February 2009

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Of all things, good sense is the most fairly distributed: everyone thinks he is so well supplied with it that even those who are the hardest to satisfy in every other respect never desire more of it than they already have.

-Rene Descartes

February 29, 2008

Geniuses

Okay, what's wrong with this picture?

Posted by Wulf | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

February 23, 2008

Huffington Post to Hillary: It's Okay to Quit

Harold Pollack at Huffington Post writes that Hillary has a bright future, even if she never becomes president.

This is exactly why I've figured she will never give up - what legacy would it leave her? The woman who was so unpopular she couldn't even ride Bill Clinton's coattails? The powerful Senator and First Lady who still failed to become the first female POTUS? Who would want to go down in history as that? She would spend the rest of her life identified as a failure, despite everything she has accomplished (and like those things or not, you can't deny that she has accomplished quite a bit). I always figured that she will have no future but to be forever awkward if she loses the nomination.

But Mr. Pollack thinks I am wrong about that.

Stephen Graubard and others have noted that she can have a bright future, even if she does not ascend to our nation's highest office.

Since 1980, Ted Kennedy has known that he missed his window of opportunity to seize the presidency. He responded with three decades of brilliant service that has made him one of the best senators in American history.

Cheer up, Mrs. Clinton. If you can't be like Bill, you can always be like Ted. Democrats are begging for you and Mr. Obama to be excellent to each other - will you oblige? Or will you fight to the last?

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February 19, 2008

Castro, Icon

Fidel Castro's resignation makes him much in the news right now, but it is NPR’s Andrei Codrescu whose comments I have found most compelling. (3:51 audio)

The CIA couldn’t kill him, so I doubt if death will. He’ll go on, becoming more and more iconic until no one will remember what a real tragedy he was, and will continue to be, for the Cuban people.

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February 18, 2008

Linkfest

Some bloggers clear the baffles by sharing a host of recent thoughts that never grew into full articles of their own. This is exactly that kind of post.

-- An interesting week-long Anonymity Experiment.

I would spend a week trying to be as anonymous as possible while still living a normal life. I would attempt what many believe is now impossible: to hide in plain sight.

It’s 8 pages long, and the comments are interesting. I don’t recommend it to the paranoid. The article highlights the convenience-vs-security dilemma that most people simply ignore.

-- A mildly interesting related Slashdot thread on How to Convince Non-IT Friends that Privacy Matters.

-- The ABC legalities blog is among many sources questioning Barak Obama’s supposed commitment to an individual’s right to own and bear arms – handguns, specifically. But as this article points out, he sounds just like a lot of Republicans on the issue – the Bush administration in particular. Stop pretending that the GOP defends those who would defend themselves.

-- Related: carrying a concealed firearm is pointless if you don’t train yourself to use it. Bullet-Proof Your Mind here.

--Via our old friend Amy Ridenour, an article at Spiked Online highlighting Ten Myths about Nuclear Power. Personally, I like wind and wave power, and solar power and geothermal too... but I’m a science/technology type who just digs this stuff. None of these are efficient, zero-impact, viable sources of energy, and Greens need to realize that. A dose of education and reality is needed when considering how your electricity will be generated, no matter what your political views or secondary goals.

-- A NYT article this week asked, Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge? It is alleged that

anti-intellectualism (the attitude that “too much learning can be a dangerous thing”) and anti-rationalism (“the idea that there is no such things as evidence or fact, just opinion”) have fused in a particularly insidious way.

Not only are citizens ignorant about essential scientific, civic and cultural knowledge, she said, but they also don’t think it matters.

Well, does it matter? This is an age of increasing specialization, where the average American knows less about raising farm animals than ever before. We are less capable of fixing our own automobiles than any time in nearly a century. And outside of our occupational specialization, most of us can live in ignorance... what problem does it cause? If you don’t know what Pearl Harbor is, then you are ignorant… and how does that really matter to you? To the individual, it may not. To a nation or a society, it may – and that is why page two of the article contains the real meat. Our educational system does not produce the best and brightest students in the world. While I don’t plan to read the book that sparked this NYT article, I suspect it doesn’t address the underlying reason our schools fail and our citizenry seems anti-intellectual or anti-rational – compulsory education, through a lack of autonomy, creates a distinct lack of motivation among students.

Publius Pundit weighed in on the same article:

There's no data whatsoever in the article to show that Americans know less about Europe than Europeans know about America. There's not a speck of data to indicate that people in the Middle East are more eager to understand American culture than Americans are to understand the Arabian variant. The article refers to our "a failing educational system," seeming to have forgotten about an article just a few days ago in which the Times itself reported the whole world was copying our education system.

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February 17, 2008

Subprime Primer

Via Barry L. Ritholtz at The Big Picture, allow me to share a slideshow that explains the subprime situation. The language may offend but the stickfigure cartoons are very work safe. Click the cartoon below to launch the slideshow.

Whether it's funny or sad may depend on how much money you have lost in the housing market. The same was true of this post from a couple of weeks ago, which highlights exactly what bothers me about this "housing crisis". It's a correction in a market that has long known to be overvalued, and it is not an issue of children sleeping on the streets, as far as I can tell.

Language frames public opinion, which determines legislative action, so calling it a "housing crisis" will attract more government action (and sell more newspapers) than admitting that it's just investors trying to mitigate financial losses by walking out on mortgages and into apartments. Repeat the phrase at your own peril.

Posted by Wulf | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

February 16, 2008

This Round's on Me

NYC Mayor Bloomberg on the federal economic stimulus plan:

They want to send out a check to everybody to stimulate the economy... I suppose it won't hurt the economy, but it's in many senses like giving a drink to an alcoholic.

Hey, hey, hey... alcohol a depressant. This is a stimulus! It's completely different. Dumbass! (hic!)

By the way, Bloomberg was beat to the analogy by several weeks. TIME's Michael Kinsley:

The experts caution that for maximum stimulus effect, we must be sure to spend it immediately. No squirreling it away for a rainy day. In drinking circles, they call this hair of the dog: to cure a hangover, you have another drink...

My gripe is that telling Americans they need to borrow and spend just a little bit more to get us past this recession—and then reform their ways—is like telling an alcoholic he needs one more drink before sobering up.

All we need is a "spending like a drunken sailor" comment and we'll have this confusing stimulus-depressant-finances analogy wrapped up.

Well, that and a chaser.

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February 9, 2008

If only there was a word for this type of behavior…

If you had $75,000 of my money, what would you spend it on?

If you are the Virginia Senate, you would spend that taxpayer money on adjusting signs, letterhead, business cards and other literature to replace the phrase "mentally retarded" with "intellectually disabled."

At least there was an effort by the party of smaller government... oh wait, nevermind... that bill was passed unanimously

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What is a Man?

I love this article, What child-men need is some tradition, and how Rod Dreher correctly identifies the culture warriors of the Baby Boomer generation as the main culprit in our sad state of cultural traditions today, specifically in reference to what defines a man.

I suspected that Dreher's use of the word authority would cause the hair to bristle on some libertarians. In Justin's response over at autoDogmatic (Authority is the Anti-man), he focuses heavily on the word authority, and comes dangerously close to confusing government-free authority with that of modern conservative ideologies, as most discussions of Western culture often do.

I am often asked why I associate myself so closely with Conservatives and the Conservative Movement when I have so little--from a social liberty point-of-view--in common with them. (Okay, I have never actually been asked that before, but still.) I have an immense appreciation for cultural values and traditions that are self-imposed and regulated by family and society, much like Dreher speaks to:

It's not that all men, or even most, lived by this general code [virtue]. It's that they recognized that they would be judged by it, and judged themselves by it.

Where I split from the Conservative movement is any attempt to legislate these societal mores. That does not mean, however, that there cannot be a society-defined set of standards by which to live. I believe that this is a noble cause, instead of one that's often dismissed by the Boomers and mocked by the Left.

Submitting to, and accepting that there are things greater than you is also a submission to authority, and I'm not talking about the government outlawing smoking in your car. In this case, authority can be a pastor or a parent, a teacher or a mentor, an elder or an expert. The lessons coming out of the Sixties taught us that we were all great and perfect, and therefore, no one has the authority or right to judge you by how you live your life. This is counter-productive to a self-regulating, nanny-free-state, society. That societal pressure "to be square" that all the Boomers railed against, was actually a good thing. It was non-state, network-based, authority.

Hey, I love the autoDogmatic blog, so my apologies in advance for poking fun here, but I think the cancerous egocentrism passed down from Boomers to my Generation X is nicely summed up in one of Justin's sentences:

For one, I cannot fathom how anyone could be a better judge of my life than me.

And therein lies the problem.

Posted by Rammage | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

February 7, 2008

Hope for the Future

I just caught my 7-year-old son out of bed an hour past bedtime.

He was working ahead in his math book because "it's fun and it's easy!"

(sniff)

That's my boy!

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A Dedication

In light of his recent post about automobiles, this one's for Rammage:

That's Lord, Mr. Ford by Jerry Reed.

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Atlas Blogged

I have recently taken an ironic sabbatical from blogging. To explain why it is ironic, I will have to get into a topic I have long meant to spell out for the friends and readers of AtlasBlogged: the origin and meaning of this website. And if I’ve been asked it once, I’ve been asked it a thousand times. What is the origin of this website? What is the relationship betwixt the authors?

(Okay, I have never actually been asked that question. But still.)

The relationship betwixt the authors is that these are some of my best friends. And the origin of this blog is that we were talking about all of this stuff anyway, and we thought we’d share it with the world. You see, AtlasBlogged was born of an email list that Rammage hosted to keep in touch with some of his old college buddies. For years it was just an email list – a way to share stories and have arguments when we were supposed to be working or spending time with our families. But then came that fateful day when Rammage suggested that some of the political conversations would make good blog posts… and he offered to set up and host a group blog for us, free of charge.

I’d been on political discussion groups before, but I didn’t know what the hell a blog. Still, I didn’t see how it could be harmful. And there was the potential for fun. So we went forward setting up a blog for the guys on our email list.

Obviously, we needed a name. Now this part is very important – please pay attention. The name of our blog tells people a lot about us, and it’s mostly not accurate. This is hardly a list of Objectivists or anarcho-capitalists. I haven’t even read all of Ayn Rand’s books, but the title of the blog sure implies some greater level of devotion. So, let’s clear the air on that one right now.

Atlas Shrugged, the magnum opus of a phenomenally influential writer, asks us to consider what would happen to our world if the movers of the world were to stop moving it. Most of humanity is pushed forward to better and better lives without doing anything but going along for the ride, while only the most capable of our species truly invent, invest, and innovate. If those top few producers decided that they didn’t like the way they were being treated by the rest of the population, and were feeling unappreciated and even reviled, they went on strike… well, how would that play out? We know what happens when trash collectors, steel workers, teachers and others go on strike, but what about the capitalists themselves?

I love this question, because to some degree I’ve personally been on strike for years. I mean I work, I pay the bills and I support my family, but to quote my high school teachers and college professors, I don’t work up to my potential. And I do that on purpose. Because I see no need to live up to your expectations for me. At some point in high school I decided that the difference between a “C” and an “A” was unimportant to me, so long as I understood the material to my own satisfaction. Since then, the reward for my learning and labor has come from within, not from without. Don't get me wrong; I put my all into the jobs I’ve taken, but I’ve taken jobs that afford me personal free time, personal satisfaction, and a fun work environment. Most importantly, I’ve refused to bust my ass in a job where anybody else can take credit for my work, or benefit from it unduly. John Galt I am not, but like so many others I have empathized with the character and resented the Moochers and Looters of the world.

So how does this relate to blogging? Well, I blog for my own personal satisfaction, and not because of the expectations our readers might ever have. No offense, but I feel no obligation to you. And I blog when I could be doing something else – something you might think was more productive, from your point of view. But from my point of view, if there was something better I could be doing, I would be doing it. See my recent sabbatical as evidence.

No, I am not John Galt. No, we are not Objectivists. We just thought the name was catchy, punny, and appropriate to our own motives. I just thought I’d share that info with our readers.

Consider how Rammage has paraphrased Francisco D'Anconia:

If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater the effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders -- what would you tell him to do? I don't know. What could he do? What would you tell him? To blog.

And if he took a sabbattical from that? What would there be to say?

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February 6, 2008

US Automakers: Rising to the Challenger?

Via Jon Henke at QandO, on the new Dodge Challenger.

A good-looking throwback, to be sure, but I could care less if Dodge, GM, and Ford go out
of business. They deserve to.

I've been saying for years now that they continually fail to deliver on the biggest strength they've got going for them: US history and nostalgia. I mean, Volkswagen practically smacked the U.S. automarket on the head with their success over the re-release of the Beetle, and still no U.S. auto-manufacturer gets it.

Dinosaurs. They are smug Titanics that deserve to sink. You take a 55 Chevy body and put in a modern engine and interior, and you'll see a hit car. Why is Ford going all plasticky with their F-series of trucks? Blech. Where is the innovation in the auto market? Rain-detecting windshield wipers? Give me a freakin' break. That's a gimmick, not an innovation.

At least Dodge is giving it a go here. Although Telemetry on their dashboard is a little goofy. It's not telemetry, for cryin' out loud. In 2008, there's no excuse for a car not to have an LCD display with a built-in GPS. I mean, what's this cost the manufacturer? $50 a car? C'mon.

You have to be careful with cars like this. I love the idea, but it's too easy to try to make something overly manly and cross over into that gay area. (For example, I think the name "Titan" is slightly gay for a truck). The remarkable failure of the Hummer is a clear illustration of this phenomenon. Still, it's refreshing to see that U.S. auto-manufacturers have given up trying to out-honda Honda. Stick to what you know: building behemoth, gas-guzzling cars and trust that Americans will take care of you.

Where is the innovation?

Why isn't there an interface that I can plug into my car that sends me detailed emails of my car's health and status? Why are we still using paint? Where are the interchangeable exterior panels that I can swap out depending on my mood? How come no ones putting USB ports in cars?Why are we paying 30k for a car to subsidize the monstrosity known as the UAW's union? Why do I need 4000 air bags in my car?

Feh. I'll stick to my Nissans until American cars become American again.

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Global Warming and Eating Storm Crows

Reason article on Anthropomorphic Global Warming:

Either way, both sets of satellite data show that the trend in average global temperatures for the past decade has been more or less flat.

A decade of research shows that the global warming trend is not significantly different from zero. So, as we can see, not only is there no reliable evidence of man-made global warming, now it also appears that global warming itself may be showing itself as cresting as part of natural fluctuations. What an inconvenient observation for the storm crows.

So, how are we doing with all of those knee-jerk, feel-good ethanol mandates and subsidies?

Corn Dog - The ethanol subsidy is worse than you can imagine
Ethanol: A Tragedy in 3 Acts
UC scientist says ethanol uses more energy than it makes - A lot of fossil fuels go into producing the gas substitute
Ethanol Production Could Be Eco-Disaster, Brazil's Critics Say

Good times.

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Yet Another Republican Not Voting for McCain

With the outcome of Super Tuesday last night, I think it's important to revisit Billy Hollis' Open Letter to the Grand Old Party:

So let me say this plainly. If you nominate [...] John McCain, you've lost me. I won't vote for your candidate. Period.

I am but an infrequent author of an infrequently read blog, and as such, just another drop in the ocean. But I think it's worth pointing out that the GOP is on the verge of alienating yet another one of their ranks - a Twenty-year Republican who has voted straight-ticket for the better part of the Nineties and Aughties. John McCain getting the Republican nomination is the biggest indicator yet that the GOP has passed me by, or, maybe it's the other way around. Either way, the pretense of believing in small government, individual rights, and Federalism will finally be exposed.

I understand that the pendulum could swing back someday, so I'm not going to be so melodramatic as to declare that I'll never vote for a Republican again. But there is no way that I am voting for John McCain. Far preferable, to me, to write-in Ron Paul or the Libertarian Party candidate, or even see the Democrats win, as Billy Hollis wrote:

But if it's McCain [...], you'll get no vote or any form of support from me. I'll probably hope for a Democratic victory with a subsequent inept administration that causes the pendulum to swing towards somebody I can support in four years. Because, based on the Clinton vs. Bush comparison, I don't think a Democratic president would be any worse than [McCain], and at least there's an outside chance that the party and the base voters might rediscover their attraction to less government.

I'm tired of voting for the lesser of two evils, and I refuse to do that in 2008.

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