Sobering Thoughts |
|
|
Comments on politics, the culture, economics, and sports by Paul Tuns.
I am editor-in-chief of "The Interim," Canada's life and family newspaper, and author of "Jean Chretien: A Legacy of Scandal" (2004) and "The Dauphin: The Truth about Justin Trudeau" (2015).
I am some combination of conservative/libertarian, standing athwart history yelling "bullshit!"
You can follow me on Twitter (@ptuns).
Archives
|
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Against grievance mongering Nothing quite offends me as much as how easily people become offended. Theodore Dalrymple recently addressed this phenomenon in City Journal: Unfortunately, sensitivity to slurs can become hypersensitivity to them, which in its own way can be as pathological as the insensitivity of those who utter them. A man who disregards others’ feelings becomes brutish by habit; a man who focuses too closely on his own feelings falls in love with grievance and constantly seeks a cause for it, becoming fragile in a way that lacks good faith. This insincere, self-aggravating fragility tends to confer great power on authority—which gladly assumes the duty to protect the feelings of the fragile, for then it will have the locus standi for almost infinite meddling. Whatever happened the schoolyard wisdom of "sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me"? Sadly, people's precious feelings are hurt not only by names or even genuine criticism but the slight of disagreeing. I recently offended an acquaintance by not agreeing that a certain movie was great -- and this is not the first time that has happened. It's like you are judging their intelligence and taste by having a different opinion. People should grow up and they could do that by remembering the schoolyard wisdom of sticks and stones. From police force to police service A move, not in the right direction. Five Feet of Fury illustrates why. End the debt-ceiling debates I'm lining up with the liberal economists (Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers at Bloomberg and Matthew Yglesias at Slate) on this one: the debt-ceiling debate is harmful. But it isn't just liberal economists; last Summer Thomas Sowell pointed out that the debt ceiling was an ineffective restraint on government spending. I have two concerns with the debt ceiling: 1) the political problems noted by Sowell and 2) the economic problems noted by Stevenson/Wolfers and Yglesias. But the combination of the two makes the debt-ceiling kabuki dance particularly pernicious: government continues to grow (and both parties are to blame, although one side usually gets "credit" for avoiding an economic crisis) while stocks take a huge hit and the economy stalls (hurting retirees' investments and worsening unemployment). There are real-life consequences to the phony political maneuvering of the debt-ceiling debate. There are two solutions: find serious politicians who are willing to tackle government spending so that the federal government is not constantly bumping up against the debt-ceiling necessitating an economically ruinous political debate or scrap the debt ceiling. I don't think there are serious politicians -- certainly not enough of them -- so that means scrapping the debt ceiling. The problem, of course, is that plagued as we are by non-serious politicians, the political class does not understand or care about the real-life ramifications of their political actions. Toronto's 'Canadian-Chinese' food BlogTo has the list of the six best Canadian-Chinese food restaurants in the city. Canadian-Chinese is an apt description of what most North Americans think of when they hear the term Chinese food. I get it's not authentic, but as Darren "DKLo" Susilo says, it is "a legitimate type of cuisine" and while I'm not quite Cliff Barnes from Dallas, I'm a fan of Chinese. I like Chinese, including the round battered meat with orange gloop, but I especially like the half-decent establishments where you can eat for under $6, although I'm not opposed to spending more for better quality. Sadly, over the past 15 years the overall quality and availability of Canadian-Chinese in Toronto has declined, mostly because the growing immigrant population has replaced the fake Chinese with more authentic ethnic foods and the growth of Asian fusion to satisfy the demand of faux sophisticates. Our family's four favourite Chinese-Canadian restaurants in North York and Thornhill have all closed in the last three to five years (Lichee Garden Thornhill was the best). Susilo admits his list is not comprehensive but I don't understand how he doesn't mention Spadina Garden which has the city's best lemon chicken, General Tso Chicken, crispy chilli chicken, Hunan beef, and crispy ginger beef. Most Toronto Chinese restaurants make sub-standard ginger beef. Interestingly, Owen Sound, located about three hours northwest of Toronto and which has a population of about 30,000, has more than a half-dozen Chinese food restaurants with several of a quality that matches most Toronto offerings (although not as good as Spadina Garden or the late Lichee Garden). Of course, the fact that a smaller community has so many of the same kind of restaurant suggests they should be good because the competition should force the poor ones out of business. That said, the quality of the sweet and sour chicken balls is significantly lower, but their fried rices are pretty good. Perhaps relevant to this discussion is the fact I don't like onions and won't eat fish or seafood, both severely limiting qualities when evaluating restaurants in general and Chinese in particular. Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Interesting presidential contest fact John Nagl pointed out in the WaPo on the weekend that, "For the first time in modern American history, neither major candidate for the presidency has any military experience." Severed human foot sent to Conservative Party HQ This is the big story in Canada right now. How long 'til the Harper government gets blamed by the opposition parties or some CBC journalist for leading the perpetrator to take such an extreme action? Elite denigrate real work Thomas Sowell has a column on how certain people -- let's call them snots -- push "meaningful work" at the expense of "menial" work. Sowell says: In the real world, many things are done simply because they have to be done, not because doing them brings immediate pleasure to those who do them. Some people take justifiable pride in working to take care of their families, whether or not the work itself is great. Sowell says this denigration of menial jobs de-legitimizes hard if unpleasant work and the lack of respect shown to these jobs might be a disincentive to people working because when the elite look down on the work, some people will feel that there is little dignity in doing them. Furthermore, Sowell says that the elite snots denigrate so-called menial work because they have contempt for the exchange system of the marketplace and prefer to impose their wishes on society. Does Wal-Mart lower housing prices? Critics of Wal-Mart claim that building a Wal-Mart lowers nearby property values. Tyler Cowen points to a study that suggests otherwise. Looking at 159 Wal-Marts built between 2000 and 2006 Devin G. Pope and Jaren C. Pope found: Using a difference-in-differences specification, our estimates suggest that a new Walmart store actually increases housing prices by between 2 and 3 percent for houses located within 0.5 miles of the store and by 1 to 2 percent for houses located between 0.5 and 1 mile. I've known a few American locations where Wal-Marts have been built and in every case they seem to have been at the front end of a revitalization of the community and in one case, the creation of a community that previously had not existed just outside the city (Winter Haven, Florida). The same is true in three locations in Ontario. The UN sucks Via David Akin: Zimbabwe will co-host (with Zambia) the 2013 United Nations World Tourism Organisation. It is hilarious how government officials from tinpot dictatorships talk. Zimbabwe's Tourism and Hospitality minister Walter Mzembi told NewsDay: WM: We have to put Zimbabwe in the right frame of mind, of a tourism host country, the entirety of it. We want to host the world. Therefore all our actions and speech should converge on this. Monday, May 28, 2012
'5 Classic Teen Sex-and-Drug Freakouts' Reason's Nick Gillespie on scares that didn't warrant the hype from "the choking game" to "butt-chugging" to "rainbow parties." These are all hoaxes, but unlike Gillespie, I don't think they're written about to sell newspapers or magazines. Indeed, it's hard to link particular features to sales and even if you could, these stories ran during the continuous slide in print sales. Instead, I think that these hoax stories result from cruddy journalism -- some are created in the imaginations of reporters or they are cases of taking a single incident and turning it into a phenomenon. Also, teenagers lie to reporters. This is about more than disenfranchisement According to Kady O'Malley, Ted Opitz, whose victory in the 2012 federal election in Etobicoke Centre was nullified by an Ontario court earlier this month, says in announcing that he will appeal the deicision: "it is in the public interest that election results be respected... and that voters not be disenfranchised." Yes, but it is also in the public interest to have fair and credible elections -- elections in which there is no doubt that the voters were qualified to cast a ballot. Sunday, May 27, 2012
Sure the Tories aren't the only ones to do this The Ottawa Citizen reports that "Nearly one in four defeated Conservative candidates in the 2011 election received a taxpayer-funded federal job within the last year." The rate for defeated candidates in Quebec is 40%. The Prime Minister's Office, of course, defends those who were appointed as qualified but that is beside the point; this kind of stuff feeds voter cynicism. Good science-based pro-GMO website In recent weeks I've had numerous discussions about genetically modified organisms (GMOs). I wish I had been familiar with Biofortified, if only to direct others to the website. Tyler Cowen, a GMO defender, describes it as a "Good website about GMOs." It's post "An inconvenient truth being ignored by GM wheat protesters Take the Flour Back," is a typically good post. 'The college-for-all crusade has outlived its usefulness' That's the opening sentence in Robert J. Samuelson's WaPo column. Samuelson explains: College became the ticket to the middle class, the be-all-and-end-all of K-12 education. If you didn’t go to college, you’d failed. Improving “access” — having more students go to college — drove public policy. We overdid it. The obsessive faith in college has backfired. For starters, we’ve dumbed down college. The easiest way to enroll and retain more students is to lower requirements. Even so, dropout rates are high; at four-year schools, fewer than 60 percent of freshmen graduate within six years. Many others aren’t learning much... The fixation on college-going, justified in the early postwar decades, stigmatizes those who don’t go to college and minimizes their needs for more vocational skills. It cheapens the value of a college degree and spawns the delusion that only the degree — not the skills and knowledge behind it — matters. I fully endorse Samuelson's suggestion that more be done to provide vocational training. '10 Favorite Hate-Crime Hoaxes' Gavin McInnes’s "10 Favorite Hate-Crime Hoaxes" notes that a good fake hate crime trumps a real crime in which the perps are a PC-protected ethnic group and/or the victims are whites. Anyway, people need to be reminded of these hoaxes so that they will learn to be sceptical when the media hypes crime nonsense in the future. The list begins but certainly doesn't end with Tawana Brawley. (HT: Five Feet of Fury) Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Amnesty International almost as big a joke as the UN Canadian Press reports: "Canada's failure to arrest former U.S. president George W. Bush during a visit to B.C. is cited by Amnesty International in its annual report on human rights atrocities around the globe." Remember when AI was not as political and did good things like highlight political prisoners and organized letter-writing campaigns to free them? Follow me on Twitter @ptuns is my Twitter handle. I try to keep snark to a minimum and generally link to stories & studies that do not require comment. People generally like my avatar even if it makes them hungry. Heh, Democrats are unexcited about their candidate, too The Washington Post reports that for the third time in three weeks, Barack Obama won a primary with only six in ten Democratic primary voters. In West Virginia and Arkansas, Obama's opponent won about 40% of the vote and in Kentucky, "uncommitted" had about 58% of the vote. Of course, these are small sample sizes -- practically no one shows up for the primaries when an incumbent president is facing what is effectively a paper candidate. It is possible that in yesterday's near-south primaries (Kentucky and Arkansas), Obama was facing a backlash from voters within his party over his newly announced pro-same-sex marriage stance. Tuesday, May 22, 2012
What's wrong with fluff? And is The Avengers fluff? Writing about The Avengers, Eric Mataxas of Breakpoint.org offers one of those humourless commentaries about television and movies for which religious conservatives are known that makes all social conservatives look like boring and self-righteous assholes. (For a great critique of why Christians should be in but not of the film and television culture, read this Rick McGinnis column from the February 2012 The Interim.) Mataxas complains of The Avengers: In fact, there were no ideas at all — the phrase that comes to mind is “mindless spectacle.” I am not saying that it wasn’t entertaining. It was, in a “popcorn movie” sort of way. But just while there are times when munching on popcorn is okay, no one puts popcorn at the base of their food pyramid. Likewise, while the occasional “popcorn movie” is okay as an occasional diversion, a steady diet of nothing but mindless entertainment is not good for us. Yet, when it comes to popular culture, “mindless” is increasingly the least-worst option. All I hear is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It isn't that Mataxas is incorrect -- of course popcorn cannot be the basis of a nutritious diet, but why pick on The Avengers. I would argue that a generous dose of popcorn movies is fine -- we need escape or diversion or whatever one wants to call it. As long as we aren't living for entertainment, there is nothing wrong with living with a fairly sizeable amount of it. And there is certainly nothing wrong with enjoying movies for their art. As Tom Hiddleston, a star of the movie, wrote in The Guardian, "Superhero movies also represent the pinnacle of cinema as 'motion picture'." We can enjoy movie-making as a form of art and appreciate when it is well done. Enjoying the non-serious in a serious or non-serious way is certainly defensible as long as it doesn't replace or crowd out what is serious and important. But is The Avengers really a fluff movie, as Mataxas says? Kelly Reed at Christian Post would disagree, saying that Captain America, for example, provides "an excellent opportunity to connect younger Americans with the values that have made this country great while at the same time giving warning of the path we are on." (Warning there are spoilers in Reed's post.) Pastor Dave Online explores the issue of submission and (Christian) freedom in The Avengers. Perhaps Mataxas didn't notice the themes of freedom in The Avengers, but if he admits them he can't rail against mindless entertainment. In this video Alex Merced offers thoughtful comments on libertarian themes in The Avengers (good and bad in human nature and how that is regulated through self-control and self-government, unrestrained use of liberty, order and justice not being intrinsically tied to the state, and other issues). Rebecca Cusey gets the political messaging wrong, but at least she sees that there is something in the movie to discuss, to think about. Not all movies need to be "burdened with glorious purpose" as The Avengers villain Loki claims to be. I'll leave the last word to Mr. Mataxas to Heath Ledger's Joker: "why so serious?" Three and out 3. This past weekend marked the beginning of interleague play for the 2012 season. Baseball Prospectus has provided free access to Joe Sheehan's anti-interleague article from 2008. Three key points: A) interleague play necessitates unequal scheduling and therefore helps and hurts different teams in the playoff hunt, B) there is no reason to ruin all of baseball for the sake of a handful of desired match-ups (Mets vs Yankees, Angels vs Dodgers and White Sox vs Cubs), and C) if interleague games were such a draw, they'd be scheduled during the week and in April and September when fans are less likely to come to the ballpark than the beautiful June and July weekends on which interleague contests are presently scheduled. 2. Al Yellon at SB Nation makes the case for the National League adopting the designated hitter. The DH has been around for 40 years so that is enough of a reason to justify keeping it. I'm a fan of the DH in the American League but oppose it becoming part of the NL. With interleague play, enough damage to the distinctiveness of each league has been done and getting rid of this most visible difference would essentially make the two leagues mere conferences in MLB and probably be the next step to having more games played between the NL and AL (as will the move of the Houston Astros to the AL next year, creating two leagues with an odd number of teams). Organized Baseball should be careful how much they tinker with a sport steeped in tradition. 1. Aroldis Chapman has been named the closer in Cincinnati -- long after he actually earned it. But as Paul Swydon at Fangraphs says, if he has finally learned to control his stuff, as Reds skipper Dusty Baker says to justify the new responsibilities, that only begs the question of why not insert Chapman into the rotation? And as Jonah Keri notes, if Chapman is as dominant in the closer role as he was in setup, he may never get the chance to start. Pitchers are more valuable as good starters than dominant closers because a quality start has more value than pitching with a three-run lead in the ninth. And then Chapman gets arrested for doing 93 mph -- with a suspended license. Monday, May 21, 2012
Thousands of Ontario college students require remedial math The Toronto Star reported on Sunday on the findings of the College Mathematics Project: Thousands of first-year students at Ontario community colleges are taking catch-up courses in basic math skills — fractions, decimals, percentages — that they should have learned in grades 6, 7 and 8, according to an alarming new study... "We’re expressing concern that 8,300 students are taking preparatory and foundational math in first-year college, but the vast majority cover concepts introduced in grades 6, 7 and 8," said co-author Graham Orpwood... A growing number of community colleges — including most in the GTA — offer catch-up courses for first-year students who are weak in math but need it for their field. Others offer broad first-year “foundation” programs such as pre-business and pre-technology that include math review. When researchers looked to see which elements of grades 11 and 12 math these courses covered, they were startled to find concepts from back in grade school. Yet these college students have graduated from high school with at least three math credits... Still, when the college study examined 19 pre-technology foundation programs and 11 in pre-business, it found every one reviewed the “order of operations” for algebra first taught in Grade 6 (the memory trick is BEDMAS; do what’s in brackets first, then exponents, then division, multiplication, addition and subtraction). Moreover, all pre-business courses reviewed fractions, 91 per cent covered decimals and 82 per cent covered percentages. Star education reporter Louise Brown asks: "Why are math skills so weak?" The answer, according to the study's authors, is that we undervalue math skills. That's probably true, but the more obvious answer is that the education system is failing students. The reason we have college students who need to review grade school mathematics is that our teachers, schools, education system, and government have failed the students they are supposed to teach. I'd like to see the past decade's worth of graduates launch a class action suit against teachers, teachers' unions, school administrators, and the Ministry of Education and sue their asses off. Was Hayek against all welfare? Kevin Vallier at Bleeding Heart Libertarians has a thoughtful post on whether all welfare states inevitably lead to serfdom. He says: Hayek's critique of the welfare state simply falls out of his broader conception of the legal order of a free people. If you have a patterned principle of distributive justice, one that would license a welfare state of tinkering, then you’re going to have to constantly interfere with liberty in increasingly objectionable ways to get the distribution right... But contrast this with being forced to pay a modest share of your income to provide a universal basic income, with clear, simple tax rates and clear, simple funds provided to those who fall below, again, a clear, simple, public threshold. That sort of welfare state does not seem to make us serfs or lead to worse forms of serfdom. So the simple answer is no, Hayek was not opposed to all welfare. The difference between a Hayekian libertarian and the leftist welfare state liberal is that the libertarian actually means modest (low) level of taxation with a minimal administrative interference to carry out the redistribution of income. It has been said that the difference between conservatives and libertarians are that the former want a limited government (limited in power by constitution and tradition) and the latter minimal government (as small as possible with few laws). The obvious best course is a combination of the two. Politicians will scold lobbyists with one wagging finger while glad-handing them with another five The Washington Post reports: The visitor logs for Jan. 17 – one of the most recent days available – show that the lobbying industry Obama has vowed to constrain is a regular presence at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. The records also suggest that lobbyists with personal connections to the White House enjoy the easiest access. More than any president before him, Obama pledged to change the political culture that has fueled the influence of lobbyists. As Don Boudreaux says, "Mr. Obama’s pledge to exclude lobbyists from the White House was, from the start, about as believable as a madam’s pledge to exclude men willing to pay for sex from the whore house." I'm not against lobbying, but I am against the hypocrisy, moralizing, and political posturing practised by most politicians. The Post has collected the information and posted it on a searchable database, "The White House Visitor Database." Sunday, May 20, 2012
Segregating black votes That essentially is what gerrymandering seats to create majority-minority seats does: it hives off predominantly black areas off for safe seats for black Democratic politicians to give white Republican politicians a better chance to win nearby congressional districts with fewer black voters (read: reliable Democratic voters). This system doesn't help black voters -- it helps politicians. Abigail Thernstrom, an expert in black America and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal and she explains how gerrymandering seats harms blacks and politics in general. Thernstrom says: "The civil rights community—they aren't idiots," she says. "They know the clock is ticking. If you don't have black ghettos—if 50% of the black population has moved to the suburbs, which is the accurate figure—you've got a problem creating a safe black seat" ... What suppresses minority turnout, she says, is not voter-ID laws but racial gerrymandering. "Turnout is very low in these safe black and Hispanic districts. And why shouldn't it be? There's no real competition." That is, to make safe black seats, you need segregated voters, people who don't integrate with the rest of society. Chinese and Hispanic neighbhourhoods are not large enough on their own (generally) so they are part of competitive Congressional Districts and will have their needs attended to be politicians who need their votes. Blacks on the other hand can be safely ignored by their politicians because they are a captive to their Democratic masters. Speaking of complete bullshit and brilliant scams ... Mark Steyn on the self-invented Barack Obama (and Elizabeth Warren). Modern art: complete bullshit or brilliant scam? Or a bit of both? The Daily Telegraph reports: Invisible: Art about the Unseen 1957 - 2012 opens on June 12 and includes an empty plinth, a canvas of invisible ink and an unseen labyrinth... Also in the exhibition will be Warhol's work Invisible Sculpture - dating from 1985 - which consists of an empty plinth, on which he had once briefly stepped, one of many explorations of the nature of celebrity. Another, 1000 Hours of Staring is a blank piece of paper at which artist Tom Friedman has stared repeatedly over the space of five years, and another by the same artist Untitled (A Curse) is an empty space which has been cursed by a witch. David Warren prefers real sex Ottawa Citizen columnist David Warren says that the real problem with the Canada Science and Technology Museum's "SEX: A Tell-all Exhibition" is not that it's about sex but that's pornographic. Warren explains: Pornography, contrary to what is currently taught in our schools, is quite easy to distinguish. It makes sexual suggestion the central aim; it hits you over the head by making every detail of a composition subordinate to that aim, reversing, as it were, the lines of polarity. The difference between “mild” and “hard” pornography is not, as is taught, a difference of degree. It is a difference of tactic. Soft pornography works better for some purposes, and on some people; hard is required for others. Pornography is barbaric. It is a form of sexual assault, to which the sexual revolution has blinded most of us. Short of direct physical force, it is perhaps the cheapest and crassest device of human manipulation, trumping cash. It impinges on the consciousness; it is a purposeful invasion of human serenity. Porn is not sex. Those who are complaining about the museum are not uptight, anti-sex prudes, but people (mostly religious and traditionalists) who want to protect sex from being degraded by this cheap imitation of pornography. Saturday, May 19, 2012
The UN is an obscene waste of time and money Every word of this report by UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Olivier de Schutter is utter nonsense, containing, as John Robson points out, a litany of faddish leftist causes. As Robson notes, it takes a special kind of idiocy to think that a "lack of food makes you fat," but that's what de Schutter wrote in "Olivier De Schutter, Special Rapporteur on the right to food: Visit to Canada from 6 to 16 May 2012." (Creative title.) Promoting everything from restoration of the Wheat Board monopoly, higher minimum wage laws and the end of free trade, de Schutter believes, says Robson, "saying 'make it so' counts far more" than the things (private property, productivity, hard work, markets) that actually create prosperity and feed people. In other words, he is a great fit for the United Nations. Another question is why was the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food even in Canada when there are ... you know ... places where real food deprivation is occurring -- places like Sudan or Kenya or West Africa. Of course, there is no need to hector their leaders about restoring a Wheat Board monopoly, so Olivier de Schutter might not have much to say to these countries. Judge nullifies Etobicoke Centre 2011 election results CBC reports that "Justice Thomas Lederer set aside 79 ballots in his decision Friday in Toronto" and in doing so nullified the May 2, 2011 election result that saw Conservative Ted Opitz defeat Liberal incumbent Borys Wrzesnewskyj. Some people will want to make this an issue of Conservative dirty tricks, but if you read Lederer's reasoning, another story emerges: The voting irregularities included some people who weren't on the list but cast ballots after being vouched for by others at the polling station, some people without the proper paperwork completed, and others in which voters cast ballots when they were registered at other polling stations or didn't live in the riding. Lederer said the core of the case was about the "confidence that Canadians must have in our electoral process." "If that confidence is diminished, it follows that our interest in, and respect for, government will be similarly diminished. It surely follows that if people who are not qualified to vote were permitted to do so, or if there is a concern that people may have been permitted to vote more than once, confidence in our electoral process will fade." Lederer noted that it seemed the election was conducted by responsible public officials and well-intentioned individuals who were motivated by nothing less than a desire to do the job properly. But it can't be good enough to accept some people voted by registration and without registration certificates, without poll books recording who vouched for whom, and without having their names on the final list of voters. "Our system requires more," Lederer wrote in the 40-page decision. To me, this is an issue about how we conduct elections and who gets to vote. The Left resists stringent rules regarding who can vote in terms of requiring individuals to prove who they say they are and that they be on voting lists. A voter card from Elections Canada along with ID to prove the bearer of the card is who he says he is would ensure that these problems do not occur. Whether or not it is Elections Canada or an individual's responsibility to ensure that citizens are properly listed before they enter the voting booth is a valid debate, but that determination should be made before a person shows up to vote. The current system is open to deliberate abuse, fraud, and unintentional error. (To be clear, Justice Lederer says the errors seem unintentional.) Tougher standards for ensuring the validity of voters would prevent this kind of problem in the future. Will the Liberals and NDP back such measures or would they (as they have in the past) claim that such efforts are indeed part of an agenda to suppress the vote? Integrity of voter eligibility is essential and the Etobicoke Centre vote was unable to do that. That's the real story here. Friday, May 18, 2012
Why do Americans work 30% more hours than Europeans? Divorce might be a contributing factor. At VoxEU, Indraneel Chakraborty, Hans Holter, and Serhiy Stepanchuk report on their findings regarding the causes of the gap between European and American hours worked and they say divorce has led women to the workforce: Our divorce argument is further supported by empirical studies finding that US states that adopted "no-fault" divorce laws in the 1970s experienced a spike in female labour supply relative to other states (no-fault divorces do not require a showing of wrong-doing by either party). This is also precisely the time when Americans gradually started to work more than the Europeans. Most European countries adopted no-fault divorce laws later and still have significantly lower divorce rates. Our tax argument finds support in studies pointing out that European and American tax levels were about equal around 1970 when they began to diverge. We conclude that in response to changing social norms, American women have moved to insure their own future by working harder, while European men in response to higher taxes have found it less attractive to work long hours. This is actually pretty obvious. What might be mildly surprising is that Chakraborty, Holter, and Stepanchuk found, "European women work less than American women, irrespective of whether we look at single or married women, or women with and without children," and that "women are typically the largest contributors to the aggregate differences." Faulty assumptions lead to bad policy ideas Robin Hanson observes that "I’ve noticed that recommendations for action based on a vision of the future are based on an idea that something must 'eventually' occur" -- for example, "We will run out of coal, so we’d better find replacements soon" or "Chips will use X instead of silicon, so our chip firms must use X now, to not be left behind" or "The more fertile stupid will make the world dumb, unless we stop them now." Hanson explains the assumption behind this line of thinking: The common pattern: project forward a current trend to an extreme, while assuming other things don’t change much, and then recommend an action which might make sense if this extreme change were to happen all at once soon. But, as Hanson explains, this is usually a problem: This is usually a mistake. The trend may not continue indefinitely. Or, by the time a projected extreme is reached, other changes may have changed the appropriate response. Or, the best response may be to do nothing for a long time, until closer to big consequences. Or, the best response may be to do nothing, ever – not all negative changes can be profitably resisted. Red China's interest in Africa is nothing new In recent years there have been numerous articles examining China's interest in Africa as the Asia giant eyes the Dark Continent's resources. As Elspeth Huxley explained in National Review nearly a half century ago (October 6, 1964) during the post-colonial retreat from Africa, the ChiComms have long been interested although at that time for more geopolitical reasons: And then, suddenly last January, Red China took over Zanzibar. Nominally, it’s under an African government and, even more nominally, united with Tanganyika, as a result of President Julius Nyerere’s eleventh-hour move to keep a stretch of ocean, however narrow, between his country and the Chinese Communists. From the outset, Peking’s men occupying ministerial posts in Zanzibar’s government have flouted the agreement which was supposed to weld together this little clove island and the huge, sprawling, undeveloped mainland territory. The Chinese put the crunch on Zanzibar and now control the key positions, such as Information (there’s a total censorship) and Police. Soon after the take-over, about 7,000 peaceful Arabs and Indians were massacred and, later, thousands more packed into dhows with insufficient food and water, and shipped off in the general direction of an Asia none of them had ever seen, destitute and helpless. Zanzibar is still a member of the British Commonwealth. In nearby Dar es Salaam, the Chinese Embassy mushroomed so alarmingly that President Nyerere, supported by his colleagues in Kenya and Uganda, tried to impose a limit of ten to the size of all embassy staffs. It didn’t work. Dar es Salaam’s Chinese Embassy has become the main center for intrigue and subversion between Brazzaville and the Indian Ocean. (Footnote: the largest automobile ever imported into Kenya recently arrived — for the Chinese Embassy.) Three and out 3. New York Yankee LOOGY Boone Logan -- has there even been such a LOOGY name? -- has 11 strikeouts in four innings over his past four appearances. Of the 16 batters he faced over those games, he struck out 11. Freakish for a left-handed reliever who hadn't struck out anyone in the six games he appeared before this streak began, and just two K's in his previous nine appearances. 2. After how the Kansas City Royals dealt with promising young starter Danny Duffy's injury -- no MRI, no time on the DL, just a skipped start, and now he'll miss the next year because he needs Tommy John surgery -- Matthew Pouliot of Hardball Talk explains the Royals are stupid not cursed. That organization is colossally stupid. 1. Over at Grantland, Rany Jazayerli explains why the Baltimore Orioles are doing so well but says they probably aren't good enough to make the playoffs. The Birds usually get worse as the season goes on, so they'll have to buck recent history. Still, it is a very interesting story about how Baltimore got good and why the Orioles have a chance to be a 500 team this season. Thursday, May 17, 2012
Trayvon Martin case was never as straightfoward as the race hucksters pretended it was Reason's Hit & Run: George Zimmerman was diagnosed with a broken nose, two black eyes and lacerations after his encounter with Trayvon Martin, lending support to his story that the shooting of Martin occurred in response to an assault. Autopsy results on Martin showed injuries to his knuckles. A 'Conservative' senator defends museum's pornographic sex display for students The Ottawa Citizen headline: "Tory senator slams heritage minister over sexhibition criticism." I haven't even read the article but I know that the senator in question must be Nancy Ruth. Again, not having read the article, I bet Ruth says the exhibit is fine and indeed it is precisely the kind of thing teens need to see. Andrea Mrozek, manager of research and communications at the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, went to the taxpayer-funded Museum of Science and Technology to see the "SEX: A Tell-all Exhibition" herself and comes away with a report about a mannequin's erogenous zones which guests are encouraged to "delicately" touch. The exhibit has a lot about sex but little about relationships. I guess that's "science" but it isn't very educational. However, the whole idea that students -- the exhibit was designed for those 12 and over -- don't get information about sex elsewhere so this entire enterprise is necessary, is just plain silly. Society is saturated with and obsessed with sex. Fondling mannequins shouldn't qualify as educational any more than any other pornographic display. Why don't we just save time and get our schools to bring in hookers so the Grade 7 and 8 kids can give it a go. And I bet Nancy Ruth wouldn't have a problem with that, either, as long as a diversity of prostitutes (straight and gay and whatever) were provided so that every taste and proclivity could be entertained and explored. The socialist case for ads on pro jerseys? Michael Kruse writes in Grantland arguing in favour of cluttering the empty space on North American pro sports jerseys by selling advertisements and making athletes walking billboards or human commercials or whatever. As much as this seems to be a capitalist dream, he is essentially providing a socialist argument: Ads on a team's jerseys? They could interfere with or at least make more complicated certain players' individual sponsorship opportunities. Listen to this cool Freakonomics podcast. So if the Miami Heat, say, mandated that every member of the team wear, oh, Carnival Cruise jerseys, then LeBron James almost certainly couldn't shill for Royal Caribbean. It's hard, I guess, to think this way when everybody involved seems so rich (and for the most part is so rich), but it's the principle. Ads on jerseys represent, at least in theory, a more equitable distribution of the money made by selling this last virgin space. No ads on jerseys, on the other hand, provides sustenance to a policy that actually funnels additional wealth to an infinitesimal sliver of the super-elite. The mere possibility of more collective benefit is thus scuttled. I should like the idea and in fact I don't mind it in pro soccer, and wouldn't object to its introduction to sports I don't care about like the NBA and NHL, and am even open to the idea of introducing ads on jerseys for college sports (including ones I watch like college hoops), and actually like all the logos on race car drivers, but I'm totally opposed to the idea of pro football players and pro baseball players adding sponsor's brand names to their jerseys. In this case tradition trumps capitalism; but as Kruse points out, it's essentially socialist, so whatever my real objections (nostalgia), I'll claim I'm making a principled stand against creeping socialism. It's almost always too early for veep speculation What's crazier? Suggesting Puerto Rico Gov. Luis Fortuño as Mitt Romney's running mate or Bush-era attorney general John Ashcroft? Those are among the 15 names on Quin Hillyer's list at The American Spectator. As if the airport experience doesn't suck enough Five Feet of Fury has a great line: "CNN: that irritating background noise at the airport." Funny thing about CNN vs. Fox: whenever I travel in the U.S. I notice that Fox News is on in stores, bars, and other public but privately owned establishments, but CNN is played at airports. Quote of the day "The kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic." -- H.L. Mencken Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Mark Cuban on universities (he's not keen on them) Internet entrepreneur and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban thinks that a university education is over-valued and that getting a student loan is too easy. His long post, entitled "The Coming Meltdown in College Education & Why The Economy Won’t Get Better Any Time Soon," is worth a read as he compares the education bubble to the housing bubble and hypothesizes that the lagging economy is related to graduates who cannot buy stuff (cars, houses) because they are saddled with too much debt from school. This is Cuban's bottom line: As an employer I want the best prepared and qualified employees. I could care less if the source of their education was accredited by a bunch of old men and women who think they know what is best for the world. I want people who can do the job. I want the best and brightest. Not a piece of paper. A university education gives you a very expensive piece of paper. Furthermore, the "Higher Education Industry" is unsustainable, mostly because it is not meeting the needs of a modern society and hurting students (the future workforce and job creators). As Cuban says, these problems "will all lead to a de-levering and a de-stabilization of the University system as we know it. And it can’t happen fast enough." Alternatives, including apprenticeships and online and private schools closely tied to industry (to meet its needs) will arise to take the place of existing schools. I'm not as sure about this; inertia is a powerful force and it isn't just potential employers young adults need to please but parents who (mistakenly) view a university degree as something desirable. I also think most businesses are insufficiently imaginative and will rely on universities to credentialize prospective employees. Some of this sounds like Peter Thiel; perhaps Cuban, like Thiel, can pay intelligent, entrepreneurial young people to drop out of college. Right after I promised my wife I won't buy any books for a while ... I discover that Reason's Brian Doherty has a new book: "Ron Paul's rEVOLution: The Man and the Movement He Inspired." I don't even mind if, as James Kirchick says, it is a love letter to the Congressman and GOP presidential wannabe. And here's video of Doherty's interview with Reason.tv. McGinnis is blogging again Rick McGinnis is blogging again, this time about learning to drive. He is a perceptive observer of the human condition and a brilliant writer so this will be fun even if the ostensible subject matter doesn't interest you. At a time when I'm trying to cut back what I'm reading online, I'm glad to see Rick is back blogging. Monday, May 14, 2012
Three and out 3. Joe Sheehan tweets: "The White Sox have used just 13 position players all year. Seven -- more than half -- are batting below .200." That's something, and not something good. 2. Dave Cameron of Fangraphs says that the St. Louis Cardinals might be better than the Texas Rangers and are set up to better over the course of the season. The teams are close but the Cards were doing it without one of their top two pitchers and one of their top three hitters. When they return (1B Lance Berkman and perhaps pitcher Chris Carpenter) and Adam Wainwright returns to form, regression for over-producing from the back-end of the rotation and some over-performing hitters will be compensated for. 1. David Pinto, usually of Baseball Musings, has a post on the NL East at Mets Blog and makes an important point about the Washington Nationals: "Wilson Ramos joined Jayson Werth and Mike Morse on the disabled list over the weekend. Three of the Nationals top offensive players are now out long term." As good as the Nats pitching it, that is hard to overcome. Wednesday, May 09, 2012
Isn't this a victory for anti-smoking forces? A half-century ago about half of adults smoked and just 15 years ago a quarter of adults were still puffing away. So when I saw this tweet from the Canadian Cancer Society, I was left scratching my head -- why complain? Tobacco is the #1 preventable cause of disease and death in Canada but 17% of Canadians still smoke. http://ow.ly/aNubM #cancerStats I'm not a fan of the CCS because they are quite comfortable with the nanny state and I recall how the Toronto chapter of the Society bullied Toronto city councilors in the late '90s to support the smoking ban in restaurants and bars. I haven't had much time for the Cancer Society since I covered the municipal debates on smoking bans in the 1990s. Why aren't charities like the Cancer Society ever called out on their political activism? Scroll down to "Tobacco control and lung cancer" for a list of political asks from the Cancer Society. Anyway, there is no possible way that any member of the public can be clueless to the deleterious health effects of smoking or that smoking is habit-forming, so we should ascertain that smokers have chosen to risk addiction and the possible consequences for their health. The Cancer Society should support programs for voluntary cessation, but stop the hectoring and, especially, the political lobbying. Three and out 3. More on Josh Hamilton's four-homerun game from Dave Cameron at Fangraphs and Cliff Corcoran at SI.com. 2. And then there were lights: using a very specific and small sample, Shane Tourtellotte of Hardball Times looks at the changes in HR and walk rates and other baseball occurrences during the transition from day to night games. There are problems with the methodology but it is nonetheless interesting. 1. David Pinto at Baseball Musings on the probability of Matt Kemp (404 BA) or Josh Hamilton (406) hitting 400 on the season. It's still very early to speculate on such things, but why isn't Derek Jeter (392) included on that list? The state vs. health care in Canada This National Post story has two important points. The first is the charge by one expert that Canada's state-run health care system is negatively affecting health care: The head of a controversial “executive” health clinic made a spirited call Tuesday for more entrepreneurship in Canadian health care, charging that central government planning has undercut a storied surgical hospital and saddled Ontario with an inferior telephone health-advice service. Restrictions imposed on Toronto’s for-profit Shouldice Hospital — once an international model of medical business — have prevented the clinic from offering the most advanced form of hernia operation and eroded its market share, charged Shaun Francis, CEO of Medcan. “Isn’t it sad how the system has effectively forced a jewel to languish,” the CEO commented to an Economic Club of Canada luncheon crowd. “What killed the Shouldice? The government killed the Shouldice…. Time and again, the government has shown the central planning approach is futile.” The second is point looks like good news but is not, namely that the Shouldice Clinic has "talked to potential partners about expanding to China and India." Great for them, but it raises the question that if it offers a quality service, why can't Shouldice expand in Canada? What I'm reading 1. An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules for Everyday Foodies by Tyler Cowen. It is as enjoyable as it can be for a picky eater like myself. This is the least useful Cowen book to me, but perhaps his most interesting. Typical for Cowen, there is plenty of counter-intuitive advice (avoid restaurants with too many attractive women, order disgusting sounding menu items, and go to restaurants where people are arguing) and obvious advice when you hear the rationale, such as avoid cola served from plastic bags in Central America. 2. Extra Innings: More Baseball Between the Numbers from the Team at Baseball Prospectus edited by Steven Goldman. Sabermetrics and clear-thinking applied to a host of issues from evaluating managers, figuring out who is a good defensive player, and thinking about the Hall of Fame and PEDs. 3. The End of Growth by Jeff Rubin. I can't decide if The End of Growth is worse than Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller, but it is too similar to the previous work to have bothered to write this new book. 4. The Economist online debate on insider trading and the April 21 special report on "The Third Industrial Revolution." 5. The May/June edition of the Fraser Forum. Two especially good articles are the pair on regulations (property confiscations and supply management boards) by Mark Milke. 6. "What CIDA Should Do: The Case for Focusing Aid on Better Schools," a C.D. Howe Institute commentary by John Richards. I'm not sold -- I prefer the humanitarian provision of emergency food and long-term nutritional improvements -- but an incredibly defensible case on the first read. 7. "Liberalism After Liberalism" by Wildred M. McClay and "After Progressivism" by Yuval Levin in the May issue of First Things Tuesday, May 08, 2012
Three and out 3. Josh Hamilton hit four homeruns against the Baltimore Orioles tonight, becoming the 16th player in MLB history to hit four dingers in one game. Also, breaks the American League record for total bases in one game, with 18. Both are amazing feats and one need not be a Texas Rangers fan to appreciate the outburst of power. 2. Fangraphs talks to Orioles 1B Nick Johnson about his career 400 OBP. Johnson is one of 60 major leaguers with a minimum 3000 at-bats and a career 400 OBP which perhaps doesn't sound all that impressive but really is. It's too bad that he hasn't been healthier during his career. 1. I'm not a big fan of some traditional stats such as RBIs and wins as a metric by which to judge an individual player's abilities because they are too context dependent and measure his team-mates' performance as much as his (although I'm not ideologically opposed to the use of these stats, they are just too limited to put much stock in them). A great example of why this is true comes via Jonah Keri's "30" column, Grantland's weekly power ranking type feature. Under the LA Angels, Keri notes: "Ervin Santana's an abysmal 0-6, but he's pitched much better of late, his 10-strikeout performance against Toronto over the weekend nullified by some more nonexistent run support (zero run support while he was in the game over Santana's past five starts)." Sure, Santana has a 5.59 ERA, but it is not possible to win when one's team is not scoring runs -- literally not scoring any runs when he's on the mound. British police worry about political correctness more than protecting citizens The Daily Telegraph reports: "Police and social workers were last night accused of failing to investigate an Asian paedophile gang for fear of being perceived as racist, allowing them to prey on up to 50 young white girls." Unfortunately, it takes some time for the Telegraph to elaborate on what they mean by Asian: Kabeer Hassan, Abdul Aziz, Abdul Rauf, Mohammed Sajid, Adil Khan, Abdul Qayyum, Mohammed Amin, Hamid Safi and a 59-year-old man who cannot be named for legal reasons were yesterday found guilty of running a child exploitation ring at Liverpool Crown Court. The details of the crimes are nauseating and it's terribly sad that some teenage girls were not protected by the authorities not because their stories weren't credible or lack of evidence but because the police and social workers were more concerned about not offending a particular group of "Asians." When Europe realizes it is in a hole, they dig twice as fast MEP Daniel Hannan on Europe: So why do voters hope to solve the crisis by accelerating the policies which led to it? Much of the blame must attach to the Centre-Right parties currently in office in most national capitals. Though they talk of fiscal prudence, many of them are in reality locked into Euro-corporatism. With a handful of honourable exceptions, they have presided over crony capitalism, more spending, more taxes and more debt. Their failure has opened the door to the angry and populist Left. When the 'Right' is represented by Samaras and Sarkozy, it's no surprise that voters cast around for radical alternatives. After all, when it comes to the euro, the Trotskyists have been proved right. They argued all along that, while the single currency would suit the suits, working people would suffer. As long as Europe's élites remain determined to keep the euro, the economic situation will deteriorate. And the worse things get, the likelier people are to demand the high-tax, high-spend policies which caused the mess. The eurozone is now in a vicious circle. Regulation and taxes Conservatives might be over-concerned about taxes, or at least under-concerned about regulation. I'm not talking about a blanket, smaller government type of conservatism. David Henderson at EconLog points to a Thumbtack.com/Kauffman Foundation study of small businesses and what they care about when determining what is a business friendly jurisdiction and the verdict is regulation (rather than tax rates). Saturday, May 05, 2012
Limbaugh has no idea what the hell he's talking about Rush Limbaugh has good points to make about how some people might be contributing to the end of football by linking the off-the-field deaths of football players to the violence inherent in the sport. Fine, I don't disagree with some of his points and I've meant to blog about how irresponsible it is to link the death of Junior Seau to concussions he suffered during his football career until we have more information -- much more information. But by taking a column by Tyler Cowen and Kevin Grier and mischaracterizing both them and the source of the article, he's shown himself as sloppy about facts as the mainstream media he often criticizes. Limbaugh calls Cowen and Grier young liberals who write for a tech blog, clearly attempting to diminish their credentials. Cowen is 50 years old, which is not that young; his blog is Marginal Revolution, one of the most read economics blogs around, not a tech blog; he is a professor of economics at George Mason who has been recognized as one of the most influential thinkers in the world; he is a liberal in the classical sense and thus libertarian, not a modern political liberal in the disparaging sense Limbaugh is suggesting and his listeners would understand; the original source of the article Limbaugh is talking about is Grantland, an ESPN sports and entertainment website, not a tech blog. Grier, for the record, is a "50 something libertarian/anarchist." Furthermore, Limbaugh implies that the article is a reaction to the news of Junior Seau's death, but the Cowen and Grier article was originally published in February. If the mainstream media made these kinds of errors about a conservative writer, he would fulminate to no end. He would criticize a left-wing pundit for not doing his homework, for not doing a simple online search, and he would be right. This week Limbaugh misled his listeners to try to score some ideological points that weren't really there for the taking. Limbaugh is capable of better. Friday, May 04, 2012
Marie Martin, RIP Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace. My maternal grandmother Marie Martin passed away this morning. Please keep her and our family in your prayers. I was extremely blessed in my life to know six of my grandparents/great-grandparents. Four of the six were called Home between the time I was ten and 19 years old and Bruce Martin passed away while I was in university. I was very fortunate to know all six of them for some period of time and at an age where I could remember them and have meaningful interactions with them. (Sadly, Grandma Marie was the only great-grandparent my five children knew, although our oldest was born before my Opa and my wife's grandmother passed away, he was still young when both passed away.) I am of course saddened by the news of Grandma's passing, but I'm also at peace with it. As the poet John Donne noted, "any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind." But likewise, another person's well-lived life enlarges me. Marie Martin would have turned 84 the week after next. She lived a long and good life, if a hard one. She was raised in a working class rural family in southwestern Ontario during the Depression. She would get married shortly after World War II and move from Lake Erie to Lake Huron where she raised five children, including my mother. To her children and 11 grandchildren, she passed on important values and virtues and, to some of us at least, her Roman Catholic faith. Importantly for me, while both the Tuns and Martin families lived off the land for most of their lives (both were farmers and the Martins were also fisherman) the Martin side of the family continued living on the farm near Southampton, Ontario, until the last few years. I fondly recall my childhood adventures in the barn, running in the fields, playing with farm dogs and cats (which are different than the ones families keep in the home), and going snowmobiling with my uncle. Children should be tethered to the realities of life somehow, and farms do that as well as any other experience. Environmentalists romanticize the natural world, but farms have important real-life lessons to teach. She suffered terribly in the past year and I hope she now knows peace. I pray that Grandma will reach her heavenly reward for a life devoted to serving others, including Jesus Christ. Marie Martin, requiescat in pace. If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Think of what is above, not of what is on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory. (Colossians 3: 1-4) Thursday, May 03, 2012
Trudeau as next Liberal leader In the pages of this week's Maclean's Paul Wells makes the case for Justin Trudeau becoming the next Liberal leader. It is argued in the typical Paul Well's too-cute-by-half way but ultimately the argument comes down to two arguments:1) Why not? Who else do the Liberals have that is not Bob Rae?2) More importantly, who else is as unabashedly liberal as Justin Trudeau?My take (not Wells'): in recent years most Liberals have identified themselves in reaction mostly to the Tories, and (more recently) as the party located between the supposedly extreme right-wing Conservative government and socialist NDP opposition. Justin Trudeau really believes in liberalism -- a faith in government to make society fairer and more efficient. In a party with a weak roster, Justin Trudeau, despite his limitations and banalities, may be the best of a bad bunch -- the non-Bob Rae who isn't the even more limited and more banal David McGuinty or Marc Garneau. Forget about November. What about 2016? Investor's Business Daily editorializes:Why are some rivals so reluctant to support the man chosen by their party's voters? They'll deny it, of course, but they act as if they're looking ahead four years ... Does Santorum think he has the clout to steer Romney closer to his own positions? Or does he figure he has to keep his distance from the probable nominee to protect his own "brand" as the true conservative? If either is the case, he's letting his ego and ambition get the better of him. Also — and this should of concern to those who share his views — he's doing the cause of conservatism no favors. It's one thing to have the 2016 race in the back of your head, quite another to have it already in your sights. Santorum would no doubt deny this, but he acts like someone who could live with a Republican defeat this November if that means he has a real shot four years later.You would think that potentially harming the Republican Party's chances this year might be something that would weigh on GOP voters' minds four years from now. I wouldn't necessarily hold it against the right (or is that Right) candidate, but I'm sure that many voters would. Amarillo Slim, RIP Thomas Austin Preston Jr., the poker player better known as Amarillo Slim, passed away earlier this week. At Grantland, Greg Dinkin, co-author of Slim's memoir, Amarillo Slim in a World Full of Fat People, remembers the man he came to know well. There are certainly problems with Dinkin's essay, including over-stressing the point that Slim, a professional bluffer, habitually made his own truth (and there is a good Jimmy Johnson story to reinforce the point). Still, the essay is worth reading if for no other reason than the anecdotes about Nicholas Cage, who wanted to produce and star in a Amarillo Slim biopic. Wednesday, May 02, 2012
Jon Will turns 40 George Will has four children, the oldest of which has Down syndrome and who turns 40 this week. Will writes:Two things that have enhanced Jon’s life are the Washington subway system, which opened in 1976, and the Washington Nationals baseball team, which arrived in 2005. He navigates the subway expertly, riding it to the Nationals ballpark, where he enters the clubhouse a few hours before game time and does a chore or two. The players, who have climbed to the pinnacle of a steep athletic pyramid, know that although hard work got them there, they have extraordinary aptitudes because they are winners of life’s lottery. Major leaguers, all of whom understand what it is to be gifted, have been uniformly and extraordinarily welcoming to Jon, who is not. Except he is, in a way. He has the gift of serenity, in this sense: The eldest of four siblings, he has seen two brothers and a sister surpass him in size, and acquire cars and college educations. He, however, with an underdeveloped entitlement mentality, has been equable about life’s sometimes careless allocation of equity. Perhaps this is partly because, given the nature of Down syndrome, neither he nor his parents have any tormenting sense of what might have been. Down syndrome did not alter the trajectory of his life; Jon was Jon from conception on.Sadly, too many parents (and children) miss out on the opportunity to enjoy life thusly because abortion is used to eliminate unborn babies diagnosed with Down syndrome, a point that Will also makes. Should blogging count as scholarly activity for academics? Martin Weller examines the "The Virtues of Blogging as Scholarly Activity" at the Chronicle of Higher Education. Weller says:Previously if I wanted to convey an idea or a research finding, my choices were limited to a conference paper or journal article or, if I could work it up, a book. These choices still remain, but in addition I can create a video, podcast, blog post, slidecast, and more. It may be that a combination of these is ideal—a blog post gets immediate reaction and can then be worked into a conference presentation, shared through SlideShare, or turned into a paper that is submitted to a journal. In each case the blog or social network becomes a key route for sharing and disseminating the findings.Robin Hanson adds to the discussion:Yes blog posts can contain impressive original intellectual contributions. Newspaper columns can contain them as well. So can speeches. Even spontaneous party conversations can contain them. The problem is, we don’t have systems set up for experts to evaluate these things in such terms. And if an intellectual contribution isn’t credentialed as such by academic experts, then it basically doesn’t exist as far as academia is concerned. Tuesday, May 01, 2012
The Armchair Economist: Economics and Everyday Life re-released Steven Landsburg's The Armchair Economist: Economics and Everyday Life has been re-released. Here's the new introduction, via Landsburg's blog, where he explains why he wrote Armchair Economist: One day in 1991, I walked into a medium sized bookstore and counted over 80 titles on quantum physics and the history of the Universe. A few shelves over I found Richard Dawkins’s bestseller The Selfish Gene along with dozens of others explaining Darwinan evolution and the genetic code. In the best of these books, I discovered natural wonders, confronted mysteries, learned new ways of thinking, and felt I had shared in a great intellectual adventure, founded on ideas that are dazzling in their scope and their simplicity. Economics, too, is a great intellectual adventure, but I could find, in 1991, not a single book that proposed to share that adventure with the general public. There was nothing that revealed the economist’s unique way of thinking, using a few simple ideas to illuminate the whole range of human behavior, shake up our preconceptions, and jolt us into new ways of seeing the world. I resolved to write that book. The Armchair Economist was published in 1993... Everything I needed to know about referencing, I learned at university GraphJam on the (expensive) truth about university. |