Man in the Middle

Premarital Sex?

2011-12-10T17:27:00.004-06:00

I was interested in this NRO article by David French today on"Evangelicals' Collapsing Sexual Mores":
"For all unmarried young adults the total is 88 percent. Oh, and even as 80 percent of young unmarried evangelicals are sexually active, 76 percent of evangelicals still believe sex outside of marriage is wrong."

The reason this interested me is that I am also reading The Blue Parakeet, by Scot McKnight, which discusses the same problem (page 118 ff.)

McKnight makes this excellent point:
"...there is no such thing as 'premarital' intercourse in the Bible. Intercourse, [per Exodus 22:16-17] constitutes the sexual union that we call marriage."

I'm with McKnight on this. Psychologically and theologically, sex constitutes the union, not the words that make it legal.

Perhaps we need to rethink our culture's recent practice of delayed marriage.

Why Gary Johnson?

2011-12-05T10:11:00.002-06:00

Paula Pennypacker of Occupy Washington Grassroots Coalition (OWGC) asked me to post my answers to the Reason.com quiz that matched me with Gov. Gary Johnson for President. Sure. Here goes:
Government Spending: "I believe that less government is the best government."
Economic Policy: "The problem is not necessarily a lack of regulation, it is hyper-regulation."
Foreign Policy: "Can we provide a strong national defense for this country and cut military spending by 43%? Yes, and we have to. "
Drug War: "You can't hurt other people, you can't defame other people. But yes, you have a right to do things that are very controversial, if not you're going to end up with government is going to tell us what we can eat and drink and what ever."
Personal Freedom: "I become emotional over the fact that we have young men and women in the service that are gay and can't express that, who are putting their lives on the line."
Immigration: "I believe Congress must work to secure our nation's borders and enforce the immigration laws already in place. Once this is achieved, improvements to the current system can be considered."
Education: "All parents should have an opportunity to choose which school their children attend."
Energy: "We must be an energy-independent nation."
Religion: "Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom."
Paula's own answers are here, and you can take the quiz yourself here.

Willowpalians

2011-12-04T23:48:00.002-06:00

I'm currently reading the book Blue Parakeet, by Scot McKnight, about how to read the Bible in our day. On page 35, McKnight emerges from an Episcopalian worship and tells his wife "I am ... a Willowpalian", then explains "I believe in the importance of a commitment both to the Great Tradition and to ongoing creative renewal we find in places like Willow Creek in South Barrington, Illinois."

As a long-term 'Creeker myself, and even longer-term United Methodist, I immediately realized he's exactly right. I too am a Willowpalian, fond of both the oldest traditions of our faith, and their latest expressions.

Interestingly, Willow itself is becoming more Willowpalian lately. We lit our second Advent candle today at Willow, the first time I ever recall that tradition being used there, and have recently experimented with such traditional liturgical worship elements as responsive readings. Never a dull moment!

Black Friday thoughts

2011-11-25T20:55:00.003-06:00

If I recall correctly, "Black Friday" got its name for being the day each year that retailers finally make it into the black (become profitable.)

It's always been controversial, a symbol of runaway consumerism. This year, the 20th anniversary of "Buy Nothing Day", may have set a new low, as a California shopper who wanted an Xbox 360 used pepper spray to disperse dozens of other shoppers (details here.)

Occupy Wall Street protesters intended to deny profits to the 1% with "Occupy Black Friday", which apparently inspired a Philadelphia group affiliated with the Tea party movement to support Black Friday with a competing "BUYcott". Personally, I cannot imagine any Tea partisan thinking deficit spending is any wiser for individuals and households than for Congress and the President.

For me, Black Friday was a beautiful sunny cool 30 mile bicycle ride with our local bicycle club for a light lunch, followed by another shorter tandem ride with the Middlewife. I've always tried to avoid shopping on Black Friday as a spiritual discipline, but did forget and reorder some supplies we're about out of from Sodastream this evening. (For anyone who likes carbonated drinks, Sodastream is a wonderfully economical and ecological alternative to hauling them home from a grocery store -- but you might want to wait until tomorrow before placing an order.)

Free Mickey Mouse!

2011-11-08T12:06:00.006-06:00

There has been a lot of anger lately against evil corporations raking in undeserved money, but somehow none of that anger seems to have landed at the door of big entertainment companies. Perhaps the height of hypocrisy recently was watching Michael Moore supporting Occupy Wall Street while refusing to admit that he himself is in their hated One Percent.

Democrats seem very sure we need to raise taxes on the very rich to solve our national debt problem, yet at the same time, a new PROTECT IP bill in the U.S. Senate and a new S.T.O.P. bill in the house seem designed primarily to safeguard ever more riches for the entertainment industry, many of whose members already make salaries among the most obscenely high anywhere in our society.

What I don't understand is why any Republican or Independent would think Hollywood needs further riches? What has Hollywood ever done to further their beliefs? Yet, at least one Republican has sponsored the S.T.O.P. bill in the U.S. House of Representatives, according to this article, "Music, movie industries giving to Rep. pushing for copyright enforcement." As Instapundit has suggested, we should be finding ways to tax Hollywood, not reward it further.

One very specific sign of this problem is that the Mickey Mouse cartoon character remains copyrighted, decades after the death of Walt Disney. Copyright law makes sense as a way of ensuring the creator of an idea profits from it throughout their remaining life, and perhaps that of their immediate dependents. However, to me it makes NO sense as a way to permanently reward vast corporate empires equal in size and reach to those now being protested by Occupy Wall Street.

As I fought with a DVD checked out of our local library last night, trying in vain to get to the actual start of a movie I wanted to view, and instead being forced to endure ten minutes of ads and warnings, the furthest thing from my mind was giving those responsible any more control over my viewing habits. Free Mickey Mouse!

Another civil right bites the dust

2011-10-02T00:15:00.003-05:00

The times they are indeed a changing when I find myself in full agreement with Glenn Greenwald, but today's the day as we are both concerned about the long-term implications of yesterday's aerial bombing of an American citizen in Yemen.

For anyone on the left who thinks what happened yesterday was just fine, consider how you'd have felt if President Bush had done the same. If I recall correctly, the left had an utter meltdown after Bush authorized just phone taps that turned out to be entirely legal, and don't forget waterboarding. But hey, given a choice, I'm sure we'd all prefer to be phone tapped or waterboarded to being aerial bombed without warning. That's about as far from being Mirandized as you can get.

At the very least, President Obama could have stripped the guy of his citizenship first, any time in the year or so he was on the government's "hit" list before being killed.

Presumably this issue will now be reviewed in Congress and the courts, as well it should be. And kudos also to Dr. Ron Paul on the right for likewise objecting to yesterday's bombing.

Ron Paul for President?

2011-10-01T10:04:00.005-05:00

Once again a political candidate is being called nuts (most recently by a former neighbor), and once again, no real evidence is given. So when the Huffman Post's Laura Trice profiled Paul's 11 point plan today, I was interested to see what that bastion of the left-leaning Web media would have to say about Paul, and whether I'd agree. Surprisingly, I find nothing objectionable in what they list. For instance, here are the first three listed:
"11. Energy Independence: Eliminate the federal gas tax of $0.18 per gallon and eliminate the EPA, allowing prosecution of polluters to answer to citizens, not Washington, and allowing coal, oil, nuclear and other forms of energy to be safely explored.
10. Education: Dr. Paul would like to see the U.S. Department of Education return its powers to the states and parents. He proposes and intends to give parents a $5,000 tax credit per child for kids K-12 to help with all the costs of education. He is supportive of home-schooling and will veto legislation that interferes with parents choosing to home-school their children.
9. Workers' Rights: Dr. Ron Paul is against forcing workers to join unions and pay dues if they do not want to, citing the $8 billion that union leaders bring in annually that is often given to political candidates. He does not want workers forced to belong to unions or to be under union control against their will."
Be sure to read the rest here, and then feel free to comment.

Country Class Forever!

2011-09-23T01:14:00.002-05:00

A new book The Ruling Class: How They Corrupted America and What We Can Do About It' by Angelo M. Codevilla and Rush Limbaugh is reportedly based on this excellent earlier article by retired Boston University professor Codevilla.

Here's a sample quote from the article:
"Today, few speak well of the ruling class. Not only has it burgeoned in size and pretense, but it also has undertaken wars it has not won, presided over a declining economy and mushrooming debt, made life more expensive, raised taxes, and talked down to the American people. Americans' conviction that the ruling class is as hostile as it is incompetent has solidified."

I consider myself part of the Country Class, and urge anyone tired of the serial incompetence of our self-appointed betters in the Democratic and Republican parties to read Codevilla's article.

How much do I deserve to keep?

2011-09-19T07:28:00.003-05:00

"Out of every dollar that I earn, how much do you think I deserve to keep?" was for me the most interesting question asked at last week's TEA Party Express debate.

Conservative blog "Hot Air" posted this interesting answer:
"If any of us doesn’t deserve to keep everything he has earned, then that man is a slave. Alternatively, he is less than human; he has no moral standing, and no unalienable rights inhere in him.
...

The question of what we “deserve” boils down to which came first, the individual human with rights, or the state. America was founded on the principle that the individual human with rights comes first."

And yet, Jesus' view of the matter seemed different in Mark 12:17:
"Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's."

Nothing in Jesus' words about deserving to keep anything for ourselves.

All that we have and are is a gift from a loving Creator. In response, we too love and share with others - but the sharing must be voluntary, or Hot Air's point applies.

A Win for Recording Rights

2011-08-24T23:28:00.010-05:00

Good news from Illinois for a change. Although we may be one of the last states in the nation where it's a felony for citizens to record or video police, a jury today needed less than an hour to find a woman innocent of that charge after she recorded 2 policemen trying to talk her out of filing a complaint against another policeman for sexual harassment.

Here's the verdict.
And here's the earlier legal discussion by Instapundit, who is pretty indignant:
"Tar, feathers. 'Eavesdropping on a public official,' my ass. Let me be very clear: That law is there for only one reason: to protect corrupt politicians and their lackeys from exposure."

Update (also via Instapundit):
A federal appeals court has just issued a welcome related ruling here.
"A Boston lawyer suing the city and police officers who arrested him for using his cell phone to record a drug arrest on the Common won a victory today when a federal appeals court said the officers could not claim "qualified immunity" because they were performing their job when they arrested him under a state law that bars audio recordings without the consent of both parties.

...the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston said the way Glik was arrested and his phone seized under a state wiretapping law violated his First and Fourth Amendment rights"

Instapundit adds:

"The really important part is that the court held that the right to photograph is “clearly established,” meaning that the officers are not entitled to official immunity."

Update2:
I had a chance to ask a local policeman about this, and was advised it's OK to video police here in their public duties, just not OK to audio record them. Sadly, I don't know how to disable the audio part of a video recording on my iPhone.

Reason Magazine reports the ACLU is also now involved, claiming:
"...'the First Amendment protects people from criminal penalty for openly audio recording the conversations of police officers in the performance of their official duties in public places and forums, while speaking at an ordinary volume—that is, conversations where there is no reasonable expectation of privacy.' The ACLU says this standard, which the vast majority of states have adopted, is required by the First Amendment."
I'm happy to again find the ACLU supporting an important civil liberty.

Update3:
The State Journal-Register reports an area Democratic legislator is offering a legislative fix:
"House Bill 3944, sponsored by Rep. Elaine Nekritz, D-Northbrook, would amend the Illinois Eavesdropping Act, under which a member of the public can be charged with a felony if he or she records the conversations of police officers, prosecutors and other law enforcement personnel without their knowledge.
...
Nekritz thinks she’ll have a tough time passing the bill."
Please thank Rep. Nekritz for starting to fix this problem, and encourage your legislator to support her bill.

A New Entitlement

2011-07-31T15:40:00.003-05:00

Overheard conversation by two boys at church today:
10 year old: My cousin is 11, and doesn't have a cell phone.
5 year old: No phone? Wow.

End Game?

2011-07-27T22:06:00.003-05:00

This analysis by Keith Hennessey of end game options for debt limit negotiations this week seems about right. Clearly seeing its faults and limitations, he supports the Boehner bill, saying "There is nothing in the bill that I dislike. That’s a rarity." He also says "I can see no viable alternative strategy to enact a stronger bill." (He also says a lot more, so read the whole thing.)

Update: Ah, leave it to Jerry Pournelle to remind us of simpler and better solutions:
"There is a way out. It starts with cuts in Entitlements. Begin this way: from this moment, you are entitled to only 99% of what you were previously entitled to. That includes Social Security, Welfare, your pension, Medicare. Meanwhile all government salaries and benefits are reduced by 1%. Once again, these are real cuts. Set up the 12-person joint Congressional Commission, but its purpose is to identify programs that we can no longer afford to fund. Those will simply be eliminated or deferred until we have budget surpluses. They include a great number of regulatory agencies and enforcements. We set up a second Commission whose job it is to determine which regulations we can afford to put off until there is a budget surplus. In other words, determine what we can afford and must have even if we have to borrow money to do it. Everything else stops until we can afford it"

I particularly appreciated Pournelle's reminder that what is now under discussion is not yet cuts at all, but only increases at a slower rate.

The real issue in the debt limit negotiations isn't the debt limit

2011-07-26T07:50:00.004-05:00

"A Standard & Poor's analyst said recently that the issue is not so much raising the debt ceiling as lowering the trajectory of federal budget deficits." (Washington Examiner)

Raising the debt limit alone would only help if there were still folks anywhere willing to buy more American debt at current rates.

Dave Ramsey for President!

Update: Another confirmation of the problem:
"David Beers, managing director of sovereign credit ratings at Standard & Poor’s, explains why a decision on a downgrade doesn’t hinge on the debt ceiling talks: 'For us, the issue is not the debt limit — it’s the underlying fiscal dynamics. It’s not obvious to us that this political divide that is proving so difficult to bridge is going to be any more bridgeable three months from now or six months from now or a year from now.'"

Who's for Freedom?

2011-07-15T03:41:00.004-05:00

The top to bottom axis in a two-axis political compass usually shows where the taker falls on a scale from valuing freedom to valuing control. According to Virginia Postrel's classic 1998 book "The Future and its Enemies", that's a key distinction, and one that can make strange bedfellows of folks who disagree widely on the usual left to right axis.

Postrel labels those who value control "stasists", and those who value freedom "dynamists." She further divides stasists into those who for cultural or environmentalist reasons want to prevent change, and technocrats who want to control all change top down. Dynamists, on the other hand, are those who want human progress limited by as few rules as possible, and for those rules to be predictable, even though their results therefore can't be.

The problem she notes is that when those who oppose change work together with those who want to be in charge of any change that is allowed, the result can quickly become stasis. She cites this as a key reason why creative and productive societies and empires eventually become set in their ways and unable to adapt to changing conditions.

So, as we head into another election season, it might be a good idea to try and decide for each candidate whether they are a stasist or a dynamist, perhaps even before worrying about whether they are a Democrat or a Republican.

(Interestingly, I bought this book as a used-in-like-new-condition hardbound that turned out to be signed by the author for less than half the cost of reading it on my Kindle. To me that suggests Postrel's publisher is a stasist.)

Google+

2011-07-08T12:40:00.002-05:00

Anyone eager to try Google+? I'm a new member (Thanks Drew!), and it appears I have 8 invites I can give out.

Pick any two

2011-06-28T17:50:00.002-05:00

For years, I've loved the saying: "Good, fast, or cheap - pick any two." It neatly summed up our options for IT projects at the University.

Here's another to ponder, from Jim Bennett via Instapundit yesterday: “Democracy, open immigration, multiculturalism — pick any two.”

A Caution on Freedom

2011-05-15T23:17:00.004-05:00

Cautionary note to the Tea Party:
"The genius of the American system is not freedom; the genius of the American system is checks and balances. Nobody gets all the power. Everybody is watching everybody else. It is as if the founding fathers knew, intrinsically, that the soul of man, unwatched, is perverse."
(page 18 of Donald Miller's book "Blue Like Jazz")

OK, here's another, from two pages later:
"...it did me no good to protest America's responsibility in global poverty when I wasn't even giving money to my church, which has a terrific homeless ministry."

Update: One more great quote, from page 220:
"Nobody will listen to you unless they sense that you like them."

Talking Left and Living Right

2011-05-14T21:39:00.003-05:00

I just read this excellent Weekly Standard article about Santa Monica playwright David Mamet's recent political conversion from life-long but unreflective progressive to Hollywood conservative. What started the process was this observation:
"He saw he was Talking Left and Living Right, a condition common among American liberals, particularly the wealthy among them, who can, for instance, want to impose diversity requirements on private companies while living in monochromatic neighborhoods, or vote against school vouchers while sending their kids to prep school, or shelter their income while advocating higher tax rates."

Mamet also comments on America:
"'I wondered, How did the system function so well? Because it does—the system functions beautifully.' How did the happiest, freest, and most prosperous country in history sprout from the Hobbesian jungle?
'I realized it was because of this thing, this miracle, this U.S. Constitution.' The separation of powers, the guarantee of property, the freedoms of speech and religion meant that self-interested citizens had a system in which they could hammer out their differences without killing each other. Everyone who wanted to could get ahead. The Founders had accepted the tragic view of life and, as it were, made it pay. It’s a happy paradox: The gloomier one’s view of human nature—and Mamet’s was gloomy—the deeper one’s appreciation of the American miracle."

Mamet's rabbi is Mordecai Finley:
"He is a creature who is not supposed to exist in nature: the Republican rabbi of a liberal congregation packed with show people.
'For most of my congregants,' he said, 'I’m the only Republican they know.'"
Read the whole thing here.

Why envy is bad. Or, why John Galt is happier than Wesley Mouch

2011-04-14T20:01:00.006-05:00

Northwestern University professor James Lindgren recently published What Drives Views on Government Redistribution and Anti-Capitalism: Envy or a Desire for Social Dominance? Therein we learn the cost of envy:
"compared to anti-redistributionists, strong redistributionists have about two to three times higher odds of reporting that in the prior seven days they were angry, mad at someone, outraged, sad, lonely, and had trouble shaking the blues. Similarly, anti-redistributionists had about two to four times higher odds of reporting being happy or at ease. Not only do redistributionists report more anger, but they report that their anger lasts longer. When asked about the last time they were angry, strong redistributionists were more than twice as likely as strong opponents of leveling to admit that they responded to their anger by plotting revenge. Last, both redistributionists and anti-capitalists expressed lower overall happiness, less happy marriages, and lower satisfaction with their financial situations and with their jobs or housework."

And if you're asking "Who is John Galt?", be sure to see the new movie "Atlas Shrugged: (part 1)" opening (when else?) on Tax Day.

(Linked by Instapundit to Beltway Confidential which linked to Marginal Revolution.)

Did Hawaian long-form birth certificates ask about religion in 1961?

2011-04-11T08:01:00.006-05:00

Donald Trump is making waves again by commenting about President Obama's long-form birth certificate. A counter-attack, defending why even Obama himself can't get a copy of the long-form birth certificate is here, including an interview with Dr. Chiyome Fukino, who has seen the long-form certificate.

Given the lasting touchiness of the subject, and how quickly and easily the issue might go away if a provably-accurate copy were released, I suspect something politically-inconvenient is stated on that form. The obvious possibility is a question about religion.

Personally, I'm opposed to listing religion on any public document, and don't think any answer to such a question about a baby has anything to do with the beliefs of an adult. It also has nothing to do with who can be President of the United States.

Update: According to CNN Politics, there was no question about religion on Hawaiian birth certificates of that era:
"Could Obama, a self-proclaimed Christian, be preventing the distribution of copies of the original birth certificate because it identifies him as a Muslim?

Fukino says no. The original certificate includes no mention of the president's religion. And indeed, other original certificates from that time don't mention faith."

What are our leaders smoking?

2011-03-27T16:37:00.002-05:00

Although I support the idea of a "war on terror", I don't support just any old war any old place for any reason. And I'm getting increasingly uncomfortable, both logically and morally, with the fights our nation now chooses to pick.

Canadian writer Mark Steyn absolutely nailed the problem in this Orange County Register column, including these points:
"... there's not a lot to be said for forswearing imperialism and even modest cultural assertiveness, and still spending 10 years getting shot up in Afghanistan helping to create, bankroll and protect a so-called justice system that puts a man on death row for converting to Christianity."
and
"Now suddenly [Gadhafi's] got to go – in favor of 'freedom-loving' 'democrats' from Benghazi. That would be in eastern Libya – which, according to West Point's Counter Terrorism Center, has sent per capita the highest number of foreign jihadists to Iraq."

Hello, anybody home in the White House? Clue phone: It's for you.

A Deeper Perspective on Events in Madison

2011-02-22T18:56:00.003-06:00

Walter Russell Mead suggests in The American Interest that the current protests in Madison, WI reflect a conflict between those who see unions as our last defense against a "race to the bottom", and those who see what Joseph Schumpeter would call "creative destruction" as our best defense AGAINST such a race.
"What we’ve got to do here is to deploy technology and aggressive, creative reform and restructuring to health, education and government. Much bureaucratic work in government is routine; computers are going to have to replace people wherever possible. Staffs are going to have to shrink in ways that are simply unimaginable to present day government workers and their union leaders.
...
The educational system is also going to change in ways the unions and the guilds can’t imagine — and will fight to the death. Going forward, students need to be evaluated and credentialed on the basis of what they know, not on the basis of time served.
...
Similarly the medical system is going to have to change dramatically. Physician assistants, aided by Watson-style computers, will handle more and more of our direct encounters with the medical system.
...
To many of the workers caught up in these changes, the transformation of these economic sectors is going to look and feel very much like a race to the bottom. The spinners and weavers in 19th century Britain felt this way as the industrial revolution turned jobs once done by highly skilled guild members into poorly paid jobs performed by unskilled industrial workers.
...
But there was also a pony. Cheaper clothes ultimately meant — and continue to mean — better dressed people.
...
The same thing needs to happen in government, education, medicine, accountancy and law."

No Longer Safe for Americans to Travel Abroad?

2011-02-17T09:51:00.006-06:00

Long ago, being a Roman citizen was a huge advantage for travelers abroad. No one wanted to mess with a Roman citizen for fear of Rome's response. Sadly, the same cannot be said for American citizens venturing abroad. Rather, it is as though Americans have become special targets world-wide, by people convinced America will no longer defend either its interests or its citizens.

This IDB editorial shows the world-wide scope of the problem, ending with these words:
"These brazen acts are the product of a superpower's weakness. So long as the Obama administration treats America as a nothing-special nation, the world's tyrants will play him like a fiddle, provoking the U.S. and challenging his leadership. They're doing it the way all weak states do — by targeting citizens."

(I don't lay all the blame for this on the current administration -- I had the same concerns in the Clinton and Bush years.)

Is conservative in higher ed the new gay?

2011-02-10T08:25:00.002-06:00

Having spent most of my career in higher ed, this Email to Instapundit seems accurate:
"I’ve just been watching the first series of Mad Men, and I’m struck by the gay guy Salvatore Romano, and how similar his behavior is to me, only I’m hiding my politics, not my sexuality. There are also the classic moments, whereby fellow believers in academia carefully try to work out if you are one of “us”."
Read the whole thing here, including this comment by Glenn Reynolds:
"But yeah, smart administrators understand that intellectual diversity on the faculty is a good thing, for purely self-interested reasons alone. Back in the 1990s when I was writing a lot of second amendment stuff, somebody tried to get my dean to fire me, saying that I was fomenting domestic terrorism. But my dean told me that he was glad to have me writing that stuff, because when alumni or legislators talked about ivory-tower liberal faculties, he could just send ‘em a copy of my 'Critical Guide To The Second Amendment.'"

Time for US troops and aid to leave Afghanistan (among other places?)

2011-02-09T20:39:00.009-06:00

Why are American soldiers, many of whom are practicing Christians, still trying to save the current Afghanistani government as it again tries to execute citizens who become Christians?

The Daily Mail reported (3 days ago):
"An Afghan physiotherapist will be executed within three days for converting to Christianity.

Said Musa, 45, has been held for eight months in a Kabul prison where he claims he has been tortured and sexually abused by inmates and guards.

Mr Musa, who lost his left leg in a landmine explosion in the 1990s, has worked for the Red Cross for 15 years and helps to treat fellow amputees."

Sadly, similar examples abound in other countries, as USA Today reported a day later:
"...Egypt's Christians are hardly alone in their suffering. Here's a headline from 2010: 'Catholic Bishop Stabbed to Death in Turkey.' And here's another: 'Islamist hard-liners in Indonesia target Christians.' And another: 'Iraqi Christians mourn after church siege kills 58.' The Christmas season saw 48 killed in Muslim attacks in Nigeria. On Christmas Day, Iran opened its campaign against conversions by arresting dozens of evangelicals. Bombs left on the doorsteps of Christian homes in Iraq killed two and injured 14 on Dec. 30.

On and on the list goes. The single most dangerous thing in the world to be, right now, is a Christian in a Muslim country."

(Hat tip to secularist blog Instapundit for both links.)

Are there are Blog Geezers too?

2011-02-03T07:30:00.002-06:00

Google News picked up an interesting FrumForum title this morning: Fox Geezer Syndrome
After noting from Conor Friedersdorf out that the same thing exists on the other side of the political aisle (in a roommate petulant, self-righteous and angry from watching Keith Olbermann every night), Richmond Ramsey notes:
"Over the past couple of years, I’ve been keeping track of a trend among friends around my age (late thirties to mid-forties). Eight of us (so far) share something in common besides our conservatism: a deep frustration over how our parents have become impossible to take on the subject of politics. Without fail, it turns out that our folks have all been sitting at home watching Fox News Channel all day – especially Glenn Beck’s program."

My first thought was, another good reason not to watch TV. My second thought though, was to realize the same may be happening to retirees with too much time on their hands who end up reading too many blogs and news stories from too narrow a slice of the political spectrum. I'm not retired yet, but I've already had to stop reading several too shrill too often blogs I used to enjoy.

Ramsey notes "We live in a time and place that puts high value on emotion, and that views emotions as self-validating. To feel something is thought by many to be sufficient evidence of its truthfulness, or at least its authenticity. This is a mark of the barbarian."

I like to review stuff

2011-01-29T15:50:00.004-06:00

A few may recall Jim Oldfield and I used to publish a Commodore computer review magazine in the 80's called the "Midnite Software Gazette." Those days are long gone, but I still enjoy writing up my impressions of things I buy from Amazon.com. Over the past couple of years, that has resulted in my "reviewer rank" improving from an original rating of over 200,000.

My first clue that this might matter was when Amazon invited me to become what they call a "Vine reviewer." This entails being offered a variety of new or forthcoming books or other products for free, in return for reviewing them. That has turned out to be way better than the old Midnite days, because I am allowed to choose what products to request for review, and therefore rarely have to slog through anything I really dislike.

The reviewing apparently passed another milestone today, as my Amazon reviews suddenly became labeled "Top 1000 Reviewer." (Not by much: my rank was #997 today.) I'd seen that label before, and considered it impressive - as in that person must know their stuff, along with the even more impressive "Top 500" and "Top 50" designations, though I have no interest in seeking either.

That adds another fun alternative career possibility besides computers or child care for after retirement: reviewer. If I recall correctly, my mom used to be a popular book reviewer, so perhaps I have her to thank.

For anyone interested, here's a link to my Amazon reviewer profile.

(I do find it intriguing that my Amazon reviews are popular, but almost no one reads this blog, even though it includes reviews. I suspect that's because I am more interested in economics, religion, and politics than most Amazon shoppers.)

Why Palin and the Tea Parties Matter

2011-01-26T23:19:00.003-06:00

I just read an interesting Jewish Press article The Aim of Blood Libels on the importance of Sarah Palin and Tea Parties:
"In certain ways, Palin is a revolutionary leader and the Tea Party movement is a revolutionary movement. For nearly a hundred years, the Left in its various permutations has captured Western policy by controlling the elite discourse from New York and Los Angeles to London to Paris to Tel Aviv. By making it "politically incorrect" to assert claims of Western, Judeo-Christian morality or advocate robust political, economic and military policies, the Left has made it socially and professionally costly for people to think freely and believe in their countries.

What distinguishes Palin from other conservative leaders in the U.S. and makes her an important figure worldwide is her indifference to the views of the Left's opinion makers. Her capacity to steer debate in a way no other conservative politician can owes entirely to the fact that she does not seek to win over leftist elites. She seeks to unseat them.

The same can be said of the Tea Party. The reason it frightens the Left, and the Republican leaders who owe their positions to their willingness to accept the Left's basic agenda, is because it does not accept the Left's policy platform."

As always, read the whole thing. (Hat tip: Instapundit)

A Simple Cheap Way to Help Solve the Public Pension Problem

2011-01-26T11:41:00.002-06:00

Here's an excellent suggestion from the Washington Examiner on how to start holding public pensions to the same ethical standards as corporate pensions:
"The true total of unfunded liabilities is not clear because many public pension systems -- including that of Illinois -- are not held to basic standards of transparency. To solve this problem, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., along with House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., have reintroduced a novel solution first reported in these pages a month ago. The Public Pension Transparency Act would require states and municipalities to hand over complete information about their pension funds to the U.S. Treasury Department as a condition of receiving federal tax exemptions for the bonds they issue. Treasury will then make the information public, so that taxpayers and investors can see what's really going on with state and local government public pension systems."

Bankrupt States

2011-01-21T10:45:00.012-06:00

The New York Times has an interesting article about the possibility and implications of allowing states to declare bankruptcy:
"Policy makers are working behind the scenes to come up with a way to let states declare bankruptcy and get out from under crushing debts, including the pensions they have promised to retired public workers. "
...
"Bankruptcy could permit a state to alter its contractual promises to retirees, which are often protected by state constitutions, and it could provide an alternative to a no-strings bailout."

With the Middlewife already a state retiree, and me expecting to become one within the next 18 months, this idea of allowing states to walk away from pension benefits guaranteed by state constitution is of huge concern.

First, I'm reminded that thanks to ERISA (Empoyee Retirement Income Security Act), private companies are no longer permitted to blatantly mismanage pension funds. Unfortunately, governments were exempted. Adding them to ERISA now seems a reasonable condition in return for any relief.

Next, more bailouts aren't the answer. Nor is adding state government employees to Social Security, unless accompanied by enough assets to be actuarially sound - which isn't going to happen.

That leaves raising taxes, cutting other spending, or some equivalent of bankruptcy as remaining options. My state (Illinois) has just significantly raised tax rates, but not yet shown willingness to reduce spending or pay anything toward pensions. If I recall correctly, Illinois has contributed nothing to its pension funds for twenty years. What's currently in those pension funds appears to be only the half withheld from worker paychecks.

For me, the most troubling line in the Times article was:
"Unfunded pensions become unsecured debts in municipal bankruptcy and may be reduced."

During my lifetime, I've owned life insurance in three 100 or more year old insurance companies that nonetheless managed to go bankrupt. In each case, I eventually ended up receiving about half what I was owed.

If the same were done by my state, I'd be lucky even to get back money already withheld from my salary.

One option I've not seen discussed might make sense for all government pensions (including Social Security) -- only guarantee them up to a sensible upper limit.

Update: According to SURS (Illinois State University Retirement System), a bill has just been introduced by Representative Jack D. Franks (D) to do precisely that for Illinois pensions:
"HB 146 - Amends the General Assembly, Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund, State Employees, State Universities, Downstate Teachers, and Judges Articles of the Illinois Pension Code. Caps the highest salary for annuity purposes, final rate of earnings, final average compensation, and final average salary for current members, participants, and participating employees of the affected systems at $106,800, but authorizes that amount to be annually increased by the lesser of 3% or one-half of the annual percentage increase in the consumer price index-u for the 12 months ending with the September preceding each November 1. Requires employee contributions to also be based on these capped amounts."

Another might be to require state legislators to retire with the same plan and benefits as other state retirees. They might also be required to live under the same health plan as other state retirees. (The same might also usefully be applied to Congress.)

No longer even on the radar?

2010-10-17T07:29:00.005-05:00

I just read this Los Angeles Times opinion column suggesting the reason young folks no longer join churches is because evangelical churches are too politically conservative.
"Very few of these new "nones" actually call themselves atheists, and many have rather conventional beliefs about God and theology. But they have been alienated from organized religion by its increasingly conservative politics."

What struck me about that wasn't the author's apparent wish that churches should therefore move left politically. Rather, it was that all of the mainstream denominations like the United Methodist and Episcopalian churches that already often seem like the "Democratic Party at prayer" aren't even on the author's radar as an option.

William Sloane Coffin was a famous liberal pastor in the '60s, who I liked for his leadership in opposing the war in Viet Nam. (I was also a fan of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., but he was a Republican.) Who's out there from the left side of the aisle today? Jeremiah Wright?

My own pastor keeps his political views private, at least from the pulpit, agreeing with John Wesley that "...as to all opinions which do not strike at the root of Christianity, we think and let think." Both Democrats and Republicans find much to love about our church.

Putting Government Waste on a Diet

2010-10-11T16:56:00.004-05:00

I'm impressed by this article from Reason Magazine on what could profitably be cut from government spending, for other more effective and efficient use, in or out of government.

Here are a few of my favorite lines, though (as always) please read the whole thing:
Medicaid: "The first step is to stop the matching grant funding process, in which states receive federal money for each Medicaid dollar they spend—creating an incentive for ever greater spending."
Military: "You can’t make a serious dent in government spending without tackling the military budget."
Education: "...a January 2010 gold-standard study by the Department of Health and Human Services found that by first grade not one of more than 114 academic and behavioral tests indicated a reliable, statistically significant effect from participating in Head Start."
Drugs: "As Sting recently observed, channeling John Stuart Mill, the war on drugs by its very nature tramples on 'the right to sovereignty over one’s own mind and body.'"
FCC: "When the FCC was launched in 1934, backers argued that its existence was justified by airwave scarcity. In an age of information overload, with a wide array of media choices available to anyone with a mobile phone or broadband connection, no such argument can credibly be made."
Farms: "... farm welfare goes overwhelmingly to large corporations. (Those cuddly fruit and vegetable growers at the farmer’s market are virtually all ineligible for federal aid.)"
Energy: "If Congress and the White House must pursue the development of alternative energy via social engineering, a far more effective alternative to allowing DOE bureaucrats to pick technology “winners” would be a tax on conventional energy."
Davis-Bacon: "Davis-Bacon was born as a racist reaction to the presence of Southern black construction workers on a Long Island, New York, veterans hospital project."
Stimulus: "Harvard economist Robert Barro recently estimated that the $794 billion stimulus will shrink private investment in the economy by $900 billion."

Amazing PC bargain

2010-10-11T00:04:00.002-05:00

The Middlewife's PC is 8 years old, and mine 6 years old, so we've been expecting to replace both for a year - just waiting for the right alternative to become available. Since we've been VERY happy with our Asus Eee PC 1000 netbook, the goal was to get whatever net top (tiny) PC first became available that truly improves on the basic Atom 1.6GHZ single-core CPU with 1GB of RAM upgradable to 2GB. That has taken two years to happen, but last week Acer finally offered a net top with an upgraded Atom 1.8GHZ dual-core CPU with 2GB of RAM, upgradable to 4GB, and a built-in ION2 GPU.

What's truly amazing about the new model is that it only costs half as much as the netbook, and takes up no more space (total volume 1 liter), despite being significantly more powerful. It's also still extremely efficient, using at most only 5 more watts than the netbook, and usually silent. Aparently others agree, as it's up to #2 seller among desktop PCs at Amazon tonight, right behind the more powerful but also more costly new Mac Mini we'd also considered.

Here's a link to my review of it on Amazon, and another to its product page there, if you'd like to read more. Highly recommended!

Recession" over? Gold says "No!"

2010-09-24T19:40:00.003-05:00

The Drudge Report notes this headline from Bloomberg today "Gold Climbs to $1,300 on Dollar Concern..." That number got my attention due to this quote I'd marked in "The Return of the Great Depression", by Vox Day: "if the price of gold exceeds $1,500 per ounce by the end of 2010, this will be a strong indicator that the Whiskey Zulu scenario is unfolding. [defined earlier as] ...the inflation scenario, which foresees Bernanke and his famous printing press forcing the United States to follow the hyperinflationary lead of Germany's failed Weimar repblic and Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe in a futile attempt to reinflate one more asset bubble."

Here's another great quote from the same book: "The genius of Keynes's general theory was not that it provided an economic model that more closely approximated the real world than classical theory, or even that it promised a means of ensuring stable, long-term economic growth, but that it told politicians exactly what they wanted to hear."

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs under Fire

2010-09-07T08:43:00.002-05:00

Forty years ago, as I was studying for a Masters in counseling, one of the key things we studied was Abraham Maslow's "hierarchy of needs", the idea that people can only focus on higher-level needs after lower-level ones are met. At one level, this is obvious: someone with serious unmet physical needs (such as air, water or food) may not even be able to pay attention to such less-obvious needs as friendship.

Recently though, the top level of Maslow's hierarchy (Self-actualization) has come under attack from at least two directions. One criticism is that there is no evolutionary value to self-actualization. Another, and the reason for this post, is that (like Lord Keynes' endorsement of politicians spending more in hard times) it told leaders what they wanted to hear. As Keith Humphreys puts it here (in a post linked by Instapundit): "Maslow did what Kolhberg did in his theory of moral development and Rollo May and all the existentialist psychiatrists did in their theories: He asserted that the objectively highest state of human development was to be like him and like people he admired."

It's becoming clear to me that I could have been a more-critical thinker in college and grad school, as I happily digested the worshipful teaching of Keynesian economics and Maslow's psychology. I wonder what convenient self-praising beliefs I'm just as uncritically ingesting today?

Is he or isn't he? Why we still wonder

2010-08-27T22:58:00.005-05:00

It occurs to me there's really a simple reason the questioning about President Obama's religion continues to simmer -- we all know where the President used to go to church, but we don't know where he's going now, if anywhere, unlike both his immediate predecessors.

That's between him and God - none of our business. Even so, we care, and I for one would be very happy for our President to find a faith community again, because I can't imagine doing my own life without that.

Hyperinflation?

2010-08-27T21:03:00.002-05:00

I've been concerned for the past 3 years about the possibility of hyperinflation in the U.S., a la that of the early 1970s, but hadn't really thought through what an even worse case scenario would look like. Typler Durden, on the other hand, lived through hyperinflation in Chile during that period, and describes the dangers and the opportunities in Zero Hedge.
"Once basic necessities are unmet, and remain unmet for a sustained period of time, any asset will be willingly and instantly sacrificed, in order to meet that basic need.
To put it in simple terms: If you were dying of thirst in the middle of the desert, would you give up your family heirloom diamonds, in exchange for a gallon of water? The answer is obvious—yes. You would sacrifice anything and everyting—instantly—in order to meet your basic needs, or those of your family."
So clearly Mormons are on to something here with the idea of storing a year's supply of food.

Even then, Durden suggests, there is opportunity (see the article for two great examples):
"Buy when there’s blood on the streets.
That’s Baron de Rothschild’s famous line—but it hides a key insight, one which should be highlighted perhaps even more forcefully than the line itself:
Even in the midst of Apocalypse, things will get better."

On the other hand, Durden adds, things might then get worse in a different way:
"...just about every period of hyperinflation has been stabilized by some subsequent form of autocratic or totalitarian government."

Read the whole thing here.

It's not about you

2010-08-09T07:21:00.003-05:00

A recent New York Times column by Massachusetts UCC pastor G. Jeffrey MacDonald suggests "churchgoers increasingly want pastors to soothe and entertain them" as though that were a bad thing. The column continues "In the early 2000s, the advisory committee of my small congregation in Massachusetts told me to keep my sermons to 10 minutes, tell funny stories and leave people feeling great about themselves."

Brings back memories, that does. As a seminarian in Boston 47 years ago, I was advised to write my sermons down, and limit their length. But that was because I had little of value to say yet, especially when I tried to preach without full notes. Fortunately for both me and the congregations I served, my preaching improved enough I was allowed to preach to an audience of thousands monthly on TV just four years later, for exactly 21 minutes each time.

In the Commodore computer era, I would occasionally speak before large groups, answering any and all questions, and was embarrassed to realize I was vastly more comfortable speaking about the details of operating a cheap computer than I was about the content of the Bible - because I knew so much more about the computer than the Bible.

Twenty-five years later, I know quite a bit more about the Bible than before, but still not nearly as much as many fellow 'Creekers. But I know enough to recognize that even Jesus used stories (parables) to keep the audience awake as he taught. I had Elmer King for that. He sat in the front row at the Church of All Nations in Boston, and as long as he occasionally said "Amen" or "Preach it" or really anything at all, I could continue. But when Elmer shut up, so did I, because he was thereby gently letting me know I no longer had anything to say worth the congregation's time to hear.

Pastor MacDonald seems to think church is all about him - what he thinks the congregation needs to hear. Worse, he seems to think whining in the newspaper will improve matters. Good luck with that!

As a counter example, I understand Pastor Rob Bell grew the start-up Mars Hill church in Grand Rapids, MI from nothing to 800 people in a year, preaching on nothing but the (to me incredibly-boring) book of Leviticus! I heard Rob myself two weeks ago, and as always, he easily kept me awake and learning for a full 45 minutes, without watering down any aspect of the Gospel.

As a 'Creeker, I am familiar with the "theater-style seating and giant projection screens" MacDonald decries, and would only remind him those came later. In the beginning, Willow was just a group of twelve teens with a student pastor. If that pastor hadn't listened to and shared the whispers of God as they attempted to recreate the loving community of the original Acts 2 church, there would never have been any theater seats or screens.

If it were just about being entertained, as MacDonald suggests, I for one wouldn't waste my time even showing up. What keeps me involved is the continuing sense that our congregation is the eye of the hurricane of what God is doing in this generation, and the chance to be part of that important work.

If MacDonald's church isn't like that, he might consider looking inward rather than outward for the reason. And when he's ready to actually do what God presumably called him to do, he might consider attending something like Willow's Leadership Summit next August rather than complaining about his sheep to wolves.

Welcoming the Stranger

2010-07-29T17:16:00.004-05:00

Last night's mid-week at Willow Creek Community Church (South Barrington, IL main campus) featured a dialog with Matthew Soerens, co-author of the immigration-related book "Welcoming the Stranger."

Three key points were made:
1 It isn't even financially possible to just deport everyone who has entered the U.S. without permission, or overstayed a visa. The cost of doing so would be in the trillions.
2 It isn't fair to just give such people unearned amnesty, as they have indeed violated legitimate laws in coming or over-staying here.
3 For some such persons, there is currently no legal way for them to make things right, short of leaving the U.S. and never returning, even if they have U.S. citizens in their immediate families.

Therefore, the discussion concluded, some process of legalization needs to be developed, some way for such persons to make things right without just going away forever.

The analogy offered was this: if no one obeys the 55 MPH speed limit on the Interstate highway, the cure is to raise the speed limit, and then strictly enforce the new limit. As applied to immigration, if we aren't enforcing our current laws, then let's change them to laws we ARE willing to enforce. (Otherwise, in a few more years, we'll be asked to legalize yet another batch of even-newer would-be immigrants, attracted by whatever amnesty is offered those here now.)

So far, so good. But as I left, I realize two more things are needful:
4 Before those who have NOT followed the rules are legalized, we FIRST need to welcome all the would-be immigrants who did follow the rules and applied for legal entry to the U.S.
5 Anyone being legalized needs to understand and commit to American core values -- nothing else holds us together as a nation.

Those who act as though America were the worst country in history are both incorrect and make it more difficult to welcome newcomers. Similarly, those who seek freedom here without affirming freedom for others may never be able to be safely welcomed.

Three qualities of satisfying work

2010-07-06T19:52:00.003-05:00

Here's my favorite quote from the excellent book "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell:
"Those three things--autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward--are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying." (p. 149)

Can a Tea Partisan be Christian?

2010-06-27T07:55:00.006-05:00

Can a fully-devoted Christ follower also be a Tea Partisan? Many in the faith (including friends and relatives) feel the famous question "What would Jesus Do?", when applied to social problems requires more government. Timothy Dalrymple explains in patheos here (hat tip Instapundit) how such a view could become a problem:
"Every American who cares about the vitality of the American democratic experiment should strenuously object to the way in which the Tea Party movement has been systematically misrepresented and mocked across most major media. The Tea Party -- however one views the principles and personalities most associated with it -- is precisely the kind of citizen accountability our founders envisioned and our form of government requires. Democracy holds the governing class accountable to the governed, and the Tea Party movement is a clear example of the governed standing athwart the will of the governors and shouting Stop."
...
"Tea Party supporters and detractors alike believe that government should be neither too small to discharge its essential functions nor too large to preserve a space for individual rights and liberties. They disagree on where 'too small' and 'too large' stand upon the spectrum."
...
"It serves no one's interest, and certainly not the interests of the poor and vulnerable, to cripple our economy and hang around its neck a massive albatross of debt."
...
"The Bible is not a civics textbook. It tells us that we should love the neighbor, yet it does not tell us which policies best express that love. It tells us to protest injustice and stand with the oppressed, yet it does not tell us whether liberal or conservative policies best respond to injustice and oppression. How simple and easy it would be if one political philosophy were the clear deliverance of scripture, and all Christians could give themselves wholeheartedly to its advocacy. Instead, Christians are left with the hard task of discernment."

Cutting clutter

2010-06-12T08:50:00.007-05:00

One of my goals in the past couple of years has been eliminating unwanted advertising in my mailbox, on my driveway, and at my front door.

The Catalog Choice Website has been a big help. Whenever a new catalog shows up, I process an unsubscribe request for it via Catalog Choice. Some advertisers require several notices, but most eventually see the illogic of spending money on catalogs and postage for someone determined not to buy anything so advertised.

Catalog Choice also shows how to opt out of printed phone directories. (Does anyone still use printed directories in the age of Google?) Further, it shows how to opt out of unwanted credit card offers -- important for avoiding identity theft.

Even free advertising papers usually include a tiny notice near the address on how to opt out. That mostly works, though Tribune Local Values recently started throwing a plastic-covered ad paper on my driveway each Saturday, after earlier complying with my request not to send it via U.S. mail. I've now requested they also cancel driveway delivery, as it eases the task of thieves figuring out who's away, harms the environment, and (since I dispose of it unread) achieves absolutely nothing for their advertisers.

I also return all returnable unwanted mail with a "Please take me off your mailing list" rubber stamp, and unsubscribe from unwanted Emails whenever safe to do so, reporting remaining unwanted Emails to the university spam filter.)

Even needed mailings, such as monthly statements, can now be received as Emails. We're now doing that, plus arranging for unavoidable bills to be paid automatically.

All this does eventually work (mostly.) Less pollution in the world, less stress in daily life, and less temptation to waste money.

Jim Champy offers a new free Kindle sample chapter of his book "Inspire" in which he points out the futility of pushing unwanted ads at consumers in the age of Google. He suggests companies instead inspire a positive reputation in existing customers, who will then pass the word to others. That's certainly how I buy. I rarely buy anything unnecessary any more without first reading several independent reviews or consulting knowledgeable friends and family members.

Best book I've ever read about the Mideast

2010-04-11T01:01:00.004-05:00

[Note: This is a copy of my Amazon Vine review here.]

In preparing for a study trip to Israel and Jordan with Willow Creek church's "Dr. B." in 2007 our group was assigned to read two books about the area and its issues. One (Blood Brothers, by Elias Chacour) was excellent; the other (mercifully nameless here) was awful. Ever since, I've sought a better book to cover the same ground as that second book.

Tea with Hezbollah is that vastly better book. In it, two Christians set out to have tea with spiritual leaders throughout the Mideast and discuss with them Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan. It's a crazy idea - reminding me of the title of P.J. O'Rourke's book "Holidays in Hell." Yet somehow, it happens, the trip is described in very interesting detail, and in each meeting along the way each response to the story is faithfully recorded.

I've not been to all the places mentioned, but have been to some of them, and heartily agree with the authors about the importance and difficulty of that particular teaching of Jesus, both 2,000 years ago and today.

I was amazed how often the authors' feelings about a particular place or group exactly matched my own from our trip. I was also impressed by most of the responses - deeply in two cases.

The book also includes an excellent story within a story, a modern equivalent of Jesus' story that adds much to the book.

Whether you are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or None of the Above (carefully listed in alphabetical order), this book is fair and honest and well worth reading. It does not sugar-coat or ignore tough issues, but keeps the focus tightly on Jesus' parable, and what that means today.

One other personal note: I now feel I better understand one particular group a recent DNA test reports is among my ancestors.

Highly recommended!

Tea Parties - Wrong Kind of People?

2010-04-03T18:58:00.006-05:00

This (just linked from Instapundit) explains a lot.
"So if white people like protests and marches, why then is much of "white culture" (the people who like the things above) dismissive of the Tea Party movement? It's got speaking truth to power, outdoors, Diversity, lawyers, bumper stickers, sticking up for the little guy, signs, being offended, even some weed and good t-shirts. The answer is that these protests are attended by the wrong kind of white people.

The wrong kind of white person is the one that "right kind" white people want to avoid.... Sarah Palin, even though she's a strong woman, in a Native American, union household with a disabled child, and an ~~unwed mother~~ single mother daughter is the wrong kind of white person."

That makes me the wrong kind too, and proud of it. I also agree with this:
"Tea Partiers are a diverse bunch. There is room for everyone. The only thing we ask when you join is a commitment to get the federal government out of our pocketbooks and now our doctors' offices. (I don't think they belong in our bedrooms either...)"

Sausage Sunday?

2010-03-20T12:04:00.003-05:00

Anyone who likes sausage probably shouldn't watch it being made, and I understand the same is true of legislation. However, when it comes to using an indefensible process in hopes of achieving a desirable goal, I don't think any legislative effort during my lifetime has surpassed the efforts now being made to pass something that can be called health reform by any means necessary, no matter the consequences for either the country or members of the current majority party in Congress.

Whatever the merits of changing the current system, I am highly offended that "reform" apparently can only be achieved by means hidden in darkness.

As Ann Althouse (law prof at U Wisc.) put it: "If this reform really is desirable, why are they doing it in such a bizarre way?"

In my opinion, "the end justifies the means" is never true, and the odds of whatever may be passed by trickery tomorrow being better overall than what we have now are slim to none.

Second Great Contraction

2010-02-13T10:57:00.003-06:00

Calling our current economic situation a depression is still politically incorrect among media elites (that word is reserved for when a Republican is in the White House.) But thanks to a good new book This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, we have a suitable alternative name: The Second Great Contraction. (The First Great Contraction was also known as the Great Depression.)

Having already lived through the worst recession since World War II in 1974, it's obvious our current situation in the U.S. is worse than any previous post-war recession. What's less obvious is what we can expect in the next few years.

This Time Is Different is very helpful in that regard. After studying close to a thousand economic crises around the world throughout the last five hundred years, its authors conclude these events aren't nearly as different from each other as one might expect.

First, housing booms before a crash are common. Less obvious is that the later housing price crash usually lasts at least seven years (with Japan's now closing in on twenty.)

Second, stock markets bounce back more quickly (within four years) though not always permanently so on the first attempt. We've now had one bounce in the U.S. market, but it is not yet clear whether that was a real recovery, or a "dead cat bounce." (Even a dead cat bounces once after a fall.) Stocks recovered fairly well in 1930 after falling in 1929, but didn't hit bottom until 1933, with another bottom in 1937.

Third, governments often run up huge debts in a crisis, and then attempt to inflate their way out. Some of us were already worried by the huge turnaround from balanced budgets to huge deficits during the Bush '43 years, but everyone should be concerned about the vastly larger budget deficits since. I've already lived through the Carter presidency of 20%+ inflation, and never want to see its like again. Getting the inflation beast back under control once unleashed is very difficult. Worse, under inflation, those most hurt are poor folks on fixed incomes.

Fourth, unemployment lasts a lot longer than the down stock market. At 10% unemployment, we're only halfway to the 20% of the Great Depression, but may not see real improvement for at least a couple more years.

Long story short? This ain't over.

A cell phone I'd like

2010-01-07T17:06:00.006-06:00

One of my pet peeves is that cellphones are still too big. Now there's one that meets my size goals. In fact, it even meets Dick Tracy's size goals. Yep, it's a watch phone, and not one of those monster ones either. Better yet, it's a $200 unlocked quad-band GSM one, so I can both use it as a spare and afford to buy it eventually. Given how often the Middlewife and I dose our cell phones with water, having a spare may be a really good idea. Here's more info about the W phonewatch, from Kempler & Strauss. It can be pre-ordered here. Amazingly, it includes the ability to phone, text, tell time, play MP3s and store #s on a micro SD card, a color VGA video camera, and includes a Bluetooth stylus controller also usable as a headset. Battery life is 150 minutes, or 100 hours of standby, and rechargeable, either via a brick or via USB. I wonder if it's water-resistant?

Update: We just both agreed to go with a pair of T-Mobile "Tap" cell phones instead. The Tap is the first pay-as-you-go phone we've seen that allows, phone calls, camera, memory card, PC sync, SMS, Web browsing, Email syncing, java apps, 3G data service, GPS, etc. without requiring any monthly or annual plan. It also makes our previous Centros look huge.

We'll have to be careful at first with the uses beyond making phone calls and sending SMS messages, to be sure the other features don't eat our prepaid minutes too quickly, but it's really good to know all that is on board if needed, and even better that we were able to buy them for only $100 each (+$10 IL sales tax), including a case and car charger from Costco. All we had to do was drop in our existing T-Mobile SIM cards, and we were in business. Apparently that was a special sale that ends tomorrow, limit of 2 per customer, so act quickly if you want one too.

Update2: The Middlewife still doesn't like the "Tap", and would much rather take over my Centro, which still works fine. Toward that end, we expect to get one iPhone4, for me to use however long I'm still working, and then share between us once we are both retired.

Gadgets and I have had our issues lately. Last Sunday I both dropped my Kindle2 (ruining its e-ink screen despite the glass not breaking) and had my 6 year old 60GB iPod Photo finally refuse to power up. Fortunately, the Kindle2 can be swapped with a repaired one by Amazon for $135, and I can get along with just the music on our 4GB iPod Nano until at least when Apple releases their next new iPods in the fall, and maybe far beyond that. One thing for sure: I don't want to buy gadgets containing hard drives any more.

Ending the most segregated hour

2010-01-02T15:00:00.007-06:00

One of the key reasons I'm fond of Willow Creek Community Church:
The Color of Faith
"...there is one part of Willow already living 2050. It is not the sanctuary. At Promiseland, Willow's vast Sunday-school complex, Jim and Ellen Strasma wrangle a band of 2-year-olds: seven Caucasians, a Caucasian-Asian, six Hispanics, an Indian American and an African American. A boy in a T-shirt and sporty maroon track pants shares a miniature plastic baguette with a ponytailed Latina. He looks like a preschool Bill Hybels, yet one of his parents is Asian American. The Indian-American girl and the African-American girl dance together. As pickup time approaches, Ms. Ellen explains that Jesus loves everyone. Sixteen small faces of various hues gaze up at her. God wants them all to be friends, she concludes--but the message seems superfluous. Here, today, Martin Luther King Jr.'s observation about Sunday school is finally refuted. In one room of one huge church striving to do the right thing, the harmony of His kingdom has already arrived."

Sarah's book is Excellent!

2009-11-25T20:38:00.004-06:00

I just finished reading Going Rogue, by Sarah Palin, and found it excellent. Considering that I don't much like autobiographies, and would generally rather watch paint dry than read a book by a politician, that's really high and unaccustomed praise.

But really, the purpose of this post is a shout-out to all my friends and relatives, both Republicans and Democrats to stop drinking the Kool Aid you've been fed about Sarah Palin for the past year by coastal self-appointed political and media elites who consider themselves your betters, and read her book for yourself, all the way through, before you say another bad word about her or believe even one more lie about her.

Do Not Call means Do Not Call!

2009-10-17T02:31:00.004-05:00

When the national Do Not Call list was created by the FTC (Federal Trade Commission), two unfortunate exceptions were allowed: charities and politicians (a typical instance of government exempting itself from its own rules.)

Predictably, most of the unwanted phone calls we still receive (and we get a LOT of them) are from charities and politicians.

What both fail to understand is that by doing so, they only ensure I will never donate to either of them again. (Yes, usually they both want money, and as long as behaving this way gets that for them, they'll keep doing it, so it's important for all of us to help make sure it _doesn't_ work for them to keep calling people on that list. The Do Not Call site already offers honorable charities and politicians a way to know who does not want to be called.)

Latest offenders on the charity side are the YMCA (caller ID "CHARITY CLOTHING") and the American Lung Association (caller ID "AMERICAN LUNG.")

Fortunately, there is a Web site 800Notes to which such callers can be reported. From it, I learned that if you call the American Lung number (917-210-4612) back, its voice mail system offers an option to be taken off their calling list. Here's hoping that works.

Marathon Goals

2009-10-14T21:44:00.001-05:00

The 2009 Chicago Marathon is now history, and I'm among those blessed to finish it within the allowed 6.5 hours. Our Team World Vision was also blessed to raise $180,000 so far, to help AIDS orphans and caregivers in Africa.

Interestingly, the place we are helping those folks is specifically in Kenya, and all but one of the top male finishers Sunday was also from Kenya.

So another way of looking at all this is that we were raising money to help Kenyans do even better in next year's marathon... (Who says God doesn't have a sense of humor?)

Favorites

2009-09-12T09:11:00.003-05:00

The Amazon Vine program recently asked me to add lists of favorites to my profile, and it occurs to me that perhaps anyone reading here might also want to know what I've rated as "Excellent" in the past five years in books, music, movies and other "stuff", so here goes:

My Favorite Books:
Windows 7 Secrets, by Paul Thurrott & Rafael Rivera;
The Last Day, by James Jandis;
The Total Money Makeover, by Dave Ramsey;
One Second After, by William R. Forstchen;
Beasts of New York, by Jon Evans;
The Shack, by Wm. Paul Young;
Boundaries with Kids, by Henry Cloud and John Townsend;
La Biblia par Principiantes;
Moment of Truth in Iraq, by Michael Yon;
Bike for Life, by Roy M. Wallack and Bill Katovsky;
My Grandfather's Son, by Clarence Thomas;
What's so Great about Christianity, by D'Nesh D'Sousa;
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert A. Heinlein;
Same Kind of Different as Me, by Ron Hall and Denver Moore;
Real Food, by Nina Planck;
SQL Queries for Mere Mortals, by Michael J. Hernandez and John L. Viescas;
America Alone, by Mark Steyn;
Younger Next Year, by Chris Cowley and Henry S. Lodge;
The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation, by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon;
An Army of Davids, by Glenn Reynolds;
Blood Brothers, by Elias Chacour;
The Power of Full Engagement, by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz;
SAS Survival Handbook, by John "Lofty" Wiseman;
Bulletproof, by Chuck Holton;
The Ezekiel Option, by Joel C. Rosenberg;
The Road to Serfdom, by F. A. Hayek;
State of Fear, by Michael Crichton;
Basic Economics, by Thomas Sowell;
The Total Temple Makeover, by Gregory Jantz;
A Long Way from Chicago, by Richard Peck;
A Year Down Yonder, by Richard Peck;
The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli;
Ten Minutes from Normal, by Karen Hughes;
The Skeptical Environmentalist, by Bjorn Lomborg;
The CONTRARIANS Guide to Leadership, by Steven B. Sample;
Welcome to the Ivory Tower of Babel, by Mike S. Adams;
Applied Economics, by Thomas Sowell;
Darwin on Trial, by Phillip E. Johnson;
Authentically Black, by John McWharter; and
Beyond black and White, by George Yancey

My Favorite Music:
Everybody Talkin' 'bout Heaven, by Acappella;
Holy, Holy, Holy, by Alvin Slaughter;
Thy Word, by Amy Grant;
By the Rivers of Babylon, by Bonny M;
Big Enough, and And Your Praise Goes On, by Chris Rice;
Sandstorm, by Darude;
Colored People, by dc Talk;
Get Over It, by Eagles;
Anywhere Is, by Enya;
Amazing Grace, by The Five Blind Boys of Alabama;
Lead On, O King Eternal, by Glad;
Everybody Understands The Blues, by Glenn Kaiser;
What A Day It Will Be, by Greg Ferguson;
Tom's Diner- (White Label Club Mix), by Kenny Blake (feat. Suzanne Vega);
You Are The New Day, by The King's Singers;
Everlasting God (New!), and Here I Am to Worship (New! Instrumental), by Lincoln Brewster;
Aethera Et Terra, and Cantandus, by Magna Canta;
Earthrise Return, by Mannheim Steamroller;
Spiritual High (Part III), by Moodswings;
Don't Give Up, and This Is The Picture (excellent birds) by Peter Gabriel;
I'm gonna love you forever, by Randy Travis;
Faure--requiem- Pie Jesu, by Robert Shaw;
Tent In The Center Of Town (Live), by Sara Groves;
Revelation 19, by Student Impact Worship Team;
Secret Garden-Moving, from Natural Wonders Music Sampler 1997;
I am a Man of Constant Sorrow (With Band), from O Brother Where Art Thou;
The Urgency (Of The Generally Insignificant), and Come Home, by Wayne Watson; and
Everyday (Live), by Willow Creek Music

My Favorite Movies:
Up; and
The Gods Must be Crazy

My Other Favorites:
Asus Eee PC 1000 netbook computer;
Palm Centro GSM unlocked cell phone;
Apple iPod Touch handheld computer;
Amazon Kindle 2 electronic reader;
Garmin Forerunner 305 and Nuvi 350 GPSes;
Peek handheld Email device;
2002 Toyota Prius automobile; and
HP Velotechnik Scorpion Fx recumbent tricycle

Still Sarah

2009-09-11T21:03:00.007-05:00

I've just come to the weird realization that the only politician whose writings I'm currently enjoying is Sarah Palin, who most of my friends and relatives on both the left and the right diss constantly.

There are a couple of reasons for my continuing interest in Sarah Palin's writings:
1) I believe Washington DC in particular, and more generally the coastal political elite of both parties in this country is the problem, not the solution. I'd rather be governed by the first 535 people in my local telephone directory than by anyone in the current Congress. Folks talk about Sarah Palin's lack of an Ivy League education and lack of experience in D.C. as bugs, but to me, those are both features.
2) I'm finding Sarah Palin's Notes on Facebook well worth reading, and effective. She reminds me of the boy in the story who alone is willing to point out when the emperor has no clothes. Sometimes lately, she seems to be the only principled Republican still on the national stage.

As a white male Christ follower, I sometimes feel like I've spent the past forty years with a kick me sign painted on me by our cultural elite, so I'm not at all sympathetic when they try to do the same to others.

My earlier thoughts on Sarah Palin are here.

Sensible thoughts from a Democratic partisan

2009-09-09T07:50:00.005-05:00

Instapundit linked to this article in Salon this morning that I was surprised to find myself entirely approving. That agreement covers comments of author Camille Paglia on both health care and the war in Afghanistan.

Here are two key paragraphs:
"As an Obama supporter and contributor, I am outraged at the slowness with which the standing army of Democratic consultants and commentators publicly expressed discontent with the administration's strategic missteps this year. I suspect there had been private grumbling all along, but the media warhorses failed to speak out when they should have -- from week one after the inauguration, when Obama went flat as a rug in letting Congress pass that obscenely bloated stimulus package. Had more Democrats protested, the administration would have felt less arrogantly emboldened to jam through a cap-and-trade bill whose costs have made it virtually impossible for an alarmed public to accept the gargantuan expenses of national healthcare reform. (Who is naive enough to believe that Obama's plan would be deficit-neutral? Or that major cuts could be achieved without drastic rationing?) "
and
"Which brings us to Afghanistan: Let's get ... out! While I vociferously opposed the incursion into Iraq, I was always strongly in favor of bombing the mountains of Afghanistan to smithereens in our search for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida training camps. But committing our land forces to a long, open-ended mission to reshape the political future of that country has been a fool's errand from the start. Every invader has been frustrated and eventually defeated by that maze-like mountain terrain, from Alexander the Great to the Soviet Union."

My comment on the latter is that trying to make Afghanistan into Kansas is a fool's errand, just as trying to make Iraq into Kansas was. We had and have legitimate goals in both places, but must avoid "scope creep" (setting the bar of success ever higher as we try to do more and more until failure is guaranteed.)

I was also intrigued by Paglia's advocacy of "bombing the mountains of Afghanistan to smithereens", in that doing so is the most likely alternative to stationing forces there, and to date I haven't seen a lot of tolerance to the unwanted results of such bombing (such as claims of up to 90 "civilians" killed this week when NATO forces bombed a tanker truck the Taliban had highjacked.)

I just read an excellent book on this topic, almost a theology of gun use, hidden in a very enjoyable novel about spending an un-ordinary day with Jesus (apologies to John Ortberg's book "An Ordinary Day with Jesus" for the pun.) Whatever your views on the topic, you'll find much to both enjoy and ponder in "The Last Day", by James Landis.

Loving both Safety Nets and Freedom

2009-09-01T21:17:00.010-05:00

While reading the story of a cyclist attacked and robbed yesterday, I was taken aback by his strong [expletive deleted] to anyone opposed to a single-payer health care system for the U.S. this shocked me because the writer had just described choosing to go to a particularly excellent hospital for treatment despite its distant location. Yet here he was, advocating against the freedom of choice he had just exercised.

Some folks don't seem to realize there is a difference between adding a safety net to American health care and forcing all Americans into a single health care solution.

In my opinion, the two questions should be separated:

1) Yes, there's a need to make decent portable health care available to all American citizens, including financial help for those unable to afford it. Whether we can afford to add yet another entitlement to our terribly-unbalanced Federal budget as our economy circles the drain is another question, but can we at least agree on wishing such an option could be offered?

2) In every other aspect of life we get the best results with at least two or three viable competitors, and horrible results from monopolies. So how can sensible folks advocate a single payor system? Haven't we already enough proof of how badly monopolies work in cable TV and local education? Haven't we already a bad-enough health care system in that regard with most of us stuck with whatever care happens to be allowed by our own current health care plan?

For me, the absolutely essential feature of any acceptable new plan is to still be able to pay more for better options. Adding Public Options is fine, unless they take away all others.

One other point: If the current health care debate is to have any chance of resulting in public good, we all need to do more listening and less shouting/boycotting. It is a fundamental American value that from a multiplicity of voices truth emerges, so let's all be a bit more tolerant of those whose views differ, and take enough time to come to a real consensus on changes that improve rather than damage our system.

Kindle books - To Delay or Not to Delay

2009-08-16T09:13:00.004-05:00

One of the selling points of the Amazon Kindle electronic book reader is that new bestsellers are offered for it at the same time as in hardback. Not all publishers see this as a good thing, with at least one suggesting Kindle versions be delayed, as paperback books and DVD movies currently are.

Publisher Sourcebooks explained their reason for delaying one such book at the Booksquare Web site:
"...the new music model of low-priced content and sales of concerts and ancillaries is probably not a viable model for book publishing. Authors, unlike musicians, don’t typically have paid live performances (and t-shirt sales are usually few). They have words. And we need to have a real conversation about what those words are worth (and that’s what the pricing issue is actually about) and how do we keep them worth enough to support authors, authorship and publishers." (That's just the thought that most interested me. Follow the link for the rest of their thoughts.)

This inspired dozens of responses from Booksquare readers, including the one below from me:

"...my reason for wanting books available on the Kindle immediately, rather than 6 months or a year later is that I am committed to eliminating physical books from the bookshelf space they previously occupied in my house, just as I have already eliminated the bookshelf space previously taken by nearly a thousand purchased CDs, all of which are now boxed in the attic, with the entire music library fitting easily on my 60GB iPod.

For me, the decision not to offer a Kindle version of a book at the same time as the hardcover does not mean a delayed sale. Rather, it means no sale, as we have an excellent local library from which I can borrow most recent hardcover books of interest to me long before a paperback version is offered.

I also find my recent reading dominated by low cost books, up to a dollar in cost, often offered briefly in the Kindle store to introduce a new author. For that price, if the book sounds at all interesting, I’ll give it a shot. But once its price is the more typical $6-15, it has to be very good indeed to inspire a sale. (A recent case of such a sale is “The Shack”, of which my wife had already bought several copies in paperback to give away to friends. We decided to buy one more for ourselves, but to make it electronic so as not to take up shelf space.

Note: books I plan to give away will remain purchased on paper. Another recent example is Dave Ramsey’s “Total Money Makeover”, of which we last winter bought 6 copies directly from the author’s Web site to give away to friends in financial difficulty.

As a former author and small-publisher myself, I well recall getting only a dollar of royalties for a book, so do see why buyers expect lower costs for books with no need for printing. Printing never cost me less than a dollar a book, and shipping was also costly, so it makes sense to share the savings of eliminating both with the buyer, especially since they are also giving up the right to resell their used book or pass it on to friends."

Update: Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group, and HarperCollins have all decided to delay release of e-books by weeks or months, compared to hardback books. Say goodnight, Gracie. Those are all firms that have decided they no longer want my money.

Priorities

2009-08-02T21:04:00.004-05:00

I was looking forward to participating in today's Chicago half marathon, along with my family. Sadly, due to a registration mixup, they got registered to raise funds for the charity we were all planning to support, but didn't actually get registered for the half marathon itself.

That left me with a bit of a dilemna: should I participate anyway, or skip the half marathon and still spend the time with my family? This should have been a simple decision, as this weekend was my son's family's only visit this year, and likely my only chance to spend time with them for several months to come as my 20 month old grandson grows quickly.

Even so, I had to remind myself of that priority, partly because I'm 1/4th Dutch, and paid $70 to register, partly because I'm also committed to our cause - Team World Vision, and partly because although I'm not particularly fast, I am nonetheless an eager competitor in such events, once I sign up for them.

Fortunately, reason prevailed, and instead of spending many hours this weekend picking up my race packet and then competing in the event, I spent all that time with those I love.

Thankfully, this would in some ways have been just a warm-up for the full marathon I'm signed up for in Chicago in October. Even so, I disappointed a good friend who'd hoped to join us in today's event.

Too long to read? Just vote 'No'

2009-08-02T20:37:00.004-05:00

Possibly the worst statement I've ever heard from a member of Congress was Michigan Democrat John Conyers this week braggingly refusing to do his job
"I love these members that get up and say, Read the bill! Well, what good is reading the bill if it's a thousand pages and you don't have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you've read the bill?"

Isn't the entire point of being a member of Congress to represent the views of voters in your district along with your own values and ideas as you debate and vote on legislation? If Conyers is too busy to do that, can't he at least assign some staff persons he trusts to do it for him? Seems to me members of Congress have large enough staffs these days to handle that.

Why on Earth should we need such lengthy bills, unless the bill's real purpose is to hide what should be revealed? How long is 1,000 pages? Long enough to hold the entire Old Testament, and five times as long as the entire New Testament!

Powerline has the right solution, in my opinion:
"So I would propose a simple, bright-line rule. In recent months many observers have said that if a company is too big to fail (i.e., in a pinch the government will bail it out), then it is too big to exist. I think there is a lot of merit to that idea. Here is my corollary: if a bill is too vast for a Congressman to read and understand, it is too big to pass. If a Congressman can't read the bill, he shouldn't vote for it. The appropriate response to any such legislation is: just vote 'No.'"

No politician unwilling to at least assign a staffer to read legislation before voting will receive my vote if I know that about them -- and from now on I mean to find out.

Kidney Stones (again)

2009-07-23T08:04:00.004-05:00

Bummer. I thought I might have passed a small kidney stone a couple of weeks ago, and according to a CT scan I had last week, looks like that stones has friends. Today I hope to have another X-ray to hopefully identify what type they are. Thankfully, they aren't bothering me at all.

The weird part is that I also had blood tests last week, and the numbers for the tests related to the two kidney stones I had a few years ago are all in the middle of the normal range. The other tested numbers are also great. 95 for the fasting glucose, for example, which is about ideal for someone who once was pre-diabetic. Cholesterol and Triglycerides, blood pressure, ECG, etc. were all excellent. Best moment was when the nurse said she was jealous of my calf muscles.

So, staying very active has been good for my health, but I'm clearly still mortal, and have reached the age where there are trade-offs between what's good for avoiding one condition, and what's good for avoiding another condition.

By the way, this is known as kidney stone season, because folks get active in the summer and don't drink enough water. I've tried to be careful about that, but apparently not careful enough.

Update: The X-ray showed the stones are the uric acid type, which I think is the best kind for me to have if I have to have them at all, in that what I'd need to eat to avoid the other kinds would conflict directly with what I need to eat to avoid diabetes.

So, my doc doubled my daily dose of a pill I already take to reduce uric acid, and I'm to have an ultrasound and see him again in a month. I've also decided to ditch even diet soda containing phosphoric or citric acid for that month.

Domino Depression?

2009-07-11T16:29:00.003-05:00

I'm pessimistic about our nation's chances for avoiding going into an economic depression this year, but a raging optimist compared to Stephen Windwalker's new book
The Worried Citizen's Little Survival Guide to the Greatest Financial Crisis of the Century (Understanding and Surviving the Domino Depression)
Those of you who want to understand:
What went wrong
How bad it's going to get
What we can personally do now to better survive the economic tsunami headed our way
(and especially those who want to hear why this is all the fault of dastardly Republicans)
will thoroughly enjoy this pithy insightful Kindle-only-for-now book, especially at its current 99 cent introductory price.

(Note: the price of the Kindle 2 also just dropped $60.)

Readers independent or conservative enough to also recall problems originating from dastardly Democrats may occasionally have to resist shouting at the screen while reading this book.

Apart from the lop-sided blaming, Windwalker's analysis seems helpfully insightful, and may help readers better survive the decade ahead.

Other books to round out the picture a bit include:
The Good Life and Its Discontents, by Robert J. Samuelson
The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, by Amity Shlaes
Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand
The Total Money Makeover, by Dave Ramsey

Getting ready to live longer

2009-07-01T14:03:00.004-05:00

Some researchers think we are on the virge of being able to vastly increase human lifespans. One obvious preparatory step is to keep intact whatever vitality each of us already has, so we can actually enjoy such an extension.

The Speculist today asked Dr. Terry Grossman what three things people might do to prepare. Here's the response:
1 Stop eating sugar
2 Get exercise
3 Reduce stress in your life
Speculist adds a fourth:
4 Don't smoke or drink heavily

These all seem excellent suggestions for best enjoying whatever time remains any of us.

Red Light Cameras

2009-07-01T13:12:00.006-05:00

Earlier this spring, I had the misfortune of offending a red light camera at the northwest corner of Willow and Waukegan avenues in Northfield, IL by making a right turn on red when traffic permitted. Until I received a notice to pay up in the mail, I didn't realize I'd done anything improper, as right turns on red are absolutely allowed on the southwest corner of the same intersection. Looking carefully at the photos provided, sure enough, there was a sign forbidding right turns on red in that direction at that corner.

What brings this back to mind is that equally nearby suburb Schaumburg, IL has just decided to get rid of its own red light camera near famous Woodfield Mall, for not having improved safety by reducing collisions during its testing period this past year. According to this article on the topic, there were also many complaints from both locals and tourists, and may have been some concern about losing tourist business at Woodfield Mall if the camera remained.

I can vouch for that concern, as my own first reaction to realizing I'd been nailed with the red light violation notice was to see if I could avoid ever again going to Northfield, IL, even though we've spent the last six years helping start the Willow Creek Community Church North Shore regional site there, and even though I've often shopped at the REI and Whole Foods stores near that corner. And in fact, I've never been back to that Whole Foods store since, and have also switched back to the main campus at Willow Creek for the most part.

It wouldn't be accurate to blame all that on the red light camera. The onset of what I expect to be the first actual economic depression of my lifetime is the primary reason. I can no longer justify the cost of shopping regularly at the store Shades refers to as "Whole Paycheck" when the fruits and vegetables are equally good for half the cost at the Garden Fresh far closer to home, and everything else equally good and inexpensive at also-closer Trader Joe's.

Similarly, now that I'm 60, it no longer seems wise to be driving to two different churches every week. Sometime in the next 20 years, I'll even have to find a church I can walk to, I suppose, though none I've visited thus far offer the cultural diversity and external focus on the needs of others that are both now characteristic of Willow Creek, and important to me.

On the other hand, I do now tend to shop at the REI in Schamburg, rather than the one in Northbrook, thanks to the Northbrook red light camera, and expect that as more and more towns install red light cameras to generate revenue, I'll be using my bike and walking instead for even more of my travels than at present. That's not a bad outcome, either for the environment, or for my fitness, but likely should be alarming to all stores located near red light cameras, if my views are in any way typical.

Common Ground on Abortion?

2009-06-05T08:34:00.002-05:00

This Slate article makes excellent sense to me. Author William Saletan suggests abortion foes and advocates work as hard at finding common ground as President Obama has in seeking common ground with Muslims, and suggests four specifics:
1) Abortion supporters need to accept "abortion reduction" as a goal. I've always liked President Clinton's way of putting it: "safe, legal, and rare."
As Saletan says, " No ordinary person sees a difference between reducing abortions and reducing the need for abortions."
2) Abortion opponents need to stop also opposing contraception.
As Saletan says, "Next to abstinence, contraception is the surest way to prevent abortions, period. Save your scruples about taxpayers' rights for an issue where nobody's dying."
3) Don't let the actions of extremists (such as the recent murder of a doctor who performed late-term abortions) stop the seeking of common ground.
As Saletan says, "Look at the president. Instead of portraying Muslims as family members of terrorists, he's reaching out to them so that they won't become or support extremists. You would do well to treat pro-lifers the same way."
4) Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good when it comes to money.
As Saletan says, "Stop quarreling about indirect funding, and focus instead on the most direct question: preventing abortions. You might even discover that the most efficient way to prevent abortions in the long term is to fund the family planning organizations you keep trying to defund."

Here are my own (slightly-updated) previous thoughts on abortion:

I'm always amazed when folks on both sides of the abortion debate go way out of their way to avoid obviously reasonable compromises. Here are examples:

1. Some folks still oppose nearly all forms of birth control, even when used by married couples, yet have the gall to demand any resulting pregnancy not be aborted. I understand their argument -- that birth control pills, and IUDs do not prevent fertilization, acting rather to prevent implantation, much like an abortion, and agree that it's hard to set any specific starting point for life other than at conception. But if aborting at that stage is wrong, then what does that make of Nature and Nature's God who allow a significant percentage of fertilized eggs not to implant even without our assistance?

2. For the same reason, I don't oppose the "morning after" pill, or even RU-486. In my opinion, both are morally better than allowing life to develop further only to still be aborted. Although potential life is just a few cells on day one, soon after it is recognizably human, with feelings that deserve at least as much protection as PETA would offer animals, and death penalty opponents would offer mass murderers.

3. In my view, abortion should be as former President Clinton once said "safe, legal, and rare." I remember the years before abortion was legalized, when rich women flew to England, and poor women used coat hangers. Although I consider most abortions immoral, I can't bring myself to favor making them all illegal.

4. On the other side, I can't imagine how any moral person can support a form of abortion that intentionally murders an almost-fully-developed infant, merely to ensure the child doesn't enter the world alive. Who can comfortably face God after doing such a thing?

5. Also on the other side, I very strongly favor adoption over abortion I've known several wonderful couples desperate for a child, and seen literally how far around the world they've had to go to find a child to adopt, at the same time millions of potential lives are snuffed out needlessly here in the U.S.

6. I've also seen the emotional scars an abortion leaves on those involved, and wonder in light of that how anyone can oppose a pause to think, and to consult loved ones and multiple counselors before taking such a drastic step, especially when the mother-to-be is underage or married.

7. An unborn child now has its first official right, in that its death or injury by violence against the mother is now a separate crime. An excellent article in MIT's "The Tech" today correctly points out that as a result we now "simultaneously recognize the unborn child as a person and as property." If it makes you uneasy to think of persons as property, well -- IT SHOULD! Read the whole thing here.

8. San Franscisco-based U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton ruled June 1, 2004 that "a woman's right to have an abortion is paramount, and that it's 'irrelevant' whether the unborn child suffers pain in the process." That incredibly-callous comment harkens back to the very first entry to my former blog, which included this Mallard Fillmore comic quote:
"You should probably vote Democratic if:
You think trees have feelings, and unborn babies don't."

9. Freakonomics credits abortion with reducing crime, by preventing children from being born into an "adverse family environment. Seems to me that argument applies to birth control in general, rather than only to abortion as a specific method of birth control.

Spending Idea: hardening infrastructure

2009-05-03T07:16:00.004-05:00

Wow! I just finished the book "One Second After", by William R. Forstchen, which very credibly described how easily and thoroughly our civilization could be impacted by a single high altitude nuclear explosion optimized as an electro-magnetic pulse weapon.

It's a scary book, but useful if it succeeds in convincing those among us who can to take the steps necessary to prevent and if necessary survive such an event. In particular, if our political class is determined to set fire to boatloads of money, perhaps it will inspire them to spend at least a bit of it to ensure they survive such an event, and thereby also better protect the rest of us against such a day.

Most of what needs to be done isn't even just to keep things going after an EMP weapon - most of the steps would be just as useful if the next "Swine Flu" turns out to be the big one that kills millions.

And if our political class can't be bothered, there is still plenty each citizen can do. For instance, Costco just had a sale on a 5 gallon bucket of 275 meals for $75 that is rated as good for 20 years. Seems to me like cheap insurance, no matter what disaster makes such a cache needed to get through a hard time.

Still Losing the 'War on Drugs'

2009-04-22T11:52:00.006-05:00

My, does this seem right!
"The futile effort to stop Americans from consuming politically incorrect intoxicants is the real source of the violence in Mexico, since prohibition creates a market with artificially high prices and hands it over to criminals. ...Instead of importing Mexico's prohibitionist approach to guns, we should stop exporting our prohibitionist approach to drugs."

Here's my own previous blog post on the topic of the futility of continuing to fight a drug war we obviously have no intention of winning:
One of the great failures of our nation was Prohibition. Eliminating the sad consequences of alcoholism was a worthy goal, but never shared by enough Americans to make it actually possible.

Another great failure was our war efforts in Viet Nam. In my opinion at the time, we weren't doing the things necessary to win, and were therefore doomed eventually to lose.

Both of the above problems seem to apply now to our decades-long "war on drugs."

Despite decades of education against use of illegal drugs, some folks in pretty much every community still choose to use them, enough to make complete elimination of the drug trade almost impossible.

If we really wanted to win the War on Drugs, we'd prosecute customers as harshly as sellers, and not worry, for example if pesticides sprayed on Marijuana plants still ended up in Marijuana sold here, even if it killed those who used it.

The only country I'm aware of that "won" its war on drugs was Communist China, which reportedly did so by immediately executing anyone caught in the trade.

We can't do such things and still be America, any more than we could in the '60s have simply paved over Viet Nam (my preferred solution at the time.)

As a result, it's not a question of whether we will eventually legalize most illegal drugs, but only of when we will finally do so. That being the case, sooner is better, with one exception:

I don't want legalization to turn into implied approval. If someone just has to smoke a joint in the privacy of their own home where no one else is harmed, that would likely be OK with me. But I don't want to see billboards suggesting I "Smoke Mary Jane", nor would I want to see vials of Crack next to the condoms at the local Safeway.

Canada, in my opinion, had a better idea. When it legalized alcohol, it restricted sales of hard liquor to government stores, which were intentionally not made attractive and did not advertise. That removed the incentive for marketers to increase the use of hard liquor, and ensured profits from such sales went where they could help deal with the unfortunate consequences of legalization.

Some Americans sense a constitutional right to advertise any legal product on every flat surface, but I do not. In my opinion, many bad products that must nonetheless be legal for use by adults should not be advertised, lest they artificially increase demand for an unhealthy product.

I've been advocating legalization publicly for a few years now, and have yet to meet anyone (other than friend Greg) willing to actively disagree with the idea. This may be an idea whose time has come, if only we can remember legalization is not equivalent to approval.

Update:
M. Simon reports "there are two iron rules of prohibition. The harder the enforcement the harder the drugs. The harder the enforcement the harder the criminals." The rest of his article here is also well worth reading.

Update2: Instapundit adds "Legalize the stuff, tax it like tobacco, and let the trial lawyers sue sellers for any product defects or dangers."

That would be a corrective for problems resulting from legalizing any and all drugs to thereby also cut medical costs, as suggested in a second previous blog entry:
change the role of the Food and Drug Administration, from deciding what drugs may be sold at all to merely certifying, like Good Housekeeping or Consumer Reports, which drugs are known to be safe and effective. This immediately reduces the cost of bringing new drugs to market by removing most of the hoops through which a company must now jump before being allowed to sell new drugs.

Final note: This all also has immediate relevance to our current efforts in Afghanistan. How likely is it that we can prevail there long term, so long as we insist on fighting not only Al Queda and the Taliban, but also a thousand-year old trade in opium poppies?

Update2: Here is a similar opinion from New Scientist:
"Far from protecting us and our children, the war on drugs is making the world a much more dangerous place.

SO FAR this year, about 4000 people have died in Mexico's drugs war - a horrifying toll. If only a good fairy could wave a magic wand and make all illegal drugs disappear, the world would be a better place.

Dream on. Recreational drug use is as old as humanity, and has not been stopped by the most draconian laws. Given that drugs are here to stay, how do we limit the harm they do?

The evidence suggests most of the problems stem not from drugs themselves, but from the fact that they are illegal. The obvious answer, then, is to make them legal."

But Taxes Are Low

2009-04-16T17:24:00.009-05:00

Shades sent along an article from the Washington Post today, headlined: "Americans' Tax Burden Near Historic Low."
"As thousands of anti-tax protesters rallied across the nation yesterday and the president promised tax cuts for most, new data showed that the federal income tax burden is already hovering near its lowest level in three decades for all but the wealthiest Americans."

The article has a point. If Tea parties were only protesting current tax levels, as one might sensibly conclude from an acronym I saw on a couple of signs yesterday: Taxed Enough Already?, even I might wonder why all the fuss?

As Robert J. Samuelson's book "The Good Life and its Discontents" recently pointed out (blogged about here), those who demand ever-increasing government services while refusing to pay for those services via taxes are part of the problem, and a serious one. That "entitlement" mentality has been a big issue for my generation, and may be an even worse one for Shades' generation.

For most present at yesterday's Chicago tea party, taxes weren't the big issue. SPENDING was. By and large, we were old enough and smart enough to know that sooner or later money which is borrowed must be repaid, with interest.

President Reagan thought he could reduce government spending by reducing its tax receipts, what he called "starving the beast." One bad outcome of last year is that Congress learned it could successfully run far larger deficits than it had previously thought, at least temporarily.

During the Clinton years there was at least lip service paid to the idea that the Federal budget ought to eventually balance. But last year and this year, Congress and both Presidents seem to have had no interest whatsoever in ever again balancing a budget, as though they think China etc. are stupid enough to keep funding our profligate ways until Eternity with no consequences.

The bills WILL be paid, most likely by Shade's generation and my grandson's, either via actual tax increases, or via equivalent inflation.

How do I know? It's happened before.

In the mid-1960s, President Johnson assured us we could have both "guns and butter", meaning both Great Society social spending AND the war in Viet Nam. But we did eventually pay for that in full with the rampant inflation of the 1970s.

This year's tea parties are not really about taxes now. They are about wasteful unnecessary spending now that if continued must inevitably lead to inflation and taxes later at best, and could at worst destroy a great country.

Chicago Tea Party Report

2009-04-15T21:41:00.002-05:00

Today was the first protest I've attended since one against the Viet Nam war in 1968. I walked over from the office, and my first clue something was happening was the two sign-carrying guys outside the mens room at Union station (and the long line within.) From there on, it was wall to wall signs, flags, kids in strollers, you name it, and all having a great time heading for the protest a few blocks East at the federal building in the plaza with the big orange statue of a horny spider.

I don't know how many of us were there in all (certainly more than a thousand), but the plaza was packed. What next impressed me was the quantity, variety and cleverness of the signs being carried. For example, "Free Palatine" instead of the similar "Free Palestine" signs often seen at liberal protests. (Palatine is a suburb in the process of trying to secede from Cook County.)

The speakers list carefully avoided conservative bias, featuring at least two lifelong Democrats. That's important, because this shouldn't be a left versus right issue. Both me and my fervently Democratic ACLU lawyer sister should be able to agree on the value of preserving this country long enough for our respective grandchildren to enjoy it too. (And in fact we do agree on that, having had that exact conversation a couple of weeks ago, including agreeing that the previous Republican administration is very much also to blame for the almost decade-long-now orgy of wasteful spending in Washington, DC, and both equally appalled by the size and wastefulness of the recent stimulus bill, and even more that it passed both houses of Congress without anyone even bothering to read it.)

I met at least one fellow "Ross for Boss" supporter from 1992, and we agreed that everything Ross Perot warned us about then is worse now.

Afterwards, I viewed a CNN report in which their reporter essentially picked a fight with a tea party attendee, pointing out just how many dollars Chicago is getting out of the stimulus bill and why aren't we happy about that? The answer, of course, is that those dollars do not actually exist, and even if they did exist, could only come from taxpayers. The CNN reporter also claimed the tea partiers were against them (CNN) because Fox News has talked up the Tea Parties, when it was clear from the video that what angered attendees was her foolish assumption that government money is a gift rather than a tax.

I don't know where this movement will go next, but if you are under 30, this issue has your name all over it because you absolutely are getting the bill for all the goodies your government plans to give away and set fire to this year.

I still wish our new president well, and pray for him regularly, but hope he too is thinking about the world he wants for his daughters, and how to preserve it for them.

My Tea Party Sign?

2009-04-11T22:39:00.003-05:00

I think we now have a contender for my sign at this Wednesday's Tea Party:

SOURCE: CBO, White House Office of Management and Budget | The Washington Post - March 21, 2009

Who'd ever have thought I'd miss Bill Clinton as President? But notice the last time there was a surplus in the Federal budget.

Please Don't Move the Goalposts During the Game!

2009-03-25T23:24:00.008-05:00

Putting it in sporting terms, a key aspect of the rule of law is that no one may move goal posts during a game. For sporting events to mean anything, their rules need to be known in advance, and not change during an event.

The same is true in economics. For a free market to work, rules and laws governing a deal must not later change without consent of all parties to the original deal.

The same principle in Constitution law keeps legislatures from retroactively making things that were legal when they happened retroactively illegal.

I'm aware of three possible current attempts to violate this idea:
1) Efforts may be underway at the Federal level to coerce lenders into retroactively accepting changes in the terms of existing mortgages.

2) Efforts may also be underway at the Federal level to retroactively claw back bonuses paid to employees of recent bailed-out firms, despite those bonuses being explicityly authorized in the bailout legislation that apparently no one could be bothered to read before signing.

If I were a bank, considering making new mortgages, I might now choose not to, due to inability to predict the actual future terms of a mortgage. Similarly, if I were considering a job at a firm that has been bailed out, and bonuses were promised for good performance, I might now ignore such promises in calculating the value of the offered job, as there would no longer be any way to be sure of keeping an earned bonus.

3) Efforts may also be underway in the state legislature to change the retirement system offered by my employer.

That last one truly has me concerned. Specifically, must I retire immediately in order for the pension agreement under which I've labored for over 24 years to be honored? And if I were to do so, would that be sufficient to ensure what I've already earned is paid?

I don't mind at all if any pension system changes for new future employees. They will know the new rules, and choose either to accept or reject offered jobs accordingly.

Similarly, I don't really mind if rules change for future work by current employees, as again, they'd have the choice of either retiring now or accepting the new rules. In such a case, it would seem fairest to honor previous rules for previous service, and new rules for future service.

What I would, however, mind a lot would be if employees were told that by continuing to work past a certain date they are deemed to have agreed to retroactive changes in pension credits already earned.

What I would mind even more (and suspect might be litigated for decades) would be if such workers were told that even if they retire immediately, the terms of their retirement could still be altered after the fact.

With several years to go before reaching the number of years at which my pension would maximize under current rules, I've always intended to keep working. But I now wonder if by doing so I might actually end up worse off than by retiring immediately, or even last year as the Middlewife did.

Needless to say, I will be seeking answers to these questions promptly, and hoping there will still be some point to continuing employment, and no retroactive fiddling with pension benefits already earned.

Tea party

2009-03-14T09:09:00.002-05:00

I'm enjoying the new Tea Party movement. Nice to realize lots of folks in this country still agree we can't both borrow up to our eyeballs as a nation and still have anything left afterward for our children and grandchildren to enjoy in freedom.

Some think of this as a conservative reaction against liberal plans, but I don't. I know of both conservatives who don't care whether bills ever get paid so long as taxes are cut, and liberals who would oppose even their most-fervently-wanted new government program unless it was fully-funded from the get-go.

The real division seems to be more Rand-ian (as in Ayn Rand): between those who contribute something to society, and those who only take from it. (Rand calls the former "producers" and the latter "moochers and looters.")

With just over 50% of the American people still paying income tax at all, we are dangerously close to the tipping point warned of by Alex de Tocqueville 150 years ago, in which the people realize they can (at least temporarily) vote themselves unlimitd benefits.

What to do? Tea Parties are a good start, a way to make it clear to politicians that those who pay taxes also vote, and are smart enough to realize whose pocket must be picked for each benefit currently being touted by pandering politicians.

Is there a place for government? Of course. But government isn't a swiss army knife that can do everything well, and even for what government does do well, it does best close to the problems being addressed, rather than via a bureacrat in D.C.

If this makes sense to you, then no matter which is your preferred political party you may enjoy being part of the Tea Party movement.

I've just heard about two upcoming events:
1 Folks are requested to empty out a tea bag, and mail the empty tea bag to elected officials, including specifically Pres. Obama, Sen. Reid, and Speaker Pelosi, as a reminder of who they work for. If mailed on about April 10, they will arrive in time for Tax Day (April 15.) Note: the postal service suggests emptying out the tea first as a way of making sure the letter can actually be delivered, as opposed to being quarantined in case it might be dangerous.
2 Lots of Tea Parties are being planned for Tax Day (April 15), including one at the Daley Plaza in Chicago, from Noon to 2PM.

As a grandparent, I care a lot about making sure my grandson enjoys the same freedom and comforts I do. So it bothers me no end that in the past month elected leaders of our nation frittered away on useless pork over a quarter of our national wealth.

If I were my son's age, that would bother me even more. Shades already doesn't expect to see a dime from Social Security, so what are the odds its Ponzi Scheme will leave anything for my grandson? The Tea Party movement is a wake-up call for young adults, to get involved in national decision-making now, while there are still decisions to make, and still a chance to save the nation we all know and love.

Kindle 2 - First thoughts

2009-03-01T21:44:00.006-06:00

Our new Kindle 2 arrived 4 days ago, and thus far has been everything I'd hoped it might be.

At first, I found it a bit hard to read, but that's just because I needed to increase the text size one notch above standard to read it well in dim indoor light.

Apart from that, all the surprises have been pleasant, particulary in how much good reading there is available for free, both directly from the Amazon Kindle Store, and from other easy-to-use sources of free ebooks.

I even had a goal of seeing how long I could go without paying for a book on it, but that only turned out to be 3 days, as the Middlewife and I agreed to add a copy of William F. Young's "The Shack" to the Kindle. That way, we can freely give away our already-read printed copy, as we've already given away several others. (If you haven't read The Shack yet, treat yourself and do so.) Like most books, it is cheaper on the Kindle. And the savings are particularly noticeable if you compare the Kindle book price to that charged by local bookstores rather than to Amazon's non-Kindle book price.

For example, Dave Ramsey spoke at church last night, with a wonderfully funny yet very instructive message about surviving economic troubles. Afterwards, we thought about getting his latest book. On the Kindle, it costs $10. From Amazon on paper, it's $15. But at the local bookstore, it's $25. Folks claim on line that you can't save enough on books to make up the $360 cost of the Kindle, but if you're used to buying your books at bookstores, and read a couple of books a month (as we both do), you could buy a new Kindle every year and still break even.

For me, the key savings of the Kindle are in physical space. We have a rule in our house, that no new book can come in unless an old book goes out. Our bookcases are full, and we won't be buying any more bookcases. Now, with the Kindle, that's no longer an issue, and perhaps in a few years we won't even need multiple bookcases any more.

Having all the books I could ever want to read with me wherever I go, in a device the size of a 5 x 8" pad and weighing only 10 oz is another savings. When we go on vacation, we like to read, and normally carry several large books. No more.

Further, being able to access the Internet via the Kindle may eliminate the need to have even our Eee PC with us on such a trip. The Kindle can send and receive Email via Gmail, and there are many tricks I've not yet tried to let it do far more than that.

So what have I read on it so far?

First, I tried out its subscripton to the Instapundit blog, my personal favorite blog for daily reading. Unfortunately, Instapundit is hard to read off-line, as much of its best material is unexplained links to other sources. You can follow those on the subscription copy, but some of those links really don't work well on the simple browser built into the Kindle. Thankfully, Amazon gives you a 2 week free trial before charging for blog subscriptions, so I quickly cancelled that subscription.

Next, I tried out a magazine subscription, to Reason magazine. It is intended for folks who don't worship at the altar of either the right or the left, and that fits me well. Thus far, I'm enjoying the issue that has already been delivered, and expect to continue that subscription. Sadly, no other magazine currently available via the Kindle interests me at all, nor any newspaper currently available.

As for books, I've only bought one other so far, besides "The Shack", David Emerson's "The Kindle 2 Cookbook", which has nothing to do with cooking. Rather, it is a manual for the Kindle 2 covering everything one might need to know about it that is not already in the sizeable and useful standard Kindle 2 manual already loaded into the device. The Cookbook is brief, just "for this, do this", but well organized, and inexpensive at $4. It only took an hour or two to read, but I'll be referring to it regularly, I'm sure, as I learn more about the Kindle.

In free books, my favorite thus far is "Beasts of New York" by Jon Evans, which you can enjoy without a Kindle here. It is a "Lord of the Rings"-scale epic featuring squirrels and other wildlife found in New York City, written as a childrens' tale for grownups. It's excellent, new, and free, so have a look.

Another pair of good recent free ebooks I've already read on the Kindle are Cory Doctorow's "I, Robot" and "After the Siege." Both, along with several others, are available for free in several formats here.

Doctorow makes an excellent point - the United States was a pirate nation for its first century, with regards to obeying the then-current patent and copyright restrictions of Europe, and that really helped us get going as a nation. So what now gives us the right to try and keep other nations from getting started the same way? As a published author myself, I'm all in favor of a reasonable copyright to protect an author's income during his or her lifetime. But I'm offended to think that even Mickey Mouse is still copyrighted, long after Walt Disney's death - now protecting not its creator, but a massive corporation. And don't even get me started on the evils of the Clinton era DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act.)

Fortunately, in the long run, as the saying goes "data wants to be free." I can finally now buy all the music I want from either Amazon or iTunes in unrestricted MP3 format, and given a few years, I'm sure the same will be true of even the non-free Ebooks.

There was a bit of a setback in that this weekend, with Amazon deciding to let publishers set on a title by title basis whether the Kindle 2's new text to speech featue can be used of not. But I wouldn't want to be the first publisher to try restricting that right facing handicapped Kindle owners in a class action lawsuit.

In sum, the Kindle 2 is better than I expected, and I expected a lot.

Down 10% since the Inauguration?

2009-02-20T21:19:00.005-06:00

Well crud, the stock market continues to tank. So much for new hope from a new President. What happened? This analysis by Liz Peek seems about right:
"Clearly, it is way too early for any of the new stabilization and stimulus programs to have taken effect. Why then is the consensus so pessimistic? Certainly the political wrangling of the past month has dispelled optimism that President Obama can change the contentious nature of American politics. Both Democrats and Republicans have spurned Obama’s leadership. The free-for-all over the stimulus bill portrayed Congress in the worst possible light — no surprise there — and led Americans to view not only the process but the bill with utter skepticism. Delivering a 1000-page bill to our legislators just two hours before the signing deadline (and then going on a long-weekend holiday before signing it) was outrageous. The mortgage relief plan hasn’t been received much better. Most Americans (ninety two percent, by some estimates) pay their mortgages on time; they’re darned if they know why they should bail out their neighbors."
This site notes renters don't want to bail out home buyers either.

Being prepared for the worst

2009-02-16T21:40:00.003-06:00

Sheesh, I thought I was a preparedness nut, until I read this talk at Cluborlov, via Instapundit.
"Given its largely depleted resource base, a dysfunctional, collapsing infrastructure, and its history of unresolved social conflicts, the territory of the Former United States will undergo a process of steady degeneration punctuated by natural and man-made cataclysms.

Food. Shelter. Transportation. Security. When it comes to supplying these survival necessities, the Soviet example offers many valuable lessons."

I've been wondering what kind of trading goods I'd need in a time of hyperinflation. Now I have an answer - canned food.

Transportation I've got covered: I love to bike and walk.

I sincerely hope Dmitri Orlov is wrong in his analysis. But I'm not seeing a lot of evidence of that lately. If anything, as Orlov points out, our leadership, both recent and current seems to have been, and still seems to be, reacting to a losing streak by doubling down on strategies already proven not to work.

Books Recently Read

2009-02-14T10:50:00.233-06:00

February '12

King Peggy, by Peggielene Bartels and Eleanor Herman (Excellent)

Sh*t My Dad Says, by Justin Halpern (Fair)

How to Greet a Dog and What to Avoid, by Sophia Yin (Fair)

Thomas & the Christmas Orange, by Lewis Brech and Laura D Lewis (Fair)

Ali Baba & the Forty Thieves, by Andrew Lang (Fair)

I Love You This Much, by Sue Buchanan and Lynn Hodges (Fair)

Last to Finish, by Barbara Esham, and Mike and Cari Gordon (Poor)

Victoria Rose and the Big Bad Noise, by Stacy Juba and Larry Drumtra (Poor)

The Frog Prince, by Vook (Poor)

What the Fox Learnt, by Aesop (Poor)

A New Pet in the Family, by John H Carroll and Claudia Mendoza (Poor)

The Adventures of Leaf Man (Poor)

Cougar Cub Tales: I'm Just Like You, by Sharon Cramer (Poor)

Cougar Cub Tales: Lost and Alone, by Sharon Cramer (Poor)

Pollywogs & Watermoccasins, by J.E. Taylor (Poor)

The Mouse and the Christmas Cake, by Unknown (Poor)

Papa's One Summer, by Natsu (Poor)

Good Friends, by Frankie Lassut (Poor)

Little Miss Mary and the Big Monster Makeover (Poor)

Henry Burp - Mind Your Manners, by Mike Winn (Poor)

Norbert, by James Sutherland (Poor)

Barack Obama: A Politician's Journey, by Vook (Poor)

When a Pig Flies, by JadeNabi Jin (Poor)

January '12

Wheat Belly, by William Davis (Very Good)

The Secret To Lying, by Todd Mitchell (Good)

Being George Washington, by Glen Beck (Good)

Photographer's Guide to the Canon Powershot S100, by Alexader S. White (Good)

Just a Minute, by Wes Stafford (Good)

In Her Name: First Contact, by Michael R. Hicks (Good)

Plants vs Zombies: Video Game Guide, by Vook (Good)

Angry Birds: Video Game Guide, by Vook (Good)

Dead or Alive, by Grant Blackwood and Tom Clancy (Fair)

Noble Vision, by Gen LaGreca (Fair)

I Have A Secret, Do I Keep It?, by EJ Thornton (Fair)

Mortimer's Book of Whatifs, by Mandi Tillotson Williams (Poor)

On My Daddy's Shoulders, by Peter Lawson (Poor)

My Little Pet Dragon, by Scott Godon (Poor)

Garbage! Monster! Burp!, by Tom Watson (Poor)

Stick Dog Wants a Hamburger, by Tom Watson (Poor)

An Austere Christmas, by E.S. Viviano and Sabrina Madsen Pate-Terry (Poor)

Patch Pirates Adventures Brocolli, by Dean Derkson et al (Poor)

Catch That Collie, by Tarrin Lupo (Poor)

Bilbo's Adventures: A Christmas Wish, by Peter John and Cher Lucking (Poor)

December '11

It Is Dangerous to be Right When the Government Is Wrong, by Andrew P. Napolitano (Excellent)

The Help, by Kathryn Stockett (Excellent)

Strength in What Remains, by Tracy Kidder (Very Good)

God's Debris, by Scott Adams (Very Good)

Ron Paul: A Politician's Journey (Very Good)

Inheritance, by Christopher Paolini (Good)

The Blue Parakeet, by Scot McKnight (Good)

The Rise and Decline of Nations, by Mancur Olson (Good)

The Dirty Parts of the Bible, by Sam Torode (Good)

Pebble in the Sky, by Isaac Asimov (Good)

The Legal Answer Book for Families, by Emily Doskow and Marcia Stewart (Good)

The Religion War, by Scott Adams (Fair)

Plants vs Zombies, by Vook (Fair)

Tunnel in the Sky, by Robert A. Heinlein (Fair)

Laughing at Obama: Volume 1, by Scott Ott (Fair)

Gift for a Mouse (Redemption Tales), by Rebecca Graf (Fair)

The Bean Straw, by David Hammons (Fair)

Ballad of the Rag Man, by Cynthia Bloomquist Gustavson and Kristina Tosic (Fair)

Frankie Pickle and the Mathematical Menace, by Eric Wight (Fair)

America's Greatest Comics Issue #1, by Brandon Mullins (Fair)

Gwynne, Fair & Shining, by Stephanie Lisa Tara (Poor)

Good Neighbor, by Erich Bethel (Poor)

Wiggle, Wiggle, Bloop, Bloop, by Adam and Robin Casbarian (Poor)

Caterpillars Don't Check Email, by Calee and Jacob Lee (Poor)

Lil Glimmer, by Angela Muse and James McCullough (Poor)

A Stranger at Christmas, by James McCullough and Dennis Cox (Poor)

November '11

Move, by Greg L. Hawkins and Cally Parkinson (Excellent)

Making an Exit, by Sarah Murray (Good)

Orphans of the Sky, by Robert A. Heinlein (Fair)

Obama: The Greatest President in the History of Everything, by Frank J. Fleming (Poor)

October '11

The Five Percent - Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts, by Peter T. Coleman (Very Good)

This Is Herman Cain, by Herman Cain (Good)

Knocking on Heaven's Door, by Lisa Randall (Good)

My King The President, by Tom Lewis (Good)

How to Protect Your Money from the Coming Government Hyperinflation, by David Voda (Good)

Rainbows End, by Vernor Vinge (Fair)

Grace Immaculate, by Gregory Benford (Poor)

The Prophet, by Brent Knowles (Poor)

September '11

Princess Bride, by William Goldman (Very Good)

Through Darkness and Stars (The Omniverse), by Steve Karmazen (Good)

Peregrin, by A. Sparrow (Fair)

Guide to Investing in the Apocalypse, by James Altucher and Douglas R. Sease (Fair)

Wackier Whisker Wisdom, by Lacey Maran and Kevin Michael (Poor)

August '11

Marzi, by Marzena Sowa and Sylvain Savoia (Excellent)

The Unearthing (The Omniverse), by Steve Karmazen (Good)

Smallworld, by Dominic Green (Fair)

Geek Wisdom, by N. K. Jemisin et al (Fair)

July '11

The Rational Optimist, by Matt Ridley (Excellent)

Temporary Duty, by Rick Locke (Very Good)

Alexander Galaxus, by Christipher L. Anderson (Very Good)

First Light Chronicles Omnibus (Spinward Fringe), by Randolph Lalonde (Good)

Shrink Rap, by Dinah Miller et al (Good)

The Future and its Enemies, by Virginia Postrel (Good)

The Accidental Hero, by Joshua Graham (Fair)

Seeking Cygnus, by I. K. Ellwood (Fair)

The Cageless Zoo, by Thomas K. Carpenter (Fair)

Mug Shot, by Edward Winslow (Fair)

Test Pilot, by John H. Carroll (Fair)

Ledman Pickup, by Tom Lichtenberg (Fair)

Copy Bird, by B.C. Young (Poor)

Coffin Humor, by John Brinling (Poor)

Fantos, by Joshua Scribner (Poor)

Here We Go Again, by Jeffrey Somogyl (Poor)

If at First, by Peter F. Hamilton (Poor)

Don't Count the Stars, by Jacob Heim (Poor)

A Short Walk on a Cold Night with a Dead Friend, by Jim Haffner (Poor)

Ethics, by Roy Le Coeur (Poor)

Stupid History, by Leland Gregory (Poor)

No Free Lunches, by Jeffrey Somogyi (Poor)

Expiration Date, by Jeff Thomason (Poor)

June '11

Economics of Good and Evil, by Tomas Sedlacek (Excellent)

The End of Country, by Seamus McGraw (Very Good)

Bonhoeffer, by Eric Metaxas (Good)

Small Acts of Amazing Courage, by Gloria Whelan (Good)

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, by Donald Miller (Good)

Change the World: Recovering the Message and Mission of Jesus, by Mike Slaughter (Fair)

Soldier of the Legion, by Marshall S. Thomas (Fair)

May '11

Lions of Kandahar, by Rusty Bradley and Keven Maurer (Excellent)

More Than Equals, by Spencer Perkins and Chris Rice (Excellent)

Son of Hamas, by Mosab Hassan Yousef with Ron Brackin (Excellent)

The Ultimate Harry Potter and Philosophy, by William Irwin and Gregory Bassham (Very Good)

The Twelfth Imam, by Joel C. Rosenberg (Very Good)

Zoe's Tale, by John Scalzi (Good)

Blue Like Jazz, by Donald Miller (Good)

The Big Shift, by Marc Freedman (Fair)

A Walk in the Woods, by Bill Bryson (Fair)

April '11

2030, by Albert Brooks (Excellent)

Makers, by Cory Doctorow (Fair)

Sophie's World, by Nancy Rue (Fair)

Sophie's Secret, by Nancy Rue (Fair)

I Love You This Much, by Sue Buchanan (Fair)

Squidge: Little Elf Big Trouble, by Andrew Thomas (Poor)

March '11

All New Square Foot Gardening, by Mel Bartholomew (Very Good)

Origins (Spinward Fringe), by Randolph Lalonde (Good)

Imaginary Jesus, by Matt Mikalatos (Good)

Lucy Doesn't Wear Pink, by Nancy Rue (Good)

Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith #6: Sentinel, by John Jackson Miller (Fair)

February '11

Why We Get Fat: and What to Do about it, by Gary Taubes (Excellent)

Necessary Endings, by Henry Cloud (Good)

Decision Points, by George W. Bush (Good)

The n00b Warriors (Book One), by Scott Douglas (Poor)

January '11

Treat Me, Not My Age, by Mark Lachs (Excellent)

The Blue Zones, by Dan Buettner (Very Good)

Starlighter, by Bryan Davis (Good)

Fireflies in December, by Jennifer Erin Valent (Good)

The Taliban Shuffle, by Kim Barker (Good)

Brain Candy, by Garth Sundem (Good)

They Almost Always Come Home, by Chnthia Ruchti (Good)

Venus in Blue Jeans: Konigsburg, Texas book 1, by Meg Benjamin (Fair)

Overtime, by Charles Stross (Poor)

Star Ware: Lost Tribe of the Sith#4: Savior, by John Jackson Miller (Poor)

Star Ware: Lost Tribe of the Sith#5: Purgatory, by John Jackson Miller (Poor)

December '10

What Your Doctor May Not Tell You about Diabetes, by Steven V. Joyal (Very Good)

The Aedyn Chronicles: Chosen Ones, by Alister McGrath (Very Good)

Elantris, by Brandon Sanderson (Very Good)

Celia and the Fairies, by Karen McQuestion (Good)

Long Term Care, by Joseph Matthews (Good)

Bittersweet, by Shauna Niequist (Fair)

God Came Near, by Max Lucado (Fair)

Weight of Shadows, by Alison Strobel (Fair)

Your Secret Name, by Kary Oberbrunner (Fair)

Natalie Wants a Puppy, by Dandi Daley Mackall (Fair)

Jed and Roy McCoy, A Christmas Story, by Andrew McDonough (Fair)

Jackson Jones, Book 1, by Jenn Kelly (Fair)

Preacher Creature Strikes on Sunday, by Mike Thaler and Jared Lee (Fair)

The Art of Deception, by Kevin D. Mitnick & William l. Simon (Fair)

Other Sides: 12 Webfiction Tales, Ergofiction (Fair)

The Last Rakosh - A Repairmanjack tale, by F. Paul Wilson (Fair)

Quiet As They Come, by Angie Chau (Fair)

November '10

When Helping Hurts, by Steve Corbett & Brian Fikkert (Excellent)

Amsterdam 2012, by Ruth Francisco (Very Good)

The Death Trip, by Marion Stein (Fair)

October '10

Thrive, by Dan Buettner (Excellent)

Through a Dog's Eyes, by Jennifer Arnold (Excellent)

Fully Devoted, by Willow Creek Community Church (Good)

Everyday Justice: The Global Impact of Our Daily Choices, by Julie Clawson (Fair)

September '10

The Power of a Whisper, by Bill Hybels (Excellent)

Velvet Elvis, by Rob Bell (Excellent)

The Shadow and Night (The Lamb Among the Stars, Book 1), by Chris Walley (Excellent)

The Dark Foundations (The Lamb Among the Stars, Book 2), by Chris Walley (Excellent)

The Infinite Day (The Lamb Among the Stars, Book 3), by Chris Walley (Excellent)

Lucy's Perfect Summer, by Nancy Rue (Good)

Maid for a Dragon, by Roderick Gladwish (Fair)

And Thereby Hangs a Tale: Stuck on You, by Jeffrey Archer (Poor)

Youth, by Isaac Asimov (Poor)

August '10

Buy In, by John P. Kotter (Excellent)

The Malacca Conspiracy, by Don Brown (Very Good)

Metagame, by Sam Landstrom (Very Good)

His Robot Girlfriend, by Wesley Allison (Very Good)

When Christians Get It Wrong, by Adam Hamilton (Good)

The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman (Good)

More Blood, More Sweat and Another Cup of Tea, by Tim Reynolds (Good)

Nostradormouse, by Chris Tinniswood (Fair)

Milrose Munce and the Den of Professional Help, by Douglas Anthony Cooper (Fair)

Sleeping Beauty: A Moment to Remember, by Catherine McCafferty (Fair)

July '10

Retirementology, by Gregory Salsbury (Excellent)

Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell (Excellent)

Invasion of the Prostate Snatchers, by Ralph H. Blum and Mark Scholz, MD (Excellent)

Permission to Speak Freely, by Anne Jackson (Very Good)

The Rules of Work, by Richard Templar (Good)

Dourado, by David Wood (Good)

June '10

The Return of the Great Depression, by Vox Day (Excellent)

Nomad, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Very Good)

The Ultimate Suburban Survivalist Guide, by Sean Broderick (Very Good)

Space Cadet, by Robert Heinlein (Good)

May '10

The End of the Free Market, by Ian Bremmer (Excellent)

In Her Name, by Michael R. Hicks (Very Good)

The Best of Everything after 50, by Barbara Hannah Grufferman

Unfinished Business, by Lee Kravitz (Good)

April '10

Tea with Hezbollah, by Ted Dekker and Carl Mediaris (Excellent)

Stuff Christians Like, by Jonathan Acuff (Very Good)

Too Small to Ignore, by Wess Stafford (Good)

Welcoming the Stranger, by by Matthew Soerens and Jenny Hwang(Good)

Xenolith, by A. Sparrow (Good)

The Twelve Sacred Traditions of Magnificent Mothers-in-Law, by Haywood Smith (Fair)

Skinny, by Laura L. Smith (Fair)

How to Succeed at Aging without really Dying, by Lyla Blake Ward (Fair)

In my Place Condemned He Stood, by J.I. Packer & Mark Dever (Fair)

Star Ware: Lost Tribe of the Sith#3: Paragon, by John Jackson Miller (Poor)

March '10

Ethnic Blends, by Mark Deymaz and Harry Li (Very Good)

Silent Tears, by Kay Bratt (Very Good)

Seized, by Max Hardberger (Fair)

Tiger's Curse, by Colleen Houck (Fair)

The Briar King, by Greg Keyes (Fair)

February '10

Empire, by Orson Scott Card (Excellent)

Hidden Empire, by Orson Scott Card (Very Good)

Nudge, by Richard H. Thaler & Cass R. Sunstein (Very Good)

The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho (Very Good)

The Sleep of the Gods, by James Sperl (Very Good)

Lamb, by Christopher Moore (Good)

Right Ascension, by David Derrico (Good)

Declination (Right Ascension), by David Derrico (Good)

Silent Tears, by Kay Bratt (Good)

This Time Is Different, by Carmen M Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff (Good)

Spin, by Robert Charles Wilson (Fair)

Poets' Corner, by John Lithgow (Fair)

January '10

American Savior, by Roland Merullo (Excellent)

The Map, by David Murrow (Very Good)

So Sue Me, JACKASS!, by Amy Epstein Feldman and Robin Epstein (Good)

Ender in Exile, by Orson Scott Card (Good)

One Simple Act, by Debbie Macomber (Good)

The Power of Respect, by Deborah Norville (Fair)

Five Little Peppers Grown Up, by Margaret Sidney (Fair)

December '09

Surviving the Fog, by Stan Morris (Good)

Ten Stupid Things that Keep Churches from Growing, by Geoff Surratt (Good)

In the Land of Believers, by Gina Welch (Good)

Elfhunter, by C.S. Marks (Good)

Fire-Heart, by C.S. Marks (Good)

Ravenshade, by C.S. Marks (Good)

Starfist: First to Fight, by David Sherman and Dan Cragg (Good)

Unleashing the Power of Rubber Bands, by Nancy Ortberg (Good)

Skeeter: A Cat Tale, by Anne L. Watson (Fair)

The Man Who Would Be King, by Rudyard Kipling (Fair)

The Sleeper Awakes, by H.G. Wells (Poor)

McIlvaine's Star, by August Derleth (Poor)

November '09

Going Rogue, by Sarah Palin (Excellent)

Windows 7 Secrets, by Paul Thurrott & Rafael Rivera (Excellent)

Surviving the Economic Collapse, by Fernando Ferfal Aguirre (Very Good)

Childhood's End, by Arthur C. Clarke (Good)

The Christmas Bus, by Melody Carlson (Good)

The Christmas Lamp, by Lori Copeland (Good)

The Scarlet Plague, by Jack London (Good)

The Crystal Crypt, by Philip K. Dick (Fair)

October '09

Tell Me a Story, by Daniel Taylor (Excellent)

Windows 7 Secrets, by Paul Thurrott and Rafael Rivera (Excellent)

Soul Intent, by Dennis Batchelder (Very Good)

Aaron's Storybook #3: The Baker's Dozen, by Aaron Shepard (Good)

Aaron's Storybook #4: The Gifts of Wali Dad, by Aaron Shepard (Good)

The Consolation of Philosophy, by Anicius Manlius (Fair)

America, Welcome to the Poorhouse, by Jane White (Fair)

The idiot girl and the flaming tantrum of death, by Laurie Notaro (Poor)

September '09

The Last Day, by James Landis (Excellent)

The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman (Very Good)

Never Surrender, by William G. Boykin (Very Good)

The Soloist, by Steve Lopez (Good)

Coraline: The Graphic Novel, by Neil Gaiman (Good)

Jungle Crossing, by Syndey Salter (Good)

Learn Me Good, by John Pearson (Good)

Private Sector and Poverty, by C. K. Prahalad (Fair)

Rogue Hunter, by Kevis Hendrickson (Poor)

August '09

Manifold: Time, by Stephen Baxter (Good)

IRAs, 401(k)s & Other Retirement Plans: Taking Your Money Out, by Twila Slesnich & John Suttle (Good)

Axis of Time: Weapons of Choice, by John Birmingham (Good)

The Caliphate, by Jack Stewart (Fair)

Heaven, by Randy Alcorn (Fair)

The Legend of Witch Bane, by Kevis Hendrickson (Poor)

July '09

Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis (Very Good)

The Worried Citizen's Little Survival Guide to the Greatest Financial Crisis of the Century: The Domino Depression, by Stephen Windwalker (Good)

Publicani, by Zak Maymin (Very Good)

Free, by Chris Anderson (Very Good)

Soul Identity, by Dennis Batchelder (Very Good)

Beacon Street Girls:Worst Enemies/Best Friends, by Annie Bryant (Good)

The Time Axis, by Henry Kuttner (Fair)

Free Range Chickens, by Simon Rich (Fair)

Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith #2: Skyborn, by John Jackson (Fair)

Bugs in the Arroyo, by Steven Gould (Fair)

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, by F. Scott Fitzgerald (Poor)

June '09

Marathon, by Jeff Galloway (Good)

The Art of Forgiving, by Lewis B. Smeades (Good)

The Parable of the tribes, by Andrew Bard Schmookler (Very Good)

eXplorations, by Poul Anderson (Fair)

The Alchemyst, by Michael Scott (Good)

The Palmyra Impact, by Boyd Morrison (Good)

His Majesty's Dragon,by Naomi Nivik (Good)

Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith #1: Precipice, by John Jackson (Poor)

The Babysitter's Code, by Laura Lippman (Poor)

May '09

The Total Money Makeover, by Dave Ramsey (Excellent)

Prayers for Sale, by Sandra Dallas (Excellent)

Autism and Me: Sibling Stories, by Ouisie Shapiro (Good)

Your Money After the BIG 5-0, by Larry Burkett & Ron Blue (Good)

In the River They Swim, by Michael Fairbanks et al (Good)

Beyond Lies the Wub, by Philip K. Dick (Fair)

April '09

Beyond the Door, by PhilipK. Dick (Poor)

The Hole in our Gospel, by Richard Stearns(Very Good)

Inside the Revolution, by Joel C. Rosenberg (Very Good)

One Second After, by William R. Forstchen (Excellent)

Retief!, by Keith Laumer (Good)

March '09

The Epicenter, by Joel C. Rosenberg (Good)

Dead Heat, by Joel C Rosenberg (Very Good)

The Promised Land, by Mary Antin (Very Good)

Watchmen, by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons (Good)

This Alien Shore, by C.S. Friedman (Fair)

Beasts of New York, by Jon Evans (Excellent)

The Kindle 2 Cookbook, by David Emberson (Good)

I, Robot, by Cory Doctorow (Good)

I, Row-Boat, by Cory Doctorow (Fair)

After the Siege, by Cory Doctorow (Fair)

Super Man and the Bug Out, by Cory Doctorow (Fair)

A Place so Foreign, by Cory Doctorow (Fair)

Anda's Game, by Cory Doctorow (Fair)

Eastern Standard Tribe, by Cory Doctorow (Fair)

Gump & Co., by Winston Groom (Fair)

Nimby and the Dimension Hoppers, by Cory Doctorow (Poor)

Home Again, Home Again, by Cory Doctorow (Poor)

Craphound, by Cory Doctorow (Poor)

Shadow of the Mothaship, by Cory Doctorow (Poor)

Return to Pleasure Island, by Cory Doctorow (Poor)

Shepherd of the Planets, by Alan Mattox (Poor)

February '09

"Tales of Beedle the Bard", by J.K. Rowling (Good)

"Atlas Shrugged", by Ayn Rand (Very Good)

January '09
"The DNA of Relationships", by Gary Smalley (Good)
"The Good Life and Its Discontents", by Robert J. Samuelson (Very Good)

December '08
"The Complete Guide to Marathon Walking", by Dave McGovern (Good)
"The Picture Bible", by Iva Hoth and Andre LeBlanc (Very Good)
"Beacon Street Girls: Lake Rescue", by Annie Bryant (Very Good)
"The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression", by Amity Shlaes (Very Good)
"The Law", by Frederick Bastiat (Very Good)
"Dragons Wild", by Robert Asprin (Good)

November '08
"Sheep Tales", by Ken Davis (Fair)
"Chi Walking", by Danny and Katherine Dreyer (Good)
"An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King", by William F. Pepper (Good)
"The Shack: Where Tragedy Confronts Eternity", by Wm. Paul Young (Excellent)
"The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order", by Samuel P. Huntington (Very Good)
"Faith and Doubt", by John Ortberg (Good)

October '08
"Using the Asus Eee PC", by Bill Lawrence (Very Good)
"Boundaries with Kids", by Dr. Henry Cloud & Dr. John Townsend (Excellent)

September '08
'Linux Pocket Guide', by Daniel J. Barrett (Good)
'The Audacity of Hope', by Barack Obama (Fair)
'Brisingr', by Christopher Paolini (Good)
'Treason', by Ann Coulter (Good)

July '08
'Democracy in America', by Alexis deTocqueville (Good)
'Guns, Germs, and Steel' by Jared Diamond (Good)

June '08
'The Message of Exodus', by J.A. Motter (Fair)
'The Last Lecture', by Randy Pausch (Very Good)
'10 Books that Screwed up the World', by Benjamin Wiker (Good)
'La Biblia para Principiantes' (bilingual Spanish/English version of 'Beginner's Bible') (Excellent)

May '08
'Looking for God', by Nancy Ortberg (Good)
'Moment of Truth in Iraq', by Michael Yon (Excellent)

Apr '08
'Bike for Life', by Roy M. Wallack & Bill Katovsky (Excellent)

Jan '08
The Power of Nice, by Linda Kaplan Thaler & Robin Koval (Fair)
My Grandfather's Son, by Clarence Thomas (Excellent)

Dec '07
Secrets of the Baby Whisperer, by Tracy Hogg with Melinda Blau (Good)
Ethical Realism, by Anatol Lieven and John Hulsman (Very Good)
World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism, by Norman Podhoretz (Good)
Rainbow's End, by Vernor Vinge (Very Good)
What's so Great about Christianity, by D'Nesh D'Sousa (Excellent)

Nov '07
The Last Colony, by John Scalzi (Very Good)
The Android's Dream, by John Scalzi (Good)
Up from Slavery: An Autobiography, by Booker T. Washington (Good)

Oct '07
I Sold My Soul on eBay: Viewing Faith Through an Atheist's Eyes, by Hemant Mehta (Very Good)

Sep '07
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert A. Heinlein (Excellent)

Aug '07
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by J. K. Rowling (Very Good)
The Treasure Principle, by Randy Alcorn (Poor)
Faithfully Fit, by Claire Cloninger & Laura Barr (Fair)

Jul '07
Chi Running, by Danny Dreyer (Good)

Jun '07
The Essential Bible: Manners and Customs, by Ralph Gower (Good)
Triathlon Swimming Made Easy, by Terry Laughlin (Good)
Narrow Gate Churches, by Atallah Mansour (Good)

May '07
Future Hype: The Myths of Technology Change, by Bob Seidensticker (Very Good)
In the footsteps of Jesus Christ, by Uzi Tauber (Good)
Same Kind of Different as Me, by Ron Hall and Denver Moore (Excellent)

Apr '07
On the Wealth of Nations, by P.J. O'Rourke (Very Good)

Mar '07
James, by Douglas J. Moo (Fair)
Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe (Good)

Feb '07
He Talk Like a White Boy, by Joseph C. Phillips (Good)
Your First Triathlon, by Joe Friel (Very Good)

Jan '07
Real Food, by Nina Planck (Excellent)
Difficult Conversations, by Douglas Stone et al (Good)
Strong on Defense, by Sanford Strong (Very Good)

Dec '06
SQL Queries for Mere Mortals, by Michael J. Hernandez & John L. Viescas (Excellent)

Nov '06
Social Intelligence, by Daniel Goleman (Very Good)
America Alone, by Mark Steyn (Excellent)
Eldest, by Christopher Paolini (Very Good)
Heart Monitor Training for the Compleat Idiot, by John L. Parker, Jr. (Fair)
Younger Next Year: A Guide to Living Like 50 Until you're 80 and Beyond, by Chris Cowley & Henry S. Lodge, M.D. (Excellent)
Crisis of Abundance: Rethinking How We pay for Health Care, by Arnold Kling (Good)
The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care, by Dr. David Gratzer (Good)
The Diamond Age, or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, by Neal Stephenson (Good)

Oct '06
The Copper Scroll, by Joel C. Rosenberg (Very Good)
Orthodoxy, by G.K. Chesterton (Fair)
Reagan in His Own Hand, edited by Kiron K. Skinner, Annelise Anderson & Martin Anderson (Very Good)
Phule's Errand, by Robert Asprin & Peter J. Heck (Fair)

Sep '06
The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation, by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón (Excellent)
Love Busters: Overcoming Habits that Destroy Romantic Love, by Willard F. Harley, Jr. (Very Good)
SQL Pocket Guide (2nd. ed.), by Jonathan Gennick (Very Good)

Aug '06
Quit Digging Your Grave with a Knife and Fork, by Mike Huckabee (Good)
Life Application Study Bible (NIV translation - Very Good, study notes - Fair)
Eragon, by Christopher Paolini (Very Good)

July '06
Making Room for Life, by Randy Frazee (Very Good)

June '06
Whose Land? Whose Promise? What Christians Are Not Being Told about Israel and the Palestinians, by Gary M. Burge (Poor)
The Rape of Alma Mater, by Wells Earl Draughan (Very Good)

May '06
The Divine Conspiracy, by Dallas Willard (Very Good)
The Wailing Wind, by Tony Hillerman (Very Good)
The Didymus Contingency, by Jeremy Robinson (Very Good)
The Ghost Brigades, by John Scalzi (Good)
The Biz Agent to the Stars, by John Scalzi (Very Good)

April '06
body logic: Guide To Wellness, Fitness And Nutrition, by Neil Wolkodoff (Excellent)

March '06
An Army of Davids, by Glenn Reynolds (Excellent)

February '06
Blood Brothers, by Elias Chacour (Excellent)
How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must), by Ann Coulter (Fair)
Leaving Ruin, by Jeff Berryman (Poor)
9 Things You Simply MUST DO to SUCCEED in LOVE and LIFE, by Henry Cloud (Very Good)
The Pushcart War, by Jean Merrill (Good)

January '06
Armed Response, by David Kenik (Good)
Dendelions in a Jelly Jar, by Traci DePree (Good)
The Travel Safety Manual, by Christopher P.P. Barnes (Very Good)
Let Justice Roll Down, by John Perkins (Good)
Shadow Puppets, by Orson Scott Card (Good)
The Purpose-Driven Life, by Rick Warren (Fair)

December '05
The Magician's Nephew, by C.S. Lewis (Good)
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, by C.S. Lewis (Good)
The Power of Full Engagement, by Jim Loehr & Tony Schwartz (Excellent)
Traveler's Tool Kit, by Rob Sangster (Good)

November '05
The Mystic Rose, by Stephen R. Lawhead (Good)

October '05
SAS Survival Handbook, by John "Lofty" Wiseman (Excellent)

September '05
Bulletproof: The Making of an Invincible Mind, by Chuck Holton (Excellent)
The Emotionally Healthy Church, by Peter Scazzero (Good)

August '05
The Cannibal Queen: An Aerial Odyssey Across America, by Stephen Coonts (Very Good)
Nice Girls Don't Change the World, by Lynne Hybels (Fair)
The Gospel of Good Success, by Kirbyjon H. Caldwell (Good)
Sarah, by Orson Scott Card (Good)

July '05
No god but God: the Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, by Reza Aslan (Very Good)
The Barbarian Way, by Erwin McManus (Good)
The Ezekiel Option, by Joel C. Rosenberg (Excellent)
The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes, by Bill Watterson (Very Good)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, by J. K. Rowling (Very Good)
Freakonomics, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner (Good)
Learning to Sail: the Annapolis Sailing School Guide for young Sailors of All Ages, by Diane Goodman (Fair)

June '05
The Road to Serfdom, by F. A. Hayek (Excellent)
A Can of Peas, by Traci DePree (Good)
State of Fear, by Michael Crichton (Excellent)
Old Man's War, by John Scalzi (Very Good)
I Am Charlotte Simmons, by Tom Wolfe (Poor)

May '05
When Jesus Came to Harvard:Making Moral Choices Today, by Harvey Cox (Very Good)
The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde (Fair)

April '05
Anthem, by Ayn Rand (Very Good)
RealLivePreacher.com, by Gordon Atkinson (Good)
Basic Economics, by Thomas Sowell (Excellent)
The Cartoon History of the Universe III: from the Rise of Arabia to the Renaissance (Very Good)

March '05
Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott (Very Good)
Floating Off the Page, by Ken Wells (Very Good)
The Total Temple Makeover, by Gregory Jantz (Excellent)
Because of Winn-Dixie, by Kate DiCamillo (Excellent)

February '05
The Complete Cartoons of the New Yorker, by Robert Mankoff (Fair)

January '05
A Long Way from Chicago, by Richard Peck (Excellent)
A Year Down Yonder, by Richard Peck (Excellent)
To Reign in Hell, by Steven Brust (Poor)
The Volunteer Revolution, by Bill Hybels (Good)

November '04
The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli (Excellent)

October '04
Dune: Battle of Corrin, by Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson (Very Good)
Making Your Children's Ministry the Best Hour of Every Kid's Week, by Sue Miller with David Staal (Good)
Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures: A True Story from Hell on Earth, by Kenneth Cain, Heidi Postlewait and Andrew Thomson (Good)

September '04
Ten Minutes from Normal, by Karen Hughes (Excellent)
the Skeptical environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World, by Bjorn Lomborg (Excellent)
the CONTRARIAN'S Guide to Leadership, by Steven B. Sample (Excellent)

July '04
Brainwashed, by Ben Shapiro (Good)
Fast Food Nation, by Eric Schlosser (Very Good)

June '04
The Five People You Meet in Heaven, by Mitch Albom (Good)
Welcome to the Ivory Tower of Babel:Confessions of a Conservative College Professor, by Mike S. Adams (Excellent)

May '04
Acorna's Triumph: The Further Adventures of the Unicorn Girl, by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Scarborough (Poor)
Deliver Us from Evil, by Sean Hannity (Good)

April '04
Star Trek Voyager: The Farther Shore, by Christie Golden (Fair)
Radical Middle, by Mark Satin (Excellent)

March '04
The Crystal City, by Orson Scott Card (Good)
Applied Economics, by Thomas Sowell (Excellent)
A National Party No More, by Zell Miller (Good)

February '04
Law in America: A Short History, by Lawrence M. Friedman (Very Good)
Darwin on Trial, by Phillip E. Johnson (Excellent)
The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power, by Max Boot (Good)

January '04
A Traveler's Guide to the Galapagos Islands, by Barry Boyce (Good)
Galapagos, by Kurt Vonnegut (Poor)
The Last Days, by Joel C. Rosenberg (Good)

December '03
Authentically Black, by John McWharter (Excellent)
Beyond Black and White: Reflections on Racial Reconciliation, by George Yancey (Excellent)
Even Grues Get Full: The Fourth User Friendly Collection, by Illiad (Good)

November '03
Dune: the Machine Crusade, by Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson (Good)
Pattern Recognition, by William Gibson (Good)
What to Do When You Don't Know What to Do, by John Townsend & Henry Cloud (Very Good)

Obamination

2009-02-13T20:32:00.003-06:00

The Middlewife just came up with a great term for the "stimulus" bill passed again today by the U.S. House of Representatives - Obamination. In conversation with her, I referred to the bill as the "stimulus abomination", and she heard it as the "stimulus Obamination." And thereby a new term is born. Somehow, I expect we'll hear this one again...

Update: OK, it was new to us, but turns out not really to be new. I just Googled it, and the first reference found was in 2007...

2 timely books

2009-02-11T03:50:00.007-06:00

Two books that are helping me form my views on the current political and economic situation are: The Forgotten Man, by Amity Schlaes (a well-regarded recent history of the Great Depression), and Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand, written in the '50s to shed light on the problems of the '30s in both the US and Russia. If you haven't read either lately, you might enjoy doing so.

Also, if you don't have a Kindle yet and are an "extreme commuter" (someone who spends a lot of potential reading time away from home where it might be convenient not to have to carry several books along) you might be a great candidate for the new Kindle 2 on which to do your reading. It begins shipping on the 24th, and looks oh so much like the PADD (personal access display device) from Star Trek. A niece has, and loves her original Kindle, so I have one of the new ones on order.

Interest rate prediction

2009-02-07T16:05:00.006-06:00

I'm opposed to the current "stimulus" bill, as I was to the "bailout" bill last fall. Both times, in the name of doing something to help the economy recover, Congress has gone out of its way to craft the worst possible bill, and guaranteed nothing but more trouble down the road.

So now, as I contemplate recent market losses and the resulting need to invest in an IRA again this year, I wonder where I can best now invest that money. Key (in my opinion) to that analysis is forecasting the likely level of inflation in our economy in a few years, as a result of the recent "bailout" and current "stimulus" bills in Congress.

In my opinion, where we will be is squarely back in the realm of double-digit inflation. I remember when President Johnson promised in the 1960s that we could have both "guns and butter" as he built a "Great Society" while carrying on a major conflict in Viet Nam, without raising taxes enough to pay for either. A decade later, we all paid the price with twenty-plus percent inflation. Starting to sound familiar yet?

I see from Zillow.com that if I wanted a 30 year mortgage today, it would cost me about 5.25% interest, and I'm amazed, because there is no way in the world I would currently agree to loan someone money for thirty years today for less than double or even triple that rate.

Update: Here's a concurring opinion, from Peter Schiff (a vastly better known and more informed economist, one of the first to predict our current woes, back in 2007-2008.)

Sarah Summary

2009-02-06T09:24:00.002-06:00

I enjoyed this Commentary article, summing up the good, the bad and the ugly of the Sarah Palin phenomenon last fall, especially these two quotes:
“In American politics, the distinction between populism and elitism is further subdivided into cultural and economic populism and elitism. And for at least the last forty years, the two parties have broken down distinctly along this double axis. The Republican party has been the party of cultural populism and economic elitism, and the Democrats have been the party of cultural elitism and economic populism. Republicans tend to identify with the traditional values, unabashedly patriotic, anti-cosmopolitan, non-nuanced Joe Sixpack, even as they pursue an economic policy that aims at elite investor-driven growth. Democrats identify with the mistreated, underpaid, overworked, crushed-by-the-corporation “people against the powerful,” but tend to look down on those people’s religion, education, and way of life. Republicans tend to believe the dynamism of the market is for the best but that cultural change can be dangerously disruptive; Democrats tend to believe dynamic social change stretches the boundaries of inclusion for the better but that economic dynamism is often ruinous and unjust.
Both economic and cultural populism are politically potent, but in America, unlike in Europe, cultural populism has always been much more powerful. Americans do not resent the success of others, but they do resent arrogance, and especially intellectual arrogance. Even the poor in our country tend to be moved more by cultural than by economic appeals”
and
“…the Palin moment shed a powerful light on the power, the potential, and the ultimate inadequacy of a conservatism grounded solely in cultural populism. It also exposed the vulnerability of the Left to a challenge to its most cherished claims—as the sole representative of the interests of the working class and the only legitimate path to political power for an ambitious woman.
And, perhaps even more telling, it revealed the unfortunate and unattractive propensity of the American cultural elite to treat those who are not deemed part of the elect with condescension and contumely.”

Update: Friend Jim G. didn't like the article so much: "Sorry, but this is still seen from a "But as we all know, the Republican ideals ARE right" perspective. I'll be the first to admit that there were some ugly tactics used on all sides in the election; there always are. But Palin took it to a new level. Listening to her speeches, she was not only anti-intellectual, but outright mean. Her rallies became proto-lynch mobs; all it would have taken was a "Hangin's too good for 'im!" and they would have been off with their pitchforks. She cultivated the image of her opponents as "Cultural elitists," pandering to the commonly held notion (and don't tell me this doesn't drive you nuts, too) that "I'm not book smart, but I have common sense" - assuming that the two have to be mutually exclusive. I guess this gives uneducated people something to feel good about, but we both know it's a false dichotomy. Plenty of "Book Smart" people have tremendous amounts of common sense, or "Street Smarts." This is a requirement for overall success in most any field; all the knowledge in the world can't help you if no one wants to work with you. Conversely, many uneducated people also couldn't think their way through a lab rat's maze; that's why they're stuck at the bottom of the economic, educational and social ladders for life.

That is why I'm especially pleased with who we have for president now. He doesn't claim to know everything; in fact he encourages dissent and actively seeks input from those who disagree with him. Then he sits down with some smart people (Book and Street, thank you), and thinks it through. What a refreshing change from the "Shoot From The Hip And Things Will Somehow Work Themselves Out" school of thought we've been dealing with for eight long years. I may not agree with everything they come up with, but I can be sure they have thought it through, and that there is SOME sort of viable plan in place. They also seem to realize that you can't have an economy based on brokers selling each other financial instruments; someone has to actually make something to create wealth. Don't get me started on Republicans defending lavish "parachutes" for failed executives, then in the next breath complaining that 40-year autoworkers' pensions are too generous. That is not the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt.

There's my 2 cents worth. Only $3.96 short of a cup of coffee at Starbucks!"

There goes my retirement

2009-01-26T22:11:00.002-06:00

According to this recent article by Terry Savage in the Chicago Sun Times, "The State of Illinois has the most underfunded pension plans in the nation..."

"The plans, on average, were at only about 50 percent of the required funding level. And that was before the stock market crash, which likely decimated the stock portion of the investment by another third."

Given that the Middlewife is already retired and counting on her Illinois State University Retirement System pension check each month, and I already have 24 years of service in the same system, we take a serious interest in such news.

And there's a further possible implication: the way SURS pensions work is that half the pension contribution comes out of the worker's check, with that amount to be matched dollar for dollar by the employer (the State.) So if the pension fund is now only 50% funded, and 50% of the total has already been funded out of State worker paychecks, that suggests the State itself hasn't set aside anything at all toward its half of the cost.

I realize the funding ratio hasn't always been this bad. But frankly, it's never been good. SURS has been complaining about the State underpaying for pensions for as long as I can remember, under both Republican and Democratic governors and legislative majorities.

Lately, one of the hardest things to do in either government or industry is to get leaders to think past the next quarterly report or the next election. But now, at every level of government and industry, the can has been kicked as far as it can be kicked, and it looks to me as if hard decisions can no longer be delayed or avoided.

Gadget lovers: watch those monthly fees!

2009-01-23T23:18:00.005-06:00

A recent light bulb moment in family finance was realizing it isn't only the initial purchase price of my gadgets that matters, but rather their total long-term cost including monthly fees and taxes.

Nowhere is this better illustrated than with cell phones. I really wanted an Apple iPhone 3G last summer, until I realized its $200 initial purchase would cost thousands over the life of the required contract.

Instead, I bought an unlocked Palm Centro for $300, plus a SIM for $30 and 1,000 prepaid T-Mobile minutes for $100 last June. I just checked, and I still have over 600 minutes left! Knowing every minute costs kept me from wasting any. I've already more than paid off the new phone with those savings compared to a previous "free" Centro from Sprint at $120 a month after tax.

Similarly, I want to Email during my daily Metra commute, but without the $30 plus monthly cost of a cellphone data plan. I'd considered a Peek Email device (www.gopeek.com), but was concerned by its $16+ a month fee for service. Then, one day last week Peek offered a Peek with lifetime service for $300. At that price, it and its company only have to last 10 months to be ahead. So far, it's great.

Final example: Tivo has twice offered lifetime subscriptions, at prices that save on total cost after two years. Our first such Tivo is now five years old, and still working well for my son's family. And our new HD Tivo has only one more year to go before we'll be ahead on that one as well.

(Why yes, I do realize we'd have saved even more if I hadn't bought the gadgets at all.)

How to Save 25%

2009-01-23T22:48:00.005-06:00

At a class in Surviving an Economic Downturn class at church last night, our instructor (David Briggs of Willowcreek Church: www.willowcreek.org) pointed out that folks who pay cash spend 26% less than folks who pay with credit cards.

Suddenly a light went on in my head: So what if my credit card gives me 1% cashback? That's still costing me 25% more than paying cash.

I've always assumed paying with a credit card is the same as paying with cash, so long as the credit card has no annual fee and is paid off in full each month. But Dave pointed out that ignores the psychological effects.

Here's a quick example: two nights ago, I wanted to buy a case for my new Peek Email device (www.gopeek.com) So, I went to the local BestBuy, found one, and was shocked that it cost $35 total cost after tax when I was expecting a price of $20. Even so, because I was using a credit card, I went ahead and paid. Then, as I listened last night, I realized that had I been paying cash, I'd instead have gone home empty-handed and ordered something cheaper from Amazon.

My other traditional argument against paying cash has been that carrying cash in the city is dangerous if you get mugged. But it also suddenly occurred to me last night that it could be more costly in such a situation to be carrying credit or debit cards than cash, as muggers sometimes force victims to make withdrawals at ATM machines.

The same technique worked well for us when we lived in Macomb a decade ago, so OK Dave, it's worth another try now.

Fructose Index is the new Glycemic Index

2009-01-23T20:22:00.001-06:00

I've recently read a lot of literature from Hammer Nutrition, from whom I recently bought a bottle of electrolyte capsules. As I read, I learned they use long-chain Maltodextrin in their Hammer gels because (though a complex carbohydrate instead of a simple sugar) it has a Glycemic Index twice as high as table sugar (meaning that when eaten, it quickly and significantly spikes blood sugar.) I immediately wondered (as a former borderline diabetic back when I was fat) whether I should therefore avoid Maltodextrin. Surprisingly, researching that on their Web site led me to a PDF article on pages 1 and 3 of their Endurance News, Issue 058: "Fructose Called Most Dangerous Sugar." suggesting high fructose foods may be a far more important problem than high glycemic index foods, by increasing insulin resistance, this way:
"1) Unlike other sugars, fructose causes blood levels of uric acid to rise rapidly.
2) Uric acid in the blood reduces levels of nitric oxide (NO), especially in the endothelial lining of our arteries..so-called 'endothelial NO'.
3) NO enhances the efficiency of insulin, increases blood flow to muscle and enhances glucose uptake.
4) Animals that lack endothelial NO develop insulin resistance and other features of metabolic syndrome: a cluster of symptoms linked to increased risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease."

Googling the term "fructose index", in turn, led me to an article in the Whole Health Source blog. Key line: "it is the ingestion of foods that induce insulin resistance that carries the increased risk for obesity and cardiovascular disease and not eating foods that stimulate insulin secretion."

Also note this:
"Fructose, but not starch or its component sugar glucose, causes insulin resistance, elevated serum uric acid (think gout and kidney stones), poorer blood glucose control, increased triglycerides and LDL cholesterol in animal studies and controlled human trials. All of these effects relate to the liver, which clearly does not like excessive fructose (or omega-6 oils.) ... Drs. Johnson and Segal recommend limiting fructose to 15-40 grams per day, which is the equivalent of about two apples or one soda (choose the apples!). They also recommend temporarily eliminating fructose for two weeks, to allow the body to recover from the negative long-term metabolic adaptation that can persist even when intake is low."

For me, this means a bit of change, as I've been taking seriously government recommendations to eat 4-5 fruits a day. [Update: mypyramid.gov actually only recommends 2 cups of fruit a day for me.] I've limited those to actual whole fruits, rather than juices or processed items, but if this research is correct, even those aren't good in the quantities I've been feeling virtuous about eating.

The particular villain in the above articles was high-fructose corn syrup, which I already carefully avoid, but now it looks like we need to also be careful of fruits and even vegetables bred to be extra sweet. Even honey is listed as problematic. Naturally, table sugar is also a problem, even when hidden behind such labels as "cane juice."

I haven't found an official fructose index yet, but here's an informal one posted by the blog Natural High Transition (as reformatted by me for easier understanding):
"Grams fructose / 200 kcal serving
Best:
0 avocado, raw"
1 rowal, raw (?)
3 cranberries, raw
4 apricots, raw
6 nectarines, raw
7 clementines, raw
8 peaches, raw & grapefruit, raw
9 oranges, raw & tangerines, raw & pineapple, raw & raspberries, raw
11 bananas, raw & blackberries, raw & melons, cantaloupe, raw & abiyuch, raw (?)
----------- Safe Cutoff? ---------------
12 strawberries, frozen, unsweetened, raw
13 plums, raw & currants, raw
14 dates, deglet noor & kiwi & cherries, sour, red, raw
15 strawberries, raw
16 melons, honeydew, raw & persimmons, Japanese, raw
17 blueberries, raw & cherries, sweet, raw
18 figs
21 pears, raw
22 watermelon, raw
23 apples, raw & dates, medjool
24 grapes, red or green (seedless), raw
Worst:
(Lower numbers are better in this list. Those in bold are often on my shopping list.)

Entitlement and Responsibility

2009-01-23T20:19:00.002-06:00

I've just finished reading "The Good Life and Its Discontents", written by Robert J. Samuelson (a Washington Post reporter, unrelated to the Samuelson who authors college Econ textbooks.)

Written in 1995, it describes a major problem in our society that has worsened since. Further, some of his more hopeful solutions have now been ruled out, and even worse scenarios than his worst case scenarios have come to pass.

Here's the problem, as Samuelson sees it. After WWII, America tried to reconcile its old tradition of individual freedom and self-reliance with its new reality of having both big government and big corporations. The hope was to use the same pragmatic cooperation between government and business that got us so successfully through the war to allow the benefits of bigness to continue while avoiding the attendant risks to individual freedom and self-reliance. And that worked for a while, through say the 1950s.

But by 1995, the grand bargain was no longer working so well. Even companies like IBM that seriously tried to be good citizens and offer lifetime employment had to lay off many faithful hard-working employees, and many government programs grew beyond sustainability as voters refused to support the taxes necessary to fund benefits they demanded. Fourteen years later, that hasn't improved, despite both parties having been on top in those years.

Samuelson notes even the biggest government can't do everything for everybody. Reasonable limits need to be set as to who's responsible for what, and benefits need to be matched with costs. Scope creep must be avoided.

How, for instance, do we win President Johnson's "War on Poverty", when the definition of poverty changes? Likewise, the War on Drugs, War on Terror, Affirmative Action, Health Care and Climate Change -- if goal posts move, who can win?

Samuelson points out a downside to the divided government that protects us from the rise of dictators -- the same division of power also makes it almost impossible to kill a government program once in existence. Those who benefit care much more about continuing it than the general public cares about its cost. In addition, those seeking to continue or expand programs have a hundred ways to seek their aims via all branches of divided government.

Another unintended consequence of government growth is that proportionately less of a growing government is still responsive to voters. Most government actions are now carried out by unelected staff, in numbers too large for our few elected officials to truly control.

Economically, we have smoothed out recessions and booms via monetary and fiscal policy, but always with a bias more toward added spending in bad times than toward adding taxes for fiscal balance in booms. The long-term cost has now come due. All Ponzi schemes come to an end.

The cure, says Samuelson, is for us to retake responsibility for what we can do ourselves and via other institutions than big business and big government, so that each part of our society ends up doing only as much as it can do well. Here's hoping...

2009-01-23T19:53:00.002-06:00

The Man in the Middle is coming in from the cold. I've been posting anonymously for the past five years, but from now on I just plan to keep any thoughts I wouldn't put on a post card to myself.

As I have time, I'll copy in previous posts that still seem worth attention, until there are no more, after which the original blog will fade away.

I think of this as a journal, and hope its being open for viewing and comment by anyone will be helpful.

Your new/old host,
Jim Strasma