The Editor, New York Times
229 West 43rd St.
New York, NY 10036

To the Editor:

The Federal Trade Commission might stop Google from merging with DoubleClick (“Inquiry Into Deal,“ June 2).  Google’s rivals support this obstruction; as you report, “Rivals of Google contend that the merger would give Google immense power in Internet advertising in both search ads and display ads online.“

A good rule of thumb is that when rivals of any company support antitrust action against that company, those actions should be dismissed pronto.  If the company’s behavior really threatens to harm consumers with higher prices or lower quality, rivals generally benefit.  Rivals squawk for antitrust actions against other firms in their industries only when those other firms innovate and re-organize in ways likely to intensify competition.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University

Just so. If corporations epitomize soulless rapacity, then it’s probably not the case that they run to the FTC because of their sentimental devotion to consumer well-being, no?

Here’s a not-so-happy thought: Cell phones could be killing off bees:

The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees’ navigation systems, preventing the famously home-loving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up.

The possibility would be disheartening all by itself. But there’s also this:

Most of the world’s crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, “man would have only four years of life left.“

File the results of the study under “Important if True.“

p.s.—It sounds like something out of a B-movie horror flick, doesn’t it? Get it? A Beeeeeeee-movie? God, I slay me.

Wow. Getting pretty punchy. Time to call it a week. . . .

The key to this tank game is to move fast and shoot fast (and remember that your movement and targeting operate independently!).

For more sedate diversion, try to steer your parachutist to the target in this game.

If this gaffe had been committed by you-know-who, you-know-who-else would be saying you-know-what.

Those of us who work with words understand how typos happen, and sympathize. As Henry Miller once said, “It requires more concentration to detect a missing comma than to epitomize Nietzsche’s philosophy.“

Still. Ouch.

A conversation this morning dredged up from the depths of recollection a memory of this fascinating piece by Sun Microsystems founder Bill Joy in Wired magazine: “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us.“

It’s wordy, but it repays the investment of time. And you don’t have to buy into the whole thing, or even most of the parts, to find its speculations provocative. (Indeed, if memory serves Michael Crichton played off the “gray goo” scenario in one of his novels.)

. . . is about legalizing the organ market.

There are good reasons to criticize the negativity inherent in some coverage of the Iraq war.* Consider the recent comment of New York Times reporter James Glanz, a Baghdad correspondent soon to take over the Baghdad bureau:

“As the number of reporters there dwindles further and further because of the difficult conditions we work under, the kind of work they are able to publish becomes very important,“ Mr. Glanz said. “This tiny remaining corps of reporters becomes a greater and greater problem for the military brass because we are the only people preventing them from telling the story the way they want it told.“

As James Taranto says, is it really a reporter’s job to prevent other people from telling their side of the story?

Attitudes such as that might help explain why coverage sometimes has been so lopsided.

But there is another side to the story of why there often seems to be only one side to the story.

At a Times-Dispatch public square last year on the Iraq War, T-D photographer Clement Britt, who has been embedded with American troops, made a rock-solid point:

As an embed, you’re consider a member of the unit. You do what they do. You see what they see. You see what they want you to see. And in Iraq . . . in the three weeks we spent there, there was only time for them to take us to one positive good news story. . . . I say 29 out of 30 days, they were doing the work . . . that’s required of them in their jobs in the military.

The same was true in Afghanistan. Only one time did we visit an orphanage out of the nearly three weeks we were in Afghanistan. One reason these good stories don’t get told is simply because there isn’t time to tell it.. . . I don’t mean this in a negative way, [but] the Army uses us to tell the story about the mission that they’re over there to do. In in the [80th Division’s] case, it’s training cops, it’s training soldiers - and they’re being successful at it. . . .

It’s a very, very wide, a broad, and a deep story. . . . We also told a positive story in the changes in the Iraqi police and army societies that the 80th was doing. And that was a good news story. It ain’t smiling kids . . . it ain’t pretty pictures. These guys are working hard . . . to move their country forward. But it’s not a feel-good kind of positive . . . touchy-feely kind of story.

And now, as if to underscore Britt’s point, there is Michael Fumento’s recent experience:

I personally have repeatedly scored the MSM for wanting to write about nothing but The Car Bomb of the Day and ignoring hearts-and-minds projects. Now I realize that while the MSM still deserve scorn, perhaps things aren’t quite as black and white as I thought.

* (There are bad reasons, too, such as the fantasy that everything is going well over there or the misapprehension that reporters should be cheerleaders.)

Slate magazine often offers fun reads for people who never get tired of learning new things with an orthogonal relationship to practical living. Two examples: This piece on how other countries do spelling bees, and this slideshow on the history of Helvetica’s domination of the font world.

According to a Slate sidebar, “The Helvetica Hegemony” is one of the most-read pieces in recent days. That means one of two things: Either a lot more people find fonts fascinating than one might think, or Slate has a particularly high proportion of readers who are typesetters and page designers. (Could be both!)

Ever wonder how politicians can say diametrically opposite things—while each claims to be stating the truth? How can a budget proposal increase taxes by “not one penny” yet still include “the largest tax increase in American history”? The always informative and helpful FactCheck.org has some answers.

A pair of falcons has made a cargo ship in the Ghost Fleet their home.

The Richmond Democrat offers a few home truths for the fringe left to consider regarding Cindy Sheehan and Co. (e.g., “Casey Sheehan’s death did nothing to improve his mother’s judgement or diplomatic ability”) — tougher words, actually, than The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto, who says: “This column has no ideological sympathy for Sheehan, who espouses noxious and hateful anti-American ideas. At a human level, however, we are appalled by the way in which the left and the media exploited this obviously troubled woman, falsely presenting her as a sainted everymom, then discarding her when she ceased to be of use to them. ‘I’ve been wondering why I’m killing myself,‘ Sheehan tells the Associated Press. ‘I’m going home for awhile to try and be normal.‘ We hope that she gets whatever help she needs toward that end.“

Governor Tim Kaine dropped some choice bon mots in his recent interview with Bloomberg News.

Here he is on trade:

[Protectionism is a] loser’s mentality. . . . The only way you’ll succeed is by being an aggressive competitor rather than trying to hoard your dwindling assets.

And here he is on immigration:

The most precious commodity in the world is talent. If we say no to [immigrants] or put up barriers to them, we’re cutting our own wrists.

Nicely put.

Kaine even takes a shot at the owner of the news service’s parent company, Bloomberg LP—New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg—for the way Hizzoner sent agents into the Commonwealth to investigate gun dealerships.

Kaine has a sharp intellect and a way with words—and it’s good to see him wield them well.

Richmond Cellars might qualify as a hyperlocal blog in the notional, if not geographic, sense: It’s devoted to a small part of Richmond, that having to do with wine. Go have a look.

The site is produced by Tripp Fenderson, who works for Media General—doing tech stuff that I can’t comprehend—and who has occasionally saved my bacon, technology-wise. But I came across the site honestly (via j’s notes), and Tripp didn’t know ahead of time about this promo. So I’m not just trying to curry favor with him.

Or at least, not ONLY trying to curry favor with him. If that happens to follow as an unintended result, then according to the principles of just war theory, no harm done!

CNN’s Lou Dobbs

30 May 2007

The Editor, New York Times
229 West 43rd St.
New York, NY 10036

To the Editor:

David Leonhardt says correctly that Lou Dobbs “has a somewhat flexible relationship with reality” (“Truth, Fiction, and Lou Dobbs,“ May 30).  Not only does the ostentatiously populist Mr. Dobbs misconstrue the reality of immigration, he’s equally fanciful on matters of trade.  In his 2004 book “Exporting America” Dobbs asserts that international trade is beneficial only when it is “balanced” - that is, produces no trade deficits - and then assures his readers that Adam Smith would agree with him.

Funny, that.  In The Wealth of Nations Smith observed that “Nothing, however, can be more absurd than this whole doctrine of the balance of trade.“

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University

P.S.—For more on Dobbs’ flexible relationship with reality, particularly regarding the great leprosy controversy (!!), read the Leonhardt column here.

The scariest part of this story is not that creationists actually are opening a creationist museum. Nor even, perhaps, that

about half of Americans . . . dismiss the scientific theory that all beings have a common ancestor, believing instead that God created humans in one glorious stroke. Similar numbers of people say the world’s age should be counted in the thousands of years, not billions, as established science would have it.

The scariest part is that

three Republican presidential candidates said they do not believe in evolution.

Because that probably qualifies as progress.

According to the news article:

The overriding goal [of the museum] is to persuade visitors that the Book of Genesis is scientifically defensible, Ham said, for if Christians lose faith in the literal truth of Genesis, doubts about such matters as the virgin birth and Christ’s resurrection, for example, will follow.

This is ridiculous on two counts. First, there’s something absurdist about trying to use the patina of science to debunk what science has said about one of its most settled questions. Second, there is something quite insecure about trying to use the patina of science to “prove” what the Bible says. If everything in the Bible were discoverable by reason and provable by the scientific method, then there would be no need for faith—which, unless I’m sorely mistaken,  is central to religious belief. Don’t the backers of the creationist museum have any faith of their own?

(Thanks to Rick Sincere for the heads-up.)

Maybe Neolibertarians are what Republicans used to be. Or maybe that’s just a misreading of the GOP. Your call.

Still, “pragmatic libertarianism” has a nice, if somewhat oxymoronic, ring to it.

And oh, yes—here is The New Libertarian, and here is the blog.

A question, though: Can libertarians afford schism? What happens when a splinter group splinters? Too much factionalism, and pretty soon someone will be accusing Jay Lovestone of being a Lovestonite.

Editor, Washington Post
1150 15th St., NW
Washington, DC 20071

Dear Editor:

Re Congressional Democrats’ penchant for earmarks (Robert Novak, “Murtha’s Friends,“ May 28): When pigs second in line at the trough accuse pigs first in line of being shameful gluttons, it is a dimwitted farmer indeed who fantasizes that the squealing accusers will be any less gluttonous when they gain favored access to the slopping pit.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics

George Mason University

on illegal immigration is now posted.

Tuesday’s column will address one line of reasoning in the debate over a complex subject—immigration—and the implications that follow once you decide that other considerations should trump the rule of law.

For now, let’s just pause for a moment to reflect on this breathtaking piece by Pat Buchanan.

Buchanan has long been a nationalist whose culture-war pugnacity has walked up to the line where white-power talk begins. But he’s taken a flying leap over the line with this:

What is happening to us? An immigrant invasion of the United States from the Third World, as America’s white majority is no longer even reproducing itself. Since Roe v. Wade, America has aborted 45 million of her children. And Asia, Africa and Latin America have sent 45 million of their children to inherit the estate the aborted American children never saw. God is not mocked.

And white America is in flight.

Note, please, the “us”—which defines only white people as legitimate Americans. This, mind you, regarding a nation founded on a set of ideas and ideals, prominent among them the notion that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights.

Weren’t we supposed to be offended by the trend toward hyphenated-americanism, which undermines the idea that we are Americans first and members of ethnic groups second, if ethnicity should be noted at all? I thought so too.

Buchanan’s bigotry is now quite thoroughly out of the closet.

A friend passes along this game—a sort of mini SimCity for those who like to curl up with a FEMP analysis of the PJM RTO.

From Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis:

“We’re demanding more gas at a time when we don’t have more gas being produced,“ he said. “That’s the economics 101 explanation for it.“

By Burnett’s count, more than 60 vehicles on the market get more than 30 miles a gallon and 40 that get more than 40 miles a gallon. “And none of them are top sellers,“ he said. “How is that the car makers’ fault?“

Just so. What’s more, recent surveys indicate consumers aren’t changing their driving habits much in response to higher prices. They seem to be looking for a secret talisman or magic bullet that will bring prices down.

Here it is:

Drive less.