Sixteen Volts

I have to say that I am curious to see how the leftists will react to the latest observation that John Derbyshire makes in his post "Raising Daughters". In that post, The Derbster strongly argues against allowing your daughters to date, let alone marry, losers. Well, strictly speaking I am not really curious, since I already know the answer: they will angrily condemn him for believing that fathers could or should have any effect or say on what their daughters choose to do in their lives. It's funny how something what would have been totally commonsense a few decades ago is now politically incorrect. But even though a father has no legal power to stop his adult daughter from marrying anybody, he can at least try to reason with her, and refuse to support her folly with his money.

Speaking of providing guidance and protection to your daughters, I could not recommend more the excellent book "Gift of Fear" by Gavin de Becker, security expert to the stars. In this book (or in one of the sequels, I can't remember exactly which one), Gavin tells us that as a father, he has taught his daughters not to show any kindness or charity attention (perhaps in the style of that "I choo-choo-choose you" Valentine's day card that Lisa gave to Ralph) to loser men who they feel sorry for and take pity of, since the probability of becoming the object of stalking is unacceptably high. Smart move. This is, by the way, one reason why (young) men end up killing themselves way more often than women, since if a woman is really down, she will usually get sympathetic help, but if a man is really down, everybody (and especially women) will instinctively distance themselves from him. Even if only a small minority of men would actually become destructive towards the people close to them, the risk is too high to take and therefore all men have to suffer from this prejudice, including the majority who will only turn their desperation towards themselves. I don't see any solution to this problem and pointing blaming fingers is useless, but at least this is an interesting aspect of social reality to point out.

At Cafe Hayek, the libertarian economist Don Boudreaux asks in his post "Some Questions About An Alternative World" what would happen in practice if anybody was allowed to practice medicine, without the pesky government stepping in the free consumer choice by requiring that doctors have to have those M.D. degrees. I guess the concluding paragraph is meant to be some kind of parody of autistic libertarianism:

Would the number of quacks practicing medicine profitably rise? (I suspect so, because some people have a demand for quackery. Why should these people be prevented from buying quack "medicine" if that's what they want?)

Then again, Deepak Chopra and other New Age nutjobs are doing profitable business under the present rules, so perhaps we should scratch that remark.

Coyote Blog tells us "How to Steal a Moped in England" by using a little bit of lateral thinking. Hate the game, not the player, as I always say.

I finished the book "The United States of Wal-Mart" by John Dicker, a book just as inane as you would expect from the cover cartoon by Ted Rall. First a lot of facts, and then just skip to the part where Wal-Mart is bad and must be stopped. I also have to say that there is certain comedy when a leftist complains that Wal-Mart does not stock lad's mags such as FHM and Loaded. You just can't please some groups, so it is best not to even try. As a happy customer of Wal-Mart, I have noticed that there seems to be certain correlation between urban misery and high concentration of trendy leftists who want to keep Wal-Mart away. "The people don't need all that cheap crap and are happier without it, man!", as Stoner G. Ponytail angrily proclaims and takes a whiff from his cigarette. Meanwhile, Will Wilkinson comments about one technique that the book recommends against Wal-Mart in his post "Chicago City Council to Low-wage Workers and Poor People: Eat Dirt!" Coyote Blog also has a post about this, "Special Minimum Wage for Big-Box Retailers". Now, I believe that I read something about the effect of significantly increasing the minimum wage just recently... I just can't remember exactly what it was... oh, darn, somebody help me out here.

Living near where you work certainly saves time and money. In Europe, people usually live near their jobs, but in North America, this is usually not feasible. Donald Pittenger of Two Blowhards examines the issue in his post "To Live Near Your Work".

In the post "Give Me Your Tired, Your Doctoral Dropouts", Paul Kedrosky notes that Ph.D. program dropouts are the most productive people in the real world.

In the interview "Romancing Opiates" we can finally see a photograph of Theodore Dalrymple. The good doctor argues that (contrary what we learned from the tragic grandeur of the movie "Trainspotting") the withdrawal effects of giving up the heroin habit are in reality rather insignificant. "Stiff upper, chaps", I would imagine the good doctor saying to his patients in withdrawal. And if he doesn't, he damn well ought to.

Posted by Ilkka Kokkarinen on Friday, July 28, 2006 at 7:04 AM