JayB

Some of the characteristics that her base seem to have qualms about - excessively calculating, etc - actually provide me with a substantial measure of reassurance concerning the kind of policies that she'd actually implement once she took office. I've been willing to accept politicians who at least rhetorically address some of the concerns of the wackier elements of the Republican electorate for some time as a lesser-of-all-evils thing so long as they and their cabinet are more likely to champion policies that I support in more concrete ways, in areas that I consider more consequential. However, when you've got a guy who's an isolationist economic flat-earther *and* has signaled his intention to cater to the wingnut contingent in the party way more than Bush has - that's just a bridge to far for me.

Given that the poorest class of people in the US probably have material wealth (car, food, roof over head, indoor plumbing, electricity, freezer, over, clean drinking water, etc) that far exceeds that of at least 3/4ths of the world's population - it's worth asking whether or not it makes sense to focus on absolute vs relative standards of living when drawing conclusions about what their material conditions say about the state of our society.

No, Jays post is an elitest argument that is designed to distract from the real issues. If you don't think there is a real, actually true underclass (hidden) in our society then you need to get on your tivo and check out the New Orleans Hurricane aftermath. As hard as it may be for your little brain to figure out, things "arn't all better" soly because of rich guys, working folks built the middle class and that constant is under great threat from the freemarket neofacist mentality that seems to be on the rise these days. Kiss me first sweety, I might even give you a drink if youre thirsty. Was the article arguing that the underclass doesn't exist? The gist of the article seemed to be that - income inequality and material inequality aren't quite the same. - When it comes to material deprivation, in comparison to the wealthiest people in society, the poorest people in today's society are immeasurably better off than the poorest of 20, 40, 80, and 120 years ago. You can thank inventors and entrepreneurs for substantial part of that improvement.

Also suggesting that Obama is in the lead at this point. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22484066/

NBC is calling it for Huckabee. If he wins the nomination (which he won't), I'll be voting for the Democratic candidate, unless it's Edwards.

If we are counting cc then add +1 to my column...

Dependency Theory?A bit off the mark. It's more of a leftist view of European and then U.S. support of repressive regimes, including the violent overthrow of independent nationalist governments, in order to maintain the exploitation of raw goods by offshore capitalist interests--our wealth and rights secured against the forceful denial of others' in their own countries. But more to the point is that it amounts to a biased criticism of a foreign power, much like this Black Book of Communism promises to be. The notion that South Americans required foreign capital and technology to sustain the brutality, incompetence, and corruption that have been the hallmarks of their history is a notion that's laughable enough to be worthy of a...leftist intellectual from South America.

"I'm self-employed, squandered way more than just my youth climbing and now will be working til I die to pay for my sins... " I don't get the idea that you were born rich - yet it sounds as though you are working independently as a programmer/consultant and bill at a pretty healthy hourly rate for your services. What gives?

I'd prefer to go back to the days of tuning my edges once per season, daytime temps that never dip below the low teens, big-mountain terrain covered by staggering amounts of natural snow but... Here's the existential quesion of the day: Who is the least happy? The Eastern Skier in deep powder, or the Western skier on ice?

Are you including yourself in this picture, Joseph? If not - why not? How is it that you haven't wound up as another exhibit A in this descriptive summary? How many people alive today would trade places with *any* of their ancestors if they could?

(Bill)Couldn't agree more. One of the more striking differences that I noticed while out here on the Least Coast has to do with graveyards. It's not terribly difficult to come across graveyards that date to ~1650-1750 out here, and the first thing that I noticed was the cluster of little headstones surrounding the big ones. In one case there were something like eleven little tombstones surrounding a cluster of four larger ones, one of which belonged to the father. The others which belonged to his three wives, two of who died in their late-teens or early twenties. Given that they died within days or weeks of one of the little headstones marking the graves of the children, it's reasonable to assume that they died of complications associated with childbirth. This was quite a change from the landscapes of the dead that I was accustomed to seeing, growing up on the West Coast as I did, and only playing close attention to the graveyards bearing the remains of the folks in my family who died after WWII.

Selected from the above for extra emphasis: "To take one recent example, Jerry Hausman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Ephraim Leibtag of the United States Department of Agriculture, show† that Wal-Mart's move into the grocery business has lowered food prices. Because the poorest spend the largest part of their budget on food, lower prices have benefited them most. The official statistics do not capture these gains."

From the Economist. "IN 1904 Willie Vanderbilt hit a thrilling 92.3 mph (147.7 kph) in his new German motorcar, smashing the land-speed record. His older brother's sprawling North Carolina manse, Biltmore, could accommodate up to 500 pounds of meat in its electrical refrigerators. In miserable contrast, the below-average Gilded Age American had to make do with a pair of shoes and a melting block of ice. If he could somehow save enough for an icebox, a day's wage would not have bought a pound of meat to put in it. Paul Krugman, of Princeton University, has recently argued* that contemporary America's widening income gap is ushering in a new age of invidious inequalities. But a peek at the numbers behind the numbers suggests that Mr Krugman has been misled: far from a new Gilded Age, America is experiencing a period of unprecedented material equality. This is not to deny that income inequality is rising: it is. But measures of income inequality are misleading because an individual's income is, at best, a rough proxy for his or her real economic wellbeing. Because we can save, draw down savings, or run up debt, our income may tell us little about how we're faring. Consumption surveys, which track what people actually spend, sketch a more lifelike portrait of the material quality of life. According to one 2006 study**, by Dirk Krueger of the University of Pennsylvania and Fabrizio Perri of New York University, consumption inequality has barely budged for several decades, despite a sharp upswing in income inequality. But consumption numbers, too, conceal as much as they illuminate. They can record only that we have spent, but not the value—the pleasure or health—gained in the spending. A stable trend in nominal consumption inequality can mask a narrowing of real or “utility-adjusted” consumption inequality. Indeed, according to happiness researchers, inequality in self-reported “life satisfaction” has been shrinking in wealthy market democracies, America included, suggesting that the quality of lives across the income scale are becoming more similar, not less. You can see this levelling at work in markets for transport and appliances. You no longer need be a Vanderbilt to own a refrigerator or a car. Refrigerators are now all but universal in America, even though refrigerator inequality continues to grow. The Sub-Zero PRO 48, which the manufacturer calls “a monument to food preservation”, costs about $11,000, compared with a paltry $350 for the IKEA Energisk B18 W. The lived difference, however, is rather smaller than that between having fresh meat and milk and having none. Similarly, more than 70% of Americans under the official poverty line own at least one car. And the distance between driving a used Hyundai Elantra and a new Jaguar XJ is well nigh undetectable compared with the difference between motoring and hiking through the muck. The vast spread of prices often distracts from a narrowing range of experience. Save money. Live better This compression is not a thing of the past. To take one recent example, Jerry Hausman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Ephraim Leibtag of the United States Department of Agriculture, show† that Wal-Mart's move into the grocery business has lowered food prices. Because the poorest spend the largest part of their budget on food, lower prices have benefited them most. The official statistics do not capture these gains. As a rule, when the prices of food, clothing and basic modern conveniences drop relative to the price of luxury goods, real consumption inequality drops. But the point is not that in America the relatively poor suffer no painful indignities, which would be absurd. It is that, over time, the everyday experience of consumption among the less fortunate has become in many ways more similar to that of their wealthier compatriots. A widescreen plasma television is lovely, but you do not need one to laugh at “Shrek”. This compression is the predictable consequence of innovations in production and distribution that have improved the quality of goods at the lower range of prices faster than at the top. New technologies and knock-off fashions now spread down the price scale too fast to distinguish the rich from the aspiring for long. This increasing equality in real consumption mirrors a dramatic narrowing of other inequalities between rich and poor, such as the inequalities in height, life expectancy and leisure. William Robert Fogel, a Nobel prize-winning economic historian, argues†† that nominal measures of economic well-being often miss such huge changes in the conditions of life. “In every measure that we have bearing on the standard of living...the gains of the lower classes have been far greater than those experienced by the population as a whole,” Mr Fogel observes. Some worrying inequalities, such as the access to a good education, may indeed be widening, arresting economic mobility for the least fortunate and exacerbating income-inequality trends. Yet even if you care about those aspects of income inequality, the idea can send misleading signals about the underlying trends in real consumption and the real quality of life. Contrary to Mr Krugman's implications, today's Gilded Age income gaps do not imply Gilded Age lifestyle gaps. On the contrary, those intrepid souls who make vast fortunes turning out ever higher-quality goods at ever lower prices widen the income gap while reducing the differences that matter most."

5. shooting for ~25, though anything East of the Rockies should only count for a half day even when conditions are good, and -1 day when the refrozen deathpack is in effect.

Ok, but only if you read "Las Veinas Abiertas de America Latina." Deal? Dependency Theory? The Asians must be thankful that no Left-wing scholars ever took them aside and explained that they were condemned to spend an eternity as underdeveloped, impoverished econo-victims on global "Periphery." In any event, the proper counterbalance in this case would be either Carlos Rangel's "The Latin Americans," or "The Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot," by Mendoza et al.

Surely we could have something remotely similar to a democracy if the average voter were as educated as you suggest. Unfortunately, that you criticize me for invoking a lay public only supports my point. Supposing that I represent a reasonable expectation of the average historical education in this country, the public in general is far enough removed from the facts of history and politics that the remaining choices are skepticism or dogma. Now I will not concede utter ignorance as to the course of history, but I will admit a preference for rational doubt over blind political faith. Your references are well taken and I'm well aware that there are plenty of examples of indisputable atrocities by enemies of the U.S. There are also clear atrocities committed by the U.S. or its allies/subordinates that we are expected to support/excuse on the basis of a double-standard--US (The Good Guys) vs. Them (The Bad Guys). That the truth is not that simple is not being debated. It's not debated here because it's obvious; it's not debated in popular politics because it's "demoralizing." Justin: Your point was that the only basis for the "lay public's" judgment on these matters was self-serving ignorance and propaganda. Are such indictments of the actual communist regimes that blighted the past century unique to US citizens? Do the majority of the scholars around the globe who are intimately familiar with the facts of what transpired under each regime hold them in high regard? I'd also note that assuming that because you have advanced training in a scientific subspecialty *and* you aren't terribly well acquainted with history that you are discussing doesn't entitle you to assume that you constitute a "reasonable expectation of the average historical education in this country." Still less does it justify the claim that the only intellectually defensible stances open to anyone attempting to understand history and render moral judgments on any particular aspects of it are either skepticism or dogma. Even less true is the claim that there's any expectation that you ignore or excuse *any* action taken by the US or it's allies. What is reasonable to expect is that: 1)You'll make an effort to acquaint yourself with the facts about the action and the context in which it occurred before you feel as though you are in a position to evaluate the morality of the actions taken in a given situation. 2)You attempt to apply the same standards to all actors. Both the US and Germany intentionally bombed civilian population centers during WWII. Does this fact alone render the two sides morally equal? If not, why? Etc. .................................................................. During my own thoroughly average education, I came across an essay on the subject that I've always remembered. The Ethics of Belief (1877) " A shipowner was about to send to sea an emigrant-ship. He knew that she was old, and not overwell built at the first; that she had seen many seas and climes, and often had needed repairs. Doubts had been suggested to him that possibly she was not seaworthy. These doubts preyed upon his mind, and made him unhappy; he thought that perhaps he ought to have her thoroughly overhauled and and refitted, even though this should put him at great expense. Before the ship sailed, however, he succeeded in overcoming these melancholy reflections. He said to himself that she had gone safely through so many voyages and weathered so many storms that it was idle to suppose she would not come safely home from this trip also. He would put his trust in Providence, which could hardly fail to protect all these unhappy families that were leaving their fatherland to seek for better times elsewhere. He would dismiss from his mind all ungenerous suspicions about the honesty of builders and contractors. In such ways he acquired a sincere and comfortable conviction that his vessel was thoroughly safe and seaworthy; he watched her departure with a light heart, and benevolent wishes for the success of the exiles in their strange new home that was to be; and he got his insurance-money when she went down in mid-ocean and told no tales. What shall we say of him? Surely this, that he was verily guilty of the death of those men. It is admitted that he did sincerely believe in the soundness of his ship; but the sincerity of his conviction can in no wise help him, because he had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him. He had acquired his belief not by honestly earning it in patient investigation, but by stifling his doubts. And although in the end he may have felt so sure about it that he could not think otherwise, yet inasmuch as he had knowingly and willingly worked himself into that frame of mind, he must be held responsible for it. Let us alter the case a little, and suppose that the ship was not unsound after all; that she made her voyage safely, and many others after it. Will that diminish the guilt of her owner? Not one jot. When an action is once done, it is right or wrong for ever; no accidental failure of its good or evil fruits can possibly alter that. The man would not have been innocent, he would only have been not found out. The question of right or wrong has to do with the origin of his belief, not the matter of it; not what it was, but how he got it; not whether it turned out to be true or false, but whether he had a right to believe on such evidence as was before him." It's been a while since I read the whole thing, but from what I can remember it's well worth reading if you have the time... http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/w_k_clifford/ethics_of_belief.html

Moral equivalency? You seem to want to say that I am singing praises of former enemies. You mistake my refusal to assume that everything that we do as a country is good, for gushing sympathy towards the other side (whoever that happens to be at any given moment). Just because an enemy is bad, doesn't make us immune from making things worse. The only moral equivalency I'm advocating is that we look at our own actions through the same lens as we do others'. I don't see anyone interpreting casualties of the American Civil War as "the Americans killing their own people, a testament to the brutality of capitalist economic development." As is clearly demonstrated by the winners' history, all enemies and/or victims of the U.S. are automatically considered evil. While I'm willing to assume that in many to most cases it is justified, the one-sidedness of our self-propaganda is so consistent that the vilification of our enemies has long since lost any true meaning. The lay public are stricken with a myopia in which we don't actually know anything about the enemy except that they are the enemy, because a constant string of "evil, evil, bad, evil, terror" is exactly meaningless, especially when is expected. (Up in the ivory tower we call it a lack of dynamic range, or an informational entropy of zero.) As it turns out this is a desirable situation for a government that would like to minimize the scrutiny of its foreign affairs, since a public which knows little truth about its enemy is easy to manipulate into a frenzy of hatred, or whatever collective emotion is necessary given the strategy. (T - 8 posts before JayB accuses me of a being a wanna-be Chomsky fanboy, or something to that effect...) I'd recommend actually acquainting yourself with the subject before tossing terms like "lay public" around when discussing a topic that's light years away from the subjects that constitute the sole basis of your education. Do you really think that the historical record is composed of exclusively American facts and commentaries? That people of all stripes - scholars, laymen, etc - who lived elsewhere, including those who lived under these regimes haven't rendered their own indictments of this system? That there's *any* sane moral framework in which one could look favorably upon the terror-famine in the Ukraine, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, etc?

Was it "fervent" or "vigorous" in the official dossier?

BTW - just saw "The Lives of Others," recently, and think that anyone of any particular persuasion would enjoy the film. Subtle, powerful, moving.

When you've attempted to supplant the price system with a central bureaucratic mechanism that makes both economic calculation and efficient coordination of supply and demand literally impossible, and you couple that with an incentive system that's profoundly at odds with human nature - the amazing thing isn't that no one's ever managed to make it work, but that anyone ever believed that it would.

Young enough not to have been brainwashed by what was apparently highly effective cold-war era U.S. propaganda. Since you bring it up, here's just one idea from scientific theory that is highly relevant to world politics. That is the idea of symmetry, specifically as expressed by Newton's third law. All actions have repercussions... And now I await your next insults. Just how far will you go to insult me personally in order to avoid addressing my arguments, I wonder? Are you seriously arguing that the Soviet Union only became repressive and murderous *after* Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

No, it does help my point. The talented self taught developers of whom you speak still took the trouble to dive deeper and learn the fundamentals of their art. Professional training can be had on one's own; it need not come from an accredited source. If that were true, Bill Gates would have been fucked. Any software engineer worth a damn should be able to quickly pick up what an 'instance' is. There is apparently one on this forum who a) has been too lazy to teach himself this basic concept of his profession or b) just doesn't have the mental faculties to grasp it. This inability to differentiate between historical events and the imperfect executions of the philosophies involved (which of course, are usually a minor part of the story anyway) is a theme that pervades his posts. In what sense were the "executions of the philosophies involved" imperfect?

I've been riding to work each and every working day for ~2.5 years, and have seen dipshits performing the very same idiotic left-turn-chicken move that you have described almost kill an old-woman, a mother with two small children, and see the aftermath of at least one collision per month at the intersection where this kind of idiocy is most frequent. Asleep and incompetent? No. Reckless and stupid? Yes. Not sure this necessarily tilts the score in their favor with regards to the likelihood that they'll kill a pedestrian. During the summer I see a fair number of bike-commuters, but nothing like I saw in Seattle. This time of year, I often ride both directions without seeing another soul on a bike. Not sure how much it matters to me when I'm on a bike - since I've always assumed that motorists: 1)Can't see me. 2)Will intentionally run me over if given the opportunity. As a citizen/driver, it gives me one more reason not to stay in this town a second longer than I need to.

My personal opinion is that Joseph is giving Boston drivers way too much credit, and that you can probably chalk the difference in fatalities up to Portland having more cyclists on the road throughout the year (on a population adjusted basis) than you have in Boston. But back on topic - best of luck in the new town. Just out of curiosity, why did you chose to move?

Once again (and again, and again): Sure I've clipped bolts in my time, although very few sport climbs. I've actually placed perhaps 3 bolts in my life. They were drilled by hand and were for belay anchors. I believe bolts do have their RARE place [in short: to be avoided as they are permanent alterations to the landscape. They should be rare and safe; thoughtful belay and rappel anchors might be exceptions and other placements should, again, be few and far apart.] It's their proliferation that I detest and free-wheeling, bolt-dependent "sport-climbing" is a vile offender. I subscribe to the "leave little trace" philosophy of outdoor interaction; "Sport climbing" is an utter violation. I'd rather see climbing areas closed than see them grid-bolted. UNDERSTAND IT NOW??? And while we're at it....hypocrisy debates [a type of ad hominem attack] are only smoke-screens to avoid addressing the real issues....I could have clipped thousand of sport routes and still have issues with them. It might be personally inconsistent with one's beliefs, but it doesn't cause the issue itself to vanish. By the way, I've never bolted a crack. I suggest you put up your evidence. Stupid, eh? Whatever, Sparky. I noted Godwin's law in a previous post and consulted the very same link before I made my comments, specifically: The "law" [which in fact is not a "law"] is ultimately telling, yet silly, and joins Murphy's and those of other similar validity. Regarding my original comment for "DeChristo" to take off his uniform and sit in the corner....you apparently have no idea how utterly offensive his comment was. For a Christian, it would probably be like spitting on the cross of Jesus. Rabbi Alfred Kolatch stated it nicely with: "The Torah is the centerpiece of Judaism and the key to Jewish survival." Hundreds of Torah scrolls were confiscated or destroyed by the Nazis when they razed or burned synagogues. (although a few were dramatically rescued). Some have survived and to this day have been given to newly formed Jewish congregations around the world. The Nazi reference was to add emotional and historical power to my reaction, despite Godwin's opinion. As I noted above, Closet Nazi, eh? Looks like it's your turn to go sit in the corner....do some more "wondering" until you come to your senses. Why are you equating someone who refuses to honor, or pokes fun at a particular set of taboos associated with a set of religious convictions that he does not share to a group of people who attempted to carry out the wholesale extermination of a people sharing a common ancestry?