Wendy McElroy reviews a recent book by Warren Farrell, Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap And What Women Can Do About It:
The first part of the book revolves around refuting feminism's explanation of the wage gap: namely that it results from rampant discrimination against women in the workplace.
Many arguments surrounding the wage gap are not addressed, however.
For example, women's lack of access to various well-paying blue collar jobs due to union policies and attitudes. But addressing such arguments is not the book's purpose. Refuting the specific feminist claim of discrimination is. And Farrell ably accomplishes this goal on two levels.
First, he cites research and extensive government data to demonstrate that women who compete for the same job often earn more than men, not less.
In Table 6, Farrell compares the starting salaries for women and men with Bachelor's Degrees in 26 categories of employment, from investment banker to dietician. Women are paid equally in one category; in every other category, their starting salaries exceed men's. A female investment banker's starting salary is 116 percent of a man's. A female dietician's is 130 percent; that is, $23,160 compared to $17,680.
As has been pointed out many times, the perception of wage differentials is not a single phenomena caused by patriarchal oppression: there are several reasons why, in some cases, men are better paid for similar work than women. Discrimination against women does occur, but statistically it isn't anywhere near as prevalent as it used to be (and if you don't believe this, you can't have been in the workforce 25-30 years ago).
Men, for the most part, do not take time away from paid employment to raise children. Women do. This has two effects on women's employment patterns: time away from the workplace (and therefore reduced experience, training, and promotion opportunities), and a stronger preference for shorter and/or more flexible work hours and an increased aversion to shift work, business travel, and overtime. From the employer's point of view, this may reduce the overall value of a woman's potential contribution to the company in direct comparison to a male co-worker.
Generally, women who do not have children end up having statistically similar careers to men: from the employer's viewpoint the only differences between a man and a woman in those cases will be meritocratic (ongoing job performance, ability to learn, and track record of accomplishment).
The 16th Raising of the Red Ensign is now up at The Phantom Observer.
Yes, risk-taking is inherently failure-prone. Otherwise, it would be called sure-thing-taking.
Tim McMahan
Mr. Chris Taylor, who hides behind the slogan "Purveyors of Fine Invective and Poor PDA Photography", displays why he's a far better photographer than yours truly, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Bastard. We hates him. How dare he show us up!
Partnership implies the burden is shared more or less equally. If I bought twenty quid's worth of shares in The Spectator and started swanning about bitching that Conrad Black didn't treat me as a partner, he'd rightly think I'd gone nuts. The British in their time were at least as ruthless about such realities as the Americans are today. For example, in September 1944, in one of the lesser-known conferences to prepare for the post-war world, Churchill and Roosevelt met in Quebec City. They had no compunction about excluding from their deliberations the Canadian Prime Minister, Mackenzie King, even though he was the nominal host. There's a cartoon of the time showing King peering through a keyhole as the top dogs settled the fate of the world without him.
And guess what? Militarily speaking, Canada was a far bigger player back then than Britain is today: the Royal Canadian Navy was the world's third-biggest surface fleet, the Canucks got the worst beach at Normandy — but hey, why bore you with details? In those days that still wasn't enough to get you a seat at the table.
Mark Steyn, "The Brutal Cuban Winter", The Spectator, 2002-01-26
This is an excerpt from a discussion I had a few months ago with a fellow woodworker-wannabe. The topic of overseas manufacturing of machine tools came up, and eventually he summarized the price and quality differences in this way:
Not that it matters, really. All these tools are made off-shore by people who will be dessicated, ground up, and rolled into honey-dipped sesame seed-coated balls that will be sold as impotence remedies.
Maybe that explains the quality of the tools. The Porter-Cable and DeWalt labourers are months away from dessication, so they are still pretty upbeat and do a good job.
The Black & Decker workers are just a few weeks away, so they don't do a very good job assembling the tools.
The Craftex guys go into the drying racks at the end of their shift.
Well, what little I remember of last night was quite good: lots of people, lots of conversation, only a few broken glasses waved around as weapons, and no permanent casualties. For a get-together of the VRWC and VLWC, that's a pretty good record.
Once again, I tried to get photos, but you'll pretty quickly realize that as a photographer, I'm a pretty good stevedore. Digital cameras are very cool, but they're still not the be-all and end-all for low-light images (I prefer to avoid using the flash, because it is so distracting for everyone around me).
The advance party was led by Chris Taylor, who staked out a position at the bar.
I was the fourth person to join the bunch, followed by Damian "Babbling" Brooks.
That gave us enough bodies to claim space downstairs, so we decamped basement-ward. The advance party agreed to fortify ourselves with some food before the Vast [RW | LW] Conspiracies arrived, only to be joined by either late-advance-party or early-main-body arrivals Greg Staples and Mike Brock.
Nick Packwood and Debbye Stratigacos soon joined the rest of us:
By this point, I'd lost track of who arrived when, and even who was already there (this was a bigger gathering than last time, and I know I didn't get a chance to talk with more than half the attendees). Anthony snuck in at some point:
Conspiracies were furthered in darkened corners:
Guests of honour did their level best to avoid being in photos:
The Green Baron impersonated Stephen Harper:
And the odd, non-blogger turned up:
I had to leave early, due to the weather, and still managed to get caught behind a phalanx of snowploughs, so that a 45 minute trip ended up being just over two hours. This is part of the reason for this posting showing up so late. . .
Update, 27 February: Michael was hanging around in the opposite end of the room for much of the night, and gives his highly colourful account of what was said and done over there.
Like other Americans, however, many libertarians think of political parties like sports teams. They want their own team to root for and cannot root for the other teams. Voting Libertarian gives them psychological satisfaction, while in the aggregate diminishing their political impact.
Libertarians should stop thinking of parties as teams and think of them instead as the playoffs. In NFL football terms, The Democrats are the AFC and the Republicans he NFC. To get into the Superbowl, you have to survive the season and the playoffs in your respective conference. In effect, Libertarians want to form their own league which no one but themselves is interested in watching. And they assure themselves of never making the playoffs much less the Superbowl.
Randy Barnett, "Parties Are Not Sports Teams — Parties are the Playoffs", The Volokh Conspiracy, 2005-02-24
A report from Associated Press indicates that Hunter S. Thompson's death was even tackier than I'd thought:
The widow of journalist Hunter S. Thompson said her husband killed himself while the two were talking on the phone.
"I was on the phone with him, he set the receiver down and he did it. I heard the clicking of the gun," Anita Thompson told the Aspen Daily News in Friday's editions.
She said her husband had asked her to come home from a health club so they could work on his weekly ESPN column — but instead of saying goodbye, he set the telephone down and shot himself.
But wait. . .it gets even better:
His son, daughter-in-law and six-year-old grandson were in the house when the shooting occurred.
I lack the words to express just how disgusted I am that a once-talented writer (yeah, I know, but he did write some great stuff . . . thirty years ago) could be such an asshole. Offing yourself is your call, but how he chose to do it? And with a six-year-old in the house? Pathetic.
It occurred to me this morning that coffee is like Viagra for the brain. After you drink coffee, your brain may still be small and ineffective, but at least it will function.
Steve H., "Coffee: Viagra for the Flaccid Brain", Hog On Ice, 2005-01-12
Jon pointed me to a post by Kim du Toit on the differences between drinking in the US and elsewhere in the Anglosphere:
Let me be perfectly clear about all this.
I know that the fabled "three-martini lunch" has fallen into some disrepute in America, because of some Carry Nation notion that the Demon Drink affects work performance and is a personal risk not to mention insurance problem blah blah blah.
It's all bullshit.
Booze (consumed not to excess) functions as a social lubricant, as a conversation facilitator, and as a means whereby the shy can be emboldened. As such, I think it performs a magic task inside business life, and does something which no other substance or structure is able to.
I also think that in a business context, booze creates cameraderie, and a means whereby individuals can become actual friends with their coworkers — no doubt a taboo in most companies, where the worker bees are not supposed to actually enjoy their job, just to perform it according to the standards set down by some faceless (and no doubt sober) O&M / finance trolls from their sterile bunkers.
I occasionally indulge in a glass of wine at lunch. I have to be a bit careful admitting that, however, as I work in a group that is mostly based in the US. Kim exactly describes the problem: "That's American business, in a word: joyless. And the absense of booze helps make it so."
Former Vikings wide receiver Cris Carter writes:
I think both teams will benefit from this trade. The Raiders won't care about the things Moss sometimes does on the football field because he'll continue to put up Hall of Fame numbers. The Vikings' defense finally will get better after seven or eight years of being at the bottom of the league.
Carter, who was a mentor for Randy Moss in his first few seasons in the league, is well-placed to judge. The Vikings have had a very high-scoring offense since Moss was drafted, but their defense has been among the very worst in the league. They set the all-time scoring record, but never advanced beyond the NFC Championship game. Until their defenders can reliably stop other teams' drives, the Vikings are doomed to be also-rans.
Here's hoping that they're finally serious about improving that wretched defense.
Here is what male speech means.
1. "Exactly what I said" — 75% of the time.
2. "Apparently I have not said the right thing yet, because your panties are still on" — 15%.
3. "My God, you're still talking. You make me wish I had a tranquilizer gun. Doesn't it ever stop? Jesus, I hope you didn't say anything important, because all I hear is a buzzing sound. Did I say 'okay' or 'mm-hmm' or just grunt last time? I better mix it up, or you'll realize I'm watching the game" — 10%
That covers it.
Steve H., "Traitor in Your Midst: She Must be Dealt With", Hog On Ice, 2005-02-17
Fox Sports is reporting that Randy Moss has been traded by Minnesota to the Oakland Raiders, for 1st and 7th round draft picks and linebacker Napoleon Harris. The original report was broken by the St. Paul Pioneer Press.
I'm still not happy with trading Moss, if the report is confirmed, but if it is true, the report makes some sense: the Vikes desperately need help on defence, especially at linebacker, and this draft is supposed to be very deep in good quality defensive players. And, as I've said many times before, Moss is a punk: he'd fit in nicely in Silver and Black.
Would it be a good deal? I don't know: I haven't been following the Raiders, and Harris is little more than a name to me right now. Moss, for all the negatives he carries with him, is one of the best receivers ever to play in the NFL; you don't just replace him overnight.
Cris Collinsworth is quoted in the Pioneer Press article as saying:
"I don't think the deal makes sense from the football standpoint because of the impact he has had on this league. His presence alone changes defenses. If it's true, it's a statement of more of the off-the-field stuff and maybe they just want a little bit of a shakeup in who they want to be the leader of that team.
"It sounds like maybe they want to turn it all over to Daunte. What you don't know is how bad it was internally, how big an issue it had gotten to be with the off-the-field issues. My guess is this trade says it's a little bigger than what they previously acknowledged."
I'm not a big fan of Collinsworth's analysis, but he hits the nail on the head here: if Moss was worse than the Vikings acknowledged publicly, then they are probably right to get less than the maximum benefit from the trade in order to get him out of the organization. I don't know how true that is: it may be years before we find out just how much of a pain-in-the-ass Randy Moss has been to the Vikings organization. Or it might be on March 2nd, just after the trade is formally announced — that'd be consistent with Moss' modus operandi.
A report in the Canadian Press says that the prime minister is going to reject Canadian participation in the missile defense program. This, in spite of his repeated assertions during the Liberal leadership campaign that he was in favour of Canada joining in.
Prime Minister Paul Martin will deliver a firm No to Canadian participation in the U.S. missile defence plan and break a lengthy silence that fomented confusion on both sides of the border.
The announcement, first reported by a radio station and confirmed by federal officials Tuesday night, will come Thursday and end a streak of obfuscation where Martin refused to state Canada's position.
News of the announcement follows a day of confusion on Parliament Hill after Frank McKenna, Martin's choice to be the next ambassador to the U.S., sparked a political firestorm by saying participation in the controversial continental missile defence system is a done deal.
A huge personal victory for Jack Layton, who almost single-handedly (should that be single-mouthedly?) pushed the meme "weaponization of space" into common usage.
My static website has moved to its new (permanent) home at http://www.quotulatiousness.ca, so if you've bookmarked the old site, please update to the new URL, as the old one may disappear without much warning after the 28th.
Hat tip, stock tip, cow tip, and other assorted tips to Clive, for providing technical assistance, advice, and bandwidth for this move. The move was required because my ISP has outsourced their web services to Geocities, which was going to require me to move everything off the old rogers.com domain and into Geocities.
If you notice any remaining weirdnesses at the new location, please drop me a line at Quotulatiousness@gmail.com to let me know.
One interesting thing about Thompson [. . .] is that much of his work could almost be assigned to the field of religious literature. This is not just because he suffered occasional demonic hallucinations under the influence of brown acid and ibogaine. Setting the drugs aside ("Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man"), there is a certain ascetic, unworldly quality to his work. He seems to have had a quasi-Augustinian horror of the greasy, hairy human body, and a strong distaste for squirming, brawling, lumpy, dumb man-apes in all their mass manifestations. His career-making Scanlan's piece, "The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved", is really an indictment of humanity as decadent and depraved — and that remains true insofar as the subject of the piece is Thompson himself and his Hobbesian preoccupations.
Colby Cosh, "Q: Where's Cosh?", ColbyCosh.com, 2005-02-21
The mapping of a Cat's Brain. Hat tip to Fark.
Reason Hit and Run linked to an article from KFVS-TV story follow-up about a 6-year-old girl who was nearly arrested for drug dealing:
Police and school leaders in Sikeston say the case involving a 6-year-old girl and a bag of dirt needs to be taken seriously.
"If she would have been 14, we would have been arrested her and taken her to jail." Sgt. Shirley Porter said.
It's a story you saw only on Heartland News. One that generated an incredible response from you. More than a 1,000 of you logged onto our web site to voice your opinion on the Sikeston first grade student disciplined for giving a bag of dirt and grass to a classmate.
Let's just meditate on this one for a minute. A six year old gave a clear plastic bag filled with dirt and clover to a classmate. This is such a serious offence that she is suspended from school and warned that she'd have been facing 90 to 180 days of suspension, plus possible criminal charges. For giving someone a clear plastic bag full of dirt and clover.
I don't know about you, but this would have been one of Kim du Toit's Red Curtain of Blood moments for me, if it'd happened to my kid.
By what possible convolution of thought could this have been anything like a crime?
HST killed himself. He never would have "turned his life around" — that's a hard thing to try when the room's been spinning for 40 years. Depression? Wouldn't be surprising. A bad verdict from the doc? Wouldn't be surprising. A great writer in his prime, but the DVD of his career would have the last two decades on the disc reserved for outtakes and bloopers. It was all bile and spittle at the end, and it was hard to read the work without smelling the dank sweat of someone consumed by confusion, anger, sudden drunken certainties and the horrible fear that when he sat down to write, he could only muster a pale parody of someone else's satirical version of his infamous middle period. I feel sorry for him, but I've felt sorry for him for years. File under Capote, Truman — meaning, whatever you thought of the latter-day persona, don't forget that there was a reason he had a reputation. Read "Hell's Angels." That was a man who could hit the keys right.
James Lileks, The Bleat, 2005-02-21
On Saturday, I had the opportunity to get a personalized tour of the cellars of the Grange Estate Winery in Prince Edward County. Our host, Jeff Innes, is the winemaker and a fascinating person in his own right (I always consider winemakers to be interesting, based on their skills). This was not a pre-arranged tour, we were just fortunate to arrive at exactly the right moment: Jeff was upstairs in the wine tasting area and nobody else was in at that time.
We rolled in, expecting to taste a few of their current release over 20 minutes or so, then head off to another winery. Instead, we spent more than two hours down in the cellar, talking to Jeff and getting a wonderful education in some of the aspects of winemaking that neither of us had particularly considered before.
As an example, I'd always rather taken oak barrels for granted: they're used to impart certain flavours to wine before it's bottled, and that was all I thought about 'em. French Oak, American Oak, even Canadian Oak: so what? It's just oak, right? Now that I've tasted the differences that the barrels impart, but also the huge differences in the flavours based on where the oak was grown, I'll pay much closer attention when I hear about wine barrels. Even the level of charring — sorry, "toasting" — makes a difference you can taste.
I started off taking my usual notes on the wines we were tasting, including the obvious data (vintage, type of grape(s), formal name, price per bottle, etc.), but soon enough I was far too involved in listening to Jeff to distract myself by writing down the details — I was a terrible student in school for this reason alone — so I have a bare minimum of notes for all the time we spent tasting, talking, and learning.
What was even more tantalizing was that most of what we were tasting was not yet commercially available, so we couldn't even take bottles home with us at the end of our visit. Which, of course, means we need to plan at least another trip when some of those interesting wines are bottled and ready to buy.
So, what can I tell you about the upcoming releases?
In summary, it was a fantastic visit with a great host and I would love to go back later in the year to repeat the experience. Thanks Jeff!
A belated welcome to Angry in the Great White North, our newest member of the Brigade. And if you come in angry, just wait until you get your first bar tab from the Brigade Mess; I'll have a Chateau Palmer '66 if you don't mind. . .
Increasingly multilateralism is a synonym for an ineffective and unfocused policy involving internationalism of the lowest common denominator . . . We are prepared to join coalitions of the willing that can bring focus and purpose to addressing the urgent security and other challenges we face. . . Our choice is whether we want to help lead rather than follow the international community in responding to a new and rapidly changing international environment.
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer speaking in 2003, quoted by Mark Steyn, Western Standard 2005-01-31
Canada remains unmatched in its ability to turn somebody else's tragedy into a debate about our own neuroses.
Paul Wells, quoted by Mark Steyn, Western Standard 2005-01-31
There have been better attempts at marching, and they have been made by penguins. Sergeant Jackrum brought up the rear in the cart, shouting instructions, but the recruits moved as if they'd never before had to get from place to place. The sergeant yelled the swagger out of their steps, stopped the cart and for a few of them held an impromptu lesson in the concepts of 'right' and 'left' and, by degrees, they left the mountains.
Terry Pratchett, Monstrous Regiment
[William F.] Buckley's touching a nerve because he's forcing attention on the Catholic Church's belief in the redemptive power of suffering, something most people are aware of at a general level but don't recognize as being absolutely central to Catholicism. I suspect I'm not the only one who was taught as a callow youth that literally any pain you endure — even down to jamming your toe — can be "offered up to God" as a good work of sorts. Just as mortification of the flesh has passed out of fashion in the West, it's hard for secular Americans to respect the idea that it's good for the Pope to be suffering like this, not because it shows his strength or tests his character but because suffering, in and of itself, is good.
Same thing with Lenten sacrifices, which get misinterpreted as a device to remind you that the life of the spirit is superior to the life of the body — both a cultural error and a theological one, since in fact your soul and glorified body will be reunited on the Last Day. Giving something up for Lent is solely about deprivation; that's why you're specifically advised not just to give up smoking or eating sweets or anything else you'd give up as a New Year's resolution, but to give up something that you will miss and that isn't harmful to you. (Harmful stuff like yanking it you're supposed to have permanently given up anyway.)
Tim Cavanaugh, "Don't Cry. It's a Waste of Good Suffering.", Reason Hit and Run, 2005-02-15
According to a new story on CP, the Canadian Forces will be given a 6.5 percent increase in the upcoming budget:
Defence sources in Halifax and Ottawa told the news agency Thursday that Finance Minister Ralph Goodale's fiscal plan, to be released Wednesday, is expected to contain a 6.5 per cent across-the-board increase that will be retroactive to April 1 of last year.
The pay hike is to be one component of a multi-pronged effort by the Liberal minority government of Prime Minister Paul Martin to revitalize the military, said a high-level source who asked not to be named.
"Better pay certainly makes it more attractive to find recruits and keep the people you need," said the official.
Six and a half percent is certainly better than I've had as a raise in recent years, so that's a good thing. I don't know that it will perform miracles at retaining trained personnel, but it's certainly better than nothing.
The blanket pay increase builds on measures in last year's budget, where Martin's Liberals granted income tax-free status to personnel serving in war zones around the world.
Non-commissioned members, no matter how long they serve in theatres such as Afghanistan and Congo, are exempted from paying up to $6,000 in income tax.
This is something I'd not heard before. An excellent idea, given how much hardship it can be for families when the primary breadwinner is posted to a combat zone. Again, hardly princely, but much better than nothing.
Mark Jen had a lightning-fast, 11-day career with Google:
Mark Jen's first day as a Google employee, January 17, also marked the debut of his "Ninetyninezeros" blog, which he intended to maintain as a personal journal of his experiences as a Google employee. Little did he know that his tenure at Google would be quite brief.
You'll notice I don't blog about my own work. There's a good reason for avoiding certain topics, y'know. . .
Now that the Ontario government has passed the changes to allow customers to bring their own wine to restaurants, a new website is tracking which restaurants now allow their patrons to take advantage of this: Bring My Wine — all about BYOW in Ontario.
There's only a handful so far, all in Toronto or Ottawa, but the corkage fees seem to be set about right from my viewpoint: the range is $10-$60, with only one restaurant over $30. I think that most restaurants should charge a corkage fee equivalent to their profit margin on a bottle of their standard house wine (not the price of the house wine, mind you). So far, this seems pretty close to what's happening.
Hat tip to Natalie Maclean for bringing it to my attention.
A good rule of thumb in reviewing contemporary legislation is that if the bill in question is named after a child it is bound to be a bad one. It will be based on pure emotion, rather than reason and any principled opposition to the bill will be stifled at the risk of appearing callous or insensitive to the personal suffering of the bill's proponents.
Jay Jardine, "A Dumb Law, By Any Other Name", The Freeway to Serfdom, 2005-01-24
Greg (at Political Staples) pointed me towards the new blog of Monte Solberg, MP. Here he is describing how Ken Dryden ended up flat on the virtual ice:
Dryden is shocked at such a radical notion. He said, "but it would leave child care in the country too much where it is, fragmented, unregulated, uneven, largely custodial, with little for the child that would encourage real development, and would waste the time, the opportunity and the possibility of the early years."
Hey, we always knew that Liberals thought this way, but you rarely hear them actually say it. So in Ken's world a mom or dad who stays at home with the kids is, "wasting . . . the possibility of the early years."
When Rona Ambrose threw his own words back at him in Question Period he looked like he just realized that he wasn't wearing pants. Then she pulled his jersey over his head and nailed him with, "Working women want to make their own choices. We do not need old white guys telling us what to do." Ouch. Welcome to the House Ken.
Nature is reporting on an interesting non-military missile launch from a Russian submarine in April:
In April, if all goes to plan, a 600-square-metre Mylar sail called Cosmos 1, which looks more like a windmill than a starship, will prove that a spacecraft can be propelled by sunlight alone.
First, though, it will have to be launched into orbit on a converted missile from a Russian nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea. Cosmos 1 is privately funded by the Planetary Society, a US space-advocacy group based in Pasadena, California, which Friedman heads, but it was built in Moscow by the ex-Soviet aerospace company NPO Lavochkin.
After the sail reaches its initial 800-kilometre orbit and unfolds its eight triangular vanes, ground controllers will tilt the vanes like sailors feeling for the wind. A slight boost to the spacecraft's orbit is all they need to demonstrate propulsion by light pressure. It may take a few days, but the Cosmos team won't mind waiting.
It may not be the fast way to go, but it's another one of those old SF ideas that we might soon be accepting as commonplace. . .
Nick Coleman (yes, that Nick Coleman) has a good column on the new owner of the Vikings:
But while the football czars wait to see if Fowler's $625 million check clears the bank, we might as well get started on educating Mr. Fowler about his new state, which he admits knowing very little about.
Acknowledging ignorance puts him miles ahead of the outgoing owner of the Vikings, Red McCombs, the San Antonio tire kicker who leaves us after seven years as miserably ignorant of our customs as when he arrived. He also leaves about half a billion richer than when he came here, which is a pretty good endorsement for the idea of studied stupidity: If staying dumb as a post is worth that much money, old Red deserves some respect.
Coleman also offers a list of survival tips, including:
1) Stay away from the State Capitol. That's the big building with the mules on top in St. Paul, which is a hockey town and which is where millionaire football and baseball owners end up mumbling to themselves and looking like they have escaped from a padded room. If, on some occasion, common courtesy requires you to be introduced to a legislator, stay alert: If he puts an arm around you, don't leave without checking for your wallet.
3) Find a nanny for Randy Moss. A big, mean nanny who can put him to bed without his supper when he acts up. A better option: Get rid of him.
14) Stay out of the locker room unless they ask for more towels or cold champagne is being sprayed.
15) Tell Daunte Culpepper not to lend his car to anyone.
21) Don't ever mention Red McCombs. Or Denny Green.
BatesLine finds the Tulsa World both clueless and bullying:
The Vice-President [sic] of the Tulsa World has threatened legal action against me for "reproduc[ing] (in whole or in part) articles and/or editorials" and for "inappropriately link[ing my] website to Tulsa World content." ("World" is the legal name, although here at BatesLine we call it the Whirled, in the spirit of Private Eye's renaming of the Guardian as the Grauniad.)
I shouldn't need to point out that the entire blogosphere would curl up and die if we weren't even allowed to link to copyrighted materials, never mind excerpt or quote from the text. (This blog, in particular, I'm sure some of you are noting. . .)
Yesterday Red McCombs, the owner of the Minnesota Vikings, announced a tentative sale of the club to Reggie Fowler, for $625 million. The deal won't be permanent until the league approves it, ideally at their late-March gathering in Hawaii. If Fowler's bid is approved, he will become the first black owner of an NFL franchise. It will take two-thirds of the existing owners to approve the sale.
Minnesota businessman Glen Taylor, owner of the NBA's Timberwolves, was also preparing a bid for the Vikings if Fowler's bid was not accepted by McCombs.
McCombs bought the franchise for $246 million in 1998, giving him a huge profit over the intervening years if the sale is approved. During that time, the Vikings have appeared in the playoffs four times and twice played in the NFC Championship game. Every home game was sold out during that run.
McCombs found the local politicians unwilling to bribe him with a new stadium to replace the 22-year-old Humphrey Metrodome (where the Vikings have a lease until 2011), and frequently hinted that he was looking to move the team to a more lucrative city (Los Angeles was the usual suspect, lacking its own NFL team). Fowler will find the local electorate similarly difficult to please in this way: unlike a lot of other cities, Minneapolis has not yet knuckled under to the pressure of building a public facility for private profit.
Update: Jon pointed me to late-breaking news about Mr. Fowler's resume, which may have a few unexplained errors:
In his official biography, distributed Monday by his Twin Cities public relations firm, Reggie Fowler declared that he played in the Little League World Series, implied that he earned a business administration and finance degree from the University of Wyoming and said that he played for the Cincinnati Bengals of the NFL and the Calgary Stampeders of the Canadian Football League.
According to officials with all of the sports organizations and official records at the NFL, CFL and University of Wyoming, none of those claims is exactly true.
I guess it's a good thing for him that his credentials don't matter anywhere near as much as his money does . . . and would the NFL dare to take any of these issues seriously? I rather doubt it, if his finances are sound.
It's a good basic axiom that if you take a quart of ice-cream and a quart of dog faeces and mix 'em together the result will taste more like the latter than the former. That's the problem with the UN. If you make the free nations and the thug states members of the same club, the danger isn't that they'll meet each other half-way but that the free world winds up going three-quarters, seven-eighths of the way. Thus the Oil-for-Fraud scandal: in the end, Saddam Hussein had a much shrewder understanding of the way the UN works than Bush and Blair did.
And, of course, corrupt organisations rarely stop at just one kind. If you don't want to bulk up your pension by skimming the Oil-for-Food programme, don't worry, whatever your bag, the UN can find somewhere that suits — in West Africa, it's Sex-for-Food, with aid workers demanding sexual services from locals as young as four; in Cambodia, it's drug dealing; in Kenya, it's the refugee extortion racket; in the Balkans, sex slaves.
Mark Steyn, "UN forces — just a bunch of thugs?", Telegraph Online 2005-02-15
Bob MacDonald gives a brief historical tour of the horror show that was the national flag debate, 1964-65:
When you recall the highly emotional, dragged-out debates 40 years ago that finally produced Canada's Maple Leaf flag, it seems fitting that its main colour is blood red.
Today anyone under 40 has little or no knowledge of the furious battles that seesawed through Parliament and across the nation prior to the decision-making months of 1964-1965.
But for anyone older, few can forget the turmoil and even French-English racial overtones that surrounded the debate. And right up to the end, the bitter battle continued until the Liberal government of Lester Pearson imposed closure to cut off debate and force a final vote.
With the Maple Leaf flag approval vote sewed up — with three Quebec Conservative MPs backing it — Pearson appealed to the opposing John Diefenbaker-led Conservatives to make the vote unanimous.
"Surely the honourable gentlemen opposite do not wish to be put on record as voting against a design which is going to be our national flag."
"Oh, nuts!" replied Waldo Monteith, a Tory MP who had sat on a 15-member all-party committee that had chosen the flag. Monteith had fought long and hard for the Red Ensign.
And so the Maple Leaf flag was approved by a 163-78 vote of the Commons at 2:15 a.m. on Dec. 15, 1964. It was first raised on Parliament Hill two months later on Feb. 15, 1965.
Striving Against Opposition hosts the most recent Raising of the Red Ensign. What was once a quick whip-around to a handful of affiliated websites has quickly become a monumental challenge: thanks for taking this on, Chris!
The moral justification of capitalism does not lie in the altruist claim that it represents the best way to achieve 'the common good.' It is true that capitalism does — if that catch-phrase has any meaning — but this is merely a secondary consequence. The moral justification for capitalism lies in the fact that it is the only system consonant with man's rational nature, that it protects man's survival qua man, and that its ruling principle is: Justice.
Ayn Rand
I can give 100% backing to this diet for fast, fast, fast weight reduction. I lost seven pounds in less than four days on this amazing diet, and You Can Too! Just let me breathe on you. . .
Yes, folks, the new "Influenza" diet can give you similar results in almost no time. Step right up. . .
Side effects may include nausea, dizziness, loss of appetite, sweating, constipation, insomnia, headaches, coughing, and loss of ability to concentrate.
Like most of my contemporaries, I first read The Fountainhead when I was 18 years old. I loved it. I too missed the point. I thought it was a book about a strong-willed architect . . . and his love life . . . I deliberately skipped over all the passages about egoism and altruism. And I spent the next year hoping I would meet a gaunt, orange-haired architect who would rape me. Or failing that, an architect who would rape me. Or failing that, an architect. I am certain that The Fountainhead did a great deal more for architects than Architectural Forum ever dreamed.
Nora Ephron, The New York Times Book Review (1968), quoted in Reason Online
On no city does history weigh heavier than on Dresden. It is 60 years in February 2005 since the bombing that forever changed the basis of the city's renown. Overnight, the Florence of the Elbe became a perpetual monument to destruction from the air, famed for its rubble and its corpses rather than its baroque architecture and its devotion to art. And then came communism.
You meet people in Dresden who, until a few years ago, knew nothing but life under Hitler, Ulbricht, and Honecker. Truly the sins of their fathers were visited upon them, for they brought neither the Nazis nor the communists to power, and there was nothing they could do to escape them. For such people, the sudden change in 1990 was both liberation and burden. Avid to see a world that was previously forbidden them, they took immediate advantage of their new freedom to visit the farthest corners of the globe, the more exotic the better. But the liberation brought with it a heightened awareness of the man-made desert of their own pasts, seven-eighths of their lives, truly an expense of spirit in a waste of shame. Never was Joy's grape burst more decisively against veil'd Melancholy's palate fine.
. . .
The destruction of Dresden on the night of February 13, 1945, by the Royal Air Force, and on the following two days by the U.S. Army [Air] Force, necessitated the rebuilding of the city, with only a small area around the famous Zwinger restored to its former glory. Dresden had been all but destroyed once before, by the armies of Frederick the Great (if Frederick was enlightened, give me obscurantism); but at least he replaced the Renaissance city recorded in the canvases of Bellotto by a baroque one, not by a wilderness of totalitarian functionalism whose purpose was to stamp out all sense of individuality and to emphasize the omnipresent might of the state. The bombing of Dresden was a convenient pretext to do what communists (and some others) like to do in any case: the systematization of Bucharest during Ceausescu's rule, or the replacement of the medieval city of Ales, 25 miles from my house in France, by mass housing of hideous inhumanity on the orders of the communist city council, being but two cases in point.
Despite this, the communists made use of the destruction of Dresden for propaganda purposes throughout the four decades of their rule. The church bells of the city tolled on every anniversary of the bombing, for the 20 minutes that it took the RAF to unload the explosives that created the firestorm that turned the Florence of the Elbe into a smoking ruin as archaeological as Pompeii. "See what the capitalist barbarians did" was the message, "and what they would do again if they had the chance and if we did not arm ourselves to the teeth." Needless to say, the rapine of the Red Army went strictly unmentioned.
Theodore Dalrymple, "The Specters Haunting Dresden", City Journal, 2005-01
I am not a fan of the scratch-game lottery. It does not provide the same amount of amusement as burning a one-dollar bill. Time it, if you doubt me. You can scratch off a card in three seconds: scritch scritch scritch, ah crap. Please play again! But a dollar bill gives you at least 17 seconds of entertainment — more, if you set off the smoke alarm. Otherwise it's the same effect: One dollar has passed from your hand into the great chain of being, and whether it subsequently manifests itself as a Trix bar in the pocket of a state employee or acrid smoke in the kitchen, it's all just molecules in the end. And you're out a buck.
But! Now the lottery has decided to give you a second chance. You mail in your losing lottery tickets — at least five duds, please — and they hold another drawing to confirm that you're not only still a loser, but now you're out 37 cents for postage.
James Lileks, "Backfence: A second-chance column for you", Star Tribune, 2005-02-01
A new wire report on Canadian Press, while being a lovely puff-piece for the Defence Minister, also indicates that there might be a glimmer of hope for constructive change in the Canadian Forces:
Defence Minister Bill Graham has tossed out initial drafts of the department's comprehensive policy review, calling it "dreadful dreck" and demanding a clear bold vision.
Graham's frustration shows how difficult it can be to propel conservative generals and defence bureaucrats in a radically new direction, particularly in a minority government. Policy-makers at National Defence had been labouring on a blueprint for the future of Canada's military for almost a year when Graham arrived there in July.
In December, Graham suddenly dismissed what senior officials described as "dreadful dreck that would not be acceptable in the public domain."
Interesting that Graham reportedly took this step in December, but it didn't make the trip outside NDHQ until now. A more suspicious mind might take it to indicate that Graham is trying to steal Hillier's thunder.
Let me see if I understand you. You're getting in my face. I'm a quiet loner. With no social life. With a gun collection. Who worked, once, for the post office. Are you sure this is what you want to do?
Eric Oppen
I've quoted Marna Nightingale several times over the past few months: she writes in a way that regularly generates amusing and/or alarming ideas. This is her second attempt to shut down an online argument between two self-described feminists:
Have I ever mentioned how RARELY I am accused of being too subtle?
Let me rephrase myself.
Speaking as a Known Feminist myself, you are both being jerks, to the degree that it is no longer possible to ascertain who is being the bigger jerk to whom, with more reason or less.
If you can't agree to disagree can you loathe each other in surly festering silence for awhile, please?
[A]ll the great football songs are by Americans — Rodgers and Hammerstein ("You'll Never Walk Alone") and Livingston and Evans, whose "Que Sera, Sera" has a British lyric of endearing directness:
Mi-illwall, Millwall
Millwa-all, Millwall, Millwall
Millwa-all, Millwall, Millwall
Mi-illwall, Millwall.
(Repeat until knife fight)
Mark Steyn, "Hyperpower", Daily Telegraph, 2002-06-22
I'm in the grip of some damned flu bug which leaves me an hour or so of relatively lucid time interspersed with an hour or so of total lethargy. I'm not sure which phase I'm in now, but blogging will now be dictated by when the phases shift.
So, if I post something even more out-to-lunch than usual, I'm probably in a lucid phase. . .
Update, next phase: Jon is back to blogging. Go read his stuff while I wait for the next phase transition.
Reason Hit and Run links to an interesting site which gives an interactive graphical representation of the popularity of names from 1900 to 2003. (The applet requires Java to work in your browser, BTW.)
As a commenter says on this thread:
Final free-association thought: Gary Larson once had a "Far Side" cartoon that showed a class photo of a "kindergarten class of 1985." The caption beneath said: "From left to right: Scott, Jennifer, Jennifer, Scott, Jennifer, Jennifer, Scott, Scott, Scott, Miss Linden, Jennifer, Jennifer, Scott, Scott, Scott, Scott, Scott, Jennifer, Scott, Jennifer."
My least favourite demographic trend in the past 10-15 years is the variant spelling of popular names. Not only do you have classes with half a dozen Meagans and Britneys, but they're all spelled differently. For some reason, this seems to be a trend among parents of girls, but not with boys.
In any case I don't think we're really going to have strange new hybrid species; it's more likely people will seek some sort of body modification that will make today's tongue studs look as tame as Hello Kitty temporary tattoos. I'm guessing that young guys will go for the elk horns, which at least would make bar fights more interesting. Young women would opt for a Bambi tail. Gastronomes would shyly ask their doctor if they could get some cow genes — multiple stomach chambers, one for each course! — and geeks would request those agile monkey toes that come in handy when you're up all night writing viruses. We'll be shocked at first; they'll be ostracized. In 2064 a presidential candidate will be forced to withdraw when someone digs up college pictures that show him sporting a scaly tail. Hey, all the kids had them. It fell off. I have no idea where it is now. But by 2096 we'll not only be used to it, we'll have a governor with a unicorn horn.
Unless we stop now. And I know what you're saying: Oh, it's easy for you to say, Mr. Stop-the-progress-of-science-for-some-ridiculous-ethical-reason. Actually, no, it's not easy for me to say. This forked tongue I got from the snake gene implant is not exactly working out. On the other hand, I don't have to change clothes; I just molt twice a year. On the other, my wife hates finding that thing in the hamper.
James Lileks "In the genes department", Star Tribune, 2005-02-06
An Englishman's Castle has an innovative — and possibly even legal — way to defend his home against break-in artists: A hog slapper.
I suspect this company has a lucrative sideline dealing with the S&M community. . .
Hat tip to Kim du Toit.
In The Guardian, Jeremy Rifkin gives some sage, sober advice to that yahoo cowboy George Bush:
Bush must face up to a rising power
The US has to recognise the new reality of a United States of EuropePresident Bush is scheduled to visit Brussels on February 22, and it may prove to be the most important foreign visit of his presidency. The ostensible purpose of the trip is to confer with European Union leaders. If it were any other head of state making such a pilgrimage, it might not even raise an eyebrow in diplomatic circles. But for Bush, the visit is potentially a watershed event.
The only watershed I'd expect is the water trickling down the inside of European leaders' legs as Mr Bush explains why he's not giving the EU a veto over his actions.
EU officials are quick to point out that in the first four years of his presidency, Bush referred to the EU only a few times in passing.
A remarkably similar response to that of Canadians when they were not mentioned in Bush's speech after the 9/11 attacks. Canadians collectively wound their watches for weeks over the "deliberate slap". Why, you'd almost have imagined that he did it on purpose, or something. . .
Hardly the kind of recognition one might expect, considering the EU is the world's only other economic superpower and a close rival to the US in the global economy.
But not in any way which matters: the EU is unable to successfully intervene in a war literally on its own borders without US assistance.
Until recent weeks, the Bush administration has preferred to deal with individual European countries — often making the distinction between "old" and "new" Europe — virtually ignoring the fact that 455 million Europeans in 25 states have forged the first transnational governing space in all of history.
The distinction between "new" and "old" Europe was real and useful — why not use it? And what the heck does the big number-brandishing "fact" have to do with how the US chooses to deal with individual countries? I think this is what is called a non sequitur.
The EU is also the world's leading exporter and boasts the biggest internal commercial market on earth. And if that were not enough, the EU's currency, the euro, is now stronger than the dollar on world markets.
The freakin' Canadian micro-Peso is currently much stronger against the US dollar than it has been for over a decade. What does that have to do with anything? The rise and fall of currencies against one another is not particularly tied to the respective countries' importance or significance.
But, a sea change may be in the offing in America's relationship to Europe. I understand that behind the scenes EU officials in Brussels have invited Bush to address the parliament in his upcoming visit and the proposal is under consideration at the US state department.
Why would he bother speaking to the so-called European parliament? It has less power, in real terms, than the legislature of Prince Edward Island. The European Commission holds almost all the face cards in the power game in Europe, and those it doesn't already have are in the hands of the individual nations, not in the greasy paws of the most useless talking shop in the western world!
Much is made of the vast economic advantages that have accrued to the US from opening up a political dialogue and commercial relations with China. Bush and his counsellors should keep in mind, however, that with all of its economic growth, China's GDP is significantly lower than the EU's.
But its population is significantly higher (harking back to the earlier "fact"), so we should pay more attention to the Chinese? Is that the point you're trying to make here? Or was the original mention of the EU's population just a throw-away line?
To a great extent, we Americans and many Europeans have blinkers on. Virtually the entire European continent now lives under a common flag, a single passport, and, soon, a common constitution. But we are still in the habit of comparing Germany or France to the US. In the commercial arena, such comparisons make less and less sense. Most companies I am familiar with in Europe think of themselves as European. That's because European businesses are increasingly under the umbrella of a common European regulatory regime administered by the EU in Brussels, just as American companies fall under a US regulatory regime administered in Washington.
Based on the level of intervention already displayed by the EU bureaucracy, I think the long-term trend is to make the European economy less and less a factor in international trade. In most cases, the strongest economic sectors are the ones least encumbered with mandated standards, tariffs, quotas, regulations, oversight committees, and general parasitism by government. Europe is moving towards a more regulated economy, not a freer one.
In many of the world's leading industries, it is European transnational companies that dominate business and trade. European financial institutions are the world's bankers. Fourteen of the 20 largest commercial banks are European. In the chemical industry, engineering and construction industry, aerospace industry, food industry, the drugstore retail trade, and the insurance industry — to name just a few fields — European companies outperform their American counterparts. Sixty-one of the 140 biggest companies on the Global Fortune 500 rankings are European, while only 50 are US companies.
Okay, you had me until you threw in the "drugstore retail trade". WTF? To just randomly pull out the world-beating industries the EU boasts, you pick this? To add to the freakin' aerospace industry? Is there a more featherbedded, crony-infested, corrupt, and incompetent oligopoly in the EU? I suspect not. Without constant support from the national and EU governments, Airbus wouldn't be a factor outside European national "flag carrier" airlines.
All of this is not to suggest that European companies have suddenly leaped ahead of their American competitors. Economic growth is anaemic, unemployment is high, and EU member states have been slow at integrating their internal market. But, the US would be ill-advised to ignore the long-term economic potential of Europe. Over the next 20 years, the EU member states will establish a seamless transportation, communications and power grid, and create a single set of protocols and policies for governing commerce and trade. Moreover, English will become the lingua franca for conducting business on the continent. If the EU can engage in commerce and trade across its member states with the same ease as we do across the continental US, it may well become the dominant economic power.
But the chances of this happening are close to nil: the only way it could come about is if the EU throttled the bureaucracy in its cradle and limited themselves to a much smaller role than they already have: and no Eurocrat would be willing to see that happen. There's also no mention of the looming demographic crisis Europe will be facing in the very near future (low birth rate combined with the impending retirement of a large number of current workers). It's already been pointed out by other commentators that in fifty years, the lingua franca of Europe will have a strong Arabic component.
In the next two years, the EU member states will probably ratify a European constitution, solidifying a 50-year development to create a United States of Europe. The question uppermost on the minds of European officials is: will Bush seize the historic moment and speak before the European parliament and, in so doing, recognise the reality of the United States of Europe, or will he let the opportunity pass?
I think the correct bid here is "Pass".
A report in the Virginian-Pilot discusses the US Navy's exploration of the idea of retiring the conventional-powered aircraft carrier U.S.S. John F. Kennedy:
The Kennedy's retirement at age 37 would leave the U.S. with 11 carriers, the fewest in decades. All five flattops assigned to the Atlantic Fleet would be based in Norfolk unless the service decides to shift one to Mayport to replace the Kennedy.
A Navy official briefing reporters on Friday suggested that service leaders are concerned that reliance on a single port on either coast would leave the carrier fleet vulnerable to surprise attack or natural disaster. The six Pacific Fleet carriers are spread among ports in California, Washington state and Japan.
"We certainly want to have, strategically, our carrier fleet in more than one port," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The economic rationale for selecting the Kennedy for retirement:
Two carriers, the Kitty Hawk and the nuclear-powered Enterprise, are older than the Kennedy. But the Kennedy is the most expensive to run ship in the fleet and was due to begin a $350 million overhaul later this year. By retiring it, the Navy will save most of that money along with the ship's operating expenses.
The expectation that a commentator's views must be in lockstep with his or her ethnic, religious, or sexual identity is always distasteful — particularly when blacks, women, gays, or Jews are labeled "self-hating" when they refuse to toe the perceived party line.
Cathy Young, "When Jews wax anti-Semitic", Boston Globe, 2005-02-07
Last night, after watching the Superbowl at my friend John's house, we were subject to the local Canadian TV station try to make up for lost time by cramming in ads for other programming. One of the items was a teaser for the 11 o'clock (or whatever time it was) news, which had a female newsreader give a brief report on two separate toboggan accidents. (Stay with me . . . it's relevant, I promise.)
One of the accidents was in Gatineau, where a youngster died of head injuries caused by losing control of his toboggan. Comment was made that mandatory helmets could cut head injury by 25% (or 33% or whatever number they quoted — I wasn't paying close enough attention).
The second accident was in Ontario, where a teenager died after his toboggan hit a snowmaking machine. Where can you ride a toboggan that you could be near snowmaking machinery? A ski hill. He and his friends had been riding their toboggans down a ski hill after the ski facility closed.
So, based on the tiny amount of information we were given, one accidental death by misadventure, one death by trespassing and recklessness. So how did the TV teaser end? By portentiously asking "what we should be doing about the dangers of toboggans." (OWTTE).
Though both deaths are tragic to the families, in neither case is it reasonable to be reaching for new laws. But, to be honest, I wasn't particularly surprised when that meme got tossed out.
. . . the new Chief of the Defense Staff is ordering a new "Blueprint" document:
CANADA'S NEWLY minted chief of defence staff took an axe to the Liberal government's top-secret blueprint detailing future military missions and purchases only days after his appointment, sources say. A senior defence department official said Gen. Rick Hillier took one look at the much-ballyhooed defence policy review shortly after his promotion Jan. 14 and scrapped it.
This is interesting, except that the role of the Department of National Defence is dictated by the foreign policy of the government, so any radical re-shaping of DND policy is still subject to effective veto by any change in the government's foreign policies. Without the government setting clear foreign policy goals and objectives, the DND is just conducting a bureaucratic firedrill here.
Novell offers a public service announcement (broadband connection recommended).
Hat tip to Wendy McElroy.
The SuperBowl is over (and it wasn't a blow-out, thank goodness), so this is a bit past its best-before date:
Now, any discussion on Philadelphia sports must, of course, start with the passion of the fans. So let me tell you upfront: Eagles fans aren't just passionate; they are out of their goddam minds. This is not a casual observation (though, rest assured, I've seen it myself several times), but rather an accepted fact of life in the greater Philadelphia area. Moreover, it's a badge of honor. Eagles fans know they're out of their goddam minds. And they know that you know it. They wouldn't have it any other way.
Eagles fever goes beyond mere fandom. It's a medical condition. It belongs in the DSM-IV. To say that folks take the Birds seriously is a serious understatement. You're not allowed to root for other teams around here. You're not even allowed to not like football. But as overwhelming as this may seem, it isn't off-putting. It's hard not to get swept up in the spirit of things.
Meanwhile, the Worldwide Sisterhood Against Terrorism And War, which includes Susan Sarandon, Gloria Steinem, Alice Walker and about 75 other sisters and is "Worldwide" mainly in the sense the World Series is, organized a petition called "Not In Our Name". "We will not support the bombing," they declared, and who can blame them? I dropped out of women's studies in Grade Two, but, as I recall, a bombing campaign is a quintessential act of patriarchal oppression and sexual domination. The male pilot, looming over the curvy undulating form of the Third World hillside, unzips his bomb carriage and unleashes his phallic ordinance to penetrate his target. Needless to say, he explodes on contact, typical bloody men.
Mark Steyn, "Omar's Girls", National Post, 2001-11-29
Thursday's New York Times had a brief review of the CellarTracker website:
Some wine lovers lose sleep wondering when they should open the $100 Burgundy they bought five years ago. Now there is online help for them.
A new Web site, cellartracker.com, lets wine drinkers keep a virtual wine cellar online, tracking their purchase and consumption records, while also allowing them to share notes about how certain vintages are drinking.
The site, created by Eric LeVine, a longtime Microsoft program manager, has more than 3,400 registered users who have created a collective wine cellar of nearly 500,000 bottles.
The site is free, although donations are accepted.
I visited the site a month or so ago, and it looks like an interesting project. If I hadn't already started tracking my own wines in an Access database, I'd be tempted to use CellarTracker.
The great silence by left-leaning Western feminists, and other large parts of the left, to human rights abuses carried out in the name of Islam is, to see it as its kindest, caused by an overdeveloped sense of tolerance or cultural relativism. But it is also part of the new anti-Americanism. Look at American Christian fundamentalism, they say.
Dislike of George Bush's foreign policy has led to an automatic support of those perceived to be his enemies. Paradoxically, this leaves the left defending people who hold beliefs that condone what the left has long fought against: misogyny, homophobia, capital punishment, suppression of freedom of speech. The recent reaffirmation by Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie has been met by virtual silence; as has the torture and murder in Iraq of a man who would be presumed to be one of the left's own — Hadi Salih, the international officer of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions. The hard left these days is soft on fascism, or at least Islamofascism.
The religious right in America would, if it could, wind back access to abortion and some other women's rights. But as far as I am aware, no Christian fundamentalist in the US has suggested banning women from driving cars, or travelling without their husbands' permission, or forcing them to cover their faces. Contrary to popular opinion, one is not the same as the other.
Pamela Bone, "The silence of the feminists", The Age, 2005-02-04
Go to All and Sundry to see the latest gear to celebrate "V-Day". Unless you're easily offended, of course.
The Times Online has an article on the Richard III Society:
I don't know who killed the Princes in the Tower. But Richard III was innocent, OK. And I have now officially joined the society fighting to clear his good name.
More than five centuries after England's most reviled king died at the Battle of Bosworth (causing innkeepers up and down the land to spend the night hastily painting over their White Boar signs — his emblem that had been patriotically displayed everywhere until 1485 — with whatever blue paint they had in the house, leaving Britain with its surfeit of Blue Boar pubs to this day), a quiet army is still mobilised in Richard's defence.
Their argument is that pretty much everything we know about Richard III comes from Shakespeare's play. And pretty much everything Shakespeare knew about him came from a history written by Sir Thomas More. And More was only five years old when Richard died, so what did he know? He was writing as an adult, well into the Tudor era - making his work a mixture of gossip and victor's history. And if you disregard More, everything is up for grabs. So who knows? Richard might easily be the good guy after all.
Geoff Hart posted this to the Tech Writing mailing list earlier this week (and reproduced here with his kind permission):
From the March 2005 Consumer Reports, which displayed a photo of the French text on the "care" label attached to a handbag produced by the Tom Bihn company in the U.S.:
[English label not shown but described by CR]: Hand-wash in warm water with gentle soap, and hang to dry. Do not use bleach. Do not machine-dry.
French: Laver à la main à l'eau tiède, savon doux, étendre pour secher. Ne pas javelliser. Ne pas secher à la machine. Nous sommes désolés que notre président soit un idiot. Nous n'avons pas voté pour lui.
For those whose French is of the "plume de ma tante" variety, the extra French text says: "We're sorry that our president is an idiot. We didn't vote for him."
Please let's not turn this into a political discussion. The lesson for those of us who do or review translation is that someone needs to check the translations carefully. In this case, the extra French seems to have been an intentional political comment by the manufacturer, but I've seen similarly egregious errors that crept in when nobody did the QA.
Geoff also pointed out that the company itself recognized the, um, interest this little item would provoke.
I don't know too much about Canadian poltics, but I'll never forget watching the [. . .] election debate and hearing Jack Layton complain about people having non-public access to MRI machines. Christ, he sounded like a villain from an Ayn Rand novel! How the hell do people go through life thinking like that?
"Protagonist", of Wyatt's Torch, posting in the comments at Daimnation, 2005-02-03
Put down your drink and finish swallowing that last mouthful. Now, go to Dust My Broom.
Jacob Sullum has a good summary of some important legal issues in today's Hit and Run:
A study reported in the journal Human Factors finds "young drivers' reaction times slow to that of a 70-year-old when they operate a vehicle while talking on a cell phone." This is meant to be an indictment of cell phones, of course, but it could also be taken as an argument against letting the elderly drive. They're just as impaired as a teenager talking on a cell phone!
The Washington Times story also mentions a 2003 study in which "the researchers concluded that motorists who talk on cell phones are more impaired than drunken drivers" — by which the Times means drivers with a blood alcohol content of .08 percent or more. Again, the comparison is meant to show how dangerous cell phones are, but it could be turned around to question the fairness and wisdom of setting the legal BAC limit at .08 percent when it's perfectly legal in almost all jurisdictions to use a cell phone while driving, which seems to be more dangerous.
And Evan Williams points out, in the comments to this posting:
Driving laws that target "unpopular" scapegoats are the definition of "wildly inconsistent".
Yet, the stupid legislatures will probably heed this as a call for more restrictions on cellphone users, not less restrictions on "drunk" drivers. This is the danger in pointing out inconsistencies to the nanny-statists — they tend to iron out those inconsistencies by increasing regulation.
Welcome to Rempelia Prime, the newest member of the Red Ensign Brigade. I'll have a Chateau Lafite Rothschild '62, if you please, Peter.
Jon has returned from his blogging hiatus, with photographic reasons for the lack of blogulaciousness-ness.
I was working on a Photoshopped image of Jon's head on Lynndie England's body (doing "the Lynndie", of course), and pointing at Samantha. Except that my photoshop skillz are even worse than my photography skillz. So just imagine a really bad pastiche . . . and what you're imagining is better than what I came up with.
Apparently, some members of Scotland's parliament are eager to rehabilitate the reputation of Macbeth:
WHAT is drama? And what is truth? This week, Members of the Scottish Parliament launched a campaign to rehabilitate Macbeth. They feel he was unfairly treated by Shakespeare.
Does this not let loose just a little frisson of unease? And does that frisson not deepen on reading that Alex Johnstone, the North-east MSP who is leading this campaign, would like the revision to be undertaken in time for the 1,000th anniversary of Macbeth’s birth this year so that the area in which he lived could be turned into a tourist attraction?
Macbeth is seen by the revisionists as one of the characters dealt a bad hand by Shakespeare: an anti-hero, torn apart by jealousy, black magic and ambition. In reality (as some see it), Macbeth was a solid 11th-century monarch who ruled well for 14 years, imposed law and order and encouraged Christianity — King Goody Two-Shoes.
No details have yet been furnished of Macbeth as a VisitScotland icon. But what a Pandora’s box has now been opened for the characters of Shakespearean drama to be cleansed and rehabilitated and their reputations restored.
This won’t stop at Macbeth. It can now only be a matter of time before the Scottish Parliament receives a blistering letter from the trustees of the estate of Lady Macbeth calling for a full restoration of her character and reputation.
U.S. Ambassador Paul Cellucci was interviewed in the Ottawa Citizen about what the government should do in the short term to boost the Canadian Forces' effectiveness:
With a boost in defence spending expected in the federal budget, Mr. Cellucci said Canada's 55,000-member military needs to be reshaped to battle terrorist threats, confront ethic cleansing and help out in national disasters.
The U.S. would like Canada to beef up its elite JTF2 special forces and establish a Canadian strike force that could deploy anywhere in the world on short notice.
"A Level 2 special forces would give Canada the ability to have troops that could be quickly deployed to trouble spots — whether it is Haiti or whether it is the tsunami where people needed help right away," Mr. Cellucci said in a wide-ranging interview.
The ancient piece of ordnance known as the M72 Light Antitank Weapon, which was superseded in US service by the AT-4, is being re-introduced:
Marines fighting in Iraq's cities will eventually use a weapon relied on by U.S. forces more than 30 years ago in the jungles of Vietnam.
Older versions of the M-72 light antitank weapon (or LAW), used extensively during the Vietnam War, were phased out when Cold War experts believed only larger, shoulder-fired rockets would work to stop a Soviet tank blitz. Post war, the AT-4 — which is bigger and has a longer range than its predecessor has — became the Marine Corps' rocket of choice.
But the old boy is making a comeback — albeit with significant technological enhancements.
I loved firing the M-72 . . . I was much more accurate with that at short ranges than I was with the Carl Gustav at medium range, even though the CG had much better sights and a much more impressive warhead.
It's good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
Ursula K. Le Guin
I've written about the LCBO and other state-run liquor monopolies before. I'm not a fan, but I recognize that they're not without some benefits. Colby Cosh gathers up several points (mainly beer-related, but the essential message is the same) in support:
My inbox is swelling with a wave of pro-market comment on liquor retailing. The most urgently relevant missive comes from Matt Bazkur, a hophead who has the goods on the bureaucratic habits of the LCBO (and others). Let's roll the tape:
As an Ontario beer geek, I want a better selection of beer in Ontario. I'm even willing to pay more for the right. As a right-wing nutjob, I want the government out of the booze business. However, my beer-geek desires override my nut job instincts to the extent that I could live with a mix of private and public. Heck, I could live with all-public if they just had a better selection.
Fat chance!
...there is a lot of nonsense that goes on because of Ontario government involvement in the liquor distribution process:
1. Exhibitors at wine/liquor/beer festivals must buy their own products from the LCBO and additionally pay a mark-up. From a posting by an importer at The Bar Towel:
"...all products being poured at this festival and any other beer and wine shows like it where consumers pay for samples must be purchased from the LCBO under a Special Occasion Permit For Sale, which means that we pay full retail plus an additional 16% levy on top."
Go read the rest of the article!
The Flea linked to this Telegraph article on the difficulties of advertising wine in France without falling afoul of one regulatory group or another:
Two different photographs of Catherine Gachet about to sip a glass of the wine she produces in south-western France show her looking more like a Hollywood starlet than a winemaker.
But in the eyes of a French law at the centre of a battle between the country's ailing wine industry and health pressure groups, only one of the images is legal.
A court agreed with the health campaigners that the first, with the glass of wine far too close to Mrs Gachet's lips, was "too sexy" to meet the strict requirements of the so-called Evin Law which rules how alcoholic drinks can be promoted.
Welcome to the latest recruit to the brigade, Abraca-Pocus!. Rue, by long-standing tradition, the junior officer in the mess buys the first round. I think I finished off the last of the '59 Chateau Margaux when John the Mad joined the unit, so I'll have to put up with a '61 Petrus this time, please. . .
Brian Doherty had a link to this article on the conflict between a packrat and her local government:
On Sunday at noon, Mills was escorted from her house by a police officer, she said. She will be kept out until next weekend. Her son, daughter and son-in- law came to the house early Monday, where they joined city and county officials and workers from the Center for Organization and Goal Planning.
"We're going to do what we need to do to satisfy everybody and keep Mom happy, and everything will be fine,' Betsy Randolph, Mills' daughter, said as she prepared to tackle the piles in the living room.
While some of Mills' possessions will be thrown out, the organizers intend to box much of it and put it in storage so Mills can sort through it away from the house.
The Center will charge Mills $18,500 for 14 or more employees to work through the week. They will come back to follow up with Mills afterward. The funds come from a lien on Mills' house.
O-kay. She has her property jammed full of flammable materials, and the local firefighters claim that they'd be unable to get into the house after their last attempt to put out a fire. I'm astonished that her insurance company didn't come down on her like the proverbial ton of bricks before this. And, in fact, why is it the municipality pursuing her rather than her insurance company?
As often is the case, I can see both sides here to some degree. When we had to clear out my late mother-in-law's house, we were astonished at the amounts of old clothes, shoes, books, papers, photos, and miscellaneous flammable objects we had to clear out (eventually, we had to hire a junk clearance firm to come in and empty the place . . . there was just too much stuff). And she wasn't too bad, compared to her next-door neighbour, who has his property packed with the same kind of stuff as mentioned in the article linked above. The neighbour, after he'd filled his entire house and backyard with stuff, bought an old Bell Canada panel van and filled it with stuff, moving it from driveway to street (when the driveway got filled with even more stuff).
But, and here's the point I wanted to make in the first place . . . other than the fire risk, why is the government using its powers to temporarily evict the lady from her own property, arbitrarily disposing of lots of her posessions, and then billing her for the "service"? The answer is (aside from the potential damage to surrounding properties if her house does catch fire), because they can. There's nothing to stop 'em. Even in the United States, there is no absolute right to own property that can't be set aside at the whim of local courts or governments.
Extending this abridgement of her rights to an abridgement of all rights is trivial in a court of law. If the potential of harm can be identified (or made up as needed), then almost any individual, group, or company can be similarly targeted for government action.
Jay Jardine linked to a Libertarian Purity Test. He then boasted about his score of 137 (out of 160). Once upon a time, I'd have scored much higher on the test as well, but I scraped in with a mere 117, proving that Jay is much more hardcore Libertarian than I am (like that would be a surprise).
My wimp-outs were mainly areas typical of soi-disant "Minarchists": courts, police, national defence. I'd love to scale back the power of the state, but I'm still inclined to feel that a certain minimum of government is necessary. The problem often is that we libertarian-oriented folks spend so much time attacking one another about our lack of ideological purity that there's no time to whittle back the state.
[T]he Welfare State redistributes wealth and resources from society at large to concentrated beneficiaries, [but] the Nanny State takes concentrated instances of stupidity and irresponsibility and redistributes the shame and consequences to society at large.
Jay Jardine, "A Dumb Law, By Any Other Name", The Freeway to Serfdom, 2005-01-24
For the one or two of you who are at all interested in wines, I've exported my wine tasting notes for the last year to an Excel spreadsheet. You can download it here.
Just remember that I'm not a "trained" wine taster (as if reading my occasional postings didn't already let you know that). My notes are kept for my own interest, so there's the odd comment in there that may make no sense at all . . .
Hat tip to Professor Bainbridge for the idea (you can download his tasting notes here).
I'm always the last to know, but Debbye, of Being American in T.O. is posting again. Yay!
Voter Turnout falls 28% in Iraq; country more divided than ever
News out of Iraq should send chills of distress around the world. As voting ended, turnout was estimated at 72%. Although Andrew Sullivan may or may not consider that a success, it reflects a 28% decline from voting in Iraq's last election. Furthermore, the unity that marked Iraq's 2002 election has been dissolved by the Bush Administration's divisive policies. The consensus which marked the last election has fallen apart to the point that one party may not even gain a majority.
Boi from Troy, "Voter Turnout falls 28% in Iraq; country more divided than ever", Boi From Troy, 2005-01-30
In addition to the terrible photos I took, there was at least one person there who stayed sober enough to take some good quality photos:
This is the good twin and this is the evil twin. Or is it the other way around? Is there a good twin?
Down at the other end of the table, serious thoughts were being thunked.
And the infamous Chris Taylor, still plotting, while Alan McLeod pretends he didn't just eat the whole thing.
These photos contributed by Wanda of "Photo Rampage in T.O."
Today's act of malice is the pingback attack. I've been turning off the comments to old postings whenever they attract a spam comment and banning the IP of the commenter. This seemed to be reducing the number and frequency of spam comments. This morning, I've already had 50 pings from some f*cker pushing his p o k e r sites.
Unfortunately, MovableType isn't quite as helpful in removing pings as it is in removing spam comments. Removing an unwanted ping can be quite a pain in the butt. And, as always, the attacker can have his 'bot post half a dozen more pings in the time it takes me to remove one.
Because of this, posting will probably be slow while I try to fit bouts of administration into my already over-crowded work day.
Way back when the term "idiotarian" was coined, it was quite explicitly aimed at the idiots of the Left and Right equally. The idiots of the Right have been somewhat quieter lately, but they're no less idiots for that.
Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit, 2005-01-31
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