FatherBrain

Speaking for the Left-Handed Majority

2012-01-15T05:29:00.000-08:00

"But when you do your giving, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing"
- Matthew 6:3

"Some people are right-handed. Some people are left-handed. There are other people who are able to use both hands with equal ease. Such people are called Handbidextrous."
- Sally Brown in "Peanuts" by Charles M. Schulz

Of all the traits that evolution bestowed on humans, our dexterity is one of the most valuable. Yes, human intelligence and communication are quite essential to our species success, allowing us to create thoughts that can be shared widely and passed down through generations. But we would not be able to readily turn those thoughts into tools without the imposable thumb. Due to the value of our dexterity, one of the more important differences between humans is handedness. The majority of humans primarily use their right hands, and this is reflected throughout our culture and technology. The vast majority of languages are written from left to right. In most countries, traffic travels on the right side of the road, drivers are seated on left, and hence the gear shift is operated with the driver's right hand. Most desks, computer mice, scissors and watches are designed for the right handed. Most cameras are ridiculously right-handed.

The left-handed live in a world not designed for them, and yet many of them become quite accomplished:

Southpaws that have excelled in the arts include Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Toulouse Lautrec, and M.C. Escher;
The music world has benefited from left-handed artists such as Beethoven, Prokofiev, Mozart, Cole Porter, Judy Garland, David Bowie, and the two surviving Beatles;
Scientists Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Albert Schweitzer, and Alan Turing were left handed; and
U.S. Presidents Harry Truman, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama all won elections from a largely right-handed electorate.

So what percentage of the population is left-handed? This is a hard question, complicated by factors such as how to count the ambidextrous or those who have trained themselves to use the other hand. Depending on how you them, 10% to 20% of the population is left-handed. But in a more general sense, one could make the case that the vast majority of us are left handed. Each individual has some characteristics that differs from the majority, and these differences often have the downside of making it hard for said individual to "fit in". In this sense, virtually all of us are all left-handed.

The simple concept of the left-handed majority provides a pragmatic justification for tolerance. Every time you accommodate someone else's differences, you strengthen the social contract and hence advance acceptance of your own differences.

I am an unlikely spokesman for the left-handed majority. For one thing, I am right-handed. I am also a white heterosexual male and married with two offspring. On the other hand (pardon the expression), I am a member of a political minority (libertarians) and a religious minority (Unitarian-Universalism). This may seem like an odd combination. There is the common perception that libertarians are just conservatives who smoke marijuana. There is also the perception and that Unitarian-Universalist churches are the last refuge for Woodstock hippies. So how can an ersatz conservative join a granola church?

In part, I would answer this question by pointing out that these common perceptions are wrong. For the record, I am not a conservative, and the last time I smoked marijuana was back when disco music was not retro. But for the most part, I am a member of both these organizations due to some common themes. Libertarianism emphasizes freedom as the core political value of modern society. Unitarian-Universalists promote freedom of thought as a core religious value. Moreover, both groups celebrate our individuality, libertarians in the political sphere, Unitarian-Universalists in the religious realm. This is why I am a libertarian Unitarian-Universalist: I am doing it for the left-handed majority.

Update: check this Facebook page for more libertarian Unitarian-Universalists.

Hitchens and Kim Jong-il prove: "Screw 'em If They Can't Take a Joke!"

2012-01-01T14:53:00.000-08:00

"And whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted."
- Matthew 23:12

"Be a clown, be a clown,
All the world loves a clown
Be a poor silly ass
And you'll always travel first-class"
- From "Be A Clown", lyrics by Cole Porter

The year 2011 ended with two notable celebrity deaths:

British-American journalist and gadfly Christopher Hitchens died of pneumonia on December 15; and
Kim Jong-il, the man who held the title of North Korean Supreme Leader (along with many other titles) died of a heart attack on December 17.

To put the lives of these men in perspective, I correct a theory of Hitchens, and apply this corrected theory to the late "Beloved Leader" of North Korea. Hitchens placed the blame for much of the world's evils on religion, but a closer examination reveals that the blame more accurately belongs to the ancient vice of vanity.

For centuries, religious leaders have attacked atheism as promoting unethical behavior. These leaders argued that without the reward of Heaven or the threat of Hell, what incentive is there for an atheist to behave morally? Hitchens, along with many atheists authors, have correctly pointed out that this argument is erroneous and unfair. There are many good reasons for practicing morality besides the afterlife, and there are many atheists who lead ethical lives. Hitchens is right on this point, but then he advanced his own variant on this attack. As he said in a debate with Mark Roberts:

"There’s a great deal of wickedness that’s attributable purely to religious belief. Morally normal people wouldn’t do these things if they didn’t think God was desiring them to do so."

So instead of arguing that ethics require a belief in God, Hitchens argues that one should not believe in order to live an ethical life. Hitchens' position has many of the same mistakes as the anti-atheist position he attacked. There are plenty of rationalizations for bad behavior besides the "God made me do it" excuse. Moreover, some of the greatest moral outrages of the twentieth century (the Soviet Gulags, the Cultural Revolution, the East German Stasi) were carried out by Marxists who opposed religion.

Hitchens frequently encountered the issue of Marxist immorality in debates, and he had a novel response to this issue. He argued that the Soviet, Maoist, and North Korean regimes, in spite of their official atheist positions, were really religions! Christopher posits that the founding members of these failed states are viewed as gods or prophets, and hence these Marxist atrocities are yet more examples of holy terror. Now granted, some communist states have rituals that are reminiscent of cult religions, such as the Soviet's extraordinary efforts to preserve Lenin's body. But the square peg of communism simply does not fit into the round hole of religion, at least as how Hitchens and Marx defined it. Consider Engals' eulogy for Marx, taught in all the major communist countries: "On the 14th of March, at a quarter to three in the afternoon, the greatest living thinker ceased to think." Such a statement makes it clear that Engals did not believe that Marx had an afterlife. Now if the communists are going to accept anyone as god, they would certainly regard Karl Marx as divine. And if they were to do so, they must conclude that their god is dead!

Christopher Hitchens is not here to defend his theory that religion is the root of most of the world's atrocities, but we can do the next best thing by fixing this theory's flaws. The real common factor to the most repressive states is a belief that their leadership is incapable of error, and therefore should be exempt for criticism. Now if your state's leadership is claiming to be God's exclusive agent on planet Earth, fostering this belief is that much easier. But as the cults of Fidel Castro and Kim Jung-il demonstrate, one can obtain such blind devotion without religion.

What these repressive regimes really lack is humility, that is, a good-natured admission that they have faults, just like the rest of us. In other words, they lack a sense of humor. Consider Kim Jung-il. He has read many a somber, scholarly criticisms of his rule. As an avid film buff, he has seen dramas and action pictures with North Korean villains. But there is only one Western work that so offended Kim Jung-il that he had North Korean embassies request that the work be banned: the film "Team America: World Police", the marionette picture made by the creators of "South Park". He realized that other critiques would do him no lasting harm, but that anyone who laughs at the Kim Jung-il puppet is unlikely to accept the real Kim as an infallible ruler. For similar reasons, Adolph Hitler was distressed by the Chaplin film "The Great Dictator". One wonders what Hitler would have thought of the many YouTube "Downfall" videos.

For this reason, we should be grateful for the current trend where our politicians appear on comedy shows, such as Jay Leno. There are now several shows ("The Daily Show", "Red Eye") that combine politics and humor. Political humor does more than provide us with some much needed laughs; it helps us keep our leaders in perspective, and by doing so, it protects our freedom.

Occupy Boston Versus What Occupies Mayor Menino's Soul

2011-10-15T14:08:00.000-07:00

"Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings."
- From "The Life and Death of Julies Caesar", Act I Scene II

"Take a step outside yourself
Then you turn around
Take a look at who you are
It's pretty scary"
- From "Turn Around" (1980) lyrics by Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale

The "Occupy Wall Street" movement has spread to many big cities, including Boston. Recently Boston Mayor Thomas Menino has ordered the arrests of "Occupy Boston" protesters. On the surface, the Mayor has some valid charges: the protest was spilling over onto the Rose Kennedy Greenway, in violation of zoning rules. The protests have disrupted commercial activity. In particular, a lucrative food festival was cancelled because the protesters had taken over the space where the event would have taken place. Yes, we have the irony that an event that would have provided a lot of temp jobs was cancelled so that people could protest unemployment.

But cry no tears for the his honor the Mayor. The blame for the current lawlessness goes beyond the young people he is arresting. The true cause of the "Occupy Boston" controversy can best be explained by the following facts about Massachusetts politics:

Massachusetts is basically a one-party state, so much so that almost all elections are considered over after the Democratic primary;
This lack of any political challenge has created unusually powerful and long tenured public officials; and
Perhaps because of facts 1 and 2, the commonwealth of Massachusetts has suffered more than her fair share of government corruption (the last three House Speakers are all convicted felons).

Mayor Menino is the archetypical Massachusetts politician. First elected in 1993, Menino has rarely encountered more than token opposition in subsequent elections. He is popular for taking a no-holds-barred approach to the challenges of the office, often at the expense of our constitutional rights.

In 2005, there was a popular line of tee shirts emblazoned with the words "Stop Snitchen'". Menino condemned these shirts as discouraging cooperation with the police. When some Boston stores wanted to sell these shirts, the Mayor vowed to send officers into the stores to seize the shirts. Menino was advised that such a seizure would raise free speech issues, so he tried another tact. City inspectors discovered (who knew?) that the clothing stores that wanted to carry the shirts (and only those stores) had code violations. And once the orders for "Stop Snitchen'" shirts were cancelled, the inspectors found that these stores were up to code after all! Score 1 for Mayor Menino, 0 for the first amendment.

In January of 2007, the Mayor was rightly concerned that after an AFC playoff game, Patriot fans might engage in violence. The Mayor felt that TV news coverage of sports bars might inflame the fans. Lesser men might have urged TV newscasters to be cautious, but not our Honor the Mayor. With all the boldness of a honey badger, he told the Boston bar and tavern owners, a group that is even more under the city's thumb than clothing stores, to not allow TV crews into their establishments. With the fear of losing their precious liquor licenses, TV journalists were shut out of Boston bars. So much for an independent fourth estate; it's good to be the king.

When the Tea Party demonstration (the recent one, not the 1773 party) took place in Boston, the Mayor insisted that they needed permits and that they need to pay a substantial fee to cover expenses that Boston might incur. The idea that we have to get permits and pay fees in order to exercise our constitutional right to assemble is problematic, but there is an even more disturbing aspect to the Boston protest permit and fees system. Before "Occupy Boston", Mayor Menino enthused over the ideas that the protestors would be advancing. So unlike the Tea Party, no permits or fees were required of the Occupy Boston organizers. Civil rights attorney Harvey Silverglate, founder of the campus free speech organization F.I.R.E., is appalled that these fees and red tape are applied at the whims of the Mayor, even though he sympathizes with "Occupy Boston". This is not about protecting city finances: in police overtime alone, "Occupy Boston" has far exceeded all expenses related to the Tea Party event. This is about directing the city's finances to the political causes that the Mayor favors. These arbitrary fees and permits represent a new low in the abuse of power, even by Bay State standards.

So even after giving the "Occupy Boston" people a pass, his honor the Mayor is miffed that the demonstrators circumvent or ignore the laws that they don't like. Sorry Mayor, you do not have my sympathy. If you want Bostonians to show more respect for the law, you should model that behavior by showing some respect for the most important set of laws for our government officials: the U.S. constitution. The constitution asserts that all of us, as part of our basic nature, have certain inalienable rights, including the right to free speech and to assemble. Mayor Menino, could your persistent violations of the spirit, if not the letter, of the first amendment be viewed by the young men and women protesting that the law is not worth taking seriously? If the Mayor were to ask the arrested protestors where they learned to disrespect the law, they could justifiably respond with the 1980's Ad line, "I learned it from watching you!".

For the lighter side of Thomas Menino, check out the Official Mumbles Menino web site. The mayor speeches are filled with many inadvertent malaprops, spoonerisms, and novel phrasing, so the news commentators that cover them often have to do double duty as cryptographers. It appears that he has as much trouble with his own speech as he has with others. The "Mumbles Menino" site includes the funniest and / or most WTF Menino utterances.

On the heavier side of Tom Menino, in recent years he has suffered from significant weight gain. Imagine an overweight autocratic leader who speaks in a way that many people find hard to understand. That image seems familiar; I think I remember where I've seen it:

The New Industrial State is Not Too Big to Fail

2011-09-18T19:57:00.000-07:00

"There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after."
- Ecclesiastes 1:12

"Your castles may tumble (that's fate after all)
Life's really funny that way
No use to grumble, smile as they fall
Weren't you king for a day?"
- From "Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams" (1931), lyrics by Ted Koehler and Billy Moll

The news coverage of Steve Jobs' retirement from Apple predictably discussed his greatest successes: the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad. But many articles about this event also covered his failed projects: the Apple III, the Apple Lisa, and the NeXT workstation. This is commendable, for Jobs' clunkers are an important part of the story. We learn more from failure than we do from success. If Jobs did not learn from his blunders, he might never have come up with the iPhone.

There is a failed project that can teach us a lot about our current financial crisis: the book "The New Industrial State" by famed economist John Kenneth Galbraith, based on a lecture series broadcast by the BBC. The main theme of this book is that the large corporations are no longer subject to market forces. Galbraith contends that the big industry leaders can use a combination of leverage, advertizing, and consolidation to squash any competitor that threatens them. The book focuses on several large corporations that J.K. Galbraith contends will always dominate their industry.

So what's the problem with this book? Well, it was first published in 1967, and as fans of Mad Men can tell you, the markets have changed quite a lot since the 1960's. Back then, General Motors made more than half of the cars sold in the U.S., as well as a significant share of some foreign markets. So naturally "The New Industrial State" assures us that GM is one of the companies that need not worry about competition. When it comes to computers, whether we are talking about hardware or software, the book asserts that the one company that matters will always be IBM. And what about retail? Remember, 1967 is before Walmart or even Kmart made it big, so the book's examples of the forever dominant retailers are Sears (currently on the ropes) and Montgomery Ward (went bankrupt in 2000, although recently revived as an online store). These 1960's corporate giants lost their market dominance to new companies whose innovations won over the customers. The history of the last few decades provides the definitive rebuttal to "The New Industrial State": even the largest corporations must remain competitive to stay alive.

The basic premise of "The New Industrial State" is widely believed today. If only I had a dime for each prediction that the internet will no longer be a venue of free speech because soon one company will take over the internet. Funny thing is, the company that is predicted to take over the internet keeps changing: Netscape, Microsoft, AOL, Google, and Facebook have all been projected to be our future on-line overlord. In 5 years, there will probably be some company not in this list that will be viewed as the future emperor of the internet.

Some very important insights in our current economy can be learned from the failure of "The New Industrial State".

There is no corporation that is "Too Big to Fail". When a corporation falters, there are plenty of other companies that will pick up the slack. In the 1970's, A&P went from the largest grocery chain in the country to a chain that operated in a handful of east coast states. The closures of all those A&P stores did not cause mass starvation, for these closures were matched by openings of other grocery stores.
The 2008 bailouts of failed large corporations were therefore unnecessary and counterproductive. At a time when the federal government could ill afford it, taxpayer dollars were wasted to reward poor corporate decisions at the expense of those companies that served their customers better.
The government should not be in the business of picking market leaders. Keep in mind that John Kenneth Galbraith was an award winning economist who advised presidents FDR and JFK. If Galbraith could not predict which companies would prevail, what chance do we have that our current experts can safely invest our tax dollars in future winning companies? This is the sort of hubris that lead to the Solyndra debacle.

Like the Apple III, "The New Industrial State" is a flawed work, but we can learn a lot from its errors. One wonders if the president's economic team understand where Galbraith went wrong, so that they can avoid repeating his mistakes.

Solving the Budget Crisis Through Theft

2011-07-24T05:45:00.001-07:00

"If you steal from one author, it's plagiarism. If you steal from two, it's research."
- John Burke

"Plagiarize
Let no one else's work evade your eyes
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes
So don't shade your eyes
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize
Only be sure always to call it please 'research'"
- From "Lobachevsky" by Tom Lehrer.

The federal budget fight has been unusually acrimonious. On July 14, Obama walked out of the budget talks. On July 22, Boehner walked out of the budget talks. And throughout these talks, the American public has been walking out from both parties, and for good reason: neither party has been serious about tackling the debt crisis. Sure, both sides crow about how they have proposed drastic cuts, but these spending proposals are "cuts" only in a sense that is accepted no where else than Washington. What they mean by cuts is that they propose spending less than projected 2011 spending. Neither the "Cut, Cap, and Trade" proposal nor the president's most recent proposal would reduce 2011 spending to less than the previous year, even after adjusting last year's spending for inflation and population growth. The Republicans have been reluctant to really address the looming entitlement crisis. Congressional Democrats are even worse on this issue, threatening to block any entitlement program changes, while hypocritically complaining that the Republicans are too inflexible about taxes.

We need not worry the August 2 deadline, however. For starters, the default deadline is bogus anyways: the government need not default nor miss sending Social Security checks if the debt ceiling is not raised by August 2. But now that both sides have propped up this phone crisis, they will have to save face by coming up with some compromise before the "deadline". The bigger problem is that the compromise that the president and congress will likely fall far short of what is needed to reassure the rating services such as Standard and Poor's. They want to see creditable deficit reduction if U.S. government bonds are to retain their AAA ratings. If U.S. bonds are downgraded,

Bond holders will be hurt; and
The costs of U.S. borrowing will balloon.

So we may dodge the August 2 bullet, only to be hit with the S&P bond downgrade.

Dramatic action is required to prevent our bond rating dropping to AA. We need a deficit reduction plan, and fast. One effective approach would be to find a previous successful budget, and steal it. In short, we can solve our money problem by theft - not of money, but ideas.

I propose that the 2011 budget be based on the U.S. budget from 2000, one of the last budgets assembled before the 2 recent spendthrift administrations. This budget covered the basic government functions while spending less than the revenues collected. This budget was put together by a Democratic president working with a Republican congress - if they could do it, why can't we? When you adjust the 2000 budget for inflation and population growth, it comes out to $1,965,999 million. This would allow us to meet the S&P deficit reduction limits without taking the perilous action of raising taxes in a troubled economy. So one simple approach would be to adopt the 2000 budget, adjusted for inflation and population growth. This is the one sequel that we would all welcome.

Critics will immediately point out how the world has changed since 2000. We are now fighting 3 simultaneous wars, we have a slew of new agencies that have cropped up to fight the "War on Terror", a bunch of new Czars, not to mention ambitious new programs such as designing and building a whole new rail system. How could the 2000 budget cover these programs that did not exist 10 years ago? To this argument, I would reply that a large part of the reason we are in this mess is that we adopted expensive new programs without figuring out how to pay for them. We simply cannot afford all of them, so we need to prioritize. Given that we almost certainly cannot do both, should we engage in nation building in 3 middle east countries, or should we rebuild our own nation? Do we really need all these agencies that we were able to get along without for two centuries, and if so, could we pay for them by making cuts elsewhere in the 2000 prototype budget? If we really need the TSA, could we pay for it by eliminating the Import-Export bank or by cutting farm subsidies paid to millionaire farmers?

Real budget reform is possible. In fact, it is inevitable: the only real question is whether we fix the budget ourselves now or let our creditors decide how to fix it in the future. With the 200 budget austerity program, we can avoid default, avoid a credit downgrade, pay down the deficit, revive the economy, and then we can party like it's 1999.

Should Someone Take the Fall for the Central Falls Pension Mess?

2011-07-17T05:16:00.000-07:00

"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it."
- George Bernard Shaw, "Man and Superman" (1903)

"With great power comes great responsibility."
- Stan Lee / Steve Ditko / David Koepp, "Spiderman" (2002)

Many state and local governments are burdened with unfunded pension liabilities. Recently it was revealed that Central Falls, Rhode Island, a small, impoverished city, has a pension obligation of $80 million. This is more than the city could possibly pay, so Central Falls is looking into filing for municipal bankruptcy. The backup plan is to go into receivership.

I wonder if this rash of municipal pension problems is caused in part because there is no one individual who is legally liable when a municipality makes pension agreements that are not fully funded. Private company officials have done the "perp walk" for not funding their pension obligations. But who will go to jail for Central Falls' pension promises that cannot be met? The mayor? City councilors? The city's union contract negotiators? And who, if anybody, should go to jail for the California pension mess?

Please contribute your thoughts: who, if anyone, should be held liable if a municipality does not properly fund its pension obligations? And if we do not hold any one person liable, what is the best way to prevent future pension crises? Feel free to also discuss the mothers of all unfunded liabilities, social security and medicare.

The Great Fall of China

2011-06-30T07:55:00.000-07:00

"To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the power which enable us to shape the processes of society entirely to our liking, knowledge which in fact we do not possess, is likely to make us do much harm."
- F. A. Hayek

"Yeah, the harder they come,
The harder they'll fall
One and all"
- "The Harder They Come" by Jimmy Cliff.

The U.S. economy may have "recovered" according to some criteria formulated in D.C., but for most American citizens, this is the weakest economy they have seen in quite a while. The last time that unemployment was hovering around 9% for this long was before WWII. Over 2.7 million Americans live in a home with a mortgage that has not been paid in more than a year. The U.S. debt crisis has become a concern for the IMF.

The financial reports from Europe are also rather grim. The one country that seems to be avoiding the downturn is China. China benefits from a steadily growing GDP and now has a substantial middle class. But all is not well for the Chinese economy. An Australian news report indicates that China has a serious real estate bubble, and when it bursts, the impact could dwarf the 2008 U.S. recession.

China has a mixed economy, and the communists still control the real estate sector. Anticipating a rapidly rising upper middle class, the communists built vast cities of luxury apartment buildings. These apartment buildings are going up faster (much faster) than the ranks of Chinese yuppies who are supposed to be renting them. There are new towns where the apartment occupancy rate is 25%. The government doesn't provide statistics, but it is estimated that China has 64 million empty apartments.

Even more amazing is the story of the New South China Mall, the largest shopping mall in the world. This impressively designed mall is more than twice the size of the Mall of America. The mall, however, lacks two essential ingredients for a successful shopping center: merchants and customers. Since opening their doors in 2005, the occupancy rate has never risen much above 1%. The New South China Mall was basically born as a dead mall.

So how will this Chinese real estate bubble play out? Anyone who has lived in the U.S in 2008 knows the script. The building owners cannot keep tossing their money into these pits forever, and will have to figure out some way to recoup some of their investment. Undoubtedly, they will have to dramatically slash rents in order to get something for their empty spaces. This will drive down the value of real estate, and therefore any fund based on property values. This devaluation weakens the economy, which creates further downward pressure on rents, therefore making the real estate crisis even worse. The situation is like the 2008 American housing market, but China's bubble is much bigger. And when this bubble bursts, it will be felt across the globe.

The impact of a Chinese bubble burst would have a mostly negative impact on European and American markets, delaying any possible recovery. But there is some good news that could come out of a Chinese market crash.

A real estate market crash will greatly reduce the prestige and power of the Chinese communist elites. It may even bring an end to one party rule.
The economic success of China has been used to advocate authoritarian measures in the west. On "Meet the Press", New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman asked wistfully "What if we could just be China for a day" so that we could pass measures he likes without having to go through our messy democratic process. The failure of the Chinese command economy would end this sort of totalitarian nonsense.
The crash would teach the nations of the world a valuable lesson, namely to avoid what Nobel prize winning economist F. A. Hayek called "The Fatal Conceit", that is, the belief that "man is able to shape the world around him according to his wishes." In the wake of China's failure to create prosperity on command, governments might take a more flexible, decentralized, market-based approach to decision making.

So hard times may be with us for a bit longer, but we will eventually come out of this both wiser and more prosperous. Unfettered by bureaucracy, humans always work out some ingenious methods to create wealth. As Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch put it in their excellent new book "The Declaration of Independents", we'll see a "future so bright, we gotta wear shades."

Warring Tribes Join Forces To Fight Smut!

2011-05-14T14:00:00.001-07:00

"Pornography is now considered as addictive as drugs"
- Rev. Jimmy Swaggart

Katie: The internet is really really great,
Trekkie Monster: For porn!
Katie: I've got a fast connect, so I don't have to wait!
Trekkie Monster: For porn!
- From "The Internet Is For Porn" by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx

It is hard to think of a time when pornography was not in the news. When the navy seals found Bin Laden, they found a stash of pornography in his lair. Several weeks ago, Sen. Orrin Hatch sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder demanding more obscenity prosecutions. Going back to the 1980's, Ronald Reagan's Attorney General Ed Meese created a Commission on Pornography. A presidential commission on pornography was assembled in the late 1960's, but when this commission recommended legalization, then President Richard M. Nixon rejected the commission's findings. In the mid-sixties, financier Charles Keating (a man who later had his own ethics issues) bankrolled an anti-pornography drive.

The most interesting anti-smut movement in my lifetime was the Women Against Pornography group formed in the late 1970's. Before this group was formed, most of the support for obscenity laws came from conservative religious groups. These early Christian right groups used to argue that pornography should not be given first amendment protection because it subconsciously alters the mind, causing both addiction and a host of anti-social behaviors. Reverends Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart, Jerry Falwell etc. asserted that if pornography were legal, we would see a dramatic increase in rape, adultery, divorce, teen pregnancy and wife beating.

I was in college in the 1970's, and there was strong support for civil liberties and free speech on the campuses of that era. That ended with the arrival of Women Against Pornography, a group founded to advance the work of feminist authors Andrea Dworkin and Catharine McKinnon. Dworkin and McKinnon argued that smutty books, magazines and films, and even publications as innocuous as Playboy were a crime against women. What I found remarkable about this group's arguments on the porn issue was how close it was to the case made by the religious right. These feminists said that pornography had special mind-altering properties, that pornography is like an addictive drug, and that it causes a plague of social ills. Attending one of their rallies, I felt like I was hearing Jimmy Swaggart and Jerry Falwell dressed up in drag (sorry for that rather unpleasant imagery). To be fair, the anti-porn feminists did come up with one argument not previously made by the religious right: they argued that porn convinces men that women are only good for sex, and hence porn consumers will not accept females in professional positions. I didn't find this argument convincing, but at least it was original.

Amazingly enough, this group had a profound impact on college campuses. I was astounded with how many students and professors did a 180 degree turn on obscenity laws, and doing so on the basis of arguments that were soundly rejected a few years ago. It was not as though everyone had just discovered the genius of Pat Robertson. So what happened to the ideals, such as free speech, civil liberties, and sexual freedom, that we used to share? This experience demonstrated an important principle. Although most people think that their political / social / religious views are shaped by their ideals, what really shapes their views is group identity, also known as tribalism. They feel the pressure to conform with the prevailing opinion of the social group that they are members of. The Women Against Pornography story is really about one tribe (feminists) joining forces with an enemy tribe (the religious right) in order to fight a common enemy, smut peddlers. And as a committed civil libertarian, I found it appalling that this would be the issue that brought these sides together.

Fortunately, Women Against Pornography disbanded in the late 1980's, so now only the social conservatives carry on the battle against smut. The right has lost a lot of its enthusiasm over this issue: if P. J. O'Rourke and Greg Gutfeld got together to discuss porn, they'd probably end up talking about where to find the really good stuff. But frankly, this issue was settled in the 1990's with the invention of the internet. The internet made pornography more available than ever. If there was anything to the right (or left) case against porn, then the rise of the on-line community would have been accompanied by large increases in rapes, divorces, teen pregnancies, etc. But as this Hit and Run post pointed out, all of these social ills have actually lessened since 1991.

To this, I would add that the internet also disproved the theory that porn consumers could not accept that women can be good for something besides sex. Since web browsing hit the big time, women have been swelling the ranks of many professions. And as a man, I am happy to report that the popularity of the Chippendales has not produced a hoard of women who think that men are only good for the full monty.

When Will We See War Declared the Right Way?

2011-03-22T15:33:00.000-07:00

"The Congress shall have Power... To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;"
- Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution

"Then it’s war!
Freedonia’s going to war!
Each native son will grab a gun.
And run away to war!"
- From "The Country's Goin' to War" by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby;

Pundits have criticized the U.S. bombing of Libya for its ill timing, its lack of planning, and for the fuzzy end goals. As serious as these issues are, there is an even bigger problem with this military action: is it constitutional? According to section 8 of the constitution, the power to declare war resides with congress. The decision to set up a no-fly zone was made without a vote in the house or the senate, or even consulting with most Senators and Representatives for that matter.

Does the President have the constitutional power to do this? Voices as disparate as Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) agree that this action is clearly a violation of Obama's oath to uphold the constitution. In fact, some feel that this is an impeachable offense. One former Senator and presidential candidate said in 2007, that if then President George Bush unilaterally took military action against Iran, he would move to impeach him. That candidate was Sen. Joe Biden, our current Vice President.

In December 2007, the Boston Globe asked the Presidential candidates

"In what circumstances, if any, would the president have constitutional authority to bomb Iran without seeking a use-of-force authorization from Congress? (Specifically, what about the strategic bombing of suspected nuclear sites -- a situation that does not involve stopping an IMMINENT threat?)"

Candidate Barack Obama's response started with

"The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."

Absolutely correct, candidate Obama! Now can you please impart this constitutional expertise to President Obama?

To be fair, section 8 of the constitution has been ignored for many administrations. The last American war officially declared by congress was before the Korean war! The U.S. has not fought a war as proscribe by the constitution in my lifetime, and I fear that I might not live to see a constitutionally declared war. But previous presidents have at least had some sort of congressional vote to approve wars that did not involve a threat to the nation. Obama has crossed a new threshold with the Libyan no-fly zone.

Instead of waiting for congressional approval, our President acted on the approval of two other bodies: the United Nation and the Arab League. This is troubling for reasons other than the fact that these bodies have zero congressional authority: neither of these bodies are elected by U.S. citizens. War can impact U.S. foreign relations for generations. The cost of American wars is born by U.S. taxpayers. Our wars also kill many of the our best young people. Given the burden on U.S. citizens, shouldn't war decisions be made by a body elected by these citizens?

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are being fought, in part, to bring democracy to those countries. But who's fighting to bring democracy to America?

The Machinery of Egyptian Freedom

2011-03-11T15:14:00.001-08:00

"Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
- John 8:31-32

"Harmony and understanding
Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions
Golden living dreams of visions
Mystic crystals revelations
And the mind's true liberation
Aquarius...
Aquarius!”
- From "Age of Aquarius" by James Rado, Gerome Ragni and Galt Macdermot

Hosni Mubarak's brutal repression of protesters proved to virtually everyone except Vice President Joe Biden that he was a dictator. And like many dictators before him (Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Idi Amin, Bébé Doc, Ferdinand Marcos, Nicolae Ceaușescu, Augusto Pinochet and Mobutu Sese Seko, just to name a few), his own people forced his exit from power. But there is something extraordinary about the overthrow of Mubarak: he was forced out with very little real or threatened violence. In contrast to their government, the Egyptian protesters were astonishingly peaceful.

How did the protesters prevail without engaging in thuggery? The answer may be found in the 1973 book "The Machinery of Freedom" by David Friedman (son of economist and Nobel prize winner Milton Friedman). In this book, David Friedman makes the case for a much smaller government, replacing most forms of state coercion with voluntary arrangements. I learned a lot from this book, even though I do not subscribe to Friedman's rather extreme form of libertarianism. "The Machinery of Freedom" forces the reader to reflect on the assumptions we often make about the need for government power. No wonder that this book made Australia's Institute of Public Affairs list of 20 books that you must read before you die.

Two chapters of this book are quite apropos to the current middle east revolts. In "Revolution is the Hell of It", Friedman rejects violent revolution as a tactic to produce a libertarian state. Violence is counterproductive violation of libertarian principles. The final chapter, "How to Get There From Here", proposes a peaceful alternative to revolution: undermining the state's legitimacy. Even in the worst dictatorships, government power derives mostly from the majority of the population believing in the legitimacy of their leadership. They may dislike their leaders, but they think that only the current leaders can run their country, and that without these leaders, their nation would descend into chaos. As the Milgram experiments demonstrated, the pressure of group conformity can reinforce such a viewpoint. Friedman felt that an overbearing state could be reigned in through a combination of education and demonstration, convincing citizens that they can run their country without sacrificing their freedoms. As Lennon and McCartney wrote in the song "Revolution", "You better free your mind instead".

Is this recipe for peaceful overthrow of a tyrannical state too optimistic? I certainly thought so when first read this book. But consider what happened in Egypt. In a very short period, Mubarak's legitimacy vaporized. Shahira Amin, one of Nile TV' most popular journalists, abruptly quit because her network would only present government propaganda, a violation of her journalistic principles. In the days before Mubarak stepped down, there were a sizable number of policemen that refused to take action against the protesters. So somehow, the Egyptians pulled off Friedman's Utopian vision of how to end government repression.

I doubt that this kind of revolt could have happened in 1973. What made it possible today is a technical breakthrough: social networking. Earlier this year, an Egyptian blogger posted a video of police rape and torture of dissidents. And as Mubarak supporters learned, once a video hits the internet, it never disappears. This video, along with unrest in Tunisia, became popular Facebook topics. Opponents of Mubarak saw that they were not alone in their concerns. Facebook also turned out to be an excellent organizing tool. Recognizing the threat, the government tried cutting off internet access (is that the reason why there is talk in Washington about an internet kill switch?), but the dissidents found ways around this, including going back to dial-up access to foreign internet providers. So remember folks, don't throw away those 56K modems!

From the start of the Mubarak regime until shortly before his downfall, the various U.S. administrations have been solidly behind him. For that reason, it is hard to find an Egyptian protester with a positive word for an American Politician. There is an American, however, who is spoken of quite highly by these protesters: Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook. If anybody gets a Nobel Peace Prize for the handling of the Egyptian crisis, it should be Zuckerberg, but unfortunately it will probably go to some politician instead. But history will remember that Facebook was a very important part in the Egyptian machinery of freedom.

Crossing the Board Game / Electronic Game Divide

2011-03-05T15:20:00.000-08:00

"You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else."
- Albert Einstein

"I think it's wrong that only one company makes the game Monopoly."
- Steven Wright

Video games have dominated the entertainment industry for the last few decades. The video games' older analog equivalent, the board game, has lost favor during this period. The number of board games sold last year was down 10% from the year before. In an attempt to reverse this decline, Hasbro will be releasing hybrid electronic / board games this fall. The first of these will be "Monopoly Live", followed by "Battleship Live".

The Monopoly Live board has a battery powered computer control tower at its center that guides the players through the game. Hasbro contends that this tower's guidance allows a new player to start playing right away without having to first study the rules. The tower provides the following services:

It takes on the thankless job of banker;
It computes taxes and mortgage fees;
It rolls the dice;
It reads the Chance and Community Chest cards (with appropriate sound effects);
It manages the money electronically (players have ATM cards); and
It runs additional games events such as auctions, horse races and tax audits.

A demo of Monopoly Live can be seen here.

Needless to say, there are purists who object to this merger of traditional gaming and electronics, defending the superiority of analog-based fun. Now I don't dispute that traditional board games can be a lot of fun. When I was a child, video games had not been invented, so my family had fun with classic board games Operation, Mousetrap, Monopoly, Life, Clue, Checkers, Chinese Checkers, and Bridge-It, as well as sadly forgotten games such as Careers and Masterpiece.

But even with these fond memories for the traditional board games, I do not reject the Live board game concept. First of all, the golden age of board games is overrated. When studying the history of a cultural phenomena, such as shopping malls, comic books, network TV, and even retro video games, one often ends up romanticizing the past. One tends to remember the successes and forget the failures. As one who lived through that era, I can vouch that for every classic board game, there were dozens of dull, uncreative games that were not worth playing once. Most of the worst board games were TV or movie tie-in games (The same thing could be said about video games). Our neighbors had a "Dick Tracy" game that was so bad, the only way we managed to have fun with it was to figure out how we could make a good game out of the game board and pieces. Note: if anyone knows of a ROM hacker who has succeeded in making a good video game out of a bad one, please tell us about it in the comments.

These "Live" games will not be the first time that electronics have promoted a board game. Two classic strategy games, Chess and Go, are probably more popular now than any time in history, thanks to the fact that one can play virtually any opponent on the planet in real time, using an internet connection. Computers almost certainly saved the game Othello from extinction. Othello is a much older game than most people realize: it was originally published as Reversi in nineteenth century England. For many decades after its invention, Reversi was known only to a small but enthusiastic group of strategy game enthusiasts. It was not until a PC version of the game, under the name Othello, that the game finally attracted a large following. There are Othello leagues in many nations, as well as international competitions. I doubt if you would be able to buy an Othello set at most game stores if it were not for the PC game.

Computers have made our work life much easier. Since the invention of the Monopoly game, file cabinets have been replaced by databases, typewriters have been replaced with word processors, checks have been replaced with electronic transfers, and postage meters have been replaced with E-mail. All of these changes allow us to do a better job with less effort. But if electronics can make our work life easier, why not use this same technology to make our gaming easier, especially since gaming is supposed to be a recreational activity?

Finally, keep in mind that the point of a board game, or any game for that matter, is to have fun, and these Live games look like they'll be a blast. I'm hoping they are working on a "Clue Live" where the tower gives voice to a detective that sounds like Basil Rathbone.

Texas School Children: Give Choice a Chance

2011-02-20T16:15:00.000-08:00

"Liberty, according to my metaphysics is a self-determining power in an intellectual agent. It implies thought and choice and power."
- John Adams

"Teach, your children well
Their father's hell
Did slowly go by
And feed them on your dreams
The one they pick's
The one you'll know by."
- From "Teach Your Children" by Graham Nash.

In this third and final post on the Texas school districts that discipline students using the legal system, I would like to focus on one incident from the Texas Appleseed report that exposes the root of many of the problems with American public education:

"A 17-year-old girl with autism became frustrated [in class]. The teacher who best understood how to manage her behaviors was off work that day. The substitute did not know how to respond and accidentally escalated the situation by talking loudly and getting close to the student. The young lady left the classroom without permission, cursed and then sat in the hallway rocking back and forth to calm herself. When the assistant principal heard what happened, he asked a police officer to write a citation for Disruption of Class. The young lady’s single, low-income mother came to the school to talk to the vice principal, explaining that her daughter did not have full control of her behavior and was not able to understand the citation. She also explained she could not pay for citations. The vice principal told the mom that if she did not want her daughter to get more citations, she should withdraw the daughter from school because she was old enough to drop out."

As the father of an autistic son, I find this incident especially appalling. One's first impression is to blame the vice principle for this injustice, but the problem goes beyond this one employee. True, the vice principle did not act in the student's best interest, but he did act in the school's best interest. But why does the school's best interest differ from those of the students? This perverse incentive system is a result of the lack of choice on the part of the student.

In most circumstances, most American public school students have no choice as to which school to attend. Moreover, school financing is generally based on the number of school aged children in the district, not on how many students actually attend the school. The school's budget is not negatively affected by their students switching to private education or home schooling.

We can empower student's families with a change to the way we finance public schools. Instead of allocating education money to the schools, we could these funds to the child, with additional public funds provided for students with special educational needs. The family would then choose which public school their child would attend, and then that school would receive the funding for educating that child. School that attracts more students would receive more financing, schools that loses students would be forced to tighten their belts. Under such a system, could you imagine a vice principle recommending that a student drop out?

Would the Texas system of legal fines for school offenses such a cursing, talking back and skipping classes be adapted in a school choice system? As we have seen, this system has been particularly harsh with racial minorities and the handicapped. These students would undoubtedly exercise their choice for a school that takes a more humane approach to discipline. No family would be forced to endure the Texas ticketing system.

School choice is not just an academic theory. It is practiced in Belgium, France, Sweden, Chile, Ontario, and New Zealand. The countries where choice has been tried get better student test results than American public schools, and get those results at lower cost. This is the unsurprising consequence of families choosing the schools that works best for their children.

When we buy a product like breakfast cereal or a laptop, we insist on having a choice between several providers in order to get the best product. And yet we settle for no choice in a much more important matter: the education of our next generation. Our children deserve better; they deserve a choice.

One final note: my autistic son Jonathan has his own blog, as well as his own YouTube account. He may be constrained by his condition, but that never stops Jonathan from making the most of what he can accomplish. This is what I admire most about him.

Texas School Children: Flex Your Rights!

2011-02-18T14:13:00.000-08:00

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
- Amendment 4 to the U.S. Constitution

"In 1787 I'm told Our founding fathers did agree
To write a list of principles For keepin' people free"
- From "Preamble", written by Lynn Ahrens for "Schoolhouse Rock"

This site's previous post discussed how some Texas school districts are now enforcing discipline using the criminal justice system. As noted in the Texas Appleseed report, this overly severe form of punishment poses a burden on poor families, is unfair to racial minorities, and adds to the already considerable challenges facing handicapped students. Is there any bright side to this criminalization of student behavior?

Yes there is. The ticketing of Texas students gives us an ideal platform to teach our children the importance of the U.S. constitution. Sadly, most adult Americans are quite ignorant of the workings of our democracy, especially our constitution. Civil libertarian Steven Silverman was shocked to discover how often people would unknowingly waive their constitutional rights, so in 2002 he founded the non-profit educational organization Flex Your Rights to educate the public on their constitutional protections. Flex Your Rights produced the video BUSTED: The Citizen's Guide to Surviving Police Encounters, which I heartily recommend.

Our schools have been doing a poor job of teaching the constitution. I would recommend that we work with the Flex Your Rights folks to develop a course on the constitution for Texas students. If the Texas school systems refuse to teach the constitution, perhaps Texan libertarians could present constitution lessons outside of school system (think of it as a Texan version of Dumbledore's Army). Armed with the Flex Your Rights curriculum, Texan students could both protect themselves from the excesses of the ticketing system and learn a valuable civics lesson in the process.

For example, the Appleseed report tells of a girl who was given a $200 ticket when a school officer searched her purse and found a cigarette butt. Had she known about the fourth amendment, she would have known that the search could almost certainly be prevented if she politely but clearly told the officer "I do not consent to a search of my purse". Unless the officer has a warrant for searching her purse, any search of her purse would be illegal, the cigarette butt could not be admitted as evidence in court, and the school officer could be be held liable for the illegal search.

The most effective learning technique is to learn by doing. Imagine what students would learn about civics by actually applying the Flex Your Rights curriculum for their own protection. This whole affair could have one really positive effect: a generation of Texas students with a full appreciation of our founding documents.

Texas School Children: Another Brick in the Wall

2011-02-16T14:19:00.000-08:00

"I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: 'The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that's fair.' In these words he epitomized the history of the human race."
- From "Education and the Social Order" by Bertrand Russell

"When we grew up and went to school, there were certain teachers who would hurt the children anyway they could
by pouring their derision upon anything we did
exposing every weakness however carefully hidden by the kids."
- From "Another Brick in the Wall" by Pink Floyd.

Bullying is major problem in many of our schools. Sometimes, the worst bullies are the grown-ups. A case in point is a novel form of discipline now practiced in several Texas school systems, including Houston, Austin, San Antonio and Dallas. Instead of detention to punish misbehaving students, the school system is using the criminal justice system. A student who disobeys a school rule is given a ticket that his or her family has to pay. Last year, more than 275,000 Texas juveniles were ticketed for such offenses as disrupting class, disorderly conduct or curfew violations (i.e. leaving campus without permission). These tickets are not cheap; when school officials searched a girl's purse and found a cigarette butt, she got a ticket for $200! Some troubled students can rack up several tickets, placing a substantial financial burden on their family.

These tickets have to be taken seriously. These violations are class C misdemeanors, which is serious enough to show up on a criminal record. Of course, a Texas child's criminal record should be wiped clean of these offenses once he or she turns 18, but due to the sheer volume of these tickets, this often isn't done. It gives a whole new meaning to the term "permanent record", doesn't it? Moreover, once a student turns 17, he / she can be arrested for failure to pay the ticket. This actually happened to a 17 year old student from Hidalgo county last year.

The public interest group Texas Appleseed has studied the ticketing of students. Among their findings were:

tickets were given to children as young as six;
racial minorities receive a disproportionate number of tickets; and
a student is much more likely to get a ticket if he / she has a disability.

What is especially appalling about this ticketing is that frequently no allowances are made for when a misbehavior might be caused by a disability. Tickets for using profanity have been given to students suffering from Tourette Syndrome! The Appleseed report has a particularly callous citation of an autistic girl. In the interest of full disclosure, I have an autistic son who has his own blog, making this sort of abuse even more disturbing to me.

All in all, this ticketing system recalls the protest song "Another Brick in the Wall" from Pink Floyd's 1979 Rock opera "The Wall". This song condemns the British school system of enforcing mindless conformity by humiliating any student that deviates from the norm. What better anthem is there for school systems that punishes students for the crime of being born with a disability?

So what should be done to stop this legal harassment of Texas children? I have two proposals that I will present in follow-ups to this post. Stay tuned.

A bonus video: here's a version of "Another Brick in the Wall" that might be more appropriate for Texas.

Coffin Nails and Death Chic

2011-02-05T12:00:00.000-08:00

"God's finger touched him, and he slept."
- Alfred Tennyson

"So do the dead, through the lights
The surfin' dead, oooh make it tight
The livin' dead now baby lose their heads
Now baby, doin' the dead"
- From "Surfin' Dead" by the Cramps.

On June 22, the Tobacco Control Act will require that cigarette packages carry larger, more visible warning labels. The FDA has proposed a set of new warnings, which will cover at least 50% of the cigarette pack's display area and portray the negative consequences of smoking in a rather graphic, shocking fashion.

The new labels have been challenged as a violation of property or free speech rights. I object to these labels for an entirely different reason: they are likely to backfire and make cigarettes more appealing. Given that humanity's greatest fear, it may seem surprising that anything can be made more appealing by associating it with the dirt nap. But the "Death Chic" phenomenon is very real, so these warning labels could make cancer sticks hip again.

To illustrate this point, consider the health crisis second only to smoking: the obesity epidemic. Certainly the owner of a grill would avoid any warnings that eating fatty foods like hamburgers could lead to heart ailments, right? Well, you'd think so, but think again. The Heart Attack Grill in Chandler Arizona makes it quite clear that its food is bad for you. It's not just the grill's name or its slogan ("Taste Worth Dying For"): the waitresses are dressed as nurses. The burgers come in three sizes: single bypass, double bypass, and quadruple bypass. Your order is identified by a hospital tag. And in spite of all these warnings, the grill has a large following. Fans from across the globe post to their Facebook page asking when a Heart Attack Grill will open in their country.

And what about that other addictive vice, alcohol? In the 90's, one of hottest vodka brands was "Black Death". Here is a bottle of Black Death in its promotional packaging; as you can see, the distillers have all the chutzpah of the Heart Attack Grill. Eventually, this product was forced off the market, but not by low sales. The regulators at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms were horrified by the product, and were even more horrified when the product was a hit. Unlike in the U.K., U.S. regulators never allowed the sale of "Black Death" vodka in its special dark glass, skull-shaped bottle.

In the popular arts, death sells everything from Heavy Metal rock, horror films, and even a cartoon series. So why are so many people attracted to embodiments of our greatest fear? Human behavior is rather complex, but there may be some simple explanations for death chic. Because death is so scary, facing death is a way of coming across as being totally bad-ass. Also, some of our current public heath campaigns have become so shrill that they come across as nagging. To many people, the campaign against obesity has definitely crossed into nagging territory, hence the popularity of the Heart Attack Cafe. It is a way of raising a pudgy middle finger to all the health experts who pester us about what we should eat.

So how do we avoid giving cigarettes an aura of death chic? First of all, don't use king size warning labels. The 50% size labels are the visual equivalent of shouting, and experience on internet forums indicates that shouting is frequently less effective than understatement. And forget the melodramatic "this product will kill you and every one you love for seven generations" messages. The warnings that are more likely to scare off potential smokers would basically say that buying this product makes you a real schmuck. Here are my recommended warnings:

Bought some cigarettes? Good luck finding a place where you can smoke them.
Warning: This product will force you to periodically leave your friends to smoke alone in the rain.
Warning: If you use this product, every cent you spent on cologne and teeth whiteners will be wasted.
Warning: If you buy this, you'll be paying way too much tax.
Warning: Being seen with this product will get you labeled as a creepy loser.

And finally, if we could get away with it, the most effective warning label of all would be:

Warning: The surgeon general has determined that smoking dramatically decreases your chances of getting laid.

After all, any Madison Avenue executive will tell you that sex sells, even more than death.

The Defeat of Anti-Tea Party Paranoia

2011-01-28T08:19:00.000-08:00

"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me"
- Psalms 23:4

"I'm not afraid (I'm not afraid) to take a stand (to take a stand)
Everybody (everybody) come take my hand (come take my hand)"
- "Not Afraid" by Eminem.

In reaction to a major man-made tragedy, a frightened public will frequently lash out at some group associated with the perpetrator, victimizing many innocent citizens in the process. When an anarchist assassinated president McKinley, there was a mass arrest of anarchists, including those who rejected violence in any form. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, we had a similar round-up of Japanese Americans. McCarthyism is another example: anger over Soviet infiltration of the State Department led to a backlash over anyone connected with the Communists, even if that connection was tangential or decades old. One decade ago, American Muslims suffered from the rage over the 9/11 attacks.

As tragic as the shooting Rep. Gabriel Gifford shooting was, we should be grateful that there was not a major retaliation against some group loosely associated with suspect Jared Loughner. Certainly there was an attempt to tar the Tea Party movement with this crime, but fortunately that effort failed.

The effort started with Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik's assessment that Loughner was motivated by the Tea Party and talk radio. This assessment came out before he had any time to investigate, and this lack of investigation showed. Jared Loughner has a significant web footprint, and a quick web search would have shown that Loughner was no Tea Partier. For example, on his YouTube account, he lists the Communist Manifesto as one of his favorite books. In one of his videos, he gleefully shows an American flag burning. Does this sound like the work of a Glenn Beck fan?

The worst example anti-Tea Party paranoia I've seen is a Palm Beach post article by Jose Lambiet where he seriously argues against praising the neurosurgeon who saved Rep. Gifford's life in the hours after her shooting. Why doesn't this doctor deserve our praise? Because, says Lambiet, his parents donated money to Tea Party candidates! This is absurd on multiple levels. First of all, he is holding the children responsible for the actions of their parents; one wonders if he would chastise JFK because his father was a bootlegger. But even if the good doctor had donated money to a Tea Party candidate, so what? The tea Party members running for office are obviously trying to change the system through non-violent means. They may well be wrong on many of their political views, but they are still within their rights to express those views.

Fortunately, quick action by some of our leaders nipped this anti-tea party parania in the bud. Credit for this should go first and foremost to President Barack Obama, who stated within days of the shooting that it would be unfair to blame the Tea Party for the actions of this madman. Rachel Maddow also spoke against using this incident to attack the Tea Party, in spite of her disagreements with them. Conservative activist Lee Doren praised Rachel Maddow for her stance on this matter.

What makes Obama and Maddow's comments so helpful is that both were known for their opposition to the Tea Party, so the public knew that these calls for restraint are based on principle. That may well have staved off a major round of anti-Tea Party paranoia.

I'm not sure if this had any effect on the debate, but you should check out long time progressive activist and frequent candidate Ralph Nader's comments on the Tea Party. Unlike most on the left, he is excited by the election of Tea Party members, because they will actually be allies of the progressives on some important issues. That's right, Lee Doren praised Rachel Maddow and Ralph Nader praised the Tea Party; we better check to see if Hell has any winter snow alerts.

Why the Fairness Doctrine is Unfair to the Left

2010-12-31T08:11:00.000-08:00

"Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it."
- Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, 04 March 1801

"So let's leave it alone, 'cause we can't see eye to eye.
There ain't no good guys, there ain't no bad guys.
There's only you and me and we just disagree."
- From "We Just Disagree" by Billy Dean

The absolute worst laws are passed as a quick response to a crisis. In a heightened sense of urgency, lawmakers are willing to pass some extreme, simplistic solution whose faults become apparent only after the crisis has passed. The 9/11 attacks gave us the PATRIOT act and the TSA, and our civil liberties have suffered ever since. In 2008, the housing bust was addressed with two complex, obscenely expensive and hastily composed programs, the stimulus package and TARP. These programs did not prevent a severe economic downturn, and will be paid for by generations born long after this crisis has passes.

Which brings us to the latest crisis: the tragic shooting in Tucson, Arizona of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and others. The instant analysis of the shooter's motivation was that it was a product of a harsh political environment. This has lead two Democratic representatives, Rep. Jim Clyburn (SC) and Rep. Bob Brady (PA), to propose reinstating the fairness doctrine. This FCC policy, first instated in 1949 and dropped in 1987, required broadcasters to present controversial issues of public importance in way that the FCC board finds to be honest and balanced. Supporters argue that a revived fairness doctrine would keep Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Bill O'Reilly off the air, resulting in a more civil political discourse.

Hopefully, cooler heads will prevail and the fairness doctrine will remain dead. The history of this doctrine indicates that it leads to ersatz censorship, and that it is especially unfair to the left. The problem with the fairness doctrine is that FCC officials of the current administration determines what is "honest and balanced" coverage, and inevitably their definition of balance reflects the administrations' point of view. The temptation to abuse this doctrine is hard to resist; Arthur Larson, a Democratic official from the JFK / LBJ years, admitted to using the doctrine to suppress right wing broadcasters. Larson regretted this censorious use of the FCC, especially after Richard Nixon used the fairness doctrine to suppress his critics. Shows such as "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" and the TV documentary "The Selling of the Pentagon" came under FCC scrutiny for their perceived left tilt. The liberal publications of that time (e.g. The Nation or Ramparts) decried the fairness doctrine on free speech grounds.

The democrats may control the FCC for now, but political fortunes can change on a dime. Remember back in 2004, when the Democratic party was given up for dead? In 2008, a mere 4 years later, political pundits declared that the Republicans would be a political minority for at least a generation. Then came the 2010 elections, and the tables turned once again. Who knows which side will control the FCC in 2013? Keep in mind that an FCC with the power to boot Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck and Bill O'Reilly off the air also has the power to silence Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, and Rachel Maddow.

The fairness doctrine unfairly favors the status quo over the agents of change. Liberal support for this doctrine is therefore self defeating. We should not use this crisis to weaken our first amendment protections.

Defending Keith Olbermann and Media Bias

2010-11-14T12:33:00.000-08:00

"He would certainly rebuke you if you secretly showed partiality!"
- Job 13:10

"Think of what you're saying.
You can get it wrong and still you think that it's all right.
Think of what I'm saying,
We can work it out and get it straight, or say good night."
- from "We Can Work It Out" by Lennon and McCartney

MSNBC commentator Keith Olbermann was recently given a two day suspension for donating money to three democratic congressional campaigns. His NBC contract stipulates that he would not engage in such partisan activities with notifying the president of NBC news, and obtaining this president's approval. NBC requires this of all of their news staff in order to maintain their "journalistic impartiality".

I may be the worst person in the world to defend Olbermann. I find that like all too many cable news hosts, Olbermann frequently goes on sophomoric and tiresome rants. His attacks on Scott Brown, Michelle Malkin, and Bill O'Reilly were so over-the-top that they generated sympathy for his targets.

So why shouldn't NBC take punitive measures against Olbermann for violating his contract? Basically, because this contract requirement of impartiality, even in his off-air activities, makes no sense in the current media world, for at least three reasons.

Olbermann does not does not host a show like the NBC nightly news where he is expected to be impartial. He hosts the video equivalent of a newspaper Op-Ed piece, where he is expected to give his opinion. How can he give his opinion and be impartial at the same time?
It is questionable whether journalistic impartiality is a realistic goal. A study published in the Journal of Political Economy finds a slant in many 'balanced' news reports, due to the nature of the news business.
When the national TV market was an oligopoly of three major networks, impartiality was a major concern. But with the explosion of news outlets on TV and the internet, we have a much better way to get both sides of a story. We can watch both a true liberal and a true conservative present their case. This is a vast improvement over having a single new anchor present his or her sincere point of view, and then for balance, present some alternative that he or she does not really believe in.

Keith Olbermann, Bill O'Reilly, Chris Matthews, and Glenn Beck may all say things that you disagree with. Certainly they have said things that I object to. But their contributions to the public dialog allows viewers to more clearly see issues from both sides of the left-right divide.

Speaking of the left-right divide, I heartily recommend the web site Blogging Heads TV. This site has videos of bloggers from differing sides debate each other over a web cam. You will be pleased to see how polite these bloggers are. They have mastered the art of disagreeing without being disagreeable. Another pleasant surprise is how often they come to agreement!

Before leaving, I should point out one point on which I emphatically agree with Keith Olbermann: his brave stance on Anwar al-Awlaki. And for those who would like to take a break from serious discussion, here is a lighter side of Olbermann.

Government Greed

2010-10-19T17:24:00.001-07:00

"Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions."
- Luke 12:15"

Money, so they say
Is the root of all evil today
But if you ask for a rise
It's no surprise
That they're giving none away"
- From "Money" by Roger Waters

In many an economic debate, you will find one participant who feels that all our troubles can be boiled down to one word: greed. You've heard this argument before: greed is what drives the profit motive, the basis of free market economies, and that this dependence on one of the seven deadly sins accounts for all our society's ills, including oil spills, stock market crashes, and lousy "Star Wars" sequels. If I had a dime for every time someone given this one word diagnosis, I'd be, well, a successful capitalist.

This one word critique of free market economics is quite emotionally satisfying, but it does not hold up to scrutiny for a number of reasons. The world economic environment is extremely complex, and one word diagnoses generally do not apply to systems more complicated than a food processor. The greed critique of the private sector also seems to make the assumption that, in the absence of profits, people behave in a less greedy fashion. But a number of recent news stories confirm that the public sector succumbs to greed at least as often as the private sector.

For example, many cities and towns use special cameras to ticket drivers who run red lights. These are there for our safety, or so we are told. But multiple studies have recently shown that red light cameras actually increases accidents. When drivers spot the cameras, they frequently slam on the brakes, and this causes more accidents than are prevented by the cameras. In fact, a Dutch city has discovered that they can decrease accidents by a re-design of their roads that does not use traffic lights at all. So how many cities have dropped the red light cameras in light of these studies? Whenever this question is posed to city officials, it is amazing how quickly the topic is changed from safety to how could we possibly replace the lost ticket revenue. So are these cameras used because of safety, or because of greed?

Consider the recent pay scandal in Bell, California, a small, lower middle working class suburb of Los Angeles. The median family income in Bell is only $30,504, but the city residents pay some of the highest property tax rates in the country. When city officials insisted that these taxes needed to be raised even further to keep the city solvent, investigative reporters looked from the L. A. Times looked into city finances. They found that Bell was dramatically overpaying its officials. The Bell police chief earned 33% more than the police chief of Los Angeles. The city manager's base salary was $800,000, almost twice as much as what we pay the president of the United States, and bonuses and other benefits raised his total compensation for last year to $1.5 million dollars. To the poor, over-taxed families of Bell, this looks like greed.

Another case to ponder: in 1992, Massachusetts passed a ballot initiative to increase tobacco taxes, and to use the additional revenue for tobacco prevention programs. Starting in 1993, the state had created an effective anti-smoking ad campaign. The most popular of these ads featured the saga of Pam Laffin, a young woman who was dying of emphysema. The ads traced her various diagnoses, her vain attempt to get a lung transplant, and finally her death that left her two young daughters without a mother. The ads had quite an impact: the number of smokers in the state dropped off faster than the national average. And yet, this successful ad campaign dropped less than a decade later.

Now why did the state drop a program that was actually helping smokers quit? Too expensive, of course. Forget the promise to voters that the tobacco tax money would go to tobacco prevention, the legislators decided that they had better uses for the money. Don't worry that the tobacco tax is highly regressive, for smokers are a politically unpopular group. When tobacco companies benefit from the unhealthful addiction of smokers, we call that greed. So when the state over-taxes these same smokers, why isn't that greed?

These and other examples of government avarice show that the public sector effort to eliminate greed is about as successful as the Puritan effort to eliminate lust. It's not clear if , greed is an integral part of human nature. It is not an issue of whether "Greed is good", the main point is that "Greed is". One virtue of free markets is that they harness greed to some positive ends. For all the moral posturing, It was greed that propelled the tremendous improvements in our PC's (Moore's Law), in our cars, and in our home entertainment (from LP's to CD's to MP3's, from VHS to DVD to Blue Ray).

So the next time you hear someone sanctimoniously boiling down a complex issue to one word ("Greed"), feel free to accuse him of one of the other deadly sins: sloth.

Homeopathy! Apply Directly to the Recession!

2010-09-10T05:35:00.000-07:00

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
- Albert Einstein

"[Groucho] My diagnosis never fails,
I know just what to do,
Whenever anybody ails,
I'm sympathetic too,
My heart within me melts...
[choir] His heart within him melts...
[Groucho] No matter what I treat 'em for,
they die from something else."
- From "Dr. Hackenbush", by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby.

A close examination of seeming unrelated topics often reveal some surprising connections. For example, the other night I was looking at youtube videos featuring James Randi, the famed magician and debunk-er of pseudoscience. One of Randi's more popular videos was his explanation of homeopathy, a form of medical quackery that produce the headache medicine Head-On, promoted by one of the most annoying TV commercials of all time. One of the basic principles of homeopathy is the law of similars, which holds that substances that cause healthy people to get symptoms can cure diseases that have these symptoms. For example, a homeopathic cure for a headache would be based on a substance that would induce the a headache in a well person. Who knows, maybe Head-On would work better if its ingredients included a portion of the Head-On ad.

Dr. Stephen Barrett, expert on medical quackery, dismisses the law of similars as a form of "sympathetic magic" without any scientific basis. In the interest of fairness, arguments for homeopathy can be found here.

Both James Randi and Dr. Barrett make a convincing case that the law of similars is rather silly. But the very night I saw the Randi video, I read this Bloomberg opinion piece on the Frank-Dodd housing reform bill. The author of this opinion piece, mortgage finance consultant Edward Pinto, criticizes the bill's list of criteria for prudent underwriting for not including a required minimum down payment nor a good credit history. It is easy to see the political motive for this bill; there is considerable pressure to increase home sales. But wasn't the current housing crisis caused by watered-down lending requirements that caused homeowners to take on excessive risk? The Frank-Dodd bill is basically applying the law of similars applied to the housing market: the policies that produced a downturn in a healthy economy will reverse the downturn in a recession. This is economic homeopathy, and hence economic quackery.

Why do people fall for medical quackery? All too often, the victims of medical frauds suffer from ailments for which there is no remedy. That is a hard prognosis to accept, and hence patients will accept any other alternative, no matter how shaky its scientific foundation.

The same can be said about why voters fall for economic quackery. Many home owners desperately want housing prices to return to the level they were at the height of the bubble. But it is unrealistic to expect housing prices to go that high again, since they far exceeded the value of the house. The cold, hard truth is that there is little that can be done to avoid the economic pain caused by our past mistakes. And no, the pain will not be lessened by an application of Head-On.

For more on the causes of the recession, I strongly recommend the documentary "Overdose: The Next Financial Crisis". In order to understand how the current financial crisis came about, the film makers talked to those few economists who foresaw the housing bust. These same economists warn that our current financial remedies will lead to another, even worse crisis.

The Dismal Science, Gangsta Rap Version

2010-08-29T16:28:00.000-07:00

"We are all Keynesians now."
- President Richard M. Nixon

"We’ve been going back and forth for a century
[Keynes] I want to steer markets,
[Hayek] I want them set free
There’s a boom and bust cycle and good reason to fear it
[Hayek] Blame low interest rates.
[Keynes] No… it’s the animal spirits"
- From "Fear the Boom and Bust" by John Papola & Russ Roberts

Our anemic economy has dominated the news of late, and will almost certainly be the central issue in the November elections. In spite of record stimulus spending, we still have nearly 10% unemployment and sagging housing sales. The debate over this crisis centers around two economists of the previous century, John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) and Frederic A. Hayek (1899-1992).

In the book "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money", Keynes argues that in times of economic downturns, government spending must increase in order to boost aggregate demand.
Hayek, Nobel prize winner and author of the 1944 best seller "The Road to Serfdom", argued that excessive government spending could make things even worse by creating perverse incentives and blunting price signals.

Voters would greatly benefit from an understanding of these two great economists. Elites often lament that far too few voters have an appetite for scholarly treatises on topics such as economics, preferring instead to indulge in pop culture. How could Hayek and Keynes possibly compete with "Dancing with the Stars"?

What about combining economics with pop culture? This unlikely idea occurred to fledgling television producer / directors John Papola and Russ Roberts. Concerned about the current downturn, Papola felt that it was important to get these ideas to a wider audience. Papola and Roberts considered several popular culture renditions of the ideas of Keynes and Hayek, finally settling on a rap video. The resulting video, "Fear the Boom and Bust", has been views 1.3 million times on YouTube. It has been translated into Spanish, French, Japanese and Chinese. Economics professors across the globe have shown this video to their classes. The producers have received kudos from both noted Keynes biographer Robert Skidelsky and rapper Kei$ha.

See http://www.econstories.tv for more about this remarkable video that demonstrates that popular culture can actually promote learning.

Taking The Pledge

2010-07-03T09:45:00.000-07:00

FREE counter and Web statistics from sitetracker.com

"I pledge allegiance to my flag and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
- Francis Bellamy, "Pledge of Allegiance" (original version)

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republicans for Richard Stands, one nation invisible, with liberty and just us for all."
- The "Pledge of Allegiance" as many school children remember it

Massachusetts state law requires that teachers lead their class in the "Pledge of Allegiance" every day. The courts have ruled that a teacher or a student's right to choose not to recite the pledge is protected by the first amendment of the constitution, so the law has fallen into disuse. Every few years, some sort of drive pops up to bring back the recitation of the pledge in schools.
Now an Arlington teenager is spearheading such a drive.

Most of the challenges to the pledge have been on religious grounds. The words "under God" were added to the pledge in the 1950's, raising establishment clause issues. In courts, defenders of the pledge have argued that these words do not favor any particular religion, since followers of any faith can interpret the phrase "under God" to be the god of their faith. This argument ignores the rights of atheists and agnostics, as well as those religions that are not centered around the worship of one deity. What would the phrase "under God" mean to a Buddhist, a Confucian, or a Taoist? And for a Hindi, which god does the pledge refer to?

Advocates of reviving the school-led pledge assure us that no student or teacher will be forced to take the pledge. But the history of the commonwealth of Massachusetts suggests otherwise. In 1984, Randolf high school senior Susan Shapiro, an orthodox Jew, objected to the pledge. She believed that pledging to an inanimate object (the flag) would be a form of idolatry. Her home room teacher berated Susan for her beliefs in front of the class. Later she found herself bullied by her fellow students, and her family started receiving anonymous threatening, and often anti-Semitic, phone calls. Eventually Susan received police protection. These were the consequences of a student declining to take a pledge that was promoted as "voluntary".

Although most critiques of school-led pledging center around religion, the strongest critique of this proposal, ironically, comes from the pledge of allegiance itself. The pledge concisely but eloquently expresses why our country deserves our allegiance in its final six words: "with liberty and justice for all". Our children should learn how valuable liberty is, how rare the freedoms we enjoy today are in human history, and why this nation's founders fought so hard for it. But what would witnessing fellow students being pressured to recite a pledge against their will teach a child about liberty?

All too often, these mass rote recitations of the pledge result in children mouthing the words without really understanding them - witness the generations of kids who thought the pledge had something to do with "Richard Stands". At its worst, this ritual can deprive a student of his or her freedom, ironically in the name of a pledge about liberty. Let me suggest an alternative: why don't we have our grade school and high school curriculum include one week where the students learn about liberty? Our schools should have an annual "Freedom Week" where the students will be taught how liberty played a vital role in virtual every subject they are studying, including history, science, music and literature. There are dissidents who have come to this country to escape repression who would make excellent "Freedom Week" lecturers. If we could really impress our children with the importance of freedom, they would gladly and voluntarily pledge to this country.

Black Gold And Red Tape

2010-07-02T15:04:00.000-07:00

"A bureaucracy always tends to become a pedantocracy."
- John Stuart Mill, "On Representative Government"

"Bureaucracy is the epoxy that greases the wheels of progress."
- James H. Boren, "When in Doubt, Mumble: a Bureaucrat’s Handbook"

The BP gulf region oil spill has released a sticky substance has rendered pelicans, crabs and sea turtle immobile. There is also something sticky that has immobilized those who should be responding to this crisis: Washington bureaucracy. Efforts to minimize the damage have been thwarted by existing regulations, mindlessly applied to a situation where they are clearly inappropriate:

French oil skimmers offered to help with the clean-up, but were turned away because of the Jones act, a maritime protectionist measure that requires such work to be done by American labor;
The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 prevents U.S. oil skimmers from other parts of the country from being dispatched to the gulf; and
In an attempt to prevent the oil from reaching the shores, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal wanted to build sand berms, but that solution was delayed by the Interior Department over concerns whether the sand berms would comply with environmental regulations.

What is particularly frustrating about their application of these regulations to the golf oil spill actually undermine the original purpose of these regulations. The Jones act was intended to preserve American jobs, and yet its application to the BP spill endangers large numbers of American jobs. And sand berms, a low tech barrier made of sand and hay, may have some negative ecological impacts, but can anyone seriously argue that the berms would do more environmental damage than a coat of oil on the Louisiana shores?

In an interview with "Today" show host Matt Lauer, President Barack Obama said, in defense of the federal response to this crisis

"I don't sit around talking to experts because this is a college seminar. We talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick."

The president caught some flack for the crudeness of his "ass to kick" remark. But there is a far more serious problem with this remark. Finding someone's ass to kick may be emotionally satisfying, but it does nothing to clean up the mess. To get this job done, the president should issue waivers to some of these regulations that are hampering the needed rapid response to this spill. Instead of asking whose ass to kick, the president should have asked "whose hands should we untie?"

2010: The Year of Voters Behaving Badly

2010-06-18T10:03:00.001-07:00

"If the ruler is upright, the people will do things without being ordered; if the ruler is not upright, even though he orders people to do something they will not comply."
- Analects of Confucius

"There's something wild about you child
That's so contagious
Let's be outrageous
--let's misbehave!!!"
- "Let's Misbehave" by Cole Porter.

The June 8th South Carolina Democratic senatorial primary is an important harbinger of the fall elections. Vic Rawl, the candidate supported by most of the Democratic party leaders, was expected to handily win the nomination. In a stunning upset, Rawl lost in a landslide to Alvin Greene, an unemployed veteran who did no fund raising, virtually no conventional campaigning, and whose campaign had neither a twitter account nor even a website. How could this happen?

Greene insists that he won with old fashioned stumping, driving across the state and meeting with the voters. As appealing as this explanation is, Greene does not appear to have the charisma to pull this off in his post-primary interviews. Some S.C. Democrats speculate that Greene is a Republican plant. This seems unlikely for a number of reasons. Pollsters agree that Senator Jim DeMint will almost certainly win re-election. Why would the S.C. Republicans take the risk of cheating when they can win honestly? Also, the only outside support that Greene allegedly received was the payment of his filing fee. If some conspirators came up with that fee, why didn't they back up their investment with some campaign funds? But more importantly, even if Alvin Greene were a plant, why did nearly 60% of S.C. Democratic voters pull the lever for him?

The answer is as simple as it is troubling for the major political parties. South Carolina voters resented the idea of anointing the Democratic leadership pick of Vic Rawl, and they resented it so much that they were willing to pick any other name on the ballot, even if it was someone they never heard of. This is part of a trend this year: voters in this year's primaries and special elections are refusing to follow the unwritten rules of behavior.

The special election to fill late Senator Ted Kennedy's seat was widely expected to be over with the Democratic party primary. Conventional wisdom said that solidly Democratic Massachusetts would never replace the late senator with a Republican. Conventional wisdom was wrong; Republican Scott Brown won that race.
In the Utah Republican senate primary, the party leaders lined up behind the incumbent Senator Bob Bennett. The Republican voters of Utah disagreed, deciding that they preferred a newcomer over their sitting senator.
Much of the Democratic establishment, including the President, welcomed Senator Arlen Spector into their ranks and endorsed his bid to be the Pennsylvania Democratic nominee. A group of liberal Democrats disagreed, and successfully defeated Spector's nomination.
In Arkansas, local labor groups ignored pleas from the national party and President Obama and campaigned against the re-nomination of Rep. Blanche Lincoln. Lincoln just barely won the nomination, but the aggressive primary fight has made her defeat in the general election an almost certainty.

This trend cuts across both party and ideological lines. Voters of all stripes are refusing to obey the unwritten rules. What has made this year's voters so ornery?

Maybe the problem could be traced to our leaders. After all, they also have unwritten rules. How good have they been at following them? Let's take a look at the Republicans. The rules say that the Republicans will avoid foreign entanglements, support free markets, cut excessive regulation and reduce deficits. For six years under the previous administration, Republicans held the presidency and a majority in both houses, and in those years:

We entered two wars that have no clear end date;
Congress enacted the most strongly protectionist policies since the Hoover administration, including high steel tariffs and farm subsidies;
From 2001 to 2007, our supposed de-regulators actually added another 13,652 pages of regulations to the Federal registry; and
By any measure, the federal deficit rose to a historic high.

It is interesting to note that on several of these issues (free trade, deregulation, balancing the budget), the Clinton administration had a better record of following the Republican rules than the Republicans did!

Now let us take a look at the Democrats. The rules say that Democrats will bring the troops home, counter corporate influence over our government, reign in executive power, and protect our civil liberties. Well, let's look at the record:

In Obama's first year, he increased Afghanistan troop levels substantially;
More than 40 former lobbyists hold senior positions in the current administration;
Despite candidate Obama's criticism of G.W. Bush's use of the constitutionally dubious practice of evading executive limits through "signing statements", president Obama is now embracing the practice; and
the Democrats actually worsened the already abysmal civil liberties record of the Bush administration by extending the use of warrantless wiretaps, opposed informing suspected terrorists of their Miranda rights, and even authorizing the execution of an American citizen!

Given the Obama record, it is no surprise that Daniel Ellsberg, the man behind the Pentagon Papers, said in a recent Der Spiegel interview

"I think Obama is continuing the worst of the Bush administration in terms of civil liberties, violations of the constitution and the wars in the Middle East."

The question is not why voters are so contrarian this year. The real mystery is why voters have been so obedient for so long. As Confucius taught us more than two thousand years ago, politicians will see better behavior only after they model better behavior themselves. In the mean time, voters will continue to reason that "If our leader won't follow the rules, why should we?"

The Nomi Song Will Set You Free

2010-06-05T14:54:00.000-07:00

"I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you."
- "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman

"I'm young and I love to be young
I'm free and I love to be free
To live my life the way I want
To say and do whatever I please"
- "You Don't Own Me" by Leslie Gore

Klaus Nomi was one of the most talented Rock vocalists of all time, and certainly the one of most eccentric. His career was remarkably brief: he died on August 6, 1983, only two years after the release of his debut album. But the impact of his short tenure on the world stage nearly 27 years ago can still be seen in current culture and society.

Klaus was a leading light of the new wave movement in the late 1970's / early 1980's. This was an era when rock music was big business, and recorded music was the most profitable sector of the entertainment industry. But many artists felt that the obvious commercial success of the music industry was masking a serious problem: rock music was becoming standardized, dull, and formulaic. The rock genre needed new, fresh ideas in order to survive. In 1978, some young artists in New York devised a way to develop these new ideas by reviving an old idea: vaudeville. They staged a review called "New Wave Vaudeville" where performing artists of all stripes could try out their innovations before a live audience.

Enter Klaus Sperber, a West German counter tenor who had done some performing in Avant Garde theater. For the New Wave Vaudeville, he put together a rock act under the name Klaus Nomi. The act portrayed him as an visitor from another planet. He appeared on stage with a costume and make-up inspired by 1920's Dadaist theater, and with a hairstyle that actually emphasized that he was going bald. His set consisted of New Wave songs, classic rock songs, old standards like "Falling in Love Again", and his first love, opera. His stage persona was openly gay at a time when that was still controversial. Well, they said they were looking for something different, and Klaus Nomi definitely delivered. Nobody could mistake him for Eddie Money. As a vaudeville insider put it, "He was the wrong man, doing the wrong thing, at the wrong time". So naturally, he was the hit of the show.

His unusual background actually served him well in his role of rock singer. His opera training gave his voice phenomenal range and control. He also imparted a certain emotional intensity to every song he did, and his unique approach to his music provided us with a fresh look to even the most familiar of songs.

For example, Nomi did a cover of Leslie Gore's 1964 hit, "You Don't Own Me". Hailed as a feminist anthem, this song's lyrics are a girl's declaration of independence from a domineering boyfriend. Typically, when a man sings a song written for a woman, the gender references are swapped. Klaus sang the original lyrics, including the lyric "Don't say I can't go with other boys". In fact, when he gets to that line, he defiantly emphasized the word "boys". In short, he turned this feminist anthem into a gay pride anthem.

This song was seen as quite liberating by straight audiences as well as gay. This is in part because all of us, at some time or another, are burdened by social pressure. Nobody is a perfect match for societal norms, and hence everybody can sympathize with a square peg being hammered into a round hole. And that is what makes Nomi's cover of "You Don't Own Me" so joyous: in a world where this ultimate non-conformist can proclaim his freedom is a world where we can all be free.

After the New Wave Vaudeville, Klaus developed a devoted following in New York, and was very well received in Europe. He signed a contract with RCA. His debut album may be the only record that has both a song written by Chubby Checker and an aria written by Camille Saint-Saëns. He seemed well on his way to making it big when he contracted AIDS. He became one of the first celebrities to die of the disease, passing away years before either Liberace or Rock Hudson.

In spite of his tragically early demise, Nomi continues to attract new generations of fans through some appropriately unconventional channels. The hipsters who produce the Adult Swim show "The Venture Brothers" included Klaus as a supporting character. More surprisingly, Nomi got a boost from conservative icon Rush Limbaugh. Rush uses Nomi's "You Don't Own Me" as one of his update themes, and this has spiked interest (and sales) among conservative republicans.

It may seem strange the same political movement that gave us the infamously anti-gay 1992 Family Values convention is now listening to the music of Klaus Nomi. I would argue that Klaus Nomi actually represents what the Republican party is supposed to be about far better than the 1992 convention did. After all, if the Republicans are serious about the principles of promoting limited government and individual liberty, what better spokesman could they have than Nomi?

The 2004 documentary of Klaus Nomi's life and career, "The Nomi Song" is now available online, and I heartily recommend it. If nothing else, catch the end of the film. The film makers have a very clever, almost magical and surprisingly upbeat way to wrap up his life story.

The Saint Valentine's Day Massacre Out West

2010-05-23T17:18:00.000-07:00

"If you have a lot of what people want and can't get, then you can supply the demand and shovel in the dough."
- Lucky Luciano

"Tell me why are we, so blind to see
That the ones we hurt, are you and me?"
- From "Gangsta's Paradise" by Coolio

Arizona Senate Bill 1070, the country's strictest anti-illegal immigration legislation, has generated a lot of discussion from both sides of the political spectrum. But somehow, nearly everyone avoids talking about the root causes of the crisis that spawned SB 1070.

Arizona is suffering from a meteoric rise in violent crime, including murders, assaults and human trafficking. Most of this crime is caused by Mexican organized crime groups. In just a few short years, Phoenix has become the kidnapping capital of the western hemisphere. It is totally understandable that many Arizonians would want to take action. The public outcry over the brutal slaying of 58 year old rancher Robert Krentz and his dog made some sort of action inevitable.

SB 1070 , like most legislation produced from a panic, unfortunately has some serious flaws. The bill aims to cut down on illegal immigration. The premise is that without illegal immigrants from Mexico, we would have no Mexican crime cartels. This simplistic approach to the crime would negatively affect law-abiding immigrants without really addressing the real cause of the crime wave.

Why did the Mexican cartels invade Arizona in recent years? After all, the flood of Mexican immigrants has been going on for decades now. This question could be answered by looking south of the border. The cartels have been active in Mexico and South America for decades, demonstrating all the brutality that Arizona is now experiencing. Mexico has fought back by liberalizing its drug policy, eliminating much of the profit of the cartel's activities. The cartels have therefore moved to greener pastures up North, where our continuing war on drugs guarantees them artificially high profits.

But couldn't SB 1070 keep the cartels out of the US? Frankly, I doubt it, but let us assume that Sb 1070 was 100% effective at keeping out the Mexican cartels. Does anyone really believe that some other organized crime group would not pick up the slack? A quick check of INTERPOL will show that the Albanian Rudaj Organization, the Russian Bratva, the Chinese Triads, and even the Japanese Yakuza are active in the U.S. Any one of these groups would love to take over the drug trade. SB 1070, even if it accomplished all of its goals, would do little more than change the identity of the gangs performing the kidnappings and murders.

The cause of the problem is really the war on drugs, and hence the solution is to bring this ill fated war to an end. Consider the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre of February 14, 1929. The public outcry over this brutal mob hit brought Prohibition into question. It soon became clear that the crime and corruption caused by prohibition far outweighed its benefits. So let us view the Robert Krentz execution as the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre of our time: a horrific crime that reveals that the war on drugs extracts a price on us all that is too high to pay.

Elena Kagan, George McGovern, and Experience

2010-05-12T15:54:00.000-07:00

"Experience. The wisdom that enables us to recognize in an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced. "
- From "The Devil's Dictionary" by Ambrose Bierce.

Most of the discussion about supreme court nominee Elena Kagen has centered around her experience. Critics have noted that for all her accomplishments, Kagen has not spent much time in the courtroom. In a column published this morning, Boston Herald columnist Margery Eagan had a different take on the experience issue: the problem with Kagen is not her lack of time in court, it is her lack of time spent outside of the company of elites and positions of privilege. As Eagen points out, the current court, even with Kagen, shows diversity in the areas of race and gender, but virtually no diversity of background. All of these justices come from Ivy League schools. Only Thomas and Sotomayor have worked in state or local courts. With Justice Stevens departure, the court will have no veterans.

The problem is not just with the supreme court; the executive branch also lacks background diversity. Less that 10% of the Obama cabinet have work experience in the private sector. President Obama has never had to make payroll. Some of his statement reflect a lack of understanding of how businesses work, such as when he refers to profits as overhead, or proclaiming at a February press conference that "If [small businesses] can get the bank loans to boost their payroll ...".

Why is this lack of experience with life outside of the elites important? Consider former senator and presidential candidate George McGovern. After leaving the Senate, George bought an inn in Connecticut. Four years later, the inn went bankrupt. In his frank assessment of his inn's failure, George McGovern places the blame on policies he enacted as a Senator! Among the inn's woes were excessive regulations that place an especially heavy burden on small businesses. Lawsuit abuse was also an issue: he was forced into expensive litigation over people who fell in - or near - his establishment. Moreover, he noted that medical lawsuit abuse was driving up his medical insurance costs. As a senator, he had heard these concerns from businessmen, but dismissed them as overblown. McGovern admits that this business venture has taught him how wrong he was to dismiss these concerns, and that if he had tried his hand at a business earlier in life, he would have been a better senator and presidential candidate.

So the next time a nominee comes up for confirmation, please urge our senators to avoid unimportant issues such a ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation, and ask the really important questions:

Have you ever run a cafe, a dry cleaner, or other such small business?
If not, what qualifies you to judge the people who do?

Cartoon Robot Reveals The Meaning Of Life

2010-02-12T17:16:00.000-08:00

"The wicked person flees when there is no one pursuing, but the righteous person is as confident as a lion."
- Proverbs 28:1

"Astro Boy there you go
Will you fight friend or foe?
Cosmic ranger, life of danger,
Everything is GO Astro Boy."
- From the Astro Boy Theme by Tatsuo Takai

One of the most influential forms of popular culture is the Japanese style of animation commonly known as anime. Anime can be seen

on the various network Saturday morning cartoon blocks;
as part of adult animation networks such as Adult Swim;
and in the movie theaters, e.g. the Miyazaki features "Ponyo" and "Howl's Moving Castle".

Along with my fellow baby boomers, I witnessed the beginning of Anime in America, in the humble form of the black and white television cartoon series "Astro Boy" (1963-1966). Created by anime / manga pioneer Osamu Tezuka, "Astro Boy" is a science fiction story that takes place in a future society where robots are commonplace. A leading scientist, distraught with the death of his own son, creates an advanced robot in the likeness of his boy. The robot, named Astro Boy, has human-like emotions as well as incredible strength and the ability to fly. Astro uses his special robot abilities to serve as a superhero, fighting crime and injustice.

The series is an appealing combination of adventure and humor, but the appeal of the show went beyond these elements. The show actually dealt with some serious issues in way that the kids in my neighborhood really respected. For example, Astro Boy frequently had to deal with his society's antiquated attitude towards robots: even though many robots in Astro's world had feelings and intelligence, they were often treated as mere objects by the humans. Growing up in 1960's Detroit, I assumed that this unfair treatment of robots was a parable about racism. Later, I learned that Tezuka's WWII experiences galvanized his disdain of racism, and that his works often include anti-racist themes. Reading Tezuka's anti-Nazi manga "Adolf", I could not help but think of Astro Boy.

The episode that had the greatest impact on us was the final episode of the 1960's, "The Greatest Adventure on Earth" (1966). Towards the end of the show , Astro discovers that a planet-destroying missile is heading towards the Earth. Astro barely has enough time to redirect the missile into the sun, but he cannot do so without being pulled into the sun himself. Our hero saves the Earth and sacrifices himself in the process. I was shocked when I saw our cartoon hero die, but only for a second, for it occurred to me that there was something wonderful about this episode. "Astro Boy" was the only show of that era that trusted the kids of our age to be able to handle the important topic of death. They didn't side step it, they didn't sugar coat it, and they didn't talk down to us. They made it clear that Astro Boy was not coming back from his final mission. I really appreciated the trust and respect that the show's creators had in us kids.

In the 1983 "Sesame Street" episode "Farewell, Mr. Hooper", Big Bird learns that storekeeper and friend Mr. Hooper had died. This episode won accolades for its honest depiction of death in terms that child viewers could understand. Granted, "Farewell, Mr. Hooper" episode handled the topic of death exceptionally well, but it should not be forgotten that "Astro Boy" taught children about mortality over a decade before "Sesame Street" did. Moreover, "Astro Boy" dealt with the even more sensitive topic of the death of a child.

There is something uplifting about the final "Astro Boy" episode: he died to uphold the same principles he held throughout his brief existence. Astro's death was a good death in a way, in that it was the finish to a good and honorable life.

The Rise of the Non-Religious Right

2010-01-28T14:09:00.001-08:00

"And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in shewing that religion & Govt will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together."
- James Madison, in a letter to Edward Livingston

"That's me in the corner
That's me in the spotlight, I'm
Losing my religion
Trying to keep up with you
And I don't know if I can do it
Oh no, I've said too much
I haven't said enough"
- From "Losing My Religion" by R.E.M.

One advantage of being a libertarian is that it allows one to view the more dominant political movements (i.e. liberalism and conservatism) without bias, and hence detect trends that mainstream analysts often miss. One such trend is the right's recent acceptance of the non-believers in their ranks. Just a few years ago, the religious right had a dominant role in the conservative movement. They were George W. Bush favorite constituency. It is significant that this president that was (in)famous for his restrained use of the veto pen first used it on an issue pushed almost exclusively by the religious right. But the following events suggest how quickly things have changed in just a few years.

When Ayn Rand first gained prominence in the 1940's and 50's, the right widely criticized her for her militant atheism. But this year, the revival of interest in Rand's work has gotten quite favorable coverage from the right wing media. Her atheism is noted briefly in passing, if at all.
John Derbyshire, editor of the National Review Online, mentions in his new book "We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism" that, due to his doubts, he has not attended a church in years. The right wing web sites I've seen that have reviewed the book have not made a big fuss about Derbyshire's decision to leave his church; in fact, few sites even mention it.
A recent poll of young republicans show that the right's next generation has very little interest in the religious right's agenda. It appears that this might be the last generation where same-sex marriage will be a contentious issue.

The religious right has always been controversial, even in conservative circles. Remember Goldwater's famous quote, "Every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass"? One would expect the religious right to lose some clout in recent years, due to their connection to the pariah George W. Bush. But even so, a change this dramatic is worth noting.

Charles Darwin Meets Adam Smith

2010-01-24T14:11:00.000-08:00

"Orgel's Second Rule: Evolution is cleverer than you are."
- Francis Crick

"Now there's no more oak oppression,
For they passed a noble law,
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet, axe, and saw."
- From "Trees" by Neil Peart

Great ideas in one field of study are often variants of great ideas in another field. Consider the theory of evolution as developed Charles Darwin, the father of modern biology. According to the theory of evolution, each new generation of a species will include genetic variations. The vast majority of these variation will not help the organism to survive, and hence will quickly disappear. The rare variation that helps the organism survive, however, will be passed onto the next generation and will improve the species. The rich, vibrant ecological system we have today is the bi-product of the myriad of these variants that have occurred in Earth's history.

The process of evolution can seem wasteful and cruel: not only do most variants fail, but often once viable species become extinct due to competition from new species. But the destruction of less fit species is a vital part of the process, and the payoff of this process is huge.

The theory of Evolution has a striking resemblance to the free market concept as advocated by Adam Smith, the father of modern economics. In a free market economy, one is permitted to start a new business to provide a good or service. As with most biological variants, most new businesses fail. But the business that finds a better way to satisfy market needs will have a competitive advantage that will allow it to survive. As with evolution, a free market economy can seem cruel and wasteful, as many new businesses and even old established businesses go under. But this destruction is an essential part of the process of improving the economy. The fall of less fit companies is required to allow the next innovations to thrive.

The recently proposed "Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee" shows how poorly the work of Adam Smith (and evolution) is understood in Washington these days. The idea is being sold as a way for the taxpayers to get back the money they lent to the bankers for the recent bailout. The problem with this fee, however, is banks that have already repaid their loans with interest, and even banks that did not take any federal funds, will be required to pay this fee. In effect, the banks that managed the recent financial tsunami properly will be called on to cover the expenses caused by less well run banks. None of this "survival of the fittest" jazz here; D.C. has decided that all banks should be saved, whether they are fit or not.

To understand what is wrong with this proposal, consider what would have happened if the proponents of this proposal had been in charge of fixing the Earth's environmental crisis of 65 million B.C.E.

"Let me be clear: the major species of this planet, the Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops are too big to fail without causing the ecology to go into major collapse. There are those who say that we need to choose between saving these dinosaurs and allowing the new mammals to flourish. This is a false choice: the Earth can support both, as long as the new mammals follow sensible restrictions. I tell these new mammal species that there is a time for multiplication, but now is not that time. "

I'm glad this approach was not taken in the late Cretaceous period: the dinosaurs would still have gone extinct, and the world would now be poorer for this futile attempt to put off the inevitable. The proposed bank fee was a bad idea 65 million years ago, and it still is a bad idea today.

Learning From A Child Who Could Not Speak

2010-01-12T16:49:00.001-08:00

"I tell you the truth, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will never enter it."
- Mark 10:15

"Them that's got shall get
Them that's not shall lose
So the Bible said and it still is news
Mama may have, Papa may have
But God bless the child that's got his own
That's got his own"
- from "God Bless The Child" by Billie Holiday and Arthur Herzog Jr.

Back when I had started college, I worked as a bagger at a grocery store in the Detroit area. The store was near a housing project, and it provided a novel economic opportunity for some of the project residents. A handful of young boys from the project hung around the store in order to earn tips by helping customers load their groceries into their cars. This most micro of micro economies was fueled by pocket change, but that was enough to provide these boys with some treats.

One of these boys working for tips stood out for several reasons, most noticeably because this boy was unable to communicate by speech. I'm not sure why, but his attempts at speaking was unintelligible grunts that conveyed emotions, but nobody could make out the words. He used to communicate with his own set of hand gestures, sort of like a pidgin sign language, that the people who knew him quickly learned.

But what I found most remarkable was that he was by far the most cheerful person I have ever met. He was always very upbeat when working his ersatz job. He was always smiling, and he always greeted me (using his "hello" gesture) with a big grin. I found his positive attitude admirable, and as strange as it might sound, I sort of envied him. At college, I met people from good (sometimes privileged) backgrounds with lots of potential who were miserable. And yet this kid, raised in poverty and with a serious disability, was a constant ray of sunshine. What was the secret of his upbeat view of life?

The cynical explanation would be that his optimism is rooted in naivete; he simply does not understand how bad his situation is. But look at things from his point of view. He really enjoyed helping people, he took pride in doing what he loved, and on top of it, he earned spending money. He sees a lot of positives in his life that most of us would overlook.

In fact, a lot of humanity suffer from unwarranted pessimism. In Bryan Caplan's excellent book, "The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies", Professor Caplan notes that pessimism is one of the more common biases of voters. The public tends to overestimate the severity of contemporary problems, while idealizing conditions in the past and in other countries. Gilbert and Sullivan parodied this bias in "The Mikado", where Lord High Executioner Ko-Ko includes in his little list of potential victims

"The idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone,
All centuries but this, and every country but his own"

Let's face it, most people don't appreciate the positives in their lives until those positives become part of their past. But not this kid earning tips at the grocery store; he fully appreciated life as it was happening. He had a disability that prevented him from speaking, but lacked the common disability of pessimism. I feel like I learned something valuable from him, and he taught it to me without saying a word.

A Theological Objection to Creationism

2009-12-13T13:51:00.000-08:00

"And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day."
- Genesis 1-31

"They tell us that
We lost our tails
Evolving up
From little snails
I say it's all
Just wind in sails
Are we not men?"
- From "Jocko Homo", lyrics by Mark Mothersbaugh

Devotees of Charles Darwin have had a lot to celebrate this year. February 12th was the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth, and November 24 was the 150th anniversary of the publication of his seminal work, "On the Origin of Species".

Inevitably, the Darwin Day celebrations have led to yet another round of the old creation-evolution debate. Many of the world's leading scientists have weighed in on the side of evolution, pointing out the scientific flaws in creationism.

I would like to present a side of this debate that gets considerably less coverage: the theological case against creationism. In their attempt to force fit the parables of Genesis into a scientific theory, creationists undermine the book's true meaning.

Genesis actually has two separate creation stories. Chapter 1 and the first three verses of chapter 2 of Genesis present the "seven days" creation story, where God creates the world in six days, then rests on the seventh day. The "Adam and Eve" creation story is presented in the rest of chapter 2 and chapter 3.

In a mere 34 verses, the "seven days" creation story eloquently expresses a deep appreciation of the beauty of our universe. Almost like a musical refrain, this creation story has each day of creation ending with God observing His work and deeming it good. This heartfelt expression of the awe and wonder of nature resonates with many who reject a scientific interpretation of the story.

If you wish to view Genesis as science instead of parable, however, there is a serious problem with the "seven days" story: it contradicts the "Adam and Eve" story. In the "seven days" parable, humans are created on the six day, after all other creatures were created. In the "Adam and Eve" story, man is created before any other creature. This is not a problem if you view both stories as parable, but it clearly is a problem if you want to view these stories as history. Major creationists have a novel way to resolve this contradiction: they posit that God was displeased with his "seven days" creation, and so God destroyed it all and started again with Adam and Eve. In their view, I guess Genesis left out this epilogue to "seven days" story:

On the eight day, God saw His creation and said "Sheesh! What was I thinking last week?" He then buried His previous week's creation in a big hole, and hoped that no one would notice His blunder. He then started afresh to create the universe, hoping that this time, He would get it right.

In their attempt to attempt to defend the literal accuracy of Genesis, these creationists threw out one of it's major themes -- the very message that Genesis 1 is trying to impart to us! This does considerably more damage to Genesis that the position of many Catholics, mainstream protestants and religious liberals that Genesis should be viewed a parable.

In short, creationism is not just bad science. It is also terrible theology.

Dreams of My President

2009-12-01T18:56:00.001-08:00

"War is the Health of the State"
- Randolph Bourne

"Even big politicians don't know what to do
Gracie doesn't know either, but neither do you,
So vote for Gracie!"
- "Vote for Gracie" sung by Gracie Allen

Tonight our president gave his long awaited speech on the Afghan war. In the next six months, 30,000 additional American troops will be sent to Afghanistan. Peace activists such as Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, and Tom Hayden have expresses their deep disapproval of this Afghan surge. After all, they supported Obama to end the wars. Wasn't Obama elected on a peace platform?

Well, not quite. During the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama actually supported the Afghan war. He fervently opposed the war in Iraq, and he may well have won based on his opposition to that conflict. But one of the Barack's most frequent arguments against the Iraq war was that it was diverting our efforts from the conflict we should be concentrating on, the Afghan war. He made his feelings on this issue quite explicit: this point was brought up in his televised debates with both Hillary Clinton and John McCain.

So how could these peace activists not remember the positions president Obama took just last year? It might be that Obama's rise was so fast that he was elected before having much of a track record. In the absence of said record, he became a political Rorschach test: people saw in him what they wanted to see. The peace activists dreamed of a President that opposed both wars, and Obama's anti-Iraq war rhetoric convinced them that Obama was the candidate of their dreams.

My sympathy for these peace activists is rather limited. Obama stated his hawkish position on Afghanistan rather clearly, and everything he said tonight is consistent with his 2008 campaign stand. They ignored what Barack said at their own peril; it is time for these dreamers to wake up.

Backwards Compatibility: Back to the Future!

2009-11-30T18:15:00.001-08:00

“The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time”
- Friedrich Nietzsche

"Ch-ch-ch-changes
(turn and face the strain)
Ch-ch-changes
Just gonna have to be a different man
Time may change me
But I can't trace time"
- "Changes" by David Bowie

My apologies for the relatively few posts I did in November, but that was in part because of some PC problems. My old PC's motherboard was starting to behave funky, so I decided to get a new one, an HP Pavilion with a quad-core Intel processor and Windows 7 Home Premium edition. The new PC must have picked up the hardware curse from the old PC, for the new hard drive was defective and had to be replaced. Finally, I've got the new system up and running with all the documents from the old system.

So now I can do everything I used to do on the old system, right? Well, not quite. The operating system on the old PC was Windows XP Media Center edition. Windows XP was the last Microsoft operating system to support programs written for the previous MS operating systems, including DOS and 16-bit windows. My version Windows 7 does not support some of these older programs so for now I can no longer run some of my older games, screen savers and desktop themes.

I am not along in my interest in old software. You can find plenty of sites that offer abandonware, i.e. software considered so obsolete that the original creators have abandoned the copyright. But why would anyone still be interested in these offerings from ancient floppy disks? Some of these programs are collected for historical interest; for example this history of windows. The vast majority abandonware collectors, however, are interested in the old games. Just as many great films were created before innovations such as color, sound and CGI, many a great game was created in the DOS and early Windows days. The 16 bit pirate game series Tales of Monkey Island was popular enough to inspire a slew of YouTube videos and new game. And thanks to a new generation of retro PC games, there is now a new entry to the Sierra Gobliiins series.

I know several options for playing my old stuff. DOSBox is a freeware application that can run any DOS application I've seen. Some PC game collectors have even successfully installed Windows 3.11 under DOXBox. You can certainly install Windows 3.11 on a Virtual PC, i.e. an emulation of a complete classic PC system. Another solution I could use would be to upgrade the version of Windows 7, which has more old windows support. So undoubtedly there are ways to run my old games on the new system. We have the pleasant situation where we can enjoy the advantages of 64-bit processing without giving up the gems from the days when home PC's were new.

Are You or Have You Ever Been a Klingon?

2009-11-27T10:14:00.001-08:00

"Propaganda is not French, it is not civilized to want other people to believe what you believe because the essence of being civilized is to possess yourself as you are, and if you possess yourself as you are you of course cannot possess any one else, it is not your business."
- Gertrude Stein

"All for freedom and for pleasure
Nothing ever lasts forever
Everybody wants to rule the world"
- "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" lyrics by Tears for Fears

I found a hilarious animated short on cartoon historian Jerry Beck's excellent blog, Cartoon Brew. The short purports to be an intercepted TV broadcast from Qo'noS, the Klingon home planet. As every SF geek knows, the Klingons are the warrior race that served as recurring villains of the original Star Trek series. The short shows that the Qo'noS broadcast day starts with a Klingon Propaganda Film. To give it that extra air of authenticity the creators of this short did it in the Klingon language. What? You don't know how to speak Klingon? Sheesh, how do expect to get a good job in this economy without knowing Klingon? Oh, OK, here's the Klingon Propaganda Translated.

In my attempts to see issues from both sides, I've looked up propaganda films from places such as North Korea and Cuba. The film is a spot-on parody of the propaganda films I've seen. Like so many of these films, it starts with a cute girl singing. Then in keeping with the genre, it praises the local culture, and then lionizes the military's great victories. Replace the Klingons with Koreans, and this film would look like it came from Pyongyang.

Once you look past the message that these films are trying to foist upon you, propaganda films reveal some surprising details about the country that produced them. The agitprop from communist countries, for example, show how profoundly conservative Marxist societies often are. The North Korean propaganda I've seen is cornier than 90% of the films in the Prelinger Collection. Sure, the Marxist revolutions are celebrated in these films, but they also project a strong sense of conformity. Check out Killer Chic and Gorki Aguila to get an idea as to how opposed these societies are to change.

And for more Klingon silliness, see a Klingon Board Game, the Klingon homeless, and the essential Klingon PC accessory.

The Difference Between High Culture and Low Culture is Measured in Dexter's Laboratory

2009-11-27T05:42:00.000-08:00

"Classic: a book which people praise and don't read."
-Mark Twain

In a college course I took back in the 1970's, the professor asked the class "What is the difference between high culture and low culture?" After a long pause while the other students pondered this question, I broke the silence by saying "About 12 feet". That got a laugh, but hopefully it also made the point that this distinction between high culture, (i.e. the art worthy of serious academic study), and low culture (the popular trash that academics should scorn) is taken way too seriously. As is often pointed out, much of what we now consider "high culture" (the plays of Shakespeare, the Viennese operas) were the popular culture of their times. Many revered artists have worked in supposedly "low brow" arts. Lyonel Feininger, a leading figure in the modern art movement, once did a newspaper comic, The Kin-Der-Kids.

For that reason, I particularly enjoyed this YouTube video, Requiem for a Dexter. This video looks at Requiem for a Dream, a highly revered film that tells the story of four young people's experiences with illegal drugs. The point of this short is that many of the innovations of this independent feature film actually appeared two years earlier in a Dexter's Laboratory cartoon, "Topped Off", where Dexter and his sister Dee-Dee experiment with this mysterious substance that seems so important to their parents: coffee.

I doubt that the creators of "Requiem for a Dream", consciously stole anything from "Dexter's Laboratory". Most likely, Darren Aronofsky (the director of "Requiem for a Dream") and Genndy Tartakovsky (the creator of "Dexter's Laboratory" and director of "Topped Off") independently devised the same innovations for the stories they told. But why does Aronofsky earn so much more accolades than Tartakovsky for basically the same ideas, especially since Tartakovsky came up with these ideas first?

Dexter's Laboratory makes me think that my initial estimate of difference between high culture and low culture (12 feet) may be a bit on the high side.

Sympathy for the Devil, Part 2

2009-11-15T15:08:00.001-08:00

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it conscientiously."
- Blaise Pascal

"I used to be such a sweet, sweet thing
Till they got a hold of me"
- Alice Cooper, from "No More Mr. Nice Guy"

The topic of "Wicked" got me thinking about how often I have been pleasantly surprized by people who once seemed to have no redeeming qualities. For example, I have been revolted by almost everything I've read or seen about 1930's evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson. She preached a hard-line fundamentalist faith that held that every syllable of the Bible was true. Her revival meetings made frequent use of faith healing, a practice that degrades both medicine and religion. And shades of Jimmy Swaggart, she was involved in a sex scandal. I had totally written off McPherson when I looked up something on the anti-lynching movement, and discovered that for all her faults, she had one strong virtue: she was a fierce opponent of racism. Her revivals preached against racism and the Klan, and often did so in the heart of Klan country. She attacked lynching at a time when most other media outlets were reluctant to admit that the practice existed.

Back when the Patriot Act was first passed, I was disappointed with how many conservatives backed it. I knew that there would be at least one major conservative leader who would denounce this law as a violation of the conservative principle of limited government, but I was really surprised that the most prominent conservative leader to denounce the Patriot Act when it was first proposed was Phyllis Schlafly. As much as I've disagreed with her in the past, I've got to give her credit: she spoke up at a time when very few were brave enough to combat the mad rush to pass this monstrosity.

The left gets a lot of flak for the political correctness movement that has significantly stifled speech, especially on college campuses. But one should keep in mind that the leading organization for promoting free speech on campuses, F.I.R.E., was founded by a liberal: Harvey A. Silverglate.

I even have an example on the cultural front. For most of his career, Pat Boone has been singing bland Gospel music, mixed with his fundamentalist rantings. Nothing he did had any great appeal for me until 1997, when he showed a side of him I've never seen before: his sense of humor. Playing against his well-known squeaky-clean image, he announced that he had developed an interest in heavy metal music. He showed off his new musical interest with the release of the album "Pat Boone in a Metal Mood: No More Mr. Nice Guy", where he perform big band arrangements of the songs of Ozzy Osbourne, Alice Cooper and Metalica.

Needless to say, some of Boone's old fans were horrified. Apparently, they did not get the gag, and that is a shame. Boone was parodying both heavy metal and his own public image. And as musical parodies go, "No More Mr. Nice Guy" is brilliant. His big band arrangements skewer the often forced "Strum und Drang" of metal. I'm especially fond of his cover of Ozbourne's "Crazy Train", which almost morphs into the Chattanooga Cho-Cho.

Sympathy for the Devil, Part 1

2009-10-31T15:43:00.000-07:00

"We may not pay Satan reverence, for that would be indiscreet, but we can at least respect his talents."
- Mark Twain

"Devil or angel, I can't make up my mind
Which one you are I'd like to wake up and find"
- "Devil or Angel", words and music by Blanche Carter

A recent sermon given at the First Parish in Waltham was based on the novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire. This alternative narrative of the familiar Wizard of Oz storyline presents the story from the point of view of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West. In Maguire's retelling, Elphaba and her sister Nessarose really are not nearly as wicked as we were led to believe from the original story. Sure, the witches of the East and the West do have their moral lapses, but in this version of the story, so do the Wizard of Oz and Glinda. Moreover, as we learn more about Elphaba and Nessa, we find that even their worst behavior resulted from understandable motives. Elphaba had fought many injustices and suffered many heartaches before, in sheer desperation, she resorted to the wicked acts that she is now known primarily for.

"Wicked" is part of a growing genre: stories that center around a common popular culture villain, and present him or her in a more sympathetic light.

The musical "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog" deals with a super hero (Captain Hammer) battling an evil mad scientist (Dr. Horrible), but this time we see the battle through the mad scientist's eyes. We see Captain Hammer as a conceited jerk who motivation is not really justice; it is his insatiable need for fame and adulation. Dr. Horrible (he really is a doctor, he has a PhD in Horribleness) is much easier to empathize with.
In recent decades, fictional works depict vampires as more than just blood-crazed killers; they are shown to more complex and nuanced characters whose misdeeds are driven more by need than by malice. The sympathetic vampire first appeared in the 1960's day time drama "Dark Shadows", and continues to the day in the "Twilight" series of romantic novels and movies.
It seems that western bad men appear as heroes almost as frequently as they do a villains: Butch Cassidy, Jesse James, and Belle Starr have all gotten favorable treatments in books, movies, and TV series.

A lot of popular culture utilizes irredeemably evil villains. So why is there so much desire to see the more lovable side of characters originally created to be objects of our hate? In some cases, the "villain-as-hero" story variant is an elegant way of satirizing the original story. This form of role reversal also provides a novel twist to an otherwise familiar story. But most of all, I think these revisionist looks at our fictional antiheroes are motivated by a certain sense of realism: nobody is either purely evil or purely virtuous, hence any tale with such black and white characterizations is not telling you the whole story.

In fact, the need to look beyond black and white characterizations of people was actually the point of the sermon on "Wicked". All too often we base our moral decision making on a highly simplistic stereotypes. Conservative commentators often dismiss their opponents as "unpatriotic Birkenstock-wearing socialistic weasels". Some liberal media figures are no better, characterizing those who disagree with them as "puritanical gap-toothed cave-dwelling rednecks". Far too many religious leaders say that all non-believers are amoral. New atheist writers such as Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens have responded to this outrage with equally broad (and unfair) portraits of religious communities. Not even religious liberals are immune from this problem: how often do we fall back on a comforting but inaccurate vision of the fundamentalists?

Let us end the agony causes by an exaggerated perception of the evil of others. If we can get past clear cut heroes and villains in our fiction, why can't we do it in real life? Gregory Maguire provides us with a valuable lession: if you want to be good, you have to understand "Wicked".

25 Will Get You 35

2009-10-30T16:51:00.000-07:00

"Only one deception is possible in the infinite sense, self-deception."
- Søren Kierkegaard

"That ain't working, that's the way you do it
Money for nothing and your chicks for free"
- Mark Knopfler, from "Money for Nothing"

Way back in the 1970's, there was an odd coin operated device advertised in a mail order catalog (I think it was Spencer gifts). When you put a quarter into this device, it would return a quarter and a dime. How can 25 cents get you 35 cents? Simple, you have to load the machine with dimes ahead of time for this machine to work. The idea is to use the device to cheer yourself up: when you've had a bad day where nothing is going right, you can depend on your trusty coin machine to give back a little more than you put in.

When I first saw this device advertised, I could not understand how it could possibly work. Of course I understood how it could spit out a quarter and a previously loaded dime; what I didn't understanding is how it could cheer someone up. Is this device anything more than just a way to scam yourself? And given your active participation in setting this device up, isn't the scam a bit too transparent to be effective? I mean, can melancholy really be cured by playing Lou Costello to a sock puppet Bud Abbott?

Well, that was what I thought when I was a naive young lad. Since then I've seen this coin operated device work quite effectively in many different guises. Take, for example, the euphoria earlier this week over the latest Gross Domestic Product figures. The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the GDP grew 3.5% in the third quarter. Wall Street responded with a big jump in the Dow Jones Average. Isn't this proof that all that stimulus spending is finally having the desired effect of reviving the economy?

Not quite, and to understand why, you have to look at how the Bureau of Labor Statistics computes the GDP. The Bureau includes government spending in the GDP, and does so with the rather optimistic assumption that every dollar spent by the government creates one dollar of economic value. So if the government spends 1.5 billion dollars on a bridge to nowhere that will be used by virtually no one, the BLS would count the building of that bridge as adding 1.5 billion to the GDP. So a lot the 3.5% increase in GDP is simply the tremendous boom in government deficit spending, including those hideously expensive bailouts and stimulus programs. The GDP figures are the Spencer gift coin device all over again: we are cheered by seeing dimes mixed in with the quarters, temporarily forgetting that all those dimes came from us. Or I should say those dimes will come from us, since the stimulus program was financed by borrowing.

Check out this candid, illusion-busting analysis of the latest GDP figures by French economist Veronique de Rugy here.

Well, the euphoria over the GDP turned out to be short lived. The stock market gave up those impressive gains today. The reality of our current economic environment interfered with our dreams of spending ourselves rich. This crisis crisis will eventually pass, but not until we abandon the deceptions and work on creating real wealth.