My family's motto is "etlay itway opdray." 95% of life deserves cheerful indifference, and doing so makes the other 5% more enjoyable [that other 5% is occupied by Joy and Vendetta]. via
If you didn't have to click that link you are probably an Episcopalian; and so you already know what a narthex is too. [I grew up in a house with an undercroft -- it's where the rakes, shovels, and lawn mowers were kept]
Hayek's classic book, The Road to Serfdomhas sold out. My copy is currently lent out (I've bought a half dozen copies over the years), so I'll post a paragraph from his later Individualism and Economic Order instead.
To the accepted Christian tradition that man must be free to follow his conscience in moral matters if his actions are to be of any merit, the economists added the further argument that he should be free to make full use of his knowledge and skill, that he must be allowed to be guided by his concern for the particular things of which he knows and for which he cares, if he is to make as great a contribution to the common purposes of society as he is capable of making.
He's referring to the Socialist Calculation Problem. Knowledge and particular talent is highly dispersed in society and wishing that it can be centrally marshaled is a fools errand. You wouldn't vote for one guy on your block to spend 20% of everyone's income for them because he obviously doesn't know better than you what you like to eat, what kind of education your kids need, etc. That a Congressman can do this for hundreds of thousands of people or a Senator for millions is complete fantasy.
Obituaries and a Decent Man
[jackdied]
May 01 2010, 08:08 EDT [updated May 01 2010, 08:15 EDT]
I was irked to read his death was from "complications of Parkinson’s disease, his son Robert said" Not because of Parkinson's but because papers won't publish an obituary without mentioning the cause. The paper called his son while he was freshly grieving and asked a bunch of questions, including cause of death. When my grandmother died at 95 I answered the phone when the local reporter called and she wouldn't take "old age" as a cause of death. I wasn't in the best of moods (my grandmother having just died) so I got to say things like "if she was eaten by a shark at the age of 95 I would have told you." We settled on "complications from a stroke" which I now (many years later) dislike - it reads too softly and implies lingering. Better to have a concise fib or go big as in Died Tragically Rescuing His Family From The Wreckage Of A Destroyed Sinking Battleship .
bobsalive had some hours to kill before he picked up his special lady friend at Logan airport so we hit the local tappy on a night that just happened to be "quiz night." Over the course of two hours we slowly increased our lead from 64-60 to 114-107 over the 2nd place team. It seemed like the game was rigged in our favor: we were the only team to correctly answer "Drudge Report" to an internet question and the the only team to go 10/10 on the bonus round of "translate British slang into US English" (I lived in AUS for a year, so this was a freebie).
The final two questions had a 30 point swing. We were up by 6 points with 114 so we couldn't not bid the highest per-question points (10 each) in the final round. We boffed both of em and another team got em both right [the cheaters]. The questions were: 1) where are MLB baseballs made? answer: Costa Rica, and 2) [I don't recall, bobsalive will edit]
We did have a little help affirming some shaky answers from the very drunk guy sitting next to us, the bartender, and the gal grading the quiz (bobsalive: did you want the character name or the movie for the 1998 Matt Lablanc movie? Quiz gal: Lost in .. shit, the movie).
I also played a losing hand at haggling over the bar tab (we had 5+ beers between us):
Bartender: That'll be 12 bucks.
Me: *raised eyebrow*
Bartender: 15 bucks.
Me: *plunks down a twenty*
Tonight we played nobody - all the members of the other team were no-shows. By our league bylaws this is not a straight forfeit: their team cannot win any points but our team still has to win each game as if we were bowling against 4 players who bowled 10 pins each under their average. Yeah, we screwed up that 40 pin per-game advantage and only took 6 of 8 points.
My night was good: 168, 210, 222 for a 600 series on the nose. The oil conditions were tough. Uniformly wet in the middle with a lot of carry down, and uniformly dry on the outside (the combination meant there was no funneling effect for hook players). One of my favorite lines just happened to be in relatively good shape and I found it relatively early.
PS, the USBC has stopped issuing patches/badges for achievements like a high scoring game or series. Tonight I got a cheap pen (as opposed to a cheap patch) for a 225 game.
How I love the internet, let me count the ways. I wanted to cite the Bible for the phrase "There are none so blind as those who will not see" and was very surprised to find out that it isn't a biblical quote -- very surprised because the saying has a very strong KJV feel.
The first seemingly relevant link I found attributed the phrase to comic/singer Ray Stevens (author of "The Streak" and "Mississippi Squirrel Revival"). That can't be right, so a couple clicks on the "more search results" button later and I found this list of literary references which includes many paraphrases of the quote. Some more digging led to this page which gave me what I was looking for, chapter and verse: Jeremiah 5:21
Hear now this, O foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not
The above linked page includes 15 different translations, the one I like best is Young's Literal Translation (a translation I'm unfamiliar with)
Hear ye, I pray you, this, O people, foolish and without heart, Eyes they have, and they see not, Ears they have, and they hear not.
PS, Happy Easter. I can say that without qualification because this is one of those years where Easter falls on the same day for both Western churches & Eastern Orthodox.
PPS, When asked, I describe myself as "C of E, C and E" (Church of England, Christmas and Easter). I didn't get to church today so I'll make up for it by attending a few services outside the high holy days. But of course I'm rarely asked, because no self respecting Episcopalian Yankee would broach the subject of religion (not even in the Narthex over coffee).
Your week in Quickies
[quickie]
Mar 24 2010, 02:01 EDT [updated Mar 24 2010, 02:11 EDT]
Hundreds of links in one post. Consider it definitive for the form.
You're going to have to come up with a platform that isn't built on a foundation of cowardice: fear of people with colors, religions, cultures and sex lives that differ from your own; fear of reform in banking, health care, energy; fantasy fears of America being transformed into an Islamic nation, into social/commun/fasc-ism, into a disarmed populace put in internment camps; and more.
It must be hard to live every day knowing that everyone who disagrees with you is made of pure evil, and that you alone are just and kind.
I have a mild interest in Kissinger: my great-aunt's husband's niece married Hank. So we aren't related unless "I know a guy who knows a guy who .." counts as a relation. And I'm pretty sure no one calls him Hank.
The House will be voting on the Universal Healthcare bill sometime tonight, likely during my bowling league. This bill is bad for several reasons: it creates a new social contract, we have no idea what is in it, it likely violates the constitution, and will be a financial disaster. Additionally it doesn't live up to it's promise - not because of Republican obstruction or lobbying by special interests - but because the promise was a free lunch and we all know those don't exist.
The New Social Contract
My strongest objection is that the bill creates a new contract between the federal government and the people. There is only one proper way to do that: pass a new constitutional amendment. Winning one election is insufficient. An amendment wouldn't be possible because the bill is unpopular. The Dems are betting that the bill will become popular after it is passed, or at least that it will be impossible to undo once it has passed by creating special interests in favor of its perpetuation.
Once the bill is passed there will be no end of calls for regulating personal behavior in the name of efficiency and cost saving, see Jacob Sullum's 1998 book For Your Own Good: The Tyranny of Public Health. The government will take your money and then regulate your personal life in the name of saving you money. You can't opt out - there will be no exemptions for people who pay more in than they take out (i.e. you and me). The inescapable nature of the system is what makes it a new Social Contract.
This will also be the begging, not the end of legislation. Pelosi has also promised the bill is the beginning of the slippery slope. Saying yes to this bill is saying yes to things that aren't even in it.
Unconstitutional
The Washington Post has a good op-ed questioning the constitutionality of the bill. In short for the bill to be constitutional congress has to have a plenary power that they simply don't have. This isn't a grey area, the framers specifically argued in the Federialst Papers 41 that the constitution didn't read like a note to your babysitter stating:
Alice can only eat dessert if she eats her veggies.
Alice has to be in bed by 8pm.
Alice can do whatever the hell she wants.
but post New Deal this is a very popular reading of the constitution. Even the Supreme Court interprets it that way when 5 justices feel like it.
Financial Disaster
Proponents of the bill like to point out that it is "deficit neutral" - meaning it takes in as much money in taxes and fees that it will spend. Those numbers from Congressional Budget Office are a fiction. 250 billion of the Trillion dollar price tag are paid for by a scheduled cut to Medicare that will be postponed immediately after the bill is passed. To balance out the budget there is almost no spending in the first four years, just tax collection. All the money is spent in the last six years.
That spending situation is very similar to Social Security, so we know exactly what will happen. Social Security ran at a profit for decades, but the money wasn't squirreled away - it went into the general fund and was spent. Now Social Security is paying out more than it takes in. Likewise the taxes for healthcare will be spent in the first four years, and not saved up to be spent in the last six. So all that spending on the backend will be unfunded even as baseline spending (non-healthcare spending) is increased in the first four years.
Conclusion
There is a feeling among my Leftier friends that this bill is important because it gets us closer to Universal Healthcare and Universal Healthcare would be neat. Besides - the politicians mean well and are earnest. But if meaning well and being earnest were good qualities by themselves we would give civics awards to stalkers. Or as Jay Nordingler likes to say whenever a politician is praised for their intelligence "intellegent sure, but in the service of what?"
Tonight was mid-season position night: 1st place bowls 2nd, 3rd vs 4th, etc. We are way down in the rankings (12/20) so we bowled the 11th place team. The result was a 4-4 point split. Our opponents were a 20-something first time team so we gave up 100 pins in handicap (the league is 100% handicap so on average we should be able to make up the difference).
The first game we smashed em. I bowled a 243 (almost 80 pins over my average). Delusions of making the men's scratch leaderboard danced in my head - you need to average 225 a game for three games to make the board. This was not to be; my 2nd game was 176 and our two big hitters were struggling with the ugly oil. The second game went to the other team but we were still up +60 pins in total pinfall. The third game was more mixed. I reverted to average (163) but Bob K switched his ball and found his mark for 205. Audrey was a bit above her 125 average all night. We lost game 3 by 15 pins but still took total pinfall for a 4-4 point finish.
Simple Music
[jackdied]
Mar 07 2010, 09:51 EST [updated Mar 07 2010, 09:55 EST]
Music pings off our brains in very powerful ways. I'm a big fan of simple music - the White Stripes are a two piece rock band that do simple very, very well. Talk show host Jimmy Fallon just had on Joanna Newsom (new to me) and she did this number:
I have absolutely no idea what the words she is singing are, but the result is hauntingly beautiful.
I am not the target market for this book, because, apparently, the target market for this book is newborn dads who need to be told that fucking the babysitter is inappropriate. “Oh,” I’m supposed to exclaim, “you mean I pick them up, pay them, and don’t fuck them? Oooooh, now I get it.”
Money vs Stuff
[jackdied]
Mar 01 2010, 19:38 EST [updated Mar 01 2010, 19:45 EST]
I had a few conversations last week where people equated money and stuff ("stuff" being the catch-all for raw materials, consumer products, and services). In our day-to-day lives money and stuff are very similar: you trade money for stuff and the same amount of money buys about the same amount of stuff yesterday and today.
We use money as a substitute for barter: if an apple is worth the same as a banana but you don't make apples or bananas then you use money to buy an apple. Eventually the guy who sold you the apple will hand off the money to someone else and so on until it lands with someone who sells a banana. But imagine if everyone's bank balance and salary was doubled overnight. There would be twice as much money chasing the same amount of stuff. An apple would still be worth a banana so after some initial confusion all prices would be double what they used to be.
Money does matter - that "some initial confusion" could be massively destructive - but when you are thinking about "stuff" and straight barter things become clearer. For instance you can't just say "occupation X should make more money" because what you really mean is "one apple should be worth two bananas." Which means you think there should either be a law fixing the price or you are writing an appeal to convince everyone else that apples are really awesome and/or bananas are icky.
To say everyone should make more money is to say everyone should make more stuff. To say some people should make more money is to say that other people should get less stuff.
Team "Final Warning" finally took some points, 7/8 for the night. Everyone bowled above their averages on both teams but we just did it more so than the other guys.
They killed the White Hen. Bastards. For non-locals: White Hen is a convenience store that is more like a Wawa than a 7-11; full deli, decent coffee, etc. The chain was recently bought by 7-11 and the stores are being redone to be 7-11s, which means no more deli. The Ball Square location will probably be shuttered because there is an existing 7-11 just a few blocks away.
The Chinese takeout joint that closed six months back has a sign announcing it is re-opening soonish as an Indian restaurant. This makes me very happy because while the Boston area has many good Indian restaurants they tend to cluster and I have to take the T to get to any of them.
Update: Somerville City Hall wants to start a city book club, or something. In March everyone is invited to read "The Things They Carried." Thank goodness the local government is stepping up to create a book club; presumably this signals that all the important stuff has been taken care of.
