The Opening Ceremonies

I'm having a lot of laughs watching the Beijing Opening Ceremonies with a Cold War historian. Nevermind what an obvious Soviet hand-me-down the Chinese national anthem ("March of the Volunteers") is, the narrator just feeds you straight lines as he tries to dance around the gigantic elephants in the room.

"...the Mogao Caves, which are wonderfully preserved Buddhist artworks in a cave in the remote desert..."

"By 'wonderfully preserved' he means that the caves were too far away for the government to destroy during the Cultural Revolution."

(dancers using their bodies to paint a traditional Chinese artwork on a giant canvas)

"So, if they're taking us through Chinese history here, when they get to Mao, are they going to come out and set that painting on fire?"

They are putting on an impressive show, but I can hardly wait to see how they deal with it when they get to about 1940.

Update: They skipped it. They cut right from the medieval era to 1978. Dead serious.

This Actually Happened

1989 sucked.

Ronald Reagan left office, Miami Vice and Family Ties went off the air, the People's Republic of China murdered about a thousand people at Tienanmen Square, Iran issued a fatwah against Salman Rushdie and his publishers, and Ghostbusters II failed to live up to the original, not in that "oh wow, this sequel doesn't even count" way, but in the way where they tried hard enough that you can't ignore it and have to deal with the mild disappointment. It's a year so generally benighted that Massive Entertainment's Soviet invasion of the United States seems oddly appropriate.

In a year filled with unspeakable horrors, The Artist (Formerly Known As Prince But Now Prince Again) released "Batdance", which became his first single released on the new "compact disc", briefly topped the chart, and made the following video an artifact of American culture which we have since struggled to expunge from our memories:


I'll bet you'd suppressed this memory.

Real news tomorrow. Promise.

Here, Eat This

A couple weeks ago, I was forced to eat at McDonald's and noticed that they have a new menu item: the "southern-style chicken sandwich"

I wouldn't have noticed it, except that it looked so incredibly unappealing that it left what I can only call a "mental footprint". In fact, I wasn't the only person in line looking at it with a little revulsion.

This is their promotional photo:


The ones they use on the big in-store menus appear to be deliberately color-adjusted for optimum bland. Maybe it's just the strong impression the picture gave me, but I'd swear it's photographed on a gray background with some kind of lighting that leaves a slight bluish tint on the food. I remember thinking about the efforts most of these art shops go to to make the food look bigger, more flavorful, juicier than it really is, and assuming that if McDonald's, a company with one of the most intense product planning schemes known to modern business, was willing to put up this photograph, what comes out of the little foil wrapper must be a sickly abomination unfit for wild beasts. It's as if by "southern-style", they meant "this is what PoWs were fed at Andersonville". It may be, in reality, a perfectly good sandwich, but on the menu, it looks like utter crap.

Now, McDonald's is resorting to giving away 8 million of the sandwiches in a desperate bid to get someone, somewhere, to eat them.

On May 15th, the Oak Brook-based restaurant chain will give customers samples of its "Southern style" chicken biscuits and sandwiches.

Customers can get the free lunch and breakfast items when they buy any medium or large drink at the company's 14,000 U.S. restaurants.

The promotion's part of McDonald's efforts to convince customers to try their expanded chicken menu.

If they don't change the photos, I won't be surprised if staff offer the free sandwiches, and customers, having already seen the picture on the menu, enthusiastically decline. I also won't be entirely surprised if it turns out the "giveaway" was actually a scheme to liquidate unsold product before they pull it from the menu, because it is seemingly only marginally popular with the customers who have tried it:

I ate a protein bar instead.

Ouch.

It's The Pope's Birthday

From the Pope's remarks at the White House:

From the dawn of the Republic, America's quest for freedom has been guided by the conviction that the principles governing political and social life are intimately linked to a moral order based on the dominion of God the Creator. The framers of this nation's founding documents drew upon this conviction when they proclaimed the self-evident truth that all men are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights grounded in the laws of nature and of nature's God.

The course of American history demonstrates the difficulties, the struggles, and the great intellectual and moral resolve which were demanded to shape a society which faithfully embodied these noble principles. In that process, which forged the soul of the nation, religious beliefs were a constant inspiration and driving force, as for example in the struggle against slavery and in the civil rights movement. In our time, too, particularly in moments of crisis, Americans continue to find their strength in a commitment to this patrimony of shared ideas and aspirations.

Read the whole thing.

Absolut Apology

Absolut has realized the scope of their error, and is very, very, very sorry.

During the weekend we have received several comments on the ad published in Mexico. We acknowledge the reactions and debate and want to apologize for the concerns this ad caused. We are truly sorry and understand that the ad has offended several persons. This was not our intention. The ad has been withdrawn as of Friday April 4th and will not be used in the future.

In no way was the ad meant to offend or disparage, or advocate an altering of borders, lend support to any anti-American sentiment, or to reflect immigration issues.

To ensure that we avoid future similar mistakes, we are adjusting our internal advertising approval process for ads that are developed in local markets.

This is a genuine and sincere apology,

By Paula Eriksson, VP Corporate Communications, V&S Absolut Spirits

They're certainly telling the truth when they say it wasn't intended to offend, but it's hard to imagine that the apology is any more "sincere" than the ad itself. This was too profoundly idiotic of a move for the company to have made with any understanding of the ramifications of their message, and there's no reason to believe they suddenly "get it". They're sorry for the outrage rather than the outrageous, which they initially defended. That's fine, because I doubt the apology will spare them the worst of the damage. The mistake will resonate for months, maybe years, emailed across the country and back a thousand times. The apology will not. It never does.

Frankly, most marketing teams seem to have a three drink minimum, and over at Michelle Malkin, you can see that the initial response of Jeffrey Moran, the company's Public Relations Director, was to delete emails without opening them and hang up on callers. Apparently, Absolut's interest in relating to the public, even in the middle of a public relations emergency being broadcast across the internet and into the mainstream press, clearly has limits.

By the way, Teran/TBWA, the Mexican advertising agency responsible for the ad, joins my little list of "advertising agencies with incredibly bad websites". As is often the case, it's barely navigable, barely legible, and constructed almost entirely in Flash, because most advertising agencies seem to think Flash-driven interfaces are cool, even though most users find them annoying and obstructive. If you're ever in a position where this advice matters, don't let an advertising agency that "also does websites" do your web design for you. Hire a professional web designer with a sound grasp of usability principles.

He's Reagan's VP In Heaven Now

Charlton Heston, former president of the NRA and star of Ben-Hur, Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green, and The Ten Commandments, as well as The Omega Man, an earlier film adaptation of I Am Legend, passed away over the weekend at the age of 84.

Fun Fact: The Douchebag once actually had the balls to mock Charlton Heston for developing Alzheimer's, giving Heston an opportunity to be smooth.

They should bury him with a gun in his hands.

Absolut Stupidity

I'm not really into calling for boycotts and I'm a Scotch drinker anyway, but you can make up your own mind about this one:



The ad is designed for the Mexican market, and Absolut has since had to issue a statement, complete with a comments board.

This particular ad, which ran in Mexico, was based upon historical perspectives and was created with a Mexican sensibility. In no way was this meant to offend or disparage, nor does it advocate an altering of borders, nor does it lend support to any anti-American sentiment, nor does it reflect immigration issues. Instead, it hearkens to a time which the population of Mexico may feel was more ideal. As a global company, we recognize that people in different parts of the world may lend different perspectives or interpret our ads in a different way than was intended in that market.

Of course, the purpose of the comment board is so that no actual Absolut employee will have to wade through ten thousand emails telling them to, as one poster puts it, "blow it out your ass".

I've written before about the insanity of this "reconquista" nonsense. The American southwest is not part of some ancient Aztec homeland. Most of Mexico was home not to the Aztecs, but to an array of people as diverse as the population of Europe. Many of them, the Aztecs regularly captured, ritualistically butchered for their gods, and quite possibly ate. Natives so far away as what is now California were probably only aware of the existence of the Aztecs in the abstract.

Further, the United States did not "steal" the land from Mexico: Mexico failed to put down the rebellion in Texas, and refused to sign the treaty Santa Ana negotiated. Nearly a decade later, Texas had since joined the United States, and it was then that Mexico decided to try to press their claims to the Texas border country through violence. As a result, they lost what was essentially the same war twice and finally saw the urgency of making a peace, which included the sale of most of the American southwest for $15,000,000. Eight years later, Mexico sold us the rest of the region for another $10,000,000, which raises important questions, since if Mexico felt there was a case that the original sale wasn't legit, selling us even more of their land wouldn't seem like the thing to do.

The region was treated as a worthless backwater by Mexico, which showed neither the inclination nor the ability to govern or defend it. Calling the land "stolen" is a mark of, at best, someone in denial, and at worst, an imbecile. That Mexico's dramatic failures during the 19th century stemmed from mismanagement and corruption isn't a matter of "historical perspective", it's a matter of objective fact, and even if Absolut was just trying to play into the happily ahistorical scapegoating used to explain those failures, they really shouldn't be surprised that there's blowback from the scapegoats.

That said, there's really nothing to get too worked up about. Absolut isn't deliberately pandering to the fascist Aztlaners, who are certainly less prominent among Mexicans in Mexico than they are among Mexicans in America. Even here, the volume of their shrieking is often wrongly confused for actual influence, and white, leftist academics probably have more to do with driving it than Hispanics do. However, it's 2008, and Absolut is a global brand in the global information age. They should've realized that people outside the target audience would see this, especially in a neighboring country where it would obviously be controversial. It's the job of their marketing teams and advertising agencies to see this sort of thing coming, to let them know when what might be funny to some people could also reasonably be seen as associating their brand with the mythology of violent, despicable racists.

Yet with the emotion some people are expressing over it, I think it's important to realize that Absolut made a badly flawed marketing decision, but that they likely did so in complete ignorance of the underlying politics. If McDonald's could produce the "I'd Hit That" banner ad, I'd say it's not unreasonable to give Absolut employees the benefit of the doubt here. Teran\TBWA, their Mexican advertising agency that celebrates "disruption", did something short-sighted and poorly conceived. Rather than expending much time and energy on moral outrage on it, it makes more sense to just refrain from purchasing their crap vodka and let them figure out for themselves if the "disruption" Teran\TBWA has brought them is for the best. Sometimes, the Invisible Hand hits.

Of course, Absolut's defense that the ad was intended for a "different part of the world" and different "sensibilities" is terribly weak. After all, Absolut is made in Sweden, and Sweden was not only a supplier of crucial steel and equipment to Nazi Germany and a country that later refused to prosecute Nazi war criminals, but was itself envisioned as an integral part of the Germanic world. I'm sure, then, that they wouldn't see anything wrong with something like this, since it just targets a specific market and isn't "intended" for all Europeans:



It's just "hearkening to a time" that neo-Nazis "may feel was more ideal", not advocating the conquest of Europe, right? Sure, Absolut isn't advertising to Nazis, but based on their argument, they seem to think they reserve the moral right to do so without facing an angry backlash. Their excuse rather misses the point.

If you feel compelled to do so, Jeffrey Moran, Absolut Spirits' PR Director, can be reached at jeffrey.moran@absolut.com or 212-641-8720, and Paula Ericksson, the Stockholm-based Director of Corporate Communications, at paula.eriksson@absolut.se.

Update: Frank J. imagines an Absolut future:

MEXICAN ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT: Yay! I've made it to America!

MEXICAN OFFICIAL: I'm afraid not. We took over most of the west coast. You're still like a thousand miles from the American border.

MEXICAN ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT: Crap. Do you have any work I can do?

MEXICAN OFFICIAL: Of course not. This is Mexico.

DANEgerus: "I am Absolut-ly going to tell everyone I know about this for the rest of my life."

Well, I guess that makes the ad a "success", though it's probably not what they had in mind.

MechaStreisand

Barbara Streisand endorses Hillary Clinton, and is hilariously taken down by CNN's Jack Cafferty.

CAFFERTY: Reclusive, neurotic, over-the-hill vocalist endorses Hillary. I mean, is the ground supposed to shake now, and lightning bolts fly out of the sky. Who cares!?

Ouch, but he's right.

It's Just Like Auschwitz In There

"Girls Gone Wild" founder Joe Francis, being transferred between penal facilities pending his tax evasion hearings, says the guards are being mean to him.

The millionaire producer of the "Girls Gone Wild" video series has accused guards of abusing him during his brief stay at an Oklahoma jail, a newspaper reported Friday.

His "abuse"? He was denied an extra blanket and says the guards threatened him. Given his past behavior...

Francis was held in civil contempt in relation to a 2003 civil lawsuit filed by parents of seven underage girls who'd appeared in the videos and who'd claimed they were victimized by Francis.

During settlement negotiations, according to court records, Francis acted bizarrely, at times yelling vulgarities and threats. Documents show that Francis arrived four hours late to the court-ordered mediation March 21, 2007, and and was "wearing sweat shorts, a backwards baseball cap, and was barefoot. ... Defendant Francis put his bare, dirty feet upon the table, facing plaintiff's counsel."

Francis reportedly yelled, "We will bury you and your clients! ... I'm going to ruin you, your clients, and all of your ambulance-chasing partners!" Francis allegedly continued with the outbursts, shouting, "Don't expect to get a f--king dime, not one f--king dime! ... I hold the purse strings. I will not settle this case, at all. I am only here because the court is making me be here!"

I'm surprised the guards didn't feel the need to taser him. (In fact, the girls, regardless of their own questionable moral standing, did get an undisclosed number of dimes, but not before Francis tried to reneg on his original agreement, getting the warrant arrested against him for civil contempt.) Francis, even with the profound wealth he's earned from his career as an soft-core/amateur porn magnate, feels the need to screw the country out of the business taxes everybody else has to pay, to the tune of an alleged $20,000,000 in falsified deductions. Despite having found the incredibly lucrative nexus of prurient interest and gullible college girls, he couldn't even manage to comply with the simple laws governing the filming of bimbos.

Hank Reardon he ain't, and now he's outraged to discover that prison isn't fun. If he can't cope with this, I can't wait to hear about his experiences among the general population. Maybe he can film it.

Never Drive With A Mop

If you remember the original Mr. Bean sketches, you might remember these:

Rapper Upset About Rap

These guys...

Racial and ethnic minorities make up 33 percent of the U.S. population

Yet they only own
7.7 percent of full-power radio stations
3.26 percent of television stations

This is a 'national disgrace'
Tell the FCC to do something!

...had themselves a meeting in Chicago. A reader writes:

As a member of the media, I cannot begin to articulate how much of a circus this was, especially on the same day as the Jena protests. Not only did this forum grossly misrepresent the impact of diversity in radio, but the FCC caved to Rev. Jackson and his campaign of distortion. Were Michael Powell still commissioner, these useless displays of industry self-loathing would never happen.

Let's watch:

More than 800 people filled the headquarters of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition on Thursday night, testifying for over seven hours before the Federal Communications Commission about the negative impacts of runaway media consolidation.

"Media is a life or death issue for communities of color in this country," said Rev. Jesse Jackson, founder of Rainbow PUSH, who arrived at the hearing after spending the day at the march and demonstration in Jena, La. "At their worst, media fan the flames of hatred, racism and intolerance that lead to violence and injustice. At their best, media hold the powerful accountable and help bring about change in our communities."

The reader who sent this in is an employee of Clear Channel, a company which owns Premiere Radio Networks, syndicator of "Keep Hope Alive", Jesse Jackson's radio show. Seriously, Jackson himself is given a voice by the generic boogie man cited by all who complain about media consolidation. What more does Jackson want here?

"Is it any wonder why the depictions of minorities in our media are so often distorted?" Commissioner Michael Copps asked the crowd. "Why their issues get scant coverage? Why their contributions to the good things happening in America are so seldom even mentioned on the air? Let's be frank, ownership matters. Truth be told, ownership rules. Unless and until we do something to increase minority ownership and minorities in top broadcast jobs, our communications sectors will continue to underserve the great promise of America."

Er, no. It will continue as long as it's profitable to do so. As soon as people stop paying for the products associated with "gangster" culture, the owners, regardless of who they are, will stop representing it. Nothing can change what the media portrays as long as consumers demand it, and stations that have changes imposed on them by the FCC simply won't make any money.

The FCC listened to two panels comprised of community activists, academic experts, industry representatives, union leaders and a few surprises -- including an appearance by hip-hop legend KRS-One, who skipped sound check before his Chicago concert to testify at the hearing.

"Media is a public safety issue," he said, discussing how the African-American community is portrayed on corporate radio. "Police officers listen to the radio too, and when all they hear is songs about gangstas and crime, they are thinking that's me."

KRS-One used to be part of a group called Boogie Down Productions with another hiphop artist, Scott La Rock. Their first album, "Criminal Minded", featured a song entitled "9mm Goes Bang", and another addressing the important cultural theme of drug-addicted prostitutes. The cover art, featuring La Rock and One (I assume that's what should be used as his last name) amid an arsenal of firearms, ammunition draped over their shoulders. The picture is generally credited with establishing the violence-oriented theme of gangster rap that continues today. After the album's release, Scott La Rock was shot to death. One would go on to find a replacement for La Rock, and release a second album, "By All Means Neccessary", was more socially conscious, featuring an homage to a famous photograph of Malcolm X...brandishing a firearm.


Malcolm X, too, had been shot to death. KRS-One even narrated a documentary about Tupac Shakur, who had grown up in a habitually incarcerated family of Black Panthers, got involved in a large number of gunfights, and, ultimately, was shot to death. KRS-One would move further from violence over time, especially after the killing of a fan in the crowd at one of his concerts, and start the "Stop The Violence" campaign, but that didn't, according to his claims, prevents the hiphop community, as he sees it, from celebrating the attacks of September 11th:

"I say that proudly," the Boogie Down Productions founder went on, insisting that, before the attack, security guards kept black people out of the Trade Center "because of the way we talk and dress.

"So when the planes hit the building, we were like, 'Mmmm - justice.'"

The atrocity of 9/11 "doesn't affect us [the hip-hop community]," he said. "9/11 happened to them, not us," he added, explaining that by "them" he meant "the rich ... those who are oppressing us. RCA or BMG, Universal, the radio stations."

KRS-One thinks that "the rich" behind "the radio stations" deserve to die in flames because they're "oppressing him"? How? By playing the music of the "gangster culture" KRS-One helped to shape, apparently.

Besides, I can't imagine why anyone would think that KRS-One, someone who surrounded himself with a culture of people who he says praise acts of mass murder and constantly seem to end up getting shot to death by other members of that culture, would attract poor opinions from the rest of society, especially law enforcement officers.

In fairness, KRS-One isn't the same guy he was in 1987: In 2002, he released a Gospel album called "Spiritual Minded". The problem is that if he himself had to undergo that kind of personal change to get out of the "gangsta'" world, what does he think radio stations can do about it? People who listen to angsty, suicidal metal listen to it for a reason, and there's a reason people choose to listen to violent gangster rap. Even the Iranians can't keep their kids away from Metallica. Does KRS-One really think it's the radio industry's fault what sort of media his culture chooses to consume?

Yes, he does, and this is the kind of madness that is informing FCC regulations.

"Evil requires the sanction of the victim."

The New York Times, over an audible grumble, considers the influence of Ayn Rand:

One of the most influential business books ever written is a 1,200-page novel published 50 years ago, on Oct. 12, 1957. It is still drawing readers; it ranks 388th on Amazon.com's best-seller list. ("Winning," by John F. Welch Jr., at a breezy 384 pages, is No. 1,431.)

The book is "Atlas Shrugged," Ayn Rand's glorification of the right of individuals to live entirely for their own interest.

One of Rand's most famous devotees is Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, whose memoir, "The Age of Turbulence," will be officially released Monday.

Mr. Greenspan met Rand when he was 25 and working as an economic forecaster. She was already renowned as the author of "The Fountainhead," a novel about an architect true to his principles....He was attracted, Mr. Britting said, to "her moral defense of capitalism."

Rand's free-market philosophy was hard won. She was born in 1905 in Russia. Her life changed overnight when the Bolsheviks broke into her father's pharmacy and declared his livelihood the property of the state. She fled the Soviet Union in 1926 and arrived later that year in Hollywood, where she peered through a gate at the set where the director Cecil B. DeMille was filming a silent movie, "King of Kings."

He offered her a ride to the set, then a job as an extra on the film and later a position as a junior screenwriter. She sold several screenplays and intermittently wrote novels that were commercial failures, until 1943, when fans of "The Fountainhead" began a word-of-mouth campaign that helped sales immensely.

Shortly after "Atlas Shrugged" was published in 1957, Mr. Greenspan wrote a letter to The New York Times to counter a critic's comment that "the book was written out of hate." Mr. Greenspan wrote: " 'Atlas Shrugged' is a celebration of life and happiness. Justice is unrelenting. Creative individuals and undeviating purpose and rationality achieve joy and fulfillment. Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should."

Rand called "Atlas" a mystery, "not about the murder of man's body, but about the murder - and rebirth - of man's spirit." It begins in a time of recession. To save the economy, the hero, John Galt, calls for a strike against government interference. Factories, farms and shops shut down. Riots break out as food becomes scarce....Rand said she "set out to show how desperately the world needs prime movers and how viciously it treats them" and to portray "what happens to a world without them."

This is a bit of a simplification: Galt's strike isn't just against "government interference", but an abandonment of Greenspan's "parasites" by the ambitious and successful, to deny "the looters" the fruits of human reason and intellect that they wish to take by force. The tyranny of bureaucrats speaking on behalf of "society" is crucial to understanding the story. Either way, Rand's most famous novel has been described as the second most influential book in American culture, after the Holy Bible.

Those who don't agree with or understand Rand's core philosophy still have to appreciate that she is a unique figure in the modern era, standing firm in defense of what it means to be a human being, rather than an animal. Even Dr. Stephen Hawking, in A Brief History of Time, mourned the collapse of philosophy in Western civilization:

In the eighteenth century, philosophers considered the whole of human knowledge...However, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, science became too technical and mathematical for the philosophers...Philosophers reduced the scope of their inquiries so much that Wittgenstein, the most famous philosopher of this century, said, "The sole remaining task for philosophy is the analysis of language." What a comedown from the great tradition of philosophy from Aristotle to Kant!"

Rand's work, unlike so much of the postermodernist and deconstructionist claptrap that has taken hold among so many, is a consistent and profound defense of human intellect, rightly elevating the individual's power to reason and right to act accordingly over the perceived desires of a collective. It reintegrates the empirical world's concrete engineering and economics into the abstract world of ideas and values to help reveal the nature of objective reality, reasserting the crucial traditions of Western thought that built our civilization and made it great, that led us to the moral imperative of recognizing individual liberties. That's why her work has enjoyed such a significant role in distinguishing American ideals, and why the framework it establishes is such a powerful weapon for use in the war against sophistry, one which any honest conservative, libertarian, or capitalist should see themselves a part of. Some of the rather "radical" ideas Rand espoused in her time, like abolishing the FCC's "fairness doctrine", eventually came to pass, and today, the people who want to undo those changes are the ones accused of radicalism.

Of course, all those reasons are also why leftists hate her. Sadly, it's why even some preachers, especially those with inconsistent, vacuous theologies, decried her work even in her own life. Rand's own personal life, like anyone's, had flaws and failings, but separating the merits of ideas from the people talking about them is the purpose of consistent logic, and her reasoning led down a path that comes closer to a lot of key Christian philosophy than some would like to admit: Rand did not condemn charity, but rather insisted that it be recognized for the act of good will and kindness that it is rather than be imposed as a moral duty. Even Martin Luther dismissed the idea that Christians should give up what they've earned to those who have not as a mandate of Faith rather than an act of individual choice, in Against the Rebelling Peasants:

...the Gospel does not make goods common, except in the case of those who do of their own free will what the apostles and disciples did in Acts IV. They did not demand, as do our insane peasants in their raging, that the goods of others - of a Pilate and a Herod - should be common, but only their own goods. Our peasants, however, would have other men's goods common, and keep their own goods for themselves. Fine Christians these! I think there is not a devil left in hell; they have all gone into the peasants.

Rand even argued both in her writings and to Playboy that, though she didn't recognize marriage as a sacred institution, sex without sincere, rational love was inherently immoral.

Regardless of that, ultimately, Rand held that happiness comes from living by your true values, and it should be obvious that nothing can prevent a man from living, by his own rational choice, for his God, except, of course, other people using force to stop him. That brings us full circle.

Oh well. Even if you want to write off all that, it's prety hard to avoid Ayn Rand's influence on the music of Rush and movies like The Incredibles and even, it's widely thought, Batman Begins. Feuding between Objectivists and other small government factions, including Libertarians, is hardly unknown, but whether you agree or not, Atlas Shrugged is certainly on the mandatory once-in-your-life reading life as a beneficiary of Western Civilization.

"The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities." - Ayn Rand

In The Words of Nelson Muntz, "Hah-Hah!"

O.J. Simpson, arrested for armed robbery.

I always knew there was something I didn't like about that guy.

She Doesn't Get It

Paris Hilton plans to spawn.

"I just started working out and it feels great. It gives me so much energy," she said. "I want kids next year, so I've got to get my body ready."

And for all the guys out there who wouldn't mind fathering Hilton's baby, the single celeb has a "Simple" syllabus:

"I used to care about looks, but I've grown out of that stage," Paris said. "They have to be a good person, someone I know would be a good husband, loyal and funny and smart. And somebody I can trust, with good chemistry. But I don't know, I like a guy who can make me laugh."

Speaking of laughter, the reality star also is fed up with her public perception as a comical "cartoon character."

"It makes me mad that I'm such a good person and I'm treated like that by some people -- I just don't get it," she said.

Well, apparently she lost her virginity before she found out there was no Santa Claus.

I just assumed there was some sort of law in California preventing her from reproducing. Can't Governor Schwarzenegger grab a grenade launcher and do something?

Maybe He's In Galt's Gulch

This is an unfortunate surprise.

A small plane carrying aviation adventurer Steve Fossett has been missing since Monday night, federal officials said Tuesday.

Fossett took off in the single engine Bellanca at 8:45 a.m. Monday at a private airstrip on a ranch south of Smith Valley in western Nevada and didn't return as scheduled. A friend reported him missing, said Ian Gregor, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman in Maryland.

The search was being coordinated by the Air Force's Rescue Coordination Center in Langley, Va., Gregor said.

In 2002, Fossett became the first person to fly around the world alone in a balloon. In two weeks, his balloon flew 19,428.6 miles around the Southern Hemisphere. The record came after five previous attempts - some of them spectacular and frightening failures.

Three years later, in March 2005, he became the first person to fly a plane solo around the world without refueling.

He and a co-pilot also claim to have set a world glider altitude record of 50,671 feet during a flight in August over the Andes Mountains.

I hope he's alright.

It's Like 'The Quickening'

I don't care if it's laced with a radioactive element known only in Marvel comics, or even an artificial sweetener that will one day cause cancer, "5" Gum can't do anything to even remotely justify the insane commercials they're putting out. It is entirely impossible, because it is just chewing gum:
Continue Reading

The Geocentric Universe Lives On

You've already seen poor Miss Teen USA's Miss South Carolina. Honestly, it would cruel to say anything else at all, at this point.

However, I don't think the world has been nearly cruel enough toward this scene from the French version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. The contestant and the audience don't have the excuse of youth.


(The other possibility, of course, is that most the contestant's countrymen in attendance seized an amusing opportunity to walk the guy out in front of a bus, but that would be an incredible coincidence. That, or French culture really is just that cruel, but even that fails to explain the audible shock at the correct answer.)

Sadly, general ignorance is without borders.

"That's how dishes are, on the street."

Scott Adams has been coaching cartoonist Scott Meyers in his quest to get his comic strip, Basic Instructions, syndicated.

This one is hilarious.

The Guy Who Dances

Excerpted from a phone call with a friend last night:

M: Wait, which one was that?

A: You know, the one with Nicholas Cage, where he's an arms dealer.

M: Oh, OK, I think I did see that. I always get it confused with Blood Diamond and... You know, that other one, the one with the douchebag.

A: Syriana.

M: Yeah!

Yeah, you know. The one with the douchebag.

(The background to the title: Once, at a previous job, I overheard a male coworker talking to a female coworker, and he couldn't remember the name of an actor. "You know, the guy who dances." Based exclusively off that piece of information, she instantly identified Patrick Swayze. It was still a running gag when I quit.)

An Evening With Ayn Rand

"Money doesn't make you happy. I now have $50 million, but I was just as happy when I had $48 million." - Arnold Schwarzenegger

Our kids have such screwed up priorities.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Today's young people have a complicated relationship with money, dismissing it as a paramount source of happiness yet conceding its power over them.

Money is nowhere near the top of the list when they are asked what makes them happiest. Friends and family are their chief pleasures, followed by God, pets and pastimes like listening to music.

But money can certainly help, according to an extensive poll by The Associated Press and MTV. And a lack of it - and the pressures it can cause - can sure make their lives unhappy.

I'm glad this blatantly obvious study was privately funded, or that would make me unhappy.

The survey of the nation's young people found only 1 percent name money as the thing that gives them the most joy. Twenty percent name spending time with family, and 15 percent cited friends.

Yet financial issues are among several problems atop the pile of things they say make them most unhappy. And while a majority are happy with the amount of money they and their families have, money ranks as their fourth-highest source of stress, and 55 percent say there are many things they can't afford.

Many sense that down the road, money will have a telling impact on their lives. Asked to describe their ideal vision of happiness, the most frequent responses are having no financial worries and a good family, each mentioned by one in five.

It's pretty simple: If your finances being screwed up is making you unhappy (and there is no rational person alive who is overjoyed to bounce a check or to try to find cash for their kids' braces), then fixing them will make you happy. To deny that is to defy reality. Money is not the whole of happiness, but to claim that it isn't part of the puzzle is a dangerous illusion, and a myth perpetuated by people who misunderstand it, as though it has some special property that makes it distinct and separate from everything else in their lives, rather than being an integral part of all things.

So much so, in fact, that some people actually fear discussing money, as though they can address everything else in the world without money becoming relevant, and often, as though they don't believe they need to understand it. (Sometimes, we call those people "the French", but even they may be coming around.) Money is a tool as critical to solving some of the key problems of life as a hammer is to building a house. To borrow from Atlas Shrugged:

"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Anconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?...

"But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality--the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.

"Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

"Money is your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you'll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?"

A person's relationship with money does tend to be a reflection of their relationship with themselves. (Note that I did not say a person's wealth is a reflection of them.) People usually fear or hate money because they, in some way, fear or hate their own life. Likewise, some people love only money because they love nothing else. Unfortunately, all too many of us have been told the lie that you should love everything but money, and reality strikes down that premise quite quickly, often so harshly that it sets young people on bad courses from day one, with car payments they can't afford, rip-off student loans, and no idea how to begin savings for their future.

That, of course, is exactly why I've long argued for making personal finance and basic economics a fundamental part of the high school curriculum and demanding results from those courses: It's in the interest of the state to make sure citizens are informed enough to help bring prosperity upon society and not ruin their lives right out of the gate, becoming liabilities on the state, and it's most certainly in the interest of the individual students. In fact, it's possibly the single most critical thing students should get out of high school with, along with the ability to write intelligibly (something else they're not getting, if some of the hair-raising undergraduate history papers I've read are any indication). Understanding how to think in a businesslike manner is urgent to getting along in society.

John S. Morton:

Economic literacy is critical to the long-term success of the American economy because today's choices will affect each person's standard of living and our overall prosperity. Economic knowledge and reasoning help on several levels.

First, economics helps people make better decisions as consumers, producers, and citizens. In the words of James Tobin: "The case for economic literacy is obvious. High school graduates will be making choices all their lives, as breadwinners and consumers, and as citizen voters. A wide range of people will bombard them with economic information and misinformation for their entire lives. They will need some capacity for critical judgment. They will need it whether or not they go to college."

Second, productivity, growth, and the rising quality of life we expect from our economic system depend in part on knowledge about that economic system.

Finally, the case for economic literacy is the case for democracy itself. If war is too serious to be left to the military professionals, economic understanding is too important to be left to economists. In the words of Joan Robinson: "The purpose of studying economics is to keep people from being deceived by economists." Thomas Sowell said, "It may not be true that everything we need to know can be learned in kindergarten, but a remarkable range of disastrous economic policies could be avoided if the general public understood just the principles of economics that could be taught in an introductory course."

However, our educational system being the way it is, it's pretty hard to find public school teachers who are competent to teach economics (or administrators competent to assess them). Some have even gone so far as to argue that our schools are teaching anti-economics, and make a compelling case.

It's a challenge to reach teachers who are ideologically unprepared to appreciate the market. Teachers do not work in enterprises where it's necessary to satisfy the customer or go out of business. They belong to a powerful union, which sees for-profit as synonymous with for-evil. Every business is Enron. Like biblical literalists who want to teach creationism in biology class, liberal teachers want to teach social justice in lieu of supply and demand.

"What if I don't believe in GDP?" a teacher asked.

Taylor sighs at the memory....When he introduced the idea that a high minimum wage creates unemployment, a teacher said: "I just don't like to think of it that way."

The question is whether teachers will teach economics. "There's a real danger of anti-economics," says Taylor. An unprepared physics teacher may not teach very well, but she's not trying to change physics to fit her preferences. "She doesn't say, 'We're going to invent perpetual motion today.' "

The whole thing is ridiculous, but parents can go a long way with their own children. Perhaps the best thing is for kids to get real-life experience through the kind of simple responsibilities kids used to take on, but I've been intending for a while to pick up a few books like Hidden Order and see which might be suitable for late teenagers. I would welcome any feedback.