totalitarianism today

Make Mine Freedom

"This Cold War-era cartoon uses humor to tout the dangers of Communism and the benefits of capitalism." 1948. Cartoon in Public Domain and available to download at Internet Archive. Google video made my day.

Monkees and penguins.

Davy Jones reveals that musical life beyond The Monkees can be fulfilling in his latest tune, Your Personal Penguin. Oh my.

The latest from Wharton.

Investors have a hard time assessing the value of social networking sites. The folks at Wharton have a somewhat decent explanation for why this is the case so long as you can overlook the dire and quite fashionable predictions about another dot-com bubble.

A neat-ish podcast from Michael Useem that might help you decide whether to have a bonfire tonight or plan one for next weekend. Who is Michael Useem and what does he know about bonfires or brains? Well all you young professionals will be happy to know that he has also the professional office-cred you've come to respect:

Michael Useem is director of the Center for Leadership and Change Management at Wharton, but his study of leadership is hardly confined to the halls of academia. His research has taken him to Patagonia, Antarctica, Iraq, the base of Mount Everest, Houston's Johnson Space Center, the Civil War battlefield at Gettysburg, fire zones in Colorado and California, and public schools in Philadelphia, among other places. He is the author of The Leadership Moment: Nine True Stories of Triumph and Disaster and Their Lessons for Us All and Investor Capitalism: How Money Managers Are Changing the Face of Corporate America, among other books. Useem's latest book is The Go Point: When It's Time to Decide -- Knowing What to Do and When to Do It. In writing this book, Useem asked more than 100 leading decision-makers to analyze decisions they had made, to name their best and worst decisions, to describe how they reached them, and to comment on what, if anything, they would change about how the decisions were arrived at. Useem recently spoke about The Go Point with Knowledge@Wharton.

So make up your mind.

The future of business visuals.

Hats off to the folks at Visual Insight, who are turning management visuals into living stories.

Hu Jin Tao is shocking.

The first clinic for internet addiction opened up in China last year, but now internet-addicted teens can take advantage of an improved facility, the Shanghai Sunshine Community Youth Affairs Center, an actual halfway house set up to soothe and detox the internet-riddled souls of young Chinese addicts.

According to the BBC, "internet addiction is reaching epidemic proportions in China". Internet addiction, like most of the so-called addictions, is usually diagnosed as a compulsion which requires intervention. An "epidemic" is one of those terms the press tosses around for impact. And who better to man this intervention to free a mind than the Chinese government, which apparently set up a rehab center for internet and gaming addicts which uses electroshock to turn these addicts around. According to The Rolling Stone:

Nearly two dozen nurses and doctors on the top floor of the Beijing Military Region Central Hospital administer to patients ages 14 to 24. Some patients come of their own volition; others are brought by their parents.

For as long as two weeks, patients undergo a full-day routine that can include recreation, therapy, acupuncture, 30-volt electric shocks to pressure points and what was described to the AP by one nurse as an intravenous drip intended to "adjust the unbalanced status of brain secretions."

If I were a Chinese government official, I might be tempted to diagnose the entire country with internet addiction (just as they begin using the internet to reject the Chinacreaucy) and serve the public good by requiring all internet users under the age of 50 to report to their local internet addiction center for shock treatment. But that's just me.

Let's talk about you. If the hubub about internet addiction has you wondering if you might not need a diagnosis of your own to make life more, well, dramatic, then you can surf on over to the Center for Internet Addiction Recovery for a few tips. Or, if you're in the market for something more viral than a yet another self-esteem test, then perhaps the internet addiction test will shed some daylight on your questions. Granted, you'll have to use the internet to access either of these resources, which might just fuel your addiction, which could then be a revolving door, which might just ruin your weekend.

For your google calendar...

On September 30th in Washington, DC, save an afternoon and evening for The Peace Through Commerce Event sponsored by the FLOW Project, a wonderful opportunity for motivated, visionary young social entrepreneurs.

Radicals in Romania.

Romania has managed to stay off the Western radar save where the Roma and AIDS orphans are concerned, which is a pity, since there are quite a few social change agents radicalizing the nonprofit world there. If you are Romanian, American, Romanian-American, or just plain interested in the Romanian political experience, then don't wake up and smell the tuica without contacting these lovely individuals:

• Horia Terpe, international man of mystery and co-founder of the C.A.D.I. If you want to know what the letters stand for, it behooves you to click on the link.
• Radu Florescu and the crew of Romania Think Tank are a dream come true. Literally.
• Gabriel Mihalache and his cohorts at Liberalism.ro.
• Cristi Comanescu and those who work the Romanian version of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

And then there are those of us working from this side of the ocean. In that league, no one holds a candle to Dragos Paul Aligica at the Mercatus Center. The wind of change continues to blow...

Breaking my own rules.

There comes a time when you have to break your own rules to arrive at the next best thing. And then there's that most terrible thing of all-- sharing personal information on your blog. Color me guilty. Just this once.

I am leaving my current position at the Institute for Humane Studies in order to get married and experiment with new opportunities. Click here to learn more about applying for my job, click here to learn more about the Institute for Humane Studies, and click here for the latest on wikipedia from Reason magazine's new associate editor, Katherine Mangu-Ward.

I now promise to be as impersonal as possible unless you take advantage of the capitalist in me and put your money where your curiosity resides.

A short film from the Culture seminar this summer.

Thanks to the brilliant filmmakers of "187 at the IHS" for sharing this gem with us.

Autism in the army.

Flipping through an old issue of The Week (May 19, 2006), I found an interesting story. It appears that the family of Jared Guinther, an 18-year-old from Oregon, was trying to get him released from the army, which recruited him in spite of the fact that he is autistic. Guinther, who rarely speaks, "wasn't even aware of the war in Iraq until a recruiter enlisted him last fall to be a calvary scout, the Army's most dangerous job". Guinther's mother tried to intervene, but the recruiter told her that he himself was dyslexic and that Jared "doesn't need mommy to make his decisions for him".

Ultimately, the Army did release Jared from his contract, but this raises a host of questions about agency, autism, and Army recruitment practices. Jared's parents believed he could not understand the consequences of making such a decision, and who knows better than the people who raised you? But Jared's parents also had mixed feelings about the war in Iraq. What does a diagnosis like "autism" or "Aspberger's syndrome" mean for legal agency?

If you have twelve minutes of free time....

For fans of intellectual history, this interview with Samuel Edward Konkin III will satisfy your deepest curiosities about the nature of the freedom movement in the 1960's. Konkin, who authored the New Libertarian Manifesto and put "agorism" in a few obscure web dictionaries, helped craft the distinction between anarcho-capitalism and market anarchism. Agorism explicitly opposes intellectual property, voting and parliamentary strategies, while siding with individualist anarchists in favor of an economy where workers are also owners.

Konkin's description of his first exposure to the ideas of liberty suggests the richness of this interview. Enjoy:

Heinlein in Moon is a Harsh Mistress first gave me the concept ("Rational Anarchist").  When I found out that Bernardo de la Paz was based on a real person (Robert LeFevre), I took it seriously.  I progressed through the Canadian and then U.S.  Right via Frank Meyer (who, until his death in 1970, attempted a synthesis of conservative and Libertarian, called "Fusionism") and Ludwig von Mises (who called himself a Liberal right up to his death in 1973 at the age of 92; I knew him for his last three years).  Both led in different ways to Rothbard but he was being smeared as pro-communist in those Viet Nam War days for his militant isolationism.  The final step was provided by an anti-communist free-market anarchist named Dana Rohrabacher at the St.  Louis YAF Convention.  He was a charismatic campus activist, radicalized by Robert LeFevre who provided him with small funding to travel the country with his instrument and folk songs from campus to campus, converting YAF chapters into Libertarian Alliances and SIL chapters.  Alas, later he fell into politics, but not the LP.  The Libertarian billionaire Charles Koch supported him in two failed Republicans primary campaigns, and after Rohrabacher put in time as Ronald Reagan's speechwriter, he got his reward of a safe seat in the U.S. House of Representatives from Orange County.  He is still in office today, with growing seniority.  There are few issues on which he is still Libertarian, certainly fewer than, say, Ron Paul holds.

Gracias to Karen Decoster for drawing my attention in the right direction.

Nose-rings for Christ?

Spin magazine writer Andrew Beaujon is opening doors for the stories no one wants to hear since the Campus Crusade for Christ turned off many a young college student considering whether or not to return to the church. Usually, just hanging out with a few Crusaders could bring on the baby brimstone talk. And then beer would seem to light a potion too erase the thoughts of hellfire. Enter MD 20/20. But I digress... as did many.

Back to Beaujon. By putting Christian rock activists on the map, Beaujon's book, Body Piercing Saved My Life: Inside the Phenomenon of Christian Rock, provides insight into the world of bands like Pedro the Lion, among others. An indie-rock veteran himself, Beaujon drew the name for his book from a t-shirt popular at Christian rock festivals. On the front of the tee reads the aforementioned slogan. On the back? An image of two outstretched palms with puncture marks through them. You can catch an excerpt of Body Piercing dressed as a feature article in the latest issue of the Washington City Paper. No mixed emotions on my part-- I'm glad to see a music writer finally cover these bands in a way that truly represents them. And I will read the book, though the "body piercing saved my life" t-shirt seems like a very cheap symbolic representation (as well as an excuse for young Christian kids to go and get their bellybuttons pierced) of an event that deserves a more serious analogy than comparison to current fashion trends. No guys, you aren't "doing God's work" or "being like Jesus" when you get your third nose-ring.

Butterflies to chase:

• The quite simply lovely website for this book, which includes a list of links for bands, events, and trinkets touched upon in Body Piercing.
• Whitney Strub's book review for Popmatters.
• A Nerve.com interview with Andrew Beaujon, where I found the information about what inspired the title.
• A free excerpt courtesy of Amazon.com.
• DaCapo Books, the branch of the Perseus Books Group, that might be focusing on effective, cool marketing for Christian ideas. Here is the Perseus press release, just to make sure we've covered all the bases.
• "The Kingdom of Rock Is At Hand" in Christianity Today

Summer songs for free.

• romeo and juliet / the dire straits
• one sweet world / dave matthews band
• busy doin' nothing / the beach boys
• blue sky and the devil / trampled by turtles
• when i stop dreamin' / the louvin brothers
• lady madonna / the beatles
• none of us are free / solomon burke
• a woman, a lover, a friend / otis redding
• buckets of rain / neko case
• sweet lil' thing / the eels
• all the time in airports / handsome family
• love comes quickly / the pet shop boys
• #20 motel room / three speed rusty
• you and me and the moon / the magnetic fields
• bern for me / paul westerberg
• shelter from the storm / bob dylan
• hearts and bones / paul simon

For fans of The Handsome Family, they will be playing a show at the Iota Cafe on July 22. That's this week. In case you missed it.

Links for some cool people in a Chapman classroom.

Books online....

• Hayek / Road to Serfdom in cartoon version
• Peter McWilliams / Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do
• Henry Hazlett / Economics in One Lesson
• Kevin Kelly / New Rules for the New Economy
• Kevin Kelly / Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines

More butterflies to chase:

• Kevin Kelly list of links is one of my favorite gateways to the possible futures.
• Bibliography and link cornucopia about Tom Robbins.
• BBC Four has a wealth of information and clips on Waco.
• Dan Gifford gets his info from TheStreet.com, Arianna Huffington's blog, Georgie Anne Geyer, Drudge Report.
• Enjoy Robert Peters online.
• The Brian Doherty biography. Email him at Bdoherty@reason.com. Or browse his diverse article contribution to Reason magazine.
• The Hayek Center
• Alum Todd Seavey's op-ed on "V Is For Vendetta" in WSJ
• "Rethinking the Social Responsibility of Business" in Reason
• School of Cooperative Individualism

Creation nets (or why I heart John Hagel).

John Hagel's working paper, "From Push to Pull-- Emerging Models for Mobilizing Resources", provides a clear, direct account of the issues underlying this change in strategic innovation models. Blogging for Edge Perspectives, Hagel chats about his new focus on "creation nets", which, quite frankly, seem to be the future of content provision for businesses, nonprofits, and other enterprises. For an in-depth treatment of creation nets, feast your eyes on his working paper, "Creation Nets: Harnessing the Potential of Open Innovation". And make your sure managers have a clue on this count.

Libertarian art, poetry, and music?

Life is beautiful. Details available here.

Tom Robbins makes redemption seem honorific.

Roger Downey's interview with Tom Robbins is one of the most entertaining and enlightening yet. After talking about his broad taste in the sweeter sex, "plot junkies", and his writing routine, Robbins puts his finger on the most important part of life-- its unpredictable, yet faithful hilarity. His words:

"I haven't voluntarily read a review of one of my books since 1977, though I've had a couple stuck in my face. But in a New York Times review of the one before last, the writer said something like, "Robbins needs to make up his mind between whether he wants to be funny or serious." And I remember thinking, 'I'll make my mind up when God makes up his.' How can you read the newspapers every day or watch TV news and not see that the world is simultaneously most tragically serious and ridiculously funny? If I have learned anything in my life, it is that there is no wisdom without playfulness. All that the truly wise teachers I have met have in common is a kind of childlike playfulness that seems to go hand in hand with enlightenment."

When asked about his favorite books, writings, men of wisdom, and music, Robbins left enough to fashion a caricature.

Ten books everybody should read because they're not remotely enlightened until they do

Understanding Media by Marshall MacLuhan
The Archaic Revival by Terence McKenna
The Tao of Physics by Frijdof Capra
The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts
The Masks of God by Joseph Campbell
On Glory Roads by Eleanor Munro
The Banquet Years by Roger Shattuck
The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets compiled by Barbara G. Walker
News of the Universe by Robert Bly
The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James

Six things I'm glad I wrote

I never go back and read my books; I'm saving that for my golden years. But I retain a strong affection for:
*the passage in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues building up to the first description of Sissy Hankshaw's enormous thumbs
*the opening gambit in Jitterbug Perfume: "The beet is the most intense of vegetables. . . ."
*the bed mite passage from Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

In the new book I'm fond of:
*the riff on Jahweh and Lucifer settling out of court
*the place on page 272 about making a morning social call without showering: "He'd awakened too late to bathe properly, and Cupid's briny chlorines clung to him like clamskin britches."
*page 314's metaphors in celebration of the hymen

Five men of wisdom and power who set an example for us all

*Alan Watts, the greatest philosopher of the 20th century in his own right, not merely as an interpreter of Eastern systems of liberation. Like very few philosophers, he actually lived his philosophy.
*Morris Graves
*Oscar Wilde, for his example and his writing both. He had an intense social conscience, he was generous to everyone, accurately observant of his time, enlightened in many areas as well as wonderfully witty. He was a great man who happened to fall in love with a jerk.
*Friedrich Nietzsche
*Allan Ginsburg. Somebody was talking about visiting a Third World village and seeing the children suffering from undernourishment and disease, and he said, I just wanted to go up to those children and hug them. And the person he was talking to said, If you'd been Ginsburg you would have.

Seven albums I'd want with me if I was marooned on a desert island

*Dylan: Blonde on Blonde, probably, or Blood on the Tracks
*The opera choruses of Verdi, 'specially the lament of the Hebrew slaves from Nabucco
*Laurie Anderson's Big Science
*The Threepenny Opera (1959 original cast with Lotte Lenya)
*Leonard Cohen's I'm Your Man
*The Beatles' Greatest Hits, if there is such an album; I would choose the one with "All My Loving" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand," because I am convinced that time will prove they are right up there with the best of Schubert.
*Perez Prado's Havana 3 AM, so if I were stuck on the island alone I could dance by myself

Read Robbins' "Here in Geodunk Junction" if you so desire. You won't get coercion from this young lady. At least, not without cash.

Music for mediocre train rides.

• be my love / geraint watkins
• brakeman's blues / jimmy martin
• whiskey bottle / uncle tupelo
• on a beach / richard ashcroft
• segredo / suba
• bus stop bitties / RJD2
• i get my beat / richard ashcroft
• strange bird / bobby bare jr.
• two kinds of love / stevie nicks & bruce hornsby
• stinging velvet / neko case
• the person and the skeleton / papa m
• if you're gonna love me (c'est le moment) / paul burch
• city lights / room to move
• drunk on love / radney foster

Now that I have forsaken the possibility of a great chain of being to organize the mp3 selection, I will follow this same organizing principle for a few essays and articles that leave a cosmic aftertaste:

• "lsd, dogs, and me" / robert anton wilson
• "starseed" / transmitted from folsom prison by dr. timothy leary
• the relation of the state to the individual / benjamin tucker
• "propaganda in a democratic society" / aldous huxley

Spring fever songs.

Download gomez_see_the_world.mp3
Download pine_valley_cosmonauts_with_neko_case_stay_a_little_longer.mp3
Download rjd2_bus_stop_bitties.mp3
Download steve_earle_i_love_you_too_much.mp3
Download the_gourds_burn_the_honey_suckle.mp3
Download the_unicorns_i_was_born_a_unicorn.mp3
Download uncle_tupelo_i_wanna_be_your_dog.mp3

Bluegrass et al.

• The 34th Annual Rockygrass Festival promises the best of bluegrass.
• 24 hours of streaming bluegrass music from BlueGrassCountry.com.
• For radio show elitists, Into The Blue is the rocky mountain oyster of bluegrass radio shows.
• Lexington, Kentucky is home to the Blue Grass Airport.
• Find a bluegrass festival near you with this handy festival map.
• The Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival might be the only excuse you ever find to see Acramdale, New York.
• The 14th Poppy Mountain Blue Grass Festival returns to the roots of bluegrass and whiskey.
• A little history to put the bluegrass preference in context.
• Cybergrass isn't what you think.
• Bluegrass Journey offers the documentary experience to bluegrass history, including more big names than one might expect. Discover Bluegrass is an easy website which accomplishes the same end without as much starfare.

Wheretofore the blues?

Nothing accounts for the cultural role of blues music as effectively as James Baldwin's short story, "Sonny's Blues". Excerpt here. To be chased with the blues-inducing poem, "Ballad of the Landlord", by Langston Hughes.

"Stages" by Herman Hesse, a poem from The Glass Bead Game.

As every flower fades and as all youth
Departs, so life at every stage,
So every virtue, so our grasp of truth,
Blooms in its day and may not last forever.
Since life may summon us at every age
Be ready, heart, for parting, new endeavor,
Be ready bravely and without remorse
To find new light that old ties cannot give.
In all beginnings dwells a magic force
For guarding us and helping us to live.
Serenely let us move to distant places
And let no sentiments of home detain us.

The Cosmic Spirit seeks not to restrain us
But lifts us stage by stage to wider spaces.
If we accept a home of our own making,
Familiar habit makes for indolence.
We must prepare for parting and leave-taking
Or else remain the slave of permamence.
Even the hour of our death may send
Us speeding on to fresh and newer spaces,
And life may summon us to newer races.
So be it, heart: bid farewell without end.

Against specialization.

Herman Hesse is never so forcefully pagan as in The Glass Bead Game, where he reveals the sorrows of the intellectually specialized elite. Considered by many to be Hesse's best work, The Glass Bead Game describes a quasi-Platonic world in which a few intellectuals are chosen to work on the big questions of humankind. However, these chosen ones remain so far divorced from everyday reality and the "big picture" due to their fine-tuned academic specialization that the only answers they concoct will be doomed to irrelevance. The protagonist faces the almost cliche conflict between cultivating his knowledge or working towards wisdom.

On a different plane, reading Magical Child by Joseph Chilton Pearce, reinforces this warning against associating specialization with intelligence, only this time, the topic is child development. Though Pearce's occasional kookiness grates the nerves, his insights about the nature of intelligence are reinforced by recent discoveries in neuroscience and cognitive psychology. Pearce glorifies the "open intelligence" as the most adaptible, hence evolutionarily useful, type-- "an open intelligence is one that can structure knowledge of an increasing amount of experience and compute the widening range of information gained by that experience". Open intelligence combines with a flexible logic to increase our understanding of the world and our ability to adapt or accomodate to it-- "the more phenomena and events with which we interact, the greater our ability for complex interactions".

On its face, this might seem like an argument for exposing children to different languages and social environments in the early years. However, Pearce could also be understood to suggest that over-emphasis on one particular framework for processing information severely limits our ability to turn that information into usable knowledge. For example, assuming rational choice theory to understand what happens in transition economies neglects the incredible influence of social and cultural factors in particular transitions. Likewise, reading literature through the dulling lens of feminist and Marxist theory ensures a limited (and often useless) interpretation of literary events.

Ultimately, the more we specialize, the less we are able to percieve the limits of our lens. This is because we have decreased incentives to percieve this limit (i.e. we've devoted so much time, money, and intellectual resources to assuming the verity of this lens). Rather than countenance cognitive dissonance, we prefer to tweak the picture on the margins rather than reevaluate the entire enterprise. Just think of the nice gentlemen who still vociferously defend communism as a workable political system-- "Communism isn't flawed; it's only that the right conditions for the experiment haven't existed yet"-- to give flesh to this problem. Let's hope that the coming decades reveals the rise of the Renaissance man who is mentally equipped to handle the increasing complexity of our mental milieu.

• The Glass Bead Game in online game form.
• Charles Cameron explains the Glass Bead Game.
• Michael Heim explains why the Glass Bead Game matters in The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality.
• The Magical Child Foundation.
• Chilton speaks to homeschoolers about the connection between heart and mind.

Words on the streets of Tribeca.

After spending a few days trotting around New York for the Tribeca Film Festival, I ran across a few good films and a litter of runts for thought...

• Air Guitar Nation amuses.
• Cocaine Cowboys perturbs.
• East of Paradise fascinates.
• Freedom's Fury puts Hungary back on the map.
• Hammer and Tickle: The Communist Joke Book reminds.
• Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis stuns.

Rest your eyes on the PDF version of the festival guide for a listing of films, descriptions, and details.

Russia up close.

For ladies like me who can't get enough of Mark Ames' good, clean fun, Vice magazine shares his guide to Russia. Ames' dictionary offers insight on critical vocabulary terms. For example:

If you’re a guy and you hang out with Russian guys, the word you will hear most often will be blyad’. You’ll think it means something like “um,” and you’ll be technically right in the sense that it’s a speech dysfluency. In fact, blyad’ means “whore.” It’s a filler word that also actually means something.

So a Russian guy might say in a typical conversation, “Whore! Yesterday-whore, I wanted-whore to get tickets-whore to the Bolshoi Ballet-whore for you. But, whore! The faggots-whore at the box office-whore tried to tell me they didn’t-whore have any good seats, whore.”

It’s fitting that the word for whore should be used so commonly, as Russia is both a major producer and major consumer of whores.

B is also for babushka, which is what the blyadi will eventually turn into. Beware of babushkas. They’re the toughest bitches you’ll ever come across in your life. They’ll spy on you, plow into you on the metro, and if you speak in English in front of them, they will bite your head off and scream that Stalin was the greatest thing to ever happen to Russia. They do make excellent soup though.

Don't miss the dyevushkas, gentlemen... (Photo credits due.)

buzzing over my synapses at am.

• the bob ross video game
• a nut at the opera
• gallery of computation / 2005

Drug war dumbstrocity of the day.

Marking a new level of absurdity in the war on drugs, prosecutors tried to apply asset forfeiture laws to the gold caps on the teeth of two gentlemen facing drug charges in Seattle. The AP reports:

Prosecutors tried to confiscate the gold tooth caps from the mouths of two men facing drug charges, saying the dental work qualified as seizable assets. They had the men in a vehicle headed to a dental clinic by the time defense attorneys persuaded a judge to halt the procedure. Prosecutors had a warrant to seize the gold dental work, according to documents and lawyers. But they abandoned the effort, saying they mistakenly thought the caps were removable. Defendants Flenard T. Neal Jr. and Donald Jamar Lewis have permanently bonded tooth caps, their lawyers said. "Asset forfeiture is a fairly routine procedure, and our attorneys were under the impression that these snapped out like a retainer," said Emily Langlie, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office in Seattle.

There's always next time...

I don't remember much about my last trip to Germany apart from good cheeses, mayonnaise, and an overabundance of plastic elfin creatures spotting the landscape. Apparently, however, I missed the fascinating diversity of German erotica.

In honor of thunderstorms and azaleas.

Growing up in Dixie, yesterday's thunderstorm returned fond memories. Right now, the azaleas would be in full bloom and the weather as mercurial as the elderly gas station attendants watching a football game. Trailing the azaleas...

gallery of native azaleas
azaleas in auburn
500,000 azaleas, the selected poems of efrain huerta
"azaleas", a poem by m. frost
azaleas tags on flickr
beautiful poison
lyrics to "azalea", a song by the ass ponys
tales of azalea hunters at biltmore

The other side of Disney.

The name Walt Disney probably conjures images of dragons and princesses and happy endings, but a happy ending would be the last thing on your mind after viewing the Walt Disney film, VD Attack Plan.

Exploring the market of perceptions: A notable article by Craig Lambert.

Craig Lambert explores the intellectual history of behavioral economics in his cover article, "The Marketplace of Perceptions", for Harvard Magazine. He also outs Larry Summers as a self-described "behavioral economist":

Although behavioral economists teach at Stanford, Berkeley, Chicago, Princeton, MIT, and elsewhere, the subfield’s greatest concentration of scholars is at Harvard. “Harvard’s approach to economics has traditionally been somewhat more worldly and empirical than that of other universities,” says President Lawrence H. Summers, who earned his own economics doctorate at Harvard and identifies himself as a behavioral economist. “And if you are worldly and empirical, you are drawn to behavioral approaches.”

Lambert reviews the work of Simon, Tversky, Kahneman, and others, including Richard Thaler:

In the 1980s, Richard Thaler (then at Cornell, now of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business) began importing such psychological insights into economics, writing a regular feature called “Anomalies” in the Journal of Economic Perspectives (later collected in his 1994 book, The Winner’s Curse). “Dick Thaler lived in an intellectual wilderness in the 1980s,” says professor of economicsDavid Laibson, one of Harvard’s most prominent behavioral economists. “He championed these ideas that economists were deriding. But he stuck to it. Behavioral approaches were anathema in the 1980s, became popular in the 1990s, and now we’re a fad, with lots of grad students coming on board. It’s no longer an isolated band of beleaguered researchers fighting against the mainstream.”

Great article for relating current academic research to economic theory. My suspicion is that Harvard will now try to use its gargantuan endowment to purchase all the behavioral economists outside its Ivy towers.

Rights in the People's Republic.

The Chinese Criminal Procedure Law, adopted in 1997, offers a little evening chuckle for those lacking the warm glow of cable television. Let it be known that Articles I and II allow peaceful coexistence of personal property rights and "socialist public order" [underlining can be ascribed to your humble blog servant]:

Article 1 This Law is enacted in accordance with the Constitution and for the purpose of ensuring correct enforcement of the Criminal Law, punishing crimes, protecting the people, safeguarding State and public security and maintaining socialist public order.

Article 2 The aim of the Criminal Procedure Law of the People's Republic of China is: to ensure accurate and timely ascertainment of facts about crimes, correct application of law, punishment of criminals and protection of the innocent against being investigated for criminal responsibility; to enhance the citizens' awareness of the need to abide by law and to fight vigorously against criminal acts in order to safeguard the socialist legal system, to protect the citizens' personal rights; their property rights, democratic rights and other rights; and to guarantee smooth progress of the cause of socialist development.

My favorite papers from the 2006 Allied Social Sciences Association seance.

• "The Limits of Equality: Insights from the Israeli Kibbutz" $$$
• "What Makes You Click: An Empirical Analysis of Online Dating"
• "Marriage Laws and Growth in SubSaharan Africa"
• "Democracy and Development: The Devil's in the Details"
• "The Impact of State Licensing Regulations on Low-Skilled Immigrants: The Case of Vietnamese Manicurists"  $$$
• "Commitment, Risk, and Consumption: Do Birds of a Feather Have Bigger Nests?"
• "Asymmetric Property Rights in China's Economic Growth"
• "Contributors to Open Source"
• "The Basics of International Trade: A Classroom Experiment"
• "Putting a Smiley Face on the Dragon: Wal-Mart As Catalyst to US-China Trade"
• "The Problem of Excessive Military Spending in the United States" $$$
• "What Undermines Aid's Impact on Growth?"
• "Examination of the Entrepreneurial Method"
• "Institutional Entrepreneurs"
• "Why Personal Ties Cannot Be Bought"  $$$
• "The Rise and Fall of Private Sector Unionism: What Comes Next?"

I put dollar signs next to the cream of this already-skimmed crop for your browsing pleasure.

Getting into Saddam's head.

The Joint Center for Operation Analysis just released 203 pages entitled "A View of Operation Iraqi Freedom From Saddam's Senior Leadership" as part of its Iraqi Perspectives Project. The transcript from the Media Roundtable provides insight into the limits of this particular analysis.

Lynch's secret love.

Filmmaker David Lynch's latest project is a far cry from Mulholland Drive. Crediting transcendental meditation with his filmmaking success, Lynch decided to spread the benefits of transcendetntal mediation across the US. Through his nonprofit, Foundation for Consciouness-Based Education and World Peace, Lynch aims to give every child in the US the opportunity to learn and practice transcendental meditation.

For details, have a look at Lynch's presentation, "Consciousness, Creativity, and the Brain" or read this message from the TM master himself.

Information hangover.

• A one-page summary of interesting, sad, and provocative information about water supplies around the world on this World Water Day.
• Kentucky cops hire hookers on taxpayer money. Nothing like a little Geraldo reporting to make the world seem scandalous.
• Sir Topham Hatt provides a terribly statist example of heroism for all the young fans of Thomas the Tank Engine. What could be worse than glorifying a fat, bossy bureaucrat? I err. There are probably worse choices for heroes. Yup.
• Romerican introduced me to the groundhog's latest competitor, Brasov Bula. Also check out his photo essay of garage signs on the streets of Brasov.

A conversation about Ceausescu....

Reminds me that his reputation in the US is a little more flowery than sensible.  To clear the record and my throat-- Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena led a totalitarian regime that oppressed its citizens and ethnic minorities on a systematic, intentional basis. Unfortunately, there is plenty of evidence for this. Ceausescu's industrial projects reinforced Hayek's warnings about the high costs of central planning due to knowledge problems.

While I would prefer to brush this demon away with reference to laughable tabloids and photos of Ceausescu's grave, it makes more sense to provide a few leads for those truly interested in the untruths of what many Romanians were forced to call "the golden era of Ceausescu".

• Trond Gilberg's disturbing look at the Ceausescu era in Romania-- Nationalism and Communism in Romania: The Rise and Fall of Ceausescu's Personal Dictatorship-- is now available in book form for free online.
• To get a better grip on the context of Ceausescu's desire to institutionalize a permanent personality cult, you could spend time reading about sociopaths or just read Adam Tolnay's great paper, "Ceausescu's Journey to the East", which tracks his inspiration by North Korea and China.
• The show trial of the Ceausescu's is well worth the read to get a sense of the different operational "realities" in communist Romania.
• "The Economic Legacy of Ceausescu" by Nicolas Holman hints at the extreme challenges of transition.
• Ceausescu.org's list of books on this topic also provides a 27-page excerpt from Katherine Verdery's book on national socialism. It doesn't get much better than Verdery.

So what's the problem?

Todd Seavey thinks V is For Vendetta might be the "first superhero movie that's explicitly anarchist", and offers a little anarchist history lesson in the process.

Anarchism, the idea that society would be better off without the constraints of government, has a long and often sordid history. What is arguably the first book urging the complete abolition of government, "A Vindication of Natural Society," was written 250 years ago by the man usually credited with founding conservatism, Edmund Burke. The British philosopher and politician, who served in the very Parliament building that Fawkes tried to destroy, argued that the same sort of anti-authoritarian reasoning that was being used in the 18th century to dispel religious belief could be used to undermine earthly political leaders.

Scholars long accepted Burke's assurances later in life--when he had become a conservative member of the (generally liberal) Whig Party--that "Vindication" was merely satire. But 20th-century "anarcho-capitalist" economist Murray Rothbard argued that Burke's views had simply evolved over time and that Burke was embarrassed by his youthful ideological excesses. Indeed, anarchism has often been an attractive notion for young people. Paul Avrich, a historian of anarchism who died a few weeks ago in New York, suggested that James Joyce, Bernard Shaw and Eugene O'Neill were all anarchists early on in their intellectual development.

Regardless of whether Burke's book was a satire, it was an inspiration to the man who first developed a full anarchist philosophy, William Godwin. He combined conservative religious sensibilities with Whig-inspired political arguments and communist-anarchist solutions to conclude that God-given goodness and the rational nature of human beings meant that the best outcomes would occur in the absence of force, thereby alleviating the need for both government and property. The utopian oddness of this view, whatever the sophistication of its argument, is a hallmark of anarchist reasoning.

Todd then rolls his eyes about the current tensions between anti-globalization anarcho-types and the history of the movement. Unfortunately, I think you can find quite a bit of support for this intolerant strand of anarchism in American history. More on this to come...

Git your Turk on.

Amazon's Mechanical Turk collects Human Intelligence Tasks for those in need of a secretary or "Turk". Alexander Muse solves the mysteries:

In 1769, Hungarian nobleman Wolfgang von Kempelen astonished Europe by building a mechanical chess-playing automaton that defeated nearly every opponent it faced. A life-sized wooden mannequin, adorned with a fur-trimmed robe and a turban, Kempelen’s "Turk" was seated behind a cabinet and toured Europe confounding such brilliant challengers as Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon Bonaparte. To persuade skeptical audiences, Kempelen would slide open the cabinet’s doors to reveal the intricate set of gears, cogs and springs that powered his invention. He convinced them that he had built a machine that made decisions using artificial intelligence. What they did not know was the secret behind the Mechanical Turk: a chess master cleverly concealed inside.

Today, we build complex software applications based on the things computers do well, such as storing and retrieving large amounts of information or rapidly performing calculations. However, humans still significantly outperform the most powerful computers at completing such simple tasks as identifying objects in photographs—something children can do even before they learn to speak.

When we think of interfaces between human beings and computers, we usually assume that the human being is the one requesting that a task be completed, and the computer is completing the task and providing the results. What if this process were reversed and a computer program could ask a human being to perform a task and return the results? What if it could coordinate many human beings to perform a task?

Amazon Mechanical Turk provides a web services API for computers to integrate "artificial, artificial intelligence" directly into their processing by making requests of humans. Developers use the Amazon Mechanical Turk web services API to submit tasks to the Amazon Mechanical Turk web site, approve completed tasks, and incorporate the answers into their software applications. To the application, the transaction looks very much like any remote procedure call: the application sends the request, and the service returns the results. In reality, a network of humans fuels this artificial, artificial intelligence by coming to the web site, searching for and completing tasks, and receiving payment for their work.

For some odd reason, Mark Twain comes to mind-- "I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want." Too bad the Turks can't help in this respect.

What to read while rotting in airport lounges.

It has been my good fortune to spend tomes of time in airports lately, missing flights, catching new ones, and grooming my disgust for the TSA. Airport reading must be salacious enough to distract you from all of this, hence the airport reading / listening list. Never fly without the laptop.

To read:

• Polyarchy: Essays on Post-Statism, a must-read for all "social scoundrels".
• Pick the most appealing manifesto from ChangeThis.com.
• In "Desperate Feminist Wives", Slate.com's culture editor Meghan O'Rourke surveys the costs of  equality.
• Stripper Polaroids offer a different sort of art gallery.
• Graham Roumieu considers life beyond the blackberry.
• The Virgin and the Gypsy by DH Lawrence might appeal to Hesse fans.
• Wired sex from Tony Long.
• A cosmologist won the 2006 Templeton Prize?

To drown out the sounds of your fellow humans:

• Cinemaphonic's Electro Soul
• Cocktail Music for Robots
• POPCORN The Discotechque Sound
• WFMU's archives contain multitudes- Paul Stanley / Terje Isungset / Thione Seck / Allen Oldies Band / don't make me go on here