Gus Van Horn

Saving a Bookstore

2012-05-30T03:19:00.000-06:00

If you enjoy the odd trip to the bookstore, but wonder how long bookstores have left with Amazon as a competitor, take heart. At least one mom-and-pop bookseller has found a winning formula, according to Phil Johnson of Forbes.

Working in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Johnson had learned that the Harvard Book Store had new ownership. Johnson feared for the store at first, but eventually found himself wanting to know how the new owner was seeing his bookstore thrive despite Amazon and the depression. So Johnson interviewed Jeff Mayersohn to learn how he achieved "double digit sales growth month by month over the last year", and encountered some very creative thinking in the process.

Imagine for a moment what it would feel like if people walked into your company and used the lobby to call your competitors and buy their products. That's standard consumer behavior in a bookstore. People browse, find a book they like, pull out their smart phone, and order online.

Making an intuitive leap, Jeff wondered if the opposite could be true? Maybe access to the vast universe of digital content could also save the bookstore. Maybe the bookstore, while limited in inventory, could evolve in the digital world and become a destination where people had access to every digitized book ever published.

Essentially, [Mayersohn] installed a printing press to close the inventory gap with Amazon. The Espresso Book Machine sits in the middle of Harvard Book Store like a hi-tech visitor to an earlier era. A compact digital press, it can print nearly five million titles including Google Books that are in the public domain, as well as out of print titles. We're talking beautiful, perfect bound paperbacks indistinguishable from books produced by major publishing houses. The Espresso Book Machine can be also used for custom publishing, a growing source of revenue, and customers can order books in the store and on-line.

I love this, and I'll have stop by there some time just to see it. Rather than meekly accepting his store's apparent role as "Amazon's showroom", Mayersohn has instead made Amazon (and Google) his catalogue. He did this by realizing that, like most big advantages, Amazon's involves trade-offs. Seeing an opportunity in what Amazon doesn't offer, Mayersohn found a golden opportunity and seized it.

-- CAV

A Glitch in Time

2012-05-29T03:36:00.000-06:00

There is an article at The Economist on a problem exacerbated, if not caused, by government regulation of medicine. "Medical Devices: A Ticking Time Bomb" begins with the following statement of the problem:

A man with one clock knows what time it is, goes the old saw, a man with two is never sure. Imagine the confusion, then, experienced by a doctor with dozens. Julian Goldman is an anaesthetist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Like many modern health care facilities, it has become increasingly digitised and networked, with hundreds of high-tech medical devices feeding data to a centralised electronic medical record (EMR), which acts as both a permanent repository for health information and a system that can be accessed instantly by doctors to assist with clinical decisions.

The article then describes how one physician encountered a timing glitch that could have led to a potentially life-threatening error on his part. The discovery caused the physician to ask how many other such errors there were.

Of over 1,700 devices checked, only 3% were found to be accurate to within three seconds. One in five were off by more than 30 minutes; one ultrasound machine was running 42 years (and some minutes) early. The average error was a staggering 24 minutes.

This seems like a good news/bad news situation. With the adoption of so many new, life-saving technologies in recent years, problems are bound to come up when doctors attempt to integrate computerized equipment -- especially when some of it is older -- into centralized computer networks, right?

Perhaps, but a relatively straightforward solution to this problem has existed for decades. It is interesting to see that our omniscient government regulators have both failed to see to it that it has been implemented and will surely make fixing the problem much more difficult than it has to be now that its seriousness is coming to light:

The rub is that few of today's assorted medical devices (or wall clocks for that matter) can tap an NTP server. Regulators like America's Food and Drug Administration have never insisted that medical-device manufacturers include this feature. Adding it now would mean rewriting software, retesting devices and resubmitting them for approval. This, too, carries considerable costs.

Still, they may be ones the industry will have to bear. In the United States, the Department of Health has proposed new "meaningful use" rules that would require EMR systems to include NTP technology starting from 2014. If you find yourself in need of a procedure before then, you might want to ask your surgeons to synchronise their watches and device clocks before they get cracking. [explanatory link for Network Time Protocol added]

I wonder how many device manufacturers have omitted or failed to add this feature to avoid having to jump through expensive and time-consuming FDA hoops, and whether this form of "encouragement" will result in some devices being pulled from the market altogether because they will have been rendered unprofitable.

-- CAV

5-26-12 Hodgepodge

2012-05-26T05:09:00.000-06:00

Happy Memorial Day!

Travel and family obligations may cause posting to be light and irregular over the next week, particularly the early part.

Weekend Reading

"Because the best indicator of the market is the market itself, the logical approach toward mitigating uncertainty is to position oneself to follow the trend, not fight it." -- Jonathan Hoenig, in "How to Tame Market Uncertainty" at SmartMoney

"Almost a quarter-century of clinical experience has convinced me that hypnosis - as it's usually understood - is a fraud." -- Michael Hurd, in "Fraud or Fantasy?" at DrHurd.com

"If you value your lives, don't be fooled by their health care Newspeak. Otherwise, you may soon be getting your medical care from Dr. Orwell." -- Paul Hsieh, in "Dr. Orwell Will See You Now" at PJ Media

Five Years Ago Today

I posted the following quote about lying that a reader had helpedme locate:

The essence of a con-man's lie," [Ayn Rand] began, "of any such lie, no matter what the details, is the attempt to gain a value by faking certain facts of reality."

She went on: "Now can't you grasp the logical consequences of that kind of policy ? Since all facts of reality are interrelated, faking one of them leads the person to fake others; ultimately, he is committed to an all-out war against reality as such.But this is the kind of war no one can win. If life in reality is a man's purpose, how can he expect to achieve it while struggling at the same time to escape and defeat reality?"

And she concluded: "The con-man's lies are wrong on principle. To state the principle positively: honesty is a long-range requirement of human self-preservation and is, therefore, a moral obligation." [bold added]

Coincidentally, I was reminded of this quote while reading part of Individual Rights and Government Wrongs during a flight yesterday. Describing the psychological torture that comes with the life of a con man, author Brian Phillips notes the following:

[A] reporter tells of comments made by Bernie Madoff: "'It was a nightmare for me,' he told investigators, using the word over and over, as if he were the real victim. 'I wish they caught me six years ago, eight years ago.'"

Interestingly, another figure brought up in this part of the book, Barry Minkow, made a similar admission -- and yet still did not change his ways.

Heh!

A Christian predictsthat questions about the existence of Mohammed will doom Islam, and some press organ in theocratic Iran is claiming that a new discovery will do the same to Christianity. People who want to be fooled -- I mean, "have faith", as my creationist college roommate once put it as he thumped on his Bible -- don't give a damn about evidence. On one level, it amuses me to see people who should know this so thoroughly brainwashing themselves that they can make such claims with a straight face.

--CAV

Sierra Nevada Hoptimum

2012-05-25T02:33:00.001-06:00

Sierra Nevada, one of my favorite breweries, has produced another outstanding beer, Hoptimum. (I loved their Rye IPA, when I discovered it in January.)

I found it on the shelf at my local beer emporium last week and bought a four-pack. Allowing my sense of smell to recover fully from a mild cold, I was rewarded yesterday evening with its rich aroma and well-balanced taste.

From the brewer's description:

A group of hop-heads and publicans challenged our Beer Camp brewers to push the extremes of whole-cone hop brewing. The result is this: a 100 IBU, whole-cone hurricane of flavor. Simply put -- Hoptimum: the biggest whole-cone IPA we have ever produced. Aggressively hopped, dry-hopped, AND torpedoed with our exclusive new hop varieties for ultra-intense flavors and aromas.

Resinous "new-school" and exclusive hop varieties carry the bold and aromatic nose. The flavor follows the aroma with layers of aggressive hoppiness, featuring notes of grapefruit rind, rose, lilac, cedar, and tropical fruit -- all culminating in a dry and lasting finish.

Perusing the rest of the description, I was surprised (although I shouldn't have been) to find that the recipe employed a favorite hop variety of mine, Simcoe. I must also say that the "hophead" illustration (top right) used on the bottles is ingenious. I can't think of a label I like better.

I really hope that by "Limited Selection", the brewer means that this will reappear on occasion. It would be a shame for this to be a one-off. If any passer-by knows one way or the other, please leave a comment.

-- CAV

Measuring Self-Awareness

2012-05-24T03:25:00.001-06:00

Over at Slate is an interesting interview with Dylan Evans, who has coined the term "risk intelligence", which really turns out to be a kind of self-awareness regarding what one does and does not know.

[Risk intelligence] is the ability to estimate probabilities accurately, it's about having the right amount of certainty to make educated guesses. That's the simple definition. But this apparently simple skill turns out to be quite complex. It ends up being a rather deep thing about how to work on the basis of limited information and cope with an uncertain world, about knowing yourself and your limitations.

In my limited exposure to the concept, it seems to be mis-named, and I would guess it might be because the author does not regard absolute certainty as possible for philosophical reasons.

Intrigued that someone seemed to be attempting to measure a quality I have often thought others to be lacking in, I took the test. Here is the writeup of my results.

The RQ score ranges from 0 (low RQ) to 100 (high RQ). Your score is 79.57. Such a score is high. Risk intelligence can be measured by calculating something called a "calibration curve". The red line displayed to your right is your calibration curve. A perfect calibration curve would lie exactly on the blue diagonal line, so the area between the curve and the diagonal would be zero. Nobody is perfectly calibrated, but people with high risk intelligence come very close to this ideal.

By now, you may have realized there is an easy way to game this test. If you always select the 50% category unless you are pretty certain that a statement is true or false - and if the test contains equal numbers of true and false statements - you will score very highly, perhaps very near 100.

What did I find myself doing during the test? I considered why I agreed or disagreed with a given statement -- or thought I had no basis for doing so, for the questions I realized I knew nothing about. In doing so, I usually ended up with some rough estimate of how confident I was in my (dis)agreement, as well as what else I would need to know to be more sure one way or the other. This was really an attempt to use a percentage as a metaphor for what I thought my level of knowledge about a topic was, rather than an actual estimate of a probability.

Based on past experience, I think it is possible for people with this kind of self-awareness to appear to be less confident than they actually are. This can happen when one communicates his level of uncertainty poorly (or too conservatively) or when one is dealing with someone who lacks this form of self-awareness (and hence equates certainty with confidence or views admitted uncertainty with suspicion). I can even recall doing the former while in the latter situation quite a few times when I was younger. (This ultimately culminated in me being ignored after correcting someone I absolutely knew to be wrong! Fortunately, the stakes were low.)

-- CAV

Commands for Everyone

2012-05-23T03:22:00.000-06:00

Over at RealClear Politics is a David Harsanyi column that comes excruciatingly close to showing the reader why state regulation of the economy is wrong. Harsanyi takes as his point of departure the recently-mounted legal challenges of various Catholic institutions to the ObamaCare contraception mandate. Harsanyi perceptively likens the mandate to various measures by theocratic conservatives to impose their morality on others through the law.

And then comes this gem:

Perhaps the Catholic Church, which often seems to back economic "fairness" rather than market freedom, will be more sensitive to the intrusions of the state in economic choice. This episode exhibits how economic freedom is intricately tied to all other liberties. When the state creates virtual monopolies through regulatory regimes, it also gets to decide what is moral and necessary and compels everyone to act accordingly.

Harsanyi unfortunately chose to focus his column more on how state economic controls are being used to impose left-wing moral dogmas. While this is true, the real problem is that whoever gets to decide what the "public good" in such a scenario is will be in a position to force his norms (right or wrong) onto everyone else, abrogating individual judgment wholesale. (Furthermore, the problem is only most pronounced with state monopolies. In truth, any state intervention in the economy, however slight, is informed by some kind of normative judgment, and so represents the forcible imposition of the judgment of some over that of others.) It is notable that Harsanyi holds that religious freedom is limited by public health concerns (as opposed to the individual rights of others): I suspect that this is why he ends up not questioning state intervention further than he does.

Rather than merely serving as a cautionary example of what a state takeover of a sector of the economy (or an industry, or a company) means, the ObamaCare contraception mandate is really an example of why all government economic controls are threats to individual freedom and, as such, contradict the proper purpose of government.

-- CAV

More on CTA Bullying

2012-05-22T03:03:00.005-06:00

Last week, I commentedon an article about the abuses of the California Teachers Association (CTA). That article, which appeared in the Orange County Register, referenced a much more detailed article in City Journal by Troy Sendik. At the time, that article had not yet been published to the Internet, but I noticed this morning that it is now available. Here are a couple of samples.

First, we see part of how the CTA defeated a ballot initiative it first spent exorbitant amounts of dues money to block (although it still succeeded in delaying it for two years):

In 1993, Prop. 174 finally came to a statewide vote. The union had persuaded March Fong Eu, the CTA-endorsed secretary of state, to alter the proposition's heading on the ballot from PARENTAL CHOICE to EDUCATION VOUCHERS--a change in wording that cost Prop. 174 ten points in the polls, according to Myron Lieberman in his book The Teacher Unions. The initiative, which had originally enjoyed 2-1 support among California voters, managed to garner only a little over 30 percent of the vote. Prop. 174's backers had been outspent by a factor of eight, with the CTA alone dropping $12.5 million on the opposition campaign.

Second, we see details about the role of the CTA as an ATM for left-wing political causes:

Cannily, the CTA also funds a wide array of liberal causes unrelated to education, with the goal of spreading around enough cash to prevent dissent from the Left. Among these causes: implementing a single-payer health-care system in California, blocking photo-identification requirements for voters, and limiting restraints on the government's power of eminent domain. The CTA was the single biggest financial opponent of another Proposition 8, the controversial 2008 proposal to ban gay marriage, ponying up $1.3 million to fight an initiative that eventually won 52.2 percent of the vote. The union has also become the biggest donor to the California Democratic Party. From 2003 to 2012, the CTA spent nearly $102 million on political contributions; 0.08 percent of that money went to Republicans.

There are aspects of the analysis I disagree with, especially the premise that public education can be "saved", but this does not detract from the great value of the article as a catalog of abuses by the union, all made possible or exacerbated by poor government policy.

-- CAV

Trade as a Government Favor

2012-05-21T03:04:00.000-06:00

Matthew Yglesias reports that the state of Washington is, in his words, about to "partially legalize home cooking". He elaborates:

Details vary from place to place, but the standard legal rule in the United States is that if you want to bake some cookies in your house then you're free to do so. You can also give the cookies you baked to friends, family, and neighbors. You can bring the cookies in to work to share with coworkers. You're also free to exchange the cookies in a wide range of contexts. You can use them as your contribution to a pot luck, for example. But what you typically can't do with your cookies is trade them for money. If you have a bunch of fresh baked cookies but need some money, and someone else wants to give you money for cookies, you're out of luck. You baked the cookies at home, not in a commercial kitchen. [bold added]

Yglesias seems to think this is a good thing:

Absent the terrible economy this probably wouldn't be a big deal one way or another, but with things being what they are these kind of barriers to gainful employment matter a fair amount.

I disagree. What Washington is doing is worse than nothing. As pervasive as government regulations are, it's a no-brainer that home cooking is far from the only thing that would get someone into trouble for the crime of doing it at home and accepting money for it without the government's blessing. In other words, this story demonstrates that, for all practical purposes, it is illegal to sell things in sufficient quantities to earn a living in the United States.

What Washington (and every state) needs isn't a laundry list (beginning with cookies) of things we serfs are allowed to sell, but a repeal of every law that bars such trade. Fraud and negligence are already (properly) illegal, and such organizations as Underwriters Laboratories and the Consumers Union(despite the frequent shilling by the latter for more government controls) show that safety and quality standards (not a proper concern of the government, anyway) will not go out the window without people being forced to comply.

What we need from our government is not permission to sell cookies, but protection of our individual rights, including the right to trade with others. Washington's move is deceptive: It further entrenches the opposite premise.

-- CAV

5-19-12 Hodgepodge

2012-05-19T03:25:00.000-06:00

On the Road

Traveling. Late to bed and early to rise. Baby wide awake at 4:30 a.m. and counting. This short post is going to be it for today. Comments and email will probably have to wait until tomorrow.

Weekend Reading

"The detachment and indifference to the underlying asset is actually a major benefit in that it permits one to learn the patience and market psychology of how to trade, including the basics of money management and controlling risk" -- Jonathan Hoenig, in "Forex Teaches Trading Without Training Wheels" at SmartMoney

"It isn't the past alone that shapes us. It's our ideas and attitudes." -- Michael Hurd, in "Get Past the Past!" at DrHurd.com

"The result of producing, saving, and investing is not the miser's life nor the cartoonish life of Mr. Scrooge but the life of earned success, supreme comfort, and guilt-free happiness. 'Austerity' seems much too harsh a name for this kind of wonderful life." -- Richard Salsman, in "Fiscal Austerity and Rational Morality" at Forbes

Another False Dichotomy

The Salsman piece is the first of a series of three that look to be required reading. Arguing that "the debate needs a moral dimension and would benefit much from applying a rational morality", Salsman notes that a false dichotomy, between prodigality and aesceticism, is undermining the real debate we need to be having, about the size and scope of government. It is interesting to me that, before reading the piece, I'd never considered the full (and wrong) implications of the term "austerity", and yet now, these seem obvious.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Minor format edits.

Friday Four

2012-05-18T03:21:00.000-06:00

1. Mrs. Van Horn and I sometimes enjoy brunch at a nearby Marriott Hotel, whose restaurant, with its numerous large-screen televisions, doubles as a sports bar. She suggested the restaurant as a place for her Mother's Day brunch.

Why? Because she knows that I am an avid soccer fan. Not only was it Mother's Day, it was Survival Sunday, the last day of the English Premier League season, with all the games being played at once and broadcast live. The most interesting game was between Queen's Park Rangers, who faced possible relegation if they lost, and Manchester City, who would win the league championship if they won. That game finished with a dramatic, injury-time win by City.

Jerry Hinnen of CBS News translates the significance of this result for the benefit of Americans more accustomed to other sports. Here's his football metaphor for the "American Equivalent":

The Minnesota Vikings are facing the Green Bay Packers in the Super Bowl, somehow[. A]fter going up 21-7 at halftime[, they] now trail the Packers 33-21 with only a minute remaining. The Vikings drive, score a touchdown, recover the onsides kick, and on the final play of the game connect on a Hail Mary from midfield to win their first Super Bowl.

The icing on the cake for me came in the form of another result, Arsenal's 3-2 win over West Bromwich Albion. That meant that Sunday was also St. Totteringham's Day, and that Arsenal overcame its slow (and very ugly) 2-1-4 start to place third and secure a Champion's League berth next season.

2. Some time back, I enjoyed reading this account of how an enterprising young man earned $65,000 repairing iPods while he was in high school.

3. Mathematical modeling vs. common sense? Not quite, but this title sure makes it seem so: "What the U.S. needs is an 18-cent coin." Following a link, I see that there is actually some interesting commentary on the advantages of the coin system used in the U.S.

4. Now that I have learned how expensive tattoos are, I am even more perplexed by their current popularity than I was to begin with: "A full sleeve can take 40 hours [at $150 per hour]." Removal will also cost about $6,000.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Corrected a typo.

Good Advice is Like a Mirror

2012-05-17T03:33:00.000-06:00

This past week, over at Hacker News (where links are promoted based on popularity among its user group), I've noticed a couple of interesting posts regarding etiquette bubble up to the front page. They make similar points, but I was somewhat bemused by them at first: I found myself initially wondering why either post was written at all.

One writer, upset with the ... communication style ... of several prominent software developers, makes the following valid point:

As I grow older, I am starting to realize the people who were idiots when you were younger are likely idiots later in life, just more set in their ways. These people are out there, learn how to deal with them.

That being said, I don't go screaming you are a moron and what you are doing is insanely stupid. That is purely a reflection on me and how I choose to handle those situations.

But then he titles his post, "Stop Calling People Morons". Whom does he address? If being gratuitously insulting reflects badly on someone, why not let such people go on doing it, as a sort of warning sign to everyone else?

Likewise, another author explains why he thinks that "Smart People Don't Think Others Are Stupid". He, too, makes a good point:

So when someone says "They are so stupid!" - it means they've stopped thinking. They say it to feel finished with that subject, because there's nothing they can do about that. It's appealing and satisfying to jump to that conclusion. [bold in original]

(Of course, I think it is possible to very carefully consider what someone is saying or doing and conclude on better-than-kneejerk grounds that that person is foolish. Perhaps the author would agree.) But again, if someone in the habit of calling others stupid has indeed quit thinking, he won't learn anything from hearing this.

I think each post serves as a way of reaching people (usually young or inexperienced) who might absorb (or continue) the bad behavior because it seems acceptable, but without realizing that it is to their own detriment. That is, appearances to the contrary, neither author is wasting his time offering advice that will not be heard.

-- CAV

Hiding and Other Writing Tactics

2012-05-16T03:56:00.000-06:00

People who know me well -- an introvert with a mostly academic work background -- might be surprised to hear that I am about to purchase a book on project management. Why? Because the happy coincidence of time pressure and rediscovering Scott Berkun's blog (after recently encountering his very good essay on "How to Detect Bullshit") have helped me realize how many similarities there are between management and the mostly solitary pursuit of writing.

Berkun's blog recently featured an excerpt from his book How to Make Things Happenthat offers the following advice on being firm about priorities:

One side effect of having priorities is how often you have to say no. It's one of the smallest words in the English language, yet many people have trouble saying it. The problem is that if you can't say no, you can't have priorities. The universe is a large place, but your priority 1 list should be very small. Therefore, most of what people in the world (or on your team) might think are great ideas will end up not matching the goals of the project. It doesn't mean their ideas are bad; it just means their ideas won't contribute to this particular project. So, a fundamental law of the PM universe is this: if you can't say no, you can't manage a project. [bold added]

I barely consider myself a writer and can already think of at least three occasions that not using that word has come back to haunt me. The excerpt is long, but well worth reading, and contains other advice. One tip that made me smile, because it's already a favorite time management tactic of mine is the following:

Hide. If you are behind on work and need blocks of time to get caught up, become invisible. On occasion, I've staked out a conference room (in a neighboring building) and told only the people who really might need me where I was. I caught up on email, specs, employee evaluations, or anything important that wasn't getting done, without being interrupted. For smaller orgs, working from home or a coffee shop can have the same effect (wireless makes this easy these days). I always encouraged my reports to do this whenever they felt it necessary. Uninterrupted time can be hard for PMs to find, so if you can't find it, you have to make it. [bold in original]

Both the new tactic and the old, as applied to writing, fall under a more general standing order I have, of protecting my writing time. I am grateful to Berkun for teaching me what I have learned so far already, and look forward to reading the rest of his book.

-- CAV

Nice Setup

2012-05-15T03:45:00.000-06:00

Via John Cook, I have run across an article that may well be unique on the Internet: a "my setup" post that goes straight to the point of why the author made the choices he made, and skips the all-too-common self-congratulations and [fill in a favorite brand of hardware/operating system/vendor] evangelism.

Cook pretty well sums up what makes the article so useful and interesting:

[T]he best part of the article was the criteria, not the solutions. It's not that I disapprove of his choices, but I appreciate more his explanation of the rationale behind his choices. I don't expect anybody is going to read the article and say "That's it! I'm going to copy that setup." I gather that in at least one detail, his choice of version control system, Vivek [Haldar] wouldn't even copy his own setup if he were to start over. But people will get ideas to consider in their own circumstances.

The article is worth a read whether you find that you're on the same page as Haldar about some of his points, or haven't thought about or had to worry much about others. You'll at least consider whether you've addressed the issues he raises adequately for your own purposes and, if you find that you haven't, you'll leave with at least one concrete solution to consider. In that vein, for example, I'll revisit his suggestions for avoiding RSI if my own strategy of keeping my keyboard (or netbook) on my lap and alternating my limited mouse use between hands ever proves inadequate.

-- CAV

The Real Bullies

2012-05-14T03:47:00.002-06:00

Brian Calle of The Orange County Register writes of some of the many abuses of power committed by the California Teachers Association. Most striking to me was how hard this union worked to prevent even a modicum of free market reform in education nearly twenty years ago.

In 1993 for example, the CTA spent $12.5 million to block a school-choice ballot initiative that would have given parents and students the ability choose their school - private or public - regardless of where they lived. The CTA, [City Journal's Troy] Senik wrote, even "bullied members of the business community who contributed" to the choice effort, including California's iconic In-N-Out burger chain, which donated to support the measure. In response, "the CTA threatened to use its market power - the teachers' retirement fund, CalSTRS, is the second-largest pension fund in the nation - to crush the value of the burger chain's stock." And the union threatened to push "schools to drop contracts with companies" which similarly supported the initiative.

This is despicable and might demoralize some advocates of freedom in education, but it shouldn't. The real power of the CTA lies, not in its war chest of stolen money, but in its ability to get good men to do nothing. And that hinges on people continuing to function within the same, narrow confines as the CTA. This is plainly not the way to win, as I will explain.

Despite its huge war chest and illegitimately granted, government-backed authority, the CTA is not all-powerful. The only reason it succeeds now is that attempts at political change like the above initiative have to rely on heavy political advertising. This is because most people see such questions as isolated "issues", to be decided based on a short-range list of pros and cons, where even the pros and cons are uninformed by principle. (Would, say, lower taxes necessarily be a "pro" in the eyes of someone who realized that confiscating money is not a proper function of government? Not if eliminating a tax were on the table.) I doubt that if more people understood freedom to be of a piece we would be fighting for such small scraps and losing even those.

What if, instead, most Americans, or at least a significant and vocal minority, raised the real questions and fought for real political change? The above ballot initiative -- assuming it actually represented a step in the right direction -- would be seen as part of a larger question, like, "Should a parent be free to decide who will educate his child?" There would be no need for a huge advertising campaign, thanks to the power of what was once known as moral suasion. There would be massive indignation about the fact that children are forcibly being coralled into holding pens, where they are not being taught what they need (or how) to function as independent adults. The CTA could spend itself silly and helplessly watch the measure pass, and then soon see itself stripped of the illegitimate government power it currently has.

Stories like this, far from being intimidating, should be used to fuel indignation in the fight for freedom.

-- CAV

P.S. The title came to me in retrospect, as I recalled after writing that the educational establishment is currently all atwitter about preventing bullying. What nerve!

Updates

5-22-12: Corrected "Teacher's Union" to read "Teachers Association".

5-12-11 Hodgepodge

2012-05-12T03:33:00.000-06:00

Required to Lie?

Open source software advocate Richard Stallman recently noticed that he was asked to lie before an appointment with his physician:

Since I was unwilling to sign a false statement, I asked to see the privacy notice. The receptionist offered me another copy of the consent form. I said I already had that, but that it referred to a "privacy notice" and that's what I didn't have a copy of. The receptionist said, "The rest of this page gives a summary of the privacy notice." It was a very brief summary and treated few points. I said, "This clearly refers to some other Privacy Notice, and it asks me to sign a statement that I have seen it. I cannot sign that if it is not true."

She said it was a binder 3,000 pages long. I said that I would not ask for a copy, but I did want to take a look at it. She went to look for it, then came back and said she could not find it, but asked me to sign anyway.

I somehow doubt that the situation Stallman describes is unique. Have government regulations with impossible compliance burdens given us "legal notice fatigue" to go along with "warning label fatigue", and induced legions of people to sign false statements in the process?

Weekend Reading

"The good therapist believes that reason is the best method for solving emotional problems, and actively helps his or her clients to better use their capacity for reason." -- Michael Hurd, in "Empowerment Depends on Reality" at DrHurd.com

"Even 88 years after their introduction in the US, I'm firmly of the belief that less active investors of modest means are far better served by using open-ended mutual funds than buying individual stocks or bonds themselves." -- Jonathan Hoenig, in "The Right Investing Tool for the Right Job" at SmartMoney

A Year Ago Today

I observed:

[Paul] Ryan, who imagines that such programs as Social Security and Medicaid can be "reformed," ... is no capitalist. (Otherwise, he'd be clear that the best way to "encourage" competition is for the government to stop manipulating the economy altogether, and would speak of phasing out instead of reformingentitlement programs.)

A year later, even some conservative commentators are catching on.

When Metaphors Die

Scott Hanselman, observing that, "The Floppy Disk Icon means 'save' for a whole generation of people who have never seen one," goes on to comment on thirteen other "Old People Icons that Don't Make Sense Anymore".

--CAV

Updates

Today: Corrected two typos.

Friday Four

2012-05-11T02:50:00.001-06:00

1. Needless to say, it's far too soon to celebrate (and such an outcome would present its own problems), but Dick Morris thinks, based on polling data and other information, that Mitt Romney would win in a landslideif the election were held today:

The journalists in the mainstream media, who are not politicians and have never run campaigns, do not realize what is happening. The Democrats, as delusional in 2012 as they were in 2010, are too much into their own euphoria to realize it. But America is sharply and totally rejecting Obama and all he stands for and embracing Romney as a good alternative. While few are saying these words, they are the truth.

Morris thinks that the Republicans will fare well in the Senate, too.

2. Might stem cells soon allow us to grow replacement teeth?

So far, teeth have been regenerated in mice and monkeys, and clinical trials with humans are underway, but whether the technology can generate teeth that are nourished by the blood and have full sensations remains to be seen. Teeth present a unique challenge for researchers because the stem cells must be stimulated to grow the right balance of hard tissue, dentin and enamel, while producing the correct size and shape.

I'm dubious about the time frame, but over half of the dentists in a 2009 nationwide survey thought stem cell-based dental technology would be available within the next decade.

3. The 2012 English Premier League title is Manchester City's to lose, but the club's oil magnate owner paid over $1 billion to get to this point. More interesting to me was the fact that my favorite team, third-place Arsenal, operated profitably on the transfer market.

4. Heh! Memo to airlines: Do the math -- and don't forget that your customers can -- before you offer unlimited first-class travel for life at any price.

Each had paid American more than $350,000 for an unlimited AAirpass and a companion ticket that allowed them to take someone along on their adventures. Both agree it was the best purchase they ever made, one that completely redefined their lives.

My laugher is directed straight at American Airlines, particularly after they started going after their AAirpass customers years later.

-- CAV

Five of One...

2012-05-10T03:10:00.000-06:00

Naming the group after their city of origin and its number of members since the nihilistic left won't own them, Rich Lowry notes that the "Cleveland Five" aren't getting much press from media outlets otherwise sympathetic to the Occupy movement.

Who are the Cleveland Five?

The Cleveland Five are a sad-sack collection of wannabe terrorists if there ever was one. The amateurish young men who plotted to destroy a bridge outside Cleveland last week give the impression of needing the attention of a guidance counselor as much as a federal prosecutor.

But there's no mistaking the seriousness of their attempted act. They allegedly planted what they thought were live bricks of C-4 underneath a well-traveled bridge connecting two suburban Ohio communities and repeatedly tried to detonate them.

The Cleveland Five have the honor of being the first bombers spawned by Occupy Wall Street, and may not be the last. ...

Lowry spends much of his piece arguing that these terrorists are hardly fringe figures in the movement, but then ends with the following interesting observation:

If the Cleveland Five had been right-wing haters of the government, everyone in America would know their names by now. Instead, they are a neglected sign of what nastiness lurks in Occupy's fetid ideological stew.

Lowry is correct that the terroristic element of Occupy is being ignored, but it's interesting to consider why. Are these men not modern-day "folk" "heroes" of the press because idealism (however naive) no longer animates the left? Or is it so conventional nowadays to want to steal from the "One Percent" that further admitting where that road will lead might cause too many people to start questioning such wisdom? I think it's a little bit of both.

Occupy isn't a reawakening of the left: It's a death rattle. This is why it no longer suits the left to lionize its own terrorists, while leftists are more than happy to smear their opponents by association with non-leftist terrorists.

-- CAV

Tread Cleanly!

2012-05-09T04:02:00.002-06:00

Over at Scott Berkun's business blog, and listed as a "popular post" is an essay, "How to Detect Bullshit", that raises lots of valuable points. I disagree with Berkun's opinion that we have an "irrational nature", but found his practical advice, which comes in the form of four "tools" worth passing along. The tools are:

Asking someone how he knows what he is claiming to be true,
Asking someone for a counterargument for his position,
Not allowing oneself to be intimidated or distracted by technical details or jargon one does not actually understand, and
Being careful about whom one trusts.

I see the first of these -- directed at oneself -- as the linchpin. All the rest follows from any interaction as long as one is scrupulous about it.

Nevertheless, it can be helpful to see examples of how such a policy might be applied in practice. Here is part of what Berkun says about the third of these, in the form of an example and his commentary:

Our dynamic flow capacity matrix has unprecedented downtime resistance protocols.

If you don't understand what the hell this means, err on your own side. Don't assume you're missing something: assume they are. They're either hiding something, communicating poorly, or don't themselves understand what they're talking about. BS deflating responses include:
I refuse to accept this proposal until I, or someone I trust, fully understands it.
Explain this in simpler terms I can understand (repeat if necessary).
Break this into pieces you can verify, prove, compare, or demonstrate for me.
Are you trying to say "our network server has a backup power supply?" If so, can you speak plainly next time?

Berkun's broad point is correct: There will always be "bulls" in the fields of human knowledge and endeavor. It is up to ourselves to keep our shoes clean.

-- CAV

Updates

5-10-12: Changed "technological" to "technical".

Spin off the Colleges, too.

2012-05-08T03:41:00.002-06:00

If there seems to be a war against football, don't write it off as the latest fixation of the left: I see that The Wall Street Journal has published an editorial by sports author Buzz Bissinger to the effect that college football should be banned. (A blurb notes that Bissinger will be participating in a debate about banning college football on the same side as Malcolm Gladwell, whose arguments I blogged in the first link above.)

Bissinger's rationale for such a ban differs from Gladwell's, and strikes me as quite likely to appeal to fiscal conservatives.

If the vast majority of major college football programs made money, the argument to ban football might be a more precarious one. But too many of them don't--to the detriment of academic budgets at all too many schools. According to the NCAA, 43% of the 120 schools in the Football Bowl Subdivision lost money on their programs. This is the tier of schools that includes such examples as that great titan of football excellence, the University of Alabama at Birmingham Blazers, who went 3-and-9 last season. The athletic department in 2008-2009 took in over $13 million in university funds and student fees, largely because the football program cost so much, The Wall Street Journal reported. New Mexico State University's athletic department needed a 70% subsidy in 2009-2010, largely because Aggie football hasn't gotten to a bowl game in 51 years. Outside of Las Cruces, where New Mexico State is located, how many people even know that the school has a football program? None, except maybe for some savvy contestants on "Jeopardy." What purpose does it serve on a university campus? None.

Later on, Bissinger notes examples of colleges subsidizing money-losing football programs or making budget cuts that spared football programs, but hurt other sports or programs. Although Bissinger suggests making college football into a minor-league subsidiary of the NFL, he still fails to suggest a truly capitalistic solution to the problem: making colleges into independent businesses. This is because he never questions the propriety of the government forcibly taking the money of some people to hand over to others, and this is because such theft is justified, in his mind, by the "public good". For starters, note the last, rhetorical question in the above passage and his answer.

How does Bissinger know what the individuals at this small school want or need on campus? By what standard is some form of recreation (e.g., watching a football game on a weekend) of zero benefit to everyone? Such context-free, blanket assertions are part and parcel of the typical cost-benefit "analyses" of modern welfare statists that omit the many hidden costs (to individuals) of having the government run things that are properly private enterprises. They also cause us to miss an easy solution to the problem of universities wasting money on football.

A private university that wanted a football program would have many options as an independent business, none of which would forcibly deprive anyone (attending or not) of their money. Here are just a few that come to mind: subsidize the program (but answer to customers and shareholders, who may well think the subsidy is worthwhile), become an affiliate of a professional league, compete on a club level (as many schools do in soccer), or run such a program at a profit. (Failure to keep the cost of football within sustainable limits would harm only the school that failed to do so.) Likewise, such a solution would allow students who valued football as part of their college experience to have it, without our government improperly (and fascistically) banning it from all colleges.

-- CAV

What Don't You Know?

2012-05-07T03:06:00.001-06:00

Writing for Lifehack, Alexandra Levit notes a common trait among the CEOs she has worked with over the years: self-awareness and a willingness to address personal shortcomings. She cites as an example a man who puzzled his employees by adding more accountants to his management team than they thought necessary:

The new leaders had other expertise besides accounting, but that's not my point. When I spoke to the CEO, I learned that he surrounded himself with financial prowess because he considered this to be his personal area of weakness. "I don't have a strong accounting background, and yet finance plays a major role in every area of our business. Issues are inevitably going to come up that I need solid and informed advice handling, even if I can't identify those issues yet," he told me. [bold added]

This is Levit's way of introducing her real point: We don't always know what our shortcomings are, and we can't fix what we don't know is broken. Levit goes on to suggest several intriguing ways to overcome the obstacles we all face when assessing our own weaknesses. I'll just list them here. Follow the link above for more elaboration.

Inventory Sub-Optimal Situations
Take an Assessment [Test]
Ask Colleagues Anonymously
Work with a Coach

The biggest surprise was the rather large list of online assessmentsLevit pointed to. I'm not sure how many of these would be useful (or how easy it would be to "take several", at least in some areas, as Levitt advises), but some of them look like they could offer a decent beginning for an objective self-assessment.

-- CAV

5-5-12 Hodgepodge

2012-05-05T04:06:00.000-06:00

May Day!

Cry for help -- or Communist holy day? After viewing Zombie's photo essay on the May 1 Oakland Oakland "General Strike", I'd say that the answer is both. Here's one amusing caption:

The range of extreme ideologies led to some hilarious vignettes. Here, for example, a guy from the ultra-libertarian anti-federal government conspiracy site InfoWars somehow convinced a guy with a "Single Payer Health Care" hat to sign a petition -- even though one advocates the abolition of governmental authority and the other advocates the exact opposite, a totally centralized economy and power structure. WTF???

These people are mindless -- but far from innocuous.

Weekend Reading

"Painful, expensive memories keep us away: rather than fight, we take flight and move on ... often to our own detriment." -- Jonathan Hoenig, in "The New Case for Real-Estate Stocks" at SmartMoney

"Sometimes people want what they think they can't have, when in fact they really could have it, or at least something like it." -- Michael Hurd, in "Do you want what you can't have?" at DrHurd.com

"Just as Americans have become increasingly skeptical of 'global warming' policy proposals based on questionable government-funded climate science, they should be skeptical about mandatory medical practice protocols based on increasingly questionable government-funded medical research." -- Paul Hsieh, in "Government-Funded Medical Research Is Hazardous to Your Health" at PJ Media

My Two Cents

The Hsieh piece cites this gem from a New York Times report: "The higher a journal's impact factor… the higher its retraction rate." I strongly suspect that the problem this piece discusses deserves a large share of the blame for the findings of Dr. John Ioannidis, who once published a paper titled, "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False".

Generally, unless I have a good reason independent of the hype to suspect otherwise, I greet any widely-trumpeted government recommendation regarding my health with great skepticism.

Heh!

A blogger called "curious rat" is abstaining from the written word for a year:

You might be saying, "Harry, why would you try something like this? Giving up something that enriches our lives on a daily basis is stupid." I'll tell you why. It's because I am too involved with words. I feel like I've only examined books and magazines up close. I spend, on average, 18+ hours a day reading things. Whether they're milk cartons, subway signs, or even bumper stickers, I am way too connected to the written word.

Now I want to see words at a distance. By separating myself from written language, I'll be able to see which aspects of reading are truly valuable, which are distractions, and which ones give me explosive diarrhea.

I, too, have noticed a small rash of bloggers giving up such new technology as social media or even the Internet for a year, as satirized at Curious Rat. That amount of time is patently ridiculous.

I don't deny the value of doing something like this for a shorter amount of time and possibly adjusting one's habits based on the experience: Not only have I blogged on the possible value in being less plugged-in, I take a week off from blogging each year and completely unplugged (save for phoning and minimal texting) for a few days around my daughter's birth nearly a year ago.

--CAV

Friday Four

2012-05-04T03:15:00.001-06:00

1. I dislike the emphasis of this column on the image (!) of the Occupy movement, but I am glad that the FBI stopped a bombing plot by infiltrating it. Kevin O'Brien of the Cleveland Plain Dealer also makes a good point: "Movements that are destructive in their ends, as Occupy is, have two choices: die when the public is not persuaded or turn to violence to justify continued existence." Guess which is happening? Perhaps a corollary is that such movements go underground.

2. If you've ever wondered why potato chip bags are so hard to open, then mosey on over to It's the Rheo Thing to find out:

The point here is that while technical options exist to prevent premature opening of the bag [i.e., when air pressure dropped in trucks driving through the Rockies from California --ed], such as reducing the initial air pressure in the bag, attempting to add this to the existing processing equipment would be a nightmare. So it was necessary to increase the seal strength.

The author should know: He came up with the solution to this problem.

3. Tech writer Alexis Madrigal gives his thoughts on why iPad sales results were below expectations:

I don't want to overpredict based on one number, but I've had a nagging sense from my own spotty iPad usage that the devices may remain a luxury. They don't quite replace your computer and they're not as mobile as your phone. What if the incredibly enthusiastic, urban, travel-all-the-time iPad early adopters actually have very different needs from the broader mobile computing market? What if beyond the perfect world travelers, the price is just too high for what you get? What if the upgrade cycle is going to be much, much slower than for phones?

As someone who is weary of seeing iPads overhyped, I recall thinking, "Yes. Thank you!" when I read that.

4. Ars Technica has run an interesting feature story on the Carrington Event of 1859, the most powerful solar storm in recorded history.

It hit quickly. Twelve hours after Carrington's discovery and a continent away, "We were high up on the Rocky Mountains sleeping in the open air," wrote a correspondent to the Rocky Mountain News. "A little after midnight we were awakened by the auroral light, so bright that one could easily read common print." As the sky brightened further, some of the party began making breakfast on the mistaken assumption that dawn had arrived.

Although this account mentions the enormous destructive potential such an event could have today, its main focus is on what it was like for the people who witnessed the week-long event.

-- CAV

The New Phrenology

2012-05-03T03:18:00.003-06:00

With so much "scientific" "evidence" purporting to demonstrate once and for all that non-leftists are mental defectives, it should come as no surprise that there is a book out, Chris Moroney's The Republican Brain. Jonah Goldberg gives us a taste:

Author Chris Mooney compiles much of this research for his new book The Republican Brain, which purports to show that conservatives are, literally by nature, more closed-minded and resistant to change and facts. His evidence includes the fact that conservatives are less likely to buy into global warming, allegedly proving they are not only "anti-science" but innately anti-fact, as well. "Politicized wrongness today," he writes "is clustered among Republicans, conservatives and especially Tea Partiers."

That's an entirely understandable view for Mooney to hold. He's a soaked-to-the-bone liberal partisan. But he crosses the line into pseudoscientific hogwash by trying to explain every political disagreement as a symptom of bad brains. For instance, Mooney claims Republicans have trouble processing reality because Republicans think "ObamaCare" will raise the deficit. No really, stop laughing.

Goldberg comments that:

Over the past decade, a new fad has taken hold among academics and liberal journalists: call it the new science of conservative phrenology. No, it doesn't actually involve using calipers to determine intelligence based on the size and shape of people's heads. The measuring devices are better -- MRIs and gene sequencers -- but the conclusions are worse.

In the process, he reminded me of a nice "translation" of the phrase, "Numerous studies have confirmed ..." by statistician John Cook, who had heard it more than once it in a business audio book he'd listened to:

Several of my peers, who share my prejudices, were also able to do a multivariate regression and select a few variables out of hundreds to confirm the prevailing wisdom.

Judging assertions posited as science depends on critical thinking that isn't satisfied with the mere trappings of science -- mathematical, technological, or otherwise. There is no one-size-fits-all "baloney detection kit" out there, not that the occasional frustrated scientist hasn't tried creating one. The real solution to the pervasiveness of pseudoscientific claims isn't cooking up the right checklist, but encouraging cultural change towards a society that more generally respects reason and fosters independence, rather than second-handedness.

-- CAV

The Demise of Football?

2012-05-02T03:17:00.001-06:00

In an interview at Slate, best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell of The New Yorker predicts the demise of college and professional football as we know it.

The factor that I think will be decisive is the head-injury issue. Colleges are going to get sued, and they will have to decide whether they can afford their legal exposure. That said, the issue ought to be how big-time college sports subverts the academic mission of university education.

...

[B]oxing and horseracing didn't end. They have persisted, just in vastly less popular forms than before. They have gone into slow and irreversible decline. I suspect that the same will happen with football. It's going to wither as the supply of talent slowly dries up. I heard on ESPN Michael Wilbon--who is one of the most influential sports journalists in the country--say that he will not let his kids play pro football. If Wilbon won't, who will?

This may be, but what I find more interesting is that Gladwell's observations come out against the backdrop of an argument he plans to make that college football should be banned -- or at least that's what Slate claims he'll argue. But observing that, in today's increasingly risk-averse, paternalistic culture -- and litigious and yet responsibility-free legal environment -- that a sport millions enjoy is in danger isn't really the same thing as saying that it should be banned. Indeed, Gladwell later says the following:

If you want college athletes to assume an as yet unknown risk of permanent physical and neurological damage, you should pay them. Properly. It's a bit much both to maim AND exploit college football players.

I don't think Gladwell is exactly a laissez-faire capitalist, but I think he stumbles into something close to what would (and should) happen with college football in a free economy: It would become -- completely, that is -- lower-tier professional football. Whatever Gladwell ends up arguing, I doubt it will be anything like, "Get the government out of the businesses of education and professional sports," but his prediction is worth noting.

I once observed that you could probably scratch many conservatives and draw pro-big government blood when it came to education (and college sports). This would happen once you connected the dots and made it clear that their college football teams (and, probably many of their almae matres) might receive much less funding, if indeed they continued to exist at all, under capitalism. But Gladwell's prediction serves as something of an antidote by highlighting the dark side of government support: government meddling.

A government big enough to grant largesse is also big enough to take it (and more) away. Football may appear to benefit from its improper association with an educational system the government shouldn't be running, but the same excuse, need, that drives the government's involvement in education drives the redistributionism in the legal system and the elevation of risk assessment from a personal affair to an excuse to confiscate money, issue orders, or both.

Ultimately, more freedom might temporarily be painful until professional football (including college football) adjusted to complete self-support, but it would allow the sport to survive.

-- CAV

Clarity on Paul Ryan

2012-05-01T03:06:00.000-06:00

William McGurn of the Wall Street Journal does a nice, economical job of demolishing the notion that Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan is some kind of closet Objectivist:

... At Georgetown [Ryan] delivered a spirited defense of his budget. He did so notwithstanding attacks by various Catholic bishops and a letter from 90 Georgetown professors decrying his "continuing misuse of Catholic teaching to defend a budget plan that decimates food programs for struggling families, radically weakens protections for the elderly and sick, and gives more tax breaks to the wealthiest few."

Now, even a Georgetown professor ought to understand that, for the most part, we're not talking about "cuts" at all; we're talking about the rate of increase in spending. Under Mr. Obama, the increased spending would go to 4.5% a year. Mr. Ryan's "radical" reform proposes to keep it to 3%.

Of course, what drives Mr. Ryan's religious critics bonkers is not his numbers. It's his claim that his policies reflect Catholic principles. At Georgetown he summarized one of the differences he has with the protesting professors this way: "I do not believe that the preferential option for the poor means a preferential option for big government."

Ryan's "radical" budget reform proposal belies that last sentence, but that's a good thing, since true reform will require clarity about what reform really is and why we need it. Returning our government to its proper purpose would entail real cuts at some point as part of a phasing-out of the welfare state. Those cuts won't come if the idea that we are our brothers' keepers goes unchallenged, and Paul Ryan isn't making such a challenge any more than he is ridding us of the welfare state.

Here's an interesting side note: The column opens with a quotations that many readers might take to be "Mr. Ryan ... channeling Ayn Rand," but which came from a Catholic columnist in the 1950's:

We believe that Social Security legislation, now billed as a great victory for the poor and for the worker, is a great defeat for Christianity. It is an acceptance of the idea of force and compulsion. ... "[W]e in our generation have more and more come to consider the state as bountiful Uncle Sam.

This shows a couple of things. First, as McGurn notes, our political discourse has shifted seismically since then. Second, while Ryan, no Objectivist, may or may not have been influenced somewhat by Ayn Rand's ideas or her uncompromising style of argument, her ideas are in circulation to the point that a columnist can say "channeling Ayn Rand" and expect to be understood on some level. Although mere cuts in spending increases aren't the real article, the seeds of a serious conversation have been planted, the posturing of Paul Ryan, his critics, and some of his allies to the contrary.

The seeds have been planted, but how will we know they have sprouted? When most people don't just vaguely know who Ayn Rand is, but immediately realize that crediting the likes of Paul Ryan with "channeling" her is absurd. We're far from that point now, but every such smear offers the chance for someone who knows better to point out the discrepancy.

-- CAV