Gus Van Horn blog

Judging Edward Snowden Peter Schwartz argues that "what Edward Snowden has done is worse" than the mass surveillance of Americans illegitimately undertaken by the NSA: Snowden stole over a million classified documents, the majority of which pertained to NSA spying, not on U.S. citizens but on legitimate targets abroad, from the Taliban to the Iranians. By disclosing the methods used by the NSA, Snowden made it easier for those targets to evade future surveillance. Schwartz proceeds to argue at length that Snowden did this, animated by standard left-wing Anti-Americanism. Amy Peikoff disagrees, starting her rebuttal as follows: First, [schwartz] notes that Snowden stole over one million classified documents, many of which concern legitimate NSA surveillance programs. But I doubt that Snowden, working covertly, had the luxury of sifting through the million-plus potentially relevant documents. He may have had a window of only a very few minutes to download what he needed. Moreover, Snowden has given permission for only a fraction of the total documents to be released and Glenn Greenwald has said that he and the other journalists have heeded Snowden's wishes (more on Greenwald in a minute). Finally, it may be true that revealing information about the NSA's methods -- some of which it uses legitimately -- could make a terrorist's job easier. But if revealing those methods is necessary to alert the American people to the injustice committed by the NSA, then so be it. Both posts make interesting reading. Not having followed this story closely, I will refrain from offering an opinon on Snowden's motives. Weekend Reading "f you picked your friend wisely, the both of you will be better for it." -- Michael Hurd, in "Business vs. Friendship" at The Delaware Coast Press "... I've come to the conclusion that the best way to raise financially responsible children is to teach them cause and effect." -- Michael Hurd, in "Teaching Kids the Value of Money" at The Delaware Wave "Thus we reach the opposite of Piketty's conclusion: a high rate of profit is caused by government crimes against the producers." -- Harry Binswanger, in "Statistics Aren't Enough to Discredit Piketty's Failed, Blood-Soaked Ideas" at RealClear Markets "Before the invention of Solvadi, no amount of money could have made it available." -- Amesh Adalja, in "The Price is Right: New Hepatitis C Drug is Really a Priceless Breakthrough" at Forbes "Recently, the patent licensing business model has taken center stage in the public policy debates in a way not seen since the [nineteenth] century (when the popular rhetorical epithet was "patent shark")." -- Adam Mossoff, in "Thomas Edison Was a 'Patent Troll'" at Slate My Two Cents Adam Mossoff does Americans a great service by demonstrating that so-called "patent trolls" are, in fact, merely practicing a venerable (and highly effective) form of division-of-labor through the practice of licensing. Based on some of the things I have seen in the tech press, many inventors and entrepreneurs would do well to read it. Too Late? I am tempted to cite the below, from an article about speeding up America's Passtime, as a textbook example of why I don't watch much baseball... On May 21, a "confrontation" between Cleveland pitcher Josh Outman and Detroit catcher Bryan Holaday took only five pitches but lasted almost three minutes. Here are my notes from that at-bat: "Holaday swings and misses. Holaday steps out and adjusts the Velcro on his batting gloves. Holaday swings and misses. Holaday steps out and adjusts the Velcro on his batting gloves. Ball low. Holaday steps out and adjusts the Velcro on his batting gloves. Outman steps off the rubber. Foul. Holaday steps out and adjusts the Velcro on his batting gloves. Groundout." ... but my alma mater is a baseball factory, and I gained an appreciation for the game from some great commentators one year when we won the College World Series. I do laugh about such nonsense, but I do hope this gets reigned in. --CAV Link to Original

1. The Santa Fe Brewing Company has helped me rediscover stouts with its Imperial Java Stout: This is the kind of beer that gives the word "stout" a reputation. Extra generous quantities of barley malt, followed by vigorous fermentation leaves this "imperial" heavy weight with 8% alcohol A.B.V. and a body as full as chocolate bread pudding. A complimentary and complex array of bitter notes comes from potent American hops, earthy British hops, black-roasted malts and, of course, coffee. Santa Fe Brewing Company uses only top-quality ingredients like organically grown East Timor coffee beans blended with New Guinea coffee beans, locally roasted by Ohori's Coffee House. Its heavenly flavor and aroma can't be beat or imitated. [minor edits] As the two sides of the can suggest, this beer is great anytime, and strikes me as suitable for viewing live English Premier League matches. 2. Speaking of craft beers, a humorist notes the rise of of an industry: But what would really surprise my younger self would be the names of the beers at the local brewpub. Oh, yeah, I forgot: There weren't any local brewpubs when I was young. In 1977 there was one craft brewery in the U.S. Last year there were 2,768 of them. They sold about 15 million barrels of beer, which seems like a lot, but it's only about 8 percent of all the beer sold. Still, that's 8 percent the giant brewers didn't sell. And the small brewers did it without spending a gazillion dollars on Super Bowl advertising, without running 57 commercials on 57 channels every night, without have to hire expensive actors to be in those commercials, without having to feed and pay the vet bills on a bunch of giant draft horses. Craft brewing is pretty much why I drink beer at all. During my college days, when those beers and imports were rare, I wasn't a beer drinker. A trip to Germany helped me realize that "the real thing", as I called it then, might be worth looking into. 3. One of Pumpkin's aunts was impressed by her quick wit over the weekend: During some time on the beach, she admonished her that eating sand "wasn't fun". But Mrs. Van Horn had just brought some Cheetos by, so my daughter immediately replied, "But eating Cheetos is." 4. I have to note for posterity that Little Man, possibly the happiest baby on earth, has two of the cutest mannerisms. He squeals when delighted and he has an open-mouthed, intense breathing mode, often accompanied with a smile, when he's happy about or interested in something. Of course, there's no telling what will interest or excite a baby, so I often get these for odd things. It never fails to crack me up when, upon starting a trip up or down stairs, I get the squeal. Oh, and I almost forgot the amusing way I woke for two mornings running, after Mrs. Van Horn brought the boy to sleep in our bed during the wee hours: I woke to bumps against my back. Rolling over to see what it was, I cracked an eye open to see the baby, smiling radiantly. Each time, he immediately made a quick grab for my eye. -- CAV Link to Original

Political analyst Dick Morris argues for the importance of the GOP taking the Senate in this year's elections. Although I regard any GOP victory as a holding action at best, given the ideological weakness of that party, a takeover of the Senate could be a significant one due to the way treaties acquire force of law: Republicans would also be able to stop obnoxious treaties from being ratified. Technically, they can so now, as only 37 votes will do the trick, but [Harry] Reid won't bring the treaties that might be defeated to the floor. As long as they have not had a ratification vote, the treaties remain in force under the Vienna Convention. Republicans would be able to bring up votes on -- and thereby kill -- the Arms Trade Treaty (backdoor gun control) and the Law of the Sea treaty (giving the United Nations power over the oceans). They would also be able to kill the climate change treaty that Secretary of State John Kerry is negotiating and any possible Internet treaty that undermines Internet freedom. [link removed] Morris makes other arguments that I would be more enthusiastic about were the GOP much more behind individual rights than it is. That said, I regard the above as perhaps the most important reason to offer highly qualified support to the GOP this fall. Indeed, this may turn out to be more important than Morris thinks it is, given a "nightmare scenario" for the 2016 election that Karl Rove's inability to counter Hillary Clinton makes all the more plausible. -- CAV Link to Original

Just before the holiday, I ran across an article in the Daily Beast that, despite its attempt to smear capitalism as mindless and predatory, nearly managed to bring up a good point. Chipotle, it seems, doesn't want customers brandishing guns in its restaurants, so the chain has, reasonably, decided to ask customers not to bring guns. Sally Kohn, writing about protests by some conservative activists against this decision, sees a double standard: Private companies want to pay their workers pennies an hour? More power to 'em. In fact, Republican Rep. Joe Barton would unshackle corporations altogether and repeal the minimum wage, which he believes has "outlived its usefulness." But when privately owned television networks make the business decision to suspend stars and cancel shows due to racist or homophobic remarks? Conservatives are outraged! And now conservatives are up in arms that the restaurant chain Chipotle has asked that customers not bring weapons into their stores, following an incident in members of the gun-rights organization Open Carry Texas brought assault-style rifles into a Chipotle in Dallas. The activist group insisted they weren't demonstrating, but simply wielding their weapons during a meal following an event. Nonetheless, Chipotle issued a statement asking patrons who aren't law enforcement officers to leave their heat at home. "The display of firearms in our restaurants has now created an environment that is potentially intimidating or uncomfortable for many of our customers." Conservatives are outraged! Set aside the fact that, under capitalism, a company that tried to pay "pennies an hour" would have trouble competing for workers, and set aside the even greater ignorance displayed by the idea that the government setting the price of labor has ever been (or could be) "useful": Kohn is right to note that some companies will set policies that displease certain segments of the population. So long as a company isn't violating anyone's individual rights, it should be free to set whatever policy it wants. It is ridiculous for anyone to get upset at the idea that a business wants its customers to behave a certain way. (Does anyone remember the phrase, "Check your weapons at the door"?) (Oh, and, by the way, one needn't commit a robbery or a murder with a gun to violate another's rights. Wielding one in a threatening manner does the same thing. I'll pass over the question of whether individuals should have a legal right to possess weapons whose sole purpose is military use.) But there is more going on here than mere hypocrisy, and this doesn't get the attention or emphasis it deserves from Kohn, perhaps due to some aspect of her own opposition to capitalism. The conservative activists she cites either insist that Chipotle's customers needn't comply or imply that Chipotle is somehow infringing their right to bear arms. The former is wrong because Chipotle, having property rights, can kick people off its premises for whatever reason it wishes, again, so long as it violates noone's rights. The latter is wrong for the same reason: Chipotle's reach extends only as far as its property. There seems to be massive confusion about the nature of capitalism, and the nature and proper role of government by nearly everyone quoted in the article. If the picture Kohn paints is accurate, a sizeable portion of the conservative movement is clueless about capitalism, government, and individual rights, including the right to own and use a gun. That said, there are at least two more related confusions present in the article, and fostered by its author. We see this most clearly when Kohn notes the protests against media outlets canceling contracts on the basis of "racist or homophobic remarks". First, there is a difference between accepting the fact that a company can set its own policies and liking those policies. Second, there is also a difference between a company's right to set policy and the fitness of its policies in terms of promoting its business or giving justice to its customers. If a company sets a policy someone disagrees with, it is not somehow anti-capitalist to protest it or even seek a boycott. Given the broad umbrella of non-leftist sentiments that qualify as "racist" or "homophobic" these days, it probably would not be hard to find a company that deserves a boycott on the grounds that it is wrongly treating someone like a bigot. Is it hypocrisy for an advocate of capitalism to protest the policies of a company when he disagrees with them? No, but it might be that or a sign that such an advocate doesn't really understand or support his cause, depending on the policy. In the case of Chipotle's asking its customers to pack their heat elsewhere, any sincere advocate of capitalism would aid his cause best by complying -- and applauding Chipotle for standing up for people who want to be able to eat a meal without having to look over their shoulders. -- CAV Link to Original

Editor's Note: I am taking a break from blogging for the holiday. I shall return by Wednesday, May 28. Happy Memorial Day! From Heresy to Orthodoxy I didn't do my graduate work in prions, but I did do my admission to candidacy exam on that subject. (Executive summary: our class were departmental guinea pigs.) Ever since, I have been a fan of nobel laureate Stanley Prusiner, whose memoir has recently come out and was reviewed by the New York Times: Sweet revenge comes in many delectable forms, among them the receipt of accolades for work long scorned. And then to get to tell the whole story at length and without a single interruption -- small wonder that the Nobel laureate Dr. Stanley B. Prusiner, a renowned neurologist at the University of California, San Francisco, writes with a cheerful bounce. Once disparaged, his scientific work is now hailed as visionary, and his memoir takes the reader on a leisurely and immensely readable victory lap from then to now. In the process, two stories unfold. The first is the progress of Dr. Prusiner's thinking on the transmissible proteins he named prions (PREE-ons) in 1982, starting with his first experiments on an obscure disease of sheep and ending with the most recent work linking prions to an array of human neurological catastrophes, including Alzheimer's disease. The science is convoluted, like the proteins, and for the uninitiated the best way to achieve a rudimentary grasp of the subject is to hear it the way Dr. Prusiner tells it, from the very beginning. I recall that many were upset that Prusiner's theory violated the so-called Central Dogma of Molecular Biology. (Technically, it does not.) That always struck me as silly, since he was arguing that the misfolded proteins seen in prion diseases were acting somewhat like enzymes, but with the correctly-folded versions as substrates. Weekend Reading "The best way to deal with a bully is to ignore him, thus giving him psychological invisibility and invalidation." -- Michael Hurd, in "Why Bullies Bully" at The Delaware Wave "Unless someone is holding a gun to your head or is outright lying to you, you are never really a victim." -- Michael Hurd, in "The Unnecessary Malaise of 'Victim-Think'" at The Delaware Coast Press In More Detail The Hurd piece on bullying is a welcome respite of sanity on this topic, which leftists are currently doing lots of overtime getting wrong. It is important to note that Hurd's advice to young victims of bullying can differ from that he gives to adults. Quote of the Week John Cook, on promoting new ideas and technology: If you want to persuade me to adopt something new, you'll gain credibility by being candid about its drawbacks. Explain by what criteria you think the new thing is better, by what criteria it is worse, and why the former should matter more to me in my circumstances. He is right to notice that simply claiming something is "better" causes one to lose credibility. --CAV Link to Original

1. I have a small backlog of beer recommendations to make, to the point that I considered devoting the whole of today's post to them. Instead, I'll kick off with my favorite of the lot, New Holland's Dragon's Milk, a bourbon barrel stout that the brewer variously describes as, a "stout with roasty malt character intermingled with deep vanilla tones, all dancing in an oak bath", elaborating that: Dragon's milk is a 17th century term used to describe the strong beer usually reserved for royalty. This strong ale was aged in oak for over 120 days. The aging process extracts flavors from the wood, which contribute to its complex character. Hints of bourbon flavor perfectly compliment its roasted malts to produce a beer fit for a king. [minor edits] The beer lives up to the above description. Accordingly, I found it to be the perfect way to celebrate the revelation that a recent health scare -- which prompted me to become a teetotaler for over a month as a precaution -- was a false alarm. 2. Pumpkin ratted out Little Man for the first time. Well, not quite, but I see that I have supplied her the phrase and the idea, when my intention was merely to make a point of acknowledging that I was wrong to blame my daughter for a small mess... Mrs. Van Horn had given her some "Gatorator" in a Big Girl glass before they all went to the den, so I could start getting dinner ready. Soon after, I heard my wife react to a spill. "Why did you take her in there with that? We have sippy cups for that," I said, racing in with paper towels. "[Little Man] came over and grabbed it." "Oh, okay. That was [Little Man]'s fault. I'll get you some more, Pumpkin." "That was [Little Man]'s fault," Pumpkin chimed in. 3. An article describing its author's experiment with replacing her usual soap-and-shapoo skin hygiene regimen with a new spray-on bacterial preparation is interesting on many levels: AOBiome does not market its product as an alternative to conventional cleansers, but it notes that some regular users may find themselves less reliant on soaps, moisturizers and deodorants after as little as a month. [spiros] Jamas, a quiet, serial entrepreneur with a doctorate in biotechnology, incorporated N. eutropha into his hygiene routine years ago; today he uses soap just twice a week. The chairman of the company's board of directors, Jamie Heywood, lathers up once or twice a month and shampoos just three times a year. The most extreme case is David Whitlock, the M.I.T.-trained chemical engineer who invented AO+. He has not showered for the past 12 years. He occasionally takes a sponge bath to wash away grime but trusts his skin's bacterial colony to do the rest. I met these men. I got close enough to shake their hands, engage in casual conversation and note that they in no way conveyed a sense of being "unclean" in either the visual or olfactory sense. [minor edits] The author also notes that her acne cleared up, remarking, "How funny it would be if adding bacteria were the answer all along." This early attempt to apply what is being learned about the role of naturally-occurring bacteria (the "microbiome", aka, "the second genome") in human health is interesting as much for what remains unknown as what is being learned. Not having any major problems I can attribute to my own current routine, not wanting greasy hair, and sure that there is more to this picture, I am much more of an interested spectator than a potential customer. 4.Reprogramming the immune system to fight cancer looks promising for patients, not to mention lucrative for pharmaceutical firms: Everything changed for Novartis with a patient named Douglas Olson, then 64, who had been diagnosed 14 years before with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. His disease no longer responded to chemo, and he had two years to live without a risky bone marrow transplant. Then he got the cell treatment that Novartis would soon buy. He spiked a fever of 103 and had to be hospitalized because his kidneys were failing. His kidneys made it, but the cancer didn't. Five pounds of cancer cells disappeared from his blood and bone marrow. "I had a complete mind shift. All of a sudden you don't have this thing sitting there waiting to kill you." He bought a boat and, four years later, still cancer free, scheduled an interview with Forbes around chainsawing trees on his Pennsylvania property. [minor edits] Believe it or not, the sub-plot concerning how the pharmaceutical giant, Novartis, is remaking itself to focus on fighting cancer will vie with that of the breakthrough for your attention. -- CAV Link to Original

Larry Elder makes a couple of interesting observations about how the Democrats have transformed the usage of the term "racist" in recent years: As with black race-card hustlers -- say the Revs. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton or any given host on MSNB-Hee-Haw -- white race-card players label others "racist" for the crime of disagreement. As with black race-card hustlers, white race-card hustlers need not name names when accusing someone of "racism." And, as with black race-card hustlers, the mainscream media will not bother to ask the white race-card hustler to identify said racists. And, much later: The next time a Democrat or member of media speaks darkly about these anonymous Republican "racists," ask this question: Don't [steve] Israel and [Jay] Rockefeller, currently in office, have a duty to "out" these racists? Why allow known bigots to remain in government? Doesn't morality require [Charlie] Crist, running as a Democrat for his old job as governor of Florida, to identify and help remove these racist elected officials? Aren't these Republican "racists" -- whose IDs are being protected by their Democratic colleagues -- detrimental to the interests of the nation and serving in violation of their oath to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution? Doesn't this oath mean protecting and defending the rights of all constituents irrespective of race -- and exposing the "racists" who refuse to do so? Why protect them? Why conceal their identities? Out the SOBs! As to the motives, Elder is plainly arguing that the Democrats are mis-using the term purposefully as what novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand called a smear against Republicans. This is nothing new, coming from the left, as Rand demonstrated in a 1964 essay titled, "'Extremism,' or the Art of Smearing" (which is reprrinted in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal): A large-scale instance, in the 1930's, was the introduction of the world "isolationism" into our political vocabulary. It was a derogatory term, suggesting something evil, and it had no clear, explicit definition. It was used to convey two meanings: one alleged, the other real--and to damn both. The alleged meaning was defined approximately like this: "Isolationism is the attitude of a person who is interested only in his own country and is not concerned with the rest of the world." The real meaning was: "Patriotism and national self-interest." ... In the late 1940's, another newly coined term was shot into our cultural arteries: "McCarthyism." Again, it was a derogatory term, suggesting some insidious evil, and without any clear definition. Its alleged meaning was: "Unjust accusations, persecutions, and character assassinations of innocent victims." Its real meaning was: "Anti-communism." Senator McCarthy was never proved guilty of those allegations, but the effect of that term was to intimidate and silence public discussions. Any uncompromising denunciation of communism or communists was--and still is--smeared as "McCarthyism." As a consequence, opposition to and exposes of communist penetration have all but vanished from our intellectual scene. (I must mention that I am not an admirer of Senator McCarthy, but not for the reasons implied in that smear.) Now consider the term "extremism." Its alleged meaning is: "Intolerance, hatred, racism, bigotry, crackpot theories, incitement to violence." Its real meaning is: "The advocacy of capitalism." It is interesting to observe that all three of the above smear campaigns involved the creation of new terms with nebulous meanings (Rand called them "anti-concepts") whereas this is a somewhat less sophisticated attempt to insinuate that an entire political party is evil by misusing a legitimate term. It is also interesting to contemplate what Rand said about the last of the three terms: The best proof of an intellectual movement's collapse is the day when it has nothing to offer as an ultimate ideal but a plea for "moderation." Such is the final proof of collectivism's bankruptcy. The vision, the courage, the dedication, the moral fire are now on the barely awakening side of the crusaders for capitalism. As the collapse of the left goes on, its rhetoric has degenerated even further into a mindless, cowardly substitute for outright name-calling. -- CAV Link to Original

John Kerry, apparently confident that nobody understands the role of freedom -- or even cheap, abundant energy -- in improving our lives (or, indeed, in making them possible at all), doubles down on Pascal's Wager in Scientific Drag (i.e., the leftist political agenda claiming to avert Anthropogenic Global Warming, aka "Climate Change"): If we make the necessary efforts to address this challenge - and supposing I'm wrong or scientists are wrong, 97 percent of them all wrong - supposing they are, what's the worst that can happen? We put millions of people to work transitioning our energy, creating new and renewable and alternative; we make life healthier because we have less particulates in the air and cleaner air and more health; we give ourselves greater security through greater energy independence - that's the downside. This is not a matter of politics or partisanship; it's a matter of science and stewardship. And it's not a matter of capacity; it's a matter of willpower. [bold in original, link added] Is John Kerry really this ignorant? Or, worse, is he pandering to a high level of ignorance? Regarding all the people the government is "putting to work", it is as if he has never heard of the parable of the Broken Window. Regarding energy independence, it is as if fracking hadn't been invented or that we couldn't consider the idea of defending our national self-interest abroad. And then there are the economic consequences of this agenda, which even its most rabid supporters sometimes admit. The worst that can happen, Mr. Kerry, if we plan our lives around an incorrect assumption, is that we waste precious time and energy that could have prolonged or enriched our lives. In a free society, at least when someone chooses to do this, the only person he harms is himself. But Mr. Kerry wants to make everyone live by the same plan he blithely admits might be wrong. In other words, it is worse than Kerry not giving a damn about Americans being free -- and thus able to take their best shot at a good life, changing course when necessary. Kerry wants to cram his plan down our throats and make us unable to deviate from it, even if we judge it to be wrong. The worse that can happen if we go along is that we live as if we do not possess the faculty of reason. John Kerry hopes we won't notice the nastiness, brutishness, or shortness of that proposition. -- CAV Link to Original

Writing at Power Line, Steven Hayward notes the inherent disingenuousness of an oft-cited ninety-seven percent agreement rate among "climate scientists" on human activity as the cause of global warming: Hayward's guess is correct, but (as they also used to say in other commercials of yesteryear) that's not all. The peer-reviewed publication originating and allegedly supporting this figure has serious weaknesses and, as with CimateGate, its data (which the first author did not intend to share) have been leaked to the Internet and analyzed by others. The rest of the blog entry elaborates on this and provides links for anyone interested in knowing more about this latest bit of legerdemain. -- CAV Link to Original

From Saturday morning until Saturday afternoon, I was in a pub downtown watching my favorite soccer team, Arsenal, haul in its first trophy in nine years. The game was hardly easy to watch, since Hull City jumped to a two-nil lead within the first eight minutes, making the game look like it was going to become yet another of the odd big-game collapses that ended the team's league title challenge early. But the Gunners collected themselves and then patiently crafted a memorable comeback to become the first side in half a century to overcome such a deficit in the F. A. Cup final. Fittingly, it was Aaron Ramsey's first-touch goal off a sweet back-heel by Olivier Giroud that won the game during extra time. This game was huge for the player and the club. Ramsey had just returned from an injury that sidelined him for half the season -- a brilliant season that marked his own long physical and psychological comeback from a much worse, career-threatening injury a few years ago: In what can only be described as a tackle that [bordered] on assault, [Ryan] Shawcross almost ended the career of a young man with his whole future ahead of him. I remember thinking, that's it, he'll never be the same. When he came back all indications were he was never going to reach that super status that he deserved. He came back to us on loan and was very good, but you could see he wasn't the same player going in for the hard tackles. I'm not for a minute suggesting he didn't give everything, but you could see there was something not right. After playing his last game on loan to us, again coincidentally against Hull City, he went back to Arsenal and some of their fans were grumbling about him, and there was talk of him leaving. This season he has shown the world what the Bluebirds knew seven years ago, this kid is for real. Today's winning goal has capped off an amazing journey from Sloper Road to Wembley Way that couldn't have been written better by Hollywood writers. [links added] As for the club, Arsenal hadn't won a trophy in nine years. This fact, in the context of the level of talent on the team and its pedigree, was a big monkey that the team needed to get off its back, and I further would have to agree with Tom J. Doyle of Goal.com that the way the team won was probably good in the long run for its nucleus of young stars: In some ways, this hard-fought victory could be better for Arsenal's young stars than a breezy victory over Hull. To come back from the initial shock of a two-goal deficit and land the trophy will serve them well for future challenges, and will teach them not to underestimate the profound effect that a sense of occasion can bring to a side on any given day. The doubt that has stalked the Arsenal camp this season like a creeping death can now be dispensed with as they are finally trophy winners once again, the name of this famous club engraved in silverware once more. This game was captivating, although not often for the beautiful moves the team is famous for, but that's fine by me. Even the best sides have off-days on which they have to grind out a result, and I'll take the inspirational example of Aaron Ramsey and the chance for Arsenal to build on this any time. -- CAV Link to Original

The Sterling Lesson: So What? Walter Williams, who is less charitable towards Donald Sterling than Larry Elder, sees little need to publicly express indignation regarding the recently-publicized remarks of the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers. After noting the many ways that Sterling's desire to make money trumped his privately-expressed views on race, Williams suggests the following: The takeaway from the Sterling affair is that we should mount not a moral crusade but an economic liberty crusade. In other words, eliminate union restrictions, wage controls, occupational and business licensure, and other anti-free market restrictions. Make opportunity depend on one's productivity. I respectfully disagree that we needn't mount a moral crusade, but I could agree that the emphasis should be less on castigating Sterling and more on the positive goal of greater economic freedom for all, which is as moral a cause as it is practical. Without the widespread disapproval that racism has today, legalized racial discrimination could easily make a comeback. That said, dwelling on such disapproval without working towards the goal Williams suggests would be to squander a golden opportunity. Weekend Reading "f there's anything we need to get over, it's the mistaken idea that life can choose to treat us one way or another." -- Michael Hurd, in "Are You the Windshield, or the Bug?" at The Delaware Wave "The first rule for changing yourself is that you must do it for yourself." -- Michael Hurd, in "Change for Me!" at The Delaware Coast Press In Greater Detail The first Hurd piece does a good job of showing how the mistaken idea he discusses can creep into one's thinking and, by implication, how much vigilance can be required to root it out. Marxian Cluelessness? If I have a spare moment and an open feed reader, the blog Clients from Hell is usually good for a quick laugh. The blog mostly concerns the travails of web designers, whose work is very frequently misunderstood, taken lightly or both. In fact, two very frequent problems are clients who think the work can be done instantaneously (and often, with little or no guidance), and clients who don't want to pay. I don't want to make too much of this, but I can't help but speculate that much of this ignorance and contempt is rooted in the widespread cultural influence of the Labor Theory of Value, which doesn't acknowledge the role of the mind in productive work. --CAV Link to Original

1. A writer at Modern Farmer asks, "Swan, anyone?" Once reserved for royalty -- Tudor, not Targaryen -- swans have been a taboo food for hundreds of years, thanks in large part to their perceived rarity and beauty. Over the past few decades, however, their numbers have swelled to the thousands in places like Michigan and New York, where the birds are called "destructive" and "invasive." Various solutions have been proposed, but with one glaring exception: The legalized hunting and yes, eating, of swans. Swans are a bird, after all, no different than ducks and quite similar to a Christmas goose. We eat lambs with little cultural objection and with the Game of Thrones TV series stirring interests in medieval cookery, it is not impossible that adventurous eaters might like to give it a try. [slight format edits] I either didn't know or had forgotten that swan once was eaten at feasts. Nor had it occurred to me that the government might stand in the way of such a culinary experiment. 2. Cancer researchers have just succeeded in wiping out cancer from a patient by using a high dose of the measles virus. In a proof of principle clinical trial, Mayo Clinic researchers have demonstrated that virotherapy -- destroying cancer with a virus that infects and kills cancer cells but spares normal tissues -- can be effective against the deadly cancer multiple myeloma... The next step in evaluating this potential new regimen will be to attempt to duplicate this success in a large number of cases. 3. The rock group, Van Halen, once stipulated in contracts that they be provided with a bowl of M&Ms backstage, with all the brown candies removed. For that, they are incorrectly remembered as prima donnas. David Lee Roth sets the record straight: The contract rider read like a version of the Chinese Yellow Pages because there was so much equipment, and so many human beings to make it function. So just as a little test, in the technical aspect of the rider, it would say "Article 148: There will be fifteen amperage voltage sockets at twenty-foot spaces, evenly, providing nineteen amperes . . ." This kind of thing. And article number 126, in the middle of nowhere, was: "There will be no brown M&M's in the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation." So, when I would walk backstage, if I saw a brown M&M in that bowl . . . well, line-check the entire production. Guaranteed you're going to arrive at a technical error. They didn't read the contract. Guaranteed you'd run into a problem. Sometimes it would threaten to just destroy the whole show. Something like, literally, life-threatening. If you read further, you will see that Roth means "literally" ... literally. So -- assuming they came up with a new test once this one became infamous -- I'd call them clever, but not unique. Many people, knowingly or not, have their own "brown M&Ms". This is why bankers wear business suits, for example. While such a test can give a false positive or negative, it can save time and more, if used properly. My biggest "brown M&M" is unsolicited, unsoundly-based advice. 4. If I blogged every one of Little Man's amusing diaper-changing antics, the subject would threaten to take over my blog, but I will allow myself this one... Little Man hates diaper changes, almost always screaming through them and sometimes arching his back to the point that, between that and my holding his ankles in one hand, he does a headstand while I am changing him. (And yet I have somehow remained "Mr. Immaculate" so far.) Yesterday, though, he outdid himself. Since he is face-down when he arches his back enough, I guess it occurred to him that, with a little more effort, he could make an escape by crawling. So he extended his arms and started crawling with the upper half of his body -- straight towards his poopy diaper, which I deftly removed, just in time, with my free hand. Oh, and at some point, he managed to pee on himself from head to chest, so he got to follow his favorite activity with his second-favorite: a clothes change. -- CAV Link to Original

City Journal presents an absorbing portrait of Havana by Michael Totten, who managed a visit there despite being a journalist. Taking a conversation with a visiting Cuban-American couple as his point of departure, Totten thus aptly describes the city, as well as the cause of its decline: "His family is from here," she said, "but mine's not, and I will never come back here. Not while it's like this. I feel like I'm in Iraq or Afghanistan." I visited Iraq seven times during the war and didn't have the heart to tell her that Baghdad, while ugly and dangerous, is vastly freer and more prosperous these days than Havana. Anyway, Iraq is precisely the kind of country with which Castro wants you to compare Cuba. It's the wrong comparison. So are impoverished Third World countries like Guatemala and Haiti. Cuba isn't a developing country; it's a once-developed country destroyed by its own government. Havana was a magnificent Western city once. It should be compared not with Baghdad, Kabul, Guatemala City, or Port-au-Prince but with formerly Communist Budapest, Prague, or Berlin. Havana's history mirrors theirs, after all. [bold added] Totten also presents us with a leftist he encountered who is the very portrait of the sin of evasion: If he were still around, [Ernest] Hemingway would be stunned to see what has happened to his old haunt[, the Floridita bar]. Cubans certainly aren't happy about it, but the tourists are another story--especially the world's remaining Marxoid fellow travelers, who show up in Havana by the planeload. Such people are clearly unteachable. I got into an argument with one at the Floridita when I pointed out that none of the patrons were Cuban. "There are places in the United States that some can't afford," she retorted. Sure, but come on. Not even the poorest Americans have to pay a week's wage for a beer. Totten does Cuba and the rest of the world a great service by straying from the tourist areas and into those he likens to Detroit to describe the brutishness of the Communist regime and the impoverishment it has brought to everyone under its thumb. This article deserves a very wide audience. -- CAV Link to Original

I have been thinking a lot about the pitfalls of placing too much stock in the idea of government inefficiency when it does economic tasks outside its proper scope. For example, Republicans sometimes warn that some statist proposal they don't like will end up making whatever new government "service" is being proposed "like the post office". One problem is that there are examples of things even the government has managed to get right on some levels, like the 1960's space program, and some that it does, or seems to do, reasonably well, like highways. (In many such cases, however, such factors as: near-monopoly status of the government, the fact that most people aren't used to thinking about how things could be done differently, and "things unseen" might be making it look better (or less inept) than it is.) This is not to say that the there can't be merits to the argument, but it should not be used as a substitute for -- or a way to avoid -- pointing out that some proposal is a misuse of government, and will violate individual rights whatever the merits of its execution. That said, a quick reading of a John Stossel piece reminded me of this type of argument a couple of times. I'll discuss one of them: Every year, government gives the group Family Expectations $100 million to teach couples how to have "healthy relationships." Family Expectations gives parents "crib cash" if they follow certain rules and advice. Does this preserve marriage? No. The government's own study found that couples who attended Family Expectations workshops were no more likely to stay together. So did politicians stop the funding? Of course not. They're politicians -- they never stop throwing your money away. This year they gave Family Expectations another $100 million. [links dropped, bold added] Regarding the handing-out of government loot to Family Expectations: That shoudn't be done even if that outfit preserved and perfected every marriage it touched. That money had to come from somewhere, and it wasn't from paying customers or voluntary donations. (And profitability is often a blind spot among those who merely ask how well the government does things. Failing to consider the relationship between the moral and the practical can lead to such blind spots.) Thus, even if Family Expectations lived up to expectations, its source of income would have to be considered in any discussion of, say, how well the government promotes marriage, including the idea of it contracting out such a service. Finally, Stossel is right to note the obvious waste of money, but the fact is that the money should have been cut off long ago on the grounds that preserving marriages is beyond the proper scope of government. -- CAV Link to Original

Republican "mastermind" Karl Rove has just confessed, more than two years ahead of the 2016 election, that he has no idea how to stop Hillary Clinton: [Rove] said if Clinton runs for president, voters must be told what happened when she suffered a fall in December 2012. The official diagnosis was a blood clot. Rove told the conference near LA Thursday, "Thirty days in the hospital? And when she reappears, she's wearing glasses that are only for people who have traumatic brain injury? We need to know what's up with that." Granted we should select a Commander-in-Chief who is physically and mentally fit for office, but those are hardly the only criteria. For example, don't Clinton's actions regarding Benghazi raise doubts about her fitness for that role, regardless of her mental and physical health? Why not focus that a bit longer, instead? Indeed, Clinton has an entire track record on a whole host of issues that should make her an excellent foil for any half-decent, non-leftist candidate. If I thought the GOP would field such a candidate, I'd welcome her candidacy, rather than pretending to worry about whether the Democrats have enough sense to make sure she's in good health. This fixation on Clinton's physical health is much like the GOP's obsession with "competence", as seen during and after the bumpy roll-out of the ObamaCare web site. That begged the following question: Would a competent roll-out have been better? In the same vein: Do we really want or need the Democrats to field a healthy, competent candidate who could implement a political agenda of meddling with -- and looting the wealth of -- the American people even more effectively than our current President has? If not, why not start educating the American voter on what's wrong with that agenda, and actually run against it, unlike last time? But then, this is the man who predicted victory for Mitt Romney, who signed into law ObamaCare before it was known as ObamaCare. I'll resist the temptation to insinuate that it is Karl Rove who is brain-damaged and say something substantive instead: The Republicans would do well to quit listening to Karl Rove, bone up on limited government, and take a lesson from history on the matter of persuading large numbers of people to support the worthy cause of freedom. Americans want a clear alternative to the party in power, not a watered-down copy or, heaven forbid, a really effective version. -- CAV Link to Original

Two apparently unrelated articles show us that, despite the fact we are surrounded by the technological trappings of a highly advanced civilization, our culture is really just a few steps removed from its superstitious past. And it is regressing. First, we learn that the current Pope takes (or at least treats) belief in the Devil far more seriously than many of his predecessors did. Although it is difficult to measure, Vatican officials talk about a resurgence of mystical rites in the church, including exorcism -- or the alleged act of evicting demons from a living host. Cardinals in Milan; Turin, Italy; and Madrid, for instance, recently moved to expand the number of exorcists in their dioceses to cope with what they have categorized as surging demand. But by focusing on old-school interpretations of the Devil, some progressive theologians complain, the pope is undermining his reputation as a leader who in so many other ways appears to be more in step with modern society than his predecessor. "He is opening the door to superstition," said Vito Mancuso, a Catholic theologian and writer. Regarding Mancuso's complaint: too late. The moment one accepts something as true on faith (i.e., arbitrarily), one has done that. The pope is just being more honest about it. Furthermore, I have to agree with the speculation in the article that the Pope "may simply be correctly reading the winds of the Catholic Church". To the extent that the religion is affected by Western culture, the Pope is much more "in step with modern society" than many would care to contemplate or admit. Before we consider the evidence, it is worth recalling Ayn Rand's words about faith and force as destroyers of the modern world: I have said that faith and force are corollaries, and that mysticism will always lead to the rule of brutality. The cause of it is contained in the very nature of mysticism. Reason is the only objective means of communication and of understanding among men; when men deal with one another by means of reason, reality is their objective standard and frame of reference. But when men claim to possess supernatural means of knowledge, no persuasion, communication or understanding are possible. Why do we kill wild animals in the jungle? Because no other way of dealing with them is open to us. And that is the state to which mysticism reduces mankind--a state where, in case of disagreement, men have no recourse except to physical violence. And more: no man or mystical elite can hold a whole society subjugated to their arbitrary assertions, edicts and whims, without the use of force. Anyone who resorts to the formula: "It's so, because I say so," will have to reach for a gun, sooner or later. Communists, like all materialists, are neo-mystics: it does not matter whether one rejects the mind in favor of revelations or in favor of conditioned reflexes. The basic premise and the results are the same. [bold added] Second, regarding communists and abandonment of the mind, one need only consider the miserable state of intellectual discourse in our universities, which the left took over decades ago, and from which cultural trends emanate, to see who really "open[ed] the door to superstition": ... There followed several emails apologizing for the delay and finally a message acknowledging that no one could be found to take the pro-feminist side. Evidently, one of those asked had responded: "What is there to debate?" No wonder those who admit no legitimate opposition to their ideas feel duty-bound to shut down unwelcome speakers. Because conservative [i.e., non-leftist --ed] students do not take over buildings or drown others out with their shouting, instructors feel free to mock conservatives in the classroom, and administrators pay scant attention when their posters are torn down or their sensibilities offended. As a tenured professor who does not decline the label "conservative," I benefit from this imbalance by getting to know some of the feistiest students on campus. That is, the leftist establishment, having long ago abandoned any pretense to reason, responds to intellectual challenges not with appeals to reason, but with force. In their hands, our culture is moving away from one in which one seeks (and is expected to provide) rational justification for one's views to one in which one is encouraged to believe he is "free" from such a necessity. The marginalization, ill-treatment, and worse that anyone who disagrees receives is par for the course. The next logical step is that those with the greatest force at their disposal (or who imagine they can acquire it, for example, by being widely recognized as authorities), will seek to become dominant in society by such brutish means. The fact that Pope Francis panders to the most irrational people he can find, be they communists or shoppers for exorcists, is not a sign that he is a trend-setter or a reason to be concerned about him. On the other hand, the fact that he feels comfortable doing so is cause for concern. -- CAV Link to Original

Government Motors, Missouri Style No, Governor Jay Nixon hasn't copied the President by socialistically taking over an automobile company -- but the Missouri legislature is closing in on fascistically dictating who can and can't sell cars: "This is worse than a mere case of dealers trying to protect an existing monopoly -- this is a case of dealers trying to create a monopoly," Tesla [Motors] said in a statement. The Republican lawmaker who introduced the Missouri legislation, Rep. Glen Kolkmeyer, did not return phone calls and emails seeking comment. [bold and link to definition of monopoly added] To be clear, the dealers would be completely unable to do ths without he government's assistance. And, yes, note that a member of the GOP, which is often mistaken for a pro-capitalist political party, got the ball rolling on this underhanded attempt to increase government involvement in the economy. Regarding the underhandedness, a statement from Tesla elaborates: In the last week before Missouri's legislature ends its current session, dealers proposed new language in an existing bill that would force Missouri consumers to purchase new vehicles only through middleman franchised dealers. The bill, HB 1124, has been in circulation since December 2013. It was passed by the House on April 17 without the anti-Tesla language. Last night, the bill with the new anti-Tesla language passed the Senate after zero public consultation and could soon move to the House floor for a final vote, essentially without debate. This change is not an innocent, minor amendment. It is completely unrelated to the original bill, which was about laws regarding all-terrain vehicles, recreational off-highway vehicles, and utility vehicles. It is also a complete 180 from current law. The current statute only bars franchisors from competing against their franchisees (for example, Ford cannot compete against Ford dealerships). The statement includes a link anyone can follow to contact their representative. I am not a fan of electric cars generally and -- for the same reason I oppose government interference in the economy in general -- I oppose the political agenda promoted by AGW fear-mongers in particular, regardless of the scientific merits of "climate change". Nevertheless, Tesla Motors deserves support on this issue. The government has no business dictating the terms of trade between consenting adults, so long as such acts do not violate anyone's individual rights. Weekend Reading "The resilience research of University of California sociologist Emmy Werner, Ph.D., demonstrated that well over a third of kids studied were never affected by the grinding poverty, alcoholism or abuse in their homes." -- Michael Hurd, in "Five Ways NOT to Feel Sorry for Yourself" at The Delaware Wave "They won't tell you what to do or what you want; but they will help you discover the best way to achieve what you want." -- Michael Hurd, in "Searching For a Decent Therapist?" at The Delaware Coast Press My Two Cents The first of Michael Hurd's two columns twice reminded me of my parents, both in terms of their rising above dysfunctional aspects of their own childhoods and in terms of their being excellent parents. Every once in a while, something like that column reminds me how of fortunate I was as a child. Will Google+ Fall Victim to "Addition by Subtraction"? Maybe not, but an article at TechCrunch suggeststhe following welcome change: In the long run, the issues with Google+ didn't especially stem from the design of the product itself, but more from the way it interjected itself into your day-to-day Google experience like some unwelcome hairy spider. Perhaps these changes will scale back the grating party crashing? Hmmm. Maybe there's also hope yet that treating us all like tablet users will come to an end. --CAV Link to Original

1. I won't quite swear to it, but Little Man already appears to be using different sounds to refer to his parents: I am Da-da and Mrs. Van Horn is Ma-ma. He may even be trying to say his big sister's name. (That last is hard for kids, which probably helps explain why her name has so many variants and generates so many nicknames.) You can't just ask him, "Who is that?" to comfirm. (He doesn't understand the question.) I think this because I have seen him catch sight of one of the others (or me, when Mrs. Van Horn is holding him) and react with different utterances. Never one to be out of the limelight for long, my daughter told me yesterday evening that I am her "best friend in the whole world". We also learned yesterday that their twin cousins, due around fall, will be a boy and a girl. 2. Writer Matt Gemmell, who has done it full time for seven years, offers his advice for working from home. Along with the usual admonitions about things like setting firm boundaries between work life and home life, Gemmell's post is unusual in offering the following reminder: ... Being successful and productive is great, but there comes a point where you're not taking advantage of the fact that you're at home - and you absolutely should. Lots of things about working from home come up over and over again because having to go elsewhere to work makes many of them non-issues for most people. (Who's going to drive to work in pajamas, or not stop by to chat with co-workers?) Others -- like dealing with kids -- come with the territory. The potential for flexibility is great, but it can be very difficult to attain. 3. Pacific Standard carries a thought-provoking story that draws parallels between modern "life hacking" and the "scientific management" movement of a century ago: In a more spectral fashion, something similar is happening with life-hacking. Rather than putting people in greater control of their lives, it puts them into the service of a stratum of faceless managers, in the form of apps, self-administered charts tracking the minutiae of eating habits and sleep cycles, and the books and buzzwords of gurus. They hum distractingly in the background, like a growing cloud of blackflies. The conventional wisdom is that both movements went "too far", or that process monintoring is useful "up to a point". That's understandable, but wrong. Where both movements go off the rails is when they are pursued regardless of actual priorities. If office workers collectively walk five extra miles a day due to the location of a water fountain, so what? Whatever time that loses may indeed be less of a waste than installing more fountains or permanently hiring someone who concerns himself with such minutiae. (And the chance meetings among workers it causes could indeed offer unseen benefits in terms of comeraderie.) It is when "efficiency" is pursued for some process in near-total disregard for its greater context that such efforts become ridiculous. 4. One Lee Sallows has written a quine-like palindromic sentence. Follow its instructions and you will have reproduced it. That gave me a chuckle. -- CAV Link to Original

George Will describesa legal case that may yet doom the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) on constitutional grounds: [T]he origination clause, which says: "All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other bills." The ACA passed the Senate on a party-line vote, and without a Democratic vote to spare, after a series of unsavory transactions that purchased the assent of several shrewdly extortionate Democrats. What will be argued on Thursday is that what was voted on -- the ACA -- was indisputably a revenue measure and unquestionably did not originate in the House, which later passed the ACA on another party-line vote. This case comes from Matt Sissel , an Iowa artist and small-business owner who is represented by the Pacific Legal Foundation, which litigates for limited government. Sissel neither has nor wants health insurance, preferring to invest his limited resources in his business. Hence he objects to the ACA's mandate that requires him to purchase it or pay the penalty that the ACA daintily calls the " shared responsibility payment." [links in original, corrected a typo] Interestingly, as Will elaborates, the very reading of the ACA that interpreted its non-participation penalty as a tax, thereby saving it, may have doomed it on the grounds now being considered. I hope Will is right, but I am wary of the fact that Chief Justice John "Humpty Dumpty" Roberts will be waiting should the case make it to the Supreme Court. -- CAV Link to Original

Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell are both writing about education, and they ask some rather pointed ethical questions of the leftist educational establishment. Williams first: The shame of the nation is that poor black children are trapped in terrible schools. But worse than that is that white liberals, black politicians and civil rights leaders, perhaps unwittingly, have taken steps to ensure that black children remain trapped. [Thomas] Sowell says, "Of all the cynical frauds of the Obama administration, few are so despicable as sacrificing the education of poor and minority children to the interests of the teachers' unions." Attorney General Eric Holder's hostility, along with that of the teachers unions, toward the spread of charter schools is just one of the signs of that cynicism. Holder's threats against schools that discipline more black students than he thinks they should add official support to a hostile learning environment. Sowell further notes that this establishment particularly harms the best students: Those black spokesmen who see all issues through a racial prism see the proposed change [of Washington, D.C.'s Dunbar High School to a magnet school] as a way to accommodate whites who want to send their children to a public school that keeps out many ghetto blacks. But the issue of selectivity was controversial even when Dunbar was an all-black school. With or without racial issues, there is no way to provide a good education for youngsters who want to learn when there are less able and more disruptive kids in the same classes. Are those who came to learn going to be sacrificed until such indefinite time as it takes for us to "solve" the "problems" of those who don't?Incredibly, this isn't the half of it. In a column aptly titled, "Moral Bankruptcy", Sowell notes what these "educators" are doing -- actively fostering envy -- instead of helping their charges acquire the knowledge and thinking skills they will need later in life: What earthly good did that do for these young people? Thank heaven no one was calloused enough to take me on a tour of a posh private school when I was growing up in Harlem. No doubt those adults who believe in envy and resentment get their jollies from doing things like this -- and from feeling that they are creating future envy and resentment voters to forward the ideological agenda of the big government left. But at the expense of kids? It never ceases to amaze me that, no matter how low my opinion of government schools sinks, it seems that there is always something else even worse lurking around the corner. -- CAV Link to Original

The Los Angeles Times provides us with a pretty accurate, if somewhat hazy, picture of why electrical prices are set to increase substantially for the foreseeable future. A couple of examples should help illustrate what I mean by the adjective hazy. First, regarding the proximate cause: The problems confronting the electricity system are the result of a wide range of forces: new federal regulations on toxic emissions, rules on greenhouse gases, state mandates for renewable power, technical problems at nuclear power plants and unpredictable price trends for natural gas. Even cheap hydro power is declining in some areas, particularly California, owing to the long-lasting drought. " Everywhere you turn, there are proposals and regulations to make prices go higher," said Daniel Kish, senior vice president at the Institute for Energy Research. "The trend line is up, up, up. We are going into uncharted territory." New emissions rules on mercury, acid gases and other toxics by the Environmental Protection Agency are expected to result in significant losses of the nation's coal-generated power, historically the largest and cheapest source of electricity. Already, two dozen coal generating units across the country are scheduled for decommissioning. When the regulations go into effect next year, 60 gigawatts of capacity -- equivalent to the output of 60 nuclear reactors -- will be taken out of the system, according to Energy Department estimates. [bold added] The problem with hydroelectric will go away with the drought and, like that caused by the polar vortex, with which the article opened, it wouldn't be a big deal were it not for the many meddling tentacles of the government. (Isn't it ironic that one of the oldest leftist caricatures of capitalism is the octopus?) The sentence in bold pretty neatly summarizes our problem, but let's boil it down further, to a phrase: improper government involvement in the energy sector. This leaves us with the question of why, in a self-governing nation, we have such tyranny. The article gives us that, as well: "If power gets too expensive, there will be a revolt," ... said [Alex Leupp, an executive with the Northern California Power Agency, a nonprofit that generates low-cost power for 15 agencies across the state]. "If the state pushes too fast on renewables before the technology is viable, it could set back the environmental goals we all believe in at the end of the day." Again, this is a hazy picture, but it gives us everything we need: Leupp doesn't speak for me when he claims that "we all believe in" having the government force people to do or pay for things that support the toxicgoals environmentalism. However, he is correct to note that we are in this predicament because lots of people buy into environmentalism and central planning. Some of these do so without thinking through the implications for their own lives. Others, badly afflicted with magical thinking, do so, expecting a miracle to keep the lights on. A very few are genuinely malicious -- See the last link. -- and are happy to cash in on the confusion. Be that as it may, we have a clear choice: continue accepting central planning (exacerbated by goals that have nothing to do with giving us the power we need) -- or have affordable lighting. We can't have both. -- CAV Link to Original

Thomas Sowell notes the demonization of educational philanthropy by the government education monopoly and, in the process, causes me to make a possibly useful connection: And how is it that the mere mention of "Wall Street" is sufficient reason to forgo any consideration of actual evidence regarding the relative merits of government schools and these alternatives? For several disturbing reasons, but probably the most important of these is the following: Most people wrongly associate Wall Street with the traditional caricature of egoism ("greed") as criminally short-range and predatory. Association with the government, which properly protects us from criminals (but improperly steals from us and subsidizes certain schools, inter alia) further gives these "educators" an undeserved spot on the moral high ground. The proper reply to such preemptive questioning of motives is to ask something like, "How are these efforts harming students?" or "Even if we set aside the question of where the money came from, can we learn from the methods and results?" Of course, doing so openly will probably get you branded as a racist, near-criminal, but we must learn to display open indifference (or at least contempt) for anyone who would attempt to preempt a serious discussion of an issue so important as education. We should not concern ourselves with the "minds" of anyone who would perpetuate such an establishment in such a way (save in self-defense, which explains manyrecent tactics of the left). Doing so while offering sound arguments for a free market in education will only help us reach, persuade, and embolden far more of the merits of our cause. -- CAV Link to Original

1. Rather than getting mad because "LinkedIn has decided that its optimal strategy is to punish registered users" [my bold], one customer gets even. According to him, unless you search for members of the network anonymously, your results will be partially truncated and replaced with a demand to "upgrade" for a fee. 2. A question at Hacker News unearths a resource I will consult for my next computer purchase: Ubuntu Certified Hardware. I had no trouble installing Linux on two of the three machines I currently use, but I did have a minor problem installing it on the netbook I use to make my practice of juggling blogging and household chores/infant care/toddler care possible. As an idiot check, I just looked for my netbook and found it missing. I am glad to see that the next generation of this line is Ubuntu-certified, as I am quite happy with what I am using now and would like to buy something like it again. 3. Along with Go the Fuck to Sleep, I highly recommend The Boss Baby, by Marla Frazee, to parents and soon-to-be-parents of infants. I agree with one customer's review, which reads in part: ... This is laugh out loud funny, from the sight of the baby in his business suit onesie to the descriptions and illustrations showing baby's business meetings. The humor is spot on and makes this a great choice for story time where it is sure to get laughs from both the kids and parents! It's also a good choice for one on one if you've got an older child who's wondering how come baby all of a sudden gets all the attention. This will be a great way to share a laugh about it together... Oh, and regarding Samuel L. Jackson's reading of the first book, which I faulted in the post linked above for being too angry-sounding: Boy, am I glad I didn't check back then and learn that he has a daughter! After Pumpkin's numerous sleep-related difficulties, I now know where that comes from! Also, I am really glad that Little Man is usually a log at night, and that we had our kids in the order we did. And speaking of Little Man: He looks like a CEO, hence his nickname. That's what first caught Mrs. Van Horn's eye when she saw the book at the bookstore. 4. PandoDaily has an inspirational story about a high-schooler who taught himself how to program and ended up saving his family's home with the proceeds of the iPhone apps he wrote. No pressure, Little Man! -- CAV Link to Original

Advocates of laissez-faire capitalism often find ourselves at a rhetorical disadvantage, thanks to the fact that so many of the effects of government meddling in the economy are unseen, as Frederic Bastiat argues in his famous parable, "The Broken Window". Conversely, almost anyone can see the tangible "benefits" of some government program or other, fail to question the propriety of the government taking money from people to pay for it, and merrily go on in ignorance of what might have been. Until now -- at least in the case of the tottering U. S. Postal Service (scroll to last item under "In Other News")... Derek Khanna of Inside Sources recently showed us a prime example of what might have been in his story, "Outbox vs. USPS: How the Post Office Killed Digital Mail": [The founders of Outbox] wanted to allow consumers to digitize all of their postal mail so that individuals could get rid of junk mail, keep important things organized and never have to go out to their mailbox again. They set out to "redefine a long cherished but broken medium of communication: postal mail." Customers would opt-in for $5 a month with "Outbox" to have their mail redirected, opened, scanned and available online or through a phone app. Consumers could then click on a particular scanned letter and ask that it be physically delivered, or that certain types of letters not be opened (e.g., bills etc.). In addition to this boon to mail recipients -- We also learn that the USPS doesn't regard us as its customers. -- Khanna and others point out that this is also exactly the sort of thing that could vastly improve the bottom line of the struggling service. In fact, the founders actually met with the Postmaster General with that idea in mind, only to be rebuffed and told to stay off its turf. The Postal Service then used its government-granted monopoly status to destroy the startup, which fought back valiantly for a time, even employing "unpostmen" to pick up its customers' mail after the USPS started refusing to honor their requests to redirect their mail to Outbox. Unfortunately, this was too expensive for the small concern -- which was also looking at a costly legal battle just to survive. So if -- even in this day and age of techological marvels -- the idea of being able to go through your mail on your smart phone sounds like the stuff of science fiction, you now know why. That -- along with your money -- is what the government took away from you. In return, you get what sounds like a juvenile prank: a pile of trash delivered to your home every day that you have to rummage through, in case something important is buried inside. -- CAV Link to Original

Some time ago, I commented on the enormous economic cost of government regulation after I learned that the Small Business Administration estimated it to be $1.75 trillion per annum -- for federal regulations alone. But, in a recent column, John Stossel describes a much higher cost: America's distinctive spirit of innovation is beginning to disappear. Here is a good summary of how this is happening: The more government "protects" us, the more it puts obstacles in the way of trying new things. It does that every time it taxes, regulates and standardizes the way things are done. Simultaneously, government offers "compassion" -- welfare and unemployment benefits. Faced with the choice of collecting unemployment or putting your own money at risk and hiring an army of lawyers to deal with business regulations, I understand why people don't bother trying. When that attitude is pervasive, the American dream dies. [ad links in original dropped] This process has been going on for some time and is accelerating, as Mark Cuban, whom Stossel interviewed, indicates: Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban left school with no money and no job prospects. He managed to become a billionaire by creating several businesses from scratch. I asked him if he could do it again today, and he said, "No ... now there's so much paperwork and regulation, so many things that you have to sign up for that you have a better chance of getting in trouble than you do of being successful." Perhaps the most striking thing about this column is that it starts out sounding so inspirational. Stossel provides several examples of successful Americans who failed numerous times along the way. Then he describes how the government is making it hard to pick oneself up and try again. I was saddened and angered by this turn -- and I hope many others will be, too. Realizing that we won't for long be able to take comfort in the once-inevitable success of our most energetic countrymen is just the sort of wake-up call we need. -- CAV Link to Original