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February 28, 2005

Irsay on Thompson

When Hunter S. Thompson did himself in the thought of getting a reaction from the owner of the Indianapolis Colts did not exactly cross my mind. But apparently Jim Irsay and HST talked over the years. I always get nervous though when Irsay spends any time in Los Angeles.

Posted by PunchTheBag at 05:14 PM | Comments (5)

Post Oscar Junk

So this is the day after the Oscars when talk radio and other commentators go into overdrive complaining about how awful the Academy Awards were.

It's the same-o same-o every year.

I can't remember the last time I watched it. Maybe when Johnny Carson hosted it. I don't know why anyone would want to watch a bunch of phonies ramble in some of the most insincere tones that have ever been contrived.

I would rather listen to former Senator Bill Bradley chair a subcommittee hearing on groundwater (and I have).

Posted by PunchTheBag at 05:12 PM | Comments (1)

Glass Houses

I am hesitant to post about the onging Ward Churchill controversy, as it seems clearer to me each day that both Prof. Churchill and Fox News' Bill O'Reilly are using the story for self-promotion. But there is at least one salient lesson in this situation: If you aspire to become a rabble-rouser, better think about any skeletons in your closet.

Soon after Churchill stepped into the limelight, questions were raised about Churchill's claims of Native American ancestry. Recently, an art print which Churchill had sold in 1981 was discovered to be a copy of (i.e., plagiarized from) a work by Thomas E. Mails. When confronted by a local TV reporter about the matter, Churchill took a swing at the reporter.

Issues of academic freedom notwithstanding, Churchill does not seem to be the sort of person one would like to have teaching their children. Unless keeping his university position was not a key part of his career goals (is being a darling of the extreme left more remunerative than a tenured faculty position?), he would have been better off leaving the extreme rhetoric to others, thus keeping his own past less closely scrutinized.

Update: David Kopel at The Volokh Conspiracy provides a litany of evidence which shows that Churchill is indeed "a fraudulent thug and bully," and calls out the 199 faculty members who signed a newspaper ad in support of him. A most interesting tidbit: Churchill's book containing the "little Eichmanns" essay also says George Washington was "the richest man in North America" during the revolutionary war and identifies Alexander Hamilton as a future President.

Posted by Eric Seymour at 01:19 PM | Comments (11)

Sign Up Now for an Enlistment Bonus

Many members of the punidtry have declared an aversion to Wars on Nouns, but I think Kevin Drum has found one we can all get behind.

Posted by Zach Wendling at 12:33 PM | Comments (2)

The meaning of a word

Liberal professor and author Crispin Sartwell was invited to speak a group of College Democrats. His speech was one all Democrats should read. Here's a passage:

Here's what I believe about John Kerry. On the Patriot Act, on No Child Left Behind, on war, on gay marriage, on whatever: in every case he voted and spoke with one goal: getting elected president. For Kerry and the Democratic leadership, getting elected was more important that a thousand American lives, more important than tens of thousands of Iraqi lives, more important than the Constitution. Now of course this is more or less just the reality of American politics. But, um, it is morally monstrous. I actually admire a straight-up enthusiastic murderer more than someone who with eyes fully open endorses murder in order to further a certain set of personal ambitions. I do not believe that our sad little species offers up any more despicable choice. Kill because you believe it's the right thing to do and you may be terribly, terribly wrong. Kill because killing polls well and you're not even worth frying.

I think it'd be worth your time to read the whole thing, though. (Hat tip to Radley Balko)

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 08:48 AM | Comments (5)

The Germans Have a Word For It

Welfare States, Immigration and Schadenfreude
Europeans' continental pastime is lecturing Americans on the sins of our policies and our culture. Too fat, too warlike, too rich, too unequal, too boorish--the stereotypical American is an obese foreigner-hating SUV driver who listens to "Rock the Casbah" as he drives to his job at Expoiters-R-Us. On his way home (via the Klan meeting), he probably spits on a poor person before adjusting his massive belt buckle and his ten-gallon hat.

After being confronted with this view once, or twice, or three hundred times, one's attitude toward anti-American screeds (like this hysterical article in the Independent (U.K.) that blames the U.S. for all Haiti's wrongs) turns from interest in a new theory, to patient toleration of a broken record, to kneejerk recitation of European sins (imperialism, appeasement, Rwanda, Boy George). It is difficult to believe, after all, that Europeans have solved all the world's problems, and done so while somehow maintaining that haughtiness, arrogance and ignorance that--as one believes if one reads only, say, the Independent--only Americans possess.

Two articles about Europeans' reactions to the demise of ethnic homogeneity have caught my eye recently. Weekly Standard discusses the changes to Sweden's famed welfare state, which the Standard links to increased immigration from countries where nobody is tall, blond and blue-eyed. Today's New York Times discusses the increasing emigration from the Netherlands, which the Times' reporter hypothesizes is linked to the immigration to the Low Countries by people from countries where they do not traditionally build dykes and wear wooden shoes.

Stories like these warm the cockles of the expat heart. At last! The Europeans are getting some of their own back! All those years of yearning to have someone expose the underside of the happy Euro-welfare state have not been in vain. It turns out that those Europeans are as bigoted, self-centered and miserly toward people who don't look like them as ... well, as people from Alabama, but let's pass that over.

But sober thought reveals that it is precisely correct that the Europeans are getting some of their own back. Just as articles like the Independent's are grossly unfair, and just as that genre of article is persuasive only to someone already indoctrinated in the idea that the United States is Amerikkka, the White House occupied by corporate puppets, the machine something to be raged against, so is my reaction to these Eurobigot articles conditioned by my own desires about what I want to be factual.

The Times article, for instance, mentions that emigration from the Netherlands has reached about 40,000 people per year. From a population of approximately 16.5 million, that leaves a mere 16.5 million Dutch who have stayed in their home country. And the problems with Sweden's welfare states (as with all welfare states) likely have far more to do with the size of the commitments the social democrats made in building their social programs and the shrinking resources with which to meet those commitments. In both cases, of course, it's true that the precise manner in which societies reconcile themselves to new challenges is telling--but that is far from confirming the most anti-Europe interpretation of events, that the whole continent is inhabited by racists and xenophobes. There is undeniably a pervasive racist and xenophobic streak in Europe, but on the other hand, many Americans drive SUVs and vote against social welfare programs.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 06:35 AM | Comments (7)

Da Vinci?

Maureen Hayden reports on the absolutely fascinating story of Ray and Nancy Hagensieker, who apparently discovered works by Leonardo da Vinci in the bottom of their Evansville, IN basement. Their find is like the "accidental discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls by a young Bedouin sheepherder." The story is filled with enormous mystery and intrigue, and not unlike something you'd read in the best selling novel The Da Vinci Code. It's not possible to summarize the events, so click here to read it (free registration required).

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 01:40 AM | Comments (0)

February 27, 2005

Not In Their Agora

Christian Science Monitor alerts us to the resolution on the Iraq war up for debate in fifty Vermont towns on Tuesday during that state's hallowed (overly hallowed, in Arendt's On Revolution) Town Meetings. Proponents of the measure say it's exactly what should be discussed, because many Vermonters serving in the National Guard have lost their lives or been wounded in the conflict. Opponents say that those claims may be valid, but Town Meeting is a time to talk about snowplows, not diplomacy.

From my perspective, such debates add little to democracy. The advocates of the resolutions want to ask Vermont's state legislature to investigate the impact National Guard deployments have had on the local communities from which the citizen soldiers are drawn--but to what end? Alert citizens are already aware of the articles in such liberal, anti-war news sources as The Wall Street Journal about the harm done to small businesses and proprietorships by the call-up of the Reserves and the Guard; this is part of the reason Rumsfeld and Congress are finally increasing the permanent number of the Regulars. But in the meantime, the Pentagon must recruit, train and deploy these soldiers, and so the Guard and the Reserves become essential to meeting America's commitments abroad.

Those commitments, ideally, are made by Congress and the President after deep thought, consultation and finally consent. (If, in the real world, they are sometimes made in a fit of absent-mindedness, that is not the fault of American constitutional theory.) Foreign policy has long been an undisputed prerogative of the federal government. It was in large part the American Confederation's weakness in conducting a unified foreign policy that the Constitution was created.

And so, finally, it is not the Town Meeting where opponents of the war should rightly concentrate their efforts. It is the federal government that should be their target. The United States already has feedback mechanisms by which local communities can influence federal policy-making. As a small state, Vermont is disproportionately represented by its two Senators in one of those institutions.

Whatever activist Vermonters may wish, the debate on the Iraq war is over for the time being. This attempt to force a debate on an issue that Vermonters, and Americans, have already spoken on is misguided. Like all such attempts to "make a statement" or let people "speak their minds," it confuses politics with spectacle, and rhetoric with action. Better to let the Town Meeting in Burlington talk about snowplows than discuss the IEDs of Basra.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 07:08 PM | Comments (8)

Empirical Dogma

Will Wilkinson:

Assignment: Write an article about how YOUR ideology embodies true blue commitment to just-the-facts empiricism while in fact demonstrating the kind of confirmation bias that makes just-the-facts empiricism all but chimerical in political discourse. Jonathan Chait: A+!

As they say, read the whole things, Chait's article for its superciliousness and Wilkinson's for its brilliance (via Jane Galt). Mind, I don't mean to say that Chait's ideological opponents can't be prone to the same pitfalls; it just happens that he decided to stick his head through this particular pillory.

Bob Formaini touched on this attitude last month at TCS:

But of course our beliefs, unlike the silly, stupid beliefs of our political opponents, are factual, and scientifically proven. (The fact that science absolutely proves nothing escapes most Americans, whether well-educated or not). Their own beliefs are, for them, obviously -- even self-evidently -- true, while their opponents can only claim to believe otherwise because they are evil or possibly misled by cunning politicians. What other explanation can there be for people believing the idiotic things that I don't believe? All such alleged beliefs must, therefore, be mendacious. Let the screaming begin!

Paradoxically, delving into the empirical underpinnings of our favourite policy prescriptions can demean rather than elevate the debate. As our priors are submerged, we lose sight of the decisions upon which reasonable people can disagree -- perhaps even losing the ability to agree to disagree. This was a lesson I learned from several learned professors as a budding technocrat: don't disparage the opinions of policymakers just because they are stupid. Try to respect them; you have to work with these people.

Posted by Zach Wendling at 01:27 PM | Comments (1)

Nanny state alert

Nick Blesch at Hoosier Review alerts us to HB 1434, a bill that seeks to prevent "negligence, recklessness, willful misconduct, or other breach of standard of care in the practice of interior design" Yes, people may be sleeping on the streets, schools may be deteriorating, and young folks may be leaving the state in droves. But it's interior design that deserves the attention of Indiana's state legislators? The bill would make it illegal for interior designers to practice without having first registered with the Secretary of State's Office. Please, register with the Kremlin Sec. of State before engaging in this dangerous thing you call commerce.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 08:19 AM | Comments (7)

Democracy On The March: One Step Backward, Two Steps Forward?

Economists and rational theorists believe that incentives structure people's actions. The question to ask of reports in this morning's Washington Post that Russia removes judges who give light sentences to some offenders--or even acquit them--is "What are the incentives at play?"

If you answered that the incentives structure a system such that Moscow's current centralizing, anti-liberal policies are given the maximum possible reinforcement, you're right.

Writes the Post:

Judges are targeted for forced retirement or dismissal if they apply the law to acquit even everyday defendants, issue sentences that are seen as too lenient by court chairmen or fail to follow prosecution requests to send suspects to overcrowded pretrial prisons where they can languish for months, according to judges, law professors and lawyers.

And what is behind this?

According to legal scholars, efforts to bring about change have stalled. The goal of breaking old habits and creating a system in which judges act as independent arbiters between the state and the individual, has not been met yet.

"We are still living with an ideology of the past, and we haven't created a new legal culture," said Sergei Vitsin, a professor of law and deputy chair of the Presidential Council on the Reform of the Justice System. "Judges do not see themselves as in any way separate from prosecutors and police. You can write democratic laws, but you have to follow them, too."

It is instructive to remember liberal Russian expert Anatol Lieven's comments in Foreign Policy in January: "If Putin weren't there, we'd soon miss him." The current regime in Moscow, Lieven argues, is as liberal as it gets.

However, freedom may take two steps forward, but both will be uncertain and tentative. Post informs us that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak may seek multiparty elections for president, a major reform--if accomplished. The trial balloon comes after Secretary Rice canceled a planned trip to Cairo because of the "lack of reform iniatives there." But the presidential election will be held only in September, and the details of the proposal could render it toothless.

Kyrgyzstani voters head to the polls today in their first real elections. At stake: Control of their country's parliament, Post explains. The vote is a two-round process, and if opponents to the president capture 26 of the country's 75 parliamentary seats, they'll be able to block a constitutional change that would allow their president to seek a now-unconstitutional third term. It would be the first time a Central Asian leader has left office through constitutional means, still a rare experience in the former Soviet Union. A complicating factor: Both Russia and the United States have bases in the country. And here's a great paragraph that Noam Chomsky will never accept as factual:

Officials bristle at international allegations that Akayev is rolling back the country's democratic gains.

"Representatives of the American government talk like old Soviet commissars. They tell us what to do and then pull out their wallets to threaten us," Osmonakun Ibraimov, the country's secretary of state and the second-highest official in the executive branch, said in an interview, referring to what he said were threats to reduce or withdraw U.S. aid over alleged abuses. "It's embarrassing."

"We have shortcomings, yes, but we are building our democracy," he said, adding that he believed that Akayev would step down.

I am elated to hear that we're using our military bases to effect reform in an undemocratic country. The Cold War really is over.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 08:09 AM | Comments (0)

The Tsunami Versus Your OASDI

Hey! You remember that tsunami that killed hundreds of thousands of people? Do you also remember those extremely tiresome people who tried to prove that the U.S. was too stingy/too generous/too slow/too unilateralist in its relief efforts? Do you remember how eventually the misery, suffering, starvation, political upheavals, etc. paled in importance beside the question of whether the U.S. should give as much or more than Australia?

Assuming you answered "yes" to any question above, you may be interested to know that, as Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono says that in his country "the current emergency relief phase will be completed by the end of March."

Yes! That's right! The emergency phase of the tsunami relief efforts isn't over yet! And after that: The real relief efforts will begin, as whole provinces have to be rebuilt.

And how much media coverage is this ongoing relief effort getting? Aside from the Post article linked supra, Google News reveals that nearly all the coverage around the Internet comes from Asian regional sources (and, surprisingly, Canadian newspapers).

But surely the Blogosphere is correcting Old Media? Ah, no. A quick sampling of nine of the Ecosytem's top thirty blogs shows that only Instapundit has mentioned the giant wave recently. Left is as silent as Right: Neither Atrios nor LGF, Daily Kos nor Powerline, Talking Points nor Andrew Sullivan has discussed the relief efforts.

Instead, they're all talking about OASDI reform, at once confirming the Angloblogosphere's American bias and its tendency to converge on the worst sins of the Old Media complex. What bold, independent voices we are, boldly taking up the independent positions of our respective political parties and loudly shouting them at each other.

Meanwhile, in Indonesia, Post reports, Indonesia's political chattering class and its people are divided over whether SBY is doing a good job. The chattering class reports "maybe," the people (by 80% to 20%) say "yes." (Characteristically, the Post--the journal of the American political class--reports this as a "mixed marks.") SBY is the first directly-elected president in Indonesia, and was faced with the disaster less than three months after taking office. Should he and his nation of more than 220 millions build on the opportunity afforded by the disaster to further pursue the unification of the nation and end the ethnic conflicts that have split the island country (Aceh, the province hardest-hit by the tsunami, is currently engaged in a civil war) then the implications for the future are immense.

But, please. All of that is happening thousands of miles away to people who speak funny languages. Tell me more about how privatizing my Social Security account will affect me.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 07:50 AM | Comments (5)

Oh, Canada.

Following on yesterday's update about missile defense: New York Times today says that the U.S.-Canadian defense relationship may be in for a fundamental reworking. In particular, Times says, NORAD--the joint Canado-American air defense command--may be scrapped, with the U.S. Northern Command assuming responsibility for defending the North American landmass.

NORAD is another of those Cold War arrangements that survived the Soviet Union. Like NATO, the United States has been seeking a way for the organization to retain its usefulness (for NATO: peacekeeping outside of Europe; for NORAD: national missile defense). And like NATO, NORAD is withering: There's no particular reason to have binational air defenses linked so closely together in an era when thousands of Soviet missiles and bombers are no longer likely to come streaming over the Arctic Circle.

Washington Post provides evidence in a different context that American policy is resolutely staying off-course:

But with 1.3 billion people, 3.7 million square miles of territory and a $1.4 trillion economy, China is the rising regional leader in other fields. This view has come into focus particularly over the last year, when U.S. diplomacy has seemed preoccupied with Iraq or anti-terrorism and China increasingly has asserted its pre-eminence.

"There is now this feeling that we have to consult the Chinese," said Abdul Razak Baginda of the Malaysian Strategic Research Center. He added, "We have to accept some degree of Chinese leadership, particularly in light of the lack of leadership elsewhere."

Hmmm. Who else could be providing leadership? The Vietnamese? The Thai? The King of Nepal? I don't think so.

(On a political science note: It is remarkable how every country's scholars says they're an idealist in some way--liberal, constructivist, whatever--but everybody acts like a realist when the bills come due.)

President Bush and Secretary Rice are trying to rebuild American leadership in the world. It will be a hard sell. Experienced observers in Europe think that the President's trip last week was little more than an exercise in smoke-and-mirrors. As Hannah Arendt would note, talk is cheap--it is only action that matters in the end. And the United States for the past several years has built an exceptionally poor record as designing and maintaining international alliances and institutions, and of publicizing its successes when those exist (such as European-American coordination in anti-terror operations).

Or, to put it in terms even the anti-idiotarian Right can understand, when Canada doesn't take you seriously, it's time to get some new policies.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 07:23 AM | Comments (10)

February 26, 2005

Missile Defense: Up and Down We Go

Attentive readers with an armchair interest in missile defense will have noted that the past fortnight has been unusually interesting. On February 15, Washington Post reported, a test of the administration's major missile defense program failed again due to a technical glitch. Only a few tests have succeeded, and the majority of tests have failed--almost all because of minor technical glitches.

These faults in the machines give the lie to conservative commentators who have claimed that the technology exists, and that all that is needed for a successful national missile defense shield is money and will. NMD is a tremendously complex system of systems, and a failure in any of the many pieces of equipments and command systems that have to work perfectly to guarantee a good chance of hitting an adversary missile renders the whole multi-billion-dollar investment worthless.

But missile defense proponents had to be heartened by news that an American ship successfully carried out a hit-to-kill interception of a short-range missile a few days ago. There is, however, less than meets the eye to this success. Such tests are scripted to make it as easy as possible to intercept a target, and real-world difficulties are left out of these tests. As DefenseTech.Org comments, this is not a proof that missile defense works. We should also remember that North Korea and China--the two most likely adversary countries--will not only utilize a wide variety of countermeasures to defeat these defenses, but they may also choose to simply launch more missiles than a perfect defense could shoot down.

Meanwhile, the major American missile defense project--based out of Alaska and designed to intercept North Korean (and Chinese) ICBMs aimed at the homeland--ran into an obstacle when Canada's Prime Minister Paul Martin issued a statement declaring that Canada would not take part in the American NMD effort. Martin's statement emphasized that Canada would continue to work with America on other areas of mutual concern, including port security and peacekeeping. New York Times quotes Canada's ambassador to the United States as saying that domestic political pressures were behind Martin's decision. Until this year, Martin was counted as a supporter of the U.S.-led plans for a continental missile shield, but last year's elections weakened Martin's Liberal Party, and the PM calculated that the Parliament in Ottawa would not accept the partnership.

How much this will affect the NMD project is unsure at this point. Canada has asked the U.S. to consult with Ottawa before intercepting missiles over Canadian soil; they may as well ask for a pony while they're at it.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 06:39 AM | Comments (6)

Party of Six: Will They, Won't They, Will They Join the Dance?

The delicate negotiations over East Asian security continue. North Korea claimed it would return to the six-party talks over its nuclear weapons program if conditions were right, but the United States rejoined that the only country that believes the conditions aren't right are the North Koreans. President Bush's trip to Europe has mended some frayed ties in the transatlantic relationship, but Wall Street Journal notes that France's desire to sell arms to China threatens to derail the Sino-American relationship. And the relations between the two principal East Asian democracies suffered a serious setback as Japan and South Korea both laid claims to a set of islands, in only the most recent territorial dispute in the region.

New York Times carries a useful article on the statements by China's foreign minister and North Korea's news media that the DPRK is ready to return to the negotiating table. The North Koreans claim the onus is on the United States to demonstrate its "trustworthy sincerity"--code words for the United States to give the Pyongyang regime a security guarantee. The United States deflected Kim Jong-il's demands. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told the Times "All of the other five parties - the United States, China, the Republic of Korea, Japan and Russia - are in fact ready to return to the table at an early date and without preconditions." At their summit meeting in Bratislava this week, Presidents Bush and Putin reaffirmed that the Korean peninsula should remain free of nuclear arms, Times reported separately.

But complicating factors abounded this weekend. Economist highlights the concerns growing between the Chinese, the Americans and Japan over the military balance in the Taiwan Straits. Last week, of course, the Japanese took a strong step toward supporting the American position that any change in Taiwan's status must happen peacefully by declaring Taiwan an area of concern to Tokyo. China's news agency called Japan's declaration "unprecedented" and castigated Tokyo and Washington for meddling in what Beijing considers an internal affair. As Economist writes, "The kerfuffle has strained Beijing's ties with Tokyo and Washington at a time when the three are supposed to be working together (along with South Korea and Russia) to curb North Korea's nuclear ambitions."

Yet not all the news from Taiwan is dismaying. Wall Street Journal brings the stunning news that President Chen Shui-bian of the Republic of China has issued a joint statement with the principal opposition leader that leaves the door open for reunification with China--a dramatic turnaround for a politician heretofore viewed in Beijing (and Washington) as leaning toward declaring Taiwan's de jure independence. Mr. Chen's statements comes after the Journal had earlier reported that criticism from Taiwan's business sector was leading Taiwan to reconsider its curbs on direct investment in the mainland. A few days later, Washington Post reports, the Taiwan Affairs Office on the mainland reported that it was ready to allow the scheduling of more charter flights from the PRC direct to Taiwan (instead of through Hong Kong or elsewhere, as at present), in addition to considering allowing direct cargo flights and allowing Taiwanese farmers access to China's markets.

Looming over all of this, though, is the European Union's preparations to lift a sixteen-year-old ban on arms sales to China imposed after the Tiananmen Square massacre on June 4, 1989. Financial Times notes the threat by U.S. Senator Richard Lugar that he would work to take action against the EU in case the ban passed, and President Bush made sure to warn all European leaders during his talks in Brussels and Manz that the U.S. Congress might take severe steps against Europe in retaliation for the ban's lifting. Bush reiterated warnings by Central Intelligence Agency Director Porter Goss that the balance of military power in the Taiwan region is shifting in China's favor. In such a situation, the administration believes, allowing China access to advanced European military technology could make Taiwan's position untenable. The United States, under the terms of 1979's Taiwan Relations Act, is bound by law to provide for Taiwan's defense.

Finally, tensions between Japan and South Korea over the Dokdo/Takeshima Islands (Korean/Japanese names) came to the fore this week. Hundreds of protesters surrounded Japan's embassy in South Korea to demonstrate against the remarks by a Japanese ambassador that Japan owns the islands just off the Korean coast. A Korean English-language newspaper urges Seoul to take a hard line:

Japan's recent moves are too extraordinary for us to carry on looking the other way. An organization from the extreme Japanese right last year threatened to occupy the islets. It suggests coat-trailing: anything will do that can bring the islets to international attention as a conflict area, even if it infuriates the Korean people.

In the past, Dokdo conflicts have been settled through the invisible mediation of the United States, which valued above all a triangular security axis among the three countries. But now that the Korea-U.S. relationship is cooling off and Tokyo-Washington ties are closer than ever, Japanese provocations are intensifying.

It's worth noting at this point that Japan is engaged in bilateral disputes with four of the six countries engaged in the talks over North Korea's nukes: Disputes over offshore natural gas fields and the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands with China; disputes (and a legal state of war) over the Kurile Islands north of Japan with Russia; disputes over Japanese citizens abducted by North Korea's security services; and now the South Korean dispute.

The East Asian security story is the most consequential of this decade. China is rising to power; North Korea's regime is clinging for life to a nuclear life raft; South Korea is moving away from the United States; Japan is seeking to counter Chinese and Korean economic and military potential; and the United States is seeking to preserve American power in the region. The flashpoints described above will remain live issues as long as the equilibria in the region are unstable.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 05:50 AM | Comments (0)

Yawn

Tomorrow ABC plays host to the 77th Annual Academy Awards, and I couldn't care less. Of all exercises in self-congratulation and arrogance, the Academy Awards tops them all. In year where none of the nominees are blockbusters, the Academy decided to bring in Chris Rock - supposedly controversial - to help boost what would otherwise be poor ratings, and in all likelihood he'll deliver. "Awards for art are f***ing idiotic," he said. Thanks to these comments, thousands of people who would've tuned out the Oscars are going to be watching to see what he'll say.

But aside from the blatant publicity stunt, Chris has a point. Why should I care what a handful of career Hollywood residents think was the most fashionable film at the moment they cast their vote? Frankly, I don't, and the whole exercise is ridiculously narcissistic. On the other hand, there's a fashion show "red carpet walk" where beautiful people dress up for the adoring fans. At least that offers a spectacle worth watching on occasion. Chris is right, awards for art are f***ing idiotic, but beautiful stars strutting their stuff isn't. That's just good TV. I'll watch, but not because I care who "wins." I'll watch for the spectacle of it all.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 05:00 AM | Comments (3)

February 25, 2005

CPAC and libertarianism

ITA hasn't covered the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) much at all. It is, I must admit, a fairly big deal when you consider the long list of attendees. It is the oldest and most significant gathering of grassroots conservatives. It's a place where agendas are set, ideas are debated, and alliances are often formed. Despite all of this it has never interested me much. To me it seems more like a place where twenty-somethings go to be seen, and thinkers and politicos go to build name recognition. Picture ambitious folks standing around exchanging business cards. In essence, it seems like a big publicity stunt for everyone involved.

But because it's an important gathering of activists and leaders, it can, on occassion, serve as a weather vane for conservative/Republican issues. This year a considerable amount of bloggers attended CPAC, including famed libertarian Radley Balko. CPAC is over now, and Balko wraps-up his experience in a piece at Tech Central Station that looks at the state of limited government in the conservative movement. According to Balko, there is still hope for limited government in the Right's ideology.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 12:28 PM | Comments (2)

The 16th Amendment

On this date in 1913 Secretary of State Philander Knox declared the 16th Amendment to the US Constitution - which authorizes income taxes in their present form - as law. Knox had received responses from 42 states, 38 of which were positive, but there is still considerable dispute over just how many states actually voted to ratify it. The most famous advocate of those who challenge its legitimacy is Bill Benson, whose book and website is appropriately titled "The Law That Never Was." Benson does not pay federal income taxes, and spent considerable time in jail for it. But no matter how much opponents such as Benson protest, the Amendment remains the law of the land. And on that note ITA would like to remind readers that tax time is quickly approaching.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 09:20 AM | Comments (5)

Star Power

Click here for a picture of Condi sporting FMB. Or is it an outfit stolen from the set of Matrix? I'm not sure.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 09:09 AM | Comments (0)

February 24, 2005

ITA Writers Elsewhere

Or, more exactly, this ITA writer elsewhere. My letter appears today in the Christian Science Monitor in response to this column in the paper last week.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 02:45 PM | Comments (4)

Defending Summers

Jonah Goldberg rightly calls out Matthew Yglesias for suggesting that conservatives are a bunch of hypocrites for defending Lawrence Summers. To be fair, I'm sure there are more than a few Limbaugh-grade conservatives who had previously never heard of or knew much of Summers, and are only now happy to join him out of anitpathy toward the academy. In this sense, yes I suppose it would be "stange new respect." But there are also more thoughtful conservatives, who even if they don't agree with Summers' policy prescriptions, regard him with certain respect or admiration. Is it really so impossible for Yglesias to acknowledge that this kind of a relationship may exist between partisans, and that defending Summers on grounds of academic freedom doesn't necessitate celebrating his views on OASDI reform?

Posted by Zach Wendling at 08:52 AM | Comments (11)

THG

ITA friend (and Evansville native) Josh Whicker is profiled today in the Courier-Journal. Whicker is the founder and operator of The Hoosier Gazette, a satire site which has had tremendous success thus far, especially in terms of duping MSM. "A lot of people ask: Why is it fun?" Whicker said. But "there's an Internet subculture that gets it."

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 08:50 AM | Comments (1)

Smiley Smile

A friend sent me this interesting article describing how Americans and British have different smiles:

While we British smile by pulling our lips back and upwards and exposing our lower teeth, Americans are more likely simply to part their lips and stretch the corners of their mouths.

So distinct is the difference that the scientist behind the research was able last week to pick out Britons from Americans from close-cropped pictures of their smiles alone, with an accuracy of more than 90%.

Naturally, I thought of the Simpson's episode featuring the Big Book of British Smiles, and doubted the distinction could be entirely due to muscles. (Apparently, the state of orthodonty in the UK is a sincere topic.)

It seems that this kind of popular science, explaining body language through kinesiology, comes along every so often, usually, as here, in books rather than journals. Which is not to say that it's buncombe -- perhaps just interesting but not useful.

And interesting indeed:

Other research has shown that women smile more than men in public, but stop smiling in private.

The power behind the smile may also be more potent than anybody has previously realised: Keltner recently released a study of photographs of women in college yearbooks dating back to the 1960s in which he separated the Duchenne smilers from the artfully posed.

Researchers then tracked the women down and found that those who had smiled most happily at college overwhelmingly tended to have had the happiest lives since they had graduated.

Posted by Zach Wendling at 08:32 AM | Comments (3)

February 23, 2005

How Many Writers Would Do This?

Imagine holding a book open as it tries to collapse, straining to read the small print while you're probably stoned, and typing word-for-word, well, the book. The New York Times reveals this fact about how Hunter S. Thompson tried to find his voice.

And his suicide had its own terrible logic. A man who was so intent on generating a remarkable voice that he retyped Hemingway's novels just to understand how it was done, gave a final bit of dramatic tribute in turning a gun on himself.

That's so raw. Forget about classes with stuffed shirts parading like peacocks. Just pick up a book and type the darn thing.

Posted by PunchTheBag at 06:26 PM | Comments (5)

The takings clause

Professor Bainbridge has a good roundup of Kelo vs. City of New London, a case involving the takings clause which seems to have significant ramifications on private property rights.

After news of Napoleon's victory in the Battle of Austerlitz was conveyed to British Prime Minister William Pitt's, Pitt pointed to a map of Europe and said: "Roll up the map; it will not be wanted these ten years." If the Supreme Court sides with New London, we might just as well roll up the Bill of Rights, for we won't need it any longer.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 02:57 PM | Comments (10)

"The" Problem

Continuing on the theme of non-topical posts, let's resurrect OASDI reform for a quick point. As the various ideas for "fixing" OASDI wax and wane, we should be wary of how they are evaluated. As Victor at the Dead Parrot Society notes, there's no such thing as the social security problem. There are, as he lays out, four or five relevant questions for reform proposals:

1) Does the plan result in system "solvency"?
2) Is the plan intergenerationally fair?
3) What is the impact on future budgets?
3a) Will it reduce future outlays?
4) Is there an impact on national savings?

I think debate over these problems has been hampered by how it was introduced by President Bush, who focused almost exclusively on the first problem and continues to use it to draw the public's attention. For future debate, I agree with Victor that, "keeping these issues in mind can help communication and help frame a solution. Or solutions, plural."

Posted by Zach Wendling at 09:39 AM | Comments (3)

Another blog victory

Bloggers come from all ideological stripes, but one thing that seems to unify them all is a disdain for mainstream media (MSM). I haven't fully jumped on this anti-MSM bandwagon, as previous posts reveal, but recent frustrations with "big media" serve as a reminder that bloggers do serve an important function that MSM just can't do.

On Monday I reported at IndyLaw Net (ILN) that multi-million dollar expansion plans at Indiana University School of Law - Indianapolis had been terminated out of a desire to keep Bloomington's law school "ahead" of its sister school in Indianapolis. The report set off a hornet's nest in the Indiana legal community and touched a nerve that many in the legal community had felt for a while.

Subsequent investigations on Tuesday by ILN revealed a series of deceptions and lies on the part of Indiana University Vice President J. Terry Clapacs. Here you can see Clapacs' changing story about the termination, a bogus response on his part, diagrams of the architectural designs, and outright contradictions among school administrators.

The story offers intra-school rivalries, multi-million dollar expansion denials, and lying university administrators. This is all very important developments dealing with a very important subject important to the legal community and the larger Hoosier citizenry. And it was all, I might add, uncovered and reported on IndyLaw Net by students such as myself at the law school. Yet the MSM, having been tipped off to the events, has yet to really bite. The story can't be served on a nice little platter, and worse, it would require attribution to bloggers.

To be fair, there are some media outlets deciding to report on it and investigate further, but by and large the MSM has demonstrated a lethargic and ignorant attitude that reminds us the Blogosphere has an important and necessary role not being filled by MSM.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 09:02 AM | Comments (8)

UN Dispatch

Some time ago the UN formed a new blog, UN Dispatch, run by former Kerry aides Peter Daou and Debra DeShong. A couple days ago Daou sent out this mass email to various media personalities:

You can see from the UN Dispatch blogroll - which will continue to expand - that this is not about "discrediting conservative critics," as the above-mentioned sources allege, but about engaging in a wide-ranging and productive debate. The blog was launched earlier this month and will soon be open for reader comments.

Among the blogs on its short blogroll is ITA, who is proud to serve as a diverse voice on their list.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 08:52 AM | Comments (0)

Harvard's Beleaguered President

I realize that it's a bit late to start talking about this "scandal" over Lawrence Summers' remarks last month, but in a way, I think that is the story. The actual offense and fallout should have been a three day story, maybe more if it broke on a Friday. Lasting as long as it has, though, reflects very poorly on Harvard, if not on academia in general. We expect this kind of stuff from Berkeley, but one would think that one of the highest ivory towers of academia would be able to rise above such stifling political correctness. That it has not is disheartening. If I were a student, alumnus, or faculty member there, I'd be ashamed, maybe even start a website to try and clear my school's name.

Some try to justify this attack on Summers by saying it's the last straw. The president must go, they say, because of a series of abuses, this last of which has made it impossible for him to be an effective administrator. I'm not entirely persuaded by this argument. First, if the "last straw" consists of his enemies blowing something he said completely out of proportion and then throwing such a hissy fit over their own exaggeration that he can't do his job, I don't know why the blame would rest on him. Second, one oft-repeated offense is that Summers treated Cornel West shabbily. (You can't see it, but I'm rolling my eyes.) Third, they say he's "insulted professors and ignored their opinions." Honestly, I'm not intimate with the affairs of Harvard, and this may be true. Considering the current behaviour of his opponents, I'm inclined to give Summers the benefit of the doubt here. Fourth, his opponents are also unhappy with the power he has accumulated while in office. Again, I'm ignorant of the scale or appropriateness of his powers, and this could be a legitimate grievance. At my alma mater, we had our own experience with a power-hungry and rude administrator, but she was corrected by her superiors, not the faculty. If Summers were acting outside his bounds, wouldn't he have been hemmed in by the Harvard Corporation and Board of Overseers?

I can't speak with authority on this rabbit trail, but the case seems more manufactured than legitimate.

Posted by Zach Wendling at 08:49 AM | Comments (19)

February 22, 2005

The end of an era

Tonight, Purdue men's basketball coach Gene Keady will take his Boilermakers to face the Indiana Hoosiers for the last time (unless the two teams meet in the conference tournament). For twenty seasons (1981-2000), Keady was a fitting opponent to Indiana Coach Bob Knight--his trademark combover and scowl just as reliable as the infamous antics of "the General."

And although Keady's departure is planned and he can thus be given a proper farewell on the court, his career is ending with a regrettably dismal season. Purdue fans will no doubt be hoping for things to improve next year under coach Matt Painter, just as Indiana fans will be looking for a new coach to get the Hoosiers back on their feet. A re-invigorated Indiana-Purdue rivalry is a key part of restoring the game of basketball in the state of Indiana.

Fare thee well, worthy adversary.

Posted by Eric Seymour at 01:26 PM | Comments (8)

God in Europe

The Christian Science Monitor is carrying a three part series titled "What place for God in Europe?" It's a fascinating look at Europe and the forces that shape European identity. The withering of the Christian faith in Europe is tremendously significant, but has been a slow evolution making it hard to notice at times. When the EU drafted its initial Constitution it spoke of Europe's "cultural, religious and humanist inheritance" being "nourished first by the civilizations of Greece and Rome, characterized by the spiritual impulse and later by the philosophical currents of the Enlightenment." This of course conveniently left out a thousand years or so of Christianity, but the slight makes sense given what CSM describes as "godless secularism" taking hold of Europe. Christianity is becoming a part of Europe's history, rather than a dynamic contemporary force.

As the Enlightenment took hold of Europe, the American counterparts interpreted it in a much different light. Grace Davie, an expert on religion at Exeter University in England, offered this explanation: In Europe, "the Enlightenment was seen as freedom from religion ... getting away from dogma, whereas in the [US] it meant freedom to believe."

When historians go to record human history over the last century, the rise and fall of communism and the expansion of American and capitalistic ideals may well be the dominant theme. But the explosion of Christianity in developing countries, and the simultaneous decline in Europe, is one fact that deserves a prominent place in the record.

The philosophical and theological ramifications are deep and fascinating, but the practical public policy effect cannot be overlooked either. One needs to look no further than Iraq to see evidence of that. But are there economic implications as well? In a separate piece in CSM, Joshua Burek asks, "Do Europeans work less because they believe less in God?" In a 2003 study Harvard researchers Robert Barro and Rachel McCleary found that certain religious beliefs did contribute to economic growth. However, correlation does not equal causation, and Japan stands as a stark reminder that a strong work ethic and religious belief must not go hand in hand. And Muslim nations, whose beliefs are often held quite strongly, remain economically stagnant.

In the final analysis, Christianity (or the lack thereof) will likely have an economic impact only indirectly, depending on how social policies and international alliances affect the economic climate. But its impact on philosophical, moral, and policy issues cannot be understated.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 12:58 PM | Comments (23)

City-County Consolidation

Groups in two Indiana cities, Evansville and Muncie, are urging consolidation with their county governments. Proponents of the move say that consolidation is a forward-looking move that will position cities for the future, and that the psychological lift that the increased populations of Greater Evansville or Greater Muncie would enjoy would give them bargaining power in marketing and economic growth.

The February 22 Wall Street Journal runs a Page A2 story on city-county consolidation efforts across the United States. Only about a fifth of the proposed mergers are ever accomplished, the Journal reports, and only 35 have ever taken place in the U.S. The first was New Orleans' in 1805; the most consequential was New York City's merger in 1897 (consummated in 1898) that created Greater New York from forty municipalities. Interestingly, New York City's consolidation, like that of Indianapolis seven decades later, took place without a popular referendum.

It is an open question whether these mergers are worth the effort. Local circumstances undoubtedly play a role in influencing outcomes: A dynamic region that is attracting new residents and businesses will experience consolidation differently from a municipal government that has to fight established interests. And some very successful cities thrive without having a consolidated government: London, for instance, is famously hard to define, much less to govern, but it's still one of the world's greatest cities.

Often, what lies behind efforts for consolidation is simple boosterism. The president of the Topeka, Kansas, chamber of commerce uses words almost identical to those used by Hoosier consolidation activists to describe the benefits of consolidation:

Merging with nearby Shawnee County would boost Topeka's population to 170,000 from 130,000, according to Doug Kinsinger, president of the Topeka Chamber of Commerce. "It gets us over that bump of 150,000," he says.

But why is getting over that bump so important? Are businesses really so dense that they can't be bothered to look at Census population figures for metropolitan areas, instead of the often-arbitrary boundaries of cities? Evansville, for instance, only has about 120,000 people, while Vanderburgh County adds another fifty thousand or so--but the Evansville-Henderson Metropolitan Area, as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau, has nearly 350,000. Looked at in context, therefore, consolidation between Evansville and Vanderburgh County hardly affects the incentives for economic development. Only a merger between Evansville and Vanderburgh, Warrick, Posey and Gibson Counties would make much sense from an economic development perspective.

Proponents of consolidation also point to the possible benefits in efficiency and cost-effectiveness from mergers. But, the Journal quotes a consolidation expert, there's never a guarantee that those benefits will be realized. That doubt is what led voters in Albuquerque, New Mexcio, and Des Moines, Iowa, to reject consolidation proposals last year. And Mayor Bart Peterson's proposals to further integrate Marion County government (which he claims will save tens of millions of dollars for the unified Indianapolis government) show more forcefully than any academic study that consolidation does not solve every problem.

More promising, the Journal says, are efforts to change the tax and regulatory schemes of the state government. These have far greater impacts on how businesses decide to locate their businesses (as, indeed, most theories of political economy predict). In Indiana's case, one step that consolidation activists could usefully focus on is fixing township government. More than a thousand townships exist in Indiana, and good-government types and experts in governance have urged them to be reformed or done away with since before the First World War. Indiana's townships are often hideously inefficient. As the Indiana Chamber of Commerce reported in a study last year, for every dollar in poor relief delivered to needy Hoosiers, township trustees need ninety cents in administrative overhead. Often that relief is begged for, as ex-Hoosier and journalist Nancy Nall notes:

There are 1,008 townships in Indiana, and if you talk to welfare professionals, you'll hear horror stories like you wouldn't believe, usually in rural areas -- trustees who refuse aid to women with blackened eyes trying to escape battering husbands, because "your husband can take care of you"; trustees who deal with troublesome transients by buying them a bus ticket to the nearest urban township, where the poor-relief offices are bigger and more anonymous; and so on.

There are many more inefficiencies in Indiana local government that could be fixed without consolidation. Often, it isn't just an issue of cost, but of democratic accountability. In Vanderburgh County, for instance, the two incorporated cities, eight townships, school corporation and county government require the services of 79 elected positions (not including judges). Even under the consolidation plans put forward in Evansville, that number would only fall to 72.

Nearly all of what advocates of consolidation want can be achieved without consolidation. At the most extreme, the city of Evansville, for instance, could simply be unincorporated and turned into a service district, thereby leaving Vanderburgh County's citizens with a unified government through a much easier legislative path. Less radically, the outdated township system of government could be eliminated or drastically rescaled. All of Vanderburgh County's poor relief could be run by one township, for instance, while the county assessor handled the entire property tax assessing process. Steps like these would deliver tangible benefits immediately to local citizens, not just promises of possible efficiencies and psychological lifts.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 08:27 AM | Comments (4)

February 21, 2005

Tom Wolfe on HST

Tom Wolfe's reflections on Hunter Thompson. Wolfe also clarifies what mystified me when I read, in one very heady month, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and Hell's Angels. It turns out that Thompson lent Wolfe his notes for a party at which Ken Kesey had met up with the motorcycle gang, which is why the scenes of the party in both books are almost identical. For years I have wondered who plagiarized who.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 08:15 PM | Comments (0)

Sorry. We Only Speak Mandarin Here. Duibuqi.

If you think that the world would be a better place if everyone spoke only English, I've written a fair bit about that elsewhere. (It is, I'm afraid, far too long to post on this site.)

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 07:33 PM | Comments (2)

Will the real Abe Lincoln please stand up?

Edward Achorn has written an op-ed about the controversial C.A. Tripp book "The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln." His strongest point--that bed-sharing by persons of the same sex was common in generations past and by no means evidence of homosexuality--has been convincingly made already by David Greenberg in Slate. But on this day when we celebrate more than two centuries of American leaders, Achorn's column is a good reminder of how easy it is to be deceived by viewing the past through our modern lenses, and a warning about trying to enlist great historical figures in support of modern social or political movements.

Posted by Eric Seymour at 10:47 AM | Comments (20)

Everything is Better in a Database

Via The Corner, I found this visual database that ranks baby names (usage of a name per million births) every decade for the past century. It seems I was ahead of the curve, Eric and Josh riding it, and Paul (or Robert) far behind it. Punch has not been popular is sufficiently large enough numbers.

Obviously, such a collection of data invites random observations. Rudolph enjoyed resurgence during the 20's, as did Charles during the 30's. Naming babies after presidents (both first and last names) was also popular during the first half of the century, but died out after Eisenhower--the notable exception is Truman, who seemed to have no effect on the usage of either "Harry" or "Truman." Hamilton and Washington had spikes in the 10's, and Lincoln is spiking now.

Infamously, Wilhelm died out by the 10's, and Adolph and Benito plummeted in the 40's just as Winston was rising. I had thought Benedict would be a name excluded from the American roster, but it was around (at low levels) up until the 70's.

We can also observe the shift in gender. Leslie and Kelly became feminized mid-century. There never have been many male Lindsays/Lindseys. The neonyms Cody and Dakota are predominantly male, but the historically male Morgan is now overwhelmingly female. Male Nancys are rare indeed.

And obviously, Hispanic names have been rising over the past few decades. Moham-ed/med/mads have also climbed since the 70's.

As for spellings, it's Sarah over Sara, Sean over Shawn, Anne over Ann, and Ashley over everything else.

Posted by Zach Wendling at 10:44 AM | Comments (5)

Hunter S. Thompson

Hunter S. Thompson is dead.

The New York Times, the established newspaper of the United States as Anglicanism is the established faith of England (and for the same reasons, inertia and authority), documents the writer and mal vivant's passing in an obituary that obeys all the conventions in the form. There is a lede; there is a nut graph; there is an inverted pyramid. In the Times's writing, there is no weeping or gnashing of teeth. There are facts, there is a story, which is a collection of facts, and there is an article that relates those facts efficiently.

If Thompson had written his own obituary, as he wrote his own biography, then he would not have followed the conventions the Times adheres to. He preferred smashing, bold, blunt writing like that of H.L. Mencken, whose obituary of William Jennings Bryan served as an inspiration for Thompson (I first encountered Mencken as an artist, not as a deviser of epigrams, in Thompson's writings).

What would Thompson have written? I cannot know. I am not a genius, and Thompson was. His genius lay not in the crafting of his books--although, as Joel Achenbach writes in Washington Post, Thompson's best pieces were the product of painstaking revisions--but rather in the creation of a persona. He became what many journalists and readers longed to be: A hard-drinking, drug-using, fearless master of his craft. His readers might be aspiring artists or members of the bohemian bourgeoisie; they almost all lacked the stamina and courage to live as Thompson professed to. Other journalists covered sewer board hearings; Thompson would blow up a Jeep at his compound in Colorado, where he shot himself yesterday.

About the drugs: In NPR's memorial interview, Steve Inskeep put the question to one of Thompson's friends. Thompson's character in his books is consistently stoned, he breaks a lot of laws, "Was he like that in real life?"

"Uh, well, yes," the friend replied.

And this, too, was part of Thompson's persona, just as much as his running for sheriff on a Freak Power! ticket (and losing, by only 500 votes) was, or his claim (in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72) to have talked football with Richard Nixon, and to have accidentally almost blown the Nixon campaign jet to pieces by lighting a cigarette near the fuel tanks.

Thompson said he chronicled the death of the American dream, and Lileks put it well some time ago:

Of course in Thompson's world the Big Darkness is always coming. Every day it doesn't come means it'll just be bigger and darker when it finally arrives.

Perversely, this made Thompson well-suited to cover the Sixties and the Seventies, when the world was going to hell.

One wonders what would have happened if Thompson, not Eric Blair, had lived in the Thirties and fought the Fascists in Spain. Fear and Loathing in Catalonia, a dark odyssey through the death of the Spanish dream....There would have been enough craziness there for Thompson, or maybe too much, because Thompson's insanity was perfectly suited to be the vessel by which the literary and the adolescent vented themselves of their middle-class frustrations. Or, as Joyce wrote in a different context:

But all these men of whom I speak
Make me the sewer of their clique.
That they may dream their dreamy dreams
I carry off their filthy streams
For I can do those things for them
Through which I lost my diadem,
Those things for which Grandmother Church
Left me severely in the lurch.
Thus I relieve their timid arses,
Perform my office of Katharsis.
My scarlet leaves them white as wool:
Through me they purge a bellyful.

And now because Hunter has blown his brains out, he has an artistic ending to an artificial life authentically lived, like Yukio Mishima cutting himself open.

Thompson did not write his own obituary--at least none has yet appeared--but he wrote his own biography. There is, I think and I hope, nothing to say about his life beyond what he wrote, and what he wanted us to know, and what he knew we wanted to believe. Along the way, he established himself as a good journalist, able to transcend the petty rules of journalism by bending them to his massive selfish will. Achenbach writes: "He didn't gum up his narrative with soul-searching. He really served as a big eyeball, if perhaps a rather glazed one." By the end that eyeball was half-blind, and it was the loathing of the final coming of the darkness that made Hunter S. Thompson take the last action of his life, to meet the darkness on his own terms, before it took him.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 10:38 AM | Comments (3)

The Wacky Legacies of British Constitutional History

The United States, with its rational federal constitution and normally-rational state constitutions, is a poor place in which to learn about comparative politics, because we assume the habits of rationalism, tempered by sentiment, apply everywhere. We are equally confused by the speed with which the French cycle through their regimes and the gradual accretion of powers that mark the British constitution. I am far from being able to offer an expert opinion on any matter of British constitutional history, but I would like to point to a few Wikipedia articles that may amuse and interest readers of ITA.

It is true that the American constitution is not quite as rational as it is presented. Whether one accepts the idea of a 'living constitution' as valid or not, it is clear that the constitution as practised does change from generation to generation, and that sometimes these changes are improvised; the status, say, of lands conquered, purchased or acquired in North America, Asia, the South Pacific and the Caribbean shows this pretty well. Nor is constitution-making by legislative or plebiscitary means always rational: The existence of the Alabama constitution by itself denies that. And American constitutional history also throws up delightful oddities like the Dorr Rebellion, the only time in history the 'republican government' clause of the U.S. federal constitution has ever been seriously tested.

But these are nothing compared to the remarkable sophistries and puzzlements of British constitutional history. Consider Newfoundland and Labrador, now the tenth province of Canada, but only a part of Canada since 1949. Before that, it had been a Dominion (a self-governing part of the British Empire), and a colony--but not a part of the Canadian Dominion. (Canada's own political history is at once frightfully complex and dull, like so many things involving our neighbor to the north.) In the antipodes, Australia's Northern Territory actually rejected statehood, after only a hundred years or so of federation without federal representation.

But Britain did not export the best of its weird constitutional practices to the colonies. It kept them for domestic consumption. Thus the counties palatine retained substantial autonomy until the nineteenth century. And Cornwall may have a Parliament that time forgot: It is a live dispute whether the abolition of the Stannary Parliament in the late nineteenth century was legal or not.

Arguably falling under the status of 'domestic' oddities is the Isle of Man, which lies smack dab in the center of the Irish Sea, or, rather, equidistant from England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland--the four major parts of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. ("Britain" and "U.K." are not, therefore, synonymous.) But the Isle of Man isn't a part of the U.K., though its defence and foreign policy is managed by London, and though it is ultimately governed by the Crown. The I.o.M. is, instead, neither a member of the U.K. nor of the EU, and its government is dominated by the Tynwald parliament, and especially the Lower House, the House of Keys.

Understanding these facts makes it possible to understand why Winston Churchill would say to Parliament in 1940 that "President Roosevelt has recently made it clear that he would like to discuss with us [i.e., the U.K. government], and with the Dominion of Canada and with Newfoundland, the development of American naval and air facilities in Newfoundland and in the West Indies." It also helps one grasp the immense gulf separating British statesmen like Edmund Burke and the uber-rationalists of the French Revolution....

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 06:43 AM | Comments (4)

February 20, 2005

Beech Grove Amtrak to Close?

It's about time that the repair shop for Amtrak trains at Beech Grove (near Indianapolis) closes.

Subsidizing this maintenance facility has been a continuing issue for the twenty years I've been living in Indy.

If Amtrak is going to essentially become an east coast operation we don't need to send the trains to Indiana for repairs.

Governor Daniels is showing some political courage by calling for no more federal money for the operation. Of course he may not want to ride his new bus into Beech Grove for any town hall meetings.

Posted by PunchTheBag at 03:19 PM | Comments (5)

Pass The Cup to the AHL

What an excellent suggestion. Award the Stanley Cup to the champion of the American Hockey League playoffs.

Anil Adyanthaya has done the research and concluded that the NHL does not own the prized trophy that is awarded to the winner of the NHL's Stanley Cup finals. In fact the cup was given to championship teams years before the NHL was formed.

The Stanley Cup trustees should make such an award and spit in the eyes of the National Hockey League.

Posted by PunchTheBag at 02:56 PM | Comments (0)

Rove Challenges the Paleoconservatives

Not like we didn't know this already, but Karl Rove makes it official by waving goodbye once and for all to the Old Right and Pat Buchanan. The train has left the station and if you're not on the worldwide liberty tour then turn in your conservative credentials.

I'm not so sure we should bury these paleoconservatives yet.

If Republicans on Capitol Hill can't stop the spending, then we will see a civil war in the GOP about the time that the presidential primaries begin.

The only thing that might delay such a war is if Hillary is the Democrat Party nominee.

The Clintons unite us like no other political force.

Posted by PunchTheBag at 02:35 PM | Comments (4)

And In This Corner, Weighing In At . . .

For those of you (like me) who are torn between ideological purists and the realists who get things done in Teddy Roosevelt's Arena be sure to read these two columns by Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels and Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform.

The Indianapolis Star pits the two against each other in a discussion that centers on the governor's tax hike proposal.

Norquist pulls no punches in scolding the governor for not trying hard enough to find spending cuts. He points out that other governors have cut spending and rejected the option of raising taxes.

However, Norquist doesn't dig into details about what specifically Daniels could do better other than not raise taxes.

The governor does delve into the nitty gritty of the options in front of him. You may not be thrilled with the tax increase (and he's not either) but at least you get an idea of how he has arrived at his choices.

He takes a shot at Norquist and his Washington ivory tower gang.

Maybe one sign of a fair plan is that it catches grief from all sides. The lobbyists for higher spending are howling. They were quickly out-shouted by my old friends from the national low-tax lobby. These folks serve a useful purpose on the national political stage, but they live in a world of words and theories; you wouldn't hire them to run your Little League concession stand. They invoke my former boss President Reagan as a patron, but prefer to forget that he asked for a tax increase his first year as governor of California for exactly the same reasons I did -- a bankrupt state and a constitutional duty.

To those on the field of battle, the purists and those who won't get their uniforms dirty are a real pain in the rear. But maybe they serve a useful purpose as the conscience of the conservative movement. Both sides need each other.

Posted by PunchTheBag at 02:12 PM | Comments (6)

What Is The Matter With You People?

Jebus, I hate when polls like this come out, because I know I'm going to have to interpret it for Irish people. And frankly there's no spinning this one: The American people have convicted themselves of their own admission. The Gallup poll says that Americans think Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, in that order, are the country's greatest presidents ever.

Right. There's no way that either president could come in before number eight (held, I would argue, by Dwight Eisenhower). Any argument to the contrary is futile. And listing the current president--whoever he is--before the effects of his policies become clear is utterly ridiculous.

Even more amazing, almost blindingly idiotic, is this poll which claims that two-thirds of Republicans would vote for the current president against George Washington. (Via The Impoverished Person)

Only 46 percent of the 800 adult Americans surveyed could identify him as the general who led the Continental Army to victory in the Revolutionary War. When asked who they thought was America's greatest president, only 6 percent named George Washington, ranking him seventh among all presidents.

Do we live in a nation of illiterates? Are we competent to govern ourselves? Is this Onion article satire or nonfiction?

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 12:24 PM | Comments (4)

Mercury 6

On this day in 1962, John Glenn, while aboard Friendship 7, orbited the earth three times in 4 hours, 55 minutes, becoming the first American to orbit the earth. Click here to read all about the Mercury 6 program.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 10:10 AM | Comments (0)

Dobson revisited

When the James Dobson v. SpongeBob showdown was in the news recently, I only did a cursory glance at the various reports and did little research into the finer points of the conflict. But now that I've had the time to do so I'm convinced that Dobson's position was grossly maligned and that the argument he was actually making may very well check out.

To begin with, Dobson was not attacking SpongeBob or any of the 100 other cartoon characters who took part in a promotional video for "We Are Family Day," nor was he attacking the video they were in, which he described as "harmless on its own." Rather, it was the agenda of the organization behind it that concerned Dobson.

The video in question features scores of popular children's characters singing along to "We Are Family" which was distributed to 61,000 public and private elementary schools. The We Are Family Foundation - the organization sponsoring the video - has hidden a lot of evidence behind their agenda since the flap has occurred.

The foundation's website offered a booklet which listed scores of homosexual organizations as "allies." The website also offered school lesson plans which suggested that teachers ask these questions:

• "How are you affected by homophobia?"
  
• "How would you be affected by your sexual orientation were it different than it is now?"
  
• "How will understanding these definitions change your thinking about compulsory heteroseuxality and homophobia?"
  
• "How will it change any of your behaviors?"

Another handout is called "Talking About Being Out," and offers a similar list of questions. Another lesson plan is called "Uncovering Attitudes About Sexual Orientation" and defines words like "compulsory heterosexuality," "heterosexism" and "homophobia" in loaded ways. These, along with a different Tolerance Pledge, have all been removed from the website since the flare up.

Taken together, these might not seem like much, and they're sensible things for a pro-homosexual group to try to distribute. But they also demonstrate that the We Are Family Foundation (a name taken from an overtly homosexual song) does in fact have an agenda. As Dobson said, the characters and the video themselves are harmless. Dobson was only trying to keep an accountable eye on an organization which he felt carried an agenda.

Some of my closest friends are gay, and I understand the desire and need for more tolerance toward the homosexual community. But "tolerance" is starting to carry different meanings. Dobson is understandably caling attention to the foundation's aims. The current video may be neutral, but given the foundation's agenda, future videos may carry a decidedly controversial tone that isn't approriate in public schools.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 10:03 AM | Comments (12)

February 19, 2005

Well, I'll Be Hog-Tied

The League of Nations Photo Archive is an Indiana University site. And look! Photos from its Disarmament Conference! Thanks, guys! That one really helped out!

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 07:09 PM | Comments (2)

Open thread.

Chat away.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 02:54 PM | Comments (4)

Party of Six

Security news involving Japan, North Korea, South Korea, China, Taiwan, and the United States

Another busy week in East Asia. To begin, Japan's Cabinet took one of the final necessary steps toward allowing the Prime Minister or military officials to shoot down North Korean missiles without Cabinet authorization (a story ITA has been monitoring for some time). The Cabinet approved the bill Tuesday, after the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (which is conservative and technocratic), throwing a sop to pacifist coalition partner New Komeito, added a measure to the bill to require the Prime Minister to report any such action to the Diet immediately afterward. The measure, which must now be approved by Japan's House of Representatives, is an essential part in developing a functioning chain of command for Japan's missile defences, being built in partnership with the United States. (Whether said defences will work is unlikely.)

Meanwhile, Japan continued to examine the possibility of placing economic sanctions on North Korea, especially the DPRK's fishing fleets (a followup to a post last week). Japan Times reports that such sanctions could cost Pyongyang a billion dollars a year--from a GDP that's only about $17bn to begin with. Japan Times also notes that remittances (transfers of currency) from Japan to the North have also fallen by more than a third from 2003 to 2004, largely because of stepped-up investigation of travelers heading to the hermit kingdom.

Finally, Japan also took a major step by inserting itself into the discussions between China, Taiwan and the United States over the status of Taiwan, which China claims is a breakaway republic, the United States says is at the very least an autonomous island, and Taiwanese leaders increasingly hint may declare formal independence. (If you're confused, don't be ashamed: read Wikipedia's article on Taiwan's status, and pay close attention to why Taipei formally claims that Mongolia is part of Taiwan.) Washington Post explains that Japan will join the U.S. today in declaring Taiwan a "mutual security concern," thereby formally committing Tokyo to maintaining the status quo in the Taiwan Strait. In effect, this means that Japan is signalling to Beijing that the United States would not be alone in repelling a mainland invasion of Taiwan. This puts last month's news that Japan has drawn up plans for repelling a Chinese invasion of Japanese territory in better context. New York Times notes the complexities involved, including the close and deep economic ties linking all four countries together. Reuters underscores that the renewal of the U.S.-Japan security alliance also signals that Japan will become a "strategic hub" from which the United States can deploy its forces from the Korean peninsula to the Middle East. (Japan's Self-Defence Forces, its military, has established a presence in Iraq.)

China, predictably, is dissatisfied with these moves. People's Daily carries the official message that CIA chief Porter Goss's testimony that China is destabilizing the situation in Taiwan sent "a false signal to Taiwan". But People's Daily also writes that "U.S. relations with Beijing have been relatively good in recent months;" the newspaper cites in particular the cooperation between the United States and the PRC over North Korea's now-declared nuclear weapons program. New York Times cautions, though, that China's role in the six-party talks over the DPRK's nukes may not be entirely helpful. Many in Beijing view the possibility of Korean reunification on Seoul's terms as being a potential disaster for China, and adding to their concerns is suspicion of American motives in East Asia.

"Although many of our friends see it as a failing state, potentially one with nuclear weapons, China has a different view," said Piao Jianyi, an expert in international relations at the Institute of Asia Pacific Studies in Beijing. "North Korea has a reforming economy that is very weak, but every year is getting better, and the regime is taking measures to reform its economy, so perhaps the U.S. should reconsider its approach."

Washington Post points out that although China has promised economic incentives to get Pyongyang to return to the bargaining table, the U.S. is telling foreign capitals that North Korea shouldn't be rewarded for becoming the tenth nuclear weapons state.

As all of these high-level negotiations are taking place, we should remember that democracies can be affected by what can seem to be minor incidents. Christian Science Monitor picks up on one such, the release of a film discussing the assassination of South Korean dictator Park Chung Hee in 1979. Monitor argues that the film has reopened generational and ideological wounds in the South Korean psyche--and, more importantly, the electorate--because Park was the symbol of anti-Communism and economic development, while more recent Korean leaders like Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun have pursued policies of reconciliation with the North. Indeed, many sources attest that a number of South Koreans fear the United States more than Kim Jong-Il's Stalinist regime to the north.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 10:00 AM | Comments (4)

February 18, 2005

Your iPod Is Your Cell Phone Is Your PDA Is Your Life

New Scientist reported a few days ago that Motorola's new E1060 mobile phone will come preloaded with Apple's iTunes software. This is a fine example of convergence, something my too-enthusiastic lecturer in K201 Business Computers talked about all the time. The basic idea is that eventually all electronic gadgets will do everything all the others do. And so, for instance, iPods have become digital cameras, PDAs have become cell phones, cell phones have become Internet devices, and digital cameras are soon to become GPS locators. GPS locators, presumably, will become coffeemakers.

By the end of the year, New Scientist speculates, cell phones will come equipped with hard drives. (Motorola's E1060 and similar devices will use Flash cards.) Toshiba has already designed a two-gigabyte, 2.1 centimeter drive "designed specifically for cell phones." Using third-generation (3G) communications technology, the news service reports, phones will be able to download mp3s at 400kb/s, or theoretically one song about every eight seconds.

So by the end of 2005, the iPod and the iPod Mini and the iPod flash and all the others will be obsolete already. The real hipsters will have moved on. What, then, will 2006 bring? And 2007? Brad DeLong predicted some time ago in Wired that by 2012, terabyte--terabyte!--hard drives will cost less than $100; in my personal computer planning, I've already determined that I may well need two of those discs, because at that point I'll have started to treat video files the way I already treat my 2,895 mp3s (13.9 GB, 8.3 days): As an integral part of my computing lifestyle. If I'm carting around eight or nine hundred gigs of Star Trek episodes and Wong Kar Wai films, then that's just the way it'll have to be.

And by 2020, I fully expect to have all of that on my watch, which will also make a killer cappucino.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 06:06 PM | Comments (10)

A Grand Bargain

I would support U.S. ratification of Kyoto if Europe, the UN, and everyone else just agreed to hold their tongues for the next ten years about American foreign policy. I think it would be worth it--and think of all the hot air that wouldn't be released into the atmosphere....

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 10:28 AM | Comments (6)

The EU Constitution

A handful of EU member states have already approved the Union's proposed new charter by parliamentary action. The first member state to hold a plebiscite on the matter, Spain, votes next weekend. Given the enthusiams the European project excites among the cognoscenti and the policy hipsters over here, one would expect the poll to be a focal point of massive popular emotions. If 'Europe' is so important, then surely the debate over how it will be structured is an issue of the first order.

Instead, Christian Science Monitor explains, at least eighty percent of Spaniards have no idea what the charter contains, and it's likely that fewer than three-fifths of them will bother to cast ballots. The referndum is expected to return a "Si!" vote, but as an exercise in the legitimation of a political order, this is somewhat unconvincing.

It is perplexing that Americans, who profess an anti-statist creed (even the most liberal mainstream U.S. citizen will tolerate far less government intrusiveness than her European counterpart), are more engaged by questions about political structures than Europe, where the state manages much of society's daily activities. (The joke in China is that the PRC is more capitalist than France.) A populace accustomed to turning toward the state for managing economic activity (including, in many countries, centralized wage-setting agreements) should be more concerned about major changes in that framework.

But apparently not. And I wonder if the ordinary citizens of Spain are not put off from the European project for the same reasons I am. Indeed, when I begin to list the ways that ever-closer union has made daily life better in the EU, I am confused about why I harbor a negative attitude toward the union. Moving from country to country is extraordinarily easy; Union-wide regulations have allowed a low-cost airline industry to develop; the common currency is staggeringly useful for those of us who can't remember what the exchange rates of the Deutschmark versus the franc versus the lira versus the drachma are. In its key goals--preserving peace and encouraging prosperity--the EU has played an important (if not, perhaps, a decisive) role. And if the EU wastes money, that is no less true of the other large federation of formerly independent states that has its capital in Washington.

The debate on 'Europe' has no Publius, and its anti-Federalists are screechy and repulsive specimens of the British right and the French left. The penalty for failing to ratify the American constitution was evident and immediate: Strategic weakness for a young nation facing threats from menacing foreign powers. If Europe fails to ratify this constitution, then--what? It will gain no seat on the UN Security Council; its foreign policy powers, weak anyhow, will hardly be changed; it has no military, levies no taxes, and its politics are distant substantively and geographically from the ordinary European citizen.

It is only those policy hipsters whose imaginations are fired by visions of a united Europe boldly confronting the United States over matters of great moral import. Most people do not vote, here or in America, because their moral indignation has been aroused. And so, if Europe ratifies its constitution, it will do so absent-mindedly and half-heartedly.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 08:44 AM | Comments (4)

George Will on The Budget

George Will writes in the Washington Post this morning about the farcial claims to "austerity" made on behalf of the Bush budget, and the strength of the special interests opposing even the nicks that Bush proposes.

Once--I remember it well--Republicans talked a good game about fiscal responsibility. In 1994, we were going to dismember large parts of the federal bureaucracy, drastically cut other programs, and work to ensure that the federal government's fiscal irresponsibility wouldn't imperil the budgetary health of state governments. The annus mirabilis of 1995 was the beginning, the peak, and the end of serious efforts along these lines.

There are fundamental contradictions among Republican policy aims. Taken severally, cutting taxes, cutting spending, balancing the budget, and acting as global sheriff are all defensible policies. Many of these policies can even work in conjunction with each other. But the GOP has forgotten the signal insight of conservatism: You can't have everything, so adapt your desires to what is possible.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 08:36 AM | Comments (3)

February 17, 2005

NHL Crash and Burn

I like hockey, I have played it, and I'm one of the few Americans who know the rules.

I'm glad the season is canceled.

The NHL needs to be destroyed in order to live again.

Obviously the labor dispute is the main reason why Commissioner Gary Bettman pulled the plug on what would've been a remaining 28 games per team season -- an insult to the fans.

I don't know how to measure fan base intensity, but one way might be to look at the roots of the sport. Up till 1967, the NHL only consisted of six teams: Toronto, Montreal, New York, Boston, with Detroit and Chicago as the "west coast" clubs.

What do these cities have in common? Snow and ice and grumpy fans who don't see the sun for a good four months in the winter.

That's a hockey culture.

Now the league has 30 teams with pucks flying in Florida, Tennessee, Texas, North Carolina, Arizona (where everyone has an ice rink in their backyard), and California.

This is insane.

Thirty clubs dilute the playing talent and expanding into these warm and humid regions to create a hockey buzz reminds me of the same "top-down marketing" of the WNBA.

A vibrant NHL needs to cut at least 10 teams and get a labor agreement. I'm not even sure it needs a wider rink or other rule changes.

It needs to recapture that intensity it once had.

Posted by PunchTheBag at 04:44 PM | Comments (8)

Maps

Will everything be digitized?

Last year, Reason magazine sent customized versions of an issue to each of its subscribers, featuring a satellite photograph of their house on the cover and targeted advertising on the back. The message: Privacy is dead. Deal with it.

A few years earlier, Arthur C. Clarke (and one of his innumerable, less-talented coauthors) wrote The Light of Other Days, in which a technology that produces miniature wormholes allows constant, unintrusive surveillance of everyone at every time (literally: present and past included). The message: Privacy is dead. Deal with it.

Two news stories today demonstrate that one more technological barrier to a world devoid of privacy as we conceive of it today is dead. Christian Science Monitor reviews the new mapping technologies unveiled by Google and new competitor A9.com (funded by Amazon), which show photographs of businesses in several cities. The photos, taken from the street by automated trucks, are in turn linked to maps that link them to street addresses. New York Times discusses the creation of high-quality three-dimensional frequently-updated maps of areas such as Philadelphia's city center. (A source tells the Times what I'd immediately thought of: This would make a killer scenario for a FPS video game.)

Privacy is not dead. Neither the search engine maps nor But it is weakening. These are ways to learn things about other places that previously only people actually standing in that place could know. Combined, too, with property-tax databases and other public records, more of which are online with every month, it becomes possible to knit together patterns of knowledge unthinkable five years ago.

And so what? Privacy is a modern invention: Your six-times-great-grandfather almost certainly enjoyed no privacy; even great lords existed in a semipublic realm all the time, as they were bathed, clothed and constantly attended by a coterie of servants. Peasants, living cheek by jowl in mud huts shared by their livestock, similarly had no privacy. The industrial revolution and the creation of the urban landscape, with its vast anonymous preserves, also allowed for the explosion of personal wealth that gave people living quarters significantly less crowded than those huts, while also allowing (or, rather, forcing) them to substitute capital and technology for servants to attend to their personal needs.

Viewed in this way, privacy is just another word for high transaction costs for the acquisition of certain types of information. And just as the advent of the steamship, the telegraph, and other technologies reduced transaction costs in other spheres of human existence, while along the way sweeping aside established customs, so will these falling costs transform our lives. In some ways, these transformations will be welcome: Blogging--especially moblogging and vlogging--reflect a desire by many to give away their privacy. In other ways, there will be harmful effects: Blogs (whether text, image or video) presume a way for the creator to control the dissemination of their private information. It is likely that both the unintended consequences of these disclosures and the possibility of unwanted, perhaps intrusive, discoveries will become an increasingly large problem for societal mores.

It will be possible to regulate certain types of information to a certain extent. But these will almost certainly prove to be second-order considerations at most, assuming that there is no blanket ban placed on these activities. And no such ban will be forthcoming. If people do not find these maps useful, they will find some other part of the information available online indispensable, and so they will eventually acquiesce in, and then celebrate, and later not even notice, the disappearance of their privacy.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 02:57 PM | Comments (0)

Daily Show Must See

Prof. Cooper points us to this month's must see: "Blogs, bloggers, the media, and the truth about Stephen Colbert on last night's Daily Show."

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 02:35 PM | Comments (1)

The Six Nations

Darby Conley's Get Fuzzy is one of the few syndicated newspaper strips to refelct the sensibilities of an oppressed minority group: Young, professional, well-educated, cynical White men. Today's strip is, as is usual for the series, brilliant and so quirky it hurts. To aid you in understanding: The Six Nations is a rugby tournament; the nations in quo are England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Italy...and France, which hitherto I had not conceived of as a rugby-playing sport. And, indeed, their habit of sipping Beaujolais instead of quaffing Gatorade means their performance improves and then slips as the game progresses.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at 08:39 AM | Comments (9)

Local news coverage lacking?

A study by the USC Annenberg School of Communication found some discouraging data regarding local political news coverage. In the month leading up to the November election, local news stations aired "nearly four-and-a-half times more stories about the presidential campaign than they did stories about all other political races combined." Local stations also devoted eight times more coverage to stories about accidental injuries, and "12 times more coverage to sports and weather, than to coverage of all local races combined."

This leads to the standard chicken and egg problem. Is the lack of local coverage a reflection of consumer interests, or does the media actually cause the lack of local interest? I'm not sure.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 12:04 AM | Comments (5)

Clear talk on global warming

There's been a lot of spilled ink in recent days over the Kyoto protocol, which went into force yesterday. About 140 countries, accounting for 55% of greenhouse gas emissions, have ratified the treaty. It's tiring to parse through biases and spin and get to the unfiltered facts surrounding climate change. I won't attempt to dissect aspects of them here, at least not yet, but I will point you to the best literature i've read on the subject in ages. I was thoroughly impressed with The New Scientist's piece on the subject by Fred Pearce (and