Enjoy Every Sandwich

I don’t recall what I stumbled across this week, but something I read referenced the Sorens and Ruger publication entitled Freedom in the 50 States: An Index of Personal and Economic Freedom which was published by the Mercatus Center earlier this year.

I am kind of aggravated by this study which, in my mind, has a glaring and quickly identifiable fatal flaw. I noticed it almost immediately upon browsing the introductory material in this report shortly after it was published. I initially just let it go, but it is once again causing me mental discord so I’m writing it up. According to the Mercatus Center:

This paper presents the first-ever comprehensive ranking of the American states on their public policies affecting individual freedoms in the economic, social, and personal spheres. We develop and justify our ratings and aggregation procedure on explicitly normative criteria, defining individual freedom as the ability to dispose of one’s own life, liberty, and justly acquired property however one sees fit, so long as one does not coercively infringe on another individual’s ability to do the same.

Using that definition of individual freedom, one cannot rank states based solely on state public policies and expect me to take the following conclusion seriously:

We find that the freest states in the country are New Hampshire, Colorado, and South Dakota, which together achieve a virtual tie for first place. All three states feature low taxes and government spending and middling levels of regulation and paternalism.

For a good counterpoint to this claim that the three states are virtually tied for the title of Most Free State, I refer to the American Civil Liberties Union which in October 2008 published the following map. This map illustrates the 100-mile “Constitution-Free” zone in which the United States Border Patrol has essentially been given legal carte blanche to conduct operations without regard for the so-called highest law of the land:

Note that the entire state of New Hampshire falls within this “Constitution-Free” zone whereas the entire state of Colorado and the entire state of South Dakota fall outside this zone. And the implications for individual freedom depending on whether you live inside or outside this zone are rather weighty. This is just one example of how Federal policy is clearly not equal, let alone equally applied, across all states, and cannot be neglected in a comprehensive state-vs-state evaluation individual freedom.

It certainly was a major factor in my decision to move from my former home in southern Arizona 45 miles north of the Mexican border to my current location in southern Montana. I am confused as to how this could have been so thoroughly blown off in this study. I would think that most people are more concerned with their overall experience of individual freedom rather than specifically with the portion of their oppression that they will endure via their state’s public policy.

Posting from: Philipsburg, MT

Autumn is my favorite season. Montana is one of my favorite places to spend it. Yesterday I was gifted by nature by some incredible sights. On my drive home from Missoula to Pburg, I saw seven- SEVEN- rainbows. I even captured a few photographically. Here’s the best one- a panorama comprised of four or five photos:

I think it’s worth clicking the image for the larger size image.

Posting from: Philipsburg, MT

I recently had my credit card number stolen. Now today I have received something in the mail which may be related to that. If you have sent me something recently without including your name somewhere on or in the shipment, please let me know so that I don’t turn over what you shipped me as evidence in a fraud case.

Thanks.

Posting from: Missoula, MT
Listening to: Aretha Franklin, Respect

I’ve been reading the November 2009 issue of Astronomy magazine today- specifically, Bob Berman’s “Strange Universe” column. This month he asks us, “Can you imagine?”

An excerpt regarding advanced topics in science such as string theory or quantum theory which cannot be imagined:

Picture this: You’re an astronaut on a planet with red polka-dot clouds. The surface is a vast rubber sheet. As you bounce along, you suddenly see a flock of flying bulldogs. The pack leader hovers in front of you like a hummingbird and speaks perfect English: “Welcome, Can you help settle a debate we’re having?”

“Um, sure,” you say.

The alpha bulldog whispers: “Who was the greatest baseball player of all time?”

You guess, “Ruth?”

And that’s what they all wanted to hear. The dogs excitedly bark, “Ruth! Ruth!” as they lick your face until you’re covered with slobber.

The point isn’t that I’ll never make a living writing fiction. It’s this: There’s no such thing as polka-dot clouds, rubber planets, or flying dogs. Yet you had no trouble picturing the whole thing. That’s because our minds easily weave familiar elements into a new context. Titan’s surface or flying dogs present no challenge for our imaginations.

But now consider Galileo’s observations of Saturn’s rings. Even after decades of studies, he never figured out what he was seeing. He thought the rings were like teacup handles. It took nearly half a century before Christiaan Huygens finally got it right. That’s because Saturn’s shape lay outside human experience. On Earth, there is no example of a ball surrounded by unattached rings. Spiral galaxies resemble nautilus shells, nebulae look like clouds, star clusters like spilt sugar. Alone among nature’s marvels, Saturn had no analog.

A bear wanders past my window once or twice each year. At first glance, I always think: huge black dog. Then the truth hits. One’s initial impulse is to perceive the familiar.

We are all prisoners of our backgrounds and experiences. Conceptual struggles arise when, as with Galileo, there are no associations, no past experience. You cannot explain the color blue to a person born blind.

Equally inconceivable are any extra dimensions beyond the width, depth, and height of everyday 3-D objects. If additional “string” dimensions exist, they cannot be pictured-by anyone. We’ve all been “born blind” to them.

I’ve often wondered to myself why freedom is so much easier to sell as fiction- Heinlein, Firefly/Serenity and the like are great examples. How many people have been introduced to ideas about freedom first in fictional form and only later seriously considered it in terms of real life applications?

I believe Bob Berman- though writing about a totally different topic- has written something very insightful about advancing pro-freedom ideas.

We live in a world where more and more people are being “born blind” to freedom. With children being brought under government influence earlier and earlier in their lives and that influence growing more and more extensive, what associations, what past experience with freedom do they have? And without that past experience, how much harder is it for people to wrap their heads around notions such as that taxes are theft, that government is just legalized thuggery, that we are responsible for caring for each other rather than government, etc.? It’s somewhat easier for many people to get to minarchism than voluntaryism, but even that can be difficult when the idea is ingrained in our culture that we turn to government to solve our problems first rather than leaving it as a last resort.

I think back to my most outstanding memory of the 2005 Freedom Summit in Phoenix, AZ. Jane Shaffer gave a talk on raising libertarian children which I almost skipped because I don’t have and don’t plan to have any kids. However, I was glad I stayed for her talk as it turned out to be one of the best of the entire summit. The most memorable (for me) point made that weekend came at the conclusion of her talk. As I recall, she wrapped up by recommending that parents make sure that their children get some taste of freedom as they are growing up. Once they taste it, she said, they will not forget it.

I think that is true of children but also of adults, and I think that is why pro-freedom arts are some of our most effective modes of communicating pro-freedom ideas. They allow us to contextualize these ideas in a non-threatening, fictional form- a form which approaches the audience on the premise that it need not be believed. And then, not threatened or challenged, the audience takes it in, allowing a seed to be planted. In some form, they have tasted freedom. And once they taste it, it can be very, very hard to forget.

Posting from: Philipsburg, MT

I am in the throes of a grammatical crisis. For a variety of reasons, I have found myself reviewing the Parts of Speech. I learned that there were eight parts of speech. Purdue’s Online Writing Lab agrees with that number. However, its list of the parts of speech didn’t match what I recalled from grade school. Purdue lists articles as a part of speech but not interjections. Several other sources I’ve looked at list interjections but not articles.

This is an unacceptable situation. What is the correct answer here? What would be a definitive source on this?

Posting from: Missoula, MT

Every once in a while I have to do a data dump to clear out some of the clutter in my mind that I don’t want to forget but can’t do anything with at the moment or stuff I want to forget but which continues to bother me until I do something with it. I’ve been feeling very cluttered lately.

1. No, little girl at Target, neither your little brother nor your dog needs a hot dog costume for Halloween. That’s not funny. It’s cruel.

2. Attention all shoppers: do not get to the front of the line at the cash register and then expect to hold everyone up while you go shop some more for that thing you forgot. Put your shit back in your cart, take it with you, and go finish your shopping.

3. I am astonished and confused by this. However, I actually have something good to say about a credit card company. My credit card company (correctly for a change!) noticed fraudulent activity on my card this week and put a hold on it. The credit card thief charged less than $15 worth of stuff before the hold was put on the card, and I am not being held responsible for the charges.

4. Tucson Water, on the other hand, you are apparently a bunch of incompetent morons. I will not get into details right now, but may the fleas of 1000 camels eternally infest the armpits of all of you who I have dealt with in the last two months since I sold my house.

5. That coffee hut across the street from the gas station at the St. Regis exit in Montana? Don’t get espresso there. It is not good.

6. Pluto IS a planet.

Posting from: Philipsburg, MT
Listening to: Paramore, Ignorance

…because none of this is true except possibly coincidentally, but if it is, I wasn’t aware. I’m pretty sure this is all just made-up.

1. There is a male teacup poodle named Sally that has been riding along with the MHD guys as MARV’s mascot since Ames, IA. It sleeps in the driver’s seat and if it’s not ready to get out of bed when they want to get going, they shoot for who has to move the dog because it bites. Adam loses a lot. Check his wrists.

2. A pink, fur-trimmed, chantilly lace teddy was found in the bathroom sink the morning after a night when no females had been in the RV. It remains unclaimed.

3. MARV is actually a souped up spy-mobile with the following features: ability to drop oil slicks at high speed, retractable jacks to pivot 180 degrees on the move (Crazy Ivan capability!), 2 banks of caltrops, night vision heads-up display for both pilot and navigator, and a gadgetcopter.

4. Adam always eats at least two apples, peaches, oranges, etc. because he thinks it’s bad luck to eat an odd number of any tree fruit in one sitting.

5. Jason’s luxurious beard is a long-term facial fixture for him- at least until tattoo removal technology advances a bit more. It’s covering up an embarrassing “Just Say No” tattoo he had done on his chin during his years as a Reaganite.

6. There was briefly a female member of the MHD crew. However, the MHD guys decided that a woman would put a damper on their non-stop partying with groupies along the way and she was voted off MARV back in New Hampshire before they ever hit the road.

7. When you flip the light switch above Pete’s bed, a rotating disco ball surrounded by red lights lowers from the ceiling and Barry White music starts playing over MARV’s speakers.

8. Pete only buys dolphin-safe tuna. He was a big fan of Flipper as a kid and cannot look at a can of dolphin-harmful tuna without ending up in a fetal position crying his eyes out.

9. The result of a good acid trip during a snowstorm involved live action Star Trek roleplaying on MARV where each “crew member” took a turn driving MARV from All Stop to Warp 5 (miles per hour) through falling snow in a large parking lot with their bright lights on. The other two role-played as Captain Picard and Number One. When Adam played Captain Picard he went to his “Ready Room” and tried to order room service from Guinan before his turn was over.

10. Jason never runs around barefoot; he always wears at least socks. He’s a little self-conscious about the middle toe that is missing from his left foot. There was a freak Dremel tool accident. Don’t ask.

Posting from: Missoula, MT
Listening to: Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers, Islands in the Stream

THE SCENE
There we were, my friend E. and I, in the Northtown Mall in Spokane, WA. I drove there from Philipsburg; she drove in from Seattle. I needed to get some interview clothes from Lane Bryant which has no stores in Montana, and she agreed to come out to make a day of it. After the clothes shopping, we agreed to head over to Coeur D’Alene for lunch and coffee at Java on Sherman (the best coffee shop I’ve ever had the pleasure of drinking at).

But she had mentioned a cheesy shop she saw on her way into the mall, and I wanted to get a picture of it. She was kind enough to offer the use of her cell phone camera and we headed over that way one floor up from where our photo target was located. Unfortunately for us, there was a kiosk right next to the place we were standing to take the photograph. This kiosk had a very pushy salesman who wasn’t taking no for an answer the first four- YES, FOUR- times we turned down his sales advances. The denials ranged from polite to increasingly rude:
1. “Thanks, but I’ll pass.” - in response to the initial sales pitch and the salesman trying to touch me
2. “Good luck.” - in response to his pitches about all the great positive community things this business supported
3. “No, we like bad music.” - in response to his continued selling tactic of trying to flatter us on our obviously good taste in music which he, of course, had no clue about, and
4. “Okay, we don’t like music at all then.” - in response to his cheerful reply to #3 that they sell bad music, too!

Alright, jackass. We’ve got our picture. Time’s up.

(That’s fairly horrifying, eh?)

E. and I began to walk away when what should he exclaim ere we strode out of sight in a very busy mall?

“IT’S BECAUSE I’M BLACK, ISN’T IT?”

You guessed it. Now it’s time for:

THE RANT

What kind of malicious “sales” tactic is that shit? Or was that some kind of fucked up joke? (E. and I discussed that at length. We are pretty sure he was serious; he sounded quite angry.)

News Flash, Mr. Because I’m Black: It was not because you were black. It was because you were being an annoying and aggressive jackass who continued to harass us even after we politely declined your sales pitch. You continued even after four- FOUR!- clear indications that WE WERE NOT INTERESTED! You would have been equally as annoying and jackasstastic were your skin any other color or even completely transparent.

And to try and make up some racist motive- what the fuck, Mr. BIB, WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK???

Surely you didn’t think that would entice us to turn around and do business with you after all, did you? Were you trying to endanger us by inciting someone in the crowd to come after us? Trying to make a sympathy sale from someone who blindly assumed that the mean old racist white people did you wrong? Not doing business with an ass isn’t racist, but it would have been racist on our part had we actually purchased something from you when we didn’t want to only because you were black. Yet that seems to be what you were angling for. At least I can’t come up with any more sensible reason for your behavior.

Your “salesmanship” isn’t just douchebaggy. It’s a step even lower than that- douchesuckery.

Well if this ever happens again, I’ll be prepared, Mr. BIB.

At first, I thought I should counter the race card with “person of size” card thusly:

“Oh, I get it. You see my Lane Bryant bag and think I’m some wallflower chubby girl who doesn’t get any compliments or doesn’t want to draw attention to herself. So you start off with the phony flattery and when that doesn’t work you try to hurry me into a sale to turn off the spotlight you’re trying to put on me in a public place. It’s because I’m a large woman, isn’t it? Admit it, bigot!”

But that’s a lot of trouble- too many words to remember and keep track of. I think I’ve come up with something better. Be prepared to endure the attention of bystanders as I scream in the most panicky tone I can muster:

We’ll see how you like the attention of people who assume (a) that they know what I’m yelling about, and (b) that it is true.

Posting from: Missoula, MT
Listening to: Mircea Baniciu, Avionul

My Chapter 3 book report is below the worksheet. All exercises are derived from quotations in Atlas Shrugged with blanks in lieu of the removed words from particular quotes.

They’re is a contraction of they are. Use they’re in a sentence if it would still make sense if you used they are instead of the contraction. Their is a plural, possessive pronoun. It is used to indicate ownership of something by more than one person. A handy trick is to remember that the word their has heir buried in it to remind you that it has to do with possession. For everything else, use there. It has a number of different usages including as an adverb that means the opposite of here, as a pronoun, as an adjective emphasizing which person one is referring to, and as a noun meaning that place. Learn to use these homophones correctly, and you can carry on Ayn’s legacy of precision in language!

Complete the following exercises by filling in the correct choice of they’re, their or there:

1. Eddie Willers, aged seven, liked to look at that tree. It has stood _____ for hundreds of years, and he thought it would always stand _____.

2. _____ was still no expression, only a faint look of attentiveness on the boy’s face, as he turned back to her and asked, “You like the music of Richard Halley?”

3. _____ were not many firms in the country who delivered what was ordered, when and as ordered. Rearden steel was one of them.

4. _____ was something wrong, by Rearden’s standards, with a man who did not seek gainful employment, but he would not impose his standards on Philip; he could afford to support his brother and never notice the expense.

5. “We’ve been improving steel rails for generations, and increasing _____ weight. Now, is it true that these Rearden Metal rails are to be lighter than the cheapest grade of steel?”

6. “Orren,” Taggart asked cautiously, “what about these rumors that _____ planning to nationalize the San Sebastian Mines?”

7. “You’re not the only one who works hard,” said his mother. “Others have problems, too - even if _____ not billion dollar, trans-super-continental problems like yours.”

8. “I guess it’s only Colorado and New Mexico that _____ going to declare restricted. I’ll still have the Arizona line to run.”

9. “You and I will always be _____ to save the country from the consequences of _____ actions.”

10. He was looking at his mills beyond the window; _____ was no guilt in his face, no doubt, nothing but the calm of an inviolate self-confidence.

11. They used to rush through here, and it was wonderful to watch, it was the hurry of men who knew where they were going and were eager to get _____. Now _____ hurrying because they are afraid. It’s not a purpose that drive them, it’s fear. _____ not going anywhere, _____ escaping.

Chapter 3 Book Report:
A meeting of the Old Boys’ Network is held. They drink and yammer a bit about touchy-feely man things like sharing ore. It concludes with Jim Taggart getting his first whiff of Dagny’s handling of the San Sebastian line and silently stewing over it. We get some history on Dagny’s fantasies of running the railroad followed by an introduction to Francis d’Anconia thereby explaining the existence of the San Sebastian line which Dagny had fought against. Jimbo shows up at the office after the Old Boys’ meeting and calls Dagny out about the San Sebastian line which she has reduced to one passenger train a day plus on freight train every other night and the crappiest stuff she could possibly send down there. In fact, she has moved every possible piece of property she could out of Mexico and still meet contractual obligations in anticipation of the nationalization of the line. Rather than take responsibility for making a decision himself, Jimbo leaves her arrangement in place telling her that she’ll have to answer for it at the next board meeting. After Jimbo’s flounce-off, we get some history on Nat Taggart as Dagny is leaving Taggart Terminal. She stops at the newsstand on her way out and chats with the owner about cigarettes and people. The chapter winds up with a scene of Eddie Willers in the employees’ cafeteria where Eddie chats with an unidentified railroad worker about Dagny.

Posting from: Philipsburg, MT
Listening to: Pavement, Cut Your Hair

I have had a LOT of guests in the last couple of months and find myself getting asked the same questions over and over so I thought I’d take a minute to answer them here and explain my reasoning behind them just to reassure people that I really mean it when I say, no, please don’t help with the dishes and that sort of thing.

1. Can I help with dinner?
Sometimes, yes. I love having people in the kitchen so I can socialize while cooking, and I try to have a few things for people to do since it can be fun to do some group cooking. However, my little kitchen does have some limits so I can’t get everyone working at the same time. Someday, though, I’ll have a kitchen like on those TV cooking shows and then we’ll really do it right.

2. Can I help with the dishes?
No. Absolutely not with only a couple of exceptions who know who they are. And, yes, I am sure.

I sincerely appreciate the offer, but unless my arms are broken or something like that, I’m going to decline. There are too many things to explain like which items can and cannot go in the dishwasher, how things are to be oriented, what has to be pre-rinsed before going in the dishwasher, what counts as clean when hand-washing, what can air dry in the drain rack and what has to be towel dried, where to put things away, etc. I especially hate when people who don’t know my kitchen put things away. After one meetup I spent about three weeks looking for stuff that a “helpful” guest put away when she didn’t know where those things belonged. And I also often prefer to leave the dishes for the next day so I can hang out with my guests instead of getting that squared away immediately.

All I’m really looking for from guests is that they get their dishes into the kitchen, get their trash such as napkins, wrappers and containers into the trash, and clean up crumbs and drips where they were eating. If you really want to go all out, scrape large chunks from your plate into the trash before stacking it in the sink or on the counter.

3. Can I help put leftovers away?
Sometimes yes. Sometimes it’ll just be quicker or easier for me to handle that myself. But again, I do appreciate the offer.

4. Should I strip the bed that I just slept in and put the sheets in the laundry room?
No, but thank you for offering. I have a tiny laundry room and it’s easier for me to leave them on the bed until I’m ready to put them directly into the washer rather than pile up a bunch of stuff in the laundry room.

In summary, I really do appreciate the offers of help, and I really will take you up on some of them sometimes. I may even independently ask for help with something. When I decline, though, I really do mean that.