perfidy

BILIOUSNESS - Jaundice or other symptoms associated with liver disease; may also have been any upset leading to vomiting bile or just vomiting
BLACK JAUNDICE - Wiel's Disease; Black Water fever (deadly form of malaria)
BLACK POX - Black Smallpox
BLOODY FLUX Bloody stools
BREAKBONE Dengue fever, Infectious fever endemic to East Africa
CORRUPTION Infection
EEL THING Erysipelas
FRENCH POX Syphilis
KRUCHHUSTEN Whooping cough
LOCKJAW Tetanus or infectious disease affecting the muscles of the neck and jaw. Untreated, it is fatal in 8 days
MORMAL Gangrene
RICKETS Disease of skeletal system
SCRUMPOX Skin disease, impetigo

I have noticed a disturbing trend lately. Names of diseases no longer sound like disease names. Long gone are the days of scurvy, gout, consumption, scarlet fever, yellow fever and plague. Now we have antiseptic acronymic disease names like AIDS, SARS, HIV, CFS. We have even ruined good disease names like herpes by adding -simplex I and the like.

The only decent new disease name is hemorrhagic fever. We need to come up with better names for our diseases. Names with bite, names that sound like you are slowly dying in agony.

espite the derivative nature of your post, there is a reason why many people do it. Its fun. (Except for ripping off Kaus, which is annoying. -ed) I have had little time to read lately, which is painful as I have read three books a week for most of the last twenty years. The addiction is strong for me.

Nevertheless, I have managed to read a couple books this summer.

• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay Johno has been bugging me to read this since the dawn of time. I should not have waited so long. (btw, this book got the record for most comments from other people who see me reading a book, at five. The previous record was for Huntington's Clash of Civilizations. I do live in DC.)
• The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler. I read this book about once a year. I still don't know what the plot is, but what is plot when the writing is this beautiful?
• A Princess of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs. I love, love, love this book. Thoats, Zitidars, and Calots, oh my.
• Heaven on Earth, by Joshua Muravchik. Still reading this one. A history of socialism by a red diaper baby who lost his faith. He still has sympathy for the figures involved, and it seems a balanced account. It is amazing how everything in modern communism was prefigured in Babeuf back in the French Revolution. Good book.

Johno is right, I do like the hard sf. One reason I stopped reading fantasy was the depressing sameness of it all. The engineering/scientific outlook on life does lend a certain flavor to hard sf. But it certainly doesn't suppress the imagination. Working under the constraints of hard sf forces some writers to greater flights of imagination than more open formats might.

[btw]My favorite part of killing star was the central park analogy. Read the book, it is one of the more chilling things you'll read. Because it could be true.

While we have come to expect media doommongering as the default view of any world situation, things are not always so bad as they seem. While conditions are not up to western standards in Afghanistan (nor have they been any time recently), according to actual Afghanis, things are getting better since the removal of the Taliban.

Despite the pleas of the Bush/Rice administration, the budgets for the Murcheson fleet were reduced by the house budget committee (chaired by Clinton? Daschle lacky Rep. McAuliffe) to fund hive rat studies on Makassar. Just like them to underfund the fleet they are so willing to send on peacekeeping missions all over local space, instead of protecting us from the deadliest threat we know of.

It's bad enough being outnumbered by aliens who are stupid. But when you're massively outnumbered by aliens much smarter than you, it's a bad day.

[moreover] I mentioned this novel in my top five science fiction books list back in May. You should have read it by now! Lazy slackers.

Tomorrow will be a big day in Iran - the fourth anniversary of the student protest movement. It will be interesting if this gets any traction on the major media, or comment from the administration. The latter is more likely, even though the protests could involve hundreds of thousands of people around Iran. This despite the fact that last week the government arrested over 4000 protest leaders, including 800 students, and has closed the University of Tehran and most other schools as well.

I pray that the protestors can bring down the mullahs, and that we support them in their efforts.

Just reading through all the blogging goodness that I missed while being exploited by my capitalist, uh, exploiters; and working hard to become a dirty capitalist landlord; I noticed Johno's post on whiteness studies.

That is the most asshatted, fuckwitted, nozzleheaded bugfuckery I have run across in a goodly long while. Although - just think if some sneaky bastard used the banner of whiteness studies to hide a return to the study of the classics? Just thinkin', is all...

The sign builder is a good way to waste some time. When we move this blog to a more salubrious clime, you will be able to see the results of buckethead cut loose on one of the time wasting webtools.

[wik] The Ministry of Future Perfidy notes that in the unimaginably distant year of 2025, this link still works, and it still looks exactly the same.  

Wow

The control panel for the blog looks different when you use Netscape 7. How's that for an engaging post after a weeks long absence.

"We wish the French the best. But their days as the moral avatar, the champion of humanity, are long gone. That reputation -- unearned for decades -- will die in the Congo, where French troops are behaving as effectively as, well, French troops. The painful fact is that no one expects much of them anymore beyond good food, bribery and honeyed hypocrisy.

One liberated Iraqi summed up the American promise like this: "Democracy, whiskey, sexy!" One could say that beats Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite.

One might suggest that it already has."

If we are going to have laws against drugs, fine, I can cope with that. I haven't done anything except alcohol in years and years. My problem, like Johno's, is with other laws being used in the drug wars. If someone is carrying, bust them for possession - its already illegal. If someone is selling, bust them for that. Prohibition, for all its faults, stuck mostly to stopping people from drinking. There was not the vast expansion of police powers that we have seen in thirty years of the war on drugs. 

The RAVE act infringes on our right to assemble peaceably. The RICO statutes have been used (quite often) to infringe on our fourth amendment rights. Civil forfeiture is based on the ridiculous premise that property used in the commission of a crime, or even suspected of such, is somehow "guilty". Never mind that only people can be guilty, and that the constitution says that we cannot be deprived of our property without due process of law. 

I have not yet read enough to know for certain that the Patriot II act is bad or not - I've heard people come down on both sides. But there is no question that RAVE act and RICO statute provisions are regularly abused, most noticeably by federal law enforcement agencies. And these abuses are regularly given the high sign by our courts. 

Why are federal agencies busting raves attended by a couple hundred (at most) teenagers and college students? And bong manufacturers? And doctors? And people like Zippy? Because they're easy, and any bureaucracy wants to expand its power. These are matters for state and local police, not federal agents equipped and trained like military units. The FBI is the Federal Bureau of Investigation, not the FB of Let's pick on some teenagers or shoot some people and then burn the building down to conceal the evidence of our fuckup.

Apparently Ross and I agree on something. (Actually, not as rare as our comments section would have you believe.) My dad (from the "Silent Generation") and I have discussed the failures of the boomers many times.

We have heard much of the greatest generation in recent years. By and large, this is a fair appraisal I think. That generation suffered through the Great Depression. (Caused by a Republican, prolonged by a Democrat; using exactly the same set of ideas.) After that, they shook the dust off and traveled all over the world to open a stupendous can of whoop ass on Japanese militarism and European fascism. After that, they came home and set about building our country into the most prosperous nation the world has ever known.

However, they fucked up in one crucial regard. They gave birth to the most self-absorbed, self righteous and deluded generation in our history. The progress of the boomers through recent history is a long tragedy. The unrest of the sixties, the indolence of the me generation, the abandonment of all their "ideals" in the eighties; and now as they approach retirement, they are proposing to screw every following generation to finance a comfortable and medically well supported retirement.

The boomers are by and large even wealthier as they approach retirement than their parents were. The average 50 year old boomer owns his home, has investments and a comfortable salary. Despite this, they want the government to provide health care, prescription drugs and social security benefits. How will these benefits be paid for? From taxes on the wages of the younger generations, or deficit spending on a scale that we have never seen in this country.

The only solution is means testing, and some sort of realistic benefit plan that takes into account the amount of money they paid in. And for the rest of us, something like the government workers' pension plan (they are exempt from social security taxes) for the rest of us so that this situation doesn't happen again.

Mike and I may differ on what services should be provided to the poor, but I think he'll agree that we should not be giving handouts to people who own their homes, have investment portfolios, and a pension. That really is theft. Social Security is a giant Ponzi scheme, and our generation is on the bottom of the pyramid.

By way of Jay Nordlinger of the National Review, this quote from Michael McFaul, a poli-sci prof at Stanford, writing in the New York Times Review of Books. The book under review was Anne Applebaum's Gulag: A History. Here is the beginning of the review:

In visiting Poland last month, President Bush took the time to go to Auschwitz and tour one of the most ghastly assaults to humanity in the history of mankind. After finishing his tour, he remarked: "And this site is also a strong reminder that the civilized world must never forget what took place on this site. May God bless the victims and the families of the victims, and may we always remember."

The next day, Mr. Bush was in St. Petersburg, Russia. While there, he did not make it up to the Solovetsky Islands, the site of the first camp of the gulag. Nor did he call upon the world to "always remember" the millions of people who perished in the Soviet concentration camps well before Auschwitz was constructed and well after Auschwitz was dismantled. The families of the victims of Soviet Communism — much more numerous than the families who lost loved ones in Hitler's camps — received no special blessing from the leader of the free world. Mr. Bush should not be singled out for failing to remember the innocents killed in the gulag. Rarely do visiting dignitaries take time to remember the tragedies of Soviet Communism.

I agree, wholeheartedly. Some of the nations of Eastern Europe are examining the crimes of their communist governments, like Hungary. Russia has not, and shows no sign of even thinking of it. And far too many people give the Communists a free pass on millions of deaths.

From Richard Brookhiser

This article is a good introduction to the supply side/laffer curve arguments. I'll find some more links and post them. These theories are not vague handwaving. Arthur Laffer, and others in the Chicago School of economists (Friedman, Hayek, etc) have studied and published on these matters. And unlike Keynesian economic theory which was proved incorrect by the stagflation of the 70s, it has been an accurate predictor (on the large scale).

Ross is correct to demand means testing - but the reason that drugs are available for cheap in Canada is because patients in the United States paid for them (and the research that developed them) at much higher prices. Canada is getting a free ride. Ross' solution only spreads out the cost - but does not effect the calculations that drug companies will make on which drugs to develop. (A shorter patent period would mean more expensive drugs for a shorter time.) 

But the problem that he brings up: the older generation passing every law needed for a comfortable retirement - which can only screw our generation - is broader than merely prescription drug plans. It applies to Medicare, Social Security, and all the entitlement plans whose costs will spiral out of control once all the greedy self righteous boomers start retiring in large numbers. 

Who among us, under the age of forty, thinks that there will be any social security waiting for us? The Supreme Court has ruled that the government is not obligated to provide us with SS benefits. They can change the rules at any time. But will they change them before the system goes totally belly up? Probably not. 
 

That tax cuts cause the economy to grow is not tired conservative rhetoric. The economy, over the last fifty years, has boomed after every significant tax cut - after WWII, after Kennedy's tax cuts in the early sixties, after Reagan's twenty years later, and after the capital gains reduction in the mid nineties. The economy in the seventies was in the shitter in every respect. Reagan not only reduced the taxes, but swept away the price controls, wage controls, and excessive regulation of business. The economy took off. With the exception of defense spending, Reagan attempted to reduce or at least stabilize government spending - it was the congress that ran the huge deficits. 

The capital gains tax cut directly affected the amount of money available for investment, and for raising capital. One of the reasons that the tech boom happened was the huge influx in venture capital made possible by the capital gains tax cut.

When you think about it, how does the economy grow? It is not through government action. The economy grows when people develop new businesses, new technologies, new methods. They develop these things with the help of investor money. That money is available because people save and earn. When taxes rise, money is pulled out of the economy, and is unavailable for capital development, and is unavailable for the people who would purchase the new products or services. Thus, higher taxes serve as a break on the economy. 

Granted, money that we give to the government can be useful - roads, defense, courts, etc. But it is more useful when it stays in our hands, collectively. One irony of the situation is that when you lower taxes, revenue rises. The Laffer curve has been proven, most recently with the capital gains cut of the nineties, but also generally over the last century. When taxes go down, the economy grows, and even though the gubmint is getting a smaller piece of pie, the pie as a whole is much larger. Capital gains were cut by I think 33%, and over two years revenue from the lower tax rate increased by 50% or so. (I can't remember the exact numbers.) 

While the deficits that were run in the eighties were enormous and frightening, they are gone. That was not an intergenerational burden of any kind - but only because the economy was able to grow. 

Ross points out that drug programs and military budgets are intergenerational warfare - which is the point I made in my first post. Tax cutting is the only way that we can restrain spending. People freak over high deficits much more than over high taxes. (Strange, if you ask me.) If we were to freeze spending, then the government would have a decreasing share of the economy over time. And tax cuts are necessary every so often if for no other reason than inflation - as people creep into higher tax brackets, the taxes are being raised, if stealthily. (Of course, a flat tax would solve that problem.) 

Of course, there are other factors affecting the economy. There are various business cycles. The education of the populace, the world economy, money supply, labor laws, productivity, cultural attitudes to work, the general legal structure for commerce, patent law, etc. But these things remain relatively constant. Other variable factors can have a big impact as well. Oil price spikes can have effects similar to a tax hike - increasing everyone's cost of doing business, but that is out of politician's control. The Justice Department prosecution of Bill Gates was the proximate cause of the recent tech crash. When Bill Gates lost thirty billion dollars, the rest of the economy reacted to the sudden disappearance of all that money. Tax levels and Fed control of the money supply are two of the biggest levers in the economy - and the ones that our elected officials control. When these levers are set in a pro-economy position, things are good, the government is out of the way of our collective business. 

Tax cuts are good for the economy. They are good, because they keep money out of the hands of politicians, and restrain the growth of government. (PJ O'Rourke said that giving money to government was like giving whiskey and car keys to a teenager.) They are good, because it is right that people keep the money that they earn, and not deliver half of it over to thumb fingered nozzleheads in DC. Links in a minute.

The reckless tax cuts of Kennedy and Reagan certainly shifted enormous burdens to us, the next generation. No, wait, what they did was allow the economy to grow faster, so that we could afford to pay for all the reckless services instituted by Johnson, Carter and others. What would be a burden for our children would be to create more programs that blow through taxpayer money like something that blows through money really, really fast. Because with rare exceptions, those programs never go away, even if it turns out that they weren't that great an idea in the first place. Like farm subsidies. Lowering taxes is the only way to prevent the government from hoovering up the whole economy. I think a better legacy for our children (because everything must be for the childen) would be to leave them a world where they could have a job and keep more than half the money they earn from it.

Ps, I think Krugman's slogan is a great idea. We should use it.

Having as your target well paid educators seems a little off. Shouldn't we be trying to get compentant educators? In any event, increasing the quality of our educators is a laudable goal. However, education does not cure stupidity. At best, it ameliorates ignorance. Call me elitist, but the vast majority of people not merely in this country but around the world are not geniuses. Half the world is below average (well, below median) intelligence, by definition; and most of the rest are hovering close to the fat part of the bell curve. There is a limited pool of people who can fully benefit from a great education. It should be offered to all, of course, but it isn't going to help everyone. But even an ideal educational system would not stop bad reporting, lying, and stupid people making bad judgements on inaccurate data.

No matter what their intelligence or education levels, every American has the liberty to choose to think what they want. I may think its stupid, but hey, that's what freedom is.

If you are quoting scare quotes, I have no need to be angry with you, Mike - it only increases my distaste for Krugman.