Gus Van Horn blog

Through a John Stossel column, I learned of British entrepreneur Mike Watts, who saw opportunity when highway repairs ended up taking far more time than originally anticipated. Government said it would take a year to rebuild the road. On TV one bureaucrat said, "you can't just do what you want ... (Everything must) conform to highway standards!" But Mike built his "private road" in just 12 days. He paid for it by collecting a $3 toll. Drivers cheerfully paid because Mike's road saved them so much time. (British private toll roads like this are where we got the word "turnpike." Private tollbooth operators would lift a "pike" to let the horses through.) Intrigued, but dubious that the roads were of similar quality, I found a more detailed account in The Daily Mail. My hunch was right, but I am now incredulous for another reason altogether: Mr Watts said he has received constant opposition from the local authority, which bombarded him with red tape and forced him to spend £25,000 gaining retrospective planning permission. He also revealed that officials at Bath and North East Somerset Council had sent him a £3,500 bill for business rates despite the toll road not being official. 'It feels like they may have raised the money to take me out of the equation.' he said. The small toll road would have been profitable nonetheless, but the government then miraculously found money to complete work enough ahead of schedule to cause Watts and his partner to merely break even. Probably due to considerations of brevity, Stossel's account runs the risk of sounding like it is comparing apples and oranges, and doesn't quite capture just how bad central planning can be, when pettiness and vindictiveness are factored in. To do that, imagine how an entity owning the highway for a profit might have responded to the discovery that the problems with the road were much worse than originally believed. The company could have built a temporary detour much like Watts's. None of the expenses added on by the officials would have occurred. Any profits from the detour could have helped defray repairs to the highway -- or the company could have used a lower toll (or none at all, to foster good will among its customers). Even if (as I doubt), the repairs would have taken a year, it is easy to imagine a far better outcome absent the meddlers in charge. -- CAV Link to Original

In a 1969 essay published for the first time only recently, Isaac Asimov wrote about how creative people come up with great ideas. Asimov makes several interesting points while, as always, writing entertaining prose. Since, to his knowledge, "the method of generation is never clear even to the 'generators' themselves", Asimov hit upon the idea of looking for commonalities among the two men who independently conceived of the theory of evolution around the same time. Among other things, he noted: Undoubtedly in the first half of the 19th century, a great many naturalists had studied the manner in which species were differentiated among themselves. A great many people had read Malthus. Perhaps some both studied species and read Malthus. But what you needed was someone who studied species, read Malthus, and had the ability to make a cross-connection. That is the crucial point that is the rare characteristic that must be found. Once the cross-connection is made, it becomes obvious. Thomas H. Huxley is supposed to have exclaimed after reading On the Origin of Species, "How stupid of me not to have thought of this." Asimov notes that an absence of pressure to create is probably also important, which I think is a valid point. It would have been fascinating to know what Asimov would have thought of one instance I know of in which the "generator" did know how she came up with the idea: the story about how Ayn Rand solved the ancient problem of universals by means of introspection, as she relates in Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. Prof. B : You said you might discuss how you arrived at your theory of measurement-omission. That might be a fitting way to close. AR : All right. Historically, it happened this way. Somewhere in the 1940s, so it's over twenty years ago, I was discussing the issue of concepts with a Jesuit, who philosophically was a Thomist. He was holding to the Aristotelian position that concepts refer to an essence in concretes. And he specifically referred to "manness" in man and "roseness" in roses. I was arguing with him that there is no such thing, and that these names refer merely to an organization of concretes, that this is our way of organizing concretes. We never really finished the argument. But after this conversation, I was dissatisfied with my own answer. Because I felt, "Yes, I have indicated where concepts come from, but I haven't indicated what is the process by which we organize concretes into different groups--because I certainly don't agree with the modern nominalists who claim that it's an arbitrary convention or an arbitrary grouping." And then I asked myself, "What is it that my mind does when I use concepts? To what do I refer, and how do I learn new concepts?" And within half an hour, I had the answer. Now it took me longer than that to check it, to apply it to various categories of concepts, and see if there are exceptions. But once I had the answer, by the logic of it, I knew that that's it. And that's it. (p.307) Asimov might note some agreement on the subject of pressure, such as in the form of "responsibiliy" to a patron in the matter of inhibition of creative thought, too. Rand once turned down an offer by a Texas oilman for a million dollars to spread her philosophy on the condition that she add a religious element to it. This is not exactly the same as the example Asimov cited, but I think there is a commonality, in the form of someone else's preconceptions intruding upon one's mental freedom, or sense thereof. -- CAV Link to Original

Thomas Sowell took on the "anti-vaxxers" in a recent column, spending more than a few words on the discredited claim that vaccines cause autism: Fortunately, others took the claim seriously in a very different sense. They did massive studies involving half a million children in Denmark and two million children in Sweden. These studies showed that there was no higher incidence of autism among children who had been vaccinated than among children who had not been vaccinated. Incidentally, the "evidence" on which the original claim that vaccines caused autism was based was just 12 children. But the campaign to convince the public was a masterpiece of propaganda. On top of that: This was not the only false claim involved. What made that claim seem plausible was a highly publicized increase in the number of children diagnosed as being autistic or being "on the autism spectrum." What was not so widely publicized was that the definition of "autism" had expanded over the years to include children who would never have been called autistic by the standards set up when autism was defined by its discoverer, Professor Leo Kanner of the Johns Hopkins medical school, back in 1943. ... Despite headlines and hysteria about skyrocketing numbers of children diagnosed as autistic, the number of children who meet the original definition of autism has been relatively stable in recent years, at about one quarter of one percent of all children... If there is anything remotely credible about the anti-vaccination movement, it is the claim that the measles vaccine (or an additive) is linked to autism. This is likely to look credible to someone who isn't aware that the original claim was found to be fraudulent (and retracted) and that the recent rise in autism diagnoses was an artefact. While there are many people out there shopping for a conspiracy theory to live by, there are many more who are open to reason. The latter will likely make the right decision regarding vaccination if they have all the relevant facts at their disposal. If you know someone struggling with this decision, you should do them and their children a favor by informing them of this article. -- CAV Link to Original

1. When Pumpkin was at Little Man's current semi-verbal stage, she used to point to things that interested her. As I mentionedrecently, his version is grabbing an adult by the hand and leading him to whatever it is. Lately, this has expanded to include starting fun activities. For example, he likes to hold hands with two adults, one on each side, and swing. So lately, any time he finds Mom and Dad in the same place, he will grab one of our hands and head towards the other. 2. Via Marco Arment comes"I'm an Anti-Braker", a gem of a parody of the self-righteous and dangerous foolishness of the anti-vaccination movement: After doing some more digging, I found a nefarious plot - Mechanics: The very people who we trust to work on and care for our cars - get PAID to install and change brakes! You might THINK they care about our safety, or our cars - but they're just in it for the $49.99 brake pad installations. So I talked to my Mechanic about taking the brakes off my car and I was disgusted by how poorly he treated me. He accused me of being ignorant, when I was the one that looked up how much rotational torque brakes can put on your rotors. He didn't even know how much torque a rotor can take before being warped!!! He said "rotors are designed to be compressed, that it isn't actually a problem" just completely dismissing me. Robert Moore nails these people rhetorically and epistemologically. It can be depressing and exasperating to think very much about this movement. For this reason, I thank Mr. Moore for the relief of his humor and the small measure of justice rendered by his piece. 3. Do you think that beer and wine became common in Medieval Europe because the water was bad? Think again. I am not sure I have ever actively espoused that idea, but I do at least have to admit never thinking to question it. That notion, common among my fellow beer enthusiasts, turns out to be unsupported: One would think that, confronted with the above evidence, those who insist medieval drinkers drank beer and wine to avoid water would at the least reconsider. Unfortunately, long-standing myths are not displaced by anything so flimsy as documentation. In previous discussions elsewhere, one person's response was simply to say, "The lack of evidence is not evidence." Another's was that since some doctors criticized some water, some drinkers might have considered this good enough reason to avoid water. Etc. This long-established idea then is unlikely to die anytime soon. But at the least, the next time you see or hear someone put it forth, you can always try asking: what is the evidence for this from the period? Because that simple question has, for too long, been ignored. The author should take heart: I am swayed by his argument and will call that claim into question the next time I hear it. 4. Jerm Boor's "The Mostly German Philosophers Love Song" is both witty and fun to listen to. At the link are audio and lyrics. -- CAV Link to Original

John Stossel warns us that the central planners who want to regulate the Internet will ruin it in the process, and he provides us with examples of other things ruined or made impossible by central planning: Eighty years ago, it took workers only 15 months to build the Empire State Building. But this century, using vastly superior construction equipment, building the new World Trade Center took 10 times as long. Eighty years ago, some trains ran faster than 100 miles per hour, but now even the "high-speed" Acela train averages only 90 miles per hour because government safety rules demand that American trains be heavier. Venture capitalist Peter Thiel says the current state of regulation should frighten us: "You would not be able to get a polio vaccine ... approved today." He's right. The first batch of Salk vaccine gave polio to 40,000 people. If that happened today, the FDA would immediately stop the research. Salk's vaccine would not have had a chance to save thousands of lives and prevent so much misery. Stossel notes that central planning interferes with the spontaneous order of the economy, which he likens to that in many daily situations, such as a crowded ice skating rink. Indeed, as we see below, Stossel once tried to direct traffic on a skating rink and failed miserably, as did an Olympian with more expertise. Stossel notes that the "planning" fails because, "no 'planner' knows the wishes and skills of individual skaters better than skaters themselves". The ice skating rink is the Internet. The rink with a "regulator" is our 'net on regulations. The ice skaters in the video complain of a lack of freedom and fun with central planning, and an economist later in the video notes that the order that was disrupted had come from the bottom up. All this reminds me of -- and beautifully concretizes -- a quote from the economist George Reisman I have used here on several occasions: The overwhelming majority of people have not realized that all the thinking and planning about their economic activities that they perform in their capacity as individuals actually is economic planning. By the same token, the term "planning" has been reserved for the feeble efforts of a comparative handful of government officials, who, having prohibited the planning of everyone else, presume to substitute their knowledge and intelligence for the knowledge and intelligence of tens of millions, and to call that planning. [bold added] I think the video of John Stossel (or Brian Boitano) directing traffic on a rink is an image that deserves to be disseminated widely in the face of the latest push to "regulate" the Internet. To borrow from an old anti-drug PSA, that ice-skating rink "is our 'net on regs". Stossel notes that regulation supporter Hillary Clinton is a self-described "government junkie". Many junkies are also pushers, so I think the analogy is apt on multiple levels. -- CAV Link to Original

Psychologist Michael Hurd, writing some time ago about the American panic over Ebola, could just as well have been discussing almost anything else journalists have used or will use to ignite a widespread panic: The reason so many Americans fall into a panic about things like Ebola is because they don't grasp why it's safer here than elsewhere. No, we don't know for certain that the outbreak of Ebola will not occur on a wide scale in America. But what we do know is that it's a lot less likely here, and lots of experience tells us this. And we also know that however bad it might get here -- with Ebola, or anything else -- it won't be nearly as bad as places, like Africa, where it was much easier for the disease to take off and spread. Not so long as freedom, innovation, capitalism, and rational science remain as dominant as they have. If those things go -- then we will be in serious trouble, just like most of the rest of the world, and just like nearly all of human history prior to the last century or two. Journalists, whom polls regularly show to be overwhelmingly left-wing, frequently mock/lament/predict the downfall of "American exceptionalism". By failing to apprise themselves of why America has been "exceptional" for so long, rather than assume it has been an accident or a myth of some kind, journalists may well be helping perpetuate that downfall. As Ayn Rand once put it so well, this is supremely ironic, since many journalists see themselves as agents of positive change in the world: The professional intellectual is the field agent of the army whose commander-in-chief is the philosopher. The intellectual carries the application of philosophical principles to every field of human endeavor. He sets a society's course by transmitting ideas from the "ivory tower" of the philosopher to the university professor -- to the writer -- to the artist -- to the newspaperman -- to the politician -- to the movie maker -- to the night-club singer -- to the man in the street. The intellectual's specific professions are in the field of the sciences that study man, the so-called "humanities," but for that very reason his influence extends to all other professions. Those who deal with the sciences studying nature have to rely on the intellectual for philosophical guidance and information: for moral values, for social theories, for political premises, for psychological tenets and, above all, for the principles of epistemology, that crucial branch of philosophy which studies man's means of knowledge and makes all other sciences possible. The intellectual is the eyes, ears and voice of a free society: it is his job to observe the events of the world, to evaluate their meaning and to inform the men in all the other fields. [bold added] Facts matter, but so do ideas, since facts must be interpreted, even at the level of what to report. Most journalists regularly blow it in this regard, as exemplified by the Ebola outbreak of 2014. -- CAV Link to Original

If, as I do, you live in an urban area, and enjoy an occasional walk through your neighborhood, you may have stumbled upon a "Little Free Library". They look a little bit like small bird houses, but they are about eye-level and hold books that are free for passers-by to borrow. Whatever one might think of the books on offer or of the charity that seems to sponsor many of these, I must say that, if there's a perfectly harmless (and even neighborly) way to use one's own property, this would certainly be one. But then, I am neither a zoning supporter, nor a power-hungry government bureaucrat, nor a meddlesome neighbor willing to abuse improper laws (HT: Snedcat): In Los Angeles, Peter Cook, who acts under the name Peter Mackenzie, and his wife, writer Lili Flanders, were told by a city investigator that their curbside library was an obstruction. They were given a week to remove it, or else face fines from the city. This came after an anonymous note from "a neighbor who hates you and your kids" was left on their library, ordering them to "Take it down or the city will." The couple is declining to remove or relocate the library, with Cook telling the Times that he'll refuse to obey "the blinded Cyclops of L.A. city -- wildly swinging its cudgel to destroy something that has made the city and this neighborhood a better place." Zoning is a blatant violation of property rights, but these rights don't exist in a vacuum, as we see here. The Cooks -- and others mentioned in the story in other cities across the country -- are seeing their freedom of speech being violated by these same laws. Barring the conceivable case of one of these libraries actually causing a nuisance or posing an objective hazard to individuals off the property, or of a local authority stepping in to enforce a deed restriction, there is no legitimate reason for the government to force their owners to remove these libraries. That laws like this are on the books is bad enough. It is worse that, apparently, the kind of people who support such laws are feeling emboldened, and are beginning to actively seek to realize their full potential for abuse. -- CAV Link to Original

A leftist congressman has kicked off the 2016 presidential debate and has, perhaps, unintentionally done Americans a favor by calling Texas a "crazy state" for (gasp!) not joining ObamaCare's state exchanges. John Fund reports on the inevitable retorts by Texan politicians and considers the evidence. First of all, the state has been a rare bright spot in our nation's economy for the past several years. For example: etween 2007 and 2014 -- the period covering the recession and the slow recovery that followed -- Texas created 1.4 million net new jobs. During the same period, the rest of the nation wound up losing 400,000 jobs. The falling nationwide unemployment rate is largely the function of people's exiting the work force entirely. And this has been in a state with the nation's second-lowest cost of living. Fund does a little bit of digging into what Texas has been doing differently from the other states and finds something I hadn't been aware of, but that has seen the Lone Star State move in exactly the opposite direction as the rest of the country in one area foundational to a free economy, rule of law: Those at the top of the corporate ladder clearly recognize Texas's strengths. For each of the past ten years, CEOs polled by Chief Executive magazine have rated Texas first in the nation for economic-development climate and job growth. What is the secret of Texas's success? Rick Perry isn't shy about sharing his thoughts. "It's all about four points," he told me. "First, don't spend all the money. Second, keep the taxes low and under control. Then have regulations that are fair and predictable so business owners know what to expect from one quarter to the next. Finally, reform the legal system so that frivolous lawsuits don't paralyze employers who are trying to create real wealth." [link in original] While this isn't exactly laissez-faire, it is relatively better than most other parts of the country. I will add that, although the article itself could also do a better job of analyzing current policy in Texas, it does note some inconsistencies that have been less than successful, such as an attempt by Perry to subsidize new business moving into the state. For fellow pro-capitalists, articles like this will help show what the strengths and weaknesses of some of the Republican presidential hopefuls are. This can help us decide whether there really is an acceptable candidate in the running. It can also, with better analysis, show us where Texas could improve, in much the same way the contrast between that state and California shows us how far from even a predominately capitalist mixed economy we have already moved. -- CAV Link to Original

1. Whoever at FEMA first realizedthat Waffle House could serve as a rough gauge of the severity of a disaster certainly deserves credit: The 24-hour restaurant chain prides itself on serving its customers at all hours of the day, seven days a week. And FEMA caught on to this. They discovered that if a Waffle House was closed after a storm, then that meant things were really bad. That said, I was more impressed with the restaurant chain, which exemplifies private sector disaster planning. Take a gander at its "Hurricane Menu", whose rationale the article explains. 2. I'll again risk boring my readers by singing my praises of Emacs, which is such a powerful tool that I may have to restrain myself from allowing it to become a time-consuming hobby. One morning this week, the highly customizable text editor saved me from a Firefox bug (that seems to have since been fixed) that was slowing my computer to a crawl. Having successfully installed an interface to the w3m web browser within Emacs, I was able to do without that CPU hog. Although I prefer a regular browser for most purposes, it's nice to be able to check on a link without leaving my editor, and toggle easily between a page's source code and its rendered text. Oh, and while I'm at it, a post on rare bigrams got me to try Emacs "key chords", which have allowed me to greatly simplify and speed up HTML editing. For example, by typing "XD" at the end of an editing session, I can replace all instances of non-standard characters (e.g., Microsoft "smart quotes") that show up as junk in certain browsers. This hasn't gone without a hitch: This morning, one ill-advised bigram, "xt" placed everything I wrote up to that point into title case, which I had to clean up. That happened when I rapidly typed in the word "text" (without noticing that I'd selected the rest of the post). 3. John Cook, on leaving academia: ... I hope to never see another grant proposal. Ditto. I once needed to find some writing samples for a job application, and considered using a training grant proposal, since the job was technical in nature. I found it so boring as to be unusable. (I own some limited culpability for that.) In fact, I regard it as the most tedious thing I have ever written. 4. Way back, an article on "What to Eat After the Apocalypse" caught my eye while I was in a state of idle curiosity. Liking the pine flavors of retsina and some kinds of hops, I was intrigued to learn from the piece that pine needles can make a good tea: Tea in particular is a relatively easy one to do. Pine needle tea has more than 100 percent of the vitamin C of orange juice. One could actually make pine needle tea from the pine tree in your backyard and get your vitamin C for the day. It's actually a really good superfood. And in some cultures, like [south] Korea, they even have pop that is flavored with pine. That's their drink. I looked into this a little bit, and learned that some varieties of pine are poisonous, so when I do get around to trying this, I will proceed with caution. -- CAV Link to Original

An article at Gallup does a pretty thorough job of debunking official unemployment statistics -- by using a phalanx of facts one could describe as "unemployed" or "underemployed" by most politicians and journalists. I knew about many of these already, but not this one: There's another reason why the official rate is misleading. Say you're an out-of-work engineer or healthcare worker or construction worker or retail manager: If you perform a minimum of one hour of work in a week and are paid at least $20 -- maybe someone pays you to mow their lawn -- you're not officially counted as unemployed in the much-reported 5.6%. Few Americans know this. [bold added] And credit author and Gallup CEO Jim Clifton for using another word that, in today's political discourse, oddly wouldn't be counted in the official employment rate if it were a human being: lie. Clifton ends his piece by citing one statistic I have little trouble believing: "Right now, the U.S. is delivering [jobs] at a staggeringly low rate of 44%, which is the number of full-time jobs as a percent of the adult population..." That's bad, but the most disturbing part of this story to me is that it demonstrates a remarkable lack of demand for facts by many of those who wish to remain "informed", and by many of those who elect our politicians. -- CAV Updates Today: Added "many of" twice to second sentence. Link to Original

Over at Life Hacker is a post on cutting brain-storming time by half. Now, let me attempt to save some of my readers a little trouble with a spoiler: This post is aimed at brain-storming by groups, contrary to the reason its title piqued my interest. Nevertheless, I the the post offers value, because it compliments other advice I have encountered on cutting down the amount of time wasted in meetings. (Indeed, it may even circumvent the problem of largely ineffective group brainstorming by shifting the creative work to individuals and having such meetings be mostly evaluative and collaborative.) That earlier advice on short meetings centered around having everyone familiarize themselves with background material beforehand. That still applies, but brainstorming is a little bit different, in that there is a further creative element. Mark Miller of Inc. suggests that the meeting organizer, "[P]rovide a pre-work, individual assignment first that spurs the thinking." This step gets lots of the individual thinking done and eliminates some of the pitfalls of doing that part of the work at the meeting: ... The problem with long brainstorming sessions is that ideas get recycled with minor tweaks because once everyone has heard a good idea, they anchor themselves to it. On top of that, people grow attached to their ideas, causing them to become defensive and destroying true collaboration... The article does indirectly save an individual time, by cutting down on meeting time. But what about more effective brain-storming on one's own? Probably the best single source of ideas I have encountered for this remains Jean Moroney's "Tap Your Own Brilliance" course, which I took a few years back. That said, I am always looking for new ideas in that area, so if you have a favorite, feel free to leave a comment. -- CAV Link to Original

The newly-elected, far-left Prime Minister of Greece once asked Wall Street Journal columnist Brett Stephens why bribery isn't more common in the United States: The OliveShop tale is a case study in what it takes to start a business legally. Yet the whole purpose of these peculiar regulatory roadblocks [including a requirement for stool samples of each shareholder, of all things -- ed] is to create opportunities to grease the skids with a fakellaki -- the little envelope, stuffed with cash -- that gets you the necessary certificate, or the government contract, or the timely medical appointment. When I interviewedSyriza leader (now Prime Minister) Alexis Tsipras in New York two years ago, his first question to me was: "Here in the United States, why do you not have this phenomenon of passing money under the table?" Stephens's answer is on the right tracl: "[Y]ou're less likely to seek a bribe if you can make an honest profit instead," but I'd add something like this: If you weren't constantly in danger of violating illegitimate, unreasonable laws, you wouldn't feel the need to pay protection money at every turn. That story, of ridiculous regulations that are made for abuse, reminds me of a new ordinance in Seattle, which imposes fines for seting out trash that includes over ten per cent food waste: So, the collectors not only have to examine your trash, but examine it closely enough to determine if 10 percent of it amounts to food. NPR's reporting disputes my assumption, but what the collector is really saying below is he's either painstakingly rifling through trash cans or ignoring the 10-percent rule and profligately offering tags and fines. Neither is good[.] I can't see how this won't corrode respect for rule of law, cause people to use money as part of the "truce" between the "citizens of Seattle and trash collectors" the Hot Air blogger wrongly hopes will result, or both. Regardless, this law is just as wrong, and only a little less intrusive than the scatological example above. The Greeks discarded freedom long ago, if they ever had it. Brett Stephens unsurprisingly says that the Greeks have just "voted [themselves] down the toilet". We're doing little better, treating food scraps like gold while discarding our freedom one stupid rule at a time. -- CAV Link to Original

Entrepreneur and philanthropist Brad Feld has an interesting idea for scheduling the day: Feld's reasoning and flexible implementation make compelling reading for anyone with control over large blocks of time. (Implementing his advice will be more challenging for people whose employers schedule much of their time.) I particularly like his use of walks for meetings he thinks might take longer: He has made himself able to adjust their lengths on the fly. Interestingly, his advice seems to me like it might dovetail well with the Pomodoro Technique (scroll down) for those on what Paul Graham calls a "maker's schedule", although for reason Graham discussed, the thirty minute slots for creative work would best be consecutive. -- CAV Link to Original

A news article about a home-grown (but apparently self-surveiling) computer network in Havana raises some interesting questions about the effectiveness of our longstanding trade embargo against the communist regime as well as the wisdom of ending it. Early in the article, we learn that the powers-that-be there blame the embargo for the unavailability of Interent access to most Cubans. Our own Nomenklatura wanna-bes seem to agree with them, as do their media lapdogs, as we see in the first and third paragraphs of the below excerpt: Cuba's status as one of the world's least-wired countries is central to the new relationship Washington is trying to forge with Havana. As part of a new policy seeking broader engagement, the Obama administration hopes that encouraging wider U.S. technology sales to the island will widen Internet access and help increase Cubans' independence from the state and lay the groundwork for political reform. Cuban officials say Internet access is limited largely because the U.S. trade embargo has prevented advanced U.S. technology from reaching Cuba and starved the government of the cash it needs to buy equipment from other nations. But the government says that while it is open to buying telecommunications equipment from the U.S., it sees no possibility of changing its broader system in exchange for normal relations with the U.S. Outside observers and many Cubans blame the lack of Internet on the government's desire to control the populace and to use disproportionately high cellphone and Internet charges as a source of cash for other government agencies. What the Cuban government claims, some opponents hope, and its imitators here claim to hope is put to the sword by a quote buried, epitaph-like, at the very end of the article -- just as the "outside observers" (Cuban diaspora?) would expect (in more ways than one): "It's proof that it can be done," said Alien Garcia, a 30-year-old systems engineer who publishes a magazine on information technology that's distributed by email and storage devices. "If I as a private citizen can put up a network with far less income than a government, a country should be able to do it, too, no?" Translation: The line about why most Cubans lack decent Internet access is a lie. The government publishing this lie will be the main beneficiary of any increase in wealth a lifting of the embargo will bring, and will do what it can to control the flow of information, should the embargo (aka, its favorite all-purpose excuse) come to an end. Our sanctions plainly haven't driven the Cuban regime out of power, but they obviously haven't inspired a revolution, either. (People have free will, and deprivation will not make them pursue any particular course of action. Plenitude, as if that would happen, won't, either.) What the sanctions have done is prevented a nearby country with such a ruling class, whose people tolerate it to a degree, from becoming any more powerful, at least with our help. At the same time, Cuba's rulers, haven't been able to line their own pockets quite so effectively. It is not the proper purpose of our government to spread freedom around the world, but to protect it here. (This could include aiding a rebellion in Cuba, should that ever come to pass.) I don't regard embargoes as a substitute for war, when it is called for. However, embargoes can be a proper response to tin-pot dictatorships that don't respect individual rights and would cause us problems if we were foolish enough to treat them like ordinary nations. -- CAV Link to Original

Last week, the Senate farcically and near-unanimously voted that "climate change is real and not a hoax". The absence of a spine on the part of the GOP -- and the reason for it -- are painfully obvious from several aspects of this story. For starters, the climate is always changing, so, to a Martian, this would be about as ridiculous as the Senate wasting time and money voting on a resolution like, "The sky is blue." We Earthlings know that "climate change" is code for "scientific-sounding excuse for government intrusion into the energy sector cum cover for global temperatures eventually heading in a direction the excuses models don't predict". So the GOP members of the Senate have, at the outset, failed to question the propriety of said intrusions. But the fun isn't over, yet. We soon learn the following: Republicans backed [James] Inhofe's stance in a second vote, rejecting an amendment from Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) that stated, "climate change is real and human activity significantly contributes to climate change." This can be taken as a reasonable expression of uncertainty about the origins of a change in climate, except, again, the wording of the resolution makes speculation about causes a complete joke. Why not vote that there will be a winning team on the Super Bowl, with a resolution about any one fan (the side doesn't matter) in the stands "contributing significantly" (whatever that means) to that outcome (whatever that might be)? Word something flexibly enough, and you're never wrong. So far as I can tell from this story, everyone went along with this kind of idiocy. But why? Perhaps Barack Obama's exploitation of a common Republican refrain on the issue of Massive Government Meddling in the Name of Global Warming or Cooling can give us a hint: ... President Obama, who has made climate change a central focus of his second term, turned the "scientist" response into a punch line in his State of the Union address. "I've heard some folks try to dodge the evidence by saying they're not scientists; that we don't have enough information to act," Obama said. "Well, I'm not a scientist, either. But you know what -- I know a lot of really good scientists at NASA, and NOAA, and at our major universities." Let's be clear about a couple of things here. First, it is honest to admit being uncomfortable with the idea of making pronouncements about questions requiring knowledge outside one's expertise. But second, some political decisions -- even about matters a government might legitimately concern itself with -- do require consultation with scientists. So, anyone who refuses to take a stand -- on the basis of a lack of expertise -- on the Political Agenda Being Excused in the Name of Warming or Cooling, is not only refusing to question whether this is a proper concern of government, he is also playing into the hands of his opponents by looking irresponsible. On top of all this, our Senators may not be scientists, but they are lawmakers. It is revealing that none spoke up against the propriety of our government dictating the actions of so many people regardless of what "the science" says. I am no parliamentarian, but it seems to me that someone could have proposed an amendment further defining "climate change" or even acknowledging that there are moral and constitutional limits on what a government can and ought to do about it (or anything else). But that would have entailed someone with a spine, and that would have demanded the moral certainty that could only come from truly understanding why he is there in the first place. All the talk about science in the world will do good among our leaders if there isn't even a peep about why they should do anything and, if so, what they ought to do. Indeed, great harm can and will result. Our new Congress isn't even starting off on the wrong foot. It is lying flat on its face. -- CAV Link to Original

1. The kids keep on cracking me up. This week, Little Man has taken to grabbing adults by the hand and leading them to things he wants or places he want to play. Pumpkin, on the other hand, continues speaking her mind, although not using my own words against me for a change. Her latest complaint about something she doesn't want to hear from me: "You're being a bad boy!" I couldn't help but laugh the first time she used that one. 2. FDR is famous for saying, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." One subject of a scientific study, "The Woman Who Can’t Feel Fear", might beg to differ. "SM", as she is known in the literature, does not have a functioning amygdala: "It's a little bit as if you would go to this region and literally scoop it out," Antonio Damasio, another neuroscientist who studies SM, told Invisibilia hosts Lulu Miller and Alix Spiegel. [minor format edits] At least one close brush with a thug might tempt you to see an advantage to her condition -- but for the fact that it got her into that encounter in the first place. 3. No sooner do I write about overcoming the limitations of blogging with a virtual keyboard than I hear about TextBlade, by WayTools, "a folding QWERTY keyboard the size of a pack of gum". For ninety nine bucks, you, too can have one by March. 4. Speaking again of time management for writers, a commenter pointed me to a post on the subject that I found to be both practical and encouraging. -- CAV Link to Original

Or: When Fashion Thwarts Delegation Just because I mentionwanting to improve how efficiently I do something doesn't mean I haven't already tackled the problem in some way, the case in point being laundry. One way I have streamlined that process is by buying about a dozen pairs of the same kind of socks every few months. This greatly cuts down on the time I spend trying to match pairs -- although it doesn't eliminate it since I don't insist on my wife doing this, nor will I do this with the kids. (Interestingly, the variety of the kids' socks, coupled with their small size, means they practically sort themselves, if I save them for last.) I bring up the sock-sorting trick because it has paid off in other ways, one of them being by saving shopping time. Recall that I buy a whole new set of socks every few months. This practice grew out of my initial decision to standardizeon one kind of sock for most of the time. Eventually, some of those socks started wearing out. My initial impulse was to buy a few replacement pairs, but a few things occurred to me: (1) I might not be able to buy the same kind of socks again; (2) Even if I could, this would make me have to start sorting again, since the new pairs would be darker than the old; and (3) Perhaps all of the socks, having been bought at the same time, were about to wear out all at once. (I was right about the last two.) So I just bought the same number of identical socks and replaced all of them. I realized then that I probably also wasted less time shopping for socks as a result, too. So I now do the same thing for tee shirts and my casual khaki pants. I buy the pants mostly at Old Navy, and this has been pretty straightforward for the past few years. I find a few pairs in my size, which has been constant for decades, try them on, buy them, and go. In fact, a year or two ago, I realized that I could just delegate the purchase because, for the most part, men's sizes are pretty standard. (For a while, that went out the window during a period when baggy clothing was a fad. For example, I once found myself swimming in a "medium" shirt I'd received as a gift. I also vaguely recall having to buy "slim fit" khakis back then.) So, when my birthday or Christmas rolled around and someone needed an idea for an inexpensive gift, I could just suggest some Old Navy khakis and have them on hand and ready the next time a pair of pants got damaged or turned into highwaters after enough drying cycles. Well, that fell through this Christmas. I needed to replace my pants wholesale, so when my wife asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I asked her for some Old Navy khakis. Once I tried on a pair of these, I noticed that it felt odd, but I couldn't put my finger on why. Over the course of wearing them for a day, I noticed, among other things, that my phone didn't quite fit in the pocket, and that the pants seemed too snug. I wondered if I'd put on weight, but I hadn't and also remembered that my older pants, which had presumably shrunk in more than one direction, felt fine. So I looked at the label, which read something like, "Classic Khakis, Straight Fit". "Oh, great. Demon spawn of skinny jeans and khakis," I thought. My wife had not ordered these, so I returned them, but ran into trouble again at the store. What was labeled as the regular cut -- like the old pair I was wearing -- was also more snug than I cared for -- but some loose-fit (or whatever they were labeled) pants on clearance fit like the pair I was wearing. So I bought a few of those. And then kept them even after I discovered about six more pairs of normal khakis squirreled away in my armoire at home: I need to ride out this fetish for uncomfortable, form-fitting clothing. (In any event, this is exactly the kind of fad that strikes me as something that men past a certain age should think twice about following. Or, to re-phrase that: I am not a teen-aged girl.) So the idea of having standard items on hand for easy maintenance and replacement has its limits. For casual pants, the whims of popular culture set some of those. There's no dodging the fitting room, at least for the next couple of years. -- CAV Link to Original

Today's post is the product of a few concurrent experiments in saving time or enhancing productivity. For my proof-of-concept, I am using Pinboard to store the location of a post, excerpted below, about finding time to write, along with a few comments of my own: But if you want to be a writer, then be a writer, for god's sake. It's not that hard, and it doesn't require that much effort on a day to day basis. Find the time or make the time. Sit down, shut up and put your words together. Work at it and keep working at it. And if you need inspiration, think of yourself on your deathbed saying "well, at least I watched a lot of TV." If saying such a thing as your life ebbs away fills you with existential horror, well, then. I think you know what to do. [minor edits] The comments I saved after reading this ended up making up most of the first paragraph of this post and most of the next. From here, I used a script to extract the bookmark and comments from my exported bookmarks, and save these as a markdown file for further editing before posting. I'm also testing an emacs customization to rid the post of "smartquotes". Both experiments have succeeded. I now have a good way to quickly write at least the rudiments of a blog post from any computing device. In particular, this is a much more effective way to blog from a smart phone than having to futz with inserting hyperlinks with a virtual keyboard, which is a pain even using markdown. The mobility of a smart phone would make it ideal for blogging, were its software better-suited to content creation. This is the next best thing: minimizing the obstacles said software presents. On a related note, I found the above inspirational post among a few others gleaned from a search for time management tips for writers whohave young children. (These links seem promising after a quick scan, but I won't vouch for any of them beyond that.) My kids are sleeping more reliably, thereby giving me more and better time in the morning. Nevertheless, I want to keep blogging daily even as I take on more complicated writing projects again. Taking better advantage of my phone when, say, I'm stuck in line, can only help. -- CAV P.S. One resource on time management for writers that I do recommend is the book Time to Write, which -- right before my son was born -- I briefly commented on here. I plan to go through it again in the near future. Link to Original

From an old Daniel Pipes review of Ibn Warraq's Why I Am Not a Muslim, comes something you'll never hear from a multiculturalist: Having thus dispensed with religion, Ibn Warraq takes up history and culture. Turning political correctness exactly on its head, he condemns the early Islamic conquests and condones European colonialism. " Bowing toward Arabia five times a day," he writes, referring to the Islamic prayer toward Mecca, " must surely be the ultimate symbol of . . . cultural imperialism" In contrast, European rule, "with all its shortcomings, ultimately benefited the ruled as much as the rulers. Despite certain infamous incidents, the European powers conducted themselves, on the whole, very humanely." [bold added] Multiculturalist folderol aside, one culture becoming dominant is not inherently bad. Indeed, when one culture is objectively superior to another, not only is there nothing wrong with cultural "imperialism", it is a good thing. That said, just as multiculturalists rant about alleged deficiencies of the West (but don't bat an eye about real problems in the Islamic world), so it is that huge numbers of people bowing towards Mecca five times a day gets a free pass. -- CAV Link to Original

Writing at the New York Post, Nicole Gelinas directly takes on the "They had it coming," post-Charlie Hebdo crowd, ending with the following: Blaming the dead for their own murders is dangerous in another way, too. Nobody with power likes free speech. If you write for a living, you learn that important people will try almost anything to get things in print or keep them out of print. Today, it's maybe irresponsible -- and therefore should be illegal? -- to print a Mohammed cartoon. Tomorrow, maybe it'll be irresponsible to criticize a wartime president or prime minister. To get an idea of how tempting it is for power to censor, consider that more than half of American colleges restrict campus speech, vaguely prohibiting things like "inappropriate expression." The dead cartoonists, in the end, were right. If you can't put pen to paper without risking death, you can't do anything freely. To make one exception means to make them all. Now let’s see how many supposed defenders of speech will just stop there ... instead of adding the "but, but, but" that shows they don't believe in free expression when it really counts -- when people just died for it. [minor format edits, links in original] Gelinas is completely right. That said, as I thought about her rebuttal of the "yes, but-ers", I was reminded of a nagging doubt I have had about her response and others like it that I have seen. Thanks to this, I believe I can now address it. One can, without being a cad, suggest that someone should take reasonable precautions against rape -- or any other crime. While it is unreasonable to suggest that a woman walking alone at night in a dangerous area "had it coming", it isn't to suggest that it might be imprudent to do so. This is the cover that false defenders of free speech and the jihdists alike crave. But what makes it cover? In other words, how do freedom of speech and other actions, like walking about, differ? Quite simply, there is no hiding what one has said once one has said it. One can choose to walk in safe areas at night, or not go out at all. One can lock the doors to his home at night or install a car alarm. And one can, say, insult the mother of a thug like the Pope, when one is out of arm's reach. But speech can't be contained or revoked. Once you go out for your walk, or drive home, or wake up at home in safety in the morning, you're done. But once you say something, it's out there. And saying something that displeases a thug may well be used as an excuse by the thug to retaliate. Nevertheless, suggesting that the bounds of prudence include not just avoiding speaking with thugs in one's immediate vicinity, but what one can say would be analogous to suggesting that, say, a woman who wants to walk outside treat all neighborhoods as equally dangerous at all times; or that homeowners who lock their doors are skimping if those doors aren't made of steel; or that an alarm isn't enough when he could hire an armed guard for his car. That is, the nature of speech, which is the expression of one's thoughts, puts limits on saying what those thoughts are beyond the realm of the prudent and into the realm of surrendering to one's enemies. The thugs and their appeasers, well aware of how different and powerful speech is, hope that we will forget that difference and that power as they liken speaking one's mind to daring some criminal to harm them. Ironically, there is truth in the idea that, if we wish to speak our minds, we must take precautions to protect our lives: But the precaution is, in fact, to take exactly the opposite of their advice and use our freedom of speech to resist these thugs and to insist on our governments doing their job, which above all includes ensuring that we remain free to speak. For, as Gelinas points out, if we can't say anything freely, we can't do anything freely, either. One cannot live a life proper to man, the rational animal, when one is forced -- by a dictatorial government or by thugs in a de facto anarchy -- to pretend that one doesn't have a mind of his own. -- CAV Link to Original

Legal Lacuna A prominent legal scholar warns us that anyone could finds himself in the Kafkaesque situation of being publicly (but falsely) accused of numerous crimes and unable to do anything about it: There is a gaping hole in our legal system that allows lawyers to bring irrelevant accusations against innocent nonparties in court papers that insulate them from any consequences, and to deny the falsely accused any opportunity to respond. Fortunately, this has come to the attention of someone who has the ability and desire to start changing this state of affairs. Weekend Reading "[W]hat happens if you sincerely have a person's best interests in mind and somehow need to get a point across?" -- Michael Hurd, in "No Matter What You Think: Controlling Others Will Not Work" at The Delaware Wave "The next time you find yourself wondering if you're normal, remind yourself that 'normal' is nothing more than a statistical average." -- Michael Hurd, in "So You Want to be 'Normal'" at The Delaware Coast Press Your Firstborn, Please! Someone in the academic science pipeline makes an interesting argument about the unseen costs of that career path: The average PhD, who doesn't make Margaret's choice to "sell out" and attain a reasonable standard of living, does a postdoc for four years. If Margaret stayed that long, her postdoc would've cost her $220,000. Incidentally, raising a child costs about $200-250,000. That's right: the price of your postdoc is your firstborn child. Please do note that the government funds many, many people in this pipeline. Market distortion isn't the author's focus, although his data show that in spades. By apparently removing some of the up-front costs of such a career path, the government has induced a glut of scientists, who suffer financial losses later, not to mention other costs, such as lost time or skill sets that may not line up with what the non-academic market demands. -- CAV Link to Original

1. One of the fun things about being a parent is rediscovering all the little wonders the world holds during the process of showing some of its newest inhabitants around. For example, I make it a point to let my kids smell spices when I cook. Sometimes, doing things like this has yielded me the further dividend of amusing results. A case in point has been what I call my son's beer rating system. As with spices, I give my kids the chance to enjoy the aroma of whatever beer I quaff at the end of the day. Over time, I have noticed that my son has several distinct reactions, which I categorize below, from least to most favorable: Pushes glass away. Smiles, and then pushes glass away. Smiles. Laughs. Laughs, and claps his hands. During a recent visit, one of my brothers enjoyed this so much he sent video of it to the rest of the family. I recently taught him to raise his cup or bottle and clink it after I say, "Cheers!" His older sister also took to this with gusto at his age, but my happy boy surprised me one day as I picked him up from daycare: He raised his bottle in the direction of his teachers and waved! 2. Although it will probably be difficult for a parent to read, I recommend reading the storyof a man who, as a boy, spent over a decade trapped in his body while, for most of that time, he was fully aware of his surroundings: Eventually Martin found a way to reframe even the ugliest thoughts that haunted him. Like when his mother said, "I hope you die." "The rest of the world felt so far away when she said those words," Martin says. But he began to wrestle with it. Why would a mother say that? "As time passed, I gradually learned to understand my mother's desperation. Every time she looked at me, she could see only a cruel parody of the once-healthy child she had loved so much." Over time, Martin began re-engaging with his thoughts. And slowly, as his mind felt better, something else happened -- his body began to get better, too. It involved inexplicable neurological developments and a painstaking battle to prove that he existed. I found this bittersweet, but inspiring. 3. Also inspiring, but a little bit amusing as well is the story of Richard Drew, the inventor of Scotch Tape: His boss, William McKnight, the same man who'd initially ordered Drew to cease his inventing efforts, still didn't see the potential in this new tape, and refused to purchase a machine that would allow for its mass production. Instead of acquiescing, Drew got creative: as a researcher, he had the right to secure purchases of up to $100, so he bought the machine in parts in a series of $99 orders, then constructed it himself. When Drew's boss later found out what Drew he'd been up to, he rewarded him for his tenacity by establishing a new managerial mandate at 3M: "If you have the right person on the right project, and they are absolutely dedicated to finding a solution -- leave them alone. Tolerate their initiative and trust them." As Drew advanced to direct a research lab, he also pioneered a policy made famous again recently by Google: encouraging workers to spend part of their paid time conducting their own research, 4. What's life like in the coldest town on earth? Thanks to the curiosity of an intrepid photographer, we can get an idea: Oymyakon weather played hell with [Amos] Chapple's camera. He faced unending challenges while shooting. "There was a lot to learn, it took several days to figure out some tricks to be able to keep working," he said. "From the moment I left the hotel in the morning the temperature of the camera would begin to drop. Once the guts of the camera froze, that was it for the day." Needless to say, there are some pretty interesting pictures there, in slideshow form. -- CAV Link to Original

John Stossel writesabout how differently the free market -- and improper government regulation -- attack minor consumer complaints. Stossel's example problem is hired drivers who nickel-and-dime their customers by taking circuitous routes. The difference in how these problems are dealt with is farcical. For starters, the effective, free-market solution, "[G]o to a different one," takes only five words to describe. Over most of the rest of his piece, Stossel contrasts this to four different, expensive, ineffective bureacratic solutions. The fourth is especially amusing -- or it would be, if people didn't keep electing officials who want to make us live like this: On to Plan D: a PDF. Bureaucrats love PDF's. Las Vegas asks you to print out a witness statement for people who have been taken on an overly long route and "complete the sworn affidavit in view of a public notary." I like how [Firefox founder Blake] Ross sums up plan D. Just carry "a desktop computer, a printer, envelopes, stamps, a fax machine [and] notary ... note the driver's full name, permit number and physical appearance. If you don't have this information memorized for some reason, just ask the driver while you're locked in the car with him ... explain that you're trying to have him fired. Ross actually bothered to try out the government's complaint system when he was ripped off, but he never heard back from any Vegas official. That's how government consumer protection typically operates. Making a full case for limited government or considering why government responses in such cases usually end up looking like this are beyond the scope of Stossel's piece. Nevertheless, by highlighting such absurdity and reminding us that things don't have to be thus way, Stossel does us all a great service. -- CAV Link to Original

Jeffrey Anderson, in an article aptly titled "Wimping Out on Obamacare?" warns that the GOP is already hard at work to save the Affordable Care Act, something I feared might eventually happen (i.e., at least take some time). Referring to no fewer than three ACA-saving tweaks in the works, Anderson asks: Anderson isn't even writing from a consistently free-market perspective and he can see the folly in this approach. Will the GOP wake up? Anderson thinks it might. Had I not already set my bar so low -- only to be disappointed already -- I might feel more of the slight optimism Anderson ends his article with. -- CAV Link to Original

Elan Journo of the Ayn Rand Institute considersseveral interesting questions, among them: [W]here was the solidarity nearly a decade ago for Jyllands-Posten, Flemming Rose, and the artists who were driven in to hiding after the Mohammad cartoons crisis? And before that, after the murder of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh? Or, for Charlie Hebdo in 2011 when its offices were firebombed? By now people have many, many more data points. Now, as in the past, the pattern is blatant. The jihadists seek to extinguish the freedom of speech. At Charlie Hebdo, the killers declared that they were avenging the prophet. They voiced a standard battle cry, "Allahu Akbar." They executed the journalists during an editorial meeting. [link in original, minor format edits] An editorial at RealClear Politics, by Bill Scher, indicates that Journo is correct. Scher, notingthat the left is "grappling" with Charlie Hebdo, cites a few examples: [Jonathan] Chait elaborated in response , summarizing New York Times conservative columnist Ross Douthat's view that "Vulgar expression that would otherwise be unworthy of defense becomes worthy if it is made in defiance of violent threats." Therefore, the Charlie Hebdocartoons are no longer on par with [Glenn] Greenwald's examples of anti-Semitism "because nobody is murdering artists who publish anti-Semitic cartoons." Bill Maher went beyond the encouragement of sacrilege to criticize Islam itself, in the name of liberalism no less. During an interviewon ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live the day of the attack, Maher insisted, "I'm a proud liberal ... It's not my fault that the part of the world that is most against liberal principles is the Muslim part of the world ... We have to stop saying, 'Well, we should not insult a great religion' ... we should insult them." Two days later on his HBO show Real Time, he was even more denigrating of Islam: "When there's this many bad apples, there's something wrong with the orchard." [links in original, minor format edits] Good data hardly guarantees correct conclusions, but it is heartening to see that the efforts of the jihadists may well backfire more easily than I had hoped. At least the idea that Islam, as a religion, is exempt from examination and criticism seems to be going by the wayside. -- CAV P.S. For clarity, let me add that I regard all speech, even the most vulgar and offensive, that does not actually cause harm (e.g., via incitement or slander) as an absolute right and deserving of government protection. This is a different issue from one's moral evaluation of the speaker. One can morally condemn, say, an anti-Semite or a mere provocateur, while still insisting that such a person has the right to speak his mind, however small it might be. Link to Original