Update - at last!

Geez, so I haven't updated this thing since April? Okay, so I've been busy.

The last posts I started to work on but never completed were a review of a variety of dystopian novels and films I had recently experienced and an exploration of misguided demographic findings of correlation. But from there, I got side-tracked onto a couple of projects that I have put off for a while, and those resonated with things that have been going on in my professional life. For one, I finally got around to renewing an interest in linux. My laptop is now a dual-boot system.

The first time I tried it out many years ago, it was still at the "linux is so cool, if you can't find a driver you can write your own and you can even rewrite and recompile the kernel if you want to!" stage. Sorry, I want to use the computer for other ends, not as an end in itself. Open Source is almost there, perhaps the latest release of Ubuntu (Hardy Heron) puts it over the top. I see where even Dell is selling a laptop with Ubuntu installed.

The next thing was to finally read some Neal Stephenson right after Richard Feynman's Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman. After plowing through Cryptonomicon, I went down to the local book exchange and pulled off the entire shelf, consisting of Snowcrash, Diamond Age, Zodiac, and Quicksilver. Unfortunately for me, one result of these (especially Feynman and Cryptonomicon) was to resurrect a childhood interest in cryptography.

The interest in crypto has tied in to an unfortunate but ongoing relationship with computer security policy. Unfortunately, the more you learn about this type of thing, the more paranoid you become. Yeah, having to memorize lots of strong passwords is difficult, so difficult that many people resort to writing them down and storing that within arm's reach of their computer, but without those and other seemingly overkill measures, you might as well be running a wide-open system. But then again, even if you have the strongest crypto around, the weakest link is usually the human factor, as illustrated by the common knowledge that most password's are within arm's reach of their computer. Comcast recently learned this lesson the hard way. And while it may be hard to pity Comcast, anyone who has read Cliff Stoll's The Cuckoo's Egg should understand that hacking pranks like these create a sense of alarm and lost innocence, sorta like when the residents of a small town have to start locking their doors because someone thought it would be fun to vandalize one house with unlocked doors. But this hardly excuses the overbearing stance of corporate security, who would really rather that you didn't have a computer at all.

Speaking of small towns, photos from our recent visit to Lake Wobegon.

Springtime

With the return of Spring, it's time to get back on the bikes. Not only does Kathleen commute, but I like it to get around and to exercise when I'm off work.

One of the things we like to do is to ride over to the Saturday morning Farmer's Market. Somewhere, I remember reading that McKibben's Deep Economy contains a statistic to the effect that 10 times more conversations are struck up in local markets like this than at Wal-Mart. I believe it - I usually don't bother asking Wally World employees for help because they generally are about as familiar with their own stock as I am. But the employees at both the local co-op usually know where to find stuff. Sure enough, the FM didn't disappoint.

The animal shelter was out with a pack of dogs. I met an old friend who was working with them; she said they had adopted out 7 dogs that day. I would have guessed 7 per week was about normal.

Then we came across a bluegrass band (The Salty Dogs). Many dogs sitting around, beckoning the wife to pet them. I struck up a conversation with Matt, who was riding a modified bicycle he used for "bike tramping". It was modified with an Xtracycle, which I thought would be something useful for grocery shopping. Matt had some, um, unorthodox views of the world, including a belief (that we did not explore) that the current economic downturn was intentionally arranged; that fluoride (which he described as an "iron oxide" class of chemical) was used to dumb down the population, a trick we picked up from the Nazis; that Kissinger was a criminal; that Godzilla-derived foods from Monsanto were poisoning us and causing diabetes; that those foods and water in plastic bottles were causing cancer; that this nation has a scary hive mentality; and some kind of anti-immigrant thing. As we parted, I realized that it's probably a good thing I keep my mouth shut since I probably come across the same way to the average person.

After that, my wife stumbled upon someone selling sewn goods [1] right across from someone with a ... is that? Yes, it's a Nolan Chart with dozens of little stick-on stars on it. No doubt as to who these people are. They were just packing up the booth (we got there late), so I stopped to confirm my suspicions. They saw me eyeing the chart, asked if I wanted to take the World's Smallest Political Quiz, I pointed to the top corner and told them I could save them some time if they would just put my star "here". They wanted to know if I wanted to join and I made a crack about being president of the Anarchy Club. "Oh, no, we're not anarchists, but someone called us ... what was that? Minimists?" I suggested, "Minarchists?" "Yeah, that was it." Er, several years ago, the Chair, the lonely, lonely Chair, asked if I would like to be Vice Chair of the county LP. I turned him down. Even then, I thought there was something vaguely wrong, and now I know (thanks to Kevin Carson) that the thing that bothered me most (still does) was the vulgarity of the LP. Anti-tax, anti-regulation, but not necessarily anti-large corporation. As if Wal-Mart sized organizations sprung up shortly after the foundations of the Ziggurat of Ur were laid.

Next up: someone advertising an Earth Day bicycle ride.

Then a woman selling some really interesting red chile sauce mix (note to MR readers: "chili" is a greasy concoction of beans and hamburger meat favored in Texas, "chile" is a red or green fruit noted for its spicy hotness and used in Mexican cuisine). Very good, less than half the price of the canned stuff we were using for enchiladas (its a very particular, locally canned sauce that we like), and much spicier.

Then, two people who were sitting in for the abuelita who sells fresh local herbs and spices (she may be a curandera?). Turns out she is the mother of one. Her meticulously packed plastic bags are hand-labeled, sometimes with very interesting descriptions and misspellings.

Then, our favorite vendor. We usually get a few sticks of incense from her for the shop. Today, she has a new dog that she just adopted (Buddy).

Then, we look at the interesting homemade breads, grains, nuts, and other stuff sold by a family who practices their own faith that seems to be an eclectic mix of Mennonism and Seventh Day Adventism. Good snack cakes, we got there too late to get any. On to the Asian artist who sells really, really decadent deserts, coffee cakes, etc.

Yeah, this is a lot more fun than Wally World or the Sons of Albert.

[UPDATE: Oh yeah, now I remember what Matt's anti-immigrant thing was: actually, it wasn't anti-immigrant so much as it was pro North American Union. He had implied that there was no real enforcement of immigration laws because, as we all know, the USA and the dollar are going to be gone in the next couple of years. Lest it be thought that I am tring to make him out to be a crackpot, let me say that he seems like a really nice guy and someone you'd probably want around in a Mad Max scenario.]

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[1] I learned from her that Albertson's is offering a $0.05 discount if you bring your own bags. I bought reusable bags from the Albertson's in Albuquerque. I take them into Wal-Mart with me. Gradually, I hope to get their checkers trained to hand stuff to me so I can load my own bag.

Frida's shame

Having just returned from Mexico City, a trip which included a visit to the Frida Kahlo house (Casa Azul), I feel obligated to describe something which I wouldn't have noted had I not just got done reviewing some of the "reviews" of Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism.

One of Goldberg's claims is that the Progressive Era progressives were just as nationalist as the national socialists who came later. Again, I haven't read the book, so I can neither endorse nor deny his claims, but it seems plausible. However, there is no denying the odd mixture of Mexicanism and Marxism in the work of both Frida and her husband, Diego Rivera.

I already knew that they were communists. In Rivera's mural in the Palacio Nacional, utopia flows both literally and figuratively from Das Kapital. What I found more shocking were the final works of Frida herself. The one upon the easel at her death was a large bust portrait of Stalin superimposed with a self-portrait, titled "Stalin and I". A slightly older work showed angelic hands emanating from Karl Marx' head to comfort Frida while an evil looking Uncle Sam Bird flew nearby; this one was called "Marxism Heals the Sick".

The Stalin homage is clearly the more shocking. This was a portrait from the early 1950s, at which point it was surely known that Stalin had been responsible for millions of deaths, rivaling or surpassing Hitler's death count. And it must have been plain that Stalin was behind the murder of their friend, Leon Trotsky. So why the worship?

A few conjectures may be ventured. First, Frida and Trotsky were reputed to have had an affair. Certainly, this was not the first such event that interrupted the tempestuous relationship between her and her notoriously womanizing husband. However, they reconciled thereafter and it seems possible that she adopted her husband's new-found rejection of Trotsky. Such a rejection may have originated in jealousy, but it is easy to see how, once the blinders fell, that he might begin looking for ideological as well as personal reasons to oppose the fallen Russian leader. And as we have seen in so many contexts, people are frequently animated more by opposition than by alliance, so it doesn't seem too far-fetched that Rivera could fall in league with the Stalinist Trotsky-haters. At some point, there may even have been an element of self-promotion as they claimed to have participated in the plot to kill him. The final conjecture involves Frida's mental deterioration at this point in her life as the result of her constant pain and use of pain-killers.

How did such a person become the object of so much recent fawning attention? I was surprised to learn that one of the reasons was Madonna's interest in her art. This led to the development of a movie project in which Salma Hayek eventually won the role, but for which Madonna was an early contender. It would have been a much worse movie with Madonna in the lead (Madonna did appear in a minor role). The Stalin worship was but a footnote to her life, and was completely ignored in the movie (from what I remember).

Frida and Diego were very clearly nationalists, though. This may have been partly in reaction to the Great Satan to the North, whose involvement in Latin American politics began with the Monroe Doctrine, peaked in the War of Northern Aggression North American Intervention United States Invasion Mexican-Amerian War of 1846-1848, and subsequently included interventions in just about every country south of our border, a total realization of Marxist claims about imperialism. [1] Their Mexican nationalism may have also been an affectation to cover their own origins and "sins", she being of German and native/Spanish descent and he being fond of international travel, study, and patronage by notorious capitalists including Rockefeller and Ford.

We can see less obvious indications of their nationalism in several ways. Frida overemphasized her facial hair in her self-portraits in order to emphasize her native origins. Despite her cosmopolitan upbringing and marriage to an inveterate international traveller, she stuck to traditional dresses and household decorations. Diego, for his part, was a tireless chronicler of Mexican history, producing works that mimicked the Aztec codex style of story-telling and giving birth to the Mexican muralism style.

A more prominent statement of their nationalism is the frequent recurrence of the Xoloitzcuintli, or Mexican Hairless Dog, in both their personal lives and their artwork. The dogs are small, black, hairless, and quintessentially Mexican, having been originally domesticated by the Aztecs. The dog can be seen in each of the pre-Spanish mural panels in the Palacio Nacional mural as part of the idyllic village life. When the Spaniards show up, the dogs snarl defensively at their European counterparts, and when the Europeans begin human trafficking in natives, the dogs become sickly and skeletal.

But nationalism is anathema to true Marxists, is it not? Well, yes, but then this seems to be one of those things Marx got terribly wrong. A Mexican painter has far more in common with a Mexican cab driver than with an American painter because language, culture, and other sources of personal identity are much stronger than class. Does this make Kahlo and Garcia bad people or bad artists? No, only bad Marxists (a charge which is only strengthened by their support of the antidemocratic Stalin).

And what of their unabashed support for the murderous dictator? In Latin America, where Che calendars are sold openly [2], perhaps we shouldn't be surprised by their embrace of brutal dictators. But we should be aware of it. Octavio Paz concluded about this issue,

Diego and Frida ought not to be subjects of beatification but objects of study--and of repentance . . . the weaknesses, taints, and defects that show up in the works of Diego and Frida are moral in origin. The two of them betrayed their great gifts, and this can be seen in their painting. An artist may commit political errors and even common crimes, but the truly great artists--Villon or Pound, Caravaggio or Goya--pay for their mistakes and thereby redeem their art and their honor.

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[1] We were pointedly reminded of the "1847 war" by a guide at the Palacio. I had thought it was 1848, but decided not to pursue it upon recalling that Americans are wisely counseled to avoid discussions about American foreign policy when traveling abroad: they generally know more about it than you do because they have been the victims of it. Several tourist sites stress that you should never talk politics in Mexico because it is expressly against the law for foreigners to participate in Mexican politics. Guess why.

[2] I was so tempted to ask if they also carried calendars with Mengele or Himmler. Murderers are murderers, the nature of the intent matters little to the victims.

More Goldberg

After listening to the interview with Glenn and Helen Reynolds, I'd have to say that the Sadly, No gang's fisking is not illuminating (the Crooked Timber takes are even less useful, since they are literally judging the book by its cover). Take this exchange, keeping in mind that one of Goldberg's themes is that the proto-fascist socialists were pro-military:

JG: There is confusion over Nazi attitudes about homosexuality.
S,N: No there isn't. They wanted to kill them.
JG: Some Nazis were gay.
S,N: Duh, of course; good help is hard to find. [EH: What happened to wanting to kill them?]
JG: They killed Rohm not because he was gay but rather because he was more radical, desiring a second revolution.
S,N: Aha! By radical, you mean more socialist! [EH: Perhaps homosexuality is not the only reason the Nazis killed?]

Sadly, No then goes on to provide a link which yielded the following quote:

The SA, led by Ernst Rohm, included control of the Reichswehr (the army) in the program of the second revolution.

The more radical/socialist members of the NSDAP wanted to control the military? It's hard to see how this doesn't support Goldberg's thesis. Instead, we get lots of side track comments from the Sadly, No author that are self-contradictory.

This next tidbit is a common problem in any analysis of the Nazi relationship to socialism, broadly understood. The standard reaction to any mention of Hitler's obsession with health is that Goldberg -- or anyone else pointing this out -- is using this syllogism:

Hitler was a vegetarian.
Vegetarians are leftists.
Therefore, Hitler was a leftist.

Since they have dropped almost all of the context, it's hard to say where Goldberg was going with his discussion, but it seems much more likely that he's developing a line of argument that has to do with connecting certain lifestyles with morality, and morality with the state, and thus the idea that the state can and should strictly regulate diet, exercise, and other habits (smoking). As Russell Wardlow and others point out on Steve Sailer's site (excellent comments), some people are unable to refrain from going to that simple strawman syllogism and therefore overlook the bigger point. The bigger point is that the Nazis wanted to regulate health habits because they thought it was every citizen's duty to provide the state with fit workers. [1]

Then we have this line from another post:

Starting wars simply to demonstrate national strength is about a billion times more fascist than some namby-pamby bureaucrat telling you not to super-size your fries.

By comparing nanny-state bureaucracy to something that arguably more fascist [2] and declaring that it pales in comparison, the author concludes that it can't be fascist. I'm sure that's a named fallacy. But even if I can't be bothered to look up the name of that fallacy, I recognize the attitude: it's the Banality of Evil.

Speaking of Hannah Arendt, the same post contains a floating quotation (no context again) about the relationship of Wilson and FDR to the French Revolution, which Goldberg identifies as fascist. The commenters are mystified, but they wouldn't be had they ever pulled themselves through a copy of Arendt's On Revolution. It's actually quite funny, since the commenters point out that the Jacobins were radicals, i.e. proto-progressives. Indeed they were. And the result? The Committee on Public Safety, under the leadership of Robespierre, commenced the Reign of Terror. I'd like to know in what way they find that significantly different from fascism.

In another post, they attempt this argument, which the uncritical commenters accept:

In fact, we must stare in awe as Jonah accuses Margaret Sanger of "nasty racism" for her era-appropriate belief in eugenics

I asked, in response,

I wonder if you'd also characterize the antisemitism of He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named as "era-appropriate"? Surely, if such ideas are bad, they are bad in any era, regardless of the identity of the person who thinks those thoughts?

Nobody has answered. If those ideas were so era-appropriate, how does one explain people like G. K. Chesterton who were opposed to eugenics? Could it be that the era-appropriateness hinged on the acceptance of the idea among H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Woodrow Wilson, and other progressives?

It is surely funny that the Sadly, No writer lampoons some of Goldberg's sources but then relies on The History Channel's National Socialism archives. Still, I wonder if he would consider it fair game if portions of that worked against him?

The roots of National Socialism, however, were peculiarly German, grounded, for example, in the Prussian tradition of military authoritarianism and expansion; in the German romantic tradition of hostility to rationalism, liberalism, and democracy; in various racist doctrines according to which the Nordic peoples, as so-called pure Aryans, were not only physically superior to other races, but were the carriers of a superior morality and culture; and in certain philosophical traditions that idealized the state or exalted the superior individual and exempted such a person from conventional restraints.

The Prussian thing, the Romantic thing, and the Aryan thing are tied together in Fichte, Herder, and several others who also influenced Hegel and through him, Marx. Stir in some Plenge, Spengler, and Chamberlain, add a dash of George Bernard Shaw's Nietzche's Superman, and you have the National Socialist German Worker's Party philosophical stew made almost exclusively from the same philosophers who influenced the era's leading progressives, Fabians, and socialists.

Consider what Richard Pipes has to say:

Was the Fascist Party a "right-wing" party?
Mussolini's party was a right-wing party but only to some extent, just as the Nazi party. These were not conservative parties. They were radical, radical nationalist parties, which in the programs very much maintained the socialist ideals [emphasis added]. For example, Mussolini's corporate state workers participated in the decision making in the business enterprises. They had as much say in some respects, as did the owners of factories.

Mussolini did shift to the right gradually because I think he was afraid of the power of the communist and the socialists, and since he was a dictator and wanted dictatorial power he felt that one has to suppress these parties and they were suppressed.

...

Are Communism and Fascism totally different things, completely opposed to one another?
Well, the notion that Communism and fascism are diametrically opposed is something that was fostered by the Communist party, by the Communist International. In the 1920s, basically the International defined fascism as any anti-communist movement. If you were anti-communist, it doesn't matter what platform, you were automatically fascist. So that even the western democracies were called fascist. This is a meaningless term. I use the term Fascism concretely, to apply only to the Italian fascist party and the Nazi to the Nazi party.

The idea that fascism as a far-right ideology was a creation of the Comintern is something Goldberg makes reference to in the interview linked above. And if you doubt the extent to which the Comintern would go to paint their fellow-traveller rivals as reactionary, I'd recommend that you pick up a copy of Orwell's Homage to Catalonia.

In the interview, Goldberg says something to the effect of, "I bet that if you were to remove the war and antisemitism from the Nazi program, most of these modern progressives would endorse their policies." That does seem to occur among the commenters in the form of "if free education was all that nazism did, I would be in favor of it," as if you could separate things so easily -- what part of "totalitarian" don't they understand? Via Matt Zeitlin, I did come across something that approached a thoughtful critique at Spencer Ackerman's TooHotforTNR (worth reading), in which he asserts that "a government that makes a lot of poor and invidious policy choices, many of dubious constitutionality, but still leaves power following a democratic election isn't fascist." Does that mean that the NSDAP was not fascist until the Reichstag fire? Or that they wouldn't have been fascist had Hitler counterfactually stepped down in elections in 1940? Does it mean that Lenin and Stalin were fascist?

This debate hinges on the definition of fascism. Most common definitions start from the standpoint informed by the post-WWII propaganda effort that painted Nazis, Italian fascists, and other groups into the right by way of contrasting them to the Communists, socialists, and Democrats. [3] As usual, I'm no fan of the overly simple, one-dimensional, left-right model of politics. Anything that pretends to pit Hitler and Stalin as polar opposites is nearly useless. If I find the time, perhaps I may make an attempt at developing a definition of fascism.

Most critics of Goldberg's book seem to think that he is making the definition so broad that it would encompass every country and political movement in history. Possibly: I don't have the book and the Amazon version isn't searchable, so I don't have Goldberg's definition. It seems likely, based on the little I have seen, that they are being intentionally obtuse. They are preferring to argue on the differences in degree in the components and refusing to see the difference in kind in the system taken as a whole. Take Ackerman's response to one passage in the book:

JG: Fascism is a religion of the state. It assumes the organic unity of the body politic and longs for a national leader attuned to the will of the people. It is totalitarian in that it views everything as political and holds that any action by the state is justified to achieve that common good. It takes responsibility for all aspects of life, including our health and well-being, and seeks to impose uniformity of thought and action, whether by force or through regulation and social pressure. Everything, including the economy and religion, must be aligned with its objectives. Any rival identity is part of the "problem" and therefore defined as the enemy.

SA: Fascist regimes do not impose their wills by force "or" through regulation and social pressure. They systematize violence.

Is this a deliberate misrepresentation of both Goldberg's claim and of fascism? He skips past the "religion of the state" part and the definition of totalitarian, going right for a minor point about regulation and social pressure. And on that point, he is wrong. Fascist states famously used social pressure as leverage to get people to report their neighbors. It is so well known that it has entered our language in the form of phrases like "little Eichmans" and "Good Germans"; it has been famously studied in the Milgram, Stanford prison, and Asch conformity experiments.


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[1] Today, the primary argument for state intervention in these matters has not been our own health or the state's right to our labor, but rather the cost which unhealthy citizens are placing on state healthcare programs. Which is absurd when you think about it - the state creates a program to shield people from risk and then is shocked to find people using it? The rejoinder to this from the left is most likely to be a moral argument, i.e., individuals should sacrifice their personal pleasure (smoke, consumption of transfats) for the common good. Sounds like ... ?

[2] First, Nazi Germany did not start a war to demonstrate their national power, they started it because they felt they had an obligation to look after the welfare of "ethnic Germans". Thus, they reclaimed the Rhineland, pulled the Austrian and Sudetenland Germans back into the fold, and then started expanding east (Poland) in order to start realizing his goals of autarky, a closed economic system which could provide its own food , manufactured goods, and markets for both. They did this because they perceived the lesson of WWI was that imperialism did not work. Hitler went to war with France and England as a pre-emptive measure, and against Russia because he felt he also needed some of the land which the Soviets had grabbed for farm production.

Another reason for qualifying war as only "arguably" more fascist is that England, France, and Kaiser-era Germany were all basically fighting over their imperialist aspirations in WWI, and the Soviet Union and China also started a few wars. Were they fascist? Using this aspect of the Sadly, No author's definition of fascism, it might be difficult to find a country which would not qualify. Can anyone state the significance of the United States, Mexico, and 1848 in this context? Anyone? Bueller?

[3] These are over-represented in the Wiki articles thanks to the efforts of Chip Berlet and a few self-identified Marxist editors. I found that if I attempted to mitigate some of their more eggregious errors, my edits were promptly removed without explanation. When I started a wholly new section, they moved it to someplace completely unrelated and then watered it down. They view their sources as unassailable while claiming that the Austrian school of economics is too marginalized to be taken seriously. Wikipedia is like politics: a small special interest group or a majority can introduce and enforce errors.

Shorter Ezra Klein

Everyone who disagrees with me is immoral, stupid, or insane.

Perhaps he might try a pledge?

I don't feel tardy

I think the exchange below reveals a problem with the blogging form. People were quick to respond, so quick in fact that I think they forgot to stop and think about what they were reacting to (I'm frequently guilty of it myself [1]). Writing is better than conversing for developing complex ideas. Blogging is better than print media because it's interactive. But sometimes, blogging comes awfully close to being like conversation: so interactive that complex ideas get distilled to pablum.

Godwin's Law, anyone?

This is my paraphrase of an exchange between Brad Delong (BD), Daniel Davies (DD), and Tyler Cowen (TC). MF is Milton Friedman, DA is David Asman (an interviewer).

DA: What say you about the Patriot Act?
MF: The sooner we can get rid of it and out of it, the better.

BD: MF is against the Un-Patriot Act.

DD: MF is lying. Liberal economists aren't intellectually honest. Don't ask how I know, I just do.

TC: No, I'd like to know how you know. For example, did you talk to them about it?
DD [from the MR comments]: TC didn't talk to me about my post. I might have meant something different than what I wrote.

DD's comment is right, his words might differ from his thoughts. Unlikely as it seems, he might have been joking, signaling, countersignaling, acting strategically, etc. In which case he affirms TC's point: we should state the basis for our claims when we claim to know what other people "really" mean, especially if those claims are opposed to what they themselves say they mean. But if TC is right and DD agrees with him on this point, it seriously undermines the other part of the exchange:

MF: Kerry's plan is bad.

DD: MF is pro-Republican. I know because he signed the statement.

How does DD know that MF is not joking, acting strategically, or acting on some other motive in this case? Because people always mean what they say? Interesting Ouroboros.

While Delong and Davies were locked in a debate about debating, Cowen's proposal stimulated a heated exchange between Davies and a swarm of Friedman defenders. [2] The resulting comment exchange (as you may have read by now) lacked reflection. It even included this curious statement:

MH: TC [but not DD!] is claiming to have mindreading abilities.

Now, since it was clearly the case that DD was making claims to know what MF "really" meant, and TC who was asking for evidence, the accusation is aimed at the wrong target. Huben is smarter than that; in fact, he himself has rightly called for Tyler to produce evidence in this exchange. I attribute Mike's misfire in the MF/DD debate to an overdeveloped desire not only to combine his trademark rhetoric and site-promotion, but also and perhaps mainly to get in a point in the debate while it was still going.

I too was at first tempted to accuse Tyler of invoking the "Nuh-uh, prove it" gambit, but after going through the linked articles and trying to understand what he was getting at, I realized that he was saying that it would be good if people provided actual evidence when they made claims of intent which were divergent from their public statements ("really want"). By "personal anthropological evidence", he meant that anything would do, even a casual conversation.

I'd like to propose a new research convention. Anytime a writer or blogger talks about what The Right or The Left (or some subset thereof) really wants or means, I'd like them to list their personal anthropological experience with the subjects under consideration.

Rather than engaging in the Friedman debate, Mike's comment is an adult version of the mid-schooler's playground "Nuh-uh, #$%" [3] retort. And my claim is not so much that this is Hubenesque as it is blogesque. The quick exchange, the desire to participate in the game, the pressure to avoid being "late to the party" (as I'm sure you must have surmised about this post) drive blogging to be more like conversing (or, in this case, yelling) than like a modern Battle of the Books.

Take a look through the comments on some of the popular blogs and note how most of them appear within a day or two of the original posting. That's understandable for a posting that covers some current and fleeting event. But very rarely does anyone comment after that even when the original posting is of a timeless nature. I find that unfortunate.

The only exception of which I know is my wife's site. Her site is educational rather than polemical, so perhaps it is a special characteristic of that type of blog. Also, she intentionally cultivates the practice not only with the recent comments listing, but also by posting weekly summaries of the archives from one and two years ago. Why does nobody else do this? The lack of backward reflection makes blogging like the Mission Impossible assignment tapes that self-destruct after one playing.

And yes, I hate the fact that the Haloscan comments on this site do not link to the original post. I only put them up there for the backward reflectiveness, but it turns out to have been completely pointless because you can't see what they link to. Maybe one day I'll grow up and make a real website out of what started out to be a personal experiment.


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[1] See how Brad Delong rightly dressed me down in this exchange. Ah, if only I had read the linked article instead of the post title.

[2] In the end, I had to admire Davies for sticking it out, but the lists of Friedman's criticisms of the GOP (Ben and Patrick Sullivan, IIRC) were never explained away, and DD never provided the requested evidence of obfuscation. Personally, I'm not familiar enough with MF to know whether DD was correct, but by the psuedo-syllogism offered above, I'd say that even if the facts were on his side, he hasn't produced them. Barkley Rosser gets the prize for only person actually engaged in substantive, civil debate.

[3] By "#$%", I am mean the classic, quick, thoughtless, playground insult of my generation, used by me here for brevity of example/paraphrase. I suspect that the modern invocation is "bitch" or worse. Mike's actual name-calling and rhetorical loading in this instance included the following names or insinuations: hoot (interpret how you will), pretension, fraud, pomposity, arrogance, elitism, clairvoyance, sycophancy, ineptitude, and dogmatism. Getting all of that within two paragraphs is impressively efficient, but comes at the expense of actual substance.

Knowledge regimes

The way most sciences are taught is to start with very simple models in which many unrealistic assumptions are made so that students can learn the big picture and major forces, and then the assumptions are gradually relaxed so that you end up with very sophisticated models. It is true of physics and economics. That was what the First vs. Second best debate between Dani Rodrik and several other bloggers was about a few months ago, to which I had three responses (here, here, and here).

I find the claim among the so-called Second Best camp to be over-simplified for several reasons. The first is the problem of vulgar second best-ism in which they spot an institutional failure, propose a correcting policy, and assume success without investigating whether there are multiple institutional failures which counteract each other, whether there is a private institutional response to the failure, whether the policy actually corrects the problem, or whether the policy has unintended consequences which give rise to a new institutional failure. I have a whole category for this.

The second is their assumption of a knowable, static set of affairs. This is an assumption that the Econ 101 theory is correct, but that the real-world solution of some master equation for universal efficiency and total spiritual creaminess requires state intervention because of those chewy chunks of degradation known as "institutional (market) failure" [1]. This presumes an optimal state of affairs that we should strive for -- the "correct" allocations of inputs, outputs, numbers and types of goods to be made, and prices. This seems to me to be impossible not only because of the unknowability of the current set of all knowledge, but because of the unknowability of all possible knowledge. Hayek was only half right: Not only is the sum of current human knowledge unknowable to a single person, but the sum of all possible knowledge is unknowable to all persons or groups except for the group which consists of all humans over all time.

Although the book isn't explicitly about this, Dengjian Jin's The Dynamics of Knowledge Regimes illustrates a relatively simple case in cultural comparisons, a single slice through the cone. The book is Jin's explanation of the competitive differences between the US and Japan. He notes that previous explanations of Japan's rise fail to explain the current stasis of that economy. Those explanations approach the problem from neoclassical, revisionist, institutional, cultural, technological, and complexity schools of thought, among which the revisionist and complexity schools might be counted as Second Best approaches, the former noting the importance of industrial policy, and the latter noting issues like path dependency. Jin, on the other hand, focuses less on trade and transaction and more on the way in which each culture creates, stores, transmits, and uses knowledge. Each culture has its distinctive isomorphic regime (to use his phraseology), and the two regimes are nearly mutually exclusive.

In Jin's description, the cultures can be identified along the relationship and identity axes, with Japanese falling more into connectual and contextual while Americans fall more into contractual and individual. In those terms, Williamson's contractual schema have little to do with the Japanese experience and therefore are relegated to the status of a subset of the possible relationship schema. The American knowledge regime both results in and encourages the creation of isolated, modularized, disconnected, universal knowledge, while the Japanese regime results in and encourages the creation of highly contextualized, tacit, specific knowledge. Jin also notes that the relationship between the state and industry tends to fall into the same isomorphic pattern, with Japanese government working very closely with the affected industries and American government working (or appearing to work) in a universalist relationship, i.e. DARPA awards contracts for knowledge creation in a competitive bid process while MITI would work closely with an alliance on a development project. Jin's book explores these ideas in detail and also shows how this produces competitive advantage for each culture in distinct sectors. For example, the American approach results in leadership in sectors such as software and biotechnology where talent and knowledge can be modularized and reconfigured endlessly, while the Japanese approach results in leadership in complex fabrication and assembly such as automobile and opto-electronics.

So whereas Americans work with a system which emphasizes contracting, Japanese work within a system which emphasizes long-term relationship building. Asymmetric knowledge and opportunistic breach of contract are therefore rarely a problem in Japan. On the other hand, network effects certainly are a strong problem for the Japanese while the creative destruction machine that is modern America blows through network effects rapidly (and the process appears to be accelerating). Thus, a problem that worries the second-besters in one culture doesn't even make it on to the radar in the other regime.

Now pull back a little and realize that Jin was only comparing dominant Japanese and US knowledge regimes. What would be the result of a similar study of all cultures? Or of subordinate cultures within the US, Japan, and other dominant culture types? Also, the Japanese emphasize tacit knowledge, some of which is destroyed by the simple act of trying to objectify and communicate it, so it is not even clear that we could understand all of the institutional failures in our own culture that a Japanese would note, and vice versa. What would happen if we were to be able to look at our own institutions not only in terms of Japanese understanding, but of all existing, or of all possible cultures?

Now, having made those observations, I immediately begin wondering about things like,

• What institutional failures are we failing to note?
• How many failures could there be that have yet to be discovered?
• Are there some failures that cannot be detected or described in terms understandable within our culture?
  
• Since failures may work in both directions, is the net effect of those underprovision or overprovision of the good or service in question? How can we know?
  
• Because we aren't aware of these failures -- indeed, because the state's relationship falls into the same patterns -- isn't it likely that attempts to counteract them will only exacerbate a set of underlying, undetected problems?
• Even if it were possible to detect all of the possible failures, is it possible to counteract those features which are (A) a distinguishing feature of our society, and (B) only detectable to someone outside our society, and (C) solvable only through techniques which are not available to our society or our state-society relationship? In other words, some problems are apt to be an undeniable feature of our society, but their solution is unavailable to us unless we fundamentally change our society ... in which case many of the other institutional failures and the corresponding responses will be rendered meaningless while we simultaneously choose a whole new set of institutional failures for which we have neither experience nor remedy. At best, we could go back, but then all we have is a mono- or bi-stable system in which we never completely eliminate institutional failure, but rather trade one type for another.
  

Don't think of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, Ray!


-------------------------------
[1] pro forma, we ignore failures of the Really Big Institution, The State

Talk radio

I drive a lot, and when I get bored with NPR (which I support; I have even been in the StoryCorps ... ah, "studio") I will listen to AM talk radio. That's about once or twice a week, rarely the same show, so I've heard all of these people, but not frequently. I've been meaning to do this for a while, but haven't figured out how to organize it. I am also finding myself in conflict with The Pledge. So what follows is a quasi-random set of observations to which I hold no particularly strong affinities (i.e. you could convince me I'm wrong):

• Bill O'Reilly: Very opinionated, very populist, fairly informed, sometimes contrarian, but succumbs easily to confirmation bias. I've mentioned his economic illiteracy before. I'm not sure why he has a co-host - she's worse than Ed McMahon.
  
• Michael Medved: incredible memory for political, legal, and historical fact, but condescending and occasionally uses the loaded question trick [1]. I think he gets contrary views more often than others, though they are sometimes not very bright. He also brings on contrary guests, which is very fair. I was convinced he was gay when I first started listening; I'm not convinced now that he is not.
  
• Rush Limbaugh: occasionally funny but frequently whiny and obtuse. Too bad he hasn't learned his lesson about The War on (Certain People who Use Certain Kinds of) Drugs. The bumper commercials and satire are great and we need a left-wing version of them, but once a month is enough to catch up on the latest satires. His concept of the "drive-by media" is accurate; that should be resonant with everyone, no matter what part of the political space you occupy. I used to like Walter Williams' guest host spots, but he seems to cover the same material every time.
  
• Sean Hannity: maddeningly single-minded. I would totally believe that he gets a talking points memo every morning. Uses the loaded question trick almost exclusively when he has a caller who disagrees. I do a great impression of him.
  
• Dr. Laura: My father used to apologize to the radio if he accidentally let her on. I don't understand why anyone would subject themselves to the humiliation of calling in. "Hi, Dr. Laura, I'm a lesbian who is living with both my lover and the father of my child. They don't seem to be getting along, and I'm afraid my son is caught in the middle, so I was wondering: should I ask my mom to move in with us so she can help keep the peace while I run my Teenangel Tattoo and Tanning business?"
• Jim Villanucci: A local in Albuquerque, I think he's on after Rush and therefore instead of Hannity (thank God). Interesting, entertaining, sometimes very contrarian.
  
• Dr. Dean Edell: Although he has that "I'm a highly trained doctor, so you're probably not going to understand this huh-huh-huh" attitude, he is generally very good. The entertainment value, though, is mostly in the things that people call in with and make you think, "yeah, what is the deal with that?!"
  
• Michael Savage: Completely unpredictable. I used to think badly of him, now I think he's laugh-out-loud funny (not always intended on his part). One day he may be defending Bush as the defender of borders, language, and culture against the "depraved commies" who defend the Islamonazis, the next day he may be ripping him as the Amnesty President and then go off and listen to some rockabilly music or talk about birds in the park. If Hillary is elected, I plan to buy a radio, tune it to Savage, turn it up, and break the dials off so I can answer the koan, "What does a supernova sound like?"
  
• Michael Reagan: Just some guy, really. Not entertaining at all.
  
• Mark Levin: The Worst One. Like Sean Hannity but louder and without the wit and charisma. I do a great impression of him.
  
• Alan Colmes: Could be better, but he seems to be playing beneath himself. Even when he's winning the argument, sometimes he goes to the loaded question almost gratuitously.
• Laura Ingraham: Okay, but too populist and pandering.
  
• Al Franken: Way below his potential. It would be worthwhile to let him get ripped and then go on the air just to see how it went. I think that he's too close to his subject, and he tends to think that his best subjectivity passes for objectivity. Maybe he peaked with Stuart Smalley.
• Rusty Humphries: Why?
• Coast to Coast: Are they serious? They certainly sound that way.
  

[1] The loaded trick question works extremely well in the talk format. It works like this: the caller asks the host a question about something he has been pontificating on, to which the host responds by asking a related but heavily loaded question. For example, an exchange might go like this:

Caller: Hi X, long time listener and first time caller.
Host: Thanks for calling.
Caller: I've been listening to you and I guess I disagree with your stance on GitMo. I mean, we're Americans and the rest of the world looks up to us and expects us to do the right thing, but this just doesn't seem right. How can you support freedom and the right to a fair tri...
Host: Oh, I see where your coming from. Well, answer this, my left wing friend, if you could save a million people by torturing a terrorist, wouldn't you do it? I mean [at this point, the host reiterates what he has been saying for 45 seconds while the caller is turned down] so wouldn't you torture a terrorist to prevent a nuke from going off in downtown New York?
Caller: ... but that's ...
Host: I see, so you won't answer the question? [at this point, the host reiterates what he has been saying for 45 seconds while the caller is turned down] so wouldn't you torture a terrorist to prevent a nuke from going off in downtown New York?
Caller: ... okay, I'll answer your question, but first you answer ...
Host: Oh, no, we're not going to play that game, my friend. You answer my question first. Why won't you answer?
Caller: ... but it's a loaded ...
Host: C'mon, what's it going to be, 4 million innocent children or the terrorist's "right" to a trial? What about the rights of 4 million children?
Caller: ... but tortured people just tell you what you want to hear and how do we know he's really a terrorist ...
Host: These points are lib'ral straw men, but just to humor you and to show you how fair I am, I'll address your questions, but I want you to stop ducking mine. Let's say that I get the world's most accomplished interrogator and we definitely know the guys a terrorist. Now what's it going to be - 4 million innocent little virgins or an islamofascist with a nuke?
Caller: Okay, fine, if you're going to load the dice like that ...
Host: Just like I thought, you're not going to answer the question, thanks for calling, let's go to a break.

I'll generally listen to someone who is reasonable even if I disagree with them because I might learn something. The loaded question trick is so maddening and transparent that I turn off right away when it starts. At least NPR is a little more nuanced in overlaying their frames on the news; maybe I'll do something similar on those shows one day (Fresh Air, Car Talk, etc.).

Blog rearguard action

Would it make sense for

• a diarist to say, "I just wrote a diary about my experience last night"?
• a newspaper reporter to say, "I just wrote a newspaper about the incident"?
• a TV reporter to say, "I did a series about that last night"?

No?

Then why the hell do people keep writing, "I just wrote a blog about such-and-such"? A whole friggin' blog? Wow.

The diarist writes entries, the newspaper reporter writes articles, the TV reporter does a show or a story, and the blogger writes entries, articles, or posts. Unless you're my wife, in which case you actually do have three different blogs. But even in her case, she doesn't write a complete blog "last night".

Sheesh. It's like teaching your parents to use slang and not sound like complete rubes. Shall I give up?

Too Long, Too Clever, both by half

Lewis Mumford's The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects is a canonical work, and perhaps deservedly so. By that I mean that it certainly covers a lot of ground*, for which he deserves credit. Unfortunately, Mumford tries too hard to shove history into Karl Marx's neat little Hegelian theory and then ultimately fails to bring his analysis closed to a successful conclusion. And for something that pretends to be The History of The City, it certainly lacks the non-Western perspective, as if this was the work not of a world historian but of a well-traveled American or Englishman. Perhaps it should have been called, "The City as Tool of Oppression in Western History".

As an example of the first problem, his explanation of early cities leaves much to be desired. Here we have neolithic man living in villages and tending crops, the happy idyllic life, a primitive utopia starring the Noble Savage. Rather than offering a sampling of theories as to how the city and king-based government came about, he forces the dialectic into the tale by bringing paleolithic man back and putting him in the place of the brutal warlord-king. Rex ex machina, I thought at the time. It was truly bizarre and forces all of the explanations to be backwards from what is most likely the truth. Mumford seems to imply that the savage, paleolithic hunter-gatherers came back, built cities, and then forced the farmers to move into them when I suspect a much more organic process was involved in response to ... what? Marauding bands of warriors? What is the relevant scarcity that would have caused people to gradually transfer their own sovereignty to the king? Mumsford's treatment of the subject is unsophisticated.

He demonstrates appreciation for Classical Greece, then nearly spits as he goes through the Roman period, and then comes back into his stride when discussing the Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods. I actually found this to be an enlightening section of the book; it explains what I like about cities like Rothenburg ob der Tauber, and what I dislike about Washington D.C. In fact, I think one could skip ahead to that part, and stop reading once you hit the early 19th century. From the standpoint of someone who dislikes much of what the modern world has become, mostly due to an overweening tendency toward centralization and rationalization of that which cannot or should not be rationalized**, I think that the future should look much more like the Medieval period without all the bad stuff (yeah, that is a breathtaking simplification that I don't intend to defend here).

After that, the book becomes a one-sided discussion of the evils of capitalism. Once again, Mumford stops being a historian and tries to interpret everything through a Marxist lens. For a counterpoint to this, I would recommend some of the work of T. S. Ashton.

I tend, however, to agree with Mumford on his observations about the impact of the automobile, but not the cause of it. "Capitalist" has two meanings: one is a person who makes a living renting capital, the other is a person who believes in a system with minimal state involvement***. The latter is the opposite of a system which provides government subsidization of the automobile culture the way we do in the US. Prior to the railroads, many turnpikes were privately owned and operated, but Americans loved first the idea of the railroad and then the idea of a system that freed men from dependence on the railroad ... to which they had given birth just 60 years before. The result today is a leviathan which we keep trying to control by ever larger public projects and programs, funded and operated by ever larger, more distant agencies. In fact, today people are advocating more railroad-based traffic even though they were condemning it just 100 years ago. It is to Mumford's credit that he seems to be a thorough Marxist in the sense that at least he does not follow his fellow-travelers down the road toward central governance. For those socialists who want to define socialism by what Marx said, I doubt they'll find much support for limitless expansion of that which Marx believed will whither away.

In the end, Mumford fails to provide any substantive suggestion as to which way we should turn to create a more livable city. The suburbs and freeways, as unpopular as they are, seem to still be dominant, but I think a generation of people exposed to Mumford's description of the livable Medieval city are starting to do something about it. Unfortunately, the people who share Mumford's politics are now the defenders of the status quo -- in San Francisco, for example, defending their own real estate investments, opposing building, and forcing people to spend ever more time on the concrete-and-asphault shackles that bind yet divide our cities.


----------------------------------------------
* I decided to read the book last weekend after coming across multiple references to it in my other recent reading material, and then a reference by Kevin Carson to it sealed the deal. Just kidding - the book is over 700 pages long, no way could I read that in a weekend.

** This is, believe it or not, not a bias toward irrationality or Romantic ideals, but rather towards rational rationality that reflects the fact that the future is uncertain and humans are neither means to others' ends, nor members of a unified collective, but rather individuals with social skills and needs too varied to be able to plug into a set of equations, pamphlets, or budgets. Perhaps Shaw sums it up best: "A reasonable man adapts himself to his environment. An unreasonable man persists in attempting to adapt his environment to suit himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." This is a brilliant, self-referential, seemingly illogical bit of wisdom that forces you to question whether the perfectly rational, centrally directed state with answers to all of life's problems (which Shaw, ironically, seemed to believe in) would be dynamic or static.

*** My standard example is that Ted Turner is the former type of capitalist but not the latter, while I am the latter and not the former. This is true of most libertarians, which is why the claim that we are looking out for "our" class interests is not only an ad hominem argument, but an unfounded one at that. Indeed, it is ironic that many if not most libertarians are academics, but most academics are not libertarians by any stretch of the imagination. Also, not that while most libertarians mean "laissez faire capitalism" or "merchant capitalism", many people intentionally or unintentionally conflate "finance capitalism", "state capitalism", and "laissez faire capitalism" as if they all meant the same thing.

Why I blog

I agree with Brayden:

Heaven help us if the natural evolution of blogging is to turn all of us into walking Powerpoint presentations. I’m glad I don’t feel cursed in this way.

Even one of the commenters on Seth's post says, "My tolerance for reading something that doesn’t make its point in the first two sentences is now zero." I suspect that has something more to do with texting than blogging, and may be indicative of the PowerPointization of thinking. Edward Tufte must be a hollow figure of abject despair at this point.

Anyhow, I first became interested in doing this because I hated Molly Ivins' style (for that matter, I hate most editorial page columnists now) precisely because she substituted a few drive-by, snarky comments for any serious, in-depth treatment of serious ideas. So I thought I would vivisect each of her columns and simultaneously demonstrate the opposite style.

Unfortunately, the first article I took on is still only half-finished. It involved her saying that phone deregulation didn't work because we are now getting telemarketer calls during dinner, among other monuments of cleverness-masquerading-as-analysis. At one time, I actually enjoyed her until I noted that one week, she was crying that Newt cut off funding to the sweet little old nuns at Catholic Charities, and the next, in an article on the favorite reading materials of favorite groups, she was telling us that the Bible is for psychotic cult leaders like David Koresh (yeah, try radiocarbon dating those references). All without apparently any sense of irony. It was just bare rhetorical point-scoring.

So, yeah, I appreciate the occasional bit of brevity, but I also believe that far too many subjects in our culture that are worthy of serious consideration have been - no, distilled is not the right word - boiled down to thin, soundbitey gruel.

White Christmas

When my ex first bought the movie, I was skeptical. As the review on IMDB says, it is schmaltzy, the plot is thin, and escapist. However, I have grown to like it for its snapshot of post-WWII Americana. Among other things, I marvel at the

• escapist story about a famous traveling song-n-dance show. This was definitely Virgin America, before the Kennedy Assassination.
  
• extremely white-washed version of America. I believe there is only one non-white character in the entire movie, a black train porter whose face we possibly never see as he serves sandwiches. It seems amazing even for that time that they don't even have a black singer or dancer in the show.
• drag performance of "Sisters" by Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye. At one point, they make a choreographed hand gesture that is also a vulgar gesture for female genitalia, which I don't believe was accidental.
• Kaye was reputed to have had an affair with Laurence Olivier during this period. Knowing this, it makes the drag number and his reluctance to get involved with girls all the more funny.
• One of Crosby's kids claimed after his death that Bing was abusive. Other kids denied it, but two of them committed suicide. This background stands in stark contrast to his gently paternalistic character in the movie. Crosby, apparently, was also a helluva businessman according to his Wiki bio, which is entirely resonant with his character. For example, Crosby invested in Ampex in the early days; Ampex developed the first reel-to-reel recorder, and Crosby was the first performer to pre-record his shows. You could probably learn a lot about how show business was conducted in those days by watching this movie.
• Vera Ellen's athleticism as a dancer. She is as fun to watch as Jackie Chan in several of the numbers.
• Train travel! Train travel is almost an integral part of the plot. It seems much more relaxed and civilized than plane travel. I went from Madrid to Paris by hotel train one time, and didn't feel nearly as wrung out as I would have had I flown.
• military hero worship. As The Gittering Eye points out, one song if not the whole movie appears to be a pro-Eisenhower commercial for the 1954 mid-term election. I'm not sure I'm willing to go that far; I always assumed that it was an attempt to recapture or cash in on the popularity of Berlin's and Crosby's wartime hit. Still, I'm baffled by the song in which Crosby appeals to the soldiers to come to the show for the retired general. It goes
  

[VERSE:]
When the war was over, why, there were jobs galore
For the G.I. Josephs who were in the war
But for generals things were not so grand
And it's not so hard to understand

[REFRAIN:]
What can you do with a general
When he stops being a general?
Oh, what can you do with a general who retires?

Who's got a job for a general
When he stops being a general?
They all get a job but a general no one hires

They fill his chest with medals while he's across the foam
And they spread the crimson carpet when he comes marching home
The next day someone hollers when he comes into view
"Here comes the general" and they all say "General who?"
They're delighted that he came
But they can't recall his name

Nobody thinks of assigning him
When they stop wining and dining him
It seems this country never has enjoyed
So many one and two and three and four star generals
Unemployed

Are we really supposed to feel sorry for them? And isn't peace a good thing?

Notes for BBC reporters

After listening to you chaps on NPR lo these many years, I thought I might offer some feedback.

• You are using a microphone and a recording or transmitting device which is used to convey by electronic means the sounds of your voice worldwide to a local transmitter that carries it to my car radio, where I can turn the amplifier up sufficiently loud to cause permanent tinnitus. It is not necessary for you to try to do so by yourself and without the apparatus. Speak in a normal voice; we can hear you. It is not a tin can and a string.
• Try to break things up a little. I know consistency is nice and all, but in a 5 minute report, it is excruciating to hear every sentence pronounced, "DAdaDAdaDAdaDAdaDAdaDAdada-DAAAAaaaa. DAdaDAdaDAdaDAdaDAdaDAdada-DAAAAaaaa." It's like listening to that Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous reporter wax eloquent about nuclear prolifer-AAA-tion. It is reminiscent of the Monty Python episode that featured Whicker IIII[s]-land.
• Korea only has one "r" in it. Same for Africa. India has no "r" in it. Thus, we pronounce them ko-REE-a, Af-ree-ka, IN-dee-a, and not ko-Ree-er, A-free-ker, and IN-dee-er. Stop appending r's to every word that ends in a "ah"-sound (I'm sure pronunciologists have a name for it, but I shan't look it up). Last night, we were watching The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe when the brave tots made several references to "gels". That's with a hard "g" as in "garage", so not at all like the stuff hardcore suburban punks put in their hair. My wife asked what they were saying, and I had by then deduced they were talking about "girls" but had somehow left out the "r". "No matter", I reassured her, "they'll likely find a spare at the end of Narnia".
  

As I look back now, I realize that "garage" was perhaps not the best example; I meant of course the first "g". Anyhow, ...

• "No" has a single syllable, at most two when a special emphasis is required. At no time does it have four or more. "No", or perhaps, "No-o", but not "NaOOoo", nor shall it be "NaOOOooUU", and higher order elaborations are right out. I have heard Australian correspondents turn "No, Sue" into iambic pentameter.

Otherwise, nice job, cheerio, keep it up, pip-pip, and all that.

Thanksgiving Means Carnage!

Well, actually, the original line was "Christmas means carnage!"

This year, it means the introduction of my nephew Ciaran Telge to the world. I hope he doesn't end up like this guy. I wonder if they'll make him sit at the kids table?

This year, I am particularly thankful that this woman accepted my proposal and agreed to marry me.

In the year of google, 7

On the way to the airport in a shuttle, a woman who was running late made a remark about pulling an OJ Simpson through the airport. After a long pause, I remarked that such a statement might have a different connotation to someone who grew up in the 90s. Did she mean she was going to kill her ex-wife and her boyfriend, leave footprints in the blood and their blood in her drain, before flying to Chicago to dump the knife? I guessed not. But how to refer to a bygone, innocent era when it would be difficult to find out about such things?

Frankly, I'm surprised that googling "bg 'before google'" only yields 443 hits. A new meme is in order: we should start referring to the era before 1998 as "ceag" (common era, ante google). That was the era when people either had to agree to disagree because they couldn't check facts, or when they had to go to the library and spend time acquiring knowledge. We now live in the cepg (common era, post google), where everyone is an instant expert on everything.

Yes they are.

Yes they are.

Okay, you're right: no, they aren't.

If you participate in any active blog or other comment sections, where there is some interaction and disagreement between the commenters, then you have probably seen the Instant Expert. They never take the time to seriously consider opposing viewpoints. Instead, they fix their attention on some trivial aspect of a counterpoint, use Google to find some rebuttal, and use that rebuttal in place of a real, reasoned, argument. Sometimes that method leads them into defending the indefensible, an error which degenerates into the snide comment and name-calling flame war.

But I digress.

As I'm sure many people are aware, the power of Google is such that you can come up to speed on topics relatively quickly. There was a recent story about Colin Powell using it to come up to speed about a UN resolution while the Russian ambassador was still on the phone. This kind of access to information has a dual-edge power; the dark side of it is that people may become complacent in a number of ways:

• If you can have instant access to all information, it is unnecessary to develop any true expertise in any subject. Of course, it is hard to win acceptance on a job application by using "proficient with Google" as a qualification.
  
• When the cost of researching was high, we were more selective about what to research. Now that it has lowered, we try to research too many things at once. This is similar to the bullet above, but there I was talking about the temptation to never build expertise, here I am talking about the temptation to become expert in too many subjects
  
• The well-discussed problem that the lack of a gatekeeper on the internet means you don't have a gauge for the quality of information. That may be true, but there's a technological answer: gatekeeper sites such as refereed journals and commercial sites also have websites.
• Using google in the manner described is really no different than using PowerPoint to discuss complex technical issues, an error that Edward Tufte has discussed at length. Root cause analysis by bulleted list ... like this one
  

One benefit of Google, however, is the fact that it may change the way business is done. In the ceag, it was necessary for businesses and professionals to maintain a physical presence such as a shop or PO box. Moving ceag meant incurring expenses which sometimes precluded the move; moving cepg means keeping a web presence and updating any physical pointers (addresses, phone numbers) on the website. You can always be found, if you want to be, cepg.

Reject the assumptions

I'm sorry, but I reject the entire premise. If I have a choice between paying $50 to go see Eric Clapton, who at one time deserved to be compared to God, or getting paid $50 to go listen to a tone-deaf, harmonica-mangling, overhyped blowhard named Bob Zimmerman Dylan, I'd take Clapton. Sorry to be a smart ass, but I find the choice to be distracting.

To use the original numbers, let's say that I'd pay $50 to see Dylan, but can get the tickets for $40. And let's say I can get the Clapton tickets for free, but I'd pay $30 for them. By the logic of the "correct" answer, even though I'm up net $30 going to Clapton, and net $10 for going to Dylan, my opportunity cost for going to Clapton is $10? I answered $50 the first time around, so I'm with Tyler in rationalizing this. Semantics, it is.

[Oh, I see someone already used this approach in the comments to Tyler's response. Geez, and with the same numbers, too.]

LA x 7

Last year, I was in Paris about 3 weeks before the beginning of the Tour. One morning, every newspaper kiosk in the city was suddenly plastered with a horrible picture of Lance - it showed him gaunt and dark. "Photoshop" I thought. The photo was emblazoned with the word DOPAGE; this was an advertisement for an edition of a Le Monde magazine featuring the recently released (at that time) LA Confidential by Pierre Ballester and David Walsh. Neither of them will say that Lance is definitely guilt of doping, only that the facts are there for you to draw your own conclusions (in other words, they don't want to face libel charges).

Today's Le Monde coverage shows that the French haven't matured since then. The coverage of Armstrong's seventh and final victory starts out with a loving description of how tour officials are relieved that he's leaving because uncertainty will return to the Tour. Then it devolves into a discussion of the code of silence that Lance enforces (?) about doping.

Every time he wins a stage ... into the doping control trailer.
Every day he stays in Yellow ... into the doping control trailer.
Random tests throughout the year.
He donates money to doping test research.
He gives tips to the doping control officials.

Also, we have this bit of snark, in which our intrepid reporter doesn't like the fact that Nike is basing a campaign on Lance's recovery from cancer. I recently read that Trek signed with him in 1998 because they thought they might get some exposure for their relationship with a "human interest story". Oh, what a story, eh? Someone in marketing gets a raise. But if anyone should be able to cash in on such a story, it's Lance Armstrong ... who signed the deal with Nike (the ad campaign included hiring an artist who turned Lance's icons into literal icons). Nike continues to support the Lance Armstrong Foundation and the Livestrong campaign. So who loses? Apparently, anyone who hates Nike and has to watch their commercials.

Do what you would tell any Nanny who thinks that you are being unduly influenced by TV: Just turn it off. Or maybe that retort only works on Jerry Falwell and not Nike haters like Peter Karasotis?

Incidentally, while I was on that trip, my father passed away after a protracted struggle with cancer. During his last year, my sister started working with Team in Training, an organization that raises money for leukemia and lymphoma research at the same time it provides endurance sports training to participants. Stephanie completed a marathon in San Francisco. Specifically, she completed the Nike Women's Marathon, which raised over $10 million for The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

N-I-K-E Women's Marathon. $10,000,000. How much did you raise, Mr. Kerasotis?

Yeah, I thought so.

Heartless Bastards

After hearing the interview on NPR, I bought the album. After 2 listens, I think I like it. There's a certain sadness (I can't quite put my finger on it), but a strong sense of defiance that infects almost every track. The rhythm section is polished and professional, but they could use a little more swing: sometimes it seems like the 4/4 might devolve into a march. The whole thing, though, is driven forward by Erika Wennerstrom's incredible vocals and credible lyrics. Her voice, which seems to have the same sonic range and quality as a young Robert Plant, thoroughly dominates the same way Bowie's dominated Tin Machine.

BTW, in the NPR interview, they said she was shy, even to the point of having meltdowns, seemed to be obsessed with being a rock & roll musician for much of her life, has been described as quirky, and she even has a certain look about her ... does she know she's autistic?

Some Things About Tyler Cowen

Every time Tyler visits some new place, he posts his favorite things about that place. When are the tables ever turned (I mean other than this)?

Jewelry: Tyler and his wife wear their rings on their right hands.

Career: Despite having chosen economics as a profession as early as 13, he was not subjected to the normal treatment we might expect of teenagers (and, apparently, adults).

Blog management: When deciding to make changes to MarginalRevolution, "things that make the blog better for Tyler" are weighted more than "things that make the blog better for readers". [It is possible that by weighing it that way, it is better for readers than if the weighting were done the other way? Also, does Alex have to use the same criteria, or is it adjusted to him?]

Travel: Tyler "collects" cities. [He apparently also collects amate paintings]

Art: Tyler has a very broad definition of art - including very utilitarian things like food. [I agree - Kathleen does, too, but may not agree that she does art]

Mexican Food: The "no brainer" on the Chope's menu is the relleno plate. [I don't know if that is a no-brainer at every Mexican restaurant, though]

The bottom line: I'm always leery about being in agreement with someone on too many topics - it makes me fear my own intellectual laziness. Should I just accept it, or start trying to find uncommon ground with MarginalRevolution? At the very least, I'm going to leave my new ring on my left hand.

Taos Solar Music Festival

I just got back from the Taos Solar Music Festival. What a great time, and tons of interesting stuff to look at in the area. What to start with?

Let's start with the music. Loved Yerba Buena and Leo Kottke & Mike Gordon ("loved" means "would buy albums from"), although Mike and Leo should consider outsourcing their singing. Not terribly impressed with many other acts. The buildup for Michael Faranti was too much. One side-stage act was amusing, singing about $2 shoes and such, but I didn't catch her name. The Solar Queens, I think we can all agree, would have been doing that even if there were no Music Festival. Conspiracy Theory: they concocted the Solar Festival as a cover story for being able to show off their drag costumes in public. Look for more festivals in Taos featuring the "[blank] Queens" (fill in blank as appropriate).

The Solar Village was a little disappointing. You've got the NMSEA, the Santa Fe Electric Bicycle Company selling WaveCrest bicycles, someone else hawking classes on making biodiesel from waste vegetable oil, someone else talking about how cities of the future will be long & narrow strips, Veterans For Peace auctioning a beautiful hand-built canoe, someone else showing off solar ovens, a few people showing collectors and solar toys, a few showing water recycling systems, and I don't remember the rest. It wasn't that any of them were bad, but c'mon! - most of the solar panels I saw were manufactured by BP, so where's BP? Where's Sharp, Kyocera, Xantrex, and the other manufacturers? How about an architect or two?

I suspect that the political and anti-capitalist messages of the NMSEA, several of the artists, and more than a few attendees might drive these companies away, but the anti-capitalists are foolish if they think that alternative energy is going to have any impact without major investment from capitalists. Why is it unacceptable (and it is unacceptable) for an oil company to be associated with a murderous regime, but acceptable for artists to worship dead mass murderers and meet and greet with living ones who have ruined their country (and are trying to ruin others') while murdering 7 times more than Pinochet? Well, at least they have high educational achievements and free health care, eh?

The better display was the community of Earthships just North of Taos, especially Angels Nest. The "entrance" to the Earthship area was extremely disappointing, including the area where I think they make their biodiesel. It looks like someone's garage project, and I think it does a tremendous disservice to show that as the face of sustainable living. Our recurring theme was that it's like serving twigs and berries to someone while trying to convince them to become a vegetarian. Angel's Nest, on the other hand, was truly impressive. Unfortunately, there weren't any signs or displays directing people towards the Earthships, and you just had to get lucky to get a tour of Angels Nest.

Speaking of twigs and berries, we had a few encounters with food establishments in Taos. We were looking for someplace to eat in Taos and discussing the possibility of finding a vegetarian place when we came across the Sheva Cafe. Outstanding - I had the spinach pie and found it to be in diametrical opposition to twigs and berries. I enjoyed coffee several mornings at the Taos House of Coffee. One night we ate at the Guadalajara Grill - surprising and interesting place, with (I can report) excellent shark tacos. We got interesting lunch goodies from Cid's Food Market, a place that specializes in food for wealthy "hippies" organic, macrobiotic, vegan, vegetarian, and other specialty diets.

The camping was okay, but there were a few things that could have been better. For example, a solar shower would have been perfect. A published shuttle schedule would have helped. Next time, we bring bikes. I think I was one of the few paying campers - freeloaders only make it less likely that they will improve the campground for next year (I think it ran on the honor system). A water supply would have been nice (thanks to whoever's hose that was, and I sure hope it wasn't grey water! (that's a real concern in Taos, where many people recycle water 1-2 times)).

Finally, a comment on Earthships in general and Angel's Nest specifically. I liked AN, but let's face it: only a multimillionaire could afford something like that. If people want to see any appreciable effect on their favorite enviro-topic (be it oil use, CO2 emissions, water use, renewable energy, etc.), the middle class has to be able and have the desire to live in houses like this. Someone has to address the affordability issue and, frankly, reduce the appeal to eccentricity. It has to be mainstreamed.

The Earthship village is a collection of independent houses, separated by hundreds of yards, with nothing looking like common space, parks, children, or any of the signs of what might be called "community". Has anyone up there read A Pattern Language? So long as it lacks the community feel, it looks like a place for eccentric hippies. People who are otherwise receptive to reducing their footprint but not to eccentricity will never look past the Earthship surface, and that's a problem with marketing, not the product. Someone is failing to do whole systems thinking.

The bottles and cans stuck in big concrete walls spell "excercise in futility" - what exactly do the cans and bottles accomplish? You're better off recycling cans to Reynolds and bottles to the local bottler, and also doing something to reduce the amount of concrete. Concrete production requires energy - tons of it! Hello - why not use native building materials that use less energy and in some cases sequester carbon? Like, for example adobe and straw-bale? It's not like adobe is unknown in that part of the world, and I walked through more alfalfa and straw in the last 2 days than I have in the past year. (I concede that maybe there's more to this than meets the eye, but I certainly never tripped across a reasonable explanation despite a lengthy visit).

Finally, there were some extremely, uh, ... eccentric? ... explanations for things at Angels Nest. Don't get me wrong - I loved the place and wouldn't mind spending a weekend there. The stretch Hummer Limo that runs on biodiesel/ethanol/hydrogen and uses sunlight to create its own hydrogen is probably the best advertisement for non-twigs & berries environmentalism I have ever seen. However,

• Magnetic vortex water purification systems: Um, no. Gravity and the offset nozzle cause the vortex, not magic energy fields. The magnets at the bottom could not possibly generate a strong enough magnetic field to kill anything except by old age. More refutation of this junk science here.
• The hot bath that "removes mercury, aluminum, and other heavy metal toxins" sounded like someone was indulging in a chelation therapy fantasy.
  
• I really like the architectural use of copper. And it is a very good conductor of electricity, but by no means the best (as they claimed). Encircling parts of your house in it looks good, but I don't think it is going to reduce "bad" EMF that "cause brain tumors". For one thing, if there were a lot of currents being conducted through it, those create their own EMF. Thus, any field created inside (by, say, electronic equipment such as stereos or inverters) are going to remain inside. For another thing, Marcia Angell wrote a very strong editorial in NEMJ when she was editor, admonishing researchers to drop the powerline/leukemia hunt and go do research with real prospects. Study after study failed to f