The other day I saw this Ted Talk from 2005 with Terry Moore demonstrating how he’d recently learned that he’d been tying his shoes wrong all his life, and that if he looped it the other way it would go from the weak to the strong form of the knot.

I’d actually been having a problem keeping my round nylon laces tied during my fairly long daily walks, and so I tried reversing the direction of the last step of tying the knot…and it worked!!!

Try it yourself. Maybe it’ll help you too.

Here’s a message I sent to my congressman and senators:

Dear xxx,

I’m writing you this Memorial Day because of a disturbing video I watched yesterday (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PDhjNF9eUQ) of park police aggressively stopping non-disruptive expression at the Jefferson Memorial.

I believe that they were there to peacefully protest the recent D.C. Circuit Court ruling in Oberwetter v. Hilliard (http://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf/748BE2DE8AF2A2A485257893004E07FC/$file/10-5078-1308285.pdf). In that case, a young woman was arrested for silently (with ear buds) dancing, with friends who were doing the same, at the Jefferson Memorial to celebrate the birthday of Thomas Jefferson around midnight in 2008.

I believe that the original arrest was the result of poor judgment of over-zealous police, and the court decision was an, unfortunately all too common, example of the state protecting its own misdeeds rather than correcting them. I think this will lead to an escalation of harms. It’s possible that the police actions and the court’s decision fall within the current letter of the law, but they fall outside of the spirit of individual liberty that makes this country uniquely great.

It’s my understanding that Congress has authority over the policies governing D.C. memorials, and so I urge you to take quick and decisive action to correct the policy and prevent future abuses of people at our memorials.

I agree that it’s reasonable to prevent large protests within the memorials and other activities that would interfere with the ability of visitors to enjoy them. But, I think it’s clear that such considerations do not apply to these cases and perhaps the policies need clarification to establish that.

We honor the memory of Thomas Jefferson for his commitment to individual liberty. In this country, we not only tolerate but we celebrate individual preferences in how happiness is pursued. We do not insist on uniformity. We do not believe that there is only one way to worship, or one way to honor our founders.

Many people are disturbed that our government has over-reacted to calls for security after the horrible attacks on 9-11, and are threatening the very values that make our country worth securing (excesses including TSA security theater, Patriot Act abuses, etc.). Please end this abuse of innocent citizens and visitors and avoid displaying the opposite of toleration at our shrines to liberty.

Please let me know what you are doing to solve this problem as soon as possible.

The Sahara Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas closed today, and it’s a little sad for me.

I have a lot of fond memories of that place, and I’ll miss it.

When I was a teenager, my father used to take me along with him on many trips to Vegas, and we would often eat a great dinner at the Sahara’s upscale House of Lords restaurant, where I’d usually have a shrimp cocktail and a filet mignon with béarnaise sauce. I’ve yet to find a substitute that lives up to my memory (which probably exaggerates the truth somewhat) of those meals. I never saw the Rat Pack perform there, but I saw other shows including a great performance by Don Rickles.

Over the years, I’ve frequently gone back to the Sahara to gamble, both for the personal nostalgia and for the low minimum bets for blackjack and craps.

I’m going back to Vegas next month, and it will be strange to not be able to go back to the Sahara.

Today, I was listening to this EconTalk podcast.

It made me feel like I have a better understanding of the world than I did yesterday.

I have been a supporter of Kiva, because it seemed clear to me that an important way to help people lift themselves out of poverty is to make credit available to budding entrepreneurs in places where a financial infrastructure isn’t available. But, in this podcast Mike Munger was explaining that aid based on this type of microfinance has not had the great effects that had been hoped for. He explained that rather than creating many productive businesses, the primary benefit of this credit help was to enable a very inefficient form of saving. In many cultures, saving up for purchases and investments is almost impossible. People who begin to accumulate savings are expected to give it away (to spouses, friends, community members who plead that they need it, etc.). The credit that must be paid back is a way for people to make the purchase before the “savings,” and have an excuse for why the accumulation cannot be given away.

Saving is so difficult in these places that those who want to do it must accept a negative interest rate!

Thus, it seems that cultural norms, rather than lack of capital, pose the greatest impediment to economic progress for much of the world’s population.

While listening to this, I remembered the thesis of Deirdre McCloskey, that it is the change in ideology (respect for bourgeois virtues and liberty), rather than any particular materialistic explanation, that enabled the fantastic progress we’ve seen in the last two hundred years. Things didn’t take off until many people started valuing things like commercial activity, innovation, thrift, and the individual liberty that makes these things possible.

Here’s a Cato article, an initial post to a Cato Unbound discussion, and another EconTalk podcast with McCloskey on her ideas.

At first I thought that this was a significant factor, but that progress has primarily been the result of the compounding effect of the powerful benefits of trade that had been expanding for many centuries and finally hit a tipping point, in combination with scientific and technological developments that enabled the industrial revolution.

But, now, I think there’s more to the McCloskey thesis than I’d thought. Cultural norms and ideology seem central to the difference between the parts of the world that have progressed dramatically, and those that haven’t.

Additionally, it really seems to me that many on the left, including president Obama, are still in the clutches of the bad ideology that is keeping much of the world poor, and threatens to make the rest of us much poorer. I think they share those long-held cultural ideas that it’s just wrong for some to have wealth while others have much less…that it’s proper for the community to claim the earned wealth as its due, and have little respect for private property. They treat wealth as a given and have no idea what makes it possible.

This insight really makes the term “progressive” into a bad joke. “Progressives” embrace the ideology that threatens to destroy the progress that we’ve made.

Let’s not regress. Let’s continue to embrace the bourgeois virtues, and help spread these ideas to the rest of the world, so we can all become better off.

I’m finally trying to read all the way through Hayek’s The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (I had begun reading it years ago, but never completed it).

I know that there’s some controversy about how much of it was written by Hayek himself, and how much was written by W. W. Bartley III, but however the work was divided I’m finding the book rewarding. There are lots of good ideas in it. I was familiar with the major points already, but not with this particular presentation.

I’ve just read the chapter entitled “Our Poisoned Language” in which Hayek complains that many of the words (e.g., Liberal, Society, Social, Capitalism) used to describe aspects of the nature of the extended order have been corrupted to the point where it’s difficult to communicate about the subject because of the ambiguities and erroneous baggage that these words now convey.

One interesting issue is that of “Capitalism” (which, I didn’t know, made its first appearance in 1902). I was under the impression that it was much older and had meant laissez faire economics until recently, but it seems that it’s long been tainted with the notion that it’s just a mechanism for serving the special interests of the few large holders of capital, rather than the mechanism that enables all people to collaborate and prosper. “Market Economy” is somewhat better but, as Hayek notes, being an economy still connotes that it is designed and driven by particular individual plans, rather than the structure of the collaboration of many different economies in which no individuals could possibly know enough to direct it. Hayek has proposed “catallactics” to replace economics and “catallaxy” to be its object of study. But, that hasn’t taken off.

I was thinking about it and it seems to me that maybe something like Market Ecology might work better to describe what we mean (I see from web searches that the term is already in use, and has meanings that are different from what I intend).

The benefit I have in mind is that many on the left already appreciate that natural ecology is not a tool that we should manipulate, but it’s a wonderful system of complex processes and feedback mechanisms, most of which we don’t understand and shouldn’t be so arrogant to think we can easily improve on it by interfering with it. Leave it alone. It works great without a designer or director.

If only they had that much respect for the market system.

I was prepared to be disappointed by Senator Rand Paul after he took office, but it hasn’t happened yet.

From his maiden speech in the Senate, in which he declared his preference for principle over compromise, to his hearing rant at Dept. of Energy busybodies, I’ve liked how he’s conducted himself.

And, now, he’s submitted a serious proposal to balance the budget within five years.

I’m sure that most people will react with horror at this radical proposal, but this is a responsible, moderate, plan. Continuing on the current insane arithmetic-denying course is what’s extreme and irresponsible.

People who reject this proposal out of hand are not serious about addressing the fiscal crisis that we face. This should be the starting point for future discussions. Those who don’t like all of the changes should propose others that accomplish similar results. Otherwise, they should get out of the way of progress.

This will be interesting.

I always thought that the linkage of the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tuscon to the “violent” rhetoric and imagery of the right was a combination of bad pop-psychology, a condescendingly biased misunderstanding of the Tea Party activists by the left (assuming that they are primarily gun-toting idiots who quickly endorse violence, and not noticing similar rhetoric from the left or the past), and mostly an obvious attempt by the losers to shut up the winners.

But, now that Time Magazine has published this article (“Wisconsin’s Governor Wins But Is He Still Dead Man Walker?”), and after the all the violent rhetoric and imagery we’ve seen from union supporters, can we admit that this is not just a phenomenon of the right, and agree to forget about it?

I just thought I’d share the fact that a few months ago I discovered YouTube videos of Tim Minchin. He’s incredibly talented, funny, and smart. Be warned that he uses quite a bit of vulgarity, but it’s always appropriate!

Here are a few of my favorites.

The Pope Song (this is the first video that brought him to my attention):

Storm (a 9 minute beat poem that lets you know he shares my worldview with respect to science vs. mystical crap):

So Fucking Rock (He is):

Lullaby (The latest one I’ve seen):

White Wine in the Sun (A Christmas Song)

Oh, just go watch everything of his you can find.

I’ll be rooting for the Pittsburgh Steelers in tomorrow’s Super Bowl game.

The Packers are a very good team, and I can understand why the betting line has them around 3-point favorites. But, I still want the Steelers to win.

I’ve been a Steelers fan since I was a teenager, even though I’ve never been to Pittsburgh. It may be because my father had been a fan, but I don’t remember that. I think he was more of a Dallas Cowboys fan (but he was a Pittsburgh Pirates baseball fan, largely because of Roberto Clemente), until I decided to be a Steelers fan; and then we both started rooting for the Steelers.

I think part of it was my natural nonconformist tendency. If everybody else was rooting for the home team, I was inclined to root against them. I remember really liking the play of middle-linebacker Jack Lambert (and reading Sports Illustrated articles about him) and then getting to know more about the rest of the Steelers team (Lynn Swann, Joe Greene, Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris, etc.) in the 70’s. It didn’t hurt that they became very successful. I think it was also, partially, because they were (and are) the sort of team that most people are inclined to dislike. Their uniforms are (often) black, and they often defeat most people’s home teams, and they play very aggressively.

This year I think the league, unfairly, decided to make an example of linebacker James Harrison and single him out for large fines because of some hard hits he made (some did involve helmet-to-helmet contact, but that’s not completely under the defender’s control) partially because he’s a Steeler, and they’re easy for most of the fans to hate.

Another reason some people are inclined to root against the Steelers this year is that their quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger, was accused of a sexual assault (a second time), and was suspended by the league (first for 6 games, then it was reduced to 4) for his conduct. Now, after investigation, he was never actually charged with a crime in either case. I don’t know exactly what happened, and neither do any of the other people who are assuming he’s guilty of something horrible. I think it’s very likely that he behaved badly, and stupidly, but I understand that he’s been trying very hard this year to change his behavior. I’ve never thought that athletes had an obligation to be role models, but I do think they should be careful to avoid situations that could lead to accusations of wrongdoing (they are obvious targets for false charges of this nature). As far as I know, Roethlisberger has learned from his mistakes and has been performing very well both on and off the field. So, as of now, I do admire him as an athlete. I also really admire Troy Polamalu, Hines Ward, James Harrison, and many other Steelers (including coach Mike Tomlin).

So, I don’t care how many more people are rooting for the Packers.

I say: “GO STEELERS!!!”

Update: Well, the Steelers lost. Too many turnovers. Congratulations, Packers.

From Obama’s 2011 State of the Union Address:

We are part of the American family. We believe that in a country where every race and faith and point of view can be found, we are still bound together as one people; that we share common hopes and a common creed; that the dreams of a little girl in Tucson are not so different than those of our own children, and that they all deserve the chance to be fulfilled.

Now, it’s true about people’s dreams being similar, but the implication that other people’s dreams and wishes should be as important to us as those of people we’ve chosen to love and support is not just wrong, it’s pernicious.

This metaphor of the nation as a family seems superficially attractive. It feels warm and fuzzy, and very humanitarian, to want the whole country to treat each other as they would their intimate loved ones. But, it’s not possible or desirable. We don’t actually know enough about strangers to push them towards what we think is best. And we don’t have enough resources (or, again, knowledge) to divide what we have among the needs and wants of everybody in the country. We’re all better off if we divide our attention and resources in a way that reflects what we actually know, and what we can actually improve.

Hayek understood this. From The Fatal Conceit:

Part of our present difficulty is that we must constantly adjust our lives, our thoughts and our emotions, in order to live simultaneously within the different kinds of orders according to different rules. If we were to apply the unmodified, uncurbed, rules of the micro-cosmos (i.e. of the small band or troop, or of, say, our families) to the macro-cosmos (our wider civilisation), as our instincts and sentimental yearnings often make us wish to do, we would destroy it. Yet if we were always to apply the rules of the extended order to our more intimate groupings, we would crush them. So we must learn to live in two sorts of world at once.

The family metaphor is very convenient for tyrants. If we’re a family, why shouldn’t our wealth be redistributed? If we’re a family, why shouldn’t some have to pay for the health and education of strangers? If we’re a family, why shouldn’t the government (parents) be able to force endless rules upon us (children) for our own good, and call upon us to constantly sacrifice our own preferences for what the government has determined is for the greater good of the family?

But, we are NOT a family*. We are nation of free individuals.

If we can remember that, all of our families will be better off.

* This does not apply to members of my actual family (of smartasses).