I'd warrant that the ratio of musical gems to musical duds, taken as a whole, remains the same. There was just less available distribution in the old days, and that lack of outlet  acted as a filter to keep the cruddy music out. Today, it is incredibly easy to release any old thing and if it has a slightly interesting tidbit get a half a million views online.   

I wouldn't take music like this to imply that good music isn't being written anymore. 

When I visit my father at his vacation spot in Delaware we inevitably visit the Cape Henlopen State Park, which is a very nice beach. However, every time we enter the park and are on our way to the parking area we have to pass a sign for the "The Biden Center" -- an environmental training center. There are a few other signs for places named Biden in that area as well.  

It does seem to me to be in bad taste to have a building named after you when you are just a hired hand tending the government stead.

have fun peter! a week without current events is pretty nice. i took mine last week.

i understand the pessimism that Dr. Sowell expresses, and I am by no means as learned or experienced, however I have come to believe in an almost libertarian inspired version of Marx's historical materialism. I think that, metaphysically speaking, something like an "imperative to freedom" is baked into the actual structure of existence and that no matter what humans do, our social forms will of their own internal force progress toward more freedom rather than less. Especially as we try to broaden the reach of government, the seeds of such an expansion's collapse are sown. The ordering of such a creatively chaotic system as human society is nearly impossible in any long term way. Further, with such a "connected" populace as exists today, would-be dictators springing up to enact crack downs will find their jobs increasingly more difficult. The trick for the freedom lovers will be to persist and endure and keep alive the flame of freedom in their own hearts. When the bureaucratic structures collapse, human ingenuity will step in to reconstruct those parts of society.

maybe i am just an optimist.

In a sense we do, but id tend to belief the loss is only temporary. That the universe is of divine origins and, as such, is filled with divinity, someone who pursues a purely materialistically guided introspection will eventually run smack into the divine presence. Maybe a generation or two can try to ignore the presence of God, but ultimately the basic truths of our existence will naturally re-emerge.

Now, they can reemerge in many contexts. One can reconnect with God through yoga or Zen meditation or through devout Christianity. The trick will be in discovering how to reorient their "self" so that the truth is made clear to them. A monk meditating on a mountain in Tibet will be in touch with God just as a Catholic priest delivering mass. The difference between them is in the upbringing which made one able to "get" God in one context over another. This is what leads me to believe that Westerners will be generally less able to find God through Eastern methods.

Patrick,

I think you have valid points, but i wouldn't be so quick to dismiss that there are interests with a stake in the DSM and those interests might be ones who manufacture drugs. I love the free market, but i would shy away from describing our medical market as free. We have regulatory capture on one end, and then we have governmental capture of medical industry interests on the other.

sometimes i wish we had the ability to write our own regulation that would regulate the regulators. govern the government!

Along with basic algebra, geometry and trig I'd include a few questions about basic symbolic/propositional logic.

Expanding on emily's point, one of the larger issues faced is that this is a "conflict" which lasted for more than half of the 20th century and it was fought largely by proxy.

How can a kid educated in the American system be reasonably expected to describe such a multi-dimensional "conflict" in a couple of sentences ? My own generation, that being the one immediately preceding your kids' generation, were aware of the cold war in the 80s and early 90s and even so they only vaguely recognize the threat that was the Soviet Union. To discuss socialism and communism with my peers is like discussing it with late 20s/early 30s people from 1900 -- they have no awareness of the nature of the conflict of liberal democracy vs statism or the horrors witnessed under the various collectivized system. Good luck in getting them to discuss lenin, trotsky or stalin as well. Heck, just this week i tried discussing the possibility of rational participation in society with a very intelligent good friend from college and was largely told it was an irrelevant subject.

I would say that, logically speaking, the two are possibly unrelated. Just because one argument falters doesn't mean that there aren't equal or stronger arguments available that ultimately achieve the same purpose.

The only way it would blow up on the big O is if people suddenly understood the distinction between an "Equal Protection" argument and a "Preemption" argument.

there is sort of the crux of our problem in general with a lot of legislation, even non-disability. How do you make the broader economic and moral arguments against a proposal which intends to help people, but which may in fact cause more harm, without sounding like a monster? Until you can do that the politicians who can look at a piece of legislation objectively will keep their mouths shut for fear of the Wrath of the Echo Chamber.

As a kid, I always wanted to be on the Wheel and found it patently unfair that I had no opportunity to do so. You really need to establish some sort of Quiz Show Reinvestment act to make sure that all comers get a shot at one of those shiny slices of the Wheel.

I look forward to the day when I can play my kids in chess. For now, I have to be satisfied with mesmerizing my two year old with my (not so) awesome yo-yo skills.

For those of you who like history and video games the "total war" games are great. Whenever I am bored I can come back to my Rome: Total War game and waste hours of my life working toward world domination.

I had the opportunity to hear Christie speak locally when he was campaigning and I wasn't too impressed. I have to give the man credit, he is a much more interesting governor than he was a campaigner. He definitely shows a lot of grit in taking hard issues head on.

After reading that piece I am prepared to give her the credit Claire suggests she deserves. As Trace says, I can't say I necessarily agree with all of her points, but as she says:

" There is always the risk in advocating for democracy that the first people to wake up might not be your team, but that is a risk worth taking. I would rather have citizens I don’t agree with organized and active than an oligarchy of people that I agree with."

I have expressed this sentiment many times before. I would much rather live in a worker's paradise so long as I could actually discuss things with aware, (self)educated and active peers than be a member of a society that blithely bobs along to any old whim of our Enlightened Leaders, even if they were essentially aligned with my own views.

I have actually started looking at the "binary systems" among the founders. Ever since reading the Jefferson-Adams correspondence I have viewed them as an inseparable pair. I have the same attachment to Madison-Hamilton from the Federalist Papers (of course). I am still looking for Ben Franklin's foil, another favorite, but one who is sadly a lonely-only at the Founders' Dance (so far).

I need to make an admission: I found myself pulled a bit by the anti-Jefferson arguments of John. I still love TJ, but the conversation forced me to admit explicitly that I thought he was a not-so-great politician. Perhaps even a bad one.

This works for me, however, because I don't like politicians and I especially dislike Presidents.