"I came for the quality, but I stayed for the freedom." - Sean Neakums
Hat tip to Jeff Waugh.
posted at: 03:57 | path: /opensource | permanent link to this entry
Jay Warran insists, in a letter to the Daily Courier-Observer published 10/29, that we should "Remember, with drugs comes violence. Period." I'm sure that the manager of the local P&C would be surprised, since he has an entire aisle-full of drugs, and sells them daily with nary a hint of violence. The pharmacist in the nearly Eckerd's would be equally surprised, since he sells drugs non-violently all day long.
Clearly, Jay means "With illegal drugs comes violence" even though he didn't say so. And yet I have to question this too. Which came first, the drugs or the violence? If one person is peacefully selling drugs to another, and society pulls a gun on both of them to force them to stop, it seems to me that society has created violence out of peace. So yes, I agree that illegal drugs are associated with violence, but that violence has been created by the laws that made the drugs illegal.
You may think that drugs are inherently bad, and this causes the violence, but you might be wrong. Imagine if use of the number five was absurdly made illegal. Everyone can see from their life experience that they can use the number five successfully without violence. If, after the start of the War on Fives, they needed to use a five every day, they would continue to do so in spite of the ban. Any violence used to stop the use of five would clearly be caused by the law, not by the five itself. If there were profits to be had from the use of five, they would have to be distributed without recourse to the law. Any conflicts would be escalated into outright violence.
What can we do about it here in St. Lawrence County? We can't make drugs legal on our own. We can, however, instruct the county sheriff to tolerate the use of drugs in certain socially-acceptable contexts. The drugs would still be illegal, and the state troopers might cause trouble, but at least we wouldn't be wasting tax dollars creating violence where none exists naturally.
Update 11/21: Richard Gadsden points out that a drug may very well be associated with violence, e.g. some people get aggressive when they get drunk. Clearly a designer drug formulated to enrage someone would be likely to come with violence. I think that Jay Warran was referring to drug sales, so I restricted my discussion similarly.
posted at: 02:08 | path: /economics | permanent link to this entry
47.92 km 157208.60 feet 29.77 mi 18835.00 seconds 313.92 minutes 5.23 hours 5.69 mi/hr
I was in Amsterdam for EuroOSCON, and the airfare was $1,000 cheaper if I travelled over a Saturday night. That gave me an extra full day, so I rented a bike and went for a ride. MacBike calls the route "The Great Waterland Bicycle Tour". The map below is fairly uninteresting because Terraserver has no coverage for the Netherlands. However, if you click on the image, it will take you to a google maps version of the same thing. Switch to the satellite view and you'll see where I sent.
It was a fairly decent ride, almost 30 miles. The pace is horrible (5.69 mph) because I stopped for lunch, stopped in a little park to do taiji, and stopped to take photos. My map generator has no tiles for the Netherlands, but you can click through to the Google Maps mash-up.
Here's a scan of the brochure. Click on it for a very large rendition of it.
posted at: 05:33 | path: /bicycling | permanent link to this entry
I just got back from EuroOSCON. Ran into Rael Dornfest, who told of his first time meeting Larry Wall. He was so impressed on meeting him (in the bathroom) that he just ran away with his tongue tied.
On the other hand, when he met Tom Christiansen at the urinals, he looked over at Tom and said "TC Pee, I Pee."
posted at: 01:48 | path: /opensource | permanent link to this entry
Crusaders? Since when did they move Jerusalem to Iraq?
posted at: 14:56 | path: /politics | permanent link to this entry
My wife has noticed that nobody votes for anybody. That's not what gets you out to vote. You vote to make sure that the other idiot doesn't get elected. So attack advertisements serve a valuable purpose: they are intended to get you to vote against the person mentioned in the ad.
Of course, a libertarian could foil that by making an ad that said "I agree with both of my opponents in this race. They're both scum-sucking bottom feeders. I'm not. Vote for me."
posted at: 04:27 | path: /politics | permanent link to this entry
Probably the biggest argument against government action is the relationship between risk and reward. Whenever any government agency or private enterprise is directed to take action by a bureaucrat or entrepreneur respectively, there are risks and rewards. These are not apportioned equally in the two groups.
When a bureaucrat directs his agency to take action, he is taking the risk that the action will be wrong. The action may very well not pan out. If that happens, because he took the initiative, he will be blamed. Consider the case of Gary Miles, candidate for St. Lawrence County District Attorney. He received evidence that Dr. Latimer was prescribing large amounts of painkillers (opiates). Rather than charge Dr. Latimer, he hounded the doctor out of office through a trial by press release. For this he is being criticized and will probably lose his election to Nichole Duvé.
Let's say, though, that the action that the bureaucrat took was correct. He will receive scant reward for his efforts. The public will not remember his good deeds later, at election time. Doing well is only his job; people don't consider him worthy of reward simply for doing a good job.
Contrast this with the risk and reward available to entrepreneurs directing private enterprise. The risk is still there. Just look at HP (fired its CEO and laid off 10,000 employees). The reward, however, is substantially greater.
You can predict, then, that given scant reward and substantial risk, that bureaucrats will underperform their equivalents in private enterprise when in control of the same resources.
UPDATE: he did lose to Nichole.
posted at: 06:13 | path: /economics | permanent link to this entry
41.06 km 134711.51 feet 25.51 mi 8564.00 seconds 142.73 minutes 2.38 hours 10.72 mi/hr
This was an out-and-back ride. There's a couple of abandoned roads I wanted to explore in the Lost Nation State Forest. Both of them end up foundering in wetlands. It looks like the fill that formed the roadbed still extends across the wetland. Since it's gotten eroded to the point where you can't drive across it, it's completely grown over with impenetrable brush. I mean, I could push my way across it with my bike, but I wouldn't want to get across and find out that I had to come back because the other end of the road was posted or even more impassable. Had to go for a ride today because tomorrow is supposed to have a low in the 30's and high in the 50's. Can't pass up a sunny day in October in the North Country.
posted at: 23:38 | path: /bicycling | permanent link to this entry
I was having a conversation with a fellow over the morality of a living wage. His point was simply that a Christian could not morally pay less than a living wage. The thing about morals is that anything can be said to be moral or immoral, depending on the principle you are applying. His principle is that Jesus instructed us to take care of the least among us. From this principle he derives the moral judgement that if an employer pays less than a living wage, they are immoral.
This is economic nonsense. Just as a bridge is supported on two ends, so is every economic action. When somebody is paid, it must be for something they have done. If people are to be paid a living wage, they must accomplish a living wage's worth of work. Everyone is fundamentally lazy (a negative description) in that they seek to accomplish their goal efficiently with an economy of effort (a positive description of the same action.) Thus, in order to gain that living wage, people will work no harder than necessary. Similarly, an employer will pay no more than necessary to gain that amount of work. The amount of pay that anybody receives for their job is a function of the pay required to hire the last employee needed. If you can hire ten people at $1/hour, but you need eleven, and the eleventh can only be hired for $2/hour, then you will end up paying all of them $2/hour. What will happen is that the $1/hour people will inevitably find out about the $2/hour person, and either ask for a raise or quit. Since the last person hired had to have an offer of $2/hour, so will the next person hired. In time, everyone will be paid the same amount as the last person hired.
posted at: 15:32 | path: /economics | permanent link to this entry
36.58 km 120017.14 feet 22.73 mi 7167.00 seconds 119.45 minutes 1.99 hours 11.42 mi/hr
Decided to go exploring today. Went on Brookdale Rd. northeast from Brookdale. It's a pleasant little seasonal dirt road. Went up to Plumbrook Road, and back to Old Market Road south and home. Saw a very interesting formation in the sky: a contrail shadow. It was a long dark blue line against a brighter blue sky. The sun happened to be exactly lined up with a contrail and it left a very long shadow; all the way to the horizon.
posted at: 23:10 | path: /bicycling | permanent link to this entry
36.96 km 121246.45 feet 22.96 mi 8085.00 seconds 134.75 minutes 2.25 hours 10.22 mi/hr
Rode mostly the same ride as yesterday. I had seen an interesting sign, the text of which was "Unmaintained Road. Travel at your own risk". For me, that's like dangling a steak in front of a dog. They're practically asking me to ride down that road. So of course I did. It was otherwise your basic abandoned road except for one thing: it had a powerline going down it! There are paved roads with long stretches that have no power and yet here was this mere track through the woods with a power line. Turns out that it goes to the easternmost farm on Van Kennen Rd. and stops there. Strange.
posted at: 04:45 | path: /bicycling | permanent link to this entry