jasonswadley.com

Take a Frugal Vacation this Fall

A post I wrote for Free Money Finance while the proprietor is on vacation.

Four-Handed Guitar Wonderment

The Exceptionalism of the West?

I was reading John Derbyshire’s article at NRO on Islamophobophobia and was struck by his point on Western progress.

As to the cultural aridity of Islamic civilizations: well, yes. This is
not an exceptionalism belonging to Islam, though. The exceptionalism
belongs to us, to the West. We are dynamic and creative; we are fired by curiosity to inquire into the natural order; we are driven by imagination to set off and explore remote places; our
culture progresses through developmental stages, each building on the
last: Baroque, Rococo, Neoclassical… Renaissance, Reformation,
Enlightenment… Romanesque, Gothic, Perpendicular… Classical,
Romantic, Modern… City-state, empire, feudalism, monarchy,
constitutionalism… [...]

The ancient Egyptians and Persians, the Maurya and Gupta dynasties of
India; the Japanese; the Mesoamerican civilizations, the old
Mesopotamian empires — there was not a lick of progress in any of them
across their entire existences, compared with what happened in any
hundred years of European civilization.

Obviously his point here is not technological progress, but social and intellectual progress. I don’t feel I (yet) have the historical training to gauge the statement’s accuracy… so what do you think?

The Illustrated Road to Serfdom

Very simple. Pretty accurate.

Hillarizing Health Care

As everyone should know by now, our nation faces a dramatic
entitlements crisis that will play out over the next 30 years. Federal
spending has been hovering in a fairly stable manner, around 20-percent
of GDP (Gross Domestic Product), for over 50 years now, since the early
1950s. But the Federal government’s own official projections show that
over the next 30 years or so, federal spending will soar to 40-percent
of GDP, requiring total federal taxes as a percent of GDP to double.
This is due to the exploding costs of the entitlement programs we
already have, primarily Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. [...]

The serious point is if you are going to require people to buy health
insurance, then you are going to have to specify exactly what
health-plan people will have to buy to satisfy this requirement. So the
government has gone from  telling you that you need health insurance, to telling you what kind
of health-insurance coverage or plan you must have.  And with Hillary,
we can assume that this will be no basic, minimum plan. But Hillary
continues to insist that this is not government-run health care.

The author of this NRO article makes quite a few assertions for which, (hopefully) due to the constraints of the medium, he does not support with evidence ("This is exactly what happens with every other country that tries to mandate or provide coverage through government."). His article, however, superbly explores possible problems facing Hillary Clinton’s newest health care plan.

Parts of her plan are pragmatic - I think the idea of mandated coverage is, in theory, a good one. Forced acceptance by insurers is a very worrying idea, though, as this article discusses.

It’s more evidence that there are very few good answers for our ailing system. Let me know what you’re thinking about HillaryCare 2.0 in the comments.

A Life of Immobility - Yann Martel

It is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for a while… but we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.

Yann Martel, Life of Pi

Ayn Rand’s Literature of Capitalism

Last year, bookstores sold 150,000 copies of the book. It continues to hold appeal, even to a younger generation. Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, who was born in 1958, and John P. Mackey, the chief executive of Whole Foods, who was 3 when the book was published, have said they consider Rand crucial to their success.

An interesting take on the economic implications of Rand.

Cheat Death And Grow Younger With These 44 Longevity Tips

Some of these suggestions (marrying happily and then having as much sex as possible) won’t be difficult. Others, like bowling, are simply impossible; my consistently sub-100 scores just make me wish life ended early.

Blissfully Uneducated

The theme of all such therapeutic curricula is relativism. There are
no eternal truths, only passing assertions that gain credence through
power and authority. Once students understand how gender, race, and
class distinctions are used to oppress others, they are then free to
ignore absolute “truth,” since it is only a reflection of one’s own
privilege.

Preach it, Victor Davis Hanson. Preach it.

How to clean your home in 19 minutes

I still can’t bring myself to make a bed that I’ll unmake in a few hours, but this CNN article has some good suggestions.

Catch-up Links and Aesthetic Improvements

Now that I’m settling into my unsettled Chicago living, I’ve posted the best of last week’s reading. Enjoy.

You’ll notice that the new link posts stand on their own with a look distinct from my own, original writings. TypePad doesn’t give an easy way to customize the look of posts based on their content, so I’ve had to MacGyver a solution that took some time on the backend but gives the appearance I’m looking for.

What does this mean in simple English? All the links now have their own posts (handy for those reading in an RSS reader). As always, I promise to only post links that are worth your time.

Let me know what you think of the changes in the comments!

The Art of Writing: 10 Tips from the Masters

Good tips (and great quotations) from writers on writing.

Save $31,000 Over 10 Years

Consumer Reports says if
you keep your car for ten years after the first five years, rather than
buying a new car like most car owners, you will save $31,000.

Incredible. More proof that cars are terrible investments.