Jeff Wolfe's Weblog

2004-12-31T16:21:00.000-05:00

NO BLOG ENTRIES THIS YEAR - I keep meaning to move to something on my own site, but it hasn't happened yet. Maybe next year.

2003-12-25T01:40:00.000-05:00

DECEMBER GREETINGS -

1. Please select one of the following options:
Happy
Merry
Joyous
Feliz
Other _____________________

2. Please select one of the following options:
Christmas (December 25)
Hanukkah* (December 20-27)
Kwanzaa (December 26-January 1)
Boxing Day (December 26)
Yule (December 22)
Solstice (December 22)
Bill of Rights Day (December 15)
Navidad (25 Diciembre)
New Year (January 1)
Other _____________________
* Or substitute your own transliteration

3. Repeat as desired.

2003-12-19T03:45:00.000-05:00

X PRIZE SUCCESS - SpaceShipOne, built by Scaled Composites, on Wednesday became the first aircraft built entirely with private funds to break the sound barrier. Scaled Composites is the leading entrant vying for the X Prize, a $10 million award given to the first private organization to fly two suborbital space flights in the same spacecraft within a two week period.

While it's just a stepping-stone to Scaled's goal of flying in space, SpaceShipOne's flight is a rather significant accomplishment in its own regard. Aside from the just-retired Concorde (built by the British and French governments), supersonic aircraft have been primarily military jets. Now, it's been proven that even a relatively tiny company like Scaled can build a supersonic plane. With Concorde grounded, perhaps some enterprising company can step in and fill the void.

Certainly, a test vehicle like SpaceShipOne is a far cry from a production commercial aircraft. But the technological barriers, as Scaled has shown, are not that high. It's the psychological barriers that are holding things back.

Even if the X Prize is never claimed, as is expected to happen next year, the Prize will have done a great deal to help bring us into the age of affordable high-speed global travel. Not just space travel, but supersonic and hypersonic travel for the masses. I'm looking forward to the day when the most time consuming part of a U.S. cross-country flight is the drive to the airport.

2003-12-16T15:03:00.000-05:00

FIGHTING TO WIN - Orson Scott Card, a noted Science Fiction author, has an article at OpinionJournal titled, "The Campaign of Hate and Fear (Some of my fellow Democrats are unpatriotic.)" He says that people are dying because of the prevalent Democratic rhetoric, and if it wins out, many, many more will die. Something to think about.

(Note: I know, I haven't blogged for a very long time. There's no good reason for it.)

2003-09-04T02:25:00.000-04:00

WOO-HOO! - Earlier today, Glenn Reynolds posted an email I sent him about the population of California (the original item was dated yesterday, but my "update" was posted today). Then, Virginia Postrel gave me an unsolicited plug on her blog. Not only that, but a friend of mine pulled out his telescope tonight, and I got to see Mars as more than just a bright "star" in the sky. And as if that weren't enough, Amazon sent me an email today telling me that my copy of The Substance of Style is on its way.

Frankly, I haven't been having very many good days recently, and with this one-year anniversary looming, I'm happy to chain a few good things together for a change. So, to reiterate: woo-hoo!

2003-08-30T00:55:00.000-04:00

RAIN, RAIN, GO AWAY - It's raining again. I'm not talking about "Darn, I have to get out my umbrella again" rain, I'm talking "Near zero visibility when you drive, even with the wipers on maximum, and God help you if you have to stop" rain. It's been like this for weeks. The other day, we had flash-flooding in my neighborhood, and it took me half an hour to find a street clear enough to drive through to get home. I've lived in this neighborhood for 15 years, and that's the first time I've seen that happen. I'm ready for it to stop, already.

2003-08-15T01:06:00.000-04:00

THE BLAME GAME - Slashdot has an item entitled Deregulation and Niagara Mohawk - Is There a Story? that asks about the role of deregulation in the recent blackout. The item contains links to articles that include the following quotes: "(The Niagara Mohawk power grid) is scheduled to request a rate hike," and "Deregulation [has] changed the laws and regulations governing the electricity industry...."

In the first case, if they have to request a rate hike from regulators, then they obviously haven't been deregulated, just differently regulated. In the second case, the quote explicitly says that the industry is still regulated--but the regulations have been "changed."

The concept of "deregulation" is a curious thing. It would seem reasonable to conclude that "deregulation" means that the regulations governing a company or industry are removed to force and allow the company or industry to compete under market rules. In practice, however, "deregulation" means no such thing. The way "deregulation" is almost always used (at implementation time, anyway) is to mean changing the way in which a company or industry is regulated. The so-called "deregulation" is usually implemented in a way that gives an immediate benefit the company involved (which is why they favor it), with at least lip service given to some form of "competition," although that competition is usually "managed" (i.e. tightly regulated). When a new regulation scheme thus implemented causes problems, then "deregulation" is blamed, with the connotation changed to mean "removing government controls," when the fact is that no such deregulation took place.

2003-08-05T19:12:00.000-04:00

SEA CHANGE IN SPACE - NASA today announced that they could launch the next space shuttle mission as early as March 11. By that time, human spaceflight looks to be quite a bit different than it is now. We could very well see three or four groups launching manned space missions before NASA manages to recover from its latest disaster.

There's the Russian launch of the next International Space Station crew, currently scheduled for October. But the Chinese government may also have a manned mission in October, the first ever by that country. And in a true sign of the changing state of space travel, the X Prize Foundation is saying that they expect a winner before the end of the year.

Since winning the X Prize involves the same spacecraft making two suborbital flights in two weeks, we could very well see several teams make attempts before the prize is claimed. And even after the prize is claimed, those teams which are working toward a commercially viable product will be pushing to get into space so their investments will pay off for themselves and their backers.

NASA hasn't proven very adaptable in its history, but it will have to adapt if it is to thrive in the new world of manned space travel. It's no longer even close to being the only game in town.

2003-07-26T04:16:00.000-04:00

ACRONYM OF THE DAY - The tech community tends to turn everything into an acronym. For example, Slashdot stories tend to include a disclaimer when they link to New York Times stories that say the NYT requires free registration. After a while, it became a parenthetical (Free Registration Required, yadda yadda yadda). Now, that has been reduced to (FRRYYY).

2003-07-01T20:49:00.000-04:00

WHY THE FANS VOTE - Why is it that so many sportswriters seem to think that baseball's All Star Game should be the All Who-has-the-best-statistics-in-the-first-half-of-the-season Game? Sure, the fans sometimes pick players past their prime, but there's no denying that player's picked this way are "stars," in the sense that they're well known and popular. Of course, individual fans often vote for their hometown players, but that tends to balance itself out, for the most part. Really, though, how can anyone seriously believe "Ichiro Suzuki didn't deserve to be in the starting three a month ago, but after a .400 June, he's worked his way in"? Ichiro is Ichiro, regardless of whether or not he's slumping in June.

2003-06-26T22:29:00.000-04:00

THE END OF THE WORLD - Virginia Postrel and Glenn Reynolds are on vacation.

2003-06-24T15:40:00.000-04:00

SPIKE, REVISITED - CNN is reporting that Spike Jones, Jr., son of the late Spike Jones, has filed a brief in the TNN lawsuit on TNN's side. See below for more on the Spike issue.

2003-06-21T06:50:00.000-04:00

AFTER BUFFY, PEANUTS - Virginia Postrel suggests that after Spike Lee is done suing TNN over their efforts to change their name to Spike TV, he may go after Buffy the Vampire Slayer, because it has a character named Spike. After that, perhaps he'll go after the comic strip Peanuts over Snoopy's brother, Spike.

UPDATE: And let's not forget Fonzie's nephew Spike from Happy Days.

ANOTHER UPDATE: How could I leave out Spike Jones?

2003-05-13T02:36:00.000-04:00

BUT DID HE PERJURE HIMSELF? - CNN.com is reporting that JFK had affair with 19-year-old intern. The allusion to Bill Clinton is obvious. There are two problems with that comparison. One, JFK did not lie under oath about it. And two, to paraphrase Lloyd Bentson, Clinton is no Jack Kennedy.

2003-05-09T13:04:00.000-04:00

FIRST AMENDMENT, WHAT FIRST AMENDMENT? - Brian Doherty at Reason has a good article on the follies of campaign finance reform. I think it's telling that the latest restrictions were passed in something called the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. It's clearly bipartisan and not nonpartisan. It represents the two major parties conspiring to prop up the political duopoly that is our current electoral system. With all the attention pornography gets, people tend to forget that the First Amendment is ultimately and fundamentally about political speech--and that seems to be the least protected type of speech today.

2003-05-01T17:24:00.000-04:00

ANOTHER FIRST - There's no reason why this should be cool, but it is. George W. Bush became the first sitting president to make a tailhook landing on an aircraft carrier.

2003-04-13T14:44:00.000-04:00

HAPPY BIRTHDAY - Today is Thomas Jefferson's 260th birthday. Since Thomas Jefferson is my historical role model according to the quiz I link to below (and his picture is staring back at me from the same entry as I type this), it's appropriate that I make note of his birthday. I noted his birthday last year as well.

2003-04-12T13:31:00.000-04:00

INTERNATIONAL BASEBALL - A Canadian team started a Japanese pitcher against an American team in a Major League Baseball game played in Puerto Rico. It's not quite hockey or soccer, but baseball's got its own internationalization going on.

2003-03-13T17:24:00.000-05:00

SURPRISE! - InstaPundit linked to one of those online quiz things, and wouldn't you know it, I rated Libertarian. Imagine that!

Libertarian - You believe that the main use for
government is for some people to lord it over
others at their expense. You maintain that the
government should be as small as possible, and
that civil liberties, "victimless
crimes", and gun ownership should be basic
rights. You probably are OK with capitalism.
Your historical role model is Thomas Jefferson.

Which political sterotype are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

2003-03-09T09:48:00.000-05:00

SADDAM HUSSEIN MEETS MONTY PYTHON - Here's an amazingly realistic take on the Iraqi disarmament negotiations, from VikingPundit (via rec.humor.funny).

2003-03-07T05:15:00.000-05:00

THE POLITICS OF THE COLUMBIA INVESTIGATION - At the first public hearing of the shuttle investigation board, the head of the Johnson Space Center said he's concerned that only 3,000 of the 10,000 space center workers are government employees. The article seems to imply that those figures are somehow surprising and haphazard, and not, as they were, a planned privatization effort. It also accepts as prima facie evidence that the presence of private workers compromised safety, the only question being if it was compromised too much. There's no allowance for private contractors being a neutral, or even positive, influence on safety. Sounds to me like uncritical reporting of sour grapes from government managers with an old axe to grind. Hopefully, the investigation board can rise above the petty political nonsense and focus on investigating the actual accident.

2003-01-09T11:17:00.000-05:00

THIS ISN'T A SITUATION COMEDY - Glenn Reynolds saw an episode of The Cosby Show on Nickelodeon ("Theo defies his parents, and they leave him with nowhere to live in order to teach him that actions have consequences, and forgiveness isn't to be taken for granted.") He drew a parallel to the situation in Korea. Sample quote:

We live in a world where most of our allies are Theo Huxtables: self-centered, unrealistic, and overconfident in their assorted schemes because they know Heathcliff will always bail them out in the end. But this isn't a situation comedy.

Near as I can tell, that approach doesn't work in real life.

2002-12-31T09:38:00.000-05:00

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.

2002-12-15T05:00:00.000-05:00

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.

2002-11-23T01:18:00.000-05:00

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.

2002-11-06T09:02:00.000-05:00

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.

2002-10-28T17:11:00.000-05:00

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).

2002-10-24T12:35:00.000-04:00

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:

I don't know, and
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.

2002-10-15T03:54:00.000-04:00

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.

2002-09-21T00:07:00.000-04:00

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.

2002-09-15T14:41:00.000-04:00

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.

2002-09-11T21:28:00.000-04:00

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....

2002-09-05T04:00:00.000-04:00

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.)

2002-08-28T12:31:00.000-04:00

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.

2002-08-21T12:16:00.000-04:00

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.

2002-08-08T20:00:00.000-04:00

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.

2002-08-08T18:26:00.000-04:00

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.

2002-07-20T11:30:00.000-04:00

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?

2002-07-20T04:18:00.000-04:00

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.

2002-07-09T10:49:00.000-04:00

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.

2002-07-01T14:24:00.000-04:00

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.

2002-06-11T04:31:00.000-04:00

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!

2002-06-11T04:13:00.000-04:00

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.

2002-06-11T04:10:00.000-04:00

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.

2002-05-31T00:30:00.000-04:00

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.

2002-05-22T16:43:00.000-04:00

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.

2002-05-18T16:07:00.000-04:00

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.

2002-05-18T12:17:00.000-04:00

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.

2002-05-15T00:43:00.000-04:00

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.

2002-05-10T07:34:00.000-04:00

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).

2002-05-09T19:26:00.000-04:00

CATO INSTITUTE, AFTER 25 YEARS - Brink Lindsey tells us what he likes about working at the Cato Institute, and why they've been successful.

2002-05-08T14:43:00.000-04:00

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.

2002-05-05T08:11:00.000-04:00

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.

2002-05-05T07:48:00.000-04:00

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.

2002-05-04T04:28:00.000-04:00

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.

2002-05-04T02:16:00.000-04:00

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)

2002-05-01T18:20:00.000-04:00

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.

2002-04-30T07:52:00.000-04:00

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.

2002-04-29T16:47:00.000-04:00

GIVING IT AWAY HELPS YOU SELL IT - Eric Flint presents compelling anecdotal evidence that making books available for free online increases sales.

2002-04-25T01:26:00.000-04:00

NOT AT ALL LIKE BAD SCIENCE FICTION - Virginia Postrel has posted a good explanation of the terms being used in the cloning debate.

2002-04-23T23:49:00.000-04:00

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.

2002-04-23T23:13:00.000-04:00

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?

2002-04-23T05:40:00.000-04:00

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.

2002-04-21T04:02:00.000-04:00

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.

2002-04-20T02:53:00.000-04:00

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.

2002-04-18T12:42:00.000-04:00

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

2002-04-13T17:34:00.000-04:00

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.

2002-04-13T01:57:00.000-04:00

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.

2002-04-10T04:51:00.000-04:00

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.

2002-04-09T19:41:00.000-04:00

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.

2002-04-09T15:39:00.000-04:00

MORE ON ANTI-WAR LIBERTARIANS - Brink Lindsey follows up on his previous post.

2002-04-09T04:08:00.000-04:00

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."

2002-04-04T15:11:00.000-05:00

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).

2002-04-04T14:09:00.000-05:00

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?

2002-04-03T07:27:00.000-05:00

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.

2002-04-01T19:37:00.000-05:00

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."

2002-03-30T02:35:00.000-05:00

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."

2002-03-29T20:39:00.000-05:00

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.

2002-03-29T20:28:00.000-05:00

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.

2002-03-22T18:43:00.000-05:00

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.

2002-03-21T19:08:00.000-05:00

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.

2002-03-21T18:44:00.000-05:00

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...."

2002-03-21T12:25:00.000-05:00

THE BAD GUYS WON - Commentary here.

2002-03-18T14:02:00.000-05:00

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.

2002-03-18T03:22:00.000-05:00

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."

2002-03-18T02:46:00.000-05:00

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.

2002-03-12T03:58:00.000-05:00

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").

2002-03-11T17:29:00.000-05:00

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?

2002-03-11T13:28:00.000-05:00

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.

2002-03-11T02:55:00.000-05:00

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.

2002-03-09T23:45:00.000-05:00

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.

2002-03-08T02:20:00.000-05:00

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.

2002-03-07T17:30:00.000-05:00

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).

2002-03-05T17:29:00.000-05:00

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.

2002-03-04T18:16:00.000-05:00

ANOTHER DYNAMIST - This Libertarian Party member explains why he believes there's No 'One True Way' to successful activism.

2002-03-04T17:25:00.000-05:00

LEGISLATION - The real story behind discussions about legislation.

2002-03-03T15:42:00.000-05:00

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.

2002-03-02T16:03:00.000-05:00

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.

2002-03-02T01:38:00.000-05:00

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.

2002-02-28T12:10:00.000-05:00

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.