The Blog Whose Name Changes Sometimes

I am still digesting all of this stuff; I may or may not comment on it later. In the meantime, though, I do want to bring up something that doesn't make sense. Presumably the timing of the TNR piece was no coincidence. And yet, if the goal were to handicap Paul in the NH primary, wouldn't it make sense to run the article on Monday the 7th, rather than Tuesday the 8th? If I were trying to sway voters, I would've built in a day for the URL to be emailed around, the media to pick up on it, etc.

Any thoughts?

Really...

On cooking couscous, from About.com
"reduce heat to lowest setting, cover and cook (no peeking!) until liquid is absorbed"

And how the heck can you tell the liquid has been absorbed without looking?

It is really annoying when someone confuses "i.e." with "e.g." If you are unsure, just say "in other words" for the former and "for example" for the latter. It really is important. When I read such dolts (i.e. those confusing the two) I want to take drastic measures (e.g. chew a NyQuil).

put Paul at between 8 and 10 percent in New Hampshire, and he actually got 8% -- maybe the MSM is biased in favor of Paul?

Here is an interesting blog post about evolutionary explanations for religion. I just skimmed the comments, so maybe I missed it, but I do believe that not a single person suggested that people in all times and all regions of the world tend to believe in a higher power because...there exists a higher power.

As always, I'm not trying to make the case for theism in this short blog post. This is just another hilarious example of how really bright people overlook a very obvious point. (For an analogy, nobody would be puzzled at the "evolutionary advantage" of widespread belief in the heliocentric model. And note that for most people, belief in this model doesn't convey an advantage at all--even sailors don't really need to believe it in order to accurately steer.)

One last caveat: I realize there is a distinction between organized religion and faith in God. But the existence of God would certainly shed light on why so many people throughout human history have bel…

I earlier linked to an Investor's Business Daily op ed in which I called for privatizing the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. In that article, I glossed over the exact incentives that would propel private speculators to stockpile oil above ground--rather than cause producers merely to slow their extraction in the present.

Well that hole has been plugged. You may now sleep better at night.

I blogged a bit recently about Murray Rothbard's essay, "Down With Primitivism: A Thorough Critique of Polanyi," that periodically veers off into the ridiculous. In reviewing a book (referenced below), I was just struck by another problem in the text. Rothbard writes:

"Moreover, the life of the savage, as Hobbes put it, is 'nasty, brutish, and short.' His life expectancy is very short, and his life is ravaged by all manner of disease, disease that he can do nothing about except give food to witch doctors to utter incantations."

Oops! It turns out that the life span of a "savage" was about the same as that of the average Englishman in 1800, and the "savage" was far healthier, as shown by his greater height, and worked far less to achieve about the same level of material well-being. (Source: A Farewell to Alms by Gregory Clark.) But why let facts get in the way of scoring polemical points? And note the invocation of a fake authority to b…

turned out to be exactly right! Zogby polled Ron Paul at 10% in Iowa on the second, and, lo and behold, he got 10%. And all those charges of "MSM bias"? It turns out the MSM correctly perceived Paul as a minor candidate. The folks who have been trying to trick people into believing Paul could win -- and I don't mean Bob or John, I mean some senior libertarian figures -- have been saying "He'll surprise everyone in Iowa and show how wrong the MSM is!" Well, the MSM was saying "He might get third" -- I guess he "showed them" by finishing fifth, behind the dead on the podium Fred Thompson. So now those same people are saying "This is a great finish!"

Horseshit is horseshit even when it's in support of someone with whom I largely agree.

(Just to be clear: I wish there was some chance Paul could win -- but, as I said two months ago, there isn't any such chance.)

I am a consultant now so I had applied for an individual (family) health plan. My son has a heart murmur that has never required any treatment or medication; the doctors didn't even hear it until several months after he was born. This is an excerpt from the single sheet we got from BlueCross:

Dear Mr. Murphy,

Thank you for your application for BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee individual health care coverage.

Unfortunately, we cannot approve Joel's request due to medical information provided. We terminated our underwriting process once we determined that the following would result in our declining coverage:

Medical records document that Joel has been diagnosed with congenital infundibular pulmonic stenosis.

However, should the need arise, BlueCross and BlueShield reserves the right to continue the underwriting process and possibly cite other conditions as grounds for declining coverage.

I realize there are probably BS government regulations that make this profitable for them (ra…

Today's article continues my spat with David Frum over the gold standard. And I forgot to post this interview from Thanksgiving on "The Political Cesspool" radio show. I think I had had some wine by that point in the night, so my answers come from strange angles sometimes.

Our group has been sequestered from the internet, in the boondocks, for the last week. I only have a couple minutes to post an update. The caucus is tonight and there's a strange energy in the air. On the ground everything looks positive, though the media, even locally, is not giving Paul the credit he deserves. There may be a lot of talk about the "surprise" in Iowa, but on the ground there are high expectations and we should not be surprised.

There is a good article on the Ron Paul students at The New Republic, if someone can find it, if you're curious about what's happening. After this, I'm headed to South Carolina with some other Ron Paul Republicans (and a few anarchists) for their analogous student efforts. I started out a skeptic, even when Dr. Paul was doing well, but I'm beginning to think it could be possible. Apparently even Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh are starting to feel the strength and truth behind the Ron Paul revolution...

He'…

the chief enforcer of the ban breaks it.

I have carpal tunnel, and typing is painful for me. Thus, every five years I try voice recognition software. It has always proved more painful than typing.

This semi-decades attempt was with iListen, supposedly the best Mac voice recognition out there. I did a half an hour of training, and the software tells me we're good to go.

I open a Word document and say, "A farewell to alms" -- the title of a book I'm reviewing. On screen appears "they have yet to evolve as"! The software achieved a match rate of 0%, a truly remarkable achievement.

UPDATE: A sentence after some additional training: "Aspects of libertarianism utilitarian signed the Senate haunted concrete check fee to tyranny cite and thing he has narrow concept the is the contending that rest, nation the to Mr. respect utility, such matters still true strictly is for and true eans this would be."

Walter Mead writes:
"For the past few centuries, a global economic and political system has been slowly taking shape under first British and then American leadership. As a vital element of that system, the leading global power -- with help from allies and other parties -- maintains the security of world trade over the seas and air while also ensuring that international economic transactions take place in an orderly way. Thanks to the American umbrella, Germany, Japan, China, Korea and India do not need to maintain the military strength to project forces into the Middle East to defend their access to energy. Nor must each country's navy protect the supertankers carrying oil and liquefied national gas (LNG).

"For this system to work, the Americans must prevent any power from dominating the Persian Gulf while retaining the ability to protect the safe passage of ships through its waters. The Soviets had to be kept out during the Cold War, and the security and independence of t…