December 2005 Archives

Reader AH sent along an article by Rodney Stark that explores "How Christianity (and Capitalism) Led to Science".

When Europeans first began to explore the globe, their greatest surprise was not the existence of the Western Hemisphere, but the extent of their own technological superiority over the rest of the world. Not only were the proud Maya, Aztec, and Inca nations helpless in the face of European intruders, so were the fabled civilizations of the East: China, India, and Islamic nations were "backward" by comparison with 15th-century Europe. How had that happened? Why was it that, although many civilizations had pursued alchemy, the study led to chemistry only in Europe? Why was it that, for centuries, Europeans were the only ones possessed of eyeglasses, chimneys, reliable clocks, heavy cavalry, or a system of music notation? How had the nations that had arisen from the rubble of Rome so greatly surpassed the rest of the world?

He goes on to discuss how Christianity, as a lived-out religion with far more practical impact on daily life than the other religions of the world, led to greater respect for man, greater freedom, capitalism, and the rationality required for scientific research.

Christian faith in reason and in progress was the foundation on which Western success was achieved. As the distinguished philosopher Alfred North Whitehead put it during one of his Lowell Lectures at Harvard in 1925, science arose only in Europe because only there did people think that science could be done and should be done, a faith "derivative from medieval theology."

Moreover the medieval Christian faith in reason and progress was constantly reinforced by actual progress, by technical and organizational innovations, many of them fostered by Christianity. For the past several centuries, far too many of us have been misled by the incredible fiction that, from the fall of Rome until about the 15th century, Europe was submerged in the Dark Ages — centuries of ignorance, superstition, and misery — from which it was suddenly, almost miraculously, rescued; first by the Ren-aissance and then by the Enlightenment. But, as even dictionaries and encyclopedias recently have begun to acknowledge, it was all a lie!

It was during the so-called Dark Ages that European technology and science overtook and surpassed the rest of the world. Some of that involved original inventions and discoveries; some of it came from Asia. But what was so remarkable was the way that the full capacities of new technologies were recognized and widely adopted. By the 10th century Europe already was far ahead in terms of farm-ing equipment and techniques, had unmatched capacities in the use of water and wind power, and possessed superior military equipment and tactics. Not to be overlooked in all that medieval progress was the invention of a whole new way to organize and operate commerce and industry: capitalism.

He continues with a fascinating account of how the Church's monastic orders began lending money at interest and selling products at market-clearing prices.

My brother pointed me to a set of poll questions by the Pew Research Center about Wal-Mart and Christmas and the some of the results are pretty interesting.

I work in a technology company, so it's strange to me to see Microsoft rated so highly. I'm curious as to whether or not these are the only companies they asked about, because I'd like to know what other companies would be rated at less than 50% favorability. It's not surprising that people aren't too pleased with an oil company like Exxon/Mobil at the moment, considering recent gas prices, but Halliburton? Come on, that low rating is purely due to political persecution. Most people had never even heard of the company five years ago.

Despite the constant furor both ways over political correctness, many people prefer "Merry Christmas" and a plurality don't care. An earlier table showed that when people weren't explicitly given the "don't care" option, 60% said they preferred "Merry Christmas".

And despite the constant harping by the ACLU, a good majority of people think religious Christmas displays should be allowed on public property. Doesn't the ACLU's focus on this issue constitute an admission that there just aren't many legitimate threats to our civil liberties? I suppose I should be thankful that the biggest threat the ACLU can come up with is so innocuous.

In the coming decades it will be incredibly important that China continues to open up its economy and political process, and it's good to see that President Hu Jintao is saying many of the right things. I'm not sure how sincere he is, and it's important to remember that we can't trust China, but in the long run I think China is moving in the right direction.

This is quoted from a Drudge flash report, so the link will go bad pretty quick.

Chinese president stresses commitment to peaceful development in New Year Address Sat Dec 31 2005 09:22:59 ET

BEIJING Chinese President Hu Jintao reiterated China's strong commitment to peaceful development in his New Year Address broadcast Saturday to domestic and overseas audience via state TV and radio stations.

"Here, I would like to reiterate that China's development is peaceful development, opening development, cooperative development and harmonious development," Hu said.

"The Chinese people will develop ourselves by means of striving for a peaceful international environment, and promote world peace with our own development," Hu said in the address broadcast by China Radio International, China National Radio and China Central Television.

Notice there's no mention of Taiwan or terrorism, but holidays are the time for vague platitudes, not concrete policy.

He said the Chinese people are willing to join with peoples of all nations in the world to promote multilateralism, advance the development of economic globalization toward common prosperity, advocate democracy in international relations, respect the diversity of the world and push for the establishment of a new international political and economic order that is just and rational.

I'm not sure if "democracy in international relations" is the same as regular old democracy, or if it means equal representation and voting among nations, as is seen in the UN General Assembly. If it's the former, great, if it's the latter, then it's meaningless.

He pledged that China will adhere to its fundamental national policy of opening to the outside world, continue to improve the investment environment and open the market, carry out international cooperation in a wide range of areas and seek to attain mutual benefits and win-win results with all countries in the world.

If they continue to open their economy, it's inevitable that their political process will follow.

He mentioned in particular that China will do its best to help developing countries accelerate development and help people suffering from war, poverty, illnesses and natural calamities in the world.

I don't think they have the resources to help other countries much at this point, considering that most Chinese subjects live in third-world conditions, but it's a nice thought.

I demand that you go read Michael Crichton's presentation on fear and complexity.

In fact, we need to recognize that this kind of human response is well-documented. Authoritatively telling people they are going to die can in itself be fatal.

You may know that Australian aborigines fear a curse called “pointing the bone.” A shaman shakes a bone at a person, and sings a song, and soon after, the person dies. This is a specific example of a phenomenon generally referred to as “hex death”—a person is cursed by an authority figure, and then dies. According to medical studies, the person generally dies of dehydration, implying they just give up. But the progression is very erratic, and shock symptoms may play a part, suggesting adrenal effects of fright and hopelessness.

Yet this deadly curse is nothing but information. And it can be undone with information.

A friend of mine was an intern at Bellvue Hospital in New York. A 28-year old man from Aruba said he was going to die, because he had been cursed. He was admitted for psychiatric evaluation and found to be normal, but his health steadily declined. My friend was able to rehydrate him, balance his electrolytes, and give him nutrients, but nevertheless the man worsened, insisting that he was cursed and there was nothing that could prevent his death. My friend realized that the patient would, in fact, soon die. The situation was desperate. Finally he told the patient that he, the doctor, was going to invoke his own powerful medicine to undo the curse, and his medicine was more powerful than any other. He got together with the house staff, bought some headdresses and rattles, and danced around the patient in the middle of the night, chanting what they hoped would be effective-sounding phrases. The patient showed no reaction, but next day he began to improve. The man went home a few days later. My friend literally saved his life.

He goes on to explain how the irrational, paralyzing fears that the left foists upon civilization -- such as global warming, oil depletion, overpopulation, &c. -- have real costs and do far more harm than good.

Maybe someone can interpret this dream for me. My brother Nick was going around hiding life-size statues of historical figures (famous and generic). When someone would find one, he would jump out and scare them, yelling "anachronism!" It was really hilarious.

As I said before, the people who leaked information at the NSA eavesdropping operation are traitors and should be executed, so it's good to see that there's finally an investigation.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department has launched an investigation to determine who disclosed a secret NSA eavesdropping operation approved by President George W. Bush after the September 11 attacks, officials said on Friday.

"We are opening an investigation into the unauthorized disclosure of classified materials related to the NSA," one official said.

Earlier this month Bush acknowledged the program and called its disclosure to The New York Times "a shameful act." He said he presumed a Justice Department leak investigation into who disclosed the National Security Agency eavesdropping operation would get under way.

I wouldn't be surprised if the information turns out to have come from a Democratic member of the House or Senate Intelligence Committee. I hope that's not the case, but I'm not sure if it would be worse or better than if the leak came from an employee of the NSA.

It was a hard decision in June of 2003, but I'm glad I sold my GM stock for $36.52 per share. Yesterday GM hit its lowest price in 20 years, slipping to $18.33 in the middle of the day. Yuck!

It's a feature of bureaucracies that they waste and steal money, and no bureaucracy is better at it than a government. It's no surprise whatsoever to discover that up to 85% of government subsidized 9/11 recovery loans were improperly awarded to businesses who weren't touched by the attack. Some of the problem is undoubtedly incompetence by bureaucrats who can never be fired, but I'm sure there's plenty of graft and outright theft going on as well.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Texas golf course, a Nevada tanning salon and an Illinois candy shop were among small businesses that may have improperly received U.S. subsidized loans intended for firms hurt by the September 11 attacks, an internal government watchdog has found.

The Small Business Administration's inspector general said in a report made public on Wednesday that in 85 percent of the sample of loans it reviewed, a company's eligibility to receive the money through the program could not be verified.

"Could not be verified" is a politico-speak for "lie".

At least with charities, if there's graft it can be criminally prosecuted when discovered and donors can redirect their contributions to less wasteful organizations. When it comes to government corruption there are rarely prosecutions because no politician wants to admit that his appointees are a problem, and bureaucrats protect their own. What's more, us "donors" (at gun-point) don't have many options for redirecting our contributions unless we want to move to another country.

I recently bought a Panasonic PV-GS19 (which I love) and have been making a lot of movies starring my family and my new wife. As you can imagine I'd like these movies to last for years, so I've been burning them to DVD. How long should they stay good? Apparently it's a matter of technology and quality. As with other products, DVD manufacturers mass-produce a huge number of units, many of which come off the assembly line with defects. The near-perfect units are sold under expensive brand names, and the slightly defective units are sold more cheaply through side companies. A knowledgable friend recommended Taiyo Yuden DVD-R discs to me through SuperMediaStore, and I haven't had any problems with them yet... but it's only been a couple of months.

Update 060117:
Reader John V. passes on this additional article about recordable media quality.

I suppose many people would find this article about the difficulty of finding an abortionist in South Dakota to reflect some sort of "primitive" moral value system, but since the Supreme Court has decreed that killing unborn babies shall be legal no matter what the public wants, social ostracism is probably one of the most effective ways to save lives.

Sioux Falls, S.D. -- The waiting room at the Planned Parenthood clinic was packed by the time the doctor arrived -- an hour late because of weather delays in Minneapolis.

It was clinic day, the one day a week when the only clinic in South Dakota that provides abortions could take in patients. This time it was a Wednesday. The week before it was a Monday.

The day changes depending on the schedules of four doctors from Minnesota who fly to Sioux Falls on a rotating basis to perform abortions, something no doctor in South Dakota will do. The last doctor in South Dakota to perform abortions stopped about eight years ago; the consensus in the medical community is that offering the procedure is not worth the stigma of being branded a baby killer. ...

[Kate] Looby, [Planned Parenthood's state director,] whose father is an obstetrician-gynecologist, said she has talked to many doctors in South Dakota who say they have no personal objection to performing abortions but cannot risk their careers and community standing by offering the procedure.

The abortionists and the mothers should be ashamed of themselves. They and the men who fathered these children (when they enabled the abortion) should all be thrown in jail.

It's kind of sad that despite a multi-billion dollar gun registry and draconian gun laws, Canadian gun violence is skyrocketing. Naturally the United States is to blame.

While many Canadians take pride in Canadian cities being less violent than their American counterparts, Toronto has seen 78 murders this year, including a record 52 gun-related deaths -- almost twice as many as last year.

"What happened yesterday was appalling. You just don't expect it in a Canadian city," the mayor said.

"It's a sign that the lack of gun laws in the U.S. is allowing guns to flood across the border that are literally being used to kill people in the streets of Toronto," Miller said.

Guns don't kill people, people kill people. Blaming poverty doesn't seem much more accurate.

"There are neighborhoods in Toronto where young people face barriers of poverty, discrimination and don't have real hope and opportunity. The kind of programs that we once took for granted in Canada that would reach out to young people have systematically disappeared over the past decade and I think that gun violence is a symptom of a much bigger problem," Miller said.

The problem isn't povery, it's a lack of opportunity. Ironically, yet tragically, the more socialist programs a well-meaning government enacts the less liberty its people have, which just makes the problems worse.

Leave it to the outgoing Prime Minister Paul Martin to make an even stupider suggestion:

The escalating violence prompted the prime minister to announce earlier this month that if re-elected on January 23, his government would ban handguns. With severe restrictions already in place against handgun ownership, many criticized the announcement as politics.

Hopefully Canadians won't be entirely castrated by their nannies.

John Thompson, a security analyst with the Toronto-based Mackenzie Institute, says the number of guns smuggled from the United States is a problem, but that Canada has a gang problem -- not a gun problem -- and that Canada should stop pointing the finger at the United States.

"It's a cop out. It's an easy way of looking at one symptom rather than addressing a whole disease," Thompson said.

But dealing with gangs is hard, and signing a piece of paper that says "all guns are banned!" is easy. It's much simpler to take rights away from everyone than to nurture a culture that respects property, loves liberty, and in which people take responsibility for themselves.

There isn't a lot of news at the moment, and I'm enjoying my week off. The only productive work I have to do is to get together a rough set of slides for my dissertation defense next quarter, but that shouldn't be too hard since all the information I need is already in my nearly-complete dissertation.

The rest of the time I'm spending with my wife and playing Might and Magic III. I played MMII several times through but never got the sequel, and I'm enjoying it quite a bit. Once I have some free time on my hands (i.e., I'm done with school) I think I might write a hybrid of MMIII and Shining Force 2, another of my all-time favorites. I'll write them in C# so they're platform-independent, and it'll give me a good opportunity to learn Gtk#.

Anyway, I'm sure I'll be posting more this week, but it probably won't be as mind-blowing as usual.

Merry Christmas everyone!

It's very unfortunate that scientists as a class don't live up to the image of objectivity they try to project, but it isn't surprising considering that every scientist I've met is a regular human being, with all the accompanying flaws. Still, many people seem shocked to discover that scientists are often more concerned with advancing their personal careers and agendas than with advancing the state of human knowledge.

Two of the world's leading scientific journals have come under fire from researchers for refusing to publish papers which challenge fashionable wisdom over global warming. ...

The controversy follows the publication by Science in December of a paper which claimed to have demonstrated complete agreement among climate experts, not only that global warming is a genuine phenomenon, but also that mankind is to blame.

The author of the research, Dr Naomi Oreskes, of the University of California, analysed almost 1,000 papers on the subject published since the early 1990s, and concluded that 75 per cent of them either explicitly or implicitly backed the consensus view, while none directly dissented from it.

Dr Oreskes's study is now routinely cited by those demanding action on climate change, including the Royal Society and Prof Sir David King, the Government's chief scientific adviser.

However, her unequivocal conclusions immediately raised suspicions among other academics, who knew of many papers that dissented from the pro-global warming line.

They included Dr Benny Peiser, a senior lecturer in the science faculty at Liverpool John Moores University, who decided to conduct his own analysis of the same set of 1,000 documents - and concluded that only one third backed the consensus view, while only one per cent did so explicitly. ...

Prof Dennis Bray, of the GKSS National Research Centre in Geesthacht, Germany, submitted results from an international study showing that fewer than one in 10 climate scientists believed that climate change is principally caused by human activity.

As with Dr Peiser's study, Science refused to publish his rebuttal. Prof Bray told The Telegraph: "They said it didn't fit with what they were intending to publish."

Prof Roy Spencer, at the University of Alabama, a leading authority on satellite measurements of global temperatures, told The Telegraph: "It's pretty clear that the editorial board of Science is more interested in promoting papers that are pro-global warming. It's the news value that is most important."

He said that after his own team produced research casting doubt on man-made global warming, they were no longer sent papers by Nature and Science for review - despite being acknowledged as world leaders in the field.

The scientific method and scientific principles are designed to prevent this sort of adherence to dogma that, when seen in religion, evokes derision from many secular scientists, but it should be obvious that despite the perception much research is far from objective and little concerned with truth.

(HT: Clayton Cramer.)

Apparently the Moschidae Deer is a real thing, but I'm sure glad they don't pull Santa's sleigh. Instead of antlers, they have fangs.

How'd you like to see a few of those nasties climbing around your roof at night?

HowStuffWorks claims to have a pretty complete list of Christmas songs with only twenty-six members. As they say, that explains why we tend to hear the same songs over and over.

• Away In A Manger
• Carol Of The Bells
• Deck The Halls
• God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
• Jingle Bells
• Joy To The World
• Hark, The Herald Angels Sing
• Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
• I'll Be Home For Christmas
• It Came Upon A Midnight Clear
• Little Drummer Boy
• O Come All Ye Faithful
• O Holy Night
• O, Little Town of Bethlehem
• O Tannenbaum
• Rudolf the Red-Nose Reindeer
• Santa Claus Is Coming To Town
• Silent Night
• Silver Bells
• The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire)
• The First Noel
• The Twelve Days of Christmas
• We Wish You A Merry Christmas
• What Child Is This?
• White Christmas
• Winter Wonderland

And over.

Also see my post from two years ago about The Twelve Days of Christmas.

Ok, so by now everyone in the world knows They got married?!, but what's the big deal? These two people have been in more internet ads than anyone or anything else I can think of. Who are they? Why do we care if they got married? Did they really get married?

I've been wishing everyone Merry Christmas and just generally refusing to recognize that the decorations at work are merely for "Happy Holidays". So far no one has lectured me on my cultural insensitivity, or even seemed to notice. I'm just glad no one has wished me Happy Channukakkah yet or I'd have to punch them in the face for disrespecting my people!

I've written about the follies of foreign aid and derided the UN for calling America "stingy", and the recent devestating earthquake in Pakistan has provided America with yet another opportunity to prove our critics wrong.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan--From the air, the town of Balakot, at the lip of the Kaghan Valley in Pakistan's mountainous North-West Frontier Province, resembles pictures of Hiroshima circa late summer 1945: All but a few buildings have been reduced absolutely to rubble. There were some 50,000 people in this town on the morning of Oct. 8; a six-second earthquake that day killed an estimated 16,000 outright. Now survivors live mainly in scattered tent villages, not all of them properly winterized. And winter has begun.

The people of Balakot and dozens of other devastated towns are much on the mind of Rear Adm. Michael A. LeFever, 51, the man in charge of the U.S. military's 1,000-man, $110 million-and-counting relief effort here. "I'll never forget landing and smelling gangrene and smelling death," he says of his first trip to the disaster zone where 73,000 died. "The first couple of days were overwhelming."

It was Pakistan's good fortune in those critical days that Adm. LeFever could call in heavy-lift helicopters, particularly the tandem-rotor Chinook, from bases in nearby Afghanistan. Every road into the Frontier Province and the neighboring Azad Kashmir region had been rendered impassable by huge landslides. Every hospital in the region except one had been destroyed. The Pakistan government, which lost nearly its entire civil administration in the region as well as hundreds of soldiers, lacked the airlift capacity to bring adequate relief north and the critically injured south. The Chinooks were among the few helicopters able to reach, supply and evacuate places that, even under normal conditions, are some of the most inaccessible on earth.

Since then, U.S. helicopters have flown 2,500 sorties, carried 16,000 passengers and delivered nearly 6,000 tons of aid. Just as importantly, the Chinook has become America's new emblem in Pakistan, a byword for salvation in an area where until recently the U.S. was widely and fanatically detested. Toy Chinooks (made in China, of course) are suddenly popular with Pakistani children. A Kashmiri imam who denounced the U.S. in a recent sermon was booed and heckled by worshippers. "Pakistan is not a nation of ingrates," a local businessman told me over dinner the other night. "We know where the help is coming from."

The American military is one of the greatest forces for good in the world at this moment, perhaps second only to Christianity.

My wife has been attending Saddam's trial in Iraq and has the inside scoop on the proceedings, including information that substantiates Saddam's claims of abuse.

You've gotta love this essay by Daniel Gross about journalists coming to terms with their place in the social structure.

The New York real-estate boom is claiming a different kind of casualty, according to an article in Sunday's New York Times. Keying off a new report issued by the Center for an Urban Future, Jennifer Steinhauer noted that, thanks to high housing prices, many of the creative types who work in Manhattan-centered fields like advertising, publishing, and the arts are being priced out of the city. This, presumably, could damage New York in the long run, since it's an article of faith among nouveau-urban thinkers that the creative classes are a huge economic advantage, as the author Richard Florida has persuasively argued.

It could also damage journalism. The journalists who write these stories about people who can't afford to live in New York can't afford to live in New York, either. And that's a trend that may prove just as corrosive to establishment media as any disruptive technology.

The "disruptive technology" being, presumably, blogs and the internet media.

Journalists have long suffered from what David Brooks (in his excellent Bobos in Paradise phase) identified as status-income disequilibrium. Journalists received low wages compared to many of their peers and neighbors but enjoyed higher prestige and job security. But for employees of the media Big Three, both the prestige and job security are fading as the publications hemorrhage audiences, advertisers, buzz, and public esteem. Meanwhile, the wages for other professions that New York journalists' neighbors and peers work in (law, consulting, financial services, hedge funds) have been rising fast.

It's called reality. You may have come into peripheral contact with it while writing disparaging, condescending articles about those of us who have lived in it for our whole lives.

Most experienced reporters and editors at the publications in question earn salaries in the low six figures. They can expect salaries to rise by a few percentage points a year, if they're lucky. Salaries that barely pierce six figures certainly aren't insulting to most Americans. But everything is relative. A couple doing quite well—he's an editor at the Journal, she's a reporter at the Times—could make up to $250,000. But after New York taxes, New York child care, and New York housing, you're not left with much. In New York City, you can't buy a co-op or a condo with only 10 percent down. In most desirable suburbs, you can't buy a starter house for less than $700,000. When children arrive, the couple has to choose between living in an expensive town with good public schools (which means long, painful commutes), or the prospect of private-school tuition at $25,000 per kid per year. Given the types of lives many journalists wish to lead—and think they're entitled to lead by virtue of their education and positions—the wages aren't anywhere near sufficient.

Oh no! They have to make agonizing decisions between public and private school? The horror! These observations demonstrate, economically, that journalists' sense of entitlement is misplaced and that their actual value is far less than their perceived value. The real tragedy here is that media consumers have been overcharged for the past century.

Apparently Mr. Gross agrees:

Today, neither journalists nor their employers have aligned their self-perceptions with the wages they pay and the space they occupy in the world. For decades, companies like the media Big Three have seen themselves as among the elite employers of New York, analogous to Goldman Sachs, or McKinsey, easily able to recruit and retain the best and the brightest. The Times, the Journal, and Time Inc. want to hire yuppies, the better to connect with their yuppie readerships. And reporters and editors want to be yuppies. But the economics of the business—and of the home town—no longer allow for the upwardly mobile portion of yuppiedom. (It's somewhat different in Washington, where the rich aren't so rich and housing isn't so expensive.)

We New York-area journalists shouldn't ask for pity, and we don't deserve it. As a class, we're bourgeois and ambitious. We like comfort and access, but we don't want to work all that hard. Working for clients, as our lawyer neighbors do, is anathema. So is taking on risk, the task for which our neighbors who toil in the financial vineyards are so richly rewarded. Most people who choose to become journalists have great advantages—good educations and the sorts of skills that can translate into other professions. Writers unhappy with their wages can always switch fields, seek other jobs, or leave. If housing prices continue to rise, and if wages continue to stagnate, the media Big Three may find that their captive creative class might quit for greener pastures.

It's optimistic to assume that veteran journalists will be able to find greener pastures and higher-paying jobs -- after all, those who can, do, and those who can't, write. Without a willingness to work hard for, you know, customers, it's hard to see how any of these journalists will even be employable. The real, precious irony will be if these elitists are forced to move into fly-over country just to find any pastures at all.

On the whole I think it's a great thing for our society that journalists are going to have to live in the real world with the rest of us; let's hope similar changes hit academia. Perhaps once our "thinking class" has a little tougher time making ends meet they'll come to appreciate the value of cutting taxes and the annoyance of governmental interference.

(HT: Rush Limbaugh's radio show.)

Richard Russell provides a list of twelve characteristics of the "ideal" business, most of which I've considered intuitively but could not have written and encapsulated as consisely as Mr. Russell has. Cutting out all the valuable explanations in the article:

(1) The ideal business sells the world, rather than a single neighborhood or even a single city or state.

(2) The ideal business offers a product which enjoys an "inelastic" demand.

(3) The ideal business sells a product which cannot be easily substituted or copied.

(4) The ideal business has minimal labor requirements (the fewer personnel, the better).

(5) The ideal business enjoys low overhead.

(6) The ideal business does not require big cash outlays or major investments in equipment.

(7) The ideal business enjoys cash billings.

(8) The ideal business is relatively free of all kinds of government and industry regulations and strictures.

(9) The ideal business is portable or easily moveable.

(10) Here's a crucial one that's often overlooked; the ideal business satisfies your intellectual (and often emotional) needs.

(11) The ideal business leaves you with free time.

(12) Super-important: the ideal business is one in which your income is not limited by your personal output (lawyers and doctors have this problem).

(HT: Sound Mind Investing.)