Marginalia

I'm not going to call the following brief collection of thoughts and rants "assorted." They're just the products of random rambles of thought. Perhaps one of them will punch one of your buttons as well.

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The change to Senate rules is just one more step in the severing of the Senate from its original mission: slowing things down. The Seventeenth Amendment began this journey; it will continue on until the Senate is merely a differently-apportioned House. The Founders, who at one point contemplated denying the Senate the power to initiate legislation, are reportedly whirling in their graves.

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To allege "racism" when one doesn't get what one wants is a form of bullying. Granted that it can only work with the target's co-operation, it's still just an invocation of undeserved guilt -- and no one who genuinely believes he's earned what he demands would do so.

To allege "racism" as a stroke in a political argument is an act of cowardice. Its sole intention is to preclude argument -- and no one who believes his argument is sound would do so. Take that, Eric Holder.

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Data mining has become a wee bit absurd. Recently I started receiving a magazine I never asked for -- indeed, a magazine I didn't know existed -- whose mission is to solicit funding for operatic productions. It developed that its publisher sends it gratis to persons above a certain net worth. But the calculation of "net worth" includes the presumptive market value of one's house. So I'm supposed to sell my house and blow the proceeds funding an opera? Someone needs to get serious.

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Inflationists habitually deny that Federal Reserve creation of money to fund the federal deficit really causes prices to rise. But it's well known -- among rational economists, at least -- that as newly created currency and credit penetrates the economy, among the first signs of deterioration is the stretching-out of maintenance schedules and the deferral of "optional" repairs. So how have the supermarket parking lots in your neck of the woods been looking?

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I feel a certain sympathy for the Healthcare.gov website engineers. The visible part of the site is the least of its complexities. Non-technologists have no idea of the immense amount of work that goes into the "back end" of such a site: the processing that takes place on the web server to support operations contingent on user input. This is understandable from general observations of the American milieu. Things have gotten too easy for most of us. Most people think potatoes are dug out of large paddies flooded with gravy.

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My preferred measure of a nation's degree of freedom is at how many moments in the course of an average citizen's day he's involved with The State, whether consciously or unconsciously. How often is his behavior affected by The State? How often is he breaking a "law," knowingly or not? How much attention does he give to political matters defensively: that is, because not doing so would endanger him, his loved ones, or his interests?

Find an old copy of Herbert Spencer's early opus Social Statics and ponder the chapter on "The Right to Ignore the State." It will reorient your thoughts as no other book I know except Hayek's The Road to Serfdom.

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As winter approaches, an old debate has resurfaced here at the Fortress of Crankitude: generator or no generator? Virtually everything in a modern home depends on the availability of electricity, and Long Island's overhead power lines are easily disrupted by our characteristic winter disaster, the "nor'easter." But the cost, plus the lack of natural gas lines on our street, has held us back for several years. The clincher against the idea has been "But how often would we actually use it?"

Just a weekend ago, my wife was drooling over a Tesla. That might tip the argument to the pro-generator side. However, she hasn't yet figured out how she'd get Rufus the Newfus into it:

Rufus is the capping stroke in many a discussion around here.

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Do other fiction writers dream about having an affair with a female protagonist? And when it happens, do they admit it to their wives?

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If just one more customer representative says "But why don't you write it in [insert language or toolkit of preference here]?" to me just one more time, I'm going to punch him out. I'm the engineer, asshole! I determine the methodology. Your job is writing checks!

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The Year of Our Lord 2014 will be my last year as anyone's salaried employee. I've made no secret of it. For at least three years, I've told management above my head that grooming a replacement for me should start immediately. I've repeatedly announced my unavailability-to-come, and have been ignored. Now, with new projects on the horizon that will require several years of highly sophisticated design and group supervision, management has begun to ask "Is your retirement date really firm, Fran? Do you plan to relocate? Or might we be able to get you back as a consultant?"

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If you want the true measure of a man, count his enemies. Gauge as best you can the depth of their venom toward him. This is merely an old law of human nature in operation: No one attacks the inconsequential.

No storyteller has come in for more derision than Stephen King. He's shrugged it off lifelong, producing one emotionally evocative, gracefully written novel after another, and in multiple genres, at that. If his work has become a bit patterned in these latter years, one must expect that of a writer as he grows old. We don't get to keep our freshness or inventiveness lifelong. When I hear someone deride King, my rejoinder is usually, "So what have you written lately?"

The most hated columnist in America is the relentlessly genteel and witty Mark Steyn. It boggles the mind that he doesn't have an armed guard around him at all times. It says even more about Mark Steyn, especially given his extraordinary productivity and the unflagging quality of his work. None of his detractors can approach him in either dimension.

To be half as effective a storyteller as King is all I could hope for as a writer of fiction. To be half as effective a commentator as Steyn is the outer limit of my aspirations as a commentator. That having been said, I'd greatly prefer it if I could get to those levels without accumulating the enemies. Are You listening, God? Christmas is coming, You know!