The iPhone Rapture Is Upon Us

At the entrance to the mall parking lot we were approached by a wild-eyed young man. In days gone by he might have been one of those youthful, stylish silhouettes that danced around spastically in an iPod commercial. But no longer. His long hair, once carefully-tended, had been mussed during the rumble that occurred while waiting in line. And his ironic T-shirt had been torn away - on his chest he'd apparently carved the word "iPhone" with the shards of a broken Shuffle.

"Dude, they totally put me on a waiting list," he sobbed, before collapsing.

We picked our way through the RAZRs and Treos that had been tossed away by early adaptors as we made our way to the Apple Store. But we were beaten back. The crowd was a furious mass of technology nuts, Apple faithful, and folks with vast reserves of disposable income. The mob was an independent thing, with a mind of its own, lurching forward and back. As they crushed into the doorways there were howls of pain as their Volkswagen keys jabbed violently into each other's sides.

A film major was trying to escape with his iLife. He was only buying software, but his waif-like constitution was no match for the mad throng that pressed forward. Bruised, he retreated to the Genuis Bar, where several of the weaker sales associates had taken refuge. They were calling Cupertino for support, their fingers dancing away on the revolutionary interface, but the network, like the fading promise of salvation, had collapsed.

The sound of ringtones. Off in the distance. I'm getting used to it now.

Kick Them In Their Senatorial Seats

It's finally over.

Bloggers, activists from all over the political spectrum, talk radio - not to mention millions of average citizens who shut down the Capitol Hill phone system with their flood of calls - these forces combined to explain in no uncertain terms where the members of the United States Senate could stick their "bipartisan attempt at comprehensive immigration reform".

Everybody wants controlled immigration, handled fairly, from all countries, all races and creeds. And this must be done through safe and secure borders. Yes, we have to deal with twelve (to twenty) million people who are here already, but we need to understand the cost of various options first. And Americans strongly feel that the most pressing issue is enforcement. There are already plenty of laws on the books that, in theory, would help in the matter of security.

But the political take-away here is simply the vast divide between incumbent, elected officials - some of which have been entrenched in their Senate positions for upwards of twenty years - and the regular citizens of America. They are shockingly out-of-touch with their constituents. They get arrogant and angry when they discover that the people of the United States disagree with them, when there are questions, when vox populi expresses it's forceful disgust (witness the implosion of George Voinovich, R-OH).

When it comes to politics, I'm jaded. It's easy enough to say "it's always been like this, it only gets slightly better or worse, by degrees". But after this most recent despicable show of condescension, pique, and temper by these entrenched, legislative jack-wits, I'm ready and willing to eagerly support every anti-incumbency campaign from here to Walla-Walla. It's time for an old fashioned, come-to-Jesus political house cleaning in Dodge City.

We need a new bunch of jerks.

Deconstructing the Plan to Smash Fred

A good sign from The Politico that Fred Thompson has the potential for some serious traction:

Democratic strategists say Thompson's populist style and show-biz allure could prove extremely appealing in a general election at a time when voters are so down on Washington. So the party has launched a preemptive campaign against him that includes a DNC fundraising e-mail branding Thompson, "The inside-outsider."

This means that the DNC has done some extensive internal polling, and they've got good data on red's strengths. His message resonates with voters who are in a strong anti-incumbency mode - thanks in part to the immigration debacle - and this cuts deeply into Hillary's electoral profile. She's the darling of the DNC, and her network there is vast.

So to deal with the threat, they've summoned the forces of opposition research, and developed a plan of talking points (Shouldn't they be "whispering points?") for Democratic pundits to begin to interject into any discussion where Fred looms. Once these themes have been developed, of course, they rely on their friends in the media to take the ball, under the auspices that these are legitimate "concerns that people have raised". From the article:

Another DNC research report sketches likely lines of attack on Thompson: "reliable supporter, defender of President Bush," "staunch supporter of Scooter Libby," "key role in Bush Supreme Court nominations," "already has a flip-flop problem," "ill-equipped for the campaign," "a thin Senate record, questions of 'work ethic', " "controversial legal clients may cause problems," "lobbying careers full of land mines."

Working to influence news coverage, the DNC also recently began circulating a "research document" with the headline, "MAJOR LEGISLATIVE ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF SEN. FRED DALTON THOMPSON (1994-2002)." Then the page is blank until the line, "Paid for by the Democratic National Committee."

Most of their counterparts are nowhere near this cagey. The Republicans are simply terrible at thinking several chess-moves ahead in the political game, developing a plan of attack, and executing it efficiently. And they're even worse at network-based activity at the grassroots level, fully exploiting the Internet to develop a message and reach voters. And this may make all of the difference in 2008.

Although as I write this, I see an email about Ohio 4 Fred, so maybe there's some efforts underway. And Thompson himself seems to "get it" ...

iPhone Overload

Shut up about the iPhone, already.

It was easy enough to play along for a few weeks there - Jobs speech at the Apple developers conference, all the details that have leaked out about the device. For a few days it seemed like every other Slashdot post was about the iPhone, and now the mainstream media has begun wall-to-wall coverage, a week in advance of the launch.

And okay, I'll admit, I'm a severe geek. Techno-toys are one of a few areas - books are the other - where I sometimes need to restrain the material impulse. At a price point of, perhaps, $199, an iPhone might be rational. But $499? It would be hard to look myself in the mirror after making such an expenditure - with three anxious children that, with luck, will be attending college in the next decade or two.

It's a phone. One with a fat price tag and a pricier data plan.

But half the damn articles in my newsfeed are about the Apple iPhone. The Cincinnati Enquirer is covering the event. And newsflash, AT&T is hiring up 2,000 sales reps just for launch day. The whole thing is out of control. You would think human society itself is approaching some transcendent moment on June 29th. And the truth is - I actually care less, the more the coverage reaches the saturation point.

Shut up already.

Those Greeny, Righteous Freegans

The New York Times has an article today about "freegans", a group of dumpster divers with a noble sense of purpose:

Freegans are scavengers of the developed world, living off consumer waste in an effort to minimize their support of corporations and their impact on the planet, and to distance themselves from what they see as out-of-control consumerism.

The wait for occasions like dormitory move-out day at the end of a university school year, and pick through the garbage for dish racks, toiletries, and still-functioning iPods - thereby nobly reducing their environmental impact on the planet. It's a highly advanced form of secular materialism:

“If a person chooses to live an ethical lifestyle it’s not enough to be vegan, they need to absent themselves from capitalism,” said Adam Weissman, 29, who started freegan.info four years ago and is the movement’s de facto spokesman.

It's the new ethics, folks, entirely devoid of spirituality or immediate concern for other people. Of course they will defend themselves by saying that they ultimately hope to leave a sustainable planet for future generations, or something. But if you read through the literature you will find a naked contempt for the default American lifestyle, which is all about materialism and greed.

But what amuses me most Mr. Weissman and his ilk is the humorless lack of irony mixed with a high level of moral certainty. Indeed, if a Rabbi or Reverend made such absolutist statements they'd be immediately recognized as a fundamentalist. I've been attending Catholic Mass my whole life and never have I heard from the pulpit such fascist, righteous language about the way others should live if they want to conform to a standard of ethics - unless of course you include such admonitions as "love thy neighbor" - which, when you really think about it, is a much more demanding directive than "hate thy neighbor, but pick through his trash".

Nobody should be fooled. These increasingly-ascetic flavors of Green politics are a thin excuse for the socialism that these (thankfully, marginal) folks would otherwise seek to impose on the rest of us - because they know better. And for this reason - I've said it before - I have more respect for straightforward, unapologetic Marxists.

Cincinnati Jail Tax Boogie

Politicians from both major political parties agree that Cincinnati needs a new jail.

So local officials recently decided to raise taxes by half a percent to help pay for the expenditure. This was done without putting the issue to a vote. And so a motley assemblage of pressure groups is trying to gather signatures for a petition in hopes of having the issue on a referendum in the Fall. It makes for strange bedfellows: On the Left they are against a jail because they are convinced that law enforcement applies justice unequally, along racial lines. On the Right they are against taxes in principle, since government often wastes money.

(All of which creates a funny inversion - because the folks on the Left still quaintly believe that the severe social problems that lead to criminal behavior can be solved by increased government spending on handouts and job training. And folks on on Right think the same conundrum can be eliminated by cracking some criminal over the head with a baton and throwing them ... uh ...in a government jail.)

Predictably, the infighting has set in among these groups. Some people claim that the NAACP is leading the efforts, and therefore any statements that have recently been made in the press by any other parties are foolish, according to activist blogger Nate Livingston. Then "the Dean" chimes in at the Cincinnati Beacon, claiming that our local major newsweekly is deficient in it's coverage - because of "big-money interests behind a prison-industrial complex". None of the activists actually addressing, beyond generalized, non-substantiated statements, the actual news item in question, whether or not the organizers of the petition are having any luck collecting the necessary number of signatures.

Again, the question: How many signatures have been collected so far?

Transparency and accountability from our public officials is always demanded from these quarters in loud and thundering tones. But I suspect that they won't feel the need to lead by example on this issue. There will be arm-waving and obfuscation. The numbers won't be counted yet. Lack of turnout will be the Enquirer's fault. And inevitably, if they can't gather enough signatures, some kind of conspiracy will be invoked. Taking full responsibility for the outcome and providing a clear view of the process - I'd be surprised if that's on the table.

Maybe officials will eventually pay the price for increasing taxes for this specific item without taxpayer consent. But at least there is a process for holding them accountable - petitions, and if necessary, elections. When it comes to pressure groups, however, it's one big, unelected, free-for-all - without any independent means of getting the facts behind the spin.

Tags: Cincinnati, Taxes, Criminal Justice

Advanced Barbeque Techno-anthropolgy

The history of the human race can be linked to military technology. And barbeque.

In the first case it's been well-documented by historians. The longbow at Agincourt, Hiroshma and Ngasaki, the machine guns and trenches of World War I - these have been the pivot-points in history for civilizations and empires. And they each rely on some game-changing technology that provides the greater capacity to efficiently dispatch rival factions of humanity. Even today some youngsters in Pakistan are patiently preparing their devotional suicide bombing while a Predator drone streaking quietly through the sky draws them cleanly into focus.

On the less grim side of the equation, researchers at Harvard have put forward a theory that barbeque played a key role in human evolution. According to an article in Technology Review:

Cooking makes both plants and meat softer and easier to chew, providing more calories with less effort. What's more, human teeth got smaller and duller at around this time, which is the opposite of what would have happened if people had had to rip and chew lots of raw meat.

Reducing the time and energy required to chew and digest raw meat means more energy available for other uses--such as feeding a voracious brain that's getting bigger and bigger.

The article further suggests that the obesity epidemic is a continuation of the same trend. Food is even easier to eat these days - you look for the arrows on the concrete and the "Drive Thru" sign, select pretty much anything, and give five dollars to the lady. The most calories you will expend will be in folding back the paper wrapper.

But barbeque is something different - it resonates with the more primative part of the brain. This summer I've availed myself of the opportunity on many occassions, firing up the grill like an "old stone savage-armed" in the words of the poet - and lining up various meats and vegetables, which emerge from the smoke and flames a short while later to find their place at table. It's immensely satisfying to know that in addition to providing a culinary tour-de-force I am also helping the brains of my family evolve. (Which perhaps may not be necessary, given the advanced sarcasm of some of the folks who sit around our table.)

And in the spirit of barbeque technology - advancing the artform for the benefit of mankind - I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the efforts of Nathan Moore, a local engineer who works by day at P&G, presumably solving the mysteries of defect-free Pringles production. His inventive mind has brought to the world a barbeque smoker that produces the succelent joys of slow-cooked protein nirvana - without the need for contstant tending.

You see, unlike conventional smokers, which require fuel to be added continuously over the course of many hours, Moore's has a gravity-fed system that allows for wood chips to gradually replenish themselves, freeing the chef to play golf, drink beer, play Madden 07, or if necessary, interact with other family members.

In light of what we now know about history, this may be an anthropological milestone. Kudos to you, Mr. Moore.

The Empire Pulls and Strikes Back

One of the great unanswerable conundrums of modern American politics can be stated thusly: Where do the Democrats stand on the war on terror? Are they merely against our involvement in Iraq? Do they simply detest George W. Bush with such ferocity that they think we are not in danger – or that there’s nothing we can do – or that it’s our entire fault anyway?

Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter, media pundit and one of the most revered strategists of the Left, acknowledges this incoherence, one which has helped earn approval ratings for congressional Democrats that are worse (if such a thing is possible) than the president’s dwindling percentages. Alter observes:

Politically, the "war on terror" continues to be a useful GOP bumper sticker, whatever John Edwards's objections. Instead of bemoaning this, Democrats need their own bumper sticker—some way of framing their position that commits firmly to withdrawal from Iraq, but doesn't make them look like surrender monkeys.

His suggestion is a “pull and strike” strategy, whereby our troops redeploy themselves from the sectarian fighting, and instead only participate in conflicts in Iraq which involve foreign fighters. In other words, we go back to a more strictly-defined war against Al-Qaeda, just like back in the day of 2002. We don’t technically leave Iraq – and everybody over there can keep killing each other – we simply stop trying to help them create a functional nation, choosing instead to kill the “classic” terrorists.

The argument isn’t without some merit. One of the underreported news stories from Iraq is that many local leaders on both sides of the Sunni/Shia divide have grown tired of the foreign interference in what’s supposed to be a bloody, gruesome civil feud. “These dudes from other countries are mucking up our ability to effectively slaughter one another!” seems to be the Python-esque line of reasoning. The pull and strike plan, by that standard – and assuming the situation on the ground is really that simple – would be a way to make everybody happy, sort of.

But I’m afraid Jon Alter’s semi-sensible proposal underestimates the extent to which the modern Democratic Party has abandoned any defensive foreign policy in favor of the “blame America” model. For every sensible Joe Biden there are several more senators and representatives who believe we should apologize, withdraw, and capitulate, folks who reflexively imagine that we deserve the hostility of Al-Qaeda, that we are imperial, over-aggressive, and wrong by virtue of our basic identity. For them the next terror attack is already Bush’s fault (because they never would have wanted to kill us otherwise, I guess) – and any notion of proactively dealing with genuine threats is illiberal and undignified.

On Immigration, Bush May Finally Destroy Himself Completely

When you hear a political story about supporters, from within the same party, abandoning their leadership, it's usually highly provisional. People who were in favor of government spending parted ways with Bill Clinton on welfare reform, or the base deserted Bush over the Harriet Meirs supreme court nomination. It's not really abandonment - it's more like a strong expression of dissatisfaction.

This is different. Republicans are abandoning Bush on immigration - totally throwing him under the bus, once and for all, thank you very much. This is abandonment. We're talking: Leave the baby in the middle of a cornfield, get in the car, and speed away type of abandonment.

It's a potent combination of things that has brought people to this point. One, the current plan is tremendously insulting to people who are legally attempting to enter America from countries that do not share a geographical border. Two, laws that are currently on the books should mean something and be enforceable, otherwise it taints the notion of law-and-order government -- an item on which Republicans take pride. Three, seriously secured borders should come first BEFORE we talk about what happens to people who are already in-country. And four, there's a profound and very powerful sense that the coastal elites - including the country-club portion of the GOP - is shoveling this bill down our throats.

Moreover, It hardly cuts down party lines: Even 54% of Democrats are against the immigration package.

Sure, there are those who habitually claim that any resistance to a generously open-border policy is about some kind of discrimination towards people from South and Central America -- the same old reflexive, knee jerk response. Maybe the congress and the president are afraid of that accusation. But this is amazingly cowardly and wrong. Most people who are abandoning the president are clearly in favor of safe, secure and even high-volume immigration of people from all different courtiers and ethnic backgrounds. Just make it as fair for the PhD from Kenya and his family as for the nonskilled gentlemen from Oaxaca.

Back to the president: In strictly political terms he was on life support anyway. Sure 20% of the country hates him with a cross-eyed vengeance, and another 40% simply doesn't like him, but he had the rest of the voting population, right? That was still a few million folks - people who dutifully stuck by him on Iraq, through thick and thin - even when it's been a "long hard slog". But now, with his incomprehensible support of this reform package - if it passes, and he signs it into law - he's going to manage to enrage everybody else who wasn't already disgusted with his presidency.

That takes a special kind of skill.

Tart Me Up, Dumb Me Down

Far be it for any blogger to defend Dan Rather - a man who still can't fully understand why everyone failed to buy into that document scandal about Bush and the National Guard - but doesn't he have a point? I realize everyone has their panties in a bunch over the use of the word "tart", since this somehow suggests that, you know, I guess ... since Couric is a lady she's stupider than Dan, or something. But clearly CBS decided to try a format change when she took over the news - does anyone remember the breathless coverage over Suri Cruise? - and it wasn't about making the news more gruff and serious-like.

Furthermore, CBS executives have been waving their arms trying to explain their failing results for the past nine months by suggesting that America must be sexist, because apparently Mrs. Couric (to repeat) is not a dude, and people have no interest in planting themselves before almighty network television between 6:30 and 7:00 to watch her, in particular, furrow her brow and tell us about the latest violence in Gaza and the usual health care microscandal.

At the risk of repeating, ad nauseam, what's brutally obvious to everyone in America but the executive suite at Viacom: The nightly news hour is an artifact of a certain time period in history, one which is gradually coming to a close. Do the rest of us a favor and buy yourself some statistics about the population and mortality rate of the baby boomer demographic. Hint: It's a line that slopes downward over the next thirty to forty years. That's all you have left for the nightly news, at most. And it's probably a damn sight shorter than that, based on the fact that even the late adopters I know in the 50 to 60 year-old set are surfing information sources all over the Internet these days.

Blame the customer. This flies laughably in the face of everything that has been learned in a network-based economy, where people have an almost silly amount of choices, and you can't swing a cat without knocking over ten MBAs jabbering about highly targeted markets, mass-customization, and making sure the consumer is delightfully over-served. But when you are still pushing a 20th century product in a 21st century economy, I guess your excuses for failure will sound outdated and shopworn too, right?

Update: I've heard some compelling arguments that this tempest in a teapot is merely (cynically) a calculated ploy on the part of Moonves and Kaplan to shake out a few more viewers for the CBS Evening News.

Tags: Dan Rather, Katie Couric, CBS

The Sorpranos Find Earth

** Spoiler Warning **

Unless you've spent the past couple of days rendered away in a Syrian prison you've probably caught the media coverage of the last episode of HBO's Sopranos. Instead of providing some definitive answer on the fate of Tony Soprano - possible outcomes included getting whacked by the mob or entering a witness protection program - series creator David Chase concluded the series without a big plot point on which to hang the story.

Ron Moore, showrunner for another progressive TV series, Battlestar Galactica, explains the last Sopranos this way:

Chase managed to do the unthinkable, the unbelievable and the unprecedented: he yanked us out of their lives without any resolution whatsoever. We were torn away from Tony, Carmella, AJ, Meadow, Paulie, Sil and the all the rest without any idea what happens to them tomorrow or even later that same evening. In real life, when you lose contact with someone, you seldom if ever have the satisfaction of knowing how the myriad threads of their lives resolved themselves. They are removed from your circle of knowledge and yet their lives go on unbeknownst to you in ways you can only imagine. The Sopranos are gone from our lives, but their lives go on without resolution, much like ours. None of us have tidy, revelatory endings that are the culmination of our "story arcs" and neither will they.

There are some implications here - not the least of which are for fans of Moore's own "BSG" franchise, which is scheduled to conclude next season after four angt-ridden years of struggling with cylons, faulty human nature, and the quest to find Earth.

Simply put, Battlestar fans should expect narrative frustration and a sense of incompleteness married together with some kind of twist. Ron Moore - as listeners of his podcast commentary know - delights in zeroing in on TV viewers expectations and artfully kicking them in the stomach. We should epect nothing less for the big finale.

But there's something else at work here - the tension between serial and episodic TV. Those aforementioned podcasts frequently discuss the difficulty of delivering a show with season- and series-long story arcs that must (according to the network) also attract viewers who may not have watched every installment. It's a tension as old as "Gunsmoke". Writers thought that some of the recurring characters might benefit from show-to-show development, but the TV brass wanted the simplistic Western formula, where everyone except the weekly villain is reset in their places like figurines in a cuckoo clock.

So what David Chase did was quite subversive. The Sopranos ended on note of tension mixed with the notion that the "world" actually continues in perpetuity. This - for a groundbreaking series that thrived by the longer narrative arc - is actually a nod back towards the episodic model of television. Maybe the search for Earth is, in the final analysis, more about the hunt.

Tags: The Sopranos, Battlestar Galactica, Ron Moore

Chinese Cropland and Thermodynamics

All of this grandiose talk about alternative energy sounds delightful doesn't it? Economics, unfortunately, involves the most efficient use of resources given certain constraints and opportunity costs. And some truths are inconvenient regardless of whether we're talking about (supposedly) price-fixing pseudo-free market oligopolies, or states based on central planning. For example, according to the U.K. Times Online:

China’s communist rulers announced a moratorium on the production of ethanol from corn and other food crops yesterday at the very time that Western leaders are rushing to embrace alternative food-based fuel technology. Beijing’s move underlines concerns that ethanol production is driving up rapidly the costs of corn and grain. It appears to reflect a growing reality about food-based alternative fuel: it is far more expensive both economically and environmentally, than Western politicians are likely to admit.

Hmm. Turns out people in China value basic sustenance - grain, crops, livestock - more than grossly inefficient land usage. It's a no-brainer. Chinese politicians understand history. Social stability is the key to retaining power, and this is more easily controlled when the population has enough to eat. They don't have time for the quasi-religious environmentalism that is currently in vogue among Westerners.

Even our president - always derided by ultralefties as coked up on oil money - is pushing the alterna-hooey. From the same article:

President Bush, who with Britain wants to see a huge increase in corn-based ethanol, called in January for the annual production of 35 billion gallons of corn-based ethanol in the US.

Although that is a hugely popular rhetoric in the Mid-west wheat belt states — the heart of America’s political battleground — environmentalists soon pointed out that such a goal would require an additional 129,000 square miles of farmland, an area the size of Kansas and Iowa combined.

Whoops. Looks like we slammed back into the laws of science and basic economics again. Renewable resources need to put more energy into the system to renew themselves, and this takes photons, and therefore land.

The tricky double-bind of total energy cost manifests itself with each alternative. Windmills? Let me show you the energy-guzzling aluminum factory that cranks those suckers out. And sure you can power Silicon Valley on sunbeams ... provided you cover half of California with solar panels.

There's no easy way around it. But while we're coming to grips with the problem - if we're serious about solutions that don't involve fuel buried beneath nutjobs - and if we lack the stomach to annex Canada to force them to farm ethanol - and if we can't fathom the notion that nuclear waste ain't so bad given the tremendous output - then we can at least learn something about efficiency from our friends in China.

(Thanks for the link, Dad.)

Postcolonial Guilt and International Aid

It seems simple and obvious, so much that everyone from Bono to George W. Bush have are all in agreement: Western nations should provide more aid to Africa. Could there possibly be a downside - could anyone disagree? Maybe international assistance can be more efficiently distributed, but you'd have to be crazy (or cruel) to envision that the best way to help Africa would be to stop giving them money and food.

Kenyan economist James Shikwati takes a contrarian view in this Spiegel interview [via Instapundit], and reveals some uncomfortable truths about how Western societies like to think they are "helping" while actually destroying any chance for self sufficiency. The whole piece is worth reading, but a few highlights:

About corruption and people afflicted with starvation:

But it has to be the Kenyans themselves who help these people. When there's a drought in a region of Kenya, our corrupt politicians reflexively cry out for more help. This call then reaches the United Nations World Food Program -- which is a massive agency of apparatchiks who are in the absurd situation of, on the one hand, being dedicated to the fight against hunger while, on the other hand, being faced with unemployment were hunger actually eliminated. It's only natural that they willingly accept the plea for more help. And it's not uncommon that they demand a little more money than the respective African government originally requested.

About the corn that Europe sends:

A portion of the corn often goes directly into the hands of unscrupulous politicians who then pass it on to their own tribe to boost their next election campaign. Another portion of the shipment ends up on the black market where the corn is dumped at extremely low prices. Local farmers may as well put down their hoes right away; no one can compete with the UN's World Food Program. And because the farmers go under in the face of this pressure, Kenya would have no reserves to draw on if there actually were a famine next year. It's a simple but fatal cycle.

On AIDS:

If one were to believe all the horrifying reports, then all Kenyans should actually be dead by now. But now, tests are being carried out everywhere, and it turns out that the figures were vastly exaggerated. It's not three million Kenyans that are infected. All of the sudden, it's only about one million. Malaria is just as much of a problem, but people rarely talk about that.

Millions of dollars earmarked for the fight against AIDS are still stashed away in Kenyan bank accounts and have not been spent. Our politicians were overwhelmed with money, and they try to siphon off as much as possible. The late tyrant of the Central African Republic, Jean Bedel Bokassa, cynically summed it up by saying: "The French government pays for everything in our country. We ask the French for money. We get it, and then we waste it."

But Shikwati's argument really gathers force is when he takes a broader view, looking at the devastation wrought by Western aid across the continent, and felt everywhere from the impact of donated clothing on Nigeria textile workers to German "assistance" for the former butchers of Rwanda.

It's not hard to see how post-colonial guilt and a strictly materialist conception of prosperity have conspired to create dependence, corruption, and helplessness. As with most excessive attempts at socialist "solutions", the checks are really being written so people can feel good, like they're solving a problem. Opportunistic politicians and bureaucracy thrive in this faux economy, and cause the system to exist in perpetuity.

And yet cutting off international aid seems unthinkable - even to those of us who can see merit to Shikwati's argument. We simply cannot stop ourselves. Thousands - millions of people are starving in Africa. Certainly we can help them, can't we? How could we do anything less as compassionate individuals?

We'll Always Have Paris

My wife surprised me. She thinks people should leave Miss Hilton alone.

She's creature given to charity and compassion, my wife, which is part of the reason I married her. And despite my salty disposition I am not so misanthropic that I relish the misfortune of others - my default setting is simply, increasingly, a matter of stoicism. With three daughters and a jumpy golden retriever in the house, somebody needs to be habitually nonplussed. I volunteer.

But Paris Hilton - all over the news, this girl famous for nothing - it's hard not to pleased to see her in jail, one way or another.

Is it surprising that she, we're told, had a nervous breakdown a few days into the ordeal? This may be the first seriously unpleasant outcome she has ever faced, as a result of her own actions, in her entire life. A life without structure, all flouncing around, impossibly wealthy - and so complete system shock when an encounter with the law and subsequent disregard becomes accommodations booked at a correctional facility. Cluelessness has consequences? What a surprise. It must have seemed to her, like these things could always be taken care of, like somebody on her staff could write a check, or talk to some people. Or something.

House arrest seems fair enough. Her parents, though? They should be buried under the jail indefinitely. Anyone who has ever had children (and quite a few who haven't) can recognize a mile away the deadly mix of soft indifference and lavish overindulgence that makes Paris Hilton possible in the first place. Whatever distant role they may have played during her upbringing it certainly wasn't parenting.

Sooner or later one of these young Hollywood types - Hilton, Spears, or Lohan - is going to kill themselves, or worse, somebody else. There will be a red "Breaking News" headline on CNN, and everyone will ask "Did you hear ...?" and phenomenal stupidity and excess will have finally turned deadly. About five days of media soul-searching will ensue, and it remains to be seen if anyone will have learned anything - lessons in responsibility and character that could be learned now, if anyone were paying attention - or if we will merely, reflexively become more cynical yet.

Response to Bryan - Long and Meandering

Some follow-up to a recent post. This one spirals all over the place, but touches on some of the essentials of political philosophy, from my layman's perspective.

Hopefully doing the writer justice - in a comment on a previous post Bryan suggests that I often rail against "mamma government", and points out that the government is comprised of the people - it is indeed our government - and that responsible and intelligent collective action in the name of government is no more or less idealistic than capitalism - which doesn't always provide the capacity for all people to "stand on two feet".

Indeed I do rail against "mamma government" - and some of this is thoughtless and too simplistic. The "Reagan revolution", which has influenced 30 years of conservatism, was much better at being critical of federal largesse than it was articulating what government can and should do on behalf of the citizenry. I do think FDR's big ideas have been railroaded towards cradle-to-crave socialism as entitlements are endlessly expanded around the idea of making all outcomes fair.

But, that said, there are some things government can and should do - from interstate highways to devices that detect radiation signatures in the bridges and tunnels around New York City. We need "mamma government" in many instances, and conservatives have done a lousy job of explaining what's fairly done on behalf of the collective good, and what is excessive.

You suggest that this is "our government", one comprised of the American people - the essential compact of civil society is built. Who could argue? Except ... even that simple formulation chafes against some expansionist and over-elastic concepts political theory, which seeks, on one side, to assign rights and social amenities to people who aren't actually citizens (those who recently wandered across our border, folks captured while plotting to kill us) - and on the other side, to make increasing use of international law, international courts and organizations like the United Nations.

Europe, of course, is the best example of this type thinking, having recently unionized into one smeary mass of formerly-sparring countries. The more traditional, or shall we say, longer-standing, ethnic groups of the region - Germans, French - have even seen fit to curb their birth rate precipitously to make way for the new arrivals! (I have reservations about the long-term strategy there, but that's another post.)

The question at the heart of the dispute between free-market capitalism and collectivist government - regardless of the entities between which it exists - is whether we seek equality of outcome or equality of opportunity. Do we seek to evaluate the worth of our society on the basis of the external, measurable indicators of prosperity, or by the harder-to-measure opportunities for personal and material self-realization which are inherent to the system itself, or at least should be?

Let's not forget that life is essentially unfair, from the moment our cells divide through the day we burst into the light and discover any putative parents that may be waiting for us - and (sooner or later) the tax bracket to which they belong. Conservatives argue that these deterministic factors are even less relevant than the traditional, nurturing and highly-involved structures of family - and that the greatest achievers in commerce, arts and letters often had the deck stacked, coming from poverty, with plenty of obstacles and little help ... except, in most cases, for a solid family.

The other way to go is to have collectivist government attempt to balance the scales for everyone. And thus we can plot the long arc of liberal munificence: Welfare, head start, lavishly funded public education, after school programs, generous and endlessly-patient college assistance, job training, free public wif-fi, unemployment, health care, social security, prescription drugs. There's plenty more of course - the list never gets shorter. Ever. And I suspect a few new programs were added as recently as the Democratic debate earlier this week.

Although let's not forget that most of these are supported - even granted, in some instances - by Republicans, so entrenched we've all become in our conception of what government should do to help people. But the question here is - are they fair? Or more fair than free markets and less government, which doesn't guarantee any outcomes, and seems more at ease with a society that has been stratified by various measures?

Many conservatives will answer that the culture of entitlement fails to deliver, and creates an sour underclass of dependence, one which often eschews work and education in favor of benefits that are easily obtained. This view seems overly simple and selective with the facts - the social safety net has saved many from destitution in times of difficulty. And others - well, what do we make of the fact that the poverty rate in America - wealthiest of nations - is still around 12%?

This implies that either social programs fail, or we don't have a broad enough safety net. Or (my view) that while there is indeed real suffering and misfortune in America - and we should never be at ease with that fact - we've also defined poverty so inclusively that it's possible to be technically poor, according to the collective government standard, in America while owning a TV set, and air conditioner, and an automobile - material goods that would place you among the highest classes in many nations.

In other words, the collectivist impulse leads to a view of the world where too much is never enough. And worse, there's a dehumanizing effect on people who are strong, independent, and ambitious - seen most pointedly in schools, the nursery of progressive theory. Recognizing diversity - itself a laudable goal in a poly-cultural society like America - has really become rewarding mediocrity. This trend once seemed implausible, the type of isolated incident a Rush Limbaugh seizes upon for the purposes of tirade - until I saw it firsthand recently at a second grade track meet here in Red State county of Ohio. Every competitor gets a ribbon, regardless of where they placed - and there's not much fuss over who placed the highest - the color for which was lavender. Numerous other examples about - instances where achievement and effort have been blunted in the name of fairness.

This is what disturbs me, and leads me to suspect that we have gone too far in the direction of relying on the collective, instead of the individual. And it leads me to think that - while benefits like social security may not be debatable anymore - when it comes to things like disaster preparedness or our societal readiness for the next pandemic - we are doing ourselves a grave dis-service when we flap our arms about "more being done". We've got to do it ourselves. On this issue and in general we simply need more capable, compassionate and intelligent adults in this society, plugged into the structure of families, ready to look after the public good regardless of whether they are obligated by the government. As hard as it may be, people are more resilient by resisting the "mamma"-driven impulse to reflexively sue for assistance during any crisis. And instead of defining fairness exclusively in material terms, and resentfully attempting to cull away our assertive, independent and competitive qualities - we should encourage self-reliance and old fashioned virtue. And, whether we like it or not - even though it puts us in line with some traditionalists scolds - it's time to recognize that families make a gigantic, unavoidable difference. So we need to encourage them, in every possible way.

Nobody in their right mind would claim that free-market capitalism is perfect, or should exist entirely unconstrained by government regulation. But I am suggesting that the alternative - a creeping notion of socialism - has simply gone too far, is silently corrosive, and finally endangers even liberal, humanist values.

Update: Edited for clarity - probably a lost cause.

Review: Pirates Part Three

Yesterday I loaded up the family minivan with various children and trekked to the local uber-movie-complex for the purpose of subjecting ourselves to the latest offering from Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise starring Mr. Depp and company.

The next three hours consisted of all kinds of action, romance, twists and betrayals, interspersed with fabulous and plausible computer-generated imagery. Recounting the specifics of the plot seems mostly irrelevant - there a couple of groups of pirates, some shifting allegiances, a trip through the underworld, some feckless British types, and a sea goddess with a temper. With a few exceptions it felt like everything from the previous two ovies had been put in a shredder and reconsituted.

Mr. Depp plays the same shuffling, lovable rogue, Jack Sparrow. Aside from some artsy weirdness in the underworld sequences - vaguely reminiscent of French avant-cinema - his talents are underutilized this time around. Orlando Bloom, Kiera Knightley continue to look very handsome. But many of the gags, both action and comic, seem overdone and familiar by this point.

Two highlights: A sight gag involving a midget (little person? little pirate?) and a bazooka which occurs early in the movie - and the appearance of Keith Richards as the "pirate king". I leaned over and explained to my oldest daughter that he was the guitarist in a very famous rock band, but I might as well have explained that he was the assistant undersecretary of economics, for all it mattered to an 11-year-old.

Later, last night we caught a few moments of a show on the History channel that anlyzed the archetypes and mythic motifs of Star Wars. This is actually a conversation you can have with kids - they enjoy it, and it's a great intoduction to literature. Who is the mentor figure in Harry Potter? Who makes up the "sidekick duo" and chorus in Lion King? They were quite involved, until the point where my daughter suggested that we break down the Pirates movie we had seen earlier. And ... although there are some congruent elements ... it just didn't quite hold up as well.

Beer Vs. Wine

http://www.slate.com/id/2167292/

Wine Vs. Beer
Slate
By Field Maloney

Wine is basically an agricultural product (fermented grapes), while beer is the result of a complicated process of manufacture (boiling barley to extract sugars, adding hops and yeast, fermenting the wort that results). This holds true whether the brewer is a medieval English villager or Anheuser-Busch. The hallmark of beer is consistency: A brewer strives to make batch after batch of Pilsener so it tastes the same—and often succeeds without much difficulty. Wine is more variable: The sugar levels and tannins and acidity of the grapes fluctuate from year to year, and so does the character of the resulting wines. This explains why the whole concept of vintages is so central to wine but largely absent from beer.

In fact, you can trace the United States' shift from an agrarian society to an urban, industrial one through beer. In the Colonial era, settlers drank mostly hard cider (the rural drink of choice), rum, and whiskey. It wasn't until the mid-19th century, when German immigrants came over in large numbers to man the new factories and brought their brewing skills with them, that beer really took off. When beer became more popular than cider around the time of the Civil War, it signaled an altered American landscape as much as altered tastes. Mass-market beer arose out of two key innovations of the industrial revolution: refrigeration and pasteurization. Suddenly, beer could travel long distances, and lager slowly took over countryside as well as town.

But in America today, beer has lost its grip. In a column on brown ales, Eric Asimov, the drinks writer for the New York Times, wrote a line that could serve as a beer elegy: "Mild brown ales, the knock-back drink of thirsty coal miners and dock workers, are not so appealing to post-industrial office workers, who are less thirsty and more aspirational."

Tuberculosis Guy Repercussions (And Freedom)

A report I caught tonight, on CNN, about Tuberculosis Guy concluded by saying - and I paraphrase: There's little immediate danger to the public as a result of Mr. Speaker's actions, but one thing is clear. There are some big problems with the process, and the way things are handled.

Why does this sound funny to me?

Because the lesson learned here, according to the sonorous bullies at CNN, isn't about personal accountability, about the need to be selfless despite our personal misfortune. Instead it's some kind of breathless "can't the government protect us?" appeal to collectivism that seems to crop up with every public health danger from Katrina to random shark attack on Florida beaches.

Are we really such helpless children? Can't anyone fathom the notion that society is better - not when mamma government protects us from every remote contingency - but when most autonomous citizens are responsible, intelligent, and compassionate towards others? Neither possibility is flawless and perfect, but in the latter scenario, whereby most of us feel obliged to be virtuous - we preserve more freedom, more rights, more range in our individual actions.

That's conservatism to me, in a nutshell. There are plenty of ways to innovate, to change, to even be quite progressive, provided the onus of responsibility - the moral burden of acting in the best interest of others - is wighted more with the people, not the collective government.

Meanwhile, I hope this fella is sued left, right, and sideways.

Dateline Charlotte

Business travel, lately. Standard disclaimer - I do not, categorically,