Lift Up Your Hearts!

I'm trying to clean up my office.  There's too much stuff that needs attending to, and it's getting lost in the paper shuffle.

Unfortunately, one of the things that needs attending to happens to be my sample ballot for the upcoming Florida presidential primary.  It inspired me to go online and try again to find help deciding for whom to vote.  Now that was depressing.  I suppose it doesn't matter, because the Democratic National Committee has chosen to play the bully and not count our votes. (They're still sore over 2000, I guess.)  What hurts so much that it's hard to think about is how opposed all of the Democratic candidates are, in their stated positions, to so many things I hold dear.  What I once believed to be the party of the little people seems bent on being the party of big government, big unions, big education, and big medicine—the bullies that are pushing around the little people I know.  "Litmus tests" on the issues are of questionable value, but it's hard to see all the candidates failing all of them.  Sigh.  I can't say I'm impressed by any of the Republicans, either, but some of them at least give lip service in favor of my positions.  So I could always cast my primary vote hoping to put forth the least electable candidate.  If I could figure out who that was.

Clinton the First wasn't as bad as he threatened to be, partly because it seems one must be extreme while campaigning, and partly because Congressional opposition kept him from accomplishing all his goals.  Perhaps my best hope is a similar stalemate.

There's always the temptation to set up a Bush - Clinton - Bush - Clinton - Bush line of presidents (all different people).  :)

I normally don't mind that most news stories are bad news.  After all, the different, the unusual, that which makes "news" should be bad; good should be so common that it doesn't make headlines.

However, I'm beginning to suspect that some folks actually enjoy reporting bad news, as stories that have both good and bad sides always seem to be reported in the negative.  Take the latest housing "crisis."  Yes, I know, people who should have known better, and bankers who did know better, behaved stupidly and even wickedly, which led to the sub-prime mortgage crisis and I understand how that's a problem for a lot more people and businesses than those directly involved.

I certainly sympathize with those who are trying to sell their houses and find that prices have fallen and they have to sell for less than they could have received a year ago—maybe even less than they paid.  But this is not news.  There have always been "buyer's markets" and "seller's markets," and I grew up knowing that one is more likely to be on the wrong end of the swing.  Yet now the headlines scream disaster because housing prices keep falling.

Sure, this is bad news to some.  But a few years ago the headlines cried woe and doom because housing prices kept rising, squeezing people—especially first-time home buyers—out of the market.  We certainly felt that way when we looked at buying a house in the Boston area.

If it must always be bad news, if the country is headed toward disaster when housing prices rise, and again when they fall, I'm likely to cry, "A plague on both your houses!" and toss the paper over in favor of my World of Puzzles magazine.

So states an Orlando Sentinel article with the bizarre and ominous headline, "Hong Kong Tests Toys for Date Rape Drug."  It appears that the Chinese manufacturers of a children's arts and craft item called Spin Dots (also known as Bindeez), instead of using the non-toxic compound 1,5-pentanediol, substituted 1,4-butanediol, which metabolizes into the "date-rape" drug gamma hydroxy butyrate when swallowed.

Surely the article's author was being facetious, for it is abundantly clear why the substitution was made; as the article states, the non-toxic compound is between three and seven times more expensive than the dangerous one.  It is the Chinese-made toothpaste scandal all over again, in which toxic diethylene glycol was substitued for harmless, but more expensive, glycerin.

Heard in passing:  Money you pay in taxes doesn't come out of your pocket.

There's a chance I missed something critical here, since I just walked by the radio and didn't hear the whole story.  But what I heard was the results of a survey of people in the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and some other countries, about which the reporter stated, with a serious and worried tone, that people in the United States pay about $1000 more per year in out-of-pocket health care expenses than those in most of the countries surveyed.

Most of the countries have socialized medical care and their people pay heavily in taxes for their services.  I should hope they'd be paying less out-of-pocket!

But somehow, if you pay money to the government, rather than to a doctor, it doesn't count.  As an economist I know keeps reminding me, "A dollar is a dollar is a dollar."  And so is a pound, a euro, or a franc.

Al Gore has won the Nobel Peace Prize.  While I don't think well enough of the committee that makes these decisions to be impressed, many others are now suggesting he run for president.  I'll admit I do find him in many ways more attractive than the current Democratic candidates, but I don't think he should join the fray.

For his own sake. (More)

Central Florida is the most dangerous place in the country, at least if it's lightning strikes that worry you.  The tragedy of a girl who was struck by lightning just after descending from her school bus is still fresh in our memories, so it's no wonder the Orange County school board policy errs on the side of caution:  No student is allowed outside until 30 minutes after the last lighning flash, if thunder follows the lightning within 30 seconds.

They are wisely reconsidering the policy, however, after a recent debacle.  A long-lasting storm coupled with rigid enforcement of the rules kept some 2000 students trapped at two schools until nearly 9 p.m.  Snacks were trucked in (the district apparently caring less about the safety of their employees), and no doubt many of the students thought the excitement high adventure—at least for the first hour.  But most of the children—not to mention the teachers—must have been anxious to get home to their families, with not a few kindergarteners crying for their mommies. (More)

Not really.  I do want my vote to count.  But I can't help finding the Democratic Party's attempt to disenfranchise Floridians amusing.  I do believe they're still sore over Bush's 2000 victory, even though Al Gore has every reason to be thankful he lost that election.

Florida has defied Democratic National Committee rules by moving its primary date into January, a month reserved by party rules for Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. Now the DNC threatens to deprive Florida's delegates of their votes at the national convention if we don't change our primary date to suit them.  There is a certain validity to their claim that they're only enforcing the rules, but what they are doing is missing the perfect opportunity to revise a totally antiquated system.  Who can blame Florida, and other states, from wanting a say in the choosing of presidential candidates?  That decision has already been made by the time of the primaries in many states.  It's time to settle on one, national primary date.  The candidates can still get in plenty of campaigning time, travel time from state to state being nearly negligible.

On the other hand, the DNC has also threatened to penalize candidates who would dare campaign in Florida or other wayward states.  This sounds like such a good thing to me I'm tempted to support the Committee's decision.

I acknowledge that sometimes the government is better than the market at accomplishing good things.  In the classic example, Company A might want to reduce its emission of pollutants, but knows that if it does it will no longer be competitive with Company B.  Company B might be in the same position.  But if the government requires all companies to make the reduction, none is left at a competitive disadvantage.

Nonetheless, I believe the market can often do a better job, being more flexible.  Take low-flow shower heads, for example.  I'm all for saving water, but I'd rather choose the method.  I'm a quick shower person: get in, do the job, get out.  Low-flow shower heads frustrate me, because I have to go more slowly—and I suspect thus use at least as much water as before.  I would much rather be able to purchase a high-flow shower head for my house, and save water in other ways.  What we don't spend watering our lawn would probably supply a small city. (More)

I have a friend who is a faithful e-mail forwarder.  I don't mind, because she is pretty much the only one who sends me the dusty sweepings of cyber space, and occasionally she finds some gems.  One of her recent offerings was not treasure, however, but fool's gold.

Note that the words of the e-mail, the majority of which I reproduce below, do not belong to my friend.  She gets credit for providing blog-post inspiration, not for the embarassing sentiments. (More)

So just what kind of people are we dealing with here?  According to this article, the eight suspects in Britain's recent failed terrorist attacks are doctors.  I can almost understand the desperate suicide bomber recruited from a population of uneducated, poor, and hopeless young men.  But doctors?  Those whose training and profession are supposed to be about relieving suffering and saving lives? 

Well, there were doctors who served Hitler.  The scariest attitude in the world is one that dehumanizes other people.  Be it Jews in Nazi Germany, natives in colonial days, slaves, unborn babies, or "infidels" of any stripe—once we convince ourselves that a group of people is less than human, we find it all too easy to justify the most hideous and inhumane actions. (More)

I find it amusing that President Bush gets blamed for anything that goes wrong, including hurricanes.  But even I am incensed about this one.  Whatever his personal opinion might be—if he's aware of the situation at all—he surely bears part of the blame for the following insanity, because the president is ultimately responsible for the actions of his administration. (More)

Remember the story of the guy who got in trouble for (correctly) using the word "niggardly"?

Porter's boss once called him on the carpet for "using words I don't understand."

Now Missouri legislators are up in arms because their vocabularies failed them.  They passed a bill legalizing lay midwifery because they didn't realize what "tocology" means. (More)

Among the more bizarre stories of the day, here's a study that claims to be able to predict your child's future SAT performance based on the relative lengths of his fingers.  Those whose ring fingers are longer compared with their index fingers are statistically likely to do better on the math portion, and those with the reverse situation to do better on the verbal.  This supposedly reflects prenatal testosterone/estrogen exposure.

It's a lot harder to measure finger length than I thought.  I finally settled on measuring from the knuckle, and it seems my ring finger is a bit longer than my index.  It's true, I did very well on the math portion of the SAT.  But I did even better on the verbal, so I must have measured wrong.  :)

The researchers plan to expand their studies into "other cognitive and behavioral issues, such as technophobia, career paths and possibly dyslexia."

We have been blessed with a surprising number of very bright friends, their talents ranging from math to music, from business to origami, from computing to law.  It was with the last that we had a disturbing conversation recently.  The conversation itself was delightful; what we learned from it was not.

To begin, the background.  Most of my readers are familiar with the following story, which I told several years ago in our family newsletter.  But for the benefit of the one or two who meander over here from random places, I'll reproduce it here, sufficiently altered to protect the innocent and the guilty alike. (More)

This just in:  middle-aged men have no business stopping to chat with young people.  After all, the young and their elders have nothing in common, right?  No reason to talk to someone who is so different from you.  Certainly no reason to smile and speak to a stranger passing on the street.  Even if you both have dogs.

Here's the story.

The 43-year-old man was the subject of a police "be on the lookout" memo because two children said he spoke to them while they were walking their dogs. Police said no criminal activity had been reported.

I don't blame the police for being cautious.  Maybe the kids had been overly hyped to "stranger danger" by well-meaning parents and teachers.  Maybe they truly sensed something wrong.  In any case, I'm glad the police took them seriously. (More)