ve'al timkor -- ואל־תמכר » in the news

“academic freedom” and other such stuff

mitchell b powell — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 19:12:28 +0000

There’s been an argument over whether the government should be able to regulate academic fraud among grant recipients. The university position, of course, is that the government has no right to interfere with “academic freedom.” And yet you don’t see that university turning down government grants. So the implication, then, is that it is okay for government to represent society by giving gifts, but it is not okay for the gifts to come with conditions like, say, a guarantee that they won’t be used for fraudulent purposes. The desire for free money without any conditions, though quite human, is not something any self-respecting society can give in to. Anyone who grants money has the option of deciding under what conditions they will grant it, and the prospective recipient has the right to turn down the money if the conditions aren’t satisfactory. So it should be clear that the university has no right to squeal about government scrutiny. But the fact that tax dollars are at work calls for even higher scrutiny. For the dollars that are going to be given to the university are dollars taken by force from the American people. To spend those dollars without checking into how they are being used would not only be foolish, it would be an immoral abrogation of the government’s mandate to work for the best interests of the people.

But, you may rightfully argue, doesn’t this leave open the possibility that the government will stifle academic discourse? Of course it does. But if it is feared that government intervention in college is bad, the correct route to fixing this lies not in handing out our hard-won tax dollars without scrutiny, but rather in removing the government from the business of funding and regulating college.

in the news

mitchell b powell — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 18:47:27 +0000

Kiryas Joel is a Hasidic Jewish enclave. There’s a sign up in the town, on private property, which tells people to keep their arms and legs covered and to maintain gender separation in town. Now, you can think whatever you want about the practice of covering up all the way and gender separation, and you can even condemn the sign-poster for being rude if you like, but please don’t be like this guy:

“I feel like my constitutional rights are being violated,” said Tyrone Wheeler, a day laborer in the village seeking work.

Poor Tyrone. If only he knew anything about constitutional rights, he would know that there is a right to free speech for the Hasids, but there is no constitutional right to not be disagreed with by religious people. What he calls a constitutional right is really nothing more than tyranny.

An outside consulting group has announced that the IPCC has engaged in some shoddy scientific practices when it comes to their advocacy of global warming. Particularly interesting was this quote:

Such behavior is perhaps to be expected from politicians and government functionaries. From scientists, it’s a travesty.

What’s going on here is semantic confusion. The writer assumes that there is some sort of self-evident distinction between “politicians and government functionaries” and “scientists.” But scientists who work by writing grant applications for government aid are indeed government functionaries, and even politicians in that they are jockeying for funding by each trying to make themselves look like worthwhile targets of funding. We can pretend all we want that science is a neutral process, but we can’t escape the fact that scientists, like all of us, work for those who pay them.

Eco-terrorist James Jay Lee was shot dead today after taking hostages. His ideology was, as harsh as it may sound, nothing more than the logical extension of the environmentalist belief that animals have equal rights with humans. Because if it were true that animals are equally valuable, taking drastic action to curb the human population would not be unreasonable. We do, after, kill billions of animals and reshape their habitats to suite our needs.

Ryan P. Long has posted a thoughtful piece on the “Ground-Zero Mosque.”

ftc bleeds $30 million from innocent company

mitchell b powell — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 18:35:27 +0000

Ever since Craig of Simul Iustus et Peccator inadvertently alerted me to the FTC’s indirect interference with the blogging world, I’ve been seeing the FTC’s tyrannous hand in everyone’s business. The latest example is the FTC’s thuggish mistreatment of Whole Foods. I couldn’t invent the bizarre dealings of the FTC from my own imagination if I tried.

on chinese character amnesia

mitchell b powell — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 18:44:30 +0000

I must have been about eleven years old when I read an old Encyclopaedia Brittanica 1943 article on the Chinese language. I was amazed by the fact that a country with a relatively simple grammar would have such a complex way of writing words. The gist of the Chinese writing system is that every word has a particular character that must be memorized. For example:

This sort of writing system has both benefits and drawbacks. On the plus side, it’s one humdinger of a work-out for the visual processing capabilities of the human brain. It’s also produces very attractive writing. It also preserves within itself a long process of historical evolution of the writing system. The bizarre contortions of the English spelling system are, in a smaller way, an analogue to the Chinese system, in that both systems require massive memorization to progress from spoken to written language. In English, you can see all sorts of traces of the etymology of words in their spelled forms. You can also distinguish between homophones like they’re, there, and their, a feat which would be impossible in a purely phonetic system.

The downside of a complex writing system like the Chinese have is that it presents a significant barrier to literacy. Unlike, say, Spanish, a language in which any person with a knowledge of about forty letters and symbols can make himself understood, the Chinese student must memorize thousands of letters. The existence of a complex writing system keeps out many people who are unable to master its difficulty and induces a permanent feeling of inferiority among those unable to adhere to its rules. How many English-speakers, for example, feel insecure about their written communications due to their being bad spellers? Our complex writing system must certainly be a factor in why the US, which spends about $10,000 per year per pupil, has an illiteracy rate five times higher than that of Cuba, which spends ten times less. And the Chinese illiteracy rate is a full thirty-five times higher than the Cuban, despite the fact that their level of economic development is nearly on par with Cuba’s.

But before I knew all these statistics, back when I was an eleven-year-old peering into that encyclopedia article, I began to wonder whether it might be best if China replaced their complex system with one based on Roman letters. Sure, it might be perceived as a pro-Western selling out of indigenous culture. And sure, it might in some subjective and ultimately non-quantifiable way reduce the happiness or artistic ability or pride of some people. But it would allow those who would otherwise be unable to write to join the world of literacy, a skill which increases earning power, life expectancy, mobility, and self-respect by giving access to vast stores of information previously inaccessible. And even for those little children who would have been able to handle the Chinese system, the huge time savings due to the ease of teaching alphabetic, phonetic reading over character-based reading would free up years of study for other subjects, like science, math, history, or art.

The article I read eight years ago mentioned pinyin, and I began to hope that one day it would succeed in being a widely used tool for communicating in China. It turns out now that this is happening.

A massive shift is occurring, and pinyin is now nearly the only method of writing used by many Chinese people. The reason for this is that pinyin is the primary input method for electronic devices in China. So everyone is writing in pinyin, but reading in characters. The result of this shift is that young adults are now beginning to forget how to write many characters, even as they still retain the ability to recognize them necessary to read.

This looks to me like just one more step in an inevitable historical process, one that started the first time Chinese people began to engage in trade with people who had alphabetic writing systems. Character-based Chinese, at least as a means of mass media communication, is dying. And we can either view this with idealistic disgust, or welcome the progress.

speaking of ftc . . .

mitchell b powell — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 19:52:09 +0000

this.

in the news — nuclear strikes, firebreathing bartenders, slapping babies

mitchell b powell — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 21:28:15 +0000

Israel, some say, must strike Iran’s nuclear facilities now if it is to strike at all. ‘Cause once Friday comes, there’ll be nuclear material in the reactors, which would make any such attack dangerous. Particularly interesting is this:

On Tuesday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast was quoted as saying that “these threats of attacks had become repetitive and lost their meaning.”

Whether an attack comes will reveal not only much about the Israeli government’s feelings toward Iran, but may also reveal much about the current US stance toward Middle Eastern politics.

Two bartenders are facing up to 45 years in prison for breathing fire. As far as I can tell, nobody got hurt, and all the bar-goers knew the risks they were taking by going there. The bar’s logo sports a fire-breathing bartender, for goodness’ sake. So I don’t see any reason for fining them, let alone sending them to jail. And the charge of “manufacturing an explosive device” is just silliness.

An assertive flight attendant took away a baby from its mother after the parent slapped it. The world needs more pushy strangers like that, to curb parents’ ridiculous notion that they can treat their children shamefully in public. (Not that privately mistreating a child is okay, of course.)

a poem to dispell the hatred

mitchell b powell — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 19:31:59 +0000

Joel Watts has written a post condoning hatred of BP. And although I think he’s substantially right on details, except that the post should probably be renamed “Another Reason to Hate the British Government and their Friends at BP,” I won’t argue the ideological implications of the spill here. Instead, I will simply try to help lower the blood pressures of liberals, conservatives, fascists, and anarchists alike through a peaceful and non-condemning poem. I give you The Oil Poem. It doesn’t go quite far enough, though, so I’m willing to entertain suggestions for additional lines:

This is the sea floor, filled with oil.

This is BP, which studied its soil,
and dreamed dreams of profit from undersea oil.

These are the workers whose labor and toil,
extract for BP from the undersea soil,
the profitable sticky stuff we call oil.

This is the inspector, all shiny and clean,
who vouched for the safety of BP’s machines,
so that all the workers could labor and toil,
and extract for BP from the undersea soil,
the profitable sticky stuff we call oil.

These are the valves which suddenly cracked
(mechanical failure? deliberate attack?)
despite the inspector, all shiny and clean,
who vouched for the safety of BP’s machines,
and let all its workers go labor and toil,
and extract for BP from the undersea soil,
the profitable sticky stuff we call oil.

This is the president, tall and lean,
who promised revenge for the oil-spilled scene,
which flowed from the valves that had suddenly cracked–
mechanical failure? deliberate attack?
despite the inspector, all shiny and clean,
who vouched for the safety of BP’s machines,
and let all its workers go labor and toil,
and extract for BP from the undersea soil,
the profitable sticky stuff we call oil.

supreme court voids labor board decisions — good, but only a band-aid

mitchell b powell — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 18:34:40 +0000

It is immoral for government to stand between a willing employer and a willing employee by dictating the terms of employment. It is likewise immoral for government to compel employers to keep employees who are refusing to show up for work, that is, striking. And it is a denial of basic freedoms of political behavior and conscience for government to force unwilling workers to join and pay dues to an agency which they oppose as a condition of employment. American union laws do all three. They violate the right of people to pursue gainful employment, and not to contribute to causes they detest. It is vain to pretend union laws are a protection of the worker against the employer, because the laws oppress both parties by forbidding people from coming to their own agreements outside of federally-mediated management-union agreements. An example of the oppressive nature of coercive union membership is my own home town’s moral hero Carol Katter, a committed Roman Catholic who was told by the local public school union that she had to choose between supporting abortions with her union dues or converting to another religion. She fought the law and she won in court. You can read this amazing story here or just do a google search on it. The immorality of union laws goes beyond just the unconscionable powers they have been given by law, however. Take, for example, the National Labor Relations Board (NRLB), which interfered with people’s personal business in a shocking 500 cases without having been given the legal authority to do so. When government decides to use law to interfere with the right of employers and employees to negotiate settlements or to go their own separate ways, the government is behaving badly. But when a government body simply ignores law and forces its illegal decisions on people, the government is behaving despotically. Thankfully, the Supreme Court intervened this time and stopped an unconscionable injustice from being imposed on workers and businesspeople. It is unquestionably a victory that courts have acknowledged the wrongful nature the school union’s behavior against Carol Katter and now of the dictatorial behavior of the NLRB, but the deeper problem is that our legal system allows interference between the attempts of both employers and employees to reach mutually profitable arrangements.

a sad day for poland

mitchell b powell — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 18:09:34 +0000

A plane with about one hundred people in it has crashed. All passengers have died, including:

Lech Kaczysnki – Polish president.
Maria Kaczynska – The president’s wife
Ryszard Kaczorowski – Poland’s last president-in-exile
Aleksander Szczyglo – head of the National Security Office
Pawel Wypych – presidential aide
Mariusz Handzlik – presidential aide
Jerzego Szmajdzinski – deputy parliament speaker
Andrzej Kremer – Deputy Foreign Minister
Gen. Franciszek Gagor – head of the army chief of staff
Andrzej Przewoznik – minister in charge of WWII memorials
Slawomir Skrzypek – head of the National Bank of Poland
Janusz Kurtyka – head of the National Remembrance Institute
Przemyslaw Gosiewski – lawmaker
Zbigniew Wassermann – lawmaker
Grzegorz Dolniak – lawmaker
Janusz Kochanowski – civil rights commissioner
Bishop Tadeusz Ploski – army chaplain

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1264964/BREAKING-NEWS-Plane-carrying-Polish-president-crashes-Russia.html#ixzz0kioLWtan

The current official statement is that it appears to have been the accidental result of pilot’s error.

The loss of so-many high-ranking Polish leaders is not only shocking to Poland, but will realign their power structure as a nation. If you are a praying person, pray for the people and government of Poland, that they might be able to transition to new leadership as smoothly and with as little unrest as possible. Deaths of leaders are always hard, especially in light of the politically charged circumstances surrounding this tragedy.

on child labor laws and the blues

mitchell b powell — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 17:38:12 +0000

Child labor laws have taken this poor kids blues away. He lives in Wisconsin, and is an 8-year-old with a shocking musical ability. He will from time to time go play at blues venues, and the money from that is all put toward his college education. It’s sort of the opposite of child exploitation. But the state of Wisconsin fails to see the difference (in Wisconsin a kid can go into a bar with his Dad and drink beer, but heaven forbid he play guitar. That’s child endangerment.):

Child labor laws are interesting to me because I was an illegal undocumented worker once, back when I was fifteen. I’d work two or three hours at a time, after school. Little did I know till I’d been doing this for some time that a minor has to go to his school and fill out forms and ask for permission from the school to work. That’s right–a school bureaucrat named Mrs. Yingling was, according to the government, better qualified than my parents to know whether this job would be in my best interests, even though I had never met her before. Of course, no insult is intended to Mrs. Yingling, who was helpful and understanding of my legal predicament and helped me get my papers in order. My two younger brothers have also had similar problems finding perfectly reasonable work, because the legal situation is so biased against the 15-17 year old.

I was talking to a local police officer about this several months later, and he replied, “You have to get permission after school to work? That’s ridiculous. More kids should be getting themselves jobs, not less.”

I agree.