Finally! Puerto Rico information
Maybe my meme is getting around. Amity Shlaes over at Bloomberg has picked up on the idea that Puerto Rico is a model for what happens with Hispanics in a US cultural and legal environment:

What the Puerto Rican example suggests is that in the short run open borders can provide nations with an excuse not to change. Mexicans hate the notion of being compared to Puerto Rico, but by not reforming Mexico runs the risk of Puerto Rico- izing itself.

Maybe not so short a run as she thinks. Puerto Rico has been a US territory, if memory serves, since 1898. Ah, the Spanish-American War. The gift that keeps on giving! The Shlaes article also shows that if you wait long enough you won't have to do any actual research, you can just pontificate at will. Some reporter will do the research for you. And if you're lucky, it will support your bloviations.

The migration information Shlaes provides doesn't agree, however, with what I read elsewhere. She says 485,000 out of 3.5 million Puerto Riquenos moved to the US in the Nineties. Another article said migration had effectively stopped, because it was now just as easy to live in Puerto Rico. I'll have to look up that other article. If I had the Furl.com utility working, I'd have it neatly stashed away under the "immigration" category. I'll have to get that going.

Ok, Janis Joplin
Drunk now. Eating day. Or should that be "Drinking Day"? C'est possible. Janis lives. And she has never died dans ma cerveaux fievre. Prediction: Youtube is going to take over from cable TV, DSL and all that other jazz. Who needs anything else?

Later Note: this post shows why internet access should be automatically cut off when the alcohol level in the blood goes above a sane level.

Married to the job

A Samizdata post avers that being married beats working for a living. But at least when you're working you get to take a break! Ba doom ba! It's really about McCartney and wives gone wild, though:

Of course, it may not be terribly 'romantic' to have pre-nups, but let's face it, if rich people fear they will lose a huge chunk of their money to a cynical spouse on the make, it will raise calls for no-fault divorce to be abolished.

So, being quite recently divorced, I had to hop in with a snarky comment that summarizes a bit of regretting, having to do with my state of mind when I was 24, which unfortunately I can't go back and change, in this lifetime:

In fact, if the newlyweds had to explicitly promise to share a certain percentage of their assets and income with each other, for a specific time - none of this "till death us do part" nonsense - they might wake up and realize how ruinously unprofitable marriage could be. The way things are, you have to be a lawyer to quite understand the trouble you are getting yourself into. If marriage were a true contract, there would have to be a knowing, conscious meeting of the minds.

Posted by Robert Speirs at May 25, 2006 08:47 PM

Maybe before reincarnation I can leave a message for my next self warning of the pitfalls presented by women you think you can't live without. Hey. Maybe that's how all those self-help books get written!

But it also seemed like a good opportunity to chime in with one of my most time-honored pieces of worldly wisdom about marriage:

Marriage as it is today is not a relationship between a man and a woman. It is a relationship between a person and the state, with the terms set by the state, for the benefit of others, that is, the spouse and the children. The relationship between a man and a woman is called love.

Posted by Robert Speirs at May 26, 2006 07:21 PM

I can't believe I've never blogged about that opinion before. So maybe I have. What does it really mean? I left out the other supposed beneficiary of the marriage machine - other members of society who get a nice domesticated castrato to deal with instead of a wild young man, from which development the state benefits as well. And marriage also is a machine for creating more taxpayers, as one commenter pointed out.

Hee, hee!
A bishop gets a lesson in what some people consider holy:

The Bishop of Chelmsford, the Right Reverend John Gladwin, and 20 curates have been abandoned in Africa by the Anglican Church of Kenya after its Archbishop discovered his liberal views on gays.

I liked it so much I even made a comment to a Social Affairs Unit post about the British church. The comment isn't up yet. I am bowled over by a vision of the Bishop's astonishment that some religious leaders actually read the Bible and take what it says as literally true and applicable to today's world. How stupid, mean and arrogant can one be? And he calls himself a representative of goodness. I hope the leopards eat well tonight.

Symmetrical blather

Tyler Cowen, having absorbed multiple broadsides on the immigration issue, has struck his flag and is bloviating about relationships. But that's OK. I can spout blather on that topic, too:

In every relationship, there is a moment of maximum symmetry. Sadly, a man's emotional high points will rarely coincide with those of the woman he loves. Women and men are just too different. The longer a relationship goes on, the more moments occur when there's no match at all. And perhaps the mutual high points are all pretty much the same. The mismatches are all different, and so more memorable.

The Da Vinci Code: Never read it, never will. But...

A post on the Gene Expression blog about the Da Vinci Code publishing phenomenon seems puzzling, as in this extract:

That being said, why does it matter that The Da Vinci Code is historically inaccurate? Some readers might view it as fantasy, but the problem is that it is billed as historical fiction (see the preface to the book). 45 million Americans have read this book, that's 20% of the population. A small minority, on the order of millions, claim to have had their view of the Bible and Christianity altered. This is nothing to sneeze at, if a new religious movement claimed millions in a few years we would take note.

until I stopped to think about Julian Jaynes and Rodney Stark. Then I came up with this comment:

Isn't it odd that a book about the fine details of Christian history should be so popular in our secularized age, when you would think religious history would be totally irrelevant? The only explanation I can imagine is that Western Man realizes that his view of the world depends heavily on the Christian perspective, whether he's an agnostic or a self-proclaimed "pagan". 45 million readers sense that what happened to Jesus affected events for two thousand years and, by extension, is essential to the consciousness with which we analyze the world today. Pretty amazing.

I don't see the DVC as leading to a religious reawakening or anything. But if it leads to a greater understanding of the role of Christian theology and psychology in creating the modern world, perhaps it will be worth the laughable errors it contains.

Futility moment
I sent this letter to Senator Mel Martinez:

I have lately heard the unbelievable suggestion that illegal aliens - who lied and cheated to get into this country and continued to lie and cheat to work here - should be able to benefit from this deception by getting credit for their illegal work in the US Social Security system, even though the work was only possible because they used forged documentation! I certainly hope you don't agree with this appeasement of felonious conduct.
The rationale that has been given is that these workers paid into the system and should get the benefit of what they paid. Of course this is nonsense. Like all other workers, the system envisions giving them far more than what they or their employers paid. But it gets worse.
As I understand Social Security regulations, even if a worker doesn't make contributions to the Social Security system, or his employer doesn't, as long as the work he does SHOULD HAVE been covered by Social Security, he will get credit for the work. How long will it be until some liberal lawmaker gets the bright idea of imputing contributions from every illegal alien who asserts, however mendaciously, that he worked in this country? This is a real threat to the Social Security system and to honest, hard-working American workers. Illegal immigration and especially illegal employment must be stopped now.

I know. It's pointless. They'll do what they want and Mel Martinez in particular will never vote for justice and freedom. But I had to try. Do I feel especially strongly about all this because I'm within a decade of getting Social Security? Maybe. Or maybe the whole immigration thing is getting to me big time, even though I plan to spend my retirement as an immigrant - legal, let me hastily add - to some lucky country with a stimulating environment. It would be good, though, if there were an actual America to come back to now and then.

Insanely great

Michael Totten, (via Instapundit), has a mind-boggling post about tackling the leaders of the Palestinian insanity in their dens. What would you say to Saeb Erekat if you had the chance, even though you were surrounded by heavies with eyes like dead sharks'? This is what Totten said:

"Why did the intifada end?” I said. The question didn’t phase him like it did Abu Laila.

“I don’t know,” he said. “And I don’t care. I’m just glad it’s over. Hopefully it ended out of an understanding that it was bad. I condemned every single attack.”

“What do you think was the biggest Palestinian mistake since the Oslo peace process began?” I said.

“We were unsuccessful in terms of transparency and accountability,” he said. “We could have done it. But we failed. That’s why Hamas won. We should have been tough on people who abused their offices.”

“What was the biggest Israeli mistake since Oslo?” I said.

“The motto of No Sacred Dates,” he said. “Each time they had a date-based obligation, they didn’t do it. They kept building settlements.”

“Why is a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank such a big problem for Palestinians?” I said. “Would you rather the Israelis stay?”
"The problem with unilateralism is the outcome of it,” he said. “The Israelis will get everything they want without negotiation.”
***
“I am against suicide bombing morally, not politically,” he said.

“How many Palestinians agree with you about that?” I said.

“Few,” he said. “Very few.” He said this inside the Palestinian Legislative Council within earshot of his colleagues, many of whom speak English and could hear him perfectly well. “We have to keep working,” he said and gently put his hand on my shoulder. “It is difficult in this environment.”

Just amazing. Why has no other news outlet brought out the true attitude of Fatah toward Hamas, the "sickness unto death" of the Palestinian "leadership"? It would conflict with their agenda now, wouldn't it? Can you imagine the Guardian or the New York Times printing such an interview? Maybe today the blogosphere came of age.

Huh?

I hope no real geneticist notices my comment on this Gene Expression post.

I'm beginning to wonder whether failure to reproduce on the part of a specific organism with a particular genetic makeup really affects the survival of that behavioral complex at all, given the genetic complexity of behavioral syndromes and the multiple methods of producing the same phenotype using various combinations of genes. Homosexuality might be an example.

Oops. Looks like one did:

Stop wondering.
gcochran | Email | Homepage | 05.19.06 - 1:38 pm | #

Fallujah in Sao Paulo
Blair also links to an article about the violence in Sao Paulo, Brazil. I like the "activists concerned" tag. It's really the criminals who should be concerned. As a judge I used to appear in front of said to young thugs: "You think you've got a tough gang? I've got the biggest, toughest gang of all - the law. And you're about to learn how it feels to lose." The Brazilian police killed 115 people. I especially liked this bit:

Police did not identify any of those they killed, say where they were killed or in what circumstances, Sao Paulo's leading newspapers reported Wednesday.

Can you even imagine what would happen around here if even one gangster were killed under the same circumstances? Of course, I can't imagine what, for example, the Houston police would do if they had forty-one police killed by rampaging thugs. And I don't think I want to know.

Pub names

Tim Blair asks for weird pub names. My favorite: The Snark and Yeti. Or how about what I saw on the way in here, "I'm Feeling Lucky"?

Bigger, Better, Cheaper
Cheaper fares to Europe? I certainly hope so:

Singapore Airlines intends to configure its A380 interior to take around 500 passengers, although the plane - depending on airline requirements - can take up to 800 customers.

Also, fewer planes will be needed, which should make airports easier to get through, at least until traffic catches up. I'm going to enjoy the next few years.

Enrique Cuatro
Just finished reading a book about Henry 1V of Castile (1425-74). OK, I must admit when I took the book out of the Leon County Library I thought it was about Henry IV of Navarre, the Huguenot King of France who converted to Catholicism because "Paris is worth a mass". And I realized the danger of being confused with Henry IV of England, father of Prince Hal and all that. But that just goes to show you that when you least expect it, serendipity strikes. After all, if you expected it, it would hardly justify invoking the Princes of Serendip, would it? So anyway, I wound up with this Henry IV, also known as Enrique the Impotent. Yeek. But Townsend Miller's book is something of a tour de force. Enrique is in Miller's hands a most compelling if pathetic figure. And a major historical influence, right in there fighting in the conflicts between Castile and Aragon that led to the reign of Ferdinand (Fernando) and Isabella (Isabel). You remember them. The ones who gave a bit of money to equip three tiny ships that conquered the Western Ocean? And just in the same year conquered Granada, drove out the Muslims and, oh, yes, banished the Jews. Well, you gotta take the good with the bad. Under that Genoese guy, Cristobal Colon? Oh, sure we know him better as Christopher Columbus, the Western oppressive white male sexist pig. But to millions of Americanos he was the bringer of a few good things. Like the wheel. And alphabetic writing. And horses. And consciousness, if you believe Julian Jaynes. (And who doesn't, nowadays?) And civilization, unless you really think the Aztec way of life, featuring the ripping of hearts from tens of thousands of living sacrifices, was a GOOD THING??! And to top it all off, the descendants of Columbus's Spanish sponsors now get minority status in the richest and most powerful nation on earth. Talk about a winner!
Enrique tried his best, despite his obvious unfitness for kingliness and especially progenitizing. Here's a Miller sample:

For more than a tired and hapless man had died that winter night. Spain's Middle Ages themselves lay dead on those bare boards. An era, a world were over: the same chill dawn was coming in Segovia, and as young Isabel rose to greet it, as she drew her martened robe around her and leaned from her casement and watched the tall square towers grow gray, grow faintly pink, then as at last the sun burst forth above the snowy mountains and scattered gold and diamonds across the wakening city at her feet, a new day, too, was breaking for the kingdom, a day which was triumphantly to free it from the rue and fraction we have sought to chronicle and bring it on - healed, rectified and welded - to might, to majesty, to sway of half the globe, to unimaginable splendor.
But that is another story.

Oh good.

Diet hope - Food Yesterday, Food Tomorrow, Never Food Today?
I'm listening to the Glenn and Helen show about the Shangri-La Diet. It's pretty interesting. I had been looking for a copy of the book, almost bought it several times. But then I stumbled across this other, old, out-of-print book called The Eating Man's Diet, by Thomas Sharkey. Of course, being a man and having some experience with eating and hoping to continue eating for some time, I was fascinated. The idea is simple: eat every other day. Unlike in Alice in Wonderland, this is not a cruel delusion. You simply eat 900 calories or less one day, then the next day eat a "regular" set of meals, up to about 3000 calories. It's easy to follow. I'm in the tenth day now. Tomorrow morning I get to weigh myself. Woohoo! But I just love the "eating days". And I'm starting to get to the point where the "diet days" are not too bad. So we'll see. He says it takes about three weeks to become habituated to the schedule. He also has some interesting things to say about the psychology of dieting and how different breaking bad food habits is from stopping smoking or excessive drinking. I'm surprised he's never, as far as I can tell, written anything else.
The Sharkey book is from 1969. The most amazing thing is how little has changed. People were obsessed with dieting then, they have been for forty years and we're even fatter now, supposedly! Something's got to change. In the Seth Roberts podcast, he mentions that "ditto foods" or foods that taste exactly the same every time you eat them, are partly responsible for food cravings and "addictions". My only problem with his approach is that I don't want to drink a glass of sugar water and tablespoons of olive oil every day. I want a diet regime that allows me to eat whatever I want, but that changes the way I approach food so I don't want as much. That way, I can eat the best food and drink and enjoy myself, while not seeking absolution or nepenthe in massive amounts of calories.

Update: Lost three pounds in ten days! And that's with only five days of actual dieting. This could be good. Before too long I might even learn to cut back - just a little - on my calorie count on the eating days.

Puerto Rico - AGAIN??
Sometimes I wonder why I have to repeat things over and over before people finally admit how brilliant my thoughts are. Here on Marginal Revolution, Tyler Cowen puts out some less-than-brilliant (maybe lower-than-moronic would be more accurate) arguments on immigrants. I hate it when they don't differentiate between legal and illegal immigration in an argument about illegal immigration! And someone calls me a xenophobe. Hmmpf! (one of my favorite words). And some of my best friends are named Xeno. Luckily Steve Sailer and someone named Teller jump in with some of those embarrassing things called facts. They also must have the "how many times do I have to say this stuff?" feeling. I make a telling rejoinder:

Immigrants, and particularly illegal immigrants, which is what we're talking about, aren't "just people". They're a particular kind of people, with lower intelligence, less education, less comprehension of English and higher crime rates than the average American citizen. They also, by definition, have less respect for the American legal system. Besides, if they're such an asset, why doesn't Mexico do anything at all to get them to stay?

And I get this for my troubles:

Thank you for revealing yourself to be an ignorant xenophobe, thus saving the rest of us the bother of reading your nonsense.

So, scads and reams of unrebutted FACTS later, I haul out the heavy Puerto Rican artillery:

Puerto Rico offers a clear example of how "Latinos" fare in a US-style economic system. Over half the island is on USDA food stamps. They have not "assimilated". They are all US citizens, but have not accepted traditional American culture. Despite decades of tax breaks and huge taxpayer-funded assistance and massive money from tourism, they are in the same situation, relative to the mainland, that they have been in for years. Their per capita GDP is at about 35% of that on the mainland. Oh, and they have also had several opportunities to become independent and have rejected them all. Puerto Rico represents the future for any other parts of the US that become Hispanic-majority. Anyone who has eyes can see these facts. You have to be ignorant and viciously partisan to deny them.

I'm still waiting for someone to deny or rebut my contentions about Puerto Rico and cite some trenchant analysis or stunning countervailing data, thus destroying my analogy. I wonder why they haven't? You don't think maybe - Heavens! - I might actually be right??!

What I believe
This introduction to The Objective Standard summarizes it pretty well. And I acknowledge I have always had problems with the word "believe". Perhaps I should just say, this is what seems like common sense to me. A sample:

Altruism is not good for one’s life. If accepted and practiced consistently, it leads to death. This is what Jesus did. If accepted and practiced inconsistently, it retards one’s life and leads to guilt. This is what most altruists do. An altruist might not die from his morality—so long as he cheats on it—but nor will he live fully. Insofar as a person acts against the requirements of his life and happiness, he will not make the most of his life; he will not achieve the kind of happiness possible to Man.

He didn't!
Did David Cameron really say this:"We should be thinking not what is good for putting money in people's pockets but what is good for putting joy in people's hearts,"?

Yes, he did, in the Daily Telegraph. Here's more:

In the UK, the economist Richard Layard, New Labour's very own happiness guru, has succeeded in getting hard-nosed political operators to back his campaign. His recent call for the Government to train 10,000 more therapists to help us become happy, resonates with politicians who are desperately short of ideas. Back in the 1940s and '50s, the big idea was the Welfare State. Today it is the Happy State. Stalin, who called himself the "constructor of happiness" would approve.

Of course, in order to make everyone happy, the state has to have a definition of happiness that applies to everyone, in every circumstance. And therapists that can help everyone get to their own state-certified and guaranteed happiness level. And the Camerons and Blairs of the world will be writing that policy! Just think what a bang-up job Gore and Kerry and Ralph Nader could do with that kind of opportunity. Now if I were a Muslim, I'd only have to open the Koran and read the right parts to figure out what to do to achieve optimum bliss. Why can't they have some sort of guide like that for us poor atheists? Oh. That's what the government is going to do - provide an ideology that conduces to happiness, just like Buddhism makes Buddhists happy and Judaism makes Jews happy. The whole idea would be shocking if it weren't so stupid, naive and ahistorical. I, for one, feel quite competent to resist any attempt to make me happy for any considerable period of time that doesn't involve gin, red meat and chocolate.

Fan

My technical brilliance astounds even me:

In the latest technology air circulating devices, circa approximately 1923, the descriptive terms "oscillating" and "rotating" are not mutually exclusive. The rotating turbine oscillates - on another axis - to sweep an extensive volume of space.

Verity and EG, sitting in a tree ...

It's a bit odd, when you haven't a clue what either one looks like. But I had to put a comment in on a Samizdata post about comment control which brought up the question of the appropriateness of comments by the varied weirdos who show up there:

We invite comments but that does not mean we relinquish control over our property, just as when you invite people into your house, you do not relinquish the right to subsequently un-invite them if they act inappropriately or if you just want them out for whatever reason.

I have always relished the to-and-fro on Samizdata. The boundaries of comment style and substance fit my inclinations. I'm aware, though, that some Samizdata commenters might think I was over the edge and should be banned, just as I dislike some of them. But it's the house that makes the rules. So I thought I'd comment on the commenting of two of the edgiest commenters:

The great thing about the blogosphere in general is that every blog has a slightly different definition of who is a "racist" or an "Islamofascist" or just a "troll". So those who really want to profit from their blogiversations gravitate toward those sites with whose definitions they tend to agree. Kos's definition of a "right-winger" is about as far from Samizdata's as Protein Wisdom's definition of a "communist" is from that of the Idiotarian Rottweiler. And many Samizdatistas reject the whole right-left thing entirely. You guys do a good job of maintaining a balance while keeping an edge on the discussions. If Verity and EG can comment interestingly on the same post without dissolving into flames, anything is possible!

Note: Of course, that should be the "ANTI-Idiotarian Rottweiler"! My humblest apologies, Emperor Misha!

Marginal Revolution had an interesting post on the "forever stamp":

The forever stamp


The post office is planning a ''forever" stamp for letters, good no matter how many times postal rates increase. That means people could say goodbye to those annoying 2- or 3-cent stamps that have to be added to letters every time rates go up. The idea for the special stamps, which would be sold at the same price as other first-class stamps, was included in proposals announced yesterday that would also raise stamp prices 3 cents -- to 42 cents -- next year.

Here is the story. Yes this is a hedging device, but it also represents an attempt to peg a real rate of return.

So I had to extend the idea:

Maybe Wal-mart should guarantee people interest equal to gasoline price inflation (which is essentially what the Post Office is doing with stamps) when they put money on those cards that get you 3 cents a gallon off the gas price at their stations. So you would be guaranteed the same price for gas for as long as the money lasted. The problem there might be that the price of gas could (I wish!) come down. What if you put sixty dollars on the card and the price of gas was cut in half? Would you then only be able to buy thirty dollars worth of gas?
The viability of the scheme would appear to depend on the size of the float and the interest the seller could get on the float money.