Truth, Justice, and the American Way

I have a few photos of my new furniture from Eurway up. What do you think?

BISMARCK, North Dakota (AP) — To sell things over eBay, Mark Nichols may be required to take instruction in rapid-fire speaking, breathing control and reading hand gestures, even though the transactions are done by computer keyboard and mouse. To get a North Dakota auctioneer’s license, applicants must pay a $35 fee, obtain a $5,000 surety bond and undergo training at one of eight approved auction schools, where the curriculum includes talking really fast.

Quiz question: this legislation is about (a): public safety (b): raising revenue, or (c): creating barriers to entry to legislate online competitors out of business

If you’ve been following the net news, you know that the thug regimes of the UN are trying to seize control of the Internet’s DNS. The latest threat is that the net will “fall apart” within months if the U.S. does not turn over control. What does this mean?

Hidden behind the claims of “multilateralism” and “sharing of best practices” is a thinly veiled threat that if states are not given the power to censor the Internet multilaterally, governments wishing to censor the internet will split off their DNS networks to censor content unilaterally to establish isolated networks.

What’s mostly ignored in the news stories is that ICANN has been successfully managing DNS system without almost any interference from the U.S. Almost, but not quite none – the DOJ has delayed the issuance of some root domains, namely the .XXX porn domain.

The real question we should be asking is - why does the Internet need to be under the control of any regime – unilaterally or multilaterally? If a private organization has done a good job so far (and they have), why not officially hand over the DNS system to them?

I am looking for an MP3 player. I would love to get the iPod nano, but much of my collection is in WMA format, which Apple doesn’t do. I want something small and sleek to bike with but with at least 2GB of space.

Ideas?

Oh, and I have some photos up from this weekend -my family came to visit for my birthday.

New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer is at it again — this time, forcing Yahoo Chat to close their chat rooms (used by millions of people) to anyone under 18, and give a few hundred thousand in extort.. err, “donations” to placate a few interest groups.

Time for an economics quiz. The likely outcome of closing the chat rooms will be (a) : millions of teens will immediately abandon Internet chat (b): millions of teens will start lying about their age, and give child molesters an “I didn’t know” excuse, (c) millions of teens will switch to seedier and unmonitored chat room sites, where the identity or age of the participants cannot be tracked, or (d): (b) and (c )will make the internet a more dangerous place, creating new opportunities for Eliot Spitzer & Co to get in on the action.

I doubt any drastic consequences will come of this. The real story here is how politicians use regulations and wealth transfers to gain favor with interest groups and voters without any concern for the actual effect on the public they are supposed to be “protecting.”

More on New York state’s resident fascist.

Love Field, that is. For the DWF residents:

Have you seen the “Set Love Free” ads? After decades of lawsuits and legislative battles, the city of Ft. Worth and Southwestern Airlines are running PR campaigns over a decades old measure isolating the DFW airport from competition.

Pro: http://setlovefree.com/ Con: http://www.keepdfwstrong.com/

I wrote a letter about it:

Please support the Right to Fly Act (HR 2646) introduced in the House by Congressmen Jeb Hensarling and Sam Johnson and the American Right to Fly Act (S. 1424) introduced in the Senate by Senator John Ensign. It’s time to bring 26 years of protectionist policy to an end. Airlines have a right to fly to and from any airport they choose, free from restrictions imposed by short-sighted protectionists who are afraid to compete in a free and open market. If DFW Airport is afraid of losing airlines, they should lower their costs, not try to legislate other, more efficient, airports out of business. Even if the absurd argument that a free Love Field would hurt DFW business were true, it would only mean that Love Field is better able to serve customers than their competition. As a frequent flier, I support lower costs (and thus cheaper tickets) and reject the destructive mercantilist mentality that views the success of one business is a threat to others.

The New York Times reports that FEMA wasted over $100 million of ice that was intended to help to hurricane victims.
One frustrated truck driver had to drive 2,000 pounds of ice around for 4,100 miles, being redirected half a dozen times, and waiting up to a week (with the engine running) for FEMA to make up their mind. 59% of the purchased ice was never used, and much of it ended up thousands of miles from the affected areas because not enough storage space had been arranged. A homeland security report stated that the problem was that there is “no automated way to coordinate quantities of commodities with the people available to accept and distribute them.” But not to worry, because “there are programs in the works that will help us better track commodities.”

Hmm, an automated way to coordinate quantities of commodities with the people available to distribute and consume them. I think I’ve read about something like that.

My apologies for the lack of updates, but I haven’t felt like blogging lately.

So here’s a personal update: I just moved from Austin to Grand Prairie (Dallas) for a new job. I’ve been busy learning .Net web services. I also got a road bike and have been checking out the parks around Arlington. I’ve gotten involved in the North Texas Objectivist Society

I’ll probably feel like blogging again soon, but till then I’m active at my forum.

For you computer programmers, I’ve published So you’d like to… Become a master .Net programmer on Amazon.

Robert Tracinski on Katrina:

The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story wrong. The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not happen over the past four days. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view. The man-made disaster is the welfare state.

Next time you hear some ignorant fool blathering about the evils of “price gouging,” be sure to send him this link: Price Gouging Saves Lives. (more)

Here is what you won’t hear in the news: Tim sent me this first-hand account of the looting going on in New Orleans. Live video feed..

There’s a discussion on the forum about a violent raid by SWAT teams on a legal rave in Utah. Comments on the forum: “In my mind, this gets filed as yet another experiment by our government, to test the reaction of the public to martial law and dictatorship…”

Info / Discuss

Here are some nifty sites whose RSS feeds I’ve added to my Google Portal:

eHow – features daily “how to” article. Today’s “how to” stories include “How to Deal With an Overbearing Mother” and “How to Select Art for Your Home”

Engadget – my source for all gadget-related news. For more general (and more left-biased) tech news, be sure to check out Slashdot.

Interesting Thing of the Day – a daily article on some interesting thing for the culturally-inspired (or challenged).

Wired – one of the first online culture mags, they will occasional feature interesting commentary — if you can filter out all the nonsense.

Capitalism Magazine: a collection of conservative editorials and ARI press releases, this is a good survey of capitalist and Objectivist writing.

Mises.org daily articles –a variety of writers, including the occasional libertarian peacenik, but also some brilliant economic commentary. For more economic insight, check out Café Hayek

The Egosphere – last but not least is my own metablog, which features posts and articles from about a dozen Objectivist bloggers, including yours truly.

Google talk is LIVE! Get it now! Add me: [email protected]

(For those who don’t follow Google’s product lines religiously, Google Talk is their new instant messaging service.)

British enviro-terrorists score another victory:

The family-run Darley Oaks Farm in Newchurch, Staffordshire, has been at the centre of a campaign of abuse. The owners and people connected with the business have received death threats during the six-year onslaught.

There are two notable things about this story: the UK police have essentially given up trying to stop enviro-terrorists because the “campaign had been so widespread,” and the state-run BBC gives several paragraphs to quote the environuts, (who differ only on tactics) but no room at all to any opposing position. Whether that is because advocates of individual rights have been totally marginalized, or were never there to begin with, I don’t know.

My (and a few other’s) photos from Mises University 2005 are up.

Have you seen the new food pyramid issued by the USDA? I’ve been trying to decipher it, but all I’ve been able to figure out so far is that Nabisco, Kraft, Kellogs, the Milk and Beef lobbies, and PETA sent a lot of $ to Congress.

Check out Kevin Kelly’s article at Wired about the historical context of the web. He makes some interesting points about the influence of commercialization of the web, the shift in how content is created, and the way it functions as an extension of the human mind.

Steven Johnson writes in the LA Times about how violent video games are actually making kids smarter and safer – as opposed to “a game that instills aggressive thoughts in the minds of its players, some of whom have gone on to commit real-world acts of violence and sexual assault after playing” - high school football.