December 30, 2004
From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:Amazon Red Cross Donations have now reached...
UPDATE: make that $9,044,545.42 as of 12/31 at 3:30PM
December 29, 2004
From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:At some personal expense, Nick
At some personal expense, Nick Coleman has certainly gained blogosphere notoriety today.
I wouldn't particularly like to be him, but I wonder if he was hoping for an insta-volokh-best-of-the-web-lanche? He's made all the appropriate enemies if one wants to build a following on the left side of the blogosphere.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Fun fact of the day
Who knows what the word for a group of ferrets is?
It's a "business of ferrets", according to my coworker, and no comment on whether or not this is kind to businessmen.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Say it ain't so!
Jerry Orbach, longtime mainstay of Law and Order, has died.
From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:The Flyover Library
While on the subject of the warped perspective of the New York Times, consider this past editorial:
Google announced an ambitious new plan to start converting millions of books into digital files in partnership with several major libraries, including the New York Public Library and the libraries at Harvard, Stanford and Oxford.
Those of you familiar with the project will note that three of the institutions named above are minor contributors to this project, while Stanford and the unmentioned University of Michigan are providing the lion's share of the content. A coastal perspective indeed. I thought it typical of the mindset illustrated in the old Saul Steinberg drawing, View of the World from 9th Avenue.
Over the holiday, one of my relatives (who works at UMich), read the editorial and expressed some outrage. Another pointed out that maybe it was because Michigan was a red state (incorrectly, thanks entirely to Ann Arbor and Detroit).
"no, no, we're a blue state!" (very defensively)
"Oh".
Recall that I am the only living member of my family to ever even think of voting Republican, or, I believe, ever doubt the received wisdom from 43rd street from the right. Now I bit my tongue at the time, but they either admitted a strange bias in their paper of record or, worse, condoned such behavior if Michigan were a red state.
From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:Multiple Choice
This just in - Bush's Ohio margin down 0.27%!
The recount, conducted over the past three weeks, showed that Mr. Bush won Ohio by 118,457 votes. Most county elections officials completed their recounts last week, but the state had to wait for Lucas County, where Toledo is located, to complete its tally. Lucas County reported the results of its recount on Tuesday.The secretary of state's office had earlier reported that Mr. Bush won Ohio by 118,775 votes and plans to record the newest tally officially later this week.
I trust many of you remember that most frustrating of SAT questions, "what would be the best title for this article?". Here are your choices:
a) "Nothing to report here, move along"
b) "Original Ohio tally proves accurate, conspiracy theorists embarassed"
c) "Ohio recount gives a smaller margin to Bush"
d) "We like eggs"
According to the NYT the answer is c).
(via Tigerhawk).
December 28, 2004
From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:Stingy American
Made my donation, got hooked hitting F5 and seeing the numbers go up. $445,886.86 as I post this.
UPDATE, 5:53 AM, $985,908.00. Should cross $1 million soon.
UPDATE , New Year's Eve - $8 million! and the government has pledged $350 million.
IMAGINARY CULT UPDATE: For an extraordinary example of unmerited extrapolation (or projection, or 'ass-u-me') read this. Perhaps the author would care to make a simple deal: Let's not confuse each other with our commenters or co-bloggers. And I, for one, don't allow 'followers'.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Gravity may not be all it's cracked up to be
NASA is looking at inexplicable anomalies in probe orbits that may rewrite the law of gravity as we know it.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Disaster relief
I haven't posted about the tsunami, as I have nothing to say except, of course, to express my horror. But if you have a little extra in the grouch bag, now would be a good time to send some of it towards your local disaster relief agency. The tourists are soaking up a disproportionate share of the headlines, but most of the dead come from villages far too poor to have insurance, where whole families, towns and regions have lost just about everything. The Red Cross is a good place to start, but so are charities that will give villagers the things they need, like seeds and tools, to start over.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Department of Ridiculous Government Departments
Meet Britain's Television police.
From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:Post-retirement aging.
Inspired by an article about Ray Kurzweil's determination to live forever, Susan Crawford compiles some advice on living longer..
Anecdotal evidence among my family and acquaintances is that people who work longer live longer. My grandfather worked until he was 86. A geriatric specialist recently told an aging relative that his primary medical advice was "don't retire". Of course it helps if you love what you do.
Last week I was a guest at a birthday party thrown by the host for himself. He got 180 friends together and sang all evening to us -- songs from his past, not songs he had written -- and it was really something. It was not pathetic and self-serving, although it easily could have been. It was a great evening. Two guys next to me were grousing about getting older ("it's all downhill, it's so awful"). It seems to me that if you can still sing (or do something else -- write software?) and still have some friends around, it might be fine to live forever.
In Susan's case, I hope she keeps playing the viola. I believe playing a musical instrument is restorative, exercising both the brain and small muscles.
December 27, 2004
From the desk of Jane Galt:Making the perfect the enemy of the good
Rather than help the Iraqis build a competent court that might impose the death penalty, the UN and EU would rather let them have an incompetent court imposing the death penalty. I too am opposed to the death penalty, but it is intrinsic to real opposition that it is better to get those accused of death-penalty crimes a fair trial than let them rot so that I may keep my hands cleam.
From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:Where I've been
I've just returned from a Western ski trip. A belated Merry Christmas to everyone.
December 24, 2004
From the desk of Jane Galt:Recipeblogging: Berry custard pie
Right now I'm getting ready to make Cranberry Bread for Christmas. But here's another great recipe I just discovered. It's so good, and easy, and Christmassy, that I thought I'd pass it along to anyone scrounging for a great dessert:
Unbaked pie shell
4 cups frozen berries (you buy them in a bag in the freezer section. I used mixed berries, but raspberries, blackberries, or blueberries would all be delicious)
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
4 tablespoons flour
Preheat oven to 400. Mix the cream, sugar, cinnamon, and flour together. Put the berries in the pie crust and poor the cream mixture over them. Bake until the filling sets (when you shake the pie crust lightly, the filling sways gently together, rather than being liquid), about 35-45 minutes.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Question of the day
Sorry I haven't been blogging -- it's been a little hectic getting ready for Christmas. But while I'm buried in the Great White North, here's a little debate question that came up during the drive to my Grandmother's:
It's widely argued that the beginning of the nanny state was the granting of voting rights to women. Assuming that this is, in fact true, here's a conundrum for conservative/libertarian women: would you give up the right to vote in order to secure a more conservative political environment?
December 17, 2004
From the desk of Jane Galt:What about printers?
It's no good getting a great digital photo if you can't get a good print off it. I have a little Canon that does a good job for its extremely cheap price, but it's not exactly professional quality. A colleague is looking for, like, the best photo printer ever. Can anyone give recommendations.
[Dreck comments - Maintaining a high-end printer is a pain, especially one capable of larger prints. I have had very good experience with online ordering service Shutterfly. Competitors Ofoto and Wal-Mart are discussed in the comments.]
From the desk of Jane Galt:One more bleg
Amazon commissions are on a sort of a step function, by number of items ordered, and they're compiled quarterly. I'm within spitting distance of the next level, if y'all will help out by clicking through the link on the right and doing any remaining shoppng you may be thinking of at Amazon. If y'all play your cards right, it could put me in a position to replace my departed TiVo!
From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:Pixelblogging - Dreck's Canon 20D Review
Following up on Instapundit's digital camera blitz, I'll pass along my Canon experience.
I upgraded from the Digital Rebel to the Canon 20D recently. I was very happy with the rebel's picture quality, and I found it a big step up from consumer digital cameras. First of all, I'm comfortable with SLR ergonomics and lens interoperability (I'm an old fogey, or a young curmudgeon, depending), and secondly because the tiny shutter lag means you can take the picture when you have it. There are two consumer models that can almost do that (Sony Cybershot and Nikon Coolpix), but generally consumer digital ergonomics are jsut annoying when you are keeping a changing subject in your viewfinder.
Secondly, I began working with raw files. The advantages of digital become clearer when you use raw files to adjust your exposure and white balance on a big screen. Since you are making these adjustments with the original sensor image, the JPEGs later come out as if you got the shot exactly right in the first place. Again, when you are working with a moving or changing subject, raw workflow afterwards is a great luxury.
The rebel uses the sensor and processing from a much more expensive camera, so it makes sense I've been pretty happy with image quality. Its shortcomings are in machinery. It's noisy and the mirror slaps, which tends to exacerbate blurring with telephoto and low light shots. Finally, the Rebel still takes more than a second to boot up and be ready to shoot, even from standby.
The 20D, besides offering a bit more resolution, corrects virtually all the defects I perceived in the Rebel. The mechanism is faster and quieter and just feels high quality. The camera turns on instantly and the shutter responds like a film SLR. Added bonuses include the ability to take 20 shots at 5 frames per second and the ability to program the two jog dials to alter the shooting parameter of your choice (ISO, Exposure, etc) while you are looking at your subject. Finally, the default color and balance settings (when shooting JPEGS) are more to my preference.
I'm very pleased with the 20D, and it's removed all of my prior frustrations with digital but one: I still find that overexposed highlights in digital tend to be completely blown, whereas film has finer exposure gradations at the extremes. Someobody's forehead or cheeks, the sun in the window, or a reflection can be completely blanched out. Those of you who are really good with Photoshop probably think that isn't an issue. I'm not, and I tend to see funny side effects of heavy Photoshop healing, dodging and burning. I have a fat Photoshop finger, I guess. Alternately, perhaps I need to be better choosing the metering points. Either way, digital seems to highlight my lack of ability in this way.
Those of you (like Glenn) who preferred the fit and finish of the Nikon to the Rebel, and/or have Canon lenses like I did, should definitely look at the 20D.
I've been working with several of the available raw processing programs, I'll give you my conclusions when I'm done. I liked Phase One a lot, but it isn't yet compatible with the 20D's raw file (CR2) format. ACDsee seems good, but it's been a little hard to become fluent.
Apparently, the first few camera bodies had firmware glitches. I hear that the ones that left the factory in the last month or so are fine. In either case, you can upgrade the firmware, although it's a little scary.
December 16, 2004
From the desk of Jane Galt:Tee-hee!
It's time once again to gather 'round the fire and sing those beautiful old carols:
Get dressed ye married gentlemen,
Let nothing through this May.
Remember, Christ our saviour
Was born on Christmas day
To save us all from Satan's power
When we were gone astray.
Good King Wences' car backed out
On the feet of heathens
When the snow lay round about,
Deep and crisp and even.
Hark! the herald angels sing,
Glory to the newborn King.
Peace on earth and mercy mild;
Goddamn sinners wreck a child.
On the twelfth day of Christmas,
My tulip sent to me:
Twelve drummers drumming,
Eleven pipers piping,
Ten lawyers leaving,
Nine lazy Hansons,
Eight maids a-milking,
Seven warts on women,
Six geezers laying,
Five golden rings,
Four calling birds,
Three French hens,
Two turtle doves,
And a cartridge in a pantry.
We want some friggin' pudding
We want some friggin' pudding
We want some friggin' pudding
Please bring it right here!
From the desk of Jane Galt:That's a headline?
From the WSJ: Client not always first on Wall Street. Coming tomorrow: "Politicians tell voters what they want to hear" and "Water is wet!"
From the desk of Jane Galt:And another good question . . .
How come we all think Humpty Dumpty was an egg?
From the desk of Jane Galt:Good question
Brilliant (and devastatingly handsome) Will Wilkinson asks what "big government" really means.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Pure poison
Good post on dioxim poisoning from Derek Lowe. He engages in some of the speculation that I've seen on other web sites: why would you bother to poison Yuschenko with something that isn't really that poisonous? The only proven long-term side effect is Chloracne, which is what is currently disfiguring him.
Well, it seems to me that maybe that was the point. If you kill an opposition candidate, you create a martyr, with a groundswell of indignation on which his successor can ride into office. If you, on the other hand, make him terribly unphotogenic and a little too sick to campaign effectively, but don't disable him enough for the opposition to put a more effective candidate in his place, you increase your chances of taking the election quite considerably.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Precautionary principles
Arnold Kling talks about Social Security ostriches:
Mankiw is arguing against those who say, "Leave Social Security alone. It's not broken yet." The fact that anyone would make such an argument is a sign of desperation, in my opinion. I cannot believe that someone would seriously suggest that we should wait until there is a huge shortfall in Social Security funds before we do anything about it. It seems to me that if you are going to reduce people's retirement benefits, you ought to give them fair warning while they are young, rather than wait until the last minute.
I find it interesting to note that if you replaced "social security crisis" with "global warming", you'd find that most liberals and conservatives had neatly switched positions. Why? Because addressing each crisis requires cutting into something that one side values; free enterprise, on the one hand, and the progressive structure of social security, on the other.
Easy for me to say, of course; I'm one of those rare cats who thinks that we should do something sooner rather than later about both global warming and social security, so it's fun for me to sit on the sidelines with my "Tu Quoque!" sign. But I'm trying to make a serious point, which is that all of us look for ways to defer unpleasant decisions into the future; we differ only on which decisions strike us as unpleasant.
Deferral is not a good strategy for problems of these potential magnitudes. Time gets rid of some problems, but it makes others, like demographic crises and cumulative environmental damage, worse, and as most of us know from our own experience, ignoring problems in the hope that they'll go away generally results in a full scale disaster rather than a manageable inconvenience.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Matthew Yglesias argues that the reason for persecuting Kerik over an extramarital affair was not the affair, per se, but the impropriety of doing it on government property. (Where have I heard this before? I'll remember in a minute . . . )
Indeed, when I first read the article, I too thought he had illegally scarfed a city apartment for his own use. But when I read it more carefully, I discovered that by the time it was converted to full time love nest, he seems to have arranged to rent the apartment at his own expense. He may have gotten a sweetheart deal because he was police commissioner, but he wasn't having a city-funded love nest. And even if the nesting started before he rented it, he still wouldn't have been cavorting on government-paid property, because the apartment was, according to the New York Times, donated by its owner for the use of cops and firemen.
I really don't want to debate this any further. I didn't want to debate it at all, but Democrats got surprisingly angry and defensive about what was basically a throwaway line. Bernard Kerik is not going to be the next cheif of homeland security, and I really don't give a [insert expletive here].
December 15, 2004
From the desk of Jane Galt:Plame game
I haven't really been following the Valerie Plame story, because frankly, I just don't care that much. Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm against outing covert agents for political payback, but it hasn't been made clear to me that she was a covert agent in a meaningful way any more (once you're the wife of a US ambassador, your covert usefulness would seem to me to be about zilch). I was much more interested in the issues of journalistic privilege that it raised; should journalists be able to claim immunity from questioning? Especially if they helped break the law by, say publishing confidential information, government or private?
[Note: there is another question that someone asked me at dinner the other night, which stonkered me. To wit, why isn't Robert Novak, the guy who actually published the name, going to jail?]
But I do read websites that are very interested in the question, and the ones that are not friends of the administration often thunder that this is not about partisanship!!!!!! This is about going after people in the administration who broke the law.
Perhaps. But an interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal argues, pretty convincingly to my ignorant eyes, that whoever outed Valerie Plame did not, in fact, break the law.
In all of this, far too little attention has been paid to the law that is driving Mr. Fitzgerald's inquiry. Nearly all discussion of the Plame investigation has instead mechanically assumed, without any critical thinking, that a crime was committed when "two senior administration officials," in Mr. Novak's words, disclosed to him in July 2003 that Ms. Plame was a CIA "operative."In fact, the most powerful reason why journalists should not be jailed for failing to cooperate with Mr. Fitzgerald's grand jury is because Mr. Fitzgerald has no crime to investigate.
The Plame inquiry is justified, we're told, by the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which Congress passed because our intelligence community was apoplectic over Mr. Agee's "outing" during the 1970s of CIA covert agents stationed abroad to purposefully disrupt the agency's operations. The bill probably should have been called the "Get Philip Agee" Act.
The law requires a prosecutor to show that a person has disclosed information that identifies a "covert agent" (not an "operative") while actually knowing that the agent has been undercover within the last five years in a foreign country and that the disclosed information would expose the agent. For a person who had no classified access to the outed agent's identity, the law provides the additional hurdle of proving a pattern of exposing agents with the belief that such actions would harm the government's spying capabilities.
As a practical matter, this high degree of proof of willfulness or intentionality would be almost impossible to find in any circumstances other than in a Philip Agee clone (and maybe not even him). To interpret the statute more broadly would flout the longstanding American jurisprudential tradition of narrowly construing criminal laws, especially those that encroach upon free-speech values.
The legislative history of the law could not make its narrow purpose more clear. The "principal thrust of this [statute] has been to make criminal those disclosures which represent a conscious and pernicious effort to identify and expose agents with the intent to impair or impede the foreign intelligence activities of the United States by such actions," reads the Senate report. Legislators emphasized that they crafted the bill to "exclude the possibility that casual discussion, political debate, [or] the journalistic pursuit of a story on intelligence . . . will be chilled."
From the desk of Jane Galt:Holy love nest, batman!
Seems we've found the real reason for Bernard Kerik's abrupt departure: the love nest, facing the ground zero pit, where he had an extramarital affair with the women who published his autobiography.
I am waiting patiently for the Democrats who have been crowing over his departure to rise up in indignation at the Republicans senselessly persecuting this man over a harmless extramarital affair.
Update Tee-hee! Every Democrat in the blogosphere seems to be linking to this post, working themselves up into a foaming lather of righteous indignation. Y'all, it was a throwaway line; there's something wrong if it's generating this much emotional energy. Why so defensive? Doth the lady protest to much?
From the desk of Jane Galt:Kill Kyoto?
Italy's environment minister is calling for Kyoto compliance to end after 2012, saying that "continuing Kyoto in its current form would be useless without the agreement of some of the world's biggest polluters". The minister calls for voluntary controls that might attract the US, China and India to participate.
This is madness, of course. If you're going to give up your Kyoto compliance after six years, why bother doing it at all? To delay the onset of global warming by two days? And with per-capita GDP in the sub-$1000 range, it's going to be a long, long time before India or China agrees to any sort of pollution controls, voluntary or otherwise.
From the desk of Jane Galt:TiVo talk
As readers know, I loved my TiVo with a rare passion until it recently died. I loved it so much that I composed a poem to it, which I will reprint here, so proud am I of my modest composition:
My Tivo has died, and I am sad
Sad like the western wind when the sun goes down
Sad like the death of truth and the end of days
Sad as Priam, wailing for his fallen son on the Trojan plain.
No more is the merry smile of my Tivo's
Animated character, dancing through the boot-up sequence
No more is the proud "bling!" of my Tivo's
Thumbs-up signal, helping me to rate a programme I have liked
Or deliver my own, personal critical rebuke
To the makers of plastic-surgery based reality shows.
Gone is the quiet competence of its steady power light
My Tivo has died, and I am sad.
Oh, Tivo, we were one, you and I! Together we chose the shows I would watch
Me with my "Choose shows to record" and you with your ever-helpful
"Tivo's suggestions". Now I no longer know the simple, perfect joy
Of browsing two week's worth of Turner Classic Movies
Recording this, and this, and this--but never that--
With an imperious flick of my thumb.
Once my life was full of light and laughter
(And not canned sitcom laughter, either).
Once my daily routine was perplexed by the
Glad quandaries of having to choose
Among the too, too many wonderful shows
You had captured for my delectation.
Now you have left me
You have crossed the dark waters of forgetfulness
Your hum is stilled
Your light gone out
I have only a silver carcass to caress, aimlessly
While watching The History Channel and wishing
Wishing
That something else were on.
My Tivo has died, and I am sad.
Now, it seems, TiVo is doing some pre-emptive grammar policing to protect its trademark:
The company's Web site has long included a legal page specifying that the word "TiVo" is to be used only in its adjectival sense: not "don't forget to TiVo Letterman!" but "do not forget to record The Late Show With David Letterman on the TiVo® DVR."Protecting trademarks from "dilution" is standard practice for any company. (After all, as TiVo's Web page cheerily reminds us, "trademarks are proud of the company that owns them!") Indeed, many of TiVo's more bizarre grammatical prescriptions (trademarks cannot be used as nouns? So much for classic ad slogans like "Coke is it" or "Leggo my Eggo!") come directly from the regulations of the International Trademark Association. Nonetheless, the TiVo story serves as an object lesson on the Catch-22 of brand identification: You want your brand name to be recognizable enough that everyone associates it with the product, but not so recognizable that no one distinguishes your product from similar ones made by other companies.
A good friend likes to tell a story about the summer he interned for Canon, which makes copiers. On his first day, he offered to "xerox" something, and immediately blushed with shame, thinking he'd committed some horrid gaffe. He rushed to correct himself, only to be told that they wanted him to call it Xeroxing, in the hopes that the trademark would be voided. Loving TiVo, as I do, I would never want that to happen. But I find it hard to imagine how I'm going to make that little trademark symbol when I talk.
The TiVo article offers another lesson: it's been five years, and TiVo still isn't turning a profit. This is surprisingly common with new technologies; innovators often (even usually) aren't the people who end up making money off the market. They invent their bright idea, and then some established player, one with the complementary assets like distribution channels and marketing departments, comes over and horns in just as it's getting profitable. As the old saying goes, smart ain't the same as rich.
From the desk of Jane Galt:You've gotta have faith
Minnesota turned in a faithless elector -- for the Democrats. Someone wrote in John Edwards" instead of John Kerry, but no one will now 'fess up to having done it.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Back to the future
The hijacker seizing a plane and demanding to be taken to Cuba was such a common icon in the 60's and 70's that comics made a riff out of it. Then it became harder to get guns on planes, and bombs became the weapon of choice (which might give gun control advocates pause).
But old standards never die; they're just reinterpreted. They're having a revival in Greece, only with a bus and a demand to be flown to Russia.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Books on the poor, we will always have with us
A while back I made a qualified recommendation of David Shipler's The Working Poor in the course of (unqualified-ly) telling you to go read Jason DeParle's American Dream right now. Steven Malanga has a rather harsher take on it in his review of books about the working poor.
Mr Malanga's review is pretty one sided, but it makes some important points. In particular, it scores on Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed, which I thought offered occasional insight into the lives of the working poor, but found almost unreadable because of its dripping, venomous contempt for the middle class (and its paternalistic contempt for her working class co-workers, whom she repeatedly implies are too stupid or deluded to understand that THEY'RE BEING BRUTALLY EXPLOITED AND THEIR LIVES ARE WORTHLESS!). There was also too much pseudo-intellectual Freudian interpretation of perfectly ordinary practices, supposedly showing the subtle, cruel underbelly of employers. Wal-Mart's pre-employment tests aren't just an attempt to protect the store from thieves and erratic workers, or even a useless and idiotic ritual designed by managers who ought to know better; they're a plot to make the worker feel powerless and dominated by The Oppressor. Merry Maids doesn't have people scrub the floor on their hands and knees because that gets the floor cleaner (she quotes an "expert" who says it doesn't); it's because nasty middle class women like to see their house cleaners in a submissive posture.
(Here, she happens to have entered on two of my areas of expertise: floor cleaning, and women who employ house cleaners. Though Ms Ehrenreich claims to be a house cleaner of old repute, she is clearly deficient in her floor knowlege; no one who has ever scrubbed their floor on their hands and knees would seriously entertain the idea that one can do just as good a job with a mop--there's simply no serious comparison. My mother is both a knee-scrubber, and an employer of cleaning professionals. The cleaning lady does her floors with a mop. But when my mother cleans, it's with a bucket and a sponge.)
Malanga's review is justifiably scathing. I urge you to check it out right now.
From the desk of Jane Galt:New Blog of the Day
I may be late to the party, but I just found The Angry New Yorker. I do question the use of the definite article, however. Look around you, honey; we're all angry.
December 14, 2004
From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:Deceptions of Scale
While I generally agree with Robert Shiller, I think he really needs to think about adjusting the scale on this chart. By adding all that useless headroom on the earnings axis he overstates his point. Try scaling the right axis so the maximum is 160, roughly the multiple of the starting point that is used on the left axis. (for an html version of charts click here and then on 'figure 1.1')
This graph was featured in his book, and it's always bugged me.
December 9, 2004
From the desk of Jane Galt:This piece . . .
. . . literally made me bust a gut. Blogging will resume when the surgeons are done.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Keep the aspidastra flying
This article by Bing West on Fallujah after the fight opens with a striking paragraph:
The main shopping road through town stretched long and straight, empty of any person or vehicle, the aluminum shutters of hundreds of shops twisted at a thousand angles, buildings ripped open, exposing demolished rooms and sagging roofs, telephone poles snapped and canted, the dangling lines curled and snarled like the webs of giant, crazed spiders. It looked like a savage tornado had roared through the downtown district, smashing all in its path, pausing capriciously to pulverize various buildings before moving relentlessly on.
What I thought immediately was "I hope we're planning to rebuild it."
What I thought second was, "What a piece of work is man."
I mean, even if we don't rebuild it (though I'll be horrified if we don't), the people of Fallujah will rebuild it. I recently watched The Third Man, Orson Welles' lovely noir mystery set in postwar Vienna. The movie is, unsurprisingly, gloriously written, acted, and especially shot, but one of hte things that really affected me was the astonishing amount of rubble in 1949 Vienna. We sacked core axis cities about as thoroughly as the Huns, but people immediately began rebuilding, and within very few years, the cities were banal and bustling, all traces of devastation erased. There's something uniquely horrifying about seeing, for yourself, ordinary dwellings twisted, scattered, and deformed by violence. But there's also something uniquely inspiring about the way human beings pick themselves up after the most awful destruction and go about restoring the devastated places to their former boring selves.
As many of you know, I worked down at Ground Zero for a year after the attack. The pace of the reconstruction disturbed me at first; I didn't want the raw wound to heal. Yet nine months later, when the rubble had been cleared and the ruin was just a big hole in the ground where the basement had been, I shocked and horrified vistors to the site by chatting merrily about the exposed slurry wall. How could I talk about slurry walls at Ground Zero?
But in the end, that's why the human race survives. There have been thousands, maybe millions, of Fallujahs and Ground Zeros in history. And every one of them has been restored to something peaceful, if not pretty.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Public Service Announcement
There is a less-than-fine line between fiction and reality. You don't need to draw that line. But you shouldn't refuse to recognise that it exists.
From the desk of Jane Galt:A favour
Now that I'm done with my seasonal Amazon link-grubbing, I want to ask a favour of my readers, which is that if you read a book I've recommended, follow a recipe that I've written up, or buy a product I've suggested, you let me know. You'll have to take this on trust, of course, but I only recommend things to y'all because I love them, and when you love something, there's great pleasure in sharing that knowlege with others. So if you made my cranberry sauce, brined a turkey at my suggestion, or trotted down to the library to take out a copy of War and Peace, shoot me an email, or leave a comment. It really does bring a glad smile to my heart.
(And I swear, the smile's just as big if you didn't buy it through Amazon.)
From the desk of Jane Galt:'Tis the season: Final edition of absolutely shameless, positively galling shilling for you to outfit your friends and family with a few of my favorite things
(If you've already done all of your holiday shopping, you should scroll down anyway for the original poem I wrote just for this post.)
It's getting late, folks. The clock ticks, and still that perfect gift eludes . . . but never fear! Here I am, willing to shamelessly offer a list of more of my most favourite possessions, in the hopes that you will a) love me and b) buy it through my Amazon link, thereby earning me a paltry, but in my impoverished state significant, commission. Remember, if Christmas is anything, it's a time for crass commercialism! And who better to get your annual dose from than everyone's favourite capitalist, Aunty Jane?
(If you missed them, here are my earlier gift recommendations for books, cooking gear, and my amazingly awsome digital camera. Also, here's my book review page.)
How about one of my favourite things on the whole planet: my TiVo.
I love my TiVo with a passion seldom found in one so young. Or rather, I should say, I loved it, as it has recently departed us after four years of faithful service. I have been meaning to compose an epic poem on the topic, entitled "My Tivo has died, and I am sad"
My Tivo has died, and I am sad
Sad like the western wind when the sun goes down
Sad like the death of truth and the end of days
Sad as Priam, wailing for his fallen son on the Trojan plain.
No more is the merry smile of my Tivo's
Animated character, dancing through the boot-up sequence
No more is the proud "bling!" of my Tivo's
Thumbs-up signal, helping me to rate a programme I have liked
Or deliver my own, personal critical rebuke
To the makers of plastic-surgery based reality shows.
Gone is the quiet competence of its steady power light
My Tivo has died, and I am sad.
Oh, Tivo, we were one, you and I! Together we chose the shows I would watch
Me with my "Choose shows to record" and you with your ever-helpful
"Tivo's suggestions". Now I no longer know the simple, perfect joy
Of browsing two week's worth of Turner Classic Movies
Recording this, and this, and this--but never that--
With an imperious flick of my thumb.
Once my life was full of light and laughter
(And not canned sitcom laughter, either).
Once my daily routine was perplexed by the
Glad quandaries of having to choose
Among the too, too many wonderful shows
You had captured for my delectation.
Now you have left me
You have crossed the dark waters of forgetfulness
Your hum is stilled
Your light gone out
I have only a silver carcass to caress, aimlessly
While watching The History Channel and wishing
Wishing
That something else were on.
My Tivo has died, and I am sad.
No, really, it's that good. For the four blessed years we had together, I never had to watch whatever crap was on. I could pause live TV when I needed to get a snack or answer the phone, and pick it up seamlessly when I got back, with the added bonus of being able to fast-forward through the commercials. (Warning: some people apparently believe this is "theft". I say, if this be theft, make the most of it!)
Is Tivo better than ReplayTV or the ones you get from your cable or satellite provider? I thought so. I liked being able to rate shows, and then get suggestions from Tivo on shows I might like to watch; I found quite a few this way. I liked Tivo's guide function, which is better than Time Warner's, appears in a transparent box over the whole screen so you can keep watching, and lets you select future programmes to record while you're watching a show, which ReplayTV doesn't. I loved the "Wish List" feature, which I used all the time. It lets you set up not only shows to automatically record, but search on various parameters--Alfred Hitchcock or Liam Neeson, to name two of mine; other friends use it to record all the games of a certain sports team, or original Twilight Zone episodes. I also find it dramatically easier to use than the other recorders, and while that might just be because Tivo is what I've been using, other people say the same thing. The new models also let you hook up to your computer and play your music, or display your photos, through your home entertainment system.
But whether or not you get a Tivo, if you don't have a DVR, I highly, highly suggest that you get one of some sort. It really will change your television life. And it's a great gift.
The third item is my MP3 player:
I love my MP3 player. I love it's playlists, I love it's battery life. I love the way it is designed to fit perfectly in my hand, and can be operated with one finger while cradled in my palm. This makes it especially perfect for dozing, on planes or on the couch. It's design is so well-done that a left-handed friend picked it up and said, with surprise, "It's made for lefties?"; we both find it amazingly easy to use. It's sound quality is great, it's software is simple to use but feature-rich, and it's nice and light. It's also less expensive than the iPod, and if you're looking for snazzy design, it has a nifty base unit that both charges and transfers files, which lights up neon blue when the unit's in.
That's all for now; I've exhausted my supply of consumer electronics. But readers are welcome to comment, or write in their own gift suggestions for the difficult-to-shop-for. Here's Tyler Cowen's.
From the desk of Jane Galt:'Tis the season: Special kitchen edition
Y'all know I like to cook, as does the rest of my family. So we spend a lot of time asking ourselves "What do you get for the cook who has everything?" (One previous suggestion here.)
Here's a slam dunk for a big gift, a KitchenAid mixer. It is one of the joys of my culinary life. I have the big, super-powerful one:
A friend came over to cook with me on Saturday, and we used my KitchenAid to make souffles. She was blown away. No scraping the sides? she asked in awe, and I realised that yes, there are people who still have to stand next to their mixers with a rubber spatula, scraping the batter on the sides into the bottom because the mixer blade doesn't reach. I, on the other hand, just set the thing and go back to fixing the rest of my recipe--a huge time saver. Then, of course, there's the speed of the thing, which is breathtaking -- it whips egg whites and cream so fast that you barely have time to get the rest of your recipe ready.
Then there are the attachments. The mixer comes with not just a normal blade, which you use for batters, but a whisk (egg whites and whipped cream) and a dough hook--and yes, a machine really can knead your dough just as well as you do by hand. I know I sound like an infomercial here, but that dough hook really does turn breadmaking from a major undertaking into a minor escapade. (Mmmmmm . . . homemade bread.) You can also buy all sorts of extra attachments: a meat grinder, a pasta-roller, a juicer, a slicer, a grain mill and even a special bowl for making ice-cream . . . KitchenAid guarantees that all their attachments (other than bowls) fit all their mixers, including the first ones it made back in the thirties. The mixers are pricier than others, but you literally have them for a lifetime; my Mom's had hers since the 1970's, and there are people out there using KitchenAids from the 1930's. Every woman in my family has one. And since my computer-phobic mother never reads this site, I can safely tell you that my sister and I are getting her the attachment pack, which has a meat grinder, food strainer, and slicer, for Christmas.
But if you don't want to pay the price for the super-deluxe model, there are more reasonably priced versions. While I recommend the extra power, even the smaller KitchenAids, the five quart professional or the compact version are worlds above the average stand mixer, in terms of power, reliability, and ease of use. (Several family members own--and love--smaller ones than mine.) They also come in multiple colors: black, my sister's favourite cobalt blue, ultra-hip nickel, and a bunch of other colors, some of which are a little extreme (grape, tangerine, and cranberry, for example . . . whose kitchen will match these colors in 30 years?). If you have a cook that you shop for, and you don't know quite what to get him or her, and they're using the same old Sunbeam their mother left them that has barely more power than an old-fashioned hand-operated rotary egg-beater, then I guarantee you this will change their life.
Little pricey for you? Their hand mixer also rocks; I had one until I accidentally submerged it in a sink full of dirty dishwater for 30 minutes. As you can see, there's one on my wish list, so I'm not just saying this.
Jacques Pepin's Fast Food My Way is my current new cookbook obsession. The idea is things that are fast and easy to make, but from a master chef (he and Julia Child have done many wonderful cooking shows together.) Since I'm single, and it's fattening and wasteful to whip up major meals for just myself, I love it.
I've been encouraging my friends who cook for more than one to get a mandoline. A pricey one like the Oxo is great for the gourmet chef, but a model like this Hoffritz is within reach of just about anyone, and extremely useful for slicing, shredding potatoes for latkes, or shredding onion without crying (because it immediately falls into the bowl). I'm also a huge fan of gadgets to grate your own spices (doesn't take as much time as you think, and it makes a huge difference in flavour). I endorse shredders that let you shred straight into a container. I adore my food chopper, which really takes the work out of the inevitable task of chopping mounds of onion, celery, and peppers for recipes--not to mention nuts and cheese. And if you want the single best stocking stuffer for a chef, for my money it's the microplane zester, which lets you remove the zest (the colored part of the rind) from lemons and oranges. It seems awfully specialised, when you first hear about it. But an amazing number of recipes call for zest, and this does a really unbelievably superior job, removing just the flavourful colored part of the rind, and leaving the bitter white part you don't want on the fruit.
December 8, 2004
From the desk of Jane Galt:More Social Security Mistakes
The topic of Social Security is a great one for bringing out all manner of odd assertions. The comment thread on the post to which I linked earlier is full of them.
This is probably the single most common erroneous argument one hears about Social Security:
Assume you have spent your life saving your money and buying government bonds. Assume further, that despite your obvious obtuseness and unwillingness to listen, you live to the age of retirement. You start cashing in. Now how is this a problem? Are you suggesting the bonds are "no good"?
It's a perennial favourite of the AARP. I confess, I don't understand why it works. Are people really unable to understand the difference between lending money to a third party, with a promise to repay in the future, and "lending" money from your future self to your current self to spend now? In case not, let's continue the bizarre anthropomorphising of the social security trust fund, and pretend that the whole US government is a person, you.
You have one paycheck, the taxes you collect from your employer, the people of the United States. You also have a bunch of expenses, some of them the basic things you need to keep alive, and many of them the basic things you need to do to keep your employer happy, like dressing snazzily. Let's say one of the most important expenses you have is commuting, and because your area is growing, and gas is getting more expensive, you know for a fact that your commute is going to get longer and more expensive every year. Getting to work on time is so important that you've set up a second bank account just for your commuting expenses, and you have the nice folks in HR deposit your commuting money directly into it each month. You're so worried about commuting expenses, in fact, that you've decided to deposit more than you need now, to cover the future expenses.
Now let's say that your other expenses are getting out of hand. You take the money out of the "Commuting Trust Fund" and spend it on a snazzy new suit. Does it make a difference if you write an IOU for the money and deposit it in the CTF?
Clearly not. Your future spending is going to be constrained by how much your employer gives you, and how much you can borrow from third parties, not by "cashing in" your IOU to yourself.
Another commenter nails it:
The real difference between 2041 (the last year there are intergovernmential government IOUs remaining for Social Security) and 2042 (when they're exausted) is that in 2041, the 20% of the cost of Social Security paid by general revenue will be explicitly claimed by the otherwise worthless bits of paper called treasury bonds, and in the 2042 this 20% will be diverted due to the political infeasibility of letting old folks starve.
Then there's this one, beloved of the hard-ish left:
One thing overlooked in most discussions about the "privatization" of SS is the employer's contribution, which is an automatic 50% return on investment for the employee. Do the privatization plans call for the continuation of the employers contribution--and does anyone believe it will continue long after privatization is implemented
This assumes, of course, that when the government comes along and slaps a whacking great tax on payrolls, the employers just say, "Oh well, that's too bad, we'll have to tell the shareholders no more profits". [/sarcasm] Payroll taxes are, of course, all ultimately paid by all but minimum wage employees, not their firms. Firms have an upper limit on the cost they are willing to incur to hire an employee; any money taken by the government in tax represents salary they could have negotiated for themselves. There is a brief windfall for the employee when the tax is first enacted, but it corrects itself in a surprisingly short time, and of course results in unemployment for those low-wage employees whose total cost is raised above their value to the firm by the tax.
If the payroll tax were actually redistributing money to workers, we should have seen a large shift in the share of national income accruing to labor (rather than capital), as it's a very large tax. Labor's share, however, is remarkably stable. QED, the tax garners no net benefit to employees.
Then there's the salvational miracle of productivity:
Envision incredible productivity growth on a previously not contemplated scale: One worker at a computer console controls robots supplying all the goods and services for the economy...take it from there.Today's workers are more productive than past workers. Presumably, future workers will be more productive than today's workers. This is not rocket science.
I'm actually sympathetic to this one, and have quoted it myself. Problem: ultimately, unless labor's share of national income falls (something it shows no sign of doing over the long run), productivity growth translates into wage growth. And social security benefits are indexed to wage growth (rather than inflation). Thus, the cost of social security will grow right along with productivity. While this argument makes sense as a macroeconomic solution to the demographic crisis, it will not make the Social Security system itself stable.
Interesting thought: is it possible that as a way to equilibriate the increasing share of national income devoted to the elderly, we'll see massive inflation in goods largely consumed by the elderly? Health care leaps immediately to mind, as do Florida real-estate and Geritol. What we'd see, then, was a massive increase in the nominal share of income consumed by the elderly of my generation, but a decline in our share of real income, as more and more of our nominal income has to be devoted to chasing a few scarce goods, like gerontologists.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Department of Awful Quotations
David Nishimura finds a good one, allegedly from Thomas Jefferson:
A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51% of the people may take away the rights of the other 49.
My understanding of Mr Jefferson's philosophy leads me to believe that he is now spinning in his grave fast enough to power a high-speed monorail between New York and Chicago. But Mr Nishimura has a lot more -- go read it now.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Can YOU beat the market?
Also via Kevin Drum comes this great Andrew Tobias column on beating the market:
Yes, you are likely smarter than most people (you were too modest to put it this way). But you’re not competing with the 98% who may not have your gifts, but, in the main, with the 2% who do – and especially with a small subset of that group who have a lot of information at their disposal and perhaps more time and training than you. (And still they – too – tend not to be able to beat the market.)Plus, the dumbness of the crowd, when it manifests itself, generally makes more for crazy overvaluations than for crazy undervaluations, so to take advantage of the stupidity (unfailingly evident with the benefit of hindsight), you have to short stocks (or at least buy puts), which as I have suggested previously is particularly hard to do successfully over the long run.
Indeed, this is one reason why the dumbness of the crowd, when it manifests itself, generally makes more for crazy overvaluations than for crazy undervaluations: smart guys will rush to buy the undervaluations, limiting the extremity of their plunge; but the same smart guys will, correctly, think long and hard about shorting the overvaluations, because shorting overvalued stocks has special perils that buying undervalued stocks does not.
From the desk of Jane Galt:What's wrong with this picture?
From Kevin Drum:
Every year the Social Security trustees produce a 75-year financial estimate. To do this, they make estimates of population growth, life expectancy, economic performance, and so forth, and then add them all up into an overall estimate of long-term solvency. In fact, they make three estimates (see chart on right), and the one you hear about in the news is the middle one, or "intermediate projection." In that projection, Social Security starts running a deficit in 2042. The key assumptions in the intermediate projection from 2015 forward are the following:* Labor force growth: 0.2% per year.
* Productivity growth: 1.6% per year.
* Average hours worked: no change.Which leads to the following overall estimate:
* GDP growth: 1.8% per year.
This growth is lower than we're used to, but that's because GDP growth = population growth + productivity growth. Since population growth is slowing down, so will GDP growth.
Still, what if you assume that things will be a little more robust than this? If you project GDP growth of around 2.6% per year, you end up with Estimate I, and in that scenario Social Security never runs out of money. In fact, if you project GDP growth just a few tenths higher than 1.8%, Social Security stays solvent for the next century.
In other words, if GDP growth averages, say, 2.2% over the next 75 years, Social Security is in fine shape and we don't have to do anything. We only need to "fix" it with private accounts if GDP growth is less than that.
So here's the puzzler: for private accounts to be worthwhile, they need to have long-term annual returns of at least 5%, and 6-7% is the number most advocates use. But are there any plausible scenarios in which long-term real GDP growth is less than 2% but long-term real returns (capital gains plus dividends) on stock portfolios are well over 5%?
Privatization enthusiasts are encouraged to leave their answers in comments.
The problem is, this treats economic growth as if privatising the pensions system will have no effect on economic growth.
But from a policy perspective, the effect on economic growth is the only rational reason to privatise (other than the moral imperative of not misleading gullible Americans into believing that their payroll taxes are somehow earning them a pension to which they will be entitled when they retire).
When we divert the FICA money into private accounts, we take money that is currently masking a huge unfunded liability, enabling the government to spend money on unproductive programmes like farm subsidies, and divert it into productive investments. (Even if you are in favour of much of what the government spends money on -- whether it be defense or welfare -- it takes a pretty ideological character to argue that this spending is increasing the growth rate). It forces the government to make hard choices about unnecessary spending, which I think is a good thing, but more importantly, increases the stock of private capital over the long term. (Not of course, over the short term, because the government will be borrowing to fund the gap).
Private accounts should change other pieces of the equation -- making it more attractive to retire later, if you're healthy enough to do so; making it more attractive to work longer hours, because the connection between work and benefits is much clearer than in the steeply progressive Social Security system; and making it more attractive for new entrants to work.
So yes, if privatisation has absolutely no effect on the economy, then there's no reason to privatise, but that's pretty much a tautology; if we assume that something's not going to have any good effects, then we can easily prove that it won't have any good effects.
December 6, 2004
From the desk of Jane Galt:I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords
. . . but not yet. Jack Shafer tells us why journalists are safe, for now.
From the desk of Jane Galt:And they're off!
The Becker-Posner blog has started posting, and it's terrific. Right now they're posting just once a week, and this week's topic is prevention/pre-emption. From Richard Posner:
If “preemptive war” is defined narrowly enough, it merges into defensive war, which is uncontroversial; if you know with certainty that you are about to be attacked, you are justified in trying to get in the first blow. Indeed, the essence of self-defense is striking the first blow against your assailant.But what if the danger of attack is remote rather than imminent? Should imminence be an absolute condition of going to war, and preventive war thus be deemed always and everywhere wrong? Analytically, the answer is no. A rational decision to go to war should be based on a comparison of the costs and benefits (in the largest sense of these terms) to the nation. The benefits are the costs that the enemy’s attack, the attack that going to war now will thwart, will impose on the nation. The fact that the attack is not imminent is certaintly relevant to those costs. It is relevant in two respects. First, future costs may not have the same weight in our decisions as present costs. This is obvious when the costs are purely financial; if given a choice between $100 today and $100 in ten years, any rational person will take $100 now, if only because the money can be invested and through interest compounding grow to a much larger amount in ten years. But the appropriateness of thus discounting future costs is less clear when the issue is averting future costs that are largely nonpecuniary and have national or global impact.
Second, and more important, and well illustrated by the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, if the threat of attack lies in the future it is difficult to gauge either its actual likelihood or its probable magnitude. But this is not a compelling argument against preventive war. What is true is that a defensive war is by definition waged only when the probability of an attack has become one; the attack has occurred. The probability of attack is always less than one if the putative victim wages a preventive war, because the attacker might have changed his mind before attacking.
From Gary Becker:
Combating crime mainly relies on deterrence through punishment of criminals who recognize that there is a chance of being apprehended and convicted-the chances are greater for more serious crimes. If convicted, they can expect imprisonment or other punishments- again, punishments are generally more severe for more serious crimes. Apprehension and punishment reduce the gain from crimes; in this way, it deters others from criminal activities.Individuals can also be punished simply for planning or intending to commit crimes. The evidence required to punish intent has to be convincing, but the standard is weaker for violent crimes, like plotting murder, since punishment after the crime does not do anything for those murdered. In addition, individuals who cannot be deterred are sometimes punished simply because it is considered likely that will commit crimes in the future. This is a major justification for forced hospitalization and psychological treatment of potentially violent and mentally unstable persons.
These arguments about intent apply much more strongly to preventive actions against terrorist organizations and rogue nations. The conventional approach to war in democratic states favors retaliation after attacks. This was the rationale for the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) doctrine during the height of the Cold War: the US was prepared to unleash devastating nuclear destruction against the Soviet Union if attacked with nuclear weapons, and visa versa for the Soviets. That worked, although there were several close calls, as during the Cuban crisis.
But this approach is no longer adequate to fight terrorist organizations, states that sponsor terrorism, and dictatorial states that want to destroy their enemies. For it is becoming increasingly possible for terrorist organizations and governments to unleash biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons that will cause massive destruction. Retaliation may be slow and difficult if terrorists are widely dispersed so that it is hard to generate sufficiently severe reprisals to discourage their attacks. Rogue governments also are more capable of using these weapons surreptitiously, so that it might be many obstacles to determining who was responsible if they chose not to admit their responsibility. It is already difficult to know which groups are responsible for terrorist acts except when they brag about them.
In addition, many state-sponsors of terrorism often prey on the zeal of individuals who are willing to kill themselves in promoting what they consider a higher cause. These suicide bombers clearly cannot be punished after they commit their acts (although their families could be) because they forfeit their lives while attempting to kill and injury others. One can try to raise the probability that they will fail-through barriers, walls, and other protective activities- but free societies are so vulnerable that these can never be strong enough deterrents.
The only really effective approach is to stop them before they engage in their attacks. This is accomplished by tracking them down and imprisoning or killing them based on evidence that they intend to engage in suicidal attacks. Those planning such acts can also be punished on the basis of intent.
. . . but that's just a taste. Read the whole thing.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Liberals discussing foriegn policy
Or actually, liberals discussing why liberals should be discussing foreign policy. Two great posts from Kevin Drum and Matthew Yglesias.
From Mr Yglesias' post:
The Nation's post-election forum is an excellent example of my new hobbyhorse -- liberals just not caring much one way or the other about national security. If it were really the case that there was some militantly dovish leftwing base out there preventing Democrats from adopting a better line on foreign policy, it would be represented here. And, indeed, just as a leftwing base should, various contributors advise the Democrats to hold the line -- or move further left -- on this or that topic. But even though several contributors note that national security played a key role in John Kerry's defeat, only one contributor has anything to say at all about how to deal with that, a joking suggestion that Kerry should have promised to kill terrorists with his bare hands.But if there's anything that left-of-center people of different stripes ought to be able to agree on it's that this won't do as a political strategy. Even if you don't think the "war on terror" should be a big deal, there's no denying that, in the eyes of the voters, it is a big deal, so Democrats need to say something about it. A lot of people on the left seem to have decided that the Cold War was exceptional and that the elections of 1992-2000 represent the norm and, therefore, national security will drop off the agenda soon enough. This seems clearly wrong.
From the desk of Jane Galt:When? When? WHEN????
Every New Yorker spends some time wondering about the question: why haven't they hit us again? And when will they?
New York magazine has a good rundown of the leading theories.
(Via Amy Langfield)
From the desk of Jane Galt:Activism ain't just a river in Egypt
Last spring, I got into a heated argument with a bunch of lawyers about judicial activism. Clearly, I was at a strenuous disadvantage, knowlege-wise. Still, all the lawyers were liberal, and while they said they were arguing that "judicial activism" didn't exist, what they were really doing was a sort of "He started it!" -- arguing that there are conservative activist, as well as liberal activist, decisions.
This is undoubtedly true. But that doesn't mean that judicial activism doesn't exist; it just means that it's a bipartisan vice. Even if the normal political usage of the term isn't strictly objective, one can still define what judicial activism is--broadly, starting from the desired result, and then reasoning backwards to the decision, as the court did in Roe v. Wade, and a lot of other cases.
I think that's a bad thing, even when I support the result; while I'm ambivalent about Roe, I'm certainly not about Lawrence v. Texas (I'm in favour of the result, if you had to ask), and yet I think that Scalia probably had the right of it: the constitution nowhere empowers the federal government to decide what we may, or may not do in bed, nor to prevent the states from deciding.
That doesn't mean that I think the states should be deciding such things; the very idea horrifies me in a deep down, visceral, Jefferson-Airplane-Reunion-Tour way. But I don't see where the constitution says that the federal government has the power to tell them to knock off; what actual constitutional right to sexual privacy (no emanations or penumbras, please) is being incorporated against the states?
Which brings me to something one of the lawyers said: basically, that sexual freedom is a constitutional right because it's important. This is certainly not a view limited to the left, and for a long time I too believed that all the freedoms I thought were important, from economic freedom to sexual privacy, were constitutional rights; the idea that the constitution guarantees a minarchist lifestyle to each and every American is rather common among parlor libertarians.
But that's not right. The founding fathers certainly never intended, for example, to scrub religion entirely out of the public square, and yet there are both libertarians and liberals who fervently believe that it is so. The founding fathers intended only that there should be no federal "established church. Their "constitutional right" is the product of judges who believed that religion should be scrubbed from the public square, not some primal tenet of American life. How did we manage to sacralise this tenet in under a decade?
Well, so what if it wasn't the original intent of the framers? Why should we listen to a bunch of dead white men, anyway?
Most people seem to think of the constitution as a guarantee of everything they believe sacred and good--whatever that may be. I think of it rather as a process for finding what is sacred and good; the operating manual for a classically liberal society. The rights it guarantees are mostly the rights that allow people to meet and debate ideas. We have freedom of speech, assembly, and religion so that we can meet and debate about the truth, including the truth about God. We have the right to bear arms, freedom from unreasonable searches, and the various criminal justice rights to prevent the government from curtailing those rights through the backdoor of intimidation. We have a mechanism for electing a federal government to be our proxies for the enacting of the truths we discover into law.
This is a model, of course, and it's imperfect; the founding fathers had many things in mind (and I'm neither a historian nor a legal scholar). But as a model, I think it works pretty well. And I think there's an important idea here: the constitution doesn't tell us what those truths are.
It doesn't tell us that the right to sexual privacy is fundamental to human liberty, nor that we may not hear prayers in our classrooms or see nativity scenes on the town square, nor any of the other multitude of "rights" we've discovered since the Warren court. If we discover such things, it gives us a perfectly good mechanism for enacting those truths into law: the legislature.
But the legislature is slow, and it panders to public opinion, and activists don't like that. How much easier to get a couple of judges on your side! It worked in Brown v. Board of Education, didn't it?
Well, no, it didn't, really. The court could order desegregation, but it didn't really get any where until the Federal government muscled in . . . and that took the general will, not the will of the court. Brown was also popular outside of the south, although of course not in it; it wasn't a case of judges going against the majority. Desegregation was everywhere a case of judges imposing an ideal on an unpopular minority: southern whites in the original cases, poor urban whites in the later ones, such as the notorious Boston case in which the judge bussed black children to distant and equally poor parts of the city, rather than integrating them with the lily white suburbs where the children of people like him went to school.
Desegregation--I'm in favour of it! 100%! Please don't call me a racist reactionary! [Too late!!!--ed] But it wasn't quite the brave stuff of the judicial legends. And where it went against the popular will, it hasn't worked very well. The deep south and northern urban areas may be political worlds apart, but they have one thing in common: the children of middle class white people almost all go to private school.
But also, civil rights is unique; race has been a constitutional problem since the start of our country, when America's "peculiar institution" was written into its fabric. It ultimately required a judicial solution, not least because blacks were being denied access to the decision-making machinery, by being systematically disenfranchised. [And still it took the Voting Rights Act, rather than a judicial decision, to end the disenfranchisement--ed. Good point!] The fact that judicial intervention may have worked once in a very special situation doesn't mean that it's a cure-all. The Warren Court was like those people who think that if one splash of perfume smells good, six will be better.
And so we get Roe v. Wade. Northerners and west-coasters think that there should be a federal right to abortion; the court, full of people educated in elite northern institutions, obliges. Feminists rejoiced; now no one could deprive them of their constitutional right. Take that, Jesus Freaks and Patriarchalists!
But you can't really short circuit the political process, not when the issue's one people care about. Roe gave birth to the social conservative movement, and continues to give it its main rallying point. And of course when you make new laws by the will of judges, rather than boring old majority rules, you tempt radicals to take the law into their own hands, with bombs and guns.
The result is that our process has become distinctly less democratic. Instead of warring over ideas, our political parties are increasingly warring for control of a despotic institution with which to make their ideas into law without having to get a legislative majority, and without accountability to the electorate. And the indignation of many liberals I talk to about this is astounding. How dare conservatives try to stack the court, when they have a clear constitutional right to stack it themselves?
No, that's unkind. But there's a weird lack of thought about the idea that brand new rights which were manufactured thirty five years ago are somehow sacred, untouchable things, and that conservatives are somehow trying to tamper with the fundamental liberties of America. America got along for almost two hundred years without a right for unmarried couples to buy birth control; while I'm foursquare against laws forbidding the practice, I'm not under the delusion that the Republic will fall if Griswold is overturned.
I'm not saying that pro-choicers are somehow not entitled to argue--vehemently--that the right to have an abortion is a fundamental human liberty should not be abridged. Many people so believe, and there's nothing inherently ridiculous about it. What is somewhat ridiculous is the language in which they argue it, carrying on about constitutional rights while simultaneously carrying on a fierce partisan fight to put judges in who will decide what those constitutional rights are. This reduces "constitutional right" to a fancy locution for "rights I think are important".
This is a bipartisan vice. As it happens, I'm currently siding with the Republicans, because they're interested in rolling back a lot of the creative work of earlier, Democrat-dominated courts. But I could as easily side with the Democrats tomorrow, if Republican judges decide that the Constitution could use a bit of reinterpretation their way.
All of this is an incredibly long-winded introduction to this article in the New York Times magazine by Jeffrey Rosen, on the myth of heroic judges:
Americans are not alone in imagining that courts can and should have the last word in the most intractable political disputes. Since World War II, more than 80 countries have transferred a startling amount of power from elected legislatures to unelected courts. As Ran Hirschl points out in his recent book ''Towards Juristocracy,'' citizens and political leaders around the globe are turning fervently to judges to resolve political stalemates. The high courts of South Africa, New Zealand, Canada and Israel, for example, have been asked to decide matters that go to the heart of their countries' national identities -- from the question of who is a Jew in Israel to the effort by Quebec to secede from Canada. As a result of this international craze, the belief that judges can be engines of social change has achieved ''near-sacred status,'' Hirschl writes.But this near-sacred belief turns out to be a myth. Far from protecting vulnerable minorities or promoting social and economic justice, the newly empowered high courts around the world tend to side with political elites in their efforts to entrench the status quo. . . . Instead of protecting minority rights against tyrannical majorities, the Supreme Court tends to follow national opinion, as reflected in the election returns. Moreover, on the rare occasions that the courts have tried to impose an outcome that is intensely unpopular, it has tended to provoke a strong political response. After the Massachusetts Supreme Court decreed a right to gay marriage and local officials in California responded by marrying gay couples in defiance of state law, 11 states passed constitutional amendments this past Election Day that ban gay marriage. That is hardly consistent with a vision of judicial heroics.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Justice delayed is justice denied
At least in this guy's courtroom. I've never seen the New York Times news side write anything this scathing.
December 3, 2004
From the desk of Jane Galt:Books galore
I just got an email report from my Amazon associates account, and a bunch of you have ordered books I recommended. This is going to sound dorky, but I really am so glad. The books I posted about are books I've really loved, and several of them are more than a little obscure, so I'm really happy to think that new people are finding them through me. I hope that if you like what you ordered, you'll email me to let me know. One of the greatest pleasures in life is sharing a really good book with someone else who loves it. I hope others of you will pick up one or more of these at your local bookstore, or borrow them from the library . . . and let me know about it when you do.
From the desk of Jane Galt:New election in Ukraine
The Ukrainian Supreme Court has just ruled that the presidential run-off will be redone. (Sorry, it's subscribers-only -- I can't find anyone else with the news yet. This is a victory for the opposition -- the Putin/Kuchma/Yanukovich axis has been trying to get the whole election re-done so that they can field a more appealing pro-Kremlin candidate, a manoeuvre known as "The Lautenburg".
I have no ideological dog in this fight; I think it's more important that the folks in Ukraine get the guy they voted for than that they get a guy who's pro-West, and indeed, I feel that way about the rest of the world so long as everyone's allowed to vote, and the people they vote for are committed to, y'know, having elections again even if they don't win. But it seems extremely dubious that the Ukrainian people did vote for Yanukovich, and a clean, fair election needs to be run. It's a pretty healthy sign, I think, that the supreme court thinks so too.
From the desk of Jane Galt:The End of an Era
First Toys 'R Us talks about getting rid of its toy business, and now IBM is selling off it's PC division. Next: Microsoft auctions off its operating system business in order to focus on making game consoles.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Headline of the Day
From the World Socialist website:
"To Fawning Applause from Canada's Elites, Bush Pledges to Wage Unending War".
I'm no socialist, but one can't help but be sickened by the warmongering Canadian elites, letting children starve in the streets as they build up their jackbooted armies, pouring money that could be funding health care into weapons research on their top secret ice guns programme. Kudoes to the WSWS to calling them out for their boot-licking alliance with the Bush administration.
December 2, 2004
From the desk of Jane Galt:Vote early and often
I have just been informed that Asymmetrical Information has just been nominated for "Best Top 100 Blog". If you love me, you'll go over there and vote for me right now. You do love me, don't you? Because I love you. And if you didn't vote for me . . . if I lost . . . I'd be so heartbroken the tears would just pour right out of my big green eyes and down my porcelain cheeks . . .
From the desk of Jane Galt:Question of the day
I've been struggling to recall a quotation I once heard. It starts "The British Isles, it is said, are composed of four races of man", and goes on to list Scots, Welsh, Irish and British, with a zinger for each.
I remember the Welsh one: "The Welsh, who pray on their knees and on their neighbours"
. . . and the ending, which goes, "And the English, who by considering themselves a race of self-made men, thereby relieve the Almighty of a terrible burden". But I can't remember the rest. Can anyone else provide a source and/or the rest of the quote?
Update
The full quote is:
The British Isles are composed of four races of man
. . . the Scottish, who keep the sabbath--and everything else they can get their hands on.
. . . the Welsh, who pray on their knees--and on their neighbours.
. . . the Irish, who don't know what they want, but are willing to fight for it anyway.
. . . and the English, who consider themselves a race of self-made men, thereby relieving the almighty of a terrible burden.
Thanks to my commenters. Y'all rock.
From the desk of Jane Galt:'Tis the Season: Special Books edition
Yes, that's right, I'm shameless. But really, these are books you should buy even if you don't use my amazon link. That's right, they're that good. Run down to the local Borders and pick up a couple today. You'll thank me.
What I'm Reading (or re-reading) Now:
Nonfiction
The Persian Puzzle, by Kenneth Pollack. Absolutely required reading, given the current nuclear imbroglio. Warning: enough failed American realism to make you want to side with the Iranians.
How We Got Here, by David Frum. It's a book about the 1970's, arguing that it wasn't the 1960's, but rather the 1970's, that created modern life. Yes, it sounds unbelievably dull, but it's incredibly good -- I've already re-read it several times. In the process, I've developed an enormous crush on David Frum. Also an enormous inferiority complex (see entry below for Conrad, Joseph.)