Canada Considers Massive 'Internet Tax'

Google actively lobbying against it.
Michael Geist describes the situation in detail.

Basically, a few policy groups are asking the legislature for some laws that have applied to media content before the Internet, to be applied to Internet content. It makes intuitive sense to me until I realize that the government should have no right to regulate media content in the first place.

Final Victory in the War of Ideas?

A friend of mine believes that this recent election may signal a final defeat for the ideals of conservatism, that no genuine right wing alliance will ever again regain control of the country.

While I fundamentally disagree, I'll grant him certain points.

• On some social issues (homosexuality, immigration, and other types of xenophobia) the conservatives will moderate significantly over the next 10 years.
• Conservative aversion to changes to the patent law may reduce as changes in the software industry make those changes more evidently necessary.
• On environmental issues, the conservatives will drop the issue of whether global warming is an issue, and focus on policies that help the market incorporate environmental cost into their decision making (carbon tax or 'cap-n-trade' vs. arbitrary per-company pollution controls).

There are a few other issues where I wish they would change the party line, but these are the ones I think will actually change. Once these changes are made, the conservative party will have a far more focused platform based on consistent principles. It will still be necessary to find a leader who can articulate those principles well to the masses, but those come in time.

The modern GOP is very different from the 1950's GOP which was far away from the 1900's GOP. Political platforms change to fit the times, but some ideas don't become less correct.

To justify 'spreading the wealth around,' one has to accept that wealth does not belong to the individual who creates it. Is wealth created by the social environment that created the person, or is it the creative and motivated character of the person that creates both the wealth and the social environment? If you claim that the social forces created the person's character, than it becomes one social duty to do everything possible to forcibly improve the social environment. That can and will be used to permit government control of anything that affects the social environment, words, print, businesses that compete with government programs, etc. If you deny the basic premise that a person owns the product of their work, then you deny the basic freedom that a person even owns his/her self.

Long Live the King

Last night, I went with some conservative friends to go bar hopping in DC and enjoy some election night festivities. I should have brought a camera, it went very bad after a while.

Around midnight, when the 'called' Obama states passed the magic number, there was such a roar of exuberance like I've never heard at any sports event. The whole bar, and people outside started singing "Can't stop thinking about tomorrow, yesterday's gone, yesterday's go-o-o-one." I expected excitement and even intense partying, this was not that.

There was a disshevelled lady sitting outside crying her eyes out on the phone with somebody saying things like, "It's actually happened!" The way she would if her child had just survived a near death experience.

I don't think this guy is even a celebrity anymore, he's graduated to 'hero.' To those of you who support his policies, I suggest you should be concerned. Passionate politics makes for passionate opposition, and the only limit on passion is the ability to through one's life away. I would be concerned about support like that from my own party, for the kind of backlash it can create.

He is a fantastic speaker, spectacularly ambitious, diplomatic, and calm. He's 47 years old, and his political carrer only started in 1997. In 11 years, he has risen from state senate, to the Presidency of the most powerful nation on earth. What does an ambitious man with those skills do after that?

Capitalism 2.0?

I've heard a great deal of talk about this in the wake of this 'crisis,' and it troubles me. I commented on the linked article, my thoughts also available here.

One of the basic tenents of philosophy is that while one cannot prove the existence of others, the act of proof is sufficient evidence to assume one’s own existence (I think, therefore I am). The only person, object or force in all of reality that must exist is you yourself.

Given that, freedom is not a luxury, or a benefit we receive from benevolent governments. Freedom is a fact of nature. 

Capitalism recognizes that nature and attempts to harness it for the best possible outcome. To deny freedom is to reverse the basics of philosophy, holding each person more accountable for the well being of others than that of those they directly care about.

Please don’t misunderstand me. There must be discussion about the proper law society uses to hold people accountable. Peaceful coexistence requires standards of behavior. If those standards are called ‘regulation,’ then fine. But if you deny the basic reality that Freedom is natural and required for life, then expect disaster.

Craiglist Crime Syndicate

http://news.cnet.com/bank-robber-hires-decoys-on-craigslist-fools-cops/?tag=rtcol;pop

The crook hired people on Craigslist to show up near the scene in a particular outfit while he robbed an armored car and made a getaway using an innertube. Police are still looking for him.

Competitive Alternatives

I'm really bothered that in all debate around the topic centers on the concept that if one is against this bailout, then one is in favor of 'doing nothing.' I have not heard a single serious alternative even floated about how to fix this problem.

I want to hear more about capital requirements. The Chinese have lowered theirs while theEuropeans have raised theirs. Here is my proposition.

Complicated Proposition

The fed should decrease the reserve ratio from 10% to 8%.  That would change the liquidity multiplier from 10 to 12.5. There are 6.3 trillion in time deposits, which probably means there's 630 Billion in base deposits. Reducing the reserve ratio by 2 points would instantly create 1.58 Trillion in liquidity. The danger here is that doing this could inflate the dollar by a lot. To limit that, announce that the reserve ratio will rise by 1 tenth of a percent each quarter until the ratio is back at 10%.

Simple Proposition

The same thing just explained in more detail for the many who  don't follow all the terms  in the complicated version. Follow the link.

Bankruptcy, Not Bailout

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/29/miron.bailout/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

I have been sent this link by 2 friends that do not know each other, but know me very well. Jeffrey Miron makes some amazing points.

• The implicit backing of the federal government for Freddie and Fannie encouraged them to take on far more risk than a free market would have allowed.
• "Worse, beginning in 1977 and even more in the 1990s and the early part of this century, Congress pushed mortgage lenders and Fannie/Freddie to expand subprime lending."
• "The fact that government bears such a huge responsibility for the current mess means any response should eliminate the conditions that created this situation in the first place, not attempt to fix bad government with more government."
• "If financial institutions cannot make productive loans, a profit opportunity exists for someone else. This might not happen instantly, but it will happen."
• "Further, the current credit freeze is likely due to Wall Street's hope of a bailout; bankers will not sell their lousy assets for 20 cents on the dollar if the government might pay 30, 50, or 80 cents."

Read the article. He makes many more points that fill in the blanks, but I figured 5 was a good synopsis.

Bring On the Shorts

Bloomberg is reporting that 2 companies, Diamond Hill Investment Group and JMP Group Inc. have opted to let their shares be short sold. I know very little about these companies, but I do know that what they've done takes guts and is the truly moral thing for any company in their position to do.

The regulators are giving the financial companies unfair exemptions instead of letting the market run its course and are protecting the weak at the expense of the good. 

Congratulations to the leadership of these 2 firms in standing up for what capitalism is all about, free and fair competition with transparency and justice for all.

Math Joke

The ark lands after The Flood. Noah lets all the animals out and says, "Go and multiply."

Several months pass. Noah decides to check up on the animals. All are doing fine except a pair of snakes.

"What's the problem?" says Noah.
"Cut down some trees and let us live there", say the snakes.

Noah follows their advice. Several more weeks pass. Noah checks on the snakes again. Lots of little snakes, everybody is happy.

Noah asks, "Want to tell me how the trees helped?"
"Certainly", say the snakes. "We're adders, and we need logs to multiply."

IED video from Iraq

I've recently found this video of an IED explosion. This is the kind of thing that our troops have made such great strides at reducing and eliminating in Iraq.

Rat brain powered robot

http://technology.newscientist.com/channel/tech/mg19926696.100-rise-of-the-ratbrained-robots.html

A disembodied rat brain interfaced to a computer chip, interfaced to a robot, which moves around the lab.

'As they do so, the disembodied neurons are communicating, sending electrical signals to one another just as they do in a living creature. We know this because the network of neurons is connected at the base of the pot to 80 electrodes, and the voltages sparked by the neurons are displayed on a computer screen.'

This is strongly in territory of 'unknown' of the same sort that can be scary. But I can't think of any specific ethical issues that I have with this line of research.

HT to Timothy at Slashdot.

Obama's Technology policy

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/technology/

It reminds me of the proverbial candidate for class president who promises CocaCola in the water fountains.

The list of expensive stuff he wants to do is only offset by his increases in taxes that will shrink the economy. He hasn't mentioned a single program that he wants to stop, just programs he wants to start and expand.

Philosophy of Liberty

This was posted 2 years ago, and I just now found it. I have now seen it 3 times, examining it closely for any idea that I even in part disagree with. The only point I have found is a minor one that can wait until you've seen the clip.



Back to that point, When the author says that people should stop asking their governments to initiate force on their behalf, it assumes democratic governments. Dictators pursue ownership of the life and liberty of their subjects as an objective for their own life. And may cause global atrocities without the deliberate consent of their people.

Information Overload: A Blessed Curse

What is so bad about information overload?
How the Google generation thinks differently.

The first article specifically talks about the advent of email deluge. How the flood of email from colleagues and clients can get far too powerful to feasibly answer or even read.

The second article is by a mom who doesn't understand why her son does 5 entertaining things while researching a report for his science class. The author distills these characteristics in regards to Google infopath adoption.

NATIVES v IMMIGRANTS

Digital natives
Like receiving information quickly from multiple media sources.
Like parallel processing and multi-tasking.
Like processing pictures, sounds and video before text.
Like random access to hyperlinked multimedia information.
Like to network with others.
Like to learn “just in time”.

Digital immigrants
Like slow and controlled release of information from limited sources.
Like singular processing and single or limited tasking.
Like processing text before pictures, sounds and video.
Like to receive information linearly, logically and sequentially.
Like to work independently.
Like to learn “just in case”.

Rudy Giuliani Defines Freedom

Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do and how you do it.
-Rudy Giuliani

Compare that to:

You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man's initiative and independence.
-Abraham Lincoln

Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.
-Mahatma Ghandi

If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom.
-Dwight Eisenhower

Food Crisis

I found some great commentaries here on the recent rise in food prices.
American Thinker | Financial Times: Economists Forum | New York Times: A Global Need...

Things to think about while listening to the news on the Food Crisis:

Since Gasoline and Biofuels are well on their way to becoming true substitutes, and biofuels are made from food, high oil prices will become directly related to higher food prices. Not only can food substitute for oil, but it apparently works the other way too. I should make a whole blog post just on that.
Wired

India, China, and South America are developing far wealthier populations who consume more of both food and fuel. Driving the demand of both, raising the prices of both.

Those same three regions are also using that wealth to increase their productive capacities. The US utilizes only 0.27% of the world's crop land, but produced 16.8% of all the world's grain in 2007. Which means the US produces grain 80 times more effeciently than the rest of the world, so there's room for 7978% improvement in global grain production without any new technologies. That's about 80 new earths to put that in terms Daniel W. Basse can understand.

I don't have many links to back this up, but it seems that as wealth passes some level, quality begins to take precedence over quantity to the average consumer. High class restaurants serve smaller portions than low class restaurants. Areas with higher average population have more Chipotle's and fewer Taco Bell's. If this is true, then as the West gets still wealthier, it will begin to consume fewer pounds of grain while expending far more in terms of other wealth to get it. That might relax demand for low priced grains for poorer areas.

'Not for Resale' free stuff

Universal Studios sent out a bunch of free promo CD's with a 'promotional use only' label to selected listeners. These CD's arrived completely free through the mail.
Troy Augusto, who decided to disregard that label and sell the disc on Ebay, is now fighting a lawsuit from Universal. The record company claims that the promotion use label identified the product as in part their property, and that they retained all rights of sale. Augusto claims that since the discs arrived in the mail with no action on his part, they were gifts and therefore his property.

The major significance is the challenges this case could pose for the 'first sale doctrine.' Universal wins, could a car manufacturer place a limit on the number of resales for the car? I could do a whole new post on that idea.

EFF has counter sued Universal on Augusto's behalf.

Constitution? What Constitution?

Bush administration claimed that the 4th amendment doesn't apply to them.

For at least 16 months after the Sept. 11 terror attacks in 2001, the Bush administration believed that the Constitution's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures on U.S. soil didn't apply to its efforts to protect against terrorism.

That view was expressed in a Justice Department legal memo dated Oct. 23, 2001. The administration on Wednesday stressed that it now disavows that view.

I'm embarrassed to say that I'm rusty enough on the Constitution that I had to look this up.

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

So far this is just an echo chamber post, Hat tip to MRogers @ slashdot. But I can't think of any commentary that won't sound like whining.

Hillary the Powerful

HT John Dvorak
This comment brought to my attention by Don Boudreaux.

The Advent of Generation Why

Quite a bit of research has been done on the workplace integration of Gen-Y.

There are those who say that Gen Y will be good for the workplace:
Five Ways Generation Y May Reinvent IT
Generation Y: They've Arrived at the Workplace with a New Attitude
Gen Y Myths Debunked

There are others who say that Gen Y poses new risks:
Beware a Generation of Risk Takers
Has Generation Y overdosed on self-esteem?
Generation Y: Too Demanding at Work?

I was born in 1983, which puts me squarely in Generation Y. While I won't speak for others close to my age, I do value entrepreneurship and flexibility in my career. I'm always confused by companies that expect to retain me indefinitely, unless they offer unlimited growth within their ranks in the form of easily expanded higher positions to make room for quality people. A 5% raise with a fancier title in my current position is not a promotion, it is a retainer.

Clean Energy Gets Cheaper

Business Week: Clean Energy: It's Getting Affordable
Wikipedia: Electricity Market
CBO: Prospects for Distributed Electricity Generation

For the last decades or so, activists and technologists have hoped and worked for a world where cheap clean power improved living conditions all over the world. Not to be melodramatic, Most technological innovation improves living conditions everywhere they're used, freeing resources to improve standards of living everywhere else.

There have been many breakthroughs in the past few years in the forms of 'more efficient' solar cells, that cost more per watt. A power generating floor, and other nifty gadgets that just don't take off. But the real test is in terms of $$$ per Watt. Because it's not really the cleanness that we want, or even the security of knowing that we will have resources for generations to come, but the raw power that keeps us from working in the dark. The environment is important, but it's not how we base our decisions.

One thing I would love our government to actually tackle however, is the legal mess it's already created preventing home owners from selling their own power back to the grid. A good power market should allow this and be transparent enough to permit real time power pricing. So that homeowners can reduce their power consumption when the price gets real high, or feel free to crank up the AC when the price gets real low. If families could MAKE money by selling the power from their solar cell when the price gets high, we might see a much higher adoption rate.

Idle chit chat with Ryan G

Ryan is a friend of mine from Mason who is currently studying graduate Econ at Oxford. This is a conversation we had a few minutes ago.

Ryan: I am writing a paper on market failure, government intervention, Coase Theorem, etc...
Now I need to do an applied section where I walk through a real case any good ideas? I would do the obvious, environemnt, or education, but I will be doing seperate papers on those two topics next.
me: tragedy of the commons is the most frequent real market failure. so overfishing?
Ryan: yeah, thought of that
me: logging on public lands?
Ryan: hmmm, ok, that would be interesting
me: information assymetry is also good. You could do healthcare.
Ryan: That is a whole nother paper. I am already at 10 pages, I had to leave out dynamic incapacities, and asymentric info otherwise it would have taken me 15 -20 pages just to define the different problems
I think I may do a paper on Health care later, so hopefully I can deal with those problems then.
me: dynamic incapacities, is that like, how electricty gets overconsumed because it's so hard to have live pricing? Google isn't turning up much.
Ryan: i think so, i dunno. He defined it, but we didn't really spend much time on it
and I didn't know where to research for it My other thought were to do big game animals again
I wrote a paper on that a while ago.
Or public financing of sports stadiums which I also did a couple years ago

me: I thought public financing of sports was more of a public choice problem instead of a market failure. It's actually a market success that stadiums don't get built

Ryan: public choice deals with market failures. lol, true.

The usualy arguments for government intervention in markets is market failure

me: so the pub choice argument is that the lack of stadiums is a market failure, so spend public funds on them?

Ryan: Yes, becasue they give positive externalities to the city

such as increased jobs, city pride etc....

things the private world won't take into account

public choice would say rent seeking and government inefficiency would result so the stadium should be financed privately

me: I wonder how you would monetize city pride as a variable

Ryan: hard to

We still don't know too much about dynamic incapacities, so if you know anything, please leave a comment.

Reagan on the role of Government

Hat tip to Brian Hollar @ Thinking on the Margin
Who gave "(HT Stephen Bainbridge via Instapundit)"

Project Lifeline, Legislating Reality After The Fact

I recently stumbled a wonderful new project by our wonderful government called Project Lifeline.

Thanks to this wonderfully brilliant contribution by our governing officials, banks will actually spend 30 days negotiating with borrowers to resolve their loans before foreclosing on them. This is such a great idea in fact, that banks have been doing this voluntarily for years with no government involvement at all!

This is basically the banks borrowing the governments credibility (imagine!) because for some reason people trust banks less than they trust our 'fiscally responsible' government. When the banks call the homeowners asking them to refinance, people avoid the calls like the plague.

Posting Lull

I regret to inform my audience that my computer has died. :-(
I will probably have substantially fewer posts for a while. I'll still try to make 5 posts a week, but it will be harder.

A little note, It's bad to run Laptops 24/7. They're cooling systems usually aren't good enough to handle it.
Also, if your computer randomly shuts down quickly and without warning, wait 20 minutes before restarting it. It's probably over heated and needs to cool down.

For those of you interested, my new system will probably be similar to this:

Anon vs. Scientology UPDATE

Anon has released a new and particularly long video announcement.

The text can be found on Google Docs.
See my earlier post on this here.

Smurf Healthcare vs. US Healthcare

The Smurfs on Healthcare

My favorite part is how Jokey gets worse and worse as he gets more 'health care' from the other smurfs who 'just want to help.'
Here's Robin Hanson's take on health care at EconTalk. He talks a lot about the psychological effect about the act of providing health care. There's also a lot of research on information asymmetry, like donating a funny bone because the docter says your friend will need one.
Dr. Hanson talked about the RAND health experiment, where people who got free health care were compared to people who paid for all of their own health care. The comparison said that even though the free health care folks used 30% more health care, they got essentially zero health benefit. So all that extra money spent bought zero additional health. I recall Dr. Hanson asking class when I took his class at Mason,

"If you assume that some treatments are helpful, and on average, extra treatment buys no health, then doesn't that mean that some of that treatment hurts?"

Reminder of How Science Works

DNA Puts Itself Together 'Impossible'

In case anyone forgot, the world we live in is a wonderful place that the totality of human knowledge barely understands. The world contains matter and energy, they interact in ways that we can see and in ways that we cannot. Science is the process of seeing as much as possible and creating the best possible ideas to understand how all those interactions occur. Compared to the totality of the world, we're barely scratching the surface.

Bill and Hillary in 1970

This reminds me of pictures I've seen of my parents and their friends in the 1970's.

Second Life CIA

Concerns Over Online Economies as Breeding Grounds For Terror

U.S. intelligence officials are cautioning that popular Internet services that enable computer users to adopt cartoon-like personas in three-dimensional online spaces also are creating security vulnerabilities by opening novel ways for terrorists and criminals to move money, organize and conduct corporate espionage.

The CIA has created a few virtual islands for internal use, such as training and unclassified meetings, government officials said.

The CIA owns islands in Second Life! I'm glad I pay taxes.

Most virtual worlds are proprietary of some sort. World of Warcraft is owned by Blizzard Entertainment, Second Life is owned by Linden Labs, combined they constitute an estimated 22 Million users total, maybe 6-12 million of which are active more than once a week. For the time that they spend in these worlds, very few of their decisions are in any way affected by the laws of their respective real world governments. While the company has full access to all the data regarding chat, text, exchanges, etc.; the government can request that access.

Second Life gets more media attention because of real money that gets exchanged in that world on a daily basis. 18 Million Linden$ ($67 Thousand) was exchanged in Second Life this January. It is illegal, however, to exchange real money in World of Warcraft (it still happens though).

Tagged Blog Game

A friend of mine 'tagged' me, which comes with a challenge to post 10 random facts about yourself on your blog. So, at the risk of sounding digital diary-ish, here goes.

1. I haven't used Microsoft Word (except at work) for almost 3 months. I've used OpenOffice and Google Docs to do pretty much everything I need.
2. I haven't bought or downloaded any music for almost 6 months because Pandora plays everything I want to play without me having to mess with playlists or file storage.
3. In 4th grade I did a science project about growing bacteria in a petri dish and kept the jars till I left for college because whenever I thought about throwing them away, they just looked so cool!
4. My highschool was the Patriots, my college was the Patriots, so I rooted for the NE Patriots for the Super Bowl. It has nothing to do with any affinity for Boston or that team in particular, I'm just used to rooting for the "Patriots." I don't want this to lock me out of rooting against them later on, I might actually like some future team. Redskins are cool because I like Joe Gibbs.
   
5. Those who know me might like to know that my hair is short now. Like, real short.
6. I'm a Christian Jew who keeps Kosher because Jesus kept kosher because that's what the law says is good. I think that law applies to everyone, but how people want to live is up to them, and while I may be wrong about the law, I'd definitely be wrong to force other's actions.
7. The second part of number 6 is why I'm also a libertarian.
8. I've listened to every show of the Anthony Sinecoff Show, and while I don't agree with everything he says, he's a friend of mine that I'm glad to know and glad to see still active on the web.
9. I play World of Warcraft on the Earthen Ring server, PST to Donleo.
10. I'm a firm believer in not posting too much personal info about yourself online, like not giving more than 9 random facts about... um.

This is going to Preppy Kev, tg coffeebean, B Pennington, C Light, and Izzy.

Gretchen tagged me from Myspace.

Light Bulbs galore

I bought light bulbs today.
I bought 6, 2 energy smart 26 watt bulbs, and 4 soft white 100 watt bulbs.
I did this because I wanted to have the packages so I could make this blog post.

I came up with formula to figure the total cost of light to me. The energy bulb is 18% cheaper at my energy price. But most of that discount is raw bulb cost if I reduce the price of electricity to $.001, the Energy bulb is still 17.7% cheaper.



Here's the formula:

cost per bulb X number of bulbs used in year
+ Watts X Price of Electricy X Hours of usage
-----------------------------------------------------------
Total cost of light for the year

Results may vary based on prices in your area, but feel free to use my spreadsheet to lower your cost of light, these prices don't change much, so you could do it once and not ahve to do it again for a while.

Tim Hartford Talks Stock Picking

Tim Hartford as the Undercover Economist explains the absurdity of predicting the stock market by telling people he can predict which que will move the fastest. Hartford also apparently has no Wikipedia article, that needs to be fixed.

It seems to me that a key difference might be the perceived simplicity of a que vs. the perceived complexities of picking a stock. Most people who are in que have lots of experience being in ques, and know that nobody can predict which one will move fastest. They see the complex stock market, though, and see a few people doing extremely well and figure that it must be predicable.

Information Super-Highway

Somebody accidentally cut an undersea Internet cable off the coast of the United Arab Emirates, which disrupted Internet service in India by a great deal.

I didn't know there were cables spanning the Pacific! That's a lot of water. The description of the cable is amazing as well. 14 cm thick with several layers of steel wire mesh guarding a narrow (like, 1 cm) wide fiber optic core that actually carries the data. It would take some heavy equipment to break that.

Video Game Tax in New Mexico

New Mexico Proposes Video Game Tax to Punish Staying Indoors

But a coalition of groups, led by the Rio Grande chapter of the Sierra Club, is sold on the idea that outdoor education programs can inspire children in a way that video games and television cannot.

The coalition wants state lawmakers to create a No Child Left Inside Fund with a 1 percent tax on TVs, video games and video game equipment. The fund would help pay for outdoor education throughout the state.

Joseph Henchman says:

The fundamental purpose of taxes is to raise revenue necessary for programs, not micromanage people's decisions with subsidies and penalties. If a tax targeting video games is justified, it should be on the basis of actual negative externalities, not the whims of social engineers picking things they don't like at random.

For myself, I can say without ambiguity that I vastly prefer this type of policy to efforts to ban certain types of video game content. One advantage is that a direct tax creates a disincentive to hurt the industry.
More ambiguously though, I agree with the philosophy of government given by Mr. Henchman. While it's appealing to think that Parks'n Rec would be paid for by Gamestop, as a service, parks and rec should be paid for by people that use it, not by people that don't. People should want more outdoor activities, government should try to 'make them want' more outdoor activities.

Hat Tip to Joseph Henchman @ Tax Policy Blog

Tim Hartford on Colbert

Aston Martin vs Roller Blader With Jet Pack

Aston Martin vs roller blader with jet pack

Awesome video.

Freedom in the Image of God

Freedom in the Image of God

I just wrote this, it has something of the tone of a rant. And although I'm still in the same mood that I was when I wrote it, I think I like it.

To be truly free, is to accurately be the living breathing image of an all knowing, all powerful God that loves the people around him so much, he is willing to sacrifice his own flesh to help those people become more like himself.

News I Find Interesting

Google may launch iPhone rival with Dell

Scientists discover memory reversal mechanism

10 Amphibians you may not have known about


Hat Tip to Brian Hollar at Thinking on the Margin

Educational Duties to the Future

Video clip of Richard Dreyfus on liberal education.



Any Questions?

Hat Tip to Brian Holler at Thinking on the Margin.

Immigration Regulations

On the other side of this argument are the well reasoned arguments of Samuel Huntington in Who We Are. My personal perspective is more along the lines of how immigration restriction restricts freedom, here explained by Don Boudreaux.

Huntington's point about culture is true, immigrants will change a culture, and ideal characteristics that attracted the immigrants are likely to be watered down or eliminated. But immigration is the very freedom that allowed those settlers to create this nation in the first place and removing that freedom seems very wrong to me. A wall on the border, for it's own sake seems like a perfectly reasonable project to me, but not for the purposes of keeping immigrants out. The great wall of china was built for real security reasons, I have no problem with that. I'd support the wall, if open immigration were in place on a very permanent basis.

Hat tip to Ampersand at Alas, a blog.

Robot vs Puppy

Anon vs. Scientology

A hacker group called Anonymous, has declared war on the 'church' of Scientology. So far they seem to have successfully executed a DoS attack on the Scientology website, and a prank on the church's hotline.



Various Media outlets have picked up on this.
Australia Wired The Register National Post

Anon has responded to media coverage of the 'war.'

I fight the urge to support Anon in this solely because of the quality of their videos. But really I don't see what they're going to do. They can't cause any real harm by pulling pranks like a DoS or phone line redirects. They'd really have to cause financial messes, like stealing money from the 'church' and sending it to the FBI, then send an email politely asking them to spend the money investigating the 'church.' That would be impressive, because it's really hard to do. So until they show themselves to actually be serious in this, I have to write them off as a bunch of kids playing important on YouTube.

Head Tracking using the Wii-mote

It's important to note, that Johnny is not actually using the Wii to run this program. But I haven't seen anything to indicate that the capacity to run this type of operation isn't there.

The one thing holding Nintendo back from destroying the M$FT and Sony empires is the perpetual Wii shortage. The Wii has been completely sold out of stores ever since the system launched 14 months ago. The ticker symbol is NTDOY.


Another hat tip to my roommate, Ryan Lea. He's the guy on the left.

Masseffect Madness

Fox News did their best to ream Masseffect. EA, who bought Bioware after release of this game, sent Fox a livid letter saying they should clear up the many false claims they made in the piece. A partial list of the lies Fox let out about this game is below.

• The game includes 'full digital nudity'

Nothing in the game is anything that can't be seen regularly on prime-time broadcast TV.

• The player chooses what happens 'between the two people, you know what I mean.'

The 13 minutes of game play that is in the game is a cut scene that probably won't even happen for most players, due to the decisions you have to make to activate the cut scene.

• That 'Princess Enchanted Brides' is an actual game that exists.

Google searches only turned up comments on blogs and Digg about how nobody know what this game is. So far, there's no evidence that the game exists except for that panelist's comment.

• Adolescent males are mostly who play video games.

According to ESA, the average gamer age is 33.

• Adult Only is a viable rating for a game.

AO rated games DO NOT GET SOLD IN STORES. It's essentially an X rating that is only used to ban a game from the market. The M rating includes some sexual content and is similar to an R movie rating. Here's a link to Gamestop's ratings explanation.

The commenter on the left that flamed the game (without even playing it) has had her book on Amazon torn to shreds by the gaming community in response to her comments on the show. Her rating is down to 1 star.

Hat tip to my roommate Ryan.

Branson's Spaceship

Virgin Galactic Unveils Spaceships That'll Take Passengers to Space in 2009

More reasons why I intend to be a millionaire by age 30.

Also, check out the Spaceport in New Mexico that the amazing Richard Branson is building to launch.

Libertarian Solution to a Political Conflict

A Libertarian Solution to Evolution Controversy: No More Public Schools

When you force people to teach a subject in a way they don't want it taught, and the school system is a political beast, which our public schools are, you're going to see the curriculum you have in mind corrupted by the political process. People campaigning for strong teaching of evolutionary biology in public schools are ignoring that this is what's purportedly been going for the last 50 years. There are no states with a theistic presentation in their classrooms. Real science is what's supposed to be taught; yet when you look at polling data, the ones who see a non-theistic, purely naturalist explanation are in the minority.

The particular libertarian speaking there is strongly pro-evolution, and is trying to resolve the debate about whether to allow the intelligent design curriculum to be taught in public schools.
A lot of people feel very strongly that EVERYONE should be well educated. I rather agree with that, education expands the human experience and gives them the tools to provide high quality services to the people around them throughout their lives. It preserves the knowledge base for a growing economy.
Many people assume however, that the ONLY way to do this is through a ubiquitous government run public education system. The argument for 'school choice' is that you could use the same tax dollars used to fund the public education system to provide limited credits that can be used to pay tuition at all sorts of educational institutions. This would make the market for education more competitive, raising quality, lowering price, and vastly simplifying the content debate.

I am in favor of school choice from kindergarden through the fourth year of college.

Tasty Chocolate Grubs

I had dismissed this yesterday as only marginally interesting. My opinion quickly changed when my boss saw this on my screen and asked me what it was.
So, would you offer a tray of these at your company picnic?

Hat tip to Pink Tentacle.

Stimulus Schimulus

Russ Roberts: Don't Jump the Gun on Stimulus Plans

The money has to come from somewhere. If you raise taxes to fund the plan, the people who are taxed are poorer and they'll spend less. If you borrow money to fund the plan, the people who buy the government bonds have less money to spend and that offsets the stimulus. It's like taking a bucket of water from the deep end of a pool and dumping it into the shallow end. Funny thing—the water in the shallow end doesn't get any deeper.

But you do spend time and effort moving a bucket full of water.

There's also other factors. If I told you I was going into debt JUST to consume more stuff, see more movies, eat out more, etc. Would you say that I'm doing my part to improve the economy, or would you tell me I'm ruining my finances because I'll have to pay that interest for years since I'm not using the money improve my productivity. Well, the stimulus package consists of taking on debt in the HOPES that people will consume with the money.

Forcing debt on the tax payers in hopes that they blow it on useless crap? Why won't Keynes just go away?

Less is More

We're doing more with less. That's good for planet Earth.

Since 1977 the value of the U.S. economy has doubled, yet the amount of physical stuff it took to supply all the needs and wants of Americans fell from 1.18 trillion pounds to 1.08 trillion pounds. Even more astonishing: the "weight" of the economy fell while U.S. population grew by some 55 million people.

This probably not true for each individual resource, only in aggregate. 55 million additional people will require additional water, and while water can be delivered and used more efficiently, the total supply is not unlimited. The good news is that although the use of water probably went up, that means other resources were probably used less, and those other resources were probably less environmentally friendly than water.

I recommend checking out the other Knowledge labeled posts. As this sort of change is what knowledge economies are good for.

Hat tip to Brian Hollar at Thinking on the Margin. Which is rapidly becoming one of my all time favorite blogs! Not to detract from my extensive respect for the eminent professors at Marginal Revolution & Cafe Hayek. Their sites are much better known.

Anti-anti-smoking Forces

Customers desert smoke-free restaurant

A restaurant owner in China started to ban smoking in the restaurant, and lost about 20% of his patronage.
Assuming that the smokers know how bad smoking is for their health (which might not be accurate, they might just not know) this owner can see the direct results of his policy in the patronage. It might be that the people that perfer a smoke-free environment just haven't heard about the restaurant yet, and will more than compensate for the 20% loss. But based just on the content of the article. I'd say he should let folks light up.

Mario Galore

No effort Mario

Mario Live

Super Mario 3 in 11 minutes


WoW Mario

Tabarrok on the knowledge economy

Dismal Science Sees Upbeat Future - Alex Tabarrok

So imagine this: If China and India were as wealthy as the U.S., the market for cancer drugs would be eight times larger than it is today.
...
People used to think that more population was bad for growth. In this view, people are stomachs--they eat, leaving less for everyone else. But once we realize the importance of ideas in the economy, people become brains--they innovate, creating more for everyone else.

New ideas mean more growth, and even small changes in economic growth rates produce large economic and social benefits. At current income levels, with an inflation-adjusted growth rate of 3% per year, America's real per capita gross domestic product would exceed $1 million per year in just over 100 years, more than 22 times higher than it is today. Growth like that could solve many problems.

It's definitely about time for some major works on how the knowledge economy works. There's just not a lot out there and it leads to some real misunderstanding and probably miss communication.

This is a somewhat connected to an earlier post by Tyler Cowen, co-author of Marginal Revolution with Alex Tabarrok. Also my commentary on that post.

Hat tip to Brian Hollar @ Thinking on the Margin.

Google 'OS'? kind of.

Though the title suggests a Google OS, this is actually Ubuntu Linux with a bunch of Google features integrated so smoothly that Gmail, Google Calendar, and maybe desktop search work like native programs.

Funny thing about that. If your Internet lags, your system performance might seem to lag, because your 'apps' are really web 2.0 apps that rely on external servers.

I hearby promise to set this up in a virtual os on my compy when I get home. I'll add comments to this post to keep you appraised of my opinions on this. I'd probably ignore this except that they're marketing it as a real alternative to Windows machines with the support of Walmart.

Also, it's essentially open source, just not on the GPL licence, this is notable on a Creative Commons license that allows for derivative works. If this takes off, and the Google integration improves, ... . Well, I don't know if I can even think about that right now, that's probably bigger than my mind can follow effectively. But it would probably be cool.

The All Seeing Eye - New policies

US drafting plan to allow government access to any email or Web search

Without this law, anybody plotting a terrorist attack is going to use encryption, so why bother? If you won't be able to understand the only people that you claim you want to watch, then why pass a law saying you can look at everything everywhere anytime with no notice or accountability?

I lack expertise in this area, but I've read some good stuff about the security features of the BSD operating system.

It seems the interest in encryption has been decreasing for the past 4 years or so. I wonder if this policy will have an effect on that trend.

Seagate has released a full encryption drive, which would not protect against this policy, but would protect against your data from theft of your drive physically.

What would help against this policy is OpenPGP.

Student Expelled For 'getting involved' on campus

Student expelled for student body activism

NEWSFLASH: When you make a stink about something, your target will look at you're background.
The real news is that they might expel you for making amateur movies (nothing indecent, either) for a contest. If you read it through, there was apparently an ad the student put together that scared the president so much he asked for a temporary bodyguard. But seriously, there was no real threat in the ad.

In a related story, from the article above:

FIRE is simultaneously pressuring Valdosta State to reverse its “free speech area” policy, which is unusually rigid in restricting student expression to a single stage on the 168-acre campus, only between the hours of 12 and 1 p.m. and 5 and 6 p.m., with prior registration.

GO MASON.
Go Mason Student Government.
Hat-tip to 'flutterecho' at Slashdot

Candidate Calculator

My Top Match
John McCain (R) - 80.33%,

My Other Top Matches
Tom Tancredo (R) - 77.05%
Sam Brownback (R) - 74.59%
Duncan Hunter (R) - 68.85%

Middle of the Pack
Fred Thompson (R) - 68.85%
Ron Paul (R) - 67.21%
Mike Huckabee (R) - 56.56%
John Cox (R) - 53.28%
Governor Mitt Romney (R) - 49.18%
Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) - 46.72%
Bill Richardson (D) - 34.43%
Mike Gravel (D) - 31.97%
Dennis Kucinich (D) - 22.95%
Christopher Dodd (D) - 19.67%

Bottom of the Barrel
Joseph Biden (D) - 18.85%
John Edwards (D) - 18.03%
Hillary Clinton (D) - 16.39%
Barack Obama (D) - 15.57%

Thanks to Jerry who sent me this Candidate Calculator.

The results surprised me since I think I more closely match Ron Paul. But then, there isn't a question asking if I think the IRS should be closed.

I think probably my opinions on Iraq and Iran are probably what pushed Ron Paul all the way down to fifth place.

I actually ran through this twice, and both times came up McCain. I do find it interesting, that 6 out of the next 7 matches are incredibly low in the polls.

Information Disclosure

New law enhances Government transparancy

If you pass enough laws, eventually you'll accidentally come up with something good.

Freedom

Libertarianism didn't used to be radical.

Sometimes, I randomly say 'freedom' to break a silence, or as a greeting, or any time really. Occasionally, when I do this, somebody gets confused and says, 'Freedom?' like they've never heard of it.

I now know why I say it. Many people don't know what I mean when I say 'freedom,' and it gives me a chance to tell them. Freedom is the liberty to say what you want, think what want, be what you want, love, hate, do, avoid, and try to change whatever you want as long as it doesn't hurt anybody else.

I promise not to go too overboard on these feel good posts. I don't promise that I might go overboard in my support of freedom.

Carbon Tax

For those of you who maybe thought, wow that looked like a good policy, freedom should take a back seat for policies that good. Let me go ahead and make a specific argument about it.
If people use more electricity than they should, then it's because there's costs that they don't feel. Like costs to the environment, and costs to somebody else's comfort in some other way, econ calls those unfelt costs 'externalities.'

I really feel like emmissions trading would be a good thing. Basically, somebody (probably a government) sells pollution credits to industries that need them. This sets a cap on the amount of pollution and people who don't pollute much don't have to pay for them. This might raise the cost of coal electricity to above that of solar, since solar doesn't really pollute. A book about it.

This is the basic idea behind the Kyoto treaty, but there's a bunch of other problems that make that particular treaty a bad plan. (politics...)

Problems with Kyoto:
Harvard magazine
ktracy.com
npr

Freedom or Welfare

Don Boudreaux: Rampaging Regulators

Professor Boudreaux explains again again the case for freedom to exercise good judgement.

Boudreaux for President!

Taxes galore

I don't know for sure that Mr. Paskel is the gentleman who authored this text. But I thank him for forarding it. I especially thank Jerry Holsworth for sending it to me. I don't beleive in forwarding emails myself, but I encourage my friends to read my blog, so I'm posting this here.

---- Original Message -----
From: Stanley L. Paskel Sr.
Sent: Monday, January 07, 2008 9:18 PM
Subject: What is a Billion???

The next time you hear a politician use the word 'billion' in a casual manner, think about whether you want the 'politicians' spending YOUR tax money.

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of its releases.

A. A billion seconds ago it was 1959.
B. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.
C. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.
D. A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.
E. A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government is spending it.

Add to this list: A billion grains of salt fills a bathtub.

UPDATE: I don't know how long this has been circulating, but I just recalculated how long it takes to blow through a billion dollars. According to figures in this white house report, it takes the federal government 3 hours, 7 minutes, and 48 seconds to spend a billion dollars.

There is a lot more to this email and you can see the rest at GoogleDocs.
I highly recommend it.

Big brother in your lap

Laptops Searched and Confiscated at U.S. Border

The government can and apparently does search your laptop contents when you travel internationally.

For those of you who may want to be safe in this, here's a coupe of encryption programs that will help you hide your contraband data.

TrueCrypt
&
Omziff