For example, voters rationally remain ignorant because their input in the election is not correlated to their knowledge about the process and the candidates. When [...]]]> Interesting lecture, put out by the Adam Smith Institute, about The Lessons of Public Choice Theory. It turns out that democracy is a less efficient system than the free market.

For example, voters rationally remain ignorant because their input in the election is not correlated to their knowledge about the process and the candidates. When everyone’s vote counts the same, educational investment just doesn’t pay off.

Another example, regulation doesn’t always pay off. Because, information about the policies and analysis on their effects is politicized out of proportion. The free market provides more information about products through consumer feedback scores Amazon to a consumer, than any voter could ever hope to get about either the regulators and their objectives, or the policies and their potential effects. Lacking information and transparency, government regulation is nearly guaranteed to provide a less cost efficient and worse quality goods.

This lecture is the first time that I have seen the same tools of analysis applied to the economy also applied to the democratic system.

Promotion of silver as a form of money.

You and I both share a preference for the GOP candidate Ron Paul, who advocates a return to hard money. His ‘End the Fed’ campaign has successfully [...]]]> I sent the following letter to Mike Maloney, CEO of GoldSilver and WealthCycles. Let’s see if he answers back.

Promotion of silver as a form of money.

You and I both share a preference for the GOP candidate Ron Paul, who advocates a return to hard money. His ‘End the Fed’ campaign has successfully influenced rhetoric surrounding the government’s monetary policies. I believe that you will find, at his rallies, a youthful exuberance for experimentation and an excitement about putting words into action. You will also find his supporters to be the most sympathetic for a return to hard money.

At any political rally, we also find various vendors, usually selling t-shirt and other paraphernalia bearing slogans and promotional imagery. Because Ron Paul’s supporters will be the most sympathetic for a return to hard money: I propose an experiment that just might grab the campaign some newspaper headlines.

Prior to a rally, inform everyone gathered that you will have several booths (clearly marked) which will exchange the government’s paper dollars for silver coinage. Because most vendors ware’s are usually less that ~$30 you should have at the exchange coins smaller than 1oz. Encourage the vendors to accept only the silver coins (and promise that you will exchange them back into government paper if they wish). The goal is to have, for the duration of the rally, a ‘hard money fair’ in which actual silver coins operate as the money (as would tokens/tickets at the fair).

Successfully pulling off this stunt accomplishes several goals: 1. It gets a small portion of the populace familiar with using silver coins as money. They can go on to spread the novelty. 2. Nothing like this has been done at any political rally. The novelty should attract some media attention. 3. It allows the campaign to ‘put its money where its mouth is’, in a way that no other campaign could possibly replicate.

I give you this idea freely, because I am not personally in a position to carry out such a plan, but it seems to me that you have the resources and might be sympathetic to the concept, as radical as it may at first appear.

Your customer,
Eric Hennigan

The unifying characteristic of [...]]]> The Communications of the ACM has put out an interesting piece about the treatment and role of faculty who wish to focus on teaching more than research. This viewpoint article, Teaching-Oriented Faculty at Research Universities, includes comments from people I’ve worked with, but who remain anonymous in the article itself.

The unifying characteristic of TOF is excellent teaching. We teach large classes, introductory classes, specialized classes; we typically teach more classes and more students than other faculty in our departments and by common measures we do it very well. Unlike our non-TOF colleagues, we are also evaluated primarily on the basis of our teaching.

These teachers usually staff the bulk (nearly 50%) of introductory undergraduate courses. They also provide academic service through curriculum development. Both of these services allow other faculty to focus more of their time on research. Yet, I feel that many of these faculty are not fully respected among their peers, because they are not leading a research program or publishing as many deep, technical papers. The TOF often don’t meet the same metric that other faculty use to assess themselves.

Ray operates a ministry in Huntington beach, and can usually be found on a soapbox bantering with beachgoers on Saturdays. There are several videos [...]]]> The last post about Ray being bananas was far too light on the details. So, I thought I’d say a bit more about the ordeal today, while I have some time.

Ray operates a ministry in Huntington beach, and can usually be found on a soapbox bantering with beachgoers on Saturdays. There are several videos of this on YouTube, that I won’t reproduce here for brevity. He made himself famous online with one episode of his “Way of the Master” series that he produces with his boy-toy and former actor, Kirk Cameron. That episode, Bananas: The Atheist’s Worst Nightmare, claimed that bananas were perfect for human consumption, obviously designed as such by a loving creator god. His arguments were rapidly debunked, both in video form, and through skeptic websites.

In the video, Ray reveals his obvious lack of scholarship. He completely neglected to research anything about bananas before simply making up creationist arguments. He overlooked the history of bananas and their human cultivation for 7,000, year. He missed the fact that the convenient ‘pull tab’ is used by stupid humans, while smart monkeys simply pinch the other end. He claimed that the shape of the banana was a perfect fit for finger joints, while it’s simply a result of having grown in a bunch (nature can pack efficiently). It is unfortunate that Ray has a successful ministry, as it reveals that humans are easily won over by superficial arguments and tend not to take the time to seriously critique the messages they hear. The success of his ministry almost directly demonstrates, how fallible and gullible we are.

More recently, as an obvious publicity stunt, Ray decided to distribute a republication of Darwin’s Origin of Species, in ‘honor’ of the 150th anniversary of its original release. Of course the book has long been in public domain, so, while a bit touchy, this is a perfectly legal maneuver on his part. He placed within the book a 50 page Special Introduction, available at his ministry. In his indoctrination, Ray again reveals sloppy scholarship. He plagarizes, and uses well worn creationist arguments, that have long been refuted. A summary nice refutation can be read at the Don’t Diss Darwin site, setup by the National Center for Science Education. He ends the Indoctrination with a plea that you should buy one of his other books, presumably also as thoroughly researched.

Since enough people within the science community had found out about the publication, there was time to address the misinformation that would be spread on so many college campuses. US News and World Report has a back and forth between Ray and the Eugenie Scott, who works as the executive directory of NCSE and who’s work finding ‘cdesign proponentsists’ helped considerably in the Dover Trial. Ray introduced why he wanted to publish the book, Exclusive: Ray Comfort Defends His Creationist Edition of ‘On the Origin of Species and Eugenie replied with How Creationist ‘Origin’ Distorts Darwin.

Ray had initially planned on releasing his creationist re-publication on the anniversary of Darwin’s original. Yet, since that landed on a weekend prior to Thanksgiving, he rescheduled to Thursday, Nov 19. This was convenient for my club, AAR@UCI because we have meeting on Wed night, and could easily discuss strategy and organization prior to his arrival. We were also hoping, that since UCI is so close to Huntington Beach, he might show up to our campus in person.

Then, on the morning of Wednesday, Nov 18, we spotted his people handing out books! He preempted the schedule! Fortunately, we had already received a collection of banana bookmarks from NCSE, and rapidly organized ourselves to hand them out. He must have felt that the atmosphere in Orange County is too strongly affected by the rationalists because he decided to show up at UCLA instead. He was immediately countered by the Bruin Skeptics though, as recorded by their posts:

• Nazis, Darwin, and Living a Good Life
• BASS Meeting VIII
• A Day Early: Banana Man and Kirk Cameron at UCLA
• Ray Comfort Soapbox Video

In summary, I found the whole event anti-climatic. Most of the world had not heard that this was going on. All they say was some people handing out Darwin books, claiming “This might help you with your studies”. The only people that even wanted to debate with them were members of our own group, who knew what was going on. It seems that the creationists must go to extreme lengths to find a way to shovel their shit into the minds of others. This includes deceit about schedules, slipping bogus content into otherwise good books, neglecting scholarship, misrepresentation of the material, and all other manner of logical fallacies. On strictly moral grounds, I have to give the entire creationist movement a big CHRISTIAN FAIL, for not following their own espoused moral code.

It begins [...]]]> The Libertarian think tank CATO recently published a small, trite piece that attempts to establish The Case against Literary (and Software) Patents. Being a Libertarian, I actually agree with the position; I just don’t think that this article fully explored the issue. Here, I seek to provide some links to more fundamental content.

It begins with the hypothetical existence of a ‘Literature patent’. I consider such an idea to be terrible at face value, and the article actually dismisses it as much. It would be ridiculous to expect every author to carefully comb over their work making sure that it doesn’t infringe on any registered plots or (worse!) plot devices (good buy holodeck!) Acquiring knowledge of registered patents would be prohibitive for a beginning author, they’d have to rely on publishers/editors. This significantly raises the cost of creating an innovative work. Not to mention the human effort the government must spend to maintain consistency in it’s patent database, and the legal costs and liabilities for the inevitable infringement.

The article then proceeds to demonstrate what happens in patentable areas. Immediately, there is a land grab on the ‘low hanging fruit’. During this process, established market leaders tend to benefit, because the have the resources (both funds and people) to make a large number of claims and file the required paperwork (economics of scale apply to paper shuffling too). Typically only a relatively few companies will be successful in this endeavor. The initial grab might also appear to be an ‘economic stimulus’, as it will show a remarkably steep and sudden interest in the field, resulting from the underlying similarity of the tragedy of the commons. After the market settles, a few incumbents then use their patent portfolios to threaten up-start competition. As the article points out, in the world of software patents, so much of the field is so obvious, that agents without an explicit interest in software will find themselves infringing as a normal course of their business but will be without their own patent portfolio and unable to make a bargaining counter-threat.

Another economic phenomenon that happens as a result of the patent system’s existence is economic stalemate. This actually happened with the sewing machine, as recorded by Adam Mossoff in A Stitch in Time: The Rise and Fall of the Sewing Machine Patent Thicket, which was blogged about at the Volokh Conspiracy. He recounts how the marketing and distribution of the sewing machine was actually encumbered by the patent system, because the machine required the combination of several innovations, and no single agent held all patents on the functionality. History also demonstrates the practice of ‘patent trolling’, whereby a company, which doesn’t actually produce anything, seeks to profit by legal threats of infringement and licensing agreements on its patent portfolio. The resulting stalemate was finally resolved through the explicit creation of a patent-holding company, whose sole function was to share the patents and resulting profits of all involved manufacturing firms.

So we can see that for areas where copyright is already established practice, the introduction of an extension of the patent system results in litigation and paperwork and encourages the preservation of an established regime of a few powerful companies working in loose collusion, both of which tend to outweigh any potential benefits to development and innovation

Now, I’d like to go out on a limb here, and reject the very concept of ‘Intellectual Property’. Richard Stallman has spoken out against its use, and continuously advertises the fact that it’s deceptive and misleading. At the root of the issue is that ideas and physical matter behave differently. That is, copying != stealing. The reasoning behind this position is fairly simple, when an idea is copied that does not deprive the original possessor from the idea. When you tell me about your theory of X, you don’t suddenly forget after telling me. In contrast, if you give me an apple, now you no longer have that apple. Ideas are part of a different realm of existence.

Finally, I’d like to point out the slippery slope, what happens if we go too far with this property idea: we might lose The Right to Read, or watch How creativity is being strangled by the law.

I hope that through these references, you can see where, how, and why I’ve developed my position on the patent issue; I’m firmly on the side of maximum freedom (and that includes the opening up of all media: open-music, open-software, open-hardware, open-design, open-architecture, open-video, open-government, open-literature, etc…)

A figure in history, Madelin Murray O’Hare. In popular [...]]]> I attended a lecture about the Michael Newdew’s case concerning the constitutionality of the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegience, presented by UCI’s constitutional law prof Donna C. Scheule. These are some notes from that talk, as close to verbatim as I could manage.

A figure in history, Madelin Murray O’Hare. In popular press, she had devils
horns, filed many lawsuits, very rough personality. Out as an Atheist, during
the time of the Cold War. Not only the devil, but also Communist. Religon
separates us “God loving” from the Communist. Catholocism had been a minority
religon, and even started a separate school system. But this separation
between us and the Communists, leads them to identify with each other, and
nationalism, start to ask for public money.

Interesting point about the pledge case, Murray never filed it. Even though
it’s low hanging fruit. Phrase gets inserted during ’54, to “out-God” the
commies. Catholic church is now very much into public sphere religion. The
current ruling only covers public school (private ones can do whatever).

There have been a few challeges over the years, but no serious ones. No courts
have disallowed the phrase. There was a 7th circuit case that declared the
phrase to be constitutional.

Newdow, was in a relationship, had a daughter. When she reaches school age, he
files a case 11th circuit case (Florida). Case was dismissed, because he broke
up, and daughter was no longer in Florida. Then he moved to CA. He’s gone to a
law school, has a medical degree and practiced for awhile. Suit gets filed in
elementary Sacramento. He wanted to be involved. Because of his job, he can be
in classroom during pledge time. Background is secular Jewish.

Refiles the case in Eastern district, gets thrown out. Appeals to 9th circuit,
San Fran. He’s representing self, must go through a screening. If doesn’t make
it, then summary decision against you. However, if succeed it gets kicked up,
to a 3 judge panel. So far this has been a really low profile case.
The panel:
Reinhardt – Supreme court dislikes judges like him, love to overturn
appointed by Jimmy Carter, never had judical experience
liberal, married to ACLU
Fernandes – spanish guy, very erudite. Conservative. under-the-radar (no
news) Not gonna get his vote.
Goodwin – appointed by Nixon, carrer judge, middle-of-road, pragmatic
been there awhile, now 85 yrs old. His father is a minister.
Family had 9 children, not much money. Moved around alot.
Not a whole lot of use for organized religion. Doesn’t see the
payoff of ministry. Might want him, because he’s otherwise
conservative.

9th circuit covers: Alk, Haw, Ariz, CA, NV, Montan, Guam, Marina Islands
Cases come into chambers, and get assigned to panels. Clerk assigns a
weighting and alerts Reinhart. As head of panel, he dismisses his choice,
Goodwin picks it up. If Reinhart had taken it, judgement writing would not
have had as much weight.

Decision goes by oral argument. ACLU doesn’t show, the case has no media,
argued by Newdow himself. Goodwin, remembers when the made the insertion,
didn’t understand it then. Newdow wins!

Judge tips her off. Heard later, through the news about the decision. It was a
shit-storm. Goodwin’s old, using his remaining time. News disturbing, threats
on life, picketing his house, etc. But he’s up in Oregon, and doesn’t get much
flack. (He doesn’t live there in June, when the news came out.) Talk radio is
ablaze. Had to quite taking phone calls that day. Scalia condemns the
decision. Senate votes to centure (unanimous, inc CA sens.) 9th circuit has
bldng headqtrs in San Fran, so media picks up on “Liberalism”

She grabs the decision, and enjoys it like a feast. The judge hung the Supreme
Court on its own petard. Every other line is a Supreme Court quote, they’re
now locked up, they can’t disavow their own language. He can’t even be accused
of misquoting. Scalia, shoots his mouth off, doesn’t like the decision. But
Goodwin has saved all the death-treats.

Couple months later, Sandra petitions court, claims that he lacked standing
because he doesn’t have custody of the daughter. Newdow’s, relationship had
gone very sour. Suit was filed in his name, not the daughters. She might be
vindictive, or didn’t want daughter involved in it. The standing litigation
went through, standing was approved.

Case went Enbanc, in 9th circuit it gets an 11 judge panel. But a vote for
that didn’t go through. So case goes to Supreme Court. Newdow, claims Scalia
is biased. Because he’d popped his mouth off earlier, Newdow is right.
Couldn’t refuse to rucuse himself. So, now there’s an empty seat. On the day
of oral argument there’s 8 judges.

Now that case has attention, ACLU and others offer services. At this level you
can’t argue your own case. But Newdow had never taken the BAR. So he takes it,
borrows someones notes (2 weeks studying, passes). But in order to argue, he
must have been lawyer for 3 years, he applies and get special dispensation. He
goes around and practices with pretend panels.

Fed gov’t intervenes. The case is now no longer about a small school. There’s
a solicitor general (lawyer Ted Olson, for whom Supreme Court is a sandbox).
Newdow faces tough competition. Plenty of media coverage. The state of union
when case hits supreme court: the decision of the circuit binds the circuit.
(So kids in 9th don’t say ‘under god’ but kids in other districts do) It had
to have intervention.

9th circuit policts were worried about being broken up. The decision was
stayed (didn’t go into effect).

Schuele went to go watch the oral argument (in a good position, clerk history,
records access) to write a book about the case. LA Times, writes a big
article, predicting Newdow would implode. It was a skewed article. She had a
reserved seat. There were pickets outside, avoided them with a sidedoor. It
was an electrified house, packed. Clerks are pushed into space between wall
curtains. Scalia’s empty chair is very obvious.

Schoolboard argues standing and custody. Olsen argues. Newdow goes second.
Starts slow, picks up steam, gets progresively better and better. Get the
sense that this is his only case, he knows it inside and out. Has an answer
for every question.

Court is arranged with terrible acoustics. The semicircle prevent seeing who’s
asking the question. Briar and Guinsberg, are on the outside (they’re new).
Renquist is center. All justices tips hand that he has standing, but for
different reasons (as taxpayer, etc) Stevens, seems to be the only one that
thinks he is substantive. At one point Newdow says stuff that and the
audience cheers. The Court, has sent a message that it’s another political
body, they brought the public. Renquist is pissed at the disruption.

Newdow argues that the phrase is divisive. Renquist: The Senate voted
unanimously to put it in. The Senate voted 99 to nothing against the 9th
circuit. What’s so divisive? Newdow: It just goes to show that an atheist
can’t be elected. Court erupts!! Renquist, clearly irate, goes crazy banging
his gavel He had answers for everything, never backed down, fully prepared.
Judges seem against him, audience loves him.

Had lunch with family. Ken Star was there, says that was the best argument
that he’d ever heard. But it was still sad, it looked like the Supreme Court
didn’t have the guts to do the right thing. One of the issues, substantive,
was wether “Under God” has become an automatic thing, too much time, it has
lost its religous significance. Where was Murray OHare?? So, this argument
open the door, to argument that Court is making a time-based/political decision.

Goto conference, take a vote. If chief justice is majority, then keeps case
for self or doles it out. If in minority, the other judges get to dole it out.
Stevens would be that person. But without Scalia, the case could tie. In that
event the 9th circuit decision stands.

Kennedy: thinks tie weakens court as an instution. He really doesn’t want a
tie. But will he change his decision? no.

A deal was probably struck, it was 5-3 against Newdow.
3: O’Conner, Renq, Thomas
believe newdow had standing,
merits had been reached,
phrase is constitutional (but all diff reasons)

Because Goodwin had written an opinion that quoted previous Supreme Court, he
forces them to overturn the precidence if they don’t like it. Thomas was the
only one that agrees the quotations, but thinks that Supreme Court must
overrule previous decisions. O’Conner and Renq want to twist.

the 5:
Kennedy wanted to get rid of the 9th opinion, and the tie. Delays the issue.
Stevens made a deal, writes a convoluted piece, about Family law in CA. gets
it all wrong. (Sup Crt, has no experience with Fam Law cases). It’s wrong, sets
dangerous precedent for stading, Will be a generation before a sympathetic
court will be present.

Newdow has set up a website, he need another fed panel to rule same as 9th.
Soliciting cases that have better standing. The issue isn’t dead. But timing
is bad, change in court membership has not been positive.

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. (NYSE: KKD) is honoring American’s sense of pride and freedom of choice on Inauguration Day, by offering a free doughnut of choice to every customer on this historic day, Jan. 20.

Somehow, [...]]]> Recently the ever popular doughnut chain, Krispy Kreme, got in trouble for supporting our new political administration.

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. (NYSE: KKD) is honoring American’s sense of pride and freedom of choice on Inauguration Day, by offering a free doughnut of choice to every customer on this historic day, Jan. 20.

Somehow, the wording of this rather innocuous invitation for free doughnuts, has led some to accuse Krispy Kreme of being “pro-choice,” which translates to pro-abortion; which is also a party political position of the Democratic Party. Of course, the American Life League would take it that way, given their entire existence is predicated on that viewpoint.

Upon discussing this bit of hilarity with my friends, we almost immediately jumped to the conclusion that ZFA set theory must be pro-abortion because of the (highly contentious) Axiom of Choice. This must be what separates the Democratic mathematicians from the Republican ones. It’s not all that nonsense about the Banach-Tarski paradox, it’s about Abortion! I get it now!