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Sunday, February 11, 2007

"America: Freedom to Fascism"

Movie maker Aaron Russo's latest: see here.

Posted on Sunday, February 11, 2007 at 2:11 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Free Floyd Landis!

Here.

Posted on Thursday, August 10, 2006 at 5:16 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

An Anomalous Step in the Right Direction?

Did the Australian government make a good educational decision? See here: Proportional Belief .

Posted on Wednesday, July 12, 2006 at 10:54 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Friday, June 2, 2006

Drugs and Dildos

Pierre Lemieux on creeping tyranny, the drug war, and a perverse law in a certain southern state, here.

Posted on Friday, June 2, 2006 at 9:43 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Of Bigotry, Dixie Chicks, and the Constitution

Here.

Posted on Tuesday, May 30, 2006 at 12:09 PM | Comments (3) | Top

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Do you remember when Bush was elected to his second term that the claim was made by lots and lots of people that the average IQ of residents of the red states--that is, those that went for Bush--were lower than the average IQ of residents of the blue states? That claim was repeated all over the place, including in respectable venues like The Economist (although The Economist later retracted the claim, based, as it said it was, on insufficient evidence.) One colleague of mine printed out the entire chart listing the average IQs of all the states, along with who they voted for, and posted it on her office door.

According to Steve Sailer (and others), the whole story is a hoax. On a related topic, Sailer claims there is evidence that George Bush's IQ might actually be a point or two higher than John Kerry's. Kerry's reaction when he was asked by Tom Brokaw about that? "I must have been drinking the night before I took that military aptitude test."

[Cross-posted at Proportional Belief.]

Posted on Tuesday, May 16, 2006 at 10:07 AM | Comments (4) | Top

Friday, April 7, 2006

The Future of American Airport "Security"?

Lie-detector tests, or, rather, "truth verifier machines." My favorite line from the story: "At first, only passengers deemed suspicious by the FSB, the security service that succeeded the KGB, will take the test. But..."--come on now, you know what's coming, don't you?--"...it will eventually encompass all passengers."

How long can it be before the wise and virtuous people at Homeland Security and TSA discover how much fun they can have with this?

[Cross-posted at Proportional Belief.]

Posted on Friday, April 7, 2006 at 9:19 AM | Comments (2) | Top

Monday, March 13, 2006

Now That's Diversity

Yale University has some kind of diversity program! Not only has it admitted a former Taliban offical as a student, but now, according to John Fund in the Wall Street Journal, it turns out that the student in question "has only a fourth-grade education and a high-school equivalency degree."

It is old news that colleges and universities greatly lower the bar for members of certain favored groups. But Yale University allowing someone with no formal education beyond the fourth grade? That almost makes it seem as though Yale admitted the student for political reasons instead of educational ones. Well, but let's be charitable; surely Yale had its reasons.

For example, as a high-ranking official in the Taliban, perhaps this Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi was homeschooled. One wonders exactly what his homeschooling may have consisted in, however. ( Among the things the Taliban did while Rahmatullah was an official: torturing children for things the Taliban accused their parents of doing, shooting dead eight boys for laughing out of turn, jailing children as young as ten years old, beating a boy to death for not chanting "Death to America" with quite enough gusto, raping wives after their husbands were taken away, etc., etc.--you know, just your average good ol' red-blooded fun in the middle-eastern sun.)

Thursday, March 9, 2006

Some were killed, some were just memed . . .

Aeon Skoble memed me (thanks, Aeon!), so I guess it's my turn. You can see my fabulous fours here .

Posted on Thursday, March 9, 2006 at 5:21 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, March 3, 2006

An Excellent, Irreverent Blog

It's called "Tongue Tied." See it here. [Hat tip: AnalPhilosopher.]

[Cross-posted at Proportional Belief .]

Posted on Friday, March 3, 2006 at 10:42 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, February 24, 2006

Sweet Sympathy

Adam Smith said in his 1759 Theory of Moral Sentiments that one of our greatest pleasures in life is the "mutual sympathy of sentiments," the joy and satisfaction of discovering that one's own sentiments are echoed in or shared by others. He was right about that, of course. That joy is especially satisfying when it is unexpected.

So imagine my joy at finding this site, maintained by a fellow philosopher: Analphilosopher.com. (And it's not just the name I like!)

[Cross-listed at Proportional Belief .]

Posted on Friday, February 24, 2006 at 3:30 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Sunday, December 25, 2005

Rest in Peace, Miss Gould

Shortly after writing about words, I learned that the New Yorker's formidable Grammarian, Miss Gould, has passed away. Writing good prose is difficult, surprisingly so. Although a good editor does not write the prose, he improves it. It requires a light hand but firm good sense, intelligence but not overeducation, and a good ear. Like Hume's "true judge" of art, a good judge of writing requires concerted practice, careful comparison, a delicate sensitivity, a lack of prejudice, and good sense. Also like Hume's true judge of art, the true judge of writing is rare.

Miss Gould was one of those rarities. Those who knew and loved her will mourn her loss. Those who, like me, love and strive for good writing will mourn the loss of a member of an endangered species: the "grammarians" who pay attention to good writing, and who, in their own small way, shoulder the burden of civilization.

[Cross-posted at Proportional Belief.]

Posted on Sunday, December 25, 2005 at 5:59 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Who are they kidding?

[Cross-posted at Proportional Belief .]

There is a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth over the prospect that Congress might cut some $50 billion from its budget over the next five years. Where, O where, can we find that kind of money? Will the elderly, children, and minorities soon be starving in the streets? Will they soon have no access to medical care?

Get a grip, people. Anyone who claims there is nowhere to cut the Federal budget is either lying, ignorant, or both. A couple of economists have put this in perspective:

Despite the "sky is falling" rhetoric warning of the dismantling of government, the budget reconciliation savings are exceedingly modest. The House'’s $54 billion of reconciliation savings represents just half of 1 percent of the $7.8 trillion entitlement spending planned over the next five years. The challenge is no greater than that facing a family of four making $50,000 a year and suddenly faced with the need to pay off a $250 emergency room bill over a five-year period.

The Federal government's budget for 2005 is approximately $2.3 trillion; even assuming it did not grow over the next five years (though of course it will), that means $11.5 trillion dollars over five years. The $50 billion the politicians and the special interest groups are fretting over cutting is less than one-third of one percent of the budget. They can't cut that? Please. I'll bet that federal agencies lose that much money every year.

Posted on Tuesday, November 15, 2005 at 5:09 PM | Comments (2) | Top

Tuesday, November 1, 2005

We are a superstitious species.

Like Reason magazine's Gene Healy, I too have been interested, although only mildly, in what the politics would be of Geena Davis's character in the new ABC drama, "Commander in Chief." I assumed her politics would be an unthinking left-wingism, like every "good" politician portrayed by Hollywood before her has been: businesses are evil, businessmen are pathologically selfish, the government is good and must save us, the poor are poor only because they have been exploited by people who have had life's gifts undeservedly bestowed upon them, etc.

So far my interest in finding out whether this latest incarnation of a Hollywood president fits the pattern has not been great enough to actually move me to watch the show. But I was interested to see that Healy's main criticism concerns the show's apparent premise that the American president has no limits to her power, other than what she can get away with. So, no statutory, constitutional, natural-right, or other limits: only budgetary limits and the constraints, malleable as they are, of popular opinion. Healy is worried about the long-term ramifications of a presidency that an increasing number of citizens view, though not explicitly, as imperial.

I share Healy's worries, and I fear for the future of an America in which people believe, as my college students frequently profess, that the government owns all the land and property anyway--so there aren't really any property rights after all, but, really, what's the big deal? It requires a surprising, and disconcerting, amount of effort to bring students even remotely to understand what the American revolutionaries were exercized about. Sure, no one likes the English, they say, and everybody knows that monarchies are 'stupid'; that's why we have an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving congress and presidency instead. (It makes no sense to me either, but that is essentially what many of my students seem to believe.)

But the idea that all we have done in the English-speaking world is exchange one divine ruler for another is an old one. Herbert Spencer wrote an essay in 1884 called "The Great Political Superstition," part of his excellent The Man Versus the State. In this essay Spencer argues that the former "great political superstition," now (in 1884) universally mocked, was the notion of the 'divine right of kings'; we cannot now even imagine what heights of benightedness could have possessed earlier minds to subscribe to such sheer and utter nonense. Yet, Spencer argues, all that the current enlightenment on which we congratulate ourselves has gained us is the erection of a new divine ruler: parliament. How right Spencer was, and how much truer is his claim for Americans today. For verily I say unto thee, what, truly, lies outside the ambit of the power and the de facto authority of today's American federal government? Onto what areas of human life may it not intrude? Where, I ask, would its presence be regarded as trespass because beyond its moral authority?

If the answer is, as I suspect, "nowhere," and if most people in America believe, as I suspect, that the federal government's job is to address and alleviate all felt ills of its citizens, then it is quite understandable that the calls for liberty around which the American revolutionaries rallied seem utterly alien to many Americans today. And that does indeed make America's future uncertain.

[Originally posted on Proportional Belief.]

Posted on Tuesday, November 1, 2005 at 9:04 AM | Comments (1) | Top

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