Über die Freiheit / de libertate

While I was doing some googling[!!] for a discussion about “random” and its word usage I came across this gem:

I’m far more proud of my reputation as Grammar Nazi though. I’ve always been a stickler for grammar and pronunciation but lately I have taken it to extremes. I interrupted a friend in the middle of him explaining the details of his break-up (yes, another freaking break-up) to let him know that he should have said ‘Louisa and I’ not ‘Louisa and me’. Insensitive, much? But somebody has to do it. The English language is being raped left, right and center, and nobody seems concerned at all. Don’t even get me started on the prevalence of the word ‘random’. *shudder* Anytime someone can’t be fucked searching the recesses of their mind for an appropriate adjective they just use ‘random’. That word doesn’t actually convey any emotion or description, you’re not giving me any details people! I’m thinking about carrying a little pocket thesaurus in my handbag to thrust in people’s faces whenever they seem to be having trouble. It might not win me a lot of friends but at least I’ll be happy. (Note: use of random as a noun is perfectly fine eg. pashed a random, caught venereal disease from a random etc.) [Link]

I have no idea who this person is, other than it’s a woman named Mel who is 23 and from Australia. (She also wants to have sex with Kevin Bacon for some reason.) One thing I do know for certain is that she is a douchebag. Aside from hating random as an adjective and supporting it as a noun, she corrects people in mid-sentence for the sense of her own grammatical superiority.

If any of my friends did that to me I’d probably flip them off and ask them to leave.

In short, parents are correct to think that they can change their children. Their mistake is to suppose that the change will endure. Instead of thinking of kids as lumps of clay that parents “mold,” we should think of kids as plastic that flexes in response to pressure - and springs back to its original shape once the pressure goes away. [EconLog]

I can’t wait for him to write a book on education, which I think he plans to do.

The Chairman of the Democratic National Committee and former Governor of Vermont contrasted the two parties’ presidential candidates, saying that with a woman and an African-American as the two front-runners, the Democratic field “looks like America,” while the all-white male Republican field “looks like the 1950s and talks like the 1850s.” [The Georgetown Voice]

Now I don’t disagree that a black man and a woman being the potential nominees is a good thing. At the same time I don’t think it is necessarily a better thing than a white man. What I think is good is that these historically marginalized groups are able to run, but I don’t think that that makes the Democractic party more “American.”

Also, if my memory serves me correctly, it was the 1850s when the Republican Party was formed and I believe it was one the correct side of the slavery issue. How many women and black men has the Democratic Party nominated since 1824? One?

Reporter: “Two of the big films this year, both your film and ‘No Country for Old Men,’ were shot in the same town in Texas.”

Daniel Day-Lewis: “Yes.”

Reporter: “How did that inform your role and how did that inform your performance?”

Daniel Day-Lewis: “In absolutely no way whatsoever.” [Richard Roeper]

I’ve seen only one similar national swoon. As a teenager growing up in Canada, I witnessed a charismatic law professor go from obscurity to justice minister to prime minister, carried on a wave of what was called Trudeaumania.

But even there the object of his countrymen’s unrestrained affections was no blank slate. Pierre Trudeau was already a serious intellectual who had written and thought and lectured long about the nature and future of his country. [Washington Post]

Another gem from the local paper:

Needed: rent fix

I want answers. What’s going on with rising rents? My family, like so many others, is in a tight spot. We need good, affordable housing and there’s almost none.

A single person can get together with friends and share rent. But for a family, it’s almost impossible to find anything good for under $1,000 a month. I don’t know about the rest of you, but if my family was paying that, we would just barely be able to make ends meet.

With the rising cost of houses, I realize that rents are going to rise, but this is getting ridiculous. If you happen to find something for under $1,000 listed in the paper, it is usually taken within minutes of the paper hitting the newsstands. I wish something could be done to put an end to this, like limiting how much rental companies can charge.

I know a lot of properties are privately owned by people from out of the province who need someone to pay their mortgages until they sell their other homes. This is OK, but they bought the property probably knowing they couldn’t move in right away, so I think that they should consider that and rent for a little bit less.

This is not Alberta and B.C., where people are used to paying well above $1,000 a month for rent. Someone needs to come up with a solution.

Laura Sorensen
Regina

Again we have economic illiteracy on display again. It’s a simple concept: rent controls = housing shortage. This, of course, is irrelevant because the government must do something, anything.

Ms. Sorensen completely misses the mark when she adovates for rent control because she does not even begin to think of the unintented consiquences that would occur if enacted. (Thankfully the Saskatchewan Party was elected and thus it is unlikely we’ll see rent control legislation.)

It’s most notable because effectively no one is building apartments in the city right now. Enacting rent controls would completely eliminate any attempts at new contstruction. Also, one of the biggest complaints heard in the city (aside from rising prices generally) is the amount of apartments that are being converted into condominiums. If rent controls were enacted, as Sorenson advocates, apartment owners would rush to convert their properties, thus making apartments even more scarce.

It will never be a popular policy because it seems like the government is acting, but the best route would be to ensure greater economic freedom to citizens. Allowing less restrictive zoning, lower taxes and a better enviroment for business is the best reaction to high prices. Ultimately, however, supply and demand will always dictate prices.

For more discussion of rent control see this entry in the Consise Encyclopedia of Economics, which addresses even the new building provision argument put forth earlier in the pages of the Leader-Post0

Glen F, from the Metacritic comments for 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

Juno was a much funnier pregnant-girl movie. I like movies. In France it’s called cinema, why is that different.

Ok, not really, but it’s a good few lines about his book via Greg Mankiw,

Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope. It is fun, smart, and well written.

The most surprisingly honest sentence so far (page 156):

the conservative revolution that Reagan helped usher in gained traction because Reagan’s central insight–that the liberal welfare state had grown complacent and overly bureaucratic, with Democratic policy makers more obsessed with slicing the economic pie than with growing the pie–contained a good deal of truth.

The sloppiest sentence so far (page 146):

Over the past decade, we’ve seen…hefty corporate profits, but a shrinking share of those profits going to workers.

I am pretty sure that the share of profits going to workers has been stable–at zero. Profits are what owners get to keep after workers have been paid.

Driving in the north end of this great city the other day, I came across a Saskatchewan Party MLA office in Regina Rosemont Constituency. I thought to myself, “I don’t remember the Saskatchewan Party winning that seat in the Nov. 7 provincial election. Oh yeah, that’s right; they didn’t.”But because their rich cousins in Ottawa have a lot of money, they decided to turn their 2007 provincial election committee rooms into a shadow MLA office.

I am not a constituent of Regina Rosemont, but am shocked that they are allowing this to happen. The people of Regina Rosemont spoke overwhelmingly on Nov. 7 when they elected a NDP MLA to represent them for the next four years.

It is unjust that, because a certain political party has more money than another, it is allowed to spend this money on keeping the heat and phone running in an office where it doesn’t hold the seat. This, to me, is poor party management and I think the people of Regina Rosemont should be ashamed of such behaviour.

I hope this doesn’t set a precedent in Regina because I do not want every political party setting up shop in my constituency for the next four years in hopes of claiming a victory one day.

Katie Gerrard
Regina

[Leader-Post]

My first, gut, reaction was “this woman is bat shit insane.”

What on earth is Ms. Gerrard talking about? What does the MLA office in Rosemont have to do with the federal Conservative Party? Since when have the conservatives taken to funding the Sask Party? Did I miss the memorandum?

I’m also unsure who “they” are. Which mystical entity is supposed to prevent this egregious violation of…Ms. Gerrard’s fragile sensibilities. No one is debating that the NDP was elected, but how does a Sask Party office undermine this?

I can’t for the life of me figure out what is unjust about a political party spending “money on keeping the heat and phone running in an office”. Whose rights are being violated? What laws are being broken? Why does running an office mean a party is being run poorly? They just won the election for heaven’s sake.

I hope that Ms. Gerrard’s theories don’t set a precedent.

Rosie Boycott, Wikipedia tells me, “is a British journalist and feminist.” She has also written the worst review (or quasi-review) I’ve ever read. To be sure, I’m slightly biased, as I believe Juno to the best film of the year (yes, it beats out the magnificent There Will Be Blood) and it is my favorite movie of all time. Nevertheless, her review of Juno is a mess, combining her poor memory and an affinity for ascribing messages to the movie which do not exist.

The first thing of note in her review is her terrible attempt at quoting lines from the movie. In fact, nearly attempt at doing so is a complete failure. To wit:

There are no tears when she finds out she’s expecting and her laid-back, wholesome boyfriend Bleeker, who runs in the local school’s track-team, says merely: “Boy, what shall we do?”

The line, actually, is “So, what do you think we should do?” And, unless you think that body language doesn’t exist, Bleeker certainly does not “merely” do anything. He looks absolutely frightened, as only Michael Cera could. As the script calls for, and is evident in the film, there is an awkward silence at that moment.

“I’ll nip it in the bud before it gets worse,” she replies, matter of factly. “It can lead to an infant.”

Again, this quotation is wrong. It removes the entire middle part of the sentence.

“I’m calling to place a hasty abortion,” she tells the operator.

In fact she calls to procure a hasty abortion.

The protester smiles at her. “God appreciates this miracle,” she tells her.

God, actually, appreciates your miracle. Su-Chin is clear on this.

Only her father raises a small eyebrow: when he hears her news, he shakes his head in disappointment and says: “I thought you were the kind of girl who knew when to say no.”

J.K. Simmons’ line is “I thought you were the kind of girl who knew when to say when.”

Now I don’t mean to imply that a reviewer must remember word-for-word the entire script, but when she gets every single quotation wrong, you have to question her abilities. Some of those lines are memorable so there is no reason to get them all so terribly, terribly wrong.

Because Juno let her guard down and had a single sexual experience with a sweet, well-intentioned boy, she alone is left with what would normally be an ordeal of sorrow and public shame.

There is no indication that Juno “let her guard down”, rather she made a premeditated decision, as Bleeker later proves, to have sex with him.

Of the 5 major sports of the world–I’m taking liberties here–that is, hockey, baseball, basketball, football and soccer, which has the worst fans?

Hockey: A thoroughly Canadian sport with thoroughly Canadian fans with some Americans sprinkled in for good measure. Hockey fans tend to be rednecks and enjoy violence. The fans are men who grew up playing the game and believe that if only they’d tried a little harder, they have made the NHL. If you spend any time with hockey fans you will feel your IQ drop as the time passes. They have also been known to riot over the results.

Baseball: American. This is a sport for people who lead dull, boring lives. It is also the best sport for statistics whores. “Did you see Jimmy he stole 47 bases this season, has an amazing ground ball fly ball ratio and 12,000 RBI’s!” Who cares? The fans aren’t so much annoying but rather depressing since so many otherwise smart people (I’m talking about you Russ Roberts and Daniel Drezner!) enjoy it.

Basketball: American. Basketball fans, well have a lot of issues with them. They tend to pick fights with the players. This stems from the fact that there is no separation between the court and the crowd. Yet again the fans like to deliberately piss off the players shooting free-throws. Classy.

Football: Canadian and American. This is the sport of experts. At least in the mind of the fat, drunk fans. Football produces fans who think they know absolutely everything about the game. In their minds they could out-play and out-coach everyone on the field. They are also fond of throwing things onto the field such as snowballs and beer bottles.

Soccer: Rest of the world. These are the fans which drank all of the Kool-Aid. Soccer fans are the most committed of all fans. This means of course they are willing riot, murder and bomb things for their team, frightening the poor Canadian tourist who just wants to get back to his hotel (that means you Berlin!).

Conclusion: Hockey fans are the people you least want to be friends with, football fans are the most annoying and soccer fans are the most frightening. Overall soccer fans win, but in the real world, known as North America, hockey fans are the worst. Congrats Canada, you’re finally number one!

While viewing my university’s students union site I came across a survey about its health and dental plan. Being a call center representative, I naturally love surveys so I promptly filled it out. The last question was my favorite. “37. Do you have any personal comments or feedback about the URSU Health & Dental Plan that you would like to provide?” I answered:

The Health and Dental plan, like RPRIG [should have been RPIRG], is extortion. You seize on the knowledge that many people will not opt-out because you deliberately make the process long, difficult and annoying. You should all be ashamed of yourselves. If you truly believe you are speaking in the name of all students, which you are NOT, then you should give them the benefit of the doubt and let them OPT-IN. If the students, as you claim, agree with your money wasting ideas, they will support you. Until that point you have absolutely no legitimacy and I demand you change your name to “University of Regina Student’s Ignorance Expliotation Centre”. God bless.

I sure hope they don’t trace this back to me…

The best response to Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and his declaration that Sharia law be allowed to operate in some capity within British law, comes from Language Log’s Geoffrey Pullum.

Dr Williams is a gentle, learned, brilliant, scholarly man, and a bit of a public relations doofus. I hate to say it, but the calls for his resignation are not unjustified. He should be the holder of an endowed Professorship of Theology and Law at some top-ranking university. He should not be a prominent church administrator, and certainly not the Archbishop of Canterbury. Someone duller, more political, less original, and less intelligent must be found for that job. [Link]

In a different spin, Eugene Volokh argues that his proposals are not unfounded and that the United States already has Sharia law. See here and here.

Over at Cafe Hayek, Russ Roberts posts an absolutely brilliant quote from the Bush-Gore debates in 2000. Bush states:

I would take the use of force very seriously.  I would be guarded in my approach.  I don’t think we can be all things to all people in the world.  I think we’ve got to be very careful when we commit our troops.  The vice president and I have a disagreement about the use of troops.  He believes in nation building.  I would be very careful about using our troops as nation builders.  I believe the role of the military is to fight and win war and therefore prevent war from happening in the first place.

As I was reading this the first thing I thought to myself was that the typical response will be that 9/11 changed everything. This, like was in the response to the video of Cheney explaining why ruling Iraq would be next to impossible, is the typical response. So, sure enough, the second commenter fills the standard conservative canard,

But that was then. This is now. Things changed on Sept. 11th.

Thanks, Buzzcut, you never fail to disappoint.

Small Dead Animals continues its stupidity. This time she focuses on her current peeve of Islam and continues to caricature it. She justifies her bigotry saying that Islam’s treatment of women should be addressed. The thing she forgets is that mockery and insulting accomplish basically nothing. It’s like the Danish cartoons. I fully support their right to publish them and I fully support the right for any and everyone to publish them. That said, I don’t think they accomplished anything positive. The critiques were spot on but I don’t think we convinced any in the Muslim world to change their thoughts or ways.

Fortunately for us we have Kate to change the world!

[Screenshot]

Edit: The commenters get in on the action.

“I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for the accolades from the Babbilonians Kate.

Intelligent women are as offensive to liberals as they are to moslems.

I am an islamophobe and have the guns to prove it.”

As I’ve said before, I love Stephen Colbert but I dislike Jon Stewart. Sean Higgins, on Jeremy Lott’s blog summarizes my views:

Since the Daily Show became a hit though the spontaneity and daring of the early years have been lost. Everybody knows about the show now. As a result its correspondents can rarely get anybody to drop their guard and give candid interviews. They are forced to rely on lame stunts instead.

Stewart meanwhile has morphed into Robin Williams. I mean the later-career, unfunny, very annoying, “family comedy”-making Robin Williams.

Stewart rarely tells jokes anymore. Instead he shouts, mugs, uses “funny” voices and generally acts that guy in college who thought he was being the life of the party right up until the moment when four guys grabbed him and flushed his head down the toilet.

Higgins is spot on when he talks about Stewart’s completely unfunny style of comedy.

I believe that J.S. Mill’s maxim in the byline is one of the most important quotes from one of the most important works in political philosophy and that it is amply useful for libertarians.

Through studying American political philosophy I have come across an interesting line in Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia. In the very first paragraph Jefferson states, “The legitimate powers of government extended to such acts only as are injurious to others.” This essential idea is a direct antecedent to Mill’s statement. I don’t mean to suggest that Mill copied the idea from Jefferson, but rather that this idea has a long lineage in the history of liberal thought. Perhaps there are more liberal thinkers with the same phrase.

Now if you spend some time reading Small dead animals you will notice that it is a uniformly terrible blog. It is routinely voted and touted as the greatest or most read Canadian blog. This is shame. The blog’s proginator is Kate, an ignorant Saskatchewan farmer. She spends most of her time spouting either a) nonsense or b) racist bullshit. It is more difficult to determine this, however, because she rarely posts an original thought. Instead she prefers to quote extenisvely and hash-out tired memes.

As a feature of this resigned blog, I will have regular posts on the ridiculous and downright bigoted ideas she spreads and the type of supporters she has in the comments.

I’ll start with this.

Poligamy [sic] functions in the reverse manner. While it may have had a certain usefulness when cultures regularly found their fighting age males depleted through warfare, and women outnumbering potential husbands who could support them, poligamy functions in an exploitive manner, in some cases, a pedophile’s paradise. [Link]

It’s a typical rhetorical trick. Plural marriage is a pedophile’s paradise! What is her evidence for this? Some polygamist men are exploitive therefore pedophilia will clearly abound. It’s a plain non sequitur but it provides a bulwark for anti-individualist views.

Welcome to de libertate, a blog about stuff. Previously hosted with GISOL, this blog is on a new, separate domain hosted by 1&1. The reason for the change is that GISOL is an incompitent hosting company, with incompitent customer service. Hopefully at some point I will be able to navigate all of my old posts to the new site, but with GISOL’s record I’m not so sure it will happen. A word to the wise, avoid GISOL at all costs.

Nevertheless, I’ve started anew and will now commence regular posting for all of my readers, all four of them. As per some introduction, this blog has no particular theme but it will generally focus on general politics with emphasis on economics and history. Local issues will also frequently arise as I expose the unwavering problems found within my home province of Saskatchewan.

As for the name, de libertate, it roughly translated means “about liberty” or “on liberty” a deliberate homage to John Stuart Mill’s seminal work On Liberty, from which the quote in the byline is take from. The name is latin, thus is should never be capitalized. I like it that way.