Friday, May 8. 2009
Stanley Fish reviews Terry Eagleton's Reason, Faith, and Revolution. A quote:
Progress, liberalism and enlightenment — these are the watchwords of those, like Hitchens, who believe that in a modern world, religion has nothing to offer us. Don’t we discover cures for diseases every day? Doesn’t technology continually extend our powers and offer the promise of mastering nature? Who needs an outmoded, left-over medieval superstition?
Eagleton punctures the complacency of these questions when he turns the tables and applies the label of “superstition” to the idea of progress. It is a superstition — an idol or “a belief not logically related to a course of events” (American Heritage Dictionary) — because it is blind to what is now done in its name: “The language of enlightenment has been hijacked in the name of corporate greed, the police state, a politically compromised science, and a permanent war economy,” all in the service, Eagleton contends, of an empty suburbanism that produces ever more things without any care as to whether or not the things produced have true value.
 Paddling is not abuse. It's correction. Fatherly and teacherly paddling probably kept a lot of people out of jail over the years.
Political tactics: Chris Dodd
All Federalists will find this fact deeply depressing. That means that the Feds own them.
Via Tiger: Countries that use their banking systems this way don't get good results.
Powerline:
Isn't there something in the Constitution that says a Supreme Court justice can't be a pathetic whiner?
Weather updates - 1. Illegal weather. 2. Government as a source of "rational climate and energy policy"? Ya gotta be kidding. 3. From Watts:
Albert Einstein once said, “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.” Einstein’s words express a foundational principle of science intoned by the logician Karl Popper: Falsifiability. In order to verify a hypothesis there must be a test by which it can be proved false. A thousand observations may appear to verify a hypothesis, but one critical failure could result in its demise. The history of science is littered with such examples.
A hypothesis that cannot be falsified by empirical observations, is not science.
Academic fraud in college: Your kids' grades
UK's tax rate to 61%.
The Holier Than Thou effect
The origin of life as ordinary chemistry. American Scientist
Human nature and economics. Dr. Sanity
Shareholder maximization. If a biz doesn't want that, count me out as an investor.
Penn and Teller on the neuropsychology of magic
Are the Repubs really dead in the Northeast?
Music as torture? They are actually serious.
Would it be so (via Phi Beta Cons):
University of San Diego Law School professor Gail Heriot blogs on a recent conference at CUNY entitled "Understanding and Combating Contemporary Shifts to the Right."
Kingston Farm, Concord, MA (h/t, And Rightly So). One heck of a fine barn/garage deal.
Thursday, May 7. 2009
"I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the falls azure in the windowpane;
I was the smudge of ashen fluff -
and I lived on..."
 I read Nabokov's Pale Fire when it came out. I've read all of Nabokov, or almost all. None of his butterfly texts.
From Mary McCarthy's 1962 review:
Pale Fire is a Jack-in-the-box, a Faberge gem, a clockwork toy, a chess problem, an infernal machine, a trap to catch reviewers, a cat-and-mouse game, a do-it-yourself novel. It consists of a 999-line poem of four cantos in heroic couplets together with an editor's preface, notes, index, and proof-corrections. When the separate parts are assembled, according to the manufacturer's directions, and fitted together with the help of clues and cross-references, which must be hunted down as in a paper-chase, a novel on several levels is revealed, and these "levels" are not the customary "levels of meaning" of modernist criticism but planes in a fictive space, rather like those houses of memory in medieval mnemonic science, where words, facts, and numbers were stored till wanted in various rooms and attics, or like the Houses of astrology into which the heavens are divided.
 Just a thought re government medical treatment: If it's so great, how come you never heard of an American going to Canada or England for treatment?
Kudlow on Obama's war on Capitalism
Belmont on the death of the newspapers. Read Whiskey's comment (#5)
Grumpy old Brits get grumpy about their nanny state. That country needs a good war.
We are more likely to act according to our ideals when...
Funny how people pick and chose the Constitutional amendments they prefer. Rick on the 10th A. Rick is absolutely right, but legally naive.
MA budgets the medical care of the people masses
George McGovern rips 'card check"
Hear about the mechanic who was addicted to brake fluid?
Says he can stop any time he wants.
Obama is the guy who is saying that America will be the last advanced country to try all the things that have already failed in other countries.
Mark Steyn, on the radio today
 It's part of wisdom to know the limits of one's knowledge (and the limits of one's wisdom, if that is possible).
When I post a photo of a rug I like, aka a floor mat, my taste and lack of expertise are invariably corrected by one or another rug pro who likes Maggie's. And rightly so. I am the kind of person who welcomes correction and education even as it injures my fragile self-esteem and self-worth.
But this time I am determined to show something to wow the experts: this highly-collectible museum quality semi-antique 3X5 Barbie rug.
Now that is a special rug. It's the Barbie 50th Anniversary Rug! The sensitive rendering of Barbie permits the depth of her wonderful personality to shine through. The vibrant, sensual pink is very special, as are the beautifully stylized background flowers.
Any person of discriminating taste would be proud to have this carpet in their parlor.
Beck destroys ACORN spokesman.
Whether or not folks such as Glenn Beck or Michael Savage or Ann Coulter are your cup of tea, we all benefit from having them around to defend the perimeter of what is sayable and thinkable.
The Dems seem to want everybody to go to college. I want everybody to get a solid HS education, but many will not. Not because of the schools - because they don't want it.
As I have said many times here, one does not "get" educated: one takes it - or does not. As it is, how many colleges are glorified high schools, diploma mills, or propaganda factories?
The Dems want student loans to be a federal entitlement. That would basically make colleges and universities fully under the thumb of the feds, which will lead to everything becoming politicized. Also, they want to eliminate private college loans. Does this all sound sort of familiar?
In part, their wishes sound like a government full-employment plan for PhDs in unmarketable subject areas, and one more power grab over independent and private institutions.
The words of Blind Willie McTell begin:
Seen the arrow on the doorpost
Saying, "This land is condemned
All the way from New Orleans
To Jerusalem."
I traveled through East Texas
Where many martyrs fell
And I know no one can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell.
Dylan on piano:
 So what? 1 in 5 homeowners underwater. Most who bought in the last few years, no doubt. Same as people who bought stocks in the last few years - or who bought cars on time. Or a new chain saw on their Home Depot credit card, for that matter.
The O's mission to bankrupt the coal biz begins. Related: James Hansen terms cap and trade The Temple of Doom.
Miss Saudi Arabia
Extremist right-wing loonies march for school choice in DC
"Rangel, of course, knows a thing or two about offshore tax shelters: He'd been operating one for years."
Are you confused yet about the stress tests?
Obama groupies: "Do these people even listen to themselves?"
Brit tax dollars at work. Also, a voice from Britain:
Given our complete lack of electoral choices, a party formed of retired Gurkhas led by Ms Lumley, standing for compulsory goat curry & promising to sort out our dumded down chav-culture with judicious use of their kukris would certainly get my unsteady tick in the box. Think of it as casting a protest vote – successive administrations have allowed once Great Britain to be overrun by just about every whinging ethnic minority load of bl**dy wogs with an open hand & a grievance you care to mention. However when it comes to those who have done nothing but loyally serve Her Majesty, the Westminster pondlife treat them with nothing but utter distain.
Blacks vs. gays. That's where identity politics will get you
Fascism revisited. It was meant to be the "third way."
From France: Dont turn America into another France (video)
Wednesday, May 6. 2009
We recently noted here that, if you gave 5 people each $100,000 to do something with, after 5 years one guy would be broke, one guy would have a million bucks, and the others somewhere in between.
It's like Jesus' parable of the talents (which of course had nothing to do with money, but with the use of gifts of the spirit.)
Readers know that I don't give a darn what other people make. I care about what I make, how I make it, and what I do with it.
Just One Minute looks at Robert Reich on income inequality. One commenter says:
Ignoring acquittals in sentencing? We agree with Dr. X that this is wrong. Judges aren't gods.
Does the highly-respected Colin Powell make any sense here?
It's mainly about the dangers of protectionism and Smoot-Hawley - with some cool old film clips too (h/t, Volokh):
I just had to highlight Dr. Clouthier's site today. She must write fast, or have no time to take care of patients. From her today:
Who owns the Republican brand?
 It begins:
It’s not Republicans. And it’s not Rush Limbaugh–much as Obama, his minions and the press would like to paint it so.
I’ve got bad news: The opposition owns the Republican brand. Oh yes, they do. Democrats define Republicans and the Republicans accept the definition by operating from their false premises.
How do I know Republicans are owned by the Left? Because the Republican message is consistently negative and defensive: “I’m not mean.” ” We don’t believe that.” “I’m not extremist like them“. And by them, Republicans are defining themselves against the press-Obama-grassroots caricature of Republicans. In doing so, the Republicans with a national voice diminish their own party.
All of her stuff is good.
 Need one of these steps? On sale now.
To me, Global Warming was the Swine Flu of the Decade. Gullible America
"Cash for clunkers" screws the poor. Not just the poor: lots of folks out there who would never spend money on something that depreciates as fast as a new car.
Quoted at Neo's Where's the Outrage?
The fate of Chrysler and its workers pale in comparison to the wrecking ball that would be taken to economic order if bankruptcy judge Arthur Gonzalez approves the administration’s plan to give Chrysler’s secured creditors the shaft. And what prize will we-the-people get in return? A doomed third-rate car company majority owned by its militant union run by Italian management building congressionally designed “green” cars no one wants to buy financed by taxpayers into perpetuity because no private investor in their right mind will touch the company with a ten foot pole. Is this supposed to be economic policy or comic opera?
Related: More allegations of WH threats
Chavez update. Front Page
David Brooks is often out to lunch. Occasionally not. Sort-of related: How Conservatives damaged the Repubs
Feds make it difficult for banks to pay back their TARP cash
The "Green Jobs" joke
Jim Cramer is a bull. Kudlow says recession is over. So does Bernanke. All provided that the govt doesn't screw it up...
Whenever you are photographed, make sure there isn't a phone pole coming out the top of your head - or worse - in the background (h/t, Samiz):
Powerline asks "Why?" re DC school vouchers. Answer is obvious. Below, from Reason:
The Slipstream Media: A New American Network. A quote from Vanderleun's essay:
This is the first in a series of articles on how to go about building a new American media; a media composed of newspapers, television, radio, film, music, publishing, and the multi-media capabilities of the Internet; an American media open to all and founded on the five bedrock principles of “Duty, Honor, Country, Truth, God.”
When dinosaurs die large opportunities for growth bloom within the ecosystem. The death of the old media is such an opportunity. It affords a wide range of possibilities to create a new media, a media that runs to the side of the mainstream media, but ultimately supplants it by slipping by it. For now I call it, The Slipstream Media.
A pipe dream?
Tuesday, May 5. 2009
The current issue of the Digest from the National Bureau of Economic Research carries findings from Stanford University economists looking at the different economic outcomes for similarly situated Jamaica and Barbados from different macroeconomic policies pursued between 1960 to 2002.
Both had the institutional foundation from being British colonies and similar sugar and tourism-based economies, yet from 1960 to 2002 Barbados’ GDP expanded about three times faster than Jamaica’s. The current income gap in favor of Barbados is near five times larger than at independence.
Why?
Jamaica pursued extensive state intervention in the economy, nationalization, income transfers and the like, and borrowed heavily to fund growing deficits. Barbados followed a more restrained posture toward business, spending and borrowing.
Sound portentous?
 Now that Homeland Security has decided to turn against fellow Americans as the dangerous enemies - patriotic dissenters - it's time to get rid of the darn thing. We already have the FBI, and Napolitano is no J. Edgar Hoover... or is she?
Miss California is still targeted, despite the fact that her views on gay marriage were identical to Obama's stated position in the election. Palinization? That gal is cute as a button - but dangerous? And since when aren't Christians supposed to be sexy?
Michael Savage is not the most refined voice on the radio (says whatever he thinks, and is #3), but I hope he sues over this.
I am shocked. Shocked. The Taliban Lied. Who'd a thunk it? Nice folks certainly - just misunderstood. Call the social worker, Dear Officer Krupke.
Also from the Gateman, I am shocked. Shocked. 19,000 phony voter registrations. How much money in the "stimulus" went to ACORN? Was it $4 billion? That is a generous reward to a "not-for profit," "non-partisan" org.
The O is now at +1%. Heading downwards. Not everyone seems to be enchanted. My motto is "Don't follow leaders; watch yer parkin' meters."
"This is America." A tough CT Yankee: I'm not afraid of Obama
Good fun to go with your single malt, at Surber.
 The US has, I believe, the highest business and corporate taxes in the world. China has no corporate tax because they want to encourage business growth. They aren't stupid.
The Dems want to push them higher. Furthermore, they want to tax foreign biz income before it is repatriated, which discourages overseas expansion and does not make the Brits very happy.
Heck, if I were a biz, I'd just move my HQ elsewhere if I am not made to feel welcome or appreciated here. The old saying goes "A gentleman knows where he is not wanted."
Am I way off the mark when I observe that taxes on business are indirect taxes on consumers and investors? And that they reduce employment and growth?
And that, by doing so, those taxes will soon reduce the revenue that the government so greedily feeds on? Is this complicated? Isn't basic economics taught in Middle School Social Studies? Or at least in Home Ec?
Good comments below - thanks, y'all.
From commenter Uburoisc on Huge Serving on Academia Nuts at Pajamas:
I graduated at the top of my class with a double major from a good college; I did not enter graduate school because I couldn’t take one more minute of the postmodern gibberish being peddled in every department and by nearly every instructor, at all times. Even the visiting lectures were hopelessly corrupted by the barbaric and unlovely LitCrit jargon: “Jane Austin and the Deterritorialized Gaze: Possession, Feminism, and the Other in 19th Century England” I’d rather watch TV, thank you. I spent my entire time reading the great critics and scholars of the preceeding generations and largely ignored my professors; Harold C. Goddard has more thoughtful things to say about Shakespeare than all the current crop of pedagogues could collectively put together in their lifetimes.
Lastly, and I feel I can say this with authority, the university is the least free place to speak your mind in the United States. At any time you might slip up and find yourself before a tribunal of administrative jellyfish, being castigated by a howling lunatic from some immaterial discipline demanding your immediate expulsion. It’s not worth opening your mouth, because no one will even see the need to come to your defense. The hard and natural sciences sail along, imperiously indifferent to the fate of the humanities. By the time they realize that the barbarians have stormed the gates, and taken the city below, their floating island will have been over-run with the same hordes of irrationalism, misplaced sentiment, self-loathing, and muddleheaded thinking that doomed their sister schools. Once language is detroyed, it becomes impossible to even articulate the grounds of dissent, or remember when things might have been different.
One of the most pressing needs that conservatives and honest liberals have is to rebuild the university; not to create a new model, but to reinstate the grand one that once existed and must exist again if our common culture is to re-establish a fellowship with wisdom.
Going Dutch? No thanks. It's about the 50-50 deal.
To keep the slaves happy, they throw them a few scraps periodically - for which they are supposed to feel grateful as if they were the folks who created the money in the first place, and not you.
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The uproar about income inequality continues to baffle me. Why does relative socioeconomic status matter more than absolute socioeconomic status? If the US has the richest poor people in the world, why is the distance between them and the people at the top such a big deal?
FWIW, Gregg Easterbrook, a liberal, argued in The Progress Paradox that if you factor out immigration, the rise in income inequality disappears. He got severely criticized by the left for this analysis IIRC.
Also I don't trust government definitions of "poor." My friends whose two kids qualify for S-CHIP have a 4 (smallish) bedroom house in an expensive part of town, a car, two cell phones, high-speed internet, a nice desktop & two nice laptops, buy mostly organic groceries, spend disposable income on ebay, gardening hobbies, etc. etc. They live on one-and-a-half salaries (he works full-time, she works part-time out of the house). But they're considered to be in need of government services, apparently. So if they're counted in the numbers of "needy" Texans, no wonder the numbers are skewed.