Coyote Blog

Staring at all my Christmas decorations around the house, and dreading putting the lights back neatly so they won't be a tangled rats nest next year, this looks more and more tempting.

This is cool - a bridge built privately in France, for a fraction of the cost of most major public bridge projects.  More via the Mises Economics Blog.

When I get an odd or inappropriate Christmas gift, I usually get a good chuckle with the family and then try to figure out who to recycle it to next year (though the Chia Shrek may be a keeper).

When economists get a bad gift, they try to quantify deadweight loss to the economy.  And, according to Marginal Revolution, the number is substantial.

Update:  more here at TCS

From Yahoo News:

Pro-West opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko claimed victory in Ukraine's historic presidential election rerun, telling supporters the vote was a triumph for the country and proclaiming that "now we are free" from dominance by neighboring Russia.

This seems like good news, especially given the creeping fascism in Russia.  However, we've been disappointed by putative democrats before.

Merry Christmas, and I hope everyone is having a happy version of whatever holiday they celebrate. 

Around our house, I am always the tech support guy, fixing issues ranging from computers to hitting all the right buttons on the home theater.  Because my wife has a Mac and I and my kids use a PC, just trying to keep everyone playing nice over the home network is hard enough (god, this is starting to sound like a Chaos Manner column).  Usually, this duty is spread pretty evenly through the year, but on Christmas day, our household has an influx of technology that often needs support.

Yesterday was no exception.  First, with the arrival of yet another new mini iPod, this one for my son, a new user partition had to be created on my wife's Mac.  Later in the day I was back on the Mac, helping my son when iTunes inevitable Christmas Day server overload caused him to have a few songs disappear on him during download.  In between, I was on the PC helping my daughter with Zoo Tycoon 2, given to her because Santa knows that she loved the first version. 

Finally, towards the end of the day, I was helping my son with his Star Wars Battlefront game install.  Unfortunately, the install code on the back of the CD box did not work, so with my son panicking when I told him he would have to wait 2 WHOLE DAYS for the the tech support people to come into the office, I swallowed my scruples and went to one of the pirate sites that publish registration codes for games and successfully used one of those to get the game started.  Unfortunately, those sites slam you with pirate-ware, so first I had to fire up my backup computer I use for such grossly unsafe surfing.

Whew.  I can relax now, everything is up and running.  Imagine my relief this morning when my kids wanted to play something low tech - Yahtzee.

My company operates campgrounds and other recreational facilities on government lands, and the US Forest Service is our most important partner.  We work day-to-day with about 20 or so district rangers, who are the front-line general managers of the Forest.

My observation over time is that USFS district rangers have a nearly impossible job.  By their enabling legislation, the USFS is tasked with balancing logging, mining, ranching, recreation, forest health and environmental stewardship in running the forest.  In our modern day age of uncompromising special interests and conflict resolution by lawsuit, it is absolutely impossible to make any decision  without sending some party scurrying to the courts.  In particular, environmental groups have become expert at tying up any decision in court, and attempting to block any of the other competing interests.

The current Administration has introduced new rules intended to make this job easier.  As reported in the New York Times via the Commons Blog,

Forest Service officials said the rules were intended to give local foresters more flexibility to respond to scientific advances and threats like intensifying wildfires and invasive species. They say the regulations will also speed up decisions, ending what some public and private foresters see as a legal and regulatory gridlock that has delayed forest plans for years because of litigation and requirements for time-consuming studies.

I hope this is true, because I feel for front line forestry personnel who joined the service mostly because of their love of the outdoors and the environment, and have been forced instead to become amateur lawyers.  However,  I doubt much will change.  I think that intelligent planning and negotiation may be gone forever in working on environmental issues in favor of litigation.

A while back, I went through my semi-annual cleaning and de-entropification of my bookshelves.  In doing so, I found several older books that I wanted to re-read.  In particular, books by John MacDonald and Alistair Maclean caught my eye.

As I have re-read these books, I have found that a number of my friends are not familiar with the authors, which is a shame.  Once an author dies and stops writing books, they kind of fall out of the public consciousness, unless you are Lawrence Sanders and have a post-humus "ghost" writer.

Now, I am not one to poopoo other people's choice of books.  In fact, I am very familiar with the look of disdain I get from time to time as I am reading Tom Clancy or Steven King or even Terry Pratchett from someone who is shocked I am not reading Sartre or some other Faulkner-esque book that is gravid with meaning.  However, I will tell you that not knowing these two authors is a lost joy, and an opportunity to have some real fun reading.

John MacDonald may not be known to most of the current generation, but he is to current writers.  More modern novelists than you can shake a stick at have grown up influenced by MacDonald's prose.  The place to begin is with his Travis McGee books, which are fabulously well written in addition to being fun to read and good mysteries to boot.  Any one will do, but if you have a choice, you might try the Long Lavender Look (all of the McGee books have a color in the title)., which is consistently rated as one of his best.  The Deep Blue Goodbye is the first of the series. I like Pale Grey for Guilt, because you see a little of MacDonald the Harvard MBA coming out, but other die hards don't like it as much.  MacDonald was very prolific, and has written a number of other great books you might know better from movies and TV, including Slam the Big Door, Cape Fear, and Condominium.

Alistair Maclean is a different kind of writer.  While his prose may not be as beautiful as MacDonald's, before there was Clancy or Crichton or even Ian Flemming there was Alistair Maclean.  Maclean is best described as a writer of great adventure stories.  My favorite is Where Eagles Dare, which actually is an awesome movie as well.  A close second is Ice Station Zebra.  Both of these share in common a lot of action and a ton of twists and turns - those who were confused by Mission Impossible need not apply.  Other great books include Guns of Navaronne, Breakheart Pass , Puppet on a Chain, HMS Ulysses, and Fear is the Key.  Breakheart Pass was particularly good, with a great story set in the old west, and Puppet on a Chain is perhaps his very best taut suspense novel, though it is about the only one on the list that was not made into a movie.

Why Aren't There More Private Schools?  This is a conversation my dad and I have had any number of times - as he has sat on the board of a number of public and private schools / districts and I have, given frequent moves, oven shopped for schooling for my kids.

The first, perhaps most obvious answer is that there is not that large of a market, because few people can afford to pay two tuitions for their kids (i.e. public school tuition via property taxes and then a separate private school payment).  But, I think that that answer is wrong.  This country is tremendously wealthy, both on average and at the top end.  Most really good private k-12 schools are oversubscribed -- with competitive entry requirements and long waiting lists.  We have all heard stories about New York City schools where you have to practically go straight from the act of conception to the admissions office to have a chance to get the kid in.

I have my own experience with this, in many cities, but take Seattle for example.  In the east side suburbs, their are 3-5 high quality private elementary schools, and for the most part, they are all way oversubscribed.  One of them admits something like 6% of applicants.  And charges $10,000+ a year for kindergarten and more for later years.

What other industries are there where 94% of the demand for a $10,000+ product goes unmet by new entrants?  And unmet for decades, not just in a short period of mismatched capacity?  Just look at iPods - how many people jumped into the market with copycat products when they saw the popularity of this product, and Apple's inability to keep up with demand?

But what really got me thinking about this problem was when I moved back to Phoenix.  Despite having my kids in some of the best schools in every city we have lived in, the absolute best is, of all places, here in Phoenix.  How do I know it is the best?  Well, my son went to kindergarten at this Phoenix school, and then we moved to Seattle for two years.   In Seattle, we went to what was supposed to be about the best elementary school on the east side -  Gates sent some of his kids here, as did the McCaws, and many other people who could afford any place they wanted.  At the end of second grade, the school told me my son could have skipped second grade, which means he could have skipped first grade there too.  In two years, he never learned anything more than he learned in one year of kindergarten in Phoenix.

There are two other interesting things about this Phoenix-area private school, beyond just its excellence:

• It is by far the cheapest we have ever attended, less than half what we paid in Seattle and well under the average per-pupil spending in public schools
• It is for profit - not a charity or foundation.  It has no donations, government grants, endowments, etc.  It runs itself for profit, it is inexpensive, and the education is great.

The school is not perfect -- it has a strong focus on academics, without the big theater programs or art programs or photography classes you might find in a large public school, so we have to supplement that stuff outside of school.  But my point is, why aren't there more schools like this?  Why aren't people jumping in to fill this market?  This is more than of academic interest to me.  I am a big supporter of school choice, but to support choice you have to believe that private schools will be created to meet the new demand vouchers would open up.

Thus it is with great interest that I saw this post at Marginal Revolution about the barriers to starting a private school.  They link this article from the Reason foundation.  The Reason Foundation argues that a lot of micro-regulation, particularly zoning, limits private schools, especially when zoning boards are dominated by people who have an interest in protecting public schools from competition.

In the context of my Seattle story earlier, by the way, note this proposal that came out a while back to actually ban private school (and church) construction in large parts of the county that Seattle is in. 

UPDATE:

There were several responses to this along the lines of 'so what - everyone has to navigate basic permitting processes'.  That may be, but my experience is that zoning is stacked against private schools, even before you consider the proposed total ban on private school construction described in the article I linked above.  For example, in the Seattle eastside suburbs, one private school that needed to move to larger quarters was unable to find a site within a 20 mile radius where they were allowed to build a private school.  Residential zoned tracks did not want more traffic from a school, and they were not allowed to have a school with little kids in most commercial zoned tracks.  The point is that private schools face permitting hurdles that go beyond what most businesses face, and, as I mentioned earlier, most zoning boards are packed with people who have a vested interest in not allowing new private schools to be built anywhere.

Penn Jillette, a very entertaining guy and a very interesting libertarian, is interviewed in Reason about censorship in America.  Jillette criticizes what needs to be criticized, but, at least as important, he recognizes that this country is still way ahead of the rest of the world.  Jillette has this way of criticizing while still remaining optimistic and positive that I like a lot, and is a refreshing change from the hate-America crowd.

Given the recent fascination with the upcoming Howard Hughes biopic, as well as any number of other articles on his life (this article covers some of the more eccentric parts left out of the movie)  I remembered my favorite Hughes story. 

Howard Hughes loved watching movies at night.  Now, this won't seem too odd to most of us, since many people, myself included, have spent a few late nights watching an old movie on cable or on the DVD player.  However, Hughes had a problem.  He liked to watch movies of his choosing in his own room on top of the Desert Inn in Las Vegas before anyone had dreamed up HBO or the VCR. 

Hughes was not daunted by this small problem.  This is the man that bought the Desert Inn when they threatened to evict him.  So, Hughes bought a local TV station.  Each week, the TV station would publish its weekly schedule, including the movies it planned to show each evening;  however, it seldom followed this schedule, because each evening Howard Hughes would call his station and tell them what movie he wanted to see, and that would be what they broadcast.  So, in a sense, Howard Hughes invented pay per view TV, though his version was kind of expensive.  Also, the TV station apparently got a lot of complaints for never showing the movie listed in the TV guide.

Tim Blair rounds up great quotes from 2004.  He may have spent more time on this one post than I have on my blog for the whole year.

From Overlawyered.com comes the story that the anti-tort reform Center for Justice & Democracy is upset about this bit of legal immunity:

Many farmers use anhydrous ammonia as fertilizer, because it provides vital nitrogen nutrients to the soil. The combustible material is produced in Louisiana, and then shipped to the Midwest on barges or through pipelines, and then stored on tanks on farms. However, ammonia is also useful for making illegal methamphetamines, and thefts are a regular problem. (KOMU-TV, "Law Officers Fight Ammonia Thefts", May 19). If a thief injures himself tampering with an ammonia tank, should he be able to sue the farmer for the injury? Three states, Kansas, Missouri, and Wyoming, say no, and provide immunity for those who store, handle, or own ammonia equipment from suit by thieves. Legislatures are considering the issue in other midwestern states.

I find this hard to argue with, unless of course you are a tort lawyer and want to sue over anything any time.  In fact, I have an even better idea.  I propose the following law:

Citizens shall be immune from any suit for injuries or damages incurred by someone committing a crime against them.

Hope everyone out there has a fantastic Christmas, Hanukkah, Ramadan, Winter Solstice, New Year, etc. (did I get everyone?)  We try to do something different each year for our holiday card.  Here is this year's.

UPDATE

I realized from fellow Arizona blog Speed of Thought, in their link to my post (cool, am I a moonbat?) that I left out Kwanzaa.  Oops, I hope there are not protesters outside my door.  Next week I plan a post on Kwanzaa -- I have zero problem with people making up a new reasons to celebrate, since life is worth celebrating.  However, I will look at the 7 values celebrated by Kwanzaa and consider whether these 7 values are really helping African-Americans (hint:  think socialism).

By the way, Speed of Thought has a very moving image here.

Every year we do this strange dance when it comes to deleting people from our Holiday card list.  My job each year is to print out the labels from last year so my wife can edit them.  In the process, particularly since we move so much, we always add about 10-20 new names and delete about as many.  So the cards went out a few days ago.

Each day, though, I get a few more from my wife to mail.  My wife doesn't tell me why we need to send a few more, but I know.  You see, we have received a card from one of the people who we took off the list.  Having received their card, we therefore must (?) send them a card in return.  This seems nuts to me.  The implication of this process is that there is no way for anyone to get dropped from a card list unless both parties mutually, without coordination, decide to drop the other in the same year.  So, inevitably, our list just keeps getting longer each year.

By the way, don't miss this year's letter here.

I worry that global warming advocacy has crossed the line from science to religion, such that data counter to the basic mantra is considered heresy rather than scientific discourse. 

In my review of Michael Crichton's new book, I said I was sympathetic to his global warming skepticism but that I thought his characters and plot were over the top and he was too heavy handed with the polemic, which hurts any action novel.  Maybe I was wrong:

We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.

- National Center for Atmospheric Research (NOAA) researcher and global warming action promoter, Steven Schneider

More here from Arizona Watch.  I do disagree a bit with using the Nature Conservancy as a proxy for all environmental groups.  Though they advocate things I don't agree with, the vast majority of their funds go to actual preservation rather than political advocacy (unlike Sierra Club or others).  They are actually one of the better examples of trying to use private voluntary action rather than the government to reach some environmental goals.

I have written more on Kyoto here.  A good recent article in TCS by George Taylor talking about the panic around arctic temperatures is here.

The Carnival of the Vanities is up at Ravenwood.  Don't miss my post on the 60th anniversary of the great Phoenix-area German POW escape.

Here is a scoop for a few folks out there:  6-year-olds do not have the reasoning ability or a sophisticated enough view of the world to be polical activits.  However, they are, given their lack of sophistication, perfect subjects for political indoctrination and great pawns for media-savvy advocacy groups looking for a little airtime.

I saw this story on Fox News today about a group of 2nd graders manipulated by their activist public school teacher and the Rainforest Action Network to protext at Chase Manhattan in New York against logging and oil drilling.  Apparently unable to get anyone with a high school education or a adult reasoning level to support their cause, the RAN turned to first and second graders:

"I celebrate the world, I celebrate the rainforest, and I care [about] the reality of what is happening with my students, which is only fair, and I let them make their own choices," said teacher Paula Healey.

Right.  Six-year-olds are in the perfect position to formulate their own opinion on sophisticated issues.  Even if the kids did have adult decision-making faculties, I would bet a gazillion dollars that Ms. Healey never brought any contrary opinions into the classroom, exposure to which is necesary for most of us to "make their own choices".

This is entirely inappropriate at this age in the Public Schools.  In my mind, this is just another reason for school choice - if there are parents who disagree with me and consider it a good use of a first grader's time to carry a picket sign about issues s/he can't possibly comprehend at a NY bank, then they should be able to send their kids to a school that so specializes, but the rest of our kids can be left alone to learn trivial stuff like math and reading.

Unlike many libertarians, I am not particularly rabid about gun rights.  It's just not an issue I am that passionate about one way or another.   I have always thought that the one monopoly the government rightly should have is on the use of force for anything other than self-defense (e.g. military, police & law enforcement, incarceration, etc.)  Given this one monopoly, it makes sense that the government should have some interest in regulating private weapons ownership.  However, we can theorize all day but as long as the Second Amendment exists, the government may wish to limit gun ownership but its ability to do so is severely restricted.

Anyway, the point of this post was really just fun and not philosophy.  Take four states:

• Connecticut
• Pennsylvania
• Texas
• Florida

Two of these states have concealed handgun carry rates by private citizens 3x higher than the other two.  Guess which.

Here, via Instapundit, is the linguistic map for how people refer to a soft drink.  Its interesting how you adjust.  I grew up in Texas and called every soft drink a "coke" and now I call it a "soda", which are both the dominant terms in the places I have lived in each phase of my life.   For the record, though, I have never, ever called it a "pop", or as they say in the midwest, a "pahhhp" (click for larger map)

In this post on Social Security reform at Powerline (Time blog of the year, congrats guys) they take as a starting point a Sabastian Mallaby article in the WaPo who says:

Privatizing social security would increase stress levels, says Mallaby, because determining where to invest one's retirement money entails making tough choices and taking risks. Thus, Mallaby believes that many, perhaps even most, people would prefer to have the government handle their social security funds as it does now than to "agonize over health stocks vs. Asian bonds."

In this we see two things that characterize liberals and progressives:  "1) distrust of individual decision-making and 2) willingness to accept much less wealth in return for more certainty.  By the way, I have no particular problem with #2 when this decision is made on an individual level.  However, I do have a problem when politicians make this decision at a societal level.  As regards Social Security, I have no problem with people being offered the "let the government continue to keep your money" option as long as it is voluntary.  The Powerline guys have other good comments, read the whole thing.

By the way, I will take a moment for a bit of "I told you so" here.  This "capitalism is too stressful for us dude" attitude is entirely consistent with what I said about progressives and capitalism here.

UPDATE:

Here is a nice post on the same topic at Cafe Hayek.

Via Instapundit:

THE NEXT HARRY POTTER BOOK, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, is finished, and will be out in July.

I had no idea this is what they were doing, but it is insane (via Marginal Revolution):

THE queue of angry motorists stretches for miles. Baghdad's petrol stations are drier this month than they have been since just after the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Some drivers wait for as much as 24 hours, sleeping in their vehicles. When told that there is no petrol, some have lost their tempers and started shooting. How, asks a furious driver, can an oil-producing country run out of fuel?

Ask an insurgent, and he will assure you that the American army steals the oil for its tanks. Others might blame the lack of capacity at Iraqi oil refineries or the fact that the insurgents keep blowing up the pipelines. But the most important reason is that the government has fixed the price of petrol at approximately zero"”barely one American cent a litre.

I wonder if the problem in the electic power sector is similar.  See the post for the whole article, from the Economist.

This week's Canival of the Capitalists is up at XtremeBlog.  Don't miss my post on the difficulty of managing corporate public relations in the web age here.

This week's Canival of the Capitalists is up at XtremeBlog.  Don't miss my post on the difficulty of managing corporate public relations in the web age here.

I hope this is a joke, but fear that it is true.  BlogCritics is posting on a Boston Globe article that teachers (presumably not in the red states!) are moving away from correcting papers in red ink because they fear it hurts self-esteem.  It sounds eerily similar to this, which actually is a joke.  I called that story "Almost to Real to be Satire", thus the name of this post.

I wonder if red ink hurts self-esteem more than, say, graduating high school and not being able to read.