Oliver Kamm writes about education as a positive externality--public good--with regards to the recent legislation pass in the UK.#

According to Professor Nicholas Barr on Newsnight last week, the government's proposals on top-up fees would mean that one-sixth of the current cost of a degree would be borne by the student, if and when he was in a position to pay. To raise this money from general taxation when 82% of taxpayers are not graduates is an overt case of sectional interests triumphing over the public good. The only possible case for objecting to this reform, given that poor students do not pay tuition fees, is that education is - in economists' jargon - a public good that generates positive externalities. But as Alison Wolf, Professor of Education at London University, has pointed out, there is no clear link between student numbers and economic growth:

[W]ithin developed countries there is no clear link between student numbers and growth rates, GDP per head or productivity. For example, Switzerland, at the top of the income tree, has the lowest university participation rates in the OECD; while the US, also near the top, has the highest. Big increases in university numbers are at least as likely to follow periods of rapid growth as they are to precede them: Japan is a prime example.

So when a minister asserts that "We need more young people to go to university because it is an economic necessity," he or she would be hard pressed to back up the claim.

Philip Greenspun writes about Cuba and socialism.#

Flew from Miami to Panama City, Panama yesterday. While sitting in a comfortable leather seat aboard an American Airlines 757 and eating a filet mignon lunch, I looked down at Cuba. Supposedly they have everything to which we Americans aspire, i.e., universal health care and an excellent public education system. Yet Cubans are dirt poor and it is we ignorant and infirm residents of the United States who designed and built the 757. The comparison isn't quite fair but really you'd think that the Cubans, being so well educated and blessed with a large and fertile country, would have done better for themselves. Perhaps politics do matter, a sobering thought as Election 2004 sweeps across the U.S.

What's the quote? "The tragedy of capitalism is that people do not share in the happiness, and the virtue of socialism is that people share in misery." Or something?

Good Health Care exists BECAUSE it is not for everyone.

Alex Tabarrok writes about Patent Theory versus Patent Law.#

According to the economic theory of patents, patents are needed so that pioneer firms have time to recoup their sunk costs of research and development. The key element in the economic theory is that pioneer firms have large, hard to recoup, sunk costs. Yet patents are not awarded on the basis of a firm's sunk costs. Patent law says the subject of a patent should be novel, useful and non-obvious but nowhere does it say the original idea should have required extensive costs of research and development as the economic theory would predict.

François-René Rideau, what do you think about this? (Note: I haven't gotten to read Patents Are An Economic Absurdity yet so I'm not sure if you are referring to the theory or the law.)

Brad Edmonds proclaims he doesn't "owe the Military anything."#

If the military is supposed to be defending our freedoms in the US, why is all the action in other countries? The only foreign action the US has seen is Pearl Harbor, into which the Japanese were goaded by FDR with his full knowledge and intent, as has been declassified only recently; and 9/11, which was most plausibly retaliation for 40 years of bombing women and children in the Middle East. I would be more willing to believe that the military was about defending our freedoms if they would limit themselves to defending our borders, and if they would do so successfully. Remember, on 9/11, the military couldn't even defend the Pentagon.

It is much more plausible that the military is merely a tool for Congress and the White House to enact their foreign-policy desires. "Defending American interests abroad" explains the last 200 years far better than "defending freedoms at home." [...]

Second question: If the military has done such a great job of defending our freedoms at home, why do we need a Department of Homeland Security? Wasn't the Department of Defense supposed to provide defense? Instead, the Department of Fatherland Defense is an open, if unwitting, admission that the Department of Defense is in reality the Department of Offense, going abroad to force Congressional and White House foreign policy on whomever they want, whether the foreign party is willing or not.

Butler Shaffer write about unchaining liberty and being a free individual.#

It should be evident that a system of private property fosters responsibility. If I, alone, control my actions, I, alone, am responsible for what I do. This is not a moral proposition, but a causal one, in much the same way that we can say a tornado was responsible for destroying Uncle Charlie's barn. But to be responsible is to be accountable, particularly to the harshest critic we face in life: ourselves.

Most of us fear this sense of responsibility, which is why individual liberty is such a troublesome proposition to so many people. Walter Kaufmann has written of "decidophobia," the fear of making decisions. If we delude ourselves that we have no control over our lives, then we cannot be held responsible. And if we are not responsible for what we do — even to ourselves — then we must be the victims of other people's decision-making. Is it any wonder that men and women who, having smoked cigarettes for fifty years and developed lung cancer, now want to sue the tobacco companies for the consequences of their own actions, or that alcoholics seek damages from distillers for their cirrhosis of the liver? A recent news story told of a man who brought suit against his local cable television company for turning himself and his family into television addicts! Do you not see the connection between the continuing diminution, by the state, of respect for privately-owned property, and the rise of the "victimization" industry?

François-René Rideau explains why, economically, all politics is completely zero-sum.#

Of course, in this con game of resource redistribution, there will be net winners and net losers; we already established that early on. In a way, the political market is a huge lottery -- and that makes it all the more ironic that once again, collectivists will accuse the free market of being a lottery, whereas it isn't and their system is one. But most importantly, the game of Politics is a negative-sum game the total cost of which to society is directly measured by the total visible benefits to some. To any government spending corresponds to a global waste to society exactly equivalent in value to said spending, except for a small part that profits but the politicians. That's the famous rule of the double incidence of the loss, which is well known since the nineteenth century as applied to protectionism, but that applies just as well to any form of government welfare. We thus see that the One Lesson of Political Economics, that which is seen and that which is not seen, applies to every and all political intervention. And this is a praxeological law, that is valid even though you may fail to imagine where the resources are being wasted in a particular intervention.

Chip Berlet & Matthew N. Lyons write about Lyndon LaRouche, whom they denote as a "Fascist Demagogue."#

Though often dismissed as a bizarre political cult, the LaRouche organization and its various front groups are a fascist movement whose pronouncements echo elements of Nazi ideology. Beginning in the 1970s, the LaRouchites combined populist antielitism with attacks on leftists, environmentalists, feminists, gay men and lesbians, and organized labor. They advocated a dictatorship in which a "humanist" elite would rule on behalf of industrial capitalists. They developed an idiosyncratic, coded variation on the Illuminati Freemason and Jewish banker conspiracy theories. Their views, though exotic, were internally consistent and rooted in right-wing populist traditions.

A former Trotskyist, LyndonH.LaRouche, Jr., founded the National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC) in 1968 as an offshoot of the radical student movement. But in the early 1970s, LaRouche engineered a political about-face, using cult pressure tactics to consolidate his grip over the NCLC and initiating a campaign of physical attacks on Communists and Black nationalists, which cut his followers off from the Left. The result was a fascist organization with some unique strengths: a dedicated, full-time cadre of several hundred members, a high proportion of intellectuals with advanced training, familiarity with leftist theory and organizing, and inside information about radical organizations and leaders.

Mark Schmitt on Political Wire's report that Cheney will be replaced by Bush.#

One of my big things now is to avoid making predictions. But I think it is a very safe bet that Cheney will be booted from the ticket when Bush needs a boost. Continually affirming that he will be on the ticket is fine for now, it actually helps make it more of a news event when it happens. And it frees Bush to make news by going in whatever direction he wants for a replacement -- toward a less-polarizing figure if need be, or a woman, or a particular state if necessary.

Cheney's health is a perfect excuse. He can have his doctor say he's perfectly healthy but that he's advised against the stress of another four years. Cheney's never helped Bush electorally, and at this point, he himself is the source of so many of the administration's screw-ups and crimes that he certainly ought to be a negative.

JoshK at Music For America acknowledges Bush-hate.#

We get a lot of flack and questioning probes here at MfA from people who think we're too hard on President Bush, who think that we're a bunch of haters. Often times people say they're "dissappointed," and that we appear to be bitter or angry or even irrational.

I'd like to set the record straight here. I don't hate president Bush. I don't even know the guy. However, I do have serious problems with what he's doing to our country, and the impact it's having on my and my friends' future. I also have a serious problem keeping quiet about what I see going on. Silence in the face of very bad governance is no virtue; I think we can all agree about that.

Grant Henninger writes about media motives.#

Back in 2001 I had a poli sci class, it was probably in the fall, before 9/11. We were talking about why all the reporters made such a big deal about President Bush spending so much time on his ranch in Crawford, Texas. My professor pointed out that it might be because it sucks to be in Crawford, at least for the reporters. They are not being objective in their reporting, they are bitching about being stuck in the middle of nowhere in a god-forsaken state.

Paul Hein cuts through campaign speeches.#

Consider these words from candidate Kerry: "This fight is about our future. About leadership. About making our system work for our people." Oh, spare me! Will there ever be any candidate who eschews such God-awful puerile rhetoric? I suspect that if I looked hard enough, I would be able to find, in the campaign speeches or literature of any candidate, an expression such as "my dream for America," or "my vision of a brighter tomorrow." Do we want leaders who are asleep, or suffering from hallucinations? Yet, year after year, we must endure this excruciating dreck about dreams and visions. Time to wake up!

Scott Rosenberg has hope for the Internet and what it represents: More than Howard Dean.#

But the at least partial validity of this comparison should not be taken by Dean's enemies as a cue to dance on the grave of his campaign. The collapse of the dot-com stock bubble was a disaster for many investors, but it never invalidated the fundamental accuracy of the insight that fueled it -- that the Internet would spark powerful changes in the way the world does business. Those changes have proceeded apace, even as the dot-com era recedes into memory as a spasmodic folly: Online sales boom. Internet use eats away at network TV viewing. Broadband and wireless extend their reach. New possibilities for self-expression beckon. Many dot-coms flamed out -- but the Internet is still reshaping the world.

Similarly, whatever happens now to the Dean campaign, it already achieved a great purpose -- and no, I don't mean that it taught a new generation of political operatives how to raise money online. Anyone could have done that. The real achievement of Dean's movement was something different and more radical.

Jon Husband on social networks and Gary Murphy's take.#

Jon's awesome comment:

"Ever watch dogs social-networking? They cut to the chase pretty quickly"

Gary's hit:

So why don't they work? Because they are notsocial networks.

A social network is a network with a social cause, a social reason for being. Social networks fill a niche need for interaction. Church clubs, business clubs, square-dance clubs, these form natural, anthropologically sound social networks with the intelligent self-organization moving from the local (chapter) out to the regional and then clustering still beyond. They are also self-governing, electing their executives from grassroots, organizing on the need to expand the social network.

So then, social-networking software should be the desired thing. Software that someone can easily use to help manage their grassroots one. Whether such a network would coexist with something like orkut is up for grabs.

A possible design: You join communities. (Check.) You add friends. (Check.) But, when you add friends who associate your connection with them by the community. (Nope.)

So, I could join the "Berkman Thursday" community, then add "Dave Winer" as a "Berkman Thursday Friend" (and possibly other types of friends.) Then when I'm looking at the network I'm part of I can filter out everyone not in the "Berkman Thursday" community--or look for intersections and what not.

How to make money would be to provide this network online as a service rather than a product which is not conducive to easy, light-weight setup or sharing of information.

MNOT on the stupid orange "XML" buttons.#

It's like having a "get your ASCII here" button; completely meaningless.

There are literally thousands of XML formats out there, so you're not really being helpful by labelling it as such (the */xml media types have similar problems).

Mine says "Feed," I was thinking maybe "Syndicate" though. Hmm?

Jeremy Zawodny writes about why Google needs Orkut and the power it gives them.#

Just think about it for a few minutes. If you've been thru the Orkut registration process, you know that it attempts to collect a ton of data about you. The kind of demographic data that marketing folks drool over. And right now there are lots of folks dying to get that special invite and begin the sign-up process.

Still with me? Good.

Let's assume that Google internationalizes Orkut and lets it run to the point that it has millions of users registered and active. That's not an unreasonable thing to expect. Then, one day down the road, they quietly decide to "better integrate" Orkut with Google and start redirecting all Orkut requests to orkut.google.com.

Ryan Overbey writes about "strong" versus "weak" religions and how it relates to religious pluralism.#

The aversion to pluralism comes mostly from my scholarly preference for strong religions. Strong religions are amazingly cool, insanely barbaric, irrational in the extreme, full of drama and emotion and violence. But I know one thing for sure- I'd hate to live in a society where strong religion is normative.

As a secular humanist, the thing that excites me most about pluralism and notions of interfaith discussion and respect for other religions is the Trojan Horse aspect- by being willing to talk to other people with an open mind, we can spread open-mindedness as a shared commitment. There's a real potential for open-minded Christians to unite with like-minded Muslims, Jews, and Buddhists to overcome the barbarous attacks on sexual and civil rights and privacy that are the staple of strong religion. My goal as a scholar of religion is to study irrationality, magic, and barbarity in religious communities. I regard them as fascinating artifacts of an animal past, something that never quite goes away, but that we always need to fight and overcome. Religious pluralism, "weak" religions, and interfaith dialogue could play a role in the battle against barbarous religion, at least in the American context. I think of it as a flu vaccine- people are still infected with religion, but it's weak and benign, and if we're lucky it generates antibodies- emotional instincts that repel strong religion.

Matthias Correction describes the second part of his story of coming to know God.#

I graduated from college with no direction, no plans. It was hard enough just getting through the day. I discovered that marijuana was especially effective in combatting the symptoms of depression for hours at a time and began ruthlessly prescribing it for myself. I had friends who had the same prescription, and we spent many long and laughter-filled evenings escaping from ourselves with the help of massive bong hits. When my parents told me that they wouldn't send me any more money, I went out and got a job, the least demanding one I could find: temping. I only knew how to do two things: perform critical analysis of literature, and type. Typing has gotten me plenty more jobs that literary criticism ever has.

Chip Gibbons writes about the lack of evolution in Georgia.#

Why is this a bad idea?

For the same reason that it's not a good idea to ban the use of the term fucking moron from the English language.

Evolution exists. Fucking morons exist. We needs words to describe things that exist.

Two comments:

1. This is the 21st century. Wow.
2. Perhaps, their miseducation is a sign that they have not evolved and are thus partially right in saying that evolution does not occur in Georgia. (Hah!)

Matthias Correction writes a parable about the nature of Divine Justice.#

When the baby died, the angels carried him up to Heaven and rested him gently on a cloud. A man was there, also new, and they decided to tour Heaven together. "Tell me about yourself," said the baby, trying to put the man at ease.

"I was old. I died in my sleep. I had a long life, so I can't complain." The man looked at the little baby before him. "You, though. How could God let you die so young? It's cruel. It's unfair."

The baby just shrugged. They walked on. As the man walked, he grew angrier and angrier at God. "How could God bless me with such a long life, and give this little one nothing? What did I do to deserve so much and him to deserve so little? How could God be so unfair? When I see God, I'm going to demand that he explain himself."

My take on Trippi's leave here.#

Howard Dean has a statement on Joe Trippi's departure from the Dean campaign.#

"I am deeply grateful to Joe Trippi, who has decided to leave the campaign. Joe has made enormous contributions not just to our campaign but to American politics — revolutionizing the way in which people are brought into the democratic process and helping hundreds of thousands of people to believe in political change again.

Aaron Swartz has an interesting take on this--one that puts emphasis on Trippi over Dean.#

Dean has decided to continue his campaign with a boring Washington insider who helped Al Gore's presidential bid go down in flames. Experts predicted Dean will soon begin spouting platitudes about "the people versus the powerful" while hiding his liberal political views and failing to make any innovative policy suggestions. This could make Dean stand out even less in an already-crowded race.

Commentators suggested the move would be difficult for Trippi, since Dean is still first in money, infrastructure, and delegates. "Rebuilding your constituency after a change like this is always difficult," said one unnamed source. "This is certainly going to be a major blow to the Trippi campaign."

Dave Winer's thoughts on the Joe Trippi's leave.#

So we got our answer. Dean wants to catch Kerry, and the Internet will have to wait. The new manager is a long-time lobbyist, a "special interest," influence seller, canonical insider. This is an okay outcome, not the best one, but okay. It's safe to support either Dean or Kerry, and we'll get a traditional Democrat administration either way. The CNN guys will treat him well now.

The Daily Kos on Joe Trippi's leave.#

It was perhaps inevitable after Dean's weak Iowa and NH results. A major staff shakeup in Burlington. Dean's media firm, Trippi, McMahon and Squires -- the source of Dean's crappy campaign ads -- is apparently out. And Trippi himself may or may not be gone. Either way, he's no longer campaign manager.

[...]

What Trippi built with the Dean campaign was amazing. Unprecedented. But the results weren't there. And in this biz, there's no margin for error

Jim Moore writes about organizational learning and momentum plays.#

The marketplace of political ideas is the fastest moving marketplace in which I have ever personally participated. This week, this day, feels different from last week, and from yesterday. Organizational learning is paramount.

So what does this mean for the Dean campaign? We have been criticised of late by our supporters for not telling the news, bad as well as good. Supporters feel betrayed when they are told things are fine, and then find out otherwise when the votes come in. "We could have helped" they say in distress, "but you didn't really ask us!"

The Black Saint is what I call "Wicked Funny."#

Tuesday night, Gov. Dean told his supporters, an assortment of Internet weenies, that there was "good news and bad news."

"The bad news is that we came in a distant second but the good news is that Lord of the Rings was nominated for Best Picture and this time, we're going to win! Master and Commander, my ass!"

The crowd cheered enthusiastically and chanted, "Gandalf! Gandalf!" as Gov. Dean threw back his head and screamed, "I'm coming for you, Sauron! I'm coming for you! You can't hide in the White House forever!"

Michael Feldman says what hasn't been said enough about Trippi.#

As it stands, we will have to wait for '08 to see the Internet Strategy taken to the next level on the national stage. In the meantime, watch local races, where a few hundred strategically mobilized voters can swing an election, and targeted protest campaigns as the probing ground for digital democracy.

Good night, Howard. Last one out, turn out the lights....

Curt Siffert writes about Howard Dean and Joe Trippi.#

I've been curious for quite a while where Trippi ended and Dean began in the Dean campaign. After hearing stories about how Dean didn't know what a blog was, could barely post on the blog (and only has like five times so far), and was freaked out and thought the blog was hacked when they had way more money coming in than they expected... it started to come across to me like Dean wasn't all that attached to the Dean campaign.

I thought it was a flaw, but hopefully not a big one. But the question remained, what part of "Dean" was Howard Dean, and what part of it was the Dean campaign?

Christopher Lydon on the Internet transformation of politics and how it relates to recent realities.#

The Howard Dean campaign (much more than Howard Dean himself) has come to stand for the possibility of an Internet democracy. From the beginning there was no separating the "political" and "media" tracks of the campaign's offensive. Didn't he say early on that he was running for president because the alternative was to spend the rest of his life yelling at the TV set? Dean's defining thrust was against the war in Iraq, in which even before it began the big newspapers and TV networks were embedded. His first contribution was simply to sound an anti-war alarm that institutional media had muffled. Millions of people knew intuitively that his warning was wise; millions more know it now. He began with a bold exercise in definition--a job of critical journalism that our big media don't perform these days. In large dimensions and small (like his chippy defiance of Tim Russert), Dean's campaign was a critique of the somnolent self-satisfaction that runs through our housecat press. And people loved him for it.

Lawrence Lessig writes about the language of Dean's announcements.#

From today's NYT: "You're going to see a leaner, meaner organization," Dr. Dean, who has asked his 500 staff members to skip their paychecks for two weeks, told reporters on an 8 p.m. conference call. "We had really geared up for what we thought was going to be a front runner's campaign. It's not going to be a front-runner's campaign. It's going to be a long war of attrition. What we need is decision making that's centralized."

Yes, centralized. Fire someone who built the most extraordinary grass-roots organization in history, and hire a Washington lobbyist in his stead. Now we're making progress.

Ryan Overbey thinks that the firing of Trippi is a positive thing, because he looks beyond the Internet and at the issues he sees Dean standing for.#

People have been shocked by the firing of Joe Trippi. They say that Howard Dean has fired the Internet. Hell, if the Internet cost me $10 million in Iowa on orange hats and cell phones for out-of-staters who turned off the natives, I'd fire the Internet too.

Bottom line: Trippi blew $35 million worth of grassroots money. Nickels and dimes from ordinary people. He blew it on terrible ads produced by his own company, on bad politicking in the Iowa caucuses. Part of the responsibility lies with Howard Dean. The speech got him off message. But the endorsements came too early, Dean ran a front-runner's campaign, and he lost his edge. His issues were quietly co-opted by Edwards and Kerry. It was Trippi's responsibility to make sure the message was constantly being communicated to newcomers, that it stayed fresh and exciting and compelling. He let Dean fall off message, and Dean lost.

Mike Walsh wants a post-Dean Trippi interview from Christopher Lydon.#

ScrappleFace reports the Joe Trippi was in fact replaced by Karl Rove.#

Mr. Rove will continue to serve as President George Bush's political strategist, even as he attempts to help Mr. Dean regain momentum after back-to-back losses in Iowa and New Hampshire.

"I have always believed in Howard Dean's candidacy," said Mr. Rove, "I think I stand with the majority of Republicans in saying that his nomination, more than anything else, is the key to guaranteeing that America is in good hands for the next four years."

Tony Pierce talks about hot hot chicks. Hot ones.#

hot chick at work sits at the front of our office and isnt really a receptionist but she knows everything, so i tell her everything. usually about chicks. today i was telling her something and she said, oh, can you do me a favor and go through one day without talking about girls or women or sex or anything like that? ok. thanks.

Joi Ito talks about how many seek to understand cultures through movies and the responsibility that that implies.#

My sister is teaching a class on how cultures are portrayed in movies and we talked yesterday about how many American movies are about Americans going to foreign cultures and "conquering" them. Even Kill Bill, which was one of my favorite movies this year, might have been more fun if it focused on the American obsession with oriental things, rather than setting it in Japan where the American triumph over the Japanese ended up being more highlighted.

[...]

Cultural understanding is one of the biggest problems facing us today and movies have a huge impact on how we understand culture. Movie makers, more than ever, have an opportunity and responsibility to help us understand each other.

Joel Spolsky has this perfect method of pointing at shit that people do to their customers. If I used PCs, you can bet I would buy all of FogCreek's stuff.#

For some reason, Microsoft's brilliant and cutting-edge .NET development environment left out one crucial tool... a tool that has been common in software development environments since, oh, about 1950, and taken so much for granted that it's incredibly strange that nobody noticed that .NET doesn't really have one.

The tool in question? A linker. Here's what a linker does. It combines the compiled version of your program with the compiled versions of all the library functions that your program uses. Then, it removes any library functions that your program does not use. Finally, it produces a single executable binary program which people can run on their computers.

Tyler Cowen links to some very interesting experiments with choice in the market, and offers his thoughts.#

Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper, psychologists at Columbia and Stanford respectively, have shown that as the number of flavors of jam or varieties of chocolate available to shoppers is increased, the likelihood that they will leave the store without buying either jam or chocolate goes up. According to their 2000 study, Ms. Iyengar and Mr. Lepper found that shoppers are 10 times more likely to buy jam when six varieties are on display as when 24 are on the shelf.

[...]

My take: No doubt, choice confuses the hell out of us, much of the time. That being said, the question is not whether more or less choice is good. Instead the question is what kind of choice-restricting and choice-regulating institutions we wish to have. Markets, in reality, are the best known institutions for limiting our choices as well as expanding them. When I go into a (good) restaurant, I like to simply tell the waiter that I don't want to look much at the menu, and he should simply bring me what is best. If he asks what that means by "best," I (sometimes) respond by telling him I am an aesthetic Platonist and that best is best. Or I will ask the waiter to imagine it is his last meal on earth and to bring me the relevant dishes he would order. [...]

[...] And if you reexamine the experiments mentioned above, they are all about ways in which people voluntarily limit their own choices. Maybe you don't wish to run your own cancer treatments, but you wish to choose the doctor who will.

That restaurant thing is incredible.

La-La-La-Language!#

Kuro5hin.org talks about a Czech publisher's punishment for publish Mein Kampf.#

1) Does the act of publishing Mein Kampf really promote Nazism?

At this point Mein Kampf is a historical document, and the publishing of such a document shouldn't necessarily imply the promotion of the ideas within. I contend that the meaning of a text is as much about the context in which it is read as the words that are on the page. If I published a collection of pro-slavery writings from the 1840's, would I be promoting slavery, or would I be promoting the study of environment in which slavery thrived? If I published the Torah, and a group of Nazi's read it and twisted the words to support their hatred of Jews, did my publishing of this sacred text promote Nazism? If so, should I be prosecuted for the ignorance of my readers?

I know the rules. I don't accept them.#

Gratuitous Butt Shot++#

Alex Tabarrok gets advice about jobs from his friend Tyler Cowen.#

should behave. Certainly, I'd never tried to use the theory to guide my own choices. Tyler remarked that even most economists don't take expected utility theory seriously but most people could nevertheless benefit by quantifying their choices. So I took his advice and sat down to think hard about the probabilities and utilities. Surprisingly, I found this very helpful. Once I had some numbers on paper it became clear which was the better choice and I made that choice confidently and without feeling conflicted. As it turned out, the choice was good ex-post as well as ex-ante. Thanks Tyler!

Tony Pierce: "dear kids of america, and canaduh. learn how to play the damn guitar."#

Daniel Davies is a racist, fascist, ist-ist, blah, blah, I'm a PC-Fag.#

There's a wide spread of political opinions at Crooked Timber; as you can tell, we run the gamut from social democrat to democratic socialist. All sorts, I tell you. But I think that there's one issue which divides us neatly into two groups. Or rather, into one group consisting of me, and one group consisting of all the others. And that's the fact that I'm a nationalist. Horrible to admit it but it's true. I genuinely do believe that, according to my standards (and who else's standards might I use?), Britain is the best place to live that there is, and the British are the finest people in the world. After that, Irish, Turks, Czechs, Danes and French in that order, and after that there's quite a steep drop-off. Sorry, where was I? Anyway, yes, the British are best.

Jane Natural-Disaster writes about speed dating and how you stop being a chump in front of women.#

What do you say to the twentieth man who asks wearily, "So what do you do?"

[...]

Don't ask me that. Nineteen other men have already asked me, and I've exhausted the possibilities. Ask me how my day was. Ask me what the last trip I took was. Ask me something more specific than general. Ask for descriptions rather than lists. Or on second thought, don't ask me anything. Talk to me. Tell me about yourself. Compliment me on something. I can't tell you, guys, how flattering this is. Nothing lewd, just something like "That color looks nice on you" or whatever. It breaks the ice and makes a girl feel good. And then let's go from there.

Chip Gibbons has a perfect take on this comment about the German cannibal, Armin Meiwes.#

CNN's Walter Rodgers said: "Most Germans are aghast yet fascinated at the idea of a cannibal in their midst. This is not supposed to happen in a tidy, democratically ordered German society. And yet it did."

The Holocaust happened in a tidy, democratically ordered German society, too, didn't it? The premise of democracy is mob rule and submission to the mob; the premise of socialism is self-sacrifice to the collective. Should we really be surprised when two people sexualize those premises, taking them a little too literally?

Dave Pollard writes about ExxonMobil and why you should probably boycott them.#

One week's revenue. That's what a judge, and a jury, have three times decided is a fair price for ExxonMobil to pay for the Exxon Valdez disasterfifteen years ago, one of the worst ecological catastrophes in the history of the world, which resulted in the permanent destruction of one of the world's most beautiful and fragile ecosystems. And now this week for the third time the corporation, with its army of high-paid lawyers, has vowed it will again appeal these paltry damages, essentially waiving any and all responsibility for this despicable atrocity. Their lawyers confidently predict they will eventually 'prevail' and will end up paying next to nothing. In America, if you have money, you can get away with anything, even, it seems, a holocaust.

I didn't realize they haven't been punished yet.

Oliver Willis posts a really cute picture of Paris Hilton.#

Jack Hodgson posts notes from the last Berkman Meeting that I couldn't be at.#

I've just now finished reading Self-Reliance and Other Essays, by Ralph Waldo Emerson. However, I'm rather uncomfortable writing my thoughts on it, as they have not properly stewed--so, I will do that later. But for now, I offer links to the essays online:#

• From Essays (1841)
• History
• Self-Reliance
• Friendship
• The Over-Soul
• From Essays: Second Series (1844)
• The Poet
• Experience
• The Divinity School Address