Category Archives: Social Commentary

Business, Economics, Education, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

The Remains Of A California Day

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Some depressing thoughts from long-time Democrat (who will be voting for Mickey Kaus in June) Victor Davis Hanson:

…how would we return to sanity in California, a state as naturally beautiful and endowed and developed by our ancestors as it has been sucked dry by our parasitic generation? The medicine would be harder than the malady, and I just cannot see it happening, as much as I love the state, admire many of its citizens, and see glimmers of hope in the most unlikely places every day.

After all, in no particular order, we would have to close the borders; adopt English immersion in our schools; give up on the salad bowl and return to the melting pot; assimilate, intermarry, and integrate legal immigrants; curb entitlements and use the money to fix infrastructure like roads, bridges, airports, trains, etc.; build 4-5 new damns to store water in wet years; update the canal system; return to old policies barring public employee unions; redo pension contracts; cut about 50,000 from the public employee roles; lower income taxes from 10% to 5% to attract businesses back; cut sales taxes to 7%; curb regulations to allow firms to stay; override court orders now curbing cost-saving options in our prisons by systematic legislation; start creating material wealth from our forests; tap more oil, timber, natural gas, and minerals that we have in abundance; deliver water to the farmland we have; build 3-4 nuclear power plants on the coast; adopt a traditional curriculum in our schools; insist on merit pay for teachers; abolish tenure; encourage not oppose more charter schools, vouchers, and home schooling; give tax breaks to private trade and business schools; reinstitute admission requirements and selectivity at the state university system; take unregistered cars off the road; make UC professors teach a class or two more each year; abolish all racial quotas and preferences in reality rather than in name; build a new all weather east-west state freeway over the Sierra; and on and on.

In other words, we would have to seance someone born around 1900 and just ask them to float back for a day, walk around, and give us some advice.

It’s hard to see much hope, given how the looters in Sacramento have arranged things with their gerrymandered districts.

On that last recommendation, does he mean upgrading I-80, or a new freeway with a different (presumably more southerly) route? Perhaps just south of Yosemite, providing a quick route to the Mammoth ski area for the Bay Area? But where would it hook into another interstate? The only two options are I-80, way to the north, or I-15, far south. Ideally, I guess it would continue east all the way across Nevada to extend I-70 in Utah all the way to California. In any event, it’s a pipe dream given the current state of state finances.

[Update a while later]

I haven’t been up that way in a few years. Is 395 four lanes all the way to Mammoth through the Owens Valley now? That would be a natural place to hook in a new road.

Social Commentary, Space

The 200-Mile Club

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It’s been speculated about for years, of course, but the Shuttle doesn’t afford much privacy. But I’m thinking that with four women up there right now, what are the chances that someone hasn’t persuaded someone else to do it in the cupola? If so, of course, we won’t hear about it for years.

Political Commentary, Social Commentary

The New Puritans

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Jim Geraghty has some thoughts about organic milk:

I like living where I live, but I remarked to Mrs. Campaign Spot that the D.C. area can be a very “pious” place sometimes. Oh, it’s not the traditional definition of devotion to religion, but instead the need to showcase one’s loyalty to all the “right” causes and decisions and proper behavior. It seems that for some of these parents, sending organic milk to school with their kids is insufficient; they need everyone else to know they they only want organic milk for their kids, and that we really ought to be following the same dietary practices.

It’s not just DC, it’s any place with a high concentration of “progressives.” Ever wonder why Massachusetts is such a “blue” state? It goes all the way back to the people who founded it. They’ve merely swapped out their religion for a more secular piety. And sanctimony.

Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Too Trusting

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Spammers are starting to move into the social network sites:

Most social networks have internal messaging systems for communication between members. Petre’s group examined that of Facebook, which boasts 5 percent of the world’s population as its users. While Facebook has an antispam engine, the group found that it was better at filtering out phishing e-mails than preventing spam messages from getting through.

The group started by creating fake profiles to trick users into friending them. They created three profiles, one containing almost no information about the user, one with some information, and one with detailed information. They used those profiles to join popular groups and began sending out friend requests.

Within 24 hours, 85 users had accepted a request from the first profile, 108 from the second, and 111 from the third. Petre says that acceptances began to accelerate, since more than 50 percent of the time, users would accept the request if they shared a “mutual friend” with the fake profile. In some cases, he says, users would send a message asking for more information about how they knew this supposed new friend. The researchers didn’t respond to these requests, but in many cases, Petre says, users accepted the request anyway.

The researchers then posted a link without any explanation to the fake profiles’ walls, using a URL shortener to obscure where the link went. Almost 25 percent of the profiles’ “friends” visited the link, Petre says.

I am pretty picky about who I friend on Facebook. I will generally only accept people that I’ve met in meatspace, or at least had previous interactions with on line. Simply having mutual friends is not sufficient. I might friend someone who I don’t know if they provide a message explaining why they want to be my friend, but never if it’s simply a generic friend request. This just seems like basic common sense to me.