Two Men Enter, 1.5 Men Leave

(Incidentally, I use the Mad Max reference a lot, so here it is in case you were up at night trying to figure it out.)

Gene and I were inspired by Steve Jobs to contribute to the economy, er, lose weight. Here is our arrangement as I understand it (subject to correction from Gene):

* The weight-loss period runs from 1/5/09 through 5/31/09. If I'm going to be on national TV promoting my new book, I want to look dead sexy.

* Since I have a large advantage, I am handicapping myself. I will pay Gene $5 for every pound he loses, whereas he will pay me only $4 for every pound I lose.

* As of the wee hours this morning, I tipped the scales at 222 pounds of twisted steel and sex appeal. (I know, you're wondering where I put it all, but remember that muscle weighs more than fat.)

We will update readers periodically. Obviously we have to rely on the honor system for the weigh-ins.

My Review of Bryan Caplan

Here.

A Profound Muddle

"That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins--all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built."

-- Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian

What is so stunning about this quote is that no finding of modern science supports it, or, indeed, could possibly have any bearing on these issues at all, and yet, someone as bright Russell could think these findings imply his conclusion.

A Contradiction Among Right-Wingers Regarding Violence?

I apologize in advance, because this is really just barely coherent enough to even qualify as a blog post, but nonetheless something struck me when listening to news coverage of the Israeli bombing campaign. The reporter said that 300-and-change people had reportedly died, and then quoted a Bush Administration official who said something like, "It is ultimately the Hamas terrorists who are responsible for this regrettable bloodshed. There will be no peace in the Gaza Strip so long as rocket attacks continue hitting Israeli territory."

It struck me that this type of excuse for the admitted killing of innocent people, is very similar to the Black Pantheresque claim that there will be no peace without justice.

And in response to that, what does the average Rush Limbaugh fan say? Why, he says something like, "I don't want to hear your excuses. Regardless of whatever injustices you may have suffered from racist cops, you can't riot and kill innocent people, you hoodlums! What's this society coming to, when whining leftists try to understand the motives behind the wanton massacre of innocents?"

Presumably the person holding these (in my opinion) contradictory views would say, "Nonsense! We live in a civilized culture in the U.S., and rioting won't achieve anything for blacks. If they have legitimate grievances, they should take them to the ballot box."

But I daresay this advice sounds just as shallow to inner-city kids getting shot by drug squads, as telling Israeli settlers that the best, long run way to get Palestinians from shooting rockets at them is to adopt non-violent methods of protest.

Finally, let me state for the record that I am a pacifist and so of course I think rioting (to protest Rodney King, etc.) is wrong and counterproductive. But by the same token, I think killing hundreds of Palestinians (many of whom are innocent bystanders) in response to a few Israeli deaths is also wrong and counterproductive in the long run.

Press Neutrality

Others have brought this up before, but the doctrine of "press neutrality" often effectively means "give the real story and some complete fabrication equal time." A good example, on an important matter, was when the press treated the Bush administration's farrago of lies about the "Mission Accomplished" banner as serious news. On a lighter note, but illustrating the same point, check out this story from the world of basketball. Somehow, Elena Delle Donne's clear, explicit, and quite plausible explanation that she was burned out is given equal weight with Geno Auriemma's idiotic statement that "we might never know why Delle Donne pushed basketball aside."

Auriemma committed a major recruiting gaffe, and now he's desperately trying to hide that fact. But "press neutrality" demands that reporters give his pathetic attempts to distract us from his mistake equal weight with the heart-felt statements of the 18-year-old girl in question as to why she did what she did.

The Recovery Is Just Around the Corner

At a holiday6 party, someone said, "Well, housing prices are bound to recover sooner or later, aren't they?"

"Absolutely," I remarked, "when property values in Rome began to decline around 200 AD, all you had to do was hang on until 15 or 16 hundred and you easily would have gotten your money back."

A Common Libertarian Confusion?

By the way, I often think that libertarians may tend to get confused (of course not all libertarians, and of course not all the time) between defending the general concept of property rights and defending such rights as they are currently defined. Now, I think it's fine to have a default position of "Don't tamper with current rights on a lark," but there are times I think it would be a very good idea to tamper with them. For instance, I would have no problem criminalizing what these "Wow Gold" folks have been doing to this blog. I've got to be spending a half an hour per week deleting their comments and the e-mails they generate. I consider what they are doing no different them coming over to my house with megaphones and shouting about "Wow gold" at a cocktail party I'm throwing.

Wow! Gold!

OK, folks, Andy explained how these blog spammers are ingeniously getting past the word verification feature and spamming this blog anyway. (They get porn surfers to type in the key word for them.) So, does anyone know how to prevent this new maneuver?

Show Of Hands...

When Gene's photo first popped up and it wasn't obvious what those things were, did you think Gene was boasting?

Did you ever have one of those days...

When you just knew that, after 5 1/2 hours on the road, you'd get home to find the toilet bowl full of drowned flying squirrels?

My First Book Is Lauded

at Barron's.

UPDATE: The article has driven EFRP to #21 in the "Economics -> Theory" category.

If they are "all steak"...

Then in what sense are they a "pie"?

Do Not Disturb

I've always loved the French version of that sign for hotel room doors: 'Ne pas deranger'. I can't help translating it as 'Do not derange'.

Howie Has His Breakfast Pint

At the Weatherspoons in Stokie:

Birmingham

Apparently, you can purchase hot dogs embedded in molten uranium ore here:




As well as:






And I learned a remarkable thing about ostriches - all creatures lay ostrich eggs!

At the Cardiff School of European Studies

Some loom like giants among men:

Senate Report Links Bush to War Crimes?

I'm no legal expert, but that certainly is the appearance Glenn Greenwald gives in this blog post.

I Just Saved the Universe From Annihilation

In my gmail account there was an ad that popped up on the margin that said something like, "LLC vs. S-Corp vs. C-Corp. What you'll never read on websites that offer incorporation services." Then it gave a link to a URL that seemed awfully like it would offer me incorporation services.

Concerned about the avoidance of paradox, I didn't click the link, nor am I offering here lest any of Gene's illogical fans click through.

What Shrub Should Have Said

Swansea

Lala

If you want to explore new music, and you already spend a lot of time in front of the computer, you should check out the streaming audio on Lala. It's free, and every computer geek knows how to capture the cached audio data for repeat plays. The streams are of decent quality (they say at 128kbps, but many sound better and a few worse. I'm not an audiophile, I don't want to fetish on the purity of sound at the expense of the music.) and the libary is so vast you'd think this offering criminal. I like the service so much I've set up a separate PC to run the streams. Do yourself a favor and check it out.

Does Anyone Really Believe Them?

Madoff’s sons, Andrew and Mark, turned him in to U.S. authorities on the night of Dec. 10 after his confession, according to Martin Flumbenbaum, an attorney for the brothers.

“Mark and Andrew Madoff are not involved in the firm’s asset management business, and neither had any knowledge of the fraud before their father informed them of it on Wednesday,” according to a statement by Flumenbaum of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in New York.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aMfFYXi.JhQI&refer=home

My dad is running $15 billion plus, I work for his firm my whole life, everyone on the Street has been questioning how he makes his money without frontrunning for years (I heard more than once that people invested with Madoff because they believed he was actually frontrunning his broker-dealer order flow to make these returns), he was only carrying $1 Billion of open positions at the end of each quarter, making his fees only from trading commissions through the firm we were managing, yet I wasn't aware there was a problem.

Cardiff

The main shopping street:



On a chilly December night, how do Cardiff girls dress?

That Pink Section of the US

I regularly receive academic job listings via e-mail. They arrive sorted by region, and I just noticed that the final region is titled 'Non-US or Canada.' So, if the job location is outside the US, or if it is in the huge frozen region of the northern US, they'll put the job listing in this section.

An Interesting Perspective on the Auto Bailout

HT2 Sandy Ikeda.

Kids Say the Darndest Things

OK I can't stand seeing Gene's "Motion Debater Light" post still at the top of the blog, so here ya go:

I rent an office and a woman put in a hair salon in the two offices next to mine. (She knocked down the wall. Or rather, she hired someone to knock down the wall.) So I hear all kinds of funny stories if I leave my door ajar. (When is a door not a door? When it's a jar.)

I just heard a lady say, "So Jimmy said to his grandma, 'I'm gonna go home and play with my Wii.' And his grandma said, 'Don't you talk like that!'"