And That’s Free As In Beer, Not Speech

In an Op-Ed from yesterday’s Charleston Gazette, Carl F. Shaw argues that land should be free:

Here are some lessons our society has learned: In the 1860s we learned that black humans should not be kept as slave laborers - and we did something about it. In the 1920s we learned that females were entitled to vote and hold public office - and we did something about it. In the 1960s we learned that black citizens still did not have equal rights promised to them a century earlier - we did something about it.

It is time we learned that land should be free of cost, and we should do something about it now. Poor economic conditions and unemployment, outsourcing jobs for lower production costs, are all results of treating land as a commodity. When people can’t find a job it is because a speculator is holding land off the market or waiting for an ideal price.

I have read and re-read this opinion piece, and I honestly can’t make heads or tails of it. I’m not sure why the civil rights movements that are mentioned have anything to do with land being free of cost, and Shaw never explains what links them. I can assume that, because it is almost unthinkable to question these tenets (”Slavery is bad,” “Women should vote,” “Racism is bad”), Shaw mentions them in conjunction with his “free land” ideal not because they are somehow related to that ideal, but because he hopes the association will keep people from thinking about what he’s proposing.

Unfortunately, that didn’t work, and I’ve now spent an entire day trying to figure out exactly what Shaw is proposing (and why he’s proposing it). I’m more confused now than I ever was.

He starts out saying that “[w]e are hearing daily that home prices are falling,” and then insists that, because the raw materials aren’t free and builders don’t work for minimum wage, that home prices cannot be falling. Therefore, he concludes, it is the price of land that is falling. None of this works, logically. Raw materials are not free is not sufficient evidence to indicate that home prices are not falling. Heck, that the price of raw materials hasn’t dropped at all would not be evidence that home prices are falling. The only thing that indicates whether home prices are falling would be whether homes (of approximately equal quality in both structure and location) are cheaper now than they were previously. Shaw never touches on whether that is the case, yet he acts as though he has proven that home prices are not falling.

Then there’s the artificial distinction between “home prices” and “land prices.” Generally speaking, the price of a home and the price of the land it is sitting on are irrevocably entwined, assuming the home exists on the land at the time it is purchased^[1].

Folks, we never complain about low costs, but now that real estate buyers see falling land prices they complain while waiting for it to hit bottom. No sense buying today at $10,000 if the price may fall to $9,000 next month. This is what is happening to the real estate market today. As the cycle reaches bottom and land prices begin inching upward, buyers will again buy land, homes, commercial and industrial property, hoping to beat a higher price later.

I haven’t got any idea what world that Shaw is living in, but I hear people complain about falling prices all the time. One of my irregular commenters, Shinzou, always complains that every time he buys anything, the price of that item drops almost immediately afterward. It’s not that the price he paid was necessarily bad, it’s just that he missed out on a better deal. Is it any wonder that those who are looking to buy real estate, one of the most expensive purchases we can ever make, are complaining because they want to buy, but also want to make sure they get the best deal possible? This is even more to be expected if those buyers are looking to purchase real estate as an investment.

Shaw then moves from illogical to completely incomprehensible. I assume that he’s simply using jargon from his previous career as a real estate appraiser that would make sense to someone, but it seems odd to me that such jargon would find its way into a paper for laypeople without having some sense made out of it:

Now look at the real estate market in another way. Suppose we operated our land system in a fair and just way. Suppose we ran our tax system so that no site rent (the annual price of land) was left over after taxation to be used to capitalize into sale price. If all the rent of land was taxed there could not be any sale price. The land would be free, just like God’s air, rain, snow, sunshine and broadcast spectrum. The real estate market would not need to wait for land prices to turn around and go back up.

If I read this correctly, Shaw means that any value that an owner gets from his/her land would be taxed so that the owner made no profit whatsoever. This would negate the ability of a property owner to make money from his property, which would then… what? Cause him to let people use the land out of the goodness of his heart? I’ve seen what people put up with from tenants, the sort of damage people can (and, almost invariably, will) do to rental property. Trust me when I say that suddenly stopping landlords from obtaining profit from renters will not suddenly make all “rent” free — it will make all property owners absolutely refuse to let anyone use their property (and if they can’t make any profit on it, they sure as heck won’t sell the property, either).

How many people rent land, anyway? One might rent a spot in a campground or trailer park, I assume, but other than that, people pay to rent not the land, but the facilities that are on the land. Yes, the land might add value (I would certainly expect to pay more to rent a house with a five acre lot than I would to rent a house with a half-acre lot), but it is still the facility, not the land, that is being rented. (This gets back into the relationship between land and home prices mentioned above.)

Finally, Shaw gets back to the point I quoted above, that joblessness is caused (apparently solely) by “a speculator holding land off the market or waiting for an ideal price”. He elaborates, but the elaboration doesn’t really mean anything. Shaw seems to assume that the only startup cost for new businesses (or farms?) is the cost of the land that the business will sit on, and that the only reason that anyone is out of work is because they can’t afford the land with wich they would start their own business.

Assuming he’s right (which he’s almost certainly not), Shaw never explores the other consequences of what he is proposing. Everyone who has ever invested in real estate, particularly those who have purchased land sans development, would immediately lose every cent of equity. That would devestate a lot of people, especially those who invested in the land expecting to use it to generate income for their retirement (e.g., by selling off lots of the land).

Combine “free land” with Eminent Domain, and you have a recipe for disaster. Own a house with an acre of land? Why, that acre could be used to generate tax income for the city, and it’s free. Enjoy your check for $0.00; you’ve just been screwed by your local government (with the wholehearted endorsement of the Supreme Court).

Honestly, this opinion piece wouldn’t have bothered me (it’s an absurd idea that falls apart even with even the most basic of scrutiny, which makes it more laughable than anything else), except that the Gazette chose to publish it. Apparently, they need better editors and less sheer partisanship (My theory on how it got published is that it sounds pretty communistic, which appeals to the Gazette’s leftist editors).

1. Also, assuming the home isn’t a mobile home that could easily be moved. [back]

Mayor Danny Jones, on the week-long shutdown of the Kanawha Boulevard for the 20th Annual Convention of the Chevrolet Nomad Association:

“It’s not a big car show,” Jones said. “It will take [the Boulevard] between Capitol and Court all next week. It’s the first time they’ve ever had a venue like this. I don’t know of a city in the country that will shut down a four-lane highway for a week.“

Emphasis Mine.

One has to wonder if Danny Jones ever considered why other cities don’t shut down one of their biggest roads for an entire week in order to accomodate conventions for obscure cars. This shutdown makes rush-hour traffic absolutely horrendous for anyone who has to get anywhere near the affected blocks, and it doesn’t help that the City of Charleston seems shut down the Boulevard every other week.

Of course, Mayor Jones has proven, time and again, that he doesn’t care what the residents (and workers) of the city of Charleston want or need. If they leave, why he’ll just expand the city limits to keep the population up!

A couple of days ago, my dad called and asked if I was going to a midnight showing of The Dark Knight. I told him that I’d taken today off, but that, no, I wasn’t really planning on going to see it until after my wife got off work.

Fast forward to yesterday. We got home from work, and my wife says that, if I really wanted to, we could go to the midnight showing. It won’t be long before she learns not to make offers like that, but, luckily for me, she’s not quite there yet. So, last night, at 12:01am, we were sitting in a packed movie theater watching The Dark Knight.

Heath Ledger did a better job that I expected with the Joker. While he’s not the manic Joker that I prefer, it was much, much better than Nicholson’s travesty. Ledger’s anarchist Joker pulls no punches, and there’s always a sense that he’s enjoying himself regardless of what’s going on around him (even if “what’s going on” is that Batman is beating him up). He’s laughing or otherwise obviously having fun, even when he’s doing some very, very nasty things. (My one complaint about the audience we had was that there were a couple of teenagers sitting behind us laughing hysterically at the Joker’s antics. He’s having fun, but I really couldn’t see how one could find him funny without being something of a sociopath themselves.)

Overall, I loved the movie, but be warned that it’s relentlessly dark. There really aren’t many bits of levity to break the mood. I am honestly amazed that it managed to keep its PG-13 rating.

Local blogger Raging Red and I don’t often agree, though that doesn’t stop me from enjoying her blog. However, on the topic of Desmond Clark, I agree with her completely.

For any non-local readers who aren’t familiar with the story, Desmond Clark is a scumbag who, despite his colorful criminal history, was free on 7/5/2008 to kill his girlfriend, Na’lisha Gravely in a local Taco Bell (Gravely had run into the Taco Bell fleeing from Clark, and hid in a closet, where Clark found her and shot her several time).

Apparently, part of the reason the courts have been so lenient with Clark in the past is because the police requested leniency, due to Clark’s status as an informant. That’s where Raging Red’s post comes in:

Exactly. She probably felt helpless. She’s not going to testify against him knowing that the police are cutting him breaks, because if she does, she’ll just get beaten and abused even worse.

…

This is a guy who tracked her down at her grandmother’s house and dragged her out to his car and forced her into it, firing a warning shot. In another incident, he forced her into his car, shot at her, then drove around for hours until she managed to escape the vehicle. During a traffic stop, do you think she’s going to lean over and say, “Excuse me officer, could you help me?” She wouldn’t be paranoid to think that Clark might just drive off if she did that. Based on Clark’s history of always getting released, why would she think that asking a police officer for help would make her any safer?

The whole post is worth a read.

Law enforcement and the judicial system exist to protect the citizenry, and in this particular case, they failed us miserably. I am not generally one of those who believes that the police should prevent every crime — the amount of power and presence they would need in order to do so is undesirable. Still, they should do their best to investigate crimes and prosecute those crimes to the best of their ability. By doing nothing to get this violent criminal off the streets, the justice system in Charleston let all of its citizens down, not just Na’lisha Gravely.

he American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) believes that the Second Amendment protects a “collective right”, not an individual one:

Given the reference to “a well regulated Militia” and “the security of a free State,” the ACLU has long taken the position that the Second Amendment protects a collective right rather than an individual right. For seven decades, the Supreme Court’s 1939 decision in United States v. Miller was widely understood to have endorsed that view.

As I believe I’ve made clear in other posts, I disagree vehemently with the ACLU’s interpretation of the Second Amendment, as should anyone who learned how to parse a sentence in English class. The reference to a well-regulated Militia was used by the amendment’s writers to explain why such a right was of the utmost importance in their minds, but the pertinent part of the amendment is that “…the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Given that the phrase “right of the people” is interpreted to mean an individual right everywhere else in the Bill of Rights, it is disingenuous to imagine that it suddenly means something else in the Second Amendment.

Similarly, there is no grammatical structure in the Second Amendment to indicate that the right is somehow dependent on the relationship between a well-regulated militia to the security of a free state. Just because many people no longer believe that a well-regulated militia is necessary for the security of a free state does not negate the right’s protection in the Second Amendment.

I also disagree with the interpretation of the United States v. Miller. In Miller, the Court held that the federal law in question was legal not because the right was “collective”, but because the “arms” in question were not of the sort that would be used in a Militia. Effectively, Miller could be read to indicate that weapons that were of ordinary military use could not be legislated. It is also noteworthy that the federal law in question (The National Firearms Act of 1934) did not ban these bans outright — it merely imposed a tax (one that was, arguably, excessive) on them. Also of note is that Miller had died before the case made it to the Supreme Court, and that only the “United States” side of the case was presented to the Court. The case did not touch on the nature of the right enshrined in the Second Amendment, only on the types of weapons to which it applied.

That said, I don’t really care about the ACLU’s opinion on the Second Amendment, or, to be honest, anything else. The ACLU is famous for standing up for civil liberties, provided they agree with the particular liberty in question (and, sometimes, provided they agree with the person exercising that liberty). What caught my attention today was that the ACLU believes that the right is a “collective” one. The “Collective Right” interpretation of the Second Amendment is one that is commonly used by Gun Control Activists, but it’s not one that I’ve ever given any thought to, until today. What, exactly, is a “collective” right?

Let’s assume that the ACLU is correct, that the Second Amendment only guarantees a collective right, and that it guarantees this right only to members of the militia. As defined at the time of the passage of the Second Amendment, the militia was every able-bodied man within a certain age range. Being of more enlightened times, I will define “militia” as every able-bodied adult, whether male or female. The militia was never intended by the Framers of the Constitution to be a government-run group^[1].

So, the militia consists of a group of civilian adults who are healthy enough (physically and mentally) to wield weapons safely. This group has a collective right to keep and bear arms, in the ACLU’s view. What does that mean? Does the ACLU honestly believe that these people have a right to keep and bear arms, but only collectively? How big of a group does one have to have to be a “collective”? Do we have to have a hive-mind, like the Borg?

And how does a group keep and bear arms? Do the weapons have to be registered to a group of people, like a corporation? Can they only be stored on group property? Do they have to be jointly carried (bore) by more than one member of the group at a time?

1. In fact, the fact that it was government-run would run completely counter to what the Framers saw as the most important purpose of the amendment, which is spelled out in the very phrase the ACLU is using to try to undermine the right — the well-regulated, armed Militia was necessary not to protect us from criminals or foreign invaders, but to protect us from the government. [back]

I’ve seen this mentioned on several blogs lately — a government-funded advisory group in England says that nursery schools should report racist incidents involving children. Racist incidents could include things such as saying “Yuck” about an unfamiliar food. Anyone who disagrees with the measure is themselves a racist, as evidenced by their disagreement.

The best reaction I’ve read comes from Rachel Lucas, who writes:

Setting the bar for racism so ridiculously low dilutes the meaning of the word to the point that it has no meaning at all.

She’s absolutely right, of course. That’s probably the most frustrating and annoying part of these sorts of policies, which have many, many frustrating and annoying parts — they make accusations of racism utterly meaningless. When “racism” is defined in this way, it becomes something completely not serious. The problem is, racism remains a serious issue, and diluting that issue with “racism” is unconscionable.

What makes it worse is that the people coming up with this nonsense probably have their hearts in the right place, and actually believe that fighting this sort of “racism” actually does something to benefit the fight against real racism. This is idiocy that is founded in good intentions, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is idiocy.

Public schools are failing us.

In his dissent on Heller vs. DC, Justice Stevens wrote, “The court would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons.” Obviously, Justice Stevens does not believe that the framers of the Constitution made such a choice. One has to wonder how Justice Stevens ever got through high school history, much less made it to be a sitting Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States.

The fact is, the Framers had every intent to “limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate” pretty much anything. That’s the entire purpose of the Bill of Rights (and, arguably, the Constitution as a whole). It limits what the government can do, by keeping it from treading on those things that the Framers considered to be fundamental, natural rights. Anyone who ever took a single American History course should have had that drilled into them. The people who were most involved with the founding of this country and laying the framework for its government were not at all interested in giving the government a lot of power to regulate anything.

A lot of people (most of them lawyers) will insist that a layperson (such as myself) isn’t really qualified to comment on the meaning of the Constitution, because laypeople aren’t trained to understand the law. The fact is, though, the Constitution is not written in technical jargon, nor is it constructed in such a way as to be unreadable (as many modern laws written by legislators and rulings written by judges are) — it’s pretty simple and clear, as any honest, half-educated person can tell you.

“…[T]he right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” That seems pretty clear to me. Yet, Stevens seems to be saying that he believes that laws that effectively ban the ownership and carrying (the “keeping and bearing,” if you will) of firearms don’t violate the Second Amendment, which is absolutely crystal clear, using language that can’t possibly be mistaken. “…[T]he right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” If he honestly believes that this is not supposed to “limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons,” Justice Stevens must have failed English as well as History.

To be fair to Justice Stevens, he isn’t the only one making the public schools look bad. Just take, for instance, Governor Rod Blagojevich of Illinois, who must have failed Civics:

“It’s a big blow to those of us who believe in common sense gun laws,” Gov. Rod Blagojevich said during an appearance at a West Side community agency to announce a summer jobs program. “And as a result, it’s the wrong decision.”

Blagojevich would have us believe that the Justices made the wrong decision because they supported gun rights, which shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what the Supreme Court even does. The Supreme Court Justices, when considering this (or any other) case, had absolutely no right to consider whether they personally believed that individuals had a right to self-defense. They had no right to consider whether they personally believed that guns were fundamentally evil devices that caused murders. Considering the rightness or wrongness of a position has absolutely nothing to do with what the Supreme Court is supposed to do.

This is Civics 101, kids. The Supreme Court’s job in the federal government is to rule on the Constitutionality of a law, not on whether they personally like the law or not. If a politician (such as Blagojevich) doesn’t agree with what the Constitution says, he has two options: 1.) work to change the Constitution, or 2.) Find a country whose foundations are more suitable. Passing laws that ignore or subvert the intent of the Constitution is illegal (and dishonest, besides), and is precisely what the Supreme Court is there to prevent.

I’m reminded of a scene from Duck Soup, in which Groucho Marx’s character, Rufus T. Firefly, is presented with a report from one of his underlings. “It’s perfectly clear,” he says. “A four-year-old could understand it. Someone get me a four-year-old. I can’t make heads or tails of this.” (Quote is from memory and may not be 100% accurate.) Someone needs to get a high school graduate (or even just a high school student — maybe those who are competing in the We The People competition, for instance) to explain the Constitution to Gun control activists, especially the parts about a.) the job of the Supreme Court, and b.) the Second Amendment.

Please note that I’m not saying that those who believe in gun control are idiots who should not have passed high school^[1]. Instead, I am criticizing those who believe that gun control should be (or even that it could be, legally) passed, even though it is in clear violation of the Constitution, without first changing the Constitution. Of course, these tend to be the same people who think it’s a wonderful idea to have judges legislating in many other legal arenas (see: homosexual marriage), so I’m not particularly surprised.

1. Though, I do wish those taking that position would review this data, presented in Dale Franks’ “Heller Wrap-Up” over at Q and O shows:

   According to the FBI, in 2006, Illinois—a state that has fairly strict gun laws—had a violent crime rate of 541.6 per 100,000. Meanwhile, down in gun-totin’ Texas—twice the population, but with very similar demographics—the wild-eyed cowboys managed to tote up a rate of 516.3 per 100,000.

   Indeed, similar rates carry through across the board:

   Murder:
   IL: 6.1
   TX: 5.9

   Robbery:
   IL: 185.3
   TX: 158.5

   Aggravated Assault:
   IL: 318.4
   TX: 316.4

   To be fair, TX still has the lead in forcible rape, at 35.6 compared to 31.8 in IL.

   Meanwhile, in DC:
   Murder: 29.1
   Robbery: 658.4
   Aggravated Assault: 789.1

   Although, DC is still a relatively genteel place for the ladies, with the forcible rape per 100,000 coming in at a Chicago-style friendliness of 31.8.

   Maybe, just maybe, the problem isn’t “guns”. Perhaps there’s some human factor that could explain these numbers. If only we could understand what it might possibly be…

   Despite all this, gun-control advocates often insist that gun control works, and that the gun ban in DC was/is actually keeping the crime rate low. [back]

Oops. Wrote this one a couple of weeks ago, but never got it posted.

Yahoo! Finance has an article, titled “When Gas Stations Run Out of Gas“, which highlights some of the problems that gas stations are facing with the current prices. Quick summary: with prices this high, consumers are bargain shopping more, so profit margins are tight. When the margins are this tight, the percentage of credit card transactions that are taken by credit companies is large enough that it causes the stations to actually lose money per gallon of gasoline.

Other service stations with a higher volume of credit-card sales say their fees add up to an average of 10¢ or 12¢ a gallon. What’s worse, says Mike Convey, a gasoline salesman for Tampa-based J.H. Williams Oil, is that most consumers are now paying with credit cards because the price to fill the tank has gotten so high. About four years ago, approximately 25% of the business at his company’s 20 or so filling stations was done with credit cards. Now about 75% of their gasoline is sold on credit, pushing up his firm’s credit-card costs.

Emphasis mine.

I can’t help thinking that the writer of this article is blaming high gas prices for all of the increase in credit-cart usage at the pump when there may be other factors at work as well:

• Pay-at-the-Pump convenience. Similarly, as pay-at-the-pump became a standard option, more people would choose to use their debit/credit cards instead of cash simply for convenience.
• Pre-pay inconvenience. Not only is pay-at-the-pump more convenient, but the option of pumping the gas and then walking in to pay the bill has been taken from us at most gas stations. If you’re planning to use cash, you’d be walking into the store anyway, so the added inconvenience may seem minimal, but I, for one, am reluctant to pre-pay because I suck at estimating how much gasoline my tank will hold. What if I walk in and give the cashier $40 only to discover that my tank was only able to hold $34.87? It’s easier to use the credit card and just settle up with the credit card company when I get home.
• Increased debit card prevalence. Over the last few years, as the number of places that accept them has increased, more and more people are using debit cards more and more often. I’m not 100% certain that debit cards carry the same per-transaction fee for retailers, but it seems to me that they’re run through the same networks, so I think it’s likely.

• Cash back benefits. This one may not matter to retailers so much, because they may get the fee waived on cards that share their chain’s branding, but every time I go to the pump lately, I see a form to apply for a credit card.

  In some cases (BP, for example), the offer is for up to 10% cash back on fuel purchases for the first six months. I spent $55 on gasoline this morning to fill up one of our two cars. Assume we fill up the tank four times a month, that’s $220 a month, or $1,320 in six months (and that’s not counting the money we spend filling up our other car). One hundred and thirty two dollars given to me for spending money that I would’ve spent anyway is a pretty powerful incentive for me to use a credit card at the pump.

  While that’s hardly typical of most cards (and it only works at one type of station, where, as I said, the retailer may not feel the bite as badly anyway on a branded card) even a much smaller incentive would give you some small relief at the pump, and if you have the discipline to pay the card off in full every month, it’s effectively “free” money.

While it’s very fair to say that the increased credit card usage at the gas station is having an adverse effect on the stations, it’s not so fair to blame every bit of that increased usage on the increased gas prices.

From what I understand of the ruling so far, I’m pretty pleased with the outcome of Heller vs. DC.

If I come up with anything I feel compelled it, I will, but right now, I’m going to leave it up to others who will (and have) cover(ed) it better than I could.

Quick reviews of the movies I’ve seen this summer so far:

• Iron Man: Great Superhero movie, and I’m looking forward to the sequel. 8/10
• Kung Fu Panda: This one was very funny. I enjoyed it a lot, though it my have benefitted from the fact that it was the very first movie I ever saw at a Drive In Theater. 7/10
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: Entertaining, but not as good as the previous movies in the series. Well, not as good as Raiders of the Lost Ark and Last Crusade, anyway. I think it was better than Temple of Doom. 7/10
• The Incredible Hulk: Much better than the first Hulk movie, and I think I even liked it slightly more than I did Iron Man. 8.5/10
• Get Smart: Steve Carell is no Don Adams, but, then, who is? I really loved this one. To be fair, I found myself laughing at quite a few things not so much because they were funny but because they were references to the old show, which I loved. 9/10

Later this summer, I plan to see Wall-E, Hancock, Hellboy II, The Dark Knight^[1], and The X-Files: I Want To Believe. There are a few others that we may go see, depending on our schedules (and funds — movies are expensive!).

1. Though, unlike Hellboy II, I get less excited with every Dark Knight preview I see. What I’ve seen of Ledger’s Joker hasn’t filled me with a lot of confidence, sadly. [back]

Since we got back from our trip, I’ve noticed a bunch of red and white signs labeling various items around Charleston in both English and Spanish. I mentioned that I was a bit confused about what they were and that it bothered me^[1].

This morning, I got an e-mail with the subject line “Here’s your sign”, which linked to a Charleston Daily Mail article that explained everything:

City artists Amy Williams and Chris Dutch hung up the signs, which translate the names of Charleston landmarks and common street scenes into Spanish, as a special exhibit for FestivALL.

The city’s fourth annual arts and culture festival starts next week, but the “Press 2 for Spanish” installation was unveiled last week as a prelude to the 10-day event.

My curiosity appeased, I was content, until I got to the end of the article. It seems that some of the signs were removed by city maintenance, because workers didn’t know the signs were officially authorized.

What does that tell you? It tells me that the bureaucracy in city government isn’t particularly efficient at letting its employees have information that they need. The artists had a somewhat… different… take.

The artists are working on getting them put back up, but the mishaps sort of prove the point Williams and Dutch were trying to make.

“There’s a whole world out there, and in it, people speak all kinds of languages,” the artists’ statement says. “Yet many Americans only know English.”

That might make some sense if the signs said on them (in Spanish only), “These signs were officially approved by the City of Charleston^[2],” but they say nothing of the sort. Instead, they say things like, “La Farola / Street Light”, which gives no indication whatsoever to maintenance workers in the city that they should leave the signs alone.

The workers in this case were not motivated by the fact that they didn’t know a language other than English, nor were they acting out of some hostility toward another culture. They were, as far as they knew, doing their jobs by removing signs that they thought were not officially permitted to be placed on city property.

I’m not arguing that the artists’ point is invalid. Many Americans do only known English, and while I don’t think we should be required to know more languages, a better understanding of other cultures and languages is not a bad goal. I just don’t think that the removal of some signs by maintenance workers has anything to do with their point at all.

1. The signs themselves didn’t bother me, just that I didn’t understand why they’d suddenly showed up, nor why the items they labelled seemed to be random — traffic signals, fountains, ice cream shops… [back]
2. Though, even then, it wouldn’t really mean much — the workers would have no way of knowing that the statement was true, even if they could read it [back]

The views and opinions expressed in this blog are solely of the husband and do not necessarily reflect the views of the management.

We’re back from our honeymoon vacation, and I have internet set up. Unfortunately, we’ve got a lot of work to do in organizing the house (and I need to do some rewiring for the cable/internet), so I’ve only got the laptop online at the moment. My PC and Xbox 360 are at the front of the house, the cable modem and wireless router are at the rear — since my laptop is the only networked device that uses wireless, it’s the only one online right now (though, I bet I could get the Wii connected, now that I think about it).

I will try to do some posting as I can, but should have everything wired up and ready to go soon, at which point I’ll get back to regular posting^[1].

1. Irregular posting, as Irishladdy was so kind as to point out, may be the more accurate term. [back]

I was playing around with web.archive.org, when I thought to look up OneStackMind. I thought it was pretty funny to look back at all of the websites I used to surf 10 years ago. When I looked at OneStackMind from 2004 I thought I should post it on here to show how little times have changed. You will notice the ever popular “I havent posted in a while” post at the top, and also a similar post to your Hybrid post from last week. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I’m getting married on Saturday, and my bride and I will be away on our honeymoon until the middle of next week. I’m also not quite certain when I’ll have internet access again (yes, I’m marrying someone who doesn’t have the internet. Shocking, I know), so it may be a little while between posts. Not that that’s anything unusual around here.

In the meantime, I’ve asked a friend of mine who comments here occasionally (Shinzou) to put up a few posts.

According to The Sun, a 14-year-old believes a picture taken in an ancient castle proves ghosts exist.

This seems like a pretty simple fake to me, though. Every digital camera I’ve ever used allowed me to set the exposure time. Long exposure times help to make up for extremely dim lighting, but anything moving through the shot will show up as a ghostly, blurry image. Someone walking down the steps and pausing briefly on the landing would produce this effect if the exposure time was set pretty high (which seems pretty likely to me — I would imagine that ancient castles are fairly dark).

Eric, at Classical Values, discusses an attempt to do away with Pennsylvania’s ban on dog-breed-specific legislation:

I deeply and bitterly resent this profound abuse of logic. Dog A is not controlled by his owner and attacks Dog B, so they want to punish owners of Dog C, because Dog C allegedly resembles Dog A. By definition, this is bigotry. Every dog is different, just as every person is different. There are good dogs with good owners and there are bad dogs with bad owners. People should be making up their minds about individual dogs and individual owners based on the conduct of the individual dogs and individual owners. There are leash laws, and laws against allowing dogs to run loose. If violators of these laws own ill-behaved pit bulls which are allowed to run around and wreak havoc, they’re like criminal gun owners who engage in drive-by shootings. Show me a bad pit bull that attacks innocent dogs or people, and I’ll show you a bad dog owner. (IMO, the popularity of strong dogs with criminals is a result of the drug war, which is another topic…..)

Emphasis Mine

In 2004, my family’s pet Boston Terrier was killed by a neighbor’s Rottweiler. The Rottweiler in question was known to have attacked other dogs, as well as acting very aggressively toward people^[1]. When I got home and learned what had happened to our dog, I was furious.

My anger was very, very specific. I was angry at the individual dog that killed ours, and I was angry at the owner, whose irresponsibility and selfishness had caused the dog to be free. When it became obvious later that the county authorities were completely incompetent and unreliable when it came to issues like this^[2], I was also angry at them.

I was never angry at Rottweilers in general. I have known Rottweilers that were gentle, or at least as gentle as their size allowed them to be — any dog that weighs more than a hundred pounds is capable of doing damage, even when they’re trying to be gentle. The problem here was not the breed of the dog, but the actions of the owner and the individual dog itself.

Near the end of the post, Eric explains that this issue is more emotional for him than the gun rights issue:

While I try defend my right to keep and bear arms as often as I can, there’s something about this that rankles me in a way that the gun control debate does not. That’s because a gun is a tool, and not a member of the family, and people who want to take them away are not threatening to take away and kill a member of the family.

My dog Coco is not a gun.

I’ve always loved dogs and can completely understand Eric’s vehemence over this issue. They are more than mere possessions, and individuals like Eric who own well-behaved animals who happen to be of a breed that is often considered “dangerous” are right to be offended when their loved one is lumped in with other dogs simply because they look similar.

1. In particular, the dog once attempted to bite my grandfather when he was tending to his cattle. [back]
2. To be fair, I don’t think the government of Clay County was — or is — competent or reliable on any issue. [back]

I know I’m late on this one, but I wrote this a while back and am only just getting around to posting it.

I almost always enjoy reading Orson Scott Card’s World Watch column over at The Ornery American. I occasionally disagree with him, but even at those times, he makes his points well.

In his column a couple of weeks ago, “What Obama Should Have Said“, Card discusses President Bush’s (correct) denouncement of appeasers and Obama’s reaction to that denouncement:

President Bush said, “Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.”

Thus he stated, quite clearly, how delusional are those who think that what we have in our war with radical Islam is a “failure to communicate.” There is no failure: communication has been crystal clear. Our enemies have announced their firm intention to destroy our civilization, to kill all the Jews, and to kill any Muslim who doesn’t go along with their program. Iran has announced its intention, if they get nuclear missiles, to obliterate Tel Aviv. Al Qaeda has declared its intention to destroy the West.

…

Poor Barack Obama. He saw a shoe, he tried it on, and it fit. Then he blamed President Bush for attacking him!

Here’s what he should have said: “I applaud President Bush for opposing any attempt at appeasement of terrorists. I agree with him completely that those who negotiate from weakness will accomplish nothing. Fortunately, when I am President I will talk to them from a position of strength, demanding that they comply with the rules of civilized behavior and put an end to terrorism. There is a middle way between blind war and mindless appeasement — it is negotiation with a credible threat of force. What Republican President Theodore Roosevelt said: Speak softly and carry a big stick. Appeasers have no stick. President Bush has nothing but the stick.”

The whole column is worth a read.

A quick look at recent history will show that negotiating with terrorists won’t work. We have spent decades trying to negotiate with Islamic radicals. Israel has consistently tried to negotiate with Palestinian terrorists. Every negotiation that ended with a temporary peace saw that peace end when the terrorists broke their part of the bargain, not the other way around.

Still, there is a possibility that Bush’s successor would be able to negotiate peace, at least temporarily. This would have been possible not in spite of Bush’s actions during his term of office, but because of his actions. Having seen an America that was willing to use force if it was necessary, terrorists (or, more accurately, the states that harbor and support them) may have been willing to stick to a peace agreement, at least temporarily.

The problem is that, if Obama is Bush’s successor, he will not be able to negotiate that peace. McCain might be, and even Clinton would have a faint hope of it, but Obama has made it perfectly clear that he opposes the use of force in any situation. Card quotes a memo written by Abraham Lincoln at a time when it appeared his opponent, who had run on a platform of negotiating with the South, was likely to win. Lincoln wrote that, should his opponent win, he would “have secured his election on such ground that he [could not] possibly save [the Union] afterward.”

If Obama is ultimately the Democratic nominee and, later, our next President, his election will be on grounds that will almost certainly make a negotiated peace an impossibility. Ironically enough, electing the candidate whose platform is most opposed to the War on Terror is the most likely path to a more horrific war.

Over at Wise Bread, Fred Lee writes about Honda Hybrids:

Hybrids are considered the wave of the future because they not only reduce emissions, addressing the issue of climate change, but they get great gas mileage, an important consideration with the current price of oil. It should be noted that hybrids can also improve the power of the engine, which compromises any advantages in fuel efficiency and emissions. Whatever the application, however, the technology makes the cars more expensive.

I wasn’t aware that the hybrids reduced emissions, so I went to do some research. According to this article, the reason that hybrids reduce emissions more than any other modern car is simply a function of their fuel efficiency:

The pollution associated with the production of fuel for hybrids is the same as the pollution created in the production of fuel for gasoline vehicles because they both use gasoline. The pollution is somewhat reduced for a hybrid vehicle because the vehicle has greater fuel efficiency.

Therefore, a hybrid car has no advantage over any traditional vehicle that gets similar gas mileage. In fact, the hybrid is at a significant disadvantage over a traditional vehicle because of the differences in their production processes (same source as the last quote):

The production process for the hybrid vehicle is very different than the production process of a gasoline vehicle. There are similarities especially in regards to the production of the gasoline powered engine. Thus the production of the gasoline powered engine in the hybrid is similar to that of a gasoline powered vehicle however the addition of the electric engine increases the environmental impact of the production of the hybrid vehicle. The greatest environmental impact comes from the pollution caused by the elaborate battery system that powers the electric engine. The battery pollution is substantial because the creation of the batteries requires destructive mining to produce the batteries and the caustic substances that power the batteries must later be disposed of. The caustic substances that power the batteries are very poisonous and when released into the environment leech into the waterways and poison groundwater.

But the hybrids get significantly better gas mileage than any traditional vehicle, right? Wrong.

The 1996 Metro’s average of 40 miles per gallon nears that of the hybrid 2008 Toyota Prius — priced at $21,000 for the cheapest model — and bests most current cars by a long shot, according to government ratings. Older models of the Geo Metro, specifically cars from 1991 and the XFi edition, have the same average as the hybrid.

Granted, it’s hard for a modern traditional car to get the same gas mileage as a Metro, because recent increases in required emission reduction technology and safety equipment have an impact on efficiency. Still, my 2007 Versa gets pretty close to 40mpg if I’ve been doing a lot of highway driving. The reduced emissions of a hybrid aren’t nearly enough to make up for the increased environmental impact of the batteries, even if the financial cost was the same.

None of this is to say that people shouldn’t buy hybrids if they want one. I seriously considered a Prius back when they were first introduced, because I wanted the cool touch-screen monitor that showed the fuel efficiency and power distributions. I’m just tired of people who’re supposedly environmentally conscious preening over their hybrid cars as though that choice makes them better than the rest of us — especially when their choice is actually more harmful than mine.

In the middle of his Reader Mailbag for the week^[1], Trent over at The Simple Dollar writes about “massive” profits by Big Oil:

Let’s say that we then put a windfall tax on Exxon and siphon away some of that profit, driving their profit down into the 4 cent range. Investors will look at Exxon and see something that they should pull their money out of. Very quickly, Exxon stops having the money necessary to get fuel to you at all. The infrastructure breaks down, no one has the capacity to pull off that large conversion of oil in the ground to gas at the pump, and gas goes ballistic in price. Since there’s no real alternative available, the United States would be hammered.

His entire answer is really worth reading. I’ve always looked at the idea of a “windfall profit” tax on oil companies to be stupid because the tax would simply get passed on to the consumers — we’d pay every penny of the tax. I hadn’t stopped to consider what such a thing would do to investments.

1. LAST week, that is. Sorry; this one’s been written and waiting to be posted for a while — as has the one that’ll be coming up tomorrow. [back]

Or is it Bigfeet?

I know I’ll never live there (it’s way too cold for me), but I would love to visit Montana. Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks are the most famous, but everything I’ve seen about Big Sky Country indicates it’d be a beautiful place to visit.

Plus, it appears that they breed the rarest of rare animals in Montana — politicians I could actually like.