Today we lost a soldier. William F. Buckley Jr., the founder of The National Review, died this morning. He was colossally important in bringing modern conservative ideas into the mainstream. Even in his old age, Buckley continued to impact conservative thought. My hope is that the conservatives across America can look at this sad event as a reminder of what the Republican party used to be. Buckley feared Obamaesque Statism as much as anyone. In 2004, conservatives rallied around the loss of Ronald Reagan, "Let's win one for the Gipper!" But before Reagan, and even before Goldwater was William F. Buckley. In 2008, let's win one for Bill Buckley.
Don Boudreaux is not afraid to take uncommon stances. He is brilliantly iconoclastic without being contrarian or cynical. Here are some humbling words to Reaganites and Obama-Fanatics alike, from a Cafe Hayek post of his from earlier this week.
"Being libertarian, I find no romance in collective action. The yearning to be part of a great collective "challenge or crusade" - be it conservative or "liberal" - reflects humans' tribal instincts. These instincts served a sound purpose during our hunter-gatherer past, but are today at odds with the individualism that makes us free and prosperous."
Also, Tyler Cowen wrote an informative post revealing some holes in the commonly expressed sentiment (I seem to hear it often) that Cuba is a somehow Utopian and care-free.
"The most shocking part is what small sums of money they would ask for or be made happy by. Or the numerous women -- and I mean ordinary women in the streets -- who would offer their bodies to a stranger (handsome though I am) for a mere pittance."
Awards shows like the Oscars seem to primarily exist to please celebrities. It becomes even more obvious what a bubble most of these people live in. Viewers at home watch in hopes of somehow entering the world of the rich and famous. The nominations and awards are secondary to the spectacle of "who's wearing what," and the possibility of drama unfolding on a national stage.
John Stewart is both necessarily refreshing and painfully awkward to watch in this setting. Unlike a Billy Crystal or even Ellen Degeneres, Stewart is not a celebrity's celebrity. He is expert at skewering the powerful and famous. It is fun to watch him juggle flattery, kind jests and some not-so-kind jests. Crystal and Degeneres did something similar, but were never nearly as blunt or caustic as Stewart is. He provides a dose of some much-need medicine.
Many actors and actresses are surprisingly bad at being natural and delivering lines from a prompter, considering the demands their job entails. Many try to be funny, few succeed. Everyone tries to look aloof, and even fewer succeed.
Heath Ledger's death was addressed almost too tastefully. The reference was so scarce and not deliberate that it almost appeared that they were trying to sweep the event under the rug. In any event, its better than not being tasteful enough.
I would not put it past Hollywood (the ever-powerful abstraction) to have intentionally selected especially young looking men and women in uniform to present the award for best documentary. Four of the five movies in the category were decidedly anti-war, the last was of course, Sicko. Nice going Oscar.
The fact that Juno won best original screenplay solidifies the irrelevance of the Academy in judging Independent films. I feel like the media latched on this movie in an attempt to play catch-up with recent movies of the same genre that it never recognized in the past; reparations of sorts. I maintain that while Juno was far from the worst movie of the year it was at best average and slightly annoying. Plus, the deepest problems with the movie were embedded in the screenplay: the painful dialogue, confused messages and lazy character development (Michael Cera's character probably had less than 15 minutes of screen time but was still treated as a main character whenever he was onscreen). I realize that this is becoming more of an informal review of Juno than of the Oscars, so I'll leave the rest of that rant for another post.
The silver lining of the whole show was definitely when Once won best original song for Falling Slowly. Of course I'm biased, Once was my favorite movie of the year, but the moment was so pure, unpredicted and detached from usual Hollywood grossness (that I also love). Actually, Stewart did sort of drop the ball by being a little bit condescending towards the duo of Hansard and Irglova. His tone seemed to say, "Isn't that great that even a funny looking bunch can make a cute little song and win our big prestigious award?"
This is all based on the two hours or so that I watched while half-concentrating on my Linguistics reading assignment. I wasn't even watching when No Country won best picture. Maybe I missed out on some of the big juicy bits.
I learned something about myself while watching the returns come in throughout the last night: I would love to see Mitt Romney make a better showing. Had I cast a ballot at all, I almost definitely would have supported McCain, but deep down, I'd like to see that conservative Republicans still exist in the numbers that they did just a few years ago.
If one thing was made clear last night, it is that Republicans don't trust conservatism to produce the prosperity they once thought it could. I disagree with that statement and can only speculate on why so many Republicans have taken a turn towards the moderate. Economic illiteracy is likely one reason. President Bush's inability to veto anything with a price-tag attached is probably another.
I don't think Mitt Romney can win against either of the Statists on the left, so I still would like to see McCain with the nomination. Unfortunately, if Romney garnered enough support to prove that America is still conservative but not enough for the nomination, then McCain would face an even bigger struggle in making it to the White House.
So it turns out that conservatives are less divided about John McCain than the right-wing pundits would have us believe. How conservative they are, though, is yet to be seen.
Last week, the Golden State Warriors very own Baron Davis was not selected to represent the best of best of the NBA at the 2008 All-Star Game in New Orleans. Warriors and non-Warriors fans alike were outraged. He got snubbed. Again.
Not only does Davis have higher stats than many guards that will travel to New Orleans, but he also performs on the court in ways that statistics don't measure. He turned one the biggest shames of the NBA into a power-house play-off team that can beat any team on any given night. So of course people are angry.
I don't care though. The Warriors, despite being 10 games over .500 with several months more basketball to come, still have an underdog spirit. A team does not just shake off 10 years of embarrassing basketball in a night (unless that team is the Celtics). Basketball coaches, commentators, and players alike are only beginning to take the Warriors seriously. The lone-wolf mentality (as a team, not as individuals) of so many Warriors players fuels victory night after night. When coach Don Nelson was ejected from a game in January we saw the Warriors play some of their best basketball ever. The day after Baron Davis was snubbed by the undeserving All-Star team, the Warriors had their biggest margin of victory of the season against a team with a 9 game winning-streak.
There's no denying that the Warriors play an exciting breed of basketball. Sometimes they break our hearts, but more often than not they make our days just that much more exciting. I predict that Baron and the Warriors will come back from this long break as the same team, but with more energy, spunk, and desire to prove themselves to the rest of the NBA .
Today, on the most super of Tuesdays, millions of voters in 24 states will cast their ballots for the candidate which they believe best represents their party. The culmination of too many months of non-stop election coverage is upon us. In less than 12 hours, clear victors on both sides will likely emerge, setting up the next 9 months of non-stop election coverage.
Selecting a candidate is a tiresome process. I've backed every remaining Republican candidate, except Huckabee, and a good number of candidates who either dropped out, or never even officially entered the race in the first place. Does every candidate look so good that I can't hold myself to just supporting one? Not even close. Rather, once I start backing a candidate, he becomes the subject of a great deal more scrutiny than the others in the race. After idealistically nodding along with Congressman Paul's solid libertarian record, I took a second look to find that he is far from a champion of free-trade. Oh, and he's kind of crazy. George Will's pseudo-endorsement of Rudy Giuliani got me to go as far as donate to his campaign. I had to take a second look at Giuliani's character, however, and what I learned was not impressive. Plus he sends me too much mail. When Senator McCain blitzed back into the race I saw a beacon of hope. But soon several respectable conservative columnists were at his throat for what seemed to be some pretty good reasons.
I received my absentee ballot a few days before the deadline for mail-in, Friday. My most recent whim had me supporting McCain, but only marginally. Friday came and went and I never made an effort to fill out the ballot. Quite simply, I forgot.
McCain will have my support along with most conservatives, moderates in particular. But why should those conservatives who find McCain to be tolerable at best "remember" to vote for McCain when it counts in November? Some won't, and I don't blame them.
This video sums up the typical arguments of proponents of net-neutrality. They make the typical assumptions and errors that tend to go along with criticisms of apparent flaws in an unregulated (free) market. Aside from the visually appealing graphics and models, the video really doesn't have a lot of substance and is incredibly misleading.
The first false assumption is that ISPs such as Comcast and AT&T (characterized as malicious UFOs) exist to manipulate, for monetary gain, a universally available service to young minorities who seek to one day become President. They fail to mention a key component of ISPs: the P, as in "Provider". Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon provide the means through which we are able to surf the internet. The day that these companies stop providing this service is the day that we can no longer stay connected with friends and family half-way across the world, post adorable pictures of our cats with ridiculous captions, and most importantly, read fine blogs such as this one.
In order to provide this service, companies invest capital. Shareholders provide the capital to the company, and the company repays its shareholders with dividends. It's through this miracle of capitalism that we are left with relatively affordable communications services such as cell-phones and the internet. Once the companies (in this case the ISPs) can no longer produce dividends for their shareholders, the investment goes away and so does our internet. The business policy in question is whether ISPs should allot more bandwidth to clients who pay the ISP more money, thus increasing their bottom line. In any other private sector, this policy would receive no attention whatsoever. The butcher gives preferential treatment (better quality meat) to the customer who pays her more money, regardless of the character of the patron. ISPs do not wish to discriminate against any particular content on the web (ex: Google over Yahoo), but rather against those customers who do not pay as much money. So where does the controversy come from?
Many people believe that the internet is somehow above the free market. The second misconception in the video is the notion that the internet is founded on a principle of neutrality. I challenge you to name one other business sector that has "founding principles" that guide all competitors (remember, these are also the providers). To go back to the butcher analogy, that is like saying that at the beginning of butchery, the proverbial community decided that butchers would sell sirloin, tenderloin and brisket for the same price. Sadly, even internet service is a scarce resource that must be allocated just like any other good or service on the market. The community does not get to dictate what service will cost how much money; that is left up to the providers, who base prices on supply and demand.
The video then makes the error of calling this an issue of monopoly. This confused me temporarily, because I still had an image in my head of four UFOs hovering around the capital building. My understanding of a monopoly was that it only occurred in the absence of competition among multiple firms. If AT&T suddenly only gave "fast-track" privileges to a handful of websites, I would soon get fed up with waiting for http://icanhascheezburger.com/ to load. As a rational consumer, I would not take to insisting that all sites were given neutral treatment, I would switch to Comcast. If Comcast did the same, I would pick up a book. In short, if non-neutral ISP policies become too restrictive, it will affect ISPs bottom lines adversely and the market will correct itself by becoming less restrictive.
The video leaves us with an image of the Insidious Space People being catapulted from Earth's atmosphere. Back on Earth, the picketers are cheering because at long last they have their unbiased internet service for everyone! Oh wait, no not everyone, only those who can afford the now exorbitantly expensive (if available at all) internet. The image of the African-American boy filled with high hopes for the future is diminished by the Pew Research center statistic that in 2005, only 13% of African-Americans had access to broadband internet in their homes as opposed to 25% of Whites.
The internet is an incredibly important resource for all Americans, in and out of the home. Our goal should be to get the internet in the homes of as many people as possible. The best way to do that is by keeping prices as low as possible. Net-neutrality raises costs for ISPs, which are passed on the consumers, hurting the lower class especially. I would like to revise/clarify the title of this post. Net-neutrality does matter. It hurts everyone.
Back in November, the Almond Gallery challenged its readers to submit grout related plays on words. Because of the lack of submission within the allotted contest time-frame, no winner was declared. Today, however, I received a submission via text message from Sean M. of Palm Springs California. Since all previous submissions were also the work of Mr. M, I declare him the winner by default.
The winning response:
I went with a grouts-hunting (grouse-hunting) party in Shropshire.
Artists rendition of Sean M. (pictured far right) spotting hunting partner Ashford Alverston.
Most loyal A.G. readers have some kind of connection to the Bay Area and to its cultural, financial and creative hub, San Francisco. Whether you've lived nearby your entire life, just came to the bay, or live in Cleveland and just happened upon the Almond Gallery, now is your chance to test your knowledge of the layout of the Golden Gate City. Try to match the following locations to their corresponding starred-number on the map below:
a) Golden Gate Park b) Pier 39 c) Chrissy Field d) Civic Center e) Haight/Ashbury f) 19th Avenue g) The Fillmore h) AT&T Park i) Marin County j) The Castro
Write down your answers before viewing the comments section. Then paste your original, unaltered answers as a comment and compare your answers to others. NO CHEATING! I will post the correct responses in about a week.
Our good friend Jonathan G. over at jonothoughts.blogspot.com has agreed to a blogging challenge! I'm partly using the competition as motivation to return the A.G. to it's original glory of last semester, and partly as a publicity stunt to increase readership.
The competition is who can create the most posts on their blog in one week. We started on Sunday at 2:30 p.m. So I am already a little bit behind the curve. Don't worry though, loyal readers! The days to come will be full to the brim with juicy observations, activities, commentary and more! Since neither of our blogs has a strict over-arching theme, any content or subject matter is fair-game. The only rule is that the posts must be coherent. This rule will be naturally enforced by the fact that we both put an emphasis on the integrity and quality of anything with our names on it, especially our blogs.
Help us keep our institutions of learning alive by following our posts as the competition goes on! Comments are always appreciated as they remind us that our efforts do not go unnoticed!
Amazingly, during the 13 years I spent in the public school system, despite all the talk about civil rights and the accomplishments of Dr. King, I had never actually heard his famous speech in its entirety. Without actually watching the speech, listening every word he uses and how he uses his words, I couldn't begin to understand the colossal importance of the event and especially Dr. King himself. Young people should understand why he is only one of two people in America's history to be honored with a Federal holiday (here in Berkeley he is the only one, as Columbus Day has been changed to Indigenous People's Day). Public schools: This one is easy, just show the clip.
In the future, if you want to honor Dr. King on his day, circulate the link to friends and family. It came to me via e-mail from my dad, John.
"Listening to the fatuous Al Gore claim his undeserved Nobel Prize and maunder on about how America is ruining the planet makes me realize how fortunate America is to have as its president George W. Bush. Yes, Bush has his ample share of failings. He occasionally speaks at the fifth-grade level. He is too willing to surround himself with cronies and sycophants. An unsupple man, Bush sometimes reminds me of the toy soldier who walks into the wall and keeps going."
This is an excerpt from Dinesh D'Souza's most recent column. I think that the he doles out a perfect balance of praise and criticism for an imperfect President that still gets undeniably shafted by a dishonest media on a daily basis. I am inclined to disagree with his final claim that Bush could be remembered as one of the great Presidents of our time, but anything is possible. It is interesting to go back and read what Lincoln's critics predicted of his legacy.
When the world is divided into two distinct camps, liberal and conservative, some radically different points of view tend to be lumped together. The Almond Gallery subscribes to a strong conservative belief system that has been defined with help from certain individuals. These "foremost conservatives" must be distinguished from the far less savory "fauxmost conservatives," that is, those who I believe tarnish the reputation of conservatism in general. Here are my lists of those who exemplify each subset:
Foremost Conservatives #1: Barry Goldwater - Reinvented the Republican party as the party of small government. Fought responsibly against the 20th century's greatest threat: Communism. #2: Winston Churchill - A champion of freedom during the darkest of times. Took on both worldwide fascism and his country's Labour party with an impeccable wit. #3: Ayn Rand - Provided a philosophical backing to the principles of individualism and conservatism. Taught us that acquiring wealth is something to be proud of. #4: George Will - The most consistently readable conservative columnist. His opinions carry a lot of weight with his conservative readers such as myself (see post from Nov. 13, Donations, Nominations..). #5: William F. Buckley - Despite being referred to by #3 as the most dangerous man in America, his biweekly publication the National Review has been incredibly influential in shaping politics in Washington for the better.
Honorable mentions to: Justice Antonin Scalia, Ronald Reagan and Thomas Sowell ---- Fauxmost Conservatives
#1: Mike Huckabee - To quote foremost conservative Winston Churchill, "He has all of the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire." He holds a backwards philosophy that diametrically opposes Goldwater's conservatism. #2: George W. Bush - Despite generally good intentions, President Bush has failed to apply conservative principles and has little results to show for his (almost) two terms. Also has fermented general hatred for the Republican party. #3: Arnold Schwarzenneger - Has disappointed conservatives in his second term with his middle-of-the-road approach to governing and big spending programs. #4: Pat Buchanan - His protectionist/isolationist ideas are some of the most anti-free-market since the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. #5: Ron Paul - I give Paul credit for his honesty and divergence from typical politicians, however, he fails to distinguish libertarianism from libertarian fetishism. The latter is dangerous in itself and in that it deters voters from looking rationally at reasoned libertarianism.
Honorable mention to: Pat Robertson, James "Mountain Jim" Inhofe and Abraham Lincoln
Today I stumbled upon a blog called waiterrant.net. It is one man posting random things that happen to him. Typically this sort of anonymous journaling fails. It takes a certain sort of arrogance to believe that your life is interesting enough for people to want to read about it on a regular basis. Though not a brilliant writer, he gives each story a relatable, heart-warming, and overall good feel. I read for 20 minutes easily without realizing what I had done. I highly recommend it.
When did the exclamation mark go out of style? When did it become the mark of a middle school writer? Today I used an exclamation mark in an essay of mine, but I have a nagging fear of being derided as immature. Before now, I can't recall the last time I formally used an exclamation mark. I think that its usage only becomes a problem when the writer uses it to replace legitimate emotion or intensity. If you can use one to enhance or clarify a statement--denote that it is meant to be read with a little more oomph--I say, by all means, exclaim away! The worthlessness of certain punctuation marks is the invention of English teachers, frustrated with the typical poor usage by their students. I remember also being told never to start sentences with "and" or "but." I was also told by my seventh grade teacher that she would not be teaching us to use parentheses because we would not be able to do it correctly. Lastly, the cliche Nazis would have us believe that any common figure of speech denotes a lack of originality. All of these devices have merit when used sparingly and correctly.
Tolman Hall, located on the north-western edge of U.C. Berkeley's campus is known for its award-winning architecture, nationally recognized graduate psychology research, and to a somewhat lesser degree, the graffiti in the third-floor men's bathroom. Above the row of urinals are ordinary bathroom tiles. In between the tiles, however, people have penciled in dozens of grout-related puns. As a lover of words (a logophile, if you will), I was amused by the various puns people came up with. Most were fairly unoriginal variations of the word "great," as in Grout Expectations or the Grout Depression. Others spiced it up a bit with things like Groutcho Marx and Potatoes au Groutin. Perhaps the trend started as a student's psychology project that has since taken on a life of its own. However it began, it has given me and countless others something to read while peeing, and for that, I'm thankful.
Loyal A.G. Reader Challenge:
Be forever enshrined in the prestige of Tolman Hall (at least until they remodel the bathrooms)! Submit your pun to the comments section of this post. I will announce the winner on Monday night. The next day I will pencil in the winning pun on an empty line of grout. Entries will be judged on originality, comic-value and overall effect. Bonus points will be awarded for additional incorporation of bathroom themed word-play. All entries must be received by Monday 12/2 at 11:00 PM PST.
There is a lot of excitement right now in the realm of my folk music tastes:
I just found out that Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson and Ray Price came out with an album called Last of the Breed last March. I don't know how I missed this, but I did.
The season finale of Showtime's Weeds ended with Pete Seeger's rendition of Little Boxes. Seeger popularized the song originally by Malvina Reynolds. The show opened with Reynold's version for the whole first season. The second and third seasons have opened with various artists' renditions of the song. I always wondered why they never played Seeger's version (by far the best, and the one I was most familiar with). The answer is now obvious: The producers were saving it for the perfect time. After a delightful episode, the song came on at just the right moment. It made all of the waiting worthwhile.
Arlo Guthrie's first solo performance in decades, at Zellerbach Hall here in Berkeley, is just months away (April 10). Arlo is the son of the late Woody Guthrie. This is really a once in a lifetime opportunity.
Interesting exercise: Imagine re-meeting your oldest friends in a different context than how you actually met. What would you think of them? Would you think they were huge tools? Could you still be friends with them? How many do you think you would have been friends with no matter what the situation in which you had met them? To what extent do friendships/relationships evolve out of circumstances rather than chemistry? Finally, would you still have been friends with me if you first met me while I was looking like this?
A pet peeve of mine is the misuse of the word "right," as in, "I have a right to affordable housing," or, "I have a right to a living wage." The word is used so often by politicians, workers and whiners alike that it has almost lost all meaning. I'm not bold enough to give an actual definition of the word, but I will say that it is used far too freely, usually in the context of overblown self-entitlement.
I realize that I'm guaranteed to take a lot of criticism for this statement, but it is essentially the core of my ethics system: No one has a right to a job, or a free education, or free health-care (not even children). Everyone has a right to pursue these things. Everyone has a right not to be denied the pursuit of these things. They are not, however, inherent. They come at the cost of other people. The government takes from Person A, and gives to Person B.
In the same sense, people do not have a right to love. Few would argue that love is any less critical to overall well being than education or health-care, yet no one argues for government enforced subsidization of love, and with good reason. Subsidized love would essentially require an abstract form of rape: forcing those with many friends to give up friends to the loveless undesirables. Even with the aid of Cupid or Love Potion #9, it would be impossible to enforce without clearly breaching inherent rights of all those with the social skills necessary to find love. Services such as education and health-care can be practically redistributed among people. Just because it is practical, however, does not make it ethical. Instead of stealing our friends the government takes our money. For those of you who have a cynical view of money and therefore think my analogy is invalid, I would recommend reading this excerpt from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. For every dollar the government takes away from an individual, they are taking away some of his/her inherent freedom. With a few exceptions (lighthouses are the only one I can come up with off of the top of my head) taxation is only excusable in the defense of citizen's true rights.
While the analogy between love and existing government programs is not perfect, I think it provides for a fresh perspective on what some taxation really is. I take my rights very seriously, and so should you.
Today we lost a soldier. William F. Buckley Jr., the founder of The National Review, died this morning. He was colossally important in bringing modern conservative ideas into the mainstream. Even in his old age, Buckley continued to impact conservative thought.
