Dave Friedman's Soul of Wit

Vonage

Vonage had its IPO last week, and some people claim that by virtue of it being a well-known company it should do well.

I'm not so sure, either on the idea that Vonage is a well known company, or that it should do well:*

1) Vonage has spent a lot of money on quirky ads, but, my bet is that a random selection of people will not know what Vonage is, or how its use of the internet threatens telcos.

2) Cable companies, which are both larger and more well-capitalized than Vonage can easily market VOIP services (and, in fact, do have such services).

It is not clear what Vonage's competitive advantage is.

*Disclaimer: I am a Vonage customer.

That Which Is Obvious, Or, Economists Do Their Jobs

So, I'm studying for the CFA. Part of the CFA is introductory economics. Part of introductory economics is stating the obvious in such a way that it quickly becomes apparent that PhD does stand for "piled higher and deeper":

Public choice analysis indicates that vote-maximizing politicians have an incentive to increase spending on their constituents, particularly if they can do so without having to raise taxes. The presence of surpluses would make it tempting for politicial decision makers to undertake new spending projects. Thus, the occurrence of persistent budget surpluses over a lengthy period of time seems unlikely.

In a word: no shit. Translated into plain English: pork barrel politics is not going away because pork creates votes.

Other things that I learned* in today's economics lesson: the government can't do much about the economy with so-called discretionary policy measures (say, cutting or raising tax rates) because such actions require time (no dictatorship for us), by which time, the conditions warranting such policymaking have passed.

Politicians, then, are impotent prostitutes: they can no more control the economy than they can the weather and, at the same time, they have to fellate their constituents in order for their constituents to keep them in office.

Is this a great system or what?

*This is sarcasm. I no more "learned" this than I learned that Britney Spears is a slatternly bimbo, but, I digress...

Things I Wonder

Wikipedia describes Henry Paulson as a "devout" Christian Scientist.

Companies are in the business of managing their risks; was Paulson required to submit to medical care as a condition of being CEO & Chairman of Goldman Sachs?

Christian Scientists, of course, are famous for eschewing medical care in favor of prayer and meditation. A large public company cannot afford to have as its highest ranking executive a person who submits solely to the caprices of prayer-as-palliative.

Steroids & Technology

One reason I don't subscribe to the theory that steroid use in baseball (or other sports) threatens to "ruin" those sports is that a similar thing has happened with sports technology over the past decade or so: titanium golf drivers, graphite composite bicycles and tennis rackets, new types of bowling balls, etc., etc.

Further, new advances in physiological medicine, nutrition science, weight-training, and sports psychology have all given professional athletes an edges that participants in bygone eras did not have.

What is so special about the advantages steroids confer on an athlete that they deserve special scorn? The Journal reports on a bowler-activist who has taken to oiling bowling lanes in hopes of diminishing the number of perfect games bowled:

The first official perfect U.S. bowling game was rolled in 1907. It was the only one that year. Two more players managed the feat in 1908. Last year, members of the U.S. Bowling Congress, the sport's amateur association, tallied a record 51,192 perfect games in league and tournament play.

Are today's bowlers so much better than their forebears of a century ago? Mr. Pierson doesn't think so, and most bowling experts agree. They say that bowlers, like golfers and tennis players, are taking advantage of technology to improve their games.

That bothers traditionalists, who say the integrity of some of the world's most nuanced precision games is at risk. Golf officials have tried to fight back by lengthening championship courses and limiting the size of titanium club heads. Former tennis star John McEnroe has called for a return to the wooden racket.

But while golfers are driving farther and tennis players are hitting more aces, they have nothing on bowlers. To score a strike, bowlers are generally aiming to hook the ball into what they call "the pocket," the space between the front pin and the next pin on either side. If the pins are walloped just right, they knock or bounce into one another, and all 10 pins will fall. It used to be an extraordinary feat to knock down all the pins at once a dozen times in succession. Few players had the consistency to do that. But in the late 1980s, the sport began to shift away from polyester balls to super-engineered polyurethane balls with special resins and particles that grip the lanes better and strategically weighted cores that make aiming easier.

The arguments against steroid use are not especially coherent, given that all manner of other technological improvements are seen by sanctioning bodies as legitimate.

What Would Jesus Do?...

...asks Sarah Silverman.

Her answer? "Give the Jew girl toys," Silverman, of course, being Jewish.

And rather annoying.

This is funny?

Uh, no.

But I wouldn't kick her out of bed.

New Yorkers Support the Military

Just in case anyone was wondering if New York City has its priorities in order:

Max Johnson, 28, a damage controlman second class on the U.S.S. Anzio, a 9,600-ton cruiser, met his wife and her sisters in Manhattan to see the tourist sites. His sailor's uniform prompted officials to put the Johnson family at the head of the line for the Empire State Building.

Midshipman Scott Clark of the Kearsarge, originally from Los Angeles, was especially lucky. On Friday, he and three friends were given Yankees tickets. A man in a suit stepped out of one of the tall buildings near Times Square and gave them the tickets, three rows behind third base, he said. At the game, "I was within talking distance of A-Rod," Midshipman Clark said.

First Class Petty Officer Jason Loftin, a radar technician on the Kearsarge, got a free sightseeing flight over Manhattan. The prize was donated by a local businessman and Petty Officer Loftin was the first to volunteer to take it. The flight left from Staten Island. "I'm glad to get away from everyone else in uniform," he said.

Housing Bubble

The Wall St. Journal reports that novice vulture investors* are swooping in to buy up houses of people facing foreclosure:

The cooling market for real estate brought Michael Termine and Uso Mbanefo together.

Mr. Mbanefo, a 43-year-old entrepreneur struggling to launch a clothing-design company, had fallen behind on his mortgage payments. He needed to sell his four-bedroom house here quickly to avoid losing it in a foreclosure. That's when Mr. Termine, a 32-year-old novice real-estate investor, stepped in.

One afternoon in early April, Mr. Termine visited Mr. Mbanefo's office in a strip mall and offered to pay $400,000 for his house. Mr. Mbanefo showed Mr. Termine fliers for nearby homes offered at $600,000 or more. Mr. Termine pointed out that the inventory of unsold homes here, as in many parts of the country, has nearly doubled over the past year. Even so, Mr. Mbanefo said that he might be able to refinance his home, spruce it up and sell it for $500,000.

"I don't see it at 500," said Mr. Termine. "I think the magic number to move that house fast is 475." Before leaving, he reiterated his offer. "I have $400,000 waiting for you, in cash."

Lest you think Michael Termine is a well-capitalized vulture investor whose risk management capabilities are such that he can hedge the risk that he is incurring by laying out cash for an illiquid asset, consider again:

Most foreclosure investors run small, local operations, buying and reselling a handful of properties a year. Some are self-taught; others take courses touted on Web sites or in late-night TV ads. Invariably, they draw criticism from advocates for the poor, who accuse them of preying on the vulnerable.

"Our time has finally come!" proclaims a recent email advertisement from ForeclosureS.com, a Fair Oaks, Calif.-based company that markets training materials for would-be investors. A 90-minute telephone program promises to teach foreclosure specialists how to be a "white knight" and not "feel like a shark."

More people are falling behind on their mortgages, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. The percentage of loans on which payments are at least 30 days overdue rose to 4.7% in the fourth quarter of 2005 from 4.4% a year earlier. With interest rates rising, it's harder for homeowners to refinance or sell quickly.

Such conditions are attractive to investors like Mr. Termine, who previously has owned a bar, worked in construction and tried acting. "I've always wanted to do the real-estate thing," says the father of two young children. "I just didn't know how."

Last year, Mr. Termine bought home-study materials from ForeclosureS.com, including six compact discs, for about $400. Then he flew to California in November to take an intensive three-day course. Mr. Termine says the lessons taught him to deal honestly and ethically with people facing foreclosure -- and make a good return for himself. "If I can create some kind of win-win, then it's worth it," he says.

So far, he says, he has used home-equity lines of credit to purchase four homes in foreclosure. He has sold two of them, he says, clearing about $160,000 in profits. Though he expects some transactions to be less lucrative, Mr. Termine predicts he can easily earn a six-figure annual income. One sign of his confidence: he bought himself an $82,000 red Porsche Carrera late last year.

It seems safe to say that some of these nouveau vulture investors, poorly capitalized, and unschooled in the complex field of risk mitigation (i.e., hedging and the like) will themselves become victims of a bubble.

*I'm using the term "vulture investor" somewhat loosely here. It typically applies to investors who buy unloved assets at depressed prices (think excess bandwidth in light of the telecom meltdown of several years ago). Vulture investors don't typically invest in illiquid assets like real estate.

In any event, the metaphor is a particularly poetic one, as vultures get much of their nourishment from carrion, i.e., dead animals killed by other predators or caprices of nature.

Light Blogging

Apologies for the light blogging. More posts to come in the coming days.

Meanwhile, read about Paulson's appointment to Treasury Secretary here.

Good explanation of Goldman Sachs here.

George Bush is Human

Says Gregory Mankiw.

His son crawled under W's desk in the Oval office; W was amused.

The image calls to mind, unfortunately, Monica Blewclinsky under Slick Willie's desk.

Dell

Ouch:

If you chart the stock performance of Dell vs. H-P over the past year, you get a sideways V, with the trend lines moving in opposite directions, and Dell on the bottom heading lower. Oddly enough, you get strikingly similar patterns when you plot other rivals, such as Intel vs. AMD or Microsoft vs. Google -- with the latter names on the top.

Something seems to be in the air: Formerly bulletproof business models are fissuring under the pressure of new and unexpected competition. Two months ago, when Dell bought Alienware, which makes high-end gaming computers, a lot of people began to worry that Dell appeared to be resorting to the sorts of acquisitions that companies employ when they don't have any more ideas about how to keep growing. The company's poor tech support has been a theme of many scathing Web-site and blog postings in recent years.

But for all that, Dell remains a huge industry power. Its market capitalization is $55 billion, although by that measure it is now a smaller company than Apple Computer, which Mr. Dell once suggested be liquidated and the proceeds given to shareholders. When it sets its mind to it, Dell is capable of fixing parts of itself that are broken. Dell says it is spending a lot of money to make things better.

Back in the days of the great tech-stock bubble, a money manager was asked what he did when he ran out of investing ideas. His response: "I just buy more shares of Dell." You sure don't hear that any more.

Posted Without Comment

Postrel:

Like the folks at MediaBistro, I'm sorry to hear that Anne Applebaum is leaving the WaPost. She's a serious historian with a lively mind and a great devotion to human freedom. It's insulting to her talents and unique voice to say, as MediaBistro does, that "Most sad of all, however, is that Applebaum's departure leaves the Post's editorial/opinion pages virtually female-free." (They actually categorize her with Ellen Goodman.) And Charles Krauthammer is just there to represent the disabled, I suppose.

OK, I can't resist not commenting (I am opinionated; therefore I blog!)

Anyone interested in the sordid history of the Soviet Union would do well to read Applebaum's incomparable Gulag. And then, apply the principles learned in that book to China, and explain to me why it is a prima facie case that the world's next big growth engine will be China. Because it ain't a prima facie case.

Explain China to Me

Can someone explain to me how China is supposed to thrive, given that the quality of its educational system does not meet western standards? Well educated people are the foundation on which modern economies depend; China can't rely forever on putting together widgets for Mattel and Intel:

Alarmed by the specter of unemployed graduates taking to the streets, the [Chinese] government this week imposed tight limits on the number of students Chinese colleges can enroll. Admissions will now be allowed to increase only in line with economic growth -- which means by around 8% annually. This follows a four-fold increase in student enrollments since 1998, as new institutions of higher education sprung up to cope with the increased demand triggered by rising prosperity,

But Beijing's move does nothing to address the real problem, which is not the quantity of graduates but their quality. For all the headlines in the Chinese media about job shortages, foreign multinationals frequently complain of being unable to find enough talented graduates. A recent study by the McKinsey Global Institute found that fewer than 10% of Chinese graduates in professions such as engineering and accounting have the skills needed to work in a foreign company.

That's because, in addition to often low English standards, the Chinese educational system emphasizes rote learning far more than it encourages students to think for themselves. "Education in China basically means memorizing," a foreign academic teaching in Beijing told us this week. "Traditionally the Chinese government has not encouraged students to ask a lot of questions."

The problem from the Party's perspective is that students taught to ask questions may end up asking the "wrong" ones. So the Beijing leadership is left with the Hobson's choice of either risking unrest among jobless graduates or overhauling the educational system to make students more employable -- at the price of encouraging them to question the Party's grip on power.

How is an economy supposed to grow into a sophisticated world power if its school churn out graduates unable to think for themselves? This is reminiscent of a debate I used to have with my grandfather, in which he lamented the decline of rote learning in America's schools. Never mind, I told him, that the post world War II generation (i.e., his kids' generation) created more wealth than any other group of people in the history of the world (the largest creation of legal wealth in history, in the words of one famous venture capitalist). Rote learning may be fine for agrarian or industrial economies, but not for the information- and data-rich economies which currently control the world.

Charlie Daniels

Saw the Charlie Daniels Band tonight at B.B King's in Times Square, and during his performance, he commented on his support of the troops in Iraq.

And I'm happy to say, even in New York City, Daniels was applauded for his comments.

Those who would impugn the efforts of Americans who risk life and limb would do well to consider how they would react were they placed in the same situation as our soldiers. No matter what we think of the Bush Administration's policies in Iraq (and it is not clear that those policies have yielded much benefit) it is nonetheless imperative that we support those who risk their lives to serve our country.

An Ad I'd Watch

I don't watch much advertising, in part because I don't watch most commercial (i.e., broadcast or basic cable) TV, and when I surf the web, my computer is set to suppress any and all advertisements.

But I may have to, now that there is an anti-union ad making its debut:

An advocacy group with an unusually broad antiunion message is now bringing its marketing campaign to television.

Earlier this month, the Center for Union Facts, a Washington-based group partly backed by corporate interests, ran what may be the first TV commercial designed to disparage the labor movement as a whole. The commercial followed the group's purchase of similar antiunion newspaper ads earlier this year.

In a 30-second spot that has aired on Fox News nationally and in several local broadcast markets, four actors posing as workers describe sarcastically what they "love" about unions: paying dues, having their dues go to support politicians they don't like, union discrimination against minorities and the "fat-cat lifestyles" of union leaders.

"I really like how the union discriminates against minorities!" says an African-American actor portraying a construction worker in the spot, which is titled "Thanks Union Bosses."

Of course, it should be obvious to balcks and all other minorities that unions do discriminiate agains thtme; all one needs to do is to look at the sorry state of public education today. One can hardly cocnclude anything but antipathy towards union when considering the problems poor kids encounter when trying to learn to read and write.

Kill unions and create wealth.

Victimhood, Markets, Seizing Opportunity, and Opus Dei: A Lesson in How Not to Do P.R.

The Wall St. Journal reports that Opus Dei is presenting itself as a victim of Hollywood, in light of the release of the Da Vinci Code movie:

So, while some Catholic groups are boycotting the film and threatening legal action, Opus Dei is calmly promoting its work and presenting itself as a victim of Hollywood. Instead of generating buzz, it wants to be seen as banal.

"People who come here looking for something surprising or shocking are going to be very disappointed," said Jean Granier, a schoolteacher, father of 10, and Opus Dei member who this week took part in an open house at the group's center in Marseille, France. "What we do is very, very ordinary." His oldest daughter, Aude, also a member, handed out pamphlets explaining that, contrary to "The Da Vinci Code," Opus Dei "has no monks, no murders, no masochism and no misogyny."

Outside PR professionals say the outreach strategy carries risks. "I think their lemonade is going to turn sour in the end," said Simon Holberton, a partner of Brunswick Group LLP, a London public-relations firm. "They are going to get lots of applications from nutters -- survivalists and others who like inflicting pain on themselves."

As for the cilice, a dozen members at the Marseille gathering all said they had never tried it and never would.

If ever there were a way to create fodder for mockery it is by acting as a victim. (It should also be noted that Holberton's comment seems at once dismissive and utterly ignorant. I don't think those who want to remind themselves of Christ's pain on the cross "like" inflicting pain on themselves; understanding Opus Dei in terms of an S&M fetish is perhaps the height of foolishness, even if it is true that the idea of "spritual mortification" involves the infliction of pain.)

As one wise Catholic recently put it: it's fiction; get over it.

Elsewhere in the Journal, here's a more sober, realistic, and acerbic take on the success of Brown's novel, namely, people like conspiracy theories:

Here's my theory of "The Da Vinci Code." Dan Brown was sitting one night at the monthly meeting of his local secret society, listening to a lecture on the 65th gospel, and he got to thinking: "I wonder if there's any limit to what people are willing to believe these days about a conspiracy theory. Let's say I wrote a book that said Jesus was married. To Mary Magdalene. Who was pregnant at the Crucifixion. And she is the Holy Grail. Jesus wanted her to run the church as a global sex society called Heiros Gamos, but Peter elbowed her out of the job. Her daughter was the beginning of the Merovingian dynasty of France. Jesus' family is still alive. There were 80 gospels, not four. Leonardo DiCaprio, I mean da Vinci, knew all this. The 'Mona Lisa' is Leonardo's painting of himself in drag. Da Vinci's secret was kept alive by future members of 'the brotherhood,' including Isaac Newton, Claude Debussy and Victor Hugo. The Catholic Church is covering all this up."

In a word, Brown saw a market opportunity, exploited it, and the Catholic Church was left flailing, as it were, in the wind. The Church would do well to heed the lesson of markets, as its evangelical brethren have, and market itself to people. Perhaps Opus Dei should go check out the Saddleback Church, figure out why it attract religion consumers by the thousands, and leverage the market opportunity presented.

But no, it's easier to be the victim than it is to be the innovator. Just ask Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and Louis Farrakhan. Those are the people with whom Opus Dei holds company if its desire is to be seen as a victim.

Sports and Detroit

Can sports teams' success help a city to grow?

On its face, this question is so utterly ludicrous that it does not even warrant a serious answer. However, many people seem to be of the opinion that a city can, in fact, tie its economic success to its sports teams' athletic prowess.

Sports teams have at best a temporary effect on a city's economic growth and, at worst, an illusory effect which lulls the city's people into a sort of complacency.

A column in the Wall St. Journal purports to ferret out the truth on this issue:

Of course, winning sports teams can't solve an area's underlying problems. Today's Detroit teams worry about fans moving away in search of work. A recent poll shows that 51% of area residents doubt their children and grandchildren will find jobs in the state. "Season-ticket holders pass good seats at Lions games from generation to generation," says Detroit sportscaster Eli Zaret. He likens it to a "sense of patriotism." But if young people move away, local sports seats could go empty. The area's economic troubles are "a colossal wake-up call for all of us," admits the Pistons' Mr. Wilson.

Still, Detroit's teams have a history of lifting residents during hard times. In July 1967, racial rioting left 43 dead and 2,500 stores torched or looted. That summer, Tigers players became civic leaders, with outfielder Willie Horton famously venturing into the riot zone, in uniform, to calm people down.

The following season, in a city beset by white flight and the ruins left by the rioting, residents both black and white celebrated together when the Tigers won the World Series. Many believe the 1968 Tigers gave the city hope, which residents held on to for years afterward.

Of course, that Detroit has been declining for the past forty or fifty years is left unsaid when considering whether sports teams' success can help a city.

Cities grow and prosper because, as Jane Jacobs pointed out, people want to be there. Good sports teams are not a sufficient reason for (most) people to stay in a city.

Kill the Tax Code

Anyone who doubts that our tax code is a drain on precious resources should consider this:

Do-gooder George Clooney donated his [Oscar] goodie bag to the United Way, which auctioned it off, with the proceeds going to victims of the hurricanes. Despite its Oscar cache and attachment to ER’s dashing Dr. Doug Ross (including a handwritten note from him!), the bag generated a winning bid of only $45,100.

Here are the exam questions, raised by the “Shop Talk” column in the Journal of Taxation:

* Is Clooney’s income on the receipt of the bag $100,000, $45,100, or some other amount?
* Is Clooney’s charitable deduction on the donation of the bag $100,000, $45,100, or some other amount?
* Does the auction of Clooney’s bag establish that the fair market value of the bags received by the other movie stars is only $45,100?

But for religion, never has man conceived a more useless and unproductive thing than the tax code.

Aesthetics Matter

Design and aesthetics matter.

Apple's new store on Fifth Avenue in New York City demonstrates Apple's interest in design:

Mr. Jobs, a major stickler for design details, has been intimately involved in helping to turn the stores into hip, visually memorable shopping destinations. Mr. Jobs is one of the named inventors on a patent Apple secured several years ago for the design of a signature glass staircase featured in many Apple stores. A person familiar with the matter says Mr. Jobs himself was involved in the design of the glass cube atop the new Fifth Avenue store.

In a recent interview, Mr. Jobs admitted that at one point he ordered workers to replace the metal bolts holding together the glass panels that make up the cube over the company's Fifth Avenue store. "We spent a lot of time designing the store, and it deserves to be built perfectly," Mr. Jobs said.

Apple stores have gained a strong following among young consumers, who flock to the stores to check their email using the free Internet connections and to snap photos with the digital cameras on display.

William Mon, a student at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J., who will graduate later this week, says he tries to visit his local Apple store whenever the company introduces new iPods and other products. Mr. Mon, 21 years old, says that by using large open tables to display its products, rather than cluttering them on store shelves, Apple makes it easier for visitors to play with them.

It should be noted, as well, that Apple appears to earn a profit on the operation of its stores:

Revenue from the Apple stores was $2.35 billion in fiscal 2005, ended Sept. 24, or 17% of Apple's total sales, up from $621 million in fiscal 2003. Apple says the stores have been profitable for several years, providing $151 million in operating income in fiscal 2005. The Fifth Avenue store will be the company's 147th, with others scattered throughout the U.S., Canada, Japan and the U.K. "The numbers have been just astonishing in terms of the traditional retail numbers we look at," Mr. Wolf says.

If you're interested in how attention to design and innovation can help a company's bottom line you should take a look at Virginia Postrel's blog.

Economic "Development"

One of the hallmarks of "economic development" plans put forth by government is that they rarely, if ever, produce economic development or growth because, by virtue of their being centrally planned development projects they fail to address the business realities of the day in favor of political reality.

Political reality, such as it is, is often less about real assessment of need and more about expediency and currying favor with voters who are supposed to benefit from such projects.

Airports, of course, along with sports stadiums, have been one of the most common economic development projects in recent years, and the success of these projects has been questionable, especially in light of airlines' shaky finances:

Airports have long been considered economic-development tools for the communities that own them. Many, like Toronto, erected palatial terminals to showcase their cities and passed on the costs to airlines and passengers. Even as airlines have gone bankrupt, airport earnings have risen.

Now, the combination of financial woes of traditional airlines and the explosion of low-cost competitors around the world is forcing big changes in airport design and operation. Airlines, which have already won concessions from employees, travel agents and suppliers, are now putting pressure on airports to cut costs and fees. And low-cost carriers have sparked the creation of bare-bones depots, like Schiphol's "Pier H," in Europe and Asia.

A Motley Crew: Derek Jeter, Martin Scorsese, Harvey Keitel, the Bible, Catholicism, St. Franics of Assisi, Inscrutable Analogies, and Theology

If you're like me, you get confused by all the various denominations of Christianity out there, their pet issues, and the prescribed manner in which they heed the line of God.

Wonder no longer:

The Bible The Bible was written by God as a merchandising tie-in to His blockbuster film "The Ten Commandments." Each book of the Bible is named after a person who features prominently in it, for example, the Book of Numbers, which is named after Herschel Numbers, who invented numerals. The Bible was so successful that God wrote a sequel, "Bible II: On to Rome," now generally called "The New Testament." Protestants believe the Bible is literal and exactly true in every detail except the description of the Eucharist, while Catholics are not allowed to read the Bible.

The Bible as marketing tie-in to the Ten Commandments. Ha! Clearly a heathen came up with that one.

Via Dispatches, natch, via The Agora.

Oh, and the Derek Jeter of Catholicism is St. Francis of Assisi, which I don't quite understand. Off to re-watch Mean Streets and see if Scorsese/Keitel can help me understand* the Saint Assisi as shortstop angle.

*Though Mean Streets is more well-known as being one of the first movies in which De Niro did De Niro, it is more properly known for a famous scene in which Keitel prays before an idol of St. Francis of Assisi. Readers more knowledgeable about Catholic imagery than I can feel free to read into that famous scene allegorical meaning; I just find the way it is filmed quite interesting.

$1.53/Gigabyte

I just bought a 250 gigabyte external hard drive, which I will use to backup my assorted computers.

Including taxes, the bill came to $162.55 which works out to a price of $1.53/gigabyte.

Half-terabyte hard drives (approximately 500 gigabytes) seem to sell for even less. According to the Wikipedia entry that you get to if you click the "terabyte" link in the preceding sentence, the entire contents of the Library of Congress comprises 20 terabytes. At the 250 gb to $163 ratio I quote above, that implies a price of $20,000 for 20 terabytes of storage, which, when you think of it, is surprisingly cheap, considering $20,000 won't even buy you a decent car, a house, an apartment, a yacht, or a horse.

Ain't technology grand?

Polipundit

Aside from the Da Vinci Code, the latest tempest in the blogosphere wars is illegal immigration, and, more specifically, the decision by a blogger named Polipundit to require that all the fellow bloggers on his blog hew to his line on illegal immigration (his line being slightly more sympathetic to said illegals than Tom "Build a Fence!" Tancredo).

Alarming News' take:

I can't help but see both sides of this coin. In the end, it's Polipundit's blog and he shouldn't have to share it with people he disagrees with so vehemently. On the other hand, debate and disagreement is good when it's between smart people who share the same goal--making America the best country it can be-- and it was good to have the debate happening all in one place.

The blogosphere is very impetuous, because of the immediacy of what we do, but I would urge bloggers and readers of Polipundit not to choose sides and to keep appreciating what all the various bloggers in this disagreement have on offer.

This sounds vaguely Clintonian in its evasiveness and prevarication. I commented:

Sorry, but Polipundit's position is rather stupid. Why host a group blog if a requirement is that no one will ever disagree with you, especially on an issue as contentious as illegal immigration?

Methinks Polipundit was graduated from the Pravda school of blogging.

He's a moron through and through.

Ann Althouse writes, perceptively, as always:

I haven't been reading PoliPundit or, really, any of the debate about immigration in the blogosphere. If I had been, I probably would only write about "tone and tenor of the debate." I consider immigration a complex policy problem, and I steer clear of ideologues spouting on the topic. I hear the President gave a speech on the subject last night and that he sounded moderate. Good. He's fending off the ideologues -- I hope.

But I'm interested in this dispute between Byrd and Polipundit and the problem of group blogs. Group blogs, like marriages, can break down, and when they do, they can dissolve quietly and present an unreadable face to the world, or they can let the ugliness show. When that happens on a very prominent blog, we're all going to look.

The idea that a coterie of bloggers must agree on an single issue seems rather antithetical to the impetuousness, as Alarming News would have it, of the blogosphere. If ever there were something about which the blogosphere should be proud, it is its impetuousness; impetuousness, it seems, allows ideas to flow freely (despite Buchanan's concerns about the free flow of ideas), and, from such an exchange of ideas, it is to be hoped, some sort of greater truth can be acquired by man.

But if a blogger's intent is to define the terms of debate, then what the hell is the use of the blogosphere?

The Da Vinci Code

Apparently, the book the Da Vinci Code has been made into a movie starring Forrest Gump...and, well, that has the Catholics all up in a lather because, apparently, said book is not only anti-Catholic, but also presents a mortal danger to these Catholics. (Never mind that pedophilia seems a more persistent thorn in the side of the Church than does fiction. After all, the Bible is fiction, right?)

But I digress.

While some Catholics have an intelligent reaction to this book and movie ("it's fiction; get over it") others seem to think the end of the world is nigh:

If "such lies and errors had been directed at the Quran or the Holocaust," said Archbishop Angelo Amato, the Vatican's secretary for the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, "they would have justly provoked a world uprising."

The archbishop was speaking of "The Da Vinci Code," the Ron Howard film that debuts at Cannes and opens worldwide this week, and is expected to gross $500 million by summer's end.

The archbishop's point is undeniable. Blasphemous cartoons of the Prophet with a bomb in his turban, published a few months ago in a Danish newspaper and reprinted on the front pages of Europe's major papers, ignited demonstrations in Muslim communities across Europe and violent and deadly riots across the Islamic world.

Is Pat Buchanan really drawing an equivalence between his fellow Catholics and wanton Islamic rioters? In any event, Dispatches From the Culture Wars dispatches with this kind of argument quite well:

Pat, take my advice. If you don't like the content of this movie, by all means don't go see it. I have zero interest in seeing the movie myself, so I'm not going to go see it (ain't that great? Freedom allows you to avoid seeing things you think are satanic, which is why I've never been to a John Tesh concert). I got about one chapter into the book and found it boring as hell. Umberto Eco covered much of the same territory 25 years ago and did it much, much better.

The Da Vinci Code, plainly, is fiction, and, as such, is speculative at best and harmless at worst. But when religious people use a work of fiction to claim blasphemy they imply that theirs is a religion beyond ridicule or reproach.

But that's not the way the free flow of ideas works in this country. Surely, Catholics (and all Christians) have better things to worry about than the fidelity of the Da Vinci Code's representation of their religion.

There are some interesting comments on this whole issue at a post written by Professor Bainbridge. Some of the more cogent arguments made about the deleterious effect of this book on the Catholic Church state that, despite author Dan Brown's protestations to the contrary, the book is not based on accepted historical knowledge, and Brown's continued claim that his work is based on historical fact, has led people to believe that the Catholic Church is an insidious, demonic organization out to ruin the world, etc. (That such would likely be the reaction of a boy raped by a priest is left unsaid in these arguments.) But in any event, it is hardly Dan Brown's fault that people believe what he says or writes, any more than it is the fault of Bush I when people believed him when he said "read my lips: no new taxes." What people are really complaining about here is not Dan Brown's lies about the historical record but rather that people read without inquiry and accept as fact that which is written because, well, it is written.

Never mind that that is rather tautological and abusrdly insubstantial.

Two plus two is three. Michael Jordan is five feet tall. I'm a billionaire.

Now, do you believe any of that?

No?

Then why the hell would you believe anything anyone writes without independent verification?

Bubble Company?

So there a blog news aggregator out there, called FeedBurner, in which the venture capital firm Union Square Ventures has an investment.

Apparently, this blog aggregating service's business model depends on placing ads in blog feeds.

All well and good.

Except the ads are optional.

Who the hell would voluntarily view ads?

Either this company is one set up to be a failure or I am just too skeptical to be either an entrepreneur or venture capitalist. I fail to see how this is a viable model on which to run a business.

More here.

UPDATE: Apparently, I misunderstood the post about this company: the ads are voluntarily for the publisher of the feed, not its reader. This is per an email I just received from the Union Square V.C./blogger who posted about it. I put a second comment up at the post:

OK, now I see that it the publishers themselves who choose whether to have ads or not; that makes more sense.

But then what's to prevent me (or anyone else) from choosing to use an ad-frees news aggregating service?

It seems to me that the barriers to entry in this space are surprisingly low (just write code, publicize your application, etc.) So what's the competitive advantage?

Retirement

Well, it looks like Americans, who can't be trusted to manage their own finances if the government is to be believed, are doing just that:

Americans are increasing the size of their retirement nest eggs at a good clip, despite concerns that the country as a whole isn't saving enough.

Data to be published this week by the Investment Company Institute show that total U.S. retirement assets grew about $1 trillion between 2004 and 2005, to $14.3 trillion at the end of 2005. The ICI, which represents the mutual-fund industry, also found that investors held $7.3 trillion in individual retirement accounts and defined-contribution plans at the end of 2005, about half of the total retirement assets.

The ICI will report its numbers this week in its 2006 Fact Book, as part of a wide-ranging annual look at the fund industry. The data is considered an early and important snapshot of the retirement market each year. ICI numbers on IRAs and defined-contribution plans, for example, will be incorporated into government data.

The overall asset growth as reported by the ICI follows two years of expansion at a similar pace, after a period between 1998 and 2002 when retirement assets flatlined and even decreased due to the bear market.

There were $14.3 trillion in retirement assets at the end of 2005, compared with $13.5 trillion and $12.2 trillion for 2004 and 2003, respectively. Starting in 1999, retirement assets flattened out for several years, and dipped significantly in 2002.

Can we quit the canard that man is incapable of providing for his future? Government is not needed.

Apotheosis

When man looks back on the 1980s and 1990s, one of man's crowning achievements of that era will be the growth of Michael Jordan as an athlete, from around the years 1988 through 1994 or so.

In any event, a recent Nike ad, in which kids recapitulate famous plays made by Michael "Air" Jordan over the years, has been generating a lot of buzz, not only because the kids' moves are uncannily recognizeable, but also because the ad, well, it gives you goose bumps.

Now, Nike has re-released the ad, with a montage of the original His Airness on the side, showing, in fact, that the kids' recapitulation of Jordan's physicality is every bit as good as those good bumps would imply.

Michael Jordan is, of course, the apotheosis of human athletic achievement, and he dominated his field in ways that few other men have ever dominated theirs.

More here.

Bookstores

I can't remember the last time I used a public library--probably when I was 10. Over the intervening years bookstores have sufficed.

Sure, I have heard the now-common lament of the decline of the independent bookstore, but I have never had a problem finding titles at the so-called big box bookstores.

Tyler Cowen doesn't seem very upset at this situation either and I'd wager that he is more in the market for obscurity than am I, given that he is a professor:

Ever since the rise of the book superstore in the 1990s, we have been flooded with lamentations for the rapidly disappearing independent booksellers—cool hang-outs where the staff knows something about literature, the owners select each title with care, and bearded patrons sit at crowded coffee tables, talking about Jack Kerouac or the latest translation of Tolstoy. Thanks to the indies, it is thought, high-quality but inaccessible books can slowly build their reputations through reader word-of-mouth and eventually take the literary world by storm. This is what people fear is disappearing forever; just last week the famed Cody's of Berkeley announced it is shutting down because of Internet and superstore competition. But does this idealized vision ring true? What exactly are we losing with the passing of the independent bookstore?

As they say in the blog world, read the whole thing.

Then use that copy of the Village Voice for toilet paper, because the whining liberals are incoherent and stupid, especially when it comes to issues of mass retailers.

Titanic Stupidity

I finally watched the movie Titanic the other night, and it is a marvelously stupid movie, exceeded in stupidity only by the arrogance with which its Victorian-era passengers went about their business.

But Rogert Ebert's review of the movie makes little sense:

She was ``the largest moving work of man in all history,'' a character boasts, neatly dismissing the Pyramids and the Great Wall. There is a shot of her, early in the film, sweeping majestically beneath the camera from bow to stern, nearly 900 feet long and ``unsinkable,'' it was claimed, until an iceberg made an irrefutable reply.

Neither the Great Wall nor the Pyramids move, unless by "move" one means move through empty space, carried on the back of the Earth. Surely that is not what Ebert means, and surely the Titanic was one of the largest vessels ever built, at its time.

A Reason to Visit Fifth Avenue

Fifth Avenue, which previously had been reserved for Eurotrash and Donald Trump wannabes (to say nothing of corn-fed tourists from the Midwest) finally gives me a reason to walk along its gold-plated sidewalks: the Apple Store is coming!

How cool is that?

Now I have even less reason to breathe the rarified air of SoHo.

In Which I Demonstrate That Respect for My Fellow Man is a Folly

Apparently, the fad du jour is claiming that one's dog provides "emotional support," and, as a consequence, a person can't be expected to eat in a restaurant without said dog:

ON a sun-drenched weekend last month, cafes from TriBeCa to the Upper West Side were swelling with diners, many of whom left dogs tied to parking meters in deference to Health Department rules that prohibit pets in restaurants. At French Roast on upper Broadway, however, two women sat down to brunch with dogs in tow: a golden retriever and a Yorkie toted in a bag.

"They both said that their animals were emotional service dogs," said Gil Ohana, the manager, explaining why he let them in. "One of them actually carried a doctor's letter."

Health care professionals have recommended animals for psychological or emotional support for more than two decades, based on research showing many benefits, including longer lives and less stress for pet owners.

But recently a number of New York restaurateurs have noticed a surge in the number of diners seeking to bring dogs inside for emotional support, where previously restaurants had accommodated only dogs for the blind.

This is all rather disgusting and European. How pathetic are people that they need dogs in their presence for emotional support during that most vital of human activities, the consumption of caloric energy?

Methinks man has become child.

Civilization?

When will civilized man learn that one's "mental state" is not exculpatory evidence?

Sure, I know "the law" recognizes that some people are not "fit to stand trial" but this is really just a way of providing an excuse not to go through the ordeal of trying and convicting someone whom society deems sympathetic.

But sympathy for man's plight has no bearing on man's guilt.

To wit:

A man accused of shooting two police officers and biting a third during a wild rumpus in a Brooklyn rooming house is not fit to stand trial, his lawyer said in court yesterday.

"He really believes that he was shooting at wolves," said the lawyer, Larry Rothstein, in an interview outside the courtroom in Brooklyn.

The man, Jonathan Julian, 29, was charged with attempted aggravated murder, which carries a maximum penalty of 40 years to life in prison. Justice John P. Walsh of State Supreme Court entered a plea of not guilty for him.

This man should be tried, and if found guilty, sentenced to a jail for a period of time commensurate with the severity of the crime. If the police officers had been murdered, he should be executed if convicted.

These are really simple concepts; one's sanity has little to do with the issue of whether a crime has been committed. Legal moralizers would do well to end their prevarication and simply realize that there is a reason jails exist: to house criminals.

Is John Gibson Racist?

Fox News anchor John Gibson recently signed off on one of his segments with a bizarre set of instructions: viewers should turn the TV off find their (heterosexual) lover and procreate.

Media Matters seems to imply that Gibson's appeal to population growth is baldly racist, and I'm not sure I disagree:

On The Big Story, John Gibson urged viewers to "[d]o your duty. Make more babies," because he had found out, from a recently released report, that nearly half of all children under the age of five in the United States are minorities. Gibson added: "You know what that means? Twenty-five years and the majority of the population is Hispanic." Gibson later repeated: "To put it bluntly, we need more babies."

Via Reason.

His is an odd statement to make if we assume that he thinks there need to be more babies because he's worried that America's population is declining: it is not. The only other conclusion that seems reasonable is that Gibson seems threatened by the idea of non-whites comprising a majority in America.

Immigration Reform

The more coherent commentators on the issue of illeal immigration note that the best way for America to stem the tide of illegal immigrants would be to help or compel the countries which supply illegal immigrants to restructure their countries' economies so that thier citiziens have less incentive to risk life and limb coming here illegally.

The most obvious target of such a policy would be Mexico, but, Marxist revolutionaries still occupy center stage in its political theater:

Subcommander Marcos, the Zapatista rebel leader, latched on to an ugly clash last week between the police and farmers outside the capital to revive his flagging campaign for a socialist movement that he hopes will someday topple the government without a shot.

Marcos appeared on national television on Tuesday and let himself be interviewed at length for the first time in years. As always, he appeared in his black ski mask and military fatigues, a headset atop his frayed cap, a pipe in his mouth.

He denounced the brutality of the police in putting down the rioting farmers, who wielded machetes and threw firebombs. He also accused the state and federal authorities of provoking the violence, raping women and jailing innocents.

Never mind that this type of agitprop does not portray an entirely accurate picture of Mexico:

But he refuses to take off his trademark ski mask, to take part in the election or to form a political party. Instead, Rafael Guillén, a college professor who became one of the most gifted orators of Mexican politics, has clung to the persona of Subcommander Marcos, an icon of the far left, who inspired millions of Mexicans in 1994 when he led an army out of the jungles of the southern state of Chiapas.

Times have changed since then. The corrupt and authoritarian party that ruled Mexico from the 1930's through the 1990's is out of power. Mexico has a functioning democracy. Armed revolutionaries are no longer in fashion.

Marcos's campaign for a new left-wing movement has not caught on. His speeches have attracted little notice in the news media and have not drawn big crowds. Even when Marcos recently declared that it did not matter who won the election, because the government would eventually be overthrown, the incumbent administration of President Vicente Fox ignored his remarks.

Since the riot, his supporters' protests have been modest. Most Mexicans appear to be more focused on the presidential race and the bickering between candidates from the three main parties.

Felipe Calderón, the candidate of Mr. Fox's conservative National Action Party, said the times had passed Marcos by. "What Mexico wants is to live in peace, to live a democratic life — that is to say, just the ideals that Marcos probably does not share," Mr. Calderón told reporters as he left a campaign event near the capital. "He doesn't share them because he has opted for violence, while Mexicans are choosing democracy."

W$J: "Berkshire Hathaway is not a Financial Company"?

Under what system of logic could Berkshire Hathaway not be considered a financial company? In discussing Exxon's growing cash horde in the midst of high oil prices, the Journal claims that BERK.A is not a financial company:

Exxon's cash doesn't include $4.6 billion it has set aside related to the appeal of a court case. Berkshire had cash and equivalents of nearly $43 billion at the end of March, giving it the largest cash holding for a nonfinancial company, according to research provider Capital IQ. Banks, insurers and other financial firms, by definition, are huge cash compilers. (A number of Berkshire-owned companies are financial firms, but Berkshire also owns consumer-goods makers and other types of companies.)

So, "banks, insurers and other financial firms, by definition, are huge cash compilers" but BERK.A, which, by definition, derives most of its income and all of its float from insurance activities, is not a financial company? Go check out GE Capital and GMAC and come back to me and tell me that neither GE nor GM* are financial companies. That they make turbines and cars, respectively, is both incidental and irrelevant to the question of whether they are finance companies. Same goes for BERK.A.

*At least, prior to GMs divestiture of GMAC.

Incoherent Professors

Interesting article in Variety about the TV show American Idol and all the cash the show generates. (I'm more interested in the cash than the show itself.)

Apparently, AI is one of the few TV shows that can now command a sizeable audience, and, as a result, it commands very high prices for advertisers that want to peddle their goods on the show:

Experts say this series, like a dwindling number of programs, may be one of the few massively popular shows to thrive on ad dollars alone, which may a reason why the piggybackers are less of a concern.

After all, the Super Bowl also has thousands of very profitable piggybackers, but it's still the network that rakes it in by earning millions on every commercial. As Syracuse U. prof Bob Thompson says, " 'Idol' proves that all this 21st century stuff depends on the cultural equity of a good old-fashioned network success."

Ignore for a moment the fallacious appeal to "experts" (professors are "expert" in nothing other than giving platitudinous quotes to gullible journalists). What the hell is "cultural equity" and what does it have to do with American Idol's capacity for lulling middle America into a collective stupor?

Via Hit & Run.

Man, Beast, Chicago, Foie Gras

Foie gras is one of those disgusting things, like wine and stinky cheeses, that the French consume in mass quantities.

So Chicago has decided to ban it (the foie gras that is).

Joseph Epstein writes in the Wall St Journal:

Foie gras (literally "fat liver"), a pate made from the livers of artificially fattened geese or ducks, is not a staple of chez Epstein. Nor do I ever order it when in expensive restaurants living happily beyond my means. Over a lengthy and immoderate life I have eaten a modest amount of foie gras, and have found some of it better than others. But were I to be sent to the gallows or the electric chair, I should not select it when composing the menu for my last meal.

The problem with Chicago's banning of foie gras, then, is not a personal one for me, but ultimately a problem of civil liberties: those of fairly high rolling gourmets versus those of geese and ducks. I've not myself seen these animals force fed to make their livers foie grasable, except in an old Italian movie called "Mondo Cane," a 1963 documentary showing strange rites around the world. The sight in that movie of live geese having grain stuffed down their throats through funnels until their livers swell well beyond normal size has remained with me. But then so has the sight of watching a Jewish ritual slaughter, when I was a boy staying with my parents at a resort in the Laurentian mountains, mutter a brief prayer before slitting the throats of chickens -- and thereby rendering them kosher -- before flicking them, squawking their death squawk, over his shoulder into the grass behind him.

Any individualist worth his salt (and I like to think I'm worth more than this common mineral) would agree with the statement that I am man and geese are beasts, and never the twain shall meet, by which I mean, of course, that while I, and most other men, lay moral claim to their life, geese and all other manner of non-human beast do not. (Yes dog and cat lovers: this means your pets, too.)

Gilder on Stock Picking

George Gilder, failed stock prognosticator and current darling of the intelligent design crowd, waxes philosophic about the relationship between picking stocks and evolutionary biologists' hold on reality:

"I do think that writing about technology and picking stocks is a very powerful and edifying discipline," he said. "It requires you to have a purchase on reality that is much more rigorous than the average evolutionary biologist has or the average free-floating technology writer has."

That anyone takes this guy seriously is as absurd as the contention that evolutionary biologists do not have a grasp of reality.

For the record, here is a table showing how an investment of $10,000 in Gilder's technology stock list would have fared from 1997 through 2006:
Download gilder.pdf

Free Speech For Me But Not For Thee?

Says the Volokh Conspiracy's Jim Lindgren:

The idea of diversity is to listen to people who are saying different things that you might not have thought of or agree with, not just to listen to your friends and people like your friends.

Ironic, considering McCain's campaign finance reform, that these words are being written about a petition aimed at stopping John McCain from speaking at the New School commencement.

Silly liberals! Free speech for me but not for thee is evidently their raison d'etre.

UPDATE: Jim Lindgren has more here.

Activist Lawyers

In case anyone was wondering why I don't donate money to my alma mater.

If Shaquille O'Neal Played Tennis...

Wikipedia's entry on Pete Sampras contains this odd statement:

his long arms meant that he could serve like a 210 cm (7 feet) man although he was only 185 cm (6 ft 1 in).

A 7 foot tall man can reach his arm up to a height of roughly 10.5 feet (arm length is roughly half the person's height, per Da Vinci). The statement about Sampras therefore implies that his arms comprise 80% of the height of his body (ten feet being four feet higher than the height of a six foot tall man.)

Even if we assume that Sampras had unusually long arms, it seems a stretch to claim that each of his arms was equal in length to eighty percent of his height. That would imply that his arms reached below his knees! Someone needs to check their geometry. Even the swimmer Michael Phelps, who is said to derive much of his success from very long arms, seems to have arms of normal length.

Politics

If you're naive enough to think that money doesn't buy elections, check this out.

"The War on Contraceptives"

The New York Times magazine (to which there is no link online until Sunday) has a cover article titled "The War on Contraceptives," which cover shows a condom wrapper with a fake disclaimer on it:

If used properly, this latex condom (or for that matter, any other form of birth control, especially the morning-after pill) will anger a great many people--people who believe that having sex without the intent to procreate is a very, very bad thing. Any contraceptive highly effective against pregnancy--that is, unwanted pregnancy, otherwise why use it?--is precisely the problem, even though there might be fewer abortions if those having sex with no intention to procrate used a contraceptive

Hard to argue with that and yet conservatives will find fault with it.

Universities Should Think Like Corporations

Ann Althouse has a blog post up about law professors intent when they write exams. Being too smart to have gone to law school, I don't have anything to add to the conversation about professors' intent when they write law school exams, however, one commenter alluded to the idea that there should be a more efficient way of getting a legal education than scrawling answers to a professor's questions in a blue book. I essentially agreed with this point but applied it to all of higher education, saying that higher education has become, in recent decades, unjustifiably expensive. Someone took this to mean that I was prediciting the disappearance of universities; this was not my intent, and I clarified my thoughts:

Regarding my comments above, which someone apparently took to mean that I think universities will disappear: that's not my argument.

My argumnent is that universities, as currently organized, have become bloated and expensive, and, at some point, most universities (if not all) will face the problem of students and their parents balking at the high prices charged, and will seek out better returns on invested capital.

This happened in the auto industry with the advent of Japan's entry into the US market, and it is currently happening in the airline industry. Merely because academia likes to think of itself as free from the pressures of the competitive market does not mean that academia is free of those pressures.

Academia, as with all other institutions, has to compete for scarce capital. Entities that can give consumers (students) the same education as traditional academies, while charging less, will prosper in the coming decades. Academia will stultify unless it radically reorganizes itself.

I don't mean to argue that this change will happen immediately, or that universities will disappear. I do mean to argue, however, that academics have to start thinking of their product in terms of the return on capital invested by their consumers. Otherwise they will find themselves in a declining industry.

I should add to this comment that the soon-to-retire President of my university, Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, essentially agrees with this argument, in a letter sent to alumni via email:

I have, for the past year, been thinking about a book addressing American higher education in the 21st century. Some of my observations have been shared with this community and in various public talks around the country. Those who study this subject understand too well that the current model of a master passing information to a novice face-to-faceformat that has changed only slightly since the Middle Agesis on the brink of a major upheaval. Life, as we know it in the Academy, will be reintegrated on three levels: (1) how students learn and faculty teach; (2) where these activities take place; and (3) from what sources scholarship will flow. Not insignificant is a coda about how the development and transfer of new knowledge will be paid for. It is difficult to cast aside centuries of work habits, but, if the economics are to remain viable in the next 100 years, universities must change their modes of operation. And, as we have seen the last few years, changeeven when it ! is inevitable and arguably for the betterdoes not come easy. I foresee it as gradual and nationwide once it begins, taking at least a decade and ranging from coast to coast. I am prepared to further develop my ideas on this subject. I will begin by giving the Sir George Watson Lecture at Sulgrave Manor in England next November. I plan to test the hypothesis that those who can do - can also teach.

I would argue that if presidents of major universities think in the same manner as does your humble blogger about the nature of universities and their prospects in the coming century, then my argument should be heeded.

History, of course, will show whether universities are up to the task of figuring out how to right themselves.

I get religion: "Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life"

I received a comment to a post I wrote more than a year ago, which comment says, in part:

This just goes to show that there is no neutral ground in the whole universe. Where the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is not preached, some sort of perverse error is preached. On college campuses, the errors of postmodern secular humanism have replaced the gospel.

Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. If you truly believe that, then you will contend for the propagation of the gospel and you will contend for true righteousness and justice. Otherwise, you are in idolatry. Most college campuses are really idolatrous temples of secular humanism.

The connection of this incoherent sentiment to the post is not clear. The substance of the post, "Leftist College Professors" is that many conservative students seem to have adopted the idea that they ought to be freed from offense in their college classses. Liberal professors ought not bring into the classroom their liberal viewpoints lest conservative feel ideologically molested. I wrote, in part:

This is ignorant thinking for a couple of reasons. First, students go to college to be educated. Education, in part, deals with exposing yourself to views with which you are not familiar, or, better, views with which you disagree. How the hell are you supposed to develop a cogent argument in favor of your position unless you are able to understand the terms on which the opposition argues? Any lawyer worth his salt will tell you that his arguments are only as good as the degree to which he can predict the opposing argument. Similarly, any person is only well-educated to the degree that he can understand the opposing argument, anticipate its assumptions, and destroy it. Arguing that, if you are politically unaligned with your professor, you should not have to hear her thoughts on abortion, or evolution, or whatever else is the current bogeyman of conservative thought, is silly and does nothing to advance your education.

I stand by this argument. When did it become permissible to expect that no one will ever be offended? (There is, of course, the issue of a professor penalizing a student for expressing sentiments with which the professor does not agree, and I fully agree that such is an abominable situation, however, that was not the situation which prompted my original blog post.)

I Do Gossip

So you know that lady Marg Helgenberger from CSI?

Apparently she's trying to set my neighbor up with one of her gay friends.

How do I know this? Because I can hear the whole fucking conversation through my wall. The dude is talking on the phone with someone about the party he just came from.

Oh, and apparently, Jerry Bruckheimer was at the party as well.

Freedom From Coherence

The so-called Freedom Tower, which is due to be built on Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan has garnered little interest from the private sector. This means that some people think its primary tenants will be government agencies:

An estimated 25% of the commercial office space at Ground Zero -- and at least 38% of the Freedom Tower -- will be filled by government tenants, echoing the government bailout of the first trade center. But persuading government employees to work there may prove challenging. Some 750 customs and immigration workers fled from 6 World Trade before it was destroyed when the north Twin Tower collapsed.

The problem here is that the tower, along with the other rebuilding, is alleged to be a symbol of Downtown Manhattan's post-9/11 resurgence. There's only one problem:

While the government tenants would create something of a critical mass, urban planners warn they also could drive away private businesses that for cultural and prestige reasons don't like to cohabit with government agencies.

"The FBI isn't who a big law firm wants to be next to," says John K. McIlwain, senior resident fellow at the Urban Land Institute, an industry research group. For one thing, he explains, the type of "bottom-end" lobby and other economies that budget-conscious government tenants demand differ from the more luxurious touches preferred by the private sector. FBI spokeswoman Christine Monaco declined to comment.

More broadly, Mr. McIlwain says there is "no perceptible office demand" for the planned 8.8 million square feet of office space, most of which will hit the market at about the same time in 2012. When government is being counted on for a quarter of that space, he says, "you know you have a problem. That's not the kind of tenants you want" to attract private businesses.

Conversely, some government agencies don't like to mix with the private sector. "There are federal agencies that won't go in with certain kinds of tenants," says Eileen Long-Chelales, regional director of the General Services Administration, the agency that procures space on behalf of the federal government. "There are some operations that are very private in nature, and they don't want the world knowing where they there."

One doesn't need to be a central planner to realize that this plan is doomed to failure, and that Downtown Manhattan's "resurgence" has been going on since the late '90s in the form of conversions of outdated office buildings into luxury condos and rentals. The high-end commercial and retail firms that define the dense urban core of Manhattan renown will not come to be either in the presence of government diktate or government employees.

Government would do well to realize that the business of Manhattan is business, and that any properly reconstituted downtown sight should be a testament to capitalism, avaricious, emancipatory, and efficient as it is. Government agencies, constrained by their own bureaucratic weight can be neither avaricious, emancipatory, nor efficient, and, therefore, a downtown populated by government agencies can not be "resurgenet" in any commonly accepted definition of the word.