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).

In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day I thought I’d just post a link to this excellent podcast of a speech John McWhorter gave at the Cato Institute.

There are a lot of great reasons to end this horrible “war,” but I agree with McWhorter that it’s probably the best policy change possible for the good of black people in America.

2010 seemed to go by very quickly for me.

I realize that I didn’t blog very much. I guess I just didn’t feel like I had much to share, or many original observations worth recording. Maybe 2011 will see more.

It should be interesting to see how the new composition of congress, and state legislatures, will change next year’s politics. I’m cautiously optimistic about the trend towards skepticism about unconstrained governmental growth. We’ll see if it lasts.

I wish the best to everyone out there.

Happy New Year!

I’m off on a 10-day vacation.

Have a great holiday season!

I wasn’t sure what I thought about WikiLeaks, at first.

I understand that there are some legitimate government activities that are best kept secret from the general public, and exposing details could cause severe problems.

On the other hand, if the government can’t keep something secret from WikiLeaks, then they probably can’t keep them secret from other, motivated, interested, parties and we may as well all know about it.

I am quite concerned about excessive government surveillance of citizens, and have never been impressed by responses in the form of “If you aren’t doing anything wrong, you shouldn’t be worried about people finding out about it.” I think private people and organizations have a right to secrets. Not everybody has a right to all of our information, and sometimes the truth hurts people unnecessarily.

But, the government is supposed to be operating on our behalf, not its own. Too much government activity is classified. Much of what they do should be subject to public scrutiny; that’s really the basis of the only check we have on them. We can’t effectively decide to change our representatives unless we can judge what they and their subordinates are doing. Some of what is done should be kept secret, but the vast majority of it should not. Most of the time, it would be better if government agents operated under the assumption that what they are doing will become public. Maybe they would do fewer things that they would be ashamed of.

So, a lot of the released information is embarrassing and inconvenient. Too bad. No, actually it’s good! It’s good for the public to be frequently disabused of the illusion that their government operates competently and effectively. This is the myth that many statists operate under and base their arguments upon. It’s wrong and dangerous and the more often people are forced to face its falsehood, the better.

Among other things, these incidents have demonstrated that the United States government sucks at keeping secrets. Maybe this will help give people, at the margins, reason to doubt the wisdom of turning more and more of our liberties over to the state.

So, while WikiLeaks may not have done a perfect job at deciding what was appropriate to release, and Julian Assange may be a wacko scumbag, I’m confident that on the whole they’ve been doing a great public service, and all this talk of it being a terrorist organization is authoritarian crap.

I don’t have anything unique to write about the recent election results, but I thought I should write something. If for no other reason than to record my current thoughts and see how wrong they are/were.

Mostly, I’m happy about the new gridlock we’re likely to experience. I suspect that the worst of the socially-conservative legislation that some Republicans might like will be blocked by Democrats and the president, and that the worst of the economically damaging ideas that the president and the Democrats have will be blocked by the House Republicans (and the larger Senate minority that doesn’t depend on Collins and Snowe to threaten a filibuster). Hopefully we won’t see much legislation pass that’s both stupid and evil.

I am heartened that there will be more congressmen who are more sympathetic to my views (although they aren’t coming from my state; so much for representation). And, I’m happy that many more people are willing to speak of libertarianism without pretending that it’s something insanely unrealistic. But, I’m not naïve enough to believe that there’s been a radical transformation in America, or that most of the new politicians will withstand the temptations of power to sacrifice their stated principles quickly. However, I’m glad that the damage may be slowed down, and perhaps some of it will be reversed. The Tea Party Movement has had a big influence on this election and it’s been
impressive how they’ve been able to maintain discipline and keep their focus on economic issues, but I also understand that many of the Republican votes came from independents who were frustrated about the economy and could easily swing back if the economy improves and the Democratic promises seem more attractive.

So, I guess I’m cautiously optimistic, but extremely skeptical.

Just like always.

I don’t have an e-reader device (I’m afraid I’d spend too much on the many books I thought interesting, and few of these are available for free, electronically, from my libraries. Perhaps everybody will soon have an e-reader that handles this situation seamlessly, and this post will be even more useless than I already suspect it is.). So I read a lot of physical books, and many of these are non-fiction books with useful endnotes.

A few years ago, I changed the way I use bookmarks.

I used to just leave the bookmark where I’d left off in the main text, and when I started to read I’d move the bookmark out of the way (to a random spot elsewhere in the book, or on my lap or side). When I would encounter an endnote reference mark, I would sometimes (if the context was sufficiently interesting) bother to flip to the end of the book and find the corresponding endnote, and then (after reading the endnote) I’d let go of that page and return to my reading in the main text. This system caused me to rarely read endnotes, because there was a non-trivial cost to finding the endnote and risk that the flow would be interrupted so much for trivial endnotes that I’d lose my focus on the subject.

Now, what I do is place (or leave) the bookmark in the corresponding place in the Endnotes section of the book, so that I can easily flip back and forth between the main text and the endnotes. Also, when I finish reading, if my bookmark is long and flexible enough (it’s usually just a slip of paper) I use it to mark the current locations in both the main text and the endnotes.

I find that I now read almost all of the endnotes, and I’m getting more out of books than I would have otherwise. For example, I’m now reading The Moral Landscape, by Sam Harris (and enjoying it a lot), and I’m finding the endnotes a very useful supplement to the main text (although I understand why he chose to separate this content).

This all seems like such an obvious thing to do, I wonder if I’m the only person who hasn’t always done this routinely. But, since it did take me so long to adopt it (and because my blog posts have become so infrequent), I figured I’d go ahead an post it so that it might be useful to others.