thduggie's blog

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Back in 2010, a German family was granted political asylum in Tennessee, because they had been homeschooling their children in a country that prosecutes, fines, and removes children from homeschooling parents. This immigration judge sent a strong message to the world: America is still a country where Liberty is writ large.

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Today, the same family stands in danger of being deported back to Germany. Whether the appeal stems from a fear of offending an ally, or a fear of having immigration offices overrun (by legal immigrants), the message is the same: “We’re scared of our Liberty.” (I suspect the family could just stay in Tennessee as illegal immigrants and wait for amnesty, perhaps?)

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I don’t think these fears started with 9/11, but 9/11 and the specter of unlikely but terrible events got enough people shaking in their booties to give the government a mandate to act on its fear of Liberty.

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As someone with a vested interest to see the right to homeschool protected, I frequently find myself opposed to regulation in the educational field. I know plenty of homeschoolers and trust that Liberty in this area will not lead to dire consequences (or the “parallel societies” that have the Germans wetting their pants). When it comes to gun control, I’m less likely to oppose regulation because I’m used to regulation and because I’m not very familiar with how gun owners tick. I remember reading Deer Hunting with Jesus and being struck with how Joe Bageant, a Liberal himself, denounced the Liberals for their stance on gun control. Folks in Winchester, he said, take great pride in knowing how to safely use a gun. Gun regulation will not make them safer, just more outraged at Democrats. Gun owners who know those in their community must trust other gun owners and therefore oppose regulation as unnecessary; we who don’t own guns and to whom the part of society that does is alien are more likely to be in favor of regulation of those scary gun-owning folks we don’t understand.
In other words, we oppose regulation for the familiar, and favor it for the unfamiliar.

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Thus, what we clearly need is understanding, and one would expect that globalization and social media would help bring us closer and facilitate mutual understanding. Instead, it has made it easier to congregate with the like-minded (a sociological phenomenon already observed and made economically relevant in Anderson’s The Long Tail). The upshot, I believe, is that we’re more willing than ever to regulate, ban, and condemn behavior we don’t understand – and less willing to try to understand it.

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A recent example of the bizarre flotsam of condemnations in our media is how the most recent Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue (may I call that SISI, pronounced “sissy?”) was widely panned for exploitation – of those people in the photos that got to stay dressed! I’d always thought that accusing the SISI of exploitation was like accusing Marx of being a leftist, but here the SISI’s being accused only of exploiting those people whose (presumably equally willing) participation doesn’t align with how we think they should behave. We expect the model to objectify herself, but object to the old Chinese boatsman being objectified as a backdrop in the same picture. Why the difference? The model gets her handful of silverlings to feed her habit, and the boatsman his smaller handful to feed his family. Does anyone think for a moment that the boatsman, today, is at all bothered by that photoshoot?

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But I also see the advantages of the like-minded being more easily able to congregate. I just sold my old 5.25″ copy of Indiana Jones to a guy in Iceland, and interest in my apparently rare French version of Maniac Mansion is coming in from all over Europe. (If you want to, you can join the bidding here.) The Lucasfilm game collectors community may be small, but eBay aggregates them into a community easily reached.

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

swissfuture and weiterdenken.ch have again conducted their end-of-year survey to determine where the Swiss place their hopes and how optimistic they are for 2013.  Simply put, we’re optimistic; we’re more optimistic about Switzerland than about the rest of the world, and at the same time, place our hopes squarely at the feet of…

…Barack Obama.  It’s enough to make me pessimistic about Switzerland.

As an average Swiss, my top ten sources of hope are
62% — the many unsung heroes of everyday life
43% — Barack Obama
41% — myself
39% — my spouse or partner
27% — God
23% — my children / grandchildren
23% — Jesus Christ
17% — my parents / grandparents
13% — the Dalai Lama
10% — Alain Berset (the youngest, best-looking, and most recently elected member of the federal council)

Why we place our hopes in someone paid to look out for the interests of a foreign country, or in someone who embodies the identity and culture of a central Asian region, eludes me.  Any ideas?

You can tell how far behind I am with videos by the fact that only now the US vacation videos get posted.  But as they say, better Nate than lever.

We start out in Providence, with Joseph going down a big slide.

Back at the Maggie P., Vivienne’s being cute.  Joseph plays with Joy, and Jonathan teaches Vivienne about tennis balls.  Noah throws a tea party for himself and his birthday buddy, who very seriously drinks his tea.  One of Joseph’s favorite birthday presents is his new abacus, but what’s really fun about his age is how much he enjoys playing with his cousins.

All the while, he’s getting used to the routines surrounding his body: brushing teeth, with fervor; and pooing.

We close with an examples of Vivienne crawling, Joseph jumping, and Vivienne smiling.

The Nobel Prize Awarders demonstrate the true audacity of hope. 

For once, I’m waiting for Mallard Fillmore’s reaction. 

“You lie!”

Poor behaviour, certainly.  But if indeed the accusation is as ridiculous as people are trying to make it out to be, then surely a refutation (based on facts, not bald denial) should be a simple matter, and we could all move on.  Instead, we have former President Jimmy Carter weighing in on matter, proclaiming the remark racist, and many alleging a racist undercurrent that won’t tolerate a black president, an undercurrent that just broke to the surface with that outburst of Wilson’s. 

Possible.  He may be a racist; he may not be; certainly Jimmy Carter has no corner on the judgment of that question.  Unfortunately, there was apparently plenty of racist mail to black politicians following the incident, which is a shame, because it gives credence to the claim that “You lie!” is racist sentiment.  I wouldn’t mind discussing that, if it didn’t also detract from the real issue: whether President Obama is correct in what he has said. 

I give our president enough credit that I don’t think he is intentionally stating a falsehood.  I do think it is possible that he may be wrong, however sincerely he believes he isn’t, and that deserves to be examined.  It ought to be examined despite disrespectful heckling and regardless of the underlying motives of such heckling. 

And let’s not forget that for about eight years BUSH LIES! T-shirts have been tolerated, if not welcomed, by the same people who are now incensed that the public sentiment so openly expressed against our former president has now made to jump to congress to be expressed there against his successor.  If Joe Wilson is guilty of racism, are wearers of Those abovementioned T-shirts guilty of bushism? texism? republicanism? 

I wish Jimmy Carter had stuck to foreign policy. 

(Disclosure: I voted for Kerry in ’04 and for Obama in ’08.) 

Dave Barry stopped writing his humor columns a while ago, but that hasn’t stopped the Miami Herald from reprinting old ones, dubbing them classics.  The most recent one was about the Art Basel Miami Beach and mentioned Rodney McMillian’s “chair.”  Clearly, Uncle Jay could have done better – and if indeed McMillian’s art was on sale for $2’800.00 then it could be a wise business investment to get Uncle Jay a gallery.  I can volunteer to write the pretentious copy. 

I suppose the real question is if anyone ever bought the artwork. 

It’s not yet made it to law, but it’s waiting.  In the Visa Waiver Program, there’s a passage that allows the US to collect a fee to pay for administrating the Visa Waiver Program.  To wit:

(3)Electronic travel authorization system

(A) SystemThe Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of State, shall develop and implement a fully automated electronic travel authorization system (referred to in this paragraph as the “System”) to collect such biographical and other information as the Secretary of Homeland Security determines necessary to determine, in advance of travel, the eligibility of, and whether there exists a law enforcement or security risk in permitting, the alien to travel to the United States.

(B) Fees

The Secretary of Homeland Security may charge a fee for the use of the System, which shall be—

(i) set at a level that will ensure recovery of the full costs of providing and administering the System; and

(ii) available to pay the costs incurred to administer the System.

That much is law.  Now, tourism to the USA has been dropping, so the US Travel Association has had to think about how to counteract this.  They could have had a look at Australia, which recently dropped the AUD 20.00 fee for their equivalent of the Visa Waiver Program as one incentive to visitors.  But no: that would be to straightforward for the land of innovative business models.  The clever folks at the US Travel Association figured that since the US is levying a fee anyway, they might as well make visiting aliens pay a little more to finance promotion for travel to the US.  Yup, they’ll pay to get in so that the US can tell their friends they should come, too, probably with slogans such as “America: Where Travel Security Is Less Of A Pain In The Rear Than You Thought,” judging from the wording.  (See Sec. 5 for the fee bit.)

Note, however, that the US aren’t the only country to make visitors pay for promotion of the place they’re visiting.  Some Swiss cities levy a “city tax;” many towns levy a “Kurtaxe,” which is meant to pay for infrastructure that benefits the tourism industry.  It seems like an odd form of subsidy, no matter how you turn it.

I’ve been silent all trip about my whereabouts and experiences, not because nothing has happened but because I have had other things to do.  Maybe this weekend I can catch up a bit, but before I attempt that, there’s something that caught my attention in a news story regarding the stimulus bill. 

“…there is more than $48 billion for transportation projects such as road and bridge construction, mass transit and high-speed rail.” 

Yes, that sounds like a lot, but:
- Break it down per capita and you have 48’000 : 300 = US$ 160.- per person invested in all these infrastructure projects, far less than most Americans spend per year on their car. 
- Compare it to the Gotthard Base Tunnel costs, which were originally estimated at about US$ 6.5 billion.  I’ll round that up to 7.5 billion to simplify calculation (and because the original costs have already been exceeded past that amount).  That makes 7’500 : 7.5 = US$ 1’000.- per person, or about US$ 50.- per person per year.  That’s just for one single (admittedly huge) project, and one decided on without a financial crisis looming! 

In my more selfish and cynical moments, I feel it’s a no-brainer to upgrade and replace road and especially rail infrastructure (which benefits everyone) instead of digging folks out of debt they owe to their poor decisions (which will benefit - even reward – the foolhardy). 

Rail infrastructure, in particular, could save significant costs and (mantra warning) reduce dependence on foreign oil if it allowed people to use their cars less frequently or even use fewer cars.  Of course, car purchases have already dropped and instead of relieving dependence on foreign oil have revealed our dependence on domestic car makers. 

Now, having added my two cents, I propose that everyone caught blogging or commenting on this issue should pay two cents per post or comment into a stimulus bill discussion fund which will be used for funding the bill.  Where do I send my cheque? 

A vote of confidence
I’d cast with much more ease.
Instead, I ride the fence,
With both of them displeased. 

I didn’t vote McCain -
Might, if his hair was sable. 
Here’s hoping that Barack
Will prove himself McAble. 

It’s taken me some time, but here are pictures of the Leu Gardens in Orlando and of last Sunday’s snow in Tokyo.  It should be obvious which are which. 

Cypress knees.  Scientists theorize that they increase oxygen uptake. 

Spanish moss.

The next shots are all from the rose garden, which perhaps more than the rest of the Leu Gardens benefits from January cool. 

Backlit Spanish moss.

More Spanish moss.  It’s the South. 

I can’t remember the name of this plant, even though it had a remarkable one.  That comes of waiting too long to post the pictures. 

Now for the snow in Tokyo.  These pictures, as the previous ones, smyp uploaded for me.  Thanks! 

Umbrella casualty.

Good thing I knew where the metro entrance was. 

Power shoveling. 

Camouflage coat.

Deserted platform.

Playing in the snow after church.

Tim, the boys, and the snowman at Honda chapel. 

The snowman didn’t last past lunchtime, suffering a lumbar prolapse and ensuing abdominal structural failure.