I just heard the worst advertisement ever from the station coming out of Redstone. It was a woman talking about this tract of land that used to have a lake where people would boat. She also talked about the houses that were being built there and how it was a nice neighborhood. They tore it down to build a golf course. This was an ad for the golf course. Talk about making potential consumers feel guilty about taking advantage of your product.

Clancy and I have been pondering getting satellite radio for some time now. We figured it was something that we would do when we relocated to rural America. We figured that there would not be many radio stations available and we were right. There are three from Callie proper and there seem to be a couple more piped in from elsewhere (or maybe the signal just carries that far). The thing is, by virtue of the fact that we live in a small town, it doesn’t take long to drive anywhere so we don’t spend much time in our cars and so the ROI for satellite radio is minimal. But back when I was driving around a lot, I had time to listen to my favorite CDs and audiobooks and therefore didn’t have a whole lot of need for the radio. So as intrigued as I am about the concept of satellite radio, I am having difficulty coming up with scenarios in which I would use it.

We keep talking about getting a new (or used) car, but we keep kicking the can down the road. We were going to get it in the month of August, because that’s supposed to be a good month to buy a car, but I’ll be danged if my Escort has not been running unusually well lately. We’re supposed to be getting Clancy’s sign-on bonus soon and so we’ll have the money, but even if we have the money we seem so reluctant to spend it. Of course, if we’re not careful we’re going to set ourselves up for having to get a car because the Escort breaks down. We don’t want to do that, either, because we want the flexibility to seek out the best deal. But inertia is really getting the better of us.

Somebody linked to the Trumanverse map from Facebook. Unfortunately, I can’t find out who or where because the referring URL is a blasted warning page.

I liked the the Wackodoodle Flight Attendant story better when the rude passenger was the villain. Stupid truth. Always getting in the way of a better story. Oddly enough, next Linkluster is going to have a post about JetBlue flight attendants. I plucked the link prior to this whole incident.

The weather in Callie has been particularly moody as of late. It can’t decide whether it wants to shine or rain and switches back and forth. I’ll take the clouds, though.

I may have commented on this before, but has anyone else noticed how hold novels seem to stand the test of time better than old movies do? Not that classic movies aren’t often really good. There are things I like about them better than I like current movies. But it feels like when I am watching Casablanca or some other old film that while I can appreciate the artistry and understand why it’s become a classic, it feels like I am grading it on a curve of some sort. Meanwhile, I’ve read (or listened to) a few old classic novels (Raymond Chandler, to be precise, and I don’t feel like I am grading it on any kind of curve when I say that I like it.

“My wife is a doctor” in response to being asked what my wife does for a living should not be construed as an invitation to hear everything you believe is wrong with the American health care system.

Brushing your teeth early to prevent yourself from eating later really backfires when you start to get really hungry.

I can’t remember the last time I got out of bed in the morning and was able to wake up gradually rather than make a beeline to the restroom.

East St. Louis is of the few cities city in the US that can make Detroit look decent by comparison. On a scale from 1-100, East Illinois scores a 3 on crime. Detroit is a 4 and Memphis is 2, though violent crime in East St. Louis surpasses that in Memphis and every other city I can find with over 17 violent crimes per 1,000 residents. I read not long ago the town is cutting its police force by one third:

“I want our citizens to know we have some of the bravest police officers and firefighters in the country,” Parks said. “But we don’t have the money to pay them. We have to have fiscal responsibility.”

City officials wanted police and fire unions to accept a furlough program that would have required employees to take two unpaid days in each twice monthly pay period. If accepted, emergency responders would have seen a pay cut of about 20 percent for the rest of the year.

Parks said the two sides couldn’t reach an agreement. On Friday, he stared at a standing-room only crowd and told his emergency response chiefs words they didn’t want to hear: “Tell your workers to start packing their things.”

The sheriff’s department does not appear willing to step in. It’s likely that Illinois has budget problems of its own.

My introduction to East St. Louis was when I discovered that it was the inspiration behind Hub City, home of DC’s The Question for a time. The picture it painted was quite bleak. At the end of the series, there’s nothing really left for the mayor to govern as The Question and a few remaining citizens fly out by helicopter, defeated. There is a point earlier in the series where the Governor’s office refuses to render aid to the city as it can’t save a city from itself. The scene was supposed to make them heartless and evil (and they were crass about it, if I recall), but it was hard to argue with.

It brings to mind the much bigger question of what, if anything, we can do about places like Detroit or East St. Louis. Places that exist, have buildings already built, but are for various reasons beyond dysfunction. Of course, at the rate we’re going, we may soon be asking ourselves that question about entire states. It would be nice if places came with a Start Over button.

The Associated Press reports that sexting-extortion is on the rise:

INDIANAPOLIS - The nightmare began with a party: three teenage girls with a webcam, visiting an Internet chatroom and yielding to requests to flash their breasts. A week later, one of the girls, a 17-year-old from Indiana, started getting threatening e-mails.

A stranger said he had captured her image on the webcam and would post the pictures to her MySpace friends unless she posed for more explicit pictures and videos for him. On at least two occasions, the teen did what her blackmailer demanded. Finally, police and federal authorities became involved and indicted a 19-year-old Maryland man in June on charges of sexual exploitation.

Federal prosecutors and child safety advocates say they’re seeing an upswing in such cases of online sexual extortion. They say teens who text nude cell phone photos of themselves or show off their bodies on the Internet are being contacted by pornographers who threaten to expose their behavior to friends and family unless they pose for more explicit porn, creating a vicious cycle of exploitation.

A lot of bloggers have been pointing out the absurdity of law enforcement for going after 15 year old girls who take pictures of themselves or the boys that they send the pictures to. In one case, though I can’t find a link, they prosecuted a boy who had deleted the picture from his phone on the basis that they knew he had it at one point. But it brings to light some rather interesting questions: how do you deal with some of this stuff?

Prosecuting girls for taking pictures of themselves and even sending them around, absent some sort of complaint on the part of who she is sending it to, is indeed quite absurd. And though less absurd it doesn’t seem particularly fair to go after the boys that they send them to if they’re not passing it on. And in some cases even when they are passing it on, they may be guilty of some unsavory behavior but they’re not really comparable to those aiding and abetting an industry devoted to exploiting young girls. I would just shrug it off to prosecutorial discretion (if the girl or guy is not making money off of it or doing it maliciously, treat them different from someone in the industry or doing what the above guy is doing), but when it comes to sex crimes involving minors I am not sure how much faith in prosecutors I have. Yet the distinctions between people with malicious intent and those that have a picture of the girlfriend they’ve seen nude with regularity is something difficult to codify into law.

For those of you that have tired of country music…

Counting Crows’ Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby. Those of you that are CC fans will have heard it and maybe some others. But if you like some of what you’ve heard, you should give it a listen. It’s one of their best, in my opinion. More quotable lines per verse than any song I can think of.

The song was actually written with regard to actress Monica Potter, whom leadman Adam Duritz is suggested to have become infatuated with when he saw her in a movie. I wish the video could have actually featured Potter, but I suspect Mr. Potter would have objected. Potter divorced, but has remarried (in the process leaving the TV show Boston Legal, which is really the only thing I know her from). So Duritz missed his chance.

Tony Pierce suspects that this sort of thing happens all across the country, but I’m really not sure it does. I think that most of the time, crosswalks like this either have (a) a lot less traffic or (b) pedestrian lights. In fact, when I first saw the video I was outraged because I thought that the undercover cop was ignoring the crosswalk lights as part of a ticket-making machine. But then when they said (or I observed, I can’t remember which happened first) that there were no lights it became something of a muddier issue. If they’re not going to put lights up there because it’s not a good and proper intersection, I suppose they’re doing what needs to be done. Pedestrians do have the right of way and it’s not an unimportant rule for people to abide by. I have some sympathy for that car that was passing while the cop was behind that truck (the driver might could have seen him, but probably didn’t), but generally speaking the people that got tickets probably deserved them. It’s too much to ask pedestrians to wait for an opening when there likely is none.

Of course, I have to wonder how much of an imposition it is to scotch the sidewalk and ask pedestrians to walk to the nearest actual intersection. It’s hard to tell from the video where that might be. If it’s somewhere close, it really might be better to force pedestrians over rather than put them in harm’s way. Otherwise, they need to stick a light in there. There are lots of crosswalks without lights, of course, but by and large where I have seen them have been places where there’s not the regular flow of traffic.

One other thing worth noting is that as long as they are making money off of this current arrangement, that kind of provides a disincentive for them to actually rectify the situation, doesn’t it? What are a few pedestrian accidents compared to 60 tickets in a single day?

I am typing this from my laptop at a regional chain in Redstone, Arapaho. The fact that I am typing from this computer is a miracle.

Redstone is not a particularly attractive city. It’s a former mining town that’s past its prime. Its population hit its peak almost a century ago. Jobs are scarce, high-tech jobs non-existence, and its reputation is as the armpit of Arapaho.

But despite all of this, one thing it does have going for it is a relatively low crime rate. Lower than any city I have ever lived in, in fact, including Deseret. And not by a small margin. Its crime rate is lower than that of the state as a whole. I knew these statistics, but it just doesn’t feel it when you’re walking around town. And today, when my laptop went missing, and I determined that I had left it on a bench in a questionable part of town, there was no doubt in my mind that some Redstonian had hit the paydirt. But when I arrived… it was still sitting there. This is good news not just because I didn’t lose a $500 laptop, but today of all days the laptop bag had in it my passport and a checkbook. These are not things that I ordinarily carry with me, but today of all days I did.

Despite all I mention above about it being a town past its prime, I am actually partial to the place. I can’t really explain why. The next nearest city, Alexandria, is much more well-regarded. Though it’s twice the distance away, people will often go to Alexandria to do their shopping and whatnot. But perhaps because time has passed it by, Redstone has a uniqueness about it. Sure, there’s a Walmart (one of the reasons I come here), but on any given day you drive by decommissioned mining rigs, a huge statue of the Virgin Mary, and mountains, mountains, mountains (even the mined ones are interesting, if a tad unsightly.

It reminds me of all I liked about Fort Beck, where I lived in Deseret, in comparison to Mocum, where I worked. Mocum had the whole “Mormon town” thing that was problematic to a Gentile like me, but in addition to that and despite the better amenities, the better economy, the more educated population, and a number of other factors I never warmed to it the same way I warmed to the usually disdained Fort Beck. Fort Beck and Redstone are both disdained by their respective states, but in my view both had more personality than the places populated with people disdaining them.

Of course, I say all this and if I had to decide on where to live between Redstone and Alexandria, there’s a pretty good chance I would live in Alexandria simply because of the increased opportunities, increased education, and better amenities. But even if Alexandria were not further away, I think I would still take my bi-weekly escape from Callie to Redstone.

But right now I am typing this on the laptop that has declared Redstone the greatest city on earth.

UPDATE: Some stats: Redstone has 2 violent crimes per 1,000 residents per year and 35 property crimes. The towns where I lived and worked in Deseret had almost 3 and over 40. The city where I lived in Estacado had over 5 and over 60. In Cascadia where I lived it was over 10 and over 80. For reference sake, Detroit is 16.7 and 60.2 and Memphis 15.5 and 84.5. Notably, unemployment is higher and median family income is lower in Redstone than where I lived in Deseret, Estacado, or Cascadia.

What’s a little funny about this is that these low crime stats are decidedly inconvenient for me. One of the things I decided about Redstone is that it would make an ideal setting for a series of crime novels that I have been thinking up for the past few years. Unfortunately, the idea requires a location with a significant crime problem. I only looked up Redstone’s stats in the first place to confirm what I had suspected, that they did have a crime problem relative to other towns in the region, only to discover that it’s actually the safest place I have ever lived. Actually, I guess I can’t say that because I don’t live in Redstone but rather in a nearby town. However, Redstone actually has better crime stats than Callie, so I guess it’s safer than any place I have lived. How bloody inconvenient is that?!

Remember Cash-4-Clunkers? The federal government program aimed at assisting people in buying new cars if they get rid of older, fuel-inefficient old ones? Frankly, I’m not a fan of it. I’m not a fan of taking anything functional and just destroying it. I have a room full of old, useless, but functional computers to prove it. However, when the argument was made that C4C was pricing entry-level car buyers out of the market, I disagreed.

And now I am afraid that the C4C-is-making-cars-more-expensive argument has reared its little head again and once again I must resist. This time it relates to an Edmunds.com analysis that used car prices have gone up significantly. It’s no surprise that some people would look for the most convenient government policy to blame. And there is an interesting corellation. The vehicles in which used car prices have jumped the most are mid-sized SUV’s and minivans. Unlike “college cars” (as I perceive them, though Web disagreed), these are the kinds of cars that C4C took off the road. And back in my original post I actually conceded that there could be some adverse effects here.

However, we have to recognize that there are other factors at play here. Indeed, according to Edmunds (who the previous article is citing), the price jump for late-model used cars (3 years old) is actually double that of used cars as a whole. This is important because C4C took old cars off the road. So C4C simply cannot be the culprit for the spike in three year old cars. If it were driven (no pun intended) by the initiative, ten you would see the largest increase on not only the models C4C targeted, but the age range as well. We’re not seeing that.

So what is happening? A couple of things that I believe swamp the effect of inventory reduction through Cash for Clunkers, most of which involves changes in behavior related to the general state of the economy. Obviously, the new cars of today are not magically more valuable than they were last year (I mean, they cost little more to build). So it has to be a supply and demand issue, which makes the tendency to target a government program that reduced supply attractive. Edmunds suggests as a reason a desire on the part of consumers to save money, which makes sense to me. The current economy lends itself to a degree of thriftiness. This has an affect on both supply and demand as the supply goes down as people put off buying a new car and demand as people choose to buy lightly used cars rather than new ones. Cash for Clunkers took 700,000 cars off the market. Last year alone (despite C4C) five million fewer new cars were sold. Fewer new cars, more people buying used cars and others not selling the used car they have.

The fact that it’s three year old cars in particular that strikes me as being particularly significant. There is a (wrongheaded) theory that some people have that it is sensible to buy new cars and replace them every three years. Whether one prefers new cars or used cars, it is virtually impossible for me to comprehend how this possibly “makes sense” unless you have either a lot of money or zero patience for car repairs. Not that there’s anything wrong with that! But it’s definitely a luxury. And it’s something easy to cut when the market starts heading south. I suspect a lot of three-year-and-out people are thinking that fourth and fifth year might not be a bad idea.

I point this out not so much to defend that awful initiative. I can really barely express how stupid I thought the idea was and I actually find it emblematic of the worst sort of opportunistic chicken-in-every pot politics. Rather, I point these possibilities out as a point of optimism. One of the things that has gotten this country in so much trouble is (whether looking at household budgets or the ones coming out of congress) overspending on non-necessities in relation to our income. And if our collective income takes a dive or seems uncertain, the buying and selling of three year old cars seems like an outstanding place to start.

Pacific 10/12 Conference (Pac-10) - The Pac-10 recently invited both Utah and Colorado into their conference, making twelve. As with the Big Ten, this presents logistical problems when it comes to dividing the schools. Their three options are north-south, east-west (more-or-less), or divisions devoid of geography. The N/S would have the Washington and Oregon schools combining with the two newbies for one division and the California/Arizona schools in another. This is exactly what the California schools want, but the other schools want to be able to play in recruit-rich California as often as possible and would be dead-set against being in a division that won’t have them playing in California every year and will have them playing in southern California only 2 of every 6 years. An east-west division would put the socal schools in a division with the Arizona schools and the newbies. The California schools won’t like that because they want to all play one another every year.

The last option is to go ageographical that split up all of the rivals (USC vs UCLA, Cal vs Stanford, Washington vs WSU, Oregon vs OSU, Arizona vs ASU, and Utah vs Colorado) and have them playing cross-conference every season. This is not unlike what the Atlantic Coast Conference does. Of course, the ACC had visions of Florida State and Miami playing one another every year for the championship and instead got Wake Forest and Georgia Tech.

What I Think the Pac-10 Should Do: Go east-west. The California schools will still play one another frequently and schools outside of California are also likely to be satisfied. It’s the ultimate split-the-difference. Going ageographical makes divisional standings much more difficult to remember and follow (I follow college football and the ACC and still couldn’t tell you which schools are in the “Atlantic Division” and which are in the “Coastal Division”). It’s not perfect because it does put the socal schools together with Arizona (the second best recruitment area in the conference), but it’s still worth a shot. If it becomes too imbalanced, as the Big-12 did, you can explore other options later.

What I Think the Pac-10 Will Do: Ageographical. I think they think that everyone is so fascinated with their conference that they will remember the divisional alignment.

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Big Ten Conference (Big Ten) - The Big Ten recently added Nebraska as its twelfth team. This means divisions and a conference championship. The problem is that if you divide the teams up east-west (the only way that makes geographic sense), you have three of their best teams (Ohio State, Michigan, and Penn State) in one division and only one first-class team (Nebraska) in the other. The only other option is to disregard geography, which carries all of the problems listed under Pac-10.

What I Think the Big Ten Should Do: Go ahead and give east-west a try. Consider changing it later if it doesn’t work. The Big 12’s problems (where its Texas-based southern division dominated) was systemic because so many of the recruits come from Texas. The divisions in the Big 12 started out equal but became more segregated over time. I think the opposite is possible for the Big Ten. Having their own division will give the western schools room to get better. And, while the top-tier teams split 3-1 in favor of the east, the second-tier teams (Wisconsin and Iowa) are both in the west with Northwestern (also in the west) not far behind. Given time and room, they could become much better programs.

What I Think the Big Ten Will Do: Ageography. Like the Pac-10, they believe everyone is obessed with them. Their argument is actually stronger than the Pac-10’s (despite the fact they are an inferior conference), but I still don’t think it’s true.

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BYU (Brigham Young University) - The key player in all of the MWC-WAC chaos. Having been left behind by Utah, which is headed for the Pac-10, they decided to go independent for football rather than remain members of the MWC. The MWC does not allow for members that do not play for four core sports (football, men’s and women’s basketball, and volleyball) in the conference, so BYU was going to join the WAC for all other sports. When the MWC secured the membership of two prime WAC teams, however, the plan fell by the wayside. Now BYU has to make the decision to stay with the MWC or to go independent with the rest of their sports joining a football-free conference called the West Coast Conference (WCC), which mostly consists of small, private, religious colleges.

What I Think BYU Should Do: It depends entirely on the numbers. Going independent can create some logistical nightmares. BYU is one of the few schools that could pull it off and financially excel, but it’s not a given that they will be better off. It depends mostly on scheduling. Every team will want to host BYU, but few of the big boys will want to go to Provo, Utah. The BYU’s flirtations with the WAC were an attempt to address this issue with a mutual agreement to play 4-6 WAC opponents per year. With the WAC possibly insolvent and the MWC piqued at them, they will have lost most of their regional opponents (who would gladly go to Provo for a chance at hosting BYU). The Pac-10 is all that’s left. Even before all of this with only 4 OOC games, BYU has had scheduling troubles. This will likely make it worse. However, if ESPN throws millions of dollars at them a year, it could be worth it anyway. If I am BYU and I am looking at 4 million dollars a year in TV revenue, I probably take the risk. Probably.

What I Think BYU Will Do: I think they’re going to do it. Maybe not this year, but next. The key thing to look out for is if the MWC immediately expands to 12 if they stay. If so, the MWC is expecting them to stick around (and probably has a reason to do so). if they stand pat at 11 (a terrible number for a conference, too many for a round-robin schedule but too few for a championship game) then they’re expecting BYU to depart once they have their act together. For the 2011 season, they have to make a decision by 9/1.

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Mountain West Conference (MWC) - The Mountain West Conference was formed when long-serving members were dissatisfied with a cumbersome 16-team WAC with a lot of new programs that they had no real bond with. So essentially the best WAC programs formed the MWC back in the late 90’s. The MWC was on the cusp of having a shot at BCS status (the ability to play in premier bowls year in and year out and not, as currently, just when their champ has an undefeated season), but when Utah left for the Pac-10 those hopes were damaged. The MWC invited Boise State from the WAC earlier this year. When they got word that BYU’s departure was imminent, they invited the remaing two WAC powerhouses (Fresno State and Nevada) and sent (rejected) overtures to a mediocre team in BYU’s footprint (Utah State) and cut the WAC of at the knees. Their plan was successful in that BYU is reconsidering its options. However, if BYU stays then they have 11 teams, which is not desirable. Then, depending on whether they think BYU is going to stay for the long haul or not, they can stay at 11 and wait for the shoe to drop or they can expand to 12 by picking up one of four candidates from the WAC or Conference USA (Utah State, UTEP, Houston, or SMU). If BYU does leave, they can either stand pat at 10 or they can expand by two from the same pool of candidates.

What I Think the MWC Should Do: If BYU goes, hold tight at 10 for now and find out what adding two schools will do for you. If you have to expand by two, Houston and UTEP are the two most attractive candidates. Don’t take USU unless (b) Utah State’s addition is part of their contract with their sports network and keeping USU keeps them from having to undergo an unfavorable renegotiation (this is the rumor in some circles, the Utah is one of the states that they must have a team in to avoid renegotiation). If BYU stays and is looking to stay indefinitely, add Houston. If Houston does not accept, add UTEP. Don’t invite Utah State unless either BYU demands it. If they do demand it, you should probably do it.

What I Think the MWC Will Do: Probably exactly what I’ve described except that they might invite Utah State even if BYU doesn’t demand it. Utah State fits the conference profile far better than Houston or UTEP and they may be comfortable with “one of their own.” On the other hand, they did invite TCU last time around and the same applies to them.

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Western Athletic Conference (WAC) - The WAC has been around for a lot of time, initially including most of the current MWC. They’ve been the victim of every realignment that has occurred since the 90’s. They lost the MWC schools in 1998, lost a bunch of schools to Conference USA in 2005, and have now lost their three remaining good programs. In the past, they have always had candidates with which to reload, but this time they don’t. They currently have six teams and need 8. Their candidates are mostly teams in the I-AA division (the next one down) looking to make a transition: UC-Davis, Cal Poly, Texas State, the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), Montana, and Montana State.

With the exception of Montana, there is little reason to believe that any of these schools are going to be able to compete at the next level (UTSA doesn’t even have a team yet). But they can keep the conference alive. Maybe. If Utah State gets an invite to the MWC, they’re down to five teams. If one Conference USA team (Houston, UTEP, or SMU) gets an invite, they likely lose their eastern-most team, Louisiana Tech, to Conference USA. At that point, you may have to bolt the doors to prevent New Mexico State from going back to its previous conference, the Sun belt, and keep Hawaii from going independent.

The real losers here are Idaho, San Jose State, and either Louisiana Tech or Utah State if they don’t get invited. Louisiana Tech can almost certainly get into the southern-based Sun Belt, but for a variety of reasons it simply doesn’t want to go there. Utah State and Idaho are former Sun belt members themselves, but that was when the Sun Belt was desperate enough to take any team that they could to get up to the number 8. They’re comfortably at 8 now and I don’t know that they are enthusiastic anymore about taking the far-flung teams. Given the goodwill that Utah State has amongst both the WAC and the MWC, they may be able to schedule independence. Idaho, meanwhile, may have to drop back down to I-AA football. The good news for Idaho is that they actually won games at that level. San Jose State recently almost killed their football program. Choosing to do so now will almost certainly be a consideration.

What I Think the WAC Should Do: Pray. Hard.

What I Think the WAC Will Do: Pray. Hard.

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Conference USA (C*USA) - Conference USA was founded as a pan-eastern league primarily located in large cities. When they were looted by the Big East in 2005, they became a mostly southern-based conference (with UTEP in the southwest and Marshall in West Virginia). They’re considerably better than the lowly Sun Belt Conference, but worse than both the MWC and WAC on the field. However, they have programs that had a lot of success in the past and some stellar academic institutions. Their role in all of this is whether they take Louisiana Tech from the WAC. Louisiana Tech was a candidate during the last expansion, but was edged out by UTEP. If a vacancy opens up, Louisiana Tech is one of three possible candidates along with Temple (which has the disadvantages of only bringing their mediocre football program and geography) and Charlotte (which has the disadvantage of not having a football program yet). There are also a couple of Sun Belt Conference teams they could grab, such as Troy and Middle Tennessee, but while they have good (for the SBC) football programs they generally lack athletic or academic prestige. If Conference USA has two openings, they may stand pat at 10.

What I Think C*USA Should Do: If they have one opening, invite Louisiana Tech. It’s not a really big school and doesn’t serve a huge market, but it’s primely located and has the potential to be a really good program. If the Big East raids C*USA again, it’ll likely be from the east and they won’t want Temple out in Philadelphia all by itself (or with Marshall out there alone). It’s the safe choice and their primary goal has to be stability. As such, if they lose two teams, they should probably stay at 10.

What I Think C*USA Will Do: If they have one opening, I suspect it’s either Louisiana Tech or Temple. The eastern schools in C*USA are somewhat isolated and would love another one out there. So that works in Temple’s favorite, football-only or no. The western schools are probably thinking what I am thinking about wanting more geographical consolidation. It could go either way. If they have two openings, I suspect that they do indeed stay at 10.

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Bowl Championship Series (BCS) - More than once, I’ve seen people blame the MWC-WAC chaos on the BCS. While I support the BCS over the playoff alternative, I am willing to admit that the BCS causes problems. This is not one of them, though. BYU’s going independent does not help their BCS game odds. In fact, it makes it harder for them. As a member of the MWC, they go to a BCS bowl any time they go undefeated. As an independent, that’s less likely to be the case. This is about money. Network TV money. This all started when Nebraska left one BCS conference for another, so it obviously wasn’t in play then. And as with Nebraska, BYU is leaving one BCS-poor situation for a worse one. In both cases, monetary and prestige were the motivating factors. Neither improved their chances of getting into a BCS game. In fact, both hurt their chances. Even if that were not true, however, an 8-team playoff system would actually make BYU more desperate to get out of the MWC because their chances of getting into a 10-team BCS allows for room that an 8-team playoff system might not. The MWC champ gets in under most 16-team playoff scenarios (ugh), but then you still have the financial considerations that drove Nebraska.

Per the New York Times, smoking does not actually relieve stress. Or, rather, it creates more stress than it relieves:

A year later, 41 percent had managed to stay abstinent. After controlling for several factors, the scientists found that the abstainers had “a significantly larger decrease in perceived stress,” roughly a 20 percent drop, compared with the continuing smokers, who showed little change.

The scientists’ hypothesis was that the continuing smokers were dealing with uncomfortable cravings between cigarettes multiple times a day, while the abstainers, after facing some initial withdrawal, had greater freedom from nicotine cravings and thus had eliminated a frequent and significant source of stress.

Meh. I don’t think that’s why. Or that’s not the whole reason why. Rather, I think it’s more like recent studies that have demonstrated that caffeine consumers are generally more tired than those that don’t consume caffeine. With caffeine, you’re in a sense shortcircuiting your body telling you that you need rest and sleep. So you respond by consuming more caffeine. That pushes you along until it wears off and you consume some more and so on. Oh, and you don’t sleep as well when you are resting. It provides short-term relief at long-term cost.

And so it is with cigarettes and stress. Yes, I think that the stress caused by wanting a cigarette and not being able to have one plays a role. However, it’s also the case that an over-reliance on cigarettes short-circuits your coping mechanisms when it comes to stress. I know that during periods of abstinence when I am feeling stressed, I have no choice but to decompress while doing something else. I have to deal with whatever is stressing me. I have to develop coping mechanisms. Once I get over the hump, the worst cravings come not from stress at all but rather from other precursors (stomach irritation, for example) or cues (doing something that I am used to smoking while I am doing, such as drinking). Eventually I get over the stomach irritation reflex as well. The cues are a bit harder because they come one at a time. I can conquer one cue and then three months later be confronted with another.

Massawyrm’s review of Post-Grad is priceless:

The really mind-numbing thing about this is the romantic thrust of the film. You see, Bledel has herself a gay best friend. He doesn’t know he’s gay. He thinks he’s in love with Bledel who only giggles and gives him the brush off every time he caresses her and tells her that he is madly in love with her. And you totally get why she does. He’s handsome, charming, a pre-law grad accepted into Columbia University and, if that don’t beat all, he’s also the lead singer of a band. I know, I know. Total pussy repellant. Honestly, who the fuck wants to date a good looking, funny, lead singer with a law degree to fall back on?

Let me ask you something guys? Have YOU ever known a lead singer that HASN’T fucked every chick in a five block radius of any point at which he is standing? Have you ever known a good looking law student that hasn’t TRIED to fuck every chick within a five block radius of wherever he is standing? I sure as fuck haven’t, and I’ve known plenty of both. But apparently when you put these two stereotypical serial rapists in the body of one down home guy, all he wants to do is stay comfy in the friend zone of some frigid, whiney college grad who hasn’t yet discovered her own vagina. Can I believe in a world where a guy like that can really exist? I sure can. It also has magic swords and robots that shoot fucking lasers out of their eyes.

The movie happened to be playing on one of my flights several months ago. I watched up at it periodically but never plugged the sound in. Sound wasn’t really necessary to follow the plot, as it turned out. My last flight included another movie in that was even less appealing. They generally run “family movies” on flights, but by “family” they mean “16-19 year old girls”.

Phi also commented on Post-Grad:

The {movie} wasn’t exceptional either way, but I was struck by what I can’t help but regard as the irresponsible behavior of the female protagonist. In the middle of a weak hiring market, she walks away with no notice from her dream job and flies off to the opposite coast to pursue a boy she wasn’t interested in when he lived next door. This seems to happen a lot in the movies; I remember how Winona Ryder’s character in Reality Bites did something similar in the last recession. Are girls really that irresponsible? I’ve clung to the same company for my entire adult life and felt damn lucky for it.

One of the great scenes in Men of a Certain Age that was almost sufficient to keep me watching the series, one of the main characters has a heart attack. He’s in the hospital, telling his wife that he just can’t stand one more day of his job and that he wants to find something else to do. Instead of the heartwarming scene wherein she tells him that of course they will get by while he figures out what he wants to do with his life, she essentially points out that they are adults with responsibilities and bills to pay and adults with responsibilities and bills to pay don’t do that sort of thing. They go to work.

I was thinking about making a comment about how it seems that women in particular make these particularly irresponsible decisions (sacrificing one’s future solvency for a boy or to “follow her dreams”) on TV shows and movies. I generally think it’s true and am a little curious as to (a) whether women notice this and (b) whether they view it as women following their dreams and a good thing or women unserious about their careers and a bad thing? My suspicions that it’s something that women do more often could be off-base, however. I’ve seen subplots for men, too.

There is no question that many parents are far, far too accommodating of their children when it is probably for the better that kids learn to just suck it up and accept that the world is not here to accommodate them. Any visit to a place where there are lots of kids provides substantial anecdata. So I’m sympathetic to parents who want to push back against this trend (if it’s a trend, seems that at least some parents have been bending backwards since I was a kid). But I also feel a twinge of uncertainty when I read posts like this:

Or, you can put veggies in front of the spoiled little wretches every morning, noon, and night until they get so hungry that they’re thankful for what they’ve been given. They won’t come to love vegetables, but they’ll sure come to love a full belly over an empty one.

He is responding to an article suggesting that multimedia can help kids learn to like vegetables. Why, he asks, get them to like vegetables when you can simply force them to eat the stuff?

The answer to me is quite clear. While parents will not always be there to accommodate spoiled children, neither will they always be there to force kids to do what they want them to do. More often than not, I think the end-product of forcing kids to eat vegetables they clearly don’t like is that once they leave the house they will never, ever eat vegetables again. Vegetables, by that point, have become an adversary. Something to only do when forced.

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t push kids to do what they don’t want to do. On the subject of education, for example, I don’t buy completely into the notion that if you force-feed them knowledge they will come to resent learning. I mean, I think it’s true to some extent, but I don’t think you can afford to wait until kids want to sit down and read science books for them to learn science. Sometimes it has to be forced. However, the analog to what Woodlief is saying in the above is that it is an unreasonable accommodation to try to present science in a way that kids might enjoy and that you should lock them in a room with their book and be done with it.

In both veggies and science, if you can find a way to make it pleasant, that’s unquestionably better than just forcing them to do it because you can.

I not-so-affectionately refer to vegetables as “earth’s vomit,” though I make a point to try them periodically and find out what I like. Had my parents force-fed me vegetables I clearly detested, I don’t know that I would make the effort. Perhaps a good example is rice. Now, rice is a grain and not a vegetable, but it is something I HATED growing up. But in recent years I have come around on it. I don’t usually eat it straight unless it’s puffy Mexican rice, but I’ll eat it as an ingredient or mix it up with beans and eat it then. Trust me when I tell you that this is serious progress for me. And I think that I kept an open mind about rice because I never had an adversarial relationship with it. When Mom discovered I didn’t like rice, she let me eat potatoes or Mac’n'Cheese instead.

I also find that among the vegetables I do eat, they’re vegetables that Mom made taste good when I was younger. Instead of saying “eat your spinach or else” she put cheese on it and instead of saying “eat your asparagus or else, she put hollandaise sauce on it. Now, cheese and hollandaise sauce are fatty and not particularly healthy, but they provided a gateway of sorts for me. Now I can eat spinach without cheese and asparagus without hollandaise sauce. I can guarantee you that I wouldn’t if I’d spent my younger years having to down the stuff just cause my parents were going to make me go hungry otherwise.

As a practical matter, there are limitations to which parents can run a short-order kitchen so that no kid need eat what he doesn’t want to eat. And some kids, if always given an opt-out will opt out of anything that isn’t sugary or fatty. But I think that you have to find a middle ground. If the kid is happy to eat some veggies but not others, it’s kind of obvious that he or she is acting in good faith. If it’s not too much trouble to make extra lima beans on Tuesday so the little skipper can have them in lieu of corn on Wednesday (as Mom did for me), then I don’t think it’s a betrayal of parenthood to do so. Maybe someday he will grow up to like corn… as I did.

I suppose it’s not impossible that kids will learn to like something if force-fed it enough. I have my doubts, obviously. I suppose you could learn to like it the same way that I learned to like beer despite initially having a dreadful distaste for it when I was younger. But I think I taught myself to like beer because I wanted to. I could force myself, but I don’t think I could have been forced by someone else.

My family grew up closely with another family named Charles. The Charles kids were kept on a pretty strict regimen growing up. They were never allowed soft drinks or snacks or fast food. I was not exposed much to soft drinks and fast food was kept to a minimum, but I also wasn’t kept on any sort of strict diet. The Charles kids were all (but the second-oldest, who like his father was just built stocky) thin… right up until they went to college. Freshman twenty-to-forty. My brothers and I, meanwhile, either did not gain weight or actually lost it when we went to college. Their weight did come off eventually, though, for all but the youngest, so I suppose not all was lost.

When it came to health and such, my parents were pretty far from perfect. There’s a lot that I would do differently with my children. But trying to meet them halfway if they have a distaste for vegetables is not one of them. Clancy’s mother made Clancy and her sisters always eat a little bit of whatever vegetable was being offered at each meal, but wouldn’t make them clean their plates. That strikes me as a reasonable compromise. As does putting something fatty on it as a gateway to get them to appreciate it in its own rights (or at least not view it adversarial). Substitutions, as long as they are not too imposing, is another reasonable option.

Oklahoma has apparently been toying with the idea of using traffic cameras to ticket drivers of cars that aren’t insured:

Meacham said legislators should get the appropriate language passed during next year’s session. Also by then, technology may be in place to allow a company to have the ability to check insurance verification data of all 50 states.

The Oklahoma chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has voiced concerns about the proposal, saying privacy rights of Oklahomans could be violated.

In the meantime, state and local law officers will continue to use Oklahoma’s computerized system that lets law officers know in real time whether vehicles licensed in the state are covered by qualifying liability insurance. It’s been estimated about 20 percent of Oklahoma motorists are driving vehicles without liability insurance.

I support this plan entirely as unlike with speeding and red light camera enforcement, lack of insurance is a law that I never break intentionally or unintentionally. Okay, that’s not really why.

Here at Hit Coffee, we are skeptical of a lot of traffic camera activity. This, however, I don’t actually mind so much. The primary arguments against red-light and speeding cameras is that the tickets are often trumped up with traffic engineering designed not for safety but for revenue-generation. If you want to catch people speeding you simply rig the speed limits by making them artificially low or by having sudden drops in the speed limit at places where it’s difficult to slow down and/or speed limit signs and cops are not particularly easy to see. You can rig red light cameras by shortening yellow lights. Red light cameras have the additional disadvantage of having debatable safety returns (but not debatable revenue returns). Oh, and in both cases you don’t know who is driving the car so you could be ticketing the wrong person.

Insurance, though, is something of a different matter. Either the car is insured or you are not. It doesn’t matter who is driving it. The only way you can rig the system is by having incomplete information and then ticketing drivers blindly and giving them the burden of proof to demonstrate that they are insured. That’s a bit of a concern, but not much of one. Oklahoma has actually put their plans on hold because they don’t have great access to the data. They’re working on it. I get the sense that if they tried to move forward by saying they only update their information quarterly, they’re likely to run into *a lot* of resistance. But absent that, I do not share the concerns of the ACLU that there is a serious infringement of liberty here. When driving on the public road, we do not really have a reasonable expectation of privacy when it comes to checking license plates and whatnot. Nor is having records as to who is and is not insured a particular privacy concern.

In fact, I think that perhaps they should go a step further and also run checks for vehicle registration. That way we can put an end to Steve Jobs’s scofflaw ways should he ever make his way to the OK state.

Our news outlets should totally do stuff like this. I would watch a lot more TV news!

One on Sarah Palin. Man, I’d love to get an English translation on this one:

My favorite, perhaps because it’s translated, involves the most recent British election:

Another translated one involving British politics:

The whole JetBlue thing, which brought these folks to my attention:

-{Via James Fallows and Transplanted Lawyer}-

A couple of articles recently have centered around the subject of women’s athletics at the college and professional levels. First, Christina Hoff Summers:

Diana Nyad, sports show host for National Public Radio affiliate KCRW and a celebrated distance swimming champion, was moved to write a special introduction to the latest report: “Women’s athletic skill levels have risen astronomically over the past twenty years … It is time for television news and highlights shows to keep pace with this revolution.” She describes the neglect of women’s sports as “unfathomable and unacceptable.”

But the heavy focus of news and highlights shows on men’s sports is not only fathomable but obvious—that is where the fans are. And that is where advertisers expect to find customers for “male” products such as beer, razors, and cars. Men’s professional sports are a fascination (obsession is more like it) to many millions of men, because they offer extreme competition, performance, and heroics. Women’s professional sports, however skilled and admirable, cannot compare in Promethean drama.

Even women prefer watching male teams. Few women follow the sports pages and ESPN, but many enjoy attending live games—featuring male athletes. According to Sports Business Daily, 31 percent of the NFL’s “avid fans” are women.

By and large, men want to watch men play. Most sports fans are men. But women that are interested in sports usually want to watch what the men are watching. This is true in part because it was likely their father or brother or husband that got them into sports in the first place. So they are introduced primarily to men’s sports. There are some exceptions to this, such as gymnastics and ice-skating, but it still remains generally so.

Once interested in the NBA of NCAA MBB, there’s no reason for them not to branch off to women’s basketball or, for that matter, volleyball. But sports are, generally speaking, a social activity. It’s not as fun to watch a sport that nobody cares about because, apart from Internet chatting, there’s nobody to talk to about it. So while Lacrosse may be a perfectly respectable sport, if you try to talk to anybody about the National Lacrosse League you’re simply going to bore them. I run into the same thing when it comes to non-alumni of Southern Tech University athletics. They’re not national players. Their conference is not one of the three or four premier conferences. Better to be able to talk about the wildly successful Delosa Panthers who draw 80k a game than the Southern Tech Packers who struggle to draw half of that.

That’s why a lot of universities that have difficulty succeeding in football or men’s basketball don’t just switch to another sport that they can dominate. A few have done so, but is the fact that the University of Denver and Alabama-Huntsville have stellar hockey teams something that registers at all? Did you even know that they had really good hockey teams? Or that Cal State-Fullerton has a really good baseball team? Given how hopeless it would be for these universities to build good football programs, going the hockey route may indeed be the best option for them, but collegiate hockey and women’s basketball are never going to really dominate our interest and so it’s not worthwhile to throw a whole lot of investment that way.

Of course, to some extent they don’t have a choice when it comes to women’s basketball or softball or soccer. Title IX requires that they field teams and that these teams are funded adequately. A lot of people like to rip on Title IX, but was (perhaps an overreaching) solution to a real problem. My father-in-law was actually the first coach of the Vandalia Fighting Vandals women’s basketball team many years ago. The pre-T9 accommodations were nothing short of pathetic. Since the reason for college athletics is ostensibly to support student athletes, there’s no reason that they shouldn’t be adequately funded in some relation to the way that men’s athletics are funded. That’s not to say that Title IX couldn’t use some tweaking - I would argue that revenues brought in by men’s sports should count for something - but I consider a lot of the criticisms off-base.

Less off-base, though, than complaints about the media. Other than perhaps soccer, no sport has ever been pumped up by the sports media more than women’s basketball. Indeed, when I was growing up there were three major college sports and women’s basketball was one of them. Now there are two major sports and two secondary ones with women’s basketball in the latter category along with college baseball. A few years ago I wondered exactly what happened to women’s basketball. What I discovered is that there was really a lack of interest. Why did interest decline? I don’t think it did. I think that the interest was never there. ESPN and the like just spent a whole lot of time and effort trying to build the interest. Sports media wants there to be more popular sports. Nothing would please them more than a robust women’s college basketball system because it would give them more stuff to sell you and it would increase leverage with Atlantic 10 men’s basketball to be able to play off Big East women’s basketball against it (”If you don’t take this paltry sum, we’ll just show this other thing instead!”). Attempts by ESPN and Fox Sports and the like to build sport interest are spotty. Particularly women’s sports, though there was a push for hockey a few years back that was unsuccessful as well. The only successful one I can think of is Poker.

The second article (teaser, really) on the subject I’ve read is one about a Division III conference getting in trouble for playing the women’s game before the men’s in double-headers. Like James Joyner, I initially thought the objection was that it was demeaning to the women athletes to have to open up for the men. If that were the case, my response would be the above. While it’s good that women are given an equal chance to play as men, we can’t just pretend that there is or could be equal interest. And having them as the “opening act” probably goes them a greater service than having them play on different nights. I was a JV basketball player at the junior high level and we benefited greatly by playing before the varsity squad and drew better crowds than varsity women’s who played on a different night. As it turns out, that’s only part of the object. The other part, that earlier games cut more into class times than later ones, is a more valid objection. In that case, it might actually be better for them to play on different nights.

Over at Slate, there’s an interview with a founder of the Innocence Project, which goes into great detail on what Peter Neufeld feels is wrong with the justice system.

I’ve mentioned before that I have a few quibbles with the Innocence Project. I am not convinced that what Neufeld talks about is systemic, as a whole, to the justice system. One reason is their deliberate hiding of a relevant statistic - they boast of having secured 258 releases of innocent people, an average of 14 per year since they began, but what they leave out is the number of people who were shown to be rightly convicted after the evidence was reviewed. In other words, they are so deathly afraid that the percentage of those wrongfully convicted is so small (based on numbers that only they know) showing that the system itself isn’t truly broken, that they refuse to be honest about the statistic. This is even more worrisome when they readily admit that they are selective about the cases they go after, which ought to give them a better chance of showing a high false-positive rate.

At the same time, the shoddy state of coercive plea-bargain threats, in which defense attorneys are forced to tell innocent people that their best bet is to plead guilty anyways, doesn’t help my view of the court system. The description of the system, by Detective George Bruch - a man who has every reason to claim otherwise, who has been a policeman, but who says anyways that the interrogation system is set up to prove your guilt even if you are innocent, by hook or by crook, and in which something you are fed through “overhearing” while being led down the precinct hallway can come back to bite you in the ass at trial - that doesn’t help either.

And then we get into the realm of the known problems of witness identification and memory being much more dynamic than most people give it credit for being, as well as police and prosecutors reinforcing the victim’s story - or perhaps, the story they want told - over and over again.

On the flipside, via a couple links that spread over email from friends in real-world proximity to the situation, I find myself still agreeing that there are subhuman beings who society is best off without, and whose guilt is, in fact, provable beyond a shadow of a doubt. And likewise, whatever you feel about the death penalty or the criminal justice system, that this is just a horrible thing to do.

This week the good folks from Dishstar* are coming to install a satellite dish… somewhere. This will be the first time I have really had cable or satellite since back when I was rooming with Dennis. Dennis wanted cable so that he could watch WWE. While we had it, I piped it into my room, too, though I rarely actually watched it. After The Great Might Ducks Three Debacle when Dennis skipped town and Karl and I had to find some other place to live, we decided not to get cable. It was a good thing since I never even bothered setting up my TV so that I wouldn’t end up watching it with KK and probably wouldn’t have if I’d had cable, either. I guess we did mooch cable when we were living with the Cranston basement in Deseret, though again I almost never watched it since the TV was inconveniently placed.

It’s all kind of odd since cable was one of the things that I was absolutely sure I could never live without when I was younger. Then the Internet came along and I barely watched anything. When I started getting TV again, I could watch most of what I wanted on the Internet or from the backlog from Netflix. So even when I was taking customer service calls for satellite provider CignalTV, I didn’t actually have the product I was pushing. It was only when we moved out here that it became important. The primary reason is so that I can watch college football. In Estacado and Cascadia, I got by because I could watch ESPN360. Sadly, none of the Internet providers out here carry it. It’ll be nice to be able to watch DVRed programs as they come out, though. Also unfortunately, I am way outside the southern pocket when it comes to regionally televised games, so it’s either get cable/satellite or resign myself to Pac-10 action.

I decided pretty early on that I wanted satellite over cable so that I could get the ESPN GamePlan. I decided that I wanted to go with CignalTV out of loyalty to the company I used to take calls for and that served my family faithfully for so long. More practically, CignalTV offers the Sky Sports Network, which carries Skyline Conference football, which I follow more closely than other conferences due to where I live and where I’ve lived. Unfortunately, CignalTV’s presence in Callie is limited. Though they do have a local dealer, all the dealer does is call CignalTV out in Redstone and they send someone. Dishstar, on the other hand, has a local retailer that’s actually local and that I could go and talk to and who, if there was a problem installing the dish, could easily drive to HQ and back and get the right equipment.

Equipment is an issue because our landlords really don’t want me to get satellite. I cleared it with the property manager when we signed the lease, but then the house was sold while we were moving down, the property manager was dismissed, and I had nothing in writing. The landlord’s agreed to let me have a dish if (a) they don’t put it on the roof, (b) don’t put anything in the ground, and (c) don’t put it on the grass anywhere. That pretty severely limits our options since the side of the house is siding and couldn’t support a dish. We decided it would go on a giant wooden post that’s just kind of sitting there. CignalTV’s rep (I called them anyway) was very unhelpful, saying basically that they would install it wherever they chose to install it and if I declined to sign up for the contract they would charge me for the service call. I was never that rude when I took calls for Cignal. Well, almost never. There was this one guy…

The folks at Dishstar were not rude so much as skittish. They couldn’t put it on a wooden pole for some reason or another to do with the wind (I wonder if they realize how big this poll is?). But they at least wanted to work with me. Absent the post, though, I wasn’t sure what to do until I got home and looked and found the perfect spot for a tri-pod. Kind of out of the way, out of the grass, and with the requisite view of the southern sky. Essentially, it’s in the rock bed with the post. The thought occurred to me that since I had a good tripod place, I could actually go with CignalTV if I wanted to. While the guy on the phone didn’t mention it, the woman at the not-really-a-dealer in Callie said that was always an options. But the way I figure it, Dishstar has earned my business in a way that Cignal didn’t. If I decide that I must have the Sky Sports Network, I can always change in a couple of years when my contact expires.

In the meantime, I am actually going to have access to all the channels that I watch so feverishly when I am in Delosa. I am going to have to be careful not to let it suck me in. But the way I looked at it, I could watch feverishly when I was in Delosa precisely because of its limited availability. I watched more TV there than I do in Arapaho despite having all sorts of much more interesting options out here. Having the DVR will also be cool so that I don’t have to wait for shows to become available on Hulu or wherever else. The only downside to having gone with Satellite, other than the cost, is that I am on the hook for a two year contract. If I had cable, I could just turn it on for the football season and then turn it off the rest of the year. Part of me, though, is pleased not to have that option so that I can justify having it available year-around.

* - Pseudonyms since I worked for one of these companies.

It’s often said that people that cannot pay their own way should not have children. This is something I used to believe very fervently. I still do believe it, but I have come to believe it’s a lot more complicated than people make it out to be. This post is about the problematic nature of that broad statement. For the purposes of this post, I am going to rely on the following assumptions:

1. If we restrict trade imports, it will lead to a decline in outsourcing and an increase in American jobs. As a result, there will be more jobs and the wages of those jobs will be higher than they currently are because the workers will not be competing with Asians willing to work for pennies on the dollar.
2. If we restrict immigration (legal and illegal), it will lead to fewer candidates for each position. As a result, there will be more jobs available for actual Americans and the wages of those jobs will be higher than they currently are because the workers will not be competing with immigrants who do not have the leverage to ask for better pay.
3. If we increase the minimum wage to a livable wage, it will lead to higher wages that allow more people to make a livable wage and fewer people will rely on welfare.
4. If we increase the Earned Income Tax Credit, it will lead to more people making a living wage through the pay they receive from their employer and the tax breaks and credits they receive.
5. Government works programs have the ability to create jobs that result in a net increase in the total number of jobs. As a result, the worker-to-vacancy ratio decreases, more people are working, and wages increase.

Whether these assumptions are actually true or not is subject to debate. I don’t believe they are all true (though some are at least partially true). For the sake of tihs post I assume these things simply to avoid the discussion getting sidetracked. Most likely, each of you (except Larry and other fervent libertarians) believe that at least one or two of the above is true. That’s all that is important. Now, back to the subject at hand.

Whether one is actually paying their own way depends on a number of factors. It depends on the talent or intelligence someone has, the skills they are willing and able to develop, their personal drive, and (this is the important part) the opportunities available to him or her. While the overall strength of the economy is also important, that last part is crucial because in many cases the opportunities available to them depend on the very same government that, in the absence of their ability to find a job, will help them get by through more direct support.

If one is a hard-core, cut-throat libertarian and does not believe that any of the above are legitimate, then the number of people that are truly paying their own way may be very small indeed. To some extent, it means that everyone whose job is under threat because of immigrants or outsourcing but whose job is saved is actually dependent on the government for their livable wage. This is not to argue against these policies. From a non-libertarian’s perspective, the fact that the government might have needed to intervene in order to protect jobs elicits a strong “So what?”. People who are given a job to do (that pays a livable wage).

But that’s the rub. Those that are not given a job to do because the government has declined to intervene or those that do not take jobs that would not support their families or those that have to take jobs and can’t support their families on them are not always going to be substantively different - from an ethical perspective - from those of us fortunate enough to have the skills, connection, and luck to find jobs that do pay well enough to support oneself. Now, we could argue that things in the US are good enough that anyone with a degree of intelligence and werewithal can make a living wage if they so chose. That may be true, but it is not necessarily so.

What do we do about the cases of people that are perfectly willing to work and would prefer to support themselves if given the opportunity but simply lack the opportunity? Do we say that these people should not reproduce? Simply because society has not found a way for them to contribute? Maybe you’re thinking “it’s not society’s job to help people find ways to contribute”, though if you believe any of the Six Assumptions are true and support those policies on that basis, you have to some degree determined that it is indeed the government’s domain to help people find ways to contribute. Maybe you’re thinking “well, to some extent maybe, but not to help everybody.” If so, you’re determining the ability to reproduce based on who you think should be assisted in supporting themselves and you’re using the fact that they can support themselves (with our assistence) to justify their reproduction over those that cannot support themselves without our assistence. (Keep in mind, I am not talking about people that refuse to work or have no interest in working.) It’s a lottery, of sorts. And maybe from a government perspective that is a good idea if you can only help some but not all of those that would be able to support themselves with job protection or assistence, but in terms of fairness or morality towards and between individuals that do not have the right skills in the right economy, it doesn’t hold much water.

To repeat an important point, the question of whether the position that only people that pay their own way should be reproducing is a fair and reasonable one to take is also dependent on how one views the American economy. If you believe that people are being left behind due to circumstances outside their control and their abilities and that the only way to rectify this is through some of the Six Assumptions, you’re standing on weak ground. If you look at the American economy and believe that anyone that wants to make it here can, then that position makes a good deal of sense.

However, even if that was the case yesterday and is the case today, (or if that would be the case if we would just change some policy or another) it is not necessarily the case tomorrow regardless of our policy decisions (unless we go Luddite). One can easily imagine a future in which automation results in an increasing number of Americans being made redundant. That our manufacturing employment sector is struggling is hard to dispute, but our manufacturing output is actually quite strong. The difference is that machines are making things more than people are. This could continue to the service sector as well. Then, by the end, we have a whole lot of engineer-types that are still useful and only menial-types (and artistic-types) that have the connections to get one of the very, very few jobs in their sector. So imagine for a moment where we reach the point where 40% of the population would be better off if the bottom 60% disappeared tomorrow. Does that mean that the bottom 60% should not be reproducing?

Now, even if you do not believe that this high-tech future could come to pass for one reason or another, the policy implications on the Six Assumptions can still be there. Or at least the first two. Imagine that some combination of 30% of Americans including but not limited to most of America’s best and brightest can work it out so that they can give the remaining 70% of Americans their walking papers and be better. They can simply import talent that they can export just as soon as they stop being useful. They can outsource everything except what they do. As a result, as employers they can get by paying their employees considerably less. The products they buy and services they get are cheaper because the labor required to produce (or pick or mine) them are cheaper. Life for them - and remember that they are by and large the maximum producers and capital holders - is dramatically improved. The Bottom 70% are not paying their own way since their very existence makes life slightly less convenient for the Top 30%.

The primary counterargument would be that the Bottom 70% comprise the majority and therefore it is their livelihood, and not that of the Top 30%, that should be taken more into account. Maybe so, but it’s unlikely that this happens all at once. Most likely it’s the Bottom 20% that first stops being able to reproduce. Then it’s the next 20% (in all likelihood the next 20% - and maybe the first - includes intelligent but uncharismatic or personally difficult people). And so on and so on. But beyond that, where precisely do you draw the line. Is the Top 60% really acceptable so that getting rid of the Bottom 40% making their life somewhat better is worthwhile simply because 60% comprises a majority?

Your mileage may vary greatly, but here are my three main takeaways from this line of thinking:

First, the ability to pay one’s own way is highly dependent on factors beyond one’s control. A person that sails in one society sinks in another. Some people will sail in any society and others will sink in any society, but beyond that it’s really quite variable and dependent on matters of economy and government policy. As such, the moral distinction between being able to pay one’s own way versus not being able to is marginal unless one lives in a society where everyone that works hard can pay their own way.

Therefore, if a society is wealthy enough that it can help people support themselves that otherwise would not have a place to, it should do so. This is one of the things that I believe we have society for. I am not advocating welfare or foodstamps here, because the primary distinction ought not be between those that can pay their own way and those that can’t, but rather between those that are willing to try work hard and exhibit reasonable discipline to try to do so. It’s not about wealth distribution per se (because I am including trade policy and immigration policy, to the extent that they help). It’s an imperative to to the extent that society can, it should find a way for as many people as possible to contribute however they can and allowing them to live a respectable life for doing so.

Third, If a society simply cannot support the weight of its redundant but able workforce, then that’s a different matter but an unfortunate one for those that are ultimately excluded. And we should bear in mind that those we are excluding are often going to be victims of circumstance rather than lazy bums.

Now, this post is more political than I usually get here at Hit Coffee, but I’ve kept it abstract for a reason. I don’t want to get to debating the merits of individual proposals for How To Save The Middle And Working Classes or anything like that. Everyone has their theories. I have my doubts about at least a few of the Six Assumptions, so don’t take this post to mean that I am advocating any of those policies. I mention policies from the right and left merely to cover more ground. While I am aware that there are reasons put forth to restrict immigration having nothing to do with jobs or wage-suppression, this post is not about those other reasons. Also, this post is looking at those that cannot pay their own way that are generally well-behaved. The negative externality of crime is not applicable here as that could theoretically be addressed without regard to one’s ability to pay one’s own way.

Update: I make a reference to “Six Assumptions” in the most. I am referring to the five above. There were originally six, though I eliminated the 6th and can’t remember what it was. Also, a big thanks to Web who fixed an HTML problem on my part and made the post readable.

Update II: Maria is contesting the notion that (outside of the immigration population) there is a problem with the lower end of the economic spectrum reproducing in especially high numbers. Honestly, the Idiocracy meme is almost so hardwired it hadn’t even really occurred to me that it might be illusory. A collection of anecdotes where my intelligent but largely non-reproducing family and social network could be something of an exception and the babies that Clancy delivered or stood in the deliver room for the past decade or so might be distorting our perspective. So As it is always good to question the assumptions we sometimes erroneously take for granted, I’m going to look into it.

Update III: Okay, it took me about two minutes to find links demonstrating that birth-rate indeed negatively correlates with education (and thus likely means). What I can’t find, though, is any indication that this is a trend that is becoming more significant. In fact, according to the links I have found, we were dysgenic all of last century. Before the Pill, before the the New Deal, before the Great Society, before abortion. Anyone with any data on how this trend is accelerating or decelerating would be greatly appreciated. It appears as though it is cyclical with the economy with the correlation being strongest during bad economic times. But I’ve only seen references to that as a trend. No data references.

In response to a post by Megan McArdle on frustrations in the search for a cancer cure, someone replied right on cue:

Why should we expect a cure for cancer? It would hurt the profits of the drug companies. What would happen to the drug companies after the cure was found?

This is a stance that I have never found very credible (my stance has actually hardened since writing that). Fortunately, there was a swath of comments in response shooting the theory down before I could even comment myself. Even so, I couldn’t resist piling on, so I wrote:

Absolutely. It’s like vaccines. No drug company would ever come up with a vaccine because imagine how much more money they could make treating smallpox or rubella or whatever. They could charge desperate parents with sick kids thousands upon thousands of dollars for treatments. A vaccine would just cut into profits. That’s why drug companies don’t make vaccines.

Speaking of vaccines, there’s another article about whooping cough breakouts:

California is in the midst of its worst outbreak of whooping cough in a half-century. More than 2,700 cases have been reported so far this year — eight times last year’s number at this point. Seven of the victims, all infants, have died.

And here’s what really worries pediatricians like USC’s Harvey Karp: Doctors thought they wiped out whooping cough when they developed vaccines decades ago.

The disease hits young children hardest, especially ones who are not vaccinated or who have not yet built up full immunity. The prescribed vaccination regimen begins with a shot at two months and continues until children are 5 years old. For many children, it can take that long for complete immunity to develop — and until then, they’re vulnerable.

The California epidemic has raised plenty of questions about the role of vaccination and the increasing numbers of parents who decide not to vaccinate their children. California’s Department of Public Health cites three schools in the state where 80 percent of parents have signed a “personal belief exemption” to keep their children from being vaccinated.

I bolded the part about infants because it belies the notion that vaccination is a “personal choice” and that those who would condemn parents that don’t vaccinate are being judgmental when it’s none of their business. These parents are not just putting their own children at risk, but also infants that are too young to have the vaccine themselves. Infants that don’t already have fully developed immune systems. I am on the border as to a parent’s moral right to put their young child at such risk (always a complicated topic and usually dependent on the level of risk), but I have far less patience for those that use others’ children at risk.

Whether we should legally allow parents to take a pass on shots is a somewhat complicated topic. I do believe in religious freedom enough that I am disinclined not to have an exemption process of some sort. But 80%? That’s simply horrifying. And whether what these parents are doing should be legal or not, they are quite deserving of judgment and I have no fear of being considered judgmental on this topic. It’s not a personal health decision so much as a social health one and I am a member in the society in which these people live.

There is a perception among some men and some women that men are first and primarily interested in looks. Some provide evo-bio-psych reasoning for this or attribute it to social conditioning. Though there may be something to the notion that looks are broadly more important to men than to women, I think that this effect is greatly exaggerated when it comes to men pursuing anything beyond a cheap and easy lay.

I personally learned the limits of beauty the most straightforward way: I briefly dated a conventionally beautiful woman several steps above me in terms of popular perception and found the whole thing far less fulfilling than advertised. Yes, it’s neat to be seen with a woman that is your better. It’s neat to be able to show her picture to your friends and have them be impressed.

But… relationships are work. The person you are in a relationship with is a partner in an endeavor. You don’t have to be particularly deep to recognize that this is a person that you want to be able to get along with. Now, for a limited time you can get along with anyone. For actual staying power, though, you need more.

Though I may have been confronted with it in a particularly straightforward manner, I don’t think I am at all unusual when push comes to shove. I have seen, time and time again, guys leave women for conventionally less attractive ones. And it’s not a matter of the latter being more up their alley (physically speaking). I’ve known guys that have said that they could never date a fat girl end up foregoing more attractive options for a girl that’s overweight.

I admit, though, that sometimes I do forget these things. I’ve been watching Grey’s Anatomy lately. Earlier in the show, everyman George O’Malley manages to hook up with the super-hot Izzy Stephens (Katherine Heigl’s character). As the relationship dissolves, by mutual consent, I am sitting there saying “Dude! You’re never going to do better than her!” And as far as the beauty criterion is concerned, he never does. But… if you’re not happy, you’re not happy. The difference between being with someone that you’re genuinely good with and being with someone that you’re mutually attracted to is significant.

Stephens later contracts cancer and is bed-ridden. Yeah, that’s soap opera kind of stuff, but variations of it are always occurring. The superficial attraction runs dry when the hot girl comes home, day after day, tired and angry at work. Or relies too much on you. Most of the time, there is a reason that the girl is dating down, and when you discover that reason, and the luster fades when you discover it.

I fought to save the not-really-a-relationship mentioned above until the bitter end. And then when it was over, I was relieved.

More broadly, one of the things I’ve discovered is that people that have never been in a position to achieve X, which they’ve always wanted, vastly overestimate what they would be willing to put up for it. And this is true when it comes to securing an attractive woman. You may think you can put up with obnoxious behavior, or regular emotional breakdowns, or any number of other things for the sake of their beauty… but more often than you think, you’re not. Or if you try to stick it out, like I did, it doesn’t make you happy like you think it will.

One of the things that I have come to notice is that relationships generally work better between relatively equally-yoked people. People in the same general level of attractiveness, same league of intelligence, same economic background, and same general age bracket (though what that bracket is varies with age). That’s not to say that relationships outside these things can’t work. They often do. But they often tend to be the product of people with a general lack of options. That’s not to say that their affections are insincere. People with a lack of options can (though do not always) have a better appreciation for the options they do have. But it’s generally the resort of people that have specific relationship needs, have some key drawback, live in a place where options are limited, and so on. And sometimes things that are less likely to work do actually work.

Opposites may attract in some contexts, but I think on the basics when it comes to things that can generally be sorted into “more desirable” and “less desirable” categories, it leads to more problems than it does complimentarianism. The complimentarianism part comes in the intangibles and the neutral. Being laid back and being particular are relatively neutral traits, for example. Being gregarious and being reserved are also more along those lines (though as a reserved person, it sometimes doesn’t feel that way). Generally, for those that seek to rise above their station (be it in terms of looks or money) pay a price for it and those that go low wonder what kind of better they might have done.

Perhaps I am merely universalizing from my own limited experiences and preferences far too much. But as, over time, I have moved further and further away from being surrounded by people that have limited relationship options that drive them to cast a wider net or fuel insecurities that they believe can be solved if they can just get that one hot girl, the more hollow that sounds. Somewhere along the lines I became a romantic optimist. Not only because I found someone, but because so many of my friends have. And there seems to be a lot more in the way of similarities of background and station than differences. And I think a lot of the “thinking outside the box” was really “wasting a lot of time.”

I happened to hear this song as a cover many years ago and immediately went home to track it down. The best angry son-to-father song I have ever heard.

The video is taken from a show. Not very good quality, I’m afraid, but the sound recording on it is surprisingly good.