The Anger of Compassion

Ayn Rand: At One Hundred Years, A Bit of Sense

It's like a radiation leak: You can't see the danger, but you know it's there.

So writes Julia Keller in Sunday's Chicago Tribune:

There it sits, a thick rectangle whose soft sides -- it's made of paper, after all, ordinary paper -- belie the harsh astringency within.

You sense the need to keep an eye on it. You can't just leave it there on a corner of your desktop as if it were an ordinary book, letting it cool its heels amid the messy papers and dried-up pens and the dark-chocolate wafer of your laptop.

No telling what it might do, this paperback copy of "Atlas Shrugged" (1957) by Ayn Rand, all 1,069 pages of it. No telling what impact it might have on the desk's detritus or the rest of the room.

Rand, of course, would adore the notion that the novel she began writing six decades ago, right after she'd wrapped up "The Fountainhead" (1943), still is regarded as perilous and possibly even lethal -- lethal, that is, to complacency and lazy thinking and easy goals.

(Speaking of the results of lazy and complacent, I wonder how many Tribune corporate officers and directors know just how many steps it takes to get from the Tribune.com page to an actual Chicago Tribune page? Just askin.')

This Wednesday, you can celebrate -- in your own way -- what would have been Ayn Rand's one-hundredth birthday. And you won't be the only one celebrating.

Certainly her publishers will consider a celebration: none of her books have ever gone out of print. In Irvine, California, the Ayn Rand Institute will will host a reception Wednesday evening at which [Ayn Rand biographer Jeff] Britting, the institute's archivist, and others will talk about Rand and present an exhibition on her." This according to Carlin Romano of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who notes that there will be

a symposium on her work Wednesday morning in the Members of Congress Room at the Library of Congress' Jefferson Building.

Sponsored by the Objectivist Center in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., one of the two major keepers of the Rand flame, its speakers will include Reps. Ed Royce (R., Calif.) and Paul Ryan (R., Wis.), and Howard Dickman, assistant chairman of programs at the National Endowment for the Humanities.

I don't know...two Republican Congresscritters, and an official of the unconstitutional National Endowment for the Humanities, holding a symposium at, of all places the odious Library of Congress, on the anti-statist Ayn Rand? Forgive me, I'm east coast born and raised but I'd prefer to be at the Irvine event.

Forget for the moment, though, any discomfort with particular institutions or officials. Has Ayn Rand, asks Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune, gone mainstream?

The radical champion of individualism and capitalism, who died in 1982, is no longer an exotic taste. Her image has adorned a U.S. postage stamp. Her ideas have been detected in a new mass-market animated comedy film, "The Incredibles." And Wednesday, on the 100th anniversary of her birth, there will be a Rand commemoration at the Library of Congress--an odd site for a ceremony honoring a fierce anti-statist.

In her day, Rand was at odds with almost every prevailing attitude in American society. She infuriated liberals by preaching economic laissez-faire and lionizing titans of business. She appalled conservatives by rejecting religion in any form while celebrating, in her words, "sexual enjoyment as an end in itself."

"End in itself?" Well now...Rand certainly was right about sexual enjoyment...and about the absolute value of human rights, each individual human being existing as a unique, irreplaceable creature...right about the moral and practical value to human lives of unfettered laissez-faire capitalism...right about the moral equivalence of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, each in its own way standing as evil beyond redemption...right about the incomparable value of Aristotle's explication of the laws of thought...right about the unity of epistemology and ethics, and about how morality can be grounded in reason, rather than in obeisance to an unseen god...right about finding value in Schiller and Hugo and lipstick and dancing and Rachmaninoff and cats and in productive achievement and, most importantly of all, in the achievement of one's own happiness.

For Ayn Rand was right about quite a few things.

"Rand emerged," continues Chapman

in the aftermath of the Great Depression, the New Deal and World War II--which were taken as proof that the free market was obsolete, that prosperity required an all-intrusive government, and that national success demanded the subordination of the individual to collective purposes. After the traumas of the 1930s and '40s, America was intent on building a well-ordered welfare state based on compromise and consensus.

In that setting, Rand resembled the female athlete in Apple Computer's 1984 Super Bowl commercial, who sprinted into a mass assembly of oppressed drones to hurl a sledgehammer at the Big Brother orating from a giant TV screen--smashing it and bathing the audience in a dazzling light.

Rand, a Russian immigrant, saw herself as harking back to the Enlightenment values of reason, limited government and personal liberty that fueled the American Revolution. "The United States was the first moral society in history," she declared.

"The United States was the first moral society in history." Consider that.

Please: do consider that. At length.

When in 1975 the brilliant Monty Python comedy troupe were filming their Monty Python and the Holy Grail, they sought permission from Britain's National Trust to shoot certain scenes at a number of ancient sites in England and Scotland. All such requests were denied, according to Python member and Holy Grail director Terry Gilliam, because the scenes they intended to shoot showed inadequate respect for the history of those sites. And yet, as I saw him assert, laughing, in a television interview, these castles and so forth were the sites of vicious intrigue and betrayal, of hideous bloodletting. Let me ask you: do we English speakers not revere Shakespeare today? And what are King Lear and Richard III and Macbeth all about?

Well?

The first moral society in history, Rand claims. That was the United States of America -- and she allowed for the contradiction of chattel slavery, which, it is not difficult to point out, has not existed in the United States (except for the obscenities of military conscription and the federal income tax) since 1865. So -- yes, Ayn Rand is right on this one as well: the United States was the first moral society in history.

But do any Americans of achievement, in their turn, admire Ayn Rand? Well, yes...Alan Greenspan, Gerald R. Ford, Cal Ripken, Ludwig von Mises, Clarence Thomas, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Henry Hazlitt, Deems Taylor, Frank Lloyd Wright...yes, I think it's safe to say that Americans of considerable talent and achievement have, in their turn, admired Ayn Rand. Safe indeed.

You might ask, though, just what does it, any of it, mean? Let's check back in with Julia Keller's story:

"Her impact is large and goes well beyond the world of literature," declares Mimi Gladstein, chair of the department of theater, dance and film at the University of Texas at El Paso, who has written two books and co-written a third about Rand's work. "I do think she's being taken more seriously now."

I think so, too, and Mimi Reisel Gladstein is partly responsible for that. My own interview with Dr. Gladstein may be read here. I asked her about the traditional academic response to Ayn Rand:

(me): Are there any barriers or pitfalls that still exist there?

Gladstein: In the academy? Well, that kneejerk reaction is still there: “Ayn Rand? Why are you writing about her? She’s such a fascist!”

(me): Which is ironic, since in literature, you get writers such as Pound, and Louis-Ferdinand Celine, and Mishima —

Gladstein: Who were real fascists —

(me) Yes, and who are yet viewed as possessing real literary merit — but not Ayn Rand: Ayn Rand is just beyond the pale. Is that why, do you think? Is it just political bias against her?

Gladstein: (Slowly) Yeah, I think so. I don’t know what the percentage is, but university professors are overwhelmingly left-wing. So those biases are there. But Pound and Mishima are already in the texts. (Shrugs.)

"Already in the texts," says the somewhat frustrated Dr. Gladstein (a real sweetheart, I must say: I owe her a cup of coffee). But "this much, at least," writes Julia Kenner, "is irrefutable:

"Atlas Shrugged" grabs hold of you and shakes you up and challenges everything you thought you believed about the world, about God, about good and evil. That's why it can't be exiled to a corner of your desk, where its slightly curled-back cover looks, in the right light, like a tiny sneer of reproach: How dare you not be reading me now, this minute. How dare you.

Well, yes...how dare you, indeed, read the not-yet-quite-mainstream Ayn Rand. And for that, I'll let Ms. Kenner have the last words:

Read at the right moment in one's life -- usually in late adolescence, when the world seems like a tangled mess of hypocrisy and confusion, and you hate your parents and especially that stupid assistant principal who is seriously on your case -- "Atlas Shrugged" is a tonic, a dream, a throat-scalding draft of pure, radiant clarity. You feel as if you've been walking upside down for most of your life, seeing things the wrong way, and now -- now -- suddenly you're right-side up again and everything starts to make sense. Turns out it was the world that was upside down, not you.

But here's the funny thing: Re-reading Rand as an adult in 2005 is not what you thought it would be. It's not a "Oh, wow, what a chump I was!" feeling. In fact, the ideas from "Atlas Shrugged" you thought you had outgrown don't seem all that outlandish, after all. The themes you abandoned as hopelessly naive and almost comically operatic -- all those fist-shaking tirades about human destiny, all those "Greed is good!" screeds that predate Oliver Stone's "Wall Street" by three decades -- somehow start making a bit of sense again, in a world upended by religious fanaticism and a nation crippled by soaring government deficits.

A bit of sense, indeed.

Ayn Rand was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, one hundred years ago this Wednesday.

Here's hoping he's in some deep, deep kimchee...

Look, y'all know me...and you know that I'm one who argues that you should be able to do whatever the hell you want to do with your own life. But...but damn...

You know your situation is pretty damn desperate when you're trying to flee into communist China.

But that's precisely how this story, from the Sunday Times, begins. And there's more:

According to exiles, North Korean agents in Beijing and Ulan Bator are frantically selling assets to raise cash — an important sign, says one activist, because “the secret police can always smell the crisis coming before anybody else”.

I find this heartening as well. I mean, Ulan Bator? Come on, man! Genghis Khan's day was some time ago. Maybe I've missed something, but it's been a while since Mongolia was a regional power, or any other kind of power, am I not right? Not that I resent their climb out of communist-induced economic doldrums, for indeed I do not. It just brings a smile to my face to think of the Pyongyang regime as that desperate.

And that would be a big, big smile. We're speaking of a regime which has kidnapped Japanese people in order to have them teach their own secret agents the Japanese language and culture, which has or is working toward missiles pointed at American targets, and which has reduced its own populace to eating tree bark -- when they can get it. Yeah, you could say I'm glad to see it on the ropes.

For I most emphatically do not believe -- to any degree -- that there is any value in international stability. Not in today's climate, for would I not prefer to witness an end to the mullahs' regime in Iran, to the vicious dictatorship in Myanmar, to the so-unjustly-feted Castro?

That Christmas season of 1989 was quite memorable, wasn't it? Angry Romanians put their vile Stalinist oppressor Ceasescu (and his wife) against a wall, on television, and shot them both dead. I had no problem with that: the violence depicted in Saving Private Ryan and in Black Hawk Down tweaked me more.

Let's not forget Beavis and Butt-Head. The violence depicted therein bothers me unfathomably more than what was shown to have happened to the Ceasescus.

So I hope Kim gets it, and soon. And painfully, and in public. On television and on the internet, if possible. Sure, there are others -- I've mentioned, in this post alone, those running the concentration camp shows in Myanmar, in Cuba, in Iran, in China itself, to which desperate North Koreans are desperately fleeing -- deserving the same fate. But I think it would be a touching February 16, for lovers of liberty, if Kim Jong-il ingested some slow-moving lead on his birthday.

(Hat tip to Paul Hsieh at NoodleFood, who, legitimate practicing physician that he is, is not responsible for anything which could be read as bloodlust in this oh-so-dispassionate post.)

Wrap That Rascal!

If you remember that headline, you're too old seasoned a little bit. Anyway, I'm talking about protecting, er, something else.

I like this miniShield for my iPod Mini. I want one.

More on Comment Spam

I'm a recovering victim of comment spam, so I'm interested in self-defense techniques. That led me to this article from Six Apart, the publishers of Movable Type: the Six Apart Guide to Comment Spam."

But I fear I've done a high-tech jinx on myself. I read the article on Friday, resolving to employ some of the anti-comment spam measures, and I noted a mention, in the article, of a blight I'd not heard of before: TrackBack spam. As of yesterday, I now have four such infestations, and can't tell how to eliminate them.

Drag and Drop; or, The Rocket Science of Using RSS

Once again I have proven myself to be perhaps the premier rocket scientist in the free world.

I posted my reaction to Jeffrey Tucker's article about using RSS, and I mentioned that I hadn't quite figured it all out.

Nor had I. I knew, for example, that Movable Type provides syndication capability, but I didn't know how to use it. Brent Simmons of Ranchero Software was kind enough to point out that I already had an existing RSS feed, and that it worked, and he showed me how to subscribe to the feed from my own blog. For that, I'm pretty grateful to Brent, and his NetNewsWire is going to be my news aggregator on the Mac platform for the foreseeable future.

But I was still confused: I'd click on the RSS feed icons at other blogs, and I'd see a page full of code as well as content, and the addresses didn't look like mine, so I had no idea what to enter into my aggregator in order to subscribe to any of them. Nor did any of the online "how to" articles I devoured enlighten me any further. Apparently, all I had to do, after validating General Relativity, locating the Amber Room, and answering the three simple questions at the Bridge of Death, was to stand at the edge of a singularity, reciting Stephen Hawking backwards from memory, and then click the icon.

None of which worked.

What did work was...(wait for it)...

Capitalism.

That's right, capitalism. The profit motive. Greed, the desire for filthy lucre. I was watching an online video from a guy trying to sell me something, and he casually pointed out that all I had to do was drag and drop a blogger's RSS feed icon from his site to my own news aggregator, and I'd now be subscribed. That's it: just drag and drop.

Drag. And. Drop.

So, chastened and feeling like a complete idiot assured of my own incomparable genius and legitimate rocket science credentials, I went to validate General Relativity prove Fermat's Last Theorem in a mere five lines drag and drop, and successfully subscribed to a number of fine blogs.

Drag and drop, all you lowly curs writers of RSS "how easy it all is" articles. Drag and frigging drop! Why the hell couldn't you just say that?

To summarize: if you're a blogger, your blogging software probably provides you with a valid feed already. To subscribe to blogs or sites, all you need to do is get a newsreader; I highly recommend trying NetNewsWire Lite if you're on a Mac, or check out the list provided in Tucker's article. Then just go to the blogs you'd like to subscribe to, and do the drag and drop thing. It really is that easy.

As for me, I'm almost finished with my Hawking recitation. Having done that, I'm off to find, once and for all, that damn Amber Room.

American Blogger Reports Unfortunately Heartening News from Iraq

From his attention-grabbing headline -- "Iraqi Voting Disrupts News Reports of Bombings" -- to his story's first sentence: "News reports of terrorist bombings in Iraq were marred Sunday by shocking graphic images of Iraqi "insurgents" voting by the millions in their first free democratic election," Scott Ott gets it.

Remember when Beirut was the hot place, and we had Marines there, trying to protect Beirut International Airport and keep it open? I was one of those Marines, and I felt reasonably safe most of the time, given that I was armed, and in the company of over a thousand of my fellow Marines, all of whom were similarly armed. But most Beirutis were not Marines, nor were they members of the PLO, the Amal, the Syrian or Israeli armies, or any of the numerous other armed factions fighting over the place -- yet it was a big city, and most of them were simply trying to go about their lives. Day after day after miserable, lousy, scarifying day, that's exactly what they did.

I for one did not predict the high voter turnout which has apparently prevailed throughout Iraq -- but a lot of us should have expected something like this. I never claimed that the threats of violence would shut the elections completely down, and cower the majority of people into submission; in fact, I didn't give it much thought at all, because I simply didn't know what would happen.

I should have known. True, there were no elections in Beirut while I was there -- hell, there weren't even any policemen to be seen. But people drove to work, vendors sold bread and oranges and chewing gum on the streets, and there was running water and electricity in most of the city. Life went on. Not for everybody, true, but people in the tens of thousands made the effort, day after day, in the face of violence and threats of violence from all quarters, and they persevered.

Why should the Iraqis have been any different? Why should we have expected them to be any different?

I should have known, and more of the punditocracy, whether they favored the Bush invasion or not, should have known.

So good on ya, Iraqis, and Scott scores another one. Enjoy the whole thing.

For Business Success: More Shakespeare and Ayn Rand Means Fewer Enrons

Georgia Berner, CEO of Berner International, speaking at Slippery Rock University:

You are setting off on a journey. If you don't like the place where you are, either change it or leave it, because life is much too short to put up with it.

Mentions Ayn Rand, too.

(Via Google Alerts)

Happy Birthday, Thomas Paine

Today marks the birth, in 1737, of Thomas Paine, one of the most influential writers in American history. Free-thinker, patriot, pamphleteer, one-time hero and later victim of the French Revolution, Paine argued for American independence in his 1776 pamphlet Common Sense.

And a radical Paine truly was, taking anti-independence arguments to their root and demolishing them one by one. Here's one of my own favorites:

But, admitting that we were all of English descent, what does it amount to? Nothing. Britain, being now an open enemy, extinguishes every other name and title: and to say that reconciliation is our duty, is truly farcical. The first king of England, of the present line (William the Conqueror) was a Frenchman, and half the peers of England are descendants from the same country; wherefore, by the same method of reasoning, England ought to be governed by France.

Gotta love that one. I'd guess that Thomas Paine had himself a bit of fun in writing Common Sense.

Paine again turned pen to polemic to urge that Americans not give up their fight, with the first issue of The American Crisis, released on December 23, 1776:

THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to TAX) but "to BIND us in ALL CASES WHATSOEVER," and if being bound in that manner, is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even the expression is impious; for so unlimited a power can belong only to God.

In The Crisis No. II, from 1777, Paine addressed Lord Howe:

As a military man your lordship may hold out the sword of war, and call it the "ultima ratio regum": the last reason of kings; we in return can show you the sword of justice, and call it "the best scourge of tyrants."

Paine's pamphlets proved him to be a mighty scourge himself, and he was a hero in France, where he was elected to represent two different constituencies in the Convention, France's revolutionary legislature -- until he managed, again by expressing his opinions, to raise the hackles of the wrong people. The result was his arrest by the Committees of Public Safety and Surety General, and subsequent imprisonment.

Paine's major effort from this period is his free-thought classic, The Age of Reason, which bears close reading. In his introduction to Part First, entitled "To My Fellow Citizens of the United States of America," he wrote what are probably his most famous lines after "These are the times that try men's souls:"

The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason. I have never used any other, and I trust I never shall.

And Paine means what he says: at the beginning of the second chapter, he demolishes, in one fell swoop, the foundations of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam:

It is a contradiction in terms and ideas to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication. After this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner, for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him.

And maybe that's why conservatives shy away from Thomas Paine. Oh, you could say that Thomas Paine is one of my heroes. But don't bother asking today's "conservatives" about Paine: history, to most of them, began with the Reagan "revolution." A real revolutionary, such as Thomas Paine, interests them not. One look at what they're putting on the internet is all you need to know: nothing to mark Paine's birth at NewsMax.com, WorldNetDaily , FrontPageMag.com, or National Review Online (or its blog, The Corner). Not a thing.

Geez. with that kind of conservative media blackout, you might think he was Isabel Paterson or something. Taking Paine's own words, conservatives are but summer soldiers and sunshine patriots in the battle for individual liberty.

I can't wait to see what they make of the Ayn Rand centenary.

Posted by Craig Ceely at 05:59 PM | Comments (0)

New year, new looks

New, sleek look at Diana Hsieh's blog NoodleFood; redesign also at Jennifer Iannolo's place, Jennifer's Gastronomic Meditations, with some lovely and very, very inviting photographs. Not of Jennifer, unfortunately. But we can dream.

On the Comment Spam Problem

I found this at Lynn Sislo's place. From the Comment Spam Manifesto:

Posting an email address in a public place is not an invitation for companies to send unsolicited advertisements. Hosting a public Web forum or Usenet server does not give companies permission or the moral right to advertise on it. And soliciting comments from the public on a weblog entry or other Web page does not mean that companies or individuals are invited to use it for their advertising purposes.

Usenet news succumbed to spam long ago. Email was next. Now spammers have turned their attention to weblogs and comment forms. In order to increase search engine rankings you are posting advertisements to our Web pages. What you failed to understand is that bloggers are smarter, better connected, and more technologically savvy than the average email user. We control the medium that you are now attempting to exploit. You’ve picked a fight with us and it’s a fight you cannot win.

We have complained amongst ourselves, tried technological solutions, and tried to understand the nature of comment spam. And we are done. We now intend to fight back.

Spammers are hereby put on notice. Your comments are not welcome. If the purpose behind your comment is to advertise yourself, your Web site, or a product that you are affiliated with, that comment is spam and will not be tolerated.

Bloggers will track you down and notify your hosting providers about your activities. We will tell your ISPs what you are using their connections for. We will let the makers of the products you are advertising know of your despicable sales methods. We will hit you where it hurts by attacking your source of income.

You can move to a new host, find a new ISP, or sign up for a different affiliate plan. The end result will be the same. Each time you rise out of the muck we will strike you down and send you back to the hole you crawled out of.

Our sites belong to us and we intend to keep it that way. It will no longer be profitable to advertise through comment spam.

Indeed: I pay for the domain name and for the server space, just so some slime can post his ads for Texas Hold 'Em and Cialis? I don't think so. But all the same, I've had hundreds of such "comments" posted to my blog -- sad to say, more spam comments than comments. I liked seeing the numbers, but that's a corruption even of a numbers game, so I had to delete them all. Ugh.

I don't know that I already agree that the spammers have picked a fight they "cannot win." They certainly have automation on their side, and ISP banning doesn't seem to work. I'd be interested if someone would write an article on how to track down an ISP through an IP address, because I certainly don't know how to do it.

With the Usenet and with e-mail, it wasn't really clear, in America's legal environment, that such things were property, or, if property were involved, to whom it belonged. But it seems to me that blogs do stand differently: I've named this blog and put my own name to it, for instance, and as I wrote above, I pay for the domain name and the server space. I think it's pretty clear that this site is mine, not public property or a common carrier of any sort. But we need to do something to protect our property, and perhaps this is the right way to begin.

(Actually, as I mentioned here, Eric Scheie had a fabulous suggestion for dealing with spammers a while back...seems even more appropriate now!)

(Hat tip: Reflections in D Minor)

Clarity and Certainty

A nice resource has been restored to the internet. Details at Ego and at Objectivism Online, with a bit of the back story, so thanks to them for passing the word. (Yes, I'm passing the word, too, but I had nothing to do with restoring the sites or finding any of the materials) With James Sedgwick's death, his internet account was closed and his material was no longer available.

It's back up now, and I recommend that you check it out.

The Certainty Site

Certainty Plus

Welfare by any other name

"Social Security is commonly portrayed as benefiting most, if not all, Americans," writes Alex Epstein, "by providing them 'risk-free' financial security in old age."

This is a fraud. Under Social Security, lower- and middle-class individuals are forced to pay a significant part of their income _ about 12 percent _ for the alleged purpose of securing their retirement. That money is not saved or invested, but transferred directly to the program's current beneficiaries _ with the "promise" that when current taxpayers get old, the income of future taxpayers will be transferred to them.

Since this scheme creates no wealth, any benefits one person receives in excess of his payments necessarily come at the expense of others.

He goes on, "Observe that Social Security's wholesale harm to those who would use their income responsibly is justified in the name of those who would not. The rational and responsible are shackled and throttled for the sake of the irrational and irresponsible." And for what -- what "security" is there?

Under Social Security, every aspect of the government's "promise" to provide financial security is at the mercy of political whim. The government can change how much of an individual's money it takes; it has increased the payroll tax 17 times since 1935. The government can spend the money on anything it wants; observe the longtime practice of spending any annual Social Security surplus on other entitlement programs. The government can change when (and therefore if) it chooses to pay benefits and how much they consist of; witness the current proposals to raise the age cutoff or lower future benefits.

Under Social Security, whether an individual gets twice as much from others as was taken from him, or half as much, or nothing at all, is entirely at the discretion of politicians. He cannot count on Social Security for anything _ except a massive drain on his income.

Just so. As Epstein argues, we should be debating how to end SS, not how to save it or "improve" it.

Along similar lines, Harry Binswanger reminds us -- in fact, it should be more commonly understood -- that "a shortfall in government revenue is not a cost.

In fact, the exact opposite is true: government revenue is the cost, the cost borne by those whose production supplies that revenue.

From that principle, and from the definition of "cost," Dr. Binswanger concludes that there is in fact no cost involved in the transition to privatized Social Security. Worth reading and pondering.

The final piece in our roundup here is from Robert Anderson, who begins his "Making Socialism Work Better?" by quoting Ludwig von Mises: "The history of government intervention is the correcting of the ill effects of earlier interventionism, and the results from that interventionism yield consequences precisely the opposite of what the interveners themselves intended!" He goes on:

Finally, a personal aside: One of the great frustrations of spending a lifetime under an expanding "nanny state" has been to witness how readily our citizenry has succumbed to statist edicts. The notion of mandating individuals into a Social Security Savings Account scheme is virtually unquestioned today from the perspective of personal freedom of choice. In fact it is being promoted as a return to an "ownership society." What a mockery of the private property order!

Welfare by any other name is welfare, theft by any other name is theft, and socialism in any realm can't be made to work "better." Ask the Cubans. Ask the North Koreans.

Treat yourself. Read all three.

All style and no substance?

Heh. Which intentional tort am I?

take the WHAT INTENTIONAL TORT ARE YOU test.


and go to mewing.net. because law school made laura do this.

Harrumph. "All style and no substance," grumble, grumble...

(Hat tip to Pejman)

The president's nominee to head the Department of Redundancy Department is ...

Am I the only one who still remembers that President Carter suggested the creation of a Cabinet-level Department of Paperwork? I just did a Google search on "Carter + 'Department of Paperwork' " which brought zero results. Fine: it was just me, then.

But here you go: Laurence M. Vance has done quite a public service in this article. First of all, he's right in claiming that the Republican Party is not the party of limited government. That's no big deal, though it does bear repeating.

What he's done, though, that brought a smile to my face was present, in one place, a list of all cabinet-level departments of the executive branch (including those Republicans have sworn to eliminate); a list of all agencies in the Executive Office of the President; and a list of "Federal Agencies and Commissions." And these lists are good for opening the eyes.

You probably already suspected as much, but there is a lot going on.

For example, in the Executive Office of the President, there is both a Council on Economic Advisers and a National Economic Council, not to mention a Domestic Policy Council. There's both a National Security Council and a President's Foreign Policy Advisory Board. I wonder if there's a Department of Redundancy Department. And just what the hell is the USA Freedom Corps?

The list of Federal Agencies and Commissions shows much the same thing: for example, we have both an Institute of Museum and Library Sciences and a National Commission on Libraries and Information Science. I'm such they're responsible for such serious improvements over the card catalogue and the Dewey Decimal System.

We have -- and pay for -- both a National Labor Relations Board and a Federal Labor Relations Authority? Hmm.

We have -- and pay for -- both a National Institute of Mental Health and a Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration?

I couldn't begin to tell you what the Defense Threat Reduction Agency even does, nor the National Institute of Justice, nor the White House Commission on Remembrance. Remembrance of what? Not the Nazi slaughter of European Jewry six decades ago -- that's dealt with, quite capably I'm sure, by the United States Holocaust Memorial Council.

Carter's Department of Paperwork suggestion was a stupid idea. [And no, I am not just imagining the whole thing!] But at least it never came about.

The Warren Commission, too, has come in for a lot of criticism during my lifetime. But you know what? At least it no longer exists. It's gone.

That's more than can be said for the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service.

No involuntary servitude?

Amendment XIII

Ratified December 6, 1865

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Such high sentiments notwithstanding, I am faced with a jury summons for today.

"I Did Not Know That..."

From the CNN.com story on Johnny Carson's death:

The former talk show host did find an outlet for his creativity: He wrote short humor pieces for The New Yorker magazine, including "Recently Discovered Childhood Letters to Santa," which purported to give the youthful wish lists of William Buckley, Don Rickles and others.

Well whaddaya know. I'd like to read that, actually, and had I known he was writing for The New Yorker I'd have checked out the magazine more frequently. I had no idea he'd written for them: he does not appear in the 2001 Fierce Pajamas anthology, although Ian Frazier is, to my taste, over-represented (am I the only one who finds "Dating Your Mom" to be seriously un-funny?). I'll bet he was good.

I say that as one who makes his own attempts at writing humor: I'll bet Johnny Carson's humor pieces were good. I'll bet they were funny.

(Hat tip on this discovery: Joe Gandelman at Dean Esmay's blog)

The very worst of fortune's might

No, that doesn't describe blogging.

I'm told by a native speaker of Russian that Shakespeare's sonnets are as beautiful in Russian as they are in English -- in particular, sonnet number 90. I wouldn't really know: I'm still shaky on the alphabet, and my vocabulary is pretty limited, too. But here it is, in the Marshak translation:

Уж если ты разлюбишь - так теперь,
Теперь, когда весь мир со мной в раздоре.
Будь самой горькой из моих потерь,
Но только не последней каплей горя!

И если скорбь дано мне превозмочь,
Не наноси удара из засады.
Пусть бурная не разрешится ночь
Дождливым утром - утром без отрады.

Оставь меня, но не в последний миг,
Когда от мелких бед я ослабею.
Оставь сейчас, чтоб сразу я постиг,
Что это горе всех невзгод больнее,

Что нет невзгод, а есть одна беда -
Твоей любви лишиться навсегда.

Here's Shakespeare's English original:

Then hate me when thou wilt, if ever, now,
Now, while the world is bent my deeds to cross,
Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow,
And do not drop in for an afterloss.
Ah, do not, when my heart hath scaped this sorrow,
Come in the rearward of a conquered woe;
Give not a windy night a rainy morrow,
To linger out a purposed overthrow.
If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last,
When other petty griefs have done their spite,
But in the onset come: so shall I taste
At first the very worst of fortune's might;
And other strains of woe, which now seem woe,
Compared with loss of thee will not seem so.

As I say, I'm not really competent to judge. I report, you decide!

(I'll admit, I thought it'd be really cool to post something in Russian.)

Congressman Calls For Abrogating Property Rights

So here's a stupid, stupid quote from President Bush:

"There's a trade deficit. That's easy to resolve: People can buy more United States products if they’re worried about the trade deficit."

Stupid, yeah, I already said that...but harmless, basically.

In this effluvia, Vermont member of Congress Bernie Sanders attacks President Bush, and claims to speak of "how out of touch he is with the economic reality most Americans face." I think the honorable Mr. Sanders is out of touch with simple, basic, necessary, essential truths about economics.

I say this with all charity and goodwill because, if the honorable and estimable -- oh, and I'm sure, honest -- Mr. Sanders had familiarized himself with inescapable economic realities, it's quite clear, isn't it, that he would not be so willing to enlist in the Sturmabteilung he so clearly aspires to lead.

However, let's take Member of the Reichstag the Politburo Congress Sanders at his word, shall we?

Did your staff purchase Christmas decorations for the White House this year? Approximately 80 percent of these decorations are now made in China. (By the way, did you read about the so-called Christian "dissident" who was placed under house arrest in China because he wanted to have a party with his friends to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ?)

Now, that is a fine sentiment. And I must tell you, Gauleiter Congressman Sanders did vote against relaxing travel restrictions against another socialist state -- Cuba -- until its political prisoners were released. On neither sentiment can I fault him.

But damn it, he doesn't mean it. Or, rather, there's no way to tell just what he does mean. Not at all. Consider this hash dog's breakfast paragraph:

While the stark reality of America's industrial might moving abroad may have escaped the president and his economic advisers, a growing number of members of Congress see with their own eyes the devastating effect that the president’s trade policy is having on manufacturing jobs in their own districts. It’s high time that Congress brought the president down to earth, and made him understand that our current unfettered free trade policies have been a disaster for the working families of this country - and need a fundamental overhaul.

Ahem.

In the climactic scene of The Godfather, Don Barzini, Don Corleone's insidious enemy, tells his fellow Mafia bosses from around the country that "we do not have to give each other assurances, as if we were lawyers." But let us, as lawyers might, deal with Comrade Sanders' points seriatim, shall we?

1. "the devastating effect that the president's trade policy is having on manufacturing jobs in their own districts."

There are...there are almost no words for this. Which president's policy? Because the globalization of the economy has been going on since US corporations built the Kama River truck factory in the Soviet Union to help them fight Hitler, if not before. In the 1970s I, an innocent yet eager teenager in Florida, bought a mbira (thumb piano), from Africa, classical guitar strings from France and from Spain, and Beatles albums from Britain and Germany. Just 'cause I wanted to.

Oh, and just before then, Americans were already buying Sony cassette players and Honda and Toyota automobiles -- Japanese products all -- because they wanted them.

(I might add that decades before Rush Limbaugh fired up his first cigar, His Haloness President John F. Kennedy was a Cuban cigar aficionado, and, on the night before his embargo against Cuba was to be announced and take effect, despatched trusted aides to purchase boxes of his favorite Cuban smokes for his own personal use before such purchases became illegal, making him not only an enemy of free trade, but an insider trader himself, eh?, given that he was trading, was he not, on information emphatically not yet available to the general public.)

2. It should be added that this president's "trade policy" is not only not one of free trade -- witness his various and varied tariffs -- but is emphatically not a policy -- witness his backtracking on tariffs, on China, on...well, on everything.

3. "It’s high time that Congress brought the president down to earth...."

Oh, please. This president has flown and landed jet fighters, and has earned -- or was, at least, "awarded" -- a Harvard MBA. And Congress is going to bring him back "down to earth?"

And really, is this the same Congress which whenever possible sends delegations to Cuba, the better to kiss Fidel Castro's ass? Is this the Congress which has delegated its power to legislate to untold numbers of executive branch agencies? Is this the Congress which has foresworn its prerogative to declare war?

Is this the Congress which has hosteled Representatives Dan Rostenkowski and Cynthia McKinney, and Klansmen Senators Harry Truman and Robert Byrd? Who could they possibly bring down to earth?

4. "...our current unfettered free trade policies have been a disaster for the working families of this country - and need a fundamental overhaul."

Oh my god, if trade today is unfettered then those hapless blues singers on Georgia chain gangs should be so fettered. Hello? What about steel, lumber, textile, and shrimp tariffs? Huh? What about drugs re-imported from Canada, "voluntary" restrictions on Japanese automobiles and motorcycles, regulations on trucks entering the US from Mexico, or absolute bans on Cuban cigars or Libyan oil? "Unfettered free trade?"

"Unfettered free trade?" Compared to what? North Korea? The Democratic People's Autarkic Republic of Shangri-la?

But Bernie Sanders isn't quite finished yet.

Nor am I finished, yet, with him.

I have blasted President Bush -- and rightly so -- for not understanding what private property, what ownership, actually means. I gave him no more than he deserves. But Bernie Sanders seems to be interested in carving out for himself his own little corner of Evil in the Universe, even if it's on a path already trod by idealists reformers monsters before him. I quote his gentle words:

The time for playing nice with corporate outsourcers and their enablers in government is over. Congress must repeal Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China and develop trade policies that protect and create good-paying jobs in America. We must create a noise so loud that even the president hears it.

I'll be honest with you: the idea of developing "trade policies that protect and create good-paying jobs in America" is a fine one. So I propose the creation of an Intra-United States Free Trade Zone, and I call upon Bernie Sanders to introduce such legislation in the House of Representatives: no taxes or restrictions or regulations on commercial trade, of any type, anywhere within the United States of America. How about it, Bernie? Call off OSHA, the IRS, the EPA, the Social Security Administration and all other parasitic federal agencies set upon us to eat out our substance, as was protested against in the Declaration of Independence.

As for his call to repeal the Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China, hell, those bastards have missiles aimed at us, do they not? This one's yours, Bernie: I'm with you on this one.

But: "playing nice?" What are you talking about here? Are you saying that owners of businesses don't really own those businesses, but must make obeisance to the Reich the dictatorship of the proletariat the US Congress in order to operate said businesses? Is that what you are saying?

So let's see where you really stand, Bernie, okay? I mean, really.

In April 1946, Ayn Rand wrote:

Those who want slavery should have the grace to name it by its proper name. They must face the full meaning of that which they are advocating or condoning; the full, exact, specific meaning of collectivism, of its logical implications, of the principles upon which it is based, and of the ultimate consequences to which these principles will lead.

Congressman Sanders, I await your reply.

Putting the President on the Couch, so to speak...

What were the best parts of President Bush's second inaugural address?

"No one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave."

Well, yes. The great pride of the United States is that it was explicitly founded as a confederation of states dedicated to the idea that each individual was entitled to pursue his own happiness.

Uh...and that was also part of its shame, for a while: "his" happiness. Oops. Well, that's what they meant at the time, women being regarded as, ah, something else, not to vote, testify in courts of law, own much property, and so on. And blacks? As Donnie Brasco and his Sicilian pals would say, fuhgeddaboudit.

"Self-government relies, in the end, on the governing of the self." Yes -- a self grounded in a strong "I," not a mindless conformity to the group, to authority, to "Allah," or to the state. Self is measured not by one's service to the community, as President Bush goes on to later imply, but to holding reality and reason as absolutes. In the process, the community most certainly benefits from the presence of capable, competent and strong individuals.

Those weren't my selections: they were those of Dr. Michael Hurd, and now you might know why I like reading him.

One of his choices for what was worst in the Bush speech:

[To young people:] "Make the choice to serve in a cause larger than your wants, larger than yourself." The premise of this statement is that one's "self" consists of nothing more than wants, urges and hormonal appetites -- devoid of reason, intelligence and thought. Although this is what our public school system seeks to create, and to some extent succeeds at creating in young people, this is not the essence of being young -- or human.

Go read the whole thing.

Happy Birthday, Isabel Paterson

Here's how the review begins:

An eloquently significant characteristic of the twentieth century is the odd combination of two facts: that politics is the paramount concern of our age -- and that political philosophy has all but vanished from public consideration, discussion or knowledge.

The subject of politics is virtually absent from philosophical journals; political science textbooks are written predominantly on the intellectual level of a third-rate tabloid editorial; political campaigns are conducted -- well, as you can see them being conducted. It is as if our age were bent on committing suicide in loyalty to the premise that the more pressing a problem, the less thought one must give it.

This cultural context adds an extra element of urgency to the importance of The God of the Machine by Isabel Paterson -- a book which would be of great significance in any period, but which, today, has the effect of a unique phenomenon: it is a work of specifically political philosophy.

That admiring reviewer is Ayn Rand, reviewing The God of the Machine in the October, 1964 issue of The Objectivist Newsletter. "One of the things that readers will learn from this book," she continues, "apart from its specific contents, is what constitutes political thinking -- on what level political issues have to be approached and discussed, what questions have to be answered, what are political principles."

And here is where the partisans of liberty must note something about their alleged allies, the conservatives. Although President Bush mentioned liberty and freedom a number of times in his inauguration speech the other day, those who live in the United States know that he uses the word "democracy" far more often. No Republican leaders in the executive branch or in the House or Senate mentioned Isablel Paterson's birthday. Undoubtedly they were more concerned, if they thought of birthdays at all, with Martin Luther King, Jr.

More likely, though, their silence simply means that they are not philosophical at all about politics, and that it simply means, to them, above all else, power. And indeed, I believe that is so: in my quick survey of conservative sites for Thursday, Friday, and today, in particular NewsMax.com, WorldNetDaily.com, and FrontPageMag.com, I found no mention of Isable Paterson at all. Even lewrockwell.com and the Mises Blog missed it, possibly due to her occasional friendship with Ayn Rand.

So the conservatives and the Republicans -- I do recognize that there is no 100% correlation there -- prefer to pass on recognizing the birthday of a brilliant, passionate defender of individual liberty. Not that their taste and judgment in political writers must mirror my own, but it does make it worth asking: What is it that they mean by such words as liberty and freedom, and is democracy more important to them?

Whatever democracy means to them.

No, I suspect that they really don't care and really haven't thought any of it out. By and large, it's all about power, and only about power, for most of them. Power. The end. Fin. Full stop.

But Isabel Paterson is not forgotten: Stephen Cox at Liberty and Power mentioned her on Thursday, complete with lots of quotes. Two of my favorites: "The biggest pests are the people who use altruism as an alibi. What they passionately wish is to make themselves important," and "If you're going to be a dinosaur, be one; otherwise you're nothing but a lizard."

(Isabel Paterson was born on January 22, 1886)

Amazing. Madcap. Great.

William Shakespeare invented two of the three words in the above title. I doubt, though, that he did so in one fell swoop

What an amazing wordplay enthusiast he must have been, that William Shakespeare. Had great range, too, didn't he: softhearted in his comedies, cold-blooded and ruthless the way he plotted his tragedies, always with an eyeball to pleasing his audience.

While googling the origins of the words "port" and "starboard," I found this post, discussing some of the many, many words and phrases coined by Shakespeare.

Academic researchers downstairs may press the authorship debate -- was he Ben Jonson? Roger Bacon? Or Robert de Vere, the Earl of Oxford? -- those of us mere readers find their arguments almost inaudible, caring only for the glory and radiance of Shakespeare's way with the English language.

Whoever he was.

Or, as my madcap faculty advisor, Dr. Charles Hazelrigg, put it when I was a pup: "Today it is generally accepted that the plays and sonnets were not written by William Shakespeare, but by another author of the same name."

Everything I've put in italics is a Shakespeare-invented word.

Amazing. Simply amazing.

Found "port" and "starboard," too, The Word Detective. Enjoy!

Movie Meme (Baker's Dozen)

Found this game of a meme at Out of Lascaux, and thought I'd play.

1. "I came to Casablanca for the waters." "There are no waters in Casablanca." "I was misinformed."

2. "You have a gub?"

3. "They must think the sun shines out your ass!"

4. "What's going on...behind my back?"

5. "Hand me another o' them Bolshevik firecrackers, would you, Colonel? I think I just fell asleep in the snow..."

6. "Let me explain something to you, Walsh. This business requires a certain amount of finesse."

7. "I believe in America. America has made my fortune."

8. "I'm not an actor, I'm a movie star!"

9. "Don't take that tone with me, young man. I fought the war for your sort." "I bet you're sorry you won."

10. "Hyman Roth has been dying from the same heart attack for the last twenty years."

11. "A wink from a pretty girl at a party results rarely in climax, Karl. But a man is a fool not to push a suggestion as far as it will go."

12. "What's the decor? Early Mexican brothel?"

13. "Never rub another man's rhubarb!"

I'd go for Ninja Wizards Too

Unlike the Cheesemistress, I haven't watched this one fourteen times.

But it's definitely good for a laugh.

Does President Bush understand ownership?

Terence Jeffrey on President Bush and his "ownership society" language:

President Bush has become, quite rightly, an evangelist for the virtues of private property, speaking about an "ownership society" just about everywhere he goes. Just about everywhere, that is, except when he visits a government-owned school.

Then he is a big-government man.

Consider back-to-back speeches the president gave last week. On Jan. 11 in Washington, D.C., he promoted his excellent plan to create personally owned retirement accounts as a part of Social Security reform. The next day, at a public high school in suburban Virginia, he proposed new spending programs for the Department of Education's No Child Left Behind Act.

So writes Terence Jeffrey, and he's absolutely right. What boggles the mind, of course, is why he should be surprised. President Bush is a big-government man, period. He wants more Americans to own their own homes -- and toward that end he promotes Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, two of the most corrupt agencies in the federal government. He wants more Americans to own their "retirement accounts," he says -- as long as they do so under the umbrella of a new, "reformed" Social Security Administration. What he won't let you own is more of your own income, let alone such things as steroids, marijuana for your glaucoma, or Thai shrimp.

But let's get back to Jeffrey's point:

"I love promoting ownership in America," Bush said in his Social Security speech. "I like the idea of encouraging more people to say 'I own my own home,' 'I own my own business,' 'I own and manage my health accounts,' and now 'I own a significant part of my retirement account.' Promoting ownership in America makes sense to me, to make sure people continue to have a vital stake in the future of our country."

But the next day at J.E.B. Stuart High School, the president did not say anything about encouraging parents to "own" their children's education. In fact, the word "ownership" did not cross his lips. The word "billion" did, however.

"Today," Bush said, "I propose a $1.5 billion initiative to help every high school student graduate with the skills necessary to succeed." Under the same proposal, states would be required to administer annual tests in reading and math to public school students in the ninth, 10th and 11th grades. (No Child Left Behind already requires math and reading tests for public school students in the third through eighth grades.)

I would correct Terrence Jeffrey on one thing: it's not just George Bush. It's not even both presidents bearing the name George Bush. Bear in mind the reason many Republicans and conservatives tend to give, election after election, for voting for their hideously lame, hypocritical, pro-Big Government candidates: "Well, he's better than the alternative. It's the lesser of two evils." And what's worse is that they manage, time after time, to make themselves believe it, often to the point of working up actual enthusiasm for their guy (I do not believe that most of the public enthusiasm for President Bush is faked).

Perhaps you remember this:

When "moderate" Bob Dole was the Republican presidential candidate in 1996, he ran on a platform calling for abolition of the federal Department of Education because the Constitution does not grant the federal government a role in primary and secondary education.

You should also remember that Newt Gingrich referred to Dole as the "tax collector for the welfare state," yet Dole had little problem securing his party's nomination that year. You'll also recall that sitting (Democratic) President Clinton had little trouble beating him.

It's easy to despise the Democrats: the socialism they stand for is truly despicable. But at least you know what they'll do or try to do once in office. Republican candidates often speak of "freedom," and "liberty," or "getting the government off the back of the American people." What we get from them are luxury taxes, Marines deployed to Beirut, free speech violations dressed as campaign finance "reform," destructive tariffs, and the No Child Left Behind Act.

You should also remind yourself that a certain Ronald Reagan spoke of abolishing the Department of Education during the 1980 campaign. This has been going on for a long time.

But back to Jeffrey: it's not just the federal government, but state and local levels of government too. He succinctly describes why America's public schools are in the shape they're in:

Even under Republican leadership, primary and secondary education in America has remained essentially a socialist enterprise: Government owns the major means of production.

Exactly.

Government needs to get out of education, out of providing loans for home ownership, and out of our shrimp.

Gold Bug Alert...and Pork Bellies Bugs, Too

"Talk to any financial advisor or read a book about saving for retirement," writes Doug French, "and the word diversification comes up time and time again. Diversify, diversify, and diversify. Like your mom told you: don’t put all of your eggs in one basket."

For too many people, diversification means putting a certain percentage of your money in stocks and the rest in bonds. But, what’s a person to do when stocks are overvalued on a historical basis and bond yields are near all time lows? Clearly neither asset class is a bargain and retirement is just around the corner.

World traveler and legendary investor Jim Rogers says the next bull market will be in commodities and provides a primer for those who really want to diversify with his new book, Hot Commodities: How Anyone Can Invest Profitably in the World’s Best Market.

Rogers was the big idea man behind the Quantum Fund. While the other co-founder George Soros did the trading, Rogers provided the history and economic knowledge for Quantum and the fund generated a 4,000 percent return in the 1970’s, allowing Rogers to retire.

I must say, up front, that this post is not a review of the Rogers book, which I have not read, but a reaction to Doug French's comments. I don't think Mr. French is trying to mislead any of his readers -- nor is Mr. Rogers, in my opinion -- but the field of discussion here is very complex and very tricky. They're talking about investing in commodities, and when investing in commodities, you can be right and still lose money. Easily.

First of all, to clear things up (and in all fairness, perhaps Mr. Rogers does so in his book. In fact he probably does.), you should start thinking in terms of "futures," rather than commodities, because unless you're a farmer or ConAgra or whatnot, you aren't actually investing in commodities such as corn, hogs, or soybeans, but in futures: contracts to buy or to sell a certain amount of those commodities at some specified, future date. There's a big difference: the reason the date is specified is because those contracts expire on those dates, which explains what I meant when I said that in such trading, you can be right and still lose money. You have to be right about which direction your chosen investment vehicle will move, and you have to be right at the right time.

Incidentally, the "commodities" investments with which George Soros earned so much money, and such fame as a trader, were currencies futures, not soybeans, wheat, or pork bellies.

French goes on:

Why commodities now? Well, actually commodities have been doing better than stocks, bonds and even real estate for the past few years. But, commodity bull markets take a couple of decades to play out, so Rogers thinks there is still plenty of time to get in.

First of all, when the government prints money incessantly, its value falls and the price of things goes up. As Rogers points out: "With the White House in a race with the Federal Reserve to spend money faster than the Fed can print it, the dollar is shakier than ever." Unfortunately, Rogers sees no other currencies that are any better than the dollar.

Here I think French is probably right. Many Austrian economists believe that Alan Greenspan has created a hugely inflationary environment, which must eventually be reckoned with. Commodities futures have, historically, done well during periods of inflation, better than stocks and certainly better than bonds or holding cash. So one value to you and me of the Rogers book is that if his economic analysis is correct, then we know what we're looking at -- a future of inflation -- and we can begin, financially, to defend ourselves. After all, we do possess some knowledge of which investment vehicles perform well during inflationary environments.

China is the primary force on the demand side of the commodities equation according to Rogers. The twenty-first century will belong to the Chinese and they will dominate the world economy. As the predominately rural Chinese population becomes more urban, their consumption of commodities will skyrocket. China is already the number one consumer of: copper, steel, iron ore and soybeans, and, number two in oil consumption.

It will be a bumpy ride for China, but the upside is enormous. Only four percent of the Chinese people own cars, the population's sugar consumption is less than one sixth that of the US, and the annual per capita coffee consumption in China is less than half a pound while Americans drink 20 gallons a year.

I agree here that China will continue to prosper, and that investors can and will profit from that prosperity, but I'll assert here that the twenty-first century will not belong to China. It's been argued, in fact, that large nations such as China and India will break up, possibly within my lifetime. It's an argument with some merit, and would definitely have an effect on whether this century will "belong" to the Chinese.

Goldbugs will be disappointed with Rogers who feels that "following an obsession is not the best investment philosophy." In fact, Rogers would like to stand the Alchemist’s Dream on its head and turn gold into lead. While lead production continues to go down, "the search for gold reportedly accounted for 75 percent of the total ongoing exploration for the world’s largest mining companies," Rogers writes. "It is as if mining professionals were as gaga over gold as the general public." And, at the same time demand for the yellow metal is tepid, demand for lead, an essential component to SVI vehicle batteries, is growing.

As a matter of speculating in futures contracts, French and Rogers are correct. But that is not the only use of gold as an inflation hedge: gold (and silver) are also survival commodities. Remember, no one knows how far out of control the inflation will get, or how long it will last. If we're looking at long-term inflation it might just be a good idea to buy and hold actual gold, not gold futures. You never know.

Rogers scoffs at the old canard that commodities are risky and backs his opinion up with results from a 2004 study from the Yale School of Management’s Center for International Finance. According to the study, not only do commodities have less risk than stocks and bonds, they provide better returns, are negatively correlated to stocks and bonds and positively correlated to inflation. The study also found that commodities futures returned triple the gains that investing in the stocks of commodities companies did.

Sorry, but commodities are risky. They always will be. There are ways to limit such risk, true. But you should never forget that your timing must be correct, as well as your judgment. And with margin calls, it's possible to lose more money than you've invested. And futures investors do that, all the time.

Still, all investment vehicles carry some risk, and so does not investing at all. I still think that the basics of surviving inflation include owning gold and real estate, but for those who can afford it, speculating in futures is probably a good idea. Doug French doesn't strike me as a naive, wild-eyed apostle of futures trading, and he's definitely gotten me interested in reading the Rogers book, which I intend to do.

(DISCLAIMER: I don't own any interest in any investment advisory firms or newsletters, nor in any futures exchange anywhere in the world, nor am I speculating in any futures at the moment. Jeez, I feel like a putz, saying all that...)

Listen to classical guitar

I'm preparing a section for items of interest to classical guitar people, but while you're waiting, you can listen to a streaming program from live365.com, hosted by Michael Cervone.

Another successful prediction

As I predicted here, Out of Lascaux has returned, with comments on New York's recently re-opened Museum of Modern Art, evidence of El Paso's moderate winter weather (supposed to be at least 65 degrees tomorrow), and more, I'm sure, on the way.

By the way, the kid in the picture made his own functional ocarina last night. Cool.

Get out your blue pencil

I guess I'm on a software binge: the latest thing I'm trying is a text editor, TextWrangler, from Bare Bones Software, the people who bring you BBEdit.

I'm not unhappy with TextEdit, which comes free with Mac OS X. Just lookin' to see what's out there, you know?

Six strings, six fingers...

I mentioned, here, that one of my resolutions for the New Year was to return to learning/playing the classical guitar. I never was much of a guitarist, and I knew that it's a perishable skill, but still...

I dug out my old Carcassi method book and scale pattern studies, and bought a few new method books. I made two decisions:

1. Digital technology is a wonderful thing for the student of music: you can now buy methods, such as the ones by Jason Waldron and David Braid, which come with compact discs, so you can actually hear how the music, exercises, etc inside are supposed to sound. And your metronome now doubles as rather an accurate tuner, can be adjusted at the push of a button, and is no larger than a deck of cards. Or your iPod.

2. Evolution as all well and good as a theory, a parlor amusement, but damn it, I just have too many fingers on my right hand. I realize what the books tell me: that I'll be using three of them, plus the thumb, but geez, just excruciating through the C major and A minor scales found me bumping into strings, hanging out in mid-air, and colliding with other fingers. As scientific arguments go, I think intelligent design loses on this one.

Why can't classical guitarists just use a pick, anyway? It was good enough for Jimi Hendrix...

Salsa Music

Quite the conversation (56 comments, and counting) going on over at Asymmetrical Information. Your estimable hostess, Jane Galt, posted her recipe for microwave rice and peas, and her loyal readers chimed in with reminiscenses of poverty and suggested recipes of their own.

Except me. I present you with something I found in James Beard's Beard on Pasta:

The point is that you need never be at a loss for something good to eat if you have some pasta and the resources of an ordinary kitchen. I remember one memorable meal that Marion Cunningham and I put together at La Costa, where we were giving a series of cooking demonstrations. We didn't want to eat at the spa, and we were too tired to go out to dinner. We hung around until it got late, and then we tore down to the little local grocery shop and found, to our dismay, that it was closed. Back to our demonstration kitchen we went and surveyed what we had on hand. We found a package of imported spaghettini and a couple of cans of salsa, the spicy onion, pepper, and green tomato sauce that is used in Mexican cooking. We cooked the pasta, dumped the salsa, cold, on the steaming hot spaghettini, tossed it all together, and to this day Marion claims that it's the best noodle dish she's ever had.

Now it's not for me to correct James Beard on food and cookery, although it must be said that in my part of the country we never italicize the word "salsa," salsa being such an everyday part of cooking and eating and speech. And it can be red as well as green. Not that I'd ever have the temerity to correct James Beard.

And anyway, he's absolutely right about pasta and salsa: I remember reading that passage years ago, and the dish became an immediate classic at Chez Ceely. You can top it with any kind of cheese, or none. You can add other veggies, or not. You won't find it in any Atkins cookbook, but as a tasty dinner in a pinch, it's tough to beat. Satisfies Jane Galt's poverty criteria, too.

Myths and Legends of Blogging

As explained by Frank J. Samples and pithy commentary:

MYTH: People only blog for the money and the babes.
FACT: People also blog for power, out of sense of arrogance, and because they like the clickity-clack sound of the keyboard.

The Anger of Compassion is well-known by the cognoscenti as The Blog Beautiful Women read. But yeah, he's right: it's the keyboard thing that draws me to blogging and keeps me here. As well as the babes.

MYTH: Blogging was predicted by Nostradamus as a precursor to the end of the world.
FACT: Most scholars believe the passage referred to is actually about Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction. When clothes no longer operate properly, the end is nigh.

To be sure. Still, I think the garment in question acted quite properly indeed.

(Hat tip: Glenn Reynolds)

Numbers don't lie?

Maybe not. Anyway, according to this Healthspan Calculator, I'll live to be 84.1 years old. If that's the case, to steal one from George Burns, I should start taking better care of myself.

Seriously, I wonder how long I'd have if I went back to exercise, and got my blood pressure under control? Hmmm....

(Hat tip: Kate at Electric Venom)

Rapmaster C is IN DA HOUSE

How multicultural are we at The Anger of Compassion? Fearlessly so!

I entered my first and last name here and was given the name Little Rhymez. Okay, not bad.

Then I added my middle initial and became (drum roll, please): B. Dirty.

Much better. Much, much better. Oh yes, ladies! Bring all the bling-bling -- and yo' bad selves -- down to B. Dirty. He'll tell you where you live.

(Hat tip: Ian Hamet at Banana Oil.)

Twin sons of different mothers

So, who is my long-lost blogger twin?

Your Famous Blogger Twin is InstaPundit

Smart, well-informed, a true polymath Don't be surprised if your blogging brings you fame as well!

Who's Your Famous Blogger Twin?

Hmmm...

(Hat tip to the Cheesemistress at The Cheese Stands Alone)

And the votes are in...

Time for a respite in the browswer wars, at least for me.

One of my projects over the holidays was evaluating browsers for my iMac and for the Windows XP laptop I use on business trips. The results are now in.

On my recent trip to Newport News, Virginia, to learn some Army-mandated software, I evaluated the PC versions of Opera and Firefox. I like both, but the winner, hands down, was Firefox. Opera has the edge on speed, but Firefox was pretty sprightly, too, and behaved with a bit more stability. So it's Firefox for the laptop.

I had more work to do, and more choices to make, on the Mac system. OS X comes with a fine browser, Safari, and I really have no complaints with it. It can even handle the flavor of the month -- tabbed browsing -- which I was introduced to by Opera, and which I didn't think Safari could do. But it can, so that's a go.

I also spent a lot of time using Opera on the iMac. I liked the look of it, and I loved its speed. But it was a bit unstable, just like its cousin, the Windows version: when a screen would be refreshed, the results weren't quite...perfect.

Besides, I wanted to give the Mozilla teams a shot.

On Mac OS X, you'll actually find two browsers from the Mozilla project: the better-known Firefox, and the Mac-only Camino. I tried Firefox and liked it, so I kept using it. Camino, I thought...well, I'll give it a chance.

Firefox was faster than Safari. Seemed to block more pop-ups. The tabbed browsing was easier. And it was better-looking than Safari. All good things -- and remember, I never disliked Safari. So Firefox got high marks for all that -- and it was more stable than Opera.

So why bother with Camino at all? Well, as I learned, it was all of the above, with a more elegant interface: it just looks, to me, more like an OS X application should look, and the tabbed browsing was nicer-looking and easier. I kept using it more and more each day, and eventually, Camino won out as my choice of Mac browser.

So there you have it: all the votes are in, and it's a sweep for Mozilla -- Firefox for Windows XP, and Camino for Mac OS X.

Syndicate This! ...well, I'm trying to...

Here's what Jeffrey Tucker has to say about using RSS:

It is used by only a small percentage of web surfers. Most people have no idea that it even exists, at least not now. Those who do use it, however, find that it has changed the way they go about keeping up with information. Quite simply, it puts you in the loop in a way in which you will never be if all you do is click surf click surf around the web.

He's right, basically. Surfing the web is never going to go away, for the same reason that browsing in a bookstore hasn't gone away: because it's fun. Readers will continue to patronize amazon.com and those same readers will go to a Barnes and Noble or to a great used-book store like COAS.

But more and more people will migrate to RSS, as I am, as you will, because of its power. Twenty years ago, the VCR gave television viewers the ability to watch their programs on their schedule, as opposed to the broadcasters'. TiVo takes things beyond that. Streaming audio and podcasting offer similar power to the radio listener.

So does such a simple thing as a news website: one reason, I think, that more and more people are getting their news from the web rather than from the major network news shoes is just that in using the web, people are more in control of their time. RSS adds to that control, by informing you that there's been an update to something you subscribe to, thus saving you the trouble of looking (surfing) for that update.

When a new item has been added, you can set your aggregator to show a small notification on your screen (and also set how long you want this to stay there). This way you can read the latest information as it is uploaded, and the instant it is uploaded. What this means is that you can follow hundreds of sources without actually clicking through the web. When you see something you want to look at, it is sitting right there on your aggregator. Or you can catch up on all that you missed while you were away in a matter of a few minutes (what used to take an hour).

Please understand: aggregation isn't just for techy mucky mucks and geekheads with iPods and Blue Tooth ear plugs. It can be used by anyone and should be. Mom and Dad will love it. Even if a person spends a mere 30 mins. online per day, those 30 mins. will be put to much better use with aggregation. Aggregation fundamentally changes your whole approach to viewing the web. It is like touring a country on high-speed train rather than on foot, like crossing a lake on a jet-ski rather than swimming, like talking on the phone rather than yelling.

Again, I agree with Tucker that using aggregation will change the way you experience the web, but not because you'll stop surfing. You won't. Rather, your experience will change because you've just made some tasks quicker and easier.

For content providers, though (including bloggers), the situation is quite different:

And a special note to all webmasters: don't think you can get by without enabling RSS on your site. If you don't have it, the people in the know are not reading you. You are slowly slipping off the face of the Internet. It doesn’t matter how high your Google ranking or Alexa ranking is. If you do not provide a feed, you are slowly but surely becoming invisible.

Invisible.

Think Tucker's being extreme in that prediction? Think again. Kaye Trammell, an assistant professor of mass communication at Louisiana State University, researches blogs and writes one herself. On Friday, December 31, in a post entitled, "rss, where art thou?" she wrote:

Syndication is key. I have become such a snob that I won't read a blog if I can't dump it into my BlogLines account. Okay, snob is a bit harsh. It is more about convenience. I don't have time to search out every nifty blog I come across every day to see if there is a new post. I want it delivered to me.

When I find a new blog I enjoy, the first thing I do is scour the sidebars for a link to syndication. No syndication, no subscription. The blogger loses out on higher readership & I lose out on reading some awesome posts.

Get that? If Kaye can't subscribe to your blog -- or to mine-- she won't go back to it. She won't continue reading it even though she knows she'll "lose out on reading some awesome posts."

Now, I'm no early adopter, and my rocket science degree came from the inside of a matchbook cover, but even I am doing this RSS thing. The news aggregator I'm using right now is NetNewsWire Lite, although as Tucker mentions, there are hundreds out there for the trying.

I don't have it all figured out yet, even on the reading end. I can't quite get all the quadrophebics to hook up to the wumpfwampfer, so I don't have all the subscriptions I want. And I haven't figured out how to enable an RSS feed for this blog. But this is not something a blogger can afford to ignore, so I'm working on it.

2005 promises to be a wild year for browsers (and browser hijacking), blogs and bloggers, and scripting. I can't wait.

Craig's Top Ten for 2005

Well, not really. But just 'cause it's that day, and it's that kind of thing to do...

Some of what I intend to accomplish this year:

1. Show off a six-pack. As scrawny as I've usually been, I've never had one. Now, having seen actual, gratifying response (to heavy work) on my thighs, chest, biceps, and shoulders, I'd like to see a six-pack as well, thank you very much. Wouldn't mind putting on twenty pounds, either...

2. Work my way through all of Wheelock's Latin.

3. On the guitar: get all the way through Matteo Carcassi's method and his 25 melodic and harmonic studies. Hmm...the Fernando Sor studies, too...

4. Check out Toastmasters.

5. Check out each of the two Hash House Harriers clubs in El Paso.

6. Climb Hueco Tanks. More than one route. More than once.

7. Read all of Shakespeare's sonnets aloud -- perhaps on live365.com...?

8. Figure out how to establish an RSS feed for this blog.

9. Attend Cosi Fan Tutte at El Paso Opera, and check out the Santa Fe Opera, too.

10. Read Human Action all the way through.

Okay, that's not everything. But that's the public face.