Quotulatiousness

April 17, 2011

Atlas Shrugged has good opening day in the theatres

Filed under: Liberty, Media — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:31

No, I haven’t seen the movie. But that’s more because I’m not much of a moviegoer. Others have seen it:

Let’s look at the numbers first. According to BoxOfficeMojo.com, Atlas Shrugged: Part 1, which was filmed with a meager $5 million budget, brought in $683,000 on Friday, the film’s opening night. It placed 13th overall in total box office receipts for the day. Not too shabby.

There is another interesting metric that BoxOfficeMojo.com provides. It breaks down a film’s estimated gross on a per theater basis. This is a fair thing to do considering Atlas Shrugged was only shown in 300 theaters and, say, Rio, the number one grossing film for the day, was shown in 3,826.

Atlas Shrugged’s per theater gross was $2,277, ranking third for the day. Rio’s per theater gross, on the other hand, was $2,666. One has to wonder, then, if Atlas Shrugged’s opening day would have grossed more if it would have received a wider release. After all, it’s per theater take was very near the number one grossing film for the day.

The critics have generally panned the movie, but the RottenTomatoes.com users have given it a 3.8 out of 5, which is quite positive.

April 14, 2011

British high court rules 2009 G20 “kettling” illegal

Filed under: Britain, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:29

While I may disagree with the protesters and their messages, the police “kettling” technique has always disturbed me far more. Britain’s high court has now ruled that police broke the law while kettling G20 protesters in 2009:

In a landmark judgment on Thursday, high court judges found for protesters who had claimed police treated them unfairly. It also criticised the use of force by officers.

In the case, the court heard that officers used punches to the face, slaps and shields against demonstrators who police chiefs accept had nothing to do with violence. The judgment does not strike down the police tactic of kettling or mass detention, but it will be seen as a rebuff to the Met.

The judgment places limits on the use of kettling. It says: “The police may only take such preventive action as a last resort catering for situations about to descend into violence.”

April 13, 2011

“Using the principle of ‘demonstrated preference,’ this music video ranks as the most popular in human history”

Filed under: Economics, Education, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:22

Jon sent me this article by Jeffrey Tucker which re-interprets Rebecca Black’s “Friday” as a libertarian allegory:

Far more significant is the underlying celebration of liberation that the day Friday represents. The kids featured in the video are of junior-high age, a time when adulthood is beginning to dawn and, with it, the realization of the captive state that the public school represents.

From the time that children are first institutionalized in these tax-funded cement structures, they are told the rules. Show up, obey the rules, accept the grades you are given, and never even think of escaping until you hear the bell. If you do escape, even peacefully of your own choice, you will be declared “truant,” which is the intentional and unauthorized absence from compulsory school.

This prison-like environment runs from Monday through Friday, from 8 a.m. to late afternoon, for at least ten years of every child’s life. It’s been called the “twelve-year sentence” for good reason. At some point, every kid in public school gains consciousness of the strange reality. You can acquiesce as the civic order demands, or you can protest and be declared a bum and a loser by society.

“Friday” beautifully illustrates the sheer banality of a life spent in this prison-like system, and the prospect of liberation that the weekend means. Partying, in this case, is just another word for freedom from state authority.

The largest segment of the video then deals with what this window of liberty, the weekend, means in the life of someone otherwise ensnared in a thicket of statism. Keep in mind here that the celebration of Friday in this context means more than it would for a worker in a factory, for example: for the worker is free to come and go, to apply for a job or quit, to negotiate terms of a contract, or whatever. All of this is denied to the kid in public school.

Ontario now closer to legal marijuana after court decision

Filed under: Cancon, Health, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:30

This news was rather unexpected (that is, I didn’t expect it):

Ontario is one step closer to the legalization of marijuana after the Ontario Superior Court struck down two key parts of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act that prohibit the possession and production of pot.

The court declared the rules that govern medical marijuana access and the prohibitions laid out in Sections 4 and 7 of the act “constitutionally invalid and of no force and effect” on Monday, effectively paving the way for legalization.

If the government does not respond within 90 days with a successful delay or re-regulation of marijuana, the drug will be legal to possess and produce in Ontario, where the decision is binding.

This is great news for those who need pot for pain relief: even though medical marijuana has been theoretically available for years, in practical terms, many could not get their doctors to sign the necessary paperwork.

In what will be a very obscure reference to non-Ontarians, Andrew Coyne twittered, “A place to grow . . .”

Update: However, carbon counters may be less than impressed, as a new study claims that marijuana “grow ops” alone consume 1% of the energy of the US:

Stoners are helping destroy the planet. Not by excessive snacking, but thanks to the high-energy demands of indoor marijuana cultivation. So says a US Government policy analyst with a Puritanical streak and an EYE for a SHOUTY HEADLINE.

Evan Mills, who works at Lawrence Livermore Labs but conducted the study in his own time, estimates that indoor pot growing accounts for 1 per cent of energy usage in the United States, with each spliff representing two pounds of CO2 emission. Heavy.

About 32 per cent of energy in the cultivation process is used by lighting equipment, including motorised lamp rails; 26 per cent by ventilation systems and dehumidifiers; 18 per cent by air conditioning; and the rest… uh, we can’t remember.

So, on current trends, just as the drug war heaves its final dying breath and marijuana is legalized in the United States, it’ll be banned under Green economy rules, right?

April 12, 2011

A “gun-crazed oil-drunk Albertan” on the NDP and Green platforms

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Economics, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:00

Colby Cosh tries to be nice about the Green Party and NDP platforms:

The contrast between the parties’ platforms is interesting: the Green ideas induce slightly more sheer nausea of the “literally everything in here is eye-slashingly horrible” kind, but at the same time there is a consoling breath of radicalism pervading Vision Green, a redeeming Small Is Beautiful spirit. At least, one feels, their nonsense is addressed to the individual. A typical laissez-faire economist would probably like the Green platform the least of the four on offer from national parties, but the Greens may be the strongest of all in advocating the core precept that prices are signals. At one point, denouncing market distortions created by corporate welfare, Vision Green approvingly quotes the maxim “Governments are not adept at picking winners, but losers are adept at picking governments.” (The saying is attributed to a 2006 book by Mark Milke of the Fraser Institute, but a gentleman named Paul Martin Jr. had uttered a version of it as early as 2000.)

That has always been the biggest failing of the regulatory view of politics: no matter how carefully you select the regulators, the regulated have many, many ways to (eventually) suborn them. Regulatory capture is the most common result, as the regulators become more closely attuned to the needs of their “charges” and work to protect them from competitors and social and technological change. What may have started as an attempt to rein-in over powerful industrial interests slowly becomes a de facto arm of government protection over the existing major players in that industry.

The New Democratic platform is more adult and serious than the Greens’ overall, which comes as no surprise. But it occurs to me, not for the first time this year, how much some folks love “trickle-down politics” when they are not busy denouncing “trickle-down economics”. How does Jack Layton hope to remedy the plight of the Canadian Indian? By “building a new relationship” with his politicians and band chiefs. How does he propose to improve the lot of artists? By flooding movie and TV producers, and funding agencies, with money and tax credits. He’ll help parents by giving money to day care entrepreneurs; he’ll sweeten the pot for “women’s groups” and “civil society groups”. One detects, perhaps mostly from prejudice, a suffocating sense of system-building, of unskeptical passion for bureaucracy, of disrespect for the sheer power of middlemen to make value disappear.

It’s useful to check who would be the actual beneficiaries of this kind of increased bureaucratization of life — and we’re generally not talking about the putative winners, but the actual ones — the ones who will staff the new agencies, bureaux, and commissions, the ones who will provide consulting services, and the ones who will study the results.

The Greens get a big thumbs-up from this corner for this particular clause of their platfom:

In 2008, according to the Treasury Board, Canada spent $61.3 million targeting illicit drugs, with a majority of that money going to law enforcement. Most of that was for the “war” against cannabis (marijuana). Marijuana prohibition is also prohibitively costly in other ways, including criminalizing youth and fostering organized crime. Cannabis prohibition, which has gone on for decades, has utterly failed and has not led to reduced drug use in Canada.

The Greens promise that cannabis would be removed from the schedule of illegal drugs and that the growth and sale of cannabis products would be regularized (and taxed), although with the usual shibboleth about the market needing to be restricted to small producers. If you’re making the stuff legal to sell, you shouldn’t try to micro-manage the product and producers you’re moving into the legal marketplace.

April 11, 2011

Political grandstanding at the expense of Muslim women

Filed under: Europe, France, Law, Liberty, Religion — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:22

Josie Appleton points out the logical inconsistencies of the various European “Ban the Burkha” movements:

In spite of the grave crisis of the Euro, the French cabinet will today (19 May[, 2010]) find the time to discuss a draft law banning the wearing of full-face veils in public places. Spain has just slashed public wages and is on the verge of economic collapse, yet the minister of work yesterday made the effort to visit Lleida and voice his support for the mayor’s plan to prohibit full Islamic facewear in the streets. Last month, Belgium’s coalition government had dissolved and there was talk of splitting up the country, yet the parliament managed to unite 136 out of 138 deputies to vote through a law banning the burqa and niqab.

How is it that European leaders, in such difficult times, have invested such energy in the matter of women’s facewear? Why was a Spanish schoolgirl who insisted on wearing a headscarf so fascinating as to draw the media’s attention away from government cuts? Why such detailed discussions on the intricacies of Islamic veils? Newspapers feature pullouts on the different forms of Islamic veil, and commentators explain why the niqab is so much worse than the shayla or the chandor, and indeed how the hijab is fine and even liberating for Muslim women.

The burqa-ban laws were introduced with such displays of speechmaking that anybody would think the fate of these countries hung on this single point of principle. One Belgian deputy admitted that ‘the image of our country abroad is more and more incomprehensible’, but said this near-unanimous vote banning the burqa and niqab rescued ‘an element of pride to be Belgian’. A French commission on the veil said the veil was ‘contrary to the values of the Republic’ and the parliament should make it clear that ‘all of France is saying “no” to the full veil’. The Spanish work minister said this clothing ‘clashes fundamentally with our society and equality between men and women. The values of our society cannot go into retreat.’

Lovely sounding stuff in front of the microphones, to be sure. Good photo ops for ambitious politicians, to a clamour of general approval and risking the loss of very little: there were so relatively few women wearing these articles of clothing — and few of them or their husbands/fathers/brothers likely have the vote anyway.

Now, pay heed to the Law of Unintended Consequences. Many of these women now have a choice: disobey the family head by going out in public without wearing the niqab/hijab/burkha (and risk beatings or even honour-killing), or follow the dictates of the family head and risk being arrested by the gendarmes.

How, exactly, is this going to benefit those poor women?

Update: The ban in France was passed in October and goes into effect today:

The centre-right government, which passed the law in October, has rolled out a public relations campaign to explain the ban and the rules of its application that includes posters, pamphlets and a government-hosted website.

Guidelines spelled out in the pamphlet forbid police from asking women to remove their burqa in the street. They will instead be escorted to a police station and asked to remove the veil there for identification.

[. . .]

In Avignon, Vaucluse, Reuters TV filmed a woman boarding a train wearing a niqab, unchallenged by police.

“It’s not an act of provocation,” said Kenza Drider. “I’m only carrying out my citizens’ rights, I’m not committing a crime … If they [police] ask me for identity papers I’ll show them, no problem.”

France has five million Muslims, but fewer than 2,000 women are believed actually to wear a face veil.

Many Muslim leaders have said they support neither the veil nor the law banning it.

April 9, 2011

QotD: “In terms of outcomes — the greatest individual Liberty for the greatest number — Canada is a FAR more Libertarian country than the United States”

Filed under: Cancon, Liberty, Quotations, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 00:07

As a conscious, de jure Libertarian; and antiauthoritarian to the very core of my being — I have more than once observed that in terms of outcomes — the greatest individual Liberty for the greatest number — Canada is a FAR more Libertarian country than the United States.

You see — and you will find this point made in core libertarian writings — liberty requires social infrastructure in order to ensure basic, common wants; otherwise those wants and needs can be and WILL be used by the minority against the majority to reduce them to a state of permanent serfdom.

Unless you can afford to say “take this job and shove it,” you are not free. Arguably, it should not be a trivial step, without consequence, but it absolutely MUST be possible — or you are not living in a free society.

Likewise, there must be robust regulations and vigilant guardians watching over the markets and the commons, so that — well, so that what is happening in economic terms in the US and Europe, does not happen. And in Canada, that is the case. Canada has not abandoned regulatory oversight of critical industries in order to pander to would be Madoffs and Enrons and the result is more — not less — economic opportunity and practical liberty for more people.

But US Libertarians are of the opinion that Liberty is the same as License. It is a movement of the self-indulgent, those who cry that “I have mine, and you are a luser who deserves nothing from me.”

Bob King, “Basement Bunker Libertarians”, Graphictruth, 2009-04-30

April 7, 2011

Friend of Randian cultists afraid to say what he really means

Filed under: Economics, Humour, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:13

The victim of Objectivist intimidation is poor little P.J. O’Rourke, who has to be very careful how he reviews Atlas Shrugged:

Atlas shrugged. And so did I.

The movie version of Ayn Rand’s novel treats its source material with such formal, reverent ceremoniousness that the uninitiated will feel they’ve wandered without a guide into the midst of the elaborate and interminable rituals of some obscure exotic tribe.

Meanwhile, members of that tribe of “Atlas Shrugged” fans will be wondering why director Paul Johansson doesn’t knock it off with the incantations, sacraments and recitations of liturgy and cut to the human sacrifice.

But that’s about as far as he dares to go, risking retribution from Randian cultists. Oh, wait . . . he does go a tiny bit further towards martyrdom after all:

But I will not pan “Atlas Shrugged.” I don’t have the guts. If you associate with Randians — and I do — saying anything critical about Ayn Rand is almost as scary as saying anything critical to Ayn Rand. What’s more, given how protective Randians are of Rand, I’m not sure she’s dead.

The woman is a force. But, let us not forget, she’s a force for good. Millions of people have read “Atlas Shruggged” and been brought around to common sense, never mind that the author and her characters don’t exhibit much of it. Ayn Rand, perhaps better than anyone in the 20th century, understood that the individual self-seeking we call an evil actually stands in noble contrast to the real evil of self-seeking collectives. (A rather Randian sentence.) It’s easy to make fun of Rand for being a simplistic philosopher, bombastic writer and — I’m just saying — crazy old bat. But the 20th century was no joke. A hundred years, from Bolsheviks to Al Qaeda, were spent proving Ayn Rand right.

Wil Wheaton gets the “special” treatment from the TSA

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:46

The TSA just got another rave review from a traveller who got the full treatment and didn’t like it:

Yesterday, I was touched — in my opinion, inappropriately — by a TSA agent at LAX.

I’m not going to talk about it in detail until I can speak with an attorney, but I’ve spent much of the last 24 hours replaying it over and over in my mind, and though some of the initial outrage has faded, I still feel sick and angry when I think about it.

What I want to say today is this: I believe that the choice we are currently given by the American government when we need to fly is morally wrong, unconstitutional, and does nothing to enhance passenger safety.

I further believe that when I choose to fly, I should not be forced to choose between submitting myself to a virtually-nude scan (and exposing myself to uncertain health risks due to radiation exposure), or enduring an aggressive, invasive patdown where a stranger puts his hands in my pants, and makes any contact at all with my genitals.

When I left the security screening yesterday, I didn’t feel safe. I felt violated, humiliated, assaulted, and angry. I felt like I never wanted to fly again. I was so furious and upset, my hands shook for quite some time after the ordeal was over. I felt sick to my stomach for hours.

This is wrong. Nobody should have to feel this way, just so we can get on an airplane. We have fundamental human and constitutional rights in America, and among those rights is a reasonable expectation of personal privacy, and freedom from unreasonable searches. I can not believe that the TSA and its supporters believe that what they are doing is reasonable and appropriate. Nobody should have to choose between a virtually-nude body scan or an aggressive, invasive patdown where a stranger puts his or her hands inside your pants and makes any contact at all with your genitals or breasts as a condition of flying.

H/T to occasional commenter “Da Wife” for the link.

April 5, 2011

Top Gear‘s Mexican jokes ruled not in breach of broadcasting regulations

Filed under: Americas, Britain, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:22

In a surprisingly robust defence of free speech, Ofcom (the British broadcasting regulator) will not apply sanctions against BBC’s popular motoring show Top Gear for their anti-Mexican jokes during a review of the Mastretta MXT:

The watchdog noted that Top Gear is “well-known for its irreverent style and sometimes outspoken humour” and that it “frequently uses national stereotypes as a comedic trope and that there were few, if any, nationalities that had not at some point been the subject of the presenters’ mockery”.

Given the audience’s likely familiarity with the presenters’ “mocking, playground-style humour”, Ofcom suggested the majority of viewers “would therefore be likely to have understood that the comments were being made for comic effect”.

The ruling concludes: “Ofcom is not an arbiter of good taste, but rather it must judge whether a broadcaster has applied generally accepted standards by ensuring that members of the public were given adequate protection from offensive material. Humour can frequently cause offence. However, Ofcom considers that to restrict humour only to material which does not cause offence would be an unnecessary restriction of freedom of expression.”

The jokes and the Mexican government’s response were discussed in February.

Grameen bank founder loses final appeal

Filed under: Asia, Economics, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:09

The founder of the revolutionary micro-capital Grameen Bank has been removed from position of managing director:

Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus has lost his final appeal in Bangladesh’s Supreme Court against his sacking from the Grameen micro-finance bank he founded.

The court upheld the decision by the central bank to remove him from office.

The bank said Professor Yunus had been improperly appointed while past retirement age.

But Professor Yunus said the attempt to remove him from the bank had been politically motivated.

The Grameen Bank has pioneered micro-lending to the poor by giving small loans to millions of borrowers.

April 4, 2011

“Free speech is a great idea, but we’re in a war”

Filed under: Government, Liberty, Politics, Religion, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:17

I love the smell of censorship in the morning. It smells like politics:

[Senator Lindsey Graham said] “I wish we could find a way to hold people accountable. Free speech is a great idea, but we’re in a war. During World War II, we had limits on what you could say if it would inspire the enemy. So, burning a Koran is a terrible thing but it doesn’t justify killing someone. Burning a Bible would be a terrible thing but it doesn’t justify murder. Having said that, anytime we can push back here in America against actions like this that put our troops at risk we should do it, and I look forward to working with Senators Kerry, and Reid, and others to condemn this, condemn violence all over the world based on the name of religion. But General Petreaus understand better than anybody else in America what happens when something like this is done in our country and he was right to condemn it and I think Congress would be right to reinforce what General Petreasus said.”

[. . .]

Here’s your answer Senator. No, you don’t need to hold hearings and you don’t need to be looking into ways to limit the free speech rights of American citizens because of the insane reaction of people thousands of miles away who were obviously ginned up by demagogues. War or not, Terry Jones had every right to do what he did.

Jim Geraghty perhaps put it most appropriately:

This pastor, Terry Jones, has a jones for media attention that makes the Kardashians look like J.D. Salinger. He knows that there’s a good chance that tossing the Koran on a pile of charcoal briquettes will make the easily-enraged in far-off lands lash out in that time-tested tradition, killing aid workers, and he doesn’t give a damn. He knows there’s a chance that the Muslim tantrums might put our men and women in uniform at greater risk. He still doesn’t give a damn. He has never given a damn. What, he’s gonna go weak-kneed at the thought of a unanimous Senate resolution?

April 3, 2011

“Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from offending culture, religion, traditions”

Filed under: Asia, Liberty, Religion — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:00

Pardon the crudity, but . . . Fuck That.

The BBC reports on the ongoing violence in Afghanistan after President Karzai made a big deal about some idiot in Florida burning a Koran:

The UN’s chief envoy to Afghanistan, Staffan de Mistura, blamed Friday’s violence in the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif on the Florida pastor who burnt the Koran on 20 March.

“I don’t think we should be blaming any Afghan,” Mr de Mistura said. “We should be blaming the person who produced the news — the one who burned the Koran. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from offending culture, religion, traditions.”

Okay, so murder is okay as long as you’ve been told that someone on the other side of the world burned your holy book?

The United Nations — our moral superiors.

April 1, 2011

Erasing your (digital) past

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:08

Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google said: “I don’t believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable, and recorded by everyone all the time.” Privacy is dying, if not already clinically dead, in the online world. If you really want (or need) to airbrush yourself out of the picture, here are some suggestions on how to go about doing it.

The Internet has made our world a lot smaller. It has also made our histories a lot better-catalogued and more-searchable, and those developments — coupled with the weird phenomenon that people’s common sense tends to fly out the window when it comes to posting information and pictures — aren’t always beneficial to us.

[. . .]

Instead of popping you into a Witness Protection program — or changing your name — let us show you five steps on how to disappear from the Internet.

Step 1: Know Thine Enemy

Before you take any action, you need to know what you’re trying to get rid of. So first, do a search for your name — don’t just search Google, though, search online people search aggregation sites such as ZabaSearch, Intelius, Pipl, and Spokeo.

Here’s how to run an online background check (on yourself) for free.

March 24, 2011

Reason.TV: That’s why they fought

Filed under: History, Humour, Liberty — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:06

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