Author: admin

Joke Of The Day

An MIT linguistics professor was lecturing his class the other day. “In English,” he said, “a double negative forms a positive. However, in some languages, such as Russian, a double negative remains a negative. But there isn’t a single language, not one, in which a double positive can express a negative.”

A voice from the back of the room piped up, “Yeah, right.”

Senators Saying Stupid Things

The slut! Wearing that little thing, walking down that street, at that time of day?. She was asking for it!

Wait, what? That was spoken by Claire McCaskell, loathsome and corrupt Senator from Missouri[*1] , to the admittedly loathsome and creepy “Dr. Oz?”

Oh. That’s completely, totally different. Because androphobia. After all, girrrrls rule, boys drool, right? Guys need to be careful. Women, on the other hand, don’t. Especially with what they say, apparently.

With all the blather about the “war on women,” how about a little attention to the ongoing, rampant “war on men?” Think of that the next time you watch a TV commercial where the dopey husband is set straight by the long-suffering, smarter-than-he-is wife . . . or daughter.

It’s everywhere. You’re soaking in it.

Check your prejudices.

And because people can be stupid: the second paragraph in this post is what is called sarcasm. It’s a rhetorical technique. It can confuse the easily confusable. Sorry about that. Get smarter.

Proposed new names for Washington’s NFL football team

Since “Redskins” is doubleplusungood, I present this list, in no particular order:

10. Washington Lobbyists
9. Washington Beltway Bandits
8. Washington Bureaucrats
7. Washington Corruption
6. Washington One Percenters
5. Washington Dictators
4. Washington Apparatchiks
3. Washington Erasers
2. Washington Federales
1. Washington Elitists

Just a few ideas off the top of my head . . .

The words of our President

Our first President, that is, not the person occupying the office at this moment. In a letter to the Marquis de Lafayette, dated April 28, 1788[*1] :

In answer to the observations you make on the probability of my election to the Presidency (knowing me as you do) I need only say, that it has no enticing charms, and no fascinating allurements for me. However, it might not be decent for me to say I would refuse to accept or even to speak much about an appointment, which may never take place: for in so doing, one might possibly incur the application of the moral resulting from that Fable, in which the Fox is represented as inveighing against the sourness of the grapes, because he could not reach them. All that it will be necessary to add, my dear Marquis, in order to show my decided predilection, is, that, (at my time of life and under my circumstances) the encreasing infirmities of nature and the growing love of retirement do not permit me to entertain a wish beyond that of living and dying an honest man on my own farm. Let those follow the pursuits of ambition and fame, who have a keener relish for them, or who may have more years, in store, for the enjoyment.

I have often said that the only person who can be trusted with the office of the President is somebody who manifestly, honestly, does not want it.

Sigh.

Underpants Gnomes, or The Road to Hell

Those of us who watch this process–on climate change, health care, minimum wage, and a host of other issues, and despair of ever getting our fellows to think through the consequences of their good intentions now have a bit more scientific evidence behind us. From BBC comes a story titled The best way to win an argument.[*1] The article describes research led by University of Colorado researcher Philip Fernbach. I’ll let the abstract of the paper written by Fernbach and his colleagues begin:

People often hold extreme political attitudes about complex policies. We hypothesized that people typically know less about such policies than they think they do (the illusion of explanatory depth) and that polarized attitudes are enabled by simplistic causal models. Asking people to explain policies in detail both undermined the illusion of explanatory depth and led to attitudes that were more moderate (Experiments 1 and 2). Although these effects occurred when people were asked to generate a mechanistic explanation, they did not occur when people were instead asked to enumerate reasons for their policy preferences (Experiment 2). Finally, generating mechanistic explanations reduced donations to relevant political advocacy groups (Experiment 3). The evidence suggests that people’s mistaken sense that they understand the causal processes underlying policies contributes to political polarization.

Basically, what Fernbach and his group are finding is that if you ask people to explain their Step #2, all of the sudden their views on the issue–the thing for which Step #3 is the desired end-state–becomes a lot more moderate.

Of course, to many of us who get lumped into the “conservative” side of the political spectrum, this is not exactly an Earth-shaking revelation. To do what you want to do, you have to know what you’re doing, and know what the results of your actions will be.

But, when dealing with human beings–changeable, emotional, mercurial human beings–is it really a rational thing to think that you can nail down exactly what the results of your policies will be? Open any history book and read a few pages, and you will quickly come to the conclusion that the answer is no, it is not rational to think that you can accurately and completely predict the results of a particular action or policy on a group of people. Oh, to some extent, you can certainly anticipate likely responses, but [i]likely[/i] does not mean [i]inevitable[/i]. Human beings are capable of almost infinite surprise. A population may be terrorized into compliance, until that point where terror becomes rage, and the oppressed rise up to tear down the oppressors. Nobody has an equation to calculate that tipping point where terror turns to implacable resistance.

Nobel Economics Prize winner Friedrich Hayek discussed this phenomenon in the context of economic planning, and called it “The Knowledge Problem” in his landmark paper The Use of Knowledge in Society[*2] . Who is in the best position to chart the course of any person’s life–individuals, or “society” in the form of a government? Hayek’s point is, essentially, that government can not know Step #2 in any sufficient detail to effectively solve any problem other than perhaps the keeping of basic public order, national defense, and perhaps construction and maintenance of high-capital-investment public infrastructure. Anything much beyond those #3 goals requires a depth of knowledge of Step #2 which is simply not available to a central planning organization.

The main (non-religious) thrust of the “conservative” thought is really summed up by the phrase from the Hippocratic Oath: “First, do no harm.” In order to abide by that noble thought, it is mandatory to understand–[b]really[/i] understand–Underpants Gnome Step #2. And that’s where the problem really resides with “liberal” (actually socialist) government-oriented plans and schemes.

“Hell is paved with good intentions.”[*3]

Uncomfortable questions

Why exactly should voting be easier to do than buying a beer at a bar?

I mean, in theory, anyway, anybody who buys an alcoholic beverage at a bar has to show an ID to prove they’re of age, right?