May 2006 Archives

Edward Jay Epstein has a fascinating look into the history of diamonds and how a single group of investors conspired to invent the world's premier luxury consumable. This story is particularly timely considering De Beers' ongoing campaign to promote right-hand diamond rings for single women.

In 1870, however, there was a radical change in this situation. Huge diamond "pipes" were discovered near the Orange River in South Africa.

These were the first diamond mines ever discovered. Now, rather than finding by chance an occasional diamond in a river, diamonds could now be scooped out of these mines by huge steam shovels. Suddenly, the market was deluged a growing flood of diamonds. The British financiers who had organized the South African mines quickly came to realize that their investment was endangered: diamonds had little intrinsic value, and their price depended almost entirely on their scarcity. They feared that when new mines developed in South Africa, diamonds would become at best only a semi-precious gem.

As it turned out, financial acumen proved the mother of invention. The major investors in the diamond mines realized that they had no alternative but to merge their interests into a single entity that would be powerful enough to control the mines' production and, in every other way that was necessary, perpetuate the scarcity and illusion of diamonds. The instrument that they created for this purpose was called De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd., a company incorporated in South Africa.

As De Beers penetrated and took control of all aspects of the world diamond trade, it also assumed many protean forms. In London, it operated under the innocuous name of the Diamond Trading Company. In Israel, it was known under the all-embracing mantle of "the syndicate." In Antwerp, it was just called the CSO-- initials referring to the Central Selling Organization (which was an arm of the Diamond Trading Company). And in Black Africa, it disguised its South African origins under subsidiaries with such names as the Diamond Development Corporation or Mining Services, Inc. At its height, it not only either directly owned or controlled all the diamond mines in southern Africa, it also owned diamond trading companies in England, Portugal, Israel, Belgium, Holland and Switzerland. It was De Beers of course that organized the Japanese campaign as part of its worldwide promotion of diamonds.

By 1981, De Beers had proved to be the most successful cartel arrangement in the annals of modern commerce. For more than a half century, while other commodities, such as gold, silver, copper, rubber and grains, fluctuated wildly in response to economic conditions, diamonds continued to advance upward in price each year. Indeed, the mechanism of the diamond invention seemed so superbly in control of prices-and unassailable-that even speculators began buying diamonds as a guard against the vagaries of inflation and recession. Like the romantic subjects of the advertising campaigns, they also assumed diamonds would increase in value forever.

So my cheap elliptical machine finally broke after about a year of constant use, and I couldn't find a replacement in the same price range so I started looking at alternatives. Wal-Mart had a few options, but the low-end machines were all at least $300, and since I enjoyed my now-broken $120 machine perfectly well I didn't really want to spend almost three times as much on a replacement. So my wife suggested that we try the Tony Little Gazelle Edge Fitness System, yes the one from the Geico commercial.

I was skeptical, but since the machine was less than $100 I figured that we might as well give it a shot; Jessica knew she liked it, having used one in the past. It didn't take long to set up, and I did a 20 minute workout on Monday and then a 30 minute workout on Tuesday morning. I didn't feel very winded after either workout, so I'm not sure if the machine is really going to push me in the long-term, but when I woke up this (Wednesday) morning I could barely move. Every muscle and tendon in my body hurts. The machine is doing something right, probably due to the incredibly wide range of motion and the fact that the left and right pedal/handle assemblies aren't connected to each other like they would be on an elliptical machine, so your body has to do all the synchronization and balancing on its own.

I haven't felt this sore and tired in a long time, so I'm going to give the machine a few more weeks before I decide whether or not I want to buy a more expensive elliptical. As of now, I can safely say that Tony Little kicked my butt.

David S. Kahn offers a whithering condemnation of America's mediocre public education system by laying the responsibility for plummeting SAT scores right where it belongs: on the schools.

People complain that the SAT is biased and that the bias explains why students don't do well. That's true--it is biased. It's biased against people who aren't well-educated. The test isn't causing people to have bad educations, it's merely reflecting the reality. And if you don't like your reflection, that doesn't mean that you should smash the mirror.

That the new SAT tests more reading comprehension than the old test did is a good thing. Colleges complain that their incoming students don't have sufficient skills to read and analyze the kind of material that their professors will assign them. I hope that the new SAT's emphasis will make students realize that you can't get much of an education if you can't read.

Maybe the decline in SAT scores will force people to notice that their children are not getting good educations. If your children don't read or do math, why would you think that they would do well on the SAT? I would love to get into a time machine and go back to 1960 and give this new SAT to high-school students back then. I suspect that they would do much better than today's students. If we want people to get good scores on the SAT, I have a suggestion. Stop complaining about how unfair the test is and do your homework.

I've written before that our society foolishly puts school teachers on a pedestal despite their rather poor results, and I think much of the blame rests with the teachers' unions which utterly refuse to move past seniority-based employment despite the demonstrated benefits of merit pay on teacher performance. We need to eliminate public education or at the very least create some economic pressure for schools and teachers to improve, such as widespread voucher programs.

Here's a great idea I wish I'd thought of: conservatives are mailing bricks to their Congressional representatives to reinforce our desire for strict immigration reform that stems the flow of illegal immigration rather than legalizing it.

One letter, which was wrapped around a brick and mailed to [Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo.] says: "I can't take a day off from work to go stand in the street and protest all day long like an illegal immigrant. But I did have time to send you this brick so that you could get started building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico."

I've got several spare bricks sitting in my front yard right now and I know how to find my representatives.

Update:
Oh, and here's the group's website where you can send a brick for $11.95.

Happy Memorial Day. Take a few minutes to thank God for the men and women who gave their lives for our great country, and to pray for those who are in harm's way today.

It doesn't speak highly of the Germans that one kid with a knife stabbed 35 people in a crowd before anyone could stop him.

Victims of a Berlin knifeman who injured 35 people in a knife frenzy late on Friday night are living in fear of contracting the Aids virus after it was discovered one of the knifeman's first targets was HIV positive. ...

The 16-year-old assailant, named only as Mike P, has a police record for violence after beating up a school friend. He used a butterfly knife to stab 35 people in the crowds of sightseers. ...

Police say the man lunged and stabbed at the audience around him for 10 minutes, many could not escape because of the packed crowd.

So there were plenty of people around and no two or three men were willing or able to subdue this kid? For 10 minutes?! The Germans have apparently been reduced to a herd of sheep.

Despite frequent dismissals of the slippery slope of abortion, babies in the UK are now being terminated for trivial handicaps that can often be fixed without surgery and would have zero impact on long-term health and happiness.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that between 1996 and 2004, 20 babies were aborted after 20 weeks because they had a club foot.

It is one of the most common birth defects in Britain, affecting one in 1,000 babies each year. That means around 600 to 700 babies are born annually in the UK with the problem, which causes the feet to point downwards and in severe cases can cause a limp.

However it can be corrected without surgery using splints, plaster casts and boots. Naomi Davis, a leading paediatrician at Manchester Children's Hospital who specialists in correcting club feet, said: 'I think it is reasonable to be totally shocked that abortion is being offered for this.

'It is entirely treatable. I can only think it is lack of information.'

Figures also show that four babies were aborted since 1996 because they were found to have webbed fingers or extra digits, which can be sorted out with simply surgery.

But, no -- of course there's no possibility that the already-depraved line will get pushed any further.

What's one of the most important factors that will determine a graduate's future financial success? Their major? Their height? Their GPA? Their alma mater? Maybe, but apparently the general state of the economy at the time of graduation can have far-reaching effects on salary.

Lost in the argument over whether young people today know how to work, however, is the mounting evidence produced by labor economists of just how important it is for current graduates to ignore the old-school advice of trying to get ahead by working one's way up the ladder. Instead, it seems, graduates should try to do exactly the thing the older generation bemoans — aim for the top.

The recent evidence shows quite clearly that in today's economy starting at the bottom is a recipe for being underpaid for a long time to come. Graduates' first jobs have an inordinate impact on their career path and their "future income stream," as economists refer to a person's earnings over a lifetime. ...

The Stanford class of 1988, for example, entered the job market just after the market crash of 1987. Banks were not hiring, and so average wages for that class were lower than for the class of 1987 or for later classes that came out after the market recovered. Even a decade or more later, the class of 1988 was still earning significantly less. They missed the plum jobs right out of the gate and never recovered.

The fact is that you will never catch up by "working your way to the top". The only way to use a good job market to your benefit is to jump ship and move to a different company altogether. Your existing employer will never increase your salary just because the job market is strong. By staying put when the job market goes down and then moving when the market goes back up you can continually stay on top by working your career like a ratchet.

(HT: Alex Tabarrok.)

I can't decide if the senate is full of retards or just plain evil. Maybe both, if they think they can so blatantly ignore the will of the American people by passing a bill that would give amnesty for illegal aliens. I like how the Washington Times leads the story anyway:

The Senate yesterday easily approved an immigration bill that allows 10 million illegal aliens to become citizens, doubles the flow of legal immigration each year and will cost U.S. taxpayers an estimated $54 billion over the next 10 years.

The leaders of both parties hailed the 62-36 passage as a historic success.

Majority Leader Bill Frist said the vote represented the "very best" of the Senate.

I don't doubt that, Mr. Frist, but why go out of your way to highlight how ridiculous your side of Congress is?

"This is a success for the American people," the Tennessee Republican said. "It is a success for people who hope to participate someday in that American dream."

This is a success for people who have broken our laws, leeched off our social welfare system, and shown absolutely no respect for the ideals that make America great. This is a success for short-sighted corporations who care more about the bottom line this year than next decade. This is a success for criminals and terrorists. This is a success for the Democrats, who can't hope to stay in power without an ever-increasing population of poor "oppressed" people.

This is a defeat for the American people.

Opponents said that the Senate is ignoring clear public will and that the bill would have disastrous consequences for decades to come.

"We will never solve the problem of illegal immigration by rewarding those who break our laws," said Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican. "We must stop illegal immigration by securing the border and creating a temporary-worker program that does not reward illegal behavior with a clear path to citizenship and voting rights."

Duh. Normally I hesitate to label people as "evil", but Senator DeMint is so plainly right that there's no way to reconcile the votes of the majority of the senators with what is best for the American people. They're clearly going against the will expressed by their constituents, and their actions will clearly hurt the future of our country.

Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, the No. 3 Republican in the Senate, said the bill "puts the cart before the horse" because it gives citizenship rights to illegals, grants full-blown amnesty to employers and opens the borders to millions of new immigrants each year.

Exactly: not only will the illegal aliens already in America get to stay forever, but millions more will be invited in under the "guest worker" program. And what happens when they don't leave when their visas expire? Will we enforce the law then and deport them? Give me a break! The goverment already actively refuses to deport people here illegally. The "guest worker" program will just open the floodgates to millions more then-legal immigrants who will cause all the same problems the illegal aliens cause now.

But conservatives in Congress -- like many voters -- are skeptical that the federal government will make good on promises to secure the border and enforce the laws. They suspect that immigration reform is headed for a repeat of the 1986 reforms that granted amnesty to 3 million aliens and promised to seal the border. Ultimately, the laws were never enforced and 3 million illegals were replaced with some 12 million new illegals.

This is obviously what the Democrats intend, which is why they are so excited by this "bipartisan" legislation. The Democrats need poor, ignorant people to exploit who can be convinced that earning a living is too hard and that the government should take care of everyone. Apparently the Democrats think that the millions of Mexicans and others who will flood in as "guest workers" will fit their bill. (Are the Democrats racist? Yes.) But what do the Republicans get from this? I have no idea. Toss the bums out.

Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican, said yesterday he has been amazed by the Senate's inability to do what voters clearly want.

"There seems to me to be a sense of surreality here, where people in the Senate just are not listening to what the American people are telling us," he said. "We've tried, through the course of the amendments that have been offered that people standing here have offered, to highlight some of the problems that we have identified and which I believe are responsive to the concerns that we've heard from our constituents."

Join the club, Senator. If you think the American people are going to sit still for this sort of chicanery, think again. It's way past time to repeal the 17th amendment and eliminate the direct election of Senators. This would help restore the intended balance of power between the federal and state governments, and would reduce the elitist mentality that runs rampant through the Senate.

Anyway, let's see what measures the Senate refused to include in the amnesty bill:

Chief among them was an amendment by Sen. Johnny Isakson, Georgia Republican, that would have delayed implementation of the amnesty and guest-worker provisions until after the secretary of homeland security had certified that the border had been secured. The Senate killed that suggestion.

Because the bill isn't about protecting our borders, it's about amnesty.

An amendment by Sen. John Ensign, Nevada Republican, would have barred illegal aliens from collecting Social Security benefits for past illegal work. The Senate rejected that proposal, even if the aliens had forged Social Security documents to get the employment.

Because the bill isn't about protecting our senior citizens or our economy, it's about amnesty.

An amendment by Mr. Cornyn and Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona would have required that the 200,000 new workers ushered into the country each year under the guest-worker program be allowed to stay for only a set period of time rather than permanently. The Senate rejected that proposal as well.

Because the bill isn't about meeting some perceived labor need, it's about amnesty.

Oh, and it's also apparently about bending over to get screwed by Mexican politicians.

Immediately before the final vote yesterday, conservatives suffered what they viewed as one final insult. Buried in a 125-page last-minute amendment was a requirement that local, state and federal officials in the U.S. consult with their Mexican counterparts before they can start building the fence.

It's also worth noting that the bill includes zero penalties for people who employ illegal aliens, whether they're "guest workers" or not. So, we'll get all the millions of "guest workers" who will never leave, plus additional illegal aliens who will come work for untouchable employers and then steal from the Social Security pot that is already running way too low to meet the needs of the baby boomer generation. Perfect.

I'm so sick and tired of this crap, but I feel so helpless. Screw you, Senate.

I'm generally quite an optimistic person, especially considering my unrelenting cynicism, and one of the only things that ever gets me down is the realization that I'm surrounded by retards like the administrators and parents of the Keller school district. I suppose I should apologize for using the word "retard", since it's totally unfair to the mentally handicapped to be linked with the drooling idiots that run most public school systems.

A Keller school district parent said political correctness has run amok at her daughter's elementary school, where the principal chose to omit the words "In God We Trust" from an oversize coin depicted on the yearbook cover.

Janet Travis, principal of Liberty Elementary School in Colleyville, wanted to avoid offending students of different religions, a district spokesman said. Students were given stickers with the words that could be affixed to the book if they so chose. ...

Officials chose an image of an enlarged nickel for the yearbook cover because this is Liberty Elementary's first year and because the nickel has a new design this year.

The nickel design features President Jefferson and the word Liberty in cursive, with the words "In God We Trust" along the right edge.

Keller administrators agreed with the decision, which Travis made in conjunction with a school parents group, district spokesman Jason Meyer said. District policy states, in part: "The District shall take no action respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech."

Principals must strive to remain neutral regarding religion, Meyer said.

"It's not always easy to make everybody happy when we are making decisions," he said. He said Travis was unavailable for comment Friday.

Here's an idea: rather than worrying about making everyone "happy", why not just stick with the truth. Again, my apologies to the mentally handicapped, you shouldn't have to share the planet with these retards either. Naturally, the ACLU is thrilled.

Michael Linz, a Dallas attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, said the district's move was appropriate, sensitive and constitutional.

"Sometimes administrators and schools are really caught trying to make appropriate decisions with respect to people's views. Someone is always going to complain," he said. "I think that the school administrators were drawing the appropriate line by trying not to offend others."

Apparently "trying not to offend others" is now the highest American ideal. Dear God, please help me not to offend all the retards that surround me.

(HT: Clayton Cramer.)

It appears that my earlier report about Iran forcing Jews to wear identification badges was incorrect. I feel a little dirty making a correction that benefits the reputation of Iran, however slightly, but the truth is the truth.

(HT: Eugene Volokh.)

Glenn Reynolds has a good editorial in the Wall Street Journal about the social costs of parenting. As a newlywed who is looking forward to having children (in a few years) I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one who regrets that childrearing has become less appreciated in our culture.

There's also the decline in parental prestige over generations. My mother reports that when she was a newlywed (she married in 1959) you weren't seen as fully a member of the adult world until you had kids. Nowadays to have kids means something closer to an expulsion from the adult world. People in the suburbs buy SUVs instead of minivans not because they need the four-wheel-drive capabilities, but because the SUVs lack the minivan's close association with low-prestige activities like parenting, and instead provide the aura of high-prestige activities like whitewater kayaking. Why should kayaking be more prestigious than parenting? Because parenting isn't prestigious in our society. If it were, childless people would drive minivans just to partake of the aura.

In these sorts of ways, parenting has become more expensive in nonfinancial as well as financial terms. It takes up more time and emotional energy than it used to, and there's less reward in terms of social approbation. This is like a big social tax on parenting and, as we all know, when things are taxed we get less of them. Yes, people still have children, and some people even have big families. But at the margin, which is where change occurs, people are less likely to do things as they grow more expensive and less rewarded.

All that, in addition to parents' lessened ability to discipline and greater supervisory responsibility, has led to a cost/benefit analysis that results in fewer children, to the detriment of our society.

These color photos from World War 1 are pretty interesting... I don't think I knew such things existed.

(HT: The site is pretty slow at the moment, because I got the link from Digg.)

Gregory Cole, aka Flap, has generously taken over the Bear Flag League administrative duties from Kasey Traeger and is discontinuing the mailing lists in favor of a new Bear Flag League forum. It's a logical progression that makes sense considering how much the League has grown and how much traffic the email lists tend to get. So if you're a member of the League, it's time to make the switch and go register at the forums; if you're a visitor, you're welcome to swing by too!

I've always enjoyed tracking the movements of the Voyager spacecraft, largely because they were both launched only a short time before I was born. In a sense, we're triplets! I doubt I'll ever get in far in life as the Voyagers have though, seeing as how they're both many billions of miles away from the Sun by now and I'm no further from the Sun than the day I was born (minor orbital perturbations notwithstanding). If we ever have the technology, I'd love to go visit one of the Voyagers out in interstellar space, just to say hi.

What are your favorite spacecraft?

The tale of Roger Clegg and how his criticism prompted the cancellation of an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission meeting is a perfect example of why our government needs a dramatic reduction in size and scope. The hubris of the bureaucrats on this commission is enraging, but hardly unheard of within our federal government in which every official sees his position of public trust as his own personal fiefdom.

Last month, I received an invitation to testify before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission about affirmative action and diversity in U.S. companies. The testimony was scheduled for today, and I was asked to share my written statement to the commission beforehand, last Thursday, which I did. Late Friday afternoon I received a phone call from the commission, telling me that because of what I had to say, my invitation had been withdrawn by its chairman, Cari M. Dominguez.

I urged the commission to reconsider this decision because it would put the commission in general and the chairman in particular in a bad light. Yesterday I was notified that the entire meeting--not just my panel, but two others--has been "indefinitely postponed."

The problem is that my testimony told the unwelcome truths that (a) American companies, in their "celebration of diversity," frequently discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity and sex, (b) this violates the law, and (c) the EEOC is not doing anything about it. I was told that it would lead to a "mutiny" among the career people at the commission if I was given a "platform" to say such things. It might even turn the proceedings that morning into a "circus," and Ms. Dominguez, I was told, did not want the EEOC "to look like the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights back when Mary Frances Berry headed it."

So the chairman of the EEOC cancelled the meeting rather than allow Mr. Clegg to testify about the Commission's tolerance and encouragement of racial and sexual discrimination. This episode reflects morally disgusting behavior on the part of Cari M. Dominguez, a public servant in a free society, and should be profoundly disturbing to anyone who cares about "government of the people, by the people, for the people".

You know, I'd have a lot more time for blogging if I didn't have to spend so much time deleting spam. It would be pretty awesome to set up a website dedicated to publicizing personal information about known spammers, such as their addresses, phone numbers, pictures, etc., along with similar information about their family members. If anyone wants to collaborate with me on such an endeavor, shoot me an email. Maybe "real life" social pressure can be brought to bear on the spam epidemic.

The New York Post offers a muck-raking-style preview of former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey's upcoming memoir focusing on the most disgusting of his transgressions, but underneath is a real tale of tragedy that exposes the complexity behind the problem of homosexuality and our society's inability to condemn it. The article starts with:

Jim McGreevey shockingly admits that before he became governor of New Jersey, he'd have anonymous gay sex at Garden State highway rest stops.

"All I knew was that my behavior was getting crazier and crazier," McGreevey says of his torrid truck-stop trysts in an upcoming book that details his tortured life of lies and sexual repression.

Shocking and sickening, no doubt, but sadly such behavior appears to be pretty common among gay men. The real tragedy of Mr. McGreevey's life is revealed later. Unfortunately the Post put the article behind their subscription wall (probably because of all the hits it was getting from Drudge) so let's turn to the North Jersey Media Group for more about Jim McGreevey's struggle.

What the book passages do describe is McGreevey's struggle with his own homosexuality and his efforts to be a straight man: staring at Playboy centerfolds, praying, reading psychology texts, frequenting go-go bars and becoming "as avid a womanizer as anybody else on the New Jersey political scene."

"I knew I would have to lie for the rest of my life -- and I knew I was capable of it," McGreevey wrote. "The knowledge gave me a feeling of terrible power.

This sort of stuggle reveals not only the tragedy of homosexuality, but also the profound weakness of our modern culture. Notice that McGreevey's only approach for dealing with his perversion is to mask his wrongful lusts with yet more evil. (Excluding the ambiguous mention of "prayer"; it's unlikely that any meaningful prayer took place considering the other avenues of coping he busied himself pursuing.)

Homosexuality is a terrible affliction that appears to be closely linked to childhood sexual abuse, and reading about the trauma faced by individuals like Jim McGreevey it's impossible not to be sympathetic to their plight. The repulsion most Christians feel towards homosexuality stems from the left's insistance that homosexuality is a "life choice" rather than a serious and tragic disease that ruins the mental and physical health of millions of Americans. Alcoholism is not dismissed as a legitimate lifestyle, and perhaps homosexuality should be considered similarly; not made illegal, because such banning would be ineffectual, but socially condemned and usefully treated. (Unfortunately, from what I've read of alcohol addiction treatments, most addicts end up merely transferring their addiction to other substances, such as cigarettes.)

Unfortunately, I don't think that our culture is morally equipped to deal with homosexuality. We aren't prepared to significantly condemn the heterosexual "womanizing" that apparently pervades the New Jersey political scene, so how can society legitimately resist homosexual promiscuity? The truth is that sexual addictions of all sorts can only be effectually treated if the addict is willing to recognize that sex itself can only rightly exist within a proper moral framework: marriage between a man and a woman. A homosexual trying to "cure" himself by oogling women is like an alcoholic trying to switch to cigarettes -- what's the point?

Alas, the boat has sailed, and almost no politician of any flavor is willing to set a high bar. The only moral choices are marriage or celibacy. Period. Do we have to mock such a moral standard just because so many people have already failed to meet it? Is it so hard for people to admit their wrongs that our society must define away morality altogether? We're reaping the consequences of this decision, and homosexuality is just one aspect of the much larger tragedy of general sexual immorality.

It's ironic that despite Mexico's outrageous infringements on American sovereignty through the promotion of illegal immigration, Mexico has far more xenophobic laws than America would ever desire. (I thought I'd posted on this topic in the past, but I can't find the link, alas.)

Even as Mexico presses the United States to grant unrestricted citizenship to millions of undocumented Mexican migrants, its officials at times calling U.S. policies "xenophobic," Mexico places daunting limitations on anyone born outside its territory.

In the United States, only two posts — the presidency and vice presidency — are reserved for the native born.

In Mexico, non-natives are banned from those and thousands of other jobs, even if they are legal, naturalized citizens.

Foreign-born Mexicans can't hold seats in either house of the congress. They're also banned from state legislatures, the Supreme Court and all governorships. Many states ban foreign-born Mexicans from spots on town councils. And Mexico's Constitution reserves almost all federal posts, and any position in the military and merchant marine, for "native-born Mexicans."

Recently the Mexican government has gone even further. Since at least 2003, it has encouraged cities to ban non-natives from such local jobs as firefighters, police and judges.

America needs to wake up and realize that cries of racism and xenophobia are nothing but lies that even the name-callers don't believe. Mexico's government is a third-world leech that wouldn't survive a year if it were unable to pass the bucks of poverty and oppression to America. Putting up a secure, impermeable border between our countries would not only be good for America, a wall would be even better for Mexico because it would force that country to deal with their corrupt, oppressive government.

So I'm here in Tennessee with my wife visiting her mom and I'm totally exhausted from the trip and the busy afternoon we've had touring the Southern middle of the state. The flight was nice, and the countryside is absolutely gorgeous. I feel very relaxed and at peace, which is nice, and I've come up with some great ideas for a new book I'm going to start fleshing out. I'm looking forward to a few days of rest, so don't expect much more here than a few pictures when I have a chance to upload them.

(And, incidentally, why I'm tentatively opposed to drug legalization despite my libertarian leanings.)

Apparently "girls gone wild" is reality in Britain, where almost 30% of young teenaged girls defined themselves as binge drinkers. Considering the level of denial that normally accompanies addiction, I bet the real number is actually a lot higher.

Teenage girls are now more likely than boys to drink, smoke, steal and take drugs, a survey has shown. ...

The study of 14 and 15-year-olds was conducted by questionnaire, in schools under exam conditions, and the results compared with a similar one from 1985.

Professor Colin Pritchard, who led the research, said: 'Girls now significantly smoke and binge-drink more than boys. They truant, steal and fight at similar rates, and start under-age sex earlier than boys.'

He said binge-drinking, which was admitted by nearly a third of girls in their early teenage years, drove other anti-social behaviour such as stealing, fighting, taking drugs and engaging in risky sex.

It should be pretty obvious that America's relatively puritannical history has given us a great cultural legacy that protects our society from many of the ills that pervade the rest of the world. I think we'd be wise to avoid Britain's "alcopop" culture.

And Sir John Krebs, principal of Jesus College Oxford, attacked the marketing of alcopops specifically for young people. 'The Government has stood by and let that happen, whereas it wouldn't have accepted the alcopop equivalent of cigarettes targeted at children,' he said.