There's a map floating around the Twitterverse that I find fascinating:

(Click to embiggen!)

The main populations in the circle are these:

I'm reminded of Hans Rosling's intriguing videos. Especially this one.

What does this geographic concentration of us humans suggest or imply about current Unitedstatesian foreign policy? What does it suggest about possibilities for sustainable development of underindustrialized (or post-industrial) areas? How does the leveling influence of communication technologies intersect the social stratification that inevitably comes with such development? How should foreign language instruction and cultural education change in regions outside the circle? Which languages should Popehat support with i18n/l10n?

There's a conceptual zone within which the romanticized historical past and the immanentizing historical future converge in a swamp of misapprehension and misstep. It's called "the present".

Is there a better way of doing today in view of tomorrow's important issues?

Suppose you're a person of libertarian persuasion. If you live in a swing state, then your vote for neither Obama nor Romney may have a marginal effect on the electoral outcome. If you do not live in a swing state, then your vote for neither major candidate is, at best, a protest. Perhaps it'll give you bragging rights when things inevitably go horribly awry for whoever happens to be in office. Perhaps it'll amplify in some infinitesimal way the visibility of third parties in this two-party nation and thereby nudge our system toward acknowledging their existence in potentially consequential ways (such as inclusion in the debates).

Then again, perhaps your vote for, say, the Libertarian Party, if cast, will be entirely misguided and even detrimental to the small-'l' libertarian cause.

At the Volokh Conspiracy, a crowd we consider kindred spirits, Ilya Somin has previously made the case that a vote for the Libertarian Party is not only a wasted vote, but a vote contrary to the interests of the one and (so far) only mechanism by means of which actual libertarian influence has been exercised to good effect: working within the major parties to move their ideological centers of gravity freedomward:

Libertarians have had some genuine successes over the last 35 years. These include abolition of the draft (heavily influenced by Milton Friedman's ideas), deregulation of large portions of the economy (of which libertarians were the leading intellectual advocates), major reductions in tax rates (facilitated by libertarian economists, libertarian activists, and the legislative efforts of libertarian-leaning Republicans), the increasing popularity of school choice programs, increases in judicial protection for property rights, gun rights, and economic liberties (thanks in large part to advocacy by libertarian legal activists), and heightened respect for privacy and freedom of speech (promoted by libertarians in cooperation with other groups). Libertarian academics and intellectuals have also done much to make libertarian ideas more respectable and less marginal than they were in the 1960s and early 70s.

What all these successes have in common is that they were achieved either by working within the two major parties or by efforts outside the context of party politics altogether. The Libertarian Party didn't play a significant role in any of them.

This line of thinking is part of an ongoing reflection in those parts on whether the Libertarian Party does more harm than good to the general pursuit of its espoused goals.

Most recently, Somin has argued that libertarians ought not to vote for Gary Johnson:

I certainly understand that some libertarians might want to support Johnson simply to express their views, regardless of whether or not it actually helps advance our cause. But I am skeptical that such “expressive voting” is the way to go.  …far better to do it through blogging, public debate, research, or just discussing politics with your friends and acquiantances, working to win them over to your point of view. If we choose to vote, however, I think we should vote for the least bad of the candidates that have a realistic chance of winning. The chance that your vote will be decisive is extremely low, but still just barely high enough justify taking the responsibility seriously.

So then…. What do you make of his argument? Does the so-called "protest vote for Johnson" have value? If so, does it have more value than a vote for "the least bad of the candidates that have a realistic chance of winning"? How might we decide? Must a rebuttal of Somin ultimately hang on emotional, subjective, or aesthetic factors?

Robert Rauschenberg, Canyon, 1959. Oil, acrylic, pencil, paper, fabric, metal, buttons, nails, cardboard, printed paper, photographs, wood, paint tubes, mirror string, pillow, & bald eagle on canvas. National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.). (C) Rauschenberg Estate/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY, via Wikipedia

2007 saw the demise of Ileana Sonnabend, a legendary purveyor of art created after 1945. Among the famous works in her considerable estate was Robert Rauschenberg's Canyon, a canonical, influential mid-century work well known from survey texts and studies of formal and thematic innovation in contemporary art. The work is neither a painting nor a sculpture, though it includes attributes of both. The artist called it a "combine", and it brings together a variety of media, art supplies, scraps, miscellaneous material, and things.

One of these things is a stuffed bald eagle.

Sonnabend's heirs tasked three appraisers, including one from Christie's, to put a value on the work. Since the bald eagle, dead or alive, is under federal protection, it would be a felony to sell the work and a felony to buy it. For this reason, the appraisers reasoned that its fair market value is $0. Price, after all, is not inherent; it is a function of market behavior. In this case, that behavior is prohibited by law.

It is perhaps no surprise that the IRS, tasked with celebrating the deceased by scrupulously taxing her legacy, disagrees with that appraisal. Stephanie Barron of LACMA, an expert adviser to the I.R.S.’s Art Appraisal Services, parses the economic data differently:

The ruling about the eagle is not something the Art Advisory Panel considered…. It’s a stunning work of art and we all just cringed at the idea of saying that this had zero value. It just didn’t make any sense. (NYTimes)

Au contraire, Ms. Barron, it cannot make any cents! Nonetheless, the IRS appraised it at $65M. (This is after having assessed a tax of $471M on the estate, for which Sonnabend's heirs had to sell off much of the collection in the largest private art sale ever.)

The federal government forbids the owner of Canyon to sell it, and forbids anyone to buy it. But the tax for inheriting it? Plus a penalty for daring to declare it worthless? $29,200,000.

Once upon a time, Greg Smith found Goldman Sachs to be a place where the wealth management consultant would support the customer's pursuit of his own investment goals in a way that optimized the benefit that accrues both to the customer and to Goldman Sachs.

Now, Greg Smith finds Goldman Sachs to be a place where the wealth management consultant will either support or thwart the customer's pursuit of his own investment goals in a way that maximizes the benefit that accrues to Goldman Sachs.

Greg Smith reckons that promotion at Goldman Sachs used to be based on leadership factors such as "ideas, setting an example, and doing the right thing." Greg Smith reckons that promotion is now based on "whether you make enough money for the firm."

Greg Smith laments that clients are discussed in terms, and managed in ways, that undermine rather than establish trust.

Greg Smith projects that junior analysts at Goldman Sachs will learn that profitability trumps service, that the monomaniacal pursuit of profit constitutes leadership, and that the reification of clients as profit centers will eventually undermine the enterprise.

Greg Smith doesn’t know of any illegal behavior at Goldman Sachs.

Furthermore…

Greg Smith was executive director and head of the firm’s United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa!

Greg Smith was selected as one of 10 people (out of a firm of more than 30,000) to appear on the Goldman Sachs recruiting video, which is played on every college campus Goldman Sachs visits around the world!

Greg Smith has had the privilege of advising two of the largest hedge funds on the planet, five of the largest asset managers in the United States, and three of the most prominent sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East and Asia!

Greg Smith's clients had a total asset base of more than a trillion dollars!

Greg Smith got a full scholarship to go to Stanford University!

Greg Smith won a bronze medal for table tennis in "the Jewish Olympics!"

Greg Smith was selected as a Rhodes Scholar national finalist!

Miyamoto Musashi, The Shrike

Politics.

Since ideologies amount to differing ways of defining the world – different accounts of what counts as a fact, as evidence, and as a sufficient definition — ideologies necessarily come into conflict not only in principle but especially in human behavior and interaction. Where ideologies are in accord, disagreement may be worked out in terms of commonly accepted and acknowledged principles of conflict resolution.

Two people committed, for example, to the guidance of formal logic, to empirical data (confirmed to a high degree of probability), and to a foundational set of axiomatic principles have a prospect of settling any disagreements that may arise between them. All such disagreements would be, by definition, a consequence of the incorrect application of logic, incorrect evaluation of data, or misapprehension of axioms. Likewise, two adherents to a particular subset of a particular religion would have greater chances of successful conflict resolution than members of two mutually exclusive faiths would have.

People whose most fundamental interpretive commitments are defined by conflicting assumptions about the nature of experience cannot, in principle, resolve the differences in a way that comports with the conflicting worldviews in question. Thus, pragmatism inclines people to deviate from consistency with their assumptions at least insofar as doing so makes coexistence and a degree of toleration possible. The negotiation of this compromise we call "politics".

Note that while practical matters force a negotiation of conflicting perspectives in terms of compromise, practical matters are not the only cause of compromise. Thus political compromise is interwoven with compromise that occurs for other reasons. For this reason, political thought and action are not reducible to an algorithm.

Politics always involves not merely negotiation but also discord. The discord provides impetus to the protection of ideological and presuppositional interests so that compromise does not lead to self-obliteration. The self-protective impetus of ideological aggression is captured well in remarks made by the seventeenth-century kensei Miyamoto Musashi:

When we are fighting with the enemy, even when it can be seen that we can win on the surface with the benefit of the Way, if his spirit is not extinguished, he may be beaten superficially yet undefeated in spirit deep inside. With this principle of 'penetrating the depths' we can destroy the enemy's spirit in its depths, demoralising him by quickly changing our spirit. This often occurs.

~ Miyamoto Musashi, A Book of Five Rings, trans. Victor Harris, (Woodstock: The Overlook Press, 1974), p. 81. (at Amazon)

Musashi here calls attention to the notion that winning the battle and winning the war are two different and not necessarily concomitant things. Redrawing the geographic and political boundaries which define the dominion of ideologically opposed bodies of people is a compromise which is provisional at best. The impetus for self-definition provides also for other-negation, not necessarily in a violent mode, but always in a mode that removes the threat of self-negation. Miyamoto Musashi's comment is directed toward this idea. If one protagonist in a conflict successfully eradicates the ideological underpinnings of the opponent, the impetus for self-definition is sated, and the threat to self is abated.

It is perhaps most characteristic of politics that, although the goal of self-preservation motivates every negotiation, the rhetoric and intercourse of political participants is not necessarily a rhetoric of violence or conflict. Approchement, appeasement, aggiornamento, détente, sympathy, aggression — all of these terms can characterize political interactions which at their core have the goal not of compromise but of dominion. Says Musashi,

When you decide to attack, keep calm and dash in quickly, forestalling the enemy. Or you can advance seemingly strongly but with a reserved spirit, forestalling him with the reserve. Alternatively, advance with as strong a spirit as possible, and when you reach the enemy move with your feet a little quicker than normal, unsettling him and overwhelming him sharply. Or, with your spirit calm, attach with a feeling of constantly crushing the enemy, from first to last. The spirit is to win in the depths of the enemy. These are all ken no sen (to set him up).

~ same, p. 71.

For good or ill, commitment to a perception of truth always entails hegemony, and denial of truth is itself a commitment that entails hegemony. So, politics is always Kendo, the way of the sword, and ideology determines whether and in what way that sword is metaphorical.

(Note: this piece is from spring of 1994, when the intarwebs consisted of Usenet and Scott Yanoff's list, which was incredibly useful in tandem with Lynx in a world of gophers and Archie.)

Politics are like real-time strategy games. They involve a careful gathering of resources and split-second decisions of their use. Ideally, the combination of tactical strategy and a more urgent pace than turn based would produce a typical match like speed chess; exhibiting fast pace, intense thinking, and tactical strategy. In reality though, the games comprise of memorized build orders and a game pace so fast nearly all strategy is thrown out the window. The only people who triumph are those losers who play for hours and hours on end; memorizing hotkeys while their vocabulary atrophies into Three Letter Acronyms. Does that sound familiar?

We've just had a historic primary season, or so I'm told. And you, dear reader, are probably sitting there in front of your computer, empty beer bottles strewn about, thinking, 'Now what the hell just happened? And where are my pants?'

Well hang on, I'm about to explain it to you, using the hyper-violent RTS Dawn of War, by Relic entertainment. By the way, your pants are behind the toilet. Go put them on before reading this; no one should have to see that shit.

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Declan McCullagh has the story of the surprising entry of Big Corn and the corn farmers' lobby into the Google – Yahoo – Microsoft merger brouhaha.  Why would Big Corn care about such a thing?  Why would a business which receives so much anticompetitive largesse from the government want to spoil the anticompetitive party for other industries?

The answer, sadly, will not surprise you.  McCullagh provides a good investigation and overview of the way many supposed "grassroots" groups are formed and operate, and a look at the industry which has become known as the "astroturf" movement.

Probably because It would be a royal pain to determine whether Exxon, Mobil, Duke Energy and other subsidized oil and power companies deserve precedence over the institutionalized duopoly on power held by the Democratic and Republican parties.

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Former United States Congressman Bob Barr (R-Mars, L-Ceres) is about to bigfoot his way into Presidential politics, courtesy of the Libertarian Party. I'm not sure what Barr is best known for in party circles, but in the world at large he's known for his role as "House manager" in the Clinton impeachment effort, a deep fear of witches, a very mixed though ultimately favorable record on civil liberties, and his smokin' hot mustache.

There's even talk of a Bob Barr-Mike Gravel (or depending on your preference) a Mike Gravel-Bob Barr dream ticket. All of this leads libertarians, anarchists, goldbugs, and Bilderberg agonists to the question: What is to be done about Ron Paul?

Hillary vows to fight "like Rocky."

"When it comes to finishing a fight, Rocky and I have a lot in common. I never quit."

Tortured metaphors aside, any Philadelphian could tell Senator Clinton that Rocky Balboa had the living snot knocked out of him by an urbane black man, only to lose the bout.

My hometown paper took a bit of a credibility hit in March, what with reporting that the artist formerly known as Puff Daddy was behind the 1994 shooting of Tupac Shakur. That would be the non-fatal shooting, by the way:

NEW YORK — Cameras flashed as paramedics carried the victim into the glare of Times Square on a stretcher. Blood seeped through bandages from five gunshot wounds.

Tupac Shakur had been beaten, shot and left for dead at the Quad Recording Studios on New York's 7th Avenue. As he was borne to a waiting ambulance through a swarm of paparazzi on Nov. 30, 1994, the rap star thrust his middle finger into the air.

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K.C. Johnson's blog Durham in Wonderland was an invaluable resource throughout the disgraceful Duke lacrosse case, and his writing had a substantial impact on how that grim matter eventually played out. Though the heart of the case is over — the players exonerated, the dishonest prosecutor disgraced — Johnson still updates the blog periodically. Two recent entries are worth a look — this entry noting the Presidential candidates' positions on the Duke lacrosse case, and more importantly this impressive and useful glossary of many different aspects of the case, with links to Johnson's coverage. It's a must-read for anyone interested in the case.

Via the (in this case entirely justifiably) Angry Asian Man, I see this gem from Planet Texas.

There's a dispute because Texas' new proposed reading curriculum from K-12 only has 4 books concerning Hispanic culture out of 150. Hispanics make up about 25% of Texans. Dig the response of the chairman of the Texas Board of Education:

Don McLeroy, board chairman, said Friday he couldn't comment about the list because he hadn't reviewed which books made it into the document.

However, McLeroy said he directed a group of experts to add examples of "good literature" to the list. He said students should spend their time in English class learning English and reading literature that will help prepare them for college.

"What good does it do to put a Chinese story in an English book?" he said. "You learn all these Chinese words, OK. That's not going to help you master … English. So you really don't want Chinese books with a bunch of crazy Chinese words in them. Why should you take a child's time trying to learn a word that they'll never ever use again?"

He added that some words — such as chow mein — might be useful.

Wow, Don, you really took the hat trick of cowardly, stupid, and obnoxious there. Cowardly because it's perfectly obvious that you are actually talking about Spanish, not Chinese — you just don't have the stones to address the dispute directly. Stupid because if you don't recognize how knowing a few words of Spanish in Texas could come in useful, you're a dim-bulb. And obnoxious because — well, I'll let you puzzle that out, I don't want to tire you.

Today Eugene Volokh has an update about the New Jersey Attorney General's investigation of the vile site JuicyCampus.com and its contemptible founder Matt Ivester, about whom I previously blogged. Matt Ivester, you might recall, founded JuicyCampus as an anonymous site for college kids to gossip about each other, and now professes to be shocked, shocked, that his site is a sewer of racist and misogynist drivel and libel.

Anyway, the New Jersey Attorney General is investigating Juicy Campus on a consumer fraud theory.  Volokh cites an article strongly suggesting that the investigation is a publicity-hound measure and not based on any rational theory, as the site does not seem to contain any guarantees that are being violated and no applicable law seems to require JuicyCampus to take down the nasty stuff that is its lifeblood.

As I said before, I strongly disapprove of government enforcement measures to address this sort of stuff. I'm still hoping that inventive college students with lots of time on their hands — is there any other kind? — will use inventive internet triangulation techniques to identify the nastier posters and reveal their identity and what they posted to their classmates. If we ask Patrick nicely, maybe he'll tell you about how he identified an "anonymous" internet poster by tracing his username to an Amazon wish list, or how we traced a poster here by linking his username to a restaurant review and a society page party description.

Also, I'd still be interested to see whether some of these schools have internet use policies that explicitly disavow any expectation of privacy. If that's the case, I have no problem with schools identifying threatening, libelous, or generally obnoxious posts, tracing them to their on-campus authors, and releasing that information to the student body.

I share Patrick's fondness for Wikipedia on matters of geekery, and think there's a quite wide range of topics on which it is an excellent resource. That range is mostly made up of technical stuff, non-controversial history, cultural minutiae, and the like.

However, for modern politics, it's completely unreliable.

Now, a large number of you are going "Well, DUH!" right now. But increasingly I see Wikipedia cited as a reliable source in political discussions. My friends who are high school and college instructors tell me that students increasingly rely on it. It has a veneer of respectability and pretenses to both neutrality and rigor. It's poised to accepted more widely.

So allow me to discuss a case study of why it is not.

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