Nataljia Radic is unbearably eloquent on the iniquity of Daniel Pearl's killers. Reading it, I heard echoes of the righteous thundering of the old Testament, and it put me in mind of that passage from Hosea: For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.
Will the Democratic Ex-Presidents Please Shut the *%@! up
First Jimmy Carter, the master of the "Give the bully your lunch money and he'll leave you alone" school of diplomacy, gives aid and comfort to our enemies in the European media by criticizing the Axis of Evil speech, saying ''I think it will take years before we can repair the damage done by that statement." Because, you know, as a new President with a crisis on your hands, the first thing you'd want to ask yourself is "What would Jimmy Carter do?"
Then Bill Clinton opens his big mouth in Australia, criticizing Bush's Taiwan policy, which to my, probably simplistic ears, is a welcome return to integrity. When a big country proclaims its right to rule a smaller country whose citizens object, Bush stands by the little guy. Clinton, on the other hand, goes to the Pacific Rim to express his support for China's right to "peaceful reunification", China's plans for which revolve around battleships and aircraft carriers. One wonders what Clinton would have had to say about the "joyful reunification" of the Sudetanland with Germany.
This is crap. I don't know whether Republican presidents were in the habit of criticizing the foreign policy of their successors, although I find it hard to imagine Reagan or even Nixon doing so; but if they did, they shouldn't have. The role of an ex-president is not to try to prove that they would have been better; it's to support the office that supported them. It's especially appalling because both Carter and Clinton were, in differing degrees, advocates of the policy of appeasement and "root cause" analysis that gave these lackwits the idea that they could execute American citizens with impugnity.
Via Dave Tepper: I just took a quiz to find my personal philosopher, and the surprising answer: Aquinas scores tops, followed by Aristotle & Mill. Apparently, I'm a rigid, dry rationalist. Probably why I drink so much.
Just came across the Official Web Site of the Citizen Corps, the new millenium's answer to the Civil Defense Corps. It doesn't seem like a bad idea, but I half-suspect that the people who volunteer will be exactly the sort of people you wouldn't want within 200 miles of you in the event of an actual emergency. Which implies, I suppose, that qualities citizens like those of the Blogosphere should think about joining up.
I . . . once regarded him as one of the better, if not best, international economic theorists in the world. Alas his sojourn into being an op/ed columnist has totally perverted him.
Jay Zilber has an extremely thorough expose of Michael Moore's self-serving revisionism on the 2000 election.
I've disliked Michael Moore ever since Roger & Me. For those who didn't see the movie, a good part of it is dedicated to Michael Moore trying to interview GM executives about the closing of their Flint plant, and being turned away repeatedly. This was portrayed in the movie as being because they were "afraid" to talk to him. I happened to run into the son of one of those GM executives at the height of the movie's campus popularity, who had a simpler explanation.
"They had never heard of this idiot," he said. "Do you have any idea how many yahoos want to walk in off the street and talk to GM executives? If they let them all in, GM would never make any cars." [Editor's Note: Is that supposed to be a bad thing?]
This strikes me as fairly emblematic of Michael Moore's career; he attributes the indifference of others to malign intent, rather than his own cosmic insignifigance, and sells the resulting product to others suffering from the same delusion.
I'm sorry -- I didn't post my site there or there, although I admit it's hilarious. I was wondering where all the extra traffic was coming from. . .
Anyway, sorry, but there's not much sex on this site. . . just good, clean, intellectual fun. I think this is more along the lines of what you're looking for.
. See, Kobe's from Philadelphia but they just don't like him. Why? I think it's because Kobe has a natural sophistication that, when combined with his life in Los Angeles and his childhood in Italy and his beautiful wife, causes Philly people to dismiss him as an elitist. Iverson presents himself as a ghetto kid, even though he's a multi-millionaire just like Kobe. But Iverson thinks a bunch of ugly tattoos and a posse of gansta hangers-on is keeping him real. Whatever, Allen.
Gangsta? I was watching him on Meet the Press last week, and he didn't look like a gangster -- he looked like an eleven-year old boy in the principle's office, slouched into his chair as far as he could go without falling off, making monosyllabic, sullen responses to the questions he was asked. When he did expound, it became clear that his view of the world was, to put it charitably, early adolescent.
On the other hand, that probably describes a lot of gangsters too.
Bloggers. . . raise your hand if you find yourself spending long minutes trying to fix the "broken" HTML tags you just inserted into your Word documents.
Reader Jim Bennett emails to say that Estonia has followed my advice to abolish the corporate income tax! You heard it here first! Live From the WTC was actually so on the ball that Estonia abolished the tax two years before I even recommended it!.
My traffic seems to have plateaued at a much higher level. I don't know where you're all coming from, but don't stop! Whatever it is I'm doing that you like, I'll do more of it.
For those with missives lost in my massive pile of emails, for those waiting to see the permalinks updated, for those hoping for a little reciprocity off their links. . . I'm getting to it. Really. Today's the crunch day for both article & business plan, and then I'll be able to do a little more. I plead for your patience and continued goodwill.
It doesn't sound like a toe-tapping evening, does it? Spare me your nose-thumbing brasses, your sassy meter-fracturing outbursts yearning to be free. What on earth is a "self-contained" chord?
Artists that create "challenging" art are often lauded as rebels or pioneers. But one wonders what authority they were rebelling against. Tommasini refers to Arnold Schoenberg, the father of 12-tone theory, as having "liberated dissonance". What I never understood was under what authority dissonance was imprisoned? Conventions aren't such straitjackets. Would it be brave of me to come out on stage and pass gas because convention says I should not? Would I be known as the artist who "liberated" his farts? People didn't like dissonance because they didn't think it sounded good., not because it was political dissent.
A neurologist friend tells me that there's considerable evidence that music is hardwired -- that we'll never be able to enjoy modern music the way we can enjoy Beethoven or Elvis because the chord structure used by almost all music is an integral part of the human brain.
Personally, I'm with the old pity and terror crowd. To me, unless it evokes emotion in the audience, it's not art, it's an intellectual excercise. I mean, it's very interesting that you can do these things with sounds, but it's also interesting that they guy who sweeps up the yard here can balance a banana on his nose. Done once, it's arresting. Done over and over again, it's a tired stunt.
The Laffer curve is based on a simple premise: if you chart tax revenue against the tax rate, obviously your revenue rises as your tax rate goes from 0% from 1%, rises again as the rate goes from 1% to 2%, and so on. However, it is equally obvious that at tax rates of 100% there will be no income collected, because no one will work if you take all their money. Therefore, there is some optimal tax rate between 0% and 100% where the government will maximize its revenue; after that point, the disincentives to work caused by the tax rate will outstrip the incentives provided by increasing disposable income, and the revenue will start to decline. Stupid jokes by journalists aside, this is not in dispute.
What is in dispute is the point at which the curve maximizes; Democrats, in general, place that point closer to 100% than do Republicans. There are all sorts of complicating factors which make it hard to calculate, because contrary to the simplistic assertions of supply-siders, lowering taxes, even from fairly high levels, does not always cause people to work more, so the revenue from increased production doesn't necessarily offset the loss from lower rates. (In the interests of fairness, however, the Reagan tax cuts would not have resulted in deficits without hog-wild spending by a Democratic Congress, which Reagan lacked the political courage, or capital, to veto). So the problem isn't with the Laffer Curve per se; it's what was done with it. (Sounds like the beginning of a slogan: curves don't lower taxes; people do. . . )
No Watermelons discusses the increase in capital gains after the rates were cut in 1975 in support of the Laffer Curve. The increase in revenue is impressive evidence -- 250% in 10 years -- but we have to remember that there was enormous inflation during much of this period, with interest rates touching 20% at one point. Also, cuts in capital gains taxes have the effect of raising the value of the assets that were previously taxed, which is not in and of itself a good thing unless it also spurs investment.
Richard Hailey reports that after the Corporation for Public Broadcasting told them they'd have to make their programming more balanced between left and right (this from Clinton appointees), NPR tried to peddle their ass on Wall Street and there were no takers. Tee-hee! It's delicious enough that the network that thinks Noam Chomsky is middle-of-the-road attempted to turn itself into a rapacious media corporation; it's the icing on the cake when they find out that they're not worthy of becoming one. Academics who think that they could run GM if they weren't so busy with more important things, take note.
A Berkely student says the Berkely sex class scandal is a temptest in a teapot, and that the activities which purported to be part of the class were actually extracurriculars organized by certain students.
Well, personally, I wasn't as offended by the sexual activity as by the elevation of dorm-room bull sessions to coursework. Perusing the list of courses offered in the same program that gave us male sexuality, I was flabbergasted by the crap that was masquerading as academic activity.
Don't get me wrong, I know that undergrads love these classes. I too took Human Sexuality, along with a number of other fluffy courses designed primarily to allow me to get an A for staring dreamily out the window and occasionally dashing off a paper that mirrored the most trivial philosophical discoveries of whatever Beat poet or PoMo deconstructionist had formed the professor's intellectual framework. However, the fact that most undergraduates would like to spend their four years getting as little for their parents' money as possible, does not mean that the university is obligated to abet them in this pursuit. If University administrators had a spine, students would have to organize their own trips to strip clubs instead of getting their instructor to do it for them.
It looks like Daniel Pearl is dead. I most devoutly hope that the cowardly little pissants who did this live the rest of their brief lives in mortal terror, being hunted like the animals they are.
One thing that should be clarified: while it's true that the tax cuts don't account for most of the decline in projected revenue this year, it does in out years. However, I'm still in favor of the cuts, because IMHO any decline in the surplus that didn't come from tax cuts would have come from congress going on a spending binge to rival Imelda Marcos at Prada.
The report also makes the important point that the complexity of the tax code is terrible for the economy and diminishes any stimulative effect the cut might have.
If you're wandering by from the Businessweek forum, welcome. I'm afraid the site's not particularly geared towards business school students, past, present, or future, unless you're interested in learning what life is like for those of us who had rescinded offers, or in getting a preview of much of the material you'll be covering in school. It's pretty much politics, economics, and technology -- no nude pictures or breathtaking revelations about life at business school. I believe that's what one of the posters meant by "geeky". . . If you have burning questions about life at Chicago, you're welcome to email me via the link at left, and if I have time, I'll try to answer. Otherwise, take a look, bookmark it if you like it, and if not. . . good luck on your GMAT's and everything.
As for the "foxy" bit, I have no idea what brought that on, but the pictures will be up next week. . .
This is why non-computer literate reporters shouldn't be allowed to write stories on things they don't understand.
Kevin Maney listened to the very interesting David Gelernter (yes, the Unabomber victim) waxing lyrical about his new concept for an operating system and fell harder than I did for Tommy Meehan when I played my first game of spin the bottle.
First of all, software engineers, like everyone else, get overenthusiastic about the prospects for whatever they're currently working on. Second of all, this guy's starting a company. He's selling, okay? And third of all, would it hurt to do a little checking before you write things down?
The reporter describes a system that uses time, rather than files, to organize things, and describes that as a more "natural" way to do it. First of all, the brain has all sorts of "natural" storage mechanisms, only one of which is chronological -- if it's natural you want, why not organize our files by smell, the most powerful of the brain's associational tools? Second of all, good file systems set up by a competent administrator do organize things chronologically. You may recall that "sort by date" function in Windows Explorer. . . Third of all, merely organizing things chronologically is a terrible way to deal with things more than a few days old. Quick -- did you write the Henderson memo before or after you ordered the tickets for your last vacation? Of course, Gelernter isn't proposing that; he's proposing something that organizes all the files relating to a given topic chronologically. Well, many or most files relate to more than one topic, so you'd end up setting up various associations for each file, so that you could view it in its proper timestream. We already have software that does this quite well. It's called a relational database, and Larry Ellison, among others, has gotten quite rich off them. Of course, David Gelernter wouldn't sound quite so sexy if he were setting up another DB company.
Then the reporter goes over the top. He tells us that this software would have prevented Enron. Why? See for yourself:
So Windows did it. Bad guys could get away with bad things at Enron because Windows stored the relevant information in thousands of metaphorical burping plastic tubs. If good guys had been able to see the story of Enron's transactions, they would've spotted trouble and stopped it.
Hey, people in technology blame Microsoft for all their other ills. Why not this?
Umm. . . because it's totally idiotic? Forget the fact that the system described, a cross between a database and a search engine, would be, on existing hardware, impossibly slow. Forget the fact that, as far as I can tell, a mention of the CEO in a memo would dump it forever after into the "timestream" for the CEO, rendering such searches near-useless. Forget trying to imagine the number of documents reading "the story of Enron" would entail, or asking who exactly would have the time or energy do this.
Let's think instead about a basic issue of which the reporter is apparently unaware: security. If you're on a network, and the network is any good, you will note that you can't see much except the stuff you're supposed to work on; personal and workgroup files, that is. Even in a poorly run network, however, confidential financial data are generally sealed up like the casino vault in Ocean's Eleven. The good guys wouldn't have been able to see the story of Enron's transactions, because the story wouldn't have been there to see. The data were locked away in the networks of other companies, or accessible only to those at the top of the food chain. No, Virginia, you can't blame Enron on Microsoft, the Freemasons, or evil Republicans. Sometimes, a badly run company is just a badly run company. It's not a symbol of anything.
Smarter Times catches the Gray Lady (registration required) in a little bit of hypocrisy:
"The Supreme Court cannot permit cities like Cleveland to violate the Establishment Clause in order to improve education any more than it could allow them to deprive citizens of their free-speech rights, if that were seen as a boon to public education," the Times editorial says.
Well, that's just rich, given that the Times has just concluded an editorial campaign arguing in favor of Congress depriving citizens of their free-speech rights, on the grounds that doing so would help clean up elections. The Times calls that "campaign-finance reform."
If you want to know what makes me laugh until I cry, try reading this page, which is what you get when you translate my page into German using Google's translator, and then translate it back again. A sample (from this post):
Some suggest a Zuendungsquad Artabkommen for judging. Summarize: on a Zuendungsquad let load only some the members their rifles. Nobody on the Zuendungsquad knows whether their rifle has a rifle bullet or a free area. So none can be safe that they killed the poor hybrid, which they accomplish, which more probably forms it that they shoot it real, instead of, "inadvertently" to miss. The arrangement, which is suggested for the judges, is that you appoint 14 judges, only 7 of their notches counts (after the coincidence drawn) -- and nobody knows, which notches counted. He says, that would not solve the problem, and suggests instead of that we do not use only judges from countries in the competition.
I couldn't have said it better myself. That poor hybrid. . . on the other hand, Steven Den Beste will be happy to know that the Google translator thinks that he is "the best Steven".
In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head to headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas -- he's the controller -- and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So I call ["sciences" like reflexology or ESP] cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they're missing something essential, because the planes don't land.
But I had no idea these things were still around. (CYA -- I'm extremely gullible, so it's possible that the article above is a hoax. It's still hilarious, however.)
This is how I feel about a lot of what passes for economic analysis in politics these days. It's dressed up with a lot of numbers, and the politicians talk fast and glib to cover the holes, but ultimately they're ignorant savages praying to the Invisible Hand and hoping that goodies will magically fall out of the sky.
He also applies game theory to the figure skating brouhaha. Some are proposing a firing squad type deal for the judging. To summarize: on a firing squad, only some of the members have their guns loaded. No one on the firing squad knows whether their gun has a bullet or a blank. Thus, none can be sure that they killed the poor bastard they're executing, which makes it more likely that they will actually shoot him instead of "accidentally" missing. The arrangement proposed for the judges is that you appoint 14 judges, only 7 of whose scores count (randomly drawn) -- and no one knows which scores counted. He says that wouldn't solve the problem, and proposes instead that we only use judges from countries not in the competition.
I think that a random draw would work better than he thinks; more importantly, I see two problems with neutral country judges. First, there's no reason to suppose that neutral country judges couldn't be bought; these judges exist on a circuit where many favors can be traded inside or outside of the games. Second, we might then be scrounging for judges from countries that don't have a figure skating program, in which case we're getting inferior judging.
But how about a combination of the random draw with blind scoring -- no one even knows what the judge awarded? Granted, this would introduce problems of arbitrary scoring, but it seems to me that that's pretty much what we have now.
A 13-year-old-girl of Moroccan origin living in the Madrid suburbs wants to wear a headscarf to her public school. She believes that her religion requires it and she wants to comply with what she sees as the directives of her faith. The Minister of Education, Pilar del Castillo, thinks the girl should not wear the scarf because it hinders her adaptation to Spanish culture.
I just think it's awfully nice to live somewhere where the Minister of Education doesn't get to decide whether or not you can follow the tenets of your faith.
Mr. Cox said he is opposed to any tax increase in the state, but his bill would let those who feel otherwise put their money where their mouths are. And those who give would be rewarded in cyberspace by having their names posted on the tax department's Web site.
I was raised by some pretty crotchety people who feel that moral responsibility starts with the individual first, society after. I have no patience for those who want taxes raised to pay for some program, but haven't given a good portion of their income to a similar private program (case in point: I supported private school voucher programs with my own cash, when I was employed). When Larry Summers said that actually doing something with the poor, rather than lobbying the government to do something with them, was what Harvard meant by "community service", I nearly passed out in delight. As far as I'm concerned, if the Hollywood mogul crowd thinks that the upper tax bracket should be higher, then they can put their money where their mouth is by, at the very least, refusing to take any deductions and not sheltering income. If they're so damn liberal, how come my parents pay a higher percentage of their income to tax than Steven Spielberg?
Interestingly, the only state that currently has such a program is Arkansas, where it has netted $276. Not one rich Democrat could stump up his "fair share"?
I don't usually blog the Professor, since you've all read him already, but this item sparked some thought:
. . . truly limited government is not only wise, but essential to public safety. The state has unfettered access to capital regardless of how incompetently it performs, therefore allowing great damage to be done to the public. If the boobs and crooks at Enron were able to acess tax revenues, instead of convincing private creditors to give them more money, Skilling, Lay, Fastnow, and company would still be in the clover, while doing great damage to the economic well being of others.
One of the great mysteries to me is the Democrats in the Financial sector. Not because they're Democrats, per se, but because their politics is so. . . well . . . wierd.
They don't like any of the services the government currently provides, but they want it to provide more.
They spend their entire professional lives thinking up ways to get around the securities regulation, but think more regulation is the answer to almost every problem.
They are in favor of regulating every industry except their own, which they insist works efficiently.
They won't buy a garden spade for themselves without doing due diligence and a DCF, but they dismiss any numbers which prove that none of the government programs they support is anything close to efficient or effective.
They think that capital markets are good, because they discipline management, yet are in favor of a revenue-generating system with no feedback loop, that takes place at the point of a gun.
They are in favor of gun control, but they want armed guards for their money.
They don't think that average people should have unfettered freedom to manage their own money, but they think they know everything they need to know about environmental policy and campaign finance reform.
They want to tax the wealthy more, but not one of them ever misses a deduction.
The only item on their political agenda that ever seemed consistent to me was their opposition to defense spending. Defense spending is spending on a useless, non-wealth generating activity that does nothing to help the country -- until you need an army that is, at which point it is too late to do anything but call your friends on the Paris Bourse to pick up some tips on white-flag design. Cutting the corporate equivalent of this spending (along with, to be fair, a fair amount of corporate jet and junket spending) forms the linchpin of many mergers and LBO's.
Okay, I'm not ashamed to admit it -- I google myself. I do it a lot. But I just checked my stats and found someone else googling me. That's a little wierd.
