That'd be an "oops"

The Telegraph reports that a New Hampshire newspaper had an unusually embarassing typo: the newspaper's own name:

This Monday readers of New Hampshire's Valley News were surprised to see the paper's name spelled "Valley Newss" on the front page masthead.

The following day the newspaper, which covers the Upper Valley area straddling New Hampshire and Vermont, published an "Editor's Note" acknowledging the error.

"Readers may have noticed that the Valley News misspelled its own name on yesterday’s front page," it read.

"Given that we routinely call on other institutions to hold themselves accountable for the mistakes, let us say for the record: We sure feel silly."

I'd actually expected the report to be about the Manchester Guardian, which was notorious for editing problems many years ago (hence the occasional nickname "The Grauniad").

Congress to repeal law of supply and demand, film at 11!

Megan McArdle recaps some pretty basic economic facts for the benefit of congressional head-in-the-sand types who seem to have dangerous misconceptions:

Let's look at the basic economics here. I agree that there is a "speculative premium" in the market — the price changes obviously do not simply reflect change in demand conditions or other new information. They're too volatile.

That doesn't mean that this speculative premium is wrong. Speculation is not a synonym for "gambling"; it's a synonym for "guessing". The speculative premium reflects people guessing that the mismatch between supply and demand will be even greater in the future than it is now.

Sometimes speculators are wrong, of course — just ask my classmates who took out $100,000 worth of student loans for business school so that they could hold onto that valuable Webvan stock. But sometimes they're right — the Confederate speculators who made a fortune buying and holding staples in the Civil War guessed, correctly, that the South would be getting a little hungry by and by.

Of course, this makes people angry who want to consume cheaply now, which is why you hear so much talk about war profiteers. But in fact, the speculators were providing a very valuable service. Without them, the confederacy would have consumed those staples early in the war at an artificially low price, and been even hungrier later.

Nobody likes paying higher prices today than they did last week, last month, or last year. But the price reflects a huge mass of information on supply and demand, in a neat little numerical form. Prices rise when supply is lower than demand, signalling that the product is becoming harder to find/manufacture/harvest, and the rational response on the part of the consumer is to use less of the item or to look for substitutes.

Prices work better than anything else we've ever invented for regulating supply and demand . . . far, far better than installing philosopher kings, commisars, or regulatory bodies to determine "fair" or "equitable" value for any given item. Trying to impose conscious human control over a process will only make the situation worse both in the short term and over the long haul.

But politicians aren't elected because of their economical insight . . . and they are always impelled to be seen to be doing something. This is never a good thing.

Conscription by another name

Radley Balko summarizes the most recent moves towards some new form of civil conscription in the United States:

The Service Nation Summit kickoff event is getting promotional help from Time magazine, whose Managing Editor Rick Stengel is a co-chair. Seems like an odd undertaking for a newsweekly, doesn't it? But then, Time has an annoying habit of crossing over into advocacy on issues its editors have deemed too important to leave to impartial reportage.

Lindgren points out that though the campaign is couched in terms that make it appear oriented toward merely encouraging volunteerism, some of its top officials have a history of supporting a more coercive definition "service," including support for Rep. Charlie Rengel's (D-N.Y.) bill to bring back conscription. Most ominously, one of the group's stated goals is to "[l]aunch a debate about why and how America should become a nation of universal national service by 2020."

Note the absence of the word "if."

Military conscription is indentured servitude. Civilian forms of conscription will be exactly as bad. This follows a discussion the other day where the term "generational welfare" was accurately used to describe most of these farcical initiatives.

Don't keep "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"

Mike Riggs reports from the "DA,DT" hearing:

The hearing went better than I expected, insofar as the Democratic witnesses, Navy Capt. Joan Darrah, retired Army Maj. Gen. Vance Coleman, and Marine Staff Serg. Eric Alva utterly outspoke Army Sgt. Maj. Brian Jones and Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness, both of whom testitified (poorly, and in some places, damn near incoherently) on behalf of Republicans.

Donnelly managed, somehow, to answer every question from both the right and the left with, "Sexual urges would prevent unit cohesion." Jones, when asked whether or not he thought homoesexuality was immoral, replied, "No, but if I'm 6'8" and I want to be a fighter pilot, I can't." Both think a gay-friendly military would bring on the end of the world.

As this hearing evidenced, the social conservative arguments for preserving DADT, letting the Department of Defense write its own policy, or banning gay service, range from paper-thin to non-existent. The only obstacle I see to passage of the Military Readiness Enhancement Act — the bill that would repeal DADT and implement a non-discrimination policy — is good ole' fashion homophobia.

As a recruiting policy, DADT is just plain dumb. As a "retention" policy, DADT is worse: gay and lesbian soldiers are pretty clearly determined to serve — in spite of the widespread anti-gay mentality pervasive in some units — and are being dismissed from the service for being honest. This, at a time when all branches of the US armed forces are struggling to maintain troop levels. It's a stupid, dishonest policy and should be discarded ASAP.

QotD: Open borders to eliminate wage disparities

Wage gaps between observably identical Nigerian workers in the United States and Nigerian workers in Nigeria (same gender, education, work experience, etc) are . . . considerable. They swamp the wage gaps between men and women in the US. They swamp the gaps between whites and blacks in the US. Actually, they swamp the wage gaps between whites and blacks in the United States in 1855. For several countries, the effect of border restrictions on the wages of workers of equal productivity "is greater than any form of wage discrimination (gender, race, or ethnicity) that has ever been measured." The labor protectionism that keeps poor workers out of rich countries upholds one of the largest remaining price distortions in any global market.

Who cares? You weren't planning on seeking employment in Nigeria anyway. The upshot is that even a very limited loosening of borders could do enormous, immediate good. No other poverty alleviation policy — microcredit, education, public health interventions, anti-sweatshop activism — compares with a work visa, even a temporary one.

Kerry Howley, "The Road Out of Serfdom", Hit and Run, 2008-07-23

Busy, busy, busy

Sorry, I had a breakfast meeting followed by other away-from-the-keyboard stuff this morning, so I haven't had opportunity to post anything. Here, just to keep you occupied . . . some font humour (you font geeks know who you are).

Holy gristle resolves religious question

If you can't trust the BBC, then who can you trust?

What looks like the Arabic word for God and the name of the prophet Muhammad were discovered in pieces of beef by a diner in Birnin Kebbi.

He was about to eat it, when he suddenly noticed the words in the gristle, the restaurant owner said.

A search of the kitchen's meat revealed three more pieces which bore the names.

The meat was boiled and then fried before being served, owner Kabiru Haliru told newspaper Weekly Trust.

"When the writings were discovered there were some Islamic scholars who come and eat here and they all commented that it was a sign to show that Islam is the only true religion for mankind," he said.

The restaurant has kept the pieces of meat for visitors to see.

And to think that other religions have miracles involving flaming topiary, resurrecting the dead, great floods, and other such over-the-top demonstrations, when all you needed to to do was to inscribe your own name in gristle . . .

H/T to John Parry for the link.

Gimli Glider 25th anniversary

Tomorrow is the 25th anniversary of one of the stranger episodes in Canadian flight history, the "Gimli Glider":

Air Canada Flight 143, with 61 passengers and eight crew members, was headed from Montreal to Edmonton.

Due to a miscalculation of the recently adopted metric system, the Boeing 767 ran out of fuel 12 km from the Ontario-Manitoba border at an altitude of 41,000 feet.

Plummeting fast with no engine power and no chance of making the Winnipeg airport, Captain Robert Pearson and First Officer Maurice Quintal made the decision to turn the plane into a giant glider and landed it at an abandoned air force strip at Gimli, Man.

No one was hurt except for some minor scrapes from exiting the plane.

QotD: Is Barack Obama "black enough"?

The issue of Mr. Obama's blackness has come up. The Reverend Jackson has made it clear he doesn't feel Mr. Obama is black enough, apparently he seems to be disregarding "black issues." While I do not support Mr. Obama I have to call the good Reverend on this one. Barack Obama is not running for President of Black America. He is running for President of all America. If he intends to push the interest of one ethnic group over any others than he has no business running for President of a nation that is about eighty eight percent white, Asian, Dine, and other races.

Sooner or later a Latino will run for President and I damn well expect him to run as an American who happens to have Latino roots, not a Latino who happens to be an American.

Back in the Fifties segregationists didn't get it, their way of doing business violated both the written Constitution and the spirit of freedom and justice it upon which it was based. Nowadays the debate is on what methodology is needed to achieve desegregation, not it's desirability [. . .] The Segregationists of old have become obsolete.

A. X. Perez, "Getting It", Libertarian Enterprise, 2008-07-20

Is the Favre "will he/won't he" melodrama coming to a close?

I've carefully not been following this story too closely, as I don't think it's anything more than a "doldrums of summer" timewaster for the sports press. Brett Favre is under contract to Green Bay, and there is no way that Green Bay's management wants to upset their plans for the coming season by entertaining Brett's public desire to come back. I can't see any reason for Green Bay giving Favre his release, as that would allow either Chicago or Minnesota to sign him — whether as a mutually beneficial arrangement or just as a way to spite the Packers.

Even if the Pack traded Favre, they'd still be cautious about the potential trading partner. It'd be very unlikely they'd trade with any other team in the division, possibly even the conference. Favre is still a good quarterback, and he clearly feels he has some gas left in the tank.

I'm still hopeful that current Vikings quarterback Tarvaris Jackson will be the player the team hoped he'd be when they traded up in the draft to take him. He's shown some positive developments over the past season, and (if he can avoid some of the more obvious mistakes this year) he has the skills to take the team to the playoffs. With the power running capabilities of the Vikings, the quarterback doesn't have to carry the entire offense on his shoulders, so minimizing dumb mistakes will be enough to win a bunch of games.

Bringing in Favre would be the worst thing the Vikings could do for the long term . . . with all the good will in the world, Favre won't be starting for any team in the NFL two years from now, and it would indicate that the coaching staff do not have the confidence in Jackson (and would pretty much force them to spend their first round pick next year on a quarterback).

Anthony Hall covers the latest developments:

For those who are deathly tired of constantly seeing Brett Favre in the news, check this out: As The Favre Turns may be nearing a conclusion. Pro Football Talk reports that the man who has dominated the headlines for the Packers and Vikings alike over the past few weeks may have decided to end his comeback attempt:

Per the tipster, Favre is abandoning his attempt to return to the NFL. We're told the Packers presented him with a list of three teams to which they'd attempt to trade him, and that Favre refused each one.

Of course, even if this report ultimately turns out to be accurate, tampergate will still continue — although with Brett out of the picture, the tampering charges will become a considerably less significant storyline as we head into the season.

More importantly, though, I couldn't be happier with even the mere possibility that Favre will finally be going away. This whole thing has been exhausting — and that's coming from a Vikings fan who typically can't get enough of turmoil occurring in Green Bay.

Anthony correctly points out that Favre missed a great opportunity to shore up his support during the Fox interview with Greta Van Susteren: his fans have been deserting steadily since that appearance:

As it is, public opinion continues to rapidly turn against Favre. Indeed, hoards of sympathetic fans will not storm Lambeau Field if Thompson refuses to cave into the quarterback’s demand for a release, and they will not storm Lambeau Field if Favre cannot leverage a trade to a team not among the three that Thompson selected as potential destinations for Brett.

His only remaining options are to accept a trade to one of the three teams that the Packers front office has picked, or simply abandon his comeback attempt. I wish he’d choose the former option — it'd be interesting to see the media compare Favre's performance to Aaron Rodgers' on a weekly basis — but for Brett, the latter option is clearly the best.

Fan fiction . . . possibly not legal under Canadian law

John Scalzi links to a discussion of fan fiction under Canadian law:

For all you fanficcers out there, an interesting take on fan fiction from the Canadian legal perspective, i.e., whether fan fic would be legal in Canada if it ever went to court there. The author suspects not and notes that in Canada (and much of the rest of the world outside the US) there's an additional layer of complication in that the author is assumed to have a "moral right" to a work which includes some strictures on how the work (and the characters within) is to be used. There is no moral right issue in US law, of course, because we in the US don't have morals. Or something.

Ah, but just what is "fan fiction" I pretend to hear you ask? Here's a good answer (from the LRC article):

This is fan fiction, and it's all over the web, at sites such as http://www.fanfiction.net, and http://www.sugarquill.com. Though its roots are in the science fiction book world, the phenomenon really took off with the TV series Star Trek. By the series' second season in 1967, fans were writing their own episodes and sharing them with like-minded friends. Drawing on Star Trek characters and settings — referred to as the canon — they placed the characters in narratives not contemplated by the show's writers, very often with subversive results. Most famously, these early fan writers perceived a repressed sexual passion between Mr. Spock and Captain Kirk and began writing stories exploring this relationship. Thus was started a roaring sub-culture of fan writing, largely by women and for women, about homoerotic relations between ostensibly heterosexual male characters. Stories of such relationships — known as slash from the "/" used to connote a pairing (such as Harry Potter/Severus Snape) — continue to make up a major proportion of fan fiction.

Social scientist Camille Bacon-Smith, in her book Enterprising Women, identifies a number of sub-genres beyond slash which give a good sense of fan fiction's diversity. Sub-genres include mpreg (where a man gets pregnant), deathfic (where a major character dies), curtainfic (where the characters, typically a gay male pairing, go domestic and engage in such comfortably bourgeois exercises as shopping for curtains together), and AU (alternative universe, where the characters are displaced into an entirely new fantasy setting). Sexually explicit sub-genres — often tagged as 'kink' or 'with plumbing' — include PWP (porn without plot or 'Plot? What plot?') and BDSM (bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadomasochism). And universally deplored as the worst cliché in the genre is the Mary Sue story, in which the fan writer writes her thinly-veiled self into the plot. 'Infinite diversity in infinite combinations' is fandom's abiding motto.

Should you feel the need to read some bad fan fiction — of which there is an incredibly large and possibly endless supply — you can cut right to the chase by visiting http://www.godawful.net/, who claim they've "scoured the 'net since 1998 to bring you the foulest fan fiction available and we like to think that we're responsible for many a dry heave and sleepless night, but the truth of the matter is, we just showcase these abominations. We'd like to take this opportunity to thank those deluded souls actually writing Godawful Fan Fiction, without whom this site would never have been possible. Or necessary."

Playground equipment again

I guess that posting about playground equipment of days gone by is the way to connect with my readership . . . first, I got a follow-up link to this site sent by frequent commenter (when I had comments open) "Da Wife":

Vintage playground equipment is fast disappearing from America’s parks and school yards. The equipment we grew up with — from spring-mounted animals installed in the 1940s to imposing rocket ships erected in the 1970s — becomes more scarce each year. Even seesaws, merry-go-rounds and swings are becoming things of the past, along with towering metal slides and elaborate wooden structures. The photos on this website celebrate the beauty and history of playground equipment that may soon be gone from the American landscape.

And then, I have Jon sending me his own thoughts on the original post:

The modern playgound is still pretty dangerous. There tend to be far more climbing areas now — (rock walls, ladders, steps, poles with footholds, rope ladders and nets — and there are more high places to serve as destinations for all that climbing. A modern play structure — I'm thinking of the one at [the local] school and another "all access for gimps" installation at another nearby school — still has monkey bars, suspended loops, firepoles, and occasionally a zip-line sort of thing between raised platforms. Of the playgrounds we frequent, half still have metal slides.

What seems to be a little disappointing about modern playsets, though, is the fact that they seem to be so small. Part of this may be due to the distortions of memory, but I think a good part of it may be due to design: they're making them smaller to discourage teens from hanging out on them.

The modern playset seems to me to be better equipped than the crap we had in the local park when I was a kid. There's more to do and there are actually places to _go_ within the playset. Contrast this to the stuff we played on, where the biggest decision about what to do on the bent pipe climber was whether to get the paint chip rammed under the fingernail at the top of the ladder or down at the bottom.

Humph.

Clearly, I should post on childhood nostalgia more often . . .

Update: And yet more from the virtual landlord:

And about this bit —

"And they were different and unique, seemingly put together by the neighborhood handymen who in a burst of creative energy one Saturday morning emptied their garages of old tires, 2×4s, and chains and just nailed it all together."

This dates the 1000 Awesome Things author. If she's fondly remembering the scrap-lumber-and-old-tires-held-together-by-chains sort of playgrounds, she's reminiscing about the late 70's and early 80's. That's when this sort of garbage started showing up in my playgrounds and schoolyards. My friends and I recognized these things as the crap that they were and we noted then that we really missed the bent pipe and sheet steel playgrounds of our youth. We were 11.

IPv6: future hero or current villain?

I found this Wired post about the possibile threats posed by increasing use of IPv6 to be quite interesting. IPv6, for those of you not elbow-deep in internet protocol, is the replacement for the current internet address model (the way that human-readable names like "wired.com" are mapped to numerical addresses like 255.128.32.16). The limitation to the existing model (IPv4) is that we're literally running out of address space: IPv6 will vastly increase the number of discrete addresses available for use, but it will take a few years for the necessary equipment and software to be deployed.

Something I hadn't thought about was that this roll-out of IPv6-capable equipment might create some new opportunities for hackers:

Joe Klein, a security researcher with Command Information, says many organizations and home users have IPv6 enabled on their systems by default but don't know it. They also don't have protection in place to block malicious traffic, since some intrusion detection systems and firewalls aren't set up to monitor IPv6 traffic, presenting an appealing vector through which outsiders can attack their networks undetected.

"Essentially, we have systems that are wide open to a network," says Klein, who is a member of an IPv6 task force and will be speaking about the issue tonight at the HOPE (Hackers on Planet Earth) conference in New York. "It's like having wireless on your network without knowing it."

The internet is moving to IPv6 because IPv4 is running out of addresses. Estimates of when IPv4 addresses will be exhausted have varied. Command Information has a widget on its web site counting down the number of IPv4 addresses still available each time the American Registry for Internet Numbers assigns an address or block of addresses. By the widget's count, the supply of IPv4 addresses – currently at around 620 million -- will run out in about 917 days, or about two and a half years.

Reasons for pessimism

Don't read this if you're easily depressed. It's the latest report from Ronald Bailey at the Global Catastrophic Risks conference:

But before becoming too complacent, keep an eye out for reports on the 210-330 meter asteroid Apophis-there's a 1 in 45,000 chance that it could hit the earth on April 13, 2036. Measurements in the next 3 to 4 years will determine just how big a chance of a collision there is.

Gamma Ray Bursts

Technion physicist Arnon Dar warned of another space hazard — gamma ray bursts (GRBs). GRBs were originally detected by U.S. military satellites that were checking to see if the Soviets were testing nuclear weapons. GRBs are beams of highly energetic photons produced when a gigantic star goes supernova. Dar described a GRB beam hitting the earth would be like a kiloton bomb per square kilometer going off at the top atmosphere. He speculated that some of the earlier mass extinctions, such as the Permian extinction in which perhaps 90 percent of all life died out might have been caused by GRBs.

So are there any stars likely to go supernova nearby? Dar pointed out that the gigantic star Eta Carinae at a distance of 7,500 light years has been extremely unstable of late. Eta Carinae is 100 times more massive than the sun and 5 million times brighter. When it goes it will be a hypernova. Dar then gave us the good news: Eta Carinae's axis is pointed away from the earth, so the GRB beam it will generate when it dies will be aimed far from us. However, don't get too complacent about GRBs. Future of Humanity Institute research fellow Anders Sandberg mentioned that some astronomers are worried that we may be looking down the barrel of gamma ray gun when the WR 104 binary located 8,000 light years away goes supernova.

Just to add to your worries . . . we'd get very little real warning that a neighbouring star had gone supernova: the GRB beam would arrive almost simultaneously with the visual or radio wave evidence of the event.

Political musical chairs

Steve Chapman finds the world turned upside down as Barack Obama and John McCain swap stances over education:

I know, because admirers of Barack Obama tell me, that this year's election poses a choice between a candidate who represents a fresh approach to problems and one who offers a dreary continuation of the status quo. That much I understand. What I sometimes have trouble keeping straight is which candidate is which.

On the subject of elementary and secondary education, the two seem to have gotten their roles completely mixed up. Obama is the staunch defender of the existing public school monopoly, and he's allergic to anything that subverts it. John McCain, on the other hand, went before the NAACP last week to argue for something new and daring.

That something is to facilitate greater parental choice in education. McCain wants to expand a Washington, D.C. program that provides federally funded scholarships so poor students can attend private schools. More than 7,000 kids, he reported, have applied for these vouchers, but only 1,900 can be accommodated.

Obama promptly expressed disdain for McCain's proposal. The Republican, his campaign said, offered "recycled bromides" that would "undermine our public schools."

Ah, childhood memories

Those deadly devices, the playground equipment of a bygone era:

And of course, there was my favorite — the Big Spinner, also known as a Merry-Go-Round, but not the kind with lights and plastic horses going up and down. This was just a giant metal circle that laid about a foot off the ground and could be spun, usually by someone standing beside it. If you were lucky you'd get a pile of kids on there and somebody's mom or dad would kindly whip you into a World of Unimaginable Dizziness. A couple kids would fly off from the G-forces but most would hang on, teeth gritted, eyes squinted, cheeks flapping wildly against the wind, until the Big Spinner reluctantly came to a slow stop and finally let you off. Then you'd all walk away in different directions, some kids hitting tree trunks head on, others falling down nearby hills.

These days those classic playgrounds sure are hard to come by.

QotD: iPhones

Since Reihan already had an iPhone, and I don't, he's choosing between the marginal upgrades — mostly the GPS and the 3G network, and his old phone. I, however didn't have one before, so I get to be all gee-whiz about features the rest of you have had for a year. Which are, as I have repeatedly been told, pretty great. The phone interface is unbelievably easy to use — so easy that my technophobe mother and luddite crank sister want to join me on an AT&T family plan with iPhones of their very own. Unlike Reihan, I've had absolutely no trouble with call quality — indeed, it seems quite a bit better than the reception on my old Razr. And the iPod sounds great.

On the new side, there are a host of new apps that take advantage of the GPS feature, and I've installed most of them. The killer app is, obviously, using Google maps to get you un-lost. But people have also coded a bunch of social networking applications that let you, for example, see where all your friends are. The ones with iPhones, anyway. And if they don't have iPhones, they should be dead to you.

Just kidding. Since I'm the early adopter on a lot of these applications, it remains to be seen how useful they will be. But things like Twitterific, AIM, and Facebook are already pretty key.

Megan McArdle, "Pondering the iPhone", TheAtlantic.com, 2008-07-15

Combatting historical inaccuracy

Johnathan Pearce remembers his early history lessons:

Last night, I watched a repeat of a programme that took me back about 30 years to when I was a young kid being taught history by a very leftwing history teacher. The period of study was the Industrial Revolution, and I remember getting what I call the default-setting "Black Satanic Mills" version of the 18th and 19th centuries, full of horrible factories, brutish owners, vicious and incompetent governments, heroic but downtrodden workers, starving farm labourers, not to mention a cast list of all those splendid French revolutionaries. I think it was at about this time — 1976-77 — that I formed in my still-young head the vague sense that I was being sold a line, that something about this was not quite accurate. Anyway, I was only 10, I was more interested in sports and messing about with my mates, and had yet to take a more serious interest in the world of current events. But even at that age I developed a love of history that has stayed with me, and for all that he is a died-in-the-wool leftie, my old history teacher, who is now retired, is someone of whom I have fond memories. He is actually one of the nicest of men and I keep in touch with him. The programme in question was fronted by Tony Robinson whom many non-Britons will know as the guy who played Baldrick in the glorious Blackadder TV series. In more recent years, Robinson, who is a campaigner for things like trade unions, long-term care for the elderly and other causes, has made a name for himself as an enthusiast for ancient history. His programme last night was a classic example of the sort of history that I was taught at school: wittily presented, but at its base incredibly biased, often factually inaccurate, and playing into a narrative of UK history that has coloured our views of industry, law, industrial relations and trade ever since.

One of the main parts of the programme was about the use of the death penalty and how the harsh penal code of the time was used to protect the property of the landed classes and the emerging class of entrepreneurs. That the code was harsh is undeniable. By the early 1820s, there were scores of offences, even ones like stealing potatoes or game, that were punishable by death. What Robinson ignored, however, is that juries frequently refused to convict such crimes because they could see that the punishment was outrageous. And in the 1820s, Robert Peel, Home Secretary at the time, swept almost all capital crimes off the statute books, save only for murder. Robinson does not mention this. And Robinson scorned how landowners were allowed, under the English Common Law, to defend their property by deadly force. He then juxtaposed pictures of poachers being executed with the recent case of Tony Martin, the Norfolk farmer who shot, and killed, an intruder at his home after having been burgled repeatedly. As far as Robinson was concerned, Martin was a throwback to the disgusting concept of using deadly force to guard property, and did not stop to consider that it is often very poor, vulnerable people who are the victims of robbery and attack. The arguments presented by the likes of Joyce-Lee Malcolm, who, for example, has defended the right of use of deadly force in self-defence, do not even enter Robinson's frame of reference. Indeed, the whole show gives us an insight as to how the UK political left — Robinson is an avid Labour Party supporter of the old, hard-left variety — view the whole concept of self defence and the role of the state generally.

". . . they're all worthless young punks . . ."

South Bend Seven is bothered by the groundswell of "compulsory volunteer" programs many politicians seem to be hankering for:

[. . .] these plans all amount to what Paul Thornton wisely labeled "generational welfare." Such plans are based on requiring service by teenagers or college students, presumably because they're all worthless young punks who wear baggy pants and listen to loud music all day, instead of pulling their weight (uphill both ways) like youngsters did back in the good old days.

I'm still waiting for the plan that requires volunteering* from able bodied retirees as a condition of receiving their social security checks, or requires a few hours a week of service from anyone getting unemployment benefits. This will never happen, of course, because it's clearly those rascally youths — who, by the way, probably need a hair cut and should definitely get off of our lawns — who are best suited for work without pay. Let them make the world a better place. We have better things to be doing.

I went to three different schools with some community service requirements, and there were some common themes amongst all three programs. One common occurrence is that people just found a sympathetic authority figure to sign off on wildly inflated numbers of hours served. This happened for almost everybody, even the people who did orders of magnitude more service than needed, because it's easier to get one person to sign one letter stating that you've put in 50 hours under their watchful eye, then get four different letters from four people each attesting to the 15 hours you actually did with each of them. At one school it was common to see fliers in the hallway promising multiple hours of service credits for less than an hour of time served.

The long-term result of all this mandatory "volunteer" programs is to devalue and discourage actual voluntary efforts, not to mention entrenching another Orwellian word-that-means-exactly-the-opposite-of-its-original-meaning.