Unqualified Offerings

By Thoreau

Oakland is doing the utterly predictable, and contemplating factory farming of a taxable crop.  When politicians view something as a revenue source, they want more of it, and they are prepared to get in bed with any businessman who can make that happen.  Most significantly, if it’s a source of tax revenue they are perfectly happy to provide security for those businessmen, which means that you get the sort of businessmen who don’t have their own street gangs and hitmen.

This isn’t about drugs.  It’s about taxes.  If tomorrow somebody decided to tax fennel (which grows like weeds in much of SoCal) city councils would be falling all over themselves to approve large-scale fennel farms.

By Thoreau

One downside of moving is that the cable company, which I already hate for giving us unreliable internet service, keeps flaking on appointments and yet has the gall to try to persuade us to sign up for more services.  Even my wife, normally much nicer than me, is being rude with them, and I begin every phone call with “So help me god, if you try to sell me phone service I will cancel right now!”  I truly hate Charter with the white hot heat of a thousand suns.  So, let us consider this debate:

Charter Communications is the best argument in favor of deregulation to end the local monopoly status and let in more competition.

vs.

Charter Communications is the best argument for better regulation to protect consumers from getting screwed.

vs.

Screw it, just get Directv and DSL or one of those laptop attachments from the cell phone company.

vs.

Keep the subscription so we can paintball the cable company truck whenever they finally show up.

Discuss.

By Thoreau

My brother was unexpectedly diagnosed with a congenital heart malformation and is going into surgery in a few days.  As befits a man who used to comment here as “Idi Amin’s Last Meal”, he’s keeping a good sense of humor.  Upon hearing that Dick Cheney is officially becoming an undead creature, he said that we should do for Cheney what they did for the vampires in the Twilight saga and create a team for him:  Team Dick.  He also suggested a t-shirt that says “Gitmo” in the same font as the titles of the Twilight novels, and a picture of Cheney above it, with pale skin and sharp teeth.

Also, my brother’s disease is actually in a blood vessel, not the heart itself, and blood vessels are just a series of tubes.  So, really, this is just internet shit.  And I TOTALLY know internet shit.  So he’ll be fine.

UPDATE:  My brother informs me that when he signed consent forms Ted Stevens was brought in to explain that his vascular system is a series of tubes.  My brother also notes that, as long as we’re talking about Alaska politicians, who would have thought that Mike Gravel would be the most level-headed Alaska politician on the national scene?

By Thoreau

Cheney’s heart condition may necessitate an interesting implanted device:

Everything is implanted in the chest except for the batteries, which are worn on a vest much like a hunting vest.

When he wears the battery pack on his chest, he’ll look like this:

Also, this device won’t necessarily keep him alive.  It might just keep him undead.  Which, yeah, we already knew.

One potential oddity is that most patients who have the device have neither a pulse nor a conventional blood pressure, and must carry medical documentation saying that the lack of a pulse does not mean they are dead.

Doctors considered doing a heart transplant, but Cheney would only consent if the organ was harvested from the mightiest hero to ever live, after the hero was bested in a duel and then sacrificed during a new moon as cultists writhed and danced around the altar, so that Cheney could absorb the life-force of this hero and thereby augment his powers.  Doctors weren’t sure if the hospital ethics board would approve that procedure, and nobody really wanted to see naked Republicans writhing around an altar, so he opted for the biomechanical suit instead.  When the mechanical device fails, he plans to infuse his spirit into a suitable new vessel and continue his evil plans.

By Thoreau

Today at lunch, I was chatting about Murphy’s Law with somebody.  I noted that I always carry a small collapsible umbrella in my laptop case, as a precaution.  I then said that if I ever stop carrying that thing around, it will rain.

On a lark, I left the umbrella in my office this evening.  When I walked out the door of the building, I discovered that it was raining.  And it NEVER rains in LA during the summer.

To rescue my fellow Angelenos from drought and wildfires, I am going to get rid of all of my umbrellas.

By Thoreau

This evening I went to the first part of a workshop on some new teaching tools.  Normally I’d stay away, but it focuses on tools for teaching some really cutting-edge and modern science  (instead of the usual “Here’s a hip new tool for teaching the same old stuff!”) and a friend really wanted me to go, so I went.  The first evening was just a couple hours setting the stage, followed by dinner; tomorrow is more intensive.

Strangely, tonight’s event was NOT about the tools.  It was just to get us thinking about our pedagogical philosophy.  Now, this wasn’t the usually fire-breathing fundamentalist sermon on how we are so wicked and can only be redeemed through a saving knowledge of interactive pedagogy.  It was a mild and unobjectionable discussion to get us thinking about how to reach our students.  These guys:the usual physics education reformers::Episcopalians:Fundamentalists.

Still, what struck me was that even these guys, mild as they are, display a key feature of the kool-aid drinkers:  The science was secondary to the educational philosophy.  The science promises to be really interesting, but they couldn’t bring themselves to lead with it.  They had to lead with the philosophy.  As I continue to think about what it is that really marks somebody as a “kool-aid drinker”, I think that it’s when the subject matter no longer comes first.  When the primary factor that drives them as a teacher is no longer a deep passion for the subject, but rather a commitment to a theory of learning.  Don’t get me wrong, there are great teachers who haven’t drunk the kool-aid but care deeply about connecting with the students and have a well-thought-out approach to learning as learning.  However, these people still respect the subject for what it is and would never compromise it, would never treat it as secondary.  Their educational philosophies and the needs of their students are important to them, perhaps even equal in importance to the subject, but if you talk to them you can will always see the passion for the subject.

So I guess that’s what the “kool-aid” is about:  It’s about adopting a new idea, and treating whatever it is that you do (teaching or something else) as a way of adhering to the idea, rather than treating the idea as  something that helps  you do what you do.

By Thoreau

Before I give our commentariat a chance to bash libertarians on economics, the least I can do is try to derail you away from that by providing a nicely distracting thread title! 

Bruce Bartlett links to a roundup of studies on whether tax cuts actually lead to spending cuts, i.e. does “Starve the Beast” really work?  Perhaps they do in the very long run, if mounting deficits eventually become so big that they provoke the budgetary equivalent of Armageddon.  However, for those who prefer a small policy change in the short term to a drastic policy change in the aftermath of a distant crisis, the evidence surveyed suggests that tax cuts may actually lead to borrow-and-spend rather than spending cuts.  If taxes are low, then people only feel the benefits of spending but not the pain (yet), so where is the disincentive to spend?

Before I was a libertarian I was a liberal, and the one constant for me in all ideological stages, being a math-oriented person who went to the bank with my grandfather to deposit my paper route earnings starting when I was 12, was that however much you spend, you should tax accordingly.  I see the case for a small deficit in bad times and a small surplus in good times, but overall they have to match.  An argument can be made for high spending and an argument can be made for low spending, but an argument cannot be made for taxing less (on average) than you spend.  In the long run, it will catch up to you.  In the short term, it divorces causes from effects and costs from actions and thereby distorts policy in unsustainable ways.  If you want legislators to spend less, instead of starving the beast you should spank the beast, i.e. make sure that people feel both the costs and benefits of spending, so that policy is influenced accordingly.

By Thoreau

While I often suggest that there isn’t enough difference between the parties on policy, there is clearly a difference between the movements.  And this sums it up nicely:

When conservatives argue, they say, “my position is the really conservative one.” When liberals argue, they often still say, “my position isn’t too liberal, don’t worry.”

I think this explains why it is that although both sides have their kooks, one side calls its kooks “the Real Americans” and the other side mostly sneers at its kooks.  Why this continues to be so continues to perplex me, but there it is.

Yesterday’s Ross Douthat column just demands the internet tradishun of the Shorter:

Shorter Ross Douthat: Alternate-worlds science-fiction is fun!

By Thoreau

I invite our readers to discuss these propositions:

The California Prison Guards Union is the best argument ever made in favor of libertarianism

vs.

The California Prison Guards Union is the best argument ever made in favor of campaign finance regulations.

While some libertarians are in favor of campaign finance regulations (I support the principle but I have qualms about how well it can work, so put me in the “lukewarm support”  camp), most are opposed, so these propositions are to some extent tension, if not necessarily in conflict.  However, I think these propositions can unit our readers in agreeing that the California Prison Guards Union is evil.

If this turns into something interesting, maybe I’ll make it a regular feature.