Who Were the Sea Peoples?

Well Gene, ya know it wouldn't be me if I weren't able to pull seemingly useless trivia from my, er, trivia conglomeration gland. There's probably good cause to worry about tsunamis hitting the East and Gulf Coasts of the US. I didn't read the NY Post story but any doom-and-gloomer worth his salt should probably first mention La Palma in the Canary Islands off Africa. Nearby, we have plenty to be worried about too from such fun things as the Montserrat and Kick 'Em Jenny volcanoes and a crisscross of faults under the Caribbean one of which recently gave the residents of the Cayman Islands a jolt that would have sent manly Californians screaming like little girls. Of course, land movement isn't the only cause of large waves. Besides a little hurricane (storm surge is the #1 killer!) here and there, rogue waves much like the one that hit Daytona Beach in the middle of the night back in 1992 frequently topple large ships out at sea. Heck, I don't know ...

Well, Margaret was spot on -- a few hours after I read her post, I read a columnist in the NY Daily News bemoaning the fact that there was no warning system in place. What people neglect to consider is that there is a cost for every precaution one takes, and that it is trivial, once a disaster has taken place, to judge that it would have been worthwhile to have had a warning system in place for that event , it is quite another matter to wisely allocate scarce resources beforehand .

Interesting development in the wake of the tsunami. Across the Indian Ocean, Somalia also got whacked by the wave--at least a hundred dead last count. As part of relief efforts Dubya said he'd temporarily suspend their debt. Whaaaat?!?! Last I checked Somalia had no central government except a bunch of guys who have to hang around Kenya because they have no authority within Somalia itself. Interesting. Do you suppose this new government has already promised bankers to leach the Somali people for money to pay back the debt the old government took on? No wonder they can't show their faces in Mogadishu. Obviously the people of Somalia are better off with the numerous clan chiefs and warlords than whatever the bankers want to impose on them through Nairobi. I hope they get their wish and keep their money.

I heard an announcer on CBS News Radio in New York say that, in the city, "street cleaning rules are suspended tomorrow." You don't want to be out there when they come around with those big old broom and water trucks and no rules !

The other little point about the Sumatran superquake I'd like to point out is the absurd coverage of the lack of an adequate tsunami warning system in place in the Indian Ocean. We can't spend all our time and money chasing nearly implausible dangers, can we? This is the first ocean wide tsunami in at least 500 years in the Indian Ocean. Is it really so newsworthy and ridiculous that they didn't have a system in place? Guess what? The East Coast of the United States doesn't have one in place either. Why?!?! Because it's probably not worth the expense since Atlantic tsunamis are as rare as Indian Ocean ones. An estimated 95% of these quakeborn waves occur in the Pacific where the system not only is in place but is a necessity. What do you think the chances are that within a year there will be a bill in Congress asking to put one in place on the East Coast? I bet it happens before the next wave hits shore.

Not to take lightly the horror of the Sumatran superquake but this seems like a good time to bring up Bastiat's Broken Window Fallacy . Nobody in their right mind would seriously suggest that the quake and tsunami that killed over 25,000 people would be a boon to the local or world economies. On the contrary, it's obvious we're all worse off for it especially in the directly hit areas. Yet, when four hurricanes beat the swamp out of Florida in August and September of this year, some financial analysts were proclaiming these multiple disasters would spur growth in the Florida economy. To be fair, the disasters weren't as bad and few people lost their lives but that only means that the Florida economy will recover to the point it was at before the disasters much faster. It will eventually get back on track but it will be months or years later than it would have been without the storms and that track will be in a different direction than it would have been. Likewise, a bro...

Yes, me been gone from the blog for a good spell of time now, but for the hollydays me giving all you ladies something to look at, should youse boyfriends be away:

An allee outside the Museo Archaeologico in Syracuse. A view from the hilltown of San Fratello. Another view from San Fratello.

I'm cleaning out all of my accumulated junk (it's part of my "Honey Do" list from my wife) and I came across a "Global Social Studies" notebook from my high school days. I was quite amused at the "ID" section on the very first page of the notebook. Some excerpts: Persian Gulf A very unstable area that is associated with many oil-producing countries. Because of their power over the economy, these countries are potentially very dangerous. Saddam Hussein A very dangerous ruler of Iraq. He could try and take over all of the oil in the Persian Gulf, crippling the economy. He has already invaded and annexed Kuwait. Helmut Kohl President of W. Germany, fighting to unify Germany. Manuel Noriega A former leader of Panama who was voted out of office, but used force to retain his position. U.S. forces restored order. Nelson Mandela A revolutionary in South Africa who was imprisoned for civil disobedience. He was released and to...

So why does every country have to move the punctuation keys around on me? I just have gotten used to the English layout, and now I find the Italians have yet another way to arrange them. If you see silly punctuation in my posts, youàll know why! Wonàt youé

I'm touring Sicily for a week before returning to the States, so my blogging will be limited -- OK, Bob? -- but I'm going to begin blogging my trip. The most striking thing so far, besides the physical beauty of the island, is how wrong I was in my naive impression of what life here would be like. I had heard of "la problema del sud," referring to the economic disparity between the north of Italy and the south. I had expected to find the island mired in poverty, a sort of time warp where elderly women in black dresses were sweeping the sidewalk in front of their ancient, stone homes, and men in traditional Italian garb sat in trattorias sipping wine and talking with great passion. Traveling across the north coast of the island, I found the towns to be more modern and less impoverished than I had expected. There were Internet cafes, plenty of cell phones, modern fashions, and an awful lot of Mercedes and BMWs for an "impoverished area." In the small tow...

Well, Gene is still AWOL in posting to his own blog, so I guess I can fill the air time by linking to the Ludwig von Mises Institute's gracious hosting of some speeches I've given. One is a talk on the Austrian approach to capital and interest theory... ...whoa, sorry, I fell asleep just typing that out!...and the other is a critique of the invasion of Iraq that I gave at Hillsdale College. So for those of you who have always said, "That Bob has funny quips, but I wonder if he's got a funny voice to match them?", enjoy!

Two things are crazy about this story : First, the Marine tells them to chop off his finger rather than cut his wedding band, even though (as any pregnant woman can tell you) you can cut a wedding band and put it back together again . Second, after the doctors chop his finger off to save the ring, they lose his ring . (Or more likely, somebody stole it.)

True story: I was sitting up with our three-week old baby, Clark, who wouldn't go to sleep. I decided to be like Mommy and sing a song. Rachael normally sings "Come Away With Me" (Norah Jones), to which I don't know the words. I racked my brain for a few moments, trying to think of a song that I both knew and that was soothing. I finally hit upon it: Dan Fogelberg's "Leader of the Band." About five seconds into it, Clark had stuffed his fist into his ear. What a precocious infant!

I was at an academic conference some time ago, sitting with a friend, who commented to me that "I'm tired of hearing Professor X talk on conservatism. Can't they come up with something new?" A few months ago, about a year after that conference, I happened to sit next to Professor X during a dinner. While we were eating, he remarked to me, "I just recently went to country Y, where they had asked me to present a talk on conservatism. I wish they would ask me to talk on something else, as I'm so tired of talking about conservatism."

Can you guess what it really is?

In this article I do my best to explain why it doesn't make us richer to prevent (a) US consumers from buying products as cheaply as possible, (b) US workers from working for the highest possible wages, and/or (c) US firms from producing at the lowest possible cost. Simplistic, I know, but very few people agree with this view so forgive me.

A flower and shrub border in St. James Park. The birdman of London. A view across the water in the park. Buckingham Palace and the Queen Victoria Memorial, from the entrance to the park.

In his unblog, Roderick Long recently made an unpost in which he critiqued my LRC article on miracles and physical law. Because my answers to his challenges are fairly brief, I’ll post them here: I see three problems with Bob’s solution. First, as Bob acknowledges, it’s much harder to see how the really fancy miracles, like walking on water or ascending into heaven, could be accounted for in purely naturalistic terms – yet Bob is committed to accepting those stories too. (And things really get tricky if we try to handle the Old Testament miracles too, like Eve arising from Adam’s rib or Joshua stopping the sun.) Now here, I think Long is missing one of my basic points: No matter what happens, it must have been possible, and hence could have been explained “in purely naturalistic terms.” I think what Long really means to say is, that it would be really tricky to explain walking on water etc. using only a very few simple laws of nature. To this objection, all I can say is...

Some English doctor was on the news this morning, complaining that the government has not been helping her enough with her duty to harass smokers. She said that it has been "too lenient" on them. Smoking is legal in the UK. Was does it mean when someone says the State is being "too lenient" on people who are not breaking the law? I believe she thinks that everything a person does is subject to government meddling, whatever the law happens to be.

I have missed my history of science seminar a couple of times this term. On the other hand, a couple of times it has missed me. Today, for the second time, I arrived to find an empty room. I think my two misses and its two misses cancel each other out, don't you?

In an interview with an American officer in Iraq -- I quote from memory, but the one word that really caught my ear I'm sure I recall correctly: "We found a cachet of arms, including chemical weapons, in a house used by the resistance in Fallujah." It's nice that the resistance is using such distinctive, high quality weapons! An interview with a "terrorism expert" -- again, from memory: "The likelihood of a nuclear terror attack is more likely than not." Well, we now know that it is probable that there is some measure of the probability of such an attack. Now, I wish he'd tell us what that probability is.

Jim Henley details what's happening to US soldiers in Iraq .

AP story : "WASHINGTON - Fueled by fierce fighting in Fallujah and insurgents' counterattacks elsewhere in Iraq (news - web sites), the U.S. military death toll for November is approaching the highest for any month of the war." There's a war in Iraq? A war ? Didn't the US win that war like a year-and-a-half ago? Then how could it still be going on? Explanations sought.

to the LSE massive, to the Lew Rockwell massive, to the Connecticut massive, and to the Brooklyn posse. Hear me now: Dis here is Ali Gene, checking out dis blogging business me hear so much about, at the invitation of me main man, Gene Callahan. Lemme tell you how I meet Gene. One day, me getting on the tube. Dis man, him have his bag on a seat, but when him see no other seats available, him take it off so I can sit. "Respect," I say to him. "One love," him say back. "RCBC," me tink, "dis man talks some Rasta language!" So, I begin to reason wit him a bit. "What book you reading dare?" I ask. Him tell me someting dat sound like "L and M Tree Logic." "What kind of crap book dat?" I ask him. "Oh, I'm reading it for my course at LSE." "Me tink dat big-time college filling your head wit some foolery, man, because trees, dem not have any sort of logic . Dem not tink at all, man. ...

Moving across the country--as well as being costly--has forced me to acknowledge that hoarding "stuff" is just not going to cut it anymore. My belongings have become a very heavy ball and chain so I've made the once-frightening decision to unload a lot of it because there's no way I'm not moving again and it ain't coming with me. I've started by selling books and CDs off on Amazon.com and will eventually move on to eBay. Amazon despite being a little more expensive than eBay is better for unloading books with one amusing exception. Even if you price your product lower than everybody else, there will be someone who comes along and prices it lower than you, even if it's only by a penny. Fine, I understand that. What has made me cackle is the "battle" I'm having with one "HA Books" company. They priced their copy of a book I have for sale at a penny less than me. When I discovered this, I underpriced them by a dollar because they h...

I lucked out and managed to get a last minute free ticket (thanks Jean!) to the Kraftwerk concert happening a few blocks from my Miami Beach home. Without thinking about it, I rode up on my bicycle which is the fastest way to get around my neighborhood. Only later when the band performed Tour De France (one of two versions)did I realize I had selected the most appropriate mode of transportation to the show. I also felt like a big dork. At a little over two hours the show was fairly entertaining and I would've enjoyed a bit more, actually. My only real complaint was that this was at a theater instead of a big dance hall. Then again from the looks of the stiffs in attendance, it would've been pointless.

An anonymous commentator, whose intials might be JCL, responded to my criticisms of Popper at some length. I am partially responding with this post, although I am also using it to start work on a paper I have to write on the philosophy of science. Note, this post will not be completed in one swoop, but will probably take several days to finish. On to the argument: ************* I wish to suggest that the history of the Copernican Revolution falsifies falsificationism. The basic idea of Popper's doctrine is that no amount of positive evidence can confirm a universal theory, but a single negative piece of evidence refutes it. The main problem with his theory is that this is not how science works. The first point to address is whether that is a valid criticism of a philosophical theory. It could be said that the actual practice of scientists may be flawed, and it is the role of philosophy to mend the error of their ways. But such a view relies on a misunderstanding of what...

Here is yet another article in which I contribute nothing of my own, but merely summarize Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk's critique of a particular theory of interest. Even if you are already a true believer in the Austrian theory of interest, I bet you will learn a few things from reading Bohm's critiques. Some people feel that I lavish too much attention on dear old Eugen. What can I say? He is my favorite economist. (And in any event, my hero is much cooler than Callahan's hero, that Michael HotShot or whatever his name is.) At least be thankful that I'm posting economics articles again, rather than ones on metaphysics.

I hadn't looked in to see updates of how "well" the war in Iraq is going in some time, so I stopped by a site I used to write for, National Review Online . There, I found Jonah Goldberg writing: "The scientific method, which has been part of our culture for more than a century, systematically roots out flaws and seeks new insights." Well, yes, four centuries certainly is more than a century! And four centuries is really a rather conservative estimate. One could plausibly argue that science dates to Aristotle, Archimedes, Galen, Ptolemy, and so on -- making the correct figure over two millenia. Of course, that's more than a century as well, isn't it?

I'm reading an excellent new book by Paul Franco with the above title. Since I am commissioned to review it, and I can't say too much about it here, but I'd like to share a few choice passages: In describing Oakeshott's philosophical influences, Franco mentions F.H. Bradley. He says that bradley "lived a fairly reclusive life in Oxford, never teaching, but occasionally coming out at night to shoot cats in the college precincts." Well I suppose everyone needs a hobby! A bit later, he quotes Richard Rorty: "Since the anti-empiricism and the anti-foundationalism on which analytic philosophers now pride themselves was taken for granted by nineteenth-century anglophone philosophers such as T.H. Green and Bernard Bosanquet, one might be tempted to say that analytic philosophy was a century-long waste of time." Ouch!

After reading my blog post about the police looking for the Colindale station , my friend Jasmine El-Mulki sent me the following story, which I share with her permission: "I was reminded of a phonecall I recieved when I was working for a Swiss insurance company this summer. A policeman from the Federal Traffic Office called me one day, giving me a plate number from Bern, wanting me to check the corresponding car for insurance, a routine request. I couldn't find any customer of my company with that plate number, so I apologised to the officer. He then asked me if it was possible for me to check among all Swiss insurance companies. "'But don't I need to call the Federal Traffic Office to do that? And isn't that where you are calling from?' "Yes, he said, he was fairly new on the job and had forgotten that point."

A couple of "boxing matches" soured the Pacers/Pistons and Clemson/South Carolina games over the weekend, but think of the possibilities: "brawl at Indy ends race early when various drivers beat the lap leader to death with tire irons", "Kentucky Derby horses gang up on jockey" and "synchronized swimmers at Olympics tweak noses in underwater melee".

I recently rented and watched the above-named movie a few days ago. A great film. I once thought very little of Jim Carrey, but I've come to believe he is an excellent actor when a director keeps him under control. (See The Truman Show for another example.) Susanne Langer was, in my opinion, one of the most under-rated philosophers of the 20th century and probably the greatest philosopher of aesthetics. She held that each major art form had its own, distinct primary effect, although works could also generate secondary effects characteristic of a different form. The primary effect of literature is to create "virtual memory," that of painting to create "virtual space," and that of music to create "virtual time." Movies, she said, create a virtual dream. If anyone wants to understand what she meant by that, I can't think of a better movie to watch than Eternal Sunshine .

Never play with Daddy's stash!

Karl Popper is famous for declaring that theories can never be confirmed, only falsified. It seems to me he is wrong about this, and his error turns on viewing falsification and confirmation as all or nothing affairs. But they are not. As pointed out by Duhem, Quine, Lakatos, Feyerabend, and others, no theory is ever so thoroughly falsified that there is no way to rehabilitate it. The Duhem-Quine thesis notes that, given an experimental result that apparently refutes a theory, one can always change an auxilliary hypothesis instead of the central tenet of the theory, and so rescue the theory. For example, Copernicus did not regard the absence of observed parallax in the stars as refuting his heliocentric theory. Instead, he simply moved the sphere of stars ten times as far away as it was previously thought to be. As my history of science lecturer, John Milton, pointed out, in this respect a Popperian has to regard Ptolemy's model as scientific and Copernicus's as unscientif...

Check out this AP story : Gee, that's surprising! People seem to object to having their country occupied and piecemeal destroyed by foreign troops.

I have given up hope that the US will be reformed through the political process. The deck is stacked against liberty. Only through secession--itself inspired by examples from abroad--will freedom spread in the region currently called the United States of America. Here is an interesting start on this topic. Yes, right now it's just chit chat, but at some point it will become a reality. If nothing else, once we start colonizing space, there will definitely be libertarian settlements. But how will these places protect themselves from neighboring governments? Read the book. Oh, you'd rather a nice story? Okay.

In Borders today, I saw a section of books with the heading "Black Writing." And, when I browsed through a few of them, I found that all of the writing in them was, indeed, black. But, on further inspection, so was all of the writing in the books I examined from other sections. There must have been something particularly black about the writing in that one area, but I can't grasp what it was.

I managed to offend just about everyone in this article. I got negative mail from both atheists and devout Christians.

President George W. Bush announced today that, with the destruction of Fallujah, the "Mercan" mission in Iraq is now "really, really, really accomplished." "When, on May 1, 2003, I announced "mission accomplished" in reference to our invasion of Iraq, I was speaking truthfully. We had accomplished the mission of getting me a great photo op." "With the capture of Saddam Hussein in December, 2003, we had really accomplished our mission, meaning, in this case, that I gained a 5% boost in the polls with his capture." "In June, 2004, when we returned 'sovereignty' to Iraq -- meaning that the new Iraqi government can do whatever it wants that we approve of -- we had really, really accomplished our mission. By saying that, I'm pointing out that my poll numbers went up another 2%." "With the conquest -- but not the subjugation! -- of Fallujah, we have now really, really, really accomplished our mission. An...

I stopped at a pub last night that had two large signs up warning that no drug use would be tolerated on the premises. I think this is pretty much equivalent to two signs saying, "Looking for drugs? There'll be a lot of them around here."

Admiral Nelson stands atop his pillar in Trafalgar Square. A fountain in the square catches the morning sunlight.

I took a quick trip up to Cambridge, to visit my friend, Canbridge University economist Paul Lewis, and then attend Tony Lawson's Critical Realist workshop. I arrived in the evening, so Paul gave me a whirlwind tour of the campus and then treated me to a lovely dinner. The gate to King's College in Cambridge. The first item on the agenda of the workshop is drinks from 7:30 until 8:00. Just before 8, when the evening's talk is to start, most people fill their wine glass one last time before sitting down. After the lecture, it's... off to the pub! Paul told me that drinking accompanies all activities at Cambridge.

Some shots of King's College in London, where I'm studying the history of science:

We were passing from the Picadilly Underground Station south toward Leicester Square, down a wide pedestrian thoroughfare. It was packed with people. Suddenly, we heard fireworks going off, in the middle of this throng of pedestrians. People began screaming and sprinting for cover. Several more rounds were launched -- some sort of bottle rockets sending bright arcs just over hundreds of heads. We picked up our pace, trying to get out of the area. We had to stop at a crosswalk, and as we stood there, from inside the McDonald's across the street, three or four minutes after the first rocket had gone off -- hey, they had to finish their Big Macs! -- about seven or eight cops raced into the street. Well, not so much raced, as kind of strolled, at a very leisurely pace. They seemed to have no interest whatsoever in finding out who was shooting bottle rockets in the crowd. In fact, they came to a stop about fifteen feet from the entrance to McDonald's, and just stood together in a...

Two shots from my street, both taken in early November:

I was in a shopping district near my home, where I thought I had seen a shoe store. However, I could not locate, so I stopped someone to ask where it was. "Excuse me, is there a shoe store nearby?" He looked at me in a puzzled manner. "A shoe store," I repeated. "You want to buy shoes?" "Yes." What else would I want the shoe store for? "I think there's one down that way," he said, pointing. Not wanting to waste time in case he was wrong -- he didn't seem very sure about whether there was or not -- I asked another passerby. "Is there a shoe store nearby?" He was taken back. "You want to buy shoes?" Now, I'm sure there was something wrong with the way I was asking my question -- I just don't know what. "Shoe shop"? "Footwear store"? Advice welcomed.

...if it's not too dear. Over the weekend, I took a trip to the Isle of Wight, to visit my friend, Paul Birch, and tour the island. Paul smiles by the seaside. Now, despite the fact that Paul is my friend, I must warn you, I fear he's a somewhat fishy character -- although he claims to be an astronomer, when I asked him to show me his telescope, it turns out he doesn't have one! I bet he has no astrolabe either. On the ferry out to the island, the passengers were shown a safety film. As usual, no one paid any attention to it. It occurred to me that such films would draw more attention if they actually showed footage of horrendous accidents, e.g., the ferry sinking, bleeding passengers, people screaming as they sunk into freezing water, and so on. That would get the customers' attention, wouldn't it? The Isle of Wight itself is not heavily populated, and is full of picturesque rural scenes. A rural barn on the island. Another country sc...

Beyond the titillating nature of this news story, I draw your attention to the official who claims that 98 percent of the people involved didn't mind. But if you read the article closely, this seems to mean 98 percent of those who volunteered didn't mind!

Today, you can go somewhere to receive treatment for alomost any habit you have, e.g., gambling, drinking, drugs, sex, and so on. Well, the Scottish philosopher David Hume said that the idea we have that certain events "cause" others arises merely from habit. So I'm considering opening a "Causation Rehab Center." Clients will come in and we will ask them things like, "How many times do you posit a cause-and-effect relationship per day?" and "How long have you been using induction?" Then we will do things like roll one billiard ball toward another, but first crazy glue the stationary one to the table, or fill it with explosives, and so on. We'll get 'em off the stuff soon enough.

True story: When I was in high school, my aunt showed me the Statistical Abstract of the U.S. and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I was amazed to see that federal revenues really did go up under Ronald Reagan. But then I started crunching the numbers, and my intellectual honesty forced me to conclude that the '80s were not a true test of supply-side principles. I drew on this experience for this article.

The above is the work of Roderick Long. Visit his excellent blog to see his original post.

I watched a very moving film last night called Amandla: A Struggle in Four-Part Harmony . It was about the role music played in the fight against apartheid in South Africa. (And the music was great as well.) During the course of the movie I reflected on the parallels between what I was watching and the US invasion of Iraq. One dissident mentioned that the South African prison wardens would strip political prisoners naked to humiliate them. Sound familiar? The filmaker interviewed former members of the "riot police," one of whom said that they "had" to use heavy weapons during protests, or some of the police might have been hurt. Just like how the US and Britain have "had" to employ aerial bombing and heavy artillery in populated areas, to minimize their own casualties. Because of such tactics, Iraqi civilian deaths are running about 100 to 1 ahead of US military deaths. The soldiers all volunteered for a job that they knew entailed the possibility of...

I, Jan Lester, and Pete Boettke listen to Larissa Price discussing property rights at a meeting of the LSE Hayek Society: (Photo courtesy of Peter Jaworski.)

My friend Jim Henley cites the perfect quote to sum up the US election results: "Democracy is the theory that the people know what they want and deserve to get it - good and hard." -- H.L. Mencken

Well, I'm finally looking the right way when crossing the street. That means that I probably will be hit by a car within a day or two of arriving back in the States.

My soul captured by a wild spirit of adventure, I walked several blocks further down the main road through my town (Colindale) then I have during the first month I've been here. There I found... Oriental City! Oriental City is a giant mall devoted to things from eastern Asia. There is a store with a huge supply of Chinese ceramics, several shops selling Oriental bric-a-brac, a Japanese beauty parlor, and a Sega center that is a confusing jumble of lights from giant game screens and the sounds of cars, shots, kicks, and dying. A little farther in I found an Asian supermarket as large as a Walmart in the US. I wandered the aisles for a few minutes, surveying the unfamiliar items. Some of the prices were astronomical: whelks were selling for 65 pounds a kilo, while "surf clams" went for 68. I saw little fruits from Thailand called "rambutan" that looked like they were covered with tentacles. My favorite item was "dried salted witch." So that...

I took a trip to Oxford yesterday. It was the first tourist activity I've done since I arrived in England. Except, of course, for the tourist activity I like the most: finding out what it's like to live in some place, especially what the people who live there are like. At the standard tourist spots, that is not what happens: they are filled with other tourists, not the residents. That bothered me when I stayed in old Quebec City: the entire old city area is a giant tourist attraction. After a few days, I realized I wasn't in a real city at all, but in something equivalent to Colonial Williamsburg on a larger scale. The countryside the London-Oxford train passes through, once one gets perhaps 25 minutes out of London, is lovely. Autumn is fully setting in here, and the trees lining the green fields are muted tones of green and gold and brown, much quieter than a New England fall, but with their own charm. The English rivers are enchanting, full and slow and lazy, their b...

Passing through Paddington Station, I saw a sign reading: "Caution: Cycle Thieves About." I guess it's like rotating your tires -- you don't want the thieves getting all worn out on one side or anything.

New York and London are quite similar as far as how people behave walking around the sidewalks, and both quite different to where I grew up. (Over here, we say "different to.") The high density of people on the sidewalks seems to lead to most pedestrians dehumanizing everyone but the people they are walking with. Whereas in the small city I lived in as a yoot, someone approaching you would meet your eyes, say "excuse me," or perhaps gesture to avoid a collision, in New York and London people are far more likely to stare at your feet and try to outguess you. This morning I was stunned by how far people can take that attitude. A woman was walking down a passage in the underground about twenty feet ahead of me. She must have decided she was going the wrong way, because she suddenly reversed directions, so that she was walking straight back at me. Now, the passageway was quite wide, and there was plenty of room for her to go around me. Of course, I could have move...

Drying one's clothes outside brings surprises. Two days ago, I put on a shirt and found that a bird had used it for target practice. This morning, as I pulled up my boxers, I felt a small lump on the waistband. I pulled it off, and then looked to see what it was. I found that I was holding a decent-sized, live wasp in my fingers. Yikes! I have no idea why I wasn't stung, unless I luckily had employed just the grip Steve Irwin uses to hold a wasp and not be stung by it.

In my local (that means a bar) the other night, I was in the loo (that means the bathroom) when I heard some fellow drunkenly ranting about "frogs" and "genocide." Did he want to wipe out the French? No, because then I heard "amphibians." I left the toilet and went to wash my hands, where I found the ranter, wearing an Irish football jersey, addressing his victim -- I mean, audience. He leaned closer and told the fellow, "You know, in this life you can be anything you want to be, if you put your mind to it." Even a raving, batty drunk!

If you're sick of having an elitist, Ivy League alumnus, multi-millionaire, Skull-and-Bones member, warmonger as president, then be thankful you live in a country where you have the opportunity to replace him with a man who is an elitist, Ivy League alumnus, multi-millionaire, Skull-and-Bones member, and warmonger.

I passed a Woolworth's in North London the other day, then turned because I realized I was curious: Would a Woolworth's here smell the same as one in the states? Yep, it sure did. Just what is that smell? Caldor and Bradley's always had pretty much the same odor as well.

From left to right, me, Lionel Robbins, and Pete Boettke:

I'm in Los Angeles so naturally the discourse at parties eventually runs towards how Dubya is the new Hitler. However, the other evening when somebody made the comment, "I think the election is going to be a disaster", I was thinking how amusing it would be to respond, "oh, you think Kerry has a chance?" but I kept my mouth shut because I wasn't really in the mood to antagonize people. (I hadn't drank anywhere nearly enough and was looking for a ride home.) Later, I realized that I should've responded with something closer to my own sentiment, "so you think somebody is actually going to win the election?" In my bumper sticker count system, Kerry wins slightly over Bush in the Los Angeles area. There are a lot of anti-Bush stickers but that doesn't necessarily mean those votes are going to Kerry. They might. They might not. Nobody anywhere seems really excited about their candidates. If nobody shows up for the election...

I've been to several "right-wing" Protestant churches, and what's odd is that they generally hold the following two beliefs: (A) America is going to h*ll in a handbasket. Our culture is absolutely disgusting, and if we don't shape up God is going to take us out to the toolshed. (B) America is the most wonderful country that has ever existed. Foreign people would gladly welcome our bombers and take the chance of being blown to smithereens, if only to be more like us. Again, I am not trying to make fun of American Christians; I'm one of them. I'm just making this observation...

William Shatner has offered to pay $210,000 to ride into space. (Doesn't he know how much he could've saved by booking his flight though priceline.com??)

I was walking down the main road near my house the other night when a police van, containing two cops, came to a halt by the curb. My mind flashed back to a night in sleepy Redding, CT, when I was walking home from my local around midnight and had a cop pull up alongside me. His window came down. "Excuse me, sir, are you just out for a walk?" "Actually," I responded, "I was down at the Georgetown Saloon, and I'm walking home." "Oh, you live near here?" "Yes, Highland Avenue." "How long have you lived there?" "Four years." "And what's your name?" "Gene Callahan." "And your birthdate?" Well, I had tried to be patient, but that was about it. Instead of thanking me for not drinking and driving, this nitwit was going to grill me because not many people in Redding walk at night. "Are you going to send me a birthday card?" I asked. Chagri...

Here's a new angle on this situation: On the tube yesterday, I saw a sign showing an abandoned piece of luggage on a seat and reading: "Don't touch, check with other passengers, inform station staff or call 999." In other words, if you just ignore the bomb, maybe it will go away. For the want of a semi-colon, the train was lost. Of course, the US is as full of badly worded signs as is England. At my old office, there was a sign on a door reading, "This door must be kept closed at all times." Wouldn't a wall have been a better choice than a door, in that case?

The other day, a headline The Times read, "Hurricane Ivan Leaves Behind Wreckage Worth Billions of Pounds." Perhaps Ivan can drop by my place and leave some of that wreckage there. I'd even be satisfied with wreckage worth a million pounds.

The other night someone said to Jan Lester, "Jan, how is Escape to Leviathan selling?" The actual title of Jan's book is Escape from Leviathan , so the new title changed the thrust of the work a bit. However, it did suggest a series of titles Jan might produce: Escape for Leviathan , in which Jan escapes from a prison to rescue the State, Escape Through Leviathan , where Jan uses the labryinth bureaucracy of the State to elude his ferocious and vicious pursuers, and my favorite, Escape with Leviathan , in which Jan and the State run off to a deserted tropical isle together, leaving the bewildered populace longing for both authority and critical rationalism.

* I was on the tube a couple of days ago, when a voice came over the PA and said, "This train is quite crowded. When exiting, please use all available doors." I know how to use one door or another to get off the train, but I froze in puzzlement as to how I could use "all available doors" to get off. It was six stops past mine before I just punted and used the one nearest to me. * And I was looking forward to having tons of yummy English muffins when I got over here, but I haven't seen one! Have the English sold all of theirs to the states?

Following up on Bob's post below, I got a good laugh when I heard Donald Rumsfeld warning other countries (he meant Iran and Syria) "not to interfere in Iraq's internal affairs." You see, buddy, if there's any interferin' to be done, we Americans gonna be the ones doin' it.

Apparently the UK paper The Guardian was trying to promote a Kerry win. Outraged Americans correctly pointed out that Britain has no business interfering with the elections of another country... I mean, with the elections of the United States.

For those of you who haven't heard, SpaceShipOne recently won the $10 million X-Prize. (Commentary here: http://www.lewrockwell.com/murphy/murphy87.html ) If and when I get a few hundred million bucks, I'm definitely going to set up prizes like this. That's really one of the main benefits of being rich, I think. You get to decide the arbitrary hoops that everyone else jumps through while they're "paying their dues."

* I'm beginning to get the notion that there's some fellow named "Beckham" who is something of a celebrity here. It's mostly the fact that his name has been in the front page headline of some tabloid every single day since I've arrived that has suggested that to me. * In America, fast food service jobs are held mostly by Hispanics, in order to prevent the customers from wasting the staff members' time by talking to them. England doesn't have much of a Hispanic population, but fast food places here have gotten around that difficulty by employing Eastern Europeans who can't understand the customers instead. Last night, I stopped at a sandwich shop. "Cheddar Cheese Sandwich" was listed on the menu. But how was it prepared? A typical cheese sandwich here might include pickles and mango chutney -- not bad, actually. So, I asked the chap behind the counter, "What's in the cheddar cheese sandwich?" "Cheese." ...

* Many of the doors around LSE bear a sign saying "Door Alarmed." Well, I'm starting to become alarmed that all these inanimate objects are so worried. * I'm writing this in the LSE library, where it's about 10 degrees colder than it is outside -- and it's not warm outside. * And the library has a sign saying, "When in the library, your cell phone must be strictly switched to silent mode." Now, I know how to switch my cell phone to silent mode, but how do I do so "strictly"? Ought I to warn it, in harsh terms, of the punishment I will deliver should it ring?

* Wednesday night, Ireland beat the Faroe Islands two-nil in World Cup qualifying play. In the States, of course, we'd say "two-nothing." But no one ever seems to say "two-zero." Why is that? * And I'm surprised that there are enough young, athletic males in the Faroe Islands to form a football (that means soccer) team. * My clothes are again "drying" on the line. I hope to be able to bring them inside by Sunday. I'm thinking of skipping the washing machine altogether and putting my laundry straight outside, since it gets both washed and dried there. * I asked directions to a restaurant from a news agent. He told me it was right across the street from "steer box." Now, I wasn't sure what a "steer box" is, so I asked him where that was. He pointed it out to me. Starbucks. * While on the topic, it's interesting to note the different effects produced by American and English rain. In the US, mushrooms pop up...

I was flipping through the channels on TV here in England, and happened on a quiz show. One contestant was an accountant. The profession of the other wasn't mentioned, but he was named " John Gray ." I thought, "That's a funny coincidence, but of course it's a common name." Then, at the end of the program, the host mentioned that a famous poet would be on next week. Hmm, could it be? A few days later, I was talking with Jan Lester, Pete Boettke, and David McDonagh, and Gray's name came up. I asked if he appeared on quiz shows, and David said, "Yes, regularly." So, while his political thought may have gone downhill, I can report he's very good at making words from scrambled letters.

I was able to bring my wash inside! We line "dry" our clothes where I'm living. The trick is to get them out and back in during one of the 12-hour windows without rain. Well, Sunday I mis-timed things, and today was the first time I was able to bring them inside. It's not that they were actually dry, or anything like that. It was just the first time they weren't dripping wet. Now they are in my bedroom, really drying.

The UK sinks are puzzling. There are always two separate faucets, so that you can choose to scald your hands or freeze them when washing up. And some of the sinks have a nifty "instant-shut-off" feature, where the faucet only runs as long as you are pressing down the tap with one hand, making it impossible to rub your hands together under running water.

Someone was busking (that means playing music or singing for change) in the tube (that means subway) line tonight. The song she was performing was "Walk on by." That seems to me to be the most unfortunate choice for a busking song I've ever come across.

...heading down the escalator at the tube, but I didn't catch him. * In both the US and the UK, waiters in Indian restaurants typically wipe your plate just before they place it in front of you. Is this supposed to inspire confidence? It always makes me worry that the wait staff fears the dish staff is not really doing their job. * The new Scottish Parliament building was just opened... 3 years late and 10 times over budget. Who but the government could wind up 1000% over budget on a building? At least here they have the honesty to call state projects "schemes." * The book store on the LSE campus is selling Waterstone's Giude to Literarute for Dlysexic Chilrden . * The cigarette packs here have labels with big letters saying "Smoking Kills." Well, at least one government scheme has succeeded, since the labels have reduced the number of smokers per capita in Britain to only like 10 times the number in the US.

A block from LSE I found Drury Lane. I've been searching up and down it for the muffin man -- no sign of him yet, but I'll report back later. Also near LSE is a building declaring itself, in very large letters, to contain "The Government of Gibraltar." What is it doing way up here? Oughtn't it to be down in Gibraltar? The first few days here, I would look outside in the morning to see if it was going to rain. I've learned to stop doing that: It is going to rain.

I saw Tony Blair on TV today saying that the invasion of Iraq was necessary because "sanctions weren't working." I agree. Saddam had only been reduced to having zero weapons of mass destruction. Clearly, the only sign of the sanctions working would have been if he had had a large negative number of WMDs.

So I'm back in Los Angeles after a really difficult three years in Miami. I had no idea I'd be gone so long and I'm really only here to gather my abandoned belongings and go back to Miami, reluctantly. Sigh. The task is overwhelming as it is but for various reasons it's become even more daunting. The first thing that happened is my hostess locked us out of her place for several hours. Then other problems magically appeared. I'd just about had it when my ex mentions the New York Dolls are playing. I wasn't sure about it but at that point I was so frazzled that getting anything accomplished was out of the question and I do love the Dolls. I went to the show straight from working on my vehicle so I was covered in oil and gas too. Within three or four songs the curative properties of the Church of Rock N Roll were working their magic and all my troubles just slid off my back...or maybe it was the motor oil.

My first jet trip since 9-6-01 and I'm sitting in the airport at Miami. The last time was actually eventful. I was "selected" to have my checked luggage x-rayed and the Black fellow sitting behind me had a copy of the Koran. Things I probably would've forgotten about now except for the obvious reason. At the time I had no idea of the personal disasters lurking in my near future. Family illness after illness kept me from traveling far so flying home to Los Angeles was out of the question until now. Once again I was selected for the super duper inspection only now it involves having to take your shoes off (damn you shoe bomber), having some stranger rifle your panties in the carry-on bag and a groping that makes you feel like you are entering prison--a naughty prison. I was thinking the entire time, "even if a terrorist gets on board, I'll rip him to shreds with my bare hands so there's no point to this nonsense." I told this to my pal Ivan a few days ...

If you want to emphasize something, turn it into a question. For example, LSE hasn't issued me a student ID yet. I was about to try to make copies at the student copy center, and I imagined answering, in response to a request for my ID: "They haven't issued me one yet, have they?" I went down to Picadilly Circus. Not only did I not see Marcus, I couldn't find the circus at all -- no tents, no clowns, no elephants! My advice is, "Don't bother." In the suburb to which I just moved, there is a eatery called -- I'm not making this up -- "New Jersey Chicken." All right, what the heck is "New Jersey chicken"? I grew up 100 miles from NJ, and I've never heard of such a dish or style. Do you get a little map of the turnpike carved into your roaster? And the breakfast place nearby offers "Bubble and Squeak" on its menu. I have to order that one day. The sidewalks in London seem to be made of some specially po...

One great aspect of being at LSE: I'm writing this sitting in the Lionel Robbins library; my department is housed in the Imre Lakatos building and was founded by Karl Popper; one of the staff is holding the Lachmann Chair; soon I'll be seeing Pete Boettke deliver the Hayek Memorial Lecture; and the second holder of the chair in politics was Michael Oakeshott.

OK, I've settled in a bit here in the UK, so I'm sending off my first dispatch: 1) British pubs are notably different than US bars in terms of how devoted the patrons are to conversation. At 5PM in a London pub, the volume of noise produced by the multitude of conversations occurring is startling to anyone accustomed to US bars. 2) Marlboro Lights here have brown filters: What's up with that? 3) The way I cope with crossing British roads -- where they drive on the wrong side -- is by frantically swinging my head back and forth in both directions. More to come.

I mentioned in an earlier post about gauging voter interest through political bumper stickers. Well, since Labor Day, Kerry has taken a slight edge over Dubya in the South Beach vinyl wars. Today, I observed a man in a tank top walking around with a circular Kerry sticker stuck to his bicep. I'm not sure what that portends.

Here is a very interesting chapter from an upcoming book by Steve Landsburg, in which he argues that sexual conservatives will actually reduce the spread of AIDS by having more one-night stands: http://www.landsburg.com/moresex.htm I don't think this blog is the ideal place to debate the matter, but my own feeling is that Landsburg is basically wrong. At least two major problems: (1) He assumes that everyone is purely selfish, e.g. Landsburg's model (it seems to me) would not include the possibility of someone discovering he is HIV+ and then refraining from future sex because he doesn't want to hurt other people. Once we realize that there are such people, then I don't see why Landsburg denies (at the end of his chapter) that his analysis might encourage more promiscuity. ("I'll be doing the world a favor by going out tonight! A Ph.D. at the U of R even says so!") (2) He assumes that the degree of promiscuity is a purely individual deci...

I'm about to head off to the London School of Economics to do a master's degree in their philosophy department. I just logged into my LSE e-mail account for the first time, and discovered I had one message, from LSE, saying, "This message was automatically generated, and you should ignore it." Now, if someone said, "Gene ignored the sign at the beach that forbid swimming," that would mean that I did go swimming. By analogy, in order to ignore a message that says it should be ignored, it seems I should not ignore it. But, if I do that, then I am ignoring it. You see my dilemma. I suspect this is some sort of test from the philosophy department to see if I am really up to the mark, and I'm very anxious about how to respond (or not).

Johnny Ramone--the man credited with revitalizing Rock by adding Punk to it--is no more after a long battle with cancer. It wasn't just that unique but much copied staccato guitar sound that Johnny introduced to the world but an attitude that encouraged people who might not have realized that despite having no training their creations and ideas were just as valid as the next person's, maybe even better. Spending his creative and business life doing things his own way made for lots of enemies. Even among self-described Ramones fans, there are people who opted to note his passing on Wednesday by complaining that they couldn't like Johnny because he was a right winger or astute businessman or some other nonsense reason that had nothing to do with the music. Nice to know that people who should be thanking the Ramones and specifically Johnny for cracking open an increasingly insulated industry are themselves guilty of pushing out the iconoclasts who taught them everyone is valua...

In the most recent issue of Reason Magazine that I received, I found an ad for American Spirit cigarettes. At the top of the ad was the text "November 2" -- election day -- followed by a listing of a number of political parties: Green, Republican, Constitution, Democratic, American, Socialist, and so on. Finally were the words, "It's all good." What typical nonsense. If voting Socialist is good, then voting for the Constitution Party is clearly bad. If voting Republican is good, then voting Green isn't. Even the people who promote this idea will reveal that they don't really believe it if they are asked to include the Nazi Party in such a list.

Near my apartment there is a live poultry vendor. A price board on the wall outside its door lists prices for chickens, roosters, rabbits, ducks, guinea hens, and "fowl." I've always been puzzled by what you get when you buy fowl. I mean, I thought chickens, roosters, ducks, and guinea hens were fowl. Are they offering some other sort of bird that they can't identify beyond the fact it seems to fall under that general category? Does anyone know what this means?

The Arts and Entertainment cable channel today was showing videos taken in lower Manhattan on the day of the attack on the World Trade Center. (I'm not sure how the program fell under either "art" or "entertainment.") It was really stunning to see how much damage those terrorists did. Their action was revolting brutal, violent beyond belief, and about as evil a deed as a handful of humans have ever pulled off. Of course, none of that justifies pulverizing a bunch of Iraqis who had no connection to 9/11. But, since some hawks equate all objections to the invasion of Iraq with support for terrorists, I thought the above might be worth saying.

I just received an e-mail with a "Plagiarism Survey for Economists" attached. I sent this note in reply: ***** Dear X, I haven't had time to fill in the survey, but I did make a copy of it, which, after a few cosmetic changes, I hope to be able to pass off as my own, original work. Thanks for sending it along. Regards, Gene Callahan *****

The other day when Jeb Bush mentioned that anti-trust laws prevented gas companies from working together to form a gasoline distribution plan in the wake of Hurricane Frances and the state would have to do it instead, I knew it could only mean trouble. Sure enough, pre-storm shortages worsened and today there were reports of five mile long gas lines in some areas. People even drove to the Florida Turnpike rest areas just to fill up there. Now if price gouging weren't illegal the few stations that have gasoline could charge accordingly high prices. People would only purchase the smallest amount they actually need and there'd be more gas to go around--but the state doesn't like that idea either. It'd be nice if those people in line realized how much the government contributed to their woes but will they be in line long enough?

Gene Callahan's recent articles on voting have inspired me. I may also try to emulate his approach to facial hair. http://www.lewrockwell.com/murphy/murphy84.html