Scissors Beats Paper

To become more competitive in the global market, American companies need to imitate their Japanese counterparts*. From the NYTimes.

Takashi Hashiyama...could not decide whether Christie's or Sotheby's should sell [his] company's art collection, which is worth more than $20 million, at next week's auctions in New York. He did not split the collection - which includes an important Cézanne landscape, an early Picasso street scene and a rare van Gogh view from the artist's Paris apartment - between the two houses, as sometimes happens. Nor did he decide to abandon the auction process and sell the paintings through a private dealer.

Instead, he resorted to an ancient method of decision-making that has been time-tested on playgrounds around the world: rock breaks scissors, scissors cuts paper, paper smothers rock...

Mr. Maclean's 11-year-old twins, Flora and Alice, turned out to be the experts Ms. Ishibashi was looking for. They play the game at school, Alice said, "practically every day." "Everybody knows you always start with scissors," she added. "Rock is way too obvious, and scissors beats paper." Flora piped in. "Since they were beginners, scissors was definitely the safest," she said, adding that if the other side were also to choose scissors and another round was required, the correct play would be to stick to scissors - because, as Alice explained, "Everybody expects you to choose rock"...

Instead of the usual method of playing the game with the hands, the teams were given a form explaining the rules. They were then asked to write one word in Japanese - rock, paper or scissors - on the paper. After each house had entered its decision, a Maspro manager looked at the choices. Christie's was the winner: scissors beat paper.

Words fail me.

*C'mon, work with me here - you remember the 1980's, doncha?

If I Had 15 Minutes With President Bush

Gallup has an interesting semi-scientific poll on the question of what people would say to President Bush if they could give him advice. The verbatim responses are online, as is an article describing the poll and a quantitative breakdown of the results. Some of my favorite answers:

That he's an idiot because he turned the surplus to the deficit. Female, age 35
I would tell him to do a good job. Female, age 90
Stop the (swear word) war. Male, age 56
Bring prices down on everything, the services and food and everything we buy has gone up so much!. Female, age 79
Find a cure for AIDS. Male, age 52
I don't know. Female, age 42

A Laptop on Every Lap

MIT's Nicholas Negroponte is pioneering an idea I've had for a few years (and he's probably had longer): building very cheap computers for third-worlders. He's aiming his initiative at children, whereas I had thought more of small businesses, but the effect would probably be the same. Check out the story at the CS Monitor.

From an economist's perspective, there are a few key things I would change about Negroponte's idea, especially as pertains to distribution. The idea here is the "Rental Car Principle". If laptops are considered school property and bought and maintained on the government dime, they won't last. Period. Whereas, if people have to buy them - even if the purchase is subsidized - they will take much better care, and won't get one on a whim, but rather to meet a real need. However, anything that gets cheap computers on the market in the third world is a good thing, so go for it, Nick!

Metavanity

In which Pascal, Kreeft, and Furth find themselves falling through an endless looking glass of vanities.

[Pascal:] Vanity is so firmly anchored in a man's heart that a soldier, a rough, a cook or a porter will boast and expect admirers, and even philosophers want them; those who write against them want to enjoy the prestige of having written well, those who read them want the prestige of having read themk, and perhaps I who write this want the same thing, perhaps my readers...

[Kreeft:] No escape! No exceptions.
Pascal too is sucked into the same syndrome he observes, by observing it only in order to be observed, read and praised.
So am I, who observe and write about hom.
So are you, who read us.

And am I, who blog them both.

To further demonstrate my vanity, I will recommend to you, vain reader, the book from which the above text is drawn, if only to point out obliquely that I am reading it. Said book is Kreeft's Christianity for Modern Pagans: Pascal's Pensees. But do not suppose yourself above vanity for not reading it: it is also vanity to think you are above this sort of vanity.

Friends Are Friends for Centuries

Thanks to a humorous McSweeney's feature for linking to Bartleby.com, purveyor of free, public-domain classics. I took the time to read Cicero's treatise on friendship, which he creatively writes in the form of a narrative among Romans considered old in his time. Laelius, whose friend (and Rome's great general) Scipio Africanus had recently passed away, undertakes a "discourse" on friendship for the benefit of and at the urging of his sons-in-law. It could have been written yesterday, save that such probity and practicality are rarely to be found in one modern man.

But I must at the very beginning lay down this principle—friendship can only exist between good men. I do not, however, press this too closely, like the philosophers who push their definitions to a superfluous accuracy. They have truth on their side, perhaps, but it is of no practical advantage. Those, I mean, who say that no one but the “wise” is “good.” Granted, by all means. But the “wisdom” they mean is one to which no mortal ever yet attained...

I conclude, then, that the plea of having acted in the interests of a friend is not a valid excuse for a wrong action. For, seeing that a belief in a man’s virtue is the original cause of friendship, friendship can hardly remain if virtue be abandoned. But if we decide it to be right to grant our friends whatever they wish, and to ask them for whatever we wish, perfect wisdom must be assumed on both sides if no mischief is to happen. But we cannot assume this perfect wisdom; for we are speaking only of such friends as are ordinarily to be met with...

Cicero's reason for writing has an echo in the opening of Luke's gospel. Cicero writes to Atticus:

You have often urged me to write something on Friendship, and I quite acknowledged that the subject seemed one worth everybody’s investigation, and specially suited to the close intimacy that has existed between you and me. Accordingly I was quite ready to benefit the public at your request.

Blurry Journalism, Blurrier 'Human Rights'

The BBC flirts with the line between journalism and commentary in the closing paragraph of an article describing the U.N. Human Rights Commission's unanimous resolution on the situation in Darfur, which fails to mention the Sudanese government by name.

Our correspondent says it is a compromise that prevented a messy row, something all sides wanted to avoid at a time when many say the commission lacks credibility.

But the fact that it took so long to agree on a resolution which does not even go as far as the UN Security Council which has already referred Sudan to the International Criminal Court is, human rights groups say, simply another sign that the UN's top human rights body needs reform.

Of course, their quote/editorial is right on. The members of the UNCHR are just plain stupid if they think that compromising with Sudan is a good way to address their own credibility gap. Of course, appointing Sudan to the Commission made the latter a mockery of itself in the first place, but you knew that.

Big Brother Watch

London Mayor Ken Livingstone wants to track every car in central London from satellite. The system would be in place in 2015 at the earliest, but will be tested on a few cars before that.

The British Parliament (or the House of Lords or the Queen or somebody!) needs to step in and give freedom a voice in a country with ever-greater government monitoring before it's too late. One thing is certain (empirically, anyway): once the government starts collecting a piece of information about you, they never stop. How long will it be before an English government actually has Orwellian surveillance capabilities? And how long will it be after that before it begins to use them maliciously?

"Show Us the DNA!"

The Globe today has an article on nerd nightlife in the Hub.

The nerds can get rowdy, in their own way. Before the projector flicked on [at] a recent Friday's Nerd Nite, the beer-swigging audience began to chant: "Nerds, nerds, nerds." When Boston University graduate student Heidi Fisher launched into her slideshow presentation on how humic acid impacts the sex lives of swordtail fish, she was periodically interrupted by hecklers shouting: "Show us the DNA!"

How come my nerdy life never has that kind of steamy excitement?

Hat tip to Soxaholix's temp.

Chomsky & Zinn on LOTR

If you want a laugh at the expense of the revisionist left, check out McSweeney's unused commentary on The Return of the King, with Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. Quite funny... here's an exerpt:

CHOMSKY: By the looks of it, these proto-Hobbits, Déagol and Sméagol, seem to enjoy modest pursuits such as fishing, laughing, wrestling.
ZINN: Choking, biting.
CHOMSKY: Which is an understandable reaction to the sudden appearance of excess wealth in a subsistence economy. The ring may not be magical, but it is made of gold.
ZINN: It's true. One shiny trinket is tossed into these creatures' lives and immediately you see the malodorous aftereffects of economic inequality, which is enacted here on a disturbingly intimate scale.
CHOMSKY: If the story ended here after Sméagol strangles Déagol, I think we'd have a really brilliant—almost Dreiserian—economic critique...

CHOMSKY: Have you noticed that there are few consonants in any of these names? What we see—or perhaps I should say, "What we hear"—is a kind of linguistic hierarchy.
ZINN: Between that of an Orcish name such as Grishnák and a Mannish name such as Eowyn, you mean?
CHOMSKY: Eowyn is hardly a name at all—it's just a series of dipthongs. When the Elves or wizards or their deluded human pawns have consonants in their names at all, they're mostly alveolar approximants or labiodental fricatives. Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas.
ZINN: Whereas the Orcs—
CHOMSKY: They get saddled with clotted sequences of nasals, velar plosives, and occasional palato-alveolar affricates. It's quite extraordinary. The abstract vowels in the overlords' names are clearly being valued at the expense of the more earthly consonants...

ZINN: We've been accused of being Orc apologists. I don't think that's fair.
CHOMSKY: I admire their pluck and I'm impressed by their loyalty to one another and their homeland, but I don't want to glorify them either. For example—
ZINN: The Orcish hazing that goes on.
CHOMSKY: Yes, Orcs do seem to haze one another. Calling each other "slugs" and "maggots," and what have you.
ZINN: But they're pulled from the earth. Being called a slug or a maggot might not be such a bad thing from the Orcish perspective. In the end, we shouldn't be talking about humanizing Orcs. Perhaps we should be talking about Orcanizing humans.
CHOMSKY: There's a movement I could get behind.

McSweeney's, as always, has lots more worthwhile reading online.

The Pope Is Dead, Long Live the Pope

Breaking News: the cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church have elected Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to the highest position in the Church. He is now Holy Father Benedict XVI.

AP reports that the vote was taken just before six in the evening, Eurotime, and announced shortly thereafter. He was elected on the fourth ballot.

Pope Benedict XVI is unlikely to serve as long as John Paul II - he is currently 78 years old. He was previously the "Dogma Tsar", serving as John Paul's party whip, to use an American analogy. How he will fare as the face of the church remains to be seen. Liberal, post-biblical Catholics will be displeased: the cardinals are sending a loud and clear message that they have no intention of following the world. On the other hand, the less-than-friendly persona Ratzinger is known for may be tough to shake as pontiff.

For now, however, the world's Catholics (and indeed all of us) can be pleased that the conclave ended quickly and without incident. Long live the Pope!

Dollars and Sense

The Washington Post editorial board is right on target in their warning about U.S. fiscal policy.

The problem is that nobody believes Mr. Snow's rhetoric. He reiterated the administration's plan to cut the deficit to less than 2 percent of gross domestic product, down from 3.6 percent last year. But this plan leaves out the cost of operations in Iraq and the general war on terrorism, and it assumes no reform of the alternative minimum tax and no rise in federal spending. Using more plausible assumptions, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities expects the budget deficit to hit a low of 2.5 percent in 2010 and then start rising again.

Economically speaking, this carelessness about the budget and current account (trade) deficits may be due to a radical monetarism on the part of the administration. If we escape a serious recession, they will be proved right. However, I join most economists on a middle road saying that even a perfect monetary policy cannot redeem irresponsibility on the fiscal side.

If we do have another major recession (or depression), it could lead to another shift in political economic thought. The Great Depression brought about Keynesianism; the Stagflation years swung the pendulum over to monetarism and supply-sidism; a new economic disaster could send it back to counter-cyclical spending and deficit management. A good understanding and responsible action on both sides would be nice, but perhaps that is too much to ask.

Forgiveness v. Hate

Check out the NYTimes account of reconciliation as a means of disarmament for brutal rebel soldiers in Uganda's civil war. This kind of consultation, restitution, and forgiveness could have been lifted straight from the Bible, and it represents the best hope, structurally, for closure to central Africa's "world war" that has been raging in different places for decades.

Weekend, RIP

I had a fantastic weekend with Ali Baba and Amylou, who drove down to visit me and the nation's capital. The weather cooperated marvelously, and we saw museums, monuments, parks, and all the spring flora in all its glory. Now it's back to the grind...

Two Cents

The Postal Service wants to raise the price of a letter stamp from 37 cents to 39. Here's my two cents (since they asked).

How much does it cost to send a letter? It has to be picked up by a mailman, processed, sent to a regional post office, flown or driven to the receiving office, and then hand-delivered at the other end. That's a lot of postal workers! Let's assume that they're charging us a reasonable rate. Let's also assume that postal employees cost (not make, but cost) $60,000 per year on average, including marginal overhead. That boils down to $32 per hour. Let's also assume that one-fourth of Postal Service expenses are non-delivery-personnel-related. This would include transportation, fixed overhead, and administration. Do the math and you get about half a minute spent on each letter. That's right: the Postal Service spends half a minute dealing with your letter. Amazing, huh?

China Too?

Has the worldwide "1848-style" democratic upsurge reached China? Huaxi Village residents' frustrations with pollution from a local chemical plant boiled over Sunday, leaving about thirty government employees and law-enforcement officers beaten and bruised. The issue is not yet settled, but it's significant that the government has done nothing to crack down. People from nearby are flocking to Huaxi Village to see the chaos. The government's silence is the loudest noise around, and people are coming to see it. Will this type of protest (and they are becoming more common) force Beijing to introduce more accountability to the Chinese people?

April 14

Seven-score years ago today, the President was assassinated for the first time in United States History. The New York Times the next day reported:

The theatre was densely crowded, and everybody seemed delighted with the scene before them. During the third act, and while there was a temporary pause for one of the actors to enter, a sharp report of a pistol was heard, which merely attracted attention, but suggesting nothing serious, until a man rushed to the front of the President's box, waving a long dagger in his right hand, and exclaiming "Sic semper tyrannis," and immediately leaped from the box, which was in the second tier, to the opposite side, making his escape amid the bewilderment of the audience from the rear of the theatre, and mounting a horse, fled.

The screams of Mrs. Lincoln first disclosed the fact to the audience that the President had been shot, when all present rose to their feet, rushing toward the stage, many exclaiming "Hang him! Hang him!"

The excitement was of the wildest possible description, and of course there was an abrupt termination of the theatrical performance.

The term "undisclosed location" appears nowhere. Instead, it closes:

Vice-President Johnson is in the city, and his headquarters are guarded by troops.

Outsider

Opinion Journal highlights South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford as a potential outside shot at the presidential nomination in 2008. He's got some good credentials: three-term congressman, retired in line with his term-limits belief; modernizing, reformist governor; pro-business and pro-earner fiscal policy; good public bearing and winning record. He'll need to win his big battle on government reform in Columbia, but if he does so well, he could gain the kind of attention and approbation needed to begin a national campaign. Not a likely candidate - his "deep red state" roots mean he brings no swing state with him - but a solid Republican who might capture the nation's imagination.

InstantReplay Sells Out

We've become low-down, good-for-nothing sellouts. So please click the Google Ads in the right navbar to donate to the InstantReplay Bandwidth Fund.

Spotlight: Rochester Econ Prof

Opinion Journal today has a book review by a future professor of mine, Dr. Steven Landsburg, on a layman's book by another economist, Dr. Steven Levitt of the prestigious University of Chicago.

Dr. Landsburg, whose review is so rosy he has to excuse himself, is a University of Chicago alumnus. I think I detect a pattern.

Manifest EuroDestiny

Europe is set to continue its eastward expansion, approving the addition of Romania and Bulgaria as early as 2007. This probably will not be met, but if it is, the weight of the weak, post-communist economies and the number of people willing to emigrate to the West for work could be a serious crisis. I don't know how much the EU can absorb into the already soft economies of France and Germany, and the center and right parties in Europes capitals are no doubt raising the same questions.

Of course, if their economies liberalized a bit, the influx of resources and cheap, well-educated labor could cause a huge economic boom, just as the influx of Eastern Europeans to the U.S. helped fuel our 1870 to 1929 boom. Either way, however, it'll be socially disruptive and raise serious questions about identity and society for a lot of Europeans.

Huge Post on Christianity

You may be interested in reading the essay I wrote about political Christianity on Watchblog.

Letters From War

Hat tip to the CS Monitor for highlighting an online museum-esque exhibition of American soldiers' letters from war, from 1776 to 2003. They've got a clever scroll-over reading tool that allows you to read the text in a simple font, but on the background of the actual handwritten letter.

Hezbollah Flexes

Terrorist group/political party/microstate Hezbollah fired a shot across Israel's bows today, flying an unmanned drone airplane south to Acco and then turning around and flying home before Israeli forces could intercept it. The warning is clear: we can deliver a payload to your urban centers without risking a man. This is a potentially serious capability upgrade for Hezbollah, and while they are very unlikely to use it, it's another brick in the wall of deterrent offensive weapons that protects them from outside attack.

Hat tip to Drudge

Genocide and Conscience

The MSM has conscientiously continued its advocacy on behalf of the victims of the crisis in Darfur; today's editorial in the Post is the latest piece calling for serious government action. It shrinks not from using the word "genocide" to describe the crisis, a word first officially sanctioned by the U.S. government. Is that an accurate description? And how exactly should the U.S. involve itself?

A few weeks ago, actor Don Cheadle and analyst John Prendergast wrote in the Wall Street Journal, "We need to make it a little warmer, a little more uncomfortable for those politicians who would look away. Just a few more degrees. Just a few more thousand letters. It is, frankly, that simple." In InstantReplay's post highlighting their article, I provided links for readers to contact their legislators. Normally, that would mean I myself had contacted them; in this case, I could not quite bring myself to. Why?

I have strong "anti-genocide credentials". I am a third-generation Holocaust survivor and I spent a month in Rwanda getting to know a few of the broken hearts left behind from their genocide. I absolutely believe that genocide is a worthy and worthwhile reason to go to war, if doing so has a reasonable chance of ending the genocide.

So why do I hesitate to pull out the stops on Darfur?

First, it is more complex than it sounds. The conflict was begun by rebels from Darfur called the Sudan Liberation Movement (or Army)*, which attacked government installations in Darfur in 2003. Sudan experts generally consider that the Khartoum government's influence is absolute only in the capital city, and tails off sharply beyond 100 to 200 miles thence. Darfur is a good 400 miles from Khartoum. A Darfur rebellion, therefore, has a legitimate chance of success. In response to the attacks, the Sudanese government armed and encouraged the "more Arab" nomads against their traditional enemies, the "less Arab" sedentary farmers. These irregulars (the "Janjaweed") have behaved like raiders from any time or place, visiting pillage, plunder and rapine upon the farmers.

Clearly, violence and injustice is taking place in an organized and inexcusable way. But is it genocide? I have seen no reports of racist or otherwise dehumanizing rhetoric, nor have I seen reports of mass murder techniques, such as chemical weapons, long firing squads, death marches, etc. The high death toll is not primarily from violent killings, it seems, but from starvation and disease among refugees. Meanwhile, the rebels continue to fight back against the Janjaweed, in a battle where there are plenty of "bad guys" but no clear-cut "good guys".

So what should the West do? Providing food and shelter for refugees is an easy call, and we have done well in doing so. Getting buy-in from Sudan's neighbors is also critical, and that has also been done. The troops on the ground are 2,000 African Union peacekeepers, and though this force is clearly too small in size, its makeup seems to be pleasingly uncontroversial.

In my mind, the United States and United Kingdom (which will no doubt act in tandem if at all) have two options. The first is to pursue the current course of multilateral relief and pressure. For instance, the U.S. recently agreed to allow a Security Council resolution referring 51 potential war criminals to the International Criminal Court for investigation and prosecution, despite the Bush administration's opposition to the Court's existence. By compromising in this way, the U.S. can keep the whole world engaged at a low but steady level, and seek to contain the conflict until it burns itself out.

The second option is to break sharply with international feeling and act unilaterally to solve the conflict. This would mean putting American and British Commonwealth troops on the ground. It would be an easy campaign, no doubt, because the Janjaweed would melt back into their tribes as soon as they saw a U.S. helicopter. We could not destroy the Janjaweed without treating their home villages the same way they have treated the farmers'. Since we are unwilling to slaughter entire tribes, this war would have no stopping point short of overthrowing the Khartoum government and taking on a nation-building project similar to what we are doing in Afghanistan. This would alienate our Arab allies (Egypt especially) and whip Islamists, who have long been predicting that America wants to take their region over and make them all Christians, into a frenzy. It would stop the killing and starvation in Darfur, but would destablize all of Sudan, and would widen and deepen the perceived conflict between America and the Arab People, in their eyes.

This second option may become necessary. The Sudanese regime is certainly no friend of the world nor of its populace, and the Janjaweed deserve to be punished. If and when we see that they are truly embarked on a campaign of extermination, we must step in. But until that is determined, I cannot justify telling the most powerful military the world has ever known to take sides in a tribal turf war in the Sahel.

If you disagree with me, please contact your representative and senators. Just as before, I cannot bring myself to advocate U.S. military involvement in Darfur, but I want to encourage those who believe it is necessary to themselves act on that belief. If your conscience disagrees with mine, obey yours - and tell those who represent you.

* The Sudan Liberation Movement/Army, formerly the Darfur Liberation Front, is not to be confused with the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army, which recently signed a five-year truce with the government, ending fighting in southern Sudan.

Note: this post was originally written for Watchblog

Like, Sweet

Napoleon Dynamite, last year's totally sweet movie about real life as a high school nerd, wins unanimous approbation from the Idaho legislature. Some of the text:

WHEREAS, any members of the House of Representatives or the Senate of the Legislature of the State of Idaho who choose to vote "Nay" on this concurrent resolution are "FREAKIN' IDIOTS!" and run the risk of having the "Worst Day of Their Lives!"

Hat tip to The Dead Parrot Society

Instant Review: Atlas Shrugged

Atlas Shrugged was due at the library today, so I hunkered down and finished the last two-hundred pages. It's an important book, though, so I'll take the time to write my thoughts before trucking it back to the library.

Before I begin, Atlas Shrugged is a very easy book to criticize. It's too ambitious, it's too long, it's too polemical, it's too unedited, and contains some absurdly long monologues that are Ayn Rand's vehicle for expressing her philosophical arguments. I will try to move beyond these elements in my criticism and look for the positive as well.

First the negative: besides the surface elements mentioned above, the biggest void to me was the lack of reader buy-in. As a reader, I simply couldn't get into the illusion of reality that makes fiction tick. Fiction derives its motive power from its ability to present a plausible scenario, a character or situation with which the reader identifies. Rand simply didn't convince me that her dystopia could occur or that the characters presented at so much length were real people with real hearts and minds.

And the positive: the middle of the book is the best part; it's the most real and most believable. It has a good plot (the whole book does, in fact), and it presents very interesting ideas about society. Many of the socialistic platitudes offered by the "bad guys" are frighteningly reminiscent of what you hear today. The story exposes the logical end of the post-modernist pablum we've gotten so used to. She demolishes the idea of need-based entitlement, and exposes the destructiveness of philosophies such as materialism, gnosticism, and nihilism.

In my analysis, the negatives outweigh the positives: Ayn Rand's opus falls short of her goals. Rand wanted to write a book that would fuse her love of fiction and her philosophy into a great work of literature. However, what comes across most strongly is the philosophy. It's too overstated: the story speaks for itself, and the monologues get preachy after a while. Worst of all, she fails to offer a convincing alternative for mankind. Her philosophy is based on the unstated premise that men are gods, that is, unsurpassed, independent, and fully capable. She leaves no room for the weak, and makes no admission of human sin. She makes a good point when she says (repeatedly) that the alternative to the dollar is the gun; she fails to see that love of the former is what most often drives men to use the latter.

Atlas Shrugged is a desperate plea for modernity. Rand was prescient enough to see that the post-modernization of the universities in her time would lead to the post-modernization of all of society in our time; she did not present a plausible alternative. But for all those who hunger for the hard facts, straight lines, and solid colors of the Age of Reason, Atlas Shrugged is a tome that will stir your soul.

The Quarterly Staple, Issue #3

Check out the new issue of Schtaple's online lit magazine. Some interesting short fiction by young authors. This issue is a bit more limited, in my humble opinion, than previous ones: a lot of the writing focuses on breasts, drugs, and death, all of which are overdone in the underground media. My favorite article was G. David Schwartz's Wondrous Journey, which I can best describe as 'corporate nihilism.' Or perhaps it's corporate existentialism. But it's a very interesting read: despite being utterly abstract and subjectively opaque it remains a surprisingly easy and relaxing read, sort of like Kafka without the angst. Anyway, kudos to Schtaple for putting this bad boy together; keep up the good work!

Rutgers University, Again

After I emailed University of Rochester yesterday to indicate my acceptance of their offer of admission, I got a letter from Rutgers upping the ante: now they're offering a full scholarship and a $17,000 stipend. That's an attractive chunk of money, but I just keep repeating the words "New Jersey" over and over in my head and the temptation goes away.

Boston College

My last graduate school got back to me today. Well, more properly, they picked up the phone when I called. Rather than have the courtesy to notify me, they waited for me to call to tell me that I've been waitlisted, with a "remote possibility of receiving an offer."

And the winner is... the University of Rochester! I see the hand of God in my acceptances: the only school to offer me any funding at all was the best one to which I applied. There's no human logic to explain why four lower-ranked schools would take a pass on me while Rochester rolled out the red carpet (aka, the full tuition waiver). So praise God!

Necrotourism?

This from the BBC is just plain weird:

City authorities are on Thursday due to sign a deal with a Japanese company to develop the site's tourist potential. Around 17,000 people are buried there in mass graves. The skulls of around half are displayed behind glass panels on a Buddhist stupa at the site. Tourist buses regularly bump down the dirt track to the memorial.

Couldn't they at least call them "pilgrims" or something? There's got to be a more appropriate way of dealing with the artifacts of genocide.

Introducing: the Reverend Al

Thanks to LaShawn for referring me to Reverend Al Mohler's blog at Crosswalk. I know the Reverend Al as a speaker at conferences and a reference in sermons; his presence is truly a grace to the blogosphere. He writes an article per day during the week, and the recent ones are lengthy, intelligent, and thought-provoking. InstantReplay continues its mission to promote content of high intellectual calliber in the blogosphere by blogrolling Rev. Al Mohler, President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

GOP Should Drop Him Without Delay

DrudgeReport has broken tomorrow's front-page news:

Ethical questions surrounding House Majority Leader Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas intensify... A six-day trip to Moscow in 1997 by then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, was underwritten by business interests lobbying in support of the Russian government, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the trip arrangements.

This isn't a "high crime" or misdemeanor, from the sound of it, but it's just another strike against a man who already has sketchy ethics and an unfriendly nature. The GOP needs someone to lead who the American people can identify as a leader. Just as they benefited from shedding the racist legacy of Trent Lott, they can benefit from shedding the unethical, gloves-off belligerence of DeLay.

Flatism

Thomas Friedman is once again ahead of the curve, and created the word "flatism" to describe the new world economy. His article in the Times is worth the twenty minutes it takes to read. Some exerpts...

It all happened while we were sleeping, or rather while we were focused on 9/11, the dot-com bust and Enron... which is why it's time to wake up and prepare ourselves for this flat world, because others already are, and there is no time to waste.

We have been slow to rise to the challenge of flatism, in contrast to Communism, maybe because flatism doesn't involve ICBM missiles aimed at our cities. Indeed, the hot line, which used to connect the Kremlin with the White House, has been replaced by the help line, which connects everyone in America to call centers in Bangalore. While the other end of the hot line might have had Leonid Brezhnev threatening nuclear war, the other end of the help line just has a soft voice eager to help you sort out your AOL bill or collaborate with you on a new piece of software. No, that voice has none of the menace of Nikita Khrushchev pounding a shoe on the table at the United Nations, and it has none of the sinister snarl of the bad guys in From Russia With Love. No, that voice on the help line just has a friendly Indian lilt that masks any sense of threat or challenge. It simply says: "Hello, my name is Rajiv. Can I help you?"

This quiet crisis is a product of three gaps now plaguing American society. The first is an ''ambition gap.'' Compared with the young, energetic Indians and Chinese, too many Americans have gotten too lazy. As David Rothkopf, a former official in the Clinton Commerce Department, puts it, "The real entitlement we need to get rid of is our sense of entitlement."

As Gates put it: "When I compare our high schools to what I see when I'm traveling abroad, I am terrified for our work force of tomorrow. In math and science, our fourth graders are among the top students in the world. By eighth grade, they're in the middle of the pack. By 12th grade, U.S. students are scoring near the bottom of all industrialized nations..."

So parents, throw away the Game Boy, turn off the television and get your kids to work. There is no sugar-coating this: in a flat world, every individual is going to have to run a little faster if he or she wants to advance his or her standard of living.

Friedman's call for education, ambition, and competition among Americans is, for whites, the corrollary to Bill Cosby's call for a straightening-up among black Americans. All of us have gotten a little sloppy, and if we want to eat, we're going to have to earn it. I've long said that my generation is the first that can't reasonably expect to do better than its parents - but it's also true that mine is just the second generation of Americans that doesn't expect to work hard.

Transition of Power

Erstwhile Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev has signed a resignation agreement, clearing the way for a relatively democrative - and quite nonviolent - transition of power. Bravo!

When the Left is Right

Maureen Dowd, who is slightly to the left of Mao Tse-Tung, is right. And the right should admit it. The selective hearing, the intelligence manipulation, and the mendacious presentation of data by the Bush administration during the run-up to the Iraq War will never be justified by its outcome.

What Bush could have and should have done in 2002 and 2003 is make a case for the removal of Saddam Hussein based on his repressiveness and the general wet blanket of ineffective government that is smothering the Arab world. He should have brought the Arab Human Development Report to the podium with him and thumped it like a Bible. He should have quoted some dead white males about "making the world safe for democracy". He should have said up front that we had unfinished business there, and that this was needed to protect America's credibility.

If Bush had said those things, I would still not have supported the war. After all, my convictions were based on an understanding of Arab feeling toward the U.S., not on any prescient knowledge about the nonexistence of WMD's. However, it would have been a polite, above-board policy disagreement. Instead, we have a president who took our country to war based on a lie. Bush reminds me more and more of John F. Kennedy. Yikes.

Selective Tolerance

This article in the CS Monitor is not worthy of that paper's august pages, and is a prime display of the selective tolerance of post-modern humanism. The article is critical in tone and content of Indian Christians who seek converts. It gives a pass to the Hindu caste system, and speaks in neutral tones about Hindus' own convert-seeking among tribal pagans. It does not even seem to occur to the author that Christianity could be a legitimately better option - even in a worldly sense - than being a Hindu dwali, or "untouchable". And the possibility that the evangelical Christians could be anything other than totally self-deceived is completely outside the author's metanarrative.

Martyrs

InstantReplay extends its sympathy to the Wycliffe community after the murder of a couple in Guyana yesterday.

[T]he Hicks had lived in Guyana for almost a decade, working for the Dallas-based Wycliffe Bible Translators and the Summer Institute of Linguistics in Florida... Kenneth Glover, a spokesman for the Guyana Bible College, said the Hicks were translating the Bible into the Wapishana language spoken by thousands of Indians in the border region, which is a cattle and peanut-farming region about 230 miles southwest of Georgetown, the capital.

The murder does not seem religiously motivated; police suspect that it was committed by thieves frustrated to find no money in the Hicks' home. To me, it's still a martyrdom, and we hope and pray that someone will take courage and step in to complete their work.

Pedants of America, UNITE!

If you're a DC-area resident, make time today to get out for the Beg The Question rally at the Capitol steps. It is time for elitists and pedants everywhere to arise in defense of those values we hold dear: whole infinitives, proper pronunciation of 'nuclear', and correct use of Latin phrases, inter alia.

Whither Information?

Opinion Journal carries a piece on MGM v. Grokster and the can of legal worms opened by it. The author offers a reasonable solution to the problem of illegal information-sharing:

It may seem quaintly old school to suggest that people should stop downloading culture without paying simply because it's the right thing to do. But that may be the best option available.

He also waxes nostalgic about the fate of many artists, current and potential, if record sales are replaced by illegal downloading. But InstantReplay would like to remind the world (if only they could hear us) that the concept of earning money by recording music or video is a new phenomenon. Actors, singers and others made their living for thousands of years in live performance only; we wouldn't find it a tragedy if that became the norm once again.

Why is it possible to download music for free? Why don't we have this problem with, say, oranges or legal opinions? The reason is obvious but is often missed: nothing new is created. Copying a piece of music onto a CD is only marginally more expensive than downloading it onto your memory space. In other words, musicians have made a profit by selling a one-time product many, many times. Economically, this worked reasonably well for both sides.

The new technology, however, removes the artificial barriers in the recorded music market. Since authorities have no reasonable way to crack down on free downloads, musicians and their handlers will have to seek other market structures or will be forced out of the recorded music market.

To keep the recorded music market at its current size, the only plausible market structure I can think of is one in which records cost thousands of dollars. Artists would sell only a few copies of their music, but the sales would be more akin to licensing. Online distributors would purchase the records and be forced to fend for themselves in order to protect their profit margins. Producers could easily keep the appetite for their music alive by giving or selling the music to radio stations. This is by no means flawless, but it has the distinct benefit of making the initial transaction - when the artist first sells a CD - a much fairer encounter.

Ultimately, the market for recorded music may simply be unsustainable at this level. Selling information only works when access to that information is limited, and in this world, that's a rare thing. In the long run, the Journal's advice may be the only way to protect the music world as we know it.

Does this affect other forms of information? Yes and no. What we're seeing with music now is just a warm-up for the fracas that will occur over movies once the technology for transmitting them easily saturates the market. Recorded music has always been readily available - on the radio. But films are expensive, have low re-usability compared to music, and are tightly controlled for years after release. Once they can be easily "shared" free and easily piped to your TV, the movie-rental market could hemorrhage faster than the Hoover Dam in a nuclear holocaust.

On the other hand, I suspect that the written word is the best insulated. Newspapers (like the Journal) can charge admission or use .pdf files to slow down free dissemination enough to make it a non-threat, if they so desire. And books are simply too long to read on a computer. Until screens are as readable, reliable, portable, and cozy as paperback books, the latter will continue to thrive. What's more, books aren't distributed in digitized format, so someone would have to type them up before distributing online, and the lack of profitability is ample disincentive. So I say, Long live the information revolution.

Disclaimer: I have never downloaded music illegally, nor do I recommend that readers do so. I also have not purchased a CD in the last two years.