Month: October 2007

Posted on

Is Less But Poor Regulation Better Than More But Good Regulation?

US demands air passengers ask its permission to fly | The Register

This is an absolutely incredible step that the United States government is taking against the airline industry. It is hard to conceive of how a complete passenger manifest can be produced 72 hours before a flight is to take off, yet the Transportation Safety Administration seems intent on forcing the airline industry to do the impossible: produce a definitive list of passenger 72 prior to a flight’s departure. 

The names on this manifest are then going to be compared against a massive list of terror suspects in order to clear the flight for departure. The number of names on this list of suspects is astonishing.

ACLU’s Barry Steinhardt quoted press reports of 500,000 to 750,000 people on the watch list (of which the no-fly list is a subset). “If there are that many terrorists in the US, we’d all be dead.”

TSA representative Kip Hawley noted that the list has been carefully investigated and halved over the last year. “Half of grossly bloated is still bloated,” Steinhardt replied.

What is most  vexing about this proposition is that the TSA has offered little evidence that this draconian measure will reduce the threat of terrorism in any measurable way. Hence, the airline industry–arguably the must competitive on the planet–is going to be forced to lose money by refusing to sell tickets during the 72 hour period before a flight without any real justification. This step by the TSA provides significant support for the contention that the only reason Americans resent government regulation is that American government regulation tends to be ineffective and senseless. Perhaps Frank Zappa said it best: 

 The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced.

Posted on

Single Bullet: How the Holocaust was Pepetrated

A Priest Methodically Reveals Ukrainian Jews’ Fate – New York Times

It is a travesty of historical education that few people in this world are aware that the Nazis’ primary means of eliminating Jews was not the extermination camps that everyone knows. The preferred method of extermination was a single bullet to the head. 

The corollary to this is that the Nazis’ preferred means of disposing of bodies was not the crematorium, but the mass grave. The vast majority of Jews who perished in the Holocaust met their demise this way. Frequently, they dug the giant ravine in which they were shot and buried, en masse.

In the Ukraine and the Baltic States, the executioners were frequently locals, not the Nazi invaders. As students of antisemitism have pointed out, these regions were as ripe as Germany with extreme antisemitism, and the Nazi approval of the wholesale slaughter of Jews was sufficient license and encouragement for these populations to participate actively in the process.

This remarkable New York Times story of a remarkable Frenchman, Patrick Desbois, is a stark reminder that, in as much as the general public is concerned, the account of the Holocaust is as yet incomplete. Besides reading this disturbing account in the New York Times, everyone ought to read Hitler’s Willing Executioners by Daniel Goldhagen in order to begin to understand the evil in the service of which ordinary people are willing to be conscripted, to acquire an awareness that such ignorance and barbarism persist, and to realize that Bosnia and Rwanda prove that the machete and the bullet remain far cheaper, far more efficient and absolutely real methods of genocide.

Alas, it is clear that neither the Musuem of Tolerance in Los Angeles nor the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, has succeeded in educating the masses of the simple, cheap and fast ways in which genocide was perpetrated by the Nazis, still is perpetrated by Serbs, Rwandans, and will be perpetrated by the next gang of ignoramuses who will be permitted to wield weapons. Perhaps the Taliban, perhaps the warlords in Somalia, perhaps ….

Posted on

Welcome to the Unsocial

Microsoft Updates the Zune Player | New York Times

Shockingly, Microsoft’s update of the Zune media player more like the iPod. Streamlined interface, more vibrant colors, and simpler graphical menus. Whether it will sell enough for it to become a “sociable” remains in serious doubt.

The Zune’s advertising slogan is “welcome to the social” because it allows one to listen to songs on nearby Zune players wirelessly. This “social” exercise has almost certainly never been experienced by anyone because the Zune’s paltry sales (only about 1.2 million units, compared with more than 300 million iPods) guarantees that one will never encounter another Zune player within the range of Zune’s wireless capabilities.

Now, of course, the new iPod touch has complete wireless connectivity, a fully functional browser and the capability to buy and download songs anywhere. These capabilities are positively better selling points than the Zune’s “new” features. If the Zune player is ever going to sell substantially enough for it to become “the social”, it had better start competing with the iPod. Zune 2.0 is still hopelessly behind the iPod. If Zune 3.0 is not released soon, it may cease to be altogether. 

Bill Gates’ investment in his foundation seems to be a wiser move than any further investment in this ill-conceived product. 

 

Posted on

West Hollywood Book Fair

The West Hollywood Book Fair is not by any means the largest in the country or even in LA. The largest book fair in the primordial soup is indisputably the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, which is held annually at UCLA. The West Hollywood Book Fair is a very small and civilized affair held in West Hollywood Park. (The term “park” is used liberally here, for the actual plot of land allotted to the public under this designation is astoundingly paltry. Public spaces in the primordial soup typically are astoundingly paltry.)

The WeHo Book Fair is composed primarily, naturally, of gay and new age literature. A healthy contingent of writing groups are also well represented because this is the city where nearly 50% of the population (yours truly excluded, for now) are writers. And, last, though by no means least, are the various political groups: the ACLU, Pacifica Radio and other fringe groups. Especially radical groups were pleasantly and conspicuously absent.

I was surprised to see John Dean‘s name listed on a panel that was about to start in five minutes, so I lingered to hear what he and the others were going to say. The other panelists were Dennis Loo and Susan Estrich, who neglected to show up.

It proved to be an instructive panel to attend primarily because of the juxtaposition of an eminently rational man like John Dean against a polemicist like Dennis Loo. (The juxtaposition would be instructive were it made with any polemicist, even with Bill O’Reilly.) Such a juxtaposition is the perfect means of demonstrating the intellectual deficiencies of the political fringes. Whether it’s the radical right or the radical left, placing either one next to a man who coolly and civilly advocates the boring, fair and historically proven method of due process vanquishes all doubt regarding whom people need to support politically: the boring guy.

Lest one be tempted to dismiss the boring guy, one must bear in mind that the boring guy here, John Dean, brought down the entire Nixon Presidency. Hence, it is absurd to think that such men are ineffective or otherwise useless in the establishment of an effective government. Quite the contrary, history and the cabal of fanatics that has been in control of the US government since 1994 clearly demonstrate that it is the fanatics that invariably destroy governments and subsequently nations. Hitler, Mussolini, Khomeini, Pol Pot, Karadzic, Mugabe and countless others have proved the destructive force of fanaticism beyond the shadow of any doubt. Yet, we are stuck with fanatics.

And, what do we do against fanatics? Dean admirably argued for the restoration of the processes that have kept fanatics out of the political system and have kept in check the fanatics who managed to enter politics. Loo argued for buying and wearing orange colored products in order to advocate impeachment of Bush and Cheney.

Dean argued that the processes that assert the will of the people and that advocate the interests of the nation need to be restored. Loo asserted that we need a “hero” to fight this battle against the titans of evil who are governing our nation. Dean advocated a practical focus on winning elections. Loo simply asserted that elections are hopeless, and that we have no remedy, though he did offer hope in the form of his book. 

The moderator gave me the microphone, and I asked these men what we, the disenfranchised public, can do to reverse the nation’s course? Loo suggested that I buy orange personal decorations, because it was his brilliant idea to start an “orange campaign” for impeachment. Dean reasserted the fact that the Republicans understand the importance of process enough to have modified it heavily in their favor. He, therefore, advocated that Democrats erase these imbalances while they wield power. Loo did not disagree with this, but all he could advocate was wearing orange and protesting.

Loo also employed fear tactics for no apparent reason. He insisted that the US will attack Iran, that electronic voting machines are hackable and will be hacked, that impeachment is the only answer even if diverts resources from worthwhile causes. Naturally, he offered no real remedy to these doomsday scenarios. An ostensibly educated man, Loo could not offer so much as a notion of a process by which electronic voting machines could be challenged. Fear of the devices was apparently enough for him.

And, that is where I lost my faith in the “left” in American politics. The American “left” differs little tactically from the radical right in American politics. Its tactics consist of fear. Practically, the difference is like night and day. The right, as Dean correctly noted, understands process. It understands power, and it has the desire to wield it. It will go far in corrupting the process, as Hitler did (Dean’s comparison, not mine!), in order to wield absolute power. And, the American “left” responds to this corruption of process with a symbolic orange campaign. In insisting on a “hero” it was almost as if Loo was begging for another Martin Luther to start a new movement, a new government, a new nation.

Heroes are the desire of the hopeless. I have no heros for I have some confidence (still) in my abilities. Dean asked for no heroes because he has been in politics enough to know that process has a far greater impact than the impact that any one “hero” can have. After all, the only difference between democracy and fascism is, in fact, the process. 

Perhaps it’s in keeping with the American tradition of creating a new religious sect or movement when one is not satisfied with one’s innate religion. The American left’s fantasies of revolution (a mantra repeated ad nauseum by the left and the right), however, can never become reality. Freedom of religion enables new religions. The Constitutional system provides little recourse for change outside the Constitution itself. Hence, Dean is absolutely right when he says that it is important to restore and repair the processes of governance, and Loo and his fellow “leftists” are little more than egomaniacal fear mongers who are far more content with selling orange clothing than they are with advocating action. “Turn on, tune in, drop out” is a message that many baby boomers are happy to propagate, albeit from their comfortable tenured positions. And, somehow, they are mystified by the (good) fact that they wield no power.

Ahhh, to be free to think and to act. Neither the left nor the right will ever advocate freedom of thought and expression, for this freedom is inimical to the stupidity that both sides advocate under the headings of objectivism, neo-conservatism, liberalism, communism and, yes, even conservatism.Â