Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Contract law and public pensions
So, I am not a lawyer—but I am a taxpayer. A taxpayer in New Jersey, yet, which means I really know from paying taxes.
The conservative and libertarian blogospheres have been sounding the alarm about public-employee pensions for some time, to no noticeable effect. But everyone assumes that the obligations to the pensioners are inviolate.
But it is, I think, basic to contract law that contracts made under false pretences—through fraud, extortion, bribery, and such—have no legal force.
Isn't the implicit quid-pro-quo between legislators and the SEIU reason enough to consider any contract between a legislature and a union null and void? I think one need only show that the public-'service' unions' efforts on behalf of politicians who vote to hand over our tax dollars to union featherbedders constitutes a form of extortion to enable any legislature to abrogate any public-employee contract.
Or am I just dreaming?
Labels: pensions
posted by vepxistqaosani 12:18 PM
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Another good reason to home school
While I am not a lawyer, I read with some interest an law article pointed to by Instapundit: Decriminalizing Students with Disabilities, by Dean Hill Rivkin.
I am incompetent to judge the legal arguments Rivkin makes, but they all seem reasonable to me. Given the laws we've got, the consequences he outlines seem straightforward enough.
However, I am competent to judge whether or not those consequences are worthwhile.
They are not, and no one who has ever been in or near a public school and has the best interests of children at heart could possibly entertain the notion that they are. It follows, therefore, that Rivkin is either ignorant or hates children.
Everything that Rivkin advocates stems from the assumption that 'mainstreaming' -- that is, putting children of the same age together in the same room to be taught by the same person, no matter what -- is the summum bonum of education practice. In short, that whatever differences might exist between individuals should be summarily erased by our schools.
For a contrary argument, see Harrison Bergeron.
Basically, Rivkin argues that, once a child has been labeled 'disabled', he is permanently immune from all disciplinary and, especially, criminal consequences of his actions. Instead, any infraction of school rules is to be answered with revisions to the student's IEP (individualized education plan), which the Federal IDEA (Individuals With Disabilities Education Act) mandates that schools prepare for all disabled students.
As it happens, I have a little experience with IDEA. My eldest daughter went through the various procedures and received a diagnosis of ADD. Reading through the material, I concluded, and said to the principal of my daughter's school, "It looks like I can make you do absolutely anything I want."
He sighed and agreed.
Now, fortunately for him (and my daughter), I'm a reasonable guy and not given to litigation. However, an educational regime that depends on parental reasonableness in order to function is not going to be particularly stable.
I also have grave misgivings about the validity of ADD -- everyone I know and like has most or all of the 'symptoms', and anyone who did not have any of them would be incredibly dull company. But that's a completely different fight ....
Eventually -- and after my daughter was knocked down during a fight between two (undoubtedly 'disabled') miscreants, who were, of course, not punished in any way whatsoever -- we withdrew her from school and taught her at home. She ended up at a local community college instead of high school, getting an AA at the age her peers were getting their diplomas, got a second AA the next year from a four-year college, and is finishing her BFA this year, at the age of 20.
So it worked out well for us, but we have resources, both financial and intellectual, that the majority of families don't have.
It should be obvious, at least to all who stop to think, that the presence of even a single disruptive child in a classroom is sufficient to prevent all the rest from learning as they ought. The Rivkins of America are attempting to ensure that every American class will have at least one such student, and in this they have largely succeeded.
Perhaps you have noticed that American students are both stupider and more ignorant than their Asian and European peers? There just could be a connection ...
posted by vepxistqaosani 8:27 AM
Saturday, March 07, 2009
Language Help for Hillary
As everyone knows by now, Hillary embarrassed herself the other day with a little mistranslation. But what is one to do, if one is a monoglot?
Consider this a free advertisement for Google Translate.
I spent 2 minutes with Google Translate to figure out how to say 'reset' по-русский. I asked for a translation of "Push the reset button". You can see the result here.
You will see that 'перегрузка' doesn't appear. However, even if you ask for a translation of 'reset' by itself, you don't get that word back. See? On the other hand, if you search for 'overcharge', there it is: here, at noun #7. And if you back-translate перегрузка, you still don't get reset: here.
To make sure this is reasonably idiomatic, I then searched the web for the phrase "нажмите кнопку сброса" (push the reset button, remember?) and got more than a thousand hits: here.
So the word Hillary was groping for was probably "сброс" (spros). In fairness to Hillary (not that she ever bothers), 'сброс' has a bunch of other meanings not obviously related to the idea of resetting. Still, I'm reasonably confident in Google's results. If it's still wrong, it's at least not laughably wrong.
Now, make the usual effort to imagine the media's reaction to Condi Rice making such an error (not that she could, of course, being fluent in Russian).
Do you suppose I have a future as a linguist at the Department of State?
Seriously -- I am far, far from expert in Russian, and I could get a reasonable word pretty quickly; there are bound to be dozens, if not hundreds, of Russian speakers in our State Department (or at least I hope so ...). How is it remotely possible for Hillary's staff to allow her to make such an ass of herself? It only reinforces the world's image of Americans as ignorant monoglots.
As long as we don't all end up completely broke, this is going to be a fun four years!
posted by vepxistqaosani 4:07 PM
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Slashdot has a discussion of a paper by T. Ord et al. which attempts to demonstrate that the probability of a world-ending disaster at the Large Hadron Collider is much greater than previously thought.
They reach this conclusion by observing that 1 in 1,000 physics papers have to be withdrawn because of miscalculations. To be 'fair' to the LHC, they use a lower number: 1 in 10,000.
Let's demonstrate how this works:My calculations show that the probability the sun will rise tomorrow is 1; however, from Ord et al., we learn that there is a probability of 1 in 10,000 that physics calculations are wrong. It thus follows that there is a 1 in 10,000 chance that the sun will not rise tomorrow.
I expect to live another 50 years. Simple probability demonstrates that there is an 84% change that the sun will fail to rise during that time.But wait! In the 5000 years of recorded human history, the probability that the sun failed to rise at least once is asymptotically equal to 1.
Everything we think we know is wrong!Labels: Apocalypse, LHC
posted by vepxistqaosani 12:05 PM
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Learning from Islam
Tariq Ramadan, whom Ian Buruma says is regarded as an 'Islamic superstar', has decided to tell us what the West can learn from Islam.
At least, that's the title of his essay in the February 16, 2007 issue of The Chronicle Review. But what can we learn from Islam? Ramadan never does quite tell us.
Oh, he does mention two Muslims from more than half a millennium ago who had an influence on Western thought -- Averroës and Ibn Khaldun -- but nothing more recent than that. And, in truth, how could he? There simply have been no important Muslim thinkers since Ferdinand and Isabella threw the Muslims out of Spain in 1492.
So what are we to learn from Islam? Science? Well, perhaps not -- the only important Muslim scientists of the past 500 years (Salam and Zewail) practiced their craft in the West. Nor is it possible to imagine a scientific breakthrough coming out of Cairo or Islamabad or Jakarta.
Perhaps we are to learn tolerance from the Sunnis and the Shi'ites.
Sorry. Bad joke.
Perhaps we should learn politics from the examples of, say, Libya, Iran, Palestine, and Egypt.
Oh. Worse joke.
Actually, Ramadan seems to think that we need to learn diversity from Islam.
No, that's not a joke. He writes, "... the presence of Muslims in Western societies is of vital interest for those societies themselves. The West today runs a substantial risk of seeing itself as a monolithic whole, as a civilization based exclusively on Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian tradition, to whose specific nature Islam is an outsider. The presence of Muslims makes it imperative to reconsider that selective, erroneous historical construction."
So Ramadan would have us break the monolith and replace our history with a fictional construct, as if the (wholly marginal) Averroës and Ibn Khlduns of the Middle Ages somehow have equal standing with Moses, Plato, Aristotle, Jesus, and Newton. Is this, then, learning?
Well, yes: that is apparently what passes for learning among the Muslims. Ramadan rambles for 3300 words, but can find absolutely nothing -- or nothing factual -- that the West can learn from Islam. Yet he is, by all accounts, the best scholar Islam has to offer.
But isn't that a relief? There is no longer any reason for any of us to give Islam a single moment's further thought. Tariq Ramadan has proven that it is utterly irrelevant to the Western -- which is to say, the modern -- world.
posted by vepxistqaosani 8:56 PM
Thursday, September 08, 2005
Doers vs. Regulators
Nearly everyone is unhappy with the response to Katrina. While Republicans can point to fields of flooded buses in New Orleans and Democrats can point to a slow response by the Bush administration, it seems to me that that's not the most important duality.The horror stories coming out of New Orleans are not evidence of conflict between Republicans and Democrats or between liberals and conservatives -- much less between blacks and whites -- but between Doers and Regulators.
Consider the devastating story, widely blogged, of a thousand highly trained first responders being given sexual harassment training in Atlanta while people were dying a few hundred miles to the southeast. Can there be any doubt that some FEMA bureaucrat -- a Regulator -- realized that there was a regulation on the books that everyone in FEMA had to undergo such training? And can there be any doubt that the firefighters, paramedics, and rescue workers -- all Doers -- would much rather have been saving lives that fulfilling bureaucratic requirements?Government attracts Regulators, not Doers. It hardly matters whether they're Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, gay or straight, Christian or atheist -- folks who like to do useful and interesting things have limited patience with bureaucracy. That's why, for instance, we lose so many young teachers -- they might love the work of teaching, but they are driven away by the paperwork and the (over-) regulation.
And this, finally, is why conservatives have not made the inroads in the culture of government that their electoral dominance would suggest. Anyone who stays in an office -- elected, appointed, or hired -- for more than a few years is guaranteed to be a Regulator: an enemy of common sense and flexibility. The government will never be run on conservative principles so long as the Regulators' butts are stuck in the majority of the seats in government offices.This is the real lesson of Katrina: Regulation kills. And so long as the Regulators are doing the investigating, reforming, and restructuring of FEMA, regulation will kill again.
posted by vepxistqaosani 8:54 PM
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
Well, Somebody Had to Do It
I couldn't find a good Fisking of Brian Reade's fulminations in the Daily Mirror.I had ignored it, but then I got this missive from my brother in California:
This was forwarded to me from someone who titled it "my sentiments exactly." Wow.
I was wondering if you could write a counterpoint version (if you had the time and desire).
Since I couldn't point him to someone else, I did it. So here goes.
GOD HELP AMERICA
Better than 'God help the world', don't you think?
THEY say that in life you get what you deserve. Well, today America has deservedly got a lawless cowboy to lead them further into carnage and isolation and the unreserved contempt of most of the rest of the world.
The contempt of the world is a matter of sublime indifference to us -- for you spineless Eurotrash will still buy our products, lend us money, watch our movies, and eat our fast food. Does it make you feel better to complain as you do so? Then feel free ... we'll still be happy to take your Euros.
This once-great country has pulled up its drawbridge for another four years and stuck a finger up to the billions of us forced to share the same air. And in doing so, it has shown itself to be a fearful, backward-looking and very small nation.
Ah. I had wondered why so many millions risk everything -- and even sometimes lose their lives -- to get here. It's because they're so fearful that they risk so much. Makes perfect sense, doesn't it?
This should have been the day when Americans finally answered their critics by raising their eyes from their own sidewalks and looking outward towards the rest of humanity.
Hmmm. You wouldn't happen to remember either of the two great European wars of the last century, would you? And would you happen to know what country is responsible for the agricultural innovations that daily save hundreds of millions from death by starvation?
And for a few hours early yesterday, when the exit polls predicted a John Kerry victory, it seemed they had.
But then the horrible, inevitable truth hit home. They had somehow managed to re-elect the most devious, blinkered and reckless leader ever put before them. The Yellow Rogue of Texas.
A self-serving, dim-witted, draft-dodging, gung-ho little rich boy, whose idea of courage is to yell: "I feel good," as he unleashes an awesome fury which slaughters 100,000 innocents for no other reason than greed and vanity.
I do so love the 'dim-witted' charge. You see, George Bush put his academic records out for everyone to see and ridicule -- for all that they show that he's in the 95th percentile of intelligence. (I'm at 99.5, myself, for what it's worth -- but I recognize my limitations; I am no politician, nor do I wish to be.) John Kerry (also no politician) did not release his Yale records, for reasons that we can only guess at. But Kerry did display (some of) his military records, including -- inadvertently, no doubt -- some aptitude test results.
Kerry is not as smart as Bush; he scores about five percentage points lower.
See the New York Times (that fabulously pro-Bush organ) for details (but you'll have to pay).
A dangerous chameleon, his charming exterior provides cover for a power-crazed clique of Doctor Strangeloves whose goal is to increase America's grip on the world's economies and natural resources.
I do not recall that those were the goals of the original Dr. Strangelove, but we can easily forgive such minor ignorance of American culture in one who so despises it.
It is doubtless foolish to try to explain economics in so small a space as this, so let me just say that America does not force anyone to sell us anything at the point of a gun. If anyone be truly unhappy with the price we offer for their natural resources, then they are perfectly free to sell them to someone else at a higher price.
And in foolishly backing him, Americans have given the go-ahead for more unilateral pre-emptive strikes, more world instability and most probably another 9/11.
Why else do you think bin Laden was so happy to scare them to the polls, then made no attempt to scupper the outcome?
There's only one headline in town today, folks: "It Was Osama Wot Won It."
And soon he'll expect pay-back. Well, he can't allow Bush to have his folks whoopin' and a-hollerin' without his own getting a share of the fun, can he?
Heck, guys, I hope you're feeling proud today.
Our dear friend Osama famously said 'When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse.' Were Kerry to have been elected, then we would have seen an explosion of anti-American terrorism, since al Qaeda would have (correctly) calculated that Kerry would not have the will to take casualties. Cf. the Madrid bombings, the craven response of the Spanish thereto, and the new comity that exists between Spain and the Islamic world.
What's that you say? That no such new comity exists? Why, imagine that!
To the tens of millions who voted for John Kerry, my commiserations.
It is a mark of the noble mind to pity the mentally infirm.
To the overwhelming majority of you who didn't, I simply ask: Have you learnt nothing? Do you despise your own image that much?
Ah, but you see, we don't care about our image. We care about reality. You may control our image now -- just as you despised Ronald Reagan twenty years ago -- but history will out. The politics of appeasement have never and will never produce anything but temporary ceasefires and disastrous wars. Bush, like most Americans, understands that. How Europeans cannot, given their history, is beyond my poor powers to comprehend.
Do you care so little about the world beyond your shores?
Bingo! (That's an Americanism for 'Precisely so, old chap'.)
How could you do this to yourselves?
The real question is, 'How can we do so much for Europe at so high a cost in the face of such hatred?' What would happen to your sclerotic economies were we finally to abandon all our military bases in Europe? Do you not remember the squeals last year when Bush announced that he was paring back our military presence there?
How appalling must one man's record at home and abroad be for you to reject him?
Oh, I should say it should be at least as appalling as Jacques Chirac's or George Galloway's.
Kerry wasn't the best presidential candidate the Democrats have ever fielded (and he did deserve a kicking for that "reporting for doo-dee" moment), but at least he understood the complexity of the world outside America, and domestic disgraces like the 45 million of his fellow citizens without health cover.
No, he didn't. The mark of one who understands complexity is the ability to explain it simply. Bush could; Kerry couldn't. But, as I said above, Bush is smarter, so that shouldn't be a surprise.
And it is remarkably amusing to hear a Britisher denounce American health care. Admire this, for instance: 'Surgeons Close Wounds with Paperclips'.
How is it, do you suppose, that such things happen (and happen regularly) in the utopia of nationalised health care, but not in the dog-eat-dog catastrophe of free-market health care?
He would have done something to make that country fairer and re-connected it with the wider world.
Instead America chose a man without morals or vision. An economic incompetent who inherited a $2billion surplus from Clinton, gave it in tax cuts to the rich and turned the US into the world's largest debtor nation.
Yes, and you will continue lending us money, won't you? Because investors can make far more, far more reliably, lending to the US than, say, Britain. The other economic nonsense we can leave to one side; I think that Bush has done rather well overcoming the Clinton recession (the economy began to fail at the end of Clinton's term) and September 11th (which took many billions [or is that milliards?] out of the American economy).
A man who sneers at the rights of other nations. Who has withdrawn from international treaties on the environment and chemical weapons.
The right to torture and murder the regime's opponents? Why is such a right not worth so much as a sneer?
As for the environment, pointing you to the (socialist) Bjorn Lomborg probably isn't going to help, is it? You don't sound like the kind of person who can read, much less understand, actual data. Suffice it to say that our environment will continue to improve, even as the environment in the third world all you bien-pensants idolize continues to deteriorate.
A man who flattens sovereign states then hands the rebuilding contracts to his own billionaire party backers.
*sigh* There are two companies in the world capable of doing the work necessary in Iraq. The other one is French. Should we really reward our enemies -- and make no mistake, France is an enemy of the United States; their foreign minister has said as much -- with such contracts?
A man who promotes trade protectionism and backs an Israeli government which continually flouts UN resolutions.
Ah, the UN. Knew that would show up eventually. We have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on the UN and have precious little to show for it.
Perhaps you've heard of the Duefler report? It shows that France and Russia were being systematically bribed by Saddam and that the UN itself has been utterly corrupted by the billions in Oil-for-Food money that it was given charge of. Moreover, the UN's "peacekeeping" and "humanitarian" forces have been consistently found guilty of the vilest sexual abuses of those they are charged to protect -- each story mentioned once in the American press and then forgotten; the UN is more-often-than-not incompetent to save those whom it graces with its attentions (see Rwanda and Sudan); and the UN's High Commission on Refugees bears the majority of the responsibility for the plight of the Palestinians (whose camps did you think they were living in? Israel's? Jordan's?). These facts should, one would think, cause any sensible person to question the doctrine that the rest of the world has the moral authority to judge the United States.
But sensibility doesn't seem to be your strong suit ...
America has chosen a menacingly immature buffoon who likened the pursuit of the 9/11 terrorists to a Wild West, Wanted Dead or Alive man-hunt and, during the Afghanistan war, kept a baseball scorecard in his drawer, notching up hits when news came through of enemy deaths.
A RADICAL Christian fanatic who decided the world was made up of the forces of good and evil, who invented a war on terror, and thus as author of it, believed he had the right to set the rules of engagement.
Which translates to telling his troops to do what the hell they want to the bad guys. As he has at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and countless towns across Iraq.
Oh, dear. That again. The Geneva convention applies only to those who make war by its rules. It does not apply to spies, saboteurs, or terrorists; nor should it. Anyone attacking American troops who is not in the uniform of a regular army is not covered by the convention.
We may, in our large-heartedness, extend such protections, but we are not required to. And may I point out that the inmates of Guantanamo gain weight in captivity? That most of them have never been fed so well in their lives?
You have to feel sorry for the millions of Yanks in the big cities like New York, Washington, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco who voted to kick him out.
Indeed you do.
These are the sophisticated side of the electorate who recognise a gibbon when they see one.
This from the continent that sand-blasts 'Thou shalt not kill' as hate speech?
I have no regrets taking my gibbon over your sophisticates; for gibbons, limited though they be, at least have a refreshingly straight-forward ability to distinguish between those who wish them harm and those who wish them ill. In a dangerous world, gibbons are far more likely to survive than, say, you.
As for the ones who put him in, across the Bible Belt and the South, us outsiders can only feel pity.
Were I a Kerry voter, though, I'd feel deep anger, not only at them returning Bush to power, but for allowing the outside world to lump us all into the same category of moronic muppets.
The self-righteous, gun-totin', military lovin', sister marryin', abortion-hatin', gay-loathin', foreigner-despisin', non-passport ownin' red-necks, who believe God gave America the biggest dick in the world so it could urinate on the rest of us and make their land "free and strong".
And why do _you_ think God gave America the 'biggest dick in the world'? And is this really what passes for reasoned discourse in Europe?
This is getting tiresome ...
You probably won't be surprised to learn of would-be Oklahoma Republican Senator Tom Coburn who, on Tuesday, promised to ban abortion and execute any doctors who carried them out.
He also told voters that lesbianism is so rampant in the state's schools that girls were being sent to toilets on their own. Not that any principal could be found to back him up.
These are the people who hijack the word patriot and liken compassion to child-molesting. And they are unknowingly bin Laden's chief recruiting officers.
Al-Qaeda's existence is fuelled by the outpourings of America's Christian right. Bush is its commander-in-chief. And he and bin Laden need each other to survive.
Both need to play Lex Luther to each others' Superman with their own fanatical people. Maybe that's why the mightiest military machine ever assembled has failed to catch the world's most wanted man.
That's 'Lex Luthor'; funny that you should so often use American cultural tropes and equally often get them wrong.
Or is the reason simply that America is incompetent? That behind the bluff they are frightened and clueless, which is why they've stayed with the devil they know.
VISITORS from another planet watching this election would surely not credit the amateurism.
The queues for hours to register a tick; the 17,000 lawyers needed to ensure there was no cheating; the $1.2bn wasted by parties trying to discredit the enemy; the allegations of fraud, intimidation and dirty tricks; the exit polls which were so wildly inaccurate; an Electoral College voting system that makes the Eurovision Song Contest look like a beacon of democracy and efficiency; and the delays and the legal wrangles in announcing the victor.
Yet America would have us believe theirs is the finest democracy in the world. Well, that fine democracy has got the man it deserved. George W Bush.
But is America safer today without Kerry in charge? A man who overnight would have given back to the UN some credibility and authority. Who would have worked out the best way to undo the Iraq mess without fear of losing face.
Yes! And the UN is incapable -- but I said this already -- of displaying either credibility or authority. It never had much, and it has now squandered what little it had on desperate efforts to support anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism.
Instead, the questions facing America today are - how many more thousands of their sons will die as Iraq descends into a new Vietnam? And how many more Vietnams are on the horizon now they have given Bush the mandate to go after Iran, Syria, North Korea or Cuba...?
Now, if you love Iran, Syria, North Korea, and Cuba so much, why are you still living in England under Tony Blair? (And isn't he just as bad as the gibbon? If not, why not?) I'm sure all those countries are desperately eager to have a solon such as yourself grace their parliaments.
Today is a sad day for the world, but it's even sadder for the millions of intelligent Americans embarrassed by a gung-ho leader and backed by a banal electorate, half of whom still believe Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11.
Yanks had the chance to show the world a better way this week, instead they made a thuggish cowboy ride off into the sunset bathed in glory.
And in doing so it brought Armageddon that little bit closer and re-christened their beloved nation The Home Of The Knave and the Land Of The Freak.
God Help America.
It occurs to me that hatred -- and what is this bile but hatred? -- always disguises fear. What are you so afraid of? Is it the spectre of the Islamicisation of Europe? Or merely Europe's inconsequentiality in an Americo-Pacific world? Or, perhaps, you are so used to failure -- social, moral, economic, military, cultural, and spiritual -- that you can no longer abide success anywhere?
posted by vepxistqaosani 10:20 PM
Friday, November 21, 2003
Krugman Actually Has a Point! (sort of)
But we'll begin with Sir Thomas Browne, instead:
'Tis not a melancholy Utinam of mine owne, but the desires of better heads, that there were a generall Synod; not to unite the incompatible difference of Religion, but for the benefit of learning, to reduce it as it lay at first in a few and solid Authours; and to condemne to the fire those swarms and millions of Rhapsodies, begotten onely to distract and abuse the weaker judgements of Scholars, and to maintaine the Trade and Mystery of Typographers.
Religio Medici, Sect. 24
As I am no longer a typographer, I am much more comfortable citing this. But what does it have to do with Krugman? Krugman complains today about the Bush administration and the Republicans in Congress (no, really!) and the AARP because he doesn't like the new Medicare and energy bills. (Who does?)
Krugman notes, "In case you haven't noticed, we live in a golden age of pork: the other big piece of legislation marching through Congress, the energy bill, makes the Smoot-Hawley tariff look like a classic of good government."
To Krugman, this is a failing of the uniquely corrupt, dishonest, stupid, and incompetent Republicans -- though how they can manage to be all four at once and yet consistently defeat the pure, honest, wise, and competent Democrats is something of a mystery. But to Browne and to me, it seems rather a natural result of the metastisization of government.
It is time, and past time, to "reduce it as it lay at first"; to declare a sort of legislative Jubilee during which all laws and regulations are repealed, and only those truly conducive to happy lives in a free society be re-enacted.
posted by vepxistqaosani 10:04 AM
Wednesday, October 01, 2003
Microsoft's treasonous innovations
Hey, so what if Microsoft can't produce interesting technology? They've got the market cornered on new ways to betray one's country!
I've blogged on this before: see this post from February 2003.
The issue -- which everyone seems to be ignoring -- is back in the news. A Slashdot post directed me to this article on C|Net. China has set up a lab to browse through Microsoft's Windows source code. Given that, as Jim Allchin, Microsoft's Group Vice President for Platforms, has said, "It is no exaggeration to say that the national security is also implicated by the efforts of hackers to break into computing networks. Computers, including many running Windows operating systems, are used throughout the United States Department of Defense and by the armed forces of the United States in Afghanistan and elsewhere." Or, as eWeek put it, "A senior Microsoft Corp. executive told a federal court last week that sharing information with competitors could damage national security and even threaten the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan. He later acknowledged that some Microsoft code was so flawed it could not be safely disclosed."
So, what Sun, HP, Oracle, etc. cannot be permitted to see because of the threat to national security can be freely given to communist China.
Someone please explain to me how this makes sense.
posted by vepxistqaosani 10:15 AM
Sunday, September 14, 2003
Fabulous Pianist Patch!
The Instapundit is in pain! But I can help ...
I suffered hand and wrist pains from computer use some years ago; I'm all better now, but my cure is an unusual one: Hanon.
Hanon is a set of finger exercises excruciatingly well-known among pianists. Since my mother was a piano teacher, I, too, knew of them. Once I had started, I eventually found a teacher -- and the muscular exercise of playing a real keyboard helped me train my hands to type using a computer keyboard in a healthier way (keep the wrist still and flat, let the fingers work, etc.)
As a side effect of this course of therapy, I can now play a few pieces of real music, even though I have no detectable musical talent.
Mouse overuse is still a problem, though, since traditional mice encourage truly lousy wrist positions. But it's rare that I have to use a mouse that much: keyboard shortcuts are so much more efficient.
posted by vepxistqaosani 5:17 PM
Friday, September 12, 2003
No Lind for Peas!
Oh, boy! My first Fisking ...
It is possible, I suppose, to be genuinely concerned about the poor of the third world and to be an American environmentalist -- but Michael Lind doesn't manage it in his New York Times piece, The Canc?n Delusion.
In fact, if a right-winger had come up with a third-world agricultural policy anything like Lind's, the Left would accuse him of racism -- if not fascism and genocide. And, for once, the Left's name-calling would be defensible.
Lind argues that eliminating agricultural subsidies in the first world would do nothing to help the third; that
... while the free traders are getting what they want out of the partnership -- lower taxes and expanded markets -- the populism and environmentalism of the left will be thwarted.
He goes on to say that
Agricultural subsidies in the advanced industrial nations ought to be reduced -- but for reasons that have little to do with their impact on developing countries. Created to promote a rural middle class when much of the population still worked in the farm sector, most subsidies are anachronistic now that agribusiness in the advanced countries employs only a tiny percentage of the population. Farm subsidy programs exploit consumers and taxpayers.
So he's on the Right side of the issue. What's the problem, then?
So yes, the abolition of most farm subsidies by the advanced nations is an overdue reform. But the result is unlikely to be the one hoped for by the left wing of the Canc?n coalition -- the enrichment of peasant farmers.
In fact, ending subsidies, if it leads to the modernization of agriculture in the developing world, is likely to destroy the very sorts of communities the pro-trade left seeks to support.
So the Evil Forces of Globalization are back in the community-destruction business. And how will they manage such destruction? Why, by using machines and chemicals instead of human muscle. Quelle horreur!
The high-tech farming of the global north uses machinery instead of human labor, along with huge quantities of fossil fuels and artificial fertilizers and pesticides. If the third world becomes as attractive to agribusiness as the first, then machines will replace family farmers, who will become as rare in Thailand as they are in the United States.
Technological displacement has the potential to produce social disasters. Many of the inner-city poor of the United States descend from farm laborers and tenant farmers displaced by the mechanization of agriculture in the South a few generations ago. Those who joined the middle class did so because they were able to find work in the expanding industrial and service sectors. But such opportunities are scarce in the developing world. For better or worse, the anti-subsidy movement, if it succeeds, is more likely to eliminate developing world farmers than to enrich them.
Yes, there are problems inherent in the transition from an agricultural to an industrial economy. But would you rather engage in back-breaking labor 16 hours a day with no guarantee that you'll actually manage to feed your family (much less make any money for the future) or take your chances in the big city? Over the past 250 years, millions of people have been faced with this choice -- and the vast majority choose the city.
Perhaps left-wing environmentalists should be required to work a year on a subsistence farm before they opine. That would save them from embarrassments like this:
The desire of many on the left to preserve traditional small-scale agriculture in the third world ...
Wait a minute! You mean the Left actively wants to keep the poorest people on the planet permanently poor? Well, yes. But there's another problem Lind has discovered (no doubt helped by Jonathan Rauch's article on genetically modified crops in the October Atlantic, not yet on line).
... is also on a collision course with the goal of preserving the last remnants of global wilderness. High-tech agriculture wastes fossil fuels -- but it spares land, by growing more food on less acreage. Genetically modified crops promise to do the same. Premodern third world agriculture doesn't rely on chemicals or genetically modified crops. But it takes far more land to grow the same crop by traditional methods than it does by means of industrial farming. The earth's remaining wilderness would be in even greater danger if the opening of northern markets were to create a financial incentive for developing nations to replace forests, savannas and wetlands with land-wasting peasant farms.
Gosh. Industrialization and technology save the environment. Imagine! Who could possibly have guessed?
These are the alternatives, then. If third world agriculture is industrialized, then much third world wilderness will be saved from the plow. But most farmers will be forced off the farm, and therefore may not profit from the access of southern agricultural exporters to northern markets. If, on the other hand, third world agriculture is not industrialized, then the effort to enrich developing countries by means of exports from labor-intensive farms will inspire a vast expansion of peasant farm acreage -- at the expense of the environment.
Note the hidden assumption: that third-worlders are simply not smart enough to do anything other than farm in the same primitive ways that our ancestors did five millennia ago. Perhaps there's a third way: that the industrialization of third-world agriculture will free up a vast pool of labor for the task of waging the third world's long-delayed industrial revolution.
But that's not what we want ... or not what we should want, anyway:
What looked like a sweet deal that could satisfy everybody except for subsidized special interests, then, seems destined to fall apart on inspection. First world consumers and third world agribusiness (much of it foreign-owned) may profit from the opening of the agricultural markets of the United States and other rich nations. But the activist left is unlikely to get what it wants: an Arcadia of prosperous village farmers living in harmony with the land.
In other words, let's keep 'em down on the farm just because that makes us feel better. And if they want to get off the farm -- well, screw 'em. We know what's best for them.
The fact that we'd never consider such an option for ourselves and our own families is beside the point -- and only right-wing meanies would bring it up.
posted by vepxistqaosani 4:03 PM
Tuesday, July 22, 2003
The Fear of Being Right
Instapundit linked to the Angry Clam's outing of Berkeley's psychoanalysis of the right-wing mindset.
If I could still be offended by leftist idiocies, I would be.
But we've had debates at my church over the past few months (the clergy is quite a bit to my left), and I have realized what the Left's problem is: They're afraid of being right.
Sure, not everyone on the Left is a Christian, so my sample is skewed: but I think my observations of the Christian Left do apply to the rest of them as well.
Christians are required, after all, to proclaim the unique truth of the Gospel; liberal priests won't do that. Instead, they'll have interfaith councils with Muslims and Hindus and Wiccans and such. In fact, the assistant minister told me that she would be very uncomfortable in a world where everyone was a Christian.
And so to politics. If you are right -- and I mean absolutely right, not merely that you think (or, more likely, feel) that you're right or that your opinions are right for you -- I mean objectively, undoubtedly, unquestionably right -- then you will be obligated both to tell others that they are wrong and to act.
But that would be intolerant. It's a far, far better thing to do to wrestle -- as publicly as you can manage -- with your doubts and dither until the debate has been decided.
Then you can start complaining all over again. That way your superior morality can never be questioned, and you can continue to look down upon simplisme. By looking down on others, you can be guaranteed to please yourself, no matter how much you have to overlook to do it.
To put it simply -- which is all I can do, being a right-winger and all -- the Left has become the party of masturbation fantasies.
Dr. Jocelyn Elders for President!
posted by vepxistqaosani 11:41 PM
Friday, February 28, 2003
Microsoft Betrays America!
Oh, sure, everyone knows that Microsoft is evil. Those of us who have to write programs for the Windows operating [sic] system are, perhaps, easier to convince than most.
But there's a story today that forces one to conclude that Microsoft are either traitors or liars. (Or both, I suppose.)
See this from the New York Times News from AP feature: "Microsoft to Let China See Windows Code". You say you don't see any problem? You say that Microsoft should be free to show their code to anyone who can stomach it?
Well, that's not the way Jim Allchin, Group Vice President for Platforms at Microsoft, sees it ... or saw it, anyway. Last May, in testimony before Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, he said that one of the states' proposed remedies (to force Microsoft to allow competitors to see their code) could compromise national security. Quoting from the account in eWeek: "A senior Microsoft Corp. executive told a federal court last week that sharing information with competitors could damage national security and even threaten the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan. He later acknowledged that some Microsoft code was so flawed it could not be safely disclosed."
So, when Microsoft is trying to suppress competition, national security is of paramount importance; but when they're trying to make a sale to a country whose interests are often inimical to those of the United States ... well, anything to make a gigabuck or two!
posted by vepxistqaosani 1:41 PM
Thursday, February 06, 2003
A Reason for Space
Arguments about space exploration usually wind up with the old canard that we should do something about <insert liberal crusade here> first. So the challenge is to demonstrate that space exploration will have some effect on earthbound ills. Weather satellites are too old-hat to do the trick; and spinoffs, it will be argued, mostly benefit the already privileged.
Solar Power
All right-thinking environmentalists are bound to be in favor of solar power -- at least, so long as solar power installations aren't large enough to be noticed; cf. wind power and the objections of those good liberals on Cape Cod. So let's give them solar power! But not inefficient, expensive, earthbound, Sierra Club--style solar cells: I'm talking about giant satellites beaming power down to Earth.
This may not be feasible, as there are substantial technological and economic difficulties. But it's well worth investigating, especially since innovations in computer technology and materials science have not stopped since the problem was last looked at (though research into propulsion systems seems to have lagged a bit).
As a starting point, take a look at this article from space.com and this neat picture of a solar power satellite under construction.
Global Warming
We can even imagine a solution to global warming, should it ever prove to be a problem: A parasol, hundreds or thousands of miles in diameter, orbiting the Earth.
Sound crazy? Sure! But check out Dyson spheres someday ... and Freeman Dyson's a very important, highly credentialed physicist, very unlike your humble blogger.
The best thing about solutions like these is that they drive environmentalists crazy. The last thing they want is a technological solution that enables the spread of the American Way of Life (the supremest of evils) throughout the entire globe. But why shouldn't we want that?
posted by vepxistqaosani 12:13 PM
Saturday, October 26, 2002
New Jerseyans: Giving Floridians a Run for Their Money
We've been making fun of Floridian stupidity for years now. But a recent New York Times/CBS News poll shows that we've been aiming at the wrong target. (The poll can be found via a pop-up link here or directly here.
Let's look at question 26:
26. Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Protecting the environment is so important that requirements and standards cannot be too high and continuing environmental improvements must be made regardless of cost.
Agree Disagree DK/NA 10/19-24/02* 65 30 5Anyone who answers yes to any question that includes the phrase "regardless of cost" is unfit to make mature decisions. Do I need to explain this any further? If you think so, email me here.
*sigh* Common sense isn't ...
posted by vepxistqaosani 3:02 PM
Friday, June 07, 2002
A Note for (Other) Pedants
Yes, I know what "intergalactic" means. But "intragalactic" or, worse, "intrasystemic" wouldn't convey anything to anyone, now would it?
posted by vepxistqaosani 5:31 PM
The Intergalactic Right-Wing Conspiracy
So, it turns out that Hillary was thinking too small (still stuck in the village, I guess). "Vast" is grossly inadequate to describe what Dave Kopel, Glenn Reynolds, and Jonah Goldberg are cooking up.
Like all right-wingers, I'm utterly devoid of prejudice. Heck, some of my best friends are Martians. But I think we might want to slow down the Barsoom bandwagon. There's lots of stuff much closer to home that needs to be tended to.
Global warming, for instance.
Back in the South (well, Florida, actually: so we're talking geography, not culture), where I grew up, old ladies used to have some of the same problems with the Sun that everyone knows we're having now. Their solution was to carry a parasol (umbrella to most of you; UMbrella to us Southerners), which they would deploy whenever their delicate peaches-and-cream complexions were threatened.
Why can't we do the same? A simple disk a few tens of thousands of miles across will drastically reduce the amount of energy the Sun delivers to the Earth. Mind you, there are significant engineering challenges in building something so big that tidal forces have to be taken into account. It would certainly require constant maintenance. But it's not a crazy idea. (OK, it is -- but not that crazy.) And it would take some doing to ensure that it wouldn't cause as many problems as it cures: see this article at SpaceDaily. But perhaps all we have to do is shade the Sahara -- or the Pacific -- to produce a controlled cooling effect.
The point is that there's something we can do -- in space, yet -- that won't destroy advanced economies and further retard the growth of third-world economies.
Which brings me to my other space hobbyhorse: solar power satellites. (Here's a Google search page.) If we embarked on a Manhattan/Apollo-sized effort, we might well be able to supply power to the entire third world (and ourselves) in the most environmentally friendly way possible: Who doesn't like solar power?
The Greens, of course. Solar power is only good if it's small. If it's big -- and, still worse, big enough to help send humans to Mars -- then it must be awful.
posted by vepxistqaosani 5:10 PM
Friday, May 24, 2002
Tyrannophilia
Jay Nordlinger has (yet another) Impromptus column up. He complains (yes, again) about the Castro-worship of the American left. He's just another right-wing extremist who can't get over the end of the Cold War.
But, then, so am I.
The Left will upbraid those of us on the Right with hit-squads in El Salvador, apartheid in South Africa, or the crimes of the secret police of the Shah of Iran. And these are all terrible things. (Oddly, though, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt never catch criticism for their support of Josef Stalin.)
But no-one on the Right ever put posters of Botha or Reza Pahlevi on his dorm-room wall.
We troglodytes are willing to practice Real-Politik (what other kind is there?) -- we use dictators; we do not fall in love with them.
Conservatives are realists. Realists (even the non-Christians) believe in the doctrine of Original Sin; the evidence for it is simply overwhelming.
Nordlingeresque aside: My own proof of the doctrine's truth is that all children are born lawyers.
Liberals are idealists; they (even the Christians) do not believe in Original Sin, but rather that human nature can be improved without limit.
So, dictatorships of the Right are frankly about power. Even if someone like Hitler claims a higher purpose -- the Thousand-Year Reich -- that goal will still reduce to power for the dictator and his cronies. And if you're willing to go along, they'll let you get along.
Dictatorships of the Left, though, claim always to have the good of humanity as their chief concern. Anyone who does not give the regime his whole-hearted support is obviously evil and must be punished.
This explains both the surpassing evil of left-wing dicatorships from 1789 on and the uncritical worship they so often receive. What is there, finally, not to admire about someone -- like Castro, or Lenin, or Pol Pot -- who is willing to dedicate not only his own life, but also the lives of everyone else, to the betterment of all humankind?
What indeed?
posted by vepxistqaosani 12:20 PM
Wednesday, May 22, 2002
Al Qaeda's next strike
Much has been made of the failure of imagination in our intelligence services, so I would like to lend them mine.
The 9-11 attacks were designed to destroy prominent American symbols and to take many American lives. What other targets are out there that meet both criteria?
Hollywood. The World Series. The Super Bowl. Disney World.
The Mouse is ubiquitous and unmistakably American. Once Memorial Day arrives, the park will be crowded with tens of thousand of people, mostly young.
I'm sure the Disney people are aware of this, but my brief experience working there some years ago (well, nearly 20) is enough to make me think that, given time and money, I could cause thousands of deaths.
Disney World is riddled with tunnels for employees to use (that's why you only see them when they're supposed to be seen). And the park is huge: 28000 acres (47 square miles), mostly of Florida scrub brush. All Al Qaeda has to do is put one man among the work force of 55,000.
Now, this is every bit as speculative as the various pre-9-11 reports; but I would be very concerned if I had any responsibility for security.
Or can someone tell me why an attack on a theme park could never happen?
posted by vepxistqaosani 11:15 PM
Wednesday, March 20, 2002
Campaign Finance Reform Loophole
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Web ...
Much has been made of the prohibition of issue ads sixty days before elections, while the media is permitted -- as it clearly must be -- to editorialize as much as it wants. And that opens up a loophole big enough for anything.
Let's say I'm the CEO of Evil, Inc. and I'm rabidly, irrationally opposed to Joe B. Righteous, the leading candidate for Senator in my state. I'm willing to empty my company's coffers to defeat Righteous. What do I do?
I start a newspaper ... and advertise it on TV
"Read the Evil Times to get the low-down on Joe B. Righteous! You'll find out that he refuses to tell our reporters when he stopped beating his wife! You'll gasp to learn that he was once -- and may still be -- a ... Thespian!"
I admit that the subterfuge is utterly transparent ... but a newspaper's a newspaper, and a newspaper clearly must have the ability to advertise.
In fact, why should one have to go to the expense of printing a newspaper? Why not just advertise a blog?
If any real lawyer reads this, I'll be interested to learn if there are any countermeasures available to those who will have to enforce CFR.
posted by vepxistqaosani 2:44 PM
