I see Big Business is feeding the crocodiles again.

Not that they weren't when they were supporting Republicans, really.

Lobbyists and PACs thereof [Packs of lobbyists. Get it?]-not to mention NGOs-only exist where governments have more power than they ought.

The NY Times has an article today about how the courtiers are scampering to the Democrats.

Unseemly. Read the Sheldon Richman article I cited in the previous post. Reading the NYT article after this one is like drinking milk after eating an orange. Yuck.

I suppose I gotta quote the SOB so this post will make sense when the link goes dead:

Democrats Get Late Donations From Business

By JEFF ZELENY and ARON PILHOFER
Published: October 28, 2006

WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 — Corporate America is already thinking beyond Election Day, increasing its share of last-minute donations to Democratic candidates and quietly devising strategies for how to work with Democrats if they win control of Congress.

The shift in political giving, for the first 18 days of October, has not been this pronounced in the final stages of a campaign since 1994, when Republicans swept control of the House for the first time in four decades.

Though Democratic control of either chamber of Congress is far from certain, the prospect of a power shift is leading interest groups to begin rethinking well-established relationships, with business lobbyists going as far as finding potential Democratic allies in the freshman class — even if they are still trying to defeat them on the campaign trail — and preparing to extend an olive branch the morning after the election.

Is that what you call it? They're taking great glee in the commingling of commercial interests with government interests, seems to me.

The Nobel Peace Prize committee redeems itself

I just read, thanks to FFF and FEE, that this years Nobel Peace Prize is going to someone who actually deserves it (rather than some fascist dictator or some guy who cowtows to fascist dictators).

Muhammad Yunus has spent many years getting money, in the form of microloans, to the poor people of Bangladesh and other countries via his Grameen Bank--which he founded by performing the action and later organizing. Now that's how to do "direct action."

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2006, divided into two equal parts, to Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank for their efforts to create economic and social development from below. Lasting peace can not be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty. Micro-credit is one such means. Development from below also serves to advance democracy and human rights.

What brings such glee to libertarian hearts is that fact that Yunus is the author of these words:

I believe in the power of the free market and the power of credit in the marketplace. I also believe that providing unemployment benefits is not the best way to address poverty. The able-bodied don't want or need charity. The dole only increases their misery, robs them of incentive and, more importantly, of self respect. . . . [T]axes only pay for a government bureaucracy that collects the tax and provides little or nothing to the poor. And since most government bureaucracies are not profit motivated, they have little incentive to increase their efficiency. In fact, they have a disincentive: governments often cannot cut social services without a public outcry, so the behemoth continues, blind and inefficient, year after year. . . .

I believe that all human beings are potential entrepreneurs. Some of us get the opportunity to express this talent, but many of us never get the chance because we were made to imagine that an entrepreneur is someone enormously gifted and different from ourselves.

Richman ends his article, "Intended or not, the Nobel committee has lent a hand in reconnecting the causes of peace and commerce." Said article proves the indivisible two-way connection that classical liberals saw between free trade and peace.

Definition of filiopietism

The best one I could find anyway, without making it my life's work.*

An appeal to tradition is also a form of an appeal to authority, because tradition is treated as being "authoritative" in some matter. As in the above example, it is not uncommon for an appeal to tradition to also be explicitly linked to an appeal to numbers, although every appeal to tradition does this at least implicitly.

Also Known As: filiopietism

My emphasis.

Source.

*I found the word in a review of The Church and the Market : A Catholic Defense of the Free Economy, by Thomas E. Woods Jr. [The Mises Store is having a sale this weekend for those of us who have bought from them before. (There's a special code to enter to get the discount). This isn't one of the ones on sale, but I had to check out the title and I've written about Woods before. No, come to think of it, that was Chafuen's book.]

It was a bit of a challenge to find a definition of the word. My massive Webster's Unabridged didn't have it, nor did a Google search turn it up quickly, yet there were hundreds of uses of it on the web. I titled this post as I did to make it easier for the next guy to find it.

Notice that even this definition is inverted: the term is an afterthought. Odd that I should find it in About.com's section on "Agnosticism/Atheism". I suppose, if you break it down the parts mean something like "the devotion of a son for his father." I'd like to know who coined it.

Wow! Time to say something new, eh?

Where the heck have I been since last Wednesday?!

Let's see...Meeting, work, meeting, older girl's birthday party, overnight guest, babysitting, yardwork, TV, Church, yardwork, work, meeting and catching up with emails filling up all the interstices. I'm handling spam manually these days. The anti-spam program clogged up like my kitchen sink.

Oh, yeah. That too. I need to get a longer snake.

And reading stories. And tending to the wife as much as one human can.

It's tough without beer. It didn't get done at all with beer, but I didn't care.

I took an official Myer-Briggs Personality Test the other day. Got the results back: INTF.

Those stand for Introverted, iNtuitive, Thinking, Feeling.

What the hell?!

That seems like a completely untenable combination. I can't wait the hear what the expert has to say about that. Probably that I've spent my whole life trying to be something other than what I am.

Well, I gotta run in the morning.

Ed Hudgins takes on Nobel winner Ed Phelps

A veritable battle of the Eds. Haha.

Link to Hudgins' article.

Anyway, between these two posts one, two, and the discussions attached thereto I think we - you all and I - did it better.

A guy I liked and admired died last week.

A guy in a position to look down his nose at me had he wanted to do so, yet he never did. He greeted me warmly, by name with a smile, every time I saw him. I wanted to do more for him.

Now I wish I had found a way.

He wasn't old - two years younger than I, in fact - he died in a boating accident. You don't want to end up in the water in Minnesota at this time of year. His youngest son was with him. The boy didn't make it either.

Yes, they were both wearing life-jackets. He was teaching his son safe boating practices.

I had a whole speech made out for this post, but now that I sit down to type it out it seems artificial, ...and I'm inhibited by the fact that I don't talk about my job on my blog - or allow myself to be pinpointed directly through it (though it's pretty easy to trace me to it, really)...

To heck with it! At least one blogger has to say that Earle Kyle was an admirable man and a kind man and the world is poorer for his loss.

Whatever happened to invadesoda?

I kinda miss the guy, don't you?

You're not afraid of contradicting me, or getting into an argument, or something are you buddy?

We're all writers here, aren't we?

Even those of us who suck?

Here's a good article on telling a story from a freelance journalist named Nettie Hartstock.

I'm not writing a white paper, but let's see if I can incorporate some of her suggestions into the tale of a little vignette that occurred on my lunch hour.

I bought a sandwich at a local shop on the way back from an errand today, and while I was paying for my purchase a tall, rather bedraggled man, who had obviously walked to the store in the rain, came in and slapped four sodden one-dollar bills on the counter. Since he came in with the manager, who was outside smoking when I entered, I didn't catch the beginning of their conversation, but I gathered he wanted a pack of cigarettes.

The manager didn't want to take the man's ratty looking money, "It's wet! Nobody's gonna want to take that!"

"It'll dry," answered the customer reasonably.

"What? You think I got all day to sit here watching your bills dry?! That one's all torn up! I can't take that!"

"C'mon! This is money! It'll work!"

"It's dirty!"

I was more interested in escaping this heated scene than in eavesdropping, and, really, the bills weren't that bad. What's up with this manager anyway? The bank would take them if nobody else wanted them. They'd probably route the torn up one back to the treasury to be burned, but until then, it's still legal tender.

My sympathies were firmly with the other customer (though, remember, I hadn't heard how all this started), until, as I turned to hightail it out of there, the guy said, in answer to the last accusation:

"All money's dirty!"

I moaned.

Apparently, feeling he'd made a great and telling point, he repeated, with a laugh, "All money's dirty!"

Continuing to the door, I muttered, "No, it's not!"

Outside, I thought, "Man, that's the kind of thinking that keeps you, and everybody you know, poor! What? Did ya take a vow of poverty?"

I was wishing, as I drove, that I had asked the guy who told him that. And how big a contribution of his "dirty money" they wanted for their services.

And another thing: how much do you want to bet that that's the only "Christian" notion he and his ilk pay any attention to? I put the word Christian in quotes, because I think it's a pretty crude, though unfortunately very common, misunderstanding of New Testament teaching about money.

I'll let my friend Steve handle the theology on the matter, but I find it impossible to believe that God has a problem with media of exchange.

------

Completely off the point [come to think of it, it's not completely off the point]: I've mentioned Michael Masterson a few times. I had no idea that he has a blog!

Back to the subject of writing itself, Tibor Machan has a rant on The Atlasphere that could do with some editing. I agree with his point whole-heartedly (I think), but he's writing like his undies are in a bunch. When you're railing against collectivism, Dr. Machan, you need to be careful about overusing collective pronouns.

Larry Elder, at Townhall.com today

says:

The unemployment rate just dropped from 4.7 percent to 4.6 percent. The Washington Post, not exactly a Bush administration cheerleader, recently wrote "that just about every worker with the skills and desire to work can find a job." Yet the same article cited its own poll that shows only 39 percent of Americans approve of Bush's handling of the economy, with 59 percent disapproving.

The tax cuts, as tax-cutting former President John F. Kennedy predicted, sparked the economy. Kennedy once said that it may sound "paradoxical," but in order to increase tax revenues, we must decrease tax rates. Under Bush, "tax collections have increased by $521 billion in the last two fiscal years," reports The Wall Street Journal, "the largest two-year revenue increase -- even after adjusting for inflation -- in American history." Even with the irresponsible spending, this puts the deficit at 2 percent of GDP, well below the recent 40-year average of 2.7 percent. Inflation and interest rates remain low. And labor analysts just revised upward the figures on job creation, adding an additional 810,000 jobs!

So how have we been hurt by tax cuts?

Bush didn't cut 'em enough. Those were pretty frickin' wussy tax cuts from Mr. Compassionate Conservative.

For my Brazilian (and otherwise Portuguese-speaking) visitors

I'd be interested to know how badly Google has done in translating the first three paragraphs of our Declaration of Independence:

Quando, no curso de eventos humanos, se tornar necessário que um pessoa dissolva as faixas políticas que as conectaram com o outro, e para supor, entre os poders da terra, a estação separada e igual a que as leis da natureza e do deus da natureza a intitulam, um respeito decent às opiniões da humanidade requer que deve declarar as causas que impel as à separação.

Nós prendemos estas verdades para ser self-evident: que todos os homens são semelhante criado, que estão dotados, por seu criador, com determinadas direitas unalienable, que entre estes são vida, liberdade, e a perseguição da felicidade. Que para fixar estas direitas, os governos estão instituídos entre os homens, derivando seus poders justos do consentimento do governado, que sempre que todo o formulário do governo se torna destrutivo destas extremidades, ele é a direita dos povos alterá-lo ou abolish, e instituir o governo novo, colocando sua fundação em tais princípios, e organizando seus poders em tal formulário, a respeito deles parecerá muito provável efetuar suas segurança e felicidade.

O Prudence certamente, ditará, que os governos long estabelecido, não devem ser mudados para causas da luz e do transeunte; e conformemente todo o shewn do hath da experiência, essa humanidade é mais disposto sofrer, quando os Evils forem sufferable, do que à direita ela mesma abolishing os formulários a que são accustomed. Mas quando um trem longo dos abusos e do Usurpations, perseguindo invariàvel o mesmo objeto, evinces um projeto para os reduzir sob Despotism absoluto, é sua direita, ele é seu dever, jogar fora de tal governo, e fornecer protetores novos para sua segurança futura.

Tom Sowell

Read him today.

Those who discuss the current war in terms of frivolous talking points make a big deal out of the fact we have been in this war longer than in World War II. But, if we are serious, we would know that it is not the duration of a war that is crucial. It is how many lives it costs.

More than twice as many Marines were killed taking one island in the Pacific during World War II than all the Americans killed in the four years of the Iraq war. More Americans were killed in one day during the Civil War.

If we are going to discuss war, the least we can do is be serious.

Yep.

This Edmund S. Phelps guy,

who won the Nobel Prize for Economics yesterday, seems to have a lot of great things to say. His article today in the WSJ, "Dynamic Capitalism: Entrepreneurship is lucrative--and just" is well worth a read.

I notice the Mises guys are agin 'im, in "Did Phelps Really Explain Stagflation?" by Frank Shostak.

I don't know. He may actually be an improvement on Friedman, though I didn't care for this line, "We all feel good to see people freed to pursue their dreams. Yet Hayek and Ayn Rand went too far in taking such freedom to be an absolute, the consequences be damned."

Tsk, tsk, tsk. Ya might wanna show some of those consequences if yer gonna make that kind of accusation, buddy. Well, maybe I should read some more of your work before I fly off the handle. The fact is that huge chunks of his readership assume that such consequences exist and are major.

Here's a good bit from his piece today:

The same capitalist dynamism that adds to the desirability of jobs also adds to their precariousness. The strong possibility of a general slump can cause anxiety. But we need some perspective. Even a market socialist economy might be unpredictable: In truth, the Continental economies are also susceptible to wide swings. In fact, it is the corporatist economies that have suffered the widest swings in recent decades. In the U.S. and the U.K., unemployment rates have been remarkably steady for 20 years. It may be that when the Continental economies are down, the paucity of their dynamism makes it harder for them to find something new on which to base a comeback.

The U.S. economy might be said to suffer from incomplete inclusion of the disadvantaged. But that is less a fault of capitalism than of electoral politics. The U.S. economy is not unambiguously worse than the Continental ones in this regard: Low-wage workers at least have access to jobs, which is of huge value to them in their efforts to be role models in their family and community. In any case, we can fix the problem.

Why, then, if the "downside" is so exaggerated, is capitalism so reviled in Western Continental Europe? It may be that elements of capitalism are seen by some in Europe as morally wrong in the same way that birth control or nuclear power or sweatshops are seen by some as simply wrong in spite of the consequences of barring them. And it appears that the recent street protesters associate business with established wealth; in their minds, giving greater latitude to businesses would increase the privileges of old wealth. By an "entrepreneur" they appear to mean a rich owner of a bank or factory, while for Schumpeter and Knight it meant a newcomer, a parvenu who is an outsider. A tremendous confusion is created by associating "capitalism" with entrenched wealth and power. The textbook capitalism of Schumpeter and Hayek means opening up the economy to new industries, opening industries to start-up companies, and opening existing companies to new owners and new managers. It is inseparable from an adequate degree of competition. Monopolies like Microsoft are a deviation from the model.

Yes, Microsoft will be reigned in eventually by superior competitors and/or new developments. It's bigness does not constitute a crisis.

Sorry, we had to run down to the Big Island Rendezvous.

In Albert Lea (MN). Watch people shoot cannons & such. They had a lot more shops there than at any of the other Rendezvous. I bought a hand made wool over coat, though I didn't need it there.

The do a lot of different eras there, ranging from the 1600s through the whole fur trade era, the Civil War and the early logging days. But you've got to pick your era and stick to it.

I pretty much spent the day chasing the older girl and her best friend as they ran around the island (Big Island) exploring. Their favorite thing was a big old willow that hung out over the water. They climbed all over that. They were delighted when they found out that the water was only about a foot and a half deep so they could wade from one big branch to the next.

Their mothers would never let them do that. Come to think of it, I forgot to suggest that maybe they should exercise some discretion on that score. I did mention the possible presence of leeches, but they didn't find any.

Rosie seems to be overly sensitive to smoke. Along with a diet of little but sweets. She threw up as we were making our way back to the truck. I found out later that she hadn't eaten anything but and Icee and a big piece of candy since noon. Ya gotta wonder how she had anything to chuck up.

We all had fun for the most part, though, even if it was pretty much just a weekend thing.

Nicholas Curott penned a piece

for the Mises Blog reviewing Jonathan Swift's victory over debased coinage in Ireland, Government Money Deserves a "Swift" Abolition, comparing that to our current situation:

But alas! Alas! It all has come to pass, just as Swift had forewarned. Today we no longer have the comfort of laws preventing the government from forcing us to take whatever money it pleases. All the gold was stolen from the people against their will and piled up in Fort Knox, and unbacked paper trash was given in its place.

Governments in the 20th century were no longer restrained in how much money they could print, and the age of inflation was ushered in. The damage caused by this inflation is incalculable.[2] Even in America the damage is great.[3] By entering into the economy through the credit market, inflation is responsible for economy-wide business cycles. And by using seigniorage to mask the cost of deficit spending, governments are able to fund a vast array of bloated welfare-warfare schemes.

Word of the Day: seigniorage [Hmm... Each of these definitions adds something interesting, so have 'em all.]:

Definitions of Seigniorage on the Web:

The profit that results from the difference in the cost of printing money and the face value of that money.
www.freebuck.com/reference/glossary/s.htm

The difference between what money can buy and its cost of production. Therefore, seigniorage is the benefit that a government or other monetary authority derives from the ability to create money. In international exchange, if one country's money is willingly held by another, the first country derives these seigniorage benefits. This is the case of a reserve currency.
www-personal.umich.edu/~alandear/glossary/s.html

The difference, which may be positive or negative, between the face value of specie (coin), silver or gold certificates, or fiat money and its commodity value in a free market.
nesara.org/main/dictionary.htm

The difference between the cost of the bullion plus minting expenses and the value as money of the pieces coined.
www.canadiancoin.com/diction/s.htm

The profit made by a goverment from issuing cons, ie the difference between their face value and the cost of manufacture and distirbution.
www.indiainfoline.com/bisc/accs.html

Seigniorage is the profit which accrues to the "seigneur" when he exercises his "royal right" to coin money without the obligation to supply anything in return for the means of payment which he puts into circulation. The Central Bank, acting on behalf of the State, is the best example of modern-day enjoyment of seigniorage. To a much smaller extent, the banks also enjoy seigniorage when they create bank money through credit. ...
www.centre-jouffroy.com/contenu_glossary_3.htm

charged by a government for coining bullion
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

Seigniorage, also spelled seignorage, is the net revenue derived from the issuing of currency. It arises from the difference between the face value of a coin or bank note and the cost of producing and distributing it. Seigniorage is an important source of revenue for some national governments.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seigniorage

A couple pix.

I call it "Fledgling Marathoner."

The cheap digital camera refuses to focus on the medal, but here's the shirt:



I got one where the medal glows gold. It's an omen, I tell ya!

I don't know what to say about the Amish schoolgirls

being shot. A fifth has died now.

Little girls...

Babies...

My objectivist side wants to blame irrationalism, and fundamentally that's it, but it's not at all satisfying, and I don't want to work up a sermon on the subject now. Now I can only be shocked and grieve.

Twisted bastards whom nobody taught self-control are attacking the defenseless.

I finally got hold of a newspaper.

I see we (those of us who support running marathons) managed to kill a guy. An experienced runner had a heart attack at mile 6. I'm surprised I didn't see anything, he had to have gone down shortly before I got there. Of course, I was running faster at that point than I should have been, so maybe he was behind me.

Matt Furey seems to believe that distance running is about as healthy an activity as smoking cigarettes... Sprints are okay, just make sure you catch your breath between them and get your heart-rate down under 100 before you do your next one. The point is to get your heart and lungs used to sudden, maximal effort and recovery to build reserve capacity.

The body adapts to long, slow distance (LSD training) by diminishing reserve capacity in the name of efficiency.

But, then, the TCM has only seen two deaths in 25 years...out of how many thousands of runners? Of course there are 364 other days in a normal year in which something could happen to you.

I can say that, although I was running too fast during the first 2/3 of the race, I was never unable to talk to anybody, and there wasn't much (apparent) strain on my lungs or heart.

I think it was in the book The Marathon where I read the author's doctor's opinion that "Marathoners are the healthiest bunch of sick and injured people in the world."

OK, I see I have to go find that on my own shelf. Amazon and Google don't know what I'm talking about. Funny it never occurred to me to dig that out and reread it before venturing one myself. I wonder if I donated it to the church rummage sale.

So, anyway, I think I'll follow Matt Furey's advice about training for a while. Sprints, intervals, cross training, bodyweight exercises... That sort of thing.

Well, I've finished a Marathon.

As often as I'm asked, I'll tell you right now that that's a 26.2 mile (or somewhere around 42km) run. Supposedly the distance from Athens to Marathon (Google Pheidippides for the story).

I'll try not to write as if I were the Grand Old Man of Marathoning now.

Let's see, how many options did I give yesterday as possible outcomes of the race? Ah! Well, here are the answers: yes, no, no, no and no. The clock, as I crossed the finish line, said 5:02-something. [Update: unofficial results from the official website. Scroll to the bottom.] My chip time will be over eight minutes less, because that's how long it took to get to the starting line after the horn.

It was an absolutely gorgeous day: blue sky, trees shading from green to red, orange and gold, cool enough at the start to make me wish I'd brought gloves.

I was aiming for a 4 hour, 15 minute finish, and I held a pace rather faster than that for about 16 miles--I even made up the difference between the clock time and the chip time. Even with the fact that I had to stop at the turn to Lake Nokomis for five minutes to use the Port-A-Potty.

Then Zeus turned my legs to lead and I had to slow way down and finally walk for a while. I pretty much ran-walked the rest of the way. For the next four miles I kept trying to get running again and keep running, but I kept have to stop and walk. Finally, I decided that, since that was the way it was going to be, I systematize the process and only rest for one minute at a time, running as long and as hard as I felt like. I made better time that way.

That got me through the next six until I saw the Capitol building and the finish line from the top of Cathedral Hill. I let gravity pull me down the hill fast, till I came to a little hump, then I just held on to the finish line, only letting one guy pass me.

I think they could do away with the 26 Mile sign though. It's a little disheartening to get to that and realize that the Finish is still far enough away that you can't quite make out what's going on up there.

I think hitting The Wall resulted from a convergence of factors. First, obviously, I'd run 16 miles. That's longer than any training run I've done this year. Second, I don't know about other Marathons, but this one is a 26.2 mile-long carb buffet. I ate and drank anything anybody handed to me. I was stuffed by the end of it. And, along about Mile 16, some joker handed me a beer (in a cup-it wasn't obvious... other than the fact that they were shouting, "ICE COLD BEER!!"

I thought they were joking. They weren't. After the first sip, I said, "I guess they weren't kidding!" So I took a second sip and tossed the rest.

And, I suppose I should mention that the temp rose quite a bit around that time, and I found myself looking for every little bit of shade.

At about Mile 20 I notice a circle of blood on my chest, so I looked in my shirt and
found that I'd lost my band-aid on my right nipple. I believe I may have let a few nasty words slip. I went on with that for a while, until it occurred to me that there was no good reason to keep the shirt on, so I tied it to the back of my gel pack belt, and, everything went better after that. I was a lot cooler, for one thing.

But, I'm pretty happy with the experience. I took every piece of advice I got, band-aided up everything that chafed severely-including the afformentioned and my toes-and Body Glided everything that chafed a little...made sure I was wearing shorts that had never made a mark on me in training.

I made some new friends that I'll have to try to track down again.

But, I'm still beat now. I did soak my lower legs in the pool. I wanted to sit down in that cold water, but... Ew! I mentioned that it needed cleaning. I've mostly drained it now. I still need to mop it up a bit and then fold it up and box it for the winter.

So, anyway, nighty-night.

Less than 10 Hours til the Marathon.

My training today consisted of trimming the hedge, mowing the lawn and beginning the process of cleaning up the pool, which has languished for a month in mostly cool and rainy weather. I had to step into it a couple times and the icy water felt good on my feet. I decided not to finish the job today and soak them thoroughly again in it tomorrow, after the run.

I have a bit of a case of butterflies. Will I finish tomorrow? Will I end up walking until the bus catches up with me? Will they haul me away in an ambulance?

Or will I equal or even exceed my expectations?

I need to get my s**t together. Supposedly we still have a gym bag around here somewhere. When you train out of your home, you don't think about such things.

I'll tell you how it went when I recover sufficiently to make it down here.

Happy 125th Birthday, Herr Mises!

And many happy returns.

The Institute is celebrating mightily today.

How do you like this seal for the Old Whig?

I got it from Says-It.com's Seal Generator:

Celebrate Anti-Federalist Day!

From the Mises Institute:

The Antifederalists Were Right
By Gary Galles
Posted on 9/27/2006

September 27 marks the anniversary of the publication of the first of the Antifederalist Papers in 1789. The Antifederalists were opponents of ratifying the US Constitution. They feared that it would create an overbearing central government, while the Constitution's proponents promised that this would not happen. As the losers in that debate, they are largely overlooked today. But that does not mean they were wrong or that we are not indebted to them.

In many ways, the group has been misnamed. Federalism refers to the system of decentralized government. This group defended states rights — the very essence of federalism — against the Federalists, who would have been more accurately described as Nationalists. Nonetheless, what the so-called Antifederalists predicted would be the results of the Constitution turned out to be true in most every respect.

The Antifederalists warned us that the cost Americans would bear in both liberty and resources for the government that would evolve under the Constitution would rise sharply. That is why their objections led to the Bill of Rights, to limit that tendency (though with far too little success that has survived to the present).

Dance a jig today, or cuss out a commie or something.

It's been pretty tough to do any writing this week

What with the running and sleeping and eating and reading to the girls and taking them places and yardwork and helping the inlaws winterize the lake place...

Ah, woe is me.

Of course, I'm actually rather enjoying myself. Funny I didn't mention work in there anywhere. I'm also having to adjust to some new circumstances there, though not completely new. I just have the feeling of being like the new goldfish won at the fair. More I can't say.

If my style sounds a bit funny, it's because I've just finished reading chapter 35 of Luisa May Alcott's Little Women, and I fear it has improved my mind.

I find that whenever I read something that is touted as great literature, these days, that it lives up to its reputation. At least everything before the turn of the twentieth century. The twentieth century German authors I read in college were a bunch of, shall we say, weirdos. Although, I like Kafka. He at least had a sense of humor. D;¨urenmatt made jokes, but they were unrelentingly dark.

Now you know why I call myself a philistine. I refuse to resign myself to society's lemminglike charge into the Abyss, nor do I pretend to stand above it, laughing. Nor do I reject many of the parts of society which my professors wanted me to.

Ah! Enough of that! Time to heal unconsciously for a while in preparation for my next run.

The Equinoctial Forces are about to exercise their celestial prerogative

plunging us into the barren winter.

I want to write a pseudo-intellectual tour de force (hmm, I think I just used that one), but it came out sounding so poetic I had to leave it.

Anyway, get ready, here it comes:

At the autumnal equinox (Sept. 23, 2006, 12:03 A.M. EDT), the sun appears to cross the celestial equator, from north to south; this marks the beginning of autumn in the Northern Hemisphere.

Infoplease. Thank you.

Celebrate responsibly.

I mentioned Dean Karnazes a couple posts back

I'm reading his book. I can't say that it encourages me to run ultramarathons any more than the movie K-2 [Uh, that wasn't the name was it? What was it?] encouraged me to climb anything in the Himalayas, but he's a stunning physical specimen and the greatest hero of our time. Equal to Jack Morris, at least.

Right now, he's running 50 Marathons in 50 days. Check out his blog.

Omni has a brilliant post about the inefficacy of authorities

Let me just give you her point

11) Once in a blue moon, the wrongdoer WILL be penalized; said penalty will almost never be severe enough to counteract the fun of doing the evil deed, and even if it IS the overall fun to punishment ratio remains way too high for getting the occasional butt-kicking to discourage them from misbehaving.

She discusses, in depth, a point well developed by Hannah Arendt and Ayn Rand. This essay fits very well with two that I read in my spare time today,

[Hey!! A guy just mentioned Hank Thompson on the Dave Thompson show! I used to run around singing "I've got a Humpty Dumpty Heart" when I was Liina's age. Of course, I sang "howt" back then. It was a bit embarassing when Mom, who goes around with one of those oxygen tanks these days, told him that personally at a concert at Cookson Hills, Oklahoma with me there. I mean, I was a 41-year-old, big, fat guy with a Groucho Marx glasses-and-mustache look for God's sake!]

What the H was I saying?

Oh! Here's a Mises.com essay, The Justice and Prudence of War: Toward A Libertarian Analysis By Roderick Long
and one of his references, Understanding the Global Crisis: Reclaiming Rand’s Radical Legacy, by Chris Matthew Sciabarra.

Those are two magnificent intellectual tours de force.

Here's a bit of Long:

The non-consequentialist core of libertarian ethical theory is an egalitarian commitment; specifically, a commitment not to socioeconomic equality but to equality in authority. Indeed, libertarians' lack of enthusiasm for enforced socioeconomic equality stems precisely from their concern that it can be achieved only at the cost of this for libertarians more fundamental form of equality.[4]

The libertarian "non-aggression principle" expresses the conviction that forcibly to subordinate the person or property of another to one's own aims is to assume an unjustifiable inequality in authority between oneself and the other. And it is because this equality in authority likewise holds between private citizens and public officials that governments are forbidden to exercise any powers not available to people generally; libertarianism requires not just equality before the law but equality with the law.

And this bit, which I believe I've said myself (I've at least hinted at this strongly):

Since a libertarian polity's quarrel is with enemy regimes, not enemy peoples, it should adopt a strategy of covert operations and assassinations — as a substitute for, not a supplement to, conventional warfare.

And a bit of Sciabarra:

I have strongly supported the attempt to bring to justice the fugitives of 9/11-the murderous Al Qaeda-or "to bring justice to them," as President Bush has said. I think this is an unconventional war requiring unconventional warfare, including ongoing disruption of terrorist finance, weapons, and communications networks. But I remain wary of any long-term U.S. expansion into the region. And I believe that a projected U.S. occupation of Iraq to bring about "democratic" regime change would not be comparable to the German and Japanese models of the post-World War II era.

Sciabarra will tell you in that essay what Ayn Rand had to say about evil-doers that jibes with Omni's extremely important article. Hannah Arendt had tons to say about the "banality if evil" which it would serve you well to study. And Long's works provide a great bridge between Libertarians, Objectivists and Liberals. I like Sciabarra best, myself.

BTW, back to Omni's post, Robert Ringer has done some serious railing against teacher approved bullying in schools (public and private) that should be considered in this discussion.

I'm down into the 100 KG weight class!

218 Today!

All you have to do to dump five pounds fast is run 20+ miles in 3 days.

Oop! Family duties call.

Too much time on my hands, eh? Or Old Whig at the Rendezvous

[I felt the need to phrase that like the old Bullwinkle cartoons.]

Thursday

We spent the entire friggin' day watchin' the old shrew get her &@*# together. Then I threw it all into the pickup in 15 minutes and we left the house at 5:00.

But! She wanted to run a few errands before we left town.

Yeah!

We left the cities at 7:00. You know when the sun sets this time of year.

8:45 PM: we arrive at Snake River Fort, near Pine City. Miles to go before we sleep. (Thank The Dear Lord our errands were in the northern suburbs.)

9:45: the tent is ready and we can put the kids to bed. Laurie and I get to relax and BS with our buddies by their campfire. Insanity and anger subside like a spent wave leaving only the pleasures of fine conversation and magnificent weather.

Friday... I'm sorry, it was just a blur of pleasure. I ran for an hour in the morning. Viewed a lot of magnificent autumn farmland and forest, lakes and rivers - played with several paces. Recovered quickly and was able to haul a lot of water and firewood.

I know I spent a lot of time tending the fire and gathering the spirit of the voyageur. We had a few visitors, the girls made friends and everything was just generally wonderful.

It rained a lot that night. Storms threatened, but didn't materialize.

Saturday

I overslept, so I couldn't run (visitor hours started at 9:00, I rolled out at 8:45. I (after taking my BP medication and vitamins) moseyed to the truck for some dry firewood and got a blaze going for a late breakfast. Which I got wolfed down five minutes before the foot-races began at ten. To spare you the agony, nobody entered who wasn't a better sprinter than I. I came in dead-frickin' last. Three grade-school kids whupped my ass!

(Let's see how that translates to a 10K, eh?)

Then, later, I stupidly repeated my failing shotput technique in the Stone Throw. I placed fifth overall, but they only give prizes for places 1-3. The two-handed, underhand throw has won it for the last two years and I've never been beaten by anyone who [correction: didn't throw] that way. (Of course, I get to claim the all-time championship of the shot-put style. Anybody seen that trophy? I guess it's my powder horn.)

But, you know what? That race speed carried over to the next day. I did a 90 minute run. I wasn't worried about the distance at the time, and I was feeling humbled by the thorough drubbing on Saturday, but on the way home I drove the truck to the landmarks I ran to and discovered that I had run at least 10.5 miles that morning. In an hour and a half! That is a huge, HUGE leap in my ability!

Talk about a confidence builder!

And I feel better than than I've felt in years at this moment!

Two weeks ago I was telling my in-laws that jogging is bad for you and that I'd never run more than three miles a day after this marathon. Now I knock off more than a 10K a day and enjoy every minute of it!

Karnazes: "If it felt good, you did something wrong"? I don't know, man. I'm having a good time.

But I have a somber point.

Saturday night, after the dance we had a hell of a thunderstorm. Tornado watches and everything.

There were no problems up our way, other than spray driven through every nook and cranny we didn't seal...

But a tornado formed and struck in Rogers, in western Hennepin County (my home county) so suddenly that homes were flattened and a little girl - only months older than my Rosie - was crushed to death before the alarms could sound.

Generally, I consider grief counselors to be a flock of twisted vultures... I can see visiting one now, if I'd known the girl.

I'm damn near ready to see one myself.

There's a place in France

Where the ladies wear no pants
And the men down there
Say they wear no underwear.

Or so I hear.

There are a couple of ambiguities here. First, is the "they" in the last line referring to the ladies or the men? And, second, is "down there" just a loose expression for "at the place where the pantless ladies are to be found" or is it specifically avering that the men are in position to verify the bloomerlessness of the ladies? If it's the men who are drawerless, then the answer to the latter question must be that "down there" is simply a loose expression.

I haven't been to France. My wife has, and I think I asked her what she knew of this vexing matter, but I don't recall that she gave me any satisfactory answers to these questions that so vex my soul.

I know that none of the ladies at the Rendezvoux wear pants, but are nevertheless modestly covered. And I have unfortunately seen evidence that some of the men there wear no underwear.

But then this is America, and my experience doesn't imply anything about what goes on in France.

We are headed out for Rendezvous in Pine City tomorrow. Perhaps some of the better informed reenactors can fill me in.

I'm going to have to squeeze a couple of fairly long runs into the weekend. I don't know how I'm going to deal with all the sweat and sweaty clothes that will generate.

I think this is so important that I'll take the risk

of republishing the article in full:

One Century of FDA Tyranny

It's the centennial of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). FDA workers are
even singing an anthem, written by an employee, to commemorate the event. The
"FDA Centennial Anthem," posted proudly at the FDA's Web site, begins:

"One century past, a people's hope fulfilled
By an act conceived for safe medicine and food
Protecting rights that our founding fathers willed
To life and liberty, to happiness pursued."

Of course, these lines are Orwellian nonsense. If you truly have a right to
life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness, then you have the right to
market and purchase medicines and foods of your choosing. A huge, monolithic
federal bureaucracy that prohibits free choice in such matters is the very
opposite of this.

It should be further noted that, despite claims that it protects the safety of
Americans, the FDA has actually killed hundreds of thousands of people by its
drug regulations.

An article in the July-August 2005 Freeman magazine, "The FDA Cannot Be
Reformed," by Arthur E. Foulkes, points out a few examples:

"[T]he FDA for many years prohibited aspirin makers from advertising the
potential cardiovascular benefits of their product since the agency had not
originally approved it for that purpose and despite widespread knowledge that
aspirin therapy could significantly reduce the risk of heart attack in males
over 50. In the words of economist Paul H. Rubin, "The FDA surely killed tens,
and quite possibly hundreds, of thousands of Americans by this restriction
alone."

"In another example, the FDA approved the gastric ulcer drug Misoprostol in
1988 -- three years after it had been available in other countries. Analyst Sam
Kazman estimated -- using the FDA's own figures -- that this delay may have led
to between 20,000 and 50,000 unnecessary deaths."

There are many other examples.

FDA regulations have made introducing a new drug into the U.S. more lengthy,
difficult, and expensive than anywhere else in the world. Says Foulkes: "It now
typically takes between ten and 15 years to bring a new drug to the U.S. market
at a cost of over $800 million."

This, of course, jacks up drug costs and dramatically lowers the number of new
drugs introduced into the United States, thus depriving Americans of beneficial
and even life-saving drugs. The Cato Institute cites Robert Goldberg of
Brandeis University: "By a conservative estimate, FDA delays in allowing U.S.
marketing of drugs used safely and effectively elsewhere around the world have
cost the lives of at least 200,000 Americans over the past 30 years."

The FDA is inconsistent with a free society, and an actual menace to all
Americans. It is unnecessary, to boot. There are free-market methods of
protecting consumers from dangerous drugs, while also allowing consumer freedom
of choice and not stifling the creativity and ingenuity of scientists and
researchers. (Some alternatives to the FDA are discussed in Foulke's Freeman
article, and in another Freeman article, both linked below.)

A century of bad policy and hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths and
untold suffering is enough. It's past time to say goodbye to the FDA.

(Sources: The Freeman:
http://www.fee.org/pdf/the-freeman/foulkes0705.pdf
http://www.fee.org/publications/the-freeman/article.asp?aid=2299
Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/30/AR2006073000699.html
The Independent Institute:
http://www.fdareview.org/harm.shtml
Cato Institute: http://www.cato.org/dailys/1-29-97.html)

I happen to take one of the drugs - inderol - that the FDA held up for ten years with its stupid bureaucratic regulations. An estimated 40,000 people who might have been protected by this drug died of stroke during that ten years.

We are poorer for the lack their contributions to our families, society, knowledge and economy due to the unnecessary shortening of their lives.

Khatami’s Harvard Visit Is a Disgrace

From the Ayn Rand Institute (if I earn any profit, I promise I'll give them a chunk):

Irvine, CA--This Sunday, on the eve of the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11, Iran’s former president, Mohammed Khatami, will speak before Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and give a talk titled “Ethics of Tolerance in the Age of Violence.” This is outrageous.

Iran is the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism. Khatami’s government jailed Iranian students who spoke out against the theocratic regime, and his intelligence service murdered leaders of an Iranian opposition party. For him to lecture Americans on ethics and non-violence is as obscene as a child molester instructing his victims on the importance of respecting individual rights.

Harvard defended Khatami’s visit, claiming we must have an “open dialogue” with Iran and allow for a “free exchange of ideas.” But there can be no “free exchange of ideas” between a killer and those he seeks to kill--or between a brutal dictatorship and the free nation it seeks to annihilate.

Let’s stop appeasing Iran and make it clear that those who threaten the United States will not receive an “open dialogue,” but swift destruction.

### ### ###

Copyright © 2006 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

I find I'm more of an Objectivist than a libertarian when I find the two in conflict.

Speaking of which, check this out:

When government undertakes to regulate a market-based system, it (1) compels exchanges (for example, through eminent domain and tax transfers) and (2) forcibly interferes with voluntary exchanges. When government taxes us to provide subsidies to business, our preferences are overthrown in favor of someone else’s. When it imposes import quotas, tariffs, and patents, the choices and prices of clothing, sugar, and many other things are distorted because inexpensive foreign goods are kept out of the market. When government imposes taxes and regulations, it favors large incumbent firms over small and yet-to-be-started firms. When it expands the money supply, inflation robs working people of purchasing power.

My disagreement with these guys and the Libertarian Party is this: I want the borders closed to anti-capitalists, and I want the border open to capitalists.

UNBRIDLE CAPITALISM is my motto.

An excellent article on the Mises Blog today

How We Come to Own Ourselves
By N. Stephan Kinsella.

He packs in quite a number of points into this paragraph about self-ownership and the child/parent relationship:

...[T]he libertarian could argue that the parent has various positive obligations to his or her children, such as the obligation to feed, shelter, educate, etc. The idea here is that libertarianism does not oppose "positive rights"; it simply insists that they be voluntarily incurred. One way to do this is by contract; another is by trespassing against someone's property. Now, if you pass by a drowning man in a lake you have no enforceable (legal) obligation to try to rescue him; but if you push someone in a lake you have a positive obligation to try to rescue him. If you don't you could be liable for homicide. [Ed. note: "could"?] Likewise, if your voluntary actions bring into being an infant with natural needs for shelter, food, care, it is akin to throwing someone into a lake. In both cases you create a situation where another human is in dire need of help and without which he will die. By creating this situation of need you incur an obligation to provide for those needs. And surely this set of positive obligations would encompass the obligation to manumit the child at a certain point.

Dan Kennedy's got a good observation,

as well as some good advice, here:

It has consistently been my experience that people underestimate themselves and overestimate what's necessary for the success they seek. The millionaire entrepreneurs that I know are not much smarter or more knowledgeable than the average person on the street, nor are they gifted or somehow pre-ordained for exceptional achievement. In many cases, they're not as smart as most people - believe me, I've met some pretty dumb rich people. Just about anybody could do what they do, it's just that few will do what they do.

Well, since they gave me the code...

You Have a Melancholic Temperament

Introspective and reflective, you think about everything and anything. You are a soft-hearted daydreamer. You long for your ideal life. You love silence and solitude. Everyday life is usually too chaotic for you. Given enough time alone, it's easy for you to find inner peace. You tend to be spiritual, having found your own meaning of life. Wise and patient, you can help people through difficult times. At your worst, you brood and sulk. Your negative thoughts can trap you. You are reserved and withdrawn. This makes it hard to connect to others. You tend to over think small things, making decisions difficult.

What Temperment Are You?

That's about right.

Thanks, Blue. What's that car, there?

Heres an important message from

Oldsmoblogger:



Screw anybody who trifles with the Bill of Rights!

John McCain and Russ Feingold are tied for #1 on the libertarian hit parade. George W. Bush is #2 [though he may be tied with a bunch of Senators and at least an equal number of US Reps.

Moderates? How about you pick your position between the obvious and literal words of the Constitution and the Bullshit of the Politicians?

Sorry about that. Went out of town for Labor Day.

I hear they had some major storms while I was Up North. We had fabulous weather.

Rosie and I took a long walk Saturday and swam on both Sunday and Monday. The water was cool, but not as cold as Pattison Park (where I grew up).

I ran 12 miles on Sunday, in 2 hours. ...All right, "jogged."

Ron, I bet you didn't know you share your birthday with Epicurus. He was born 2300 years to the day before you. [Except you actually have to subtract 2 years because the guys who made our calendar didn't know about zeroes... don't get me started. But you can't make any numerological hay out of 2298 years. Or can you?]

I've mentioned him before. I like his philosophy, generally speaking. He was accused of being a sumptuary [WOD alert!!], because he says that the basis and goal of action should be pleasure. Or, to quote from the first paragraph of Cicero's quote of Lucius Torquatus who was defending Epicureanism:

...[T]he final and ultimate Good, which as all philosophers are agreed must be of such a nature as to be the End to which all other things are means, while it is not itself a means to anything else. This Epicurus finds in pleasure; pleasure he holds to be the Chief Good, pain the Chief Evil. This he sets out to prove as follows: Every animal, as soon as it is born, seeks for pleasure, and delights in it as the Chief Good, while it recoils from pain as the Chief Evil, and so far as possible avoids it. This it does as long as it remains unperverted, at the prompting of Nature's own unbiased and honest verdict.

The Definitive Anti-Drug-War post

has been made by my dear friend, Kyle Bennett.

I can't beat the argument (with video) that he presents, though I can present his outline:

Drug use is immoral!

But prohibition doesn't stop it.

Drug use is dangerous and destroying our society!

Prohibition doesn't stop it.

Drugs are illegal and drug users are criminals!

Prohibition doesn't stop these kinds of criminals.

Repealing prohibition sends a message that drug use is acceptable!

Prohibition doesn't stop drug use.

It's a funny thing about drug (and alcohol) abuse, that the user never stops until he's convinced that drug (and alcohol) abuse is unprofitable. Or that those other considerations everybody is squawking about are actually important.

He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

Note to self:

Read this!

Later accretion: This is the 'graph that caught my eye:

I will admit that I do find it odd the way that only certain parts of the, say, Swedish, "miracle" are held up as ideas for us to copy. Wouldn't it be interesting if we were urged to adopt some other Swedish policies? Abolish inheritance tax (Sweden doesn't have one), have a pure voucher scheme to pay for the education system (as Sweden does), do not have a national minimum wage (as Sweden does not) and most certainly do not run the health system as a national monolith (as Sweden again does not). But then those policies don't accord with the liberal and progressive ideas in the USA so perhaps their being glossed over is understandable, eh?

Eh, indeed.

Oh! Actually, I guess I was originally enticed to read the article by this exerpt quoted in Freedom News Daily:

In the USA the poor get 39% of the US median income and in Finland (and Sweden) the poor get 38% of the US median income. It's not worth quibbling over 1% so let's take it as read that the poor in America have exactly the same standard of living as the poor in Finland (and Sweden). Which is really a rather revealing number don't you think? All those punitive tax rates, all that redistribution, that blessed egalitarianism, the flatter distribution of income, leads to a change in the living standards of the poor of precisely ... nothing.

He's being kind. The official stats say they're doing worse than our poor are. Doesn't surprise me a bit. But don't forget the previously cited paragraph.

But who cares about a strong argument? Certainly not the anti-anti-communists!

Oh, crap! Now I've gotta quote Williams:

Often, when people evaluate capitalism, they evaluate a system that exists on Earth. When they evaluate communism, they are talking about a non-existent Utopia. What exists on Earth, with all of its problems and shortcomings, is always going to fail miserably when compared to a Utopia. The very attempt to achieve the utopian goals of communism requires the ruthless suppression of the individual and an attack on any institution that might compromise the loyalty of the individual to the state. That's why one of the first orders of business for communism, and those who support its ideas, is the attack on religion and the family.

I tend to commit the opposite fallacy: I compare governments that exist to the Anarcho-Capitalist Utopia in which any individual may pursue any dream he or she has using all the resources he or she can muster, as long a they don't use physical force against their neighbors (either directly or delegated to an agent or agency).

A lot of thinking has gone into how life in society could be without the threat of force. The masters are, from clearest to deepest, the Tannehills, Murray Rothbard and (who runs the gamut by himself) and Hans-Hermann Hoppe.

How about that Carmen Electra, eh?

There's a raft o' pix here! [That site's not work safe!]:

Now, what made me think of that?

Oh, hey!

I just checked the Heart of Summer site, and my actual running time, from the time I crossed the starting line to when I crossed the finish line was 56:21, and my official place was 261.

Kick A! Man!

I was still 35th out of 42 in the 40-44 age class, but you get some serious competion once you step beyond the 5K range.

Old Whig could be considered synonamous with "fat geezer." I'm doing what I can prove that's not so.

I took a jog today.

150 Minutes worth. That's two hours and 30 minutes. I doubt that I maintained a pace of 10 minutes/mile, but it's the best estimate that can make. That is, 15 miles.

I kicked butt for the first hour; I ran a full mile farther than I did the last time I jogged in that direction. Everything went fine for the next hour, during which I reached my goal - a beautiful park in Maple Grove with several terraced ponds - and headed back. I returned almost exactly to my one hour mark at two hours so I was still kickin' butt.

My mind gave the tune, "One Shower! One nap! And one beer!" as a mantra.

I left the house with a 20 oz. bottle of water mixed with an ounce of liquid minerals. I sipped my third to last swig at the two hour mark. It was my intention at that point to continue running for one more hour. Oddly enough, at the ultimate [by that, I mean last] sip of my mineral-infuse water my will to continue died.

I lasted about another 200 yards. Then I started walking.

I was carrying a fiver in my pocket so I stopped at the first convenience store I found and bought a "Sports Shake". It was cold. It tasted fabulous.

It damn near made me barf.

Here, I had an odd experience once I stopped running. I was still 4 miles from the house and I was walking along when I saw a plastic bag billowing in the wind on the sidewalk. There was a bunch of rubbish in the woods next to it, so I grabbed the bag and started filling it with the rubbish. Then I saw, under a low branch, a dollar bill, and said to myself, "I guess I get paid for this good deed!" It was like God said, "Here's a dollar bill. If you clean up this mess, you'll find it and it's yours."

So, naturally I bought some fruit juice at the next convenience store and it gave me the energy to run some sprints as I continued on my way home. The spiritual energy gained from the idea that God rewards simple, good deeds was not a miniscule contribution.

In the end, I kept my body in motion for a full four hours. It gives me confidence that I actually can do a marathon. I think I can at least do a 25K race in two and a half. [A marathon's 42.something.]

I see that the belly's a bit flatter this evening.

I'm publishing ARI's press release

[Let's see the "cease and desist" letter.]

Stem Cell Breakthrough Won't Satisfy Religious Conservatives
August 24, 2006

Irvine, CA--"The researchers at Advanced Cell Technology should be congratulated for their scientific breakthrough," said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. "But their new method of creating stem cell lines will not stop religious opposition to scientific progress."

In developing a method of extracting embryonic stem cells without destroying the embryo, the team was, in part, trying to address the concerns of those opposed to the destruction of embryos. As the team leader said: "There is no rational reason left to oppose this research."

"But there has never been a rational reason to oppose embryonic stem cell research," said Dr. Brook. "The opposition comes mainly from religious conservatives and is--by their own declaration--based on faith, not on reason. It is based on the irrational belief that a mere clump of cells is a full-fledged human being."

"There is no rational reason to morally oppose this research, and its potential to produce treatments for such diseases as diabetes, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's is ample reason to morally support it.

"It is a mistake to try to appease religious conservatives on this issue. What they are opposed to, fundamentally, is science as such."

### ### ###

Copyright © 2006 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

I don't know, do you see anything to argue with there?

Anybody heard of The Newby Club

It's a free membership site for people new to the Internet and/or internet marketing. Another site you should go to before you sign up or buy anything about online marketing.

The guy does have things to buy, but read everything he gives away free first, particularly the "Scam-Watch Bureau" articles. If you think Joe Robson's treatment is inadequate, he also has links to:

Scambusters

Several FTC articles:

Opportunities (Index page; I just had to click the only link on that page I came to to make it work right.)

Biz Op Scams

Work At Home

MLM vs.Pyramid

and

i-cop.org

It's late. Sorry.

Vox Day made the point on Northern Alliance Radio

That "liberalism" is an insufficiently robust philosophy to survive the assault on Western Civilization from Islamists.

The "liberalism" I'm referring to is called libertarianism in the US: the philosophy that has been growing in Western Civilization since the time of Solon.

Day pointed out that secularism isn't worth a damn without Christian support, and Islam - not to speak of Islamism - will never support secularism.

As a libertarian, I understand the value to individual freedom of political secularism - nobody deserves to be arrested or killed because of their religious beliefs - but I have to admit that pure secularism and pure liberalism - excuse me, libertarianism - get nowhere without the support of the locally dominant religion.

Christianity, Hinduism and Taoism are (sometimes) strong supporters of individual freedom. The Minaret of Freedom is trying to make the case for freedom among the Muslim.

I wish them luck. Indeed, give them money.

I did indeed finish the Heart of Summer 10K

Some of you may understand why I don't mention the primary sponser of the race. If you don't get it, you just won't. Forget it.

Here's a link.

Katie McGregor, btw, made $7,000 on the race, I forget where it came from, but it was $500 + $1500 + $5000. Not bad for half an hour's work. Kinda makes you think about getting serious about this game.

Oh! And here's where you can verify my veracity. 2006 results will be up Monday.

Of course, it was more than a half hour of work for me. My time was 56:54 and I finished 262nd overall. Nobody considered giving me any prizes.

[Mike Nelson, of Mystery Science Theater 3000, is ripping Road House - one of my favorite movies - on the radio (on the Northern Alliance) behind me. It's quite a distraction.]

There was a 72-year-old who beat me by over ten minutes, but at least I whupped up on the truly rotund women.

[Later addition] Oh, btw, there were no truly rotund men in the race. That speaks worse of the men than of the women who had the guts to get out there. I was about the fourth or fifth heaviest guy there (though one or two of them were big linebacker types). And it seemed to me to me that nobody dropped out. There were plenty of finishers after an hour and twenty minutes. You have to admire a gal who can push that hard for that long.

I hitched my wagon to the wrong horse for this race. Although, come to think of it, I guess what I did wrong was unhitch from that horse at about 3 miles. I think it might be entertaining to talk about that horse.

I found myself, within the first mile, behind a young, hot gal in tight shorts, obviously wearing a thong underneath. I kept up with that vision for the next 2 and a half miles. Unfortunately, at that point, sexual attraction dropped below self-preservation in my priority list and I let her go.

Judging by the way I feel now [Fantastic!], I should have kept up with her. She knew what she was doing.

I won't forget that in future races: find the hottest chick you can and don't let her out of your sight. I'm good enough at running that the hot chicks are at my level; I'm not looking at emaciated freaks nor competitors with the globe.

Conservative Manifesto (invadesoda)

Lately I have been thinking about my ongoing transition from conservative to conservative-libertarian. Since it is too easy to get distracted by the policy issues of the moment, especially as a blogger, I have deliberately attempted to pick the most enduring conservative beliefs, the ones I am likely to keep no matter what and the ones I will try to instill in my daughters. It's a very short list so far. I see these principles as the basis for both social and economic issues. I also find the seeds of libertarianism in these statements.

• I owe my family more than I owe other people's families.
• Big government with the best people in charge is still big government.
• You cannot strengthen society by weakening the individual.
• It is still possible to succeed at making a living through honest work (in the absence of a tax policy that punishes honest work).

Holy Cow! It's Wednesday!

I bet you didn't know that.

I've been kicking the Marathon training up a notch, and I've been a bit tired. There's another 10K on Saturday that I want to do. 2 laps around Lake Nokomis in Mpls. I want to see if I've improved any over my July 4th time of 58:37.

I weighed 223 lbs this morning (101.6 KG for you furriners - I made this number more accurate, btw), so I'm moving back in the right direction. I don't know how much I can or should lose by Oct. 1, but I'd like to hit the starting line at least 10 lbs lighter.

Whoop, the thing I was waiting for is done!

I was thinking about a post on "70's Cool"

I was an expert, don't you know. But while I was - rather desultorily - racking my brains, to wife called to announce that there's an ABBA concert on PBS.

Research, don't you know.

Kyle reminded me about my E-Mentor, E. G. Ross.

He didn't mean to, but he meant to.

From the time I went online in November 2000, until his death in 2003, I read him daily.

God! I loved him! Nobody -- Nobody!! --is doing anything like what he did. Here's some of his work to whet your appetite to study his archives:

Economic Spring

THIS PUBLICATION'S struggle against irrational negativity takes many forms. But over the last year—with so much success evident in the War on Terror and so little bad news to report on that front (despite the bleating of the appease-for-peace crowd)—negativity has most often occurred in economics. Despite rapidly accumulating evidence that economic activity is not only picking up, but has been relatively robust since the fall of 2001, the pessimists nevertheless abound. We see it in the grumbling of the world's economic ministers, in the downcast biases of certain federal data agencies that seem to specialize in keeping good news from the public, in ignorant politicians who prattle about the "demise" of the US dollar (last year they whined that it was too strong!) or about the public being too stupid to invest wisely, and in the ever-catastrophic claims of scores of Internet and other media columnists. Sometimes I call these people—with a Nod to former US VP Spiro Agnew—the Nabobs of Negativism.

One wonders why the Nabobs persist. Their negativism seems so outdated. Just think about it a second. If 25 years ago you had tried to anticipate today's magnificent living standards—replete with amazing products, inventions, services, and entire industries that didn't even exist then—many people would have buried you in a hailstorm of rotten eggs. You would have seemed foolishly Pollyannaish, even callous, or, as the Democrats like to redundantly say to Republicans, you'd have appeared mean-spirited. (Doesn't just "mean" say enough?) Those were bad days. No, not Great Depression stuff. But they weren't anything to write back to the home planet about, either.

For younger readers, a one-phrase history: A quarter-century ago, we were in the clutches of a deep recession, ruinous inflation, high unemployment, low overall confidence, and ridiculous regulation. Today—despite the brief 2001 slowdown—we are in another American golden age of prosperity. Productivity has run at an envy evoking 4% for the past 18 months. Core economic output is once more chugging close to historical norms, averaging around 3%. Unemployment is unexpectedly falling, down from its fairly low peak of 6%--and far below the rates seen in the last major recession of the early 1980s. Inflation is hiding under the rug. Oil prices are again plunging in anticipation of the Iraqi conflict's settlement. The Dow Industrials are again soaring, up a whopping 10% in the last week; the NASDAQ is up even better, percentage-wise. Retail sales—the true measure of consumer sentiment, far more reliable than any confidence polls—have chugged along at a 5% rate for the last several quarters. From an utopian standpoint, it's not the best of all possible worlds. No, it's just the best that the world has ever seen.

So why all the fallen faces and moaning mugs?

"Well," you may say, "with billions flooded away in the 2001 stock market turmoil, the resulting smell is not exactly that of the flowers of spring." True, the market downturn—mainly in the tech-heavy NASDAQ—drew a lot of Sulking Sams out from under their economic rocks. The media have given them their usual, unwarranted snivel-time. And, as usual, the hubris of the sectorially disaffected remains high. The first-time recessioners continue to predict that their economic sector determines the fate of the world. "When tech goes, we all go," I heard one 20-something econo-seer spout, depressed about his Web stock having lost a huge hunk of its value—and never mind that his company never actually produced any tangible service or product, but only promised to do so. (A trap, by the way, that "too rich" Bill Gates never fell for—one big reason why he remains the world's richest man here in early 2003.)

Let's not whisper that most over-projecting, conceited grumps have proven themselves wrong throughout history. That never stops a new crop of catastrophists from making overwrought forecasts and denigrating any who question them. They tend to be oblivious to the wider trends of their times. For example, long-time readers will remember how three years ago we told you about a Forbes columnist who claimed that a Dow decline to 3,600 was likely, and could last for years? Didn't happen. Not even close. The Dow as I write this is in the 8000s. And while the NASDAQ remains off its highs, it's also well off its lows and is rebounding faster than the Dow.

The truth is that the super-doomers are usually wrong in America. It's normal for them to be wrong. To this day, they vastly underestimate the synergistic power of optimism, resilience, and ambition in the modern US economy. Much like the ultra-greens, they snatch at short-term problems in order to argue for long-term catastrophe. They try to stretch short-term recoveries into long-term debacles.


Baffling Boom

Spring begins tomorrow. As we say here at TOA Daily, the positive is part of the objective. The forthcoming rebirth of nature's annual growth is a good time to reexamine our economic positives. There are quite a few.

Despite the tech stock shock, real consumer confidence—i.e., retail sales—are doing well. It's not as strong as it was a couple months ago—mainly due to the war uncertainty—but it's not bad. When a high jumper clears seven-and-a-half feet, he's still jumping well even if it's not his record. Investment money continues to move into America, as do brains and talent. New business start-ups are rebounding. Internet sales have quintupled in the last two years, soaring right through the so-called recession of 2001. With 238 months of growth out of the last 245, this remains the longest growth-to-decline period for a major nation in modern Western history. (I don't buy the theory that we actually hit recession in 2001. At worst, the economy might have experienced a negative blip for a month or two—but even that is unclear from revised data. It's not as cut-and-dried as the media tell you. In fact, don't be surprised if the recession is rescinded in one of the more red-faced "Oops!" episodes we've ever seen among the datacrats.) Despite the official Neandertal numbers, our own growth estimate suggests that the pace of US expansion is not 3%, but closer to 5 or 6% (roughly paralleling retails sales, which is often a better proxy for true growth as well as for true confidence.)

Yes, we're growing more slowly than during the hottest part of the last boom, but we're still in a long-term, healthy expansion. As our younger market participants are finally realizing, booms have slowdowns—and even sectoral contractions (e.g., the NASDAQ and much old-line manufacturing)—and are never smoothly continuous.

There's more positive news. Despite the bad-weather driven slump last month in new home sales, home ownership is at its best level in decades. Regardless of Fed chairman Greenspan's periodic grousing over the last seven years about imminent inflation, inflation is probably true deflation right now. TOA estimates that with quality improvements and other factors taken into account, deflation is running at about 1.5% a year. Gold prices, after having briefly hitting $370 an ounce a few months ago, have been sinking again as the dollar rebounds rapidly. Industrial investment in new companies is cruising close to the average of the best three years ever. Research and development are still picking up and there is no shortage of brainpower and talented labor—yet pay is good. TOA's index of individual income growth, after taxes, is moving ahead at about 5% annually. On top of all that, we're in the midst of a 10-year cut in US taxes, the good effects of which we're only beginning to feel. And new cut packages are moving through Congress.

The list of positives is long and deep.

In the face of so many optimistic economic facts, what accounts for the perpetual whining and griping—and at times, near panic—among certain media, academics, politicians, and professional bureaucrats—not to mention more than a handful of economists? As with the human condition itself, the reasons are multiple:

First, it's partly an ancient psychological phenomenon: As conditions improve, expectations rise faster. Man's imagination and desires always outpace his achievements. This is not exactly news. Socrates and others talked about it in Ancient Greece. Jewish and Chinese intellectuals have said as much for millennia. This is characteristic of any vigorous economy—not just ours. Ireland (still Europe's best by several measures), Spain, Australia, England, Taiwan, and others have reported the same phenomenon during periods of growth. It is a psychological impression that one is falling behind although he is moving ahead, sometimes briskly.

Envy is also involved. As some people look around and see others getting ahead faster, they resent it. They feel that they are losing ground, regardless of the fact that they may be gaining at a record rate compared to their own pasts. That shows why it's always important to judge yourself by where you've been, not just by some preconceived ideal or, worse, by what the Joneses are doing.


Press Pessimists

Even in the best of economies there will be people sliding into tough times—or rather, tougher times. With its astonishing "job machine," they are a relative rarity in America and therefore become news. They stand out. Good economies cannot solve everyone's problems. I doubt they ever will. People's perceived problems are always relative. Problems expand with the times. Definitions stretch as cultural prosperity and opportunity evolve. What people see as a problem today (e.g., lack of a widescreen HDTV or of DSL service) people yesterday didn't even think about. Nor does every down-and-outer want his problems solved. Welfare can be more than adequate to sustain a standard of living above subsistence in America and most of the West. Because the media tend to readily focus on hard luck stories, actual or exaggerated, the attention they get is disproportionate to their reality—especially when a slowdown occurs. The TV networks and major newspapers are masters at creating the impression that under the surface of the economic roadway there is a huge sinkhole ready to swallow us all.

Then there's a philosophical problem. Certain economists and politicians operate on outdated principles. For example, many analysts believe that prosperity inevitably generates runaway prices. Never mind that advocates of this school have been around since the early 1980s and have been proven wrong again and again as inflation has spiraled down. Old hypotheses die hard. Old advocates of them die harder. Misconceptions are the barbiturates of economic thought.

Finally, there's evidence that the media seek out sourpusses simply to get more variety in the name of "human interest." (Why does human interest always have to be negative?) That's why—as has been true every year or two in this long, long boom—we're seeing more hard luck stories, cases of people "falling through the cracks" (if not here, then overseas, maybe in Lower Mumbojumbo or some similarly enlightened place), and of endless interviews with off-beat economists and newsletter authors predicting the demise of good times or the worsening of "bad" ones. The latest fad is that the War on Terror will "soak up" economic vitality and cause a double-dip recession.

This gloomy media season won't last, so let's try not to take it too seriously. Here on the eve of Spring 2003, let's remind ourselves of the underlying positives in America. Let's recall that economic corrections can happen even in the best of times, just as they can in our personal lives—but that with resilience and reason we will survive them quite nicely. Let's keep our economic counsel and integrity and give optimistic facts their deserved place. Things are looking up. The Worriers of Winter are about to dive back into their caves. The Optimists of Spring are coming out, stretching and smiling in the sun. Things will be just fine.

This was his last in-depth post before the stroke that eventually killed him. With his opposition, I was able to stand reading Anti-War.com.

I haven't been able to do so since March, 2003. Their positions seem too much in line with the "blame America first" crowd.

News alert! Gunter Grass admits to having been drafted into the Waffen SS in WWII.

Crap! I'm tired! I think I'll head off to bed.

Oh! By the way! Jason Lewis is back in the Twin Cities. I've been enjoying his broadcasts since Tuesday.

Another good quote

This one's from The Chronicles of Mises:

George Reisman once again gave a splendid lecture entitled "The Benevolence of Capitalism." The thesis: capitalism promotes human life and well-being and does so for everyone. Amen, preach on!

Freedom is the foundation of personal safety and economic security. Some people think there is a conflict of security and freedom, but really freedom is the foundation of security. Why? Freedom is the absence of initiation of physical force. When one is free, one is safe and secure from common crimes. To the extent we have freedom we are safe and physically secure. Free from government, which is potentially much worse than a common criminal gang. Furthermore, where there is freedom there is peace abroad, because once again there is absence of force. Economic security under freedom derives from the fact that you can do whatever you want to do without using physical force. With the use of force prohibited, he must use his reason to find ways to increase his own well being with others through trade and production. Hence, during the age of capitalism a continuing increase in the supply of economically useable, accessible natural resources has been made possible.

BTW, I'm not going out of town this weekend, so I'll be checking up on the old blog Sat & Sun.

Thomas Sowell's article today,

"Studies prove....", makes a great point, "Many people who complain about the corrupting influence of money never seem to apply that to government money."
But he has a fix for us:

If high government officials were serious about wanting to know the facts, they could set up an independent statistical agency, along the lines of the General Accounting Office, to do studies of the effects of the policies of the operating agencies.

That would mean that the fox would no longer be in charge of the hen house, whether the fox was the Labor Department, the Commerce Department, or any of the other departments and agencies.

It would also mean that various bright ideas originating in Congress or the White House would now be exposed to the risk of being shown to be costly failures or even counterproductive. Whole careers could be ruined among both elected officials and bureaucrats.

Yeah, my heart would bleed for them.

On the other hand, I thought that that was what the GAO was supposed to do.

Voyageur Rendezvous, White Oak, 2006

I got some work for the old Image Shack!

Where to start?!

Well, I brought the wife and kids up a week ago Sunday, and set up the tent for them. Then I had to race back home and spend the week in the empty house pretending that life had meaning without them. Like TV before color it was...a regression.

They were as happy to see me as I was to see them Friday night. I intend to plan my life better in the future.

Here are my loved ones:


Craftsmanship of the highest order was on display! I don't know whom to start with!

The Clockwork Clown befriended my Rosie (I swear I took her picture, but I don't see it here), so I'll start with her. She's a fantastic, tiny little acrobat and contortionist who does a show with her big, strong, glib showman brother. I'll work on a "show-don't-tell" post about their show. But what they did for Rosie was teach her to make glass beads. I'll show you Rosie's accomplishments later, but here's Emerald's (the Clockwork Clown's) work:

I gotta get a better camera. The stuff is beautiful! The larger beads go for $20, and I'd say they're worth it.

I talked about my friend Dan the Blacksmith, who let me make a hook on his forge at Pine City last year. (That's a September Rendezvous, the "Fall Gathering", if you care to attend. Period attire-1760 to 1806-gets you in free! Heck! They probably wouldn't reject 1600-1840, as long as it has something to do with the fur trade.)

Where was I? Oh! Dan wasn't there, but a brand-new Rendezvouser, coaxed (for good reason, let me tell you) in be the same people-Dan and Stoni-who brought us in, displayed his brilliance at tanning and finishing animal hides. Here he is smoking a hide:


Dave is a true craftsman, and a wonderful gentleman. The next pic will show the beauty of his workmanship, but I have to tell you that he took down one of his own hides from the smoker to cure a hide for a visitor before we left on Sunday.


In his day job, he's a...well, since I don't have his permission to talk about it, we'll call him a music teacher. His buckskins are as smooth and soft as silk, and he charges far too little for them. I've got to get six or seven for a shirt and pants for myself before he raises his price. Did you notice that I called that pic "silk-soft wares?"

Other traders at the Rendezvous include my daughter's friend Emma. This is her blanket:


I'll stop there, but I'd be happy to show all my pix, including the sword fight that broke out outside my tent [or tount, as Aliina insists on calling it--now I know how languages change over time], the magnificent woodworks of two of my neighbors'-one who specialized in boxes and one in noggins.

I could use a new noggin. Mine is tiny. If you show up at a neighbor's tent with a tiny noggin, you won't get much. You can't!

The bigger the noggin the better, they say. Anyway, the guy I failed to buy from has some beautiful, big ones to choose from.

All right! I can't stand it either!

I, stupidly, didn't get his card (although, maybe the fact that he was an extreme smart-ass had something to do with that)).

Just remember: take care of your noggin, and she'll take care of you.

I was up at the White Oak Rendezvous for the weekend

I believe I mentioned that before.

We had a good time. I plan to bug you with pictures later today.

Ron, especially, needs to check out Matt Furey.

[Matt Furey]

I'm a total convert. Here's a couple paragraphs, from an ebook of his:

...[W]hose kidding whom? Most people, worldwide, have been sold the 'weights only' hype for so long I probably have no chance of ever convincing them that my way is right. ...But I sell what I believe in. Period.

...

If what I say upsets you and 'the others' who think like you - and you choose to keep pumping your iron, you'll hear no argument from me. It's really none of my business. If, however, you ever join that group of people who are racked with pain from years of weight training - or who simply didn't get the results they wanted from the practice, I'll be here for ya.

I direct this at my role-model and life-coach. You gotta read this ebook, Ron. Furey was a swimming champ and a wrestling national champion (NCAA-Div I). And a Kung Fu World Champion.

I know that wrestling was the hardest thing I've ever done. If you haven't experienced it, imagine spending three minutes in close contact with a person who is opposing - with physical force - every motion you want to make. That physical force you're facing, btw, is applied with great ingenuity, experience and understanding of what you're up to.

I guess I'm saying that I'm assuming Matt Furey is my new hero. And, Oddly enough, he's pretty much exactly my age.

Mel Gibson Being Stupid (invadesoda)

As someone who has defended the film "The Passion of The Christ" against charges of anti-Semitism, I am entirely disgusted with Mel Gibson's recently reported anti-Semitic remarks . I had defended against criticisms of the movie because I saw them as veiled attacks from people who had a bone to pick against Christianity itself. Gibson's father has denied the Holocaust, but I was sure the son was smarter than that. I was wrong.

I agree with Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League that "his tirade finally reveals his true self and shows that his protestations during the debate over his film 'The Passion of the Christ,' that he is such a tolerant, loving person, were a sham." Some will now try to say the film is not anti-Semitic even though its creator is. That rings false to me. Here's why.

I have never been one inclined to complain much about left-leaning bias in the media, simply because most journalists in the media are left-leaning. I believe someone can be left-leaning and still report fairly in some cases, but what I don't believe is that someone can be left-leaning without that outlook seeping into their most important journalism. To be consistent, I have to consider Mel Gibson's work the same way. An anti-Semite can no more make a film about Jews that's not anti-Semitic than a left-leaning journalist's body of work can fail to be left-leaning.

I never got around to seeing the movie, and now I have no reason to.