The Blog Whose Name Changes Sometimes

Well, I've finally come around to the point of view that says the US and UK must "stay the course" in Iraq, whether or not the invasion was justified in the first place, because otherwise Iraq might become a country full of violence and chaos.

I have eaten more packaged sandwiches since September than I had in the preceding 45 years.

The Conservative Party recently sent a flyer to my house promising that, in contrast to Labour, its candidates would deliver: "Less talk, more action."

Isn't that, well, the exact opposite of conservatism?

So, there's that guy, Hoppe, who has managed to rally several hundred libertarians around him in support, charged with the most horrendous crime in all of our "secular society" (more on that another time), the refusal to be politically correct.

These libertarians have spent much time discussing our insulted student, Mr. Knight, on the Internet and much of the talk is brutal. But I think Mr. Knight is judged too harshly, for he believes what he believes precisely because he has come to adulthood in a culture which worships freedom from insult, a world that is populated with sheep who actually pay the Wolf, the State, to keep watch over them. Mr. Knight did the only thing he knows how to do, the thing he has seemingly been taught is acceptable to do his entire life: to use authority to force others to shut up. He actually believes that he shouldn't have to hear ideas of which he disapproves. There are several problems with this, not the least of which is the eviden…

Just to keep it real with the anarchists out there (after my post siding with Gene the Sellout), let me tell what happened with my dealings with the Transportation Safety Administration (I think that's what the abbrevation is for)...

Last time I flew, I couldn't use electronic check-in. The airline employees at the counter (both ways) had to take my license and make a phone call before giving me my tickets. The first time, they wrote down the 800 number for the TSA and told me I'd have to call or else this would happen every time I flew. So I needed to call to take care of it. (The lady added, "It will take a while.")

So finally I called, was on hold for not too long (about five minutes), and then got an African American woman in her thirties I think. (I tell you about demographics merely so you can "hear" her scold me in a moment.) Our dialogue:

TSA: Hello my name is ______ how can I help you?

Bob: Yeah, I just had a flight and couldn't use ele…

I was quite amused by Mr. Fuller's tsk-tsking of Gene's reaction to his (Gene's) mugging. (Please read his analyis to assure yourself that I am not mischaracterizing his post.) He quotes Gene saying that the cops sincerely wanted to catch the guy and then says, "Yeah right." He then goes on to ask if they had done routine follow-up (sketch artist, etc.) and says "I doubt it." Then to prove that he is right, and apparently to justify his rhetorical quesion, "And Gene calls himself an anarchist?", Fuller relates an anecdote from Chicago. Gene then responded in the commentary and pointed out that Fuller's a priori deduction was completely wrong in the case of the bobbies, and then Fuller apologized.

Heh heh, got you there at the end. Of course Fuller didn't apologize, he explained that he was going on his own experience from Chicago (and that's why he wondered whether Gene knew how to interpret the desires of others across an oce…

Woman accused of using man's sperm received in oral sex to get herself pregnant. Surprised father sues. Court says sperm is gift. Hee HEEEEEE!!!! How much lower can we sink?

My friend Vicky and her son at the off license.


My Turkish dry cleaners.


Two of my housemates, Gui and Kotaro, hide from the paparazzi's intrusive camera.


My friend Mick, from Cork, Ireland, hard at work.


Looking down the high road in Colindale.


Kwamye, from Ghana, at the local phone shop/call center/Internet cafe.


The crew at New Jersey Fried Chicken -- the notorious "Slovakian chicken girl" is the one on the left.

From Glen Whitman.

"Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics (i.e. astronomy etc.); and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation ... the shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scriptures are criticized and rejected as unlearned men."

(From http://www.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/cis/lucas/lecture.html#_ftn12)

Despite turning my mugging into a lesson arguing against the state, some bloggers feel I failed as an anarchist in that post. For example, Raymond Fuller is so disgusted with it that he writes, "And Gene calls himself an anarchist?"

He continues: "Did the police ask Gene to sit with a sketch artist? Did they call the cell phone company to trace any calls that were made from Gene's cell phone. I doubt it."

You doubt it, Raymond, but in fact they did both of those things.

When I lived in Connecticut, I once heard a ruckus in the backyard. I looked out my window to see a crow standing on the roof of my toolshed. In the trees surrounding him were five grackles. The crow could only face one of them at a time. Whichever way he looked, the grackle who was directly behind him would leave his perch and swoop in at the crow. The crow would hop around and change his orientation to face that assailant. As soon as he did so, the approaching grackle would pull out of his dive, while the grackle who was now behind the crow would swoop in towards him.

After several minutes of this, the crow took off from the roof. All five grackles followed him, harassing him, no doubt, until he was out of their territory. Is there a "Driving off Crows" School were they go to learn that sort of tactic?

Introducing the new head of the World Bank.

There's a lot of debate going around about the Kansas state attorney general's demand to see medical files from women who were given late term abortions. I really have no interest in debating abortion but I heard a very interesting defense of the AG from Judge Andrew Napolitano on the O'Reilly Factor tonight. I can only hope I misheard him say, "If you are a crime victim, you lose your right to privacy." Exactly what magical thing happens to a crime victim that they deserve to be twice victimized? Of course, some people will say "the defense of the child trumps" privacy and that's fine. That's a legitimate opinion but Judge Napolitano made a blanket statement about being a victim of crime not a perpetrator. If somebody steals my bike, can the state come to my house and ransack my lingerie drawer? If someone paints graffiti on my van, should the police come over and see what books I like to read? If my purse is snatched, should the Florida AG h…

My friend Tim Swanson alerted me to to a commentary on my mugging post in which the author declares, amongst other things:

"I was a bit surprised that Callahan said 'the state did nothing to either prevent or redress the attack'. While it may be true that the State was not able to prevent this attack or even capture the culprits, the presence of a police force certainly decreases the number of attacks on whole. There would be more muggings if the police did not exist, and that doesn't necessarily mean that they are the most efficient protection service either."

Skarbek's comment is odd in a number of ways. First of all, I didn't say, "The state has never prevented any attack on me" -- I said it did nothing to prevent that attack on me. Secondly, if the state police are not the most the efficient protection force, then their monopolization of protection services, effectively shutting out other, more effective private protection services, will obvio…

So I hear from a friend who enlisted in the US Army to become an infantryman. He details some of the crazy physical training. One of my fovorites is how as new recruits for basic training they are run around and around a dirt track for miles and miles after of course hundreds each of assorted pushups, crawls etc. finaly there is a break for lunch with a time limit. Then immediately out to run and run. Naturally as crippling effects of the grueling chore led to vomitting by all at various times during the run. The rule was no puking on the track. If you puked on the track you got a welcome break to be forced to roll around in your goop. As there were no breaks to relieve bladders or bowels, many garments were soiled. The soiling continued during lectures, puddles under many. No, don't raise your hand and ask to be excused.
Another favorite of mine was the incident related regarding chow line. As our soldier explained at his level of training he was not allowed to take the little cup…

My friend and fellow blogger, TT Tom, went to see The Dead (essentially the Grateful Dead without Jerry Garcia -- he must have been the one who was grateful) at Jones Beach. Now, TT Tom has a thing about sitting in his own seat at a concert, sporting event, etc. Or, perhaps it's better to say a thing abut not sitting in it. So we were shifting seats every 15 minutes throughout the first set, but always up in the mezzanine, since our tickets wouldn't give us access to the floor.

Just before the set break, it began to rain. Tom said to me, "Let's head out toward the exit gate. Someone older and weaker than we are will leave because of the rain, and we can ask them for their floor stubs."

So I stood in the rain for about 10 minutes while Tom accosted people near the exit gate to see if they were leaving. After watching the futility of his efforts, I walked up to him and said, "Face it, Tom, there's no one here older and weaker than we are."

We went back i…

Just so you don't think I deal exlusively in potty humor, let me share with you my thoughts on the secular benefits of tithing (i.e. giving ten percent of your income to the church). If you feel you have a religious duty to regularly given ten percent of your income, then it forces you to keep a budget so that you know what your income is in any given time period. And that's the first step toward financial discipline.

Once my wife and I got meticulous about tithing (we had been moving etc. and it took a while for us to really buckle down--she took over when I was clearly not up to the challenge and did everything in Excel) we had all sorts of money left over every month, whereas previously we had been eating Ramen at the end of every pay cycle. (Not quite, but almost.) And part of it could be divine rewards, but I don't think our income went up all that much. I think it must just be that we were previously spending all kinds of money on odd things here and there becaus…

True story: I was at school (my secret identity is a mild-mannered college professor) and had to go see a man about a toilet. So I get in there and walk into my favorite stall. (There are only two, and the other one is a handicapped one with the seat that makes your legs dangle.)

Much to my horror, the moment I got in I realized that the prior occupant had left me a large present. I marveled at the monstrosity for a few moments, and then was about to head for the adjacent stall (with the Olympic high-dive seat) when--gasp--I heard the bathroom door open.

Consider my dilemma: If I walked out, that student may have also noticed the present, and then told everyone that Dr. Murphy leaves gifts in the student men's room. So I couldn't leave the stall.

I tried flushing away the present, and realized why the donor had left it for all to see: It didn't want to visit the sewer! Now I was really in trouble. Even if I waited for the student to leave, he might have been suspicio…

The absolute best T-shirt I have seen since "Egrets, I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention."



You can find it here.

There are all sorts of reasons that human beings can increase knowledge (however we define that) through society. A huge one is division of labor; rather than everyone trying to make advances in medicine, physics, economics, etc., people specialize and this is far more productive.

But there's another aspect to it that I haven't seen stressed before. Let me illustrate it with a little thought experiment: Suppose Gene Callahan, me, and 98 other people with "deep thoughts" are locked in a room. (Let's hope it's a big room with plenty of toilets.) Now we want to come up with a way to leave the room after 2000 minutes, such that everyone is as smart as possible. Finally, suppose that in the beginning we are all equally knowledgeable and intelligent. (Yes, I shall be humble for this hypothetical scenario.)

As above, one way would be for each person just to think on his or her own for the allotted time. But suppose instead, each person picks a different proble…

On a recent trip to San Jose State University (to give a talk to Ben Powell's seminar), I finally figured out what the deal is with airlines putting a "group number" on your ticket. The way I remember the progression, a long time ago ("long time" for my age, of course) they would board first class, then it was a free-for-all.

Then they started boarding by row number. This was a little better; in theory you could board from the back of the plane to the front, to reduce the amount of jostling and waiting. (Inexplicably, though, I seem to recall many flights where they boarded from the front first...)

But now they board by "group number." My first theory was that it was to minimize on people boarding before their row was called, but in retrospect that's pretty dumb. Now I think I figured out what it is: People with window seats (and I think in the back of the plane) are in group 1. Then people in window seats in the middle of the plane are group…

Find out what MJ's favourite things are! (Yeah, that's how we spell 'favourite' over here, OK? MS Word was just carping at me for spelling the other way.)

Shout out to Elen for the link.

Using word this morning, I noticed that a little red toolbox up on the toolbar had begun pulsing. Many years ago, I published on article on semiotics and GUI design arguing that there are real limitations to what can be communicated with icons. This was a great example: What, exactly, is a little, pulsing red toolbox supposed to mean? (It turns out Word had decided, in one of its frequent decisions that it's high time to interrupt my workflow, that it was the perfect moment for a "compatibility check.")

Australian force sent to guard Japanese force.

Hat tip to Tex.

This is an excerpt from Tom Engelhardt's recent LRC column...

Last November, the Marines issued a newly updated Iraq Culture Smart Card, but an earlier version, from February 2004 (pdf file), is more reliable for viewing purposes as well as indicative of the thrust of the American effort in that country. In addition to its simple cartoons of "insurgent tactics" (e.g. hiding a stick of dynamite under a dead goat), the Smart Card has a number of panels devoted to essential language skills. While its unclear exactly how the card is meant to be folded, it appears that the first language panel a Marine would read (devoted to "Command and Control") contains not translations for "hello" or "thank you," but far more useful greetings like "hands up," "no talking," "do …