Things and Stuff

HIV is not the cause of AIDS

2011-09-13T15:22:00.000-07:00

(Much of the following is taken from Henry Bauer's book, The Origin, Persistence and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory.)

Around 1980, in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco, there were sudden outbreaks of rare, opportunistic infections, infections that were nearly unheard of in individuals with healthy immune systems. These infections consisted mainly of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia and Kaposi’s Sarcoma, with a little candidiasis and other fungal infections on the fringes. They happened almost exclusively in gay communities, and were called GRID, for gay related immunodeficiency. Many suspected an infectious agent was responsible.

While the myth has been established that these were healthy young men, the truth is their ages ranged between 20 and 50 years, and they were drug abusers, living what became known, in the seventies, as the fast track lifestyle. 96% of the early AIDS cases had abused poppers and most had abused other drugs as well, such as heroine. The vast majority had had STD’s, and many were habitual takers of antibiotics, creating the possibility of long term, suppressed but not eradicated venereal diseases, which are known to weaken immune systems.

Since then, Kaposi’s Sarcoma’s cause was found to be HHV-8, human herpes virus eight. There are some who think there may be co-factors, but it is now known that HIV does not cause Kaposi’s Sarcoma. To the dispassionate observer, this must seem a severe blow to the HIV/AIDS dogma. One of the two primary AIDS illnesses of those early years is not an AIDS illness. This means that all there is left to explain is an outbreak of pneumonia in a population at severe risk for weakened immune systems. It practically explains itself, does it not? There is no need to resort to a mysterious “lentivirus”, a virus that does no harm until years after infection.

Throughout the 1970’s, virologists were on the hunt for viruses that caused cancers. Robert Gallo claimed to have found one that caused leukemia, HL23V. It was later discovered not to exist (Barbacid et al., 1980; Snyder and Fleissner, 1980). By the 1980’s, that quest had been given up, and virologists were looking for ways to justify their funding. Gallo latched on to AIDS and, as he had done in 1975, claimed to find a retroviral cause. But what did he actually do?

In order to isolate a retrovirus, there are a number of things that need to be established, things agreed upon at a convention by the Pasteur Institute in 1973, and things that Gallo himself stressed as important. A retrovirus has a density of 1.16 gm/ml, so samples are placed in a centrifuge prepared with sucrose that gets progressively denser. After spinning, particles will sink until buoyancy won’t let them sink further, and retroviruses sink to, or band at, 1.16 gm/ml. EM photographs of this band must be taken to establish the presence of particles that at least look like retroviruses. Not all such particles will prove to be retroviruses, but if there are no particles with that appearance, then no retroviruses are present.

Next, after ascertaining the attributes of these virus-like particles, virgin cells must be co-cultured with the particles, and then the centrifuge process is done again. If identical particles, looking like retroviruses, are found in the virgin cells, the particles can be called retroviruses, because they look like retroviruses, have the same density as retroviruses, and also infect like them. This constitutes discovery and isolation of a retrovirus. Gallo did far less than this when he claimed to discover HIV.

He cultured T-lymphocyte cells, because the T4 lymphocytes, also called CD4 cells, were the ones that dwindled to almost nothing in AIDS patients. Fluids from this culture were co-cultured with a stock, leukemic T-cell line called HT. Under a microscope he found particles resembling viruses and detected reverse transcriptase activity (reverse transcriptase is what turns RNA into DNA and allows a virus’ RNA to merge with the DNA of an infected cell). He gave no evidence of any virus-like particles banded at 1.16 gm/ml.

At this point, what has he established? Next to nothing. Without proof of virus–like particles at 1.16 gm/ml, we don’t know whether there is the possibility of a virus. Reverse transcriptase is not unique to retroviruses, and indeed human cells have enzymes that mimic reverse transcriptase activity, so the presence of this activity in the culture does not establish the presence of a retrovirus.

Next, he mixed proteins from the culture – which may or may not have been viral proteins because viral presence was not established – with sera from AIDS patients and observed antibody reactions with the proteins. On this basis he claimed discovery of what would come to be known as HIV. But what did he actually discover?

Since he did not even establish retroviral presence in the first two cultures, much less a single, unique retrovirus, the proteins cannot be considered as definitely viral, much less specific to one retrovirus. Indeed, it is known that one of the proteins, p24, is not specific (Agbalika et al., 1992; Mortimer et al., 1992). Therefore, the antibodies are equally unknown. However, even if the proteins were definitely specific to a unique retrovirus, there is no reason to believe that the antibodies reacting with them are monogamous. Most proteins and antibodies display cross-reactivity. So all that Gallo did was show that proteins from one AIDS patient – or possibly from the HT cell line – reacted with antibodies from some other AIDS patients (not all!).

After looking for the new putative retrovirus, he claimed to discover it in 26 of 72 AIDS patients. 26 of 72. And he claimed to find it in their sera if two of the following four conditions obtained: unbanded virus-like particles were discovered; reverse transcriptase activity was detected; antibodies reacted with proteins; virus-like particles were transmitted to bone marrow or other samples. Even his 26 “hits” are dubious.

When he went back to look for just antibodies in AIDS patients, he found that 88% of them had the antibodies he had never proven specific to HIV. It is not surprising to find antibodies in patients as sick as these men were, but even then he did not find the HIV antibodies in all of them, nor even his watered down claim of HIV in many more than a third. How did he claim to have found the cause of AIDS, then? Keep in mind, he had used the same process to “find” HL23V, except in that case he had actually published EM photos of virus-like particles banded at 1.16 gm/ml. If HL23V was found to be a chimera, why should HIV have been considered proven? The process was obviously fallible, and the process used for HIV was a watered down version of the one that had already blown up in his face in 1980.

But Gallo had the clever idea of bypassing the peer review process and running straight to the government. The Secretary of Health and Human Services announced, on April 23, 1984, that the likely cause of AIDS had been found. Over the next year, the word likely was dropped from the literature, but with no further evidence to justify this.

A word on lentiviruses is in order here. Carleton Gajdusek won a Nobel Prize for demonstrating that kuru, mad cow disease and other similar diseases were caused by a lentivirus, a virus that does its damage long after infection. This went against the germ theory of disease, where a germ entered and multiplied and was either finally overtaken by antibodies or killed the host. Germs were not supposed to lay in wait and only produce their disease years later. HIV was supposed to be one of these lentiviruses, a concept first introduced for kuru.

In 1997, Stanley Prusiner won the Nobel Prize for showing that prions, a kind of infectious protein, were actually the cause of the diseases, not a lentivirus. The very existence of lentiviruses might have been reexamined. At any rate, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. A retrovirus that kills its host cell is an extraordinary claim (they need the cell to survive in order to reproduce). The idea of a lentivirus itself is an extraordinary claim. More extraordinary claims would be added later. And what for? To explain an outbreak of pneumonia among a drug abusing and sexually promiscuous segment of the population. Occam’s Razor speaks loudly and clearly on this one.

After Gallo, AIDS evolved into a different syndrome. Other researchers, using Gallo’s methods, established a few more HIV proteins. Patients in hospitals were now tested for HIV, and when enough patients with a certain disease had antibodies that reacted with these proteins, a new disease was added to the list of AIDS defining illnesses.

But we run into yet another problem here. If these new diseases were actually AIDS illnesses, why did they not break out in the early 1980’s like PCP and KS had done? Indeed, most of the illnesses were waning, not waxing. Cervical cancer, for instance, went down 50% from the period 1975-2003, declining by a few percent each year.

Deaths due to AIDS jumped in this era, but part of that was because old diseases that were already killing people were added to the list. Another reason was that AZT was given to people who might have needed nothing more than to stop abusing their bodies.

AZT was developed in the 1960’s to fight cancer. It proved so toxic that no patent was applied for; it was considered useless. With the advent of HIV/AIDS theory, AZT became a moneymaker, and a patent was petitioned in 1985 and granted in 1987. The original idea behind AZT was that it might kill the cancer cells before it killed the person, but this did not pan out. A few compromised studies – one might even say fraudulent – purported to show that AZT improved outcomes. It was not until the Concorde Study, where proper controls were used, that AZT was shown to increase, not decrease, mortality (Seligmann et al., 1994).

So drug abusers and sufferers of multiple STD’s in the early 1980’s experience immune system collapse. Then, anyone with non-specific proteins and/or antibodies is put in the category of AIDS, which increases the death toll. AZT further increases it. All the while, there is no isolation of the virus (Bess et al., 1997; Gluschankof at al., 1997; Papadopulos, 1997; Pease, 2005, 127-9) , no proof that it exists, not enough correlation between HIV and AIDS even if one were to accept that Gallo isolated a virus, and no good reason to believe that a retrovirus, whose believers do not even claim to find it in more than one out of every one hundred T-cells, would wipe out the cells it needs to propagate. By 1997, we could add that the very idea of a lentivirus was questionable.

In 2004, David Rasnick gave a good summary of what is meant by “isolation” of HIV in modern virology. The ultimate test that the establishment offers is what’s called a co-culture technique where you take a sample of the individual’s blood cells, white blood cells. You cannot find HIV now in this sample. All you have are these blood cells. But then you culture these cells with some special cells that Robert Gallo generated some years ago. You have to throw in some powerful chemicals, phytohemaglutinin or IL-2, for example, to force these cells to do anything. The idea is to wake up the patient’s cells to start producing RNA; and then this RNA will be coated in a protein, and possibly then there will be viral particles produced in the medium. These viral particles now will go infect the other cells that you added, and then you will amplify by a period of time the replication of these viral particles in the laboratory, what we call in vitro. Now, these particles did not exist in the patient, in the human being, the person that you got this sample from. You created them in the laboratory. And by creating these virus particles in the laboratory, people say they have isolated HIV from a human being. They have not done any such thing.

In 1993, the definition of AIDS was changed again, in the United States, to be anyone who got a positive on an HIV test and a one-time CD4 count below 200. It has never been shown that a low CD4 count is necessary and sufficient to wreck the immune system (Seligmann et al., 1994; Cohen, 2001, 150). Indeed, sitting out in the sun might lower your count enough, but now, the correlation between HIV and AIDS was tautological. If you had HIV and a low CD4 count, even if you weren’t sick, you had AIDS. If you had AIDS symptoms but did not set off an HIV test, you had idiopathic CD4 T-cell lymphopenia. It should be noted that a large part of the decreased mortality in AIDS patients came from the fact that they were now not necessarily unhealthy. The cessation of AZT was also a blessing, and though the newer drugs were dangerous too, they were given in lower doses (low enough that hormesis now can go some way to explaining improved health outcomes).

So now we have people with HIV who have AIDS. We have people with HIV who do not get AIDS, or who remain healthy even after that one-time low CD4 count. We have people without HIV who remain healthy. And we have people without HIV who get what would have been called AIDS before 1993, but is now called the aforementioned infelicitous idiopathic CD4 T-cell lymphopenia. How exactly is HIV responsible for AIDS any more than, say, freckles are? I imagine there is a similar distribution, with the exception that AIDS diseases do indicate an increased risk of being HIV positive, for reasons that will be explained later.

Because the definition of AIDS has changed so much over time (and indeed varies today from country to country – find me another disease which you can contract in, say, Africa and cure yourself merely by flying to Uruguay), it can be difficult to get a good grasp on the issue. Nevertheless, a picture has emerged that looks nothing like a sexually transmitted disease.

The prevalence of HIV does not correlate well with the presence of other STD’s in a population. For instance, numerous studies in French Polynesia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Papua New Guinea and Malaysia found that while STD’s were declining, HIV rates were increasing. A large study in Uganda of efforts to reduce transmission of STD’s noted that gonorrhea, herpes and syphilis had indeed decreased, but the infection rate of HIV remained unchanged (Kamali et al., 2003; Stephenson and Cowan, 2003).

300 Pakistani truckers, a group constantly fingered as spreaders of contagion, found a 12% syphilis rate. 50% had had sex with prostitutes and 20% had had sex with other men. 65% never once used a condom, and only 5% had used a condom during their last sexual encounter. Not a single one had HIV (Shah et al., 2002).

Condom use does not affect transmission rates of HIV (Wawer et al., 2005, 1406; Padian et al., 1987).

Given that the probability of transmission of HIV is one in one thousand sexual contacts, it is hard to understand the magnitude of HIV (Chakrabarty et al., 2001).

Rabkin et al., 1987, found that there was no correlation between the prevalence of HIV and exposure to prostitutes.

Horsburgh et al., 1990; Brown, 2006; and Kelley et al., 1986 found low to no seroconversions in looking at prison systems in Nevada, Georgia and the military.

Finally, no STD displays a regular infection rate across gender, geographical and racial lines, but HIV does. Babies test HIV+ more often than teenagers, but the older one gets, the more likely one is to be HIV+ until around age fifty or so, and then it drops off. No matter the rate of infection, the ratio remains roughly constant. Urban areas test HIV+ more often than rural areas. Blacks test HIV+ more often than whites. Men more than women. There is an explanation for this, but it has nothing to do with an infectious agent.

Real STD’s, on the other hand, vary through time. They change geographic foci, as well as sexual and racial proportions. Syphilis, around the time we became aware of AIDS, was primarily a disease of white, homosexual men. In 1990, however, there was an outbreak in black communities, affecting both men and women. Over a two decade period, relative rates of infection of males and females changed by a factor of over two. More recently, gonorrhea, in the span of just five years, went up 22% in whites, but down 19% in blacks.

Things can change very quickly with a real STD. The states in 2003 with the highest rates of gonorrhea infection included only six of the 11 states with the highest rates in 2001. For adult inmates, only half of the top eight states in 2001 were in the top eight in 2003. Between 1997 and 2003, syphilis increased in the West and Northwest, remained stable in the Midwest, and decreased in the South (www.cdc.gov/std/2004STD-Conf/Slides/A-sessions/A7/Heffelfinger.pps, accessed March 25, 2006).

There is no such occurrence with HIV. The infection ratios have remained stable since testing began.

Nor does HIV behave like a virus passed along through contact with dirty needles. Kruger et al., 1990 found, at a drug clinic, that intravenous drug users (IDU) who used clean needles had a 34% infection rate of HIV, whereas the ones who shared needles had a 19% infection rate. People who use clean needles have less hepatitis B, according to one study, but ten times greater frequency of HIV infection (Bruneau et al., 1997). Correlations between dirty IDU and HIV infection rates were searched for, but not discovered. Instead, HIV infection rates were found to correlate only with race and geography (Lange et al., 1988). Vlahor et al., 1989 found zero spread of HIV from IDU in Maryland prisons.

Even more convincing is the fact that health care workers almost never contract HIV. Despite the fact that about a 1,000 health care workers a year contract some disease through workplace accidents, only a few dozen, representing a handful a year, are thought to have contracted their HIV through a needle stick, or some other accident. This is by no means proven, as the testing done for HIV is done with kits that come with disclaimers saying they should not be used to determine HIV infection.

Viral load test: The Amplicor HIV-1 Monitor test is not intended to be used as a screening test for HIV or as a diagnostic test to confirm the presence of HIV infection.

Western Blot test: Do not use this kit as the sole basis of diagnosing HIV-1 infection.

ELISA test: EIA testing alone cannot be used to diagnose AIDS, even if the recommended investigation of reactive specimens suggests a high probability that the antibody to HIV-1 is present […]there is no recognized standard for establishing the presence and absence of HIV-1 antibody in human blood (emphasis mine).

The regularity of HIV infection ratios bears some comment here, especially with respect to race. As mentioned, blacks always test higher for HIV than whites and Asians. The problem with this is that, according to HIV/AIDS theory, one gets AIDS from choosing to engage in risky behavior. Notwithstanding the evidence presented above, it is thought that AIDS is primarily a sexually transmitted disease, with a significant portion getting it from dirty needles. Though it is true that babies are said to acquire it from the mother, the mother herself must have engaged in sex without a condom, or injected herself with a dirty needles according to the orthodox theory.

While it is no secret that blacks choose to commit crimes more often than whites, this difference disappears when one disaggregates the data and proper controls are applied. A group of whites raised in the same condition, and living in the same circumstances, as a group of blacks will commit crimes at the same rate. With HIV infection, there is no disaggregation of the data that levels the infection rates between blacks and whites. Blacks ALWAYS test positive with greater frequency, whether they were raised with a father or not, whether they were raised in the suburbs or the ghetto, whether they were raised on welfare or not, in poverty or plenty, north or south, east or west. But HIV is contracted through poor decision making… this is tantamount to saying that no matter how educated, well raised, rich or well-placed a black is, he will always make riskier choices, with respect to sex without a condom and drug use, than a white. The testing for HIV is invalidated on this one point alone.

The orthodox explanation for AIDS is invalidated on many more points. For instance, ever since testing began – and testing has been widespread for well over two decades – the number of HIV infected in the United States has hovered at just over one million people. This is true all the way back to 1985, at the start of testing. But why the ups and downs in AIDS cases? Should not the HIV infection rate run parallel to, albeit slightly ahead of, the AIDS rate? And if about a million people were already infected in 1985, how did it spread so quickly, given the extremely low transmission rates? And why were HIV infection rates not necessarily highest where AIDS first showed up (Burke et al., 1990)? Why did HIV infection not radiate out from the original centers of AIDS, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco?

And why were 90% of the early cases male, given that the male/female ratio of HIV infection was already, by 1985, nowhere near nine to one. Among military applicants, males and females had equal infection rates (Burke et al., 1990). Even in the late eighties a large disparity persisted, and it was not until the addition of cervical cancer to the list, in 1993, that the AIDS ratio was brought in line with the HIV ratio.

Why did blood transfusions in San Francisco before 1985, despite being about 6-7% from gay men, not spread HIV, except in one possible case which itself is doubtful, given the child’s health before transfusion?

Why can’t the virus be isolated? Why do people get AIDS without HIV (idiopathic CD4 T-cell lymphopenia)? Why do many people who test positive for HIV not get AIDS? Why can’t the method of CD4 destruction be determined?

AIDS theory has become like Ptolemy’s theory of the solar system, epicycles and more epicycles. Instead of a simple, clean theory, we get all manner of nonsense. To explain the number of HIV infected people living in good health, an increasingly long gestation period was attributed to the disease, going against the standard germ theory. A lentivirus was invoked, and still is, despite the fact that the very foundation for acceptance of the existence of lentiviruses was blown up by the mid-nineties. This particular retrovirus, aside from being a lentivirus, also destroyed the cells it needed to reproduce. When curious differences were found in the many different putative cultures of HIV, it was claimed that the virus must mutate at an unprecedented rate. The differences are not surprising, given that HIV is never purified and whatever it is they are seeing will be different based on the individual whose mycoplasma, cellular debris and other material inhabit the culture with the alleged HIV. What is surprising, or at least disappointing, is that scientists will not recognize the epicycles they are creating.

Perhaps the most absurd epicycle is immune restoration syndrome. Many healthy individuals who test positive for HIV are given dangerous drug cocktails and consequently develop health issues, like inflammation, opportunistic infections, liver damage and swollen lymph glands. The orthodox explanation? This is just the body’s way of reacting to its immune system being restored (Davaro and Himlan, 1999; DeSimone, Pomerantz and Babinchak, 2000). This reminds me of nothing so much as the South Park episode where Kyle and Stan’s dads are convinced that global warming has brought on a new ice age, and they venture into the streets, in the middle of summer, dressed like Roald Amundsen. When they feel like they are burning up, they attribute it to the warm feeling one gets at the onset of hypothermia.

So what does a positive on an HIV test mean? Probably nothing more than immune system distress, nothing to take lightly, but there is no one specific condition causing it. Some people, when their immune systems are under stress, react in such a way as to set off an HIV test. And the antibodies to the diseases found in 90% of AIDS patients react with the supposed HIV proteins (Muller et al., 1991; Kashala et al., 1994). A person’s genetic makeup, and how it relates to their immune system, will also affect how likely it is to set off an HIV test.

This explains why a positive result on such a test does correlate with decreased life expectancy, but also why the infection ratios discussed above do not significantly vary. It explains why Hispanics in the west of the US have lower infection rates than Hispanics in the east (western Hispanics tend to come from Mexico, whereas eastern Hispanics tend to come from Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, whose inhabitants have much African ancestry). It explains why 30% of HIV negative blood transfusions develop antibodies to the p24 protein (Genesca et al., 1989), or why a transfusion of one’s own HIV negative, irradiated blood produces antibodies to HIV proteins (Kozhemiakin and Bondarenko, 1992).

It explains why HIV-free animals given HAART and other cocktails experience AIDS symptoms.

It explains why a few percent of Africans test HIV positive despite no sexual experience at all (Gisselquist et al., 2002).

It explains why only drug-using prostitutes have high prevalence of HIV (Rosenberg and Weiner, 1988).

And why Fiala, 2000, found that the prevalence of HIV in non-drug-using prostitutes was 1.5%, but in drug using prostitutes was 32%.

And why drug addicts in treatment have lower HIV prevalence the longer they have stayed clean (Moss et al., 1994).

It explains the numerous cases of HIV positives reverting to HIV negative status.

And why patients admitted to hospitals for conditions having nothing to do with AIDS or HIV show the same range of HIV prevalence as people at clinics for venereal disease (sources numerous).

And why HIV prevalence is higher for critically ill patients than for the least ill patients (MMWR, 1987b).

And why seroprevalence in emergency departments correlated only with “penetrative trauma” like gunshot and stab wounds (Kelen et al., 1988).

And why a survey of autopsies in Philadelphia showed significantly higher prevalence than in the general population, and it increased with the degree of trauma associated with death: 1.88% for death due to natural causes, 1.96% in accidental deaths, 2.27% for suicides and 3.74% for homicides (Resnick et al., 1991). A survey of autopsies in San Francisco found an 18% infection rate among those without any history of immunodeficiency or any laboratory or pathologic indication of AIDS (Coleman et al., 1986).

And why applicants for military service average about 3 HIV positives per 10,000, but this rate is reduced to half for those who passed the fitness test (AMSA 2004).

And why, given that the Marines require the highest levels of fitness, the incidence of HIV is less than half in the Marines what it is in sailors (Garland et al., 1989) or soldiers (AMSA 1996, 2004; Kelley et al., 1990; McNeil et al., 1989, 1991; Renzullo et al., 1995, 2001).

And why the probability of testing HIV positive increases with the number of previous hospital admissions (Renzullo et al., 1991).

And why a large percentage of African babies, born HIV positive, have HIV negative mothers (Gisselquist et al., 2002).

And why “Professor Richard Lee of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto has discovered that the San people of Botswana and Namibia have mysteriously low HIV infection rates even though these countries are known for their extremely high AIDS mortality statistics” (www.news.utoronto.ca/bin6/060728-2466.asp, July 28, 2006). The San people are genetically distinct from the other West Africans of those countries.

The evidence against the orthodox theory is massive, while the evidence for it is virtually nonexistent. Despite this, people do not see, perhaps do not want to see, the truth. HIV is a fiction, and AIDS is a real but rather amorphous condition, a grab-bag of all sorts of problems. Merely suggesting this will make people angry. Mark Wainberg even suggested changing the US Constitution so that Peter Duesberg and people like him could be put in jail.

It is no surprise that vested interests in the AIDS orthodoxy would react this way, but what about everyone else? Why does no one want to consider the evidence, and why do so many get so vitriolic at mere disagreement over the theory? Perhaps Bertrand Russell can elucidate this:

If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do. If someone maintains that two and two are five, or that Iceland is on the Equator you feel pity rather than anger… the most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way… So whenever you find yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard, you will probably find, on examination, that your belief is going beyond what the evidence warrants.

A Reply to Terence Ball

2011-06-25T19:05:00.000-07:00

A decade ago Terence Ball wrote a critique of some Frankenstein-like creature meant to represent free market ideology. He robbed the graves of men and women as diverse as Murray Rothbard, Margaret Thatcher, Robert Nozick and Ayn Rand to put it together and came up with something that no libertarian would endorse, I suspect, but which nevertheless is recognizable as libertarian(ish). It may not be the same species, but it is in the same genus. Or at least the same family.

He imagined a country called Marketopia and described how life would be there, with the purpose of showing us that while markets are good for some things, there are areas where they are inappropriate. As he wrote, “why do some (or perhaps all) Marketopian practices make many – perhaps most – of us uneasy or queasy, or worse?” The answer, as I shall argue, is a combination of three things: some of the practices are not libertarian, some of the practices are permissible but unlikely, and some of the people getting queasy hold some very strange and, frankly, damaging beliefs, prevalent though they may be.

1) In the latter category we have his example of the market for organs.

Organ brokers walk the halls of the private hospitals, keeping close watch on the dying and making deals with the family members whose grief is greatly offset by the prospect of profiting from the death of their loved one. Those awaiting organ transplants are prepared to pay the going price for a heart, lung, kidney, or other vital organs. Typically, competing organ brokers play one patient off against the other, thereby raising the price and ensuring that the organ goes to the highest bidder. Most Marketopians opt for a designation on their drivers’ license, saying that in event of their death their organs should be sold to the highest bidder.

I fail to see what should make someone queasy about a market for organs to save lives. It is not the act of giving up an organ, because I have never heard an objection over that. It must be the fact that the organ is being sold, and yet no one objects to farmers selling food to save those of us who need to eat to remain alive. I truly do not understand it, and not understanding it, I stand little chance of curing the nausea. Therefore I shall limit myself to one question: assuming that those retching at the thought of organ sales can at least agree that a market for organs would create more supply of those organs, which makes them queasier, someone selling their organs, or someone dying because they couldn’t buy one?

While the good reader is busy deciding which scenario induces a greater quantity of vomit, I ask that he take some note of the way the cited paragraph was crafted. Notice the family members nearly forgetting to mourn because of the money they shall get from selling their loved one’s cadaver, or the organ brokers walking the halls, seeking out death. See how unsavory is the practice of pitting desperate and dying patients in a bidding war for organs that could save their lives. One is tempted to suspect that Mr. Ball is simply being unfair, painting as hideous a picture as he can in service of his thesis, rather than trying to be honest.

Why exactly does Mr. Ball conclude that the organ industry would operate in this manner? Has he ever heard of insurance? Why does he assume that dying patients must outbid other dying patients for survival? Why would the organs not have already been purchased each month when they pay for health insurance? And why would organ brokers stalk the hallways looking for organs? Did the dying patient not already sell the rights to them in event of his death years ago (incidentally, people stalking the hallways looking for healthy organs from dead individuals is what happens now. I know this because my wife works in a MICU. People intrude on the grief of families right now in search of organs – I don’t blame them; they are trying to save lives after all – and they are often told no.)?

Blackmail… is regarded as a free-market transaction in which one person pays another for the service of remaining silent.

Entirely unobjectionable, at least from a legal perspective. If I am allowed to reveal your secret, why should you not be allowed to offer me money to drink a nice tall glass of shut-the-fuck-up? Mr. Ball never objects to non-disclosure agreements; why should he care if this sort of consent is purchased? This is similar to the organ case in that all similar activities are legal; it is money that gets people riled up. But who honestly is going to be uneasy about someone having a method of preserving his secrets? Certainly not the man whose secrets would have otherwise been revealed, and certainly not the man who agrees to be silent and finds himself richer. Is there anyone else in this transaction whose opinion matters?

The sale of cocaine, heroin, hashish, and other drugs is viewed in a similar light [to blackmail].

This is not the time to make a five thousand word argument against the drug war. I shall simply appeal to decency: in exchange for drug users not using violence against him, can the good reader find it in his heart not to use violence against them? Understand that this precludes the possibility of imprisonment, because how but by violence or a threat of violence can you get them into prison?

2) After those scenarios which Mr. Ball got right – a minority – but finds intolerable, we come to those which are hypothetically possible but a little absurd. Some of them are areas where, I agree, it would be silly to take a consumer approach, but they are so unlikely they come off as idiotic in any society. Others are clearly areas where Mr. Ball wants government interference.

For instance, Mr. Ball claims that all roads are toll roads in Marketopia. Let us forget for a moment that private companies operate toll roads right now – roads which never have traffic jams – and ask a few questions to determine how exactly Marketopia came to be dominated by toll roads only. Do developers not make community roads for the neighborhoods they build? Is it actually more profitable to make neighborhood streets toll streets rather than open them for all residents and guests and maintain them through the monthly, quarterly, semiannual or annual homeowners’ association fee? Have no businesses built roads to attract customers to their stores (as happened frequently in colonial America)? Have car companies not paved a few highways to make their product more valuable (as Ford Motor Company offered to do but was rejected)? That last question brings up an interesting point: why should the good reader be taxed to pay for something to make Ford’s products more valuable?

[F]ire and police protection is provided by private companies for a fee, and according to how much protection, delivered how fast, the consumer desires or can afford. If you can’t afford, or choose to forgo, fire protection, one or more fire companies will, in the event of a fire at your house, appear with hoses, hooks, and ladders—and the fire captain will engage you in fast-paced negotiations about how much you think his company’s sevices are now worth. These negotiated post-fire fees (as they are called) tend to be very high, often running into the tens or even hundreds of thousands of Rothbards.

We may dispense with the nonsense about anyone being unable to afford fire protection. If you can afford the house, you can afford $75 a year for fire protection (assuming private companies don’t find a way to provide it for less). This is assuming, of course, that fire protection is not offered by the homeowners’ association as an incentive for buyers (as lawn-mowing and pools are often provided now, and as anything that is demanded could be in a free society). And for those houses out in the country, to them I say “PAY YOUR $75 FIRE PROTECTION FEE OR DON’T WHINE!”

Nevertheless, there are some who may refuse the fee (we cannot seriously claim that they could forget, because the profit-seeking companies would surely set it up to be deducted each month from their bank account or billed to their credit card) and they may have to negotiate at the last minute. Economic theory tells us that there is a maximum price the buyer will pay, and a minimum price the seller will accept. If the post-fire fees are so high, wouldn’t other fire protection companies show up to bid the price down? How could a soaring high price like that not attract competition? There is, after all, no regulatory agency keeping them away.

Mr. Ball makes a similar case about private policing, but I think I can skip it and refer the good reader to the fire protection example.

Marketopians love to be entertained and amused. Most television stations do not broadcast depressing programs; there isn’t much of a market. This means that reports about floods, famines, airplane crashes, and Middle Eastern politics are not featured on the most widely watched news programs.

Right. Those sensational sort of stories don’t attract viewers.

One of Marketopia’s more thriving enterprises is Rent-a-Friend. For ten Rothbards an hour one can rent an “acquaintance,” for twenty-five a “friend,” for fifty a “good friend,” and for one-hundred a “best friend.” For those who prefer non-human companionship, Rent-a-Pet (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Rent-a-Friend) provides dogs, cats, goldfish, gerbils, pot-bellied pigs, and many other animals for periods ranging from one day to the lifetime of the animal… [F]rom Sycophants Inc. you can rent a flatterer to follow you around and praise you…From Losers [Ltd.] you can rent a partner… Loser’s slogan is “You win, we lose—guaranteed.”

Is there some government law preventing these things now? I note a distinct lack of such services despite the freedom to offer them. And if someone needs companionship so badly they are willing to pay for it… what type of violence does Mr. Ball propose in order to maintain them in solitude?

The marriage contract stipulates what assets each partner will bring to the marriage, which assets they are (or are not) willing to share, how frequently they will engage in sex (and what fee or exchange is involved), how many children they will have (and what the wife will charge the husband for the inconvenience of pregnancy and the pain of childbirth), and so on and on.

Much of this can happen now in what is called a prenuptial agreement. I don’t know if Mr. Ball has heard of them. Every contract has terms and marriage is a contract. Why should anyone but the two betrothed have the power to determine the terms of a particular marriage contract? If they want things like the frequency of sex spelled out, that is their business, but we must note, as we have so often, that if people aren’t doing it now, Mr. Ball has the burden of demonstrating why that would be different in Marketopia.

Some especially wealthy men “upgrade” by exchanging older wives for newer and younger models; wealthy women do the same.

It is very important, of course, to prevent people from leaving a relationship they don’t want to be in. Our government, God bless it, has done a good job of preventing rich men from divorcing and marrying younger.

[A] mother might ask her son to “Give Mommy a kiss.” To which the son typically replies, “What’s it worth to you?” The mother will then say something like, “Two Rothbards.” “Four,” he says flatly and firmly. She nods, and as he pecks her cheek, she opens her purse and says proudly with a warm maternal smile, “That’s my boy. The best bargainer a mother ever had.”

The reply to this has already been used for certain examples above. I don’t feel like reproducing it and anyway, I’m so embarrassed for Mr. Ball that I prefer to hurry on past this nincompoopery.

William Graham Sumner University—a private institution, as are all institutions in Marketopia—is not only “run like a business,” it is a business, and a very profitable one at that. A grade of “A” can be pu5rchased for the relatively modest sum of five hundred Rothbards, a “B” for four hundred, a “C” for three hundred.

And why purchase them, since no business is going to hire someone with a diploma from WGSU? Which leads me to ask, how exactly is WGSU a “very profitable” business?

All research at Sumner and other centers of higher learning is financed by large corporations. The tobacco industry supports research on smoking and health… Pioneering research… has shown that—contrary to a once-popular but now discredited belief—there is no link between smoking and cancers of the lung, throat, and other organs.

However, most of the populace ignores that research and instead focuses on the research done by medical insurance and other like industries, recognizing that they have more trustworthy incentives. Kind of like how I get my oil changed every five thousand miles, like Toyota says I should, rather than the every three thousand miles Jiffy Lube insists on.

3) Finally, we come to those fictitious practices which are not libertarian in the slightest, starting with the Marketopian dictionary.

The language spoken in Marketopia bears a close resemblance to English, at least in vocabulary and spelling, though not in the meaning of many words. Makretopian dictionaries are helpful here. Under “society,” for example, the entry reads: “Fictitious entity believed by collectivists to be real. See also Public.” Under “justice” the entry reads: “Noninterference in market transactions; actions, arrangements and/or decisions conducive to the functioning of free markets.” And under “injustice” the obverse: “Interference with and/or regulation of market transactions.”

Libertarians are perfectly aware that society exists; what we argue is that there is nothing to society that is not a part of individuals and their interactions (unlike the mind, which is not to be found in any constituent of the brain, but only when all those constituents are together). As for “justice” and “injustice”, I can only suggest some reading material for Mr. Ball.

After being tried in private court before a judge—juries being slow and inefficient (and unfair to would-be jurors, who are in any event too busy with their own affairs to serve), are never used in Marketopia, even in capital cases—the wrongdoer will be incarcerated in one of the private prisons run by Burglar Kin, McPrison, and other franchises.

It is difficult to know how exactly a courtroom would turn out in a free society, but it is interesting to note that Mr. Ball, who goes so far as to suggest that little boys will charge their mothers for kisses, has failed to imagine that there might be professional jurors. At any rate, people in a free society would be at liberty to choose the legal protection from the company that best suited them and had the most attractive agreements with the other companies.

As for prisons, I don’t see that they would be used very often. Mr. Ball has already conceded that drugs would be legal, so there goes half the prison population. Cut it back some more for the decrease in crime once the black market was gone, and cut it back even more for all the true crimes which would nevertheless be handled by compensation for the victim, and perhaps by violence in kind. Again, I refer him to that reading material linked to above. Prisons would be used for those who have not been executed but simply cannot play well with their fellows.

The private prisons of Marketopia have proven to be both profitable and popular. Prisons serve not only to punish criminals but to entertain a vast television audience. One program, called “Con Cam,” broadcasts videos of prisoners as they go about their daily business—making homemade knives in the prison workship, extorting money from weaker prisoners, and buying drugs from the guards (perfectly legal of course).

Much of the inhumanity in modern prisons is due to overcrowding, a problem already solved by legalizing drugs and using proper retribution and restitution to handle crime. However, even those few who do get put in prison are still entitled to rights protection, and they may purchase these services like any citizen (of course they may labor and sell the surplus! How else would they pay for their own imprisonment?). Therefore, any extortion that takes place can be rectified. As for broadcasting their lives, that is an impermissible intrusion into their privacy unless they sign on to permit it.

It should be noted that in many instances, I speak of the proper libertarian action when in fact, even a market society might deviate from it. This seems like one likely instance. It could well be that those deemed unfit for life outside prison walls, even in Libertopia, could have their rights stripped from them, despite the efforts of family, friends and altruistic benefactors on the outside who campaign on their behalf. But this is not just a problem for Libertopia and Marketopia; any government faces this conundrum as well. That the government has not chosen to close budget gaps by selling TV rights in prisons probably has something to do with the reception it would receive by the populace at large. Is Mr. Ball really going to argue that, no matter how consumerist we already are, the addition of a few more goods and services to the market would so change our character that we would then countenance this sort of thing?

Even if it did, a televised prison show is a small price to pay for freedom.

But the most widely watched televised spin-off of the private prison system is the hugely popular “Who Wants to Live?” A month before his or her execution, the condemned prisoner is introduced to the viewing audience, which then submits suggestions for the manner and method of execution—hanging, firing squad, disemboweling, drawing and quartering, and other even more ingenious means. This supplies special incentives to the prisoner and his or her allies in the anti-death penalty movement to raise money for release or at least commutation of the death penalty. The ensuing bidding war is fierce and frenetic. In most instances, the prisoners lose (unless of course they are wealthy enough to outbid their opponents). Two days before the scheduled execution a final vote is taken. The rule is, “One Rothbard, one vote.” Some viewers—especially members of the victim’s family—are prepared to pay thousands or even millions of Rothbards to ensure the grisliest of deaths for the condemned. And this in turn ensures an even larger viewing audience and therefore increased advertising revenues.

In a libertarian society, the victim determines punishment, as long as it does not surpass in scope the original crime. Only a murderer may be executed, and only if the victim left behind instructions in just such an eventuality, or if his next-of-kin or whomever he designated so decides. No one else has any business in the decisions.

Of course, Mr. Ball could then argue that the circus would revolve around the next-of-kin, and indeed it might. The prisoner might beg for his life; his family might offer money. So what?

Mr. Ball’s little thought experiment suffers from all the typical hysteria statists use to greet libertarian ideas: casting them in the worst light possible; rigging the scenario to get the most idiotic worst case outcomes; failing to recognize that a certain problem is shared by all systems, not just libertarian ones; and occasionally understanding the libertarian idea but failing to see its superiority. Mr. Ball goes on to explain how Marketopia is inferior, and he even repeats those tired old canards about deregulation hurting power companies and the banking industry. I have seen worse characterizations of libertarianism, but this one never manages to distinguish itself from the pack of misguided critiques that statists frequently send our way.

Book Review: Infinite Jest

2011-02-14T16:37:00.000-08:00

I made it to around page 150 or so before I quit. I do not often leave a book unfinished, but only once have I ripped one twice along the spine and thrown it away.

What I find interesting about reviews of Infinite Jest, or indeed of any work of art that eschews the mainstream and challenges people, is that most reviewers, pro or con, launch preemptive attacks on the other side early in the review. People who hated IJ know they will be labeled as dim-witted, so they often begin with a diatribe about hipsters who tote around IJ to impress people, pretending to like it merely because they have been instructed to do so by some entity that someone with the right authority consecrated as intellectual. Lovers of IJ, knowing this attack is coming, start their review by expressing their doubts as to whether detractors had their brains turned on while they were reading, or indeed whether or not they even have such an organ to turn on in the first place.

There is probably some truth to be found on both sides. It must be conceded that some readers may have been swayed by the power of suggestion and hype and laud IJ simply to be members of their preferred chorus. I will also concede that there may be genius and an enjoyable experience in that multitude of pages but that I lacked the sensitivity or perspicacity to see it. Nevertheless, I did not enjoy the experience, and I read IJ for the same reason I do anything: either to enjoy it or to make possible the enjoyment of something else at a later date. I accomplished neither, and so IJ landed, in tatters, in my garbage can.

I thought the book began well enough, and up to a certain point I liked it. The opening scene made me chuckle, especially the line that went something like, "What I saw in there, sir, was barely mammalian." I knew a little of the plot, so when Hal Incandenza appeared normal soon after, it seemed clear to me he had gotten hooked on the movie, been forcibly separated from it and this had damaged some of his humanity in the process. Much of what would follow, of course, would show us how events had led up to this.

There was more I found good. Whatever character it was who was obsessing over appearing nonchalant as he waits for a drug delivery (and whom I never saw again through the next 100,000 words or so) was worth a couple chuckles. I appreciated the first appearance of Orin and his battle against cockroaches. DFW had a flair for creating characters of the sort one might find in a Wes Anderson film: unrealistic but humorous caricatures and eccentrics. These and others were perfectly good inhabitants for a story, but after what must have been an entire normal sized novel - 150 large pages of small print - I lost faith that a plot was going to develop, while at the same time noticing that what was good in the book, which formerly had mingled with what was bad, was growing scarcer and scarcer.

The parts I considered bad were not truly detrimental to the work; they were tolerable so long as I was enjoying meeting new people. The sentences were long but basically parsable. I still do not know what, other than length, is achieved by ending a sentence three pages after it begins, nor what theme, nuance or specific bit of information is added by starting it with "And but so then", but I could understand what was written. These annoyances added to the work about what sprinkles of parsely add to french fries, but at least they were almost as easily ignored. If DFW occasionally hit a flat note by misusing a word, that too I can overlook, and the necessity of a dictionary when reading IJ has been mildly overstated.

What ruined the novel for me was that my growing, gnawing concern that DFW was taking too long to get where he was going met my growing, gnawing concern that he wasn't going anywhere in particular. More patient than Kurt Vonnegut, I do not demand that every sentence in a story either advance plot or reveal character - and indeed even if I were of this mind the very act of opening a 1,000+ page tome is implicit agreement to suspend this requirement - but these two functions are indeed the most important that a sentence in a work of fiction can accomplish. After we paint a picture, establish an atmosphere, toy with an idea and leave a little room for the occasional parenthetical aside, I think it is high time we advance the plot.

What, then, was DFW doing with all those sentences? Is there a reason we are treated to long stretches of boys complaining about how tired they are after tennis practice? Not just one passage, which itself was four times longer - at least - than it needed to be, but replicant passages that do nothing that I can see save belabor the point? Was there something subtle accomplished in this seemingly surplus verbiage? I have already conceded there might have been, but just as a man calls a woman a nymphomaniac at the precise moment her sex drive eclipses his, I call a tract useless at the precise point its subtlety eludes my detection. The bits of character and humorous moments came to be surrounded by greater and greater quantities of excess prose, prose for the sake of it, prose in the form of tortuous filaments of sentences which, despite the memory of past periods, one felt might finally shun that particular punctuation mark and keep going to the final page. If that last sentence left the good reader winded, I suggest he not attempt Infinite Jest. When a sand dune is a challenge, Mount Everest is beyond consideration.

Finally, interminability met aimlessness, or so it seemed to me, and I chose to go no further. What I have read about the book since has convinced me I made a wise decision, given my aforementioned determination to enjoy life. That opening sequence with Hal apparently serves no purpose; characters are dropped part way through; storylines never meet up; the book ends suddenly, arbitrarily, though it is possible there was a real ending in the two thirds of the book that was snipped from the first draft (those gifted at math will note that this supposes a first draft of about 3,000 pages).

I have occasionally dabbled at being a snob. I enjoy Hour of the Wolf, The Trial and David Lynch. I not only have the complete works of William Shakespeare but have read most of it. I once spent several hours perusing Caspar David Friedrich paintings in Berlin (and know what peruse actually means). I use a semi colon when it is called for. However, this pursuit must be abandoned; I relinquish any claim to snobbery these acts might have afforded me. I am not a snob. I enjoy plot. I require it, in fact. I may have a certain tolerance for dawdling but plot I refuse to do without, and so dies Infinite Jest on the sword-point of my opinion.

Nevertheless, I will not be called a dimwit. While I concede that all dimwits hate IJ, not all haters of IJ are dimwits. I hope the other side can concede that though not all lovers of IJ are hipster poseurs, all hipster poseurs love Infinite Jest, whether they have managed to get through it or not.

College Football End of Season Power Rankings

2010-12-18T12:37:00.000-08:00

With the regular season over, and the first game of the bowl season playing as I type these words, it's time to rank the top 15 college football teams according to the humble blogger's very own computer system (WAC teams and other small conferences not included).

1. Ohio State 126.48

A Rose Bowl win only went so far to improve Ohio State's national image. If they don't beat Arkansas this year, they'll be right back where they were at the end of 2008. Despite a poor showing at Camp Randall, this team has the year's best overall performance.

2. TCU 125.86

The humble blogger is still not sure whether MWC teams deserve to be included or it is too easy to padd stats in that conference. For what it's worth, TCU has the year's second highest score.

3. Oregon 118.36

The Ducks' scores were lower in the latter half of the year, but they were good enough for the third spot.

4. Stanford 117.35

Michigan is nuts if they don't have Harbaugh walking their sideline next season.

5. Alabama 113.89

One of the strongest three-loss teams I've seen.

6. Virginia Tech 111.77

A couple early losses bring them down a bit, but their game against Stanford should be a good one.

7. Oklahoma 107.07

This team has had great wins, perplexing losses and cloos wins over poor competition. All in all, a fine score, and they've improved as the year has gone on.

8. Auburn 105.66

Remember that this is for performance over the entire season. This team had a lot of unimpressive close calls early on. In the second half of the year they've been one of the best.

9. Oklahoma State 103.51

I've never seen a better team from Stillwater.

10. Wisconsin 99.02

A slow start to the year brings their score down. Their finish was exceptinal.

11. West Virginia 95.01

The only good score from the Big East.

12. Missouri 94.25

The Tigers turned in a solid performance this year, with a signature win over the Sooners.

13. Arkansas 93.38

This team is good, but doesn't look good enough to beat the Buckeyes... unless the SEC curse is still in effect.

14. Nebraska 92.68

This team felt stronger than their score at times. The slip up against Texas hurts their score.

15. LSU 89.13

The SEC West has four teams above 89.00. Not too shabby.

TSA!

2010-11-18T21:28:00.001-08:00

The beloved TSA was founded on the belief that gross sexual imposition is less awful than mass murder. There are, the good reader is no doubt aware, terrorists who want to kill us. We are supposed to be thankful, therefore, for the government agents who prevent this by molesting us. The humble blogger makes it sound a touch absurd, but there actually is a train of thought, not entirely illogical, whereby one can conclude that getting to second base with random airline passengers will keep them alive. If between a woman’s breasts a bomb can fit, then we must search the cleavage.

There are some who think a little deeper, but only a little. They ask how many gross sexual impositions are required to be more awful than a single murder. With the thousands of intimate pat downs and naked photos (taken by damaging backscatter X-Ray equipment), how many murders must be prevented to be worth it? This low level of oppositional thought is typically achieved by journalists and TV pundits, as one would expect.

Economists and those adept at thinking economically go a bit deeper. They point out that TSA’s patriotic groping scares passengers away, leading some to take more dangerous transportation to wherever they are going. They envision an amount X that represents dead flyers if no precautions were taken. They further envision an amount A of people deterred from flying. B amount of these deterred passengers will forego their trip, and of the ones who still go, an amount C will avoid a deadly accident. D amount of people in deadly accidents will simply take the place of someone else in an accident that was going to happen anyway. Which, then, is larger, X or (A-(B + C + D))?

A few others think to add the bad of the still ongoing gross sexual impositions to the potential bad of increased overall deaths and conclude that (A-(B + C + D)) + Molestation is worse than X. The people from the side that believes a cheap, unwanted feel plus naked photography go well with aviation insist that (A -(B + C + D)) is smaller than X. The lines and equations are drawn: with TSA we get (A-(B + C + D)) + Molestation; without TSA we get X. Now how can one go about obtaining a reasonable solution?

With no great amount of modesty, the humble blogger would like to announce that he has solved the problem.

Let us assume a best case scenario for the pro-TSA side. Let us assume that (B + C + D) = A, in other words that no extra traffic deaths come from deterred flyers. We are thus left with X vs. Molestation. Now let us determine what value to plug in for X.

It is not as difficult as it might at first seem. Though an individual terrorist does not announce to the world that he has been deterred from blowing up an airplane, the aggregate actions of the entire group of terrorists reveal certain things about them, including population size. One must only realize that a terrorist thwarted at the airport is still left with a bomb in his hands and hate in his heart. Are we to believe that he gives up, goes home, disassembles the bomb and lives peacefully forever more? Nothing could be more absurd! The terrorist who avoids the airport is yet left with numerous possibilities for inflicting murder on the society he hates. He can take his bomb on a bus; he can take it into a football stadium; he can take it on a train or a subway; he can take it to a shopping mall. The fact that the airports are closed to him does him no great inconvenience. Have we removed from his reach those Americans in the air? Why, he shall simply concern himself with those Americans still on the ground. A single wisp of cloud in the sky does more to bother astronomers than TSA does terrorists.

At this point, the good reader may be tempted to form his conclusion. TSA cannot prevent terrorist attacks, merely divert them to different areas. Therefore, TSA should be abolished. This is of course correct, but let us make the conclusion even more robust. After all, though the death total is unaffected, it is shifted to a different part of the population. Not everyone flies with the same frequency, so those who fly often may still feel that, though the country as a whole isn’t any safer, they themselves are. We can dispel this notion.

The key is to track the change in non-aviation terrorist attacks. Though there may be seasonal, annual, even decadal cycles in these attacks, if we look at the change in frequency of such attacks since TSA has been in operation, we can get a rough estimate of how many extra deaths are occurring through bus bombings, basketball game explosions and the like. If, for instance, there were twenty non-aviation terrorist attacks per year before TSA, and 25 per year since, we can conclude that these five extra attacks are likely ones that would have occurred in airports and on airplanes but have been diverted through the diligent crotch grabbing of the men and women in black and blue.

Since the humble blogger could not find comprehensive data more recent than 2005, let us consider the four years before and the four years after the inception of TSA. The FBI lists 25 terrorist incidents after TSA and 36 in the four years before it. These are non-aviation terrorist events, so the TSA cannot be credited with the drop in terrorist attacks. However, the vast majority of these attacks are arson and vandalism committed by animal lovers and eco wackos, not the sort of thing airlines have ever had to deal with. When we look only at non-aviation, non-animal rights terrorist incidents, we get 12 before and 4 after. As difficult as it might be for some to believe, terrorism is down, not up.

But what if we discount those terrorist incidents from Puerto Rican nationalists who don’t operate in the mainland United States? And let’s throw out the anti-abortion crazies who certainly aren’t being diverted from airline violence. Now we are left with 6 before and 4 after. Our conclusion can only be that if terrorists are being diverted from attacking airlines, it’s not showing up anywhere else. X is likely zero. This means that TSA has likely done nothing to protect the lives of any Americans from terrorists, because there doesn't appear to be any terror displacement.

Airline passengers aren’t getting any increased safety from TSA, they’re just getting molested.

Wĭthûr Wē

2010-08-16T13:02:00.000-07:00

The humble blogger has been away for a while, but the time was not wasted. I recently published my first novel, of science-fiction, and I am giving away a free PDF version at the official website, www.withurwe.com.

The story is, of course, a libertarian one, and here is a summary:

Centuries hence, Man, seemingly alone in the universe, slowly spreads his civilizations across his corner of the galaxy. Tyrants vie for power, and in their fierce grip the colonies of the Milky Way are suffocating.

In this society of many billions, a young marine, a highly trained war hero, returns home from his tour of duty. Physically powerful yet shy, awkward and unable to sway the masses with pretty speeches, Alistair Ashley 3nn makes a decision to strike at the hierarchy the only way he can.

His decision starts him on a grand adventure, and as he is carried along by forces beyond his control, he comes to confront an ancient secret, one which may reveal Humanity’s future.

Some people have had some very nice things to say about it, and it seems to be picking up some steam. I hope the good reader will consider giving it a free test drive. In the meantime, there have been two professional reviews which I link to below.

ForeWord Clarion Review:

Withur We is a magnificent epic in the grand tradition of such works as Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series and Frank Herbert’s Dune. Matthew Bruce Alexander, a first-time author, combines the warfare orientation of John Ringo and the lyricism and storytelling ability of Ray Bradbury with philosophical, political, and economical treatises similar to the works of such thinkers as Thomas Paine, Thomas Hobbes, Adam Smith, and Noam Chomsky...

Apex Review:

...Considerably thought-provoking, Withur We is a compelling fantasy tale with a powerful central message: the importance of preserving freedom from the crippling grip of tyranny. In convincing fashion, author Matthew Bruce Alexander highlights the potential perils of a manipulative, controlling central government, while simultaneously inciting readers to remain ever-vigilant against the manifestation of such a grim reality. With strong libertarian overtones, Withur We paints a vivid picture of the ominous future that awaits citizens of any society who fail to guard themselves against the spread of abusive authority. As such, it offers a timely message of the true costs of freedom and liberty. An insightful, eye-opening read.

If you are ever in the mood for some science-fiction/action-adventure with a libertarian bent, I hope you'll give it a try. Rated R for language, sex and ass-kicking.

Psychopaths

2010-04-20T09:27:00.000-07:00

While wandering down Wikipedia’s tended lanes, without destination, twisting and turning from path to path, your humble blogger happened upon the entry for Psychopathy. The topic is more complex and uncertain than I am going to treat it here, but the description of the garden-variety psychopath is interesting.

A psychopath is a person who lacks the empathy that most human beings have and that allows them to exist as social animals. Capable of evincing emotions they do not feel, they are superficially charming but ultimately deceitful and manipulative. We often think of them as serial killers, and some are, but they need not be. They use people as a means to their ends and they do so without remorse.

Furthermore, there doesn’t seem to be an effective treatment for them. Indeed, typical psychiatric treatment just teaches them how to better manipulate. The psychopath has an inflated sense of self-importance and gives little thought to the repurcussions of his actions; he is nearly immune to corrective measures.

A grandiose and superficially charming manipulator who can’t be cured, who uses people for his purposes, feels no remorse, never learns his lesson and has no sense of tomorrow’s consequences for today’s actions? Have I not just given the best general description of a politician ever written? If the good reader will but pause a moment to consider, he will see why this might be so. In our brave Republic, our political class is elected from a group of ordained “serious” candidates that the media selects, but this group of “serious” candidates is culled from a broader group of self-selected aspirants. Would not an office that traffics in control and power, while instilling a sense of grandness in the occupant, not appeal to a psychopath? Would not those first forays into political power, those first attempts to crush opponents and ruin lives, those initial backstabbings of erstwhile allies, serve to dampen the enthusiasm of the normal man but leave the psychopath unaffected, eager for the next campaign?

The evidence of psychopathy in, say, the American politician – certainly in one who has not had his enthusiasm dampened and so has lasted long enough to rise high in American politics – hardly needs to be debated. Their grandiose self-importance is the stuff of legend. Their shallow charm is undeniable. Yet look with what remorselessness they continue to pursue the Iraq War even while they take aim at Iran. Who but a psychopath immune to consequences could foist upon us Social Security, whose doomsday clock is ticking down to zero? What manner of man, the events and outcomes of Prohibition available for his perusal, could so zealously pursue the War on Drugs unless he were incapable of learning a lesson? And how many politicians, driven by impulse and blind to outcome, have thrown their careers away for the brief bliss of sexual infidelity?

With some margin of error, it is estimated that about 1% of the population is psychopathic. Even if this is off by an order of magnitude, that leaves around 300,000 individuals without conscience to fill up our political offices, from State Rep to Commander in Chief. If my hypothesis is anywhere near correct, we would expect the portion of psychopaths among politicians to rise with increases in station, i.e., with increased time spent in the culling process and with increased adeptness at politics. We should also expect to see fewer psychopaths elected to offices where the voters actually know the candidates and are not to be fooled by mere superficial appeal and specious empathy. The mayors of the various Danvilles that dot the Republic may not display an elevated propensity for psychopathy, but what of Detroit, New York, Chicago and Philadelphia? State Representatives might show a moderate increase, while the proportion of consciences to Congressmen in the Capital Building could be appallingly low.

H.L. Mencken estimated that one third of Congressmen, more or less, are scoundrels. Two thirds, more or less, are know-nothings. Three thirds, more or less, are cowards. This explains Congress’ behavior quite well, but what is the actual percentage of scoundrels, and are they indeed psychopaths? Fortunately, there may be a way to find out. Psychopaths, according to some, show a lack of grey matter in certain areas of the brain associated with emotional learning and impulse control. This moves psychopathy out of that nebulous and fantastical realm of mental health and into the realm of an actual physical derangement of the brain.

I therefore propose that any man or woman seeking elected office, and any appointee up for confirmation, undergo a brain scan of these areas. I propose no oversight committee to grant or deny eligibility, because this is too much power to invest in any group of oligarchs. Rather, let them simply have a brain scan made public. It need not even be a law – indeed, it is better that it is not. Let the public simply demand it.

Any man who refuses to have his brain scanned and released to the public shall be considered a potential psychopath and suffer consequent losses at the polls. Any who presents a lack of development in empathetic and decision-making regions of the brain will find himself against an impossible hurdle to overcome. And any man whose brain exhibits markers of psychopathy but who is not actually a psychopath shall find election equally unlikely and thus be spared a lifetime as a parasite.

Socialized Medicine

2010-03-23T12:43:00.000-07:00

If I grant the benefit of the doubt to the supporters of socialized medicine, grant that they are not out to destroy freedom and health care but rather have a sincere desire to help the less well off, perhaps they will grant me that I am not a selfish, uncaring troglodyte but rather oppose socialized medicine, indeed socialism in any non-voluntary form, for other reasons. Perhaps they will make a good faith effort to understand my position. It is devoutly to be hoped, because this is not a matter of opinion. There is a right and there is a wrong, and by any reasonable measure, the outcomes of a system of socialized medicine are inferior to those of a fully capitalist system.

I very deliberately avoid saying free health care, as many are inclined to do, because there is no such thing as free health care. All health care must be paid for, although the manner in which it is paid for will greatly influence the outcomes in the system. I also do not call it universal health care, for reasons which will become apparent later. Furthermore, while I will cite examples from the US and Canada, as well as other nations, this essay is not meant to be a defense of the American system of health care. Far too many health care debates devolve into a Canada vs. US argument. My position is that the US health care system is deeply flawed; what I advocate is a capitalist system of health care, which the US has only in bits and pieces.

Let us begin with a quick look into economics, because it is on the rocks of this discipline that socialized medicine flounders. The good reader will note that air does not come with a price. The reason for this is that air is what economists call ‘superabundant’, i.e., there is more supply than demand. Everyone who wants air may breath it, as often and as much as desired, without inhibiting the rest of us from breathing it. But what happens when the demand for something outstrips its supply?

Let us say that there are ten individuals, and each individual desires an apple, but only five apples exist. In such a situation, it is unavoidable that rationing will occur; not every individual will get his desire filled. Perhaps only five will eat an apple, perhaps all ten will eat only half an apple, but it is not possible, under those constraints, to give each individual all of what he desires. But what form will this unavoidable rationing take? In inventing a rationing system, we are limited only by our creativity, but in a system where people are allowed to own property, and where all relationships are voluntary – a free market system, in other words – a general medium of exchange evolves. Called money, this medium allows for all goods to be measured against it, and this is called a price. It is price that, in a free society, rations goods and services on the market. Of course, in a small example like ours, it is quite possible that all ten will know and like each other, and therefore cooperate so that each will eat half an apple. This is a perfectly moral decision, but it is not a market decision. On the market, the price of apples will rise until only five are desired.

Notice that price, therefore, coordinates behavior between producers and consumers. The price rises until consumers reduce their consumption to the amount of apples in existence, but the price also encourages people to grow apples so that next time there will be more apples. This is part of how the market works: price coordinates behavior. Consider your own life. The last time you bought a sweater, did you take an inventory of how many sweaters were in existence, and did you then survey the entirety of the human population to see how many wanted a sweater, and did you determine how badly they wanted/needed the sweater before deciding whether it was appropriate for you to buy one? The question may seem absurd, but that is exactly the dilemma, along with a host of others, facing a socialized system of anything. The ability to centrally plan an economy continues to elude our species. In a decentralized system like the free market system, where individuals make their own decisions, one need only look at a price and decide whether it is worth purchasing. The price itself will guarantee, within a reasonable margin, that there is a sweater for everyone who both can and wants to purchase one.

If one looks at the US health care system, as well as the Canadian one, we can see the effects of interfering with market prices and the market method of payment. Roughly sketched, the US health care system is one where health care goods and services are largely privately produced for profit, but payment is usually made through a third party, be it government MedicAid or essentially private insurance (for our purposes, it is enough to note that this is the case without going into how such a system has come about). The Canadian system is one where each province funds the vast majority of its own health care system through taxes, sets budgets and price controls, and all health care producers and consumers must participate in the system. Given this, there are certain results we should expect to see, and we indeed do.

A man who spends his own money on an apple at the point of purchase experiences the loss of the dollar as well as the pleasure of the apple. Furthermore, he knows he may stop the loss of the dollar by ceasing to purchase apples. He must balance the quality of the apple against its price in deciding which apple to purchase. But consider a man with apple insurance. He is still interested in quality, but he has already paid his apple insurance; there is no longer any reason to forgo purchasing an apple unless he simply feels satiated. Furthermore, the cost of his apple insurance, if I may be permitted to keep it simple, will be the cost of all the apples that all the members of his insurance program purchase throughout the course of the year, divided by the number of members. If there are one thousand members and each purchases ten apples for a dollar each, each member must be charged at least ten dollars simply for the insurance company to recoup that particular cost. If our man decides to reduce his consumption to five apples per year, his apple insurance will now be nine dollars and ninety nine and a half cents. If we round up, he still pays the same for apple insurance, but has lost out on a few apples. In other words, he has no control over his costs, unless he chooses to forgo apple insurance, but he still controls his apple consumption.

We can see, therefore, that he has the same concerns about quality, but his concerns over costs are effectively zero. He will be more likely to choose higher quality, and therefore more expensive, apples. Since a good deal for him now merely represents the quality of the product, when he shops around it will not be to find a better price. With consumers less interested in price, producers are less constrained to hold down costs. We would therefore expect to see a high quality of apple and a lot of them, but high prices as well, even higher than the quality of the apples can account for. We would also expect to see more individuals purchasing apple insurance and then try to purchase more than their yearly premium would buy, thus putting at least some of the cost of their consumption on their fellow subscribers. Others would simply forget their apples and eat oranges instead. If the tax code encouraged employers to provide apple insurance in exchange for reduced salaries, the hold of the apple insurance on the country would further solidify.

Does the above situation not describe health care in the United States? The service is superior to what is found in the rest of the world and the outcomes are better too. For instance, cancer patients are more likely to survive in the US than in Canada, and far more likely than in Britain. The US beats all of Western Europe for outcomes in the vast majority of deadly diseases. We have a very high level of capitalization, and services can be provided in an expeditious manner. Rich and well connected foreigners come to the United States to get health care; there is no such outflux of rich Americans to foreign nations. But the cost is ungodly high. One study found health care costs for the uninsured were the number one cause of bankruptcy and house eviction. There is an outflux of poor and middle class Americans to places like India that offer cheaper, though somewhat inferior, services. There is also a keen interest in alternatives to traditional health care, some of which are nothing more than snake oil. None of this is surprising to those who understand economics.

But what if apples were paid for through taxes? What if apples were ‘privately’ produced but producers were put on a government budget and subject to government price controls? We can predict a similar flare up of demand, but in this instance the greater demand does not represent a potential profit for producers. They are constrained by a yearly budget. With demand increasing and a constraining budget, decisions must be made between providing apples and investing in capital to produce more apples, or to improve them. We would expect to see waiting lines for apples, but little capital investment in apples. We expect to see less fertilizer per apple tree and more apple trees. We would expect to see less care given to each apple in transport, less care given during cultivation, less of a lot of inputs which can lead to better apples but which are sacrificed in favor of getting more apple trees to try to meet demand for quantity. Apple consumers would still demand quality, but investments in quality, given the yearly budget, mean that fewer can consume apples. The price controls which act as a guard against the artificially inflated demand serve to reduce the incentive to increase supply.

Anyone with a passing acquaintance with Canadian health care can see the similarities between the example immediately above and the Canadian health care system. Waiting lines in Canada are typically in the realm of four months; some patients are put on blood thinners for years while they wait for a surgery; the Canadian Supreme Court has even admitted that many Canadians are dying in waiting lines – which gives the lie to any claim that socialized medicine is somehow ‘universal’ health care – and the Canadian health care system is undercapitalized. For instance, there is a PT scanner for every 1 million citizens in the US; in Canada, there are two in the entire country, along with one other that is available one day a week. The two fulltimers are in dire need of repairs. Liam Neeson’s wife needed four hours to get to a hospital in that undercapitalized system. Had she taken a fall in the US, a helicopter would have transferred her far more rapidly and she would have stood a better chance of surviving.

There are many other reasons to reject socialized medicine. Public Choice makes dire predictions for a system where faceless bureaucrats control the supply of health care, for instance, and these predictions have come true. There are moral reasons: why should any person, by threat of imprisonment, be forced into a system they do not wish to be a part of? Should not all relationships be voluntary? But for those who are unconvinced by any argument they consider impractical, the above should be enough to warn them away from socialized medicine. It leads to the deterioration of the industry, and there are inescapable economic reasons that no amount of wishful thinking and good intentions can overcome.

There is perhaps no better indictment of Canadian style health care than to look at their relatively unregulated Veterinary care and see how much cheaper, faster and better their pets are taken care of. Those who cheer Obama’s recent political accomplishment should reconsider their position.

Football is here, and it's time for a prediction!

2009-09-04T15:58:00.000-07:00

I have but a few hours to get my predictions in on time.

1. Iowa is the second best team in the Big Ten.

2. Michigan will win 7 regular season games this year.

3. Michigan State is better than most seem to think.

4. Ohio State is going to another BCS title game, this time undefeated, and this time we'll win.

Have a great football season!

The Battlestar and the Shark

2009-08-10T15:21:00.000-07:00

It is a sad thing to see a good show deteriorate, to see pusillanimous producers stretch a concept thin rather than face the daunting task of developing a new show to fill a vacant slot. I hope it can be shown, on some bright tomorrow, that not only is artistic integrity preserved when a story is allowed to run its course in its natural time frame, but the bottom line as well. Might a show not be more profitable if it stays compelling, even if that means fewer seasons, perhaps even fewer episodes per season? It is devoutly to be hoped.

One of the great jewels of television of recent times, which could not escape that purgatory of mediocrity to which so many erstwhile masterpieces are consigned, is Battlestar Galactica. Through two seasons it remained as gripping a story as any ever told. There were moments of such fantastic intensity that I, as a viewer, was afterwards left in that quivering state of post ecstatic bliss which so eludes and embarrasses the infallible Holy See. Alas, it was not to last, and yet the decline was not due to producers who refused to say goodbye, like family members who keep a loved one on life support long after the part they loved is gone. BSG lasted only four seasons, an expiration date that was set early on, i.e., it began not only with a good story, but under the most favorable of circumstances: with a finale already scheduled and not too remotely in the future.

The malady that afflicted BSG, that sapped its vitality, hobbled it, caused it to become frail, was not the Stretching Disease that felled The Simpsons. Instead, the writers committed a series of blunders that worked like successive body blows in boxing. Was BSG left standing when the bell sounded? Perhaps, but it was bruised, bent over in pain and sucking oxygen.

The finale of BSG was always going to disappoint. This is due to the simple fact that the creators did not know where they were going, only how they were going to take off. The longer they went without sketching a climax, the more their odds of getting a good one came to resemble those of the chimpanzee with a typewriter trying to make a sonnet appear on the paper. This handicap, however, was not the ultimate problem. It started to manifest itself only in season four when, for instance, the writers revealed the history of the cylons from a hospital bed rather than through some interesting episodes, a clear sign that they were throwing together a hastily conceived conclusion. When that insipid bit of storytelling occurred, the show was already in decline.

The characters of BSG were, one by one and almost without exception, removed from interesting circumstances in which they began and placed in positions with fewer possibilities. The totality of these moves was as damaging to the show as anything else that happened to it. Consider Lee Adama, once a fighter pilot and CAG with an extremely talented but insubordinate and emotionally damaged ace to keep in line. He wound up as a politician sitting around a table making speeches. A storyline wherein the CAG had to maneuver through politics for some reason, something quite foreign to him, would make for an interesting episode. Unfortunately, it was not just an episode but an entire change of character, and the show suffered for it.

Boomer was one of the most compelling characters as she slowly realized, with horror, that she was a cylon. That made Chief Tyrol, her lover, more interesting as well. This particular storyline was wrapped up early but done so brilliantly I wouldn’t change a thing. Nevertheless, it is another intriguing part of the series that came to an end and left a hollow that was never filled with something as satisfying as what they originally had.

President Roslin, thrust into the role of Head of State when dozens of higher ranking officials were killed in the cylon attack, struggled to learn her new job and guide humanity to salvation even as she herself was dying of cancer. Her role lost luster when the writers decided to cure her. As if realizing this, they brought the cancer back, but it felt like a cheap trick. They should have had the guts to let the cancer kill her in the waning hours. Better yet, she, knowing she was nearing the end, should have sacrificed her life at some key moment, a sacrifice that kept the dwindling human hopes alive.

Baltar was probably the most fascinating character in the entire show. A cowardly yet brilliant scientist, he discovered that a cylon tricked him into giving away key defense secrets, thus ensuring the sneak attack would be successful. Even as the remaining humans relied on his skills to survive, he had to constantly be alert to keep his secret safe. Moreover, the cylon seductress who tricked him seemed to leave some sort of program in his brain, and he saw visions of her at the most inconvenient times. This storyline is so integral, its resolution should have been saved for the very end, culminating in something fantastic and inextricably woven into the climax of the entire series itself. At some point he definitely should have committed murder to safeguard his secret. Instead, they wrap up that arc and then spend a while trying to find something interesting for him to do before finally settling on a silly religious prophet with nothing at stake that relates to what the show is actually about (or should have been about).

Helo was once a fugitive, stranded on Caprica, running out of anti-radiation shots to keep himself alive on the now radioactive planet. He encountered another Boomer, but we knew she was a spy for the cylons. This new Boomer, soon to be called Athena, struggled with which side she should fight for, much like the original. When they reconnected with humanity, they still provided some mildly compelling storylines but they were always more interesting on Caprica. They should have spent the majority of the series there. They could have made contact with the human resistance movement and, when they finally did escape, discovered some key secret to the cylon plans to bring back to the humans. The revealing of this secret would have been a great beginning for the series’ last act. Keeping Boomer alive and in prison until Athena and Helo returned would have made for some possibilities too.

Just as deleterious as the increasingly lackluster characters was what happened to the cylons. We got to know them far too well. At times their motivations were bizarre, such as when they decided to occupy New Caprica in a blatant attempt to have something to say about the Iraq War no matter the damage done to the integrity of the show. They became a petty band of squabblers essentially indistinguishable from human beings. Other shows, such as Star Trek: The Next Generation, have dealt with artificial intelligence and at what point such a creation should be considered a conscious being with rights like a human. Star Trek ultimately made Data very human, and it worked in that context. The writers of BSG went that route as well, but the consequences were disastrous.

At the show’s outset, the cylons were menacing, conscienceless killers who were out there somewhere, and might appear at any moment to wipe out the rest of humanity. They were like sharks in the ocean. One of the most terrifying parts was that they had built some models that looked human. The opening sequence set the tone: a beautiful robot meets a human at an established meeting point which the cylons have neglected for decades. She commits a most human act by kissing him… and then the station is destroyed. She displays no fear, for her program will be downloaded into a new unit. She does not suffer from mortality. Any indication of a conscience is absent. Another of the same model crushes a baby’s neck with no more remorse than we would have from swatting a fly. She does it merely as an act of curiosity. When that same model has sex with Baltar, her spine glows red, a characteristic which was a fine way to cast them as inhuman but which the writers forgot about, or abandoned, afterwards.

It is quite clear that these cylons were not humans. They should have remained machines, terrifying, hidden and never completely knowable. In proportion as the cylons regretted their actions, bickered among themselves and became too well known to us, they lost their mystique and ability to frighten. The show could not but suffer for it.

There were other problems too, but they were comparatively small and easily overlooked. It was the mishandling of characters and the cylon “race” that spoiled the project long before the lack of a total vision became apparent. It is a shame, and we do ourselves no favor by inventing excuses. BSG limped to the finish line, perhaps crawled over it, and the reasons are clear. Let the lesson be learned, so that the next promising start may have a better end. Do not launch until you know where you want to land. If you manage to create some interesting characters, realize what makes them interesting and keep them that way until the right time to finish their character arcs. And never, ever, ever ruin your villain until you are ready to drop the curtain.

String Theory and Capitalism

2009-06-08T17:29:00.000-07:00

It is time to recognize that String Theory is buncombe. This has yet to dawn on the majority of physicists, who are enthralled with the thing, and may be many years away from general public recognition, but nevertheless it seems plainly evident to anyone who manages a sober reading of the issue. A general and brief overview of String Theory is enough for the purposes of this essay: the theory is not testable, is background dependent, has not been proven to be finite, is not responsible for a single practical technological advance despite the constant efforts of thousands of physicists over a quarter century, is at odds with actual observations and comes in a quantity of varieties that may exceed in number the population of atoms in the universe. Can one imagine a more formidable array of obstacles? More promising theories have died on the tip of just one of these spears.

The purpose of the present piece, however, is not to convince the good reader that String Theory has been a waste of time. Its own practitioners have supplied the curious investigator with ample proofs on that point. The intent today is to demonstrate that government is at fault and that Capitalism would have spared us almost the entire endeavor, whose opportunity costs are incalculable.

Is there a private citizen more sheltered from the Market’s vicissitudes than the college professor? He has tenure, which means that, short of being caught in bed with a nine year old Cambodian sold into white slavery, he cannot be fired. He is free to indulge those whims which most please him without affecting his salary, which is paid to him whether or not he produces something that someone wishes to purchase. The result is that he may consume without first contributing anything worth consuming. Contrast this with the common laborer, who no doubt would prefer to study the effect on batting averages of lowering the pitcher’s mound but who must instead, at the prompting of his landlord, stand at an assembly line for forty hours of the week.

We can see that the university environment permits capricious and non-productive behavior. Who among us would not alter his activities if his salary were guaranteed, would not seek to please himself not just at the point of purchasing, but at the moment of earning as well? If String Theory catches the fancy of a physicist, he may pursue it past the outermost limits of sensibility. That it has not led to any practical discoveries has not affected any salaries, and therefore it has not affected any physicists. The realities of the marketplace would permit very little of this behavior. It is certainly true that a rich patron, fascinated with science and dedicated to research, might be taken by the specious promises of String Theory and convinced to support a team of researchers while they scribbled endless equations only they understand. Insofar as that rich patron is spending his own money, this patronage is his consumption and he is welcome to it. But how many curious souls have been so delighted by String Theory that they would have spent, of their own volition, an amount of money equal to what has actually been given over to the pursuit of strings?

That is the truly appalling aspect of String Theory, not that a few physicists might have grown fond of it, but that it has taken hold of nearly the entire community of physicists and is researched to the exclusion of anything else. The nature of the sheltered community of particle physics has not just failed to put up barriers and discouragements to a non-productive activity like String Theory research, it has aggressively cultivated and expanded the phenomenon. Here too, we can see that exposure to Capitalism would resolve the problem.

Our statist universities pump out more Masters and PhD’s each year than is warranted even by the artificially inflated demand for them, a situation that is true in many areas, not just physics. These overly abundant young physicists are then forced to compete for a limited number of positions which are doled out by the old tenured professors in the field. The relative numbers of positions compared to applicants gives the advantage to these hoary professors, who find the aspiring physicists competing for their favor but who feel little pressure to compete for applicants. They choose youngsters who flatter their egos, who profess an interest in what they want to see studied.

It so happens that, due to a very respected member of the society declaring for Strings in the 1980’s and human beings’ well known propensity to get carried away by fads, String Theory came to dominate the upper echelons of physics society. That it has continued to dominate may, to some extent, be explained by the nature of String Theory itself: it is exceedingly complex, requiring many years of study before the relevant equations can be mastered. By the time a middle aged physicist has finally gotten a handle on the theory, he has devoted a very large portion of his career to just getting started and, like the war widow who supports the cause all the more strongly rather than face the truth and admit that her husband – or son – was killed for no good reason, finds himself unwilling to acknowledge how much of his time he has wasted.

Was String Theory always destined to seize the halls of physical academia? Was it a freak occurrence that made String Theory king and keeps it on the throne? The answer to that question is beyond the scope of the present piece, which is simply to note how Capitalism would cure the problem, a problem that besets any human endeavor when our natures clash with our environment.

Picture a company’s manager with no power to tax, and no possibility of indirectly receiving such coerced payment from the populace at large. Imagine him reviewing his books and noticing that his String Department has consumed a lot of capital and shows no promise of a breakthrough that he might use to increase the company’s profits. Imagine as he talks with his String Theorists and discovers that the theory, rather than honing in on an elegant explanation, keeps getting more and more complex as every emerging problem is addressed by further complications, distortions and conjectures. Whatever company saw profit potential in unifying physics, they could surely see scant reason to continue to underwrite String Theory research.

The universities, too, would get scrubbed clean in a fully capitalist world. Imagine an entirely private school system that had people ready to enter the work force after high school. Imagine businesses that did not fear law suits such that they could hire whom they pleased and did not need to allow universities to do their discriminating for them. Imagine universities being funded without taxes, which means with student fees, and therefore gearing themselves towards students. The whole prestige of research departments would fade, as would the impulse to manufacture higher order degrees which serve the university but rarely the student. Imagine a system where students, who need college less after being better prepared by their high schools, decline to pay the kind of tuitions needed, in the absence of taxes and Pell Grants, to fund major research. Companies would no longer be able to foist the costs of research onto the tax-paying public and allow the universities to do it for them. They would also be less able to let taxes pay to train their workforce.

In such a system, in such a world, it is difficult to imagine that a barren area of research like String Theory could long survive. It could still emerge and be pursued for a time, for there once were sound reasons to pursue it, but a capitalist system would have recognized long ago that nothing good was likely to come of String Theory. The discovery that Calabi-Yau Spaces might number 100,000 would have been a signal, to a profit-driven capitalist, to abandon the project. The discovery that there might be 10^1500 different vacuum states in String Theory would have been an even more powerful signal. The inability to prove the theory finite would never cease to provide its own signal, and certainly the acceleration of the universe’s expansion, which String Theory can accommodate only in the wishful daydreams of invested String Theorists, would have done it.

Instead, we are left with String Theory and its theorists. In a capitalist system the buyer pleases himself and the seller, if he wishes to remain in business, pleases the buyer. In String Theory, the “buyer”, compelled by taxation, pleases the seller. Certainly this delights physicists, who never find themselves in a position to curtail their impulses and do something of service for their fellow man, but it is a waste for, and a crime committed against, the rest of the populace. Add it to the list: Reason number 43,586 to abolish government and allow Capitalism to work its magic.

A Few Lists Compiled by the Humble Blogger

2009-03-31T15:57:00.000-07:00

Many thousands of my fans who come to this site every day have written emails inquiring into the reason for the long absence. Why did February pass us by with no blog posts? The reason, my dear friends, is because your humble blogger was busy compiling a few lists, making sure to include every applicable name or item that belonged on them. At long last, he is ready to divulge the contents of these lists.

List of People Who Need to Tap Dance in a Mine Field

1. Anyone who uses feminine pronouns as neutral pronouns.

Take your time to peruse the list, and then consider the second one.

List of People Who Need Their Face Sat On

1. Your humble blogger

Next, a companion list.

List of People Who Need To Do Some Facesitting
1. Megan Fox

One final list for those who will be doing some gambling in the coming year.

List of College Football National Champions in 2010

1. Ohio State Buckeyes

There we go. That should clear a few things up around here. Next week we'll discuss lascivious cradle-robbers and how to spot them.

Wealth, the Economy and Why Barack's Plan Will Fail

2009-03-26T18:33:00.000-07:00

Economics is the science of human action, understanding the actions man takes to achieve his goals and increase his happiness. A human being is faced with needs that he must satiate or face extinction. He survives to the extent that he does so. The same human will have desires and he thrives, or flourishes, to the extent that he satiates these. In all cases, this satiation, this consumption, requires labor so that the raw materials of nature can be changed in such a way as to satisfy him. The change can be something as simple as location, e.g., moving food from one place to another; or it can be something more drastic. Materials can be melted or frozen, combined, reshaped, improved upon. All this is in service of satisfying his needs and desires.

When a man, through labor, transforms material into a state that he values more, he has increased his wealth. When he trades something he values less for something he values more, he increases his wealth, as does the other party. Wealth is subjective; another way to describe wealth is happiness, and when we realize this we see the uselessness of statistics like GDP.

His general prosperity can be increased only if he increases his capacity to produce more of the things that make him happy. There are two basic ways to do this. He can divide his labor in cooperation with others, and he can invest in capital improvements that increase his productivity.

The division of labor takes advantage of the fact that humans are a heterogeneous group with respect to their knowledge, location, proclivities, abilities and other traits. To take a simple example, if Sarah is good at making clothes and Martin is good at building houses, it behooves them to divide their labor and exchange their surpluses. Instead of Sarah having nice clothes and living in a crappy house while Martin has a decent house but crappy clothes, they may both have nice clothes and houses if Martin dedicates himself to building the houses and Sarah to making clothes. They can each make more than they personally desire in preparation for trading the surplus for the surplus the other has. They will also infuriate feminists, which will make the humble blogger wealthier.

Capital is any asset that aids in the production of other assets. A tractor, education, money, a building… all these things are capital assets. A man with a hammer can build a house more quickly than a man who has no such tool. The hammer makes him more productive, i.e., allows him to transform more material to higher valued uses in the same span of time.

It is quite clear, now, that productivity determines prosperity. Unfortunately, there are many witch doctors and charlatans who claim that the money supply must be increased to increase prosperity, or at least must go along with increased production. Without spending too much time on the subject, the good reader who has followed us thus far will no doubt have little difficulty in seeing that an increase in the supply of money does not increase productivity, it merely increases the amount of claims tickets in circulation. This will do nothing to increase actual prosperity in general, although the parties which get the increase in money first will benefit initially.

Last year, the humble blogger wrote a piece explaining money and prices, and how the latter help to regulate an economy and ration scarce resources. The good and faithful reader may wish to review this post before continuing.

Now that we understand a bit about economic activity and what wealth is, as well as money and prices, we can understand what has caused the recent recession and why Barack Obama and his band of tools and fools will only make things worse. When a central bank, like the Fed, increases the supply of credit, the interest rate will go down. The interest rate is the price of credit, and like any price it brings supply and demand into equilibrium.

A loan can be made when someone forgoes consumption that they have earned on the market, which is referred to as saving, and this foregone consumption, generally in the form of money held at a bank, can be lent out to a business interest which can use the loan to make capital investments. The market, remember, has a price structure keeping things in equilibrium. Consumers spend so much on consumption, and there is such and such supply of consumer goods to be consumed, and these forces determine market clearing prices. What is not consumed right away is saved, allowing for investment in capital goods and maintenance of the capital structure (which, we must remember, decays over time). The demand for loans and the desire to save coordinate to give us an interest rate.

When credit is artificially increased, it lowers the interest rate, and something similar to the situation detailed in the post on money occurs: people start saving less and consuming more – the lower interest rate attracts less saving – and businesses take out more loans for long term capital projects, something also induced by a lower interest rate. However, the underlying goals of the people in the economy have not changed. People have the same demand schedules as before, an interest rate change has simply changed their incentives.

The new money allows those who first get their hands on it to bid up the price of whatever it is they are investing in, and the economy starts to reshape itself around this apparent demand. Projects which before seemed unprofitable now look good with a lower interest rate. Banks lower their lending standards because they have already made the best loans available to them, and with the flood of new credit they must lend it out to less likely candidates that remain. New businesses arise around the apparent reality of the lower interest rate and the spending preferences of those who get their hands on the money.

This boom must eventually end, however, and when the money works its way through the economy, eventually the underlying reality asserts itself. Workers wages eventually go up after a period of lagging behind and this return to the old purchasing power balance means that the economy that reshaped itself around the influx of money will now go back to its original shape. Many of the new loans start to default. The projects which looked doable when the big spenders got their new money and the interest rates were low are now revealed to be mistakes and must be liquidated. This liquidation is the recession.

The process can be extended for a while, but each influx of new money makes the distortions bigger and requires more and more inflation to keep it going. Eventually, the distortion becomes so big that it either must be allowed to explode into a recession or the inflation needed to keep it going will actually destroy the currency… and the recession will be had anyway (For more on this, go to www.mises.org and search for the Austrian Business Cycle Theory).

Once this is realized, it becomes obvious that the influence of John Maynard Keynes haunts us still, and leads us down the wrong path. We are told to spend, and yet spending is for consumption. The greater the level of savings, the lower the interest rate, which means the less liquidation of investment will have to occur to get the economy back on track. Saving is the way to reduce the pain of recession, not spending! Geithner, Bernanke and Obama want to inject more credit into the economy, but this is more of what got us into trouble and will either destroy the dollar, not be enough to fend off the recession, or prevent the needed liquidations from happening, keep unsustainable businesses afloat, and prevent a return to firmer ground and a recovery.

The way out of our troubles is to let the liquidation happen and get it over with. The sooner this is done, the less painful it will be when it happens. To make things easier, the capital gains tax could be eliminated (any impediment to the accumulation of good capital restrains progress and prosperity). Any other taxes should be eliminated or at least reduced. No cheap loans to failing businesses should be made. And the more Americans save, the less liquidation has to take place.

If the humble blogger’s recommendations are followed, the recovery will happen soon and a truly stronger economy will result. I fear, however, that we are doomed to another Keynesian depression and many many years of hardship.

Are Women Winning the Battle of the Sexes?

2009-03-23T17:17:00.001-07:00

I have in another window on my computer screen the most amazing piece I have read in recent times: a report on prostitution. A healthy heterosexual male being unable to help but be at least mildly interested in what the ladies of the oldest profession are up to, and your humble blogger being no exception to this rule, I opened the report for my eager eyes with a click of the mouse when I saw a snippet about it on another page. It turns out that this report has nothing to do with your typical working girl, but rather goes into some detail about the highest price hookers, the upper class hookers, the ones Bill Gates dials when he wants booty by delivery. I am astonished and appalled by what I find there.

First I see that some of these dames will charge upwards of $10,000 for a single session. This in itself is not appalling. The greatest football players will make many times what their less talented brethren make because of their talent for the job. The finest wines cost far more than the prosaic selections because of their taste and beauty. Then may not a prostitute, through expertness of technique, exquisiteness of odor and flavor, and excellence of pulchritude, earn a sum that exceeds those of the low-end variety by nearly an order of magnitude? She may indeed: the market has spoken.

I read also that those ladies of joy at the very pinnacle of the industry may charge a monthly retainer in addition to service charges per session. Again, I can see nothing objectionable about this. The lady has placed herself at his beck and call, and the rent is due each month whether he has it in him or not. This is simply a hedge against erectile dysfunction.

The part that stupefies me is where I read that these white-collar sex workers may make a potential john see them for months before surrendering their chamber of Venus. So the man lavishes money on her and takes her out for weeks and months before she puts out? That’s not prostitution, that’s dating. If she’s a hooker then so am I the Archbishop of Canterbury. That she has a handful of johns – but what do I mean by johns? These men are boyfriends! – as clientele merely means that the lady is promiscuous. That he knows she has these other beau’s and does not protest merely means that he is liberal-minded. The plain fact of the matter is that she has no business besmirching the good name of prostitution.

The advantage of prostitution over dating, apart from the man’s ability to pick exactly what he is looking for, is that he may, if he is of a mood, dispense with flirting and courtship and cajoling and get down to brass tax. Imagine if other industries operated like these high-end hookers: supermarket managers insisting on an interview before clients can shop, plumbers turning down paying customers on a whim, waitresses withholding food until your sixth trip to the restaurant! The absurdity of it is hard to overstate. With ten thousand dollars and a few months to work with, I could get a Notre Dame Nun to put out. The Nun may feel guilty afterwards, and may give most of the money to charity, but it is not on the manner in which a woman spends her money, nor how she feels about it, that we may distinguish her as a prostitute; she is a prostitute based on how she gets the money. When she gets the money under the same terms that a bride of Christ could find agreeable, or at least acceptable, she has no claim to being a prostitute.

In pondering this issue, one starts to wonder if women might not be winning the battle of the sexes. Perhaps some of our brothers have betrayed us. My understanding was that this battle was a tie, that men did not get what they wanted from a woman, and women did not get what they wanted from a man. Nobody is happy and everybody is content with this. I see now that this is incorrect, at least in a few cases that nevertheless are enough to break the deadlock. Some women get exactly what they want. They get a man who is rich and successful enough to shell out nearly six digits a month, the satisfaction of his earnest pursuit, and just enough variety to avoid boredom in the bedroom.

Am I correct in stating that we are losing? Can we mount a comeback? Is there no man who gets exactly what he wants out of women? Ah, I almost forgot.

Kid Rock.

Let's Fix the Economy!

2009-01-26T21:13:00.000-08:00

Better to remain silent and be thought of as a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. This quote is attributed to Abraham Lincoln who, however many execrable qualities he possessed, seems at least to have been touched with a bit of wisdom. Recently cnn.com solicited from fifteen of our fellow Americans their opinions on what the government should do about the current economic crisis, and they proved nothing so much as that whatever heavenly grace brushed baby Abraham and imbued him with some mental acumen was entirely absent at their births.

I do not know what it is about the science of economics that invites so many know-nothings and bounders to render their opinions on it, and out loud to boot. Imagine, good reader, that some yokel approached you and, on whatever area of expertise you claim, proceeded to expound in the most grotesque manner about his ideas on the matter, even going so far as to suggest how you ought to do it better. Imagine his appalling ignorance, how he stumbles over the plainest and simplest facts that any journeyman in your profession has long understood. Imagine a garbage collector explaining cell biology to Richard Dawkins. Picture a chimney sweep correcting Franz Liszt’s compositions. If you can do this, you can conceive of the plight of the professional economist. And it’s not enough that these simians disagree with experts in the field, but they usually go so far as to refuse to allow any real education on the matter to be delivered to them.

Cnn.com has done us the disservice of encouraging this sort of behavior by not only printing their recommendations, but also massaging their vanities with a color photo. Karen, Darren, Lori, Michelle, Tom, Tim, Dino, Tatiana, Eamon, Carolyn, Chris, Joe, Jeff, Howard and John were all given the spotlight to embarrass themselves, and nearly every one of them did a very decent job of lacerating their dignity. Called upon to sing an Aria, they howled like alley cats. Lest the singers refuse to leave the stage, allow me to boo as loudly and as cruelly as I may.

Karen Case

I've been in the workforce for 43 years. I have been paying taxes since 1966. I am a divorced mother of four, two still trying to get out of college, a cancer survivor still under treatment after 10 years.

While the good reader is frowning at the sentence construction, don’t forget to take note of her qualifications as an economist.

I have one credit card, not maxed out, that was at 13% interest. I have always paid at least 150%, if not more, of the required payment, never missed a due date, but it was jumped to 22.9% in November. When I asked to have it reduced back I was told "every person with our credit card has been moved to this, and it cannot be changed.

What Obama can do is mandate an interest rate cap on all credit cards to a manageable figure (12%?). And not allow credit card companies to retroactively increase APRs. This would be the best news families could receive, other than lowering their mortgage payments.

She is, unfortunately, correct when she says that Obama can do this, even if she doesn’t know what retroactive means, but in her eagerness to not uphold her end of the contract she freely entered into with her credit card company – a contract that apparently included a provision for raising the interest rate – she forgot to learn the function of price in a market. If there are ten apples, one apple seller, and thirty other people who each want one apple, of necessity apples will be rationed. This can be done in many different ways, but in a setting where 1) people are allowed to own and exchange property, 2) relationships are voluntary and 3) there is a general medium of exchange (money), the apples will sell for a price which will rise until twenty people are without apples and the ten willing and able to pay the highest price have their apple. This is called the market clearing price, which clears the market in that there is an apple for everyone who wants to and can purchase one. The others no longer want an apple at the increased price.

An interest rate is also a price; it’s the price of credit. When you have debt on a credit card, it is because you spent money you did not have, i.e., you consumed before you were able to produce something to exchange for whatever it was you consumed. This cannot happen unless someone else forgoes his consumption and lends you the money (presumably, this was done under terms which Karen now wants the government to violate in her favor). If the interest rate rises, it is reflecting changes in the supply and demand for credit. Why does Karen not take out a new credit card with a lower interest rate, transfer her balance to the card with the lower rate, and then close the old card? I’m guessing it has something to do with the fact that all interests rates were up because either credit was scarce, demand was greater, or a combination of both.

What would happen if interest rates were capped at a “reasonable” rate? If that rate is below the market rate, then more people will demand credit cards than otherwise would, but less capital would flow into the credit card industry due to reduced profit potential, meaning that even fewer people would be able to get credit. Karen goes on to say: Credit cards help the American public get the car fixed, pay for the child's college, medical bills, the roof that needs repair, the large deductible now required on medical insurance.

If that is so, why don’t you leave the industry alone, Karen?

Darren Schwindaman

A government-sponsored health insurance program, drawing from a large pool of people with low premiums, would be ideal.

Darren’s atrophied cerebrum can do no better than call for some Canadian-style health care system, where patients typically wait months for procedures that Americans can get in a matter of days or even hours. The American system has plenty of flaws, but they all come from government interference, something which Darren has chosen not to learn about but which he reserves the right to have an opinion on. The Canadian system suffers from even greater problems than ours, much of it due to price distortions or even eradications whose effects were partially discussed above.

Furthermore, I'd love to see a comprehensive program that encourages local commerce.

Apparently the opportunity to profit will not suffice?

Strong federal, state and local initiatives to help local business owners network with each other and build professional relationships would be helpful.

Darren is enjoying the pulpit so much he can’t bring himself to sit down and shut up. Not only is he designing an ignoramus’ solutions for America’s problems, he is conjuring up difficulties that don’t exist so that he may pontificate on one more topic. A true Federalist, Darren wants initiatives at all three levels of government to get these businessmen to build relationships with each other.

Lori Van Etten

The job market in rural Idaho doesn't exist. Up here, we're near the Canadian border, and it's freezing cold. But when you drive by the bus stop, you see people waiting with no winter jacket on. They just can't afford it because they've lost their jobs.

Were they leasing these winter jackets? Renting-to-own? How exactly did they lose the winter jacket they owned when they had a job? Living in Idaho, they did buy winter apparel, right? A search of just two Idaho zip codes at Goodwill’s website turned up twelve different Goodwill stores for those who came to Twin Falls in a thong bikini.

Anyway, Lori, tell us your solution.

Instead of handing the money over to six-figure-salary executives who use it for lavish company retreats, Obama should give each head of household $25,000 to $35,000 so we can bail ourselves out.

If the money were given to the people, they could pay down mortgages or pay off car loans, and that would in turn go to the bank. That would ease people's income loss while also putting the money back into the economy.

They could also buy winter coats. But why stop at $25,000 to $35,000? If $25,000 would ease people’s income loss while putting money back into the economy, then why not give everyone $453, 372, 345, 213, 934, 342, 876.43? This $25,000 could be given to some families in the form of a tax cut – which would be one good way to help the economy – but you never mention a tax cut. You just want a bail out, and giving every head of household that much money would require a lot of money printing. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t create anything more to buy with the money, so prices would go through the roof.

Of course, when your mortgage is a fixed amount, cheap money becomes very enticing. Get a house now that you can’t buy, pay it back tomorrow with cheap, almost worthless money! Fantastic!

Until one stops to think that someday, your children may wish to borrow money too, and who is going to lend money when lenders get screwed over by government printing presses? You did realize that money, real money, doesn’t grow on trees, right Lori?

Michelle Herrera

I think Obama will turn our economy around. I have never seen so much strategic planning done in every sector of our government.

It worked for the Soviet Union, right?

He needs to keep businesses here and should limit American companies from outsourcing jobs to other third world countries.

Because who wants to pay lower prices?

He needs to provide free health care to every American…

Are you talking about Gandalf the White or Obama? There is no such thing as free health care. Air is free because it is superabundant. Health care is not; it has to be provided by someone. Ergo, it has a price. Someone must pay for health care. Now, sometimes lobbying groups can get Congress to force others to pay for things for them, but someone, somewhere, has to pay.

…and should regulate how much doctors charge for services.

Ask Karen about price caps.

In addition, he needs to initiate a total overhaul on the pharmaceutical companies.

Why does it matter where he does it? What I want to know is OF what does he need to initiate a total overhaul?

They have been ripping us off for many decades now. If they don't want people going to Mexico to buy their prescriptions at a cheaper price, then lower the prescription medication costs.

The costs are not under their control to lower, but I suppose they could lower the price. But that would not be profitable unless the costs were lowered. Hey, maybe while Obama is sitting on the pharmaceutical companies, he can initiate a total overhaul of the FDA!

He needs to stop illegal immigration and punish (send back) those who come to this country illegally.

Solidarity, Hermana Herrera!

This country needs to stop the greed. This is why we have these problems.

Actually, this is a beginning that a more promising intellect could pursue to a satisfying conclusion. Unfortunately, I believe you are probably one of those that Joseph Sobran talks about when he says that, “Today, greed is defined as wanting to keep your own money, need is defined as wanting someone else’s, and compassion is when a politician arranges the transfer.”

Tom Julian

The current mood of the country is making us rush to bailouts for various reasons in order to kickstart the economy. But if you give individuals money in an attempt to affect our country as a whole, it should be structured so they buy something that makes a difference -- not flat-screen TVs.

Tom cannot, it would seem, be bothered to tell us what makes a difference, nor why specifically a flat-screen TV will not.

When government gives you funds, it should be coupled with an idea of service. What you buy should be something for the long-term good, in the tradition of asking `not what you can do for yourself...

The humble blogger suspects that not even Tom understands what he means by this, but I think he has a promising career waiting for him as some candidate’s speech writer.

I've been a homeowner for the past three years, and in wintertime my wife and I have large heating bills. It is very expensive to weatherize your house with windows and insulation, and we wouldn't see a return on our investment for 10 or 15 years. People need a push in the right direction.

Congress should give a 100% refundable tax credit for making green improvements to your house or business. Any money spent on items like energy-efficient windows, insulation and solar panels would be paid back by the government over a four-year period.

In the tradition of conveying information when one writes, the humble blogger would like to point out that the last sentence of the first paragraph above has fuck-all to do with the rest of the paragraph. As for his “green improvements” idea, how is it helping our economy to take our money from us on April 15th and then pay it back over four years if we buy certain “green” items that apparently take a devilish long time to pay for themselves. It is worth mentioning here that everyone has a time preference. All else being equal, a good today is worth more to us than a good tomorrow. The higher the time preference, the more future goods are discounted in value. Maybe getting money back in a slow trickle over 15 years doesn’t seem like a good investment for someone who already has windows in the first place, or doesn’t plan on being in that house very much longer and would rather spend the money on something else. Why should he be taxed and teased because Tom Julian and his band of merry green bandits don’t like what he chooses to spend his money on?

This would stimulate the local economy as entrepreneurs set up shop to deliver these improvements.

No, it would merely distort the economy. The money spent on “green” things would be money not spent somewhere else. This draws resources from one sector and into another, it does not stimulate the economy. The only way to do that is to save money, the which can be lent out for the purpose of expanding the capital structure, which will expand our ability to produce.

Home owners would see the values of their homes rise instantly

And home buyers would see their dream home suddenly out of their price range. On net, even if this were true, there is no gain for the country. A net gain for the country, economically speaking, can only be done by expanding the division of labor and expanding the capital structure.

And Americans would instantly begin saving money on energy, and our country's carbon footprint would begin trending down.

Green initiatives can reduce carbon footprints on both a community and countrywide scale. They create jobs for your neighbors, which is the point.

I thought the point of green initiatives was to save us from a putative one degree of warming over the next one hundred years, but I’ll not split hairs here. I’ll simply note that creating jobs is the means, not the point. The point is production so that we may consume.

I support extremely generous tax cuts that encourage people to do things that are good for our country.

That’s rich. As Croesus. When the government decides to take less of your money, pending, of course, your compliant behavior, it is suddenly generous. What was it Joseph Sobran said again?

Tim Logue

I supported Bush (though until November I hadn't voted since the first Clinton election) because I thought his foreign policy was what we needed at the time.

A little taste of more brilliance to come.

We do not need to all receive $500 checks. We need to have the government invest in the work ethic of the American people.

How exactly does one invest in a work ethic?

We need some projects that will put folks back to work and repair our interstate infrastructure at the same time.

Interstate infrastructure? Either say highways or admit you’re using big words whose meaning you don’t know to impress people.

We need to get money flowing to the innovative sectors in this country that can put us on the course to cleaner energy both for our homes and the automobiles that we drive.

Do not allow the people who work to earn the money decide how it is to be spent; get politicians to redirect it to what Tim wants.

Dino Ianniello

As a small-business owner in Atlanta with a wife and two small children, I think what's on my mind isn't too far off from other small-business owners' minds: Let us keep more of our hard-earned money.

Seven people into our fifteen member panel of experts and we encounter one whose brain is not paralyzed. The rest of his explanation is just expounding on the idea of lowering taxes, which is a good idea. Now, if Dino can learn the evils of a central bank and fractional reserve banking, we may just have our man!

Tatiana Harrison

I hope that Obama will stop bailing out big, inefficient businesses, and instead let new, more robust businesses emerge.

Two in a row! The streak of economic idiocy, shoddy writing and sheer stupidity is over!

Instead, let's fix our failing infrastructure and give people jobs in the process. Let's fix our roads and bridges, let's do more public transportation, particularly trains. We are so behind all the other civilized countries in the world. Even Russia is way ahead of us in public transportation area!

The last part hurt her grade. Why not let the private sphere do that, since only the private sphere has a profit/loss test to determine how to allocate resources? If there is demand for public transportation, such transportation will arise in the free market. How can the government possibly know where public transportation should be built, and to what extent, and in what manner?

Also, our roads are probably overbuilt as it is. Investing in the roads works against your idea of public transportation. The roads should be privatized because, as it is now, they are like healthcare in Canada: you already paid for them so why not overuse them? In a free market there would almost certainly be fewer roads, fewer cars, more people living in the cities, fewer in the suburbs and therefore more public transportation.

Eamon McCaffery

I have a lot of debt from my family's medical bills, and I want to take money from my retirement account to pay off my debts. But there's a 10% penalty if you withdraw your money before age 59-1/2.

I want President-elect Obama to take away the penalty that happens when you take out money you've saved in retirement accounts. With the way that the economy is, it'd be easier to let us go get it without all the restrictions. Why should there be those roadblocks? It's red tape over red tape.

This does not go nearly far enough for my anarchist heart, but as far as it does go it sounds good to me.

I'm being charged 28% interest on a credit card, and that's way too high. Obama should reduce interest rates that lenders can charge.

Talk to Karen. She used to think that way too.

Carolyn Anderson

I can attest to the importance of small businesses in building this economy. They are like children who need to be nurtured so that they can grow to have a successful future. Small businesses are the future of the U.S. and they cannot grow in this poor lending environment.

But fewer SBA-guaranteed loans were issued last year than in 2007. And the agency is completely underfunded.

According to Wikipedia: The SBA has directly or indirectly helped nearly 20 million businesses and currently holds a portfolio of roughly 219,000 loans worth more than $45 billion making it the largest single financial backer of businesses in the United States.

That’s 45 billion more dollars than it ought to have. The free market has devised a way to lend money; the SBA is completely superfluous. Worse, it takes money from tax payers who might have saved it anyway, in which case the amount of savings is depleted and interest rates rise, making it harder to get a loan outside the SBA. And if that money given to the SBA from taxes would have gone to consumption, then let it go to consumption. So much of this idiocy comes from people who think that they or someone else ought to decide how everyone else’s money gets spent. This idea, apart from bad economics, is not compatible with freedom.

Chris Moscicki

I've been in the auto industry for my whole working life, over 20 years. I got laid off at the end of 2007 when the Ford dealership I was at closed. I went to work for a local rental car company through August. I lost my job there in a restructuring. Then I was out of work for two months. Fortunately, I found something. I'm now working for a truck rental company.

In the good years I made really great money. Where I'm at now I had to take a 30% pay cut, if not more.

So that’s a pay cut of anywhere from 30% to 100%? May I presume that your idea for America will be a bit more precise?

We're trying to get a loan modification, which is a joke.

It wasn’t a good one. If it had been a good joke, you wouldn’t have had to tell us. We would know by the laughter coming from our own mouths.

We're on our second try. We had to hire a lawyer this time around. We either pay the mortgage or pay the lawyer. We decided to pay the lawyer, because if we can't get this thing modified, we can't afford the house.

Excellent idea. You asked for a modification of your loan and it was denied. Then you hired a lawyer to try and strong-arm a deal for you. You could have paid your mortgage, as promised in your contract, to the people who lent you money because you couldn’t afford a house on what you had saved up, but instead you decided to pay someone else to get you a change in a contract you agreed to after the lender already told you he wasn’t going to change the contract.

Chris, would it be alright with you if I betrothed my sons to any daughters you might have? Or at least nieces or cousins? I would like some of that Moscicki integrity in my family.

When people are out looking for work, they need to look for work with dignity.

A meaningless platitude fit for any politician. And not really relevant to your discussion, but maybe you’ll develop it with the next sentence.

If you put people out of their house, how are they going to do simple things like take a shower and eat?

Disappointment, but not surprise. For the record, the answer is: rent an apartment.

That's why the government needs to focus on keeping people in their homes.

Or else we’ll be a nation of unbathed, starving savages.

For the next 24 months, I think there should be a moratorium on foreclosures. If anybody can pay anything to the bank whatsoever, even if it's a couple hundred bucks, I think the bank should accept that.

I am sure that, with a moratorium on foreclosures, people will do their best to make good faith payments. The banks should accept these, and the homeowners should use the money they are saving by reducing their mortgages to pay lawyers to get them further reductions.

Have you ever heard of a risk premium, Chris? A decision by the government to forestall foreclosures would ensure that the field of lending would be seen as a greater risk than otherwise. This means that any future loans will come with a risk premium – an increase in interest rates – which will hit hardest the people with lower credit ratings. This means when your good-for-nothing son, well schooled in your ethics and in default of thirty three different loans, applies for a loan for his house, he will have to pay that higher risk premium that your policy caused. This may even prevent him from getting a house, which means that when social security goes belly up and you need to be taken care of in your dotage, you will have to move in with him in his three room, one bedroom apartment with his ugly nagging wife and smelly children where you will sit in the corner all day and shit yourself wishing that he could either have afforded a house or had money left over from a lower interest rate to get you into a decent assisted living center.

At least, that’s what would happen if there were justice in the world.

I am a Republican, and I am a believer in the free-market system.

Sometimes, all you can do is stare with your mouth hanging open.

Joe Ryan

My wife, Gilda, and I, sell computer products online as well as handmade goods from Mexico. Our business launched in 2000, and while the business is doing well, our competition has gotten increasingly unfair.

I think the Detroit Lions complained of the same problem this year.

The craftspeople in Mexico do a great job of catering to our customers, making saddles and hats that fit their needs.

But both our electronics business and our artisan goods face a lot of competition from the Chinese, who sell knock-off goods at much lower prices. The quality of these cheap goods can't compare to ours, but Americans, particularly in this tough economy, will see only the price tag.

Those motherfuckers. How dare they choose to sacrifice quality to gain on price, when they should be sacrificing price to gain on quality like you want them to. What do they think they are doing, spending their own money that they earned or something?

I don't mind having competition

The Lions don’t mind competition either; they just want it bound at the ankles.

But what bothers me is that the people who make these cheap products work under labor standards that are not those I expect of the people who make my products.

I believe in capitalism and free trade so long as it's moral. If the workers have to work around the clock, without vacations or breaks and cannot return to their families for years, I have to say that it's a human rights issue as much as it is a trade issue.

I'm impressed that Obama has already taken a hard stance against torture and I hope he can take that same stance against poor labor standards. That may mean people in this country will have to make sacrifices, but if the issue is not addressed, we'll be seeing a race to the bottom and a world system that's built on ruthlessness.

There are few things as entertaining in this world as a good, thumping fraud. Joey is peeved that people would choose to buy products other than his, and doesn’t feel like changing anything about his production to conform to consumer demand. That’s what he spent the first half of his post telling us. Now, in the second half, he wants us to believe that he wants trade restrictions not to help him economically, but because of all the bad labor conditions in China.

Joe, after you die, I hope you come back as a suppository. The labor standards of any poor country are going to be abysmal, just like they were once in the US. What good for these workers for whom your magnanimous heart so copiously bleeds do you expect to accomplish with trade restrictions? If they lose their jobs because the awful businesses they work at go bankrupt, do you think nice, air-conditioned office jobs will be waiting for them all of a sudden?

Jeff Oviedo

Worried about the economy, I have prepared both my personal and business finances for a sour economy. I have no debt, and my wife and I are conservative with our spending - even with four kids. As a result, my green consulting and engineering business is steady, and I'm living comfortably.

Green consulting and engineering? I feel sure his idea is going to be magnificent.

Unfortunately, he will push the economic stimulus. That means more debt that we simply cannot afford. We were already in debt before this mess started. Debt is a four-letter word, and I'm really not sure how we'll be able to pay it back.

Instead of throwing money at the problem, the administration should do what I've been doing in my personal and business life for years: Cut the fat. I have sold my house, downsized my business, and I am still functioning very well. The solution lies in trimming the expenses.

Mother of God. A greenie-weenie wants to reduce the size of government? Am I reading this correctly? I’ll not even quibble and point out that trimming the fat of government would leave us with exactly no government.

Obama is already making steps to do this by pushing for greener buildings, which could save a lot of money. I hope he applies this mentality to other endeavors so that we can come out of this with less debt.

Ah, so it’s not exactly trim the size and scope of government, it’s get a better bargain but keep all the government we have.

If going green saved money without losing anything else in the bargain, government wouldn’t need to push it. I will note that polluters should pay the cost of their pollution and that this would make them recalculate some of their decisions, but we don’t need government pushing green solutions.

And CO2 is not pollution.

Howard Butler

The Big Three automakers have themselves to blame, so I'm not in favor of a bailout.

Good.

Obama should give people and businesses a two-year tax credit equal to the price of any American car up to $40,000, to be purchased in 2009.

How about just a plain old tax cut? Christ, why do people have to buy what you want them to just to hold on to the money they earn?

But the really big issues are Medicare and Social Security. It's time to call it an entitlement program.

Take the kiddy gloves off and call it what it really is: a pay-as-you-go Ponzi scheme.

Phase out people 50 and younger; grandfather in those already on SS and Medicare; Phase out people between the ages of 55 and 65, proportional to the years toward their promised benefit; replace the current payroll tax with a pay-as-you-go tax for the needy, based on net worth and income qualifications.

Means testing, including net-worth testing, is the only way to rectify this mess. Let's stop taking money from people who are working to pay for these programs we can no longer afford.

Anything that reduces SS and Medicare is fine with me, but let’s be bolder and just get rid of them. We can argue about how later; right now let’s just agree to do it.

John W. Scherer

Fact: Good people want to buy houses from people that want to sell them. Or buy homes to rent to others. But they want to buy.

Where did you get this fact? Was it peer reviewed? Does this mean that my friends who live in apartments are bad?

Problem: The system is such a mess, they can't. Even the most qualified of potential buyers.

This is bull. There is credit out there for people with decent credit ratings. There won’t be if some of the suggestions of our experts are followed, but there is right now.

Result: Chaos.

Dictionary.com says that chaos is a state of utter confusion or disorder; a total lack of organization or order. I fail to see how what is going on is chaos. What is happening now is a return to sanity, if the government will just get out of the way.

The political pendulum has swung from "anything goes" to "no way" since the system crashed last fall.

How about swinging back to the middle? The way buying and lending used to be; fair and equitable terms for qualified people. Apply the same rules for all borrowers and lenders. Then enforce them.

Your mortgage payment shouldn't be more than 1/3 of your income. Your income must be verifiable, and you have to show a proven and stable record of paying your bills on time.

I think the market was doing that on its own before the government pumped a bunch of cheap credit into the system.

Let's peg the interest rates at no more than 5%.

Which interest rates? All of them? And why 5%? What if the market clearing price is different? Talk to Karen.

Let's provide this additional inventive [sic] for investment property buyers: No Capital Gains Tax on proceeds if the house is sold within ten years of original purchase.

Anything that cuts taxes is good in at least that aspect, but why the strictures? How about a cut in taxes across the board?

Once we get qualified buyers into houses, there will be a positive impact on our economy. These homeowners will buy new carpet and drapes. They'll install cable or satellite TV. Maybe even buy a new TV and sofa. They'll buy building materials to expand or improve their property and hire trades people to fix anything from a leaky faucet to repairing a roof.

All this creates jobs. Good jobs.

New carpet and drapes would also be bought for the apartments they lived in if they don’t get in a home. Again, rather than improving the economy this is just reconfiguring it.

I don’t think “we” need to do any of this. The market has found a way to extend loans to qualified recipients for all sorts of purposes, home buying included. We just need to prevent government from injecting cheap credit into the system ever again.

Let's dispel a myth right now. Government doesn't create jobs.

Not true. Talk to FDR about that. I would agree if you said that government doesn’t create efficient jobs, or efficiently allocate resources, but it creates many thousands, even millions of jobs. They are usually worthless and frequently counterproductive, but they are jobs.

Government is pouring billions of dollars into banks. Let's just attach one string. The banks have to make this money available for investment. A trillion dollar deficit isn't the answer. A trillion dollar investment in real estate is. Not by government, but qualified and responsible buyers.

This has been the core of this nation's economic success for over two centuries.

Let's move forward by looking back at what worked so well in the past and will work in the future.

Please stop printing money we don't have. It's not as complicated as Washington is making it.

So you want government to pour money into the banks, to the tune of at least a trillion dollars for real estate investment, and force the banks to lend it. And then you ask the government to stop printing money we don’t have?

And this is what has been the core of our success for over two hundred years?

It is little surprise that we get the politicians that we have. This is the electorate that is voting for them.

Final Regular Season Power Rankings

2008-12-21T09:52:00.000-08:00

Now that the bowl season has begun, and all bowl picks on College Pick 'em have already been made, the humble blogger releases his power rankings for the regular season, happy to note that his bowl picks, based on a certain portion of his data, are 4-0 to date. Thus, smugly self-satisfied, the humble blogger presents:

Top 25
1. Florida 144.42
2. Oklahoma 139.74
3. USC 132.02
4. Texas 124.8
5. Boise State 122.73
6. Penn State 118.11
7. TCU 117.22
8. Alabama 114.41
9. Ohio State 109.8
10. Utah 98.82
11. Texas Tech 98.513
12. Missouri 87.987
13. Oregon 86.592
14. Oklahoma State 85.726
15. Pittsburgh 82.86
16. Oregon State 82.799
17. California 81.23
18. Arizona 80.248
19. Cincinnati 79.846
20. North Carolina 76.433
21. Iowa 76.179
22. West Virginia 75.495
23. Georgia Tech 73.004
24. Mississippi 72.515
25. BYU 71.255

Of course, this does not tell the whole story. Look for Ohio State to upset Texas, TCU to upset Boise State, and Alabama had better watch itself against Utah in the Sugar Bowl.

A New Solution To Fermi's Paradox

2008-12-04T20:44:00.000-08:00

I have sitting on my computer desk next to my keyboard a copy of The Chilling Stars, a book by Nigel Calder and Henrik Svensmark in which they put forth a new explanation of climate change. Woven into the fabric of the writing is a thread of evolution and how it has been affected by climate change. As a fan of The Rare Earth Hypothesis, your humble blogger could not help but notice how well the former book compliments and supplements the latter. Having mulled over Mssrs. Calder and Svensmark’s work, and having pondered its relation to the fascinating text by Brownlee and Ward, the humble blogger has emerged with a new solution to Fermi’s paradox.

Fermi’s Paradox is a question that Enrico Fermi put forward several decades ago. He asked, if there were indeed intelligent civilizations in our galaxy, why they were not readily apparent. Should they not have made contact, given that some of them must be many millions, or possibly even billions of years older than ours? Or should they not have colonized our planet long before animal life evolved on it? The range of answers goes from a denial that intelligent civilizations exist beyond our solar system, to a suggestion that they exist but destroy themselves before they advance far enough to make contact, to the Zoo Hypothesis, which states that we are being watched over until such a time as we develop enough to be ready for contact. A new hypothesis has suggested itself to the author of this post, one which does not require so bleak a prediction as to declare that we are alone in the universe, nor to anticipate our own self destruction, nor even to place us in the monkey cages.

The good reader will recall a previous post in which the humble blogger gave a brief explanation of The Rare Earth Hypothesis and applied it to the famous Drake Equation. In brief, TREH concludes that conditions in our solar system, in our galaxy, and on our planet were finely balanced for the evolution of intelligent life, and that these conditions are likely to be very uncommon in the universe, possibly even unique. Of the many different conditions which have affected the evolution of life on earth and which, there is some reason to believe, are preconditions necessary for any intelligent species to evolve, one of them seems to have been the pressures put on ecosystems by catastrophes. Evolution, it appears, advances more rapidly in the wake of ecological disasters. But the key is that the disasters not be so great as to extinguish life, merely to eradicate enough of it to open up some niches for new forms to evolve, as well as to put enough pressure on these forms that only the hardiest and best adapted among them go on. It is a bit like lightning striking down a tree which, well established in its position, has prevented younger saplings from growing into even fitter trees if only they could get a foot hold in the area. This is likely to have been what happened when the dinosaurs went extinct: the already extant but dominated mammals were given a chance to fill the void, and ever since intelligence has advanced more rapidly.

There are three periods of interest for the present piece, one occurring approximately 2.3 billion years ago, the second one occurring around 700 million years ago, and the third beginning around 542 million years ago. The first two are called Snowball Earth events, in which the entirety of the globe may have been covered in ice, even in the tropics, and the last is the Cambrian Explosion. The Cambrian Explosion is well established and accepted by science, while Snowball Earth is yet to gain a unanimous backing, though there is much evidence, though not always of the strongest caliber, that the globe did indeed languish in the grip of a super ice age. TREH proposes an explanation for the first, and now The Chilling Stars may be able to explain the latter two.

The first Snowball Earth event occurred 2.3 billion years ago, and seems to coincide with the first known appearance of eukaryotes, a single cell organism far more complex in structure than the previous forms of bacteria. The eukaryote has organelles and a nucleus, and this greater complexity confers upon it certain advantages as well as greater possibility of evolution later on. The second Snowball Earth occurred, perhaps in fits and starts, hundreds of millions of years ago and ended about 650 million years ago. It coincides with the first known appearance of multicellular organisms. Called the Ediacarans, these creatures were a great leap forward in the history of life and may have needed a cataclysm like the globe freezing over to push them into more advanced and complex forms as well as clear some space for their arrival.

Finally, 542 million years ago, the Cambrian Explosion began. The new animal forms suddenly grew in size, and began to evolve shells and skeletons that allowed for even greater complexity and more possibilities. By the time is was over, perhaps 510 million years ago, all of the extant body types on earth today, as well as a few which have since gone extinct, had appeared. TREH points out that the catalyst for this event may have been a sudden tipping over of the earth, when over the course of perhaps fifteen million years the poles became two points on the equator and two points on the equator became the new north and south poles. Called the Inertial Interchange Event, this idea is still controversial, but it would have done two things important for the advancement of life. One, by moving the continents from tropical to polar regions, and from polar to tropical regions, in a relatively short span of time, it would have put the kind of pressure on evolution which seems to push it forward. Two, it may have changed ocean currents, which could have kicked up detritus on the ocean floors and thus accounts for the sudden abundance of phosphorite in the ecosystems of the time. TREH posits that the limiting factor on animal evolution was a lack of material with which to build bones and shells, and that when these materials, such as oxygen and phosphorite, became more abundant, coupled with the pressures of climate change that the continents were going through, animal life took off, never to look back.

It must be conceded that there is no proof that these Snowball events and IIE provoked the evolution of these new forms of life, and many dispute whether they even occurred. All we have is a tantalizing coincidence and some plausible sounding reasoning along the lines of the lightning striking the tree mentioned above. Still, coincidences can be harbingers of a more profound relationship, and the reasoning behind TREH does sound enticing. We do have very sound indications that life was present on the planet 3.8 billion years ago, or almost immediately after the earth cooled down from its formation and heavy bombardment period, and that, in evolutionary terms, it did very little for the next one and a half billion years. Then, suddenly, eukaryotes appeared just when the earth may have turned into a gigantic ball of ice or slush. When the earth warmed up, another billion and a half years of change but little progress ensued, and then suddenly animals appear on the scene, but only when the earth again turns into a big snowball. It is certainly a possibility worth exploring, and we can permit ourselves the luxury of a bit of speculation.

The Chilling Stars enters the conversation with a reason for the Snowball Earth events, something which TREH, written several years earlier, left without explanation. According to TCS, the cosmic rays given off in the aftermath of a large star going supernova contribute to the formation of clouds on earth. This idea is also controversial, but there is very strong evidence for it which the reader may judge for himself by reading the book in question. These clouds, depending on their thickness and altitude, have different effects on the earth’s temperature. The low hanging and thick clouds which are the principle item of interest in TCS seem to be formed when muons, short lived particles formed when cosmic rays hit the atmosphere, tumble to earth and seed cloud formation along the way, and the effect of these clouds is to cool the planet. Thus, when more muons are reaching the lower altitudes, the planet will cool, and when fewer muons come crashing down, the planet will be warmer.

The authors of TCS look at the story of the earth over the last few hundred million years and find that the earth goes between “icehouse” and “hothouse” phases as it passes in and out of the four spiral arms of the Milky Way. These spiral arms are dense areas of star birth and, therefore, star death, and so are filled with cosmic rays which serve to cool the earth, which in turn seems to prime the pump of evolution. Even the evolution of human intelligence seems to have begun in coincidence with a small scale cool period about 2.8 million years ago, which happened to be a time of high cosmic ray intensity on the earth, which also happens to coincide with a supernova explosion in the earth’s vicinity.

Within each hothouse and icehouse phase, the temperature of the earth can fluctuate based on the strength of the solar wind, which is the sun’s way of preventing cosmic rays from reaching the earth. We are currently in the Orion spur, a minor arm of the Milky Way, and therefore are in an icehouse phase. However, the sun’s solar wind is stronger than normal, which means that the icehouse phase is somewhat in abeyance, though there is still ice at the poles. This cycle of icehouse and hothouse, with warm and cold fluctuations within each, has been going on for as long as we can tell, but there are two events, icehouse events, which stand out above the others for intensity of frigidity, and those are the Snowball Earth events mentioned earlier. These events so exceed the typical icehouse phase, that merely passing through a spiral arm of the Milky Way does not explain them. However, it has been noted that, when we look at the ages of the stars around us, there seem to be clusters of star populations dating from 2.3 billion and 700 million years ago. Something happened at these times to rapidly increase the rate of star formation, which would also rapidly increase the rate of star explosion and the amount of cosmic rays in the galaxy. TCS proposes that the Milky Way had a collision with smaller galaxies at these two points in time, an event which would compact interstellar gases in the two galaxies and lead to more star formation. The result would have been an earth made even colder than a pass through a spiral arm could have done… but this would be a galaxy wide event, and now the proposed solution to Fermi’s Paradox can finally be revealed.

If it proves true that the Snowball Earth event is both a real event and a necessary pressure to produce advances in the evolution of life, then it may very well have been that 2.3 billion years ago saw not just the first appearance of eukaryotes on earth, but also the first appearance of eukaryotes in the Milky Way, spurred on by Galactic Deep Freeze I. When the cosmic rays died down, these fledgling creatures were then free to spread across their planets and firmly entrench themselves. Then, 700 million years ago, Galactic Deep Freeze II conceivably may have produced the Milky Way’s first animals. Even if it did not, a Snowball event is likely to wipe out, or nearly wipe out, the animal life of a planet, as it did on earth at the time. There have been great extinction events which killed up to 90% of the species on the planet, and these were less cataclysmic than a Snowball event. Even if a planet had evolved animal life already, it is quite possible that a galactic collision would have killed off these animals and set the planet back to square one, or at least square three or four.

The humble blogger therefore proposes that 700 million years ago, animal life in the galaxy died out or came very close to it, and that all planets suitable for the evolution of life, and which had advanced to a certain point, emerged from the galactic crash more or less at the same stage of evolution. We must now consider how closely our putative IIE followed our second Snowball. If the strictures of TREH are correct, there were not too many suitable planets to begin with. How many of these candidate planets have had an Inertial Interchange Event since the last Snowball? And how many of these had an IIE so soon after Galactic Deep Freeze II?

Fermi’s Paradox is neatly solved if the earth proves to be not the only planet where animal life has advanced, but merely one of the most advanced or possibly the most advanced of these planets, a prospect which, until recently, seemed absurdly improbable. Intelligence, in our galaxy, might just be creeping onto the scene. Perhaps a few other species have attained space flight ahead of us, but are still lost in the great mass of hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy and have not had a chance to thoroughly colonize it, as Fermi predicted. Perhaps there are no others ahead of us at all.

If TREH and TCS are both correct, and we must remember that there is far to go in proving this, then the Snowball events and IIE are great staging points for evolution, and a few predictions can be made. One, life on earthlike planets in our galaxy can probably be divided into distinct generations. Our generation began 650 million years ago with animal life, and our advanced animal life with skeletons and shells may be ahead of most of the rest. There is, in this point of view, likely to be a younger generation of life which reached the level of eukaryotes about 700 to 650 million years ago and is waiting for Galactic Deep Freeze III to evolve into animals. This collision, however, would probably wipe out the animal life in older generations (unless intelligent species had evolved which had developed enough technology to either survive the Snowball or prevent it on their own planet or planets). At this point, the life of the older generation would then merge with the younger generation and restart at the point of the simplest animal forms.

It is also possible that the Snowball of 2.3 billion years ago produced animal forms in a generation older than ours, a generation whose eukaryotic precursors emerged from a Snowball that earth, being only 4.6 billion years old, has not recorded (indeed, it is possible that our sun was born out of just such a collision). If this is true, then these animals may have evolved intelligence long before GDF II, in which case we need another answer to Fermi’s Paradox (The humble blogger would like to suggest that, given A.C. Clarke’s dictum that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, any alien intelligence with a 1.5 billion year head start might well have passed out of the universe altogether, or may exist in it as consciousnesses enclosed in beams of light. It is nearly impossible to even guess at what we should expect out of a species so far advanced).

One final, sobering conclusion can be drawn if TREH and TCS are sound theories. When these alleged collisions occur, they produce a baby boom of stars, so that the star populations in a galaxy are not uniformly distributed in time, but rather cluster around these baby boom periods. It appears that our galaxy, in comparison with the other galaxies around us, has few cluster points for the birth dates of stars, suggesting fewer galactic crashes and therefore fewer Snowball events. While these Snowballs may be essential for the evolution of intelligent life, they are also potentially inimical to animal life already developed. A galaxy which has too many Snowballs may never get an intelligent species, being eternally stuck in a cycle of animal creation and then destruction and reduction, before intelligence can arise, to the beginning of the animal stage. TREH concludes that only spiral galaxies are likely homes to animal life, and it appears that our spiral galaxy the Milky Way has had fewer galactic collisions than the other spiral galaxies in our local group. Given the long time between the Cambrian Explosion and the emergence of intelligence on earth, an increased frequency of Snowballs probably means a concomitant reduction in the likelihood of intelligence evolving.

It could well be that a galaxy suitable for intelligent life is a very lonely thing, separated from like galaxies by many millions of light years, like an oasis in a vast, dry, sterile desert. Perhaps, if we did not already have reason enough, we should reconsider the killing that we visit on one another in the form of wars, purposefully induced famines and other government atrocities. The lives we extinguish here on earth may be the only intelligent lives the universe has ever produced.

College Football Power Rankings

2008-11-27T22:08:00.000-08:00

With the NCAA football regular season drawing to a close, it is time to release the humble blogger's own power rankings for the teams going bowling. A few of the lesser bowlers are not included.

1. Oklahoma 142.46
A gigantic win over Texas Tech vaults the Sooners into first place.

2. Florida 140.24
They have been creaming teams for the majority of the season, and that loss doesn't look so bad anymore.

3. USC 132.01
That defense could keep them competitive with just about anybody.

4. Texas 126.74
Still one of the best, even if the Sooners got a little revenge by making their loss to TTech look a bit worse.

5. Penn State 118.73
The Lions never get respect. Joe Pa has four undefeated seasons in which he was not given a share of the national title. When Alabama falls to Florida, what good argument is there for PSU not getting more consideration for the title game?

6. Boise State 118.07
Ever since a BCS bowl win, Boise State has gotten good press. The humble blogger's numbers argue that they deserve it.

7. TCU 117.35
Don't laugh, they have really put a hurting on people, and gave Oklahoma a tougher way to go than a lot of other fine teams. Undefeated Utah needed a last minute score to defeat them. In Utah.

8. Ohio State 109.58
The Buckeyes started slow, despite returning a lot of experience. Nevertheless, they have had some recent blow out wins to rise in the rankings.

9. Alabama 109.53
Alabama has mixed in some less impressive wins along with the ones that everyone talks about. The humble blogger can't help but think that, unless the Tide pull a magic trick, the Gators will be too much for them.

10. Texas Tech 105.29
Still a very strong score, despite a recent embarrassment.

11. Missouri 102.71
That makes four Big 12 teams in the top eleven. Don't count Mizzou out of the Big 12 title hunt.

12. Utah 98.46
Undefeated, but ranked a bit lower, despite their win over TCU.

13. Oregon State 89.42
This is no longer the same team that got demolished by PSU. Is a rematch in the works?

14. Cincinnati 87.57
The Bearcats are quietly having a fine season in a middling conference.

15. Oklahoma State 87.23
That makes five Big 12 squads in the top fifteen. The SEC must bow down to another this year.

16. West Virginia 83.54
Not the same team as last year, but must still be taken seriously.

17. Oregon 83.2
The Ducks are a solid team. Are they solid enough to put USC into the Rose Bowl?

18. North Carolina 79.68
It took a while, but we finally hear from the ACC. The Tarheels would have been higher, but the Wolfpack brought them down several notches.

19. Boston College 79.57
Not the same team of a year ago, but worthy of a decent bowl invite.

20. Georgia Tech 79.48
For all intents and purposes, the ACC has a three-way tie for the top spot in these rankings.

21. Arizona 78.83
When one peruses their resume, one finds some respectable games, not least of which was the 17-10 loss to USC.

22. California 78.05
They have some solid wins this year, and well deserve a bowl game.

23. Iowa 76.0
Let me guess: you wrote them off. After losing several close games, the Hawkeyes have won almost every time they've taken the field recently, and finally realized their powers against the Golden Gophers. Watch out for this team next year!

24. Florida State 72.18
They're not great, but they're decent. Mr. Bowden might want to consider calling it a career; he's unlikely to end on a better note than this.

25. BYU 72.04
The biggest name from the MWC, the Cougars are eclipsed this year by TCU and the Utes.

26. Pittsburgh 71.76
Maybe not as good as they wanted to be, but still respectable.

27. Mississippi 70.71
Where did these guys come from? Congrats to a new coach.

28. Nebraska 69.15
The Huskers have piled up a few losses in a very tough conference, which will likely mean a bowl pairing with a lesser team. A good bowl win is just what Mr. Pelini and the Cornhuskers need for their program.

29. Michigan State 67.63
The Spartans let Saban get away. I advise them to hold onto Dantonio. Things look set to go up from here.

30. Georgia 64.6
Their score is decentish, it's the optimistic preseason ranking that hurts.

31. Virginia Tech 61.84
An average team in a conference full of decent teams but devoid of awful ones.

32. Miami, FL 61.81
Preseason hype had the 'Canes ahead of the 'Noles on the rebuilding track. Not so fast.

33. Air Force 59.16
Not to be forgotten, but not too impressive either.

34. Wisconsin 51.24
A midseason collapse brings this score down. Look for something a touch better in their bowl game.

35. Connecticut 49.14
There is little depth in the Big East. After a few solid teams, the rest look rather weak.

36. South Florida 47.9
The green and gold have had trouble building on last season, which did not end too well.

37. Northwestern 47.49
They have a solid record, but no wins over anyone important. And they didn't have to play Penn State.

38. LSU 45.39
A far fall indeed from the heady heights of a few months ago. Buckeye fans must try not to sneer.

39. South Carolina 45.32
The Gamecocks just can't quite find that breakthrough season. They should hire that coach who won the national title for Florida in 1996.

40. Maryland 38.04
There have been bright spots. The question is, are these inexplicable bright spots from a bad team, or are the dark spots aberrations from a team that really is, or should be, good?

41. Minnesota 18.86
The Big Ten is far better than the pundits give them credit for, but clearly after the top six there is next to nothing there. Remember when the Gophers were 7-1? Well, they finally played a few more of the better teams in their conference and they now sit at 7-5. And they didn't have to play Penn State or Michigan State, either. There are too many bowl games when this team is practically assured of a spot after padding a record with twelve point wins over Montana State.

Stay tuned for updates after the final regular season games and conference championships are played.

Ohio State vs. Michigan

2008-11-21T20:31:00.000-08:00

One need only watch a Michigan football game to understand why they have no souls. No sooner does the viewer see the opposing team commit the most atrocious unforced errors, or the line judge reverse a Michigan fumble by throwing a flag on a non-existent penalty, or the referee award a reception when the Wolverine receiver was well out of bounds, to wit, a Michigan team stumbling onto outcomes that, even in defeat, are far in excess of what their modest efforts on the field deserve, than he realizes that Wolverine nation has entered into a Faustian bargain at the cost of their eternal spirits. In return, they are to enjoy unmerited, though not unsurpassed, success on the football field.

I know of no Wolverine victory that was not aided by favoritism from the referees, or sloppy play on the part of opponents who, quite unmolested by the sluggish maize and blue defense, seem only to desire that the Wolverines have the ball again. I am aware of no Michigan defeat whose margin was not made narrower by the same. But even so, I strongly suspect that it was not with Lucifer that this pact was made, but with some minor demon in his employ.

I have reached this conclusion by perusing the college football archives since the time of Woody Hayes, and in that vast expanse of history I can find only one mention of a Michigan national championship, and a disputed one at that. In the decade of the fifties alone Ohio State managed twice as many. One imagines that Lucifer could have made Michigan nearly Ohio State’s equal had the bargain been with him. For this reason I feel confident that they have bargained with a lesser being who cannot lift them up to stand eye to eye with the Buckeyes, but only far enough to give them a good sniff of our flatulence.

Nevertheless, that rectal aroma is more than they deserve. Witness the 1998 game with Ohio State. Facing third and very long near their own goal line, but leading 14-3, the Buckeyes complete a long pass for a first down, a play that surely would have broken Michigan’s backbones if Wolverines were vertebrates. In steps the minor devil, and the referee rules a Buckeye fumble that replays conclusively proved was no such thing. Michigan gets a field goal and manages to stay close to the nation’s best team.

Or have a gander at the 2005 Penn State game, perhaps the Michigan game par excellence. Behind by a single score and with time running out, Michigan begins its drive by completing a pass in an area of the field generally reserved for coaches, bench warmers and the team cheerleaders. Typically, teams catching the ball there must return to the spot where they started the previous play and lose a down. Not so the Wolverines. Later in the drive, Michigan coach Lllllloyd Carr requests that the game be played for sixty minutes and two seconds, rather than the standard one hour, and this request is granted. At the sixty minute and one second mark, when most teams would be heading for the locker rooms, Michigan scored the touchdown it needed to win the game.

I could provide as many more examples as there are grains of sand in the Sahara. I invite the good reader to research on his own, if he has the stomach for it. The point here is that, if not a favorable wind, than at least a light breeze has blown in Michigan’s favor for as long as I have been acquainted with the gridiron sport, and that clearly some Hellspawn is responsible. Perhaps it is not strong enough to make them the leaders and best, but it more than suffices to irritate the rest of us who play the game without arcane interference.

There is good evidence that this sulfurous charm extends beyond the borders of the football field. Consider our thirty eighth president, Gerald Ford. A former Michigan football player, he got his ass into the chair behind the desk in the Oval Office. And how did he accomplish this? Not in the manner of the thirty seven presidents who came before him, i.e., by being on the ticket of a successful presidential campaign. Instead, Gerald Ford could do no better than the House of Representatives, and yet when first Spiro Agnew and then Richard Nixon fumbled their political careers away, he slipped into the Whitehouse without ever having earned the honor. If there has been a more perfect display of Michiganity, I have yet to hear of it.

But this year is different. Certainly, the Michigan win over Wisconsin had all the hallmarks of a typical maize and blue victory, Michigan State watched Michigan score a new kind of touchdown invented ad hoc by the officials in the replay booth, and Utah was struck by the same old affliction in the early going, but taking one game with another it seems clear that the minor devil, patron of the Ann Arbor pigskin, has come down with palsy. His modest powers have waned, and we see exactly what sort of record Michigan would have every year but for his sinister intervention. Fallen upon hard times even before this, at least against the noble warriors in Scarlet and Gray, Michigan comes stumbling into Columbus with lacerated hands, bludgeoned ribs and swelling of the brain.

Let our eleven warriors brave and bold take full advantage of this window of opportunity. Next year, no doubt, either the demon will recover or another bargain with another villain will be struck. This is our year, our time, to mete out to our northern neighbors in proportion as they deserve. May our boys with the beautiful silver helmets, riddled with Buckeye Leaves, not grow overconfident. Let justice be done, let goodness and decency thrive. Tomorrow, November the twenty second in the year of our Lord two thousand and eight, may Ohio State deliver such a thrashing to Michigan as to send them home howling and begging for mercy, so beaten in body and spirit that for a period of two years, they dare not return to Columbus, Ohio.

Amen.

SEC Power Rankings

2008-11-11T21:30:00.000-08:00

The next batch is ready. This time we see what our southern cousins have to offer.

1. Florida 141.2479271

The strongest team yet rated, one slip up against Mississippi hasn't kept them down.

2. Alabama 111.0245249

The Tide are having a very strong season, though they look vulnerable more often than Florida, despite their better record. The humble blogger's rating concurs.

3. Georgia 74.58527542

No match for the tops in the SEC, the Bulldawgs are still a solid ball club.

4. LSU 73.43431431

Another good ball club, but they won't be successful in defending their title this year.

5. Mississippi 64.27505829

A big win over Florida is helping them look respectable. We'll see what happens from here.

6. South Carolina 52.8440255

An average team, though no one has beaten them by more than a touchdown.

7. Kentucky 42.43979872

The Wildcats don't look particularly dangerous, but they're not entirely an embarrassment either.

8. Vanderbilt 34.10849179

A pretender. Their last few games have brought their average way down.

9. Auburn -0.11212348

Yes, that's a negative. Trying playing offense sometime, Auburn.

More to come!

Big Ten Power Rankings

2008-11-10T16:01:00.000-08:00

The humble blogger has developed a computer rating system for college football, a system of such cunning and precision that it exactly reveals the strength of a team with an exceptional degree of confidence. With enough games played to allow for the necessary data to be compiled, it is now time to reveal the strength of the Big Ten teams who are or may yet become bowl eligible. In descending order, they are as follows:

1. Penn State 125.8157454

Despite the heartbreaking loss to Iowa, Penn State sits comfortably atop the Big Ten power rankings.

2. Ohio State 108.7154993

The big loss to USC has been counterbalanced by a fine game against Penn State and blow out wins over Michigan State and Northwestern.

3. Michigan State 74.83464459

A solid score. Dantonio finally has the Spartans finishing well.

4. Illinois 71.45637656

Despite a 5-5 record, the Illini have played well enough times to warrant serious consideration.

5. Iowa 71.19349052

Notice with what precision the humble blogger's system predicts the Iowa/Illinois outcome.

6. Wisconsin 54.95152252

A modestly respectable score, Wisconsin has been the least consistent team in the Western Conference. Will the real Wisconsin please stand up?

7. Northwestern 38.33981567

The Wildcats are revealed to be pretenders. Nothing below 60 is considered impressive, and nothing below 40 is considered even mediocre. Northwestern is a poor team.

8. Minnesota 27.91306049

Even below the Wildcats. A good record composed mainly of getting by 1AA competition is exposed as fraudulent by the humble blogger's tool.

Stay tuned for more scores from teams that are going bowling.

I Did Not Vote Today

2008-11-04T15:18:00.000-08:00

I take the same view of presidents as I do of whores: I don't have much preference for one cocksucker over another, I just wish they weren't so goddamn dirty and expensive.

Copernicus, Farewell!

2008-10-09T08:13:00.000-07:00

Nicolaus Copernicus is often credited with starting the Scientific Revolution with his On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres. In it, he argued that the earth was not the center of the universe and in fact revolved around the sun. It began a trend in which successive scientific discoveries moved the earth further and further away from any central location in the universe, and closer and closer to mediocrity. This trend established itself in scientific opinion and, under the name The Copernican Principle, became a sort of doctrine for scientists. It is the humble blogger's contention, however, that the Copernican trend has reversed itself, most decisively, and that it is time to stop invoking it in astronomical and exobiological discussions. It is time, in other words, to say farewell to Copernicus.

This will be difficult for many, who seem to have a very firm fondness for the principle. The earth, say men such as Neil DeGrasse Tyson, is an unremarkable planet orbiting an unremarkable star in an unremarkable galaxy in an unremarkable part of the universe. There is nothing special about our circumstances and we can, therefore, expect to be an unremarkable species in this sea of mediocrity. Carl Sagan went so far as to estimate that as many as a million other intelligent species inhabit our galaxy alone.

And yet, it seems to your humble blogger that such talk flies in the face of more recent trends in science. That learned men of the sort mentioned above could still be preaching Copernicus in light of things more recently discovered is a testament to the unshakable doctrine that the Copernican Principle has become. That the earth is special, and in a special place, is becoming more and more apparent.

The universe in which we live is so finely balanced to support life that any suggestion of luck or coincidence should be dismissed out of hand. The fine tuning is such that to have arrived at it by chance would be far more remarkable than to thrice win a state lottery on successive tickets. It is not our purpose here to argue that a deity must have created the universe for it to be so finely tuned, nor to contend that we live in but one universe of sextillions and sextillions in the "multiverse" so that a stable universe where galaxies and stars form would eventually emerge. Our purpose here is merely to note that in either case we live in a very special universe.

There are good reasons to believe that our galaxy, a spiral galaxy, is a special kind of galaxy. Other types of galaxies, at least as far as our current understanding goes, are probably poor candidates for life. Indeed, not even all spiral galaxies are necessarily hospitable to the evolution of life and intelligent species.

Inside our own Milky Way Galaxy we appear to be located in a tract of prime real estate. We are far from the galactic center where the density of star distribution would make the evolution of animal life unlikely due to the dangers posed by other stars. But we are also distant from the outer edge where stars are unlikely to have the heavier elements in enough abundance to form larger planets.

Even our orbit around the galactic center seems to be ideal, leaving us generally isolated but taking us every so often through a spiral arm and its more densely packed stars. While continuous existence in a densely populated stellar neighborhood seems inimical to animal life and intelligence, there are some scientists who believe that an occasional flirtation with disaster actually propels evolution forward. It has been calculated that the periodic mass extinctions that our planet has experienced coincide with times when the sun passed through a spiral arm, and each time life adapted new and better forms.

Our solar system itself seems special too. On Youtube one can find the aforementioned Neil DeGrasse Tyson claiming that our star is ordinary, but this is demonstrably untrue. Our sun is larger than approximately 95% of the other stars in the galaxy, but not so large that it will burn out in a few hundred million years, or sooner, and thus die before advanced life can evolve on one of its planets. It is higher in metal content than the vast majority of other stars. Its planets have stable, nearly circular orbits, something that seems to be rare if the other systems so far discovered are any indication.

And our home planet seems to be well tuned for life. There are enough radioactive elements in the core to generate enough heat for plate tectonics, and enough iron to generate a protective magnetic field. There is enough water to lubricate the surface so that the subduction zones and volcanoes can continually recycle the planet's carbon, but not so much water that continents never break the surface. There is enough gravity to hold an atmosphere, but not too much gravity either.

The ways in which our place in the universe is special abound. There are certainly myriad other unique aspects not discussed here. Just as the universe itself is finely tuned to allow for life, so too seem to be the characteristics of our own celestial neighborhood. If this truly is the case, and the evidence points in this direction, we should not be surprised to find few other intelligent species out there. The possibility of complete isolation should not be discounted. So well established is the Copernican Principle that perfectly respectable scientists today go around invoking it, but facts seem to be pointing a different direction.

Copernicus, for centuries you have tried to convince us that we were mediocre. Now we are on to your little game. As our understanding of the universe grows, our appreciation of our place in it increases. We are indeed special; the Church, however wrong its reasons, was correct in this. Not only are we special, we are more special than we ever realized we possibly could be. Your facts were true, but the interpretation that bears your name is poor. Let us read to your Principle its Last Rites. Farewell!

How Could the German People Let the Holocaust Happen?

2008-09-01T12:52:00.000-07:00

It was a springtime ritual that my classmates and I engaged in the first year we studied American History and every year thereafter until we finally graduated. Having lingered longer over the Civil War than the nine month school year could justify, we were forced to fly through World War I and, while the green heralds of summer sprouted on the tree branches around us, squeeze in some discussion on World War II. It was at this point that we invariably shook our heads, sighed, and wondered how the Teutonic peoples could do nothing while Jews, homosexuals, dissidents, Poles, Czechs and all the rest - eleven million in all - were cooked, starved, gassed, shot and otherwise exterminated.

In high school, and later college, I learned that this question was prevalent in all the other little grade schools... prevalent to the point of being trite. To be complete, any discussion of World War II had to include the title question of this post, generally delivered with a practiced, exasperated, regretful sigh. The other parties would then shake their heads in commiseration. Like actors who have been in the same play, we could recombine in different groups, mingle with total strangers, but reproduce the same sequence because we all knew our parts.

The answer to this question, though no doubt complex in its entirety, is rather simple to summarize. By a series of gradual changes, each enacted after a critical mass of the population becomes sufficiently accustomed to the previous change, a government can get its citizens to accept anything (especially if it can invent a crisis or crises to justify its actions). Those citizens who might be moved to resist are cowed into sulking submission by the fear - probably justified - that they would be acting alone. If the entire student body hurls spit wads at the principal, the odds of being singled out for retribution are small, but even the malcontents will behave, for the time being, if they know they will stand out for such behavior.

But it is not in pursuit of a full explanation of German inaction in the face of gruesome tyranny that your humble blogger sets his fingers to the keyboard today. Rather, it is the implicit and smug sense of superiority that permeated every discussion of the topic that motivates him. Should the good reader be surprised that so little was done to oppose so great an evil, he should look at the America around him, the nascent police state, and realize that the ability to be both mollified and cowed into submission and acceptance is a human, rather than a Germanic, quality.

To ask when a nation becomes a police state is akin to asking when a homo erectus becomes a homo sapien. The good reader and the humble blogger may differ as to where they draw the line, but certainly we can both recognize the process. No informed observer could conclude that America is not drifting steadily in this direction, but the hell of it is that no one cares enough to try and stop it. For all the indignation we directed at Germany as children, we have grown into adults who either believe there is actually a chance they may be killed by a terrorist attack and have thrown their support to the police state; are not interested enough to find out what is going on; or start blogs to complain that no one is doing anything but, despite being perfectly capable of seeing where all this is going, decline to make the sacrifices that might amount to serious opposition because they know they will be the only one throwing the spit wad. The humble blogger is well aware that he falls into the latter category.

The recent surveillance powers that government has granted itself did not move us to action. Too many figured the odds of their privacy being violated were very small (strangely, this power to calculate abandons them when they think of a terrorist bomb), not realizing that the point is that it gives the ruling party too much power to squash their opponents, not the general populace. The rest of us did not want to get caught with a spit wad in our hands. The president's declaration that he could name, on no evidence, anyone as an enemy combatant and hold them indefinitely with neither trial nor charges did not move us to action. Too many figured that the odds of them being detained were very small, not realizing that the point is that it gives the ruling party too much power to squash opposition, not the general populace. The rest of us did not want to get caught with a spit wad in our hands.

During the recent Democratic National Convention, and now during the Republican National Convention, we can see the government engaged in the most audacious displays of human rights violations while a compliant populace does little more than take a few moments to whine about it. Even by the US government's charter, itself a human rights violation for any right-thinking anarchist, these acts are execrable. As Glenn Greenwald has detailed, the local police of Denver and Minneapolis, assisted at least by the FBI, are engaged in acts of intimidation against would-be protesters. Ranging from physical assaults to threatening searches and seizures and even outright theft, the aim is to crush resistance from any sheep who would protest that the shepherd was coming to resemble the wolves.

Together, we all let this happen. We started to worship the police and other government officials. We made laws to elevate them to a superior status. We treated their deaths as greater tragedies than others, and their work as more important. We permitted them certain behaviors that no other person could dare engage in. Even when government behavior is finally chastised, it is chastised in the abstract, and no punishment to individuals is given. We prohibited to ourselves behavior that is perfectly legal, except when done to those of exalted status (such as the mere act of photographing them).

It is not hard to see a dark future out there. And it is out there, like some hulking beast in a horror flick. It hasn't shown up yet, and we don't know with accuracy what it looks like, but we know that it is ugly. And no one is going to do anything about it, even if it gets worse. Not when the draft is reinstituted, not when the internet is censored, not when war breaks out with Iran, not when elections are postponed, not when Muslims are corralled in detention centers like Jews in Germany and Japanese in America a few generations ago, not when a nuclear bomb is dropped on Iran... all this and more looms on the horizon, avoidable in theory but maybe not in practice.

And if we don't avoid it, the blame will be ours, because we didn't give the politicians and their jack-booted thugs exactly what they deserved. Once upon a time, a man like Sam Adams could torch the house of a British official, run the bastard out of town, and still be elected to the Continental Congress as well as Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts. Nowadays we suffer from some fundamental perversion whereby we hold in reverence the very boot that grinds our faces into the pavement. And those of us with the spit wads look about sheepishly, waiting for someone else to fire the first shot.

That is how the Germans could permit tyranny to flourish. They did it the same way we do. May our fellow Man forgive us if we allow our situation to progress from here like the German situation did from 1932 to 1945.

So Whom Should I Sue?

2008-08-27T18:07:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year, before summer's heat took hold of the northern hemisphere, we were told that the Arctic Ice would melt away this summer. The northern seas would be wide open, we were promised, and polar bears would start dying off.

I regarded this as a solemn promise, coming as it did from individuals so reputed for accuracy and reason. I was promised an Arctic melt-off this summer, and I planned my entire season around a lack of ice at the North Pole. Now, it turns out that this is bullshit, as all the other environmentalist predictions - coincidentally - have been. There was no great Arctic melt-off. In fact, the ice cover was greater this summer than last summer!

That's three months of my life gone to shit because environmentalists couldn't predict that a sponge would get wet if immersed in water. All my plans revolved around an ice-free Arctic, and it didn't come close to happening. Environmentalists are now, by my count, 0 for 437, and if they miss too many more predictions I am going to stop trusting them.

But what I really want to know is, which douche bag was responsible for this so that I can sue his biodegradable, earth-friendly, sustainable, made-from-recycled-spotted-owl-piss ass right off.

Tournament of Buckeyes: Play-In Game

2008-07-21T20:21:00.000-07:00

In preparation for the upcoming football season, Things and Stuff will be running a tournament of the greatest Buckeye football teams of the modern, or at least modernish, era. You, the good reader, have the opportunity to vote to decide the winner. Seventeen teams have been chosen, and after the play-in game results come in, the sixteen top Buckeye teams of all time will face off in a knockout tournament.

The teams were chosen and seeded based on their regular season record. The undefeated teams went first, and any teams from the year before or after were disqualified. At the humble blogger's discretion, teams two years away could be disqualified if the composition of that team was too similar. For instance, the undefeated 1968 team is in, immediately disqualifying the 1967 and 1969 squads (even though the 8-1 1969 squad would likely have won if they had faced off). However, since the starters on the 1970 squad were principally the same characters, the 1970 Buckeyes were also disqualified.

Some of the choices might seem a bit controversial, such as the 1983 Buckeyes being included at the expense of the Big Ten champion 1984 Buckeyes who finished with the same record. The decision was made because, in the humble blogger's opinion, the 1983 team faced far stiffer competition and was a superior team.

With each pairing, a description of the teams and key players will be given as well as some vital stats. OR stands for Opponents' Records, but is handled in a slightly different fashion. Every win of a team that Ohio State defeated goes in the win column, and every loss from a team that beat Ohio State goes in the loss column. T20 is Ohio State's record against teams that finished in the Top Twenty (when this is possible. For some years, only a Top Ten was recorded). T20E is the extended version of T20, in which the records against the Top Twenty of Ohio State's opponents (excluding Ohio State) are put into two aggregates, one for the teams Ohio State beat and one for the teams that beat Ohio State (this does occasionally happen). In other words, if a 6-3 Buckeye team defeated six teams whose total record against the Top Twenty was 3-4, and lost to three teams whose aggregate record against the Top Twenty was 3-1, that Buckeye team's T20E would be 3-4/3-1.

Other categories include HS, LS, BM, DD. HS, High Score, is the number of times the Buckeye team in question put up the most points that year against an opponent. LS, Low Score, is when the defense held that opponent to its lowest score of the season. BM is Best Margin, the number of times that Ohio State had the best victory margin against that team. Finally, DD is a Double Double, which is when Ohio State had both the HS and LS against the same team in the same game.

Welcome to the Tournament of Buckeyes and thank you for playing! Before we can start the tournament proper, we have to have a play-in game to reduce the field of 17 to 16. Please vote only once, by leaving a comment, and no votes under anonymous will count. The humble blogger will keep his vote secret until the end of voting. The 1983 Buckeyes, led by Earle Bruce, are up against Woody Hayes' 1977 squad for the right to take on the number one seed. Here are the stats and background information.

1977 Buckeyes
9-3; Lost to scUM 14-6; lost to Alabama in Sugar Bowl 35-6

Key players included Ray Griffin, the All-American safety and brother of Archie Griffin, three-time All-Big Ten cornerback Mike Guess, All-American linebacker and future #1 draft pick Tom Cousineau, All-American middle guard Aaron Brown, tackling machine linebacker David Adkins, All-Big Ten defensive end Kelton Dansler, All-American offensive tackle Chris Ward, center Tim Vogler, future All-American guard Ken Fritz, quarterback speedster Rod Gerald and runningbacks Jeff Logan and Ron Springs, both All-Big Ten.

10-0 Miami, FL
38-7 Minnesota
28-29 Oklahoma
35-7 SMU
46-0 Purdue
27-6 Iowa
35-15 Northwestern
42-0 Wisconsin
35-0 Illinois
35-7 Indiana
6-14 scUM
6-35 Alabama

OR 37-5
T20 0-3
T20E 3-14/2-4
HS 4
LS 6
BM 4
DD 2

1983 Buckeyes
9-3; lost to scUM 24-21; beat Pittsburgh 28-23 in Fiesta Bowl

Key Players included defensive backs Shaun Gayle and All-Big Ten Garcia Lane, All-Big Ten linebacker Rowland Tatum, linebacker Orlando Lowry, All-Big Ten tight end John Frank, All-Big Ten linemen Kirk Lowdermilk and Mark Krerowicz, first round draft pick offensive tackle Bill Roberts, quarterback Mike Tomczak and future All-American and 2nd place finisher in the Heisman Trophy balloting tailback Keith Byars.

31-6 Oregon
24-14 Oklahoma
14-20 Iowa
69-18 Minnesota
33-22 Purdue
13-17 Illinois
21-11 Michigan State
45-27 Wisconsin
56-17 Indiana
55-7 Northwestern
21-24 scUM
28-23 Pittsburgh

OR 40-8
T20 1-3
T20E 1-24-1/4-6
HS 3
LS 0
BM 0
DD 0

The results are now in the good reader's hands!

The All-Time Ohio State Football Team

2008-07-14T11:38:00.000-07:00

It is generally acknowledged that THE Ohio State University football team is the most successful, tradition-laden, talent-filled football program in the entire world. The supporters of other powerful programs, like Notre Dame, Penn State, Alabama, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Texas, Florida State, USC, LSU and Miami of Florida will readily acknowledge the superiority of the Buckeyes, as well as offer thanks for the many innovations and lessons that the men in Scarlet and Gray have given them over the years. In celebration of Ohio State, and as a culmination to the All-Decades teams we have named, let us choose the very best of the best of the men who have worn the uniform.

QUARTERBACK

Troy Smith. No quarterback in Buckeye history has combined the patience and arm of a pocket passer with the quickness of a scrambler quite like Mr. Smith. Though this is not always the case, in 2006 the Heisman Trophy was awarded to the right guy.

FULLBACK

Bob Ferguson. He was big, even by the standards of later decades. And he was fast. Those who saw him play, which the humble blogger must admit that he has not, generally say that Woody never had a better fullback. He came within a few votes of winning the Heisman himself.

TAILBACK

Archie Griffin. Watch out, Mr. Griffin, because a young lad named Chris Wells is poised to surpass you, but for now we'll sti
with the universe's only two-time Heisman Trophy winner (and three-time All-American).

OFFENSIVE TACKLE

Orlando Pace. They invented statistics like the pancake block just for his sake. He took on other All-Americans and left them flattened in the dust. Any questions about his impact can be answered by looking at Pepe Pearson's stats in 1997, the year after Mr. Pace left, and compare them to 1996, when Orlando was still mowing down the competition.

OFFENSIVE TACKLE

John Hicks. An offensive tackle who came in second in the Heisman voting? The best lineman on what may have been the best offensive line in history: the 1973 Ohio State offensive line.

OFFENSIVE GUARD

Jim Lachey. Did not start regularly until his senior year, he did not give up a sack the entire season, and went entire seasons in the pros without giving up a sack either. This was an offensive lineman who finished second in the state in the hurdles.

OFFENSIVE GUARD

Jim Parker. Perhaps the greatest lineman in history, he was a multiple All-American and multiple All-Pro who could not be withstood. Anchored the line for the 1954 National Champions, paving the way for Howard Cassady.

CENTER

Nick Mangold. Ohio State has had quite a few solid centers, but only Mangold was called the best prospect of the last fifteen years by pro scouts. Looks set to have a very fine and long NFL career.

TIGHT END

Jan White. An All-American in a program known for allowing other teams to have the great Tight End athletes. One of the Super Sophs who won the 1968 National Championship.

WIDE RECEIVER

Paul Warfield. His name was synonymous with excellence, both in the pros and in college. A multiple All-Pro, he ran alongside Bob Ferguson on the undefeated 1961 team.

WIDE RECEIVER

Chris Carter. In a program famous, in recent decades, for its wide receivers, the two old school guys are still the best. Chris Carter, before a long and distinguished pro career, was an All-American for the Buckeyes.

DEFENSIVE END

Jim Houston. A sophomore on the 1957 National Champions and two-time All-American, he went on to have a long career for the Cleveland Browns. Woody said he was the best defensive end he ever had.

DEFENSIVE END

Mike Vrabel. It is generally acknowledged that this Buckeye All-American is the primary reason for the New England Patriots' recent success. At Ohio State, he was a sack specialist who could stuff the run too.

DEFENSIVE TACKLE

Jim Stillwagon. Another Super Soph from the 1968 squad, Mr. Stillwagon was twice named All-American as well as an Outland Award winner in 1970.

DEFENSIVE TACKLE

Dan Wilkinson. He wasn't at Ohio State very long, but he had perhaps more impact than any sophomore in Buckeye history. The number one pick of the NFL draft and All-American, he labored in the pros for a long time.

LINEBACKER

Randy Gradishar. No one was better than this two-time All-American, who in 1973 finished sixth in the Heisman voting. He went on to be All-Pro seven times for the Denver Broncos.

LINEBACKER

Chris Spielamn. For Buckeye fans who came of age in the 1980's, Spielman was synonymous with Buckeye Football. A tackling machine and two-time All-American, he went on to multiple All-Pro honors.

LINEBACKER

A.J. Hawk. It took a lot for Tom Cousineau to get knocked off the list, but no linebacker in recent memory has equaled what this two-time All-American did (keep an eye on Lauranaitis for his senior season!).

CORNERBACK

Shawn Springs. This number three draft pick and All-American with a long NFL career was the epitome of a shut-down cornerback. Quarterbacks simply did not throw in his direction, and for a very good reason.

CORNERBACK

Neal Colzie. Another stalwart from the 1973 defense, this All-American was a great kick and punt returner as well. There are plenty of other talented CB's from which to choose, but we think Mr. Colzie edges them out for the second CB spot.

SAFETY

Jack Tatum. The national defensive MVP of 1970, yet another Super Soph and 1968 National Champion. He was a two-time All-American and went on to a fabulous pro career. No one hit harder, no one was faster, only no one his size was stronger. You couldn't design a better strong safety, cornerback, monsterback or linebacker. Along with Jim Parker, Orlando Pace and Randy Gradishar, he might be the premier football player in Ohio State history. They just don't come any better.

SAFETY

Tim Fox. A very difficult decision. Do you take another strong safety and three-time All-American Mike Doss, or the all time interception king Mike Sensibaugh (yet another Super Soph)? We'll say that Mr. Fox edges them out for the final spot. An All-American and member of the 1973 defense, Tim Fox had an equally successful pro career when he was done playing for the Scarlet and Gray.

KICKER

Mike Nugent. Never has Ohio State had a kicker with such range and accuracy. Ever.

PUNTER

Tom Tupa. Three-time All-American Tom Skladany is an acceptable replacement, but Tom Tupa was an All-American in an age when kickers and punters were finally out of the Stone Age.

The Authors on Politics: Alexandre Dumas and Gun Control

2008-07-11T04:57:00.001-07:00

From time to time, the humble blogger will yield some space to an author of suitable note so that this esteemed man or woman of letters may express an opinion on a political topic. Today, we allow Alexandre Dumas to lecture us on gun control, from his work The Count of Monte Cristo as translated by Robin Buss and published by Penguin Books.

“Franz,” said Albert, “we have here a splendid adventure ready made for us. All we have to do is fill our carriage with pistols, blunderbusses and repeating rifles. Luigi Vampa will try to seize us, and we will seize him. We’ll bring him back to Rome, offer him as a token of our respect to His Holiness, who will ask what he can do to recompense us for such a great service. Then all we have to do is ask for a coach and two horses from his stables and we can see the carnival by coach. Apart from which, the people of Rome will probably be so grateful to us that we shall be crowned on the Capitol and proclaimed, like Curtius and Horatius Cocles, saviours of the fatherland.”
The expression on Signor Pastrini’s face, while Albert was pursuing this train of thought, would be impossible to describe.
“And where, for a start,” Franz asked Albert, “would you find these pistols, these blunderbusses and these rifles which you want to cram into our carriage?”
“The fact is I have no such things in my arsenal,” he said, “because even my dagger was confiscated at Terracina. What about you?”
“The same was done to me at Aqua Pendente.”
“Well, there now!” Albert said, lighting his second cigar from the stub of the first. “My dear host, do you realize how convenient this regulation is for thieves – so much so that I suspect it was introduced in collusion with them?”

Thank you, Alexandre, for your opinion. And thanks to the millions of readers who come to this site every day. We’ll see you next time for The Authors on Politics.

Libertarians and Moving (Occasionally referred to as Immigration)

2008-07-09T16:10:00.000-07:00

Allow me, if you will, to pose a question and then, not to answer it, but to describe the process by which the question might be answered and in doing so shed some light on a related debate within the libertarian community. This unfortunate debate is curious because libertarian principles are quite clear on the issue, and yet many confirmed libertarians with impressive pedigrees have bungled the thing. Perhaps the humble blogger’s efforts will be of some assistance in correcting the errors of certain of our number who have done so much for the cause of liberty and yet stumble in the most maladroit fashion whenever the topic in question arises.

My question is this: May a man who lives at spot A be justly permitted to travel along path B and begin to live at spot C? The libertarian cannot yet answer this question, because there are up to seven further questions he must ask before he can deliver a verdict. When he has obtained accurate answers to these questions, the answer produces itself quite naturally from the core belief of libertarians. The seven questions are as follows:

1. Is path B unowned?

If B is unowned, we can conclude that, at the least, the man may be permitted to move along it and we can skip to question 4. If it is owned, we must proceed to question 2.

2. Does the man own path B?

If this answer is yes, we again conclude that the man is justly permitted to move along it and may skip question 4. If the answer is no, we must ask the third question.

3. Does the owner of path B give permission to the man to move along it?

An answer of yes to any of the previous questions leads us to conclude that the man is well within his rights to move along the path in question. Only an answer of no to all three questions forces us to conclude that the man may not move along B and may be, if necessary, forcibly prohibited from doing so. The second part of the original question must now be investigated, and the three questions are of the same form as the first three with a different focus.

4. Is spot C unowned?
5. Does the man own spot C?
6. Does the owner of spot C give permission to the man to live there?

Again, an answer of yes to any of these last three questions leads to the conclusion that the man may be permitted to live at C, and only an answer of no to each would morally, if not physically, prohibit the man from living there. There is only more question which must be asked.

7. Is the man free from any contractual obligations which he has voluntarily entered into under which he is prohibited from moving along path B and/or living at spot C?

An answer of yes once again leaves the man free to effect his move, while a no leads us to conclude that the man may be prevented from the move or must be made to pay a penalty for breach of contract should he go ahead with it. There is nothing left for the libertarian to ask. Those yet seduced by the specious charms of statism are, in concocting reasons why a man may be prevented from this hypothetical translocation, limited only by their own creativity. They may, for instance, choose any clause from the constitution of whatever government claims to rule the territory they happen to be in and, after having pummeled the original intent out of the clause, connect to it, by the most absurd and abstruse reasoning, the issue at hand (My favorite example of this was the dissenting opinion of Justice (sic) Ruth Bader Ginsburg in a case in which the Federal Government of the United States sought to prosecute rape crimes under the pretext that a) the Constitution provided for the Federal Government to regulate interstate commerce and b) rape was positively correlated with decreases in interstate trade. Never mind that the intent of the Commerce Clause was to open up free trade amongst the states, and never mind that prosecuting rape was not actually regulating trade). The libertarian, however, is restrained by the decency of his moral reason and, if he has gotten answers to his question, will go no further. Essentially, the issue may be reduced to a single sentence: go where you will, but do not trespass.

It is very instructive to point out the questions that were not asked. What language does the man speak? What shade is his skin? Will he corrupt my children with piñatas and soccer balls if he moves next door? Most of all, is there a group of thugs who call themselves government officials pretending that there is a national border that bisects path B? None of these questions does the libertarian ask, because they have no bearing on the ethics of a man moving to a new place.

For someone who has already accepted libertarian ethics and principles, the issue is very simple and very easy. Why, in that case, do so many libertarians get it wrong? How can men and women of anarchist proclivities allow the putative presence of a national border to influence their thinking? I say putative presence when perhaps I should say dubious presence, because the men and women who stand around with guns where these borders are reputed to be are engaged in the same sort of fanciful playacting as so many children lining up to see Santa Claus. It is not my intent in this post to argue anarchy to the good reader, merely to point out the disquieting absurdity of a market anarchist, anarcho-capitalist, libertarian – call it what you will – who agrees with me about governments, using the excuse of a national border to forcibly prevent what he terms immigration but what is really just moving.

Two influential thinkers have no doubt exerted a great influence in this area and have obliged those of us with clearer thoughts on the matter to engage in cleaning up their mess when we might otherwise direct our efforts to more fruitful enterprises. The first is Murray Rothbard, an otherwise impeccable giant of anarcho-capitalism who spent the vast majority of his life arguing for open borders or, more accurately, no borders and who, towards the end of his life, regrettably showed signs of succumbing to a grouchy conservatism that thankfully seems to have done little damage to his legacy save for on the topic of moving, which he came to call immigration when it involved crossing those national borders that he did not believe in. The second is an extant Teutonic scholar, perhaps even more resolutely anarchist than Rothbard, who currently resides in Nevada, goes by the name Hans Hermann Hoppe, and spends a portion of his time berating the United States government for allowing him in the country. These men cast long shadows indeed, as they should, but I fear that, in falling under their sway, certain of our brethren have been ensnared by reputation rather than convinced by reason. At least this is the more pleasant explanation, because permeating this issue is the unpleasant fact that, unless the humble blogger is mistaken, moving did not divide the purer libertarians until a critical mass of the immigrants were brown.

Stephan Kinsella, a prominent anarchist who has devoted ample time to arguing against the government monopolization of law and law enforcement, has likened the prohibition of entry for some would be movers to a municipal government owning a pool and restricting access to town residents. I have heard no good arguments in favor of moving control, but this is the least bad that anti-moving anarchists have come up with, though the spuriousness of its seeming plausibility is not difficult to reveal. The custom of public pseudo ownership can indeed make ambiguous certain concerns which under private ownership would be perfectly clear, and it is in this miasma that the anarchist I referred to conceals the warts of his argument.

The solution to public ownership, for the anarcho-capitalist, is privatization, for clearly delineated property rights allow one to ascertain what is permissible and what is not. When everyone owns something, effectively no one does, and control falls to the oligarchs at the top. This control is less execrable the more it imitates the market. Of course, one can never be sure if the decisions of the oligarchs are actually imitating what would have happened on the market, but sometimes one can take a reasonable guess. With the public swimming pool, sustained by taxes and to which town residents are granted free access, it is not unreasonable to imagine private owners restricting use of certain pools to dues-paying nearby residents, and so the admission policy is less intolerable.

But imagine if the entire world were privatized and government disappeared. Anyone who thinks that all, say, Mexicans would be boxed up in Mexico by a coordinated policy under which all land elsewhere was homesteaded and all property owners agreed to deny Mexicans transit rights on streets and refused to sell or rent any parcels of land to them is engaging in self delusion. It is not intelligently deniable that under market anarchy there would be an influx of “foreigners” into the territory comprising the United States, especially if the other nations remained statist and only the territory comprising the modern United States went anarchist. An anarchist who opposes moving, whether in any case or merely beyond a certain number or rate, must ask himself why he wishes to use government force of arms to thwart what the market would surely produce.

Herr Hoppe, in his argument in favor of allowing government to control moving, claims that in a natural market order there would be very little movement from one cultural region to another. This contention, confidently put forth by Herr Hoppe, seems less evident to your humble blogger, but no matter. At least our German immigrant friend recognizes this basic right of movement so long as no trespassing has occurred. His analysis gets muddled when he says that under a statist system, with respect to movement, there is either forced exclusion or forced integration. Allowing moving forces residents to integrate with people they might not otherwise choose to, and we must concede the point that moving, taken with certain "civil rights" laws does produce a forced integration, but there is one fundamental question we must ask ourselves: does forced exclusion or forced integration necessitate more government involvement? To ask the question, as Walter Block is fond of saying, is to answer it. There is no feasible way to keep out immigrants who wish to get into the United States, and any such efforts entail expensive and useless walls, coerced detentions at gun points, forced deportations that split apart families and quite possibly ID cards to prove you are not an immigrant. On the other hand, forced integration entails... pardon me while I recover from a bout of the willies... meeting people of a different culture. I respect the insight that government involvement and stewardship of property, if one may be permitted to so abuse the term as to use it to refer to government management of anything, makes issues difficult. But short of a sudden turn to an anarchic order, I prefer to see my government do as little as possible, and with respect to moving it is quite clear what that means.

Libertarian principles are clear, and their application is generally lucid too. Though there are some murkier areas, moving is very plainly not one of them. The libertarian position is obvious, and the anarchist who opposes moving or supports government curtailment of moving, much like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, commits the most sickeningly comical acts of mental gymnastics in order to twist libertarian ethics into a shape that permits one to prohibit movement across a national border the existence of which these same libertarian ethics deny. There has been quite enough of this nonsense for my taste.

Does GDP Really Measure Economic Growth?

2008-06-18T16:40:00.000-07:00

Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, is the commonly accepted measuring stick for economic growth. This is not a great argument in favor of its use, merely an acknowledgement that most people are satisfied with it. Given that bleeding a patient was once the commonly accepted remedy for all sorts of illnesses, we must conclude that the standard way of doing things is not necessarily the correct way of doing them; we must judge things on their merits, not on their popularity. Despite its universal appeal, due to its simplicity no doubt, your humble blogger would like to argue that GDP is a poor measurement for the strength of an economy.

Before we can choose the right measuring stick, we must understand what economic activity is and what is its purpose. The answer is very simple: economic activity is the actions humans take to achieve their goals. Its purpose is nothing less than happiness. An economist might say that human beings labor to produce so that they may consume and increase their utility, but that is just a fancy way of saying that people try to be happy. Even the heroine addict who knows that another injection will only further his problems down the road is still choosing happiness when he sticks the needle in whatever arteries are still soft enough to penetrate. He is simply giving more importance to current utility than future utility. Humans act, we may conclude with the force of unassailable logic, to increase their own happiness, even if they occasionally misjudge, or even if that happiness comes from an action that might be called altruistic. The very act of choosing something is, ipso facto, proof that, at the time of the decision, they preferred the consequences they believed would result from that action than of any other action that they could think to take.

When we examine GDP, we see very quickly how poor a judge of economic soundness it is. GDP is the total of all purchasing, which for the United States right now is about $12 trillion. Unfortunately, there are a lot of purchases which do not represent the freely chosen actions of individuals whose money is used for the purchasing. For instance, it is unlikely that an individual would spend his money on, say, a missile that can be launched to kill people who otherwise are potential customers for whatever work he does, and yet military purchases constitute a large chunk of GDP in many countries, and nowhere a larger chunk than in the United States. This would seem to be an economic loss for a number of reasons, and yet it is recorded as an economic gain by GDP. Similarly, it is certain that few individuals would, of their own accord, spend their money to sustain an agency which would then tell them what they could do with their property, prohibiting some actions and compelling others, and yet when the EPA spends money on its operations, it is included in the GDP.

But it is not a simple matter of eliminating all government operations and expenditures from GDP to arrive at an accurate rating for the economy. For one thing, government performs services that some people wish to have, even if it does it poorly and inefficiently. Let us say that a government spends $100,000 on a police force, something whose services we can assume most people would purchase on their own if not forced to by the governmental system. Should this $100,000 count fully towards the GDP? What if the police force is not managed in the way that best suits people’s needs (for instance, the police spend most of their time writing tickets for silly traffic offenses rather than patrolling neighborhoods to prevent muggings)? What portion of that $100,000 should count towards the GDP? Even if the government is doing the job partially right, should the lost opportunity to have a more customer oriented police force count against the GDP? If so, by how much? What if the people would freely purchase only $50,000 of police services? What if free individual purchases of police protection would result in a $200,000 police industry? In any of these cases, how can one decide by what amount the GDP should be adjusted?

Another problem with discounting all government purchases is that, though it may go too far in some areas like police protection, this discount may not go far enough in others. There are many private activities which have been spurred on by government regulations, even if the government is not directly generating inefficient economic activity. Microsoft, having learned its lesson after the recent anti-trust debacle, now employs full time lawyers and lobbyists in Washington D.C., whereas before they restricted their activity to business and some charitable contributions. The salaries of these lobbyists count towards GDP, and yet these salaries represent lost opportunities to invest in something more productive to human happiness, rather than as a defensive measure against their competitors efforts to initiate another anti-trust lawsuit. The construction of roads is another example, for the highways of the United States are almost certainly more extensive than they would be if people had to pay every time they used a highway. As it stands now, drivers are subsidized by non-drivers because everyone pays for the roads through taxes. Construction companies lobby hard for new road projects, whether they are needed or not. If, in a given year, a government spends $1 billion on road construction and maintenance, should it all count towards GDP, even if some of the roads are unnecessary and that labor could have gone to something else? How do we account for the potential park land that has been turned into a highway? How do we account for all the public transportation which is now not viable because of greater flight to the suburbs subsidized by taxes? Given $1 billion of road construction in a year, what number do we add to GDP? Certainly some of the roads are necessary, but how many?

Yet another problem comes from the fact that the purchase amount of a good or service does not reflect the happiness it gives to varying individuals. If two men purchase a CD for $12.99, the GDP figure grows by $25.98. But let us suppose that one man was willing to spend as much as $145.00 dollars on the purchase, and then, upon listening to it, discovers that he likes the CD even more than he expected to. The other man was never going to spend more than $13.50 on the same CD, and then discovers that he likes it less than he thought he would. Economic activity is about happiness, both purchases contribute the same amount to GDP, and yet the amount of happiness produced by each purchase is very different.

Further confounding attempts at accurate measurement is the fact that some activities which produce happiness do not involve any exchange of money and therefore go unrecorded by GDP. Leisure time, for instance, is a consumer good that is so ignored, and yet it brings much happiness. What adjustment should be made to GDP for leisure time? Even if such an adjustment were not arbitrary, how would we handle a situation where leisure time goes down because people voluntarily work more? The economy would take a hit, on paper, because of the decreased leisure time, and yet people are happier, having voluntarily chosen to work more, either because they are making more money or because they suddenly enjoy their jobs. One man is happiest working twenty hours a week and living poorly but with ample leisure time, while another is happiest working eighty hours a week with little leisure time but a large salary. If we incorporate leisure time into our measurement, it must necessarily split the difference between the two extremes, and yet both men have found the arrangement that suits them the most. By what figure do we adjust GDP?

Criminal actions are also problematic and come in two varieties. There are private criminals whose actions increase their own happiness but violate someone else’s property rights, and there are organized institutions of criminals, called governments, whose members violate people’s property rights and, in doing so, increase their own happiness. There are also private citizens who, though not exactly criminals, benefit from the criminal activity of their government and see their utility increased (there are those who would take the implausible position that governments are not criminal, but such an argument cannot be logically sustained. A government is an institution which compels its citizens to turn over a portion of their money/ property to it upon penalty of imprisonment, and then, after having compelled the purchase of its services, does not allow any competitors, upon the same penalty, to provide the same services. Regardless of whether the government’s goals are parasitic in nature or benevolent, they are plainly criminal in execution). An example of the third kind would be the drivers mentioned earlier who can enjoy driving privileges while dumping the cost of these privileges on non-drivers. Even if their happiness increases more than the unhappiness of the non-drivers, and even if we could somehow accurately and meaningfully measure this net increase in happiness, should we really increase the GDP figure for something that is, in essence, criminal? The government extorts money from one group to benefit another; why should this be recorded as a positive gain? An example of the first kind mentioned above would be a rapist. A rapist may enjoy what he does, and we can imagine scenarios where his enjoyment exceeds the pain he causes his victim, but even if we could somehow measure this, why would we want to represent our economy as being stronger because some violator of a woman’s property rights in her own body had occasion to force himself on a victim? Of the second kind, examples are abundant, but they run into the same trouble. Perhaps a Senator’s happiness increases when a new regulation restricts our freedom, or a President and his supporters enjoy the war he is conducting, but this is no reason to claim that the economy is stronger.

GDP measures purchases; the purpose of economic activity is happiness. There is some area of overlap here, but ultimately GDP is a ridiculous measure of economic growth. In fact, economic growth cannot be measured, but there are a few things worth keeping track of. Since it is axiomatic that a person works to increase his happiness, we can assume that the freer he is to work towards this end, the more happiness he is likely to achieve. Therefore, rather than measure GDP growth, we should attempt to track government depredations on our lives. The freer we are, the happier we are likely to be. Criminal activity of any sort should also be noted, as well as activities taken to reduce this activity. A lock for your door does not increase your happiness, it protects the things that make you happy. If the lock were unnecessary, effort into lock-making could be reduced and the excess labor transferred to a more productive endeavor. GDP is nothing more than a curiosity, at least as far as the economy is concerned. The important figures are three: freedom, criminal activity and the resultant anti-criminal activity. We are better off when the first one is higher and the latter two are lower. Whether these three things can be accurately measured is another matter, but they are the only three things that matter with regard to economics.

Movie Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

2008-06-05T19:26:00.000-07:00

It has been a long time since we heard from Indiana Jones. In the interim, Harrison Ford changed, the world changed, cinema changed, but Steven Spielberg set out to deliver a movie as if it were old times. He waited nearly two decades to film the fourth installment, but if the wait between sequels is a positive boon for a movie maker, I would suggest he did not wait long enough. Perhaps he should have waited an additional two hundred years.

Set in 1957, when Indiana Jones would have been about as old as Harrison Ford is now, the fourth movie of the series replaces Nazis with Soviets, and the bulk of its action takes place in South America. The evil Commies are looking for a weapon, just like Hitler was in the two previous movies that matter, and they think they have found it with a strange artifact, thousands of years old, made of crystal and carved by unknown methods into the shape of a vaguely humanoid skull. Indiana gets caught up in all the fuss, and along the way meets up with some characters from his past while performing death defying stunts and such.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a diseased movie whose manifold infirmities have caused dozens of symptoms which ravage the celluloid. One disease is certainly George Lucas, who, if the tales are true, had too much of a hand in developing the movie. Another disease would be a rich, successful director with little reason to push himself and switch off the auto pilot. A third sickness would be a certain actress who one would swear has not acted since 1981 and failed to get all the rust off before stepping in front of the camera.

The symptoms of these diseases, to paraphrase Shakespeare, maintain such a politic state of evil that they will allow no good parts to intermingle. I say this with only the faintest trace of hyperbole, because in the entirety of the film there is almost nothing worth praising. The first act is an attempt to squeeze every single iconic fifties cliché and scrap of popular history into about a twenty minute time period. Other than Marilyn Monroe getting her panties revealed by an updraft, I think they managed to include them all. I found it distracting and entirely too cutesy. The first three movies were set in the thirties, and that was about it. Costumes fit the time period, at least as far as I could tell, but they never made a fetish of it. For some reason, the filmmakers decided that Harrison Ford, in the fourth film, needed to experience the entire decade in less than a half hour, and the result is distracting and entirely inappropriate for setting the mood of an Indiana Jones movie, on the order of a laugh track for Terminator II.

The characters that we knew from Raiders of the Lost Ark are gone, replaced by caricatures, as if lifted from a third rate sitcom. The banter that passes between them is as uninspiring and hackneyed as can be imagined, with entire exchanges bereft of the slightest mark of distinction, the merest hint that this is a conversation that belongs to these characters and not to any of a million underdeveloped roles languishing, never to be produced, on dusty shelves around Hollywood. These words are not the dialog of artistic inspiration, but merely an average of all the other conversations on like topics, an average that fits as well in your film as mine, but belongs in no film at all. That David Koepp, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, men with a combined total of over a century of experience in the industry, should make characters and scenes and dialog like this at this stage in their careers pleases me very little.

If David Koepp could not muster the energy to fashion a decent script, one can hardly credit Spielberg with a significantly better effort. His action sequences are glossed over, run through with ease, and Harrison Ford and the other actors take their cue from him. At no time does one feel that Indiana Jones is actually in danger, like we did during the magisterial truck sequence in the first movie, or during any one of dozens of sequences from Raiders and Grail. There is no effort to delve into the action and make it feel exhilarating. It feels as safe and secure as if it had been rehearsed a hundred times, like a dance number in a Broadway musical.

There is a moment when Indiana and Mutt (Shia Labeouf) are riding a motorcycle and being chased by bad guys. Indiana gets pulled from the motorcycle into a car, Mutt steers the bike to the other side of the car, and Indy pops out the other window and back onto the bike. It is accomplished in about five seconds with maybe five or six different shots and has no greater effect than that of a moderately clever sight gag. Contrast this with the aforementioned truck fight in the first movie, which is its own miniature film with a good beginning, middle and end. Along the way we feel every bump and bruise, we feel Indy being dragged along the ground, we fret when the grill on the front begins to bend and we see no way out for him. But this can only be achieved with an effort, which apparently Mr. Spielberg could not be bothered to spare.

As damaging as anything else about the movie is the lack of restraint on display, a lack which makes mystery and awe wither. When the credits roll after Raiders, the Ark is still an enigma, still awe-inspiring, still not completely knowable. Crystal Skull manages to turn its artifact and the beings behind it into something mundane. Too much is revealed about them; too much is made explicit and obvious. What a director does not show is every bit as important as what he does show, and Mr. Spielberg did not restrain himself enough.

This problem of restraint is also evident with the action sequences which, when shown in the trailers, made me uneasy from the outset. When Indiana Jones was entertaining back in the 1980's, it was with far more modest action pieces that were marvelously well directed at their best. Spielberg even managed to create a successful sequel with the third movie, but the intervening years have done something to him. Where before the action was grounded in a certain amount of believability, it is now absurdly exaggerated, well beyond the bounds of good taste. Pushed to a certain extent, an action sequence can be thrilling. Pushed too far, it becomes commonplace and boring. The trap of the sequel has ensnared even Steven Spielberg, who, in trying to outdo himself, has instead undone himself. Crystal Skull will take its place next to Alien Resurrection on the shelf of sequels that, I am prepared to swear, never happened.

Final Grade: D+

Why Do Women Live Longer Than Men, or How Healthy Is Your Porn?

2008-05-09T10:52:00.000-07:00

With few exceptions among the nations of the world, females live longer than males, generally around four to seven years longer. Why this might be is a subject that is still debated and there most likely are multiple factors. One possible reason occurred to your humble blogger not too long ago, a reason which he had never before heard expressed by another and which he tentatively calls his own. An article about a scientific study sparked the idea, and now a new study seems to lend some important support to it.

Among the commonly listed reasons for the greater female longevity is the double X chromosomes that women possess. As I recall, there was evidence that women's bodies choose the healthier of the two X chromosomes to be the dominant member of the pair, whereas men have no other X to choose. Scientists point to species of birds where the male has a double sex chromosome and the female has only one of the two kinds. In these species males are reported to live longer. Since the X chromosome in the male comes from the mother and the female gets an X from both biological parents, it seems to me that there is a simple way to test this hypothesis, though I am ignorant as to whether this has been done. Couples in which the female is longer lived than the male should produce offspring of both genders that are long lived. Couples in which the male is longer lived than the female should produce long lived daughters but shorter lived sons. Obviously, any such study would want to focus on couples where both the woman and the man expired of old age or complications due to it rather than, say, a job-related accident. This would give us couples in which, if the hypothesis is correct, the relative healthiness of the X chromosome might be gauged and one possessed a healthier X chromosome than the other. Now, a long lived female, accordingly, might still have a weaker X to pass on, but over a large enough sample size the effect of the healthier chromosome should show itself if there is any validity to the theory.

Another commonly cited cause is that females have a greater responsibility in child rearing, a responsibility that reaches even into the last years of their lives with grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The reported longevity of most apes shows that the sex that takes care of the children - females in most cases, males in some - lives longer. Whether or not this is relevant to humans has not been conclusively determined.

Other reasons given include lifestyle - far more males die from risk taking and from accidents on the job - bad luck - more males are murder victims and hit by lightning - and stress from more physically and emotionally strenuous careers that males tend to have. Some even claim that the greater amount of funding that goes towards research into women's health issues over men's is causing the difference. All of these reasons seem plausible, and none excludes any other, but there is one other that your humble blogger would like to suggest as a very real possibility.

A few months ago your humble blogger came across a study which found that women are attractive more often than men, and that it doesn't have to do with greater options with makeup and clothing. This was immediately obvious to me, as I definitely find myself attracted to women more often than men, but the point here is that attractive couples tend to have more daughters than sons. Though this at first seems unlikely, the idea is really not ridiculous at all. Since a female's body is going to invest time and resources and effort into 'growing' a child, it does not seem at all absurd that evolution would have bestowed on it a way of choosing a child who was more likely to succeed with the qualities it was going to have (there is a similar effect for males. High achievers tend to have more sons, and evidence for this can be seen with the American presidents, whose sons outnumber their daughters by about 2 to 1). Perhaps the pH level of her body slightly alters, making it easier for the female sperm to get to the egg, or perhaps it is more likely to abort male zygotes before they even take hold. However it accomplishes it, attractive couples do seem to have more female offspring, and it is not hard to believe that beauty does more for a woman than a man. Anyone who disagrees need do no more than look at the salaries of female models as compared to male models to get an idea of how in demand female beauty is. Of course pulchritude is, to certain extent, subjective, but there are some good objective indicators. One is the extent to which one side of the face mirrors the other, and in studies, highly symmetrical faces are always rated as more attractive by participants.

But how does a woman's body know that the recently injected sperm inside her are going to make for beautiful children. I would suggest that it has something to do with the very reason that some people are more attractive than others in the first place: health. It all comes back to Evolution. We are driven to have sex (or at least men are, which is why beautiful people have girls. Women are sometimes driven to it when the Tylenol is working). Any individual who is attracted to, and therefore more likely to have carnal relations with, other healthy individuals is more likely to have offspring who are healthy and therefore who live to pass on their genes. Consequently, the individuals most likely to have children that pass their genes on are the ones who are attracted to the exterior markers that indicate inner health (one of these being the symmetric face, it would seem). These exterior markers, in a species which develops language, come to be called beauty. This is significant for several reasons. One, it means that porn is about health. Two, it means that if effective aspirin had been around 200,000 years ago, there might be more good looking men today. Three, it means that women have only themselves to blame when they go to a bar and can't find any appetizing prospects (if you put out a bit more easily, your great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great- granddaughters might thank you). Finally, it means that in tending to select offspring who will get the most out of the traits they are going to have, which means in selecting more females to be attractive, a woman's body is also selecting females to be healthier.

It has long been known that women have slightly stronger immune systems than men, baby girls have fewer problems when they are born and have lower infant mortality, and now a new study cited on LewRockwell.com seems to give more support to the humble blogger's hypothesis. Apparently, beautiful people are healthier than fuglies. It is difficult to say how much impact this has, but it seems reasonable that longevity will be affected by it to some extent. Indeed, it is difficult to see how it could avoid having an effect.

It used to bother the humble blogger that he might be destined to punch out a bit earlier than if he were a female. If I have an average life span, I will get to watch five or six fewer Ohio State/Michigan games because of the gender I wound up with, but it is now apparent that it is all for a greater purpose. Friends, Americans, countrymen, lend me your ears. Let us keep our porn healthy and our females beautiful, even if we have to miss a few football seasons to do it. That's a sacrifice that I am willing to make. Did you hear that, ladies? I will die early to make you beautiful. Now take off that slip and put your ankles behind your head while I turn the camera on.

Global Warming: Laughing My Ass Off!

2008-05-06T19:06:00.000-07:00

What is a scientist to do when his theory is bunk, is perhaps five years away from being generally accepted as bunk, and he therefore runs the risk of having his lips ripped from the public teat as government grants dry up? This is the problem facing many scientists now, as their beloved theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming - or B.S. for short - is entering its death throes. B.S. was fed to us in the 1980's by some dude named Hansen (I think) from NASA, and suddenly the moral crusade was on. The problem was, there was very little evidence behind B.S.

CO2 had risen during the 20th century, and its rise, to a very modest degree, coincided with the rise in temperature, and it seemed reasonable to believe that human activities could be contributing to the increase in CO2. But that is a metric mile from scientific certainty. Unable to test things in the lab, scientists created computer models that told us that B.S. was real, that humans were indeed warming the planet. The problem was this: B.S. was supported only by the computer models - plus a dubious and loose coincidence of 20th century temperatures - and the computer models were based on B.S. It were as if someone had decided that cheddar caused cancer, designed a computer model based on this assumption, and when the computer model then fed him back the assumption he had already made about cheddar and cancer, he proclaimed his case proven.

Of course, there were some bumps along the way. For instance, the computer models of the eighties were proving quite poor at prediction as nineties data came in. But we were told that the models were being improved all the time, despite the fact that not a single one of them handled the water cycle accurately. Finally, in 1999, some ice corp data did indicate a close relationship between CO2 and temperature. Some scientists reminded their brethren that correlation does not prove causation, but they were largely ignored. After all, when the public teat is shoved down to your tonsils, it is hard to focus on things like good science.

1999 proved to be the high point for B.S. doomsayers. They finally had some evidence, and even though their computer models were still off, at times performing worse at predicting than a table of random numbers, the correlation between CO2 and temperature gave the faithful cause to hope that the earth might indeed be about to exterminate mankind. But since 1999 it has been all down hill for the believer of B.S.

The ocean, just as it had done in the early 1980's, suddenly lost a huge portion of the heat that had built up in it, and no model predicted it, and no scientist could explain it. 1998 proved to be the high point for temperature, and in the decade following temperatures have been stable, possibly even beginning to fall as of 2007. A further examination of the ice corp data, using more refined tools, showed that the correlation between CO2 and temperature detected earlier suggested a cause/effect relationship that was the exact opposite of what had been supposed by B.S.: CO2 went up in response to rises in temperature (probably because a warmer ocean holds less CO2), and not the other way around. James Hansen was forced to admit that his temperature data for the US had overstated heating and had to reassess things, the result being that 1998 was no longer the warmest year on record. He is now currently reassessing South American data too. Global warming was detected on several other bodies in our own solar system, including Mars and Jupiter, suggesting a cause other than SUV's. Different methods, more precise ones, of measuring temperature other than land based thermometers detected far less warming. Hundreds of land based measuring sites were surveyed, and only 4% were found to be up to specs with regard to where such sites should be and how they should be operated. An amazing 76% were given grades of 4 or 5, the lowest grades on the five point scale. Further work showed that the equations used to correct for the Urban Heat Island effect were not adequate, and sometimes even accentuated the warming beyond what creeping urbanization had done. The oceans were found not to be warming, and previous data was seriously called into question. Finally, an atmospheric survey showed that no greater warming had occurred in the troposphere, which is a problem because greater warming of the troposphere, which subsequently warms the surface, IS WHAT GREENHOUSE WARMING IS. If there is no greater warming in the troposphere, on the order of three times greater as all the models predict, than B.S. is nothing more than bullshit.

Other theories, crazy ideas that the temperature of the earth might be more influenced by the sun than by what type of car you drive, predicted that earth would start to cool sometime around... now. So we return to the question posed above: what is a scientist to do when his theory is bunk, is perhaps five years away from being generally accepted as bunk, and he therefore runs the risk of having his lips ripped from the public teat as government grants dry up?

We now have our answer: he starts to bullshit some more. Now, despite the fact that none of the models which were supposed to have proven global warming predict it, we are supposed to believe that B.S. might be put on hold for a few years, at least until 2015. Obviously, this is an attempt to put off the day of reckoning, to keep sucking on the public teat for a few more years, to keep alive a theory that earth must warm even while the earth is cooling.

For my part, I am laughing off my buttocks. There was, for a brief moment in time, one bit of evidence in favor of B.S. Apart from that there were some computers models which proved that if you base a computer model on a theory, the computer model will agree with the theory. Billions of dollars and two decades later, B.S. has nothing to show for it. But that won't stop the true believers.

No matter. The more sensible among us can sit back and laugh at them.

Ohio State Football All 2000's Team

2008-05-02T11:17:00.000-07:00

With the horrors of the 1990's behind us, Buckeye fans were eager for a brighter future, and Coach Jim Tressel gave us just that. With three appearances in national title games, with a 2002 national championship, as well as multiple Big Ten titles and a 2005 class which produced five first round draft picks, the program seems to be back where Woody would have wanted it. For the first time since the 1970's, Ohio State has won the decade against Michigan, with two seasons remaining, and looks like the favorite to win the 2008 national championship.

Though there is still more to come before the decade is finished, already an impressive array of talent fills the All-Decade team. Nothing is set in stone, but here is a look at the best of the decade so far.

BACKFIELD

QB Troy Smith - Heisman Trophy winner and All-American, no one else can hope to match him in this time span.

FB Jamar Martin - Branden Joe was a very good runner, but Martin was more of a complete package.

TB Chris Wells - 1,600+ yards in 2007. And miles to go before he sleeps, and miles to go before he sleeps.

OFFENSIVE LINE

OL Nick Mangold - Called the best Center prospect to come out of college in the last fifteen years, an All-American who jumped right into the starting position in the NFL.

OL LeCharles Bentley - Either Bentley or Mangold would have to move to guard, but neither one can be left off the All-Decade team. An All-American.

OL Alex Boone - Another year to go, his agility is reminiscent of Pace and Hicks and his strength is unquestioned.

OL Kirk Barton - An All-American and part of the powerful 2007 O-Line.

OL Alex Stepanovich - A number of talented athletes could go in this last spot, including Datish and Olivea, but we'll go with Stepanovich because... just because.

RECEIVERS

WR Michael Jenkins - Strong career with great numbers to back it and a good attitude as well. No relation to the CB with the same last name.

WR Anthony Gonzalez - There is plenty of competition for the second receiver spot, but Gonzalez was stronger than either Holmes or Ginn and was just as fast. Keep an eye out for Robiskie in 2008.

TE Ben Hartsock - At a position which Ohio State does not generally stack with talent, Hartsock was a solid performer in all aspects.

DEFENSIVE LINE

DE Vernon Gholston - A physical specimen non-pareil, one wonders what would have happened with a senior season. All-American and #6 pick in the NFL draft.

DE Will Smith - Is beginning to dominate in the pros like he did for OSU, helping them win a national title. Big Ten Defensive MVP and All-American.

DT Quinn Pitcock - An All-American who caused no end of troubles for offenses as he charged up the middle.

DT Tim Anderson - Never attracted too much notice, but did great work for the Buckeyes' in 2002 and 2003. Continues to perform well in the NFL.

LINEBACKERS

LB A.J. Hawk - The best LB to don the Scarlet and Gray since Chris Spielman. Described by some as a force of nature. Two time All-American and Butkus award snub.

LB James Laurinaitis - Let's see what happens in 2008; Hawk's position at the top is not entirely secure. This one will almost certainly be another three time All-American for the Buckeyes.

LB Matt Wilhelm - An All-American that the 'experts' said could not make it in the pros. He is now having the last laugh. An integral part of the 2002 national champions.

DEFENSIVE BACKFIELD

CB Malcolm Jenkins - Holds his own with the best Buckeyes of all time, and he still has a senior season to impress us some more. No relation to the WR with the same last name.

CB Nate Clements - A tough call with Gamble waiting in the wings, but Clements was a lock down corner, and he is now getting, in the NFL, the recognition he should have gotten in college.

S Mike Doss - Three time All-American? Say no more.

S Donte Whitner - Got some All-American recognition, but the NFL valued him a bit more accurately. Will Allen, Nate Salley and Donnie Nickey are acceptable alternatives.

Bathroom Etiquette

2008-04-23T14:38:00.001-07:00

It has recently come to my attention that there is a socially deviant behavior prominent here in these United States which wants a code of etiquette to smooth out the friction of our interactions. I am writing of the phenomenon of talking to oneself in a public restroom. Like masturbation, nose-picking and listening to Air Supply, talking to oneself is a benign enough activity in which many engage but which no one wants anyone else to think they engage in. The humble blogger himself engages in two of the three above activities but has the sense to do it only when he is quite sure that he is alone. And there is the rub.

The other day your humble blogger was occupied with a certain activity which is similar to the ones listed above in that it is best done in private but differs from them in that there is no way to deny that one partakes in it. If one is to live, one must eat. And if one must eat, one must occasionally visit a restroom, and once in a while there is no other option than a public restroom. Having chosen the stall at the far end, I sat quite alone, taking care of business with the expertise that comes from decades of practice, when suddenly the door burst open, announcing that company had arrived. This is only to be expected in the oft-frequented tile surroundings in which I found myself, so, perfectly unperturbed, I carried on in silent determination. What was not to be expected was that the newcomer would begin to engage himself in a half-coherent conversation.

I do not know exactly what the discussion was about, only that the man felt passionately about it and the same sentence was repeated several times. He may have been practicing for a play, but I think it more likely he had just had an argument and was going over the line he should have said, but which had not occurred to him until too late. So far as I could tell, he never once visited a stall but went right to the sink to wash his hands, beginning his monologue as soon as the water was flowing. When his hands were washed and dried he began to pace back and forth with short, furious steps, whirling about when he reached a wall to walk in the opposite direction, all the while muttering to himself.

The good reader can imagine my condition at this point. There was no way to extricate myself from the situation. Possessing a kindly heart, I had no wish to embarrass the poor chap who was obviously already distraught. The only other remedy was to wait it out in silence until, none the wiser, he finally left. But silence – real silence – is a difficult thing, especially in a bathroom which echoes. The body, even when not moving, is apt to make all sorts of sounds, and the business that I was in the middle of entailed certain other noises that only a dogged clenching could forestall. So I clenched. As God is my witness I clenched for the poor man’s dignity. Against forces of nature that fought the clenching I clenched, praying that it would not occur to him to begin a belated search for other occupants.

Finally, having purged himself of emotional demons, he left and allowed me to resume the purging that is more proper to a room of that kind, a purging which does to a toilet essentially the same thing that a politician does to a microphone. But I had only enough time to chuckle at the experience before the door once again was opened and another man walked in. This one was a good deal heavier than the previous man, and from the thud of his waddling I imagined an expansive midsection, probably one that drooped over his beltline. He approached a urinal, the sound of a zipper being opened rang out, and thereupon followed a very predictable sound, somewhat covered by his labored breathing.

He had not, as it turned out, become aware of my presence, a fact I deduced when he began to converse with himself while standing at the urinal. This conversation was unlike the passionate yet ultimately diffident muttering of the previous autolocutor; it was a deep, rumbling, fearless baritone which set the room echoing like a firecracker in a cave. One advantage of speaking with oneself, I suppose, is that there is no question of misunderstanding, so little things like moving your lips and tongue to enunciate become unimportant. What poured out of the man was half way between speech and groaning. I can only say that I detected a growing satisfaction in the sounds he emitted until he finally withdrew from the urinal. It was then that I, called upon once again to preserve the dignity of my fellow man, was forced to guard my clenching silence while the other, his conversation finished, stood at the sink, breathing heavily and cleansing his hands. The ordeal did finally end, and when the man had left I made sure to expedite my processes in case there was something behind these bizarre events other than random chance, something which might at any moment send my way another twit with a full bladder and something to say.

I relate this story to the gentle reader with the public welfare in mind. Perhaps some good may come of my hardships. Apparently, some of you out there are given to self-directed speech, and this is perfectly fine with me. But do me a favor, and I shall do my part to help us both out. The next time you enter a bathroom for the purpose of discourse, take the one and a half seconds required to squat down and search for other occupants. Most bathroom stall walls do not reach the ground, and most people leave their feet on the floor when they occupy them, which gives anyone else an excellent opportunity to take a quick census of the local population. For my part, I shall undertake to cough whenever I hear someone enter the bathroom to let them know that just right then is not the best time to practice oratory. Etiquette, my friends, is the key to civilization. Please do your part to make our public restrooms more civilized.

What Is a Price, and What Is Its Purpose?

2008-04-18T22:01:00.000-07:00

Perhaps no concept of economics is more misunderstood, to greater human detriment, than that of price. This misunderstanding can be traced back centuries, to laws against usury and the concept of a fair price, and has led to wrongheaded policies wherein lawmakers, seemingly under the delusion that prices can be adjusted without consequence, have instituted all manner of government distortions on an essential market phenomenon. Just as a doctor does great work in proportion to the lethality of the disease which he cures, so too does the economist do greater work when the ignorance which he alleviates is responsible for graver social ills. If the good reader is willing, the humble blogger will expound on the concept of price, investigating its nature and significance and if the good reader will endure with but a modicum of patience, we may proceed, with the greater understanding obtained, to proffer some real world policy prescriptions and analyze and debunk faulty ones.

A price is nothing more and nothing less than an exchange rate. Once a general medium of exchange has been established in an economy, an interested party may, instead of exchanging ten eggs for a gallon of milk, exchange anything he likes in terms of money. A dozen eggs, therefore, may exchange for, say, two dollars. We may say that the exchange rate of eggs with respect to dollars is twelve for two, or, more simply, the price of a dozen eggs is two dollars.

The good reader will notice that some things have a price, while others do not, and may be curious as to why. Air is free under normal conditions, but apples must be purchased, i.e., they must be exchanged for. The reason for the difference is the scarcity of the things in question. In economics, something is said to be scarce when there is more demand for it than supplies can satisfy (the good reader will note that scarce does not mean rare, merely that supply is not sufficient to fully satisfy demand). Air, on the contrary, is superabundant and therefore carries no price.

If a good like an apple is scarce, then it is unavoidable that, after humans have taken possession of them according to their nature, at least one person will be left with either no apples or fewer apples than he would like to consume. At this point, unless, by miraculous coincidence, the apples have wound up in people’s possession according to a precise pattern of ownership, exchanges will take place. This will happen whenever an apple-less individual who has something he is willing to give up for a certain amount of apples finds an appled individual who wants that something more than that same or a greater amount of apples. In concrete terms, if Jaime has five apples and Mohamed has none, but Mohamed has a Pepsi which he is willing to exchange for two apples, and Jaime is willing to give up as many as three apples for the Pepsi, then if and when these two find each other an exchange will be made as soon as the knowledge of the other’s want is discovered. The exchange rate will be between two apples for the Pepsi and three apples for the Pepsi, which is the area where their desires to exchange overlap.

It is a natural thing for humans to exchange something they want less for something they want more, and when there is a general medium of exchange these exchange rates are called prices. Instead of apples and Pepsi exchanging for each other, they exchange for dollars or pounds or yen or euros or what-have-you. Not every exchange need take place through the general medium of exchange, but in practice nearly all of them do. One great advantage to this is that it allows actors in the market to calculate based on the exchange rate in dollars. Instead of tracking exchanges between cows and sweaters, then between sweaters and shoes, then between shoes and milk and finally milk and eggs to find the likely exchange rate between cows and eggs, all these products can be measured against money and calculation can be made easier.

It is a simple enough matter, in principle, to determine what the price level of a certain good will be, even if the complexities and flux of a real economy make it more confusing in practice. Let us imagine that a vendor has five apples, and that ten people desire to buy an apple. The first person is willing to pay one dollar for the apple, the second two dollars, the third three dollars and the rest follow in that pattern. The vendor does not know who wants the apples nor how much each is willing to pay, so he must begin a guessing game and hope he can attract a buyer (much of the job of an entrepreneur involves anticipating demand and the changing flow of people’s desires on the market). In this situation, any price at five dollars or less, assuming that word of the apple sale gets out to all interested parties, will clear the market of apples, i.e., all apples will be sold. Anything above five dollars will leave a glut of apples on the market which can only be solved by lowering the price. With repeated sales, the vendor will, dependant upon his ability as an entrepreneur, come to an understanding of what the true price should be.

For the next batch of apples, the apple vendor will look at the costs of his enterprise and decide how many apples to produce, which in the particular industry in question principally means deciding how many trees to plant. We shall keep the matter simple and ignore economies of scale, which mean a lower unit cost of production for each apple if more are produced, as well as the effect of inputs like fertilizer and variables like weather, none of which alter the essence of the example. We shall assume that, after everything is factored in, an apple can be produced for $3.50 per unit no matter the quantity produced. If our vendor decides to produce just one apple, he may sell it for $10.00, to the one who was willing to pay that much for an apple, and make a profit of $6.50. If he produces two he may sell them, assuming he cannot price discriminate, for $9.00 and make $11.00. If he produces seven apples, he can sell them for $4.00 and make $3.50. The vendor will make the most profit by producing four apples, selling them for $7.00 each and getting a profit of $14.00, a fact which he will arrive at according to his ability as an entrepreneur.

But this is not the whole story, because there is a profit opportunity to be made by anyone who can also produce apples at $3.50 per unit. If a competitor is free to enter the field, then he will try to undercut the first vendor and sell the apples for less. With competition the price of the apples will be driven downwards towards the $4.00 level, and from that point the vendor with the most success will be the one who figures out how to cut costs without cutting quality. It is true that they may collude to cut back production and keep their prices high, but this opens up the same profit opportunity that brought the first competitor into the field, and for this reason these collusion agreements, these cartels, are unstable and short lasting in a free market. Without exception, businesses which wish to reduce production to keep prices high, and have managed to do so for any lengthy period of time, have appealed to government to help them do it.

The good reader is now on familiar terms with the concept of price. On the market, without the need of a central planner to worry about rationing, free entry competition and profit maximization make for a price which rations for the market, emerging out of the decentralized actions of the various actors. When demand goes up, prices go up to make sure that the market clears, which means that everyone who wants an apple at a certain price can get it. It also increases profit margins, which attract more investment into an industry and cause it to expand, thus keeping the price from going too high and bringing more supply to compensate for the increased demand. When demand drops, the reverse happens and investment flows out of the industry and supply shrinks so that resources may be diverted to other, more urgently desired goods and services whose urgent desires, or demands, have caused their prices to go higher.

We can see, then, that the price arises not out of the whims of entrepreneurs but rather out of the interactions of free individuals on the market, of which group entrepreneurs form only a small part. If the price of something suddenly increases, it no more means that capitalists have suddenly become greedy than a sudden drop in price means that they have become generous. They are always trying to make as much profit as possible – just as the customers are trying to get their products as cheaply as possible – so if we observe a sudden change in price, we can with confidence declare that the forces of supply and demand have altered and this change is responsible for the change in prices.

With a good understanding of what a price is and what it does, the good reader is now equipped to see the flaw in thinking behind price controls. No more thoroughly debunked folly has ever passed through the bowels of a parliament, and yet it persists in policy, no matter that it failed for the ancient Egyptians as well as any and all governments since. Let us say that a parliament decides that $4.00 is too high a price to pay for apples and decides that no apple shall sell for more than $2.00 per unit. We can immediately see that nine of our ten prospective buyers will wish to purchase an apple and yet there are only seven apples to be bought. It was this very dynamic which determined the $4.00 price and the supply of seven apples. We might ask by what wisdom a politician has decided what the correct price is, but to what end? The price is now $2.00 per apple and we have waiting lines for apples.

When the current stock of apples very quickly runs out we will see a second effect come into play. Not only is demand over stimulated with respect to supply, supply is now under stimulated with respect to demand. Investment will be diverted from apple growing to other endeavors, so that fewer apples will be available the next time around, exacerbating the problem of growing waiting lines for apple eaters.

At this point a number of things happen. It is very apparent that no apple vendors can make a profit with the current allowed prices and production structure. Some will leave the field, and this may alleviate the price of the factors of production because of the reduced demand for them. However, if these factors, fertilizer, for instance, are not specific to apple growing then the demand for them from other industries will keep the price high. If the factors are specific to apple growing then they will drop in price, as the apple industry’s demand was the only demand input in the price, thus reducing the unit cost of production. If this cost per unit is not reduced to below $2.00 per unit, other actions will be taken. For instance, less fertilizer will be used, less soil preparation, less watering, i.e., fewer inputs, which means that the quality of apples will diminish. It is also possible that the apple vendors will go to their politicians and demand price controls on the factors of production. If these are granted then the problems the humble blogger has been at pains to detail are extended to other sectors of the economy. Once the factors of production, like fertilizer, are placed under price controls then the producers of these factors will take the same steps, decreasing the quality of these factors, and may also turn to government to put price controls on the factors of the factors of production. It is not hard to see, in theory, how a single price control could, by degrees, infect an entire economy, and take it from a free market to a centrally planned economy.

But notice that nothing has really been solved. Instead of four dollar apples, we have two dollar apples on those rare occasions when any are in stock, many of the people who were willing to pay $4.00 cannot get any apples at all, the quality of the apples has been reduced and, to top it off, price controls might be awaiting other industries in a vain attempt to solve the problems created by the original price control. It would behoove the citizens of any nation to understand price and to resist attempts to fix it according to arbitrary ideas. A price arises from market conditions, as we have seen, and no amount of passion can give us the power to wish a different price – a different market clearing price, that is – for something. Price is a symptom, an effect, of underlying conditions. A price control no more solves a supply shortage or an increase in demand, which led to a higher price, than peach colored skin dye cures jaundice in Caucasians. The sooner this is learned by the citizens of this planet, the sooner we can be rid of this particular bit of government nuisance.

Ohio State Football All 1990's Team

2008-04-12T10:12:00.000-07:00

When the Ohio State football program, at the end of the 1980's, was in decline, the University turned to John Cooper to turn things around. Having had a brief but successful stint at Arizona State, in which he defeated the Wolverines in the Rose Bowl, he seemed like a decent pick for the job. But little noticed was the fact that Cooper, in three tries, never beat rival Arizona in their end of the season match up, managing only a tie during the 1987 campaign. This despite ASU having a record that was as good or better than Arizona each year.

What John Cooper did for ASU, he also did for Ohio State. He brought some top talent into the program, managed a Rose Bowl win, but performed atrociously against the eternal rival. In the 1990's Ohio State produced enough talent for multiple national championships. In no decade other than the seventies did so many top athletes put on the Scarlet and Gray, but only twice could they conquer the Maize and Blue.

It was a decade of great teams and terrible heartbreaks. There were some memorable wins but too many losses against teams that had no business beating the Buckeyes. Nevertheless, the talent from that decade is well worth celebrating. Here is your humble bloggers choice of the All '90's Team.

BACKFIELD

QB Joe Germaine - As good as Hoying was, no one had accuracy and grace under pressure like Joe Germaine. He deserves the nod for the 1997 Rose Bowl alone. It was absolutely criminal that he spent two years alternating with Stanley Jackson.

FB Matt Keller - The days of the Woody Hayes fullback were long gone at this point, but Keller was a good athlete and solid performer.

TB Eddie George - No explanation needed.

RECEIVERS

WR Terry Glenn - Possibly the most explosive receiver in Ohio State history.

WR David Boston - With his almost TE size, a good complement to Glenn. Great Hands.

TE Ricky Dudley - Ohio State is not known for its Tight Ends, but Dudley was a strong receiver and a decent blocker.

OFFENSIVE LINE

OL Orlando Pace - Could well be the best offensive lineman in Ohio State history, and that's a proud history! They invented the pancake block stat just for him.

OL Rob Murphy - If he had been academically eligible for his senior year, this one would have been a three time All-American.

OL Korey Stringer - It says something about your program when a lineman of this caliber is not the greatest Tackle of the decade.

OL Jason Winrow - Solid performer and All-Big Ten honoree.

OL Alan Kline - Four year starter, All-Big Ten from the early nineties.

DEFENSIVE LINE

DE Mike Vrabel - All time sack leader at Ohio State, perhaps the most versatile defensive end the Buckeyes have ever had. Led a ferocious defensive of the mid to late nineties. Two time All-American.

DE Jason Simmons - Finished career with 27 sacks, a stalwart on the '93 defense.

DT Dan Wilkinson - Only played for OSU as an underclassmen, but left an indelible impression. Oh what he could have done for the '95 team!

DT Ryan Pickett - Fickell was good, but we must give the edge to Mr. Pickett, also from the '98 squad.

LINEBACKERS

LB Andy Katzenmoyer - Injuries ruined his pro career, but this All-American was everything a linebacker needed to be. Some belittled his '98 stats, but when Bailey, Diggs, Johnson, and Pickett all returned for the '99 season up front and the run defense was still far inferior, you knew something was missing.

LB Na'il Diggs - Without this All-American, the '99 team would have been a disaster instead of just a disappointment.

LB Steve Tovar - You can't argue with two All-American honors. It's a shame he never got to play on a memorable Buckeye team.

DEFENSIVE BACKS

DB Shawn Springs - Ohio State has never had a better coverman than this All-American and #3 draft pick.

DB Antoine Winfield - Another in a long line of standout secondary men for OSU. All-American.

S Damon Moore - All-American, a starter for both the '96 and '98 powerhouses.

S Rob Kelly - There are many solid athletes to pair with Moore, we'll take this solid performer with a decent pro career.

Do We Need Government to Build Highways?

2008-04-11T21:04:00.000-07:00

Not long ago your humble blogger was sampling the entertainment on Youtube and came across an episode of Real Time with Bill Maher. Real Time is a show on HBO, a discussion group led by Mr. Maher which features celebrities, politicians, journalists and such giving their opinions on issues. On this particular episode Congressman Barney Frank was one of the guests, and P.J. O’Rourke, one of Real Time’s “Real Correspondents” was brought on part way through. Barney Frank is a very liberal Congressman and P.J. O’Rourke is a lukewarm, half-defender of Free Market Capitalism.

Bill Maher started a debate by taking P.J. to task for a statement he had made, namely, “My money does not make you poorer.” Mr. Maher immediately disagreed, but no real delving into the topic was achieved because after a mere handful of seconds spent talking over each other Barney Frank quickly changed the subject by saying that we need government, because without it we wouldn’t have the highway system which we now enjoy. Or at least tolerate. Before the conversation precipitously careened into another area – this time the rise of the middle class in America and the putative reason for it being Federal Housing loans and such – P.J. O’Rourke confessed that Barney Frank was right and that they were in agreement about the highways.

The answer to Maher’s and O’Rourke’s original dispute is an easy one: money honestly earned does not make anyone else poorer – quite the opposite, in fact – but money stolen, through government for example, does indeed make the rest of us poorer. This issue could be examined in more depth, but my real purpose here is to analyze Barney Frank’s comment, which prematurely ended discussion on whether the pie, as George Bush has said, could be made higher, and which quickly brought the meek and imperfectly libertarian P.J. O’Rourke to heel.

Since we are accustomed to government control of the roads; since most of us are educated in government schools and are indoctrinated in pro-government propaganda; since government influence has been creeping into the private schools; since many of the teachers in private schools have government-influenced education; since ‘progressive’ statism has been the dominant public ethos for over a century now, I suppose it is no surprise that most people view government control of the roads not only as normal and proper, but also as the only way roads could be made. It is, however, disappointing to watch a man, who professes to speak for libertarians, cave in and concede the point to statists, especially when, on this particular topic, it is rather easy to demonstrate how wrong they are.

Any such argument as Congressman Frank made argues against the proofs of history itself. The first roads and highways in American history were privately constructed. New England had an extensive system of highways before government got involved, most built by companies dedicated exclusively to roadway construction. Many other roads were built by land speculators who wanted to increase the value of their holdings and were given to public use with no charge. Often examples like these are countered with something vague and irrelevant, like, “Yeah, but that was a long time ago. Things are different now.” When pressed for details, such as why the calendar date affects the market’s ability to provide roads or what specific differences of today would render private actors incapable of providing what they proved themselves very capable of providing before government took over the operation, statists usually falter, occasionally mumbling some unconvincing excuse about greater population density.

A little reflection on the nature of their argument reveals how silly it is. Does the statist argue that private actors lack the capability to create paved highways? This obviously cannot be the case, because even now roads are made by private companies; government is limited to supplying the funding and maintenance. The statist cannot make the case that roads would not be useful or that we would not want roads, because this forms the foundation of his argument: roads are necessary and only government can build them. Nor can the statist make any claim that, in a free market, people would not be at liberty to make the roads should they decide to. The very definition of a free market means that people are free to make what they are able with their justly owned property. The statist argument thus boils down to this: that in a free market people would have the capacity to build roads, would have the desire to build roads and would be free to build roads, but would not. Moreover, the statist’s solution to this quandary is to take some of these people who won’t build roads, make them government officials, and now roads will get built. The humble blogger shall assume that this argument can be left to fall of its own weight.

But in a free market who would actually get around to building the roads? An excellent question. Who would build the roads? Is there anyone with both the capital to build roads as well as the incentive? Let’s ask it another way: is there any company whose product is worth more with roads and therefore has something to gain by building them? Is there any company whose product is only worth something when there are roads to DRIVE on?

Ultimately, we can’t know exactly how, in a free market, roads would be built, by which processes and in which proportions until roads are left to the free market. Ford Motor Company, dissatisfied with the rate at which the government was building highways, once wanted to take over the business of building US highways, but the government would not allow it. I’m guessing they figured their cars were worth more with roads to drive them on. There might also be road companies who do nothing else; indeed there are privately operated and maintained highways right now (John Stossel documented one near Los Angeles which, because they charged the right price at the right time, never had traffic jams, thus reducing transit time from one end to the other by forty-five minutes. This highway has staff which monitor the road at all times and instantly send help to cars which break down as well as provide a free gallon of gas to cars which run out so that they can get to the nearest gas station. Basically, it’s the difference between the service you get at the BMV and the service you get at Disney World). Smaller roads would probably be maintained by cooperation between the businesses which want to attract customers, or by neighborhood associations such as already maintain lawns and pools in private developments right now.

Maybe someone will come up with other ideas, but the point is that the free market can do it, and it is disappointing to see P.J. O’Rourke thus cavorting with statists. While some economists mistakenly claim that there are public goods which only government can provide, they do so on grounds of non-rivalry and non-excludability, two aspects which roads do not have. The fact is, there is nothing that government does today which both needs doing and hasn’t been done at some time by private interests, even law enforcement and arbitration. Claiming that only government can provide roads is not just absurd on a priori grounds, it is proven wrong by history.

It is also the case, as is always the case in these matters, that with private provision of highways resources would be better allocated. Rather than building roads just to build them, for political reasons, generally after construction companies have lobbied for it, roads would be built where the public expressed a true need for them, this expression taking the form of willingness to pay to use the roads. Most likely, urban sprawl would be reduced, the population density of cities would grow which would make public transportation (which should also be privately provided) more feasible, and therefore pollution would also be reduced.

Upon reflecting on these considerations, the statist, if he is honest, must admit that his opposition to private highways is born of custom and ideology, not of logic. But how is he to reflect upon these considerations if the very people who should be expounding on them and educating him, putative libertarians like P.J. O’Rourke, either lack the guts or the sense to stand up for the free market?

Movie Review: Leatherheads

2008-04-06T18:37:00.000-07:00

As the timing goes, so goes the comedy. Timing is, of course, important for any sort of film, but in comedies it assumes a role of such prominence that the success of the entire piece is dependent upon it. An unlikely character is pardonable; poor action choreography is of no moment; we can even forgive a distracted and unfocused plot, but if the comedic pace is off the comedy simply cannot be successful. In Leatherheads, George Clooney’s third directorial effort, there are sporadic moments where the project works, but these are islands in an ocean, and they grow sparser as the movie progresses.

It takes place in 1925, at a time when the popularity of football was centered around the college game. Jimmy ‘Dodge’ Connelly (George Clooney) is the de facto captain of a professional football team from Duluth, Minnesota, an impecunious squad which must forfeit a game because it does not have money to provide a second game ball when the first is stolen. They travel from blue collar Midwest town to blue collar Midwest town, drying their laundry by hanging it outside the train as they go, changing destinations if their next opponent goes bankrupt in the middle of the week. In an effort to achieve greater financial stability for the league, Connelly recruits a young Princeton star, Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski) to play for the team. But Lexie Littleton, played by Renee Zellweger, is a reporter who has been hired to try and uncover an embarrassing secret in Carter’s military service, and when she begins to travel with the team, Connelly and Rutherford both begin to fall for her.

As a football player, the smooth and handsome George Clooney is miscast. His character is a forty-something football veteran who has made a living for years doing little else. When his Duluth team temporarily disbands and he seeks employment, he comes face to face with the reality that he has no skills or education to make him attractive to an employer. And yet, this uneducated Midwestern football player, who gets in multiple fist fights during the course of the movie, is oh so smooth with Ms. Littleton, master of the frank look and the tilted head, the slight caress to the chin before his soft lips brush hers. No French noble was ever more debonair. My grandfather played semi-professional football for a blue collar Midwest city back in the 1920’s and I can tell you that this is not how he wooed his women. Nor, to judge from his stories, did his teammates operate anyway similar.

There is more than just Clooney’s effete charm that feels out of place. The radio announcers sound like they are working for ESPN, for instance. I have heard old time radio broadcasts and the cadences and rhythms and vocal tones of these men sound nothing like what one hears today. A couple hours with some archival tapes might have helped to add some authenticity to the picture.

The football action isn’t impressive either, not that this distinguishes the movie from any other football movie I’ve ever seen, but it would be nice for once to see a football movie in which the director was less interested in rigidly composing the action of a play to the point where it feels stilted and the camera interferes with the flow. Why not just line the boys up and let them play some football with the cameras rolling? This would have the added benefit of cutting down on plays which one sees two or three times in a season but in the movie one sees with a frequency that makes them boring.

But these are small complaints. A bit more problematic is the script itself, which often has trouble choosing a story to pursue and leaving many in their incipient stages. In the beginning of the movie some ado is made of a new recruit from high school that will be joining their team at the next train stop. It turns out that the teenager is a whale of a man and capable of beating the snot out of anyone who comes near him. But after this introduction, his importance in the movie is reduced to appearing in the background during some of the games. One wonders what the point was of spending time introducing him. There are a couple distracting scenes which seem to have been filmed simply because they were opportunities for slap stick comedy, not because any role they play in bringing us to the third act. And the third act itself is less satisfying than it might be because the various threads of plot are not brought together in a last madcap rush of adrenaline, but rather fizzle out one by one. The end of the second act, to the extent that I am even confident I know when this occurs, doesn’t leave one yearning for the third as it should, tingling with anticipation.

A comedy can survive, however, with a middling story if the scenes are funny enough. The Good Lord knows that Monty Python’s Meaning of Life is not as good as its predecessors, largely due to a wandering script with little cohesion between scenes, but many of the individual scenes themselves are hysterical. Leatherheads has moments when it is amusing in a charming and clever way – mainly when Clooney and Zellweger are interacting – but all too often the right notes just aren’t hit at the right tempo. And not enough hay is made with the different characters’ objectives, which are at cross purposes with the others, nor with all the deceit and trickery in which they might have engaged.

Worst of all, the movie can’t – or perhaps it is more correct to say refuses – to keep its momentum going. For all the other irritations, the worst part is when Carter’s back story, whose culmination is premature, deviates into some sort of government-worshipping morality tale when Congress assigns a commissioner to the professional league – something which, as far as I can tell, is entirely fictional – who starts to impose order on the affairs. What would we poor folk do without a government? The commissioner immediately imposes rules, licenses the players – God forbid that people start playing football without bureaucratic say-so! – and with a threatening stare and a tough-guy voice begins to generally throw his weight around. In a scene which flattens the momentum – a scene devoid of the quick banter that provided the most humorous moments – the story slows down so that the tough guy can deliver a lecture and, one cannot help but feel, so that Mssr. Clooney can lecture us a little as well. It was far too serious, too slow and too preachy for the movie in which it appeared.

For all that’s wrong with it, however, it still has its charm. Zellweger and Clooney have some very good moments filled with snappy dialogue, and Randy Newman’s score is the perfect compliment to the picture; indeed, his score is what the movie should have been: relentlessly lighthearted, brisk, old-fashioned and too caught up with having fun to slow down and get serious. Maybe Newman should have composed the score first and the script could have been written, and the scenes shot, while the artists listened to it on their IPods.

Final Grade: C+

Are We Alone in the Universe?

2008-03-24T18:37:00.000-07:00

The recent trend among scientists in certain fields, so far as I can tell from perusing their writings, is to be sanguine about the chances of there being intelligent life somewhere else in the universe. This trend is really quite remarkable given the typical attitude of scientists in other areas and the paucity of evidence for this life. The same scientific community which stubbornly refuses to acknowledge some very clear indications of life on Mars turned up by the Voyager experiments of the 1970’s is nevertheless cautiously optimistic about finding it elsewhere. Many well respected scientists like Seth Shostak have spent many hours scanning the heavens for some sign of radio contact from another civilization, and a couple have even recently announced that, given the very real possibility of intelligent life evolving elsewhere, perhaps we shouldn’t so quickly scoff at UFO reports.

Notwithstanding this hopeful drift of opinion, we still find ourselves confronted with Fermi’s Paradox, to wit, “If there are intelligent beings out there, where are they?” In other words, given all the time during which intelligent species could have evolved before we did, before our solar system even came into existence, the presence of intelligent species, if they are at all similar to us in temperament, should be pretty obvious in our galaxy. It has been estimated that a single community, by spreading out in a chain reaction of extra-solar colonization, could populate the entire galaxy in as little as 5 million years, and certainly in under 50 million. Given that our galaxy is billions of years old, it is strange that this has not yet occurred.

Many explanations to this paradox have been proffered over the years, some of them seemingly ridiculous, some of them moderately sensible, but only one, in my opinion, is a complete and simple solution to the paradox which does not leave one uncomfortably doubtful about at least one or two of its implications. That elegant and reasonable solution is simply that there is no one else out there. Or if not no one, then at least not many.

The famous astronomer Frank Drake came up with an equation named after him which is an attempt to estimate how many other civilizations exist. It is a series of fractions which eventually whittle down the total number of stars to an estimate of the total number of planets that are home to intelligence. Generally applied only to the Milky Way Galaxy, it starts with an estimate of the number of stars, then asks how many of those have earth like planets, how many of those planets are near enough, but not too near, the sun, and so forth. But all current estimates are fraught with guess work, and Drake himself said the equation is really just a way to organize our ignorance.

Carl Sagan, using the Drake Equation, once estimated a million other intelligent species in our galaxy, and though he later reduced that number there is still much optimism out there that, given the sheer quantity of stars, there simply has to be intelligent life, if not in our galaxy, then at least somewhere in the universe. Since there are, approximately, one million stars in the known universe for every grain of sand on planet earth, this could well be a universe teeming with intelligent life. But I myself am much influenced by The Rare Earth Hypothesis, which states that microbial life is probably extremely common, but that complex and intelligent life is extremely rare or even unique. It is, after all, the most elegant solution to Fermi’s Paradox.

The Rare Earth Hypothesis summarizes what we know about life’s evolution here on earth, tries to fill in the gaps with some speculation, and then applies these tentative conclusions to the idea of life elsewhere. There is much criticism that many of the points raised in TREH are not limitations to life elsewhere, but rather simply descriptions of how we developed here. There certainly could be much validity to these arguments, but for the most part I think the authors have identified some key elements that any system with intelligent life will have. With some of these fractions beginning to come into sharper focus, and in light of these Rare Earth insights, we can recalculate the Drake Equation and perhaps get at an idea of the likelihood of intelligent life existing in our own galaxy.

Let us begin with the number of stars in our own galaxy. Estimates range from 100,000,000,000 – that’s one hundred billion – to 500,000,000,000. The estimate I have seen most often is 200 billion, so I will begin with that and pare away the systems thought to be unsuitable for life. What we will wind up with is a range, with an optimistic figure at one end and a pessimistic figure at the other, of likely suitable worlds where carbon-based, earth-like intelligence could develop. This is as far as we can go with estimates based at least partly on what has been observed. Discussions on non earth-like life are mere speculation and, in my opinion, probably pure fiction.

With our figure of 200 billion stars in the Milky Way, we must now, according to TREH, determine how many of those stars reside in the galaxy’s habitable zone. This is a concept that many find surprising, that there could be parts of the galaxy in which complex life will not develop, no matter how pleasant the sun and ideal the planet. The fact is, the central part of the Milky Way is an area where stars are packed tightly together. There are 40 stars within 16 light years of our sun, the nearest being 4.22 light years away. If our sun were in the center of the galaxy, there could easily be hundreds in that same 17,000 cubic light year sphere of space. This greatly increases the chances of a star being in the vicinity of a super nova, whose gamma ray burst could fry all life in nearby systems. It also means the super nova explosion could be right next door, as opposed to several light years away. The center of the galaxy is also a zone of high radiation which would certainly be inimical to our kind of life.

But the outer zones are poor candidates for life as well, since they are metal poor. In astronomy, a metal is any element heavier than hydrogen and helium, and these metals are made by the super condensing power of stars which, when they die and explode, release their contents into space. When the next generation of stars form, they do so with more metal rich material, but on the thinly populated outskirts of our galactic metropolis, very little of this metal-building has gone on, making terrestrial planets very unlikely. It is therefore argued, and I think the argument is a very strong one, that complex life will exist in an inner ring of a spiral galaxy, away from the lethal center and inside the sparse outer edge. Estimates of the number of stars in the Galactic Habitable Zone range from 5% of the total population to 10%. The pessimistic figure leaves us with 10 billion stars, while the optimistic one leaves us with 20 billion.

Another factor to consider is the type of star. The large, powerful stars are unstable and short lived. While life on earth was probably present 3.8 billion years ago, very soon after the putative collision that is supposed to have resulted in our moon orbiting us, complex life was not present until about 580 million years ago. There is a great amount of uncertainty here, but if intelligent life requires billions of years to develop, then the largest stars, types O, B and A, will explode and destroy any planets they have long before this limit is reached. Small stars are also poor candidates, because in order for a planet in the system of an M type star, the smallest kind, to have liquid water it would have to be so close as to be in constant danger of solar flares and radiation, not to mention being tidally locked with the sun. Being tidally locked means that the same side of the planet is always facing the star, which would not, it is reasoned, be conducive to life.

This means that M type stars are out, in addition to the O, B and A large stars. The dimmer K type stars and the brighter F type stars are also probably poor candidates, which leaves only G type stars, like our sun, along with possibly the bright K’s and dim F’s. The smaller the star type, the more populous it is in the heavens. M type stars account for over three quarters of all stars in the sky. G type stars represent only 7.6%. Combined with a small portion of the K types and a small portion of the F types, it seems reasonable to conclude that only 8 to 12 per cent of the stars in the galaxy are suitable to the long term evolution of life. With our pessimistic 8% figure, we are down to 800,000,000 stars; with the optimistic figure we arrive at 2.4 billion. Even speaking optimistically we are down to little more than 1% of the stars in the Milky Way. And there are many steps ahead of us.

We must now ask what proportion of the stellar population has terrestrial planets. Until recently this was nothing more than speculation, but a recent survey of other stars found that between 20% and 60% had the kind of dust that some astronomers think is the by product of terrestrial planet creation. That is a very large margin of error, but at least it gives us something to work with. Pessimistically, we are down to 160,000,000, and optimistically we come to 1.44 billion.

A terrestrial planet that supports life will be constrained by size in all likelihood. The current thinking which I have read and heard is that, in order to maintain plate tectonics (discussed more below) a planet must be at the very least half the size of earth. A too large planet is also considered a poor candidate. So what is the ratio of acceptably sized planets to stars? There is little to guide us here, but we do have at least a vague notion of things, and I cite two lines of thought to arrive at what might be a plausible range of values.

One, we have now discovered about 200 exoplanets, all but one of them thought to be gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn. What is becoming clearer and clearer is that the larger the gas giant, the fewer of them one finds, despite the fact that the larger ones are easiest to find. In fact, a gas giant of Jupiter’s size – there are far larger planets out there – is many times more prevalent than some of the super giants. It seems reasonable that a similar bias might eventually be discovered amongst terrestrial planets, which would mean that earth sized planets are not uncommon. Furthermore, it is supposed that we have a range from half earth sized to slightly larger to work with. My second line of reasoning is simply to look at our own solar system, excluding the Earth for anthropic reasons. In our system we have very small Mercury, nearly earth-sized Venus, small Mars and a very small planet that never quite formed, leaving us instead with the asteroid belt. This admittedly minuscule study at least coincides with what we are beginning to discover about gas giants: smaller planets are more prevalent.

With these two lines of reasoning, a healthy dose of arbitrary lay-opinion, and very little idea how many terrestrial planets typically form in a star system, I’ll assign a 1 to 4 ratio of correct sized terrestrial planet to sun as pessimistic and, say, 4 to 5 as optimistic, realizing that some systems, like ours, will have two planets of acceptable size and will thus drive up the real ratio. The pessimists now have 40 million and the optimists have 1.152 billion.

The next category is relatively uncontroversial: the solar habitable zone. The planet must be at the “Goldilocks” point, where the water will not all evaporate or freeze. In our own solar system, it is thought that the habitable zone – sometimes called the continuously habitable zone in recognition that the sun varies in brightness over time – extends from 0.95 Astronomical Units – 1.0 AU being the average distance of the earth from the sun – to 1.15 AU, which leaves Mars and Venus just outside the zone. Of course a planet which reflects a lot of sunlight might conceivably move in a little closer and still maintain life, and other considerations might allow to move a little further out, so the limit is not a clear line of demarcation, but it is something to work with. If we consider the asteroid belt, which can go out to about 3.0 AU, as the furthest that terrestrial planets will form in our system, and if we accept that our system is most likely average – meaning that for every system with wider boundaries there is one with narrower limits to balance it out – and if we also assume that a planet is as likely to form in one part of the terrestrial zone as another (possibly a bad assumption), then a planet has about a 7% chance of being in this zone. Some of these assumptions are likely good ones, others are quite uncertain, so let’s make 5% the pessimistic extreme and quadruple it for the optimistic one. This leaves the pessimists with 2 million adequate planets in an adequate zone in an adequate part of the galaxy, while the optimists still have 230,400,000.

Another must for intelligent life, so it seems, is that the system have planets with stable orbits. An eccentric orbit and the wildly varying weather it brings would make it difficult for advanced life to develop. Unfortunately for the SETI crew, of the planets surveyed so far, the vast majority have elliptical or otherwise unstable orbits. There are a number of planets with stable orbits, but almost all of these are gas giants orbiting very close to their suns. Perhaps, upon drawing close to a sun, a planet’s orbit smoothes out a bit, but any such gas giant, which must have formed further out according to what we now understand, would completely upset any terrestrial planets closer in when it started its move. We are left with very few planets with stable orbits, and our list of candidate planets is about to shrink a great deal. Let’s take 1% at the low end and 8%, probably unreasonably high, at the upper end. The most planets we are likely to have left is 18,432,000, and we may already be as low as 20,000 with more elimination steps coming.

The size of the gas giants in the system is a consideration. It is thought that a gas giant of sufficient size will reduce the number of potentially deadly meteorite impacts, but if the gas giant is too big it will disrupt the orbits of the other planets, even if its own orbit is a circle. However, some computer models have suggested that if Jupiter had instead been the size of Saturn, the number of meteorite impacts on earth would increase. Of course, for reasons discussed below, this could be a good thing, so there is a great deal of speculation on this one. There may be very few of the super giants, as discussed above, so it is likely that Jupiter sized planets are fairly common. I am unaware of how distance from the star, beyond simply being outside the terrestrial area, affects these conditions. Let’s set limits at 20% and 50%, leaving us with 4,000 planets and 9,216,000 planets respectively.

Plate tectonics is thought to be, for a number of reasons, important for the evolution of advanced life. One reason is that it recycles carbon back into the ecosystems, an important thing for carbon-based organisms. Another reason is that, by moving the continents over the face of the planet and throwing up mountain ranges, it is constantly creating new climates and micro climates, leading to diversity of species. This diversity, apart from its obvious benefits, is also important for surviving disasters like asteroid impacts. These disasters, in earth’s own history, have killed off as many as 70% of the species of the planet. With less diversity, it is conceivable that all complex life might have been extinguished and, left with only unicellular organism, the planet would have had to start over.

This consideration leaves us with two further paring-points. One, what elements, and in what ratios, make up the interior of the planet. While tectonics are not completely understood, scientists are confident that radioactive decay is indispensable to their existence. Since we are already dealing with metal rich stars, as evidenced by planetary formation itself, it is unlikely that the percentage of these planets without the right elements in its core is extremely low, and could well be very high. There is so much uncertainty that we must leave the range of values very wide open (we must also consider that iron in the core, which provides for a protective magnetic shield, is also important). Let’s go with 20% and 80%, giving us 800 planets on one end, and 7,372,800 on the other.

The second paring-point is the amount of water, which acts as a lubricant for the subduction zones that are a core part of plate tectonics (not to mention being a key component of life). Once again, it is very difficult to estimate with any confidence. Most water is believed to be carried in from further reaches of the solar system by asteroids in the early part of a planet’s life, but too little water and too much water are thought to be bad. Too little and the tectonic process will not run well and the water will most likely lose its liquid form. Too much and no continents will ever rise above the surface of the oceans, and it seems quite clear that the most intelligent species evolve on land (even dolphins, reputedly highly intelligent, evolved on land before returning to the water). Let’s assign the same broad range of 20% and 80% to this category, which has the same profound uncertainties. We now have 160 planets left if we are pessimists and 589,824 if we are optimists.

Finally, we come to the moon. This is a subject I am not entirely sold on. It is argued in TREH that a large companion moon is essential because of the way it stabilizes the earth’s rotation and wobble. Some argue that this is not necessary for complex life but is merely what happened in our case. With some reservations, I am inclined to incline towards Ward and Brownlee, the authors of TREH. Though, as hinted above and discussed a bit more below, climate variation is important for spurring evolution on, it could well be that the erratic wobble of the globe without a moon would be entirely too much for complex life like mammals. It is also worth mentioning, even if it is only one data point, that if this moon formation is as infrequent as studies suggest, then the fact that we wound up with one might carry profound significance, for if moons are unnecessary then we could still be here today and yet would most likely not have a moon. The fact that we do have one, uncommon as they appear to be, combined with the stabilizing effects we know it has, is enough to put me tentatively on the side of the moon inclusionists. At any rate, recent studies indicate that the sorts of collisions that probably form such proportionately large moons amongst terrestrial planets occur infrequently but not rarely, in 5-10% of star systems with planets. However, we must remember that just because it happens does not mean that it happens to the particular terrestrial planet that sits in the habitable zone. Let’s take 5% for the optimists and 1% for the pessimists, leaving us with, after rounding, as few as two planets and as many as 29,491. This upper limit is, in my opinion, very likely to be far too optimistic, but if it turns out that a companion moon is not necessary the prospects get a good deal better.

We have not established that life will develop on these planets, only that these are the ones where complex earth-like life, if it does form, will likely be found. Any other sort of life, if it can possibly exist, is nothing more than speculation. At least with carbon-based earth-like life we have a little bit of data to mix in with our guesses. There is still a great amount of uncertainty, which explains the large disparity between 2 and 29,491, but if the moon is a vital element than I feel a moderate amount of confidence that the real number is in that range. Eliminating the moon requirement for the optimists, we get a range of 2 and 589,824, and I feel quite confident that the real figure will be found in that range, probably far closer to 2.

In crunching these number, this time without ranges but rather with my best guess as to the real percentages, I arrive at 1,853 suitable planets in suitable systems (that’s with the moon requirement). This doesn’t mean that I believe there are 1,853 other civilizations out there in our galaxy, just that there are 1,853 planets where they might have developed or, if the system is still young, where it might develop given more time. And this is where the guess work gets very fuzzy indeed. I would be willing to bet that simple life forms will evolve on at least 1,852 of these planets. Apart from the fact that life arose almost immediately on this planet when conditions were right, biologists and chemists are increasingly noting how abundant the building blocks for life are, and how easy it might be to get life started. I think microbial life is all over the place, but complex life is likely a very different matter.

It took over three billion years to get from simple bacteria to more complex life forms. Furthermore, it does not appear to have been a steady climb to complexity, suggesting that certain conditions must be present, or perhaps certain events set it off. One thing that is nearly certain is that a great deal of oxygen must be present for organisms to gain a great deal of complexity, and this takes a while to build up in an atmosphere. Another factor often cited is that catastrophic events, while killing off a great number of species, actually clear the way for future progress. The great leaps forward in the history of evolution are fairly closely tied with some sort of crisis event on the planet, whether it be Snowball Earth or an asteroid impact. If this is the sort of precarious trail that leads to complex life, this need for disaster and a diverse ecology to survive it, it is reasonable to suppose that not all of these 1,853 suitable planets will develop it. Some of the disasters will prove too much, some to little. As to intelligent life, even less is known. It does appear that animals may have increased in intelligence over time, but the sudden spurt of intelligence in the genus homo is quite anomalous, at least in earth’s history (We must also note that if complex life can develop on the moon of a gas giant in the habitable zone, the odds will get better).

So how many intelligent species are there, at least with characteristics similar to us? The humble blogger is beyond the point where he is willing to speculate. Due to issues of time, we must eliminate the young systems, so it is likely that the number of suitable planets in suitable systems, if the 1,853 figure is remotely correct, is around 1,000. It will be exciting in the coming years to try and narrow down our limits and ranges with new data sure to be forthcoming from the new telescopes that they plan to launch into orbit. Perhaps these ideas will be overturned, perhaps confirmed. But for my money, the best answer to Fermi’s Paradox is still that we are alone or nearly alone in the galaxy, possibly the universe.

For this reason, SETI is probably a waste of time for some talented astronomers as well as a waste of tax payer money, but the humble blogger will expound on that in a future blog post.

Movie Review: Doomsday

2008-03-18T20:58:00.000-07:00

Neil Marshall, director of the recently released Doomsday, is still in the early stages of his career and as of yet it is difficult to assess his overall ability, especially when each opus sends a different signal. His first movie, Dog Soldiers, was a surprisingly decent flick that could very easily have been pure schlock. After that he made Descent, another opportunity for awfulness that he adroitly turned into a very respectable effort. After these two lower budget, minimal scope efforts, he graduated to something grander in reach and far more expensive, but in doing so revealed that his ability, at least as of yet, is not up to the task of a bigger production.

The Scottish director, even with his more successful efforts, never demonstrated much proficiency in screen writing. Descent’s plot, which he penned, is very simple, even rudimentary. It involves getting a group of female spelunkers lost in a cave system and then stirring in some humanoid monsters. It does not, on the whole, delve very deeply into character, but the different roles do at least display distinctive personalities, and with careful craftsmanship Marshall makes the most of the premise. Doomsday is his attempt at a more intricate plot, but its failure as a story may be an indication that Descent’s simplicity was not obscuring a latent talent in writing awaiting an opportunity to better express itself, but rather may have been the very extent of that talent. It is the viewer’s further misfortune that, during his latest project, the director’s abilities, which indisputably are there somewhere, either abandoned him or retreated deep inside.

Doomsday is another post-apocalyptic tale, this one, like 28 Days Later, set in the British Isles. The entire nation of Scotland has been quarantined due to the outbreak of what is called the Reaper Virus. When, decades later, the virus shows up again in London, a team of trained specialists, led by Rhona Mitra, is tasked with penetrating the quarantined land to find a man believed to have the cure. Things, the good reader will be unsurprised to learn, do not go as planned.

Directing talent can be a mercurial thing and oftentimes one gets the feeling that certain director’s are good without them knowing exactly why. A director like Hitchcock who grows into his talents over time is no mystery at all; it is the Francis Ford Coppola, the George Lucas, the Wolfgang Petersen who requires an explanation. Perhaps some directors grow too self aware and begin to strangle their art with wrongheaded, over-deliberated decisions where, in their better efforts, instinct would have gotten them smoothly through. Maybe they lose courage, or success satiates the hunger that drove them to excel. Whatever the reason or reasons, Neil Marshall has been stricken with the same syndrome, which I shall name after Lucas, whose fall from ability exceeds in depth those of Coppola, McTiernan and Petersen, among others, as much as the Pacific Ocean does the Olentangy River.

Mr. Marshall’s mistakes come early and often. The beginning of Doomsday, when the scene is set and the characters and obstacles introduced, moves at the pace of a hurricane, almost eager to be done with itself. This is in stark contrast to Descent, which was far more circumspect about its first act and never seemed to be in a rush to move on. Anyone who has ever gotten into trouble at school and was made to wait until Dad or Mom came to mete out a punishment knows that the anticipation is often worse than the sentence. So long as the wait is not too drawn out, this same principle of tantalizing expectation can work to augment just about any sensation and Marshall used it to good effect in his previous movies. Its absence is a disappointment as well as a harbinger of things to come.

There is a scene when the team first enters Scotland whose basic premise recalls a bit from James Cameron’s Aliens. Transported by armored vehicles, the team, in pursuit of their objective, enters an abandoned building where they come under attack and must make a chaotic retreat. One could do a case study on the difference between lazy, uninspired filmmaking and the better crafted variety by comparing and contrasting the scenes from these two different movies. James Cameron did not do profound character studies in his sequel to Ridley Scott’s masterpiece, but what he did quite expertly manage was to give each role a distinguishing personality as well as establish an interesting and believable group culture and dynamic. By the time Cameron’s space marines must infiltrate the seemingly abandoned compound, we are already quite invested in what happens to them. When things start to fall apart, skillful directing and editing tell the tale from multiple perspectives, and each step along the way is a well developed mini-story all on its own. No such brilliance is to be found in the Marshall version, which is a haphazard collection of action and gore which would almost make as much sense and be just as emotionally satisfying if the shots were randomly rearranged. If he had spared half the attention to detail, tension and development in this scene as he does to the scene in Descent where the spelunkers must cross a chasm while hanging from its roof, it would have come out alright. Sadly, he seems to have contracted indolence during the preparations for shooting.

In depicting the quarantined savages, Marshall does not seem to be concerned with much detail, a further indication of lassitude. The traditions and institutions of a society of that sort must be rooted in basic survival, shaped by the austere environment in which they live. If the bulk of a nation were to die off and the remainder cut off from the rest of the world, the most immediate concern for any survivors would be clean water and food. Do they farm? Do they hunt? How do they live off the land? Shelter was provided, of course, by the dead civilization before them, but how do they eat? The director is quite unconcerned with such questions, but these are questions which could lead to a fuller, more satisfying development of the world in which the story takes place. Instead of a society, we just see wave after wave of heedless warriors who, when not engaged in battle with the forces from London, are engaged in grotesque partying, thanks in part to gasoline and electricity which is still, apparently and inexplicably, readily available.

Apart from the aforementioned problems, the movie suffers from the usual illogic whereby the importance of motive, perspective and even location is sacrificed to bring us more violence and gore. By illogic of motive I mean that characters do things to help maximize gore rather than behave like the individuals they presumably are. Like automatons in a video game, they leap out in front of automatic weapons, maniacally screaming, so that we may see their bodies erupt and blood spurt. By illogic of perspective I mean that villains suddenly show up at the right time and place, as if they were omniscient, when a character with more human-like senses and less mystical knowledge would not have known where to show up to try to foil the heroine’s plans and, as it happens, have a high-adrenaline car chase. By illogic of location I mean that all matters of travel time, distance and location are forgotten so that the right confrontation or meeting can be had, whether it be a character implausibly hiding nearby in enemy territory with an available train so that a serendipitous escape can be made, or characters ranging, by automobile or helicopter, all over the island of Britain in mere moments.

But none of this is appreciably worse than scores of other forgettable action movies through the years. What makes Doomsday stand out as particularly bad is its ridiculous depravity. The survivors of apocalypse, Marshall would have us believe, will groom themselves like punk rockers and behave like inebriated teenagers at all times. There is no event in this fictional Scotland that is too mundane to be greeted with a wide open mouth, a strident howl, and a furious shaking of the head. Physical violence is the norm, and great delight is taken from the most degenerate and horrific rituals, all accompanied, of course, by open mouths, eye makeup, and screaming. Humans devour one another, and cadavers are abused for pure shock value. There is no tenderness in these people, no refinement, no culture, no humanity. And yet there have been numerous peoples, throughout history, who have been subjected to terrible emotional trauma and who have lived at a subsistence level without descending to the sheer wantonness we see in Doomsday. An exploration of the pathologies that result due to the Reaper Virus and the quarantine could be interesting, but Neil Marshall gives us only monstrous caricature.

It may be that at no time does a critic do more important work than in eviscerating the bad art of a promising director. Rather than let him continue to stray down the path begun with Doomsday, rather than let his Lucas Syndrome go untreated, let us ridicule his mistakes so that they can be corrected. We’ll stop of short of the point reached with David Lean where, after Ryan’s Daughter was roundly criticized, he stopped making films for fifteen years, but let us proceed far enough to nudge Mr. Marshall onto a different course, the one suggested by his first works. I add my weight, meager as it is, to the collective effort. This way, we might yet enjoy the long career of a talented artist rather than suffer through decades of similar offal wondering what became of that guy – what was his name? – who made Descent.

Final Grade: D

Ohio State Football All 1980's Squad

2008-03-10T16:04:00.000-07:00

The 1980's were the first decade without Woody Hayes as coach since the decade in which the Nazi's were toppled. After Woody's demise the program was entrusted to Earle Bruce, a Woody disciple who had successfully turned around the program at Iowa State. But after his first season, in which a late USC drive in the Rose Bowl left Ohio State two points shy of a national title, Earle was never able to take his teams quite so far. Towards the end, the program had slipped and the decade ended on a very sour note.

In investigating why "9 and 3" Earle lagged behind his mentor and predecessor, it immediately becomes apparent that the defense softened during these years. The offensive stars of the 1980's compare favorably enough with past decades, and the linebackers were as strong as any group yet, but there is a distinct paucity of the high quality defensive backs with whom OSU had thrived under Woody and, after Earle's first class graduated, a complete lack of the powerful defensive linemen who used to fill the trenches on Saturdays.

The final scores demonstrate this decay of the Buckeye defense. From 1981 to 1985, Ohio State registered one shut out, and Earle Bruce teams had only three in his final seven seasons. Compare this to Woody's 1977 and 1973 squads, who each registered four shutouts. In this seven-year span, nine teams scored 30 or more points on the Buckeyes, compared with only two teams in the 1968-1977 period, and none managed it in the regular season. From '68-'77, only 21 teams put up 20 or more on the Bucks, while 33 teams did it in the '81-'87 period. While it is true offenses opened up in the early eighties, the top ten scoring defenses were not dramatically different, and though Ohio State was consistently in the top ten in the 1970's, they never once made the top ten list in the 1980's.

But for all that, it was still a successful decade. Earle Bruce got five bowl wins, even though many of them were lesser bowls than the Buckeyes were used to, and Ohio State still managed four wins over Michigan. If the defensive talent had been as deep and broad as the offensive talent, it might have been a tremendous decade indeed, but there is still plenty to celebrate. Let's see who tops the list.

BACKFIELD

QB Art Schlichter - Oh what he might have done in the NFL without fewer off-the-field problems! He still was the Big Ten MVP in 1981 and a good enough passer that people forget how well he ran.

FB Keith Byars - The era of the Woody fullback was over, but this tailback, who nearly won the Heisman Trophy when he wasn't injured, was big enough to play some FB in the pro's.

TB Tim Spencer - One of Ohio State's all-time leading rushers, room must be made for him even if it means shifting Keith around a bit.

RECEIVERS

WR Chris Carter - Probably had the best hands in Ohio State history, a phenomenal All-American and long time pro player. His presence on the 1987 team might have been enough to turn that season around.

WR Gary Williams - A fine and nearly forgotten receiver from the early eighties; one of Schlichter's favorite targets.

TE John Frank - Little dispute over this one, perhaps the finest receiving tight end OSU has had in the modern era.

OFFENSIVE LINEMEN
OL Jim Lachey - Yeah he was All-American, yeah he was a multiple All-Pro, but did you know he finished second in the state track meet in the hurdles?

OL Kirk Lowdermilk - Mr. Lachey's buddy on the O-line, he had a long and distinguished NFL career.

OL Joe Lukens - Three-time All-Big Ten honoree, probably should have been an All-American

OL Bill Roberts - Passed over by awards committees, this powerful tackle was a first round NFL pick.

OL Jeff Uhlenhake - An All-American, Cooper's favorite of his early linemen.

DEFENSIVE LINEMEN

DT Jerome Foster - The one true star of a group that lacks punch, Mr. Foster was a sack specialist for the early Bruce teams.

DE Erik Kumerow - Earle's OLB were DE's too. Erik stands out among a moderately talented bunch.

DE Rowland Tatum - Another solid OLB/DE, an All-Big Ten selection.

LINEBACKERS

LB Chris Spielman - There was defensive talent at Ohio State in the 1980's, you just have to know where to look. No one was ever better than All-American and future All-Pro #36 Chris Spielman.

LB Marcus Marek - All-American and all time tackles leader at OSU. A four year starter.

LB Pepper Johnson - An All-American with a distinguished pro career, this Detroit native found his true home in Columbus.

LB Orlando Lowry - A solid OLB/DE and future NFL player. Paired up with Rowland Tatum in the first part of the decade.

DEFENSIVE BACKS

DB William White - A good cover man at the end of Earle's Buckeye tenure, All-Big Ten, he had a nice pro career.

DB Shaun Gayle - Another solid DB with a long pro career, he labored on the forgotten 1983 team.

DB Sonny Gordon - Another All-Big Ten pick who played along side Mr. White.

DB Garcia Lane - All-Big Ten and partner to Shaun Gayle on the 1983 team.

Central Ohio Household Registers 100% for Ron Paul

2008-03-05T14:33:00.000-08:00

With both members reporting, the A______ household today announced that Ron Paul, Republican candidate for president, had taken the household with 100% of the vote. In what is being called an overwhelming landslide, the half acre property in a Columbus suburb bucked recent trends and registered resounding support for the Texas Congressman.

“It’s absolutely phenomenal,” Campaign Chairman Kent Snyder was quoted as saying. “It demonstrates how powerful the message of freedom can be.”

But David Axelrod of the Obama campaign highlighted what he called a “strong performance” from his candidate. “Obama finished a close second in a home where no one expected him to do well. He’s a liberal welfare tax-and-spend Democrat with a boundless desire to regulate anything that moves. And there are no African-Americans in the household. Falling just two votes shy of the winner in a house like that demonstrates Barack’s broad appeal to Americans from all walks of life, even those who think his politics suck. I don’t think that Ron Paul can just take the house for granted in the future.”

Exit polls indicated that Congressman Paul had made an early impact in the household, getting 100% of votes from those who made up their minds to vote for him within three seconds of his announcement that he was going to run.

“America needs a change,” an anonymous voter from the household told reporters. “The other candidates just offer more of the same.”

The A______ residence is an ethnically diverse central Ohio abode, with exactly two thirds of all residents claiming some Native American ancestry. The rest is northern and western European. One third work in the medical field and one third are Spanish interpreters. With an unemployment rate of 33.3%, there was initial speculation that Ron Paul’s economic message may have helped to influence the votes until it was revealed that the unemployed of the household were too young to vote and had only just learned to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich without getting half of it on their faces.

A closer look at the numbers revealed how deep and broad was the support for Dr. Paul in the residence. The Pittsburgh native had a 100 point advantage over rival John McCain among those voters who viewed the War in Iraq as extremely important. This same advantage was maintained among voters who viewed the economy as important, were concerned about gun rights, disliked socialized medicine, hated the income tax and expressed doubts about whether Mike Huckabee had a penis.

Spokesmen from the other campaigns immediately downplayed the significance of the win.

“It’s a fucking three-member family,” Chairman Terry McAuliffe of the Clinton campaign asserted. “We don’t give a good Goddamn which way they vote.”

Officials from the Obama and McCain campaigns were quick to point out that the household had not been apportioned any delegates.

“I hadn’t even heard of them before,” admitted former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who withdrew from the race Tuesday night. “I know for a fact that they are not in the Bible.”

While conceding that the vote would play a small role in the current campaign, the Paul camp pointed out that the current demographic trends indicated the household could be a major player in the near future.

“They’re set to increase in population by 33.3% over the next two months alone,” said Snyder. “At that rate, by the 2016 presidential elections, the A______’s will have a population of 2,985,391. Six years after that it will exceed the population of the rest of the planet. We’re talking about the future of American politics here.”

Aides from the other campaigns were quick to give it their own perspective.

“Even if these trends continue, in the 2016 elections the household will still have only two voters,” said a Clinton team member on condition of anonymity. “The other 2,985,389 will still be minors. I don’t care if they have a billion kids, with an immigration rate of zero they still have only two voters in 2016, making their importance, in terms of American presidential politics, only slightly greater than that of Narnia.”

Narnian officials did not immediately return calls for comment.

Scientists also expressed caution with regards to the Paul camp’s estimates, citing evidence that Mrs. A______’s uterus was unlikely to sustain such an output in the long term.

Ohio State Football All 1970's Squad

2008-02-27T17:52:00.001-08:00

It is quite probable that in no other decade has Ohio State produced more talent than during the 1970's. The combined record of these ten teams reflects this, as they compiled an incredible 91-20-3 mark. But at the same time that Buckeye fans were enjoying nearly uninterrupted success, they were dealing with the frustration that comes with coming close to, yet never achieving, championships.

On new fewer than three occasions, Ohio State went to the Rose Bowl undefeated and untied and, with a win, would have won a national championship. Each time they lost, to Stanford, UCLA and USC. On one other occasion they made it to the Rose Bowl undefeated and pummeled USC, but an earlier tie with undefeated Michigan, in Ann Arbor, left them in the #2 spot.

The decade started with the senior season of the Super Sophs. After avenging a los to Michigan the previous year, they lost to thrice defeated Stanford in the Rose Bowl and lost a national title. Four years of Archie Griffin followed soon after, but in three of those years, despite defeating Michigan, they lost the Rose Bowl. The one year they did defeat the (then) Pac 8 team, they tied Michigan. A promising 1977 squad came up just short against the Sooners and Wolverines and then, inexplicably got pounded by Alabama in the Sugar Bowl. The 1979 squad, the first coached by Earle Bruce, started slowly but, by the end of the season, was rolling over opponents and found themselves ranked #1 in the nation in the AP poll before falling by a single point to Charles White and the USC Trojans.

The decade was a study in contrasts. For the first time since the 1930's, a decade would pass without an Ohio State national title. Perhaps the greatest decade of talent ever assembled, led by two-time Heisman winner Archie Griffin, failed to bring home a national title, despite being so close for so long. Finally, an aging Woody Hayes, whose teams were beginning to underperform - especially the immensely talented 1977 squad - lost his cool one last time and got himself fired for an embarrassing punch to the face of an opposing player. The resurgence of Buckeye football in the late sixties had yet been tinged with the tragic loss to Michigan in 1969, the last game of the decade. Perhaps that fateful game hung over the team in the coming decade.

Nevertheless, the All 70's Squad might be the best that Ohio State, or indeed any college, has ever offered.

BACKFIELD

QB Cornelius Greene - Probably the best scrambler in Ohio State history, he developed into a decent passer with more experience. Won the Big Ten Silver Football award the year Archie won his second Heisman.

FB Pete Johnson - Combined power with speed, his legs never seemed to stop chugging. Led the nation in scoring and, the year Archie won his second Heisman, ran for over 1,000 yards!

TB Archie Griffin - Any questions?

RECEIVERS

WR/WB Brian Baschnagel - A utility man, he ran the ball and caught the ball and, in the pro's, even played some DB. An underpraised but integral part of the middle 70's juggernauts.

WR Doug Donley - Woody's teams did not pass much, but when Schlichter arrived receivers started getting some attention. The best of them was Doug Donley.

TE Doug France - A first round draft pick, he went on to be a tackle in the NFL, in case there is any doubt as to what sort of TE Woody looked for. Not often used to catch passes.

OFFENSIVE LINE

OT John Hicks - Woody went so far as to say that John Hicks was the best lineman he ever had... better even than Jim Parker. In 1973, despite teammates Griffin and GRadishar finishing 5th and 6th in the Heisman voting, and despite playing offensive tackle, Hicks finished 2nd in the Heisman balloting! Case closed.

OT Chris Ward - Some would argue for Schumacher in the second spot. Both were imposing tackles; we'll give the edge to Mr. Ward.

OG Ted Smith - An All American and member of Woody's most beloved class, 1975.

OG Ken Fritz - Another All American offensive lineman from the 1970's. When multiple All American lineman don't make the All Decade team, you know it was a good decade for talent.

C Tom DeLeone - Another toss up with Steve Myers, from what we have seen, DeLeone might have had a small edge.

DEFENSIVE LINE

DE Bob Brudzinski - Some of Woody's assistants insisted that Robert was as good as Jim Houston. This All American sure lasted a long time in the pro's.

DE Van DeCree - All American and member of that 1973 defense. Was there ever a better one?

DT Pete Cusick - Injuries cut his pro career short, this All American was part of the immovable 1973 defense.

DT Aaron Brown - Another All American and sack specialist from the 1977 team.

LINEBACKERS

LB Randy Gradishar - They just don't come any better. Finished 6th in the Heisman balloting in 1973, considered by many to be Ohio State's all time greatest linebacker. 7 time All Pro.

LB Tom Cousineau - #1 pick in the draft, he preferred to play in Canada at the start of his career. One of the best conditioned athletes ever and a tackling machine.

LB Rick Middleton - Patrolled on defense with Randy Gradishar, a first round draft pick and possible oversight for All American honors.

DEFENSIVE BACKS
DB Tim Fox - A long career in the pro's awaited this All American Ohio State safety. Prominent member of the 1973 and 1975 teams.

DB Ray Griffin - Archie's brother and another All American. Some said he had more talent than #45.

DB Neal Colzie - Also a wonder on special teams, this CB intercepted passes when QB's dared throw in his direction.

DB Mike Guess - Overlooked for All American honors, he started four years and was named All Big Ten three times. Helped the 1979 squad to an undefeated regular season.