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Clayton Cramer's BLOG |
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Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).
 Never forget! I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page).
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Friday, August 19, 2005
Grand Theft Auto Made Me Do It! It's sort of a variant of Flip Wilson's famous line, "The devil made me do it!" BIRMINGHAM -- A black man sentenced to death for the murder of three Fayette police employees likely will appeal both the makeup of the all-white jury and a judge's decision to bar evidence linking the killings to "Grand Theft Auto" video games, his lawyer said Monday.Mental illness might be a plausible explanation by itself. I don't doubt that those who are easily influenced by be encouraged to antisocial activity by a game like this. But trying to blame his actions on playing a video game? I know that people get themselves trapped into drug addictions, and do stupid and evil things because of it. But a video game? Perhaps it is just that I find video games not very interesting. I Keep Waiting For The Punchline Thanks to LoneStarTimes.com for the pointer to this amazing story about how New Orleans has one of the highest murder rates in the country: Experts said the trend in the city that's home to the popular French Quarter exists for several reasons -- drugs, too few police, inexperienced prosecutors, and residents staying quiet because they fear retaliation.I guess that the residents didn't think it worthy to do so. New Orleans has always been a rough place. When I was researching my book Concealed Weapon Laws of the Early Republic, I was reading newspapers from the 1803-1812 period--and one memorable article was from a newspaper that announced, "Good news!! No assassinations since our last issue!" New Orleans had 7500 people at the time--and this was a daily paper. The House Project: The Flatwork Is Done? I ran up at lunchtime to get a water sample--water is coming out of the frost-free faucet (say that five times fast!) but in weird spurts and dribbles. The contractor was scratching his head trying to figure it out, so I decided to use my software debugging techniques on it. "We have another pipe that goes into the house, right? That comes off the same pipe from the water tank?" "Right." "So that has an end cap or something on it right now, because the house plumbing isn't in. Can we take the end cap off, and see if the water flows okay?" "Sure." So the contractor crawls into the crawl space (to the amusement of the workers, one of whom said, "You won't see that very often!"), and measured how long it took to fill a five gallon bucket--45 seconds, so about 6 2/3 gallons per minute.  Click to enlarge This tells us that there is either a clog between the tee connection, or something stuck in the frost-free faucet mechanism. However, since the concrete had just been poured around that faucet, we'll have to wait for it set before we unscrew the faucet to see where the problem is. (The mechanism lifts out of the pipe--no need to excavate the concrete.) The remainder of the patio, porch, and what are called garage "aprons" are now poured. The colors don't match in these pictures, of course, because some are days old, and some a few minutes old. There's still some cleaning and finishing to do.  Click to enlarge  Click to enlarge This picture is a bit overexposed--I didn't feel like spending the time fiddling with contrast and brightness to solve it.  Click to enlarge Here you can see the back driveway (since the garage has doors on both ends), and the little extension where Big Bertha, the 17.5" reflector, will sit.  Click to enlarge It looks too small, but it measures out okay. Here's a view of the house that I haven't shown you before, from atop the water tank hill.  Click to enlarge The front garage apron.  Click to enlarge My wife and I went back up there this evening while President Bush passed by (we waved at him), and she noticed that some of the concrete looks like the pattern was pressed into it before it had started to set--and consequently the pattern was not as sharp, and the relief that makes this technique attractive was largely missing. I don't know if it is possible to fix this now--perhaps putting a thin layer on top, and repressing? My last house entry. Labels: house project President Bush Came By My New House... Unfortunately, he didn't stop to talk:  Click here to enlarge  Click here to enlarge We were up looking at the continuing work on the new house this evening. I knew that President Bush was headed to Tamarack this weekend. I heard helicopters flying towards our property, and they sounded military. (And no, I can't exactly define what makes them sound military--but civilian helicopters never sound that way.) I started kidding my step-mother-in-law and wife that they were coming to get us--and then I saw that there were several dark green military choppers--and I realized, since there are no military bases that direction, that this was President Bush. They were travelling pretty slowly, obviously enjoying the scenery along the Payette River. (I'm glad he shares my good taste.) Judge Roberts Does Have A Sense Of Humor Or at least he did, once upon a time. You are probably familiar with the saying, often attributed to Justice Learned Hand: "No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the state legislature is in session." Judge Roberts's comments when he worked for the Reagan White House: "While some of the tales of woe emanating from the Court are enough to bring tears to the eyes, it is true that only Supreme Court justices and schoolchildren are expected to and do take the entire summer off," Roberts wrote on April 19, 1983, in a memo to Fielding, his boss at the time.Another memo skewered one of then Chief Justice Burger's ideas: Burger wanted administration support for a new position called "Chancellor of the United States." Burger would choose the chancellor from the appellate court judges, and assist the chief justice in his nonjudicial functions. Thursday, August 18, 2005
Economic Ignorance Different River has a thoughtful piece about how economic ignorance caused a stampede of people, trying to get some surplus laptops that were priced far below the market: See, it seems the Henrico County School District had 1,000 surplus iBook laptops to sell, and they decided to sell them for $50 each. At which price way more than 1,000 people wanted to buy one. No doubt they thought they were doing enough Â?rationingÂ? by giving Henrico County residents first crack at them, but it turned out way more than 1,000 Henrico County residents wanted to buy one. So, implicitly it got to be Â?the first 1,000 people in get one,Â? so there was a mob scene:And yes, there were a number of injuries caused by the District either ignorantly setting the price too low, or thinking that it was doing a favor for potential buyers. Different River observes: Note that whenever the price of something canÂ?t adjust, the amount Â?paidÂ? has to adjust in some other way. In this case, successful Â? and even unsuccessful Â? buyers ended up Â?payingÂ? with their running speed, agility, and tolerance for violence towards themselves and others, in addition to waiting time.Let me just add to his observation that a lot of people do not understand the importance of allowing prices to reflect scarcity. It isn't just a matter of greedy people trying to get rich "exploiting" the masses. Free market pricing contains information about a good or service: how rare is it? How many people want it? This information is critically important. Let me give some examples. One of the biggest environmental disasters in the history of mankind was the Aral Sea. National Geographic had a startling article some years ago showing what the Soviet Union had done. At one time, the Aral Sea had been a rich fishery--but Stalin's desire to turn the area into a giant cotton farm meant that the waters going into the Aral Sea were gradually diverted away. The Aral Sea kept shrinking, becoming more salty with time--and eventually, the fish that had been the heart of its commercial fisheries had died off. How did this happen? It wasn't that the Soviet Union was trying to destroy this ecosystem. The problem was that the entire Soviet system was a command and control economy. Prices did not reflect supply and demand, but what a bureaucrat in Moscow decided was the right price. The ultimate expression of this was that the Soviet government, once the Aral Sea was too salty for the fish, started flying fish in from the Arctic Ocean (more than a thousand miles away) for the Aral Sea canneries to process. If prices had been free market, the price of these fish would have been so high that the Soviet government would have figured out, "Hmmmm. Something is very wrong here." Instead of looking at the cheapest way to get cotton--and relying on the private sector to make sensible allocations of resources--Stalin's government just decided that the Aral Sea's watershed needed to be diverted to make cotton. Free market prices perform a market clearing operation, as alluded to above in Different River's piece. If you only have 500 of item X, and there are 5000 people that want to buy item X, one of several things will happen: 1. The lucky 500 will be those who got in line first. 2. The lucky 500 will be those who know someone at the store, and will get special treatment--which means everyone else will get mistreated. 3. You will have to set the price of item X sufficiently high that 4500 of those 5000 people decide, "That's too expensive. I've got other things on which I can spend my money." It may seem unfair that the price of item X is so high--but what's the alternative? Lots of queuing (choice 1)? Sleazy deals that involve insider influence (choice 2)? Or allowing prices to rise to reflect both scarcity and demand for the product (choice 3)? Price information isn't a static thing; it is dynamic. If item X is priced at $50 each, and you sell all 500 of them in the first hour, this tells you that you should probably make a bunch more of item X, because they are in high demand. If item X is priced at $50 each, and it takes you several months to sell them, you might decide to make more of item X--but you probably aren't going to make thousands of them. There is a demand, but it's not enormous. One of the greatest economic ignorance errors with respect to pricing is "fair wages." Why should a plumber get paid more than a teacher? The left likes to argue that a teacher's work is more valuable than a plumber's work, and the low pay of teachers is just because women dominate the profession, and women's work is not highly valued by our society. There are some jobs that are intrinsically nicer than others. Teaching (from my limited experience with it, and from watching my wife do it) is a very satisifying activity. My experience working under houses, putting in sewer pipes (don't ask why--it's a long story involving a rental we lived in), tells me that it is not a very satisifying activity--quite the opposite. If you asked me whether I would rather teach for $30,000 a year, or work under houses with spiders and sewer pipes for $100,000 a year--well, that's easy. I'll teach, thank you. Still, that's a personal judgment. When we allow wage rates to be set by the marketplace, part of what we are factoring into the equation is the personal preferences of millions of potential workers. There's a reason that teaching pays poorly, in spite of the many years of education it requires, and the importance of it to the society--and the reason is that for millions of Americans, they would rather teach, and stay clean, instead of crawling under a house. There is also the matter of supply and demand. When my wife and I first met, she asked me what I did for a living. I explained that I was a software engineer. She was impressed, and assumed that it was a very difficult job, requiring exceptional skill. I told her that I thought you could almost teach chimpanzees to do it. I was exaggerating for dramatic effect, but my perception was that the skills that I had were really very widespread. I've since found out that not ony can't you teach chimps to do this, you can't even teach a lot of very smart people to do this. My wife is a very bright, very thoughtful, very logical person. With my encouragement, she took a programming class when she was attending Santa Rosa Junior College. For reasons that I could not understand, this very smart woman that I am married to just didn't get it--and I've discovered that she is not alone in this respect. It is apparently somewhat harder to learn how to program, at even a very simple level, than I realized. Software engineer salaries, like that of a number of other professions, reflect this scarcity. Unlike the plumber crawling under houses to fix sewer lines, software engineering isn't so bad. I think the most serious injury I've ever received was a burn from a soldering iron. There are times that the work is pretty boring--and there are times (especially when I am actually coding in a programming language, or designing a large and complex piece of software) that it is quite stimulating and fun. Most important of all, from the standpoint of wage rates, most people seem to lack something fundamental that allows them to be effective software engineers. They may be able to write simple programs--or even write programs that should have been simple, and turn them into steaming piles of incomprehensible crud--but they will never be a software engineer. Hence, wage rates are pretty darn good for this line of work. Market clearing wage rates means that as long as the demand for software engineers is high, high wages will encourage people with that aptitude to go into that line of work. Artificially setting wage rates low for software engineers would discourage those with that skill set from going into that line of work, and perhaps encourage engineers to take less boring but less socially useful jobs. As much as I would like to teach history, I assume that because I get paid about twice as much to be a software engineer as a professor, then what I am doing must be about twice as useful to the society. Of course, the ultimate sign of this, I like to remind myself, is that I could step into the job of just about any American history professor tomorrow, and do a creditable job of it within a week or so. I can say with some assurance that there probably aren't any American history professors that could step into my job without six months or more of full-time preparation. The House Project: Patio and Sidewalks, Interesting Water Problems, Management Headaches We had to decide between using poured, colored, patterned concrete, or a plastic, and recycled wood decking material called Trex. Trex looks good, doesn't require the maintenance of a wood deck--but it would have been about $5000 more expensive--and our builder believes that it won't be quite as long lasting--so we went with the concrete for the patio out back, the front porch, and the deck around the east end of the house. Anyway, we went up last night to take a look at the first pours. These pictures really don't show it off--as you can see, the concrete in the front of the house is still in needed of cleaning, and there is a glossy finish applied when everything is complete, so it still doesn't look so good.  Click here to enlarge Here you can see the pattern that they press into it. We would have preferred another pattern called "castle flagstone" but the patterns really don't work for rectangular shapes so well. This does a passable job of simulating brickwork.  Click here to enlarge Here's the patio in back.  Click here to enlarge  Click here to enlarge As inevitably happens, a little of the concrete ended up on the siding, so that will need to be knocked off before painting.  Click here to enlarge I mentioned previously that we drained the water tank so that we could retest with presumably cleaner water. No water came out Thursday evening, and the temporary electric meter was showing so little current draw that the builder believed that the pump wasn't running. So we verified the current at the plug at the meter, where to wires went into the well--everything seemed okay. But no water was coming from the water tank, so it must be empty, right? Besides, there was no noise from the pump. So we assumed that the well pump (which sits 160 feet down in the casing) must have failed. Well, this happens on brand new electrical equipment, sometimes, so the builder got the pump guy out Friday. The conclusion? The pump was running just fine--maybe the pump just hadn't put enough water in the tank yet to feed the faucet. Suddenly in the middle of the afternoon today (while running errands associated with my father-in-law's death in the morning), I get a call from the builder. He has suddenly realized that someone left the power on to the well pump--and they have not yet installed the sensors that turn the pump on and off at the minimum and maximum levels of the water tank. "I'm on the far side of town. Could you run up there and unplug it, before it burns out the motor?" I get up there, and discover that the circuit breaker is off--either someone turned it off (like there's any passers-by here) or the pump popped the breaker. But there should be enough water in the tank by now--it was running all morning, pumping at least five gallons a minute. But the faucet still gives no water--then a tiny trickle--then nothing. Hmmmm. I climb up to the water tank, and notice that around one of the access covers on top there is a good bit of water. It has cooled off the last few days, but at this humidity and temperatures in the low 80s, this water can't have been here for long. It appears that the tank is so full that water is coming out around the rubber seal. So why isn't it coming out through the faucet down below? At this point, the possibilities include debris that has somehow worked its way into the line, or a big air bubble. The problem sure isn't the well pump--that water tank is absolutely full. The builder's plumber is going to try and solve this on Friday--and I am expecting not simply a fix, but an explanation of why water isn't coming out. If this is an air bubble problem, it could come back, so we need not just a quick fix, but a long-term solution. The roof trusses were supposed to arrive on site today, and a crane was supposed to lift them in place on Friday--but the truss company suddenly went, "Whoops!" so we won't see trusses until Tuesday or Wednesday. The concrete guys, who were told to come back Tuesday to finish their work (because they couldn't work while the trusses are being dropped onto the house) now have to come back Friday, and get their work out of the way. I will be so glad to have this place done--just in time for dark sky observing, now that the sun is setting earlier each evening. Last house project entry. Labels: house project Payment With a Check From a Closed Account Is Fraud, Right? A doctor in Kansas bought a product from ScopeRoller--and I just received notice that the account was closed. Not payment stopped, or insufficient funds, but account closed. I guess it is time to talk to the Postal Inspection Service. UPDATE: Heard from him this morning--apparently, he closed this checking account last year after someone stole his checkbook--and at least one block of checks from that closed account ended up in the drawer for the new checking account. The wife pulled that block, and they are still dealing with the consequences of having paid a number of bills with these checks. He is mailing me a replacement check today. It didn't make much sense to commit a felony over $194. Stupid people do that; doctors usually don't. UPDATE 2: By the way, he did make good on the check, and I have every reason to believe he is an honorable person. His Pain Is Over I went over to visit my father-in-law about lunchtime, and they informed me that he had just passed on. Unreliable Assurances Professor Volokh gives several examples of "unreliable assurances" -- cases where opponents of X say, "X will lead to Y," and proponents of X say, "Don't be silly, X will not lead to Y"--and within a few years, X does lead to Y. One of the examples Volokh points to is the Griswold (1965) decision, in which a concurring opinion asserted that striking down a state law banning contraceptives for married people would not impact state laws banning homosexuality--and yet, when the Supreme Court in Lawrence v. Texas (2003) struck down the Texas homosexual sodomy law, they cited Griswold as the starting point. Similarly, when Massachusetts debated adding sexual orientation to its antidiscrimination law, opponents argued that it would lead to gay marriage; proponents denied that this would happen. But this exactly what happened: Yet when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court held that the state constitution requires the legislature to recognize same-sex marriages, part of its reasoning rested on the legislature’s decision to ban sexual orientation discrimination: This decision, the Court reasoned, undermined the asserted government interest in condemning homosexuality as immoral, and thus helped strip away any rational basis the law might have had.I have heard proponents of gay marriage insist that recognizing it would not lead to legalizing polygamy or adults having sex with minors (both positions that the ACLU now argues are constitutional rights--here for polygamy--here for sex with minors). Past history suggests otherwise. Labels: polygamy Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Fun With Lathes Okay, I got a small rod of aluminum and a small piece of brass, and I start machining the aluminum last night with the lathe. Right now, I am concentrating on finish--I'll worry about dimensional accuracy later. I have ordered almost as much in parts for this lathe from Sherline as I spent buying it used. There was no dead center for the headstock, so I ordered that. You can't machine the entire length of a rod if you are holding the end of it in a chuck. There was no dead center for the tailstock, so I ordered a live center for it. I ordered a drill chuck that can go in either headstock or tailstock, so that I can rather precisely (.003" accuracy) holes. I order a center drill, necessary for precisely making holes that the dead center and live center can fit. I ordered a parting tool, that lets you cut material in a chuck. I ordered the spindle bars that you use for tightening the 3-jaw chuck. (They were $0.60 each--I've been using hex head wrenches so far.) I ordered the riser blocks for the headstock and tailstock, so that I can the 3.75" diameter plastic for the biggest ScopeRoller products. And You Thought Collecting Pull Tabs Was Weird This guy found a... unique use for ice cream sticks: AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A replica Viking ship made of 15 million ice cream sticks is to be launched in Amsterdam on Tuesday by a former Hollywood stuntman who hopes eventually to sail it across the Atlantic.All the hard work? Like eating 15 million ice cream bars? Will We Be Watching Air America Go To Prison? Michelle Malkin and Brian Maloney have a detailed account of the increasing evidence (some from court filings) that the left end of the Democratic Party that created Air America is in deep, deep trouble--the kind of actions that get people sent to prison. If you are one of those people who finds phrases such as "fraudulent conveyances and breaches of fiduciary duty" a part of your reading diet, go read it. I suspect when some of the participants start to get the matching bracelets and marched off to arraignment for fraud, the mainstream media will finally cover the story--and claim that these ideological soulmates with Enron's accountants are victims of a political vendetta. I think the real problem is that the left honestly thinks it is the vast majority of America*, and therefore couldn't imagine that Air America wouldn't be a smashing business success. When it cratered--because there just aren't enough hardcore leftists (overwhelmingly, multimillionaires, Hollywood celebrities, and university professors) out there to keep Air America afloat--desperate people turned to desperate short-cuts, in the hopes that the audience would suddenly show up, and make the business model work. * The classic example of this is the famous Pauline Kael quote, after Nixon's landslide victory in 1972: "How can that be? No one I know voted for Nixon." Another example is what happened in the latter stages of the anti-Vietnam War protests, when groups like Weather Underground persuaded themselves that the masses were on the edge of rising up to overthrow the fascist, racist government of Amerikkka, and just needed some encouragement--and so they started bombing buildings and robbing armored cars. The left seems to have an especial talent for this sort of political encapsulization, perhaps because anyone on the right would have to stop reading a daily newspaper, and stop watching the major television networks, to have this same level of delusion that almost everyone agreed with them. Immigration From Mexico Advocates of open borders should take a serious look at these poll results, and ask themselves if they really want to allow unrestricted immigration--because 46% of Mexicans indicate that they would like to immigrate to the U.S.: WASHINGTON – With pressure growing on Congress and the White House to impose tighter controls on immigration, a survey released Tuesday showed that four in 10 Mexicans would immigrate to the United States if given the chance and more than half would consider participating in a guest worker program like the one proposed by President Bush.I'm flattered that America is such a wonderful place to live that almost half of Mexicans would rather live permanently in a country where Spanish isn't the dominant language, and whose culture is quite fundamentally different. Since the current population of Mexico is about 106 million, where would we house more than 40 million new residents? And what would it do to the wages of existing American workers? Another survey mentioned in that same article is a reminder that Hispanics are not of one mind about immigration-related issues: A separate survey by the non-partisan Pew Hispanic Center also revealed a split in attitudes among native- and foreign-born Latinos in the United States on immigration-related issues, including whether illegal immigrants should be allowed to get drivers' licenses. Most U.S.-born Latinos agreed that illegal immigrants should be barred from getting licenses, while a similar majority of foreign-born Latinos disagreed.In short, the Republican Party need not fear being called racist for taking a position that even most U.S.-born Latinos take. UPDATE: I've long been puzzled by the enormous gap between the people and the opinion makers on this question of illegal immigration. I can somewhat see why the hard left end of the Democratic Party would want illegal immigration, because they fundamentally hate America. If 20 years from now, 75% of Californians speak Spanish as their primary language, it will be very difficult to keep it from going back to Mexico--and America will be greatly weakened by the loss of all that farmland. What I don't understand is why so much of the Republican Party leadership is unwilling to turn off the spigot. Sure, corporations need cheap labor--but I find it hard to believe that their profitability will be that badly injured by hiring legal residents. I doubt that most large corporations rely on illegal aliens for their workforce. Over at The Corner, John Derbyshire floats at least one idea that might be the real reason: Our elites have got used to cheap domestic labor and are unwilling to give it up...."This might be it. One of the defining aspects of the media and political elites, I suspect, is how much they rely upon immigrant labor for gardening, nannies, maids, and so on. One Of These Days, The Ghosts of Vietnam Will Stop Running America The news reports indicate that a U.S. military intelligence unit named Able Ready attempted to warn the FBI about Mohammed Atta and three other 9/11 hijackers months before the attack--and the lawyers would not allow it: WASHINGTON (AP) - An Army intelligence officer said Wednesday he does not believe the 9/11 commission pressed hard enough for documentation of claims that military intelligence found a U.S.-based terrorist cell that included Mohamed Atta, who turned out to be the leader of the Sept. 11 attacks, prior to the terrorist strikes.The PATRIOT Act has pulled down the wall between counterintelligence and criminal investigation (as well it should), but I fear that because so much of a generation was traumatized by what went wrong during the Vietnam War era, we are going to be suffering from these, "We can't do that! How would it look?" problems until that generation dies off. The Brazilian Electrician Shot To Death By Mistake The more news that comes out about this, the less it sounds like an honest mistake, and more evidence of gross police incompetence: The documents and photographs confirm that Jean Charles was not carrying any bags, and was wearing a denim jacket, not a bulky winter coat, as had previously been claimed.His arms are pinned to his side--making it difficult to set off an explosive, unless he had the switch in his hand already, or there was some sort of unusual triggering mechanism--and then one of the officers shot him while another was holding onto him. If this is what passes for "elite firearms police" in Britain, perhaps they need to get some training from U.S. police. Another news report says: The leaked report said the intelligence operation may have been botched because an officer carrying out surveillance had gone to the toilet when de Menezes left the building. Software Engineering in Boise To my surprise, there's more serious software engineering in Boise than just HP and Micron. A couple of recent ads from Boise companies that startled me, because I tend to think of these as West Coast jobs only: DESCRIPTIONAnd this one: DESCRIPTIONAnd this one: DESCRIPTIONAll very encouraging to see! Tuesday, August 16, 2005
Spontaneous Human Combustion Explained? A reader points to this article from BBC that purports to explain the incidents. Need .38 Special Ammo In Boise? My wife and I were going through the contents of my father-in-law's desk this evening, sorting out paperwork, figuring out which life insurance companies we will need to contact in the next few weeks, and trying to make sense out of what seems like a jumble of papers--even though everything is pretty well labeled. Anyway, the handguns are in danger of being shipped to Canada, and perhaps returned to the U.S. for sale, but the ammunition was packed in the boxes from his desk. The 9mm Parabellum I can find a use for (since that's one of my calibers), but I don't own anything in .38 Special. I have two full boxes of CCI Blazer .38 Special 158 grain round nose, and part of a box of Winchester Silvertips. You can have them for free; if you want to give me what they would cost you in the store, I can put that in the account to provide care for his wife, whose affairs we are taking over, because she isn't quite competent anymore. If you are at the stage where you are planning the disposition of your affairs, make sure that you provide for the possibility that your spouse is going to become either mentally or physically incompetent. All of these trust paperwork that my father-in-law spent time and money preparing two years ago was based on the assumption that when one of them died, the other would be fully competent to manage his or her affairs. The Hazards of Antidiscrimination Suits A discussion of sexual orientation antidiscrimination laws over at the Volokh Conspiracy caused me to burp these two comments which I thought I would share with you. The major beneficiaries of sexual orientation antidiscrimination laws are going to be those who engage in stereotyped behavior, or make a point of letting people know about their sexual orientation. Over the years, I've worked with a number of homosexuals. Most were discreet about it. They weren't closeted, but they knew that not everyone was going to be thrilled about it. On the other hand, some of the homosexuals that I worked with were not just indiscreet; they engaged in offensive stereotypes (the woman wearing a chain as a belt, smoking big fat cigars, pot belly, bowling bumper stickers--an insulting parody of a blue collar man), just to make sure that you could not possibly miss it. I've worked with people who were almost as offensive about their religious beliefs--the sorts who were constantly using the break room as a chance to let you know that they were born-again Christians, and promoting their belief system. Even though I shared their beliefs, I found their behavior offensive. There's a fuzzy line between discreet and offensive, between polite and boorish. Antidiscrimination laws pretty well destroy that line, and turn almost any firing of an offensive and boorish member of a protected group into a lawsuit. Let me give you an example. Many years ago, I worked for a startup in California. At some point early on, we hired a fellow I'll call M.N. (now dead) M.N. was a technical writer--and part of the last generation of technical writers who had used typewriters to produce manuals. M.N. had some difficulty adjusting to the modern age, and at one point, when deadlines were looming on getting a manual out the door, and he was having some trouble doing a cut and paste--he did a real cut and paste, with scissors and glue. This was in the late 1980s, not the 1960s. His performance was only so-so, but because he was a nice guy, his bosses kept giving him overly nice performance reviews. Perhaps because of age, his performance kept declining--and eventually, the gap between, "M.N. is a nice person, let's not fire him" performance reviews and his actual performance reached a point where they had to let him go. So M.N. filed suit, claiming age discrimination. Was this the case? Even a co-worker who was a flaming feminist liberal agreed with me that this was not the case--he just wasn't doing a very good job anymore. But because his supervisor had been too nice on a couple of years' worth of performance reviews, his lawyer argued that obviously his performance hadn't been a problem in the past, and so the only possibility was age discrimination. The company settled out of court. As I understand it, the normal burden of proof rules apply to discrimination suits. Neither side goes into the courtroom with the deck stacked against them (as is the case, quite rightly, in a criminal case). But for some odd reason, when it comes to discrimination suits, the whole system seems to work on the principle that if you are a member of a protected minority, the burden of proof is on the employer to prove innocence. Or at least employers behave that way. When I mentioned earlier about fuzzy lines separating boorish from discreet behavior, think about the guy who thinks it is appropriate to come to work some days dressed as Carmen Miranda, and some days as the construction worker from The Village People. If you suggest that such attire is not appropriate for his job as a customer services representative, you have just put the first nail in the coffin of your employer's sexual orientation discrimination suit. "But this is who I am! This is part of my culture!" That a lot of gay men don't do this isn't going to help much, I fear. The Armed Peace Corps I've mentioned before that some of what Coalition forces in Iraq is doing is almost like an armed Peace Corps--but this article in our local paper by an Idaho National Guardsman really captures the weird combination of trying to make friends, while intimidating our enemies--all at the same time: Meanwhile, an Arabic neighborhood known by its sector name, "Zulu 13," slumbers peacefully. On rooftop balconies, families sleep together on foam mattresses to escape the heat.Kiril Dimitrov? Americans come from everywhere! Sgt. Dimitrov, tactical shotgun slung over his shoulder and bandoliers of shells wrapped around his chest, takes a break to give two small teddy bears to two very shy and nervous girls who peer out from behind a wagon. I take a moment from the radio to hand out a couple more stuffed animals to some very nervous local kids.I have an acquaintance who served 30 years in the Marine Corps, and retired as a sergeant major. He thinks that using reserve forces instead of regulars has been a very serious mistake. I'm not so sure. For industrial scale killing, as sometimes has to be done, the regulars are probably better suited to the task: more regularly trained; younger; tougher. But for jobs like the one described above, where you need both the velvet glove and an iron fist to back it up, the use of reserves isn't a second choice--it might even be the first choice. Democrats Tiptoeing Up To The Border Control Issue The Washington Times has an editorial pointing out that even an Hispanic Democrat--Governor Richardson of New Mexico--is now saying that we have to take seriously the border security and illegal aliens problem: Democratic hopefuls for 2008 are sensing how vulnerable President Bush is on border control. The latest sign: New Mexico's politically shrewd governor, Bill Richardson, has made a partial about-face on the issue -- at least in words -- and is throwing money and attention at his state's southern border. If he makes a national comeback from the Energy Department security scandals that all but ruined his reputation in the final years of the Clinton administration, it will owe in part to a seeming shift on border control that mirrors the one that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton made in December and then reneged upon.Securing our borders (and not just the Mexican border) is a national security issue that both parties should be pursuing with vigor. Preventing illegal aliens from driving down wages for low-skilled legal residents and unintentionally busting unions would be a natural issue for Democrats. Considering the enormous level of support for securing our borders--with 91% saying that illegal immigration is a serious problem, and 67% want the military deployed to the borders to solve this problem--this could be the issue that wins elections for Democrats running for Congress in 2006 and 2008. UPDATE: And another Democratic governor joins in: Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano declared a state of emergency along the Mexican border on Monday in an effort to fight a tidal wave of illegal immigration and Mexican drug cartel activity in the state. Arrogance There's an article about the three books that President Bush is taking to the ranch for his summer vacation reading--and no, none of them start out, "See Spot run." The article interviewed the author of one of the books, and the arrogance of the Bush-haters just leaps out at you: According to the White House, one of three books Bush chose to read on his five-week vacation is "Salt: A World History" by Mark Kurlansky, who chronicled the rise and fall of what once was considered the world's most strategic commodity. Foolish Hobby GrannyTiger has an amusing list of recent examples of people being stupid, but this is the best of the bunch: I was ready to call the first award a tie between those two, but then today's news provided a true definition of advanced brainlessness. Monday, August 15, 2005
The Differing Meanings of "Liberal" One reader asked if I had lost my mind for my slightly flippant observation about ersatz cannibalism and liberals here. It was a useful reminder that a lot of people call themselves "liberals" who would be considered centrists or perhaps even conservatives where I used to live in California. A few examples of the stuff that was common in the deranged county where I used to live (Sonoma County, California), and where liberal was a proud label. 1. Sitting in an outdoor cafe at the end of the Russian River, where a group of environmentalists were gathered in their Gore-Tex parkas after a walk through the woods, discussing the then-current bubonic plague that was killing dozens of people in India. "It's a shame that these diseases hit in the Third World, instead of in the U.S." None of his fellow worshippers of Mother Earth disagreed with him. 2. Seeing bumper stickers--and not just one--that said: "Sorry I missed you in church Sunday. I was too busy practicing withcraft and becoming a lesbian." Yes, it was a very long bumper sticker. 3. Having a pre-school teacher tell her class that the First Thanksgiving was to thank the Indians. When my wife went to the teacher and pointed out that this was not correct, the teacher explained that she knew better, but if she explained that the Pilgrims were thanking God, she would get lots of complaints from parents. 4. A friend worked for one of the public school districts; she kept a low profile about her faith, and it was a good thing. She overheard hiring discussions in which those making the decisions speculated about the possibility that someone being considered for a teaching position might be a fundamentalist--and the clear implication was that this might be a reason not to hire. (Yes, illegal, but so what?) Another teacher I knew was approached by a teacher who didn't know her well, and asked, "Did you get any fundamentals this year?" (Meaning, "any fundamentalist kids in your class"--but what's a little ignorance when you are being a bigot?) 5. Napa College settled out of court for $30,000 (a year's wages, I think) a lawsuit by a psychology professor who claimed that he was denied promotion opportunities because he was a heterosexual where what he called a "homosexual cabal" ran the department. Think about that for a second: this is a pretty bizarre claim--and yet they settled out of court. What sort of evidence did he have to back up such a bizarre claim? 6. I saw classified ads that openly stated that gay/bi people were preferred for a job opening as a graphic artist. 7. Parents supplied marijuana and alcohol to their middle school kids as a reward for good grades. 8. The local paper--a bastion of liberalism--reported that the District Attorney's office had a full-time staff just prosecuting cases involving minor females raped while passed out at parties. Sad to say, there were people I knew that had acquaintances that had been through that situation. It wasn't that unusual. 9. A neighbor's son had been molested--and there was clear physical evidence of it. He at first accused his father (the parents were separated), but later backed off, making it an unknown man. Did the father sodomize his son? Hard to say. But the net effect was that custody was taken away from the mother (who could not have done this), and given to the father (for whom there was at least a little question). 10. I knew a young lady, just turned 18. Her father started molesting her when puberty hit. She called the police. The father was convicted--and his punishment was that he had to move out of the house for three years--not go to prison. The young lady moved out of the house when her father moved back in--and when her younger sisters were just hitting puberty. At this point, you are probably wondering, "Why didn't the mother divorce this creep?" Mom didn't know what the fuss was about--her father had sex with her as a child. 11. A friend of a friend was accused of child molestation--of his diaper age toddler (not even a year old). I showed up at several of his hearings to make sure that he was not being abused by the process. By the time I was done attending these hearings, I came to the following conclusions: 12. A professor of mine at Sonoma State made the statement during class that nothing fundamentally has changed about race relations in America since the 1950s. To give you an idea of how silly this claim was, the professor in question was black, and was an elected member of the Santa Rosa Board of Education--a city that was still overwhelmingly white. Even worse, this professor told us about how a white girl he knew, back in the 1950s, would go with him to ask about places to rent, just to shock landlords. They stopped doing this when one of them had a heart attack. The 1950s was definitely not the 1990s when it came to race relations. Reality check, please. 13. There's this example of liberal intolerance of dissenting points of view. Point me to conservative examples if you like--but wasn't the essence of liberalism, long, long ago, that dissent was a good thing? 14. There's this example of liberalism at work, where Irv Sutley insisted that the City of Rohnert Park seal be revised, because it shows a church, a cross, and a Star of David. They were there because when Rohnert Park was incorporated in 1962, they were trying to emphasize the diverse nature of religious beliefs in Rohnert Park (probably more diverse than it really was back then). The seal now should show a parent handing a joint to his stoned middle school aged son, who is engaged in group sex. There's a lot of people in America who are liberals in the Adlai Stevenson sense. But "liberal" in the sense that I have experienced is nothing like that. I Don't Believe This For A Second But it is just too funny not to share: The famous Olympic skier, Picabo Street (pronounced Peek-A-Boo) is not just an athlete . . . she is now a nurse currently working at the Intensive Care Unit of a large metropolitan hospital. She is not permitted to answer the hospital telephones any longer. It caused too much confusion when she would answer the phone and say, "Picabo, ICU." Arthur C. Clarke Is Again Vindicated As Futurist The sign of a great writer is his ability to write a spectacular story in one or two pages. One of Arthur C. Clarke's most amazing short, short, short stories is about a future where all meat is produced this way: A research team is proposing a new technique that would allow meat to be grown in a laboratory for mass consumption, according to a report.I'm a little skeptical, also, but it is a pretty neat idea (but remember thalidomide--new technologies are sometimes carrying horrifying surprises). My only concern comes from that same Arthur C. Clarke story. In Clarke's story (whose title escapes me, but it was only a page or two long), in the 25th century, meat is made this way entirely--and social pressure against eating actual animals is so strong that everything has been euphemized so that most people have no idea that "meat" is something that used to come from living creatures with soft brown eyes. The Congressional hearings that are the core of the story are about one ersatz meat company's unfair competitive advantage--all the analysis of the flavor leaves the competitors unable to figure out what animal this very desireable fake meat simulates. The closing sentence of the story is devastating: "Senator, there is now no scientific test that can distinguish us from cannibals." I fear that the liberal effort to abolish all notions of morality derived from a theistic base would doubtless lead to such production. UPDATE: If you want to know why "liberal" is such a dirty word to me, see this. "Liberal" where I am from means something quite different from where you are from. Gov. Dean Opens His Mouth Again, And Removes All Doubt* Look, I agree that there is a real possibility that because of Shiite domination of the new Iraqi government, Iraqi women are at risk of losing some of the rights that they enjoyed under Hussein's government, but when I see this claim by DNC Chair Dean I am just floored: Appearing on CBS' "Face the Nation" yesterday, the fiery former Vermont governor said, "It looks like today, and this could change, as of today it looks like women will be worse off in Iraq than they were when Saddam Hussein was president of Iraq."Let's see: has Dean decided that being raped, mutilated, tortured, and murdered is just one of the costs of enjoying Saddam Hussein's style of feminism? * Mark Twain is reputed to have once said that it is better to keep your mouth shut, and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth, and remove all doubt. Strangelet Collisions & The Unexplained This is one of those bizarre stories that makes you wonder if this is some sort of gag (thanks to Instapundit for the tip): Scientists have come to the conclusion that two mysterious explosions in the 1990s were caused by bizarre cosmic missiles.Unless, of course, one went right through you. One of the often unstated assumptions of science is that there are no terribly rare events. If something happens that is truly unusual, especially if there is no theoretical basis for the event, there is a tendency of scientists to assume that it is fraud, ignorance, or delusion. |
