Via Huffington Post
Libertarians
Cato Institute launches Libertarianism.org |Exploring the theory and history of liberty
by JOHN ADAMS •
LIBERTY.
It’s a simple idea, but it’s also the linchpin of a complex system of values and practices: justice, prosperity, responsibility, toleration, cooperation, and peace. Many people believe that liberty is the core political value of modern civilization itself, the one that gives substance and form to all the other values of social life.
THEY’RE CALLED LIBERTARIANS.
See, Libertarianism.org.
Freedom of Speech, New Media
The Simplicity of Blogging
by JOHN ADAMS •
The important dynamic for blogging is one that I tweeted about yesterday: write what you believe, and defend what you write. If one writes from conviction, and defends that writing (and the liberty to write), one has a good chance of making one’s way through good times and bad. (In the course of defending something, there’s an opportunity to adjust one’s thinking, too.)
The same cannot be said for those driven by status, situation, social scene: they’ve no internal temperature, and like cold-blooded animals, they’re especially dependent on even slight changes in the weather for their survival.
Blogging often starts out as an alternative to conventional media, but over time persistence takes a toll on conventionality. That’s why in response status quo voices will sometimes imitate the form and style of blogging. When that fails, as it often does, they’ll search for any forum, any medium, to get their message out.
It could not be otherwise. The same desire that formerly motivated people to dominate a social scene will cause them seek new platforms when their old ones are no longer exclusive, or when their old ones are challenged.
That’s not political conventionality’s problem, though: it’s not a lack of a platform that imperils the status quo. It’s the enervation and dissipation that comes from being an exclusive voice, lazy and dull and presumptuous. Social neediness imperils sharp thinking, and to obscure thinking about more than one’s place in a much larger scene than the here-and-now.
The core motivation of conviction, and the impulse to defend those convictions, keeps blogging a clear, persistent, enjoyable pursuit.
Comment Forum
Poll and Comment Forum: Android or iPhone?
by JOHN ADAMS •
Ok, smart readers: here’s a question about smartphones. (‘Smart readers’: that’s all of you, with the exception of anyone visiting who thinks Whitewater’s Tax Incremental District 4 has actually been managed well.)
I use an Android phone, and it’s one in a series of Android phones I’ve used since the launch of that operating system. (Before that I was a longtime BlackBerry user.)
Now, though, I wonder: should I jump ship to the iPhone 4s?
Droid or iPhone? I’ve a poll and comment forum on the topic, and your opinions are my enrichment.
Comments will be moderated against profanity and trolls; otherwise, have at it.
Crime, Liberty, Press
State Journal blasts arrest of Journal Sentinel reporter
by JOHN ADAMS •
Officials’ foolish over-reaching:
We’re not anti-cop. Far from it. We’re actually very much pro-law and order. Some of our best friends are police officers, and we admire the difficult work done by the men and women who keep our communities safe.
But the decision by Milwaukee police officers Wednesday to arrest a Journal Sentinel photographer who was simply doing her job is inexcusable. Were it not so offensive the arrest would be laughable….
Cats
Friday Catblogging: Cat v. Kid
by JOHN ADAMS •
I’m sure to get complaints about this week’s catblogging photo – an animation of a spat between a small child and a feline. Some will blame the cat, others the child, still others will wonder where the parents are (after all — it wasn’t another cat that filmed this conflict).
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 11.4.11
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning,
It’s a sunny day with a high of fifty-four ahead.
The Wisconsin Historical Society notes that this day marks the anniversary from 1909 of the
Nation’s First Commercially Built Airplane
On this date in Beloit, a plane was assembled and built by Wisconsin’s first pilot, Arthur P. Warner. This self-taught pilot was the 11th in the U.S. to fly a powered aircraft and the first in the U.S. to buy an aircraft for business use. Warner used it to publicize his automotive products.[Source: History Just Ahead: A Guide to Wisconsin’s Historical Markers]
The Journal Sentinel covered the centennial of Warner’s flight in 2009. See, First state flight to be commemorated in Beloit.
Economy, Poverty
More Americans in Dire Poverty, But There’s a Way Out
by JOHN ADAMS •
Disconcerting economic data have this advantage: they’re a useful reminder of work ahead, and a spur to greater zeal.
Best fiscal choices in times of poverty: spending cuts (beginning with elimination of leadership posts) to fund a reduction in taxes, return of most tax money to taxpayers and businesses, with second source of expense savings going to temporary assistance to the poor. It’s cut, return, support.
America will bounce back, but changing course will help us bounce back more quickly.
Anyone contending it’s business as usual in cities and towns across America is either confused or deceptive.
New census data paint a stark portrait of the nation’s haves and have-nots at a time when unemployment remains persistently high. It comes a week before the government releases first-ever economic data that will show more Hispanics, elderly and working-age poor have fallen into poverty.
See, full story from the Associated Press.
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 11.3.11
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning,
High winds and morning rain visit the Whippet City today, with a high temperature of fifty-one. I’m sometimes asked why I write briefly about the weather each morning. There are three reasons. First, it’s a holdover from a long-ago comparison I made between the Farmers’ Almanac and National Weather Service forecasts. Second, it gives faraway readers an idea of what conditions are like here on any particular day. (Questions received about the city range from weather to politics to how many cows we have.) Third, it’s simply a rhetorical scene-setter for my morning post.
More about that scene: it’s a new moon, and we’ll have 10h 14m of sunlight and 11h 13m of daylight.
There’s a Police Commission meeting in town tonight, beginning at 6 PM, with both open and closed sessions (the closed session taking part in the middle of the meeting, for interviews of police captain candidates). The meeting agenda is available online.
Good news –
Recently released statistics show the state produced 219 million pounds of cheese in September, up one percent from that month a year ago. That production accounted for one-fourth of the nation’s cheese output.
Wisconsin may have her share of problems, but she’s still – and I would guess forever will be — America’s leading cheese-producer. We’ll not be bested. See, Wisconsin still tops the nation in cheese production.
Politics, Religion
On Schedule: Left Reports on How Right is Upset with Romney’s Mormonism
by JOHN ADAMS •
Too funny.
Via Huffington Post.
Sports
Packers on national cover of Sports Illustrated
by JOHN ADAMS •
Police
The Shrewd Mr. Flynn
by JOHN ADAMS •
I wrote yesterday about the press battle between the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Milwaukee’s Police Chief Flynn. Conflicts like this often lead to wagon-circling, a self-defeating response. See, The Predictable, Dead-End Response.
And yet, Flynn is sure to have a second term, something unusual for Milwaukee, but common in most departments. Commonly, police commissions go with what they know: they favor incumbents or internal candidates. The advantage an incumbent or internal candidate has is nearly overwhelming.
If that should be so — and it is — what does that say about open applications processes, and the nature of the chief’s role?
On processes. For open processes, it’s not any given outcome, but the process itself, that matters. That process is a general good, but also has occasional practical benefits. Each and every word of a candidate’s application statements may be used as a standard by which to measure conduct in office after his selection. Did he do what he said he would do? Were those words, instead, all just the rhetoric of the moment, the mere parroting of platitudes and pale promises?
There’s a value in measuring actions against good practices, and another value in measuring words against actions.
On the chief’s role. Flynn’s looking for a second term, and he’ll get one, and he has done so shrewdly. Like him or not, the Journal Sentinel sees that Flynn’s a politically clever, nationally-recognized chief. He didn’t get that way by being obvious or outwardly fawning toward Milwaukee’s police commission.
Flynn knows what small-town pols and bureaucrats can’t quite grasp – that a chief’s authority doesn’t depend on shows of closeness with a police commission, but on the public’s direct and immediate support for community safety. Flynn doesn’t need his hand held, nor does he need to make a show of holding anyone else’s hand.
If anything, a smarmy relationship between commission and chief only reveals conflicts of interest, failures of oversight, and embarrassing neediness. Rather than serving the interests of good policing, it only serves as another avenue of legitimate criticism.
Flynn may have made a dozen mistakes, but he’s not made any of the avoidable mistakes that mediocre, dull leaders make. It’s one of the reasons that, unlike middling leaders, he’s likely to survive (even now!) with his standing mostly intact.
Laws/Regulations
Reason’s Nanny of the Month for October 2011
by JOHN ADAMS •
It’s an international edition this month, and the winner is the European Union, as that vast bureaucracy has regulated children’s activities from “baby rattlers (which have brand-new noise restrictions) to blowing up balloons (not to be done by tots under age eight!).”
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 11.2.11
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning,
It’s a rainy day with a high temperature of fifty-four for Whitewater today.
Whitewater’s an old Midwestern town, and her Landmarks Commission meets this afternoon at 5 PM. The Commission’s agenda for the meeting is available online.
Wired has an article about humanity’s domination of the planet. In Making Sense of 7 Billion People, Brandon Keim writes that
According to a back-of-the-envelope calculation, there are about 1.7 million other top-level, land-dwelling, mammalian predators on Earth. Put another way: For every non-human mammal sharing our niche, there are more than 4,000 of us.
In short, humans are Earth’s great omnivore, and our omnivorous nature can only be understood at global scales. Scientists estimate that 83 percent of the terrestrial biosphere is under direct human influence. Crops cover some 12 percent of Earth’s land surface, and account for more than one-third of terrestrial biomass. One-third of all available fresh water is diverted to human use.
Altogether, roughly 20 percent of Earth’s net terrestrial primary production, the sheer volume of life produced on land on this planet every year, is harvested for human purposes — and, to return to the comparative factoids, it’s all for a species that accounts for .00018 percent of Earth’s non-marine biomass.
We are the .00018 percent, and we use 20 percent.
Astounding. If we are so very influential among all of the natural order – and we are – we might expect more of ourselves for the exercise of such unrivaled power over other creatures.
We often don’t, but we should.