Original Rags

...by Scott Joplin.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ybSmkyDjZI

Now why can't modern music be this bright? (And lyrical without lyrics...but that's just me)

Grand Political Visions; or, If I Ran the World...

A fair number of people in real life ask me, "Hey, Davin, where the heck are you politically?" I want to say "conservative-ish", but some recent developments in the conserative party (in particular people like Huckabee) make me kinda doubt that, and saying "Buckley-Goldwater conservative" is a great way to make people go "huh?" With that in mind, I'm going to call myself "classical liberal", and point anyone who asks to this particular post. Specifically:

• National government should dedicate its time and money to a few national-interest things, and do those things well. This means things like a strong military (though not necessarily big or pervasive) and well paved cross-country roads. This does not include providing for businesses (see below) or people.
• Free market capitalism, pure supply and demand, raw profit motive is the most efficient way to distribute limited things among unlimited wants, and does a remarkable job of addressing various societal ills that would normally be fixed by fiat. If, for instance, women are paid 75% of the wages men are for the same amount and difficulty of work, then a company would be insane to hire three men; instead for the same money, it would hire four women, get more work done, and drive its competitors into the dirt. This would increase the demand for women workers, and to attract them companies would raise their offered wages, eventually getting to general wage equality. The same can be argued if black, gay, etc., were substituted for women.
• The most complete intellectual threat to free market capitalism may be socialism, but the most immediate threat is capitalists looking for a political advantage by government. These capitalists seem to be trying for a sort of neo-mercantilism, protecting companies in-country and imagining outflowing wealth is lost, not invested or traded.
• The government's job in international affairs is to project national interests. If these happen to overlap with international ones (e.g. a sort of Pan-Europe-U.S.-Japan free trade agreement), fine.
• People aren't saints. The reason free market capitalism works so well is because it does not require people to be saints; in fact, one could argue that free market capitalism, understood a certain way, plays to the greedy instincts of others to sate your own greed. In theory, all deals should have both/all parties walk away from the table thinking "...sucker!", because everybody's gotten something he values more for something he values less (else why make the deal?).
• Political and economic systems that claim to do it better than "dog-eat-dog" free market capitalism usually don't. Just look at the utopian societies of the 1800s and early 1900s, various African basket-cases, the old Soviet Union. Even more benevolent cases like Sweden lag in comparison with the rest of Europe.
• Utopianism, whether in this life or the next, is for suckers.
• Leave well enough alone in the case of social issues.
• ...But come at me in a drug-addled stupor and don't be surprised if your head hurts when you're lucid again. (Self-defense, by hand, knife, or gun, is always in style.)
• Precision of language helps everybody.
• You can't necessarily say everybody's a minority (unless you mean a minority of one), or an oppressed class, or a blue-collar union man, or whatever. But at the end, everybody's a consumer.
• Rationalism is awesome.
• Goldwater had it right when he said "I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!" (Let's not get into how such a quote could be corrupted by terrorist-types, however)
• Alinsky and Luntz are both morons.

I'll elaborate on various points here at random in later posts.

I Like This Guy

The flipping CEO of Whole Foods doesn't much like the new comprehensive health care bill!

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052970204251404574342170072865070.html

And apparently some people are planning a boycott of the store.

I'm not a particular fan of "organic" foods---for one, the thing's a government label and may not be "organic" as I know it, and for another, less chemical use means less crop per acre means increased costs---but maybe I'll stop by and pick up some crackers or something. There's supposed to be one near Harvey Mudd.

Random Thoughts #3

If gay men are supposed to be attracted to masculinity, is a man attracted to girly or not-particularly-manly men (like myself--what can I say, Link from the Legend of Zelda series looks nice) gay or compensating for a percieved lack of ability to attract women?

Logos, Ethos, Pathos, Bathos

If none of those terms makes any sense to you, here's a quick run-down:

Logos is an argument from logic: it's the assertion that the pool is contaminated because there are five confirmed elevated concentrations of strychnine and seven mosquito nests.

Ethos is an argument from expertise (usually moral): it's saying that the pool is contaminated because I'm an expert on water quality and I should know.

Pathos is an argument from emotion: it says the pool is contaminated because of those kids that got sick and had to go to hospital for a few weeks.

Bathos is what happens when you screw up pathos: it's the argument that apparently more kids got sick and/or died from swimming in that one pool than live in the county.

I'm not certain why, but my dividing line between pathos and bathos is really really thin and really easy to cross; see "From the Annals of TV Tropes" for an example (archives on right). And for some reason, pathos is on full display in every area of politics, no more so than in places like Health Care, Global Warming....

This isn't to say it's a completely torrid affair--the Congressional Budget Office has kept its head, and most of the commentors on National Review (especially Krauthammer and Hanson; Steyn is deliberately going for bathos for comic effect) are very calm. But to listen to those people the media love to show in town hall clips, advocacy groups on every side of the line, and the President's media offices is like a big heaping combo dose of laughing gas and ipecac (a vomit inducer).

People, I'm a logos man! Most people, I suspect, are logos men! Argue to my brain, not my heart, and you have a much better chance of getting me to listen to you and not pick you apart.

Random Thoughts #2

Team Fortress 2 recently released a new "classless update". I'd have waited longer to get a "Meet the Medic" trailer with it...

Where'd Ya Get Your Friends?

Internet.

Having done some guesstimation I have come to a conclusion.

I have spoken to people whose faces I do not know through chat boxes on Steam for the last three months more than I have spoken face-to-face with people at college for the nine preceding those three, and on much more varied topics.

I'm pathetic.

Bookstore Mediations

Bad sides of volunteering at the bookstore annex of local public library:

No profit sharing. (It's not a job, obviously.)

Distressing look at reading tastes of modern America. (Plenty of Self-Help, Christian Fiction, cheesy Romances...we should open a Maple Syrup annex to the bookstore annex to process all the sap!)

Good sides of volunteering at the bookstore annex of local public library:

Sense that you are "making a difference". (So stop bothering me about my cynicism, Obama!)

First pick at all the books that get donated. (To date, I have purchased Clausewitz's On War, Heinlein's Starship Troopers, the second and third volumes of Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago [already got the first], a copy of Don Quixote published 1941, and A Clockwork Orange, along with a near complete collection of P.J. O'Rourke's works from before 1995.)

Oh Dear...Heh...

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MmQ1YzAyYTM3NDYwMGQ5MDdkYTA3ZDlhMjdmODE5ZmM=
Apparently Canada doesn't feel like donating sperm to impotent couples...

That Valkri is a SPY!

You know the Spy?

Think this guy, but with a red suit instead of a blue one. He has a bunch of fun tricks you can pull on an unsuspecting enemy:

• He can make himself look completely like a member of the opposing team, even choosing a name that matches the class being played (if available). The only clues the enemy has that he's a SPY are that he's solid to them and he catches on fire.
• He can also render himself invisible for a period of time, and extend that invisibility by picking up ammunition boxes.
• He can disable buildings with his "sappers" without dropping his disguise, slowly draining their health and eventually destroying them without engineer intervention.
• And once he gets behind his enemy...

Backstab!

Boom! One shot kill!

I just racked up twenty of these bad boys without getting killed (my team still lost though), shot one guy, disabled several buildings and generally made a real ass of myself whenever the enemy tried to make a push!

And what does Steam decide to do? It says "Nope! Too bad! I'm not keeping a record of it! Even though I got all these fun numbers to show you, I'm not going to actually UPDATE your records!"

Wah....! Anybody else have this problem out there? WAH......!

UPDATE! Turns out it DID save it! I was just looking in the wrong spot! He he...

UPDATED UPDATE: NOOO! It's gone again!