Gus Van Horn blog

A list of "20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don't Get" includes tthe following: Speak Up, Not Out - We're raising a generation of sh-t talkers. In your workplace this is a cancer. If you have issues with management, culture or your role & responsibilities, SPEAK UP. Don't take those complaints and trash-talk the company or co-workers on lunch breaks and anonymous chat boards. If you can effectively communicate what needs to be improved, you have the ability to shape your surroundings and professional destiny. It has always seemed to me that there is a subtle distinction between speaking up and speaking out, although not quite the narrow one made here. The closest thing to the above or to my own distinction that a cursory search yielded this morning was the following pair of definitions: speak up: to end one's silence and speak negatively and publicly about someone or something speak out: to say something frankly and directly; to speak one's mind Of the two, which many seem to regard as equivalents now, the first seems, at least to my mind, more old-fashioned, dignified, and without connotations of being unnecessarily confrontational. (I am dubious that it necessarily has to entail speaking negatively about something.) The latter has always seemed "noisier" to me. The one makes me think of conveyng information over noise, be it in a literal sense or figuratively, in the sense of overcoming a common prejudice. The other connotes shouting to me, including the possibility of being part of a noisy gang getting ready to intimiate any dissenters. The one overcomes noise, the other contributes to it. The one has struck me as courageous, but unassuming; the other as cowardly, but posturing. Perhaps this is just me overreacting to the predilection I have observed among rabble rousers for demanding that people "speak out" about the pet cause du jour. Is this all in my head or have you, gentle reader, observed the same? Either way, feel free to speak up about it in the comments. -- CAV Link to Original

A short time ago, I said: The current "civil rights" establishment does a better job than any racist hick ever could have of ruining the prospects for millions of young black Americans. It's probably safe to say that Walter Williams agrees with me. He has some interesting facts and figures on hand to to support such a point, as well as to refute the standard leftist narrative on race. First, weaken the black family, but don't blame it on individual choices. You have to preach that today's weak black family is a legacy of slavery, Jim Crow and racism. The truth is that black female-headed households were just 18 percent of households in 1950, as opposed to about 68 percent today. In fact, from 1890 to 1940, the black marriage rate was slightly higher than that of whites. Even during slavery, when marriage was forbidden for blacks, most black children lived in biological two-parent families. In New York City, in 1925, 85 percent of black households were two-parent households. A study of 1880 family structure in Philadelphia shows that three-quarters of black families were two-parent households. Most damning about the redistributive welfare state is that Wiliams doesn't even have to bring up the fact that it is wrong for the government to steal from citizens in the first place. The practice subjects us all to open-ended robbery, but its further consequences are quite devastating. The welfare state harms everyone, but black Americans in particular. -- CAV Link to Original

Writing for Forbes, author Michael Ellsberg explains why the myth of "passive income" is dangerous nonsense. Although its title might lead one to expect a short article, the piece is long, and carries on, full steam, from the end of the short list that lends its title to his piece. Before going on, I'll give summary statements of Ellsberg's four reasons the myth is doomed to fail in a business sense: You can't stay ahead of competition passively. You can't maintain a loyal tribe of customers passively. You can't lead great teams passively. You can't create meaning, passion, or purpose in your life passively It is on the last point that Ellsberg's piece really shines. Here is part of his reasoning: This is the basic mistake they've made: they've fallen prey to the belief that money and meaning are two totally separate things. They've chosen to make their money from something that feels completely meaningless to them (some business they care so little about, they just can't wait to get away from it and minimize their involvement as much as possible), which they hope will buy them the freedom to do something they actually care about. [bold added] Ellsberg looks at (1) the empty lives of a few people who actually have something like a "passive income", (2) the lives of a few "active" successful people, and (3) the ways the former fail and the latter succeed, in the process of showing how mistaken the fantasy is. Ellsberg also delivers a much more positive message about how good actual success is. I am not at all surprised at how well this all ties together, but I am very impressed with how well Ellsberg demonstrates it with his writing. Read the whole thing. -- CAV Link to Original

Columnist A. Barton Hinkle discusses a subject that has come up here before: licensing laws as violations of freedom of speech. This time, it is a syndicated psychology columnist who has run afoul of bureaucrats in Kentucky. But, as they used to say in more free-wheeling days, that's not all! Within the column, the following eye-opening side note reveals something only a little less disturbing: the astonishing (and growing) degree of control that the government exerts over our livelihoods through licensing. Nationwide, more than 100 occupations are licensed by some or all of the 50 states; roughly a third of Americans hold jobs that need a government license, up from 5 percent a half-century ago. [bold added] This kind of government control reminds me of a couple of things Ayn Rand had to say. First, there are her comments on guild socialism: The particular form of economic organization, which is becoming more and more apparent in this country, as an outgrowth of the power of pressure groups, is one of the worst variants of statism: guild socialism. Guild socialism robs the talented young of their future--by freezing men into professional castes under rigid rules. It represents an open embodiment of the basic motive of most statists, though they usually prefer not to confess it: the entrenchment and protection of mediocrity from abler competitors, the shackling of the men of superior ability down to the mean average of their professions. That theory is not too popular among socialists (though it has its advocates)--but the most famous instance of its large-scale practice was Fascist Italy. Certainly, if -- as Hinkle points out -- one can face criminal charges for saying something that is completely true (among other things), this is an arrangement taylor-made to hold down the best. Second, since there is little practical differencebetween government ownership of the means of production and government control of the same, I am also reminded of something Ayn Rand said about what losing a job meant during the Great Depression: In these United States of ours, we working women may fear we will lose our jobs. That is one fear we all have, to some degree at any rate. But when the job is gone, we don't feel at the end of our resources. We still can go out and get another. I know this well, for in my first years in this country I worked as a waitress, as a saleswoman from door to door, as an assistant wardrobe women in Hollywood, as a scenario writer, as a worker at a bewildering number of jobs. And when fired, I always landed somewhere else, eventually. But in Russia the terrific fear of the young girl worker is the fear of losing her job. Once it is gone, it is almost impossible for her to get another job, since under the collectivist state, the government is the only employer. And if the government has discharged you, it is rather unreasonable to expect the same boss to take you back again. The same boss seldom does. [bold added] Official unemployment figures, which grossly undercount the unemployed by such means as leaving out those who do not apply for government "benefits", have been hovering around ten percent nationally for some time. While the situation is hardly identical to that in Soviet Russia, licensing undoubtedly does prevent many individuals from, say, attempting to enter new professions or innovating within their old professions to achieve a competitive advantage. With one third of Americans needing bureaucratic approval to work, I can't help but wonder how many people are hindered in their job searches by licensing requirements, in one way or another. -- CAV Updates Today: (1) Removed "not" before "leaving". (2) Added a hyperlink. Link to Original

Theft by Semantics The kleptocrats who run Kansas City, Missouri, have found a new way to steal money from drivers: ... According to a recent change in the city code, running a red light in Kansas City is now treated as if the owner of the vehicle parked illegally in the middle of an intersection. "The violation is not driving into the intersection but owning a vehicle that is found in the intersection while the light is emitting a steady red light," a city memo said. The fact that this is a parking violation, not a moving violation, means that K.C. doesn't have to bother with figuring out who was driving. Of course, the justification usually given for red light cameras is safety, despite the fact that they often cause motorists to slam their brakes to avoid tickets, so the fact is that the word games have been going on for quite some time. Weekend Reading "Because obnoxious people can't get validation from within themselves, they seek reactions from others by being blowhards." --Michael Hurd, in "Handling Obnoxious People" at The Delaware Wave "[A]s a matter of general prudence, armed civilians should avoid unnecessary confrontations with others." -- Paul Hsieh, in "The Single Most Important Lesson Gun Owners Should Learn from the George Zimmerman Case" at Forbes My Two Cents Micheal Hurd, as always, explains the advice he gives. Regarding not showing a reaction when dealing with obnoxious people, I would imagine that would also entail suppressing the smirk one might make upon realizing that one is frustrating such a person. Ditching GMail Google's overall direction seems to be to abandon standard Internet protocols in favor of vendor lock-in and assimilation of any and all services it doesn't kill into a Facebook-like social network. Bearing that in mind, I am always on the lookout for how-to guides such as Max Maznick's "Switching from GMail to FastMail". --CAV Link to Original

1. Two years on, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's changes to teachers' union rules appear to be in the process of wiping them out (HT: Amit Ghate). 2. This mosquito magnet is eager to try running a fan on the deck to ward off the pesky insects. I have been amazed at the abundance of mosquitoes here in St. Louis. 3. Yesterday, on my second day of solo duty with both kids, I took them to the zoo. The highlight was watching my daughter at the excellent hippopotamus exhibit, which allows visitors to view the beasts in a good re-creation of their natural habitat. It was a sunny day and the animals were particularly active, repeatedly swimming past the viewing window. This delighted my daughter, who would yell and flail her arms as she watched them go by. As I said to another parent, who smiled at her antics, "You know you've had a great trip to the zoo when your two-year-old starts shouting nonsense." 4. Canonical is forging ahead with plans to build a smart phone that can team up with a monitor and other peripherals to function as a desktop that runs its Ubuntu flavor of Linux: I won't be reserving one of these, but I would consider one as a successor to my current phone when the time comes to replace it: All my other computers run Ubuntu Linux. -- CAV Link to Original

I have many problems with the work of Ann Coulter in general, but will readily concede that she can be very good at exposing the vacuousness and malignity of the left. Today, I have to further concede that she has written something much-needed and long overdue. In her latest piece, Coulter considers the army of unsung heroes who have played integral parts in various highly publicized criminal cases, of which the Zimmerman trial is the latest; cases in which leftist media and politicians have been more than happy to fan the flames of what could aptly be called black-on-black bigotry: One neighbor testified that Jonah [Perry] told him the night of the incident that his brother was shot when they were mugging someone. Another neighbor said Jonah told her that night that he tried to beat up a guy who turned out to be a cop. This was in a courtroom full of rabble-rousers, amen-ing everything defense lawyer Alton Maddox said. They told the truth knowing they'd have to go back to the neighborhood . Whatever happened to them? Why aren't they the heroes? Where's their Hollywood movie? There was a movie about the Perry case. It was titled: Murder Without Motive: The Edmund Perry Story. (The grand jury had no difficulty finding the motive: The cop was being mugged.) [bold added, minor format edits] I do have one quibble with this otherwise excellent column: I wouldn't say that these witnesses were under pressure to "root for their race". Objectively, rooting for a race would entail generally feeling good will towards the individual members of that race, and wouldn't preclude doing so for members of other races. Put another way, that phrase lets the zero-sum, collectivistpremise behind race-based law off the hook too easily. When individual rights are protected by law, everyone who obeys the law has the opportunity to win, that is, to pursue his own happiness. To root for or against a race in the way Coulter used the phrase is to admit that one does not see othersor himself as an individual. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to consider whether something like happiness ever factors in to the thinking of such an individual. -- CAV Link to Original

Jonah Goldberg's obituary of Helen Thomas is on the money, justly indicating that too many others have been puff pieces. A lack of actual accomplishment and an animus against the United States and Israel emerge as the two dominant themes of Thomas's career: Still, as time went by, the awards poured in as Thomas became a Washington institution, with cameos in Hollywood movies and even The Simpsons. But the "odd thing about her awards and citations," [Jonathan] Chait noted, "is that they almost never mention any specific contributions she has made to journalism save for being female and, well, old." [minor format edits] And: Ironically, her views on Israel made the woman who knocked down doors quite eager to lock them behind her. It was widely rumored -- and reported by Slate magazine -- that she kept pro-Israel New York Times columnist Bill Safire out of the Gridiron Club for years until he turned 70. When Slate asked her about this, she replied, "I don't think I'll talk to you anymore," and hung up. [minor format edits] Goldberg claims he can come up with only one explanation -- that used by Delta House as its "defense" in Animal House -- for Thomas's plaudits:" But sir, Delta Tau Chi has a long tradition of existence to its members and to the community at large." He gets the laugh, and such a joke is surely what this person deserves. I thought at first that Goldberg could have been more explicit about the fact that Thomas's iconic status said much more about her promoters than it did about her, but I changed my mind on that: Simply pointing these things out will be enough for an independent thinker to figure this out for himself. Past a certain point, connecting dots can amount to helping an intellectual opponent pass himself off as open to rational argument. That is more than the perpetrators of this fraud deserve. -- CAV Link to Original

Lenore Skenazy writes of lawsuit-driven precautionary thinking run amok at a popular institution that many parents hope will teach their children how to swim: At some of the YMCAs around the country, a rule for free swimming is now this: If a child is under a certain age -- sometimes as high as 11 -- and has not yet passed a swim test, a parent must be in the water with him at all times, not more than an arm's length away, in the shallow end. And the child must be wearing a life vest. This is all in the name of safety, of course -- except that it constitutes the exact opposite. It is practically guaranteeing that kids do not end up learning how to swim. How could they? Whenever they've got time to practice, they can barely get their head underwater! In fact, a head's going underwater is precisely what a life vest is designed to prevent. [bold added] Skenazy compares this with her own experience and then suggests the tongue-in-cheek remedy of a class action suit against the Y for failing to teach children to swim. In the process, she reminds me of how I learned how to swim, despite a stupid rule our pool had in place for swimming lessons. Because I am negatively buoyant (See Items 5 and 6.), unlike most people, I do not float in water. The result of this was that I was unable to do the "belly float" at an early stage of my swimming lessons. This was mindlessly enforced, preventing me from progressing, and leaving me to my own devices for learning to swim, which I was able to do precisely because our pool did not impose a silly requirement to wear a float for all children below a certain age during free swimming time. I also recall hearing about how my childhood best friend's dad learned: by jumping into a pond with a rope tied around his waste, with his father holding the other end. While I would not use that last method to teach my own children to swim, it illustrates the ever-widening gap between our growing body of de factoprescriptive law and common sense. The gap is widening so much that more people are falling into it daily. -- CAV Link to Original

Writing in the Telegraph, Daniel Hannan notes a striking similarity between a recent description of Detroit in the Observer and Ayn Rand's description of Starnesville in her "dystopian" Atlas Shrugged. (He quotes each at length.) Not lost on Hannan is the fact that Detroit has hemorrhaged over a million residents since Rand's novel was published. After reporting that one native blamed his city's poor state of affairs on a failure of capitalism, Hannan further notes that capitalism is one thing Detroit hasn't had for half a century and correctly names statism as the culprit. Of Detroit's $11 billion debt, $9 billion is accounted for by public sector salaries and pensions. Under the mountain of accmulated obligations, the money going into, say, the emergency services is not providing services but pensions. Result? It takes the police an hour to respond to a 911 call and two thirds of ambulances can't be driven. This is a failure, not of the private sector, but of the state. And, even now, the state is fighting to look after its clients: a court struck down the bankruptcy application on grounds that 'will lessen the pension benefits of public employees'. Hannan, taking note of financial parallels Mark Steyn draws between the federal government and Detroit's, also warns that the United States as a whole is headed down the same path, ending on the following note: Oh dear. No wonder the president would rather talk about Trayvon Martin. If you want to see Obamanomics taken to its conclusion, look at Starnesville. And tremble. It is refreshing to see the truth spoken so plainly. It is too bad that, as a commenter here recently pointed out, that one generally has to go to a foreign news source to hear it. -- CAV Link to Original

Regulation as Strangulation VIa HBL, I learned that John Stossel has, once again, hit the nail on the head. His whole column is worth a read, but I found the following bullet list quite informative: Drug companies invented a vaccine against Lyme disease, but they won't sell it, because they're scared of lawyers. Fearful medical device makers often stick to old technologies because trying something new, even if it's better, risks a suit. Monsanto developed a substitute for asbestos, a fire-resistant insulation that might save thousands of lives, but decided not to sell it because the company feared it might be sued. Believe it or not, Stossel provides a particularly sickening example of this process in action before he even gets to these. Weekend Reading "If you're too stressed-out to think, then you need to rearrange things to make time for it." -- Michael Hurd, in "Take a Deep Breath and Think", at The Delaware Coast Press "I can't overemphasize the importance of making sure your goals are achievable and realistic." -- Michael Hurd, in "Planning Your Planning" at The Delaware Wave "Opponents of assisted suicide place sovereignty outside the individual and view individuals either as the property of a supernatural deity or mere vassals of the State." -- Amesh Adalja, in "Does the Right to Life and Liberty Include the Right to Terminate One's Life?" at Forbes "Gasland, Part II is a direct continuation of the original Gasland, which famously featured footage of a Pennsylvania man lighting his water on fire--a phenomenon that, unknown to many, is a frequent natural occurrence." -- Alex Epstein, in "Gasland II's Luddite Slander of 'Fracking' Is The Latest Technophobe Attack on Progress" at Forbes "usiness leaders are paid for their contribution - and paid well, we know - but precisely because their contribution is large." -- Richard Salsman, in "Americans Think Little of Business, and That's Bad for the U.S. Economy" at Forbes My Two Cents The Epstein piece does an excellent job of debunking the claims of the two movies that smear fracking. But there's a nice bonus: Epstein also describes the dishonest rhetorical tactics they (and similar Luddite attacks) employ. That can help numerous people notice when they are being used -- and they will be -- in the future, and perhaps be able to see through them. A Heroic Moment in Medicine Over at Futility Closet, Greg Ross relays the story of Evan O'Neill Kane, who wanted to show that some major surgeries could be performed under local anaesthesia: [O]n Feb. 15, propped up by pillows on an operating table, he cut into his own abdomen, using novocaine to dull the pain while a nurse held his head forward so that he could see the work. "Just say that I am getting along all right," he told the New York Times the following day. "I now know exactly how the patient feels when being operated upon under local treatment. … I have demonstrated the fact in my own case that a major operation can be performed by the use of a local anaesthesia without causing pain more severe than can be borne by the patient." [minor format edits] Ross notes that Kane was sixty at the time and would repair his own hernia similarly nearly a decade later. --CAV Link to Original

1. Patience paid off for the folks at Trinity College, who successfully filmed a drop of pitch falling after only sixty-nine years: Over several decades a number of drips did form in the funnel and fall into the jar, giving credence to the hypothesis that pitch is indeed viscous. However, the dripping was never witnessed or captured on camera, which would have definitively proved the theory. A number of weeks ago, scientists in the department noticed that a drip had formed. In order to finally and definitively end the experiment, they set up a webcam to video the experiment around the clock. Last Thursday, the drip finally dropped into the jar, and was captured on camera. If this sounds vaguely familiar, it should. (Scroll down to Item 3.) But that experiment, the longest-running in the world, never caught the event on camera due to technical difficulties. 2. Someone has argued that we now have scientific proof that charcoal grilling is superior to gas, at least in terms of flavor. So if you have two identical steaks, cooked at identical temperatures, for the same amount of time, where the only difference is that one is cooked over charcoal and one is cooked over gas, what will be the end result? The charcoal-cooked steak will taste more like bacon. Plus, we already knew that charcoal grilling does a better job of upsetting greens. So why am I on a gas grill these days? Time. (And safety will rear its ugly head during the next year or so.) When you have an infant and a two-year old, the time to build and tend to a fire, along with the ability to sit next to it in peace, go completely out the window. Nothing makes one appreciate a gas grill quite like the following alternative: Gas grilling or no grilling. And I'll do both when the kids grow up: There will always be times that convenience wins out. 3. Speaking of kids, my two-year-old daughter asked me a "How?" question for the first time this week. Also, after she objected to her car seat before a trip to the "Magic House" Children's Museum, I gave her the choice not to go. I reminded her, though, that we have to use the car to get there. (That was all I said this time.) On the way, she volunteered something like the following: "Magic House far away. Car fast." 4. Over at Slate, a college student tells us what it's like to have a photographic memory: Only a few of my friends know that I have this kind of memory, and they all ask me the classic: Why aren't you getting A grades all the time, in everything? The simple answer is that the "photographs" in my memory are so fragmented and so cluttered that it consumes a whole lot of my energy just to visualize one chosen memory.Interesting. And three cheers for having a regular memory! -- CAV Link to Original

Via RealClear Policy, I have encountered a Reason Magazine article titled, "Why the Government Was Wrong to Shutdown Fung Wah Bus Company." The piece missed a golden opportunity to indicate that the regulations and the shutdown were improper uses of government. However, it offers value by detailing the degree to which the government micromanages transportation safety -- and the fact that it often does so incompetently on multiple levels. I also found the following cost-benefit analysis of the inter-city bus company shutdown worthwhile, although with the usual caveats such analyses deserve: Fung Wah customers actually have much to be nostalgic for and little to fear. Regulators could have shutdown Greyhound, or practically any bus company, on the same grounds they used to force Fung Wah out of business. And if saving lives is the whole idea, regulators should more logically prohibit intercity travel in passenger cars, while mandating travel in buses run by companies like Fung Wah. ... Again, unless riders were being forced or duped into using the buses, or the company were acting negligently, the government had no business shutting it down. The proper role of the government is to protect our right to make judgements, such as what we regard as safe or what risks are acceptable, ourselves. Even if the government were not forcing people to do something riskier (on average) than they might otherwise do (i.e., travel in cars instead of buses), it shouldn't be dictating to us how we should live. That said, this example eloquently illustrates one danger of the government imposing its "wisdom" on everyone. -- CAV Link to Original

Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Jason Riley apty sums up (via HBL) the reaction of the left to the verdict in the George Zimmerman trial as a "predictable" call for "a 'national conversation' about this or that aspect of the case". He also gives this drivel exactly the answer it deserves: So let's have our discussions, even if the only one that really needs to occur is within the black community. Civil-rights leaders today choose to keep the focus on white racism instead of personal responsibility, but their predecessors knew better. "Do you know that Negroes are 10 percent of the population of St. Louis and are responsible for 58% of its crimes? We've got to face that. And we've got to do something about our moral standards," Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. told a congregation in 1961. "We know that there are many things wrong in the white world, but there are many things wrong in the black world, too. We can't keep on blaming the white man. There are things we must do for ourselves." Much has changed for the better since the words in the last paragraph were spoken, but some things have changed for the worse. The current "civil rights" establishment does a better job than any racist hick ever could have of ruining the prospects for millions of young black Americans. This it does by having them limit their own prospects -- by inducing them expect to have to do nothing to earn respect or to achieve the same standard of living that everyone else does. -- CAV Link to Original

George Will makes a colossal error in his latest column, defending an improper government survey on the grounds that it is good for the economy: Nothing Will says in defense of this survey is relevant to whether our government ought to be conducting it. The fact that this survey has historical roots in the Constitution is irrelevant: See slavery. The fact that the results of the survey were arguably beneficial to some business or other is irrelevant: So are lots of other things the government doesn't or shouldn't provide at the expense of people other than its proprietors. The fact that the program is inexpensive is irrelevant: It is wrong for our government to forcibly take moneyin any amount from the citizens whose rights (including that of property) it is supposed to be protecting. That completing the survey poses a minor inconvenience is irrelevant: The government shouldn't be issuing orders to citizens who pose no objective threat to others. Finally, that the survey does not (yet?) collect a particular type of information that some citizens would find objectionable is also irrelevant: Americans deserve to have a reasonable expectation of privacy regarding their personal affairs, including whether to trust some agency to keep any such information they choose to provide anonymous. Will's defense of this "inexpensive federal program" will seem reasonable to most people, but it actually epitomizes what is wrong with the whole idea that our government is "too big", rather than acting improperly. The former offers no reasonable criterion for limiting the role of government in our daily lives: See the metastasis of government meddling in medical care (and now even personal "lifestyle" decisions) over the decades. (And isn't a healthy population good for business?) The latter does offer a way to test whether a government action is legitimate or not. Unfortunately, the latter does not tolerate exceptions for the sake of expediency. The truly inexpensive cost of such a test is that "small government" conservatives will have to let go of a pet government program here and there. -- CAV Link to Original

Writing at The New Scientist, Alan Levinovitz introduces readers to the idea of the nocebo effect, noting along the way that it surfaced among the results of an Italian study of gluten intolerance: [L]ast February[,] Slate's Darshak Sanghavi reported on an Italian study that confirmed the existence of gluten intolerance ("non-coeliac wheat sensitivity") as a third, "distinct clinical condition". In the study, one-third of patients who self-identified as gluten-intolerant did in fact experience symptom relief after adopting a gluten-free diet. Case closed, right? Pass the gluten-free pasta. Not so fast. An important implication of the study is that two-thirds of people who think they are gluten intolerant really aren't. In light of this, the even-handed Sanghavi suggested that "patients convinced they have gluten intolerance might do well to also accept that their self-diagnosis may be wrong". The article is a mixed bag, but does a good job of showing with a couple of examples how common cognitive errors can lead otherwise intelligent people into becoming convinced that something benign is actually harmful. (His other example is "Chinese restaurant syndrome", which I'd heard of and which sounded semiplausible to me, although I've never personally known anyone who claimed to suffer from it.) -- CAV Link to Original

Appreciating Ayn Rand Tom Bowden of the Ayn Rand Institute points to a thoughtful essay on Atlas Shrugged by Brad Keywell, who co-founded Groupon and Lightbank. Keywell doesn't claim to be an Objectivist, and even though I disagree with some of his formulations, I can highly recommend reading the entire essay, available here. If you're undecided about reading the whole essay, Bowden supplies some good excerpts at the first link above. Weekend Reading "People who are together but aren't very happy have, in most cases, simply neglected their relationship." -- Michael Hurd, in "To Love is to Cherish", at The Delaware Wave "Do you share the widespread assumption that morality has to be based on religion? If so, are you willing to check that assumption?" -- Harry Binswanger, in "Capitalism Without God: Freedom is a Secular but Absolute Value", at Forbes My Two Cents The Binswanger piece is one of those that is difficult to pull a teaser quote from because it is so tightly integrated. Fortunately, his first two sentences provide an excellent motivation to read it, whether you wonder where he's going, or are already there. Eyes Great and Small The following Richard Feymnan quote appears, with further context, at Futility Closet: So the same artist who made the smallest drawing ever has also made the largest. Let's go up another scale, the same amount again, another hundred thousand, and then try to draw an eye: Where would we have to draw it? Well, it turns out that it's there -- it's a beautiful eye in the heavens, namely Saturn with her rings! Follow the link to see Tom Van Sant's drawings, whose scales differ by a factor of ten billion. --CAV Link to Original

1. I'm pretty sure it isn't available in my area, but doesn't Instacart sound like great way to cut down on errands: Founder Apoorva Mehta says Instacart's "secret sauce" is its fulfillment software, which allows the online retailer to combine orders placed at different times and fill them from different stores--supplementing frozen food from Trader Joe's with fresh fruit from Whole Foods and cereal from Costco. Customers assemble their orders with lengthy drop-down menus on Instacart's website or app. [links dropped] The full article sounds much more hopeful about the grocery shopping startup than its failed predecessor, Webvan, for several good reasons. 2. Vivek Haldaron becoming a parent: Becoming a parent is a singularity-like event. Those not there have no idea what it's like. Those past the point of no return can't get the message back out. It instantly changes the world you live in and the person you thought you were and what's important and precious. I also like his thoughts on "work-life 'balance'". [my scare quotes] 3. Some coffee shops offer unlimited free wireless to draw customers, but others are looking for ways to drive out "laptop hobos" (not to be confused with "laptop zombies"). 4. One day a few months ago, after we came in from playing outside, I filled a glass with water, drank it in one gulp, and said, "Aaaaaah!" when I finished. My daughter promptly imitated me and smiled, causing me to laugh. Ever since, she has often looked at me, smiled, and said, "Aaaaaah!" after seeing me drink water. -- CAV Link to Original

Victor Davis Hanson looks at several recent examples of celebrities who got into trouble with the leftist media for "hate speech" -- as well as a few who got off scott free for doing essentially the same thing (or worse). Hanson rightly concludes that what is really being penalized isn't speech, but thought. But then he makes the following additional observation: Poor Paula Deen. She may protest accusations of racism by noting that she supported Barack Obama's presidential campaigns. But the media instead fixates on her deep Southern accent and demeanor, which supposedly prove her speech was racist in a way that left-wing and cool Jamie Foxx purportedly could never be. We cannot forgive conservative Mel Gibson for his despicable, drunken anti-Semitic rants. But it appears we can pardon liberal Alec Baldwin for his vicious, homophobic outbursts. The former smears are judged by the thought police to be typical, but the latter slurs are surely aberrant. The crime is not hate speech, but hate thought -- a state of mind that apparently only self-appointed liberal referees can sort out. It makes sense on a psychological level that the kind of personality that imagines it knows better what is good for you than you do would "know" better than you do what you actually think. It also makes sense that someone accustomed to yanking data out of context (or adding one's own random emotional associations to it) when it suits him would realize on some level that he doesn't know it all. Being able to so easily wield the club of "hate speech" serves several purposes to such a mentality, but first and foremost it is to avoid exposure of what he is to others and, most of all, himself. It is too bad for those of us who do not need such mollycoddling that there are real-life consequences to innocent victims for it, be they unjustly accused of bigotry or unjustly victimized by it. We do not serve the cause of liberty (or, therefore, ourselves) by pretending that certain words, however repulsive, should be illegal or that they, alone, apart from any and all context, damn the one who utters them for all eternity. -- CAV Link to Original

Cass Sunstein writes an interesting article on confirmation biasamong certain detractors of ObamaCare. (Interestingly, Sunstein (or at least his editor) feels the need to call such detractors "haters".) Noting the chorus of "I told you so" roused by the recent decision by the Obama administration to delay implementation of part of the measure by a year, Sunstein likens the chorus to the work of Edwin During-Lawrence, whose work, Bacon is Shakespeare, he cites as an example of confirmation bias. He continues: To the critics of the health-care law, however, the real lesson of the announcement is clear: OBAMACARE IS A DEBACLE. And to those critics, that is the real lesson of essentially every development in health-care reform. If governors decline to establish state exchanges, leaving that task to the federal government, then Obamacare is a debacle. If the administration releases a complex application form for the coming exchanges, then Obamacare is a debacle (even if the application is just a draft). If states opt out of the Medicaid expansion, then Obamacare is a debacle. [link dropped] It is tempting to liken Sunstein's serial dismissals of the difficulties in implementing ObamaCare to his holding the preordained conclusion that OBAMACARE IS JUST ANOTHER LAW. However, I think it is more important to concede that he has raised a good point. Perhaps the recent delay really is just because reporting requirements are in dire need of revision. I haven't studied the matter enough to know whether Sunsteins's position is correct or the decision really is a symptom of the law being so badly written that it is, beyond being improper, also a comedy of bungling. It doesn't matter which is the case, because a principled opponent of ObamaCare will see the latter case as merely a symptom of a greater problem. Even were the law flawlessly executed, it would remain immoral (and an improper use of government) to dictate to physicians and patients alike the terms by which they are to do business. (Oh, and it would, as such, be a debacle on those merits alone.) Any opponent who can't see this -- who feels the need to grasp at straws -- is going to lose the fight to repeal it, if he sees the need for such a fight at all. ("'Repeal and replace' Republicans, I'm talking to you.) Maybe this decision deserves ridicule, maybe not. Just don't hang your hat on it. To do so is to concede a bigger issue: whether we should have such a law at all. -- CAV Link to Original

Still adjusting to life with two children, I have been thinking about time management a lot lately. I recently recommended a book on the subject for authors, Time to Write, by Kelly Stone. Around the time I was finishing that one off, I came across an installment of an advice column based on another promising book, this one geared towards working parents. The Balance Myth: Rethinking Work-Life Success, by former Qwest CEO Teresa Stone, offers, in the words of Anne Fisher: ... the kind of 'nitty-gritty details' you're looking for, starting with the premise that the whole idea of 'work-life balance' is an unrealistic goal that just makes people feel as if they're failing at everything. Among the six tips Fisher gave as examples was the following: Keep one calendar. Early in her career, Taylor kept separate calendars for work and home, which meant "I bifurcated my life, and as a consequence I felt bifurcated. This was not pleasant. Meeting and appointment overlaps occurred, and I dropped the ball and missed a few things." Noting personal and professional items on the same calendar prevents that. That's one I needed to hear. I also like the advice against "multitasking". If anyone who passes by has read this book or has recommendations for other, similar books, I'd be interested in hearing from you. -- CAV Link to Original

Facebook employee Tom Stocky, whose paternity leave is ending, reports on his experiences as a stay-at-home dad. Overall, his experiences pretty much resemble mine. Anyone contemplating such an endeavor for whatever reason, would do well to do the quick read. This is because Stocky is really writing about doing two difficult things at once: (1) starting life as a parent, and (2) assuming a very non-traditional role. While we were in Boston, I took care of our daughter full time, except for a part day off on Friday and whenever I had consulting work to do. There, I had to use babysitters. Daycare was not an option because it was even more expensive than our outrageous rent. In St. Louis, we can use daycare part time. I think that it is fair to say that parenting is both unexpectedly difficult on a day-to-day basis and very rewarding in the long haul, and that Tom Stocky might agree with me: For the first few weeks, I missed my old job. The new one was more physically exhausting and less mentally stimulating. Each day was almost identical to the last: wake, change, feed, play, feed, change, nap, change, feed, play, feed, change, nap, change, feed, play, feed, sleep. The fact that my day was interlaced with palindromes didn't make it any more exciting. A switch flipped sometime just after the 2nd month, when I could more easily imagine myself being happy doing this full time. Maybe it was because she was 2 months older and had learned new and cooler tricks or maybe it was because I was really starting to reap the benefits of my work. It was nice to have her like me so much, to come to me for comfort when she fell, to come and cuddle with me when she got sleepy, to run toward me screaming with excitement after I'd been away for awhile. I realized that's just because I spent so much time with her, but I didn't care, it felt really good. Maybe it was also because I got better at childcare. It feels nice to be good at something, and I got much better at the work I was doing at home. Now that I am caring for a two-year-old and a newborn, I can say that the improvement in Stocky's outlook was for both reasons: Past a certain point, one can only be so well prepared. One has to "learn" the individual child and there are too many unexpected challenges to adjust to. One almost can't help but improve over the first couple of months. At the same time, very young children, simply by becoming more capable, become easier to care for. You wouldn't believe, for example, what a treat it's going to be for me when my son starts being able to hold his own head up. (Just holding him will become a lot easier.) But Stocky isn't just assuming a difficult role. He is also bucking tradition. I didn't like being the only dad at the playground, getting cautiously eyed as moms pulled their kids a bit closer. It probably didn't help that I tried to lighten the mood the first time by saying, "Don't worry, I'm not going to nab your kid, I already got this one." I felt awkward at the mid-day baby music class, like I was impinging on an established mom circle, so I switched to the 5pm one that had more dads. But honestly, I got used to most of that, and I understand that websites, classes, and organizations are targeting their primary demographic. If I remember correctly, something like 96% of full-time parents in the US are women. While I never made the mistake of joking about the obvious apprehension that many people have about men at the playground, I have had my share of awkward moments. (These are by no means due only to stereotypes about men as caregivers.) Stocky goes on to discuss other common prejudices about full-time dads and his observations are spot-on. Stocky notes that his return to work will come with mixed emotions. I am in the midst of a difficult career change made harder by the economic depression and the fact that I have had to move twice over the past few years due to my wife's career. I am sure that, as happy as I will be to see my career progress upon my eventual return to full time work, I will miss full time parenthood very much. -- CAV Link to Original

Internet Cafés vs. Homelessness? In Japan, some workers affected by the depression are living in Internet cafes. At a discounted monthly rate of about 1,920 yen ($21) a day, the 24-hour cafes offer private rooms with computers, reclining chairs, and an endless supply of coffee and soft drinks. Shared bathrooms and laundry service are also included. Government estimates in 2007 put the number of people staying in Internet cafes on any given night at nearly 61,000, and long-term at 5,400. A Japanese documentarian is reporting on the phenomenon in order to, "reveal a glimpse into the lives of the people being affected by the global economic downturn". Weekend Reading "This research asks you to uncritically accept and to take for granted that the physical makeup of the brain determines your emotions." -- Michael Hurd, in "Programming the Brain" at The Delaware Wave "Thousands of books and interviews based on the opinions of supposed 'experts' insist that countless years must be spent analyzing the past - but nobody has ever explained why!" -- Michael Hurd, in "Get Past the Past!" at The Delaware Coast Press "On the issue of racial quotas, a precursor of affirmative action, Rand had choice words[.]" -- Tom Bowden(introducing a republished essay by Ayn Rand), in "How Would Ayn Rand Have Commented On Last Week's Supreme Court Race Ruling?" at Forbes My Two Cents I am glad to see that Ayn Rand's essay on racism is appearing in print again. Neither the left nor the right had the right stand on the issue when she wrote about it back in the 1960s and nether has the right stand now. As she puts it in her essay, "[T]he smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights, cannot claim to be defenders of minorities." There is no place in the laws of a civilized country for laws based on racial heritage. Google is as Google Does Headhunter Nick Corcodilos comments on Google's recent admission that its "brain teaser" interview questions were bunk: Google's admission is no surprise. Managers who interviewed using goofy questions like, "How many barbers are there in Chicago?" were basically saying, "Search me!" about who was worth hiring. Trouble is, they're still saying, "Search me!" when they use canned personnel jockey questions to figure out who can do the work. It amazes me (though it shouldn't) in how many fields I see the same phenomenon as we see here: The conventional wisdom is idiotic, but so are many alleged departures from it. Corcodilos is right to point out that everyone here is missing the big picture by failing to connect their actions with their goals. --CAV Link to Original

1. Modern "art" does occasionally have its moments. Greg Ross of the Futility Closet writes: In 2009 experimental poet Robert Fitterman erased most of The Sun Also Rises, retaining only phrases that begin with the word I. The result can sound strangely like the diary entry of a random Saturday afternoon[.] See his post for a passage. 2. The below comes from a samplng of complaints medieval monks left in the margins of the books they transcribed: As the harbor is welcome to the sailor, so is the last line to the scribe. I have to admit a feeling of kinship for a monk complaining of back pain: Much of the week, I have had to hold the baby, whom I often call "No-Doz", while pecking things out one-handed and looking at the computer at a very awkward angle. 3. Is your phone set to vibrate? Then you might find this explanation of phantom vibrations interesting. One occasional benefit of such false positives for me has been that, upon reaching to check my phone, I have discovered that I have forgotten to take it with me. 4. Good news/bad news for a salesman who told a designer that, "I just need cards by Wednesday so I look like I know what I'm doing." The good? I bet nobody threw his business cards away. The bad? If he ever gets a clue, he might want them to. It was a rush job, and I would have preferred better images, but he gave his approval and we met the deadline in time for him to attend a bunch of conferences and hand out most of his cards. Curious, I took to finding out what the formulas were for. Turns out the client handed out cards with the formulas for cocaine and a variety of other hard drugs to a bunch of chemists. He could have just passed out cards that read, "Caveat emptor," but that wouldn't have been as funny. -- CAV Link to Original

This Independence Day, I find myself recalling a line from the movie, Smoke Signals, in which one character asked another something like, "So, are you feeling independent?" The question struck me as based on bad premises, but understandable. At the same time, it was a question that could have been spot-on (and applicable to all Americans) based on good premises and the accelerating trend of government abuse called for by the electorate. With that in mind, I direct your attention to a lesson we could learn from our neighbors to the north. Their forebears may not have rebelled against England, but they now freer than we are in some respects and are moving in a better direction overall than we are. Here is just one example: ["Hate speech"] legislation was nowhere near unique to Canada, as charges of "hate speech” are a ubiquitous tool of the worldwide Left, intended to silence opposition while elevating their approved opinions to the level of law. But the fact that Canada has abolished this shameful codification of censorship reveals a tendency toward renewal of liberty that the United States, and other nations, would do well to emulate. My thanks to reader Steve D. for bringing this article to my attention. The piece shows that there is hope that the tide of statism can be turned. It can happen here, too, and that is cause for celebration. This is especially true for those of us who realize that the fight for liberty never ends. -- CAV Link to Original