If circumstances are such that thrift, energy, industry, and forethought enable the farmer, the tiller of the soil, on the one hand, and the wage-worker on the other, to keep themselves, their wives, and their children in reasonable comfort, then the State is well off, and we can be assured that the other classes in the community will likewise prosper. On the other hand, if there is in the long run a lack of prosperity among the two classes named, then all other prosperity is sure to be more seeming than real.

Theodore Roosevelt, Republican

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

Gandalf

Maze of Contents

Magazine tables of contents are curious things. A table of contents is supposed to help the reader find his way to a desired section quickly; but in magazines they seem designed instead to purposefully frustrate and bewilder the reader.

I can’t think of a single time in which I’ve opened a magazine’s table of contents and found the article I was looking for faster than if I just flipped through the damn thing. But paradoxically, once I’m invested in using the TOC, I cannot but continue the quixotic search. I suppose it comes from the belief that, having already devoted a chunk of time toward this insane and fruitless endeavor, surely the answer lies just around the nect page (past those ads). And while the entire operation may turn out to be longer than a simple pass through the entire thing, the marginal time left to find it in the TOC must be less by now, right? Oh, such folly!

And if, perchance, you ever do find the page number of that article, good luck finding that page through any mechanism faster than a bogosort.

Designing magazine tables of content and page numbering systems (or rather, page-number-hiding systems) is truly a work of art. Demonic, maddening art.

Cry For Me Argentina

In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s been few tyrants getting toppled in the world this year. I felt a little bit (just a little) for Gaddafi, having been dragged out from his hole or wherever he was hiding, and apparently unceremoniously shot by his former subjects (and I mean subjects).

I imagine that dictators like Gaddafi and Mubarak probably spend most of their time in power, especially in their later years, in a bubble of hubris, believing themselves not only indispensable to their people, but beloved by them. I don’t know if Gaddafi actually believed his own bullshit about the rebels being terrorists and brainwashed drug addicts, but I do believe he thought himself loved by his people, and tended to consider those who protested or rebelled against him to be aberrations and hooligans, and thus could justify his regime’s brutal treatment of them.

I imagine that even in his final days, Gaddafi, deserted by all but his most loyal (or most desperate) supporters, with little more left to his name than a bag of luggage and a toupee, believed that he was the rightful leader of Libya, and that he would somehow once again rule. That surely would make his final moments all the more crushing when dragged out from his bubble, he looked around and only saw the hatred of his people.

I imagine there must have been a moment then that the reality struck him: his bubble was a lie, most Libyans detested him, and they couldn’t wait to discard him like day old fish carcass. Had he been kept alive to face trial, no doubt he would have erected that bubble again, but nevertheless, that moment of realization would have happened.

It is thus that just a sliver of sympathy goes out from me to those fallen tyrants in their moment of revelation, whether summarily executed by former subjects, thrown to rot in their own prison, or sent into permanent exile.

And I feel a similar pang of sympathy to any Microsoft executives who might be watching this video:

Publicly-Traded Stock Is Not An Investmet

My thoughts exactly:

contrary to popular opinion, shareholders of American public corporations are NOT [...] investors, as in the contributors of capital. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareholder

Thought of the Day

It’s amazing to me how many of the same people who interpret magnificent details of nature as subtle evidence of God’s intelligent power can simultaneously discount the considerably more obvious evidence of human impact on nature.

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.
John Rogers

Embrace The Bias?

With the recent gaffes from NPR execs, conservative opponents of publicly-funded radio and television have taken fresh aim at the popular radio producers. Many conservatives have had a hard on for de-funding NPR (federal contributions make up about 10% of NPR’s budget) mostly because they believe that the network, along with PBS (the television network) and CPB (the actual organization that gets most of the federal funding) are all liberal fronts.

I’ve been listening to NPR for years now. These days, this consists of Morning Edition, Talk of the Nation, Planet Money, occasionally the Diane Rehm show, and This American Life (technically produced by PRI, which gets only 2% of its funding from the federal government). I have yet to observe a systemic liberal bias in the content on NPR, and that’s during a time that spans from me associating with the Republican party, to my participating in a Democratic caucus and beyond.

I’m sure some particular shows do have a noticeable liberal slant. I won’t dispute that personalities like Bill Moyers or Tavis Smiley have particular political perspectives, and if those were the only personalities that someone caught on NPR or PBS, then I couldn’t blame them for thinking there was some bias there.

But take the shows like Diane Rehm, Talk of the Nation, or PBS Newshour, which regularly have guests and roundtables from all different perspectives, and specifically balances at least the two major parties during political analysis. I challenge you to find definitive cases of the hosts or producers imposing their political or ideological bias on the shows.

The complaint I tend to hear is not that the shows are obviously biased (like almost every second of Fox News is) but that they are more subtly biased via things like story selection. This sentiment is concisely provided by the second letter (from a self-described progressive) in this post over at the Daily Dish:

…If they would just say, “Yes, our story selection is directed at mostly rich, mostly white, mostly liberals.” OK, now we can all move on.

If conservative detractors would largely agree that public radio/television’s alleged bias is in story selection rather than story coverage, then they’ve already conceded the argument. Even if you agree that NPR’s story selection is directed at “mostly rich, mostly white, mostly liberals” (which I don’t concede; but maybe I’m just blinded by being mostly rich, mostly white and mostly liberal), in order for that to mean that the network has a liberal bias per se, then you have to agree that those stories themselves, even when covered completely fairly, lend themselves to a natural liberal interpretation. Such criticisms devolve to arguing, in effect, the adage “reality has a liberal bias”.

And is that grounds for labeling the coverage of such stories as biased? There are no liberal facts or conservative facts, just facts. If the facts lend themselves to a liberal interpretation (or a conservative interpretation), then that’s what the facts lend themselves to. Accepting that is not liberal or conservative bias, it’s just being rational. Avoiding facts inconvenient to your preconceived worldview, on the other hand, is not balance, it is obstinacy.

NPR should not ‘embrace bias’ in their journalism or their hosts, they should stamp it out. Does that mean their personalities can’t have opinions? No, they can, but if they are reporting on facts or moderating guests’ discussions, then they should be as objective as possible, challenging and exploring all views as appropriate in order to better inform their audience (as opposed to entertaining their audience).

The Heresy Of Mitch Daniels

Andrew Sullivan is drooling over the Republican governor of Indiana, Mitch Daniels:

As Dish readers know, Indiana governor, Mitch Daniels, seems to me the kind of man the GOP desperately needs: a real fiscal conservative, socially inclusive, open to serious tax reform and politically adult conversation to regain the center ground. Here’s why the Dish loves him so:

Let’s raise the retirement age, he says. Let’s reduce Social Security for the rich. And let’s reconsider our military commitments, too. When I ask about taxes—in 2005 Daniels proposed a hike on the $100,000-plus crowd, which his own party promptly torpedoed—he refuses to revert to Republican talking points. “At some stage there could well be a tax increase,” he says with a sigh. “They say we can’t have grown-up conversations anymore. I think we can.”

The Heresy Of Mitch Daniels – The Daily Dish

From Politico:

Daniels, once the Hudson Institute’s chief executive, described himself as an acolyte of [Herman] Kahn’s and marveled at the creative thinking evident in his 1982 book, “The Coming Boom.” Daniels recited from Kahn’s book: “It would be most useful to redesign the tax system to discourage consumption and encourage savings and investment. One obvious possibility is a value added tax and flat income tax, with the only exception being a lower standard deduction.”
Mitch Daniels open to VAT, oil tax hike – Politico

While I’m happy to see at least one Republican leader try to discuss fiscal policy intelligently, here are some problems I see with the above positions:

Increasing the retirement age has become the mantra for tinkering with Social Security formulas, from both the left and the right. As the standard argument goes, people are living longer and longer, thus they need to work longer before retirement. The problem with this idea is twofold: firstly the motivation for it is not that people are living longer, it’s that we need to shore up Social Security (or at least, there is a perception that we do). From that perspective, increasing retirement age is simply a cost-cutting measure, and should be seen as at least neutral with cutting benefits in general. Secondly, the rationalization that people are living longer does not imply that people are more able to continue working longer (much less desire to). People are living longer because of advances in medical technology for the very old, but are people at 65 healthier and more able-minded than people at 65 were ten years ago? I don’t know the answer to that, but I haven’t heard any of the proponents of this policy say so.

My second disagreement is with the idea that “It would be most useful to redesign the tax system to discourage consumption and encourage savings and investment.” Why? It might be useful at certain stages in the economic cycle, but I don’t see why it would necessarily always be useful. I would prefer the government try to reduce the distortionary effect of taxation, not use it to manipulate people into becoming consumers or investors. Let the public decide when consumption, savings or investment is right for them. From my nascent understanding, a VAT is less distortionary than the income tax, so in that respect, it may be preferable. But it’s not like we’ll have one or the other, we’d have both. With that in mind, the government should look to balance out any anti-consumption effect of a VAT with anti-savings effect of the income tax. This way, the government gets funded, and individuals are unencumbered in managing their own finances.

Sam Harris and the “Ground Zero Mosque”

I agree with much of what Sam Harris writes. When I don’t agree, it’s usually a question of degree. For instance, Harris recently ignited debate at his TED talk, in which he advocated science as an arbiter of moral decisions. While I support this effort in principle, I fear Harris is a bit too optimistic on the prospects of science to  develop from a historically descriptive practice to a normative one, or, to put it another way, to rise above Hume’s (in)famous “is-ought” problem. In fact, one could review history and make a plausible case that science is often at its worse when it is used prescriptively. (The expected counterargument is that those examples are not examples of science, but pseudoscience used to further decidedly non-scientific agendas.)

I am not writing this to debate science’s role in morality, though. I believe a thoughtful debate can be had there. Rather, I am reacting to Harris’ recent article, Ground Zero Mosque from The Daily Beast. His first two sentences perhaps best sum up his position:

Should a 15-story mosque and Islamic cultural center be built two blocks from the site of the worst jihadist atrocity in living memory? Put this way, the question nearly answers itself.

Harris’ answer, in case the obviousness escaped you, is no.