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Liberty and Power

  • Sep 16, 2004

    Lacking Metrics

    by Liberty and Power

    Here's a piece I had in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune last weekend on whether we're winning the war on terror. Registration's a pain, so I'll reproduce it here:

    We're at war not with a state but an armed ideology

    Gene Healy

    September 12, 2004

    Last October, in an internal Pentagon memo leaked to the press, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld hit on the key question in assessing U.S. progress in the war

  • Sep 16, 2004

    Question for L&P Economists

    by Liberty and Power

    Why do so many clothing store dressing rooms use harsh fluorescent lights? I would think that more flattering light would make customers look better in the clothing they're trying on, which would translate into higher sales.

    Any theories?

    My only guess is the obvious -- that the difference in cost between cheaper fluorescent lights and more expensive "warmer" lighting more than offsets any increase in clothing sales that would come with the latter.
  • Sep 16, 2004

    Ivan from on high

    by Liberty and Power

    Yikes! If it looks scary from up here, I'd hate to be inside. Good luck, Roderick! (Hat tip to Lileks for the pic)
  • Sep 16, 2004

    Bringing Down Big Java

    by Liberty and Power

    I really like this quote from an NAH study on caffeine, which I found on the website of the Center for Science in the Public Interest scolds:
    ...decaf drinkers are more likely than other coffee drinkers to take care of themselves. They tend to take more vitamins, exercise more faithfully, and eat more cruciferous vegetables like broccoli. They're even more likely to use seat belts when they drive.

    And heavy-coffee-drinkers
  • Sep 16, 2004

    Apparently, Republicans in Congress Have Solved Terrorism

    by Liberty and Power

    Norbizness roudns up gay marriage quotes from Republicans prone to hyperbole. The following two are particularly compelling during the the week of the third-year anniversary of September 11:
    "It sort of bothers me a little bit when I hear the comment made--and it has been made over and over, not only here on the floor but by many pundits--about we have more important things to do. I cannot think of anything more imp
  • Sep 16, 2004

    44...

    by Liberty and Power

    ...U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq already this month.

    Which means we're on pace for the second deadliest month since the war began, eighteen months later.

    Wonder how many in Congress would have supported the war if they'd known there'd be no WMD's, no al-Qaeda connection, that Iraq in fact would not be paying for its own reconstruction, and that one and a half years later, we'd still be losing somewhere between on
  • Sep 15, 2004

    Tempest-Tost

    by Liberty and Power

    [cross-posted at Austro-Athenian Empire]

    Auburn University is directly in the path of Hurricane Ivan, so I will probably be incommunicado for a few days. Auburn's email server is shutting down tonight as a precaution (so any email to me will presumably bounce for a while); also, power is likely to go out all over the area tomorrow, and might not be restored for several days. So farewell, civilisation!
  • Sep 15, 2004

    John M. Palmer and the Gold Democrats

    by Liberty and Power

    On this day in 1817, John M. Palmer was born. He was a key figure in the"last stand" of classical liberalism as a political movement in the nineteenth century. When the Democratic Party, repudiated Grover Cleveland, a defender of the gold standard, freer trade, and anti-imperialism, many of his followers formed a new third party, the National (

  • Sep 15, 2004

    Nine Innings from Ground Zero

    by Liberty and Power

    I watched last night's HBO showing of"Nine Innings from Ground Zero." It's got some problems as a documentary, but for this Yankee fan, it had many moments of poignancy. It told the story of how baseball helped to heal many of the gaping wounds in the souls of New Yorkers in the days after the 9/11 attack.

    The film mentioned that a Yankee game had been rained out the night before the tragedy. I remember it well.

  • Sep 14, 2004

    Topsy-Turvy

    by Liberty and Power

    What a topsy-turvy election! One candidate chose to fight in Vietnam. One candidate chose not to. Opponents of that war back the first, while supporters of that war back the second.
  • Sep 14, 2004

    Long reply to critics on war issues

    by Liberty and Power

    Ok, several responses to my Friday post have come in over the weekend, so I’ll make several replies together here. John Shaffer writes in the comments: What about the Arab proverb,"Better 100 years of tyranny than one night of anarchy." Surely that proverb refers to chaos, not anarcho-capitalism, but even in that case, it’s not clear that 100 years, or even 10 years, of secret police torture and
  • Sep 14, 2004

    Richard Cobden on Non-Intervention

    by Liberty and Power

    Reading Richard Cobden (1804-1865), the great Victorian-era champion of free trade, I discovered that he was also eloquent and passionate in his loathing of British imperialism and militarism. Here are some choice passages.

    “How shall a profession which withdraws from productive industry the ablest of the human race, and teaches them systematically the best modes of destroying mankind, which awards honours only in proportion to the number of victims offered at its sanguinary altar,
  • Sep 14, 2004

    Sovereignty again

    by Liberty and Power

    Carlin Romano has a great essay on sovereignty in the free section of the Chronicle of Higher Ed. (My previous blog entry on that was here.)