History Erasure Almost Complete

Brian J. Noggle

Professor Bainbridge points to an article that might indicate that the ruling class has almost succeeded in erasing history to its benefit:

Who will be the Greatest American? Political giant Abraham Lincoln or Bill Clinton? Sports legend Babe Ruth or Tiger Woods? Media mogul Oprah Winfrey or Walt Disney? These remarkable people, and many more, have been named by America as some of the top 100 Greatest Americans.

The common man gets to vote for the greatest American from these choices:

Abraham Lincoln
Albert Einstein
Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Hamilton
Amelia Earhart
Andrew Carnegie
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Audie Murphy
Babe Ruth
Barack Obama
Barbara Bush
Benjamin Franklin
Bill Clinton
Bill Cosby (William Henry Cosby, Jr.)
Bill Gates
Billy Graham
Bob Hope
Brett Favre
Carl Sagan
Cesar Chavez
Charles Lindbergh
Christopher Reeve
Chuck Yeager
Clint Eastwood
Colin Powell
Condoleezza Rice
Donald Trump
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Eleanor Roosevelt (Anna Eleanor Roosevelt)
Ellen DeGeneres
Elvis Presley
Frank Sinatra
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Frederick Douglass
George H. W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Lucas
George Patton
George Washington
George Washington Carver
Harriet Ross Tubman
Harry Truman
Helen Keller
Henry Ford
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Howard Hughes
Hugh Hefner
Jackie Robinson (Jack Roosevelt Robinson)
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
Jesse Owens
Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Stewart
John Edwards
John Glenn
John F. Kennedy
John Wayne
Johnny Carson (John William Carson)
Jonas Edward Salk
Joseph Smith Jr.
Katharine Hepburn
Lance Armstrong
Laura Bush
Lucille Ball
Lyndon B. Johnson
Madonna (Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone)
Malcolm X (Malcolm Little)
Marilyn Monroe
Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens)
Martha Stewart
Martin Luther King Jr.
Maya Angelou
Mel Gibson
Michael Jackson
Michael Jordan
Michael Moore
Muhammad Ali (Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr.)
Neil Alden Armstrong
Nikola Tesla
Oprah Winfrey
Pat Tillman
Dr. Phil McGraw
Ray Charles
Richard Nixon
Robert Kennedy
Ronald Reagan
Rosa Parks
Rudolph W. Giuliani
Rush Limbaugh
Sam Walton
Steve Jobs
Steven Spielberg
Susan B. Anthony
Theodore Roosevelt
Thomas Edison
Thomas Jefferson
Tiger Woods
Tom Cruise
Tom Hanks
Walt Disney
Wrights Brothers (Orville & Wilbur Wright)

Excellent! The blurring of historical achievement and current celebrity. Once the process of completely eliminating a sense of history from citizens occurs, the greatest Americans will narrow to contemporary celebrities and political figures. Wirhout a perspective on history, who will we be to challenge the thoughts and views of the Greatest Americans as they tell us what to do and think?

My, aren’t I dystopian in the morning?

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Prometheus Unhinged

Brian J. Noggle

I’ve been skimming David Greenberg’s rather disagreeable posts at Daniel Drezner.com and quietly disagreed them. Little did I realize that Greenberg’s excursion into the blogosphere was an anthropoorelitist study where he was Dian Fossey and we were the gorillas. He’s published his findings in the peer-reviewed New York Times:

As I checked other sites for ideas, I now realized that I didn’t need only new information. I needed a gimmick – a motif or a running joke that would keep the blog rolling all week. All of a sudden, I was reading other blogs, not for what they had to say, but for how they said it.

And:

It’s not that the readers were dim. Some forced me to refine or clarify my arguments. But the responses certainly got reductive, very quickly. And for all the individuality that blogs are supposed to offer, there was an amazing amount of groupthink – since some of them were getting their talking points from … other blogs.

By the end of the week, with other deadlines looming and my patience exhausted, I began to post less and less. There was a piece for Slate due, a book chapter to finish, my baby boy, Leo, to entertain and a piece to write for the Week in Review.

So you see, while he enjoyed his trips to the darkest underbelly of commentary, he had real work to do, and with regret could no longer post to the low quality standards he’d set for himself and the presumably knuckle-dragging readership and commentariat.

Nothing like a little slumming to shore up your liberal cred. Oh, I know, it’s under the guise of broadening your horizons or trying something new. If you perform the task with the idea that it will confirm your preconceptions, though, you’re probably right–but your horizons are no more broad, and you’ve really only tried the same old thing.

More at:

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Government and Developers

Brian J. Noggle

Over at Boots and Sabers, Owen’s done his homework to spell out the beginnings of a land grab wherein shady government officials working with developers and with local neighborhood associations will eventually run the middle class owners out of their neighborhood:

A Den of Thieves

The worst part of the whole story is the sense I get that it’s not a vast conspiracy of long-range plans to incrementally drive the homeowners out, but rather that the government officials have nothing else to do but try a variety of approaches to meet their goals of stripping citizens’ property rights. Patience and not having to live a freaking life while fighting city hall and its developer overlords tip the balance of power from the citizens to those who live only to rule them.

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White House Thinks Your Clothes Are Too Cheap

Brian J. Noggle

In a move undoubtedly designed to stimulate the economy, the White House has determined that you should pay more for your clothes:

The Bush administration is re-imposing quotas on three categories of clothing imports from China, responding to complaints from domestic producers that a surge of Chinese imports was threatening thousands of U.S. jobs.

The administration action will impose limits on the amount of cotton trousers, cotton knit shirts and underwear that China can ship to this country. American retailers say that will drive up prices for U.S. consumers.

Higher prices and diminished sales always benefit consumers, retailers, and the economy. Or so this administration thinks when it starts slapping around the tariffs. Perhaps the Bush administration can only replicate the success of Smoot-Hawley in the twenty-first century.

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Senator Bond Battles Fiscal Responsibility

Brian J. Noggle

Once again, Christopher “Pork” Bond promises to fight fiscal responsibility if it, you know, impacts his voters:

U.S. Sen. Christopher “Kit” Bond, R-Mo., said during a news conference outside the base gate Friday that he was “stunned” by the recommendation [to split up the area’s 131st Fighter Wing at Lambert Field, to relocate the Army Human Resources Command from Overland, and to move the Defense Finance and Accounting Service as part of BRAC] and promised to fight it.

“It has very clear homeland security implications that must be considered and, I do not believe, have been adequately considered by the Pentagon,” Bond said.

Because, you know, the Pentagon has overlooked homeland security and military considerations which a senator, whose job involves bloviating on all sorts of unfocused topics, sees immediately. The important homeland security functions provided by the Human Resources Command, you see, which only possible Bond voters can provide adequately.

Perhaps Bond means his homeland job security implications, which puts him in the chorus of local democrats (William Clay, Charles Dooley, and Francis Slay). Excellent company you’re keeping, Senator. Those of us who value fiscal conservatism in our federal legislators have taken note.

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No MLS for You

Brian J. Noggle

Major League Soccer has looked to St. Louis for an expansion team and it doesn’t look promising:

Kansas City Wizards midfielder Chris Klein, a St. Louisan, told the Star: “If a city shows it’s willing to build a stadium and that there’s a viable owner that’s there, then the league is going to look at it. So far, St. Louis has shown neither of those two aspects.”

Thankfully. After three publicly funded sports venues in St. Louis itself over the last decade, including the new Busch stadium which is still a skeleton fleshing out downtown and the most unpopular spending on sports yet, perhaps Missourians are growing weary of blowing money on sports facilities instead of vital public infrastructure. Particularly venues for the fold-by-night soccer teams.

Probably not. Politicians love getting their pictures taken with athletes. But with upcoming spending on Columbia and Kansas City facilities, perhaps this particular field has had its seed corn eaten already for a couple of years.

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Word of the Day: Twee

Brian J. Noggle

Today’s word: Twee: Overly precious or nice.

I don’t normally do words of the day, but I’ve encountered this word twice already this morning.

Neil Steinberg of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote:

(And why don’t men garden in ads? I know lots of guys who garden, who are proud of their tomatoes. I sure am. Is it twee? Come by the office and say that to my face!)

Mark Steyn wrote:

The score gives you a good clue to the main problem: sometimes it’s grand and epic, at others it’s twee and nudging and determined to jolly along the flattest of gags.

Weird, huh?

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Fanboy Attack!

Brian J. Noggle

In his review of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Mark Steyn makes a gaffe:

The ordinariness of Freeman is just right for the Dent role. To see him on some dusty lunarscape is to see the essence of Douglas Adams’s paradoxical world: a vast corner of a very foreign galaxy that is forever England — or, as one book title put it, The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul.

But The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul is a Dirk Gently novel, not one of the five books (and one short story *) in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy.

* Of course, the short story is “Young Zaphod Plays It Safe” which is available in the anthology editions. You did know that, didn’t you?

Mark Steyn, who has a British-sounding accent, should have known better. He’s trying to pass as informed but, :: sniff ::, he is obviously not.

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Mother Displays Ignorance of 13-Year-Olds

Brian J. Noggle

The blame for the 13-year-old who climbed an electrical tower, touched a 19,700 volt transmission line, and fell lies not with the child, for his lack of common sense, nor with parenting that didn’t hone his instincts, nor with the friends who had five dollars to bet him he wouldn’t do it. Of course not.

Anna Thebeau says her son, 13-year-old Justin Porter, wouldn’t be in the hospital recovering from burns and a broken pelvis if the electric tower he scaled on a $5 bet had a warning sign.

It’s Illinois Power’s fault for not having a sign. Lawsuit countdown begins.

Because teenagers heed all signs and obey all posted rules. Perhaps Justin is an anamoly, but somehow, I doubt it.

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Good Thing There Were No Fatalities

Brian J. Noggle

Fowl play on highway:

St. Louis police detained seven ducklings Wednesday after they blockedHighway 40 and caused a traffic accident, but later released them to custody of their mother. No charges were filed.

Officers gave this account:

A minor collision occurred about 11 a.m. in the eastbound lanes of the highway, which is also Interstate 64, near Kingshighway. Motorists blamed slowed traffic trying to avoid the feathered pedestrians. No injuries were reported, human or otherwise.

Because once ducks cause a couple of fatalities, the city of Denver will kill them all.

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To Be Clear

Brian J. Noggle

You know the unnamed capital-O Objectivist in the post below?

A complete and utter fabrication. If blogvestigators hit the streets and the lawns of the Ayn Rand Institute, looking for someone who even heard of Musings from Brian J. Noggle, they would find no one to fit the description. Then they would pressure me to give up my position here for misleading The Public, or just you, gentle reader. I don’t want this to happen to me.

So please understand that here at Musings from Brian J. Noggle, we got no truck with reality. We do however, got truck with bad sixties slang that continues to live on into the twenty-first century for some reason or another.

(Link seen on Michelle Malkin.)

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The Utter Fallibility of Ayn Rand

Brian J. Noggle

Ayn Rand, the father of the Objectivism philosophy, was not infallible. Observe:

He thought of how convincingly he could describe this scene to friends and make them envy the fullness of his contentment. Why couldn’t he convince himself? He had everything he ever wanted. He had wanted superiority–and for the last year he had been the undisputed leader of his profession. He had wanted fame–and he had his five thick albums of clippings. He had wanted wealth–and he had enough to insure luxury for the rest of his life. He had everything anyone ever wanted. How many people struggled and suffered to achieve what he had achieved? How many dreamed and bled and died for this, without reaching it? “Peter Keating is the luckiest fellow on earth.” How often had he heard that? (p444 of The Fountainhead, International Collectors Library edition, 1968)

You see, gentle reader, Ayn Rand used insure, that is to provide or arrange insurance for, instead of ensure, to make sure of. Granted, English was her second language and all, but it’s important to note that Ayn Rand could make errors.

UPDATE: A capital-O Objectivist responds:

Dear whim worshipper:

Ayn Rand represents one of the greatest intellects of all time, so it’s certain that your interpretation of her usage of “insure” instead of “ensure” in the passage you quote cannot rival her genius nor that of Leonard Peikoff, author of Ominous Parallels and the Ayn Rand’s Official Intellectual Heir®. Regardless, you parasite to the creators of wealth, I shall seek to educate you even though I suspect you would prefer your blessed collectivist ignorance.

By using “insure” instead of “ensure,” Rand was illustrating the essentially bankrupt nature of Peter Keating; although he didn’t have enough wealth to “ensure” his lifestyle–that is, he could not repurchase all of his meaningless, unearned belongings nor could he recreate his success from scratch without leeching the production of the successful Howard Roark, he could “insure” his wealth by knowing that in the event of a total loss, the State would steal from the real producers in the world to recreate the fantasy of his opulence.

So you see, you second-hander primitivist, Ayn Rand packed meaning into that passage that you couldn’t, with your escapist worldview embracing “equality” and “altruism” instead of “egoism,” understand. So stick to writing your silly little sentences on the latest pop-fiction book you’ve read and regurgitate other peoples’ opinions without trusting your own judgment.

Okay, I made it up, but that’s how sanctioned Objectivists sound, ainna?

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All the News I Can Imagine (I)

Brian J. Noggle

Marvel sues two sleepers over dreams

LOS ANGELES — Marvel Enterprises is suing two individuals who’ve slept because it claims that the individuals had dreams with Marvel characters “Spiderman,” “Rogue,” “ShadowCat,” “She-Hulk,” “Dazzler,” “The Scarlet Witch,” and other heroes and, quite frankly, a lot of heroines.

The lawsuit claims that St. Louis resident Sean Wilson and Cahokia, Illinois, resident Sam Jose violated Marvel’s trademark characters in their dreams on the nights of May 4, 2005 and May 6, 2005 respectively. Marvel seeks unspecified damages and an injunction against the two young men to stop using its characters.

REM-sleep enables participants to emulate superheroes’ look and abilities and then battle against other dream characters in a virtual city. Like similar so-called personal entertainment media, dream offer a myriad of combinations so that no two dreamers’ plots are exactly the same.

But in its lawsuit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court, Marvel argues that the dreamers’ imaginations easily allows them to portray themselves as its superheroes, including “Cyclops” of the X-Men in that one scenario involving “Dr. Jean Grey” of which the Comics Board would not approve.

The New York-based company also took issue with the ability of dreamers to go so far as to use the names of Marvel comic book characters in their dreams.

Marvel claims the two men are responsible because the the dreams occur in their minds, raising the question of whether a person is responsible for his or subsconscious behavior even while unconscious.

Marvel also claims the men have disrupted its “existing and future” business prospects for licensing its characters in stories similar to the plots of their dreams, as the men might not buy those comic books that pale in comparison to their own nocturnal experience.

Neither of the defendants in the lawsuit would comment.

The Marvel lawsuit appears to be the first to raise this question in the scope of individual dreams. But early copyright infringement lawsuits brought by recording companies against people who hummed tunes successfully argued the hummers were responsible for license fees owed to the music publishers because they performed the songs, often in public venues.

The argument can still be made that the dreams are only empower dreamers to the same degree that an establishment like Kinko’s enables customers to make paper copies of copyrighted material, said Lou von Fredericks, senior intellectual property attorney with the Nighttime Frontier Foundation.

“Is it a violation of copyright to make up a character in the dream world or is that fair use?” von Fredericks said. “This is really untested ground in the courts.”

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Denver Pit Bull Genocide

Brian J. Noggle

One more reason not to live in Colorado: Denver has declared all Pit Bulls illegal and is now rounding them up and killing them:

It has to be one of the dumbest laws, ever. And I don’t even own or like pit bulls. It’s nothing personal, only that I’d never keep any animal that eats as much or more than I do.

Still, I can weep for the pit bulls of Denver, particularly for the puppies that never did anything other than get born into the breed.

Yet here we have the city of Denver, newly sprung from legislative and judicial restraint, rounding up pits over the past couple of days and killing them like rats during The Plague.

A uniformed officer arrives at a home. “I’ll get him,” she announces to her partner. Rather than fight it all, a distraught man emerges, weighs going to jail and a fine, and in the end hands over his dog.

Well, there you have it again. The government confiscates and destroys things which are abused, mishandled, misbehave, or misused by a few. For the Children, no doubt. Soon, the government will only allow us to have nice foam (not polyurethane, which is flammable, but something more spongebobby). For everything.

(Link seen on The Agitator.)

UPDATE: Wait! I have a sudden bad governance inspiration! Couple your pit bull confiscation with this lunacy, and it’s own an illegal pit bull, lose your house!

Vote for me. I am worse than the rest of them.

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Book Review: The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (1943)

Brian J. Noggle

I wanted a good reading copy of The Fountainhead, so I cruised eBay for one. I mean, I have the first edition, but I don’t want to spill beer and danish toppings on it. I also have my first paperback copy from college, but I’m a hardback snob. So I cruised eBay and found a nice International Collector’s Library edition ca 1968, complete with heavy paper, leatheresque binding, and attached ribbon for book marking. Oh, yeah. And for such a low price (shipping and handling extra)!

So once I bought it, I put it on my to read shelf. And now I have read it for the fifth time.

What can I say? I like the book. I read it first, a library copy, before my freshman year of college. I’d been challenged by the startlingly-literate machinist next door to elevate my reading habits if I wanted to be an English major. So I remembered flyers for the ARI’s The Fountainhead essay contest scholarship and figured it was Literature. So I consumed it at the most formative time, that summer when a young man leaves his boyhood home and tries to become a man.

The book seemed very long back then when I was used to 175 page crime thrillers, but now that I have graduated to 1000 page Stephen King books, it seems almost like a quick read. I’m surprised every time how approachable the book is; the book avoids the speechifying that sank Atlas Shrugged. Rand also had a better hero in this book, Howard Roark, with whom the reader struggles throughout the years that pass in their epic sweep.

Howard Roark, architect. He’s thrown out of architecture school for being a nonconformist and has to strive through a series of setbacks to be the man he is and to be an active architect without compromising his ideals. He won’t, of course, because he’s a Randian hero, but it continues to inspire me each time I read the book. So I’ve read it again for the first time in five years, and I’ll read it again in another five years, when I need a reminder of the freshness and vitality I felt and feel about my ideals when I read this book.

It’s not much of a book review, but let the fact that I paid eBay shipping and handling for a copy of this book so I could read it a fifth time speak for me.

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New Revenue Stream in New Jersey

Brian J. Noggle

Bill: Seize homes that contain ‘illegal’ guns:

The legislation, sponsored by Assemblyman Louis Manzo, D-Jersey City, authorizes the forfeiture of “motor vehicle, building or premise” if a firearm is found in it that is not possessed legally per state law – “even if the firearm was not possessed by the owner of the motor vehicle, building or premise,” states a summary of the bill, A3998. The legislation was introduced Thursday.

Manzo pointed out his bill extends government power now reserved for targeting those in possession of illegal drugs.

Behold the slippery slope. Hey, asset seizure of this fashion has all but eliminated the scourge of illegal drugs. Why not extend it?

Because I’m eventually looking forward to handing over pinks because a speed camera clocked me at two miles per hour over the speed limit.

(Link seen on Ravenwood’s Universe.)

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First Hand Second-Handing

Brian J. Noggle

From the bizjournals.com: Mastering meetings:

MYTH: Most meetings are a waste of time.

FACT: Every meeting — whether you’re a participant, a presenter, or the chairperson — represents a golden opportunity to increase your visibility as an effective communicator.

Remember, bureaucrat, meetings are not to do something, nor to reach a decision: they’re all about increasing your visibility.

So please pipe up with your eloquent digressions and anecdotes of personal achievement. Because that will serve the real purpose of the meeting.

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