voluntaryXchange

New Giant Microbes

GIANTmicrobes has come out with its summer releases: fat cell, brain cell, chicken pox, staph, herpes, chlamydia and pneumonia.

(GIANTmicrobes sells plush "stuffed animals" of germs and other one celled creatures.)

10 Free Security Programs

I found a bunch here that I don't use, and I keep up to date on this stuff. Here's the ones I'm going to check out:

• Secunia PSI (to find out which software you haven't updated),
• Open DNS (to protect from pharming),
• GMER (to make sure your PC isn't a zombie),
• Netcraft Toolbar (which could've helped out Julie Amero),
• CCleaner (to clean up your system),
• NoScript (to block scripts from websites you don't trust).

I don't need one, but I do know that if you need this sort of software that most companies will only let you have a crappy version for free, and make you pay about $25 for one that actually works, so it is good to know that FileShredder is out there when you need it.

Putting Gonzalesgate In Perspective

It turns out that Congress has gone after the President about firing attorneys before.

But, it was 1885, the Congress was Republican, and the President was a Democrat.

Nothing came of it because there really isn't anything that could or should have come of it.

And there won't be anything this time either, because the Democrats are bluffing. They certainly have an issue, a position, and an opponent, but the problem is they don't have a case. If they did, they'd take the White House to court. The fact that they haven't suggests that they don't think they can win - they're not exactly bringing it on, are they?

Instead, we have a lot of rotten tomatoes being thrown.

Kim Strassel goes over all of this. Read the whole thing. Here are the parts I liked best:

The contempt citations are, rather, an audacious break with history and Mr. Conyers has far more honorable options. The reason Democrats haven't pursued those more dignified routes is because this is about smearing the president, not proving a principle.

Let's remember how we got here. ... Democrats latched on to the firings in hopes of building some case ... The Justice Department, in the spirit of cooperation, turned over 8,500 documents ... Conyers and ... Leahy, found nothing. So they then demanded the White House turn over privileged communications ... Bush invoked executive privilege ...

... This is a straightforward battle between Mr. Bush's claim of executive privilege and Congress's claim of oversight. Both sides, in theory, have a legitimate case.

... Mr. Bush has just as much right to grant himself a similar power and hold Mr. Conyers in criminal contempt for interfering in executive-branch business.

... If Messrs. Conyers and Leahy think the White House is wrong to refuse to comply with Congress's subpoenas, they can file a civil legal proceeding in court. The judiciary will then decide ... It's not complicated.

... Mr. Conyers hasn't pursued a civil case is that his legal staff has informed him that he has a very poor chance of winning. Legal precedent strongly suggests that Mr. Bush's assertion of executive privilege is valid here ...

Need a Font?

I'm not a great collector or user of extra fonts.

Having said that, there are reasons to go out and get new ones:

• Lots of folks don't know that there are better things than Times New Roman out there,
• Windows is a lot better at including fancy fonts you won't use rather than practical ones you might need (e.g., like a fixed width one for Excel),
• There are fonts you can get for special occasions like holidays, and
• You can solve that pesky problem of differentiating your o and 0 and I and L.

So, check out Dafont.com. It has a good selection of free fonts, and it can show you samples of what you write will look like instantaneously.

Because They Were There First

The New York Times has a policy to use the term "Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia" instead of "Al Qaeda in Iraq". The conservative blogosphere has had a field day with the use of a deprecated name to emphasize their view that the Iraq conflict has nothing to do with Al Qaeda. (Perhaps they're right, but it seems to me that this is the sort of nomenclature a historian would use after the dust has settled and the point has been proved rather than what journalists are required to use when the question is still open).

Anyway ... I laughed so hard when I read this:

If The New York Times keeps using the ancient term "Mesopotamia" in reference     to modern-day Iraq, perhaps we should start using the word "Persia" to describe     the region we now call Iran.

We could call Turkey the "Ottomans." And we could call Syria "Sargon."

We might even be able to slip in the term "Babylon" to describe parts of     Iraq and Saudi Arabia.  

This can be so much fun!  

But I guess we would have to call Israel "Israel."

Gosh ... sounds like a policy intended to emphasize the politically incorrect fact that Jews have the oldest claim to a patch of earth in the region.

This is from a letter from Debbie Symanovich excerpted in Best of the Web Today.

OOPS - Big time spelling boo-boo now corrected.

The GDP Grade for 2007 II

Real GDP growth for the second quarter has come in at 3.4%.

This is about average for the U.S. economy, and grades out as a very high "C" on my standard scale.

On the college student curve though, this is a very low "A".

What's that Red Star?

That's been the question on our deck after 10 PM the last few nights.

I said Antares of Betelgeuse.

It turns out that you can get star charts from Wunderground (the link is hard to find on their main page, so go here). Just put in your zip code and the time you'll be looking and you'll get a chart that's, frankly, much more than the typical person needs.

I'm thinking now that we're seeing Jupiter. It isn't as red as Antares, but it is close by right now, and much brighter.

Roots of Terrorism

It isn't PC, but this letter to the editor by Peter Altman makes some points that any serious analysis of terrorism must confront:

... Poverty isn't the main motivating factor behind terrorism, but he is wrong in stating that a lack of civil liberties and political rights is the real culprit ("Capital: Princeton Economist Says Lack of Civil Liberties, Not Poverty, Breeds Terrorism," July 5). Mr. Krueger looks at the list of major terrorist-producing states and sees a lack of freedom and democracy as the common denominator. However, there are too many authoritarian states that don't produce terrorists for his hypothesis to be true. Neither North Koreans nor Cubans are busy blowing themselves up in cafés.

The common denominator among all major terrorist producing states is Islam ... it is the caustic sense of humiliation among many Muslims over Western ascendancy that actually lights the fuse. Muslims are raised on the belief that Islam, the perfect faith, is superior to all other religions and that the only reason that Islam is not ascendant is that the West is undermining it.

Until self-criticism and a recognition of Western scientific superiority resulting from the triumph of science over orthodoxy is embraced by Islamic civilization from North Africa to the Indian Ocean, we need look no further for an explanation.

I know and like a lot of thoughtful Moslems who will disagree with aspects of this argument, as is their right. But ... they all live here. I've also known a great many students from Moslem countries, and generally they'll do just about anything to avoid going back there.

Read the whole thing in the July 17 issue of The Wall Street Journal.

The New Economic Inquiry Policy - You Heard It Here First

Preston McAfee has taken over as editor at Economic Inquiry.

He has instituted a new policy:

... In this experiment, an author can submit under a 'no revisions' policy. This policy means exactly what it says: if you submit under no revisions, I (or the co-editor) will either accept or reject. What will not happen is a request for a revision.

I will ask referees: 'is it better for Economic Inquiry to publish the paper as is, versus reject it, and why or why not?' ...

I think this is a great move.

In fact, voluntaryXchange suggested a tournament format in conjunction with a 'no revisions' policy in 2004.

 

FTNITK #1: Economic Inquiry is a general interest journal that -as a Western rather than national outlet - resides in the second tier of rankings. As such, it is a very, very good second tier journal and probably the best regionally-oriented journal.

FTNITK #2: R. Preston McAfee is on a lot of folks medium-sized list for a Nobel Prize. He's not a lock, and he's young enough that it won't come soon, but he's published a ton of stuff that is not only good, but whose implications are still poorly and incompletely understood by the profession at large (me included). 

Las Vegas Is Getting Cooler

The big difference between faith and science is that in the former you support your null hypothesis with evidence that is consistent with it, while in the latter you retain your null hypothesis because you haven't yet found any evidence that is inconsistent with it.

So, it's interesting that Las Vegas has gotten cooler over the last 50 years.

The extent to which tidbits like this are absent from the debate over anthropogenic global warming should push our posteriors towards the viewpoint that this is about faith not science.