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SAN FRANCISCO - It began, as grand ideas often do, over a dinner — risotto, artisan cheese and wine. What would it be like, 10 environmentally conscious friends wondered as they discussed the state of the planet, to go a year without buying anything new? Twelve months later, the results from their experiment in anti-consumption for 2006 are in: Staying 100 percent true to the goal proved both harder and easier than those who signed on expected. And while broken vacuum cleaners and malfunctioning cell phones posed challenges, some of the group's original members say the self-imposed shopping sabbatical was so liberating that they've resolved to do it for another year. "It started in a lighthearted way, but it is very serious," said John Perry, 42, a father of two who works for a Silicon Valley technology company. "It is about being aware of the excesses of consumer culture and the fact we are drawing down our resources and making people miserable around the world." A Red Bird-area homeowner turned the tables on a gun-toting burglar Wednesday night, taking the weapon away from him and beating him up with it. The suspect, identified by police as 21-year-old Marquis D. Anderson, ended up in a local hospital. "When the police got him, he wasn't able to talk," said Steven Flowers, a neighbor whose home was also burglarized. "He got beat bad. I wish it had been me [who delivered the beating]. I would have done the same thing." Mr. Flowers, who lives on Greenspan Avenue near Interstate 35E and Camp Wisdom Road, arrived home shortly after 6 p.m. to find that his home had been burglarized. The burglar had kicked in a rear door and stolen jewelry and a handgun. "I noticed the lights on in my house," said Mr. Flowers, who has lived there about eight years. "I could see a silhouette, peeking out of the window of my den. I left and called 911." Police records show that the suspect fled that home and broke into a neighboring home in the 7600 block of Woodspan Drive. That homeowner, Prentice McKinney, arrived home to find his front bedroom light on, his front window busted out and a man looking out the window at him, records state. Mr. Flowers said that Mr. McKinney went into the home through the window and confronted the burglar. Police said the suspect fired a shot at Mr. McKinney, but it hit a wall instead. "He said by the time the guy realized he was in the house, he had already pounced on him and beat him up pretty bad," Mr. Flowers said. "He can't remember how he got the gun from him. He said he just had so much adrenaline pumping, he just kind of lost it." The burglar had tried to steal two handguns and jewelry from that home, a report said. When police arrived, they found the unconscious burglar in a pool of blood on the hallway floor. Labels: homosexuality Labels: cross-species breeding Labels: homosexuality
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An Argument Against Minimum Wage That Doesn't Work, and One That Does Work
The Argument That Doesn't Work
In talking to my daughter and son-in-law last night, I heard an argument against minimum wage laws that, at least in the simplest form, isn't right. The argument is that raising minimum wage increases the costs of doing business, and therefore drives up prices. You've doubtless heard variants of this with respect to government fees, such as impact fees on housing developers.
This argument is wrong because retail businesses, with a few exceptions, don't set prices based on cost plus a profit margin. They set prices based on what the market will bear. A restaurant sets the price of a meal so that they get the optimum number of customers.
If the cheeseburger, fries, and a Coke combo is priced too high (say, $9.99 for a sitdown restaurant), few customers will order it. If everything on the menu is similarly overpriced, they won't have enough customers to stay in business.
If they price everything too low, there are two possible negative results. The obvious negative result is that they lose money with every meal, and eventually go out of business. The less obvious negative result is that even if they are making a profit at the lower price, a restaurant may find itself with long lines of customers waiting to be seated. The price that they have set fails to balance supply and demand. This frustrates customers who have to wait (especially those who can afford to pay more for a meal), and means that the restaurant is giving up higher potential profits by charging too little.
Pretty obviously, raising the minimum wage doesn't alter the price that the market will bear. What it does is reduce the profit margin of the restaurant. Now, if the increase in minimum wage is large enough, it may reduce the profit margin so dramatically that the owner decides that the aggravations of running the place (and there are many) don't justify the miserable return, and the owner sells out or closes the doors. This reduces competition, and those businesses that continue to operate in that market segment are now freer to raise prices--but this is by no means a certainty.
If existing businesses are highly profitable (say, a 30% annual return on capital), increasing the minimum wage a small amount may not drive any businesses out. If the existing profit margin is small (say, an 8% annual return on capital), increasing the minimum wage may close a number of businesses.
Not all businesses are equally profitable. A business just getting under way often loses money in the first year or two. I've read that about 40% of restaurants fail in their first year--but those are successful are often highly profitable. Part of what lures entrepreneurs into the restaurant business is the prospect of being one of the successes that makes money hand over fist.
To the extent that raising the minimum wage reduces the potential profitability of a business, or impairs the ability of a new business to start making money, raising the minimum wage may have the effect of discouraging new businesses, and especially those that do not have large amounts of capital or advertising behind them. I rather suspect that raising the minimum wage does more damage to an independent burger joint than a McDonald's franchise.
Another Valid Argument Against Minimum Wage
Minimum wage laws exist at both the federal and state level. The argument for a minimum wage is that the cost of living is so high that no one can live on market wages. I've previously pointed out that this is something of a straw man; only 15% of minimum wage workers are still making minimum wage three years later, and 63% had advanced beyond that level within a year. Nonetheless, even accepting for purposes of argument the validity of such a claim, pretty clearly, the cost of living in California isn't the cost of living in much of the rest of the United States. California is a hideously expensive place to live: housing and utilities are two examples.
A minimum wage that might allow a person to survive in a small town in Idaho would be completely inadequate in Los Angeles or San Francisco. Hence, different states have different minimum wage levels. If all of America had California's minimum wage law, large numbers of unskilled Americans could not be lawfully employed, because they simply aren't worth $7.50 per hour to most employers. This is the criticism that many economists have long made of minimum wage laws; they disproportionately injure the high school dropouts with no previous job experience, especially injuring poor black teenagers.
Setting minimum wages at a state level has many of the same problems. The cost of living varies pretty widely in Idaho--as it does in California. If you live somewhere like Lassen County, in northeastern California, the cost of housing is a fraction of what it is in the Bay Area. (Click here for a $75,000 3 bedroom, 2 bath house.) Similarly, Boise housing costs have risen significantly over the last five years--but many other parts of Idaho are still surprisingly cheap. In Heyburn, Idaho, for example, you can buy a very small house for $30,000. A statewide minimum wage law that provides what activists like to claim is a living wage for Boise is far higher than is required in Heyburn. Such a wage is almost certainly going to disemployed unskilled workers in those rural, inexpensive parts of Idaho.
The Democrats Are Going To Do Something Stupid And We Will All Benefit
Pelosi is all hot to raise the federal minimum wage, which is clearly a mistake, because it will cause an increase in unemployment among the unskilled. But guess what? It may turn out that the net effect will be good, at least over the next year or so, for a rather surprising reason. The reason the stock market got splattered today, and Treasury yields rose, is the employment report:Prices gave up gains and sold off after the Labor Department said nonfarm payrolls rose by 167,000 and the jobless rate remained at a very low 4.5%.
All else being equal, an increase in the federal minimum wage would cause some increase in unemployment at the bottom of the job market. But in a rapidly overheating job market, this might actually counteract some of this. However: if the wage inflation mentioned above was primarily taking place well above minimum wage levels, this may not help as much as it sounds.
MarketWatch had expected just 100,000 new jobs to be created in December.
In addition, average hourly earnings in December jumped by 8 cents or 0.5%, far ahead of the 0.3% rise expected by MarketWatch. Over the past year, average hourly earnings have increased 4.2%, more than double the inflation rate.
December jobs growth was strong in professional services, which added 50,000 workers in the month, while healthcare generated 31,000 jobs. There were 23,000 new food services jobs in the period.
I find it interesting that wages have grown twice as fast as the inflation rate (presumably the CPI-U number, which measures urban retail price inflation). It seems like any time Republicans do something that benefits workers--Democrats get the political benefit.
Is This Right?
My co-blogger Pete Drum pointed me to this news story about a gas station owner who was found shot to death, and includes this almost unbelievable claim:In South Carolina, clerks cannot be armed and could be charged if they shoot a suspect, even in self-defense. In North Carolina the decision whether to arm clerks is at the business’ discretion.
Does South Carolina really prohibit a gas station employee from being armed? Does it really prohibit use of deadly force in self-defense? This has to be a mistake. South Carolina isn't Britain.
UPDATE: A South Carolina reader quoted me the appropriate sections. Yup, the reporter is wrong.
No-Fault Divorce: Is It Time To Rethink This?
One legitimate criticism of efforts by conservatives to constitutionalize bans on same-sex marriage was that it wasn't homosexual marriage that was damaging the institution of marriage, but heterosexual divorce. I've been saying this for some time, and I seem to recall Bill Bennett making that same point a few years ago. (He came from a divorced home, and obviously knows well the consequences.)
Not surprisingly, the group that pushed through Virginia's constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage last year are now pursuing reform of Virginia's no-fault divorce law:RICHMOND, Jan. 4 -- After its victory in last year's fight over a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage in Virginia, the Family Foundation of Virginia announced Thursday that it will push to change the state's divorce laws to make it more difficult for parents to end their marriage.
I think a more accurate statement is that no-fault divorce does nothing to encourage couples with children to stay together.
The Family Foundation, which opposes abortion and promotes socially conservative values, said it will lobby the General Assembly this year to amend the state's long-standing no-fault divorce law, which essentially allows a husband or wife to terminate a marriage without cause.
The foundation is advocating "mutual consent divorce" for couples with children, which would require a husband and wife to agree to divorce before a marriage can be legally terminated, except in certain instances, such as abuse or cruelty. The proposed legislation would not affect childless couples.
"Right now, one spouse can unilaterally end [the marriage], and not only is their spouse unable to stop the divorce, their abandonment does not preclude them from having custody of their child," said Victoria Cobb, president of the Family Foundation. "When we send a message that one can up and leave their family and have no consequence, the Old Dominion is encouraging divorce."
I think the decision to aim this specifically at married couples with children is very wise. I'm not thrilled at how readily childless couples get divorced, but at least there's no third party involved. I'm sure that if any state repeals no-fault divorce, the ACLU will challenge the Constitutionality of such a law opn the grounds that it is imposing Christian values, and therefore it is a violation of the establishment clause. (And somehow, this was never noticed in the almost two centuries where our divorce laws were consciously modeled on Jesus's teachings about divorce.) By limiting such a change to marriages with children, you can make a strong case that the change is for a purely secular purpose--preventing emotional damage to children of divorce. And guess what? Not only does it look like a purely secular purpose--it is a purely secular purpose. My wife's experiences teaching at a Christian middle school in California--where of course, most of the kids were coming from divorced Christian homes--suggests what she herself experienced, growing up in a divorced secular home--divorce is terribly destructive.
Now, the change being proposed doesn't prevent divorce--but it does require both parties to agree to it. I know that some of you are probably saying, "Why would anyone want to stay married to a spouse who wants out?" My observation, as I have watched marriage after marriage fail, is that no-fault divorce means that a couple who are having a temporarily difficult time to break up very quickly. I often found myself wondering, "If it would take at least a year to get the process going, would at least some couples who are having problems perhaps spend a little more energy trying to resolve their differences?"
To put it in economic terms, the cost of getting divorced under no-fault laws is relatively low; the short-term benefit is substantial, and when you are hurting, it is easy to focus on the next three months--not how tremendously painful the situation is going to be for you and your kids over the next five to ten years. Raising the cost of divorce in money and time might well cause some couples to reconsider the decision. The husband who realizes that he can't just walk out on the kids, start afresh, and get remarried may stop and think a little longer about whether the sexual excitement of that blonde in Accounting is really worth all this. The wife who is frustrated with her husband's thoughtlessness might well decide that it is worth a bit more work trying to get him into a marriage counselor.
Let's not kid ourselves. Much of the divorce problem isn't just that we have made it too easy. Economic pressures are forcing too many husbands and wives to work too many hours. At the end of the day, two stressed out people are going to have a hard time relating to each other emotionally and sexually. That's a recipe for disaster.
The strong promotion of selfishness by the popular culture is also a part of the problem. Marriage, to work well, requires a willingness of both parties to sacrifice for the other. If neither party is willing to sacrifice, divorce will be rapid. If one party is doing all the sacrificing (usually the wife, in a depressingly common tradition), divorce may not happen as quickly--but if it is readily available, it will happen.
The one piece of bumper sticker thinking that I completely reject is the one that I used to see in Santa Cruz: "Divorce is better than murder." I find it completely unbelievable that a spouse who is psychologically prepared to murder a spouse is terribly common. A little under 9% of murders where the relationship of victim and offender are known are spousal, but this was only 729 murders in the entire U.S. in 2005. I find it hard to believe that even returning to the 1950s divorce laws would dramatically increase the spousal murder rate. And as much as divorce advocates might like to think otherwise, a fair number of these murders are probably cases like this or this, where the prospect of divorce seems to have precipitated the murder.
UPDATE: A reader points me to a recent decision of the South Carolina Supreme Court which illustrates how incredibly screwed up things have become. If there is a better example of someone being "at fault" in a divorce, what is it? The wife asked for a divorce after 32 years of marriage, shortly after their only daughter graduated from high school. Subsequent investigation, and the admission of the wife in court, showed that:
1. The wife had been carrying on an extramarital affair for more than 20 years.
2. The daughter turned out to be...not his. She was the biological daughter of the wife's extramarital affair. He never knew.
Over the period from 1970 to when the wife demanded a divorce, this couple (like many Americans) went from penniless laborers to having an estate worth more than one million dollars. The family court, because of the wife's adultery, because nearly all the assets of the marriage were the result of the husband's work (she stayed home from 1984 onward, raising the child and presumably sneaking off for afternoon delight with the child's father), and because the husband had paid the substantial costs of raising someone else's child, awarded 70% of the assets to the husband, and 30% to the wife.
The South Carolina Supreme Court decided that this wasn't fair--to the wife!
A case like this makes me want to bring back scarlet letters on clothes.
I Can't Really Applaud; Nor Can I Completely Reject This
Sometimes, people reach the right conclusion by entirely the wrong methods. You're glad that they got to a sensible result--but it is not confidence inspiring that their arrival at the right place was entirely dumb luck. This article reports on a group called The Compact, who decided to not buy anything new (except for food, underwear, essential toiletries) for a year:
I reject consumerism for its own sake. Yes, it's nice to have nice stuff. But there comes a certain point where buying stuff just to have it is not very satisfying. I have to have a car to get to work (less than I used to) and to run errands, and it might as well be a nice car--but you wouldn't believe the amount of gentle ribbing I used to get from co-workers in California for not buying a Ferrari. That would have been completely and utterly extravagant.
Similarly, I really, really liked the Jaguar X-type that I drove--but as it has turned out, the winter weather conditions really haven't made it all that necessary to have an all-wheel drive vehicle. Having a second nice car for three months of the year--even bought used for less than $20,000--is just extravagance.
Ditto for lots of things. You buy stuff that you need, and within reason, you buy stuff that you want--but the greatest joys in life tend not to be expensive in money, and most of the expensive toys turn out to be relatively short-lived joy. The stuff that really matters usually requires investments of time and energy more than money. The week between Christmas and New Years Day with family and friends was immensely joyful--and it wasn't hideously expensive.
What the members of The Compact have discovered, based on a complete misunderstanding of what causes poverty in the Third World, is that much of what drives materialism for its own sake is a very transitory pleasure that fails to address deeper emotional needs. A friend of mine calls this spending of money on stuff to satisfy emptiness "retail therapy." And it describes it well. You spend the money, you buy the stuff, and in a few weeks, you have a credit card bill, a gadget that you use a couple of hours a month--and that emptiness is still there.
My daughter had one of those "Aha!" moments recently, when she looked at something that she wanted--and then she converted the cost of it into the number of hours that she would have to work to pay for it, and realized, it wasn't worth it. That's one of the ways that I talk myself out of silly purchases. I ask myself, "How many weeks or months will have I have to work to pay for this? Is it really worth it?" The answer, often as not, is that it really isn't worth it.
Perhaps the saddest part of The Compact's experiment is that they had to go to extremes--buying nothing new (with a few necessary exceptions) for a year. How about trying something sensible--like only buying stuff that you need (and being careful to properly identify need), or if you are buying something that is a want, making sure that it isn't absurdly expensive, and that the pleasure that you get from having it is proportionate to the cost?
I recently changed cell phone service provider from Cingular to Verizon, largely because Verizon has service in Horseshoe Bend, and Cingular does not. I would not have paid one penny for a new cell phone, but the Motorola Razr was free, so I bought it. It is a pretty nice phone, but as I look at the all the stuff that is available for it, music downloads, ringtone downloads, and in just about every case, sold on a monthly subscription basis, it struck me that an awful lot of people (I suspect largely young people) are buying all these services to bring some joy to their lives. An application of the idea that stuff doesn't make you happy would probably improve the financial state of many of Verizon's customers.
The Criminal Will Just Take The Gun From You"
This is a recurring theme of gun control advocates, especially when telling women that they shouldn't have a gun for self-defense. I've blogged before examples where the criminal started out with the gun--and the victim disarmed the criminal. Here's another one, especially weird, from January 5, 2007 WFAA channel 8:
Interesting Paper About the Ninth Amendment
Regular readers of this blog will know that I am not particularly impressed with Professor Randy Barnett's argument that the Ninth Amendment was intended as an essentially libertarian defense of individual rights against the states. You can see one of my criticisms here.
Professor Kurt T. Lash of Loyola Law School in Los Angeles brought to my attention a recent paper of his concerning the meaning of the Ninth Amendment: "A Textual-Historical Theory of the Ninth Amendment" (January 2007). Loyola-LA Legal Studies Paper No. 2007-2. While I have no special expertise on the subject, I find his argument persuasive. The opening few pages of the paper may be heavy slogging for some of you, but he makes several strong points about the history which I know from my own research to be true:
1. James Madison, when introducing the Bill of Rights, wished to make it a limitation on the states as well, but he was ahead of his time on this point. Congress was not willing to go that far. As I have pointed out elsewhere, fear of governmental tyranny at the time was largely fear of the federal government. There was a widespread belief that the individual states were unlikely to abuse the rights of the people. The state constitutions, the protection of regular elections to correct abuses, and if worst came to worst, the ability to rise up in armed rebellion, would be sufficient. Congress showed no willingness to limit state authority with the rest of the Bill of Rights--why assume that the Ninth Amendment was the exception? Professor Lash makes this point well:If these rights are part of the “enumeration of certain rights,” then one way to read the full text of the Ninth would be as follows: “The enumeration of certain rights (including those enumerated against the states in Section 10) shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people (also against the states).” Although textually possible, historically such a reading it is highly implausible. First, we know that Madison’s attempt to add an amendment expressly binding the states failed.23 It seems most unlikely that an express restraint on state action would fail, but a text of unlimited restraint in the form of unenumerated rights against the states would receive super-majoritarian support. As Chief Justice John Marshall concluded in Barron v. Baltimore,24 the overall structure of the Constitution suggests that general language binds only the federal government, not the states.25 When one adds the fact that no one in the history of the Constitution has ever suggested such a reading of the Ninth, the odds that “the enumeration of certain rights” the Ninth referred to unenumerated rights against the states becomes vanishingly small. Put another way, conventional wisdom is correct in at least this regard: The Ninth does not involve rights enforceable against the states.
Lash argues that the alternate reading of the Ninth Amendment--that because some individual rights in Art. I, sec. 10 are protected against state interference (" No State shall... pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility"), this does not mean that either federal or state governments are free to violate other rights that are otherwise left to state authority:For example, one could read the text as follows: “The enumeration of certain rights (including those enumerated against the states in Section 10) shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people (in the several states).” According to this reading, the fact that some rights are enumerated against the states shall not be construced to disparage or deny other rights left under local (state) control.
I can see how this would certainly be true with respect to the federal government--that the Ninth Amendment could be read as protecting individual rights against federal abuse, but otherwise leaving the states free to pass whatever laws they wished, as long as they did not violate Art. I, sec. 10, or the state constitution. This is a position that is consistent with Barron v. Baltimore (1833). Whether Lash's reading of the Ninth Amendment is logical or not, what matters to an originalist is what was either intended (original intent) or how it was generally understood (original meaning)--and Lash claims that this was how it was understood:As we shall see, this reading tracks how courts and commentators read the Ninth in the early years following its adoption and for decades afterwards.
Lash also makes the point that "deny or disparage" means that the unenumerated rights should be given equivalent strength with the enumerated rights:It also forbids construing the fact of enumeration in a manner that disparages other rights. As distinguished from outright denial, disparagement suggests a lessening or diminishment of retained rights, as opposed to outright denial of such rights.32 The “Disparagement Clause” thus prevents unwarranted diminishment of retained rights because of their lack of enumeration. Theoretically, such disparagement might occur in different ways. For example, the fact of enumeration might be read to suggest a hierarchy of rights, with enumerated rights occupying a higher status than non-enumerated rights. The Disparagement Clause prevents this by declaring that the fact of enumeration shall not imply the superiority of enumeration. Additionally, disparagement might refer to treating non-enumerated rights as having a narrower scope than enumerated rights. To prevent this, the Ninth declares that the fact of enumeration shall not be construed to imply the lessor scope of non-enumerated rights.
There is considerable argument about whether the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment should be read as protecting only the enumerated individual rights of the Constitution, or should be read more broadly. Starting well before the New Deal, the Supreme Court has used the Due Process Clause to block all sorts of laws. In Lochner v. New York (1905), they used it to prevent New York State from regulating the hours and working conditions of bakers--which would seem to be a pretty clear-cut case, since "the right to make a contract" seems to match pretty well with Art. I, sec. 10's prohibition on states passing any "Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts." Other uses of the Due Process Clause were considerably broader: the unenumerated right of parents to direct their child's education in Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), and Meyer v. Nebraska (1923). The laws in both cases seem pretty repugnant to me, and I can't claim to have any sorrow about seeing either of these laws struck down, neither case made any effort to show historical evidence that this was understood as an unenumerated right.
These two views of disparagement (lower hierarchy and limited scope) are but different ways of expressing the same idea. For example, courts strongly disfavor content-based laws that restrict the enumerated freedom of speech in a public forum.33 In such situations, courts apply what is called “strict scrutiny” and demand that the government show that its law is the least restrictive means of accomplishing a compelling interest. Suppose, however, that a federal court refused to provide the same level of scrutiny for a non-enumerated right on the grounds that only enumerated rights should receive strict scrutiny. For the purpose of our analysis, it does not matter what degree of scrutiny is actually provided, only that the level of scrutiny is less for unenumerated rights. The simple fact that scrutiny is lower due to the fact of non-enumeration is enough to render this interpretation in violation of the Ninth Amendment. It lessens the “strength” of the retained right and renders it less immune to government regulation. Put another way, this approach disparages the unenumerated right.
Similarly, when the New Deal Supreme Court started to uphold economic regulatory measures that arguably violated the Art. I, sec. 10 limitation on the states, they simply refused to see that there was any real question on this. In West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish (1937):The constitutional provision invoked is the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment governing the states, as the due process clause invoked in theAdkins Case governed Congress. In each case the violation alleged by those attacking minimum wage regulation for women is deprivation of freedom of contract. What is this freedom? The Constitution does not speak of freedom of contract. It speaks of liberty and prohibits the deprivation of liberty without due process of law.
Huh? Art. I, sec. 10 is pretty clear:No State shall... pass any ... Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts....
You might argue that this isn't really what it seems--that regulatory measures that prohibit the making of certain contracts aren't the same as laws that "impair" contracts, but there is certainly a strong case that the state laws on this were violating an enumerated right.
On the other hand, cases such as Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) uses the 14th Amendment's Due Process Clause and a lot of unenumerated rights such as "privacy" that would have been laughed at by the Framers--at least in the way that this right has been used by the Supreme Court. Justice Goldberg's concurring opinion in Griswold relies on the Ninth Amendment, and makes the argument that it is a limitation against both federal and state power, and is not dependent on the Fourteenth Amendment for its application. And then he reverses himself, apparently arguing that the Ninth Amendment only tells us there are other rights:Rather, the Ninth Amendment shows a belief of the Constitution's authors that fundamental rights exist that are not expressly enumerated in the first eight amendments and an intent that the list of rights included there not be deemed exhaustive.
Instead of looking to historical evidence of what those unenumerated rights are:In determining which rights are fundamental, judges are not left at large to decide cases in light of their personal and private notions. Rather, they must look to the "traditions and [collective] conscience of our people" to determine whether a principle is "so rooted [there] . . . as to be ranked as fundamental."
Yet his test for whether a right is "fundamental" seems to be suspiciously loose, rather hard to distinguish form a judge's "personal and private notions."
Okay, I've run out of steam. Go read Lash's paper. You'll learn a lot.
Interesting Quirk About the Compact Fluorescents...
I replaced all the incandescents on the exterior lighting fixtures--and at first, none of them seem to work. Then one of them--made by nVision, came on--and one of them made by Philips came on. None of the rest. It appears that because these motion detector lighting fixtures have a dimming capability (run in dim mode until there's motion, then full power), only the nVision bulb actually gets enough juice to start up, and even that takes a while.
I may have to go back to incandescents, or use the nVision bulbs alone in the exterior fixtures.
My wife has also noticed that the CF bulbs start out relatively yellow and dim, and take a minute or so to reach full brightness. This seems to be temperature related; if I turn them off for a few seconds, they reach full brightness again almost immediately. This isn't surprising; they have mercury in them, and the mercury probably takes some time to reach full vaporization.
UPDATE: It turns out that four of the eight bulbs (purchased in two four-packs) do not work, either in the outside light fixtures, or the inside ones. I don't know for sure that all four dead ones came from the same pack, but it does seem rather likely, doesn't it? I called Philips, and they indicated that they would arrange for either replacement or refund shortly--and indicated that they may want to get the bad bulbs back, so that they can figure out why they were DOA.
I Feel So Much Better
I was feeling so guilty about my Corvette, which typically gets 21 to 23 miles per gallon, but after seeing this collection of comparable or less efficient Berkeley cars with utterly hypocritical bumper stickers on them, I don't feel so bad. The Chevy Blazer (8.7 mpg) with the "Be Green" bumper sticker is especially memorable. I mentioned during the 2004 election campaign that the "Kerry for President" bumper stickers were disproportionately on the Hummers. (Who else could afford his tax policies but the obscenely rich?)
Coming To Maryland
I'm busily arranging a series of events as part of the book tour for Armed America. I currently have events scheduled in the latter part of the week of February 12-20. I haven't made the reservations yet, because I want to get as many speaking opportunities in that period as I can--and I don't want to spend too many days wandering around Maryland without something to do. I do want to make those reservations in the next few days.
So: if you are in Maryland or adjacent states and would like me to come and speak about the history of gun culture in early America--let's talk. This is a chance for me to sell some books, for your organization to bring an absolutely fascinating speaker to your membership, and who knows? We're trying to get media coverage of some of these events, rather like what happened when Book TV came and covered the Columbia University Conservative Club's event at which I spoke on the day that Columbia was giving the Bancroft Prize to Michael Bellesiles. (They later revoked it--the first time that they have ever done that.) Make your group famous!
Some Items Just Aren't Worth Selling
I have a Pentax ME Super 35mm SLR with a 50mm and a 28mm lens, along with the cable shutter release and the manual. This is a really nice film camera, with many of the features of a professional photographer's camera in that day, and yet still quite compact. BGut go to eBay, and see what they are now fetching. Oh my, it's like trying to sell your buggy whip in 1920 Los Angeles. The 35mm SLR camera isn't antique enough for collectors to pay silly prices for them (yet), and yet they are sufficiently obsolete that it is hardly worth the effort to try and sell.
Compact Fluorescents Again
There are actually quite a few compact fluorescent floodlights available now, such as these 90 watt equivalents for both indoor and outdoor use. One reader pointed out an advantage that I had not thought about (except in reverse): not only are you saving money on electricity, but you are saving money on air conditioning, because the heat radiated by incandescent bulbs is no longer warming up your house.
In winter, of course, the situation is reversed; the incandescent bulbs are operating as little localized room heaters, and so I expect that in exchange for saving some money on electricity, I will be spending a bit more running the furnace.
I discovered LED floodlights as well, but I am a bit confused, because their stated illumination doesn't sound terribly bright. This one, for example, consumes three watts, and is purported to be equivalent to a 40 watt incandescent. However, the specification is 150 lumens. A 40 watt incandescent produces about 500 lumens. Of course, the incandescent bulb is producing it in 360 degrees; this floodlight produces it in 15 degrees. Perhaps the directed nature of a floodlight makes this equivalent. I will have to investigate.
I really like the idea of LED light fixtures--they have lifetimes far greater than even a compact fluorescent, and with lower energy use.
Ethical Problems of Choosing Sexual Orientation of an Unborn Child
I mentioned a few days ago an interesting news story about experiments to prevent homosexuality in sheep--and how some homosexual activists were furious because the same strategy might be useful in preventing homosexuality in people.
Red Ink: Texas raises an interesting ethical question:If a parent can prevent their unborn child from developing what can honestly be called a socially and psychologically debilitating attraction to the same gender, I think parents have a duty to do so. However, that means that if a child can be "straightened" in such a manner, it also means they can probably be made gay in a similar manner, and this frightens the hell out of me. Why? Because the same idiots that claim that this denies people the "right to be gay" may make a conscious decision to make their children gay in some kind of perverted political statement. That would be tantamount to child abuse. Let us be honest with ourselves. How many gay people, if they had the ability to chose, would honestly chose to live a life of social scorn and psychological rejection and trauma? Probably only a few who have drank deeply of the "if it feels good, do it" kool-aid. What kind of parent would intentionally cause their child to experience all of the angst, rejection, scorn, ridicule and abandonment that a person coming to grips with an altered sexuality have to deal with? It would take a person who would choose to further their own distorted political and social agenda over the health and wellbeing of their own child.
Sad to say, this isn't a thought experiment. There are people this perverse out there already, as this article from the Journal of Medical Ethics explains:A deaf lesbian couple in the US deliberately tried to create a deaf child. Sharon Duchesneau and Candy McCullough hoped their child, conceived with the help of a sperm donor, would be deaf like the rest of the family. Their daughter, five year old Jehanne, is also deaf and was conceived with the same donor. News of the couple choosing to have a deaf child has only been revealed with the birth of their son Gauvin.
To increase their chance of having a deaf baby the women sought a deaf sperm donor from a sperm bank but were told that congenital deafness is "precisely the sort of condition" that disqualifies would-be donors. Rather than dismiss the idea they found their own sperm donor by asking a deaf friend who comes from a family with five generations of deafness.
The women, both professionals in the mental health field, insist that they would still love their child if it could hear: "A hearing baby would be a blessing. A deaf baby would be a special blessing".
Like many others in the deaf community, the couple don’t view deafness as a disability. They see deafness as a cultural identity and the sophisticated sign language that enables them to communicate fully with other signers as the defining and unifying feature of their culture.
Both women were born deaf and want their children to share their culture. They each suffered from being raised to function primarily in the hearing world. Ms Duchesneau experienced "numbing isolation" at school without the benefit of sign language or exposure to other deaf people. She grew up feeling that she "was flawed". Ms McCullough, the child of deaf parents, was brought up using sign language and attended a hearing high school with an interpreter. She also suffered isolation: "No teenage conversation can survive the intrusion of third-party interpretation".
Michael Crichton's Next
This was a Christmas gift from my daughter Hilary, who knows that I am a fan of Crichton's work. Next has many of the strengths and weaknesses of other Crichton novels. Regular readers of my blog will not be surprised to find that I am again disappointed at the weakness of characterization. Crichton can do it; read Prey. I think he's just too focused on the big ideas to spend the time on breathing life into these characters--and that big ideas are Crichton's strength.
To Crichton's credit, Next is far less didactic than State of Fear (which I reviewed here). There aren't any long speeches about the dangers of genetic engineering. I suppose that if you were reading this strictly as a novel, and especially if you weren't very thoughtful about it, you might not even get his point about the emerging trends of genetic engineering. It is clear that he regards the transgenic Island of Dr. Moreau future much as I do--with some alarm and considerable revulsion. But he isn't banging you about the head with his point. He even manages to create a rather comic situation where the parrot with human intelligence and the chimp/human hybrid come together to save the day.
Where Crichton is a bit more...unsubtle, let's say, is with respect to his interest in seeing the law changed concerning the rights of humans to maintain some control over their genetic material being used for profit by others. He also makes in a more subtle and interesting way some useful points about the difficulty of separating environment from genetics in determining behavior. I find it fascinating that Crichton's bibliography makes the point that G.K. Chesterton's early twentieth century criticisms of the emerging science of eugenics--and the dangers of where it might lead--were spot on:Yet Chesterton was right, and the consensus of scientists, political leaders, and the intelligentsia was wrong. Chesterton lived to see the horrors of Nazi Germany. This book is worth reading because, in retrospect, it is clear that Chesterton's arguments were perfectly sensible and deserving of an answer, and yet he was simply shouted down.... Some things never change--including, unfortunately, the gullibility of press and public. We human beings don't like to look back at our past mistakes. But we should.
Next is more readable, and more of a page turner than State of Fear.
Energy Saving
I bought a bunch of 100 watt equivalent compact fluorescent (CF) bulbs the other day, and I am now on an energy saving campaign with them. What's the attraction?
1. Remember that a 100 watt CF bulb consumes only 23 watts of electricity, so anytime you replace a 100 watt incandescent, you are saving 77 watts. This isn't a lot, unless you have a light on all the time. At something under six cents per kilowatt-hour (you Californians can just turn green with envy), electricity costs aren't much of an argument for replacing a working incandescent. Compared to a 100 watt incandescent, these save a bit under half a cent per hour--so the $2 purchase price per bulb will take almost 433 continuous hours of operation to recoup. Still, these CF bulbs have a nine year warranty on them--and if they last that long (and I can still find the receipt proving when I bought them if they fail early), I expect this is a net gain.
2. A lot of light fixtures have wattage limits on them. Some of our overheads, for example, are limited to 240 watts. Why? Primarily because of heat. Incandescents are very inefficient, typically producing about 90% of their energy as heat, not light. If you replace three 80 watt incandescent bulbs in such a fixture with three 100 watt equivalent CF bulbs, you get 25% more light--and use only 29% of the electricity. This means that you get more light with less heat, and with less draw on the wiring. (I doubt that current draw plays much of a part in determining the maximum wattage of the fixtures.)
We replaced five 65 watt bulbs in the light bar above the sink in the master bathroom with five of these 100 watt equivalent CFs--and it is obvious how much brighter the bathroom is. My wife describes it as being like putting on makeup in direct sunlight. (Not quite--the eye and brain do some amazing things to adjust apparent brightness--but it is obviously brighter in there.) However: we have replaced a 325 watt draw with a 115 watt draw.
3. A few places don't work. My wife has a very stylish desk lamp that adjusts brightness in response to finger touch on the outside. Unlike an incandescent bulb, there's a minimal current required for a compact fluorescent, and even the three way compact fluorescents are really just two brightness settings. We may have to stay with an incandescent for that fixture.
4. One place that works--but not as well as I had expected--is the overhead reading lights in the master bedroom. We have these two floodlights above the bed, with wall switches such that you can turn on a reading light for either side. I have never found the 65 watt flood lamps in these fixtures quite bright enough for reading in bed, so I have usually turned them both on. When I replaced one with a 100 watt equivalent CF, it was slightly brighter than the floodlight--but not dramatically brighter. I think you can see the difference in this picture. (Bad focus is because I wasn't targeting the right objects.)
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The problem is that the floodlight has a reflective surface everywhere but the front of the bulb, so all light is reflected in one direction. A CF doesn't have that capability, so much of the light is wasted in the floodlight fixture. I'm thinking that a reflective surface on the inside of the fixture (such as aluminum foil) might redirect more of the light downward. (Yeah, yeah, no jokes about recycling it from the inside of my hat.)
Still, even though the improvement in illumination isn't dramatic, it is a bit brighter, and I'm using 23 watts per light, instead of 65 watts per light. This is a net gain--maybe even more of one, once I get a reflector up there in the fixture.
There are a few other places that are going to get the CF treatment next. The exterior house lights, for example, because they are on motion detectors, may run for several hours a night. That's an obvious candidate for CF bulbs, especially because there are about eight or nine of these around the house, and they are currently using 60 watt incandescent bulbs. Replacing these with CFs would give almost twice the light, and consume less than half the power. My only concern is that there seems to be two brightness settings these fixtures use, and the fluorescents may only operate at the higher brightness.
There are some floodlights in the soffit of the front porch, and these are also obvious candidates for replacement. Without getting out a ladder, I can't tell what wattage these are. If they are 65 watts, I can replace them with 100 watt equivalent CFs and end up saving some money with a slight improvement in light. If they are 100 watt floodlights, I might have to use a 150 watt CF, or figure out the reflector solution to direct more of the CF's light downward.
UPDATE: It turns out that there are CF flood lamps out there.
Looking For Some Unique Ceramics?
My nephew in the Portland area is a ceramic artist. Do you want a gift to give that you can be sure that the recipient doesn't already have? Well, try here.
Our Wild Neighbors
Up where we live, I really need to keep the telephoto lens on the Pentax all the time. The other morning, I saw something pass by the back door--about fifteen feet from the glass. By the time I grabbed the camera and ran outside, he was way up the hill--and not surprisingly, the 55mm lens just didn't do much of a job, so I had to crop these pictures once I downloaded them.
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We also saw what Rhonda thinks was a golden eagle as we walked down to the mail box a couple of days ago. Yesterday, about five miles north of Horseshoe Bend on Idaho 55, we saw a bald eagle. Unfortunately, I only had the little HP camera, and the bald eagle was too far away. Another photographer (with a Canon sporting a dangerously large telephoto lens) said that it was often nested in that location. We may go back with the Pentax and the telephoto lens, and make another try.
Photovoltaic Panel Results
Okay, Radio Shack had the right fuse for my multimeter, and I was able to measure not just voltage, but also amperage. I gave it a load to feed--recharging a 12 volt battery.
We had some very high, very thin cloud cover, but it wasn't much of an obstacle to the sun. By 9:10 AM, the panel was producing 14.1 volts and 325 milliamps. By 9:40 AM, it was up to 352 milliamps (the advertised output). By 10:30 AM, it was around 420 milliamps. This is very good news! However, the clouds came in during the afternoon, and by 1:50 PM, we were down to 71 milliamps. (I didn't measure the voltage before I brought everything in.)
From how much power this panel was producing at 9:40 AM, I am going to guess that on a clear day, in winter, I can count on at least five hours (and maybe six hours) of full output--with perhaps another hour producing somewhat less than full power.
You can buy a 160 watt panel for $799. If I get the equivalent of six hours full output (figure five hours full output plus another couple of hours average 50% of full output) that's .960 kilowatt-hours per day on sunny winter days. We do get cloud cover, rain, and snow falling in winter, but perhaps half the time, so .960 kilowatt-hours per day times 45 days gives 43.2 kilowatt-hours per winter. In summer, I would expect at least twelve hours full output equivalent per day, and perhaps 95% sunny days, or 164.16 kilowatt-hours per summer. Spring and fall will probably be about half-way between these, so perhaps 103.68 kilowatt-hours for each of these seasons. (I will have to do some measurements on these to be sure that I have these guesses right.)
Annually, this comes to 414.72 kilowatt-hours from a 160 watt panel. Electricity costs a bit under six cents a kilowatt-hour from Idaho Power (assuming that the environmentalists don't get their way and destroy some of the existing hydroelectric power plants). That means the panel produces $24.88 worth of electricity per year. (Actually, a bit less, because the conversion from DC to AC through an inverter isn't perfectly efficient.) This means about 32 years to pay for the panel. The inverter and grid-tie equipment (and the electrician who installs it) costs something, but these are a one time cost, whether you have one panel, or one hundred.
This still doesn't make a great deal of sense, unless I can substantially reduce the cost of the panels. At roughly $5/watt produced, solar just isn't going to make economic sense. At $1/watt produced, solar panels could pay for themselves in about eight years--and that would make sense. At $2/watt, it would be worth seriously considering.
Great Stories Aren't Necessarily Great History
Unfortunately, there are certain myths that become so politically attractive that the lack of evidence for them really doesn't matter. There has been a very interesting claim made for some years now to the effect that abolitionists and slaves encoded certain information about escape routes to the North in quilts. I remember in late 2005 when the H-SLAVERY list, a professional historians of slavery mailing list, had a discussion of this very satisfying, but completely unsupported myth, in response to a query from a professor who had a student doing a master's thesis about it. There was general agreement that no matter how satisfying this myth was, there wasn't really any evidence for it.
Now, it appears, that the student didn't let this get in the way of his master's thesis:According to Ransaw (thesis, p.3), Conley's query was the result of an early thesis committee meeting which caused Ransaw to revise the "purpose" of his project. Remarkably, less than six weeks after the H-Slavery exchange, Ransaw’s thesis was not only complete but had been accepted by the committee. In it Ransaw unquestioningly embraces the existence of a "Quilt Code", and while admitting he has never seen the "authenticated first hand account" Kemp claims to have, he simply takes her word it exists.
While it isn't terribly relevant to the truth or falsity of the thesis, these comments about Ransaw's teaching style suggest some confusion about what is part of a college instructor's duties:
Throughout his 80-page document, Ransaw repeatedly gets his principals' and sources' names and professional standing so wrong they cannot be excused as typographical errors. He refers to Hidden in Plain View, "one of [his] most heavily used sources" (thesis, p.13), as "Hidden in Plain Sight". His illustrations for several "Code" designs bear no relation to the actual quilt blocks they are said to depict. He lifts a phrase verbatim from my website and credits it to another individual (thesis, p.12).
Disorganization and reading comprehension problems might be blamed for these inaccuracies. But others are harder to explain. Ransaw (p.10-14) describes the H-Slavery response to Conley's request as a heated but uninformative "debate" about the Code’s existence which culminated in "one fruitful posting" suggesting Ransaw visit the "Quilt Code museum". This is false. Although Ransaw's account certainly has more dramatic effect, it completely reverses the chronology. H-Slavery archives show the suggestion to visit Kemp's "museum" is what prompted more than two dozen responses from 15 individuals arguing that the "Quilt Code" is a myth. Apparently Ransaw decided these were neither persuasive nor "fruitful."
Ransaw’s thesis is so filled with basic factual inaccuracies concerning quilt history and Underground Railroad history that the informed reader is left wondering whether he actually read any of the sources he cites before claiming they support his conclusions But in claiming support for the "Code," he goes beyond simple error into outright falsehood.
* He writes that "reinforcing a theme of Freemasonry in" his thesis, I "mentioned celebrated quilter Harriet Powers was a member of the same female secret society my grandmother was in, the Freemason Eastern Stars". This is false. I have said exactly the reverse - that Dobard and Wahlman's claims of a Powers/Eastern Star connection are without foundation and appear to result from ignorance about Freemasonry.
* He writes that I "referred to a primary source Underground Railroad text code, the Lawn Jockey Code (L. Fellner, personal communication, October 25, 2005)" and go on to describe the story as an "authenticated account". This is false. Ransaw first contacted me October 30. We never discussed the jockey story he recounts - which, rather than being "authenticated' or supporting the existence of a "Quilt Code," is itself a myth.
How does such flagrant misrepresentation occur? Are poor researching, reading comprehension, or writing skills to blame? Does critical analysis succumb to wishful thinking? Or, when faced with no evidence supporting their belief in a "Quilt Code," will proponents resort to deliberate fabrication?poor teacher and his mind is on hitting on girls, including students
Biological Origins of Homosexuality: Good News, Bad News
This seems to be one of those good news, bad news stories--and which part is which will vary depending on how you feel about homosexuality. The good news: scientists are investigating the possible biological origins of homosexuality in sheep. The bad news (at least for gay activists):SCIENTISTS are conducting experiments to change the sexuality of “gay” sheep in a programme that critics fear could pave the way for breeding out homosexuality in humans.
In some circles, the biological origins of homosexuality are so widely assumed that to even question it now is a form of heresy.
The technique being developed by American researchers adjusts the hormonal balance in the brains of homosexual rams so that they are more inclined to mate with ewes.
It raises the prospect that pregnant women could one day be offered a treatment to reduce or eliminate the chance that their offspring will be homosexual. Experts say that, in theory, the “straightening” procedure on humans could be as simple as a hormone supplement for mothers-to-be, worn on the skin like an anti-smoking nicotine patch.
The research, at Oregon State University in the city of Corvallis and at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, has caused an outcry. Martina Navratilova, the lesbian tennis player who won Wimbledon nine times, and scientists and gay rights campaigners in Britain have called for the project to be abandoned.
Navratilova defended the “right” of sheep to be gay. She said: “How can it be that in the year 2006 a major university would host such homophobic and cruel experiments?” She said gay men and lesbians would be “deeply offended” by the social implications of the tests.
Oddly enough, some homosexual activists deny that there is anything to this--they insist that they chose their sexuality, apparently out of concern that their abnormality might be taken as a defect. More than once, however, I have been told by homosexuals, "Why would anyone choose to be homosexual?" Until very recently, it would have been a "choice" that led mostly to difficulties, and even today, with a fiercely supportive pro-gay popular culture, I get the impression that many homosexuals would have been just as happy to be straight.
Regular readers of my blog know that I am very skeptical of the biological origin claim, at least as an explanation for all homosexuality. (Here is one posting that expresses my skepticism of this claim; and here is a posting pointing to evidence suggesting a possible environmental cause.)
Still, a study like this raises interesting questions.
1. Is sheep homosexuality equivalent to human sexuality? I notice that the article discusses male sheep homosexuality--but not female sheep homosexuality. Perhaps what we are seeing in sheep is more about dominance than sexuality?
2. Is sheep homosexuality "natural" or the result of our selective breeding of sheep? I put "natural" in quotes because I've never found the claim that homosexuality is "unnatural" very persuasive. Wearing clothes, living in cities, building computers, refraining from rape, and using antibiotics are all "unnatural" behaviors, and thank you, I would rather be unnatural.
3. If sheep homosexuality is similar in purpose to human homosexuality, does it have the same origin? Look at all the diseases that we call "cancer": they have some things in common, but they are actually different diseases.
4. If prebirth hormone therapy reduces the chances of a child being born gay, why would homosexual activists object? I can see why they might object to a eugenics program that prevented living homosexuals fromm reproducing. I think almost every American outside of Rev. Fred Phelps and his extended family would also be concerned about such a dangerous precedent. (The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld similar eugenics programs in the past, when aimed at the mentally deficient.) But what objection would someone living today have to preventing a child from being born with the "homosexual preference"? Is this just a matter of maintaining their political movement's strength?
5. Even accepting that homosexual activists might have some complaints about a program to prevent the birth of the next generation of homosexuals, wouldn't blocking such a program being intefering with a woman's right to choose? I mean, if she can choose to abort because it is inconvenient, why couldn't she choose to prevent her child from growing up with homosexual preferences?
A Little Wariness of Government Out of Control Is Always Good
But when the purveyors of "the government has enormous concentration camps already built" make claims like this:There over 800 prison camps in the United States, all fully operational and ready to receive prisoners. They are all staffed and even surrounded by full-time guards, but they are all empty. These camps are to be operated by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) should Martial Law need to be implemented in the United States and all it would take is a presidential signature on a proclamation and the attorney general's signature on a warrant to which a list of names is attached....
Well, my first question is: where are the satellite photographs of such a massive facility? A prison like San Quentin in California--which was pretty big--has a capacity of less than 6000 prisoners. Even double or triple celling prisoners wouldn't boost it above 18,000. And San Quentin occupies a lot of land. A prison that could hold more than one hundred times than many? Excuse me, but I need a bit more than a bare claim to buy this.
Currently, the largest of these facilities is just outside of Fairbanks, Alaska. The Alaskan facility is a massive mental health facility and can hold approximately 2 million people.
What amazes me is how much the paranoid "blue helmeted UN troops are flying black helicopters" right-wingers have in common with the paranoid "BusHitler is going to lock up every woman who has ever had an abortion" left-wingers. I can't immediately tell from the paranoid website above which group put this together (although I suspect left-wingers)--craziness transcends politics.
