Via Q&O, we find this depressing news:

The study [of 48 news outlets, by the Project for Excellence in Journalism] also found that nine out of 10 stories focused on campaign tactics or the relative popularity of the candidates.

This is truly contemptible. This distribution of stories partly reflects the media's bias toward easily researched, simple stories with a patina of spurious cleverness, like analysis of a publicly visible advertising campaign; but such an extreme result must also be driven largely by demand. Media consumers have demonstrated an insatiable appetite for stories with little more content than "My candidate can beat up your candidate."

The only plausible explanation I can see is that most people are natural betas, who are more interested in watching the alphas struggle with one another than in trying to understand or influence the issues behind the personalities.

It has been suggested that George Bush's determination to increase immigration and access to American citizenship is morally motivated: he values the welfare of non-Americans as well as of Americans, and the benefits to the former may greatly outweigh the harm to some of the latter.

There are two problems with this moral calculus. The first is that it opposes President Bush's duty to serve the interests of those who elected him, rather than of the whole world. The second is a simple question of efficacy: can the flame of freedom best improve the cold morass of human misery by being submerged in it?

CNN's got the doctor who came up with the "Lethal Injection" method of execution saying maybe it's time to rework the drug formula. He also says he thinks the Guillotine is the simplest and most effective.

Of course, over time, there have been all sorts of methods for working with the death penalty. Some were designed deliberately for pain, some were simply working with the tools available at the time, some were attempts at making the process "humane."

On the truly barbaric side, you have options like drawing & quartering, burning at the stake, waterboard drowning, and tying someone out in the wilderness to die of exposure/starvation/dehydration. Nasty ways to go, very visible for the most part, and if you're looking for something that will make others who might commit crimes think "I really don't want to risk it", most capable of driving home the point.

In the middle, you have things that were just trying to use the best stuff available at the time. Hanging was supposed to be a quick death, and it doesn't take more than a rope and something to hang the rope from (whether a constructed gallows or otherwise). Keelhauling - another form of drowning death - is somewhat necessitated by the tight quarters on a ship and rather neatly sidesteps the worry of carrying the body for later disposal, especially since those who died of disease or other natural causes would likely be "buried at sea" anyways. Killing someone with a sword or spear using a "killing" strike - be it through the heart or neck - was intended to be more humane than just chopping at someone until they died, but it has a tendency to be messy.

And then we get to the "modern" versions. During the French Revolution, one Dr. Joseph Ignace-Guillotin went into medical records and came up with a device that had been used in earlier centuries to execute Italian royalty; this was later improved on by Antoine Louis to come up with the "modern" device that the French Revolutionaries are infamous for using. At the time, the Giullotine was indeed considered "humane"; it required only one stroke (instead of the several that a sword or axe usually require to get through a human spine and sever the neck) and the death was thought to be as close to instantaneous as possible.

With the introduction of guns, another option came in the firing squad; you take men who are reasonably good shots, arrange them at point-blank range for maximum accuracy, and administer a killing shot with a gun. Problem: a killing shot is either to the heart or head, and it doesn't look very nice.

The next option was the electric chair; rather than something which caused major bodily damage, an electric shock would (ideally) destroy brain function and stop the heart. Unfortunately, it sometimes goes wrong, requiring multiple shocks or causing small fires.

So, the idea came to have lethal injection. Administer a "painkiller" to be humane, and then drugs to kill the patient. Adopted overall, but now death penalty opponents are going after it by claiming it's not "humane enough."

Part of me wonders if "humane enough" really matters for someone who's done something egregious enough that society needs to get rid of them so completely. Many victims' rights groups argue that even if it's not completely painless, it's much less painful than the deaths most death penalty recipients gave their victims. And in truth, if the death penalty were not so hidden away from the public - done at night, done in a private room with no visual record to the outside world, done in a way that didn't appear quite so "peaceful" - that it might have a larger deterrent effect. A perhaps not strange irony of the situation is that as methods have become more 'humane', opponents have been more successful in arguing that the new methods didn't have much of an effect for deterring other crimes; I'd posit that someone who knew they could be drawn and quartered for killing another human being might, just perhaps, be less likely to go through with it than someone who knew they could sit in prison for 30 years before going in and getting strapped down for "endless sleep."

On a larger issue, however, is the possibility that the search for 'humane' death for these people isn't so much for them, but for the people who may or may not watch this. There's a portion of the population that supports the death penalty in theory but still finds that the visual consequences are not appealing to the eye. It is somewhat striking that the more 'humane' a method supposedly is, the less visual impact it's supposed to have upon the corpse - and perhaps it's that portion of the population that the newer methods are intended to appease.

An interesting thing caught my eye when checking a link posted by an earlier poster regarding the right of felons to vote; at the beginning of the formation of the US, voting rights were restricted to landowners.

While I don't think that this ought to be the case, there is one scenario that I noticed that the change does seem to impact; the highway robbery system that is the property tax.

In the original system, landowners voted. A property tax would likely not become all that harmful, because those who were voting would know that they, too, were subject to any form of a land tax/property tax that they voted for.

Enter the new century; now, most people don't "own" their home. Apartments house a large number of the populace, dormitories for college students, and rental properties are very common.

I'm reminded of a scenario I was told of in a county that bordered a reservation; the property taxes for the few non-Indians in the county were astronomical, because the reservation land (where most of the populace lived) was not subject to property taxation. Every single property tax hike that ever came before the voters passed... because less than 10% of the voting population had taxable homes.

I'm starting to wonder if something similar is going on today in Texas. Property taxes are being hiked at a truly alarming rate. I rent, and indirectly pay a portion of my roommate's property taxes - but I've seen the numbers, and the taxes are getting truly outrageous.

People who have no kids are having their housing subjected to ever worsening taxes, to pay for the schooling of people who have kids and don't own homes. Something's wrong with this.

One of the terms that's become all too frequently used in describing the problems the Republicans have of late speaks to the disappointment of the Republican Base - the people that the Republican Party can supposedly "rely on" for support. A lot of this has turned around with the introduction of the term RINO: Republican In Name Only.

The term fits amazingly well. Rudy Giuliani, for all his name recognition, has probably a 40% (at best) match with the Republican base's positions. He's big on social programs, highly liberal on social issues, and questionable on foreign policy.

Ron Paul, sometimes referred to as the "taxpayer's friend", is a long-time Libertarian who runs with an "R" next to his name... though chances are he's going to face some serious, stiff opposition in the coming election. In days where there are major issues coming up for Congress, Ron Paul's big thing is... legalizing Marijuana.

Worst for the Republican base is President Shrub (and how it hurts me to use that term for that incompetent, traitorous boob). With this guy the base has every right to feel abandoned. Just about none of his campaign promises were ever fulfilled, and there's actually talk from members of his own party in Congress that he was happy to see the Democrats retake the House, because they were more willing to match him on "certain" issues than the people who voted him into office were.

It's a sad day when that happens, but hey - Bush is a RINO, not a Pachyderm. It's even sadder realizing that my choice, in both 2000 and 2004, came down to either a Rhino vs a Jackass or, perhaps more appropriately, a Douche and a Turd.

A loyal Marginal Revolution reader, attempting to once again tempt Tyler Cowen into a Dear Abby moment, asks:

Tell us how "Knightian [i.e., unquantifiable] uncertainty can be made operational"...

This obfuscatory term reminds me of the Dire Straits lyric:

History boils over, there's an economics freeze,
Sociologists invent words that mean industrial disease

If you want chance to "be operational" for you, then be alert to events and analyze them for opportunities. Louis Pasteur has already said the final word on this topic:

Chance favors the prepared mind.

Mr. Cowen takes the bait, here.

A loyal Marginal Revolution reader asks about the relation between age and productivity.

There is a conventional wisdom to the effect that geniuses peak early, and are spent by the age of 30. This seems to originate from the retrospective glory accorded to some poets who died young, and to the physicist Paul Dirac's statements to that effect. There are several reasons this belief might be popular, not least because it reassures non-geniuses that they do not have so much to envy. But there is less reason to suppose that it is true.

It appears to me that productivity rises steadily with age, at least well into the forties, in any given field. However, the fields which permit greatest productivity are the newest. This is largely because, in a new field, less of the easy work has been done; in addition, the steady rise in societal productivity is largely caused by the invention of new, intrinsically more productive ways of working.

It is very difficult for a top producer to leave his field; thus breakthroughs visible to the nonspecialist tend to be made by those who have not yet specialized. This accounts for the continued perception that genius is for the young.

[Mr. Cowen answers a different question, here.]

Changes are afoot!

Okay, I've gotten the last couple posts out of my system. Now back to the novel...

One of the things that it seems most of my friends are united on is the expansion of what is generally considered "fair use" of copyrighted material. Though I agree with them more often than not, I often find myself taking a contrarian view because I find the self-righteousness of their view to be a little-bit offsetting. Their view of "fair use" is broad enough that if it were widely implemented I believe it could do more harm than even the current tragic copyright regime.

So I've been a bit surprised to see many of these same people suddenly find one area in which they support curtailing fair use: censorship. Not censoring what anyone else watches, mind you, but censoring what their families watch. I find this a bit perplexing in a couple of ways. First, these leave-me-alone folks are suddenly concerned with how other people watch movies. Second, they are lining up against the consumer to do what they want to the movies that they purchase!

The case and point is a recent court ruling that put an injunction against a Utah-based company that scrubs dirty movies, taking out the objectionable material. There's no piracy going on as the customers send in one copy of the video and get back one copy of the video, albeit with some parts missing. This doesn't affect anyone except the consumer and the company providing them a service -- the movie tha tthe rest of us see is the same.

Though I don't know Pete's views on "fair use" at large, I find his views on the matter indicative of a lot of liberal-minded media consumers:

You don't get it both ways, guys: if the movies presented as are aren't to your liking, make your own. You don't get to alter a director's work without his approval. I realize our "human laws" don't hold up against the teachings of Jesus (or Joseph Smith, whoever), so maybe you ask him to pay your legal fees.

I consider this view to be quite peculiar. By this reasoning, when you purchase a movie you are only entitled to see the movie as the original producers intended it. Theoretically, that means that the last time I fastwarded through some less interesting scenes in Spiderman, I was infringing on their artistic vision and copyright because I was watching a movie in a way other than how it was intended. The answer, according to Pete's logic, is that I should make my own. More often, the answer I see is to not get movies that you dislike any particular part of.

This from the side that normally promotes cultural freedom.

Obviously, I disagree. If someone wants to edit Jar-Jar Binks out of Star Wars Episode 1, they have no right to do so. Either they accept Jar-Jar or they reject the entire movie. The same applies to someone that wants to put Memento in chronological order.

I will grant that there is an extra fold to all of this: These people are not cleaning up their own movies (as someone inside Pete's comment section advocates the right to do), they are cleaning up someone else's as a service. I can sort of understand a distinction here. And if someone wants to make that argument, I may disagree but I will understand it. Instead, however, the argument is that they shouldn't want to and therefore should not be allowed to. It usually involves the sort of personal ridicule sprinkled throughout Pete's post. Their opposition to this fair use seems at least partially rooted in animosity towards those that would take advantage of it.

And... to be honest... I agree with the first part of that rationale: they shouldn't want to. Replacing curse words with bleeps and "Motherfalcon!"s detracts from the movie even in cases where the curseword was needless to begin with. A family that has reasonable priorities should almost immediately see bigger and more important battles to fight than this and any that doesn't has bigger problems, in my view.

But this invites all sorts of producer-rights that I am extremely uncomfortale with. It gives movie studios further justification to apply more copy protection since they have one more "evil" to fight off. And besides slippery-slope arguments, I think that someone that wants their movie scrubbed should have the right to do that, even if I question the wisdom of doing so. At the retail level it could prevent or make more difficult for people to get the particular artistic work as the artist intended. In this case, the cheaper and easier version is precisely what the producers intended.

It's nigh impossible to argue that the customer was in any way denied the opportunity to consume the artists' original intent if they have to go to the trouble of sending it away to get it altered.

Nick Gillespie makes a better case than I do on the subject:

As a writer, I can sympathize with Apted's sense of creative ownership and his fear of losing control of his work. (Let's leave aside for the moment the legendary compromises all movie directors make on virtually every picture; and let's even leave aside whether that sort of often overbearing editorial oversight is a bad thing, though the short answer is that it sometimes is the only thing keeping a self-indulgent artist from producing total crap and losing his audience).

"These films carry our name and reflect our reputations," continued Apted. "So we have great passion about protecting our work...against unauthorized editing."

But here's the rub. There is only unauthorized editing whenever a piece of culture is put in front of an audience. The individuals watching in the darkened theater, the family room, or on a computer screen are constantly making choices, skipping over stuff, misinterpreting things, and more. The audience, alas, has a mind of its own, and that mind doesn't care about the creator's intentions.