Posted 12/31/2002 09:38:00 AM by Jeff
PRO MILITARY, ANTI DRAFT - Sergeant Stryker has a forceful argument against the military draft. Excerpt:

The U.S. military is not your daycare center. We're not here to correct mommy and daddy's errors or make your son a better man. We're here to defend the Constitution and we employ whatever tools necessary to ensure the success of our mandate. The values the military attempts to instill in its members are those that have traditionally proven to be successful in providing a disciplined and orderly force capable of success in battle. Any secondary benefits these values provide to society at large are irrelevant. Our job is not to crank out patriotic young Americans to make America better. Our job is to crank out soldiers who will fight, kill and win against a hostile adversary. If these same soldiers translate the skills and values they learned in the military into a successful civilian life, so much the better, but that is neither the purpose nor the goal of military indoctrination and training.

Posted 12/15/2002 05:00:00 AM by Jeff
HAPPY BILL OF RIGHTS DAY - The first ten amendments to the United States Constitution, also known as the Bill of Rights, were all ratified December 15, 1791. De facto repeal has been ongoing for quite some time now. Take a moment to get to know your Bill of Rights so you can appreciate what you stand to lose.

Posted 11/23/2002 01:18:00 AM by Jeff
277153*2^429819-1 IS PRIME! - I've been using the spare cycles on my computers to search for prime numbers since 1996. For the past couple of years, I've been working on the Riesel problem. This week, I discovered the prime number 277153*2^429819-1, which is currently the 84th largest prime number ever discovered. It contains 129,394 digits.

Only 115 more primes to discover before the Riesel problem is solved. You can sign up to join the search (or join several other prime projects) here.

Posted 11/06/2002 09:02:00 AM by Jeff
1994 LITE - In 1994, if memory serves, the media predicted a close election, and the Republicans swept every "close" race. This is no 1994, but again after a prediction of a close election, the Republicans made solid gains in Congress, increasing their slim margin in the House and retaking the Senate.

I noticed two interesting items from the above linked cnn.com article. One, it mentions that this is the first time since 1934 that the president's party gained seats in the off-year election of his first term. What it doesn't mention is the president in 1934. Perhaps the authors don't want to admit any similarities between W and FDR.

Also, with the Republicans sweeping the Congress, the article takes the first step in what I expect to become a trend: downplay the importance of the Congressional races and claim that the gubernatorial races (in which the Democrats look to gain a few seats) are what really counts. Or, as the article puts it, "In the long term, the gubernatorial races -- where there are 20 open seats -- may have greater political resonance. Four of the last five presidents were governors." Of course, there are enough governors of both parties in office to supply the presidential races indefinitely--one or two isn't going to make much difference in that regard. And the time to be gaining statehouses is before redistricting, not after.

By the way, my favorite line from the otherwise insipid television news coverage was by the analyst who suggested that with the election of Elizabeth Dole to the Senate, her husband Bob Dole and Senator Hillary Clinton's husband, Bill, who ran against each other for President of the United States in 1996, might next run against each other for President of the Senate Spouses Club.

UPDATE: This version of the article mentions FDR by name.

Posted 10/28/2002 05:11:00 PM by Jeff
PAGANS FOR LIBERTY - In a book discussion group meeting yesterday, we had a few off-topic discussions, including a brief discussion of Wicca and another on the Libertarian Party. On the way home, I pondered the compatibilities of the philosophies of the two communities (pagans and libertarians). Today, I ran across an article by a pagan libertarian that said many of the same things I had been thinking. Rather curious that this all happened so close to Halloween (Samhain).

Posted 10/24/2002 12:35:00 PM by Jeff
HERE WE GO AGAIN - Pete Rose was at the World Series last night, because his hit to break Ty Cobb's all-time hit record was voted the 6th most memorable moment in baseball history. Even though Rose has been banned from the game, he was allowed to appear on the field for this event, just as he was for a similar event a few years ago. And just as in the previous event, Rose got the biggest ovation.

Rose's detractors, such as ESPN.com's Jim Caple, say that Rose really needs to 'apologize' for gambling on baseball before he is reinstated.

The problem is, Major League Baseball has already agreed that there was no finding that he bet on baseball. In the same document in which Pete Rose accepted the ban, Baseball agreed that he didn't bet on baseball. And there's a reason they did so.

In his book, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, Bill James says:

Because of an article I wrote about Pete Rose ten years ago, I am also confronted by people who want to debate me about Pete Rose's guilt or innocence (meaning whether he did or did not bet on baseball). I don't like to be drawn into this debate, for two reasons:

1. I don't know, and
   
2. You don't know, either.
   

Major League Baseball, through the Dowd report and ever since, has insisted that there is irrefutable evidence that Rose bet on baseball. That issue I am willing to debate: that there is irrefutable evidence that Pete Rose bet on baseball. I would characterize the evidence that Rose bet on baseball as ... well, not quite non-existent. It is extremely weak.

James then goes through the evidence presented in the Dowd report, including the infamous "betting slips," which (a) don't contain any actual betting information, just names of teams with winners indicated, and (b) contain several errors about who was playing and where, errors you wouldn't expect from a baseball person such as Rose. At the end of his article about Rose, James concludes:

There is, I would suggest, a better way to think about it. Pete Rose is innocent unless there is proof that he is guilty. I've looked at the evidence as closely as I can. The closer you look, the less you see.

Rose submitted an application for reinstatement several years ago. Commissioner Bud Selig has sat on the application, because, if he reinstates Rose it would give the appearance that he had "given in," and if he rejects the application, he would be subject to a lawsuit from Rose for violating the agreement. Doing nothing allows him to say that there's no new evidence to consider, ignoring the fact that the original evidence was insufficient to begin with.

Posted 10/15/2002 03:54:00 AM by Jeff
COMPETETIVE BALANCE REVISITED - The baseball World Series is now set: San Francisco Giants vs. Anaheim Angels. The Angels have never won a World Series in the franchise's 42 year history, and the Giants haven't won since 1954, back when they were the New York Giants. So the streak I mentioned before will be extended to 17 different winners out of the last 23 World Series.

Just for fun, I randomly generated 23 numbers between 1 and 30 (representing the 30 major league baseball teams), to see how that compared. I got 17 different results. And I didn't even allow for the fact that 4 of the 30 teams didn't exist for most of that period. That's hardly scientific, but it suggests that baseball wouldn't have had a much more balanced picture if they had just selected the World Series winner randomly.

Try it yourself, if you're so inclined, and let me know what you get.

Posted 9/21/2002 12:07:00 AM by Jeff
SHAWN BLACKFORD, 1985-2002 - My nephew died Thursday, after a short battle with cancer. Memorial donations may be made to American Cancer Society or Columbus Children's Hospital.

UPDATE: Shawn's obituary can be viewed here.

Posted 9/15/2002 02:41:00 PM by Jeff
WHY IRAQ? - I've been thinking about why we are about to attack Iraq, and not the real enemy, Saudi Arabia.

Most of the debate has been focused on the first part of that question, so I decided to look at the second part a bit. I pulled out a map to see how I might execute a war against Saud-controlled Arabia if I were the general in charge. It wouldn't be easy. Once you no longer count Saudi Arabia as a friend, the U.S. doesn't have very many friends left in the region. Israel and Kuwait are too small (and Israel is unsuitable in any event for obvious reasons), and Turkey and Afghanistan are too far away.

If we need somewhere from which to base an attack on Saud-controlled Arabia, and none of our current bases are suitable, where do we turn? Going back to the map, we see that the best situated country is probably... Iraq.

Posted 9/11/2002 09:28:00 PM by Jeff
ANNIVERSARY - I'm afraid I don't have anything useful to add to the discussion of the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks that have come to be known collectively as "9/11," but I did want to mark the occasion. To the memory of those who died and to their families....

Posted 9/05/2002 04:00:00 AM by Jeff
THE MYTH OF COMPETITIVE IMBALANCE - Reason Online has a new article about how Major League Baseball's new collective bargaining agreement, specifically the revenue sharing portion, will make things worse, not better. It says, "Baseball's push for economic reform was founded upon wildly overstated competitive-balance concerns." The competitive-balance concerns aren't overstated, though, they're flat-out inaccurate.

Before this season, 23 of the 30 teams had made the playoffs at least once in the previous 10 years. And there were only 64 playoff spots available in that 10-year period (1992-2001).

Only seven teams didn't make the playoffs in that span. Two of those look to make the playoffs this year: Minnesota is currently leading the American League Central by 12-1/2 games, and Anaheim is leading the American League Wild Card race by 3-1/2 games. One of the seven, Montreal, was leading its division in 1994 when the player's strike ended the season. One, Tampa Bay, only began play in 1998. And the other three, Milwaukee, Detroit, and Kansas City (plus Minnesota), had the misfortune of playing in the American League Central in the late 1990's, when Cleveland won the division every year.

But what about the Yankees and their free-spending ways? George Steinbrenner has never been one to hold back when it comes to spending money on players. But the Yankees only made the playoffs three times between their championships of 1978 and 1996--and not at all from 1982 to 1993. The turnaround didn't come from spending money, but from the Yankees' uncharacteristic use of their farm system. Key players including Soriano, Posada, Bernie Williams, Jeter, Rivera and Pettitte all came up from the minor leagues. If the Yankees falter, it won't be because of revenue sharing, it will be because the pipeline is dry: their top minor league affiliate (and my local team), the Columbus Clippers, just finished the season in last place.

As we saw, looking at the last ten years reveals a strikingly balanced picture in Major League Baseball. If you go back another decade, the picture is downright astounding. Since 1980, every team has made the playoffs at least once, except one of the 1998 expansion teams (the other 1998 expansion team and both 1993 expansion teams have made the playoffs, with two of them winning the World Series.) And it's not just limited to squeaking into the first round of the playoffs: fully half of the teams in Major League Baseball have won the World Series at least once since 1980. Fifteen different winners out of the last 21 World Series (16 out of 22, if you include 1979 winner Pittsburgh) is hardly a measure of imbalance.

An interesting angle is looking at who has been shut out of the playoffs the longest. Except for Montreal, which had a playoff run stopped by the 1994 strike, the longest record for futility belongs to the Milwaukee Brewers. The Brewers last made the playoffs in 1982, when they won the American League Eastern Division title and the AL pennant. Perhaps realignment has hurt them, as they moved to the AL Central Division in 1994, and then to the National League Central Division in 1998. Or perhaps they have other priorities. As I mentioned in March, the most profitable team in baseball last year was the Milwaukee Brewers. As a so-called "small market" team, revenue sharing could only push those profits higher. Surely it's only a coincidence that the team was formerly owned by one of the biggest champions of revenue sharing, Commissioner Bud Selig. After all, Selig no longer owns the team. His daughter does.

Or maybe that explains where the myth of competitive imbalance comes from.

(Thanks to Retrosheet for some of the data used here.)

Posted 8/28/2002 12:31:00 PM by Jeff
POT, MEET KETTLE - The Star-Tribune has an article pointing out how hypocritical it is for Congress and the White House to be criticizing corporate America for their bookkeeping irregularities. Sure, they need to clean up the mess of Enron, et al., and they are. But the problem is nothing compared to the problems with the books of the various federal agencies. And this kind of thing has been going on for decades.

Posted 8/21/2002 12:16:00 PM by Jeff
LOCK-IN: A MYTH? - DVD is rapidly supplanting VHS as the video format of choice for consumers. That demonstrated that anti-trust action based on the concept of "lock-in" is flawed, according to this article by the Independent Institute.

Posted 8/08/2002 08:00:00 PM by Jeff
REASONS FOR OPTIMISM - Eugene Volokh tells us why he's an optimistic libertarian. Then he says, "people who get too pessimistic might feel (wrongly) that things are already so bad that they can't get worse, and as a result fail to protect what liberty they do indeed possess but that they ignore in their excessive gloom."

Fortunately, some of the pessimists are like L. Neil Smith, and they continue to work for liberty out of sheer bull-headedness.

Posted 8/08/2002 06:26:00 PM by Jeff
MICROSOFT PLOTTING ITS OWN DEMISE - Back in January, I posted a piece on (ultimately false) rumors that AOL would buy Red Hat Software. I noted that Microsoft's so-called anti-competitive practices had the potential to hurt Microsoft in the long run.

Here is an article with a much more direct example. The article is a counterpoint to comments made in a recently published interview with Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy. The comments are about the revenue model of Open Source, but they also undermine the anti-trust mentality of attacking Microsoft.

IBM was probably the first company to reinvent itself around a viable model for the future. Ironically, IBM took its first step in this direction when it gave up on some of its software products (such as OS/2 and SmartSuite), endorsed Java, and started promoting open standards as the only reasonable course of action. As a former user and fan of OS/2, I resented IBM's move back then, and I resented even more that it was induced in part by Microsoft's refusal to let IBM license Windows 95 for a reasonable price unless it put the brakes on OS/2.

In retrospect, however, this could have been one of the best moments in open source history. IBM's transition to Java and open standards eventually led to its support of Linux and open source, steps it probably wouldn't have taken if IBM had held onto the dream of supplanting Windows with OS/2 and Office with SmartSuite. We can also credit IBM for given Linux a great deal of credibility by endorsing it. In a twisted way, we can thank Microsoft's hard-core monopolistic practices for much of the success of Linux today.

If Microsoft had been forced (by anti-trust action) to cater to IBM and OS/2, IBM would not today be committed to open standards and Open Source on the desktop. That committment doesn't guarantee the success of Open Source or the downfall of Microsoft by any means, but it is another piece of evidence that doing nothing is preferable to taking anti-trust action against Microsoft. At least for the average consumer.

Posted 7/20/2002 11:30:00 AM by Jeff
PARABLE OF GOVERNMENT SPENDING - Nobel laureate Milton Friedman related the following story at a White House ceremony in his honor on May 9, 2002. I first saw it recently in a Cato Institute publication.

My views on government spending can be summarized by the following parable. If you spend your own money on yourself, you are very concerned about how much is spent and how it is spent. If you spend your own money on someone else, you are still very much concerned about how much is spent, but somewhat less concerned about how it is spent. If you spend someone else's money on yourself, you are not too concerned about how much is spent, but you are very concerned about how it is spent. However, if you spend someone else's money on someone else, you are not very concerned about how much is spent or how it is spent.

Sounds obvious, doesn't it?

Posted 7/20/2002 04:18:00 AM by Jeff
INCREMENTAL LIBERTY - Some of the more uncompromising libertarians out there assert that liberty is never gained incrementally, so working for a "partial" solution is just selling out. Even those of us who are more moderate sometimes wonder if we're in a futile struggle for liberty--perpetually one step forward and two steps back. With that in mind, here are a couple of examples from history of "incremental liberty," where government restrictions have eased over time.

SUFFRAGE - When the United States was founded, the electorate was pretty much white male property owners over 21. Over time, race restrictions, gender restrictions, property ownership restrictions, and other restrictions have been eliminated, and the age limit reduced nationwide.

Today, just about any citizen over the age of 18 is eligible to vote. There really are only two main restrictions left: most states require voter registration in advance of an election, and many states restrict or prohibit voting by convicted felons.

BROADCAST CENSORSHIP - This may not be considered a "good" example by everyone, but nevertheless, government censorship of the airwaves has been greatly reduced over time. The FCC has directly and indirectly imposed restrictions on what could be broadcast on television and radio since the very early days.

When Lucille Ball was expecting her first child, it was written into the script of her television program. But she wast prohibited from using the word "pregnant" to describe her condition. Around the same time, Ozzie and Harriet Nelson had twin beds in their television program, and in general, people could not be shown in bed together, even fully clothed.

By the 1970s, the restrictions had eased, but George Carlin was still able to identify Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television. In a case of life imitating art, the Seven Words became the standard by which content was judged for many years. But the restrictions continued to loosen, and all but two of the Seven Words have appeared in scripted broadcast television programs to date.

Posted 7/09/2002 10:49:00 AM by Jeff
The current Reason Express (Reason magazine's weekly email newsletter) compares U.S. strategy in the "War on Terrorism" to that of the Viet Nam war. That's the first specific comparison I've seen. I'm sure it won't be the last.

Posted 7/01/2002 02:24:00 PM by Jeff
SCHOOL CHOICE - When I saw that Lisa Snell had written an article about the danger vouchers pose to private schools, I thought of Marshall Fritz. I wasn't the only one. Read the article. And remain eternally vigilant.

Posted 6/11/2002 04:31:00 AM by Jeff
THE LAST MILE, REDUX - Back on my first day of real blogging back in December, I suggested that if the Baby Bells weren't careful, the last mile would end up being wireless. Well, Slashdot is pointing to an article in the New York Times about two guys who are actually making it happen in their garage (a few blocks away from the garage where Jobs and Wozniak made Apple Computer happen in the 1970s).

As Glenn Reynolds would say, Advantage: Wolfe!

Posted 6/11/2002 04:13:00 AM by Jeff
I don't usually post these things (I rarely take them to begin with), but here's my similarity to Eric Raymond:

SimilarMinds.com Compatibility Test

Your match with Eric S. Raymond you are 95% similar you are 96% complementary

How Compatible are You with me?

If you enjoy that type of thing, have fun.

Posted 6/11/2002 04:10:00 AM by Jeff
IT'S NOT AN EITHER/OR PROPOSITION - Eric Raymond explains why he's not a (left-)liberal and why he's not a conservative. I don't agree with all of it, but I agree with most of it, and it's does a good job of countering the left/right myth.

By the way, Raymond is the second person in the last couple of months who has managed to echo my views on abortion (Brink Lindsey was the first). And it hasn't been very long since I've worked out what my views actually are. Again, it's not an either/or proposition, although today's political environment makes it out to be.

Posted 5/31/2002 12:30:00 AM by Jeff
EVOLUTION OR INTELLIGENT DESIGN - Rand Simberg has some insightful observations about the debate over Evolution and Intelligent Design. Evolution requires faith in the scientific method, but it can be reinforced or disproven by additional experimentation. Intelligent Design, on the other hand, can't be proven or disproven, so it falls outside the realm of science. So the best argument against teaching Intelligent Design in a science class is not whether it's true or false (which can't be determined), but whether or not it's science.

Posted 5/22/2002 04:43:00 PM by Jeff
ALWAYS A CLASSIC - Brink Lindsey posts the text of Patrick Henry's Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death speech, and says that it's just what we need in these post-9/11 times. I agree completely.

Posted 5/18/2002 04:07:00 PM by Jeff
WHICH ADMINISTRATION BLEW IT? - CBSnews.com is reporting that the FBI knew in 1996 of "a specific threat that terrorists in bin Laden's network might use a plane in a suicide attack...." As Glenn Reynolds points out, the story incorrectly refers to "a top-secret briefing memo presented to President Bush in 1998." Bush, of course, did not take office until January, 2001.

So who should shoulder the largest portion of the blame here, if there is blame to be assigned? Is it the president who knew about it for five years and did nothing except take a pot shot to get his personal scandal off the front pages? Or a president whose administration was less than eight months old, with many senior positions still unfilled because of foot dragging by the opposition party in an evenly divided Senate?

Perhaps, in an effort to smear Bush, the major news media are finally beginning to unwittingly reveal the true Clinton legacy.

UPDATE: 5/19/2002 1:10 AM - The story has been updated. It's now a story speculating about a possible future attack. The references noted above are still there, but they have been pushed to the bottom of the story. And the 1998 reference to "President Bush" was changed to "the president." The story also now includes a statement from former President Clinton defending the actions taken (or not) during that time period.

Posted 5/18/2002 12:17:00 PM by Jeff
AND YOU THOUGHT IT WAS BAD WHEN YOUR MOM THREW OUT YOUR BASEBALL CARDS - CNN.com is running a story about a woman who was arrested after apparently destroying artwork her son had stolen. The son was already in custody, and they arrested the mom after finding paintings "cut to shreds" in his bedroom. They are still looking for all the works, but more than 172 pieces were stolen over a five year period. The total estimated value: $1.4 billion.

Posted 5/15/2002 12:43:00 AM by Jeff
A MAZE OF TWISTING PASSAGES, ALL ALIKE - Juan Gato points out the similarities of several editorials opposing Attorney General John Ashcroft's interpretation of the Second Amendment. My own local paper, the Columbus Dispatch can be added to the list.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention it when I first posted this, but the Columbus Dispatch requires free registration. I wish I could assure you that it's worth the bother, but unless you live in Columbus, it's not. Even then, it's a close call. It's rather bizarre that they think people would jump at the chance to give them personal information for the privilege of reading day-old news.

Posted 5/10/2002 07:34:00 AM by Jeff
ARTIST 1, CALTRANS 0 - An artist in Los Angeles was tired of getting lost on the freeway. So he decided to improve one of the freeway signs. Caltrans officials didn't notice for nine months, until they read about it in the paper after a friend of his leaked it to the media. He did such a good job that they're not pressing charges and they're leaving the sign in place, at least for now. (via Slashdot).

Posted 5/09/2002 07:26:00 PM by Jeff
CATO INSTITUTE, AFTER 25 YEARS - Brink Lindsey tells us what he likes about working at the Cato Institute, and why they've been successful.

Posted 5/08/2002 02:43:00 PM by Jeff
DOWNTOWN FIXATION - In the latest issue of Dallas's D Magazine, Virginia Postrel examines why political leaders are fixated on downtown and why they're wrong. Her article could very well apply to Columbus or, I suspect, most any other moderately sized city in the country. Change the word "Dallas" to "Columbus" and the article still makes sense, even the part about parking lots and revitalization.

Posted 5/05/2002 08:11:00 AM by Jeff
WHAT'S YOUR POINT? - Cnn.com is running a poll on their front page, "Would you be willing to pay more for crustless bread?" Currently, 91% say "No." I suppose some people would think that means Sara Lee shouldn't be making crustless bread. Setting aside for the moment the total unreliability of Internet polls, I'd say 9% would make a pretty nice niche market for them. That's the great thing about decentralized control. Choices. Even loony choices. Especially loony choices.

Posted 5/05/2002 07:48:00 AM by Jeff
CLONING BAN CONSEQUENCES - My paper ran this political cartoon by Tom Toles in today's issue. It looks to be a couple of weeks old, but it's still a good commentary on the therapeutic cloning debate. If you haven't signed the Franklin Society petition yet, you should go do so now.

UPDATE: Virginia Postrel apparently linked to this cartoon on April 22. I must not have been paying attention that day. I say "apparently" because her link doesn't still point to a cloning cartoon.

Posted 5/04/2002 04:28:00 AM by Jeff
GIVING IT AWAY HELPS YOU SELL IT, PART II - A CNET.com story tells of a study that claims that people who swap music files on the Internet are spending more than they did before. One study is not conclusive, of course (and the music industry has its own study showing the opposite), but when you add it all up, it's not nearly so clear cut as the music (and book) industry would have us believe. Maybe sales are down because people don't like to do business with short sighted, money grubbing idiots.

Posted 5/04/2002 02:16:00 AM by Jeff
ANTI-FIREBALLS - A guy in Thailand has invented a new way to extinguish fires. It's a ball of fire-extinguishing materials which you can roll or throw into a fire. The heat of the fire explodes the balls, which then extinguish the fire (up to four square meters per anti-fireball).

The article says they "could lead to a day when firemen carry catapults in their trucks as well as ladders." That brought to mind the medieval image of castle sieges. Only now, when we arrive with our catapults and ladders, we won't be there to burn down the buildings, we'll be there to keep them from burning down.

(article via Slashdot)

Posted 5/01/2002 06:20:00 PM by Jeff
COLONIZING SPACE - Here's a good article by John Weidner on why we should colonize space. He's describing dynamism as applied to exploring space. One thing is certain: when that (first) revolutionary discovery is made, we'll all wonder how we lived without it.

Posted 4/30/2002 07:52:00 AM by Jeff
RESISTANCE IS ... INEVITABLE - Slashdot is reporting on some games Microsoft is playing with access to a technical specification related to the Windows networking protocol. Here's my take on that:

• Name one successful lawyer driven company (i.e. there aren't any)
  
• Microsoft is becoming a lawyer driven company
  
• Q.E.D.
  

I was skimming a copy of Money magazine at the grocery store, and it mentioned that Microsoft has something like $40 billion in the bank. I don't know what Money made of that, but I see it as an indication that Microsoft knows it doesn't have the Next Big Thing in its back pocket, so it's sitting around waiting to buy the Next Big Thing.

If the Next Big Thing is in any way tied up with Open Source software, Microsoft is in trouble. I think Microsoft knows this, also.

Perhaps Microsoft is secretly hoping one of the anti-trust suits will "force" it to do something that will maintain its monopoly for the next ten years. The holdout Attorneys General don't really know what they're doing, so Microsoft is playing a rope-a-dope strategy to get concessions disguised as punishment.

Regardless, Microsoft is clearly struggling with how to fight an opponent (Open Source) that has changed the rules in nearly every conceivable way.

Posted 4/29/2002 04:47:00 PM by Jeff
GIVING IT AWAY HELPS YOU SELL IT - Eric Flint presents compelling anecdotal evidence that making books available for free online increases sales.

Posted 4/25/2002 01:26:00 AM by Jeff
NOT AT ALL LIKE BAD SCIENCE FICTION - Virginia Postrel has posted a good explanation of the terms being used in the cloning debate.

Posted 4/23/2002 11:49:00 PM by Jeff
FUN WITH ARMAGEDDON - The Smarter Harper's Index for May is now available. Here's his response to an item about the doomsday clock:

Dang! Last month I set my doomsday clock forward one hour and I keep thinking Armageddon should have happened 53 minutes ago.

Posted 4/23/2002 11:13:00 PM by Jeff
WHAT'S UP WITH THAT? - CNN.com has a story about Elmo testifying before Congress. That's right, the muppet Elmo. It's not April 1, and the story appears to be serious. Is this what it has come to?

Posted 4/23/2002 05:40:00 AM by Jeff
SPORTS PLAY BY DIFFERENT RULES, IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE - "Max Power" takes on the idea that NFL teams are socialistic. He's right that the NFL teams collectively compete more against the NBA, NHL, and MLB than they do individually against each other, at least economically. They also compete against Lord of the Rings and the ballet for your entertainment dollar, and the rest of the entertainment world, for that matter.

If anything, he understates his case.

While NFL Europe is unlikely to be a haven for disaffected NFL draftees, because of the two leagues' relationship, several NFL players over the years have gone to play in the Canadian Football League. So that remains an option, although obviously not an ideal one.

Power also minimizes the impact of defections to other sports. But it can't be dismissed so easily. The draft only lasts seven rounds. Any eligible player not selected in the draft automatically becomes a free agent. So it's only the top athletes who are selected in the draft. These same top athletes are the ones most likely to be multi-sports stars in college. Drew Henson was a star quarterback in college, but he is currently playing baseball for my "hometown heroes," the Columbus Clippers. And he's by no mean the only example.

That such defections rarely occur doesn't lessen their impact. The NFL knows the players have other options, so they have incentive to deal fairly with them.

Baseball, basketball and hockey are all Olympic sports with worldwide appeal. The fact that even a sport as uniquely American as, well, American Football cannot eliminate players' options entirely just demonstrates the weakness of the sports-leagues-are-socialistic argument.

Posted 4/21/2002 04:02:00 AM by Jeff
THE CENTER OF THE BLOGGING UNIVERSE - Max Power proposes that the weblog version of the Erdos Number and the Bacon Number should be the Sullivan Number.

Bacon Numbers measure how far an actor is to Kevin Bacon. Those who have appeared in a movie with Kevin Bacon have a Bacon Number of 1. Those who have appeared in a movie with a person who has a Bacon Number of 1, but not with Bacon himself, have a Bacon Number of 2. And so on.

Erdos Numbers do the same thing, only with collaborations on mathematical research papers with Paul Erdos.

Sullivan Numbers measure how close you are to Andrew Sullivan on the web. Since both InstaPundit and Virginia Postrel have linked to my humble blog, I can claim a Sullivan Number of 2.

Posted 4/20/2002 02:53:00 AM by Jeff
MORE DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING - A new distributed computing project called Seventeen or Bust was started recently, which is working to solve the Sierpinski Problem. It's piggybacking on the existing Sierpinski Problem project. They've broken up the tests into smaller units and automated the collection of results so that more people can participate.

I've been participating in distributed computing projects for about six years now. I started out on the GIMPS project (world record prime numbers), then moved to distributed.net (cracking encryption keys to prove their vulnerability). Now I'm working on the project to solve the Riesel Problem, which is sort of a mirror image of the Sierpinski Problem. One of the maintainers of Seventeen or Bust told me that their software could easily be adapted to Riesel, which I'm hoping they'll do after they finish with Sierpinski.

One of the best known distributed computing projects is called SETI@home. I've never participated in SETI@home, though. It took them several years to get it off the ground, and by the time they did I'd already been working on GIMPS for a while. Plus, I could never quite get excited about a project with such a remote chance of success.

If you're interested in more information about distributed computing, take a look at this page.

Also, see this article and this one by Virginia Postrel for earlier comments I made on the history of distributed computing.

Posted 4/18/2002 12:42:00 PM by Jeff
GREAT HEADLINE - Mike Lynch has an article over at Reason Online about the recent Supreme Court ruling on Child Pornography. The headline says it all.

Congress Shall Make No Law
The Supreme Court tells Congress to read the damn Constitution

Posted 4/13/2002 05:34:00 PM by Jeff
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, THOMAS JEFFERSON - Today is the 259th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Jefferson. He was born April 2, 1743, Old Style, which corresponds to April 13, 1743 on the modern calendar. He was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence and the 3rd President of the United States, although he did not think the latter accomplishment was worthy of mention on his self-designed grave marker.

Posted 4/13/2002 01:57:00 AM by Jeff
ANTI-WAR LIBERTARIANS, THE FINAL CHAPTER - Brink Lindsey takes on the topic of anti-war libertarians for the last time "(for now)." He takes on the anarcho-libertarian argument head on. An excerpt:

The international system thus provides no evidence that anarcho-libertarianism is workable; it doesn’t show that the absence of a monopoly of force in a given territory is a good idea. On the contrary, a survey of the world as it is today shows that the alternative to a governmental monopoly of force in a given territory isn’t utopia, it’s mafias and warlords and unremitting bloodshed.

While you're there, you should also read the following article on Ludwig von Mises.

Posted 4/10/2002 04:51:00 AM by Jeff
POLITICS OVER MEDICINE - Virginia Postrel has a link to a petition to stop a bill currently pending in Congress that would ban so-called therapeutic cloning. The bill has already passed the House, so you should go sign the petition, then write your Senators. If you're a leftist, you might also want to sign this petition.

Posted 4/09/2002 07:41:00 PM by Jeff
BARRY NOT THE GREATEST - Jayson Stark looks at whether Barry Bonds is the greatest baseball player ever. The short answer: no.

It's difficult to compare era-to-era, but I don't see where Barry Bonds has passed Babe Ruth as an outfielder. Or will. Barry's home run totals may be huge, but Babe Ruth won his first home run title in the dead ball era. Ruth hit more home runs than entire teams. And Ruth wasn't all power, no average. He had five seasons in which he had an On-Base Percentage over .500, something Ty Cobb, playing in the same era, never did even once.

Once you add in the Babe's pitching record, though, the comparison isn't even close. He had two 20 win seasons, and led his league in ERA once. And that's considering that he only had three seasons in which he pitched more than 200 innings (in addition, he split two seasons between pitching and the outfield). In those three seasons, he finished ahead of Walter Johnson in ERA twice. Three full seasons and two partial seasons aren't much to go by, but it's possible he could have made the Hall of Fame as a pitcher if he hadn't been moved to the outfield because he was such a great hitter.

Posted 4/09/2002 03:39:00 PM by Jeff
MORE ON ANTI-WAR LIBERTARIANS - Brink Lindsey follows up on his previous post.

Posted 4/09/2002 04:08:00 AM by Jeff
THANK YOU, BOB POOLE - Airports across the country are already talking about opting out of the federal screening program, as soon as they are able. The airport director at Kansas City International Airport said, "Our private screeners don't sleep on the job, they don't unplug metal detectors and we want to keep them here."

Bob Poole, Transportation Studies Director at the Reason Public Policy Institute, has been writing opinion articles and testifying before Congress about the limitations of federalized airport security since before the bills to do so were introduced in Congress. When it became apparent that federalization was inevitable, he suggested a program to test its effectiveness and an opt-out procedure after three years. Congress was in a hurry to "do something" about airport security in the wake of September 11. With those provisions, we'll be able to tell, as Poole said in December, "which 'somethings' will actually make flying safer."

Posted 4/04/2002 03:11:00 PM by Jeff
LIBERTARIAN ISOLATIONISTS - Virginia Postrel links to a Brink Lindsey post about anti-war libertarians. You should read both posts, because Virginia has some important things to add to the discussion. And she quotes a very prophetic Glenn Reynolds post.

If you've read Virginia's book, The Future and Its Enemies, you know that in the book, she explores the contrast between stasists, who want a controlled, one-best-way future, and dynamists, who believe in a decentralized, dynamic society.

Virginia casts the anti-war Libertarians as stasists "who dream of a static, stateless utopia." So it's easy to see how Virginia, as a dynamist, would have a problem with them, libertarianism notwithstanding.

I'm with Virginia and Brink here. I had a discussion last week with an anti-war Libertarian, and he blamed the whole thing on the presence of military forces overseas. Bring home all American troops everywhere, and the danger to America would end. Simple. Easy. And wrong.

UPDATE: Jay Manifold adds his views on the issue (via Virginia Postrel).

Posted 4/04/2002 02:09:00 PM by Jeff
BASEBALL AWARD NAMES - With the NHL season wrapping up, some have started discussing who should win each of the various hockey awards. The thing about the hockey awards is, they all have interesting names. Baseball needs to do the same thing. Here are a couple suggestions to get things started.

Babe Ruth Award - The current MVP award should be renamed the Babe Ruth Award. Babe Ruth was head and shoulders above the competition of his day. I think most people think of him as a big, fat one dimensional power hitter, because that's what we see in pictures of him. But in his prime (before movies and television), he was a fit player who redefined the concept of all around. Obviously, his power records stood for decades, and he's still among the leaders, though no longer at the top. But he also hit for average and had a fair amount of speed. Beyond that, though, he was also a very good pitcher. When he pitched full time for Boston, he was consistently among the league leaders in ERA and other pitching statistics. Look at his record, and you'll see that Babe Ruth could very well have made the Hall of Fame as a pitcher, if he had not been transformed into arguably the greatest hitter of all time.

Willie Mays Award - Every year the baseball community has an argument over whether pitchers should be eligible for the MVP award. After all, pitchers have their own award, the Cy Young Award. We should end the argument by instituting a non-pitcher version of the Cy Young, called the Willie Mays Award. Willie Mays was one of the greatest everyday players to play the game. He hit for average, he hit for power, he had speed, and his defensive abilities were amazing.

The best pitcher gets the Cy Young, the best everyday player gets the Willie Mays, and the Most Valuable Player gets the Babe Ruth. There are other awards, and they should get names too, but these would be the big three. How about it, Baseball?

Posted 4/03/2002 07:27:00 AM by Jeff
LOTR MILESTONE - According to the Internet Movie Database, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring passed $300 million in domestic box office this weekend, becoming only the 11th movie to reach that milestone.

There's no reason you should care about this; I just thought it was an interesting bit of trivia.

Posted 4/01/2002 07:37:00 PM by Jeff
EVERYBODY'S A CENSOR - Last night, I was at my dad's house for Easter and I saw the television program Max Bickford for the first time. Last night's episode was about a group of radical leftist students who were trying to prevent a right-wing extremist from speaking on campus.

Meanwhile, in the real world Internet filters in libraries are the big story. Two quotes from the above story caught my eye.

From former U.S. Rep. Dick Swett: "Why should I be penalized if the rest of the world's mind is in the gutter?"

From Multnomah County, Oregon spokeswoman Penny Hummel: "We maintain it's a local control issue — the federal law is a one-size-fits-all solution."

Posted 3/30/2002 02:35:00 AM by Jeff
ERIC RAYMOND - Here's an interview with Eric Raymond about Open Source software and Linux. He's mostly positive about the prospects of Open Source, as you would expect, but he's not afraid to frankly point out problems:

It has been argued that in some critical aspects of desktop software, like maintaining a consistent user interface where different applications work seamlessly together, just work better when there's a big controlling company in charge. What do you make of that argument?

I don't think that's a real issue, but there's a closely related issue that is real. I don't think it's necessary to have a single player dominating user interfaces if you have a development community that is alive to the necessity of having a uniform interface, and prepared to make that a priority.

In fact, the Linux desktops have already successfully done this. You may note that drag and drop works correctly between GNOME and KDE applications. That's not an accident, it happened because the GNOME and KDE people reached out to each other, said, "We've got to have a common drag-and-drop protocol," wrote a standard, and now the applications on both sides conform to it. That happened in spite of the fact that there was no single player that controlled both GNOME and KDE that was able to compel that interface uniformity. I think we've demonstrated in open source that it is possible to bridge those gaps and create a uniform interface.

There's a closely related issue, however that I don't know how to solve yet without a big player with a lot of money, which is doing systematic user interface end user testing. We're not very good at that yet, we need to find a way to be good at it.

It's the actual mechanics of setting up large-scale focus group testing with end users. The problem is they're not getting feedback from large-scale end user testing, and that's allowing a certain spikiness in the interfaces to persist that could be smoothed out otherwise.

It's no coincidence that my biggest complaint about Linux is what Raymond describes as "a certain spikiness in the interfaces."

Posted 3/29/2002 08:39:00 PM by Jeff
WHODATHUNKIT - Forbes Magazine is saying that Baseball made money last year, contrary to the claims of management. Next, they'll claim it rains in Seattle.

One interesting thing that I must have missed in the first go-round. Even using Major League Baseball's own numbers, the team formerly owned by the current Commissioner (and now run by his daughter) made more money than any other team. Yes, even more than the Yankees. "Best interest of baseball," indeed.

Posted 3/29/2002 08:28:00 PM by Jeff
REVISIONISM - Jonah Goldberg writes about the attempts to rescue Clinton's presidency after the fact. It all strikes me as a desperate attempt by the Clinton apologists to justify their own hypocricy. Clinton is now a laughingstock, and rightly so. They're just going to have to live with it.

Posted 3/22/2002 06:43:00 PM by Jeff
PRIORITIES - The Drug War promotes terrorism, according to Dave Kopel. The article is fairly long. InstaPundit has a good summary. If we want to make the war on terror a priority, we need to end the war on drugs. It's that simple.

Posted 3/21/2002 07:08:00 PM by Jeff
GOVERNMENT ENRON - NASA has been having problems with cost overruns for the International Space Station for years. Recent testimony before Congress reveals that their financial accounting system is at least partly to blame. Until last year, their books were audited by Arthur Andersen, who gave them "a clean bill of health."

On the plus side, recently confirmed NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe was brought in specifically for his ability to clean up this sort of thing.

Posted 3/21/2002 06:44:00 PM by Jeff
COLORFUL - Glenn Reynolds at InstaPundit has been going on the last few days about what he calls lifestyle conservatism, and why it's bad for the Republicans. His posts on the subject are well written and on the money, but pretty much standard fare. What caught my eye was a phrase in his latest post, "...Democrats' concerns about 'privacy in the bedroom' evaporate when the question is whether you can have a gun in your bedroom instead of a dildo or a moose...."

Posted 3/21/2002 12:25:00 PM by Jeff
THE BAD GUYS WON - Commentary here.

Posted 3/18/2002 02:02:00 PM by Jeff
MEDICAL MARIJUANA, FOR GREEN THUMBS ONLY - Here is an article on the difficulties they're having in California adjusting to the medical marijuana law.

One man was arrested with 150 plants. He claims he had so many because he wasn't very good at growing them and they tended to die on him. A police sergeant involved in the case agreed they were in "very poor condition." The case against him rests on the fact that he had more plants than he needed for personal use. So he may go to jail for being a poor gardener.

Posted 3/18/2002 03:22:00 AM by Jeff
SHAREWARE - Here's an article on shareware that I found on Slashdot. As a former shareware author, I can say that the author gets several things wrong.

First, he claims that the shareware industry "can't function without Internet distribution" (emphasis his). That's demonstrably false--the shareware industry got its start before the commercialization of the Internet, on local computer bulletin board systems (BBSs) and on paying services such as CompuServe.

Then, he says "shareware authors can only guess" if consumers are paying for their software. It's actually very easy to tell if consumers are paying--they send you money. What's harder to tell is how many aren't paying. The thing is, most of them wouldn't pay in any event. If given the choice between paying up and removing the software from their system, most would chose the latter. Unfortunately, most reports of software piracy (whether shareware or not) equate piracy with lost sales. This unrealistic view undermines the argument against software piracy.

Lastly, the article repeats the notion that software piracy is theft. Software piracy isn't theft, though. If you make a copy of a piece of software, you haven't taken anything from anybody. It is somewhat analogous, but the analogy is tenuous enough that it's easy for the software pirate to justify his or her actions by dismissing the analogy. It would be much better if everyone would discard the argument, "Software piracy is theft. Therefore, software piracy is wrong" and replace it with "Software piracy is wrong."

Posted 3/18/2002 02:46:00 AM by Jeff
FREE PRESS COVERAGE - As a public service, I'm presenting a couple of ways to score free press coverage. Of course, you need to have some level of public recognition to begin with before this will work.

Exhibit 1: Grow a beard. Al Gore got press coverage when he grew his beard, and he got more coverage when he shaved it off. This is not an isolated incident. The same thing happened a couple of years ago with the then-mayor of Columbus.

Exhibit 2: Celebrity Boxing. The reason these goofy programs on Fox get such high ratings is that the "news" media cover them to death. This works with any outlandish programming, but you have to keep coming up with newer and more bizarre ideas.

Posted 3/12/2002 03:58:00 AM by Jeff
LETTERMAN STAYS AT CBS, NEWS AT 11:35 - David Letterman will be staying at CBS, and Nightline will remain in the 11:35pm timeslot on ABC.

Normally, I wouldn't link to a story like that. But I was amused that in the same press release in which the Nightline producers proclaimed the value of their journalistic contributions to the world, they misused the word "its" (spelling it "it's").

Posted 3/11/2002 05:29:00 PM by Jeff
MORE ON MONEY - I went to the post office to mail a letter and buy stamps. The line was a mile long, so I used the vending machine. All I had was a $20, so I ended up with 13 dollar coins in change.

With the coins I normally carry, I had 15 dollar coins and a bunch of other change in my pocket. And while it was noticable, it wasn't particularly uncomfortable. Granted, I was wearing jeans and I wouldn't want to do the same thing with dress slacks, but still. Even though I like dollar coins and use them often, this kind of surprised me. The rap on the golden dollar is always, "who wants to carry around a bunch of coins." Turns out it's not that bad.

As I said, I do like the golden dollar, but I may be the only person in the country who likes it that the coin and the bill are circulating simultaneously. If the tab is only a buck or two, I'll pull out dollar coins. If it's more than that and I have to reach into my wallet anyway, I'll use dollar bills.

I used to almost never pay with change, now I frequently do (and not just dollars, either). Based on the lack of response I get from vendors, I think it's here to stay this time. I don't remember the last time somebody said something like, "wow, a dollar coin."

And people are also able to readily recognize the golden dollar, unlike its predecessor. Strange that after botching the first attempt, it took us 21 years to try again. In terms of adoption, inflation may have helped some, but mostly it's about getting the design right. No mistake, I suppose, that it's the same size and about the same color as the Canadian one dollar coin, the loonie.

So, now that we've successfully copied the loonie, can the toonie be far behind?

Posted 3/11/2002 01:28:00 PM by Jeff
UGH - This article by Bob Lewis at InfoWorld is just so much nonsense. He claims that corporations are immoral, and the evidence he gives is ridiculous.

To believe Lewis, you'd have to believe that corporations never threw Christmas parties, sole proprietors never fired anyone because of economic conditions, and individuals never committed a crime.

Corporations get their moral compass from their stakeholders and their management. "Maximizing shareholder value" can be a moral statement as well as an economic one. Worthington Industries has operated since 1955 under a philosophy based on the Golden Rule. And it's worked for them.

Of course when you work for a company, you're obligated to maximize shareholder value; that's part of your contract with the company (implicit if not explicit). But you're not obligated to continue working for the company if it violates your moral compass. Just as you're not obligated to associate with natural persons in similar circumstances.

He's right about one thing, though. If you want morality, you'll have to bring it yourself. It's just that that's true for everything, not just corporations.

This is why capitalism has such a bad name. Anti-capitalists can get away with tearing down paper tigers and ignoring the realities of capitalist societies.

Posted 3/11/2002 02:55:00 AM by Jeff
SIX MONTHS - It has been six months since the September 11 attacks. Virginia Postrel has a good reflective piece.

Even six months later, it's hard to wrap my mind around the scope of what occurred. It's not hyperbole to say that the world changed. Thousands dead, millions of lives directly affected. They're still cleaning up the rubble. And that's just the direct effects. It's just hard to fathom, and even still, a little hard to believe. Maybe six months is just not long enough a time for something like this to "sink in." I wonder how long it will take. Or if it ever will.

At the Olympics, they had a flag that had flown at the World Trade Center on 9/11. It took me a while to figure out why that was such a big deal. It's right there in the National Anthem: "...the flag was still there." There's something about disaster-torn flags burned into the national psyche. Somehow, seeing the flag reassures us that we will survive and we will prevail.

My views on military action have always been my least Libertarian. I have been relieved to learn that not all Libertarians are as isolationist as I had feared. What's my point? I knew as soon as I heard about the attacks that war was inevitable, and believed that it was necessary. I still do. The primary function of our federal government is national security. We can argue over the details, and as time goes on, that will become more important, but we must deal with those responsible. Not only as a punitive measure, but also as a message to the world that such actions will not be tolerated. Standing down our military might is not going to bring peace any more than removing guns from civilian hands would eliminate crime.

OK, enough of that. This is not a warblog, and with good reason.

We will never forget 9/11--of that I'm certain. But for a day, half way to the first anniversary, we can spend a little time bringing it back to the front of our minds. Reflect on those who passed. Resolve not to let it destroy us.

Posted 3/09/2002 11:45:00 PM by Jeff
WHY I LIKE THE PALM COMPUTER - My Palm Computer died a few days ago after I changed the batteries. I'm not sure what its problem was; I verified immediately after I put the batteries in that it was working, but the next time I picked it up, it was dead. After some fiddling and a (soft) reset, I was able to get it turned back on, but the data and applications had been completely wiped out. This is not why I like the Palm computer.

But today I decided to recover the data. It wasn't very well documented, but all I had to do to get everything back--data, applications, and (most) settings--was change a few settings on the desktop and do a HotSync. After an extra long HotSync, everything was back, even the crap on there I've never gotten around to erasing. The only thing I noticed missing was a few settings on a third-party application. The next version of that application was just released, so hopefully they've fixed even that problem. The HotSync concept and implementation is about as close as you can possibly get to, "Push a button and It Just Works." Even when recovering from a disasterous situation. So HotSync is part one of why I like my Palm computer.

Part two of why I like my Palm computer is the company's developer-friendliness. It's not because I'm a software developer--I don't develop for PalmOS. But I did download some of their developer tools, and they appear to be very friendly (at least they were when I looked at them). Why do I care about that, even though I have never developed software for PalmOS and have no plans to start? It should be obvious, but most technology companies miss it. If you make things easier for software developers, they'll develop more software for your product. As a result, people aren't locked in to the built-in applications. Palm was the first PDA company to do this well. And they succeeded because of it.

I personally do most of my work on my Palm computer with two third-party applications: DateBk4 and Natara Bonsai. DataBk4 is especially nice because it piggybacks on the built-in applications, meaning I can still use the Palm Desktop application (or even Outlook, if I want) on the desktop.

By the way, the thing I like least about the Palm computer is the name. You have to say "Palm computer" or it sounds like you're talking dirty.

Posted 3/08/2002 02:20:00 AM by Jeff
PROOF THEY'RE WEASELS - It turns out that while Major League Baseball was investigating Pete Rose for gambling, they were also investigating umpires for the same thing. Two umpires were disciplined, with two years probation. Rose, of course, was banned for life. Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig has refused to even consider Rose's application for reinstatement, which Rose submitted in September, 1997.

According to the article, former Commissioner Fay Vincent said the difference between the umpires' cases and Rose's is that there was no proof that the umpires bet on baseball. However, one of Rose's primary conditions for accepting a ban was that there be no finding he bet on baseball. Major League Baseball didn't have to sign that agreement, but it did. Yet since the day the agreement was announced, Baseball leaders have maintained that he bet on baseball, and that justifies his ban.

Ironically, John Dowd, who investigated both the umpires and Rose, is quoted as saying of the umpires, "they were honest about it. They were men about it." Too bad the same can't be said for the Baseball leadership.

Posted 3/07/2002 05:30:00 PM by Jeff
FREE, AS IN BEER - Denied a permit to sell beer, a Hooters restaurant in Texas gave away beer at its grand opening. (Note for the uninitiated: the headline is a reference to the free software community).

Posted 3/05/2002 05:29:00 PM by Jeff
CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS - Here are articles by Ken Layne, Rand Simberg, and Hugh Hewitt about the California elections.

UPDATE: Layne mentions that Gore outpolled Bush in California by 1 million votes. I looked it up on Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections, and it's actually almost 1.3 million. Add New York's 1.7 million plus vote margin, and you have Gore winning those two states by about 3 million votes, and Bush winning the other 49 states by 2.5 million votes. (DC, which Gore won by a 9 to 1 margin, is considered a state for presidential election purposes, which is why Gore+Bush=51 states). That's why we have the electoral college: so winning two states by huge margins doesn't take the entire election.

Meanwhile, the guy I supported (the Libertarian candidate) got fewer votes in Ohio than I did, and I only ran in one county.

Whether the results of the California gubernatorial election will affect Bush's prospects in 2004 is subject to debate. Bush's 2004 opponent will probably have more to do with that than how Californians vote in 2002. Of course, Bush proved he can win with without California, notwithstanding the results in Florida. A few thousand more votes in Florida is probably easier than millions more in California.

Posted 3/04/2002 06:16:00 PM by Jeff
ANOTHER DYNAMIST - This Libertarian Party member explains why he believes there's No 'One True Way' to successful activism.

Posted 3/04/2002 05:25:00 PM by Jeff
LEGISLATION - The real story behind discussions about legislation.

Posted 3/03/2002 03:42:00 PM by Jeff
LIES, DAMN LIES, AND HARPER'S INDEX - This guy has set up a site debunking of several "facts" from the March 2002 Harper's Index. It's fairly new, so hard telling if this will be an ongoing thing or not, but I thought the following was too good to pass up:

Percentage change since January 2001 in the share price of the largest private prison-management company: +440

You have to look in the well-hidden references section for the Index to note that Harper’s is referring to Corrections Corporation of America (CXW). And, son of a gun, in the first days of January 2001 the stock was trading around $4. Now it’s trading around $17 – a 440% increase in the share price. However, if some young fact-checker had done his/her work instead of lounging around Starbucks reading “Utne Reader”, he/she might have noted a 10-1 reverse split in May 2001. Reverse splits are when a company converts or buys back stock (usually) in a desperate attempt to keep from getting de-listed, such as when the stock price drops below $1. Less shares = more value per share and with only 10% of the shares available since January 2001, the actual rough value of the stock would be $1.70 – a 57% decrease in real share price.

I have one small quibble with the posting: when you figure the effect of a stock split, you adjust the cost. It's more proper to say that each of those $17 shares was worth $40 in January, 2001. It still works out to a 57% decrease instead of a 440% increase, though.

Posted 3/02/2002 04:03:00 PM by Jeff
OHIO QUARTERS - The U.S. Mint has started making Ohio's quarters, and four of them are on the space shuttle that just went into orbit. Two of the crew are Ohioans.

It's appropriate that these particular coins go into space, since they feature a space suit, the Wright flyer, and the words "Birthplace of Aviation Pioneers." The Wright brothers (first to fly), John Glenn (first American to orbit Earth), and Neil Armstrong (first to stand on the moon) were all from Ohio. The current Ohio slogan is "Birthplace of Aviation," but they changed it for the quarters because North Carolina has a competing claim: the Wright brother's first flight was at Kitty Hawk, NC.

Like the Euro, my interest in the State Quarters program is independent of my assessment of its wisdom. If you're going to have fiat money, it might as well be cool.

Posted 3/02/2002 01:38:00 AM by Jeff
EURO MONEY - The transition to the Euro is complete. I have no opinion on the wisdom of a unified European currency, but I think it's interesting from a logistical and historical perspective.

Posted 2/28/2002 12:10:00 PM by Jeff
WE KNOW BEST - This article gives the latest in the California energy situation.

Here's a quick recap: California wouldn't let private companies sign long term contracts for energy. When energy prices spiked last year, it drove most of the energy companies to or near bankruptcy. With long term contracts, the companies could have smoothed out the price spikes, and weathered the storm. Instead, the government of California took over. Suddenly, they decided that long term contracts were a good thing, and with prices high, they signed a bunch of long term contracts. When prices declined again, California was stuck with their long term contracts at inflated prices. So they've decided that long term contracts are a bad thing again.

Governor Gray Davis's administration comes out of all this looking like a band of idiots. For a simple reason: they are.

Posted 2/28/2002 12:14:00 AM by Jeff
DARE EFFECTIVENESS DEMONSTRATED - A man who won a motorcycle in a raffle to benefit the DARE program was arrested after allegedly selling drugs to an undercover cop. He rode the DARE motorcycle (complete with anti-drug messages) to the alleged drug deal.

Posted 2/27/2002 05:21:00 PM by Jeff
SPRING TRAINING - They've started playing baseball again. This is good news and bad news. The good news is that the off-season nonsense is now over. Hopefully, they'll keep the in-season nonsense to a minimum. The bad news is that the Reds got beat 13 to nothing.

Posted 2/27/2002 11:51:00 AM by Jeff
Site reads Web surfers their rights. ChillingEffects.org gives information about copyright, trademark, and so forth, so an individual will be able to make a somewhat informed decision when confronted with a cease-and-desist letter from a big corporation. Another link I found on InstaPundit.

Posted 2/26/2002 11:20:00 PM by Jeff
CAPITALISTS ARE MORE GENEROUS - Reason Online has an article from Ron Bailey that examines a study showing that people who are exposed to markets are more generous than people who aren't.

Posted 2/24/2002 12:17:00 AM by Jeff
I FEEL SAFER ALREADY, TAKE II - An airport security guard took a bribe for letting a passenger on board with marijuana. Also courtesy of InstaPundit.

Posted 2/24/2002 12:08:00 AM by Jeff
WHAT'S OUR SECRET? - InstaPundit points us to an article that examines what makes America exceptional. What we like to think of as American values go back much further than 1776.

Posted 2/23/2002 02:41:00 AM by Jeff
BUY THE EXPOS - A group of college students decided to buy the Montreal Expos. They set up a web site to find additional investors. They currently have over $200,000 in pledges. When they get to $100 million, they're going to form a real investment group.

Hey, if it works for the Green Bay Packers, why not the Expos?

Posted 2/21/2002 03:42:00 PM by Jeff
MORE ON SPACE ELITISM - Rand Simberg has an article here about regular people going into space.

Posted 2/20/2002 10:16:00 PM by Jeff
Here's a great article about why having two similar Open Source projects is not more wasteful than having just one, and may in fact be very beneficial. The concept applies to many things outside of Open Source Software, too. It's a perfect example of dynamism, in fact.

Posted 2/19/2002 10:36:00 PM by Jeff
FUN WITH PAGE NOT FOUND - InstaPundit points out this interesting error message for a page that can't be found on the server.

Posted 2/19/2002 10:17:00 PM by Jeff
I FEEL SAFER ALREADY - Two days after the federal government took over airport security, an employee was caught sleeping on the job.

Posted 2/15/2002 06:27:00 PM by Jeff
WHY I WEAR A SEAT BELT - Three people, including a major league baseball player, were involved in a car crash in Arizona. Two weren't wearing seat belts, and were killed. One was wearing a seat belt, and was treated at the scene and released. I realize that doesn't prove anything, but it's certainly compelling. And the actually automotive statistics do show a correlation.

Posted 2/14/2002 07:30:00 PM by Jeff
Baseball Spring Training has started. I'm half hoping the Twins will win the World Series this year, so Bud Selig and his cronies will have to decide whether or not to contract the world champions out of existence next year. Ideally, they'll come to their senses and decide against contraction, but I'm not holding my breath.

Posted 2/14/2002 11:05:00 AM by Jeff
FREE SPEECH IS FINE, BUT YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO PAY FOR IT - The so-called Campaign Finance Reform legislation passed the House early this morning. As Michael W. Lynch reports, it's all about protecting incumbants.

Posted 2/07/2002 02:24:00 PM by Jeff
WE'RE FROM THE GOVERNMENT, AND WE'RE HERE TO HELP YOU - Dick Armey has come out against AmeriCorps. He's quoted as saying, "We give best when we give what's in our own hearts. We give least well when we give at the direction and supervision of the government."

Dick Armey is absolutely right on this one. Which just goes to show that not all Republicans have gone over to the dark side on every issue, as some Libertarians would have us believe.

Of course, the fact that he's opposing a Republican President undermines the Republican Party's characterization of itself as a small government party, but it's not exactly as black and white as some make it out to be. Even Bush has some libertarian moments--look at his Deptartment of the Interior.

Posted 2/07/2002 01:55:00 PM by Jeff
COSTA RICA - The Movimiento Libertario (Libertarian Movement) now has six seats in the Costa Rican Legislative Assembly.

The linked article above refers to "exceptionally low turnout," as do most other articles I've read about the elections. The article doesn't mention it, but turnout was nearly 70%. I find it remarkable that in Costa Rica, that qualifies as "exceptionally low."

In the United States, the highest turnout in the last 70 years was 62.8% in 1960. Since the voting age was lowered to 18 in 1971, turnout has never exceeded 56%. In 1996, it was below 50%. That only includes Presidential elections (numbers are from the World Almanac), but numbers for off-year elections in the U.S. are usually lower--often much lower. If the U.S. had a turnout of 70%, it would be "exceptionally high."

Posted 2/07/2002 01:23:00 PM by Jeff
REGULATIONS - More Than Zero has an article On Regulation, describing why most regulations are bad, and what would make a "good" regulation. Virginia Postrel calls it "Good Stuff".

Posted 2/06/2002 06:28:00 AM by Jeff
NO CONTRACTION THIS YEAR - Baseball postpones contraction until 2003. Spring training starts next week.

That Baseball was even considering contraction at this late date, with the immense disruption that would have caused, demonstrates either indifference or contempt for their customers, the fans. Businesses that don't look out for their customers' interests tend to lose those customers. Just ask K-Mart.

Posted 2/05/2002 05:39:00 PM by Jeff
Here is another article about the problems with a national ID card system. This one is by Linda Gorman & Dave Kopel. Their conclusion: a national ID card would be expensive, intrusive, and it would make things easier for criminals.

A government trifecta.

Posted 2/01/2002 03:51:00 PM by Jeff
SPACE TOURISTS - NASA has issued its rules on the qualifications for private individuals being allowed to fly to the space station.

They include things like passing medical tests and being able to speak English which make some sense. But there is also a litmus test on character that you have to wonder about. What struck me was that a candidate could be disqualified for "membership or sponsorship in organizations which adversely affect the public's confidence in the space station or its partners."

Talk out about shortcomings at NASA and they won't let you fly to the space station. I guess that leaves me out.

Update: The NASA report is available (in PDF format) here, so you can read it yourself.

Posted 2/01/2002 06:24:00 AM by Jeff
I love the headline on this blog entry about the Michael Bellesiles book. And I Would Have Gotten Away With It, Too, If It Weren't for You Meddling Kids!

Posted 1/29/2002 06:54:00 PM by Jeff
ALL-STAR - Espen Knutsen becomes the first NHL All-Star ever to be selected from the Columbus Blue Jackets.

My mother lives about an hour and a half from San Jose. Her neighbor is a big San Jose Sharks fan. When our lowly Blue Jackets beat the Sharks 6 to 2 last week, Knutsen had a hat trick. That's three goals, for you non-hockey-fans out there. They weren't too happy about that, as you might imagine.

And now he's an All-Star. Go Blue Jackets!

Posted 1/28/2002 08:42:00 AM by Jeff
TRANSPARENT CONCRETE - How to see through walls.

Posted 1/28/2002 03:13:00 AM by Jeff
WHAT TO DO WITH THE EXPOS - I was reading an article on relocation, and it occurred to me that the best place for the Montreal Expos to move would be New York City. The Powers That Be currently in New York would never go for it (and Baseball can't force them), but it makes sense. New York is certainly big enough to support three major league teams. It would increase parity by diluting the market for the two biggest teams. After 9/11, everyone's a New Yorker, so we have a perfect candidate for a new America's Team. A fitting fate for what is now a French-Canadian boondoggle.

Posted 1/26/2002 03:32:00 PM by Jeff
ONLINE VIGILANTEISM - Some people who got ripped off on eBay decided to take matters into their own hands, and track down the crook.

Posted 1/25/2002 10:49:00 PM by Jeff
THE UNTOLD STORY - A New York Post op-ed by John Lott reports that out of 280 news stories about a recent school shooting, only four reported that the people who stopped the attack had guns. And only two reported that they actually pointed their guns at the perpetrator. Media bias? Nahhh.

Posted 1/25/2002 10:14:00 PM by Jeff
SPACE ELITISM - Cosmonaut hero slams space tourism plans. I get the feeling from the article that the cosmonaut is just concerned that people will get the idea that just anybody can do this flying-in-space thing. And of course, they would be correct to think so. Certainly, you need basic safety training. And somebody on board needs to be able to pilot the spacecraft. But once that's taken care of, the other people on board can be basically anybody.

Both the Soviet/Russian and American space agencies have been setting aside space on their spacecraft for years. In addition to professional astronaunts, we've had representatives from foreign governments, employees of private industry, politicians, and one ill-fated teacher. The high profile junkets are for promoting the space agency, but the rest of them are for money. Why should that be different when the bill is being paid by a private individual rather than a government or corporation? So far, it's had the added bonus of generating publicity, too.

Posted 1/25/2002 09:57:00 AM by Jeff
THE MAINFRAME IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE MAINFRAME, ER, "ENTERPRISE SERVER" - InfoWorld reports that IBM unveils cheap, Linux-only mainframe.

There used to be a tremendous cultural difference between the mainframe world and the PC world. Mainframes were dinosaurs and PCs were just toys, if you believed what they were saying about each other. I was a part of both cultures, and I couldn't wait for the day when the worlds collided. I think it's safe to say that that has happened. Mainframers worry about usability and connectivity, and PCers worry about reliability and stability.

And, on the Internet especially, the end user doesn't have to care what they're running. It just works. More and more, even the application programmer doesn't have to care. And that's a good thing.

Posted 1/24/2002 12:10:00 PM by Jeff
Reuters has an article, which Yahoo! News is carrying as Campaign Finance Overhaul Gets Boost From Enron, that discusses the renewed push for the Campaign Finance reform discharge petition. It's strange that the article comes over a month since the last person signed the discharge petition. During the first push to get the discharge petition signed, there were several articles in the media that implied the discharge petition was about to get its 218 signatures. Seems to me to be an effort by the media to play up the issue so it'll get more support. It hasn't worked so far, and we can only hope that it doesn't.

Posted 1/22/2002 11:37:00 AM by Jeff
I've seen plenty of ideological arguments from libertarians about why national id cards are bad. But InfoWorld examines the subject from a technological perspective and concludes National ID cards still a bad idea.

Posted 1/22/2002 12:04:00 AM by Jeff
There was a rumor that AOL Time Warner was going to buy Red Hat Software, a Linux operating system distributor. However, CNet says AOL (is) not bidding for Red Hat.

What's interesting in this article are the reasons they think AOLTW would be interested in Red Hat. It's because Microsoft is not playing nice and letting AOL have a place on the Windows desktop. This is the same thing that has all the anti-trusters in a tizzy.

But if Microsoft was forced to give AOL a place on the desktop, AOL would have much less incentive to look for alternatives to Windows. That's right, taking anti-trust action against Microsoft would have a net effect of strengthening the Windows stranglehold on the desktop.

Microsoft bashers should keep that in mind before they support more legal action against the Beast from Redmond.

Posted 1/20/2002 08:17:00 PM by Jeff
Here's an article about Bjorn Lomborg, Anti-Christ of the green religion.

Posted 1/18/2002 07:03:00 PM by Jeff
The Cato Institute says Saudi Arabia is thinking about kicking out the U.S. This strikes me as a bad move on the Saudis' part. As long as the U.S. has troops over there, there's an aura of friendship between us. As soon as they kick us out, American leaders might start listening to those who think we should do to Saudi Arabia as we did to Afghanistan. It's still possible that it could happen anyway, but it's harder to do if we're nominally their friends when we do it.

I'm with those who think we should have left on our own a long time ago. Once Saddam was out of Kuwait, our job was done. I don't much buy into the "do it for the oil" theory. The numbers don't really add up, and it's going to turn out to be a relatively short-term benefit, anyway. Fuel cell technology will be commercially viable in less than two generations (I'd say one, but the government recently started to subsidize it). And oil will be much less important than it has been in the past.

Posted 1/17/2002 09:44:00 PM by Jeff
It looks like Washington is the destination for whatever team ends up moving in the next year or so. This story says it will be Montreal unless they are contracted, and no earlier than 2003 in any event. Washington is a good choice politically, of course; the only problem is getting the Baltimore club to go along with it, since it infringes on their territory. It will probably do well at the turnstyles, too. I still think Las Vegas, Sacramento, or Monterrey would be more fun.

Bud Selig says that baseball should "solve the basic problems" before it turns its attention to relocation. Never mind that the suppression of relocation is one of the basic problems. If you let weak franchises move to better markets, you don't have to contract them.

It doesn't look like the improper loan scandal is going to displace Selig. That's too bad, because baseball could use a real Commissioner. Bud Selig isn't getting the job done.

Posted 1/16/2002 06:29:00 PM by Jeff
Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban recently criticized an NBA official by saying "I wouldn't hire him to manage a Dairy Queen." Quick-thinking Dairy Queen management managed to turn the comment into a media event (with help from Cuban). Way to go, DQ!

Which goes to show, you don't have to be money-grubbing and humorless to be successful. The spirit of Dave Thomas lives on.

Posted 1/16/2002 06:17:00 PM by Jeff
According to this Wall Street Journal piece, the war is Not a Victory for Big Government. I hope he's right.

Posted 1/16/2002 03:48:00 AM by Jeff
Here's an article from Rand Simberg about a bill introduced in Congress to ban space-based weapons. Any bill that mentions mood management and mind control has to be goofy. Check it out.

Posted 1/16/2002 02:21:00 AM by Jeff
2002 baseball cards are out. Some of them, anyway. I picked up a package of Topps Series 1 cards tonight. I started collecting baseball cards in 1974, and I never really stopped. Although it's been about 20 years since I've actively collected, this year marks the 29th consecutive year that I've bought at least one pack of cards. For those who really like to follow hyperlinks, here's a link to Topps.

Posted 1/14/2002 05:08:00 PM by Jeff
Glenn Reynolds reports that a pilot was "hauled off" for pointing out that, as the pilot, he didn't need tweezers to crash the plane, so searching him was pointless. Reynolds's assessment (elsewhere on InstaPundit) of the new world of airline security is right on: intrusive and ineffective. I'm just glad I don't travel by air very often.

Posted 1/12/2002 10:44:00 AM by Jeff
Another Slashdot article, this called USPS Irradiation Damages Electronics. It links to two articles--one about the anthrax irradiation process damaging CompactFlash cards, the other about it making people sick. This is probably a case where the solution is worse than the problem.

Posted 1/12/2002 03:17:00 AM by Jeff
I'm playing with the weblog template, to make it look more like my main web site. Hopefully it will work out.

Posted 1/10/2002 02:00:00 PM by Jeff
I'm pretty sure there's a libertarian angle to this Slashdot story called Cooperation Works if Majority Can Punish Freeloaders, but I'm not sure what it is.

Posted 1/07/2002 10:18:00 PM by Jeff
Jerry Pournelle's January column is called Escape from Redmond. He talks about Joel Rosenberg's decision to migrate to Linux, and his success at doing so.

Pournelle then goes on to say that despite Rosenberg's success, Linux isn't ready for prime time yet because "Aunt Minnie" can't yet run Linux without technical assistance. I agree that Linux isn't ready for prime time, but it's not because of Aunt Minnie.

The fact is, Aunt Minnie requires technical assistance, regardless of the operating system she runs--even Windows. I field Windows technical questions all the time from family and friends. So Aunt Minnie is not the key to success for Linux.

The real key is Cousin Stan. Cousin Stan is that pseudo-techie who has enough technical knowledge and experience to get the basics set up and to help Aunt Minnie fix her problems. If he has a real serious problem he turns to a professional, but for most problems, Cousin Stan can figure it out.

Cousin Stan is the driving force for the mainstream. The technology is not his job, but he's just techie enough to try out the latest and greatest thing out there. If he can figure it out, he'll adopt it--and get Aunt Millie to adopt it, too. Success requires a critical mass of Cousin Stans, not Aunt Minnies.

Joel Rosenberg is a Cousin Stan. The fact that he got Linux installed, and is now using it on a daily basis, is a very, very good sign for Linux.

Posted 1/02/2002 11:59:00 PM by Jeff
Most of the time, the Non Sequitur comic is pretty good--or at least not too bad. Unfortunately, that doesn't apply to today's strip.

The setup is a debate program. The topic is the Presidential Electoral College. One character defends the Electoral College. The next character questions the Electoral College and says, "All other offices are elected by the popular vote, so why not for the pres..." at which point the first character's head explodes. The parting shot is, "Sorry, logic just slipped out."

But it didn't. No other office is like President, because President is the only office elected nationwide. So it does not follow that what works for other offices will work for President. Not only that, but it's not true to say that all other offices are elected by a simple popular vote. Many local offices (such as city council) are elected in groups, with voters getting as many votes as there are open seats and the top vote getters being elected. This can create a scenerio where you cost your favorite candidate the election by also voting for the person who finished ahead of them.

Whatever logic slipped out, must have fallen on the floor, because it certainly didn't enter the debate.