Read it.

Something to ponder, along with this map.

The Hog isn’t doing politics any more.

Here’s a funny question. Has anyone noticed how American troops stopped dying in Iraq after Obama was elected?

Seriously, when was the last time you read about “mounting death tolls”? When was the last time you saw a journalist quote the latest figure? We know journalists are honest and fair, so the only possible explanation is that Americans aren’t being killed any more.

I’ve also noticed that global warming has slowed down, the planet is no longer running out of oil, and crazy government spending is no longer a bad thing. When Bush spent billions, it was very, very bad! Bush was a bad man! Now Obama spends trillions, and we all realize it just makes life better for kitties and puppies and flowers and baby ducks, which is what government is supposed to do.

Hold it, I have to throw up.

Timothy Burke is rather an odd fellow but occasionally he hits a jackpot. Here he discusses buying fantasy books.

Other things that are likely to drive me off:

1) “Book One in the Dark Swords of Black Terror Trilogy”.
2) Mostly, if the word “vampire” appears anywhere in the cover, title or blurb. It stops being “mostly” if “vampire” appears in the same blurb with “elf”.
3) Titles or blurbs that contain the name of a fantasy kingdom that sounds more like a prescription medicine for depression or impotence.
4) Anything that contains three of the following four elements in the blurb: plucky but innocent young heroine, farmboy with a destiny, dark lord of evil, wise ancient wizard. “Handsome voodoo priest” is a bonus demerit.
5) The word, “Drizzt”.

I have to confess, I’m with him there. He also has the virtue of being of one mind with me regarding the defects in most modern fantasy fiction:

The problem with Acacia is a problem that a lot of genre fantasy has: it too often reads like the detailed notes of a Dungeons & Dragons’ gamemaster about his campaign world rather than as a work of narrative fiction. The tedious (but accurate) old dictum to “show, not tell” is violated with astonishing aggressiveness within the first hundred pages, but not in any consistent or deliberate fashion. You know you’re in trouble when the king’s chief advisor Thaddeus murders a messenger who carries vital news and following a description of the act, Durham continues, “Thaddeus was not entirely the loyal servant of the king that he seemed” (and more still along those lines following). No shit, Sherlock. Of the many things that could go unsaid in the novel, this is only the beginning. Almost any of them–the lengthy expositional asides about the cultures, practices or peoples in the novel, the omniscient descriptions of characters and actions that suddenly erupt out of (a great many) viewpoint characters, could be unsaid or said minimally to vastly greater effect. As a sparce, fast-moving narrative that concentrated on its plot, it wouldn’t be half-bad. As a diagrammatic and pointlessly long act of world-creation, it’s clumsy and tedious at many points.

The Hog doesn’t do political commentary any more. Nope. Wouldn’t think of it.

It looks like the liberals have won the education battle. Socialism has caused the deaths of tens of millions of people, and it has never produced a good standard of living anywhere, and it is the greatest evil mankind has ever encountered. But a fair number of Americans, especially those who were “educated” after our school system was destroyed by liberals, think socialism is…pretty rad. No work! Free beers! Che T-shirts! If you want to be a lazy, flabby slouch all your life, socialism is the bomb. A lot of people are content to live that way. Clip your own wings and belly up to the trough.

Just tools and food, and some religion here and there. That’s all. Nothing else.

Here is the lesson conservatives should have learned from the last three elections, especially after seeing the impact of swing voters. The stupid are incredibly dangerous. The stupid make totalitarianism possible. Our kids are stupid, and they’re getting more stupid every decade. Look out.

Read it.

Elizabeth Wurzel, a writer turned lawyer, bites the hand that fed her.

Anyone who toils in the legal-industrial complex — better known as Big Law — should be able to tell you how we got here. Corporate attorneys like me, even those with the eyesight and insight of Mr. Magoo, all should have been able to see this financial collapse coming.

Carrie Vaughn (whose books you really ought to read, by the way; she’s in the list of Recommended Writers over there on the right) takes on the love that launched a thousand books.

Read it.

I rather suspect that the Red State/Blue State borders are a more accurate predictor of where the U.S. would split, but I still find this sort of speculation fascinating. Fragmentation of the U.S is not an uncommon conceit in speculative fiction but usually depends more on the needs of the plot than of any practical analysis.

Read it.

There are many factors contributing to this trend. Diminishing social mobility, the cult of celebrity, the decline in serious learning, the increasing disregard for empiricism and social attitudes verging on “valuephobia” all threaten to cast a shadow on the enlightened western Liberalism which has taken us so far.

Distracted by celebrity, softened up by the education system, we have also succumbed to what you could call intellectual relativism. We have reached a state of affairs whereby people believe that the validity of their views is determined by the strength with which they hold them, not by any reference to empiricism. And so we hear phrases such as “Well that is your truth – it’s not mine”, or, increasingly, the word which is doing untold damage to the concept of objectivity: “whatever”. When confronted with evidence which undermines the current fashion or your own prejudices, simply lift your hand and say “whatever”, and you can avoid all the discomforts of the value of truth, or objectivity, or of being plain wrong.

Read it.

When the federal government keeps changing the rules, it’s like having Darth Vader in control, John H. Cochrane, a professor of finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, said during a panel. “I have changed the deal,” he intoned like Vader, the “Star Wars” villain. “Pray I don’t change it any further.”

And that tells you everything you need to know abut government “regulation” of the economy.

Mr. Vedder playfully offered another analogy: the recession of 1920. Why was that slump, over and done with by 1922, so much shorter than the following decade’s? Well, for starters, he said, President Woodrow Wilson suffered an incapacitating stroke at the end of 1919, while his successor, Warren G. Harding, universally considered one of the worst presidents in American history, preferred drinking, playing poker and golf, and womanizing, to governing. “So nothing happened,” Mr. Vedder said.

Of course Mr. Vedder does not wish ill health — or obliviousness — on any chief executive. Still, in his view, when you’re talking about government intervention in the economy, doing nothing is about the best you can hope for from any president.

And that’s the truest thing you’ll read today.

Read it.

One of the reasons we’re often skeptical of legislative/regulatory solutions to things is that they almost always have unintended consequences that do a lot more harm than good — and quite often those unintended consequences are the exact opposite of what the regulation was supposed to do.

Every legislator ought to have that tattooed on his (or her) forehead.

A few years back, the government passed a bill to encourage “greener” transportation by providing tax credits for the use of alternative fuels — including for the use of fuel mixtures that combined alternative fuels with gasoline or diesel. As Chris Hayes explains, this resulted in America’s paper companies suddenly dumping diesel into their production process solely to qualify for the tax credit.

Free markets work, even when you don’t want them to.

Check it out.

The story of my life.

Read it.

Guess the ghost doesn’t get out much.

Update: Link fixed.

Read it.

Now that’s comedy.

Read it.

Not really a surprise, but a useful reminder.

Read it.

I don’t think I’ve used a phone book in ten years. Of course, I don’t often have occasion to call anybody I don’t know, so maybe that’s just me. Certainly for businesses I just look them up on the Internet.

Steve Sailer is always worth reading.

The point is that despite all that sophomore silliness that cultural anthropologists teach about how race doesn’t exist, the forensic anthropologists usually don’t have much trouble figuring out which Race box to check on the “Missing Person” ID form. In fact, they are now so good at it, that they can often tell a Swede from a Greek or whatever from the shape of the skull, supposedly “contradicting the classic biological race concept of physical anthropology,” (although not my partly inbred extended family model).

Almost certainly not.

The people who make that case are mostly affluent, upper-middle class folks. They want to eat local (preferably organic) food, buy stuff that isn’t made by children or slave labor, and avoid supporting activities that deplete fisheries or promote global warming. Their choices are limited, though, because there aren’t enough people like them. In order for the choices they want to be readily available, they need to expand the market–by getting the poor, working class, and middle class to buy into the whole “vote with your dollars” notion of supporting local production of food and crafts.

Think AlGore. Think the Obama Nation.

Yes, the folks shopping at the big box stores and eating at chain fast food restaurants are sending out of town money that local businesses might have used to hire them or buy from them, but they’re still coming out ahead. And that’s especially true of the poor and working-class folks.

Yes, if everyone tried to buy local, the money would stay in town–ready to be turned around to buy other local stuff and hire other local folks. The production wouldn’t end up in China or India or Bangladesh, and the profits wouldn’t end up on Wall Street. But the young couple trying to furnish their first apartment would have to sleep on the floor for months to cover the difference between a bed from Ikea and a bed made by a local woodworker. How long should they eat out of cooking pots to save up enough money to buy ceramic dishes produced by a local potter when they could buy some Corelle for just a few dollars? I’ve seen stainless steel flatwear on sale cheaper than plastic–what local producer could come close?

Read it.

I had suspected as much.

Perhaps, if Aniston had died her hair brown, Pitt would have taken her more seriously.

Hey, it’s worth a thought.

Read it.

I guess that’s why everyone regards Winona Ryder as a Serious Person. Uh, yeah.

So the ones that remain blonde don’t want to be taken seriously? This is a useful indicator.

Actually, if they wanted to be taken seriously, they wouldn’t wear so much lipstick.

Read it.

Or at least thinks he does. But you knew that.

Read it.

I am not making this up.

Steve Sailer is never afraid to ask the questions nobody else dares ask.

Read it.

However, the report published in the academic journal Neurobiology Of Ageing, found that abilities based on accumulated knowledge, such as performance on tests of vocabulary or general information, increased until at the age of 60.

So younger people are quick-witted but ignorant. I can buy that.

Read it.

On the other hand, this is a valuable life lesson not vouchsafed to his contemporaries.

Read it.

It all used to be pretty simple. You’d have a cutthroat razor which you kept honed to perfection on a leather strop. They lasted for decades. The only drawback was that in the hands of the very drunk or the very stupid they could live up to their name, but no one cared; if you killed yourself while trying to scrape unwanted hair from your face it was probably inferred that your life was hardly worth living anyway.

I’m an electric gizmo chap. A pack of cheap Bic disposables lurks somewhere in the bowels of the house in case I forget to recharge the Philishave, although this hasn’t happened yet. And how close is my shave? Well, you see, that’s just the point. I have no idea. I run the machine over my flabby jowls and end up with a face that looks shaved to me. Could I find a device that cuts off a little bit more? Possibly, but why should I want to? What does it matter? What benefit will result if I do and what detriment do I now suffer because I don’t? The answer of course is that it makes no difference to anything.

Read it.

The Guardian just announced that it is releasing all its content through an API as well as making available many different data sets through a data store, all of which can be mashed up into others’ sites and applications. They join other organizations – the BBC, National Public Radio, and The New York Times – in releasing APIs; notes that it’s the creme of news that sees the wisdom in APIs. The Guardian’s offers more than headlines: articles, video, galleries, everything. It also adds one more important element to its offering: a business model, creating an ad network for users of the API.

David Friedman needs a good rat, which is the technical term for a pointing device moved by the foot.

As any enthusiastic player of World of Warcraft—or other video games played on computers—knows, giving up the prehensile tail was a great mistake.

Read it.

They used to do that 200 years ago.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

Ross Douthat does an excellent analysis of Obama’s situation.

The Hog isn’t doing politics these days. Obviously.

Read it.

If law enforcement officials break the law, fine, punish them. But don’t “punish” them by letting criminals off the hook; that “cure” is worse than the disease.

When people see criminals escape without punishment on technicalities, they lose respect for the law, and either give up and cease to resist crime, or take their own steps to prevent and punish it. Neither is characteristic of a civilized society.

Megan McArdle ponders an interesting wrinkle in the housing mess.

Playing with mortgage terms cannot prop up prices, because it cannot create more homebuyers, nor convince them to pay more than they want for a house.

Read it.

This is why Christian theology is so difficult to grasp: Its basic premise is, uniquely, that God isn’t just like us, but amazingly different.

Most self-styled Christians try to understand that but get it wrong — some a little, some a lot … and some even found entire spinoff religions (like, say, Protestants) based on that sort of misunderstanding.

Read it.

Note that, although a native African, she passes the “paper bag and ruler” test.

Read it.

Holding a “fiscal responsibility summit” at the White House in the middle of a government spending spree is a bit like having an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting at a frat house on homecoming weekend.

Read it.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

Read it.

Read it.

A teachable moment?

Read it.

It’s not what you think.

Read it.

If the government is going to bail out the irresponsible, why be responsible?

… I had to decide if it was worth getting out of bed to earn the money to pay my mortgage or not. Like all those bankers that got a bailout, I was wondering if it might be worth more to me to default on my mortgage than to pay it. I mean, what if the only people getting bailed out are the ones who truly screwed up? Being right doesn’t mean being rich and I didn’t want to miss out.

Steve Sailer is eager to get with the new Attorney General’s program.

So, let’s talk about the Holder family’s racial background, which is pretty interesting, although he forgot to mention it during his big Black History Month speech to his new charges in the Department of Justice.

I’m sure he won’t mind us talking about his family’s race, since he just insisted that we all talk about race all month.

Be careful what you wish for, Eric.

Funny thing: Most of the “black” elite in the U.S. — Holder, Barack Obama, Colin Powell, Beyonce, Halle Berry, the Governor of New York whose name I can never remember — would pass the paper-bag-and-ruler test.

“Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother’s eye.” — Luke 6:42

Read it.

Men, of course, don’t have any comparable “love affair” with neckties. I suppose there’s a lesson in there somewhere.

Steve Sailer is always worth reading.

In Japan, “nationalist economics” is a serious, well-thought out philosophy that entails short run sacrifices for the long run general welfare. In the West, our elites have been trained to scoff at nationalist economics as mere mindless populism, but the best minds in Japan have developed an economic culture that’s perhaps too sophisticated for American economists and their fellow travelers in the punditry to understand.

The Chinese, in contrast, have followed the Taiwanese model of manufacturing anonymously under contract to Japanese and American brand names. They churn out stuff and let other countries’ companies sell it as their own. For the Chinese, it’s all about meeting minimum quality and cost parameters to get the next deal, not to build a reputation with the public for high quality. How many recognizable brand names have the Chinese created so far? There’s Lenovo, and then there’s …

Megan McArdle prods our collective memory.

Our memories are distorted by two things:  first, the tendency of all cultures to focus on their own outliers (many fewer people work for silicon valley startups in real life than in either our entertainment, or the popular imagination), and second, the fact that the people who have written about the period are abnormally likely to have come from successful families who pushed them through an education.  Their memory of a well-appointed blue-collar childhood in a nice suburb on Dad’s generous steelworker wages endures; few memories of a straggling blue-collar childhood as the child of a factory janitor do, because those kids were less likely to go to college and become people of letters.  The successful and educated are disproportionately likely to be represented in all parts of our written and spoken culture, from man on the street interviews to letters to the editor.  History really is written by the winners.

Steve Sailer delves into one of the burning questions of our day.

Read it.

The problem is, there’s one group that did not assume the risks of the individual autonomy boom.  Children are not benefited by the unstable new co-habiting options that adults are devising for themselves.  Adults are merely rationalizing their own preferences when they intone that children are better off raised by separated parents than in an unhappy marriage.  Hogwash.  Most children would far prefer two unhappy married parents to two happier divorced or never-married parents enjoying their new freedom or new spouses.  Perhaps eventually, if any expectation that a procreative union is permanent is abolished, children will adjust, but I doubt it.  The preview afforded by the black community is not reassuring (though I admit that inner-city Milwaukee is not readily comparable to Lyons or Stockholm).

Read it.

For years, we’ve been among those pointing out that the really important thing in economic growth isn’t invention, but innovation. It’s the process of actually taking an idea and successfully bringing it to market in a way that people want that matters in the long run. Coming up with new ideas is only a small part of the process. That’s why we often have so much trouble with the way the patent system works. It greatly enhances the role of simply coming up with the new idea, and then makes the important part — the innovation — a lot more expensive.

Preach it, brother.

Read it.

Children coming of age in the 1950s and 1960s were born into families that, on average, enjoyed the greatest material prosperity and the best housing the world had ever known. The security offered by an enormously expanded and comfortable middle class allowed these children to crusade on behalf of various causes. Those who called themselves “progressive” pushed to expand individual civil rights, sometimes at the expense of what others perceived as community rights or duties, but at the same time they were often deeply suspicious of capitalism and markets and for this reason pushed to restrict the rights of private property owners in order to expand on their own notions of community rights.

Take the case of the Bay Area, where land prices were on par with urban areas elsewhere in the country up until 1970. Then, as the area pioneered in land use regulations of every kind, house prices started a steep climb. Where the rule of thumb had long been that the average American family in any given urban market would expect to pay about three times its annual salary for an average house, by the early years of the 21st century it had reached the point where that average house in the Bay Area would be the equivalent of ten, eleven or even twelve years of the average family’s income. At the same time, however, in lightly regulated urban areas, even extremely dynamic ones like those of Atlanta, Houston or Phoenix, house prices registered no comparable rise against incomes.

An excellent analysis. The people who whine most tediously about the effects of the current crisis are the very ones who created it in the first place with their short-sighted and elitist policies.

Bryan Caplan asks an interesting question and finds an even more interesting answer.

Alexander Pope said “For forms of government, let fools contest / That which is best administered is best.”

If the government provides services efficiently and doesn’t steal too much of your money, do you really care whether it’s democratic. I don’t. People forget that democracy is a means, not an end.

David Friedman is always worth reading.

In an earlier post I proposed an economics course built around World of Warcraft. I have much less experience teaching statistics than teaching economics and I suspect the game is less suited for the former than the latter purpose. But it does occur to me that it provides quite a lot of opportunities for observing data and trying to infer patterns from it and so could be used to both explain and apply statistical inference. And I suspect that, as in the case of economics, application to a world with which the student was familiar and involved and to problems of actual interest to him would have a significant positive effect on attention and understanding.