Today’s episode: Ugly Wallpaper

Photo © 2008 Louisa Billeter CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Click here for the original image.

“Are you going to get that?! That alarm’s been going off for the last half-hour.”

Nanny peered over his bag of potato chips at his wide-screen TV. Reclined on the couch, his beer belly provided a nice, convenient shelf on which to rest the bag, not too far away that he had to reach to get at it, not so close that it blocked his view. “Hold on!” he called back. “Let me just make it to the next commercial break.”

Control stomped in from the next room and positioned her body in front of the television screen. “Now,” she intoned, pointing at the emergency-monitor console.

“Damn,” Nanny muttered as he rolled off the couch. “There ought’a be a law against that.”

“What did you say?” Control sounded annoyed.

“Nothing,” Nanny said.

He sat in front of the console and punched a few buttons.

“Yikes!” He jolted from his chair. “I gotta go,” he said. “Looks like another hapless consumer being exploited by an evil capitalist.”

“Well, good luck,” said Control. “And don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“Yeah, right,” he muttered, as he took off on wingless flight toward the site of the trouble.

“…and I think,” said Linda to her friend and client, Suzanne, “a red throw rug would accent the color scheme you chose for the room—”

“Aha!” Nanny interrupted, swooping in from nowhere, pulling his bazooka from his pants—no one knows how he fits it in there, but there must be a lot of excess room.

“Bazooka Nanny!” exclaimed Suzanne. “What’s the matter?!”

“Fear not, fair damsel!” he replied.

“Nanny?” Linda asked. “But… you’re a guy.”

Swiftly aiming the barrel of his bazooka straight at Linda’s head: “Okay, slowly and carefully, let’s see your interior designer’s license.”

“My what?” Confusion and horror washed over Linda’s face.

“Ha! I thought as much,” Nanny said. “You thought you could get away with cheating the American public, but we’re on to you!”

Suzanne interevened. “There must be some mistake. Linda’s one of the nicest, most honest people I know. She’s always had good ideas, and I’ve always been thrilled with her work.”

“Ha! Fooled you, too, I see. But tell me this: if she’s so honest, why is she practicing interior design without a license?”

“Without a…” Suzanne’s puzzled words trailed off, as she regrouped. “I’m sure it’s just an oversight. She clearly knows what she’s doing.”

“Not so! Unlicensed operators can kill! But fear not, fair damsel! I’ve brought with me a qualified interior designer.”

At that point, a tall, thin man strolled into the room, dressed in a designer jacket, hands clasped behind his back.

“How did he get in here?!” Suzanne objected.

“Oh my!” The man spoke with a lisp. “Red is absolutely the worst color for this room. The energies of the universe would play a cosmic game of badminton with your fate, and you would end up with an awful disease, like cholera.”

“Is that gibberish?” Suzanne asked.

Linda regrouped, at least enough to answer for her friend. “We don’t do feng shui. We’re not into that sort of thing.”

“Silence, villain!” Nanny shouted at her, readjusting his aim. “You’ve ruined your last living room!”

A new voice suddenly rang out. “I think we’ve heard enough of this.”

“Damn!” Nanny said. “It’s my arch-enemy, Syl.”

“Syl?” asked Suzanne. “Is that a name.”

“It’s short for Sylvester.” The new voice came from a tall, broad-shouldered man with sandy hair and blue eyes. He wore a suit and tie and carried a beige attaché, and he spoke in rich, dulcet tones that filled the room. “I’m a civil liberties attorney,” he explained. “I’ve been following your progress, Nanny.”

“Don’t call me that!” Nanny objected.

“Why not? It’s your name.” And without waiting for an answer, “You’re through tormenting these poor people, Nanny. Pack up your bazooka and go home.” It sounded more like an order than a request.

Suzanne spoke up. “Aren’t you the guy who’s always putting criminals back out on the streets?”

Syl spoke matter-of-factly. “No, you’re thinking of criminal defense attorneys. I’m here to stand up for everyone’s right to put up ugly wallpaper.”

Nanny snarled. “There is no right to ugly wallpaper!”

“That’s what you think, Nanny. But you’re wrong!”

In a fit of sudden rage, Nanny swung his bazooka around at Syl and fired.

But Syl was ready for him. In a well-practiced motion that would have impressed Kwai Chang Caine, he blocked Nanny’s swing with his briefcase, and the bazooka blew a hole in the wall behind him. Syl stepped up his attack, with fists of lightning knocking Nanny to the floor.

“Look what you’ve done now, Nanny. You’re going to fix their house, aren’t you, Nanny?”

Nanny couldn’t reach his bazooka, because the damn lawyer was blocking the way. “Damn!” he said. “I hate ugly wallpaper.” Then, “There ought’a be a law against that.”

“Yes, I know,” Syl said, as if he were talking to a small child. He helped Nanny up off the floor and began walking him away from the disaster area. “Don’t worry,” he said with an air of condescension. “Maybe you’ll be able to shut down the unlicensed flower arrangers instead.” He chuckled.

Today’s episode was inspired by an actual Florida law (which resembles laws in a number of other states) that forbids people from giving interior design advice unless the first go through a convoluted and expensive government-licensing process. The Institute for Justice wants to challenge the law, because it represents prior restraint of First Amendment speech. The U.S. Supreme Court is to decide today whether it will hear the case.

Here’s Reason.tv’s video “Throw-Pillow Fight: Is your interior designer really putting your life at risk?”

UPDATE: The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case against interior-design licensing. The Nanny State lives on!

Photo © 2010 J. Timothy King CC BY-NC-SA 2.0; Original Photos: “RNC Bush Lied Americans Died” © 2008 Chad Davis CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, “Tea Party rally” © 2010 Fibonacci Blue CC BY 2.0

Q: How do you know when a politician is lying?

A: His lips are moving.

As one might expect, Obama’s speech at the University of Michigan this past weekend contained a healthy portion of misstatements, debatable half-truths, and deep-thick bullshit. If political rhetoric were to pollute our drinking water, we’d be perpetually living in a state of panic, as many here in the Boston area felt the same weekend. But as Christ himself said, it’s not what goes into a person that defiles him, it’s what comes out.

I’m not going through the entire speech, but I’d like to focus on one little gem that was picked up by the AP and rebroadcast far and wide:

What troubles me is when I hear people say that all of government is inherently bad… When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening foreign entity, it ignores the fact that in our democracy, government is us.

This snippet contains two huge, obvious fallacies. Can you spot them? If not, don’t worry; I intend to point them out.

First of all, our government is not a democracy; rather, it’s a representative government, where we elect those who represent us in the government. If we had a direct democracy, in which every law was a public referendum, then the government would indeed be us. But as it is, there’s that degree of separation between the government and us. They are the government; we are the governed. And the reason for elections? Because a government only governs at the consent of the governed. That’s just one of the many checks and balances that exist in our system of government, designed to prevent any one group from abusing the power of government.

But the founders of the United States wisely and astutely disparaged direct democracy. Even then, they knew that in a democracy, the majority always ends up using the power of government to oppress the minority. That’s why our government has multiple branches and layers as well as constitutions that limit what the government is allowed to do. And it’s also one of the reasons we generally vote for representatives, rather than on referendums. Even if the government were us, that still would not make it good. That’s the second fallacy, that somehow a democratic government is non-threatening.

(Notice how he also threw in foreign: a “menacing, threatening foreign entity,” as though foreigners are more menacing or more threatening than our fellow Americans. Hey, I’d take a foreigner with a sense of fair play over an American with a extortive agenda any day. But it’s human nature to fear that which is different, and that includes foreigners. Funny, that, the foreigners are to be commended when they promote government policies that Obama wants to copy, such as government-run healthcare, but they’re menacing and threatening otherwise?)

So we come back to the root of Obama’s point, that it troubles him when he hears people say that government is “inherently bad.” Well, I would expect it to trouble him. But that doesn’t make government any more or less “inherently bad.” Our system of government revolves around the idea that government power will eventually be abused, if we let it, either by the majority—as in a democracy—or by the minority—as in a monarchy—not because those holding the reins of power are evil, but because “all power tends to corrupt” (as Lord Acton put it). Our very political tradition is to be skeptical of anyone who claims that power. Given this, I might buy that a certain level of government is a necessary evil, as the saying goes. But even if it’s necessary, that doesn’t make it any less evil, any less inherently bad.

-TimK

This is too funny for me to have made it up. The IRS has ruled that Obama’s stimulus bill subsidizes actual, honest-to-goodness golf carts, under the “high-mileage vehicle” provision. This is causing golf-cart sales to soar. Laments Doug Bandow of the Cato Institute, “In a normal world this would be shocking, even scandalous news. Taxpayer money wasted buying carts for golfers. Uncle Sam as reverse Robin Hood, stealing from the needy to enrich well-heeled golfers.” Not in this country.

The Morality of Climate Change

True story: I was walking down Main Street this week, and one of the churches had a banner out front: “Climate Change is a Moral Issue.” Uh… Funny. I thought it was a natural atmospheric phenomenon.

Of course, it’s also a “crisis” and an “indisputable fact.” So I guess it could be a “moral issue,” too.

It’s campaign time again!

Every time I drive into Boston, I see signs for Mayor Manino’s reelection campaign: “Moving Boston Forward.”

I understand the challenger is running on the “Moving Boston Backwards” platform. It’s a close race.

Oy vey! Menino’s not moving anyone anywhere! Of course he wants to claim he is. But that’s what politicians do, take the credit for all our hard work.

The government solution to “market(ing) failure.”

The Onion ran this (fictional) piece last month, about a (fictional) man who was ejected from a movie theater “for failing to meet the minimum gender, age, and socioeconomic status requirements set forth in new guidelines to ensure marketing is reflected in movie audiences.”

Not sure what The Onion’s point was, but to me it sounded like a government solution. Are you sure they weren’t talking about US healthcare?

Last Weekend to Win a Free Book

This is the last weekend to enter this site’s drawing for a free book. Just click here to go to the giveaway post, then add a comment at the bottom of that post describing why you should get a Nobel Peace Prize. I understand they’re still giving them out to everyone.

-TImK

“Barack Hussein Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize, NASA Bombs the Moon”; © 2009 RR Anderson CC BY 2.0

As you know, Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize last Friday.

At first, I thought it was some sort of joke. And then I decided it actually was. “Wow. They’re giving them out to everyone now, aren’t they?”

The sentiment is not mine alone. For example, Ana Marie Cox, National Correspondent for Air America radio, wrote on Twitter, “Apparently Nobel Prizes are now being awarded to anyone who is not George Bush.”

After much debate, I think we’ve finally zeroed in on why Obama received the prize. It’s for his extraordinary effort, as Jerry Salcido reports at the Campaign for Liberty, “at bringing peace to the anti-war movement.” This has allowed him to further implement the peace-keeping missions created by his predecessor and the predecessor before that.

This should not come as a complete surprise. Nobel Peace Prize laureates over the past decade have included the UN, for their extraordinary efforts to promote endless bickering between national governments; the International Panel on Climate Change, for their extraordinary efforts to build up and disseminate greater myths— er, I mean, “knowledge,” about the global climate; and most importantly, Al Gore (for inventing the Internet).

(Yup. That joke still works.)

Your Own Peace Prize

In the spirit of the Nobel, I’m instituting my own peace prize. I haven’t given it a name yet— but I know that I don’t want my name on it. (Feel free to suggest names along with your contest entries below.)

If you’re the most deserving person— Ha! (Sorry, I couldn’t keep a straight face. Let me begin again.) If you win, I’ll give you an autographed copy of The Conscience of Abe’s Turn, Volume 1. This is a libertarian novel about the dangers of power. (Here’s an unsolicited Abe’s Turn review, from a libertarian who seems to get what it’s about. Google for other reviews, if you want.)

I’ll also subscribe you to my on-again–off-again print newsletter, which I send out (when I release a new issue) to my web-shop customers.

So the prize: a free book, with my authentic autograph; a free subscription to my newsletter; and the notoriety and fun that goes along with posting snarky comments on a political blog. (I don’t know about you, but if I weren’t running this contest, I’d participate just for the last of these. The free book is just a bonus.)

How to Enter

Submit a comment below, a few sentences explaining why you ought to receive a Nobel Peace Prize.

(Note that I want to know why you should receive a Nobel Peace Prize, not why you should receive a copy of my book. You can get the book just by ordering it, if you really wanted it that bad. But why should the Nobel committee award you a Nobel Peace Prize? That’s the question at hand.)

For example, here are a few possibly winning entries:

I ought to receive a Nobel Peace Prize because I’ve actually done more in my own private life to promote free, consensual commerce and non-violent conflict resolution than any government agency.

I ought to receive a Nobel Peace Prize because I plan to try really hard to make extraordinary efforts to pour myself a hot bath with vanilla and lavender. (And we all know how peaceful that is.)

I ought to receive a Nobel Peace Prize because Sirrus and Achenar didn’t fool me for one second! Yes, I actually won the computer game Myst. First time, too. No walkthrough needed.

I ought to receive a Nobel Peace Prize because I love the color pink. And I also hate big corporations and stockholders, because all they want is money, and all they have is money. And besides, why should they get all the money?! I have a 401(k). How come I’m not rich? It’s not fair!

I ought to receive a Nobel Peace Prize because you’re sooooo cool, and I really want to read your book. (That’s apparently as good a reason as any for being awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.)

How the Winner Will Be Chosen

As with Nobel Peace Prize laureates, entries will be judged by an impartial panel of experts—specifically, me and me alone—who will weigh such factors as the entrant’s peace accomplishments, the charisma and humor value of the entry, and whether the coin flip comes up heads or tails. The panel of experts—again, me and me alone—may also choose entries at random, or based upon whether I’m having a fun day or a sucky day.

(So in other words, for the record, this is not actually a contest. That part about entries actually being judged, that’s just for humor. The winner will actually be chosen in a random giveaway.)

(However, I may link-to or comment on some of the more notable entries elsewhere on the blog.)

How Long the Giveaway Will Last

On or around midnight, Monday, November 2, I’ll pick the winner. I’ll post a follow-up post and announce who it is. I’ll also email you for your mailing address, so that I can send you your free book.

So get those entries in! Submit a comment below!

-TimK

P.S. You may submit multiple entries if you’d like, but I’ll only count each person once. (Please, no posing as multiple personas in order to increase your chances of winning. This giveaway is for fun, and posing as multiple personas is against the rules.)

P.P.S. If you want to comment, but don’t want to be entered in the giveaway, just say so in your comment.

Cato Institue Healthcare Policy Ad

Michael Cloud decades ago said, profoundly, “In the jungle, the rule is kill or be killed. In politics, either define or be defined. Because words are weapons; words are tools.” (From the Essence of Political Persuasion CD series.)

If you want to control the direction of a debate, find a way to control the language of the debate.

I want to talk, though, not about the linguistic tricks used in the healthcare debate, but about the term “healthcare reform” itself. The healthcare issue is exceedingly complex, and relatively little good research has been done to understand it, much less to be able to analyze possible futures. Most of what people claim to know about healthcare is just myth and conjecture. And even within the myths, there are a number of possible courses of action. But none of this stops them from leaping on the pro- or anti-reform bandwagon.

And as a libertarian, I find this deeply troubling.

So what is “healthcare reform,” anyhow?

The liberals’ tour de force in this debate was in coining the term “healthcare reform.” They did so many years ago, and we’re still feeling the effects of it today.

By their definition, “reform” means:

• more government control over insurers and healthcare providers
• more government dictates over the healthcare choices we make
• more government restrictions over what kind of health insurance we will be allowed to buy
• more government spending on government health insurance programs
• more government administration of the market

Do you see a pattern developing here?

“More government,” yes. More government bureaucrats, less personal autonomy, fewer personalized options, bigger government spending, higher taxes, and more laws, government regulations, and lawyers.

Do you really want more government-run healthcare? Because that’s what “reform” means.

The conservatives, on the other hand, are now forced to make the case against “reform.” And that’s not a very good case to make, because we all know that the system is broken. We pay too much for the healthcare we get, prices continue to rise, and more and more people are choosing to do without health insurance. What’s more, no one really understands why. We feel helpless, and that’s why some of us are willing to give up so much of our freedom, in exchange for just the promise that someone will “do something” about it.

So what happened to the small-government solution?

The small-government solution got lost in the debate. The Cato Institute has a good summary of it on their healthcare website: the small-government, free-market healthcare solution. It’s not difficult to explain or to understand, and it supports the values most Americans hold. Briefly, Cato’s 7-point solution is:

1. Let individuals control their own healthcare dollars, spending them wherever they deem best meets their personal healthcare needs, because you are best able to make the best choices for your own, individual healthcare situation.
2. Move away from employer-purchased health insurance, because your health insurance should attach to you, not to your job..
3. Change tax laws that encourage employers and employees to include health insurance as part of the pay package, because that will will allow you to choose and control your own health insurance choices and provide you with better options.
4. Allow people to purchase health insurance across state lines, because that will increase competition in the industry, making the right health insurance easier for you to find and cheaper for you to afford.
5. Rethink medical licensing laws, such as allowing doctors to take their licenses from state to state, and allowing nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and other non-doctors to treat more problems within their areas of expertise, because that will open up innovation and provide you with better healthcare at a lower cost.
6. Let Medicare enrollees spend their healthcare dollars on any plan on the market, if they choose, because that will prevent government bureaucrats from interfering in your Medicare healthcare needs.
7. Allow health-status insurance to expand, because it is a fiscally solvent way to provide you with long-term, portable health insurance.

This solution could be discussed, debated. But in most circles on the street, people have never even heard of “health-status insurance,” and they aren’t even aware that a free-market healthcare solution would work. They blame the “free market” for the current healthcare “crisis,” even though we actually aren’t in any meaningful healthcare “crisis,” no matter how many shocking statistics big-government politicians make up to bolster their case. (Political crises are almost always fabricated by politicians in order to invoke us to action without thinking, but that’s another article.)

More importantly, if you want to talk about the “free market,” the U.S. healthcare market is hardly free, because it’s a politically devised mishmash of individual healthcare consumers (like you and me), healthcare providers (like your doctor), healthcare insurers (like your HMO), health insurance purchasers (like your employer, who chooses the insurance even though its value is part of your pay package), and government regulators and enforcers, on both the state and federal level, desperately trying to hold the whole rat’s nest together.

I was pleasantly surprised with a Cato Institute event, “Does America’s Health Care Sector Produce More Health?” I expected them to invite a liberal speaker, who would argue for more government, and a libertarian who would then be forced to argue against the liberal agenda. But instead, the libertarian started by admitting the problems with the current system, then detailed the paucity of good data, a wonderful example of intellectual judo.

Define or be defined

While the people at Cato, along with other principled, consistent lovers of freedom, have all made great strides in tearing down the big-government healthcare agenda, they are sill using the word “reform,” and I don’t know that they’ve successfully redefined it.

But they have qualified it: “free-market healthcare reform,” which is at least a step in the right direction.

Still when my liberal friends start talking about “healthcare reform,” they don’t ask me what kind of reform I favor. They assume that if I believe in small government, I must be a conservative, and therefore anti-progress. It seems to me we’re still comparing big-government reform versus the status quo.

-TimK

UPDATE: David Boaz of the Cato Institute, after I posted this, coincidentally posted his own piece on the liberal semantics of “reform.” He draws an insightful point, looking at the issue from a slightly different perspective.

Long story short: Paul Keigan started out as a Canadian immigrant 48 years ago, with $96 and the American dream. He got into sales at a car dealership, and immediately he started making friends and repeat customers. Then, 20 years ago, he bought a failing dealership in Franklin, which was to become Keigan Chevrolet.

This year, however, GM, in the midst of its own baptism of fire, has pulled the plug.

“Nobody wants to go out this way,” he explained. “And I’m just one of thousands going through it. Honestly, I’m not bitter for me; where else could a guy like me have gotten a shot like this? I’m bitter about the good people this is hurting, like the people on my staff who performed so well.

“They had nothing to do with GM’s bankruptcy, yet they’re the ones paying for the greed that caused it.

“If we had run our business into the ground, fine. But to have done the job the way we did, only to have someone tell you, ‘Hey, buddy, you’re all done,’ it’s awful.

“Who’d have thought that could have happened in America?”

Now, my very old friend tells me, from personal knowledge, that Paul Keigan is the nicest man you’d ever want to meet. And I believe it, because if he’s as good a salesman as they make him out to be, catching the American dream using nothing more than his personality and wits, then he’s gotta be a nice guy. We picture the salesman as a sleazy type, hair slicked back, hand out ready to shake and pickpocket at the same time. But in reality, the best salesmen are personable and downright likable, because they have to be, because in the real world, that’s how you get people to like you enough for them to buy stuff from you.

So if Paul Keigan is the nicest man you’d ever want to meet, that’s going to make me the asshole, because I am definitely not feeling like a salesman right now.

Because if Keigan really cared about his employees, and if he’s really that great a salesman, he’d start a business selling something else. It’s not like there’s nothing to sell. Hell! He could probably even still sell cars. (I understand people are still driving them.) He started Keigan Chevrolet in the middle of a recession 20 years ago, and he could do the same thing again, if he wanted to.

But he doesn’t want to, and I can respect that, too. He’s 68, and he wants to retire. I can understand that… except for one thing… he’s “bitter”—his word, not mine. That sticks in my gut, makes me feel uneasy, like I’ve been emotionally violated.

I have a real hard time working up sympathy for a man who complains instead of doing something to fix what’s bothering him. Now, maybe it was just the reporter who made him seem like a bitter, old man, because playing the victim goes over really big nowadays politically. Or maybe the reporter did not misrepresent him; maybe he needs to be bitter so that he can blame someone else, rather than just admitting that he could do something for his employees, but he just doesn’t want to, because he wants to retire.

However the rhetoric falls out, one fact is clear. We have all had to adjust. I am looking for work again, even though I don’t really want to. Many people are looking for new jobs or starting new businesses. Many businesses need to find new industries or new markets—and not just during a recession, either. Every time Google changes their policy, thousands of online businesses need to adjust or go under. When Amazon some months ago seemed to be discriminating against print-on-demand books, many indie authors freaked out, because they depended on Amazon for almost all their revenue.

And you know something else? I couldn’t work up any sympathy for them, either. Because if you build your business on someone else’s, you accept that you’ll go down with them. You accept their risks. If you depend on Google, you should expect to fail as soon as your business is no longer useful to Google, because that’s the risk you accepted by depending 100% on Google. If you don’t want to accept that risk, you must diversify, only depending a little on Google, and a little each on many other sources of web traffic. That’s the smart thing to do, anyway. And I have a real hard time working up sympathy for these online businesses who don’t do the smart thing and then complain and get bitter when Google changes their policy. See this? It’s the world’s smallest violin…

So their chosen ski rope broke, or maybe their boat ran out of gas, and they sank into the water. So get up and try again already! Because that’s what the American dream is all about! What makes Paul Keigan, his industry, his business, his employees so special that they deserve a pity party instead?

What makes any of us so special that we deserve a pity party?

Remember Will Smith’s character in The Pursuit of Happyness? Even at the lowest of lows, he was still a sympathetic character. With all the mistakes he seemingly had made, we still sympathized with him. Because he never asked us to pity him. Rather, he took his destiny into his own hands and pursued his American dream.

Likewise, the American dream is only dead if we stop pursuing it.

-TimK

Well, here’s an idea they haven’t done yet, but which they ought to do, because it’s tailor-made for this show:

(UPDATE: They did an episode about polygraphs shortly after I wrote this post. Their research team, I’m sure, had already been hammering out the details when this post went live. Interestingly, they never got to most of the points I mention here. I guess lie detecting really is a huge load of bullshit.)

Lie Detectors

The polygraph, voice stress analysis, and now brain scans for lie detection. Unfortunately, these methods are only a step above ancient methods, such as a touching a hot iron to a suspect’s tongue, or having the suspect pull the tail of the Sacred Ass. (There’s gotta be a good Bullshit joke in there somewhere.)

Since you’re asking now, here’s how the Sacred Ass worked. What they told the suspects was that the ass was inside the dark, sacred hut, and it could tell whether or not you were guilty. If you pulled the ass’s tail and it brayed, you were guilty. But if it didn’t bray, you were innocent. What they didn’t tell the suspects was that they had coated the tail with lampblack. An innocent party, they supposed, would go into the hut and pull the ass’s tail. The ass then may or may not have brayed, but the innocent suspect’s hands would be covered with soot. The guilty suspect, however, afraid of being revealed, would not pull the tail in the dark of the hut, and when he came back out, his clean hands would betray him. Of course, what they failed to realize is that an innocent suspect might also refrain from pulling the tail, for fear that the ass would bray out and that he would be wrongly accused.

Similar methods are still used by modern cops, by the way, one of the subjects I address at AbesTurn.com. Effective Interviewing and Interrogation Techniques (the link above) tells the story of a 1950′s police force who would have one cop ask questions while another stood behind the suspect with a large telephone book. They told the suspect that if he lied, he would get whacked in the head with the telephone book, and then they watched to see if he ducked. I guess they didn’t consider that even an innocent suspect, giving the “wrong” answer, might not want to get hit in the head with a thick phone book, even if he was telling the truth.

Under the same heading could also go the most hideous and deplorable of supposed truth-telling techniques: torture.

The research on lie detection isn’t much better. Some advocates of polygraphy and other techniques claim a 90% success rate… but not under real-world conditions, and not with suspects trained to use effective countermeasures. Even if that success rate were true, I’m sure it would be a great comfort to the 1 out of 10 people wrongly accused. There’s a reason why polygraph results are inadmissible as evidence in criminal trials: because the polygraph doesn’t actually work.

Frankly, Penn & Teller in their magic act do a better job of reading minds than most lie detectors.

Lie detection is bullshit!

-TimK

P.S. If you’re from the Bullshit research team, here are a few resources to get you started:

A report by the National Academy of Sciences on ineffectiveness of the polygraph:
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10420&page=212

A New Yorker article on using brain scans to detect lies:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/07/02/070702fa_fact_talbot

A video by George Maschke of AntiPolygraph.org, with a funny story of how some cops used a colander and photocopy machine as a lie-detector, and how this is no different than the modern polygraph:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJvh0GFNUrE

As we approach this holiday season, it seems we have little to be thankful about. Still topping the news are stories of death and dire.

• Abraham Biggs, a Florida teenager blogs that he will commit suicide and then webcasts a video of the event, live, while viewers on the Internet wonder if it’s a hoax. His family is despondent and livid, and his father “is now calling for more [government] regulation of chatrooms,” even though his use of the term “chatroom” clearly shows he understands neither the technology or the psychology involved.

• Ashley Dupre reveals on national TV the “details” of her involvement with former New York governor Eliot Spitzer, whose political career was destroyed in a scandal of such magnitude that when people talk about the “details,” they still can’t bring themselves to say what really happened.

• Al Qaeda is still in the news, and we’re still apparently terrified by terrorists, meanwhile Palestinian militants fire a rocket at Israel, which lands in an industrial zone in the town of Ashkelon.

• Rights activists are livid that California Proposition 8 passed, and they have stepped up their campaign to have it rejected. Whichever side eventually wins, this will turn out to be a ruthless and bloody fight.

These are just some of the stories I pulled out of the “top stories” at Google News last week.
Meanwhile, the financial markets continue to ride a roller coaster. We aren’t officially in a recession yet, but analysts are predicting one with such certainty that everyone accepts it as a fait accompli. President-elect Obama in a radio address claimed “we are facing an economic crisis of historic proportions,” and he proposed massive, long-term federal hiring, spending, and hand-outs to compensate for the flailing economy.

Some analysts have even predicted another great depression, and they could very well be right. We are experiencing an economic adjustment, in which efforts that we have been expending poorly we must now shift to expend more wisely. Economists know that this kind of adjustment is good for the economy, because we will end up with a better, stronger economy for having gone through it. (What does not kill you makes you stronger.) But such an adjustment also means unemployment, as people in old jobs must transition to new ones. And unemployment tends to freak people out. And that means the government is likely to intervene, and probably poorly. And what would have been a short-lived—though painful—economic readjustment could indeed turn into the next great depression.

It’s scary.

Under these conditions, finding something to be thankful for may feel like an impossible mission.

What’s Important Is Perspective

At this point, you probably think I’m about to launch into a speech about how material things don’t really matter and how family and other loved ones are what makes life important. Well, I’m not.

You see, also amongst the top news stories at Google were stories about people lining up to buy the new Blackberry, and about all the fans queued up to see the movie Twilight, which turned out to be a blockbuster. Statistics show that airplanes are still the safest way to travel, despite the TSA, and the risk of an American being killed by a terrorist still ranks up there with the risk of being hit by lightning. (Seriously.) Despite the freak suicides and the politicians hiring hookers, we are still safer from violent crime than at any time since the War on Drugs started. Meanwhile, I’m booked up with work for at least the next two months, and I’m turning away potential clients, giving them the option of letting me pencil them in after a couple months. Some recession, eh? I thought I would have a little time off, a slow time, time I could spend writing my next book full-time. No such luck.

Okay, so maybe we’re not in a full-blown depression yet, and maybe the recession hasn’t hit me yet, but some people have indeed lost their jobs. My father works in the financial-services industry. He recently reported from his company, where dozens of employees were laid off, including some of his friends. That hits close to home.

But in a recent poll, Americans were asked what they would do if they had to tighten their financial belts. They said, they might not go out to eat as often, but they absolutely would not give up their Internet connections!

OK. Let’s get some perspective, here. During the Great Depression, nobody had an Internet connection. Even the roaring ’20′s happened decades before Al Gore invented the Internet.

How good do we have it? How bad would things really have to get before we see–in real terms–another “Great Depression”?

This past Sunday, the family and I stopped off at the grocery store, on the way home from church, just to pick up something quick for lunch. More than $75 later, we came out with fixin’s for a humongous salad, chips and pretzels, 2 different kinds of soup, 2 different lunch meats, 4 different cheeses, 4 giant chocolate bars (because they were on sale), 2 boxes of cereal (but that wasn’t for lunch). Meanwhile, there was still a little leftover chicken in the fridge, which I had roasted last Friday (and served with mashed potatoes, stuffing, veggies, and a bottle of shiraz rosé).

This is cutting back?

Frankly, our biggest problem is that we’re spoiled and fat. If we really had to cut back, it would mean not getting to snack between meals, surviving on Ramen noodles instead of choosing what kind of soup we wanted, eating all of the leftovers before opening a new can of anything, and praying that we never make it “down to the last jar of peanut butter,” as my dad puts it. But even when he and Mom were first married, were starting a new family, and were struggling to make ends meet, they never got down to the last jar of peanut butter. Literally, they had a jar of peanut butter they held in reserve. They never had to open it, because income always came in, or food was always available, or a friend would always come through with a little kindness.

Discounting the Positive, Over-dramatizing the Negative

Bryan Caplan opened my eyes. I’ve long been a fan of his, as much as any layman can ever be a fan of a research economist. But he actually produced evidence that people “pessimistically believe the economy is going from bad to worse.” This is actually only one of the 4 biases he laid it out in his book, The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies.

Even leading optimists grant that pessimistic bias has grown worse in the modern era… How can high levels of pessimism coexist with constantly rising standards of living? Though pessimism has abated since World War I, the gap between objective conditions and subjective perceptions is arguably greater than ever. (pp. 46-47)

We tend to look back at the past with nostalgia. We tend to downplay our own good fortune, because it feels normal. We tend to over-dramatize fear and pessimism.

The reality is that things would have to get so much worse than they are now before we even approach the average quality of living during the Great Depression. The gap is so great, I doubt we could get there, no matter how bad the economy gets.

Be Thankful

So this Thanksgiving, I’m not going to whitewash over the truth. I’m not going to be thankful just for family and friends, because that’s not all we have to be thankful for. I’m also going to be thankful that we live in the most wealthy and prosperous age in human history. And because of that, we have the transportation to visit loved ones. And even if we can’t visit them, we can send them our Thanksgiving wishes on Facebook. And we have more good food and more choices today than ever before, and available more cheaply than ever before. You wanna talk about a feast? The pilgrims ain’t got nothin’ on us! We are truly blessed.

-TimK

Imagine this happening to you…

One Sunday morning service, a 2,000 member congregation was surprised to see two men enter, both covered from head to toe in black and carrying submachine guns.

One of the men proclaimed, “Anyone willing to take a bullet for Christ, remain where you are!”

Immediately, the choir fled.

The deacons fled.

And most of the congregation fled.

Out of the 2,000, there only remained 20.

The man who had spoken took off his hood. He then looked at the preacher and said, “Okay, Pastor. I got rid of all the hypocrites. Now you may begin your service. Have a nice day!” And the two men turned and walked out.

So, would I have run?

Hell, yeah!

Look, just because some guy in riot gear carrying a gun tells you to stay put so he can shoot you for your faith, that doesn’t mean you have to listen to him! If you have the chance to escape, then you escape, with you friends and family if possible, and you never look back.

Do you think all the Jews who escaped from the Nazis were traitors to their faith? What about all the Christians who helped them escape, at great personal risk? (The penalty for harboring a Jew was summary execution.)

There is no triumph in dying for Christ, if you could choose to live for Him instead.

-TimK

Why? Because she was involved in setting up a fake MySpace account, posing as a teenage boy, in order to mess with the emotions of a psychologically fragile teenage girl who had been nasty to her daughter. The teenage girl ended up committing suicide, and now people want to blame someone. And technically, Lori might have run afoul of federal computer fraud laws, even though those laws were supposedly never intended to address this situation.

The bad part about this case is that it only reinforces that federal prosecutors can convict almost anybody they want to, because we almost everybody has done something that is technically against federal criminal law. And most of us have also done at least one stupid thing online that might have pissed off someone else.

You see, the federal code is full of over-harsh laws. (Years in the federal pen for violating MySpace’s terms of service?! Get some perspective.) And this law wasn’t even applied correctly, because federal computer crime laws were intended (supposedly) to protect peoples’ credit card numbers and other sensitive information stored on computer. And rooting for a misapplication of an unfair law just to get even hurts us all, because it makes it more likely that the next victim who wants to get even will want to get even with you or me.

OK. Rant over. (For now.)

-TimK