Bubbles aren't so bad, according to a new book:

Read This: 'Pop! Why Bubbles Are Great for the Economy'

Daniel Gross. HarperCollins. 232 pages. $22.95.

Investment crazes aren't all bad, argues Daniel Gross in Pop! Why Bubbles Are Great for the Economy. Gross, a business journalist who writes for Slate.com, makes the contrarian-but-persuasive case that irrational exuberance and its aftermath have transformed the U.S. economy into a juggernaut. The dot-com bubble and the recent real estate craze are fresh in readers' minds, but Gross finds that American-style investment frenzies haven't changed much since the 19th century.

-- Cox News Service

Should readers expect a creative destruction argument? The explanatory theory that comes to my mind hails from the mind of Ludwig Lachmann.

On internetnews.com, Sean Michael Kerner writes:

The Republic of Estonia is under a massive cyber onslaught that apparently is targeting government servers in a broad-based distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack. Quantitative data points the finger at a broadly based attack, but speculation is rampant that the Russian government is behind it.

He calls in an expert, Jose Nazario, who is a software and security engineer for the Arbor Networks Active Threat Level Analysis System (ATLAS). It's a distributed botnet, he says, and there is also evidence that there are different attacking groups and it's not just one botnet behind it, which makes it harder to take down.

This is something that doesn't require a government . . . though one gets the strong feeling that the Russian government is, in some way, behind this. Whether Putin has been in on it, I've no idea. It's the kind of thing that might start out as a policy initiative but then takes control of itself, like a distributed terrorist network.

This may be the nature of the next attack upon America from Islamic extremists, by the way.

I've something in my eye.

I just bought Blink by Malcolm Gladwell yesterday. And today I pick up a Time magazine from 2005, and there Gladwell's interviewed, saying the darndest things:

I'd like to make a distinction between change and progress. . . . [T]echnology related to golf has improved and will continue to improve dramatically. Golf clubs are way better today than they were 10 years ago, and will be way better 10 years from now. Golf scores, however, have remained absolutely stable. . . .

The explosion of choices on the internet — the fact that I can get 100,000 songs on iTunes as opposed to 1,000 songs &mdis that progress.

He means the answer as No. I answer Yes.

Gladwell, at the second elipsis, had interuupted an interlocutor expostulating on choice, stating this: But most of this falls into the category of giving me more of things that I don't need.

The iTunes example was inapt, though, no?

When iTunes had only a few thousand songs, I couldn't get Tibor Serly's Rhapsody for Viola and Orhcestra. I could get a bunch of pop songs I didn't want. Now, with thousands upon thousands of downloadable musical works available to me, I have purchased music composed by Martinu, Stravinsky, Benda, Stamitz, Haydn, Griffes, Bolcom, Russo, Gershwin, Schuman (yes with one n), and many others.

Did I need the music by these composers? Well, I needed them more than I need music I didn't buy, and wouldn't, when iTunes had less music to offer.

Is Gladwell's remark as elitist as it sounds? I don't know if he's attacking our wants in general, or some particular wants. Were we supposed to be content buying stuff we didn't like because there didn't used to be many options? Is he actually denying value pluralism?

I like diversity in society, because then I'm more likely to find people and things to my taste. When we're stuck with only the people at hand, and their limited talents, we're stuck with a lot of substandard people and stuff.

That's just simply the case.

Yes, there's change that's mere change. From my perspective, the move from woman-bashing rap to man-bashing rap is mere change. But change to a greater diversity of options that enables me to find music that bashes neither women nor men — is just very good music, with or without commentary — is progress.

No winking. I'm serious.

I have many of these, holding paperbacks, mostly. These interlockable boxes make for very efficient paperback shelves.

But I do put things other than paperbacks in them. Smaller hardbacks, such as my Classics Club set, for instance.

I bought mine for a buck a piece at a local Dollar Tree store. I highly recommend them.

This is somehow a scandal: government employees are taking their sick leave benefits as rolled over retirement or health care benefits:

A Journal Sentinel review of 67 Milwaukee area municipalities and school districts found that 36 of them allow employees to take cash payouts for unused sick days, subject to a cap.

I don't really understand why this is a problem. If your employment contract specifies sick leave, and you don't get sick, that means . . . what? That you just leave the benefit? The incentive for that would mean people would call in sick (or treat minor ailments as worth avoiding for) to take their benefits when they can.

Not a good idea in establishing long-term contracts.

Much better would be to convert unused sick leave days into wages and have them accrue into a retirement fund or, as happens in a few of these stories, medical insurance. I favor the former.

So, tell me, why is this bad?

The blog software I use has its problems. I need to update it, for one. Hundreds of criminals* litter this site with thousands of pseudo-comments, while an actual reader, Roderick Long, couldn't add a comment to my recent post, Spenceriana. Here's what he emailed me, after failing to post at this site:

Back when I had a run of Spencer articles online, several different
people emailed me to ask if I could track down the source of the Spencer quote that occurs in the Alcoholics Anonymous book. Alas, I can't now remember whether I succeeded in identifying the source or not. But when I saw Spencer book of interest to alcoholics I knew it would have something to do with that quote, and sure enough when I clicked on the link I saw that it did.

Admittedly this doesn't do much to resolve the puzzle, though. For why would the mere fact that a putative quote from Spencer occurs on p. 570 of an Alcoholics Anonymous book be sufficient reason for an alcoholic to want to plow through the entire Data of Ethics?

Indeed.

I gather that some eBay sellers will take any hook to sell their wares.

But once again Spencer is placed in the weirdest of contexts by people who just don't bother to read or appreciate.

. . .

* I call anyone who litters someone else's property for their own convenience, a criminal. I don't really care about the law in this designation. I'm in the good libertarian camp, now, calling criminals criminals according to my judgment, not according to positive legislation.

Tthose of us who research Herbert Spencer's philosophical and scientific writings will likely find this especially amusing:

Vintage Herbert Spencer Book Of Interest To Alcoholics

Talk about a reach! Why Spencer's Data of Ethics would be of special interest to alcoholics is, well, tenuous at best. Strangest eBay advertising I've seen in some time.

The blurb is an important form of advertising. It characterizes the thing touted in such a way as to encourage purchase. Or at least attention.

I have in my possession a book I'd like to read. It is called The Atonement, and it appears to be a scholarly treatise explaining why the central conception of Pauline Christianity is not nuts. I would like to see such an argument. So far, the best I've come across is C. S. Lewis's implied argument in Till We Have Faces. But that's hardly a philosophical position upon which one could rationally build a philosophy.

Of course, religions have a much lower bar!

Anyway, I'd really like to read the book. But I have a problem. I find it difficult to take the book seriously. Why? Because of the blurb. Here is the blurb on the front cover, placed right below the book's title:

A heartfelt & clearly reasoned discussion of the significance & necessity of Jesus' death.

What could bother me?

That word, heartfelt. I have some trouble reading books so earnest that they wear their earnestness on the cover.

I don't care the depth of the earnestness with which the author approaches his subject. Not on this subject, anyway. I care about the clarity and persuasiveness of the argument.

The blurb was written, of course, to coddle Christians. It was placed there to encourage them to read an old book — from 1860, no less! — reprinted in the edition at hand. In general, Christians do not want well-reasoned argumentation. They want something heartfelt. Well, ick.

Bethany Fellowship, the publisher in question, reprinted this old book ostensibly with people like me in mind. The book is, after all, written for careful, serious thinkers. The first chapter seems to be quite up front about the philosophical problem of the Atonement.

But by including that blurb, it cast a pall of gooey emotionalism on a book that probably doesn't deserve it.

The desire to meet audience expectations can turn the art of blurbcraft into a form of mendacity. I had plenty of such experience when I worked for a little magazine, years ago. I was a very imaginative and concise blurbist. For many years, I wrote the bulk of them. And yet, sometimes the publisher, in his desire to push this piece or that, would take control and ruin things.

He once switched the genre labels we placed over articles, simply because the one I'd placed over my comment was the most arresting, and he thought that the more philosophical piece written by another commentator could use a boost. Forget, though, that the cool word salvo fit my piece but not the other. It was a cooler word, had more blurbish potential, and thus would encourage readers to read a piece that might otherwise be neglected.

This kind of thinking can backfire, of course. It gave me additional reasons not to write for the magazine I helped edit (something the publisher expressed others some apparent concern to avoid). And in the case of this book in my library by Albert Barnes, it's led me not to read it and comment on it, which might have increased (just a bit) interest in the book and its message. Which is something you'd think the Bethany Fellowship would want.

Go figure.

Why object to heartfelt? Why does it bother me so?

Well, when we encounter the word, we know we are being presented with something more than clear reason, but also rhetoric especially tuned to convince, even where reason fails. There's nothing wrong with heartfelt writing, really, but by putting this forward, a flag goes up, and cautious readers like me take extra caution, while incautious readers feel pleased.

It's a signal, then, of a major element of in-group/out-group (esoteric/exoteric) affiliation and recruitment.

A person in philosophy often doesn't want to be recruited. He simply wants to understand. For a philosopher, affiliations take care of themselves. First comes knowledge.

Of course, in other writings, non-philosophical writings, the heartfelt and the prophetic and all the rest are utterly appropriate. I engage in them all the time. But I do so mainly when I have reason to expect agreement on the value or commitment upon which I rest my case.

I long ago gave up on the Atonement as making any sense. So an argument that is heartfelt about it will simply not speak to the values I do have. What values are those? Virtue as excellence through balance, justice as responsibility attributed in a context of liberty, and reasoning as a process of finding the best reasons for believing . . . by evidence and logic. I have no idea whether Albert Barnes could satisfy these demands of mine, because, so far, I've let a bad little blurb prevent me from giving his book a chance.

Why do I use OS X and not Linux? Very simple: OS X is very simple to use.

For example, I've used multiple monitors for years on my Macs, from OS 8.6 on. I use two extremely cheap 17" monitors now in Panther and Tiger. They are easy to set up, easy to configure.

Now, see how it's done under Linux:

First, as usual before any changes, you need backup current xorg.conf. Next open config in favourite editor, and add following lines under section Device:

Option "TwinView" "1"
Option "TwinViewXineramaInfoOrder" "DFP, CRT"
Option "UseDisplayDevice" "DFP, CRT"
Option "TwinViewOrientation" "DFP LeftOf CRT"
Option "NoPowerConnectorCheck"
Option "UseEdidFreqs" "1"
Option "Metamodes" "CRT-0: 1280x1024, DFP-0: 1680x1050"
Option "SecondMonitorHorizSync" "31-82"
Option "SecondMonitorVertRefresh" "56-76"

And that's just the beginning.

Linux is still for people who like to code. I reject it not because it is part of the white western male power structure, but because it still demands more attention than I'd like to details I've no interest in.

Contemplating the Sony Reader, in the pages of The Weekly Standard, David Skinner writes:

[T]he virtues of portability are being exaggerated, but the Sony Reader has other selling points; above all, its potential to reduce the clutter of books. For me, the perfect advertisement for this device would be a picture of my bedstand without its ever-present leaning tower of literature. More reading, the tagline would say, fewer books.

No, no. This is wrong. At the risk of pedantry, I suggest that the line should read

More reading; fewer bookshelves.

Or maybe this:

More reading. Fewer ungainly towers of stacked books.

I have no trouble with the look and feel of a book. But the housing of such books, that can become a problem.

I've designed many a computer reader in my head. Just its functionality. Not its technical foundation, of course. And I think I'd be a great part of the Apple team. Sony? I haven't read a Reader for a test read, yet.

But I do know something: A computer-based, PDA-like e-book reader should cost no more than a bookshelf. So the Reader has a long way to go. Over $300 is way over its ideal price.

Still, my ideal portable digital device, mimicking as it does the handheld codex, the book, could, I suppose, be priced nearly as much as a computer, because it could indeed do many jobs, from providing a drawing sketch pad through browsing the Web to . . . letting you read a book.

The key? Two pages . . . two screens. Perhaps I thought of it because I use two monitors on my computer. Perhaps because a book presents two pages to the reader at once. But that's just the beginning of a truly useful portable device, a device that would make the PDAs of today look as limited as Post-It Notes.

(I think of my design as the iCodex, because it so well imitates the design of a book. The iBook name was already taken! Problem? It would almost certainly be shortened to iCod! Well, Apple could use as a logo a cod — yes, a fish in profile — and give it those three original Apple colors! Perhaps with a bite taken out on the right.)

From Skinner's review, it's obvious the Sony Reader was not designed by Apple:

[T]he Reader's shortcomings prove that whatever stage of development it represents, it is not to literature what the iPod is to music. Pages can be marked to help you find your way back to a passage, and the "continue reading" function returns you to the page reached before the device was last turned off. But pages cannot be marked with marginalia, a common enough practice with books that one hopes--or perhaps the verb "to dream" would be better here--that Sony is trying to figure how to make something like it possible with the Reader.

Also, maneuverability within books and within the Reader is limited. Text is not searchable. Flipping through several pages in a row is a small ordeal. A row of small buttons beneath the screen allows you to choose items from a central menu. Unfortunately, the buttons, like the Reader's small mouse-type pointer, are awkward and hard to use. The buttons can help you shift through a long text but do not correspond to obvious reference points like chapter openings, and the selection system is slow to respond.

But really, I'm more in the market for books and bookshelves than a replacement for them. Physical books, made of paper, seem like a very, very good idea to me. They've lasted because they are very good at what they do. They perform a function well.

I don't expect them to be replaced any time soon.

The newspaper, on the other hand . . . well, its days are numbered.

It appears that Microsoft is the computer company most guilty of planned obsolescence. Its Vista OS makes obsolete numerous other products you may own, including (get this) some of Microsoft's own most-used products!

Contrast this with Apple. I can shove Tiger on a Beige G3 if I want, and have few problems (the Molar, though, won't work well with anything past Jaguar, alas). My own Mac is over six years old, and runs Apple's latest OS without a hitch.

If you ask me, most people's addiction to Microsoft products is an example of sheer and utter folly.

Looking at the new dollar coin, I see that the word Liberty does not appear. The Statue of Liberty was deemed enough of Liberty.

I was told, once, that U.S. coinage was originally designed to have a representation of Liberty on one side. So we saw a lot of Indians (in a sort of American irony, I guess) and a lot of classical androgynous represenations on our coinage.

And then the presidents took over.

My thought was that a dead president wasn't that bad of a representation of liberty; live ones, though, wouldn't work at all.

But how much better would it be were it not a bust of a president presented, but a head of a president, bleeding on a pike?

(Perhaps I'm in such a bloody turn of mind because a friend of mine just noticed that we've been seeing a lot of Assassination Movies recently!)