My email account was on the fritz all weeekend.

So if you sent me mail from noon Friday to about 5pm Sunday, I probably didn't get it.

Feel free to send again. I've sort of missed the free Viagra, low-interest mortgages, pen@is enlargement pills, and business scams.

Of all the tributes we're likely to see to Ronald Reagan over the coming week, I can't think of a better way to remember him than to read this Reason interview from way back -- almost older than I am -- in July 1975.

A few of my favorite quotes:

Well, the first and most important thing is that government exists to protect us from each other. Government exists, of course, for the defense of the nation, and for the defense of the rights of the individual. Maybe we don’t all agree on some of the other accepted functions of government, such as fire departments and police departments–again the protection of the people...

...I don’t believe in a government that protects us from ourselves. I have illustrated this many times by saying that I would recognize the right of government to say that someone who rode a motorcycle had to protect the public from himself by making certain provisions about his equipment and the motorcycle–the same as we do with an automobile. I disagree completely when government says that because of the number of head injuries from accidents with motorcycles that he should be forced to wear a helmet. I happen to think he’s stupid if he rides a motorcycle without a helmet, but that’s one of our sacred rights–to be stupid.

The 1970's-era Reagan is far from perfect, but he's certainly a welcome change from today's GOP. Every Republican should read this interview.

My new Fox column proposes a very lucrative prize to tap the collected wisdom of the private sector and apply it to national security.

I realize it's at least possible that I've wandered a bit off the libertarian reservation on this one, though I'm not completely convinced I have. I'm sure my anarcho friends will find fault with the idea.

I did think it was a provocative enough idea to throw into the debate.

Your thoughts welcome.

There's also a correction of my previous column, where I erroneously wrote that Ruby Ridge occurred under Janet Reno's watch.

An interesting article on the online game Second Life details the growth of the market for virtual real estate.

Large swathes of undeveloped online property, some bearing an uncanny resemblance to a palm-studded West Coast beachfront idyll, are selling for up to $550 an acre.

That amount is but a song compared with real world real estate, but these are computerized representations of property -- pretty pictures, if you will -- in an online graphic role-playing game known as "Second Life." [...]

Marker owns an ocean-front spread on which he heads Awakening Avatars, the fourth-most-popular social group in the game.

His two-thirds of an acre property could fetch as much as 10 Linden dollars a square meter, or $106 at today's exchange rate, a bit higher than the average price of about $100 for an acre.

All goods and services in the game can be transacted in either Linden or U.S. dollars.

When people criticize online economies for having no significance to the realspace economy, they are entirely wrong. There will always be overlap of the virtual with the real as long true scarcity exists online.

[cross-posted at Catallarchy]

Apropos of Amy's post below, William Langewiesche wrote an absolutely amazing article about the Columbia disaster (and more generally, about NASA and about how beaurocracies function) in the November, 2003 issue of The Atlantic Monthly.

Langewiesche was given complete access to Hal Gehman - who was in charge of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board ("CAIB") - and his investigation from its very beginning. He describes every twist and turn of the investigation, and intimately acquaints the reader with all of the key players - from the engineers and grunts at the bottom who discovered the foam strike shortly after launch and worried about its effect on the shuttle, to Linda Ham, the arrogant, incompetent manager who nipped further investigation into the foam strike in the bud and essentially sealed the fate of the astronauts, to NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe, who is at various times sympatetic, earnest, devious, shortsighted, and humiliated.

Aside from a detailed account of the investigation and the cause of the accident, the article gives non-scientifically-inclined readers a really great, straightforward explanation of how the shuttle flies and what a miracle even one safe flight is. And it offers some great insight into the invisible ranks and protocol in large beaurocracies.

After reading the article, you can't help but feel angry. Angry at NASA for its arrogance, shortsightedness, and virtually complete failure to make meaningful, lasting changes after Challenger. Angry that our President wants (or, judging from his silence thise days, wanted) to hand NASA more money to go back to the moon (which we successfully reached 35 years ago), or on to Mars, without demanding some housecleaning and some real change within the power structure. Angry that nobody stood up and took responsibility. Angry that there were all kinds of earnest tributes to the "heroes" aboard the shuttle and high eulogies and flags at half mast, and sad music, and somber reporters, but very little about how NASA completely failed those astronauts and contributed to their fate.

It's a long article, but well worth it. Use the "Printer Format" button, print it out, and read it.

[originally posted at Pieces of Flair]

One way to think of the governments of the world is as a political market. Each government has its own laws, regulations, and tax policies, analagous to a vendor selling goods in a bazaar, alongside other such vendors. There is no supra-national higher authority to regulate these governments. The United States has been historically an attractive government to live under, and thus, people have often chosen this government from the world political market, resulting in an nation of immigrants.

There is a significant price to be paid for making these choices on the political market. Moves from living under one government to another are costly, in more ways than one. The trip to the new jurisdiction has to be paid for. Belongings have to be packed up and transported over land and sea. Old jobs have to be severed, and new ones found. The red tape of paperwork has to be cut through. New languages have to be learned. Family has to be left behind. A new culture has to be acclimated to. Sometimes, the punishment for unsuccessfully trying to change governments is imprisonment or death. Difficult choices have to be made.

If it was somehow possible to reduce these costs and make exiting one government for another relatively easy, then governments would have to compete over their citizens. The result would be jurisdictional regulatory arbitrage-- a net positive for liberty. This political market for laws is the next best alternative to a truly free market for laws.

The original design of the United States tried to take advantage of such a political market by having relatively independent states with a strictly limited Federal Government. Federalism is attractive because it allows the individual states to compete over Americans' patronage. Instead, with the powerful Federal government we have today, there are fewer choices for everyone. The political market within the United States has been greatly harmed since 1787.

Natalie Solent, like myself, opposes the EU, UN, WTO, IMF, and World Bank for a similar reason-- these supranational entities blur the distinctive features of different systems of government that used to exist, say between communist countries and liberal democracies. Gradual rot and a slide into decadence result from the lack of contrasting examples.

This argument can be further extended to the War in Iraq. There were many arguments against the War, many of them I found unattractive, with the most egregious ones being those that appealed to "non-aggression" (as if Iraqis citizens weren't already being 'aggressed' against) and those that appealed to 'International Law'. A better case against the War can be made for purely consequential reasons.

When the US government takes part in dictating to other countries how to manage their affairs, it hampers the worldwide political market. When it pushes around those nations that do not meet its standards, fewer choices are available to everyone. With the wonders of technology, the political market has been growing in many ways. Tax shelters, offshore banking, and the like, which were once only available to the "Jet Set" are today available to the upper-middle class, and are becoming cheaper everyday. If other nations are ever to act as tax havens, blacknets, and issuers of anonymous digital currency, they have to be free of the threat of violent consequences from the US government. To me, that is the best argument against the War in Iraq.

When the US government engages in a worldwide War on Terror, it plays the same role as the EU, UN, WTO, IMF, and World Bank: a predatory, harmonizing, choice-limiting, political-market monopolist.

[cross-posted at Catallarchy]

In May 1996, a group of venture capitalists announced the inception of the Ansari X Prize, $10 million award which will be given to the first viable, privately built passenger spacecraft. The idea was born out of the aviation prizes offered in the early 20th century to engineers and pilots who set new milestones in the burgeoning field of airplane travel. The X Prize Foundation hopes that, by offering financial incentives to private space developers, they can spur the growth of private space travel and make recreational space travel a reality in the next several years.

The prize is only funded through January 1, 2005, which doesn't give the hardworking competitors--more than 20 as of now--much time to get their craft up and running. However, several of the teams are already making impressive strides and may well achieve the prize goals before the end of the year. The frontrunner at this point is team headed by Burt Rutan, the designer of the Voyager airplane, the first to circle the earth non-stop without refueling. For the past several years, Rutan and his dedicated staff have been working full-time on the spaceship project, funded by Microsoft founder turned futurist Paul Allen.

No matter who wins this competition, and even if no one does, this is a clear example of how with the right incentives, privately developed technology can far surpass anything that government science has to offer. Already, several of the competitors have managed to innovate in ways that NASA has never considered, toward the goal of making space travel cheap and safe. Keep an eye on this one, because soon, anyone with a few hundred thousand dollars may be able to take a ride on a rocketship.

(cross-posted at The 50 Minute Hour)

I got an e-mail last week from the IT Department at my place of business saying that our office has decided to "get tough" about computer network security. Now, passwords have to be changed at least once a month, and you have to have at least one number in your password (preferably not at the beginning or end).

Naturally, people have trouble remembering their ever-new passwords. So, at various secretarial stations, and on various corkboards in the offices of the higher ups, you see Post-it notes that say things like "carnival8" or "bird7bluejay."

[cross-posted at Pieces of Flair]

Well, Neal Boortz' commencement speech was a disappointment. He didn't discuss politics much at all, and instead focused on the standard high school graduation topics: success, failure, adulthood - zzzzz. If anything, the Rabbis and other speakers were more political and more controversial than he was. A common theme among all the speakers was the importance of taking personal responsibility for one's actions and not blaming other people for one's failures. In a world of increasing nannyism, this was a refreshing change.

Boortz said that this was the first commencement speech he had ever given, and it showed. I think he is so used to speaking to hostile, politicized audiences that he just doesn't know what to do with a friendly one. Boortz said that he had another speech planned, but one of the Rabbis basically said everything he intended to say, so he scrapped the canned one and make a new one up as he went along.

At first I thought he was just being cute, but immediately after saying this, he pulled out a stack of CDs in sleeves and handed one to each of the 22 graduates (it's a very small school). Boortz said that this CD contained a copy of his real speech, and that the graduates should listen to it alone, and NOT in front of their parents or teachers. Phelps informs me that the CD most likely contained this speech, the transcript of which is available on his website. Given the context of the situation, I'm glad he didn't insult his audience by delivering it.

[cross-posted at Catallarchy]

On Monday I'll be moderating a forum at Cato on efforts to ban the marketing of food to children.

If you'll be in the D.C. area on Monday and want to come, you can still sign up until 4pm today. It's free. And you get a free lunch.

And there's a fairly good chance it'll be televised on C-SPAN.

Your humble Agitator broke a bit of news.

I couldn't sleep last night, so I flipped through the channels for awhile trying to find something interesting. I settled on an episode of Cheap Seats, an ESPN Classic original program.

Cheap Seats "stars" (and I use that term loosely) Randy and Jason Sklar, twin brother comedians - from my hometown of St. Louis - that apparently subscribe to the MaryKate-and-Ashley philosophy and never do gigs alone. The show's concept is a clever one: dig through all of the old footage that ESPN has in its archives, find some of the more ridiculous stuff that used to fill time on the network, and make fun of it. The problem is, the Sklar brothers make the show a 30 minute comedy act with the tapes as filler, rather than the other way around.

I've watched the show a few times, and it is typically pretty dreadful. Poor one-liners, Ellen-Cleghorne-Era-SNL-quality skits, and running gags that aren't funny once, much less 10 times. But last night the underlying sports event was so absurd that it made the show enjoyable: a sporting event called "Superdogs! Superjocks!".

Ever since 9/11, I've longed for the days when the 24-hour news channels had to occupy themselves with round-the-clock coverage of Gary Condit and the shark attacks.

Yes, the "I had a Scream" speech was somewhat satisfying, but we've had to slog through numerous "serious" controversies like Valerie Plame, Abu Ghraib, and now Ahmad Chalabi.

We need a new issue. Thankfully, William Safire comes to the rescue:

What frazzled pollsters, surly op-ed pages, snarling cable talkfests and issue-starved candidates for office need is a fresh source of hot-eyed national polarization. Coin reform can close the controversy gap and fill the vitriol void. Get out those bumper stickers: Abolish the penny!

Anyone who opposes this much-needed and long-overdue coin reform clearly hates America.

[cross-posted at Catallarchy]

This has been all over the place of late, but it's cool enough that it's worth repeating for the benefit of those who haven't seen it yet: a Los Angeles man was cleared of a murder charge based in part on footage from the television show Curb Your Enthusiasm.

The suspect claimed that he was at Dodger Stadium watching a ballgame at the time the crime occurred, and had a ticket and family members' testimony to back him up. Still, the state insisted he was the man, and had a witness who could supposedly put him near the crime scene.

The suspect's lawyer subpoenaed Dodger Vision footage and Fox TV footage, and came up with nothing. He then learned that Curb Your Enthusiasm was filiming at the ballpark that night (the episode where Larry David hires a prostitute so that he can drive in the carpool lane to make it to the ballpark before the first pitch), and the producers gave him all the footage they shot. In some of the film that didn't make the show, there was the suspect, eating a Dodger Dog and sitting with his daughter. The judge dismissed the case for lack of evidence.

A great story. Too good to be true, but true nonetheless.

[cross-posted at Pieces of Flair]

In a society of humans, can cooperation exist? That was the question pondered by both Hobbes and Kropotkin, among others. Hobbes gave the pessimistic answer, writing that in a "state of nature", selfish individuals were in such ruthless competition that the result was "a state of war, every man against every man" and a life that was "solitary, poor, nastry, brutish, and short".

Kropotkin rejected this conclusion and refused to accept the notion that selfishness was man's biological inheritance, needing to be civilized by a higher authority. He saw cooperation all around him in nature, as an ancient endownment common in the animal kingdom, with which man also was equipped. Like many thinkers before him, he saw man having a noble constitution, but being corrupted by the society around him.

There were some great responses on both blogs to the questions posed. As was probably evident by the way I phrased the question, I hold a third view that partially agrees and disagrees with both Hobbes and Kropotkin.

Consider an insignificant event that took place earlier today-- I bought a bagel this morning from a shopkeeper by exchanging for $1.

Does the shopkeeper make bagels out of goodwill in order to provide food to the people of the world? Is he motivated by charity? Driven by the goodness of his heart? Obviously no. He makes bagels for the purpose of making his own life better. Do I make money solely to give to other people? No, I similarly make money largely for my own personal gain, including for the purpose of using it to acquire bagels, among other things. In carrying out the exchange, both the shopkeeper and I act selfishly. He desires my $1 more than the bagel he has; I desire his bagel more than the $1 I have. To fulfill those desires, we cooperate to achieve both of our selfish desires. In a groggy early morning flash, we created a datapoint that counters Hobbes's basic view of the world. Billions of such datapoints are generated all around the world every day.

Like Hobbes, I believe that man's nature is essentially selfish. Each of us has our own subjective ends and desires, and we take action to pursue them. But rather than believing that this leads to a "war of every man against every man", like Kropotkin, I believe that cooperation can emerge among individuals. Yet, contrary to Kropotkin, this cooperation does not have to be driven solely by mutual aid, but can also result from self-interest.

Adam Smith saw the power of cooperative selfishness when he wrote:

In almost every other race of animals, each individual, when it is grown up to maturity, is entirely independent, and in its natural state has occasion for the assistance of no other living creature. Man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me what I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is the manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love.

The greatness of the Enlightenment was the escape from the filthy gutters of the zero-sum worldview of Hobbes and those before him. It was the realization by a large segment of mankind that mutual benefit for selfish goals can be achieved through reciprocal exchange, that cooperation can be entirely congruent with selfishness. The result was a massive increase in the standard of living of the common man. Despite the bleating of cultural relativists, there is sound reason to hold Western civilization in high regard.

[cross-posted at Catallarchy]

My second dispatch from Williamsburg is up at Tech Central.

John Kerry's people appear to have settled on "Let America Be America Again" as a campaign slogan. For many, the slogan is stupid enough (or arrogant enough) on its face to fail. But, for those who need a little something more, Timothy Noah has a good article on Slate.com about the line's etymology.

The line comes for a poem by Langston Hughes of the same name. A reading of the poem reveals what a poor choice the line was. For example, a pretty stanza romanticizing America as "a land where Liberty/Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath/But opportunity is real, and life is free/Equality is in the air we breathe" is followed by the poet's comment "(There's never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this 'homeland of the free.')".

Then, the person romanticizing the old America, and calling for its return, asks who is making the objections to his speech, and the answer comes:

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

The poem then builds up steam, rallies the workers, and concludes that the poor men, Indians, Negros, and all those who really made America [read: the proletariat] must take back America and make the America that never was, but that should be:

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Maybe Hughes' position is what Kerry actually seeks when he says "Let America Be America Again." Maybe Kerry is saying "we've never achieved the true vision of America, and let me lead you there, with your hand at the foundry and your plow in the rain." But more likely, Kerry is that speaker in the intial stanzas, longing for the olden days, when life was peachy and men were men and all were free and prosperous: the very position that Hughes attacks in his poem.

It will be interesting to see if this gets any play at all, or how the "Let America Be America Again" message evolves.

[cross-posted at Pieces of Flair]

My first entry from the Obesity Summit is up at Tech Central.

Dive 75
101 W. 75th St. (Upper West Side)
between Columbus and Amsterdam Aves.
New York, NY 10024
212-362-7518

Matthew Yglesias answers the age-old question: who does W work for?

All fabulously snarky fun aside, the disturbing thing about this theory isn't that there's any truth to it, because there isn't. The disturbing thing is just how well it fits, how logically it all works out. Because in the end, does it really matter how loyal our leader is if one of the most dangerous despotic states in the world finds an opportunity to seize more power?

(cross-posted at The 50 Minute Hour)

Now this is a cause I can get behind.

Seven members of the American Literacy Society picketed the 77th annual spelling bee, which is sponsored every year by Cincinnati-based Scripps Howard.

The protesters' complaint: English spelling is illogical. And the national spelling bee only reinforces the crazy spellings that lead to dyslexia, high illiteracy, and harder lives for immigrants.

"We advocate the modernization of English spelling," said Pete Boardman, 58, of Groton, N.Y. The Cornell University bus driver admitted to being a terrible speller. [...]

Carrying signs reading "I'm thru with through," "Spelling shuud be lojical," and "Spell different difrent," the protesters — who first protested two years ago, but skipped last year — drew chuckles from bee contestants.

Fite the power.

[cross-posted at Catallarchy]

Neal Boortz, nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and local Atlantan libertarian personality will be the commencement speaker tonight for Yeshiva Atlanta, a private, Orthodox Jewish high school from which I graduated in 1999.

Boortz was instrumental in sparking my interest in politics in general and libertarianism in particular. While I have not listened to him in quite a few years, and while I was disappointed in his gung-ho support for the War in Iraq, I still owe him a debt of gratitude for turning me on to classical liberal ideas.

I was surprised that Yeshiva invited him and that he agreed to speak. Most Jews lean strongly to the left, and although Orthodox Jews are somewhat more politically conservative than Jews overall, they are known more for their communitarianism than any latent individualism. As far as I know, this is the only commencement speech Boortz will be delivering this year, and I don't recall him giving any in the past.

A friend of mine who will be doing the audio-visual work at the graduation told me that a large portion of the senior class are big Boortz fans and consider themselves libertarian. Given that Jewish history is replete with persecution and tyranny at the hands of the state, this is a welcome change. I can only hope that my generation and future generations of Jews will eschew the misguided efforts of left-liberalism (and now, regrettably, neo-conservativism) and turn their attention to the importance of individual freedom and the danger inherent in state power.

Either tonight or tomorrow, I will post a report of Boortz' speech. I'm hoping he doesn't focus too much on the War in Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or the standard, boring fare of high school commencement speeches (success, failure, adulthood, blah, blah, blah). My preference would be a speech tailored to the audience, specifically about school vouchers and the importance of a maintaining (more like resuscitating) a strong separation between school and state. We shall see.

[cross-posted at Catallarchy]

A question for readers-- consider the following quotes:

Nature hath made men so equal, in the faculties of body and mind that are born in them, that one man cannot in respect of these claim to himself any benefit to which another may not pretend. From this equality ariseth equality of hope in the attaining of our ends. Therefore, if two men desire the same thing which they cannot both enjoy they become enemies, and seek each the destruction of the other, each mistrusting the other. So men invade each other, first for gain, second for safety, and third for reputation. Hence, while men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in a state of war, every man against every man.

-- Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

In that immense division of the animal kingdom which embodies more than one thousand species, and is so numerous that the Brazilians pretend that Brazil belongs to the ants, not to men, competition amidst the members of the same nest, or the colony of nests,does not exist. However terrible the wars between different species, and whatever the atrocities committed at war-time, mutual aid within the community, self-devotion grown into a habit, and very often self-sacrifice for the common welfare, are the rule. The ants and termites have renounced the "Hobbesian war," and they are the better for it. Their wonderful nests, their buildings, superior in relative size to those of man; their paved roads and overground vaulted galleries; their spacious halls and granaries; their corn-fields, harvesting and "malting" of grain;(9*) their, rational methods of nursing their eggs and larvae, and of building special nests for rearing the aphides whom Linnaeus so picturesquely described as "the cows of the ants"; and, finally, their courage, pluck, and, superior intelligence -- all these are the natural outcome of the mutual aid which they practise at every stage of their busy and laborious lives. [...]

As seen from the above, the war of each against all is not the law of nature. Mutual aid is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle...

-- Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution

[cross-posted at Catallarchy]

While we're talking about teen sex, what we really need to be talking about more is sex education. Educators from Planned Parenthood have recently reported hearing a frightening new question from teenagers coming to them for advice: Why bother using condoms when you have sex, since they don't work anyway? The misinformation assumed in the question is the product of "abstinence only" sex ed, which under federal law is not allowed to tell teens that condoms are 96 percent effective at preventing the spread of HIV and 97 percent effective at preventing pregnancy. If teachers of such programs talk about condoms at all, they are only permitted to emphasize their failure rates. And people wonder why half of all new HIV infections are among people younger than 25.

When the Clinton welfare reform bill was passed in 1996, few people noticed that it included $250 million for programs to teach kids that sex is bad for them unless they get married first. States match each $4 of federal money with $3 of their own, and can use the money in schools, community programs, non-profits, or the health sector. This year, President Bush has increased the amount of federal funding available to $270 million. Eligible programs must have the exclusive purpose of "teaching the social, psychological and health gains to be realized by abstaining from sexual activity" and that "sexual activity outside of... marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects." Many include "virginity pledges," in which a teen promises not to have sex until marriage. No federal funds are available for comprehensive sex-ed, which includes any program that teaches about contraception and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, even if the program emphasizes abstinence. This puts money pit state governments in a bind, since they have trouble refusing free money, even if the strings Congress attaches may end up killing their children.

Now, I'm obviously not in favor of any sort of nationwide curriculum to teach children about the birds and the bees, it's clear that we're currently headed in that direction. California is the only state that refuses to accept federal sex ed money. Coincidentally, California has seen a 40 percent decline in teen birthrates over the last decade, 25 percent greater than the decline in the national rate in the same period. Sixteen states have laws requiring that sex education programs encourage abstinence, but do not require that programs provide basic, medically accurate information about condoms or other ways to prevent unplanned pregnancies.

Proponents of abstinence only sex ed claim that their programs work to protect teens from the consequences of sex. It's true that kids exposed to abstinence only education wait, on average, 11 months longer than their comprehensively educated peers. The abstinence crowd trumpets statistics that teens who have sex earlier are more likely to get STDs, more likely to have abortions, and more likely to be depressed and commit suicide, and they declare victory. Of course, it never occurs to them that perhaps teens who are more depressed are more likely to have sex, or that teens who have sex younger have riskier sex because they haven't received enough education on safe sex, but that's another argument. Abstinence only programs have been proven to delay sex by less than a year, after which kids start having sex, but have little information about how to protect themselves. Teens who take pledges to remain virgins and then break them are less likely to use protection their first time.

Even if you believe that 11 month wait is significant, kids who are remaining "virgins" are not remaining safe. According to a study by Northern Kentucky University, 55 percent of undergraduates who claimed to have kept pledges to remain virgins have engaged in oral sex. Apparently, the Clintonian abstinence programs also come with a Clintonian definition of what constitutes sex.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that teens are disturbingly blase about any form of sex that isn't intercourse, and that many don't understand the dangers of the activities they choose to engage in. Many of the same parents who want their kids taught that sex before marriage is always wrong are now alarmed to find that their kids are engaging in a wide array of sexual behaviors, including oral sex, exhibitionism, sex with multiple partners, and masturbation. Whether this trend is actually significant, it's clear that middle class, suburban parents are worried about the trend towards casual sexual behavior by the amount of attention it has received in the media. And yet, it seems not to have occurred to people that teenagers are having unprotected oral sex because their teachers have told them that having protected intercourse is too dangerous. No one is talking about the fact that preaching abstinence and telling kids that pre-marriage romantic relationships can hurt them may be encouraging promiscuity. No one is outraged that we're teaching teens to fear their sexuality, and that as a result, they get all of the dangers of sex with none of the rewards.

The United States is the only country where abstinence education is so widespread. According to the UN Population Fund, our teen birthrate (pdf) ranks in the middle of the third world, higher than those of North Korea, India, and Rwanda. Countries like Sweden and Denmark, where sex ed is comprehensive, matter of fact, and reinforced throughout adolescence have one seventh the number of teen births that we do. They have lower rates of STDs and, social conservatives might be interested to know, a few as one eighth the number of abortions. Their kids get information that ours do not, and they're better off for it.

Elizabeth Koch is having some computer problems and unfortunately won't be part of the next week's guest blogging crew.

She'll fill in next time around.

Social conservatives are always talking about how abstinence is the only way to avoid unwanted pregnancies. But with their raging hormones, abstinence for most teens leaves much to be desired.

Thankfully, the good people at TechnicalVirgin.com offer a number of creative alternatives to procreative sex.

[T]here is a way for youths to enjoy rich and satisfying sexual intimacy without risking unwanted pregnancy — ANAL SEX! ...

Of course, the safest way for teens to avoid unwanted pregnancy while satisfying their carnal needs is to limit themselves to homoerotic encounters until they are ready for procreation. But many boys and girls are uncomfortable with the idea of same-sex encounters. Anal sex, however, can be fun for both sexes, and thanks to modern improvements in strap-on sex tools, girls can enjoy being in control of their own anal encounters.

MARK G., Atomic City, ID

When I started my junior year of high school, I was already the captain of the football team and the baseball team, I was a straight-A honors student, and girls were offering themselves to me. I just couldn't say no to easy sex and free booze, but I knew I was risking my future. So I prayed on it, drove to Boise, and got this butt-ugly haircut. I haven't been laid since, praise Jesus!

DANIELLE V., Buffalo, N.Y.

My boyfriend always asks to have sex. "Come on, baby," he begs me, all the time. I feel really bad about making him wait, but I know that if I have sex with him too soon, he won't respect me. But I also know that if he ain't satisfied with me, he'll date some other girl. So once a month I show him how much I really love him by coughing up the $500 to get him a really top-quality call girl to fuck him silly.

And be sure to watch the helpful TV Commercials.

[cross-posted at Catallarchy]

Although agitator.com commenter "Joe" thinks that after my first post (about hats) I "should have [my] fingers broken and [my] lips sewed shut so that [I] cannot communicate to anyone in a meaningful way", I am determined to try this again. The post below was originally posted on my own group blog, Pieces of Flare [sic]. But, because nobody actually reads that blog, I am posting it here:

The coolest thing about Archive.org- a site that is really cool for lots of reasons - is that it hosts The Prelinger Archives.

The archives were started by Rick Prelinger in the 1980s, and grew to include almost 50,000 films. The films are described as "ephemeral" films, like educational, advertising and industrial shorts. A look at the categories of films offered gives you a sense of how big the collection is.

It's really great stuff, and a good way to waste a few hours (or days). The most viewed movie on the site is "Duck and Cover", a famous 1950s film by the U.S. Government about what to do when under A-bomb attack. Other good ones are One Got Fat, a 1963 movie about bike safety featuring kids in odd Gorilla masks and Perversion For Profit (Part 1), a 1964 anti-pornography film "linking pornography to the Communist conspiracy and the decline of Western civilization."

There's just so much to see. It's really amazing.

I got Amy Phillips' bio information from an outdated page on her website.

I sorta' knew she wasn't still pursuing her undergrad degree, I just assumed that she was pursuing an advance degree.

At any rate, she has her dgree from N.Y.U. in philosophy, and currently works for an international human rights organization based in New York.

Apologies. And welcome.

Much thanks to Radley for inviting this motley crew to fill in for him while he is gone. With the economy as it is, Radley decided it was cheaper to outsource the labor to other bloggers than to use his own resident monkey butlers. Expect lots of hemming and hawing from the Monkey-First crowd.

Case in point: A few days ago on CNN, Lou Dobbs worried that "the U.S. army may begin buying bullets from Israel and Canada because the U.S. ammunition plants can't keep up with demand."

Republican congressman Duncan Hunter, who is Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, had this to say:

We shouldn't have any foreign dependents with respect to critical assets, and ammunition certainly falls into that category.

It's interesting that Dobbs' focus is on the arms industry. The U.S. is the world's largest producer of military weaponry, responsible for more than half of worldwide arms production. According to the Foreign Trade Division of the U.S. Census, the U.S. exports more than 3½ times as much advanced weaponry as it imports.

Imagine what would happen if the rest of the world did what Hunter and Dobbs want the U.S. to do. If the U.S. "shouldn't have any foreign dependents with respect to critical assets", then the same must be true for Israel, Canada, and every other country that imports weapons from the U.S. Instead of importing millions of dollars worth of weaponry each year from the U.S., Israel and Canada should become independent and produce all of their own weapons. This, of course, would put thousands of U.S. workers out of their jobs, and would cost the U.S. economy more than $3.50 in lost export sales for every dollar we might save by not purchasing from foreign sources, but that is the price we must pay for Lou's protectionism.

[cross-posted at Catallarchy]

President Bush has apparently been busy over the last few months, campaigning on the public's tab. Because he labels the trips "official" instead of "political," the government pays for his use of Air Force One while he holds rallies and fundraisers in key swing states.

Here's a thought: why can't we just make a law saying that no politician may campaign for reelection during any trip paid for with government funds? That way, he can make as many "official" trips as he wants, but he can't engage in "political" activities while on them. That means no rallies, no fundraising events, no bus tours, and no schmoozing with big money donors. If the White House refuses to make public its criteria for deciding which trips are "official" and which are "political," we should simply declare that any trip on which political work is done is automatically a political trip.

(cross-posted at The 50 Minute Hour)

Let me offer my congratulations to Radley for being published in Time, and my thanks for letting me guest blog here at one of the best blogs in the 'sphere. It's an honor. My first post here is on the topic of how to best create alternatives to gasoline-powered transportation.

Many Americans want energy independence from Middle Eastern oil, and want the government to fund research into alternative energy sources to achieve this. This is an issue that has broad support on 'both' sides of the political spectrum. It is also a bad idea.

If Americans desire alternative energy sources, why have so many continued to buy inefficient vehicles such as SUVs? The answer is, of course, that until recently gas prices have been (relatively) cheap. A given volume of gasoline is still cheaper than that same volume of bottled water, depending on the brand.

With the recent rise in gas prices, hybrid vehicles which are more fuel-efficient than conventional vehicles are in greater demand, as this article by Poornima Gupta shows. Sales of the hybrid Toyota Prius are expected to jump more than 25%. When consumers choose to exchange their money for gasoline and gasoline-powered vehicles, hybrid vehicles will see little demand. When the price of gasoline along with the resulting price of the use of gasoline-powered vehicles increases, many consumers will switch to lower cost alternatives, depending on what their threshold of "too high" is. Some might even choose to forego driving itself, instead choosing to spend their time and money in different ways. Those who view prices below this individually subjective threshold will continue to use gasoline-powered vehicles. The higher gas prices go, all things being equal, the greater the demand for alternative-energy vehicles will be. Higher consumer demand will drive entrepreneurs to exploit the alternative energy market and will spur venture capitalists to invest in alternative energy capital.

This is the market in action, allocating resources to their most strongly desired uses, with prices being the essential mechanism of guidance. What happens when the government gets involved? As most people know, government research funding does not magically appear out of thin air, but instead has to be funded by taxation. Spending taxpayer money on research funding bypasses the price-rationing system, resulting in a distorted energy market. It directs taxpayer-driven funding to people and places where politicians and central planners believe it should go, rather than allowing the market to achieve capital formation based on the desires of consumers. Yet, history clearly shows the inability of central planners to rationally plan any economy with more than a minimum level of complexity. If alternative energy is the future, its development should be the result of the choices of consumers, not arbitrary decisions by lawmakers. The best thing politicians can do is get out of the way and let the market do its job.

[cross-posted at Catallarchy]

First, thanks to Radley for inviting me to post while he's away spreading the classic liberal message. For my first post on a big blog, I wanted to do something with deep meaning and insight. When I failed to think of anything, I decided to write about funny hats.

I determined that a post about funny hats on a libertarian blog was permissible because the abundance and variety of funny hats available are a good sign of a successful, prosperous capitalist society. That people routinely blow $25 on a set of plastic viking horns or a Nemo head shows how vibrant our economy is and how much disposable income people have in our modern United States.

The true test for a great funny hat, in my mind, is how fun it would be to wear while sitting around your house drinking with your buddies. To me, wearing funny hats while drinking beers changes the mood from "we're just sitting around drinking beers" to "we're sitting around drinking beers while wearing funny hats." It's a subtle difference, but I think an important one.

Prior to this week, the best funny hat I encountered was the classic giant foam cowboy hat (I have one, but mine is red with a blue star). But that changed when I saw the hat below. For those of you who don't recognize it, it's a replica of the Loyal Order of the Water Buffalo hat that Fred and Barney wear on the Flintstones. It looks like an excellent hat. You can buy yourself one here.

And this concludes my first post.

P.S. Lest anyone think I am a "that guy," I should be clear that I do not like people who misuse funny hats by wearing them out to bars or parties or something to get attention (as in "hey, look at me and my funny hat"). But when used properly, funny hats are excellent.

I want to thank Radley for the opportunity to sub in for him while he's away fighting for our right to deep fry chocolate. I've been particularly interested lately in the ways that reform-minded liberals, in their zeal to protect us all from the apocalypse they're convinced that current human action is causing, are deceiving the public to gain support for radical restrictions on our lives. The latest bit of propaganda comes from the environmental lobby, which is using the new movie The Day After Tomorrow, a sci-fi story of a sudden violent climate shift, to convince us all that we're doomed.

MSNBC says that the most sudden climate change scientists can conceive would still take several decades to occur. The Australian reports that the movie's science is "so absurd that even the hysterics in the US green movement reportedly feared audiences would laugh it out of the cinema," but that "it will certainly frighten university students and schoolchildren" who have been "assiduously prepared to be frightened." The Arizona Republic describes the science as "much like when the Professor on Gilligan's Island designed a fusion reactor using only coconuts and Mr. Howell's after-shave." Even the New Yorker, long a refuge of liberal thought, dismisses the silly premise of the movie as more likely to harm the level of debate about the environment than to help it. Moveon.org, however, calls The Day After Tomorrow "the movie the White House doesn't want you to see" because "an unparalleled opportunity to help people do something to prevent a climate crisis."

I understand the urge to bring issues of conservation and better management of natural resources to the forefront of our political consciousness, but it's just dishonest to use a premise you and all of your allies admit is false--that environmental protection measures are necessary to prevent imminent catastrophic danger--to advance your political agenda. Scare tactics do move people; that's why they make such good drama in movies. But people who try to influence the political process are, as they so often like to tell us, beholden to a higher moral standard than just getting the most money from the most consumers. They have a responsibility to tell the truth, and not to use propaganda that they admit is not representative of the real facts to get their message across. Preying on our basest fears is not an ethically sound method of political activism.

Moveon.org is not, to be sure, representative of the core of liberalism in the U.S. It has, however, become a significant source of political information and mobilization for many on the left. And it is troubling that a group whose mission is to counter the dishonest propaganda of mainstream politics would stoop to pandering and misleading the public to advance its agenda. But then, I guess I should stop being surprised by now.

(cross-posted at The 50 Minute Hour)

While I'm out/busy for the next week, I've invited a half dozen smart, witty, and interesting people to keep you entertained.

Quick introductions...

Micha Ghertner and Joanathan Wilde are regulars over at Catallarchy, in my opinion the most underrated group blog out there. Smart guys in the anarcho-capitalist vein.

Amy Phillips has her own blog at 50 Minute Hour, and is pursuing a degree in philosophy from N.Y.U.

Elizabeth Koch is pursuing an MFA in creative nonfiction. She covered the Martha Stewart trial for Reason.

Hoey Robbins and Hipp Dog are, obviously, pen names. Robbins is a law school chum of mine who now lives and works in Chicago. Hipp Dog work in Kansas City, and is a somewhat frequent commenter on this site. Both also write at the group blog Pieces of Flare.

Have at it, gang.

First the good news.

Your humble Agitator has a short essay on obesity in the latest issue of TIME magazine. I go head to head with food nannies Marion Nestle of N.Y.U. and Kelly Brownell of Yale. The piece was very heavily edited, fact-checked and cross-checked. So yeah, it's probably quite a bit drier than most of what you've read of me. Also, I don't normally sneeze in less than 350 words, so the length restriction was certainly a challenge.

Nevertheless, it's a great hit for me, and I'm flattered that TIME asked me to represent the free market side of the debate.

I'll also add here that I'll be at the TIME/ABC News obesity summit next week in Williamsburg. I'll be sending dispatches back from the event -- two or three per day -- that you'll be able to read at Tech Central Station.

(I've lined up a fun roster of guest bloggers to keep you entertained while I'm out, but more on that later.)

Now the bad news. The rest of the TIME issue devotes what I'm guessing is some 10,000-12,000 words (at least, I didn't count) to obesity. My meager 350 of those words are really the lonely few not advocating some sort of massive government intrusion into our lives, diets, lifestyles, and eating habits to combat this "obesity" thing.

It's really pretty astounding. Take Nestle and Brownell, for example. The two of them got 350 words to counter my 350 words. Fair enough. Except that the same issue then devotes an entire separate four-page article to Brownell, Nestle and two other fat nannies' various plans for government intervention, without even a token rebuttal from a scholar or scientist who disagrees with them (and yes, there are plenty).

Banning advertising to children, rebuilding our cities and suburbs, taxes on "unhealthy" food, lawsuits, and a myriad of other programs are openly advocated and cheerlead by alleged journalists as if they were universal truths, simply not up for debate. The rare times when reporters did seek out dissenting opinions, they're clearly labeled "critics," and usually, their motivations are questioned ("paid operatives of the food industry").

TIME embraces the Body Mass Index (BMI) throughout the issue as supreme arbiter of "obese" and "overweight," without a hint of skepticism (here's your skepticism: I work out 3-4 times a week, including at least 45 minutes of cardio with each workout. I have a 36 inch waist. I'm 6'1". I weigh 205. According to the BMI, I'm on the heavy end of "overweight," nearly "obese").

I'd say in nearly all of these articles, TIME's reporters didn't bother to even check to see if there was another side to the story, much less give it voice. I'm guessing that's because they merely assumed there wasn't another side. Clearly, obesity is every bit the "public health threat" tobacco is/was. And clearly, we need heavy-handed government intervention in obesity, just as we've had with tobacco (because, of course, none of us smokes -- particularly none of us under 40, who have known pretty much all of our lives about the risks that come with smoking, and are the "beneficiaries" of these various anti-smoing intiatives). TIME takes the Nestles and Brownells and Wootans of the world at their word, at face value, and they nearly always assume that anyone striking a blow for consumer choice, personal responsibility, or the freedom from government trespass on what we eat must be motivated by greed, profit, or ill motives.

This is one of those issues, apparently, where there's simply little room for pro and con, like rape, child abuse, or Nazism.

Since TIME's made access to its current issue available only to subscribers, my essay follows, and I've followed that by Brownell and Nestle's piece.

The terms of this debate couldn't be starker. One side makes no bones about wanting heavy government regulation and restrictions on when, where, how, and how much you eat. The other side says you ought to be free to make all of those decisions on your own, but that you also should be forced to live with the consequences of those decisions.

Government has no business interfering with what you eat.

By RADLEY BALKO

Nutrition activists are agitating for a panoply of initiatives that would bring the government between you and your waistline. President Bush earmarked $125 million in his budget for the encouragement of healthy lifestyles. State legislatures and school boards have begun banning snacks and soda from school campuses and vending machines. Several state legislators and Oakland, Calif., Mayor Jerry Brown, among others, have called for a "fat tax" on high-calorie foods. Congress is considering menu-labeling legislation that would force chain restaurants to list fat, sodium and calories for each item.

That is precisely the wrong way to fight obesity. Instead of intervening in the array of food options available to Americans, our government ought to be working to foster a personal sense of responsibility for our health and well-being.

We're doing just the opposite. For decades, America's health-care system has been migrating toward nationalized medicine. We have a law that requires some Americans to pay for other Americans' medicine, and several states bar health insurers from charging lower premiums to people who stay fit. That removes the financial incentive for making healthy decisions. Worse, socialized health care makes us troublingly tolerant of government trespasses on our personal freedom. If my neighbor's heart attack shows up on my tax bill, I'm more likely to support state regulation of what he eats--restrictions on what grocery stores can put on their shelves, for example, or what McDonald's can put between its sesame-seed buns.

The best way to combat the public-health threat of obesity is to remove obesity from the realm of "public health." It's difficult to think of a matter more private and less public than what we choose to put in our bodies. Give Americans moral, financial and personal responsibility for their own health, and obesity is no longer a public matter but a private one--with all the costs, concerns and worries of being overweight borne only by those people who are actually overweight.

Let each of us take full responsibility for our diet and lifestyle. We're likely to make better decisions when someone else isn't paying for the consequences.

Not if blaming the victim is just an excuse to let industry off the hook.

By KELLY BROWNELL and MARION NESTLE

The food industry, like any other, must grow to stay in business. One way it does so is by promoting unhealthy foods, particularly to children. Each year kids see more than 10,000 food ads on TV alone, almost all for items like soft drinks, fast foods and sugared cereals. In the same year that the government spent $2 million on its main nutrition-education program, McDonald's spent $500 million on its We Love to See You Smile campaign. It can be no surprise that teenagers consume nearly twice as much soda as milk (the reverse was true 20 years ago) and that 25% of all vegetables eaten in the U.S. are French fries.

To counter criticism, the food industry and pro-business groups use a public relations script focused on personal responsibility. The script has three elements: 1) if people are overweight, it is their own fault; 2) industry responds to consumer demand but does not create it; and 3) insisting that industry change--say, by not marketing to children or requiring restaurants to reveal calories--is an attack on freedom.

Why quarrel with the personal-responsibility argument?

First, it's wrong. The prevalence of obesity increases year after year. Were people less responsible in 2002 than in 2001? Obesity is a global problem. Is irresponsibility an epidemic around the world?

Second, it ignores biology. Humans are hardwired, as a survival strategy, to like foods high in sugar, fat and calories.

Third, the argument is not helpful. Imploring people to eat better and exercise more has been the default approach to obesity for years. That is a failed experiment.

Fourth, personal responsibility is a trap. The argument is startlingly similar to the tobacco industry's efforts to stave off legislative and regulatory interventions. The nation tolerated personal-responsibility arguments from Big Tobacco for decades, with disastrous results.

Governments collude with industry when they shift attention from conditions promoting poor diets to the individuals who consume them. Government should be doing everything it can to create conditions that lead to healthy eating, support parents in raising healthy children and make decisions in the interests of public health rather than private profit.

It's crazy. If you aren't responsible for what you put into your mouth, chew and swallow, what's left that you are you responsible for?

As is often the case, when politicians start stumping on alleged crises like the high price of gas, many times it's their own policies, not market failure, that lead to the crises in the first places (and even more often, there's really not much of a crisis to begin with).

Did you know that in Maryland, for example, there's a minimum-price law for gasoline? Did you know that this law forbids gas stations from giving away free coffee with a fill-up?

And in Minnesota, they fine gas stations for selling gas too cheaply.

Combine silly protectionist laws like these (which spread quite a bit farther than the borders of Minnesota and Maryland) with EPA regulations that require different regions of the country to compy with different gas formulas to meet emissions standards, and you have a government-inspired recipe for artificially high gas prices, wholly independent of price gougers or greedy oil companies.

Hat tip: Marginal Revolution.

"People who go into these restaurants need to realize what they're putting into their mouths."

That's what Supersize Me fraud Morgan Spurlock said upon winning the directing prize at Sundance.

Delve a little into Spurlock's past, however, and you'll find a man willing to exploit society's most vulnerable people to make a cheap buck and get some cheap fame -- usually by having them put odd things into their mouths.

He started out with a personal website called TheCon.com (now, curiously, wiped completely clean from the web -- even from the Internet archive). There, Spurlock would pay homeless people and poor folks $100 or more to, for example, chew and swallow dog feces. He'd then charge his website users to watch video feeds of the stunts.

From there, Spurlock moved to MTV, where his short-lived show "I Bet You Will" continued with the theme, paying one man to eat an entire jar of mayonaise, for example. One woman cut her own hair, mixed it up with butter, then ate the entire mixture.

Now Spurlock gets famous slamming McDonald's for selling willing consumers a product he feels is too unhealthy to put into their bodies.

Spurlock has been approached several times to do on-air debates with his critics. He always refuses. In fact, he won't even do a show when a critic is to appear directly before or after him.

Fortunately, CNBC's Maria Bartiromo nailed him the other day in what Spurlock obviously thought would be a fluff interview.

England is set to ban the advertising of junk food to children.

One of the few pluses to come out of the EU is that the organization will soon require its member states to disband state monopolies on the postal service. By April 2007, for example, FedEx will be able to compete with Britain's Royal Mail. The Spectator ran an editorial (free registration required) welcoming the change.

That editorial also produced the following "how many things are wrong with this picture" moment:

Three-year-old Abigail Fielding missed a hernia operation, and will now have to return to the NHS waiting lists, because the letter informing her of the scheduled appointment took more than a week to arrive in spite of being posted first-class.

But perhaps the coming private post service across the Atlantic wil inspire a little change here at home.