All my bags are packed
I'm ready to go

I've been working long hours this week, but Saturday morning, I'll be here. I just hope the snow is on its way to Tahoe tomorrow, too.

I could moan about how there's more snow here, and how my favorite place to ski is celebrating her 30th birthday without me.

But how can I complain when I'll also ski or ride here, here, and maybe here next week.

I haven't found a good roadhouse for some country western dancing in North Tahoe, yet, but I'm wearing my boots anyway. I've got cowboy fever after seeing Brokeback Mountain last week. Heath Ledger was not that hot when he was in Prague, I'll tell you what.

Tobacco and the Soul

One of the many benefits of my current place of employment is how much I learn. I often leave Jay's Saloon (where we get $5 pitchers) and head directly to the bookstore to buy a book that my colleagues have just been discussing. I work with people who make me feel stupid and profoundly unliterate.* It's not because they want to. They most assuredly do not. They're simply so amazingly well-read that I drink in their knowledge as I'm drinking in the beer. With my Seattle tribe I've often felt like one of the least literate people in the crowd, but not quite to the extent I do here.** It's almost overwhelming. But in a good way. It's humbling, and it generates that perfect amount of unease that Mises says inspires us all to action.

The other night, driving a bunch of drunken, philosophizing boys home from the bowling alley, I was highly amused by their descriptions of the Kantian pleasures of smoking and other high-brow "excuses" for their strong nicotine preference. One of them followed up and sent me a link to the brilliant article "Tobacco and the Soul."

The author, a theologian, calls marijuana the charlatan-weed because it creates an appearance of conversation rather than creating actual conversation. So true. Perhaps other people are having profoundly different experiences with THC than I am and it really does help them think. With me all it does is slow my brain down such that I can't process very many thoughts at a time and can, therefore, consciously follow my own neural activity. It is kind of cool to meander along the neural paths that you normally take for granted because you're usually hurdling through multiple paths at supra-conscious speeds. It is not, however, cool to be dumb.

In any case, most of the aforementioned brilliant article is about tobacco.

"The current brouhaha over smoking has made everyone painfully aware of tobacco's effects on the body, but it has also obscured a more profound reason for smoking's popularity: its relation to the soul. As the heyday of smoking passes into the ashheap of history, it is meet that we reflect on this connection."

"It is fitting that all three kinds of smoking tobacco involve the use of fire, for each relates to the soul's responsiveness to reason, and fire, at least from the days of Prometheus, is especially emblematic of reason."

"Most significantly, however, the relative rarity of pipe-smoking in America is a telling sign of its current intellectual crisis. If the pipe epitomizes the intellectual way of life, then is it any surprise that it cannot be found where schools substitute politically correct ideology for real philosophy, or where the intelligentsia, instead of engaging in serious thought, pander to the latest activist fads?"

The article's not so brilliant that it makes me want to take up smoking, but it is well worth reading. The above quotes give you the gist of the main thesis, but they are no substitute for reading it in its hilarious entirety. I can almost guarantee your amusement.


*Yes, I claim to not read much while claiming the authority to invent new words.

**The Seattle tribe has its own plethora of very distinct advantages, of course.

John McCain’s War on Political Speech

How the Arizona senator and other campaign finance reformers use the law to muffle critics and trample the First Amendment.

I have strong political opinions and sometimes I just can't restrain myself from expressing them. In this month's issue of Reason, I was glad to see a very clear expression of what's wrong with campaign finance reform, and I have to share.

John McCain, of course, being a politician, wants to help me (and people like me). He knows some of us can't handle self-governance when it comes to the sinful temptation of speaking out when we see abuses of power. So -- as you all know -- he and his buddy, Russ Feingold, have been working hard to help sinners like us keep our mouths shut. Well not us as individuals. Not yet. We're still "allowed" to blog, write e-mails, and talk politics over beer. For now.

Sen. McCain has said he doesn't like groups like the National Rifle Association, the Sierra Club, and Planned Parenthood because they “often run ads that the candidates themselves disapprove of.” Gasp! There are groups who disagree with the "men" on Capitol Hill? And they are allowed to express themselves? Not anymore. Thanks to McCain-Feingold, they're NOT ALLOWED to run ANY televised ads within 60 days of an election.

What does this mean? We, as citizens, can join groups like the NRA or the Sierra Club. We can give them our money in order to represent us and our beliefs. Lucky us! Our government is so benevolent and giving. They allow us so much freedom. But we, as groups of concerned citizens, can't run ads that criticize officeholders, simply because the ads are “negative” or expose things about candidates that the candidates would rather not have exposed? Before NPR and other McCain-Feingold fans hypnotized me into forgetting its meaning, I think I had a vague understanding of something called the First Amendment that did something like assure us that Congress would make no law abridging freedom of the speech or of the press.

Public Choice Theory is a really good tool for understanding the problem with campaign finance reform.

We intuitively understand Public Choice, right? The reason we restrict political contributions is because we know elected officials are human. We know they are self-interested. We know they place their personal interests in retaining office ahead of the public good. We think they will be corrupted by money and shape public policy in the interest of campaign donors, rather than on behalf of their constituents.

What are we doing to combat this problem? We're pretending these same elected politicians are passing campaign finance rules for the greater good rather than for their own interests. Of course they would have only altruistic motives in passing this kind of law. They aren't using campaign finance reform as a means to keep their challengers out of office. Senators McCain and Feingold aren't corrupted by power. No, sir. Lord Acton was a fool.

This speech by Bradley Smith, who recently left the Federal Election Commission, is awesome.

Uh-oh! I've fallen in love again

With Universidad Francisco Marroquín, whose mission is "to teach and disseminate the ethical, legal and economic principles of a society of free and responsible persons."

The school took over a biohazardous waste site (where the state-run hospital of Guatemala was dumping all of its garbage) and turned it into an oasis. And I use that word in the aesthetic sense -- the architecture is Mayan-inspired and the buildings designed to nestle into the landscape. I also use the word "oasis" in an intellectual sense -- all students, even dental and medical students, learn enough economics to understand how wealth is created, and enough philosophy and ethics to understand the principles of liberty. I also use that word in the ecological sense -- they've turned the government dump into a nature reserve and botanical garden. Yes, this is me gushing.

You can see pictures of our visit on their web site.

If you're not yet as impressed as I am and want a sample of their lectures, prepare to be amazed by the work their New Media Center is doing. As a sample, watch a video of Nobel Laureate Vernon Smith talking about experimental economics and public choice. Don't have time to watch the entire lecture? No problem. UFM indexes the entire thing, you can can scroll through the outline and start the video right where you want.

Estoy enamorada.

Anarchy in the U.S.?

Why are people interchanging the words "anarchy" and "chaos" with such frequency these days?

Let's revisit the dictionary definitions, shall we?

an·ar·chy ( P ) Pronunciation Key (nr-k)
n. pl. an·ar·chies
Absence of any form of political authority.

cha·os ( P ) Pronunciation Key (ks)
n.
A condition or place of great disorder or confusion.

So sayeth American Heritage.

Tonight on Boston Legal (yes, dear readers, I'm hooked), James Spader's character was doing the weekly sanctimonious bit about how what happened in New Orleans was every bit as much as social disaster as it was a natural one. He said that perhaps the next disaster could be anarchy.

Anarchy, a disaster? Has the horrible aftermath of Hurricane Katrina taught us nothing? Faith in government is misplaced.

Perhaps if there weren't a nanny state government abusing its powers in biblical proportions and crippling its people with economic sanctions and forced inferior education, people wouldn't have so much pent-up rage to let loose the minute something goes wrong. Perhaps they'd be capable of solving their own problems.

Anarchy is not chaos, people. Aargh!

I'm no anarcho-capitalist. And I'm certainly no confused-beyond-all-belief socialist anarchist. But that doesn't mean I can't see the potential for order in a community without government. If you can't see the potential for order in a community without government, check out Bryan Caplan's Anarchy FAQs, or read some Hayek.

All I'm saying is anarchy does not equal chaos. And I'm asking that people use the word "chaos" when that's what they want to express. In this case, the extra syllable doesn't make you look smart for using the bigger word. It makes me wonder if you know what any of the words you're using mean.

Here're some important words to understand: spontaneous order