Fear Itself

One thing that irks me a bit about The World Is Flat is the way the author uses fear to motivate. He keeps saying: there are brilliant Indians and Chinese who want your job, so you need to be smarter and more educated - or you won't have your job anymore.

If this were true, there would be a lot more unemployed Americans.

At other times, when talking at a macro-economic level, he knows that jobs are not a zero-sum game. But when it comes down to addressing the individual reader, he seems to forget it.

It's good to encourage people to be well-educated. On average, it seems to get you a better job. But the less-educated also find work. Our economy has provided jobs for millions of poorly-educated laborers from Latin America.

He says: listen buddy
Better hurry up and study
Or they'll rob
You of your job!

But somehow, mostly, people here avoid
Being unemployed.

Almost 600 Pages

I'm reading The World Is Flat.
But the book is not. It's fat.

Found in a Tomb

The world's oldest multi-page book
Is in a museum where you can look
In wonder at its golden cover.

But try to read it, and you will discover
That neither you nor any of us can
Make any sense of ancient Etruscan.

Globalizing Medicine

It seems like there's a boom in offshore surgery. First I just heard about plastic surgery in Rio, but now I'm hearing about open heart surgery in India being a big bargain as compared to the costs in the U.S.

So, if you need some expensive procedure, and don't have insurance, this may be a good option. So sign up for your passport now, because the passport situation is still out of control.

Of course, it won't be worthwhile for minor procedures, because you do have to factor in the ticket to India!

If you need a new nose, try Brazil.
But head for Mumbai if you're really ill.

The Soul Selects Her Own Society

Tomorrow evening at our house we'll have a discussion of shunning as a practice among Objectivists. Marsha will start off with few brief observations. Please feel free to drop in! We'll try not to shun you!

I've only just begun
To shun.

Soon my social circle will be so small,
It won't contain anyone at all.

Not even me.
I'm rather sick of myself, you see.

Problem Solved!

My daughter's notebook wasn't connecting to wifi in Maryland.

So she brought it home for me to fix.

Presto, it instantly connected to our home wifi.

Apparently it was the networks in Maryland that were at fault, not her computer. But I hereby take full credit for "fixing" it.

That's me: tireless
In support of wireless.

Diversity Study

Robert Putnam, a Harvard prof, recently completed a study of ethnic diversity and its effect on communities. The controversial conclusion, as described today in the Wall St. Journal:

People in ethnically diverse settings don't want to have much of anything to do with each other.

There's an interesting exception - apparently those evangelical mega-churches are often happily integrated. Which suggests that the real issue is not ethnic mixing as such.

People are more likely to care
When the focus is on values shared.

Maybe We Could Call It "Sociable Medicine"

Hillary is now denying that she has ever advocated socialized medicine.

It depends on what you mean by "socialized," I suppose. She didn't advocate a single, government-owned enterprise for which all doctors would work. She pushed a system where there were local HMO monopolies - kind of like local phone companies - heavily regulated but privately held.

Is there a difference? Probably some. But as the level of regulation increases, the differences start to disappear. What does it mean to have a "private company" if government regulations completely determine the company's course of action?

Ownership without control
Is just a body without a soul.

Blue Ridge Runner

I got some funny looks on the Appalachian Trail, jogging along alone with my running shorts and water bottle. Each of the 2 times I met other people, they were in good-sized groups, dressed up for serious multi-day hiking with big backpacks. Perhaps to them I looked like a crazy person in the wilderness.

I met the second group at a trail crossroads. High school kids, mostly. The adult leader kept trying to talk to me, looking at me like he was trying to solve a puzzle. I said hello, but mostly I was looking at the carved wooden signs, making sure I went the right way. He called out "Good luck!" to me as I jogged away.

Apparently the Appalachian Trail has a higher level of mystique than I realized. Much is made of the fact that it's a "wilderness" trail. Well, I suppose it is, but it's crossed by a lot of roads, and it's well marked.

Besides, I was a Boy Scout. How lost could I get? I had examined a map. I had a compass in my pocket. I had a runner's GPS on my wrist. And I had a cellphone - which actually showed 3 bars at the higher elevations. Piece of cake. But my legs are still sore from running up and down those big blue ridges!

I'm a city boy
But I still enjoy
Hauling my tail
Over forest trails.

Re-Routing

Flew home. My router was dead.
It wouldn't power on.
It lay there - dark - instead.
Sad moment. It was gone.

But WalMart had a passel,
So I laid my dollars down,
And now, with minimum hassle,
I've washed away my frown.

Long Weekend

I spent the last few days in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia, without internet or much even much cell coverage.

I climbed up Crabtree Falls Trail and jogged some of the Appalachian Trail as well. My legs are sore, but it was a good, arduous birthday adventure.

Today we visited Thomas Jefferson's house - my second visit. Then we toured James Monroe's place nearby - my first.

We did not visit Washington's house or Madison's house, which aren't all that far.

Virginia was the residence
Of many early presidents.

Statuesque

Whether sunny or shady,
You'll find this leafy lady
Watching Chicago's sky
Go by.

Update: The artist says, "The garden is about Daphne. She was running away from Apollo who wanted to capture her. She had run out of options. She called upon her father, the river god, to help her. He turned her into a laurel tree to save her from Apollo. The garden is celebrating the moment she realized she was free. She surrendered to the unknown and attained freedom."

The Y2K Bug Finally Strikes

Blogger Finds Y2K Bug in NASA Climate Data

He saw the data displayed
Some funny spiking
Right around Y2K,
Which was not to his liking.

Turns out the warmest year of the 20th Century, in the U.S., was not 1998 after all. It was 1934.

Tilting Against Windmills

In case you haven't seen it, here's a Youtube clip from the Daily Show, making fun of the rich folks in Nantucket who are fighting against the Cape Wind project, which is designed to generate electricity from offshore wind turbines.

"We're environmentalists!" they boast.
They think renewable energy is the most
Wonderful thing - until it's near their coast.

Dissidence: A Disease Like Any Other?

Soviet psychologists used to diagnose
Dissidents as nuts in need of drugs.

They'd pump them full of sedatives till they were comatose
And sweep them underneath asylum rugs.

Even now, it turns out, Putin's fervent foes
Can be committed by white-coated thugs.

Proving and Reproving

I don't know too much about birth control pills. But I was puzzled recently when there was a lot of publicity about a new pill that could permanently stop menstruation.

You see, I had long been told that birth control pills simulated pregnancy. And pregnancy - while it lasts - sure does stop menstruation. So what was with the new pill?

Enlightenment came to me today, when visiting reasonpharm.

The problem is that women could already do this long before Lybrel showed up. Any of the existing brands of birth control pills will work -- simply omitting the placebo pills in the pack and taking active pills continuously will do the trick. Gynecologists have known this for years, but apparently years of successful experience aren't enough to satisfy the FDA; only an expensive clinical trial will do.

Well, the government is famous for spending money to prove things we already know. So it's no surprise that they would require companies to do the same,

Who will protect us
From our protectors?
Thank goodness for skillful
B.S. detectors!

bloggers@normarae.org

Big news from the Yearly-Kos Convention here in Chicago: a bunch of bloggers want to organize into a labor union.

Fantastic. A long time ago I was in the Teamsters.

We'll make The Man shake
With our newfound powers,
When we go on strike
For shorter hours!

(Joke stolen from Glenn Reynolds.)

Behind the Wheel

I drove by a horrible traffic accident on my way home from Michigan this evening. It was on frequently nerve-wracking stretch of interstate called the Borman Expressway. A lot of volunteers had stopped and emergency vehicles were just arriving.

There's a lot of trust involved in driving on busy highways. Mostly you trust that other drivers won't hit your vehicle.

Considering the constant decisions
It's impressive there aren't more collisions.

Becoming Jane

Saw Becoming Jane. a love story featuring Jane Austen as the heroine. In principle, it's like Shakespeare In Love - a made-up back story for the genesis of literary genius.

I liked it emotionally, even though my brain kept objecting: "we don't know anything like that!"

Even if we knew her whole life story,
Would it really help explain the glory
That rages on her pages?

I, For One, Welcome Our New Droid Overlords

Robots with guns are on patrol in Iraq.

If they misbehave, they can be ordered to blow themselves up.

If the robots figure out how to turn off the self-destruct feature, we could be in trouble!

Well, not really. These are just remote control devices, not autonomous machines that decide on their own what to kill. Someone sits at a console... a lot like a video game.

And if the insurgents take it hostage, well,
We'll blow it up and blow them all to hell.

Collapse

This horrible Minnesota bridge collapse is reminding me a bit of the Katrina disaster, in that there were lots of warnings, but state officials chose watchful waiting and perennial patching.

This is a risky approach with structures that can fail catastrophically.

When a road has holes,
You can patch it.
But when a bridge falls,
You can't catch it.

Old Man's War

Yesterday I finished John Scalzi's trilogy of interstellar trouble, which started with Old Man's War, continued with The Ghost Brigades, and wrapped up nicely with The Last Colony. As one reviewer mentioned, the books are fairly short, so reading the whole trilogy is a lot like reading one volume of many other trilogies.

It's "hard s.f." with a military edge, somewhat reminiscent of Heinlein at times. The author has a lot of big, interesting ideas. His characters are sharply, but not deeply drawn. The twists and turns keep coming throughout the series, so I'm just going to tell you the opening premise:

People on earth, when they're old enough, if they wish, are allowed to leave the planet forever, in order to be rejuvenated and join the Colonial Defense Force to fight in wars against aliens.

If you happen to like this genre, I recommend the series.

You grow old, and then turn young
In order to be slung
To deadly far-flung wars
Among the stars.

Contenders

Hillary's taken flak
For having Bush's back
On his push into Iraq.

But Obama is the man
For invading Pakistan.

Other candidates, beat that if you can.

Herding Kittens

Some years back, with a group of friends on a rainy day, we visited Ernest Hemingway's house on Key West.

There were cats, cats galore, cats with extra toes. Of course, we petted them.

Now the federal government wants to help the cats. By forbidding people to pet them. And by locking them up at night.

The manager of the Hemingway Museum responded with a typical cat-lover sentiment: "They own us. We don't own them."

The government's theory, apparently, is that the cats are "performers," and need to be regulated like zoo animals.

Thus does over-reaching insanity
Descend, at last, to inanity.

Legal action has begun.
Run, little kitties, run!

Distressing Condition

Our chief justice had a seizure today.

I expect to hear a lot of dumb 4th amendment jokes concerning "unreasonable searches and seizures".

He had another seizure back in 1993. So that's 2 seizures, lifetime, 14 years apart. But once you've had 2, doctors often recommend meds for the rest of your life.

Fyodor Dostoevsky scraped along without medicine for a more drastic form of this condition, managing to write great works of literature. But I bet he would have jumped at the chance to get modern drugs, despite his suspicious attitude toward scientific progress.

Would you rather take an annoying med
Or risk another storm in your head?

Ha Ha - Aha!

Sometimes a sudden laugh reveals
What a serious face conceals.

Mining Party

We had a good crowd for the Mine Your Own Business DVD-viewing party. People enjoyed watching it and it generated a lot of discussion.

My favorite line was from some British academic. He said that progressives have stopped believing in progress.

I stopped and thought about that one. Like most broad generalizations of big ideological movements, it's easy to find exceptions. But it's true that Progress with a capital P is no longer the ideal it once was in liberal circles.

Move forward with a will.
Forget about standing still.

Try stopping in your tracks,
And you'll soon start drifting back.

No Footwork

Though bound by circumstance to the ground,
Plants have found a way to dance,
Swaying while the wind plays on.

A Cane Transforms

Got off the train tonight and who did I see but my former next door neighbor, out taking a stroll, hobbling along on a cane.

He's in his 70's. We walked for a while and he began talking dispiritedly about how he "wastes his life" nowadays by doing things like taking strolls. He's a widower, and his kids have long ago moved out.

I felt bad for him as I struggled to understand his words. He's from County Mayo, in Ireland, and sometimes my ears stumble on his accent.

Somehow we started talking about hurling, an Irish game that looks, from a distance, a bit like lacrosse. I confessed I had never seen it played and asked him if it was a good game.

You should have seen the energy flow into his body. The cane in his hand suddenly became a hurley stick as he vigorously demonstrated basic moves to me. Yes, he had played the game, and rather well too, as a young man.

Playfulness had replaced
His sense of waste.

Mine Your Own Business

We're going to be hosting a showing of Mine Your Own Business this Saturday at 8pm. My wife saw it at Freedom Fest in Las Vegas and raved about it. Feel free to join us.

Youtube trailer here.

I'm told it's a skillful expose of certain environmentalists who interfere with mining projects in impoverished parts of the world. They come off as arrogant and uncaring about the truly poor.

Perhaps they think the poor should be kicked to the curb,
So the rich can enjoy the scenery undisturbed.

Hands On

kraorh points out that New York's Governor Spitzer has a reputation as a micro-manager.

Which makes it harder to understand it -
How did he miss the underhanded
Behavior of his underlings?

If I had that sort of occupation
I'd hope to develop a reputation
As a boss who favors delegation.

In the Spitzer

If you're a prosecutor, it's hard to get in trouble when you use the police to look for dirt on people. It's just part of your job! So what if you leak damaging stories about defendants to the press? The press doesn't complain.

But if you're governor of New York, and your staff uses the state police to look for dirt on a rival, and then - when they can't find real dirt - feeds false stories to the press, you can get in all kinds of trouble.

Or, rather, your staff can get in all kinds of trouble. After all, you didn't know anything about it.

"Finally, I apologize to the people of the state of New York for letting this matter become a distraction from the vital work at hand."

I like that. It's just a distraction. Move along. Nothing to see here.

He was on a crusade
To get rid of crooks,
But his staff mislaid
Their ethics books.

Hard to Believe

Quick - what famous American leader was killed by a nutty Communist?

Did you answer John Kennedy?

There's a guy who has a new book out claiming that liberals just couldn't handle that truth. He argues that the Kennedy assassination caused "cultural disorientation," which in turn led to the campus radicalism of the late Sixties.

I agree that a lot of people wanted a different villain for this piece. Preferably one with right-leaning politics.

But, so far, I can't see the basic line of causality here. Isn't it simpler just to say that the Left's sympathy with the "ideals of communism" was sufficient cause for both: 1) preferring a right-wing villain, and 2) desiring a cultural revolution?

Allegedly the killer was a commie,
So disbelieving liberals went balmy
Leading to a cultural tsunami.

That's his theory.
Color me leery.

Between Barack and a Hard Place

We went to see the latest Second City comedy revue, "Between Barack and a Hard Place." They spent a lot of time having fun with the way that so many people, from all sorts of backgrounds, identify with Obama.

There was a funny bit, too, where Hillary tried to figure out what she could do to make people like her.

Looking good, and mouthing pieties,
Makes you popular in most societies.

Nothing But Blue Sky

I'm not really sure I ever get the so-called runners high. But sometimes, after running for hours on a nice day. the colors all seem to get brighter.

It's like a laundry detergent commercial for the world: the sky is bluer, the grass greener, the flowers brighter.

I'm not going to claim it makes long-distance running worthwhile. But it's an exquisite experience.

Achy and dazed
As feet pound the ground,
Amazed by beauty
All around.

Not Her Day

In area traffic news, Ruth Rose, 94, drove her car into a restaurant yesterday.

"She's not sure what happened," said the local police chief.

Maybe there was a "Drive Thru" sign?
Good thing she only injured nine.

Ergo's Puzzle of Bulbous Chunks

Ergo writes from India:

Ya know, being gay and all that, I never really figured out the straight male’s fascination with breasts. In my eyes, they were just large chunks of bulbous fat–and quite frankly, large viscous chunks of fat anywhere is simply an undesirable thing.

So he's interested in a new evolutionary theory:

Harvard anthropologist Frank Marlowe contends that larger, and hence heavier, breasts sag more conspicuously with age than do smaller breasts. Thus they make it easier for men to judge a woman’s age (and her reproductive value) by sight—suggesting why men find women with large breasts more attractive.

Is it the truth
Men prize big scoops
Simply because
A lack of droop
Is proof of youth?

Facts, Schmacts

Newsweek's Evan Thomas, speaking of the Duke non-rape case:

"We just got the facts wrong. The narrative was right, but the facts were wrong."

That reminds me. I worked as a reporter one summer. I got the facts wrong about a fire once. Being a strict sort of guy, the editor was not pleased, and seemed to think I had the story wrong.

As for the facts, be flexible.
Bend them to fit the narrative.
Reality is optional,
The party line is imperative.

From "Quicksand Beach"

choriamb links to a wonderful article about a lovely poem by Kate Bingham. The poem is titled "Divorce."

I had been looking forward to divorce –
recriminations, therapy and casual sex,
the disentangling of my life from yours

That's the opening. But, trust me, it's a love poem. Click above to see the rest.

(Okay, you may not like it. But I do.)

It lures you in with grief,
And spins you around with relief.

Pupfish Popping Through The Pipe

There's an endangered little critter - the desert pupfish - that has successfully invaded some man-made ponds.

The artificial ponds were designed for scientific research - of something else completely.

Apparently the fish swam a mile and a half through a pipe.

The fish were in a declining niche,
"Our lives are at risk!" they started to gripe.

Some of them got the traveling itch,
And swam through over a mile of pipe
To man-made ponds of a suitable type.

Once there, they happily swam about.

"This is way better than the old ditch
Where we used to hang out!"
They were heard to shout.

Recreation of Quotations Past

The St. John's College magazine, the current one with J.S. Bach on the cover, (warning:pdf) has a quote from Ayn Rand featured on page 23, but it's attributed to Marcel Proust. Someone else pointed it out to me a while back.

It's her definition of art. Try googling: proust "metaphysical value judgments"

You will get a lot of hits. Proust has become Objectivist in his theory of art, in retrospect.

I suspect someone credited Proust
To give the quotation a boost.

Right One and Right Two

There's a disputed passage somewhere where Rand argues something like:

It's right for a man to do X, therefore he has a right to do X.

Where X is some virtuous behavior generally necessary for human survival.

The 2 occurrences of the word "right" are a bit different in meaning, the first being ethical, the second political.

Some have worried that her argument implies that one ONLY has a political right to do ethical things. But this reading of the argument sounds rather unlikely, since she morally condemned all sorts of things, but thought most of them should be perfectly legal.

Her argument still makes sense if she simply thought that virtuous activities should generally be legal, as well as many - but not all - forms of bad behavior.

She thought committing force or fraud
Should be outlawed.

Otherwise, you're free to will
Good or ill.

But when you choose unvirtuous stuff,
Life gets rough.

Brigadoon Dissolves

As conference attendees headed home, I finally got a chance to meet bjornblog in real life. He was every bit as charming as his pictures indicate, and not stuffy at all.

When Bjorn, the white bear,
Travels by air
He's coldly polite - even polar.

He's got a cute racket:
He steals peanut packets
And grinds them to paste with his molars.

The End Is Here

The end of lecture-live-rhyming, that is.

Robert Poole spoke on "Fighting Back in the War Against Auto-Mobility".

Privatize the roads
And handle larger loads.

Alexander Cohen extemporized on "Rights and the Rule of Law".

Alex Cohen spent
Time on what is meant
When we speak of the Consent
Of the Governed.

Live Rhyming Friday the 13th

This morning started out with Walter Donway, speaking on "Poetry: the Supreme Romantic Art Form". In his abstract, he staked out the position that "the medium of poetry is meter".

What could be sweeter
Than deeply felt meter?

Stephen Hicks addressed "The Fate of Art under Capitalism".

The historical record
May be somewhat checkered,
But for the most part,
Markets make for great art.

Jason Walker tackled "Photography as a Selective Recreation of Reality".

Is taking a photograph...
Art or simply craft?

Or could it be half and half?

Fred Stitt spoke on "The Life and Work of Frank Lloyd Wright".

Confined within his spaces, I feel free.
Mr. Wright is quite all right with me.

Finally, wrapping things up with a bang, Thor Halverson talked about "Making Pro-Liberty Films".

Truth may emerge from dry tomes,
But movies make it hit home.

Symphonic Tonic

Douglas Wagoner spoke about the Symphony Orchestra. He began by talking about the musical instruments they use.

Pity the poor English Horn.

They can't quite distinguish
How it got born.

It's not really English,
Nor is it a horn.

No wonder its singing
Can sound so forlorn!

Lectures with Fountainhead References

Robert Bidinotto spoke this morning on: Is There an Objectivist Sense of Life? His answer was a qualified no.

Probe a bit, and you will find
Under your conscious state of mind,
Automated premises.

They color how you react to art,
And guide your deciding who plays the parts
Of Heroes and their Nemeses.

Bidinotto mentioned, by way of example, an argument in the pages of the New Individualist - between Roger Donway and my wife. Roger wrote:

Where the purpose of bourgeois morality is to survive by means of prudence, frugality, industry, and perseverance, the purpose of Continental Romantic morality is to experience the edgy, stylish, stimulating, and contemporary. Bourgeois man desires a decent life secured by doing what he can with what he has scraped together. But the Romantic burns with the vision of all that he could be and do, if only he had the means, which he would have if true Reason and Virtue prevailed.

In reply Marsha wrote that if Roark was trying to secure a decent life with what he could scrape together, she would "eat her house."

That got a laugh from the crowd.

Bidinotto described this as a sense-of-life disagreement, and went on to describe Roger as leaning toward the Eddie Willers perspective.

Marsha, defending Howard Roark,
Declared he wasn't an edgy dork.

Roger was said to favor Eddie:
Not too romantic but pleasantly steady.

Duncan Scott then presented video interviews with Iris Bell and Patricia Neal. Bell worked with Rand in the early NBI days. Neal played a certain troubled heroine in the Fountainhead film.

Patricia Neal
Kept things "reel"
And gave us a juicy peek
Into how she played Dominique.

Back In The Saddle

Today was the "free day" - free of lectures! So I quit the company of my fellows, and did what romantic poets are supposed to do: commune with nature.

Nature responded by drenching me with wonderful thunderstorms. Twice.

I did my communing on a mountain bike. No poet of yore owned such a contraption, but I believe that Lord Byron would have approved.

I took a trail from Ashland, MD to York, PA. It's about 82 miles round trip.

Half way back, just after 6 PM, I realized that my back tire had gone flat.

Fortunately, I had just passed a bicycle shop with an "OPEN" sign.

The lady of the shop took a look. It turned out my tire had a thorny problem. Literally. 2 of them.

Thorns are Mother Nature's spears.
I saved them both as souvenirs.
She tried to nail me, but she failed.
Technology, again, prevailed.

From Business To Romanticism

More talks to attend!
Talks without end!

William Kline talked about Business Ethics and Objectivism. I came in late, but I got this part:

In Ayn Rand's moral theory,
As you probably knew all along,
Rights violations are merely
A subset of ethical wrongs.

It was onto Tibor Machan, calling for: No Taxation With Or Without Representation.

He says if you study the facts,
That Robin Hood
Was actually good,
Since he was just taking back
Funds that had been wrongly taxed.

Then I ran out to rent a bicycle, so I missed a class.

Then Fred Stitt gave a lecture
On gothic architecture
With its beautiful well-lit spaces.
(Disregard the gargoyle faces!)

Then I attended a talk by my wife
Who talked about the project which, to my knowledge,
Has taken over her life:
A new college

Finally, I went to see Lindsay Hardman, who talked about the Romantic era in painting, with a great set of slides.

If Romantic art history
Seems like a mystery,
It's too bad you didn't attend,
Because now you would comprehend,
Or at least experience improvement
In your grasp of this complex movement!

From Business To Romanticism

More talks to attend!
Talks without end!

William Kline talked about Business Ethics and Objectivism. I came in late, but I got this part:

In Ayn Rand's moral theory,
As you probably knew all along,
Rights violations are merely
A subset of ethical wrongs.

It was onto Tibor Machan, calling for: No Taxation With Or Without Representation.

He says if you study the facts,
That Robin Hood
Was actually good,
Since he was just taking back
Funds that had been wrongly taxed.

Then I ran out to rent a bicycle, so I missed a class.

Then Fred Stitt gave a lecture
On gothic architecture
With its beautiful well-lit spaces.
(Disregard the gargoyle faces!)

Then I attended a talk by my wife
Who talked about the project which, to my knowledge,
Has taken over her life:
A new college

Finally, I went to see Lindsay Hardman, who talked about the Romantic era in painting, with a great set of slides.

If Romantic art history
Seems like a mystery,
It's too bad you didn't attend,
Because now you would comprehend,
Or at least experience improvement
In your grasp of this complex movement!

Lecture Liner Notes

Mike Shapiro continued the TAS Lecture Fest with an entry entitled: "Program Music (or: What Does E Flat Look Like?)"

Music requires a structure,
Often purely formal,
But music that paints a picture
Is also fairly normal.

From Vivaldi's buoyant Spring
To Ives' Unanswered Question,
Composers labor to bring
Sound out of pregnant suggestions.

Live Rhyming the TAS Summer Seminar

I'm here in beautiful Towson, MD, for the TAS Summer Seminar, where I am seeing lots of friends, at least one of whom I had never met in real life.

Today, the presentations began.

Instead of normal note-taking
I have the bad habit of making
Rhymes with some passing relation
To the formal presentation.

But sometimes I skip the essential
And go straight to the tangential.

First talk I attended was Ed Hudgins on the State of the Culture:

What is the state of the culture?
Do the circling vultures
Prove that we are doomed?

Or shall the soaring eagles,
Glorious and regal,
Chase away the gloom?

Next was Glen Fletcher on the Laws of Nature:

The older idea was that natural law was descriptive,
Orders from God that told physical things how to act.
The newer idea is that such so-called laws are descriptive
Patterns we see that run true in the world of fact.

Next up was my wife, Marsha Familaro Enright, talking about Social Skills. At one point she explored how one of the obstacles to clear reasoning, for many people, is the fact that clear reasoning challenges the beliefs held dear by family and friends:

Sometimes the use of reason
Feels like a kind of treason
To the "truths" we've imbibed
As a child of the tribe.

Okay, that's all I've got so far.

Heinlein Centennial

I remember, when I was 16, having a conversation with a fellow student about Robert Heinlein. This kid's position was that Heinlein was a "hack". He seemed to think it was obvious.

The opposite was obvious to me. He was a "genre writer" of course, but that doesn't make one a "hack". A hack, as I understood it, is someone who just churns out work for money, without believing in the value of his own work.

In principle, a mainstream "literary fiction" writer can be a hack.

But Heinlein sure seemed sincere to me, and he tossed off suspenseful stories full of his own distinctive world view.

Think outside the box.
"Throw rocks."

Through Another's Eyes

I've been hosting a young man from Botswana for a few days. He hasn't been to the U.S. before, so it's fascinating to hear his observations.

He arrived on July 4, and was surprised to see all the stars and stripes flying on private residences. He says that never happens back home, even on national holidays.

He was also disbelieving about vanity license plates. Didn't there have to be an official number? He liked it, once he believed it, and saw that it was a good money-making opportunity for the government as well. He's probably already emailed home about it.

Soon they'll have vanity plates
In Botswana - just like the States.

Jane Eyre

I recently finished a reading of Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte.

I was fascinated by this marriage proposal our heroine gets from a minister:

"God and nature intended you for a missionary's wife. It is not personal, but mental endowments they have given you: you are formed for labour, not for love. A missionary's wife you must -- shall be. You shall be mine: I claim you -- not for my pleasure, but for my Sovereign's service."

She's actually a sort of submissive and altruistic heroine, and she's willing to sacrifice herself in many ways, but she draws the line at such a loveless marriage.

She ends with a man who touches her with pleasure
And regards her as a treasure.

Is Binary 111 Lucky For Androids?

Tomorrow's 7/7/07.

That resembles 7-7-7, which is a jackpot combo on a slot machine. So I figure the machines will be busy in Vegas tomorrow.

You'll probably have to compete
For a seat
In order to lose a lot
In a slot.

Tough Guys In The News

Here's a 72 year old who beat up a would-be pickpocket.

But this outdoes it: a cab driver who tore a tendon when kicking a flaming terrorist in the testicles.

Never underestimate
Citizens when they get irate.

Life In The Fast Lane

Down the highway thundered
A hybrid doing one hundred!

I didn't know they'd go that fast.
Sounds like an eco-friendly blast!

Go Fourth!

Today I'm thinking about freedom of expression, in the U.S. Lots of other countries, and some of our own citizens, think we're way too extreme here.

Some of them would like us to just put a cork in it.

As we used to say on the playground: Too bad. You're not the boss of us.

Let's keep independence.
In splendid ascendance.

What Next

Downtown was crawling with cops as I made my escape this evening.

The lakefront is a party tonight: Taste of Chicago plus a huge fireworks show.

Not to mention that we're at threat code Tangerine.

Designed to disconcert:
A terrorist doctor alert!
They crash flaming cars
Into airports and bars
But only the drivers get hurt.

Get Out Of Jail Free

Not pardoned, nor exonerated,
But Libby has been liberated.

It must be tough to prosecute
Only to have the prez commute.

Better Late than Never

Jose Temprana, just got his American citizenship.

He's pretty happy about it:

''I feel different,'' said Temprana, who served 30 years in Cuban jails. ''Satisfied, very happy. It was worth the wait.''

They finally let him out of Cuba when he was 93 years old.

Once here, he worked to get his citizenship. "I've wanted ... it since I was 8 or 10 years old," he said.

He's 105 now.

He wanted this since he was 8.
What a wait.

Buying Time

No one can afford all the medical care they might need. Not even Bill Gates. That's because a lot of stuff still needs to be discovered, and his billions would not suffice.

He can afford more than the rest of us, in this as in other things.

Billionaires routinely die of incurable diseases. They do die later than the rest of us, since they can basically pay for several doctors to sit by their bedside full time, which no insurance policy is ever going to cover.

So that old Kansas song, Dust in the Wind, was wrong when it said: "all your money won't another minute buy".

What really drives health progress, economically, is not billionaire's bucks. The mass market provides much bigger incentives than Bill Gates can.

The bad thing is that governments keep intruding on this helpful mass market.

Which is why Andrew Sullivan's warning seems timely. He goes into some detail with lots of stats about Europe's decline in the Rx research biz. "America is the last refuge for pharmaceutical innovation. And the left wants to kill that off."

Why would we want to cut off the legs
Of a goose that lays curative eggs?

Where Is That Border Exactly?

We built a little border fence
Down in Arizona
But some of where we built the fence
Is land we do not owna.

Diaper Drama

Lisa Nowak's lawyer now insists that the disgraced astronaut never wore a diaper on her long drive to confront her lover.

"It jeopardizes our ability to have a fair trial when the accused is the butt of jokes," Lykkebak said.

The "butt" of jokes?

Is this guy really a lawyer? Or is he Jay Leno in disguise?

Better counsel she needs to find.
As for this one, leave him... behind.

Duds on Wheels

So that's 2 unexploded car bombs in London. These particular bad guys must be technically challenged.

Let me say, for starters,
That's how I like my martyrs -
Technically inept.

I hope they'll soon be swept
Into a Scotland Yard cell
So they can break down and tell
Where all their friends live, as well.

Worrying Over Weekend Warriors

For years I've read articles that advise exercising throughout the week - particularly painting the dangers of being a "weekend warrior" who slacks off 5 days and then goes gung-ho on the 2 days off.

Apparently these guys were terribly vulnerable to injury.

But I had often followed the "weekend warrior" pattern - especially when my weekdays got busy. And I didn't seem to suffer any ill-effects. I wondered what made me different.

Then someone tried to get some hard numbers, and came up short:

Given all the anecdotal reports about the weekend-warrior phenomenon, “we were surprised that the prevalence was low,” says study author Judy Kruger, an epidemiologist at the CDC’s National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.

Even in the article they warn against "deconditioning" during the week. But has anyone done a study to prove that a normal workweek truly runs down your fitness? I'm skeptical. It's not like bed rest. It's work!

Where are the weekend warriors,
Weakened by 5 days off,
Traipsing office corridors
With grim tubercular coughs?

What if those warnings were crazy?
What if it's just not true?
What if slacking for 5 days
Isn't so bad for you?

Icko

I'd like to see less
Of Michael Moore,
But to my distress,
I'm seeing him more
Than even Al Gore,
Which puts me close
To a lethal dose.

Taking a Shot

Suppose you wake up with a splitting headache, and you ask your wife to take you to the ER, and the ER folks say you have been shot in the head, and your wife chooses that moment to make herself scant. Yep, it happened in Florida.

The ER nurse said
"You've been shot in the head."
Then the wife fled.

Losing and Winning

You may remember I lost my watch at the Cutting Edge Half-Distance Triathlon on Sunday. It turns out I also lost my finisher's medal - probably when I went to wash off in the lake afterwards.

I wrote to Becca, one of the people running the race, asking if I could pay shipping and handling to get a replacement.

She wrote back:

Hey! I found your medal and your banana during the cleanup. I'll send the banana to you tomorrow!

LOL The medal will be on it's way in the morning! Forget the shipping just come back and see us again...and tell your friends!

Seriously, this was a professional but very friendly race.

They posted pics. Here's me enjoying the bicycle ride. Here's me stunned to be done.

When I finished, I looked like hell,
But they took my pic and rang a bell,
And I felt swell.

Our Helpful Relatives

Sharon Begley, in Newsweek, is going on about how scientists have discovered "selfless altruism" among chimps.

Selfless altruism... that's the bestest kind, of course. It was surely what August Comte had in mind when he coined the term.

Apparently there is also "selfish altruism," where you help somebody because they might help you back someday.

By the way, the chimps will only act with "selfless altruism" when they aren't "preoccupied with getting food for themselves."

When there's chimp food to be chomped,
They're not big fans of Comte.

Carjacked Tow Truck

A Chicago city tow truck driver got carjacked today. Downtown. He was in the process of towing a car when it happened.

The carjacker got arrested after crashing the truck into a fire hydrant.

Who would steal a city tow truck? They're kind of conspicuous.

I've thought up a scenario to explain this:

The truck starts to tow
A car belonging to Joe.

Joe blows his stack
And gets his car back

By stealing the truck
On which his car is stuck.

Watchless in Effingham

This morning, soon after I started swimming, I felt my watch come off my wrist in the murky lake water. I looked down and could see it tumbling downward. I reached for it, and touched it, but it tumbled, out of my grasp, toward lake bottom.

I was tempted to dive for it. But this was the start of a triathlon. Every second counted - even though I would no longer be able to count them. So I shrugged it off and kept swimming.

On the surprisingly hilly bike ride, I had a speedometer with a clock. No worries.

But on the run, in the heat, I was unsure of my plodding pace.

When I turned the final corner of the run, I could see the finish line clock: 6:40.

6:40 had been my best time ever at this distance. In 2000.

I cranked up my speed and made it to the finish line before the clock ticked over to the next minute.

It wasn't a good competitive time. Out of 130 people, I was 118th.

But tying my younger self
Is top shelf.

Not In My Back Yard

I saw in passing that China is now pumping more carbon dioxide into the air than we are. For some time, it has been reported that Chinese air pollution floats over the Pacific to reach our west coast.

I suspect that all our clean-air laws have helped move manufacturing to countries that are willing to endure smokestacks for the sake of economic gain.

Have we simply outsourced dirty air
To over there?

Male Volunteers Disappear

Glenn Reynolds sez:

ATLAS IS SHRUGGING. "Perhaps men are merely acting rationally. They’ve assessed the risk of volunteering to work with children, and want no part of it."

I've worked with children - I spent some years coaching summer soccer - and I found it to be rewarding work. But the AYSO people did tell us to avoid being alone with a child.

After all, who wants to be up on "inappropriate touching" charges? Even when such charges are false, they're hard to live down.

As a matter of fact, there's an old high school teacher of mine, James Connelly, now in his 70's, who finds himself in exactly such a situation. Even though the charges were unfounded, St. Ignatius refuses to hire him back unless "he agreed not to be alone with students while at the school, to tutor students only in public areas and not to talk about the case."

A lot of my fellow alumni fault the school, but I fault the legal environment.

Once accusations are sounded,
Even though proven unfounded,
The innocent victim is hounded.

Free Market in Medicine Controversy

The other day I said something in favor of the free market in medicine, which generated criticism from radiantsun's father.

He took me to be defending the various anti-competitive legal features of our current medical system. But, no. And again, no. In a contest between the medical establishment and freedom, there's no contest where I'm concerned.

As a timely example, there's a new trend where big pharmacy chains are staffing in-store clinics with nurse-practitioners who can look you over, run simple tests, and write prescriptions.

They're open nights and weekends, and cost less than doctors.

Some doctors are trying to do an intervention:

The Illinois State Medical Society is backing a bill that would impose tighter regulations on retail clinics. And the Illinois delegation of the American Medical Association has introduced two anti-clinic resolutions for the AMA to consider at its annual meeting in Chicago next week.

Of course, it's being done in the name of patient safety. Anti-competitive laws are routinely done up as safety laws. And I do expect that on average you would get higher quality care from a doc than from a nurse. But people have trouble even getting appointments on a timely basis from a lot of doctors, and people have trouble taking time off from work to see a doctor, so on average they may be more likely to actually get medical care from one of these clinics.

But, for me, patient safety shouldn't be a be-all and end-all. Patients should be allowed to make their own trade-offs between risk, cost, and level of care.

Some laws that are passed "to protect your health"
Stealthily manage to drain your wealth.

Congress at All Time Low

I don't mean the Congress is behaving at an all time low. I just mean their overall poll numbers are at an all time low - at least since Gallup started measuring.

Just 14% of Americans have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in Congress.

Here's what I don't get. Politicians are said to purposely take positions that are popular - in current polls. So how do they get so low?

Maybe the people are just in a grumbly mood,
Showing off some survey attitude.

The Great Influenza

Just finished reading The Great Influenza by John M. Barry.

On page after page he documents how federal, state, and local governments made things worse as the killer flu of 1918 swept through the nation and around the world. Basically, the bureaucracies were slow to respond, and then spread overly cheery propaganda rather than useful but depressing information.

Meanwhile, a fairly small number of early medical scientists did what they could, mostly struggling against the government.

Of course, the author thinks the lesson is that the government needs to do a better job, to be ready for the next uber-flu.

Or maybe the government needs to get out of the way,
And let a free market in medicine save the day.

A Not-So-Touching Story

Here's a creepy story about a school where touching is forbidden.

Fortunately, it's not zero-tolerance. So when a middle-schooler hugs his girlfriend, he's not instantly expelled. Just sent to the office.

Dr. Helen comments:

This no touch rule seems wrong in so many ways, I don't know where to begin. I used to think schools were becoming like prisons, but honestly, prisoners have more rights.

Class - for your next assignment,
Solitary confinement!

No Licensing Requirement

Now and then I meet people who want to license parents. I don't even want to license doctors or lawyers.

So for all you unlicensed male parents out there, happy father's day.

Though sitcoms mock at Dad
Lots of kids are glad
To have somewhere to go
When Mom says no.

Painful Truths

There's an opinion piece in the Chicago Tribune today entitled "Cheers can't drown out painful truths." It's about the Duke-Nifong false-rape case. I did find the article painful to read.

It ended like this:

The myth of the "false report" of rape must be replaced by this truth: It is underreporting, not false reporting, that poses the greatest risk to our families and our communities.

I think the author is avoiding a painful truth: Not all rape charges are true. And wrongful prosecutions of individuals, in disregard of facts, cannot be justified by appeals to family and community.

Otherwise we'll start inching
Back to the way of lynching.

Bloody Palestine

The 2 big Palestinian factions are shooting each other up. I can't figure out what to call the conflict.

The place is splattered with gore.
The situation is urgent.
Is it truly a civil war?
Or just dueling insurgents?

Sailors of the Sky

They've fixed the Russian computers on the Space Station! I was starting to get worried.

By the way, how come we still can't agree on whether space travelers are Cosmonauts or Astronauts? The cold war lives on in terminology disagreements.

What if someone else - like the Euros - finally succeed in launching people into space? Will they go with Cosmo or Astro? Or will they feel entitled to coin yet another word ending in -naut?

Although we diverge on the start,
We agree on the ending part.

So perhaps we really ought
To just cut it down to "Naut".

Intimate Relations

Fumarase deficiency is a rare, and nasty, genetic disorder.

Arizona has half of the known cases in the world.

That's because they've got a bunch of polygamists straddling the border with Utah, and they're inbreeding.

Recessive traits
Can be dire straits
When you're buzzin'
Dozens of cousins.

Evolutionary Love

They're showing the notes
Charles Darwin wrote
While trying to decide
Whether to take a bride.

He weighs up the pluses and minuses of marriage.

The funniest one on the plus side: "Object to be beloved and played with -- better than a dog, anyhow."

He did get married, and then -
He needed no instruction.
They had lots of children - ten!
Thus achieving reproduction.

No Warning Label

Psychotherapy can be dangerous to your mental health! So saith Newsweek.

Not in general, from the sound of it. Just certain kinds. And only if you listen.

If you start to think
That maybe your shrink
Is making you nuts,
Then have the guts
To take a walk
Away from their talk.

Stroke, Stroke, Breathe

I went for a swim in the Lake today. Very refreshing. I swam out to a certain buoy, and returned.

I covered about .8 miles, judging from this very cool USATF "map your own route" site. It's designed for runners, but it let me draw a path right across the water on a satellite-map hybrid view.

It was a little on the cold side, and there were some waves to contend with. But it was a lot more fun than swimming laps.

Swimming laps
Is like taking a nap
On a long black line.

Open water enlivens the mind.

Unfinished Finale

If a bada-bing conclusion
Is what you sadly lack,
Here's a new solution:
Make the screen go black.

Passport Surprise

So they made a new rule that Americans flying to Mexico or Canada or the Caribbean needed passports.

And then the passport issuers were surprised when... they were flooded with passport applications!

I love this quote:

What we did not anticipate adequately enough was the American citizens' willingness and desire to comply with the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative in the timeframe that they did...

The new rules haven't been axed
But for now they're slightly relaxed.

Hate Crimes

The Trib ran a good article today by Howard Witt on the current Knoxville hate crime controversy.

Basically, a young couple in Knoxville was "carjacked, kidnapped, raped, and finally murdered during an ordeal of unimaginable terror in January."

The victims were white. The four people charged with the crime are black.

Some are complaining that:

A) It would have been a big national news story if the races in the case had been reversed.

B) It should be prosecuted as a hate crime.

As for point A, I think that's true. The press likes white-on-black violent crime stories. That's partly because they fit the overarching narrative of black victimization, and partly because such stories are relatively rare:

In 2005, there were more than 645,000 victims of cross-racial violent crimes between blacks and whites in the U.S. In 90 percent of those crimes, black offenders attacked white victims.

Please note that this addresses violent crime only. I bet that if you did a study of cross-racial business fraud, you might find some strikingly different numbers. Also, it's hard to capture accurate cross-racial police brutality statistics, but I bet that runs the other way too.

As for point B, I think this sort of crime had to involve inner rage of some sort. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the killers bore some animus toward white people. But it would be hard to prove as the key motivation, which is one of the troubles with hate crime laws in the first place.

Why does someone decide to shatter
Another person's life one day?
For the victims it doesn't matter.
They're destroyed either way.

I Love Paris in the Spring Time

Paris Hilton that is. It's technically still Spring, you know.

What a story. Into the clink, out of the clink, and then back in.

Today's hearing featured an angry judge, tearful parents, and Paris melting down and yelling "Mom!"

Still no word on the nature of the illness that temporarily sprung her out of the lock-up.

When your body's ailing,
And you've got no time for jailing.
Just have your Mom arrange
A teeny weeny change
From that iron-bar assignment
To a bit of home confinement.

Vacation Day

Today at work I kept telling people it was a "vacation day."

Sometimes I told them I was glad to see them working on a vacation day.

Sometimes I kept asking them why they were still at work.

I'm not sure where this idea came from, but we had fun with it.

In fact I was so busy
I was almost feeling dizzy.

Horseman, Pass By

A good friend of mine, about my age, is a cardiac patient.

A couple of weeks ago, he had no such diagnosis. But he had this stinging sensation in his chest. After an intense weight workout.

Eventually he went to the ER. They were all over him like flies on honey. That's how they treat you when you show up with chest pain in a good ER nowadays.

At first they couldn't find anything. Then they put him on the treadmill for a stress test.

Anyway, now he's got some stents in his coronary arteries, and he's on a bunch of meds. He's still pretty shaken up about it.

It has to be disconcerting
To go from mysterious hurting
To learning you're being saved
From an early grave.

Hitchhikers Without Thumbs?

Penguins live down by the south pole.

But every now and then, one is seen up by the north pole.

How does this happen? They can't fly. You might think they swim the distance? But apparently they don't care for warm water.

So scientists think they arrive as hitchhikers.

Whether as pets, or stowaways,
They hop a boat and ride for days,
Until at the opposite pole they arrive
And into the freezing water they dive.

Namaste

Took a yoga class tonight.

As with Pilates, a lot of it is fine, except for a lot of the parts where I have to stretch my legs.

Of course, that means it's actually good for me to do this. But, still.

Running and biking
Are much to my liking.
But I find some flexing
Vexing.

The Assault On Reason

Did Al Gore
Generate all this prose galore?

Or was the author mostly
Ghostly?

As for reason, I vote yes.
But I'd still like to hear from Al Gore less.

The Feline Menace

Apparently cats kill hundreds of millions of birds a year, at least according to the side bar here.

One solution: a special purple bib for kitties. The bib is supposed to stop the cat from catching birds.

Color me skeptical. I'm worried it will work out like this:

While crunching on a pigeon rib,
The kitty said, "Hey, thanks for the bib!"

Terrorists of the Caribbean

Here I was, worried about Middle Eastern terrorists, but it turns out that now I have to worry about Caribbean terrorists too.

I never did wanna
Go to Guyana.

But are things that bad
In Trinidad?

Limited Funds

The drumbeats for "Health Care Reform" go on and on.

One thing you hear is slogans like: "Nobody should go without health care because they can't afford it." Preferably accompanied by a photogenic victim.

But as soon as you have the government pay for everything, you will hear that other slogan: "Hard choices about health care need to be made since government funds are limited."

Either way, someone's not getting treated. But who that person is, and how that person gets picked, changes.

I believe the new government rationing committee will have a lot of rules...

Photogenic people shall be treated
With publicity and speed,
And politicians' cousins shall be greeted
As people with urgent needs.

TB Show

So the drug-resistant TB guy has been quarantined in Denver.

But now we learn that his father-in-law works for the Center for Disease Control. And he works on drug-resistant TB.

Hmm.

So far they say that no one knows
How the young guy got exposed.
But I've watched lots of TV shows...

On TV the old man would have brought home work
And stress would have made him go berserk
And infect the younger man just for being a jerk.