Unqualified Offerings

By Thoreau

Today’s amazing astronomy news, via Kentucky State Senator Brandon Smith (R-Epistemic Closure)  is that the temperature on Mars is the same as the temperature on earth.

“As you [Energy & Environment Cabinet official] sit there in your chair with your data, we sit up here in ours with our data and our constituents and stuff behind us. I don’t want to get into the debate about climate change, but I will simply point out that I think in academia we all agree that the temperature on Mars is exactly as it is here. Nobody will dispute that. Yet there are no coal mines on Mars. There are no factories on Mars that I’m aware of.”

Video here.

By Thoreau

Stack Overflow is nice for a lot of things, but if you really have to understand something about an algorithm, you should trust no source except the four Gospel authors.  However, it is unnecessary to have a Gospel translated into the Python vernacular.  The C or Fortran versions are sufficient.  Indeed, much original meaning is obscured when we use languages like Python; Vatican 2.0 should have kept the mass in Fortran.

Amen.

By Thoreau

There are only two weeks left in July.  Any predictions for what the media will spend August freaking out about?

UPDATE:  Well, I guess we know what CNN will spend the next few months obsessing over. Could there be a connection to the Malaysian flight lost in the Indian ocean?  Well, could there?  Huh?  YOU CAN’T RULE IT OUT!

By Thoreau

Several years ago I asked our esteemed readership if they could remember which ancient Egyptian scribe had allegedly written some lament of how hard it is to come up with new ideas and new ways to express things.  I finally sat down and skimmed Durant’s Story of Civilization.  That gave me a citation to Erman’s Literature of the Ancient Egyptians, where I find a translation of “The Complaint of Khekheperre-Sonbu”, who said (among other things):

Would that I had words that are unknown, utterances and sayings in new language, that hath not yet passed away, and without that which hath been said repeatedly–not an utterance that hath grown stale, what the ancestors have already said.

…

Would that I knew that which others knew not yet, something of that which is not (only) repetition, in order that I might say it, and that my heart might make answer to me, in order that I might make clear to it (i.e. to the heart) my suffering, and thrust aside to it the load that is upon my back.

Even in 1900 B.C., coming up with a novel idea that wasn’t just derivative of somebody else’s word was freakin’ hard.  Dude was obviously suffering.  Well, at least he had high scholarly standards.  If he’d had no standards he would have just picked up a megaphone, stood in front of a wall of hieroglyphs, and passed off some dumb and unoriginal ideas as his own, thereby giving the world’s first TED talk.

By Thoreau

First, Neel is kicking ass in our comments section, with a great analysis of the limits to rationality in markets.

Congratulations to comments stalwart Eli Rabett for his promotion to a high-ranking position in the UC system.

Scott McConnell explains the latest Israeli-Palestinian flare-up for you.

CHOOSE THE FORM OF THE CREATOR-DESTRUCTOR!!!! (This command is inevitably followed by studied attempts to not engage in any sort of thought.  Then something very sugary comes along, though it’s usually a giant kool-aid pitcher knocking down walls.)

By Thoreau

I like this article arguing that Hobby Lobby is the greatest left-wing ruling ever.  The state cannot force us to pay for things that we have religious objections to.  I’m going to set up a meeting with my accountant to start deducting the portion of my taxes used to pay for the military and the prison-industrial complex.

And now that we have blurred the line between a corporate person and the individual who owns it, I hope that the people living on the Gulf Coast start suing the shareholders of BP.  I also hope that victims of tasing start suing the shareholders of Taser International.

Not to diminish the importance of birth control, but I think that overall this ruling is a net boon to the left.

By Thoreau

So:

The warnings followed what Gaza medical officials said was the deadliest night yet in which dozens of Palestinians were killed, pushing the campaign’s death toll past 160 with more than 1,000 people injured.

A U.N. humanitarian affairs office in the Palestinian enclave stated that 70% of the Palestinian fatalities since Monday have been civilians, of whom 30% were children.

The casualties include 17 members of the Batsh family, who were killed while praying at a mosque next door to a targeted building owned by Gaza Police Chief Tayseer Batsh, who was reported to be critically injured.

There have been no Israeli deaths during the fighting so far. But a teenager became the second person to be severely wounded when two rockets landed Sunday in the Mediterranean coastal city of Ashkelon.

Is there anything–anything at all–that Israel could do that might elicit some response from the US?  (That is, some response other than a unanimous bipartisan Congressional resolution of support?)  These are children we’re talking about.  Apparently a few dozen Palestinian kids killed in retaliation for zero Israeli deaths.  And Congress says nothing.  While kids are killed.  Just kids.  Celebrating a holy month, no less, and suddenly all hell is breaking loose over their heads for some shit that they have exactly zero responsibility for, and their friends and siblings and cousins and classmates are dying.  And we wonder why some Palestinians support terrorists and guerrilla fighters?  Why the fuck do you think they support them?  If somebody killed my nephews I would probably go completely insane with rage, because they’re innocent little kids and I love them dearly.  (In fact, I’m going to one of their little league games today.  So cute to watch.)  That’s why some Palestinians support violent resistance.  Because their kids get killed and people often go completely fucking insane after burying kids.  Wouldn’t you?  If you don’t want people to go completely insane, not killing their kids is a good way to get started on solving the problem.

I assume that there is some line that Israel could cross that would elicit Congressional disapproval, but it would probably involve gas chambers.  (And even then I’m not so sure.)  But short of that, how many kids would they have to kill before a narrow Congressional majority might pass a resolution merely offering lukewarm support instead of fervent support?

By Thoreau

The DEA’s fortunes are slipping slightly in DC politics. It is true that ups and downs are normal in any political arena, but it is still nice to see it happening now, at this time.

By Thoreau

It is strange to me that so many libertarians are so sympathetic to managers in large organizations.  Isn’t a key insight of Hayek that planners working on large scales will lack access to the local information that is so important to the success or failure of what real people actually do?

Now, yes, corporations can face a type of market discipline that governments lack (unless, of course, the corporations know that the government will bail them out…) but all that means is that planners in the upper echelons of corporations might be less clueless than planners in the upper echelons of governments.  It doesn’t mean that they actually have a great insight into what’s really happening on the ground, just that their analyses are less fictional than those of governments.  Now, I do get why libertarians have a lot of sympathy for entrepreneurs and small business owners, but that sort of sympathy is (rightly!) widespread in our society, and doesn’t require adoption of a radical ideology.  It just means you admire people who took a massive risk, worked their asses off, and made something of their own.  Indeed, my understanding is that a non-trivial fraction of entrepreneurs did it precisely because they found it more rewarding than working for a big company.  Some of them evidently preferred to sell everything they own, go deep into debt, and work 100 hour weeks just so they could work on their own terms.  You gotta admire that.

I’ll never understand why adherents of an anti-authoritarian ideology are so sympathetic to high-up bosses in big, subsidized organizations.

(And yes, I work for a big, subsidized organization, but at least I’m honest about it.)

By Thoreau

I agree with Andrew O’Hehir: The Republicans should jump on the weed legalization bandwagon.  It would be good for the country on so many levels.  For starters, there’s the fact that ending the drug war is simply the right thing to do, for the victims of the war both at home and abroad, for the civil liberties that have been collateral damage, and for the budgets stretched by fighting the war.

Then there’s the fact that we really do need two competitive and marginally sane parties if we want to be a healthy democracy.  If the GOP became the legalization party, I don’t think it would only make them sane on one issue.  I think that it would help move us past a lot of things that have been lingering since 1968 or longer.  I’m not saying that the GOP would magically become sane on everything if they just moved past one culture war issue, but I think tossing out a lot of old baggage would be mentally healthy for everyone both in and out of the party.  Sometimes you just have to put some stuff in the past, and while it doesn’t fix everything it does tend to have some ripple effects.

Finally, if there’s one thing we can count on Republicans to do, it’s to scoff at lefty health nannies seeking regulations.  I’m not convinced that we should go as far as, say, crack in school vending machines (we should probably just limit it to the more potent coca leaf teas), but I am very worried that there’s a contingent ready to halt drug reform in the name of Somebody Might Get Hurt.  If we had more Republicans on Team Legalization I’m pretty sure that those nannies would lose.  Yeah, we’d eventually have to form a lefty coalition to oppose subsidies for corporate crack producers putting their products in school vending machines, but wouldn’t that be a nice problem to have, in the grand scheme of things?