PUTTING THE “OFFSHORE” in offshoring.

RAND SIMBERG WRITES ON LIFE EXTENSION AND THE PAPACY: Habemus Papam…Ad Perpetuitatem?

I THOUGHT WE WERE TRYING TO GET “BIG MONEY” OUT OF POLITICS: I guess it isn’t working.

ANOTHER CANADIAN SCANDAL:

Even as the association of Canadian Maurice Strong with “Koreagate Man” Tungsun Park was coming under world limelight, Sri Lankans were starting to demand answers about where the $425 million promised by Canada to tsunami victims is.

Four months after the tsunami hit, Sri Lankans still don’t have their money. Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin rushed to the scene for a weeklong photo op. Generous Canadians donated record amounts of money on line.

The Canadian government promised to match dollar for dollar, donations from the public.

But the promised mega millions never arrived.

Turn down your PC volume before following the link, as this page has an extremely obnoxious ad with audio. I don’t know why people think those kinds of things are good for business, as it merely makes me want to give the advertiser a sound InstaPunk treatment.

THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF THE VANITIES is up!

HERE’S AN ARTICLE on bloggers and tipjars. And blogs are also being credited (perhaps a bit too extravagantly) for bringing freedom to Canada.

DIGITAL CAMERAS: The Wall Street Journal has a guide to buying digital cameras. And the New York Times offers a lengthy comparison of the new Nikon D70s and the new Digital Rebel XT.

You shouldn’t let my problems with the D70 affect your judgment too much, as I don’t think they’re systemic. But the fact that it went back to Nikon for service and returned no better — and perhaps worse — should perhaps trouble you more.

UPDATE: Sorry for the brain-burp: I had EOS 20D instead of Digital Rebel XT before.

THERE’S ALREADY AN anti-Voinovich ad.

MORE DEMONSTRATIONS IN CHINA, and these aren’t about Japan:

As the market plumbs six-year lows, China’s 60 million retail investors are an embittered lot — sounding a jarring note amid the capitalist changes transforming China’s economy. The government once touted the nation’s two stock exchanges, started in 1990 and 1991, as founts of opportunity. But they have turned out to be full of rotten companies that relied on political connections to get listed. Regulators have had little success fighting rampant insider trading and poor disclosure.

For the ruling Communist Party, the rage of investors who have lost their nest eggs could be toxic. The party has long struggled to keep a lid on social unrest, especially among unemployed workers and overtaxed farmers. Now a big chunk of the middle class is angry, too.

No wonder the government would rather have people angry about Japan.

Meanwhile, France is supporting preemptive war — so long as it’s by a major customer!

During a state visit to China, French Premier Raffarin threw support behind a law allowing China to attack Taiwan and continued to push for a lift of the EU arms embargo.

At the outset of a three-day visit to China, French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said he supported Beijing’s “anti-secession” law on Taiwan, and vowed to keep pushing for an end to an EU arms embargo that could open the door for Paris to sell weapons to the Asian giant.

Raffarin also signed or finalized major business deals with Beijing valued at around $3.2 billion (2.4 billion euros).

You know, we should have just bribed Chirac et al. It’s clearly the way these things are done. Bloggledygook has more on the big picture.

ROGER SIMON:

The level of prevarication surrounding the recent resignation of investigators Robert Parton and Miranda Duncan from the Independent Inquiry Committee into the United Nations Oil-for-Food Programme is so great that even a blogger in farwaway Los Angeles can see that committee members responding to the resignations are lying through their teeth.

You’d think that the reporting on this story would make lies like that more difficult. Press coverage of UNScam, and particularly of the serious problems within the Volcker Committee, has been disappointing. I guess only amateur bloggers have the time, discipline, and resources to fully address this story!

I WONDER IF THIS STORY will have legs?

A Democratic fund-raiser involved in Senator Clinton’s 2000 campaign has offered a guilty plea to bank fraud charges and is likely to become a government witness at the upcoming federal trial of a top finance aide to Mrs. Clinton, David Rosen, court records obtained by The New York Sun show.

The Sun is certainly punching above its weight.

RYAN SAGER NOTES that left and right are making common cause against campaign finance “reform.”

MORE JOURNALISM-AS-FICTION at the Los Angeles Times. Patterico has the story.

PRAISE FOR CONNECTICUT’S CIVIL UNIONS, over at GayPatriot:

Twenty years ago, few, even in the gay community, recognized gay couples as a social unit. Nor did many more “mainstream” institutions, whether commercial, civic, educational, religious or governmental. Today, a growing number of commercial enterprises offer benefits to the partners of their employees while other institutions welcome same-sex schweeties (i.e., significant others) to meetings, services and social events.

And now, a state, not forced by a court and with an elected legislature close to the people, has recognized gay unions. This is huge. Let me repeat, this is huge.

I agree.

NIKON D70 UPDATE: There’s bad news about the pictures below, though. The autofocus on the D70 emitted an ugly groan and quit working about halfway through my walk. It doesn’t even try to autofocus now; I focused most of these manually.

I’m pretty disappointed in that. One reason I bought a Nikon over a Canon was because I thought it would be more reliable. Now it’s headed back to the Nikon repair shop for the second time.

I HAD PLANNED TO GO TO THE MOUNTAINS to take pictures after a brief stop at the office, Once in the office, however, I was unable to escape in time. But I did wander the campus with the Nikon and took some pictures, for the benefit of the various alumni and expats who keep asking for more.

This is just outside the Walters Life Sciences building. The dogwoods are blooming nicely.

Some posters at the bottom of The Hill, near the student center

A campus coffee shop, ghostly face visible in the window.

The path to Ayres Hall, with more dogwoods.

One of the unsung heroes of the Physical Plant, hard at work. The main guy for the law school is cool; he’s into electronic music, and is even a Cool Edit fan.

Outdoor reading and studying is de rigeur on days like today.

Bigger versions available here.

RX-8 UPDATE: Reader Tony von Krag emails:

IIRC you got your RX 8 just about a year ago. So any thing you like or hate to a tremendous degree? BTW AutoWeek just did their year long test wrapup this week too.

I like the car to a tremendous degree. There’s nothing I hate. The Autoweek testers experienced much worse fuel economy and oil consumption than I’m experiencing. Perhaps that’s because I was meticulous about the break-in period, or perhaps it’s because their car was just different. My mileage isn’t great — about 18-20 mpg in mixed driving, and I think I got 21 or 22 on the highway once, but it’s substantially better than theirs. And my oil consumption is much, much lower. I don’t think it’s that they drove it a lot harder, because I generally keep the revs pretty high. It’s a lot more fun to drive that way, after all.

I had a battery problem (covered under a recall), but that’s the only problem I’ve had with it. The car is fast — and, more importantly, it feels fast, something that other cars with similar numbers don’t always deliver. It’s loads of fun to drive, the seats are shockingly comfortable, even on fairly lengthy trips, and the back seat is actually functional. I’ve actually had it since August of ’03, and I like it at least as much as when it was new.

I haven’t tricked mine out with lots of Japanese Domestic Market gewgaws or anything, and it’s kind of sad that you can’t get one of these for the RX-8, as you could for the RX-7, but I’m very happy. I had an elderly (1980) first-gen RX-7 in my youth, and this car captures the pleasures of that car without any of the downsides, and with far more refinement.

UPDATE: A reader emails:

Thought I’d give you my impression of the RX-8. I’ve had one since June 2004. My gas mileage is about the same as AutoWeek’s (I actually stopped keeping track after about 6 months, but I haven’t seen any noticeable improvement in miles per tank). The only time I went over 20 mpg was on a long trip from CA to AZ. I usually get 15-17 mpg. (And yes, I drive it pretty hard, what’s the point of getting a car that revs to 9300 if you don’t get it at least 2/3rds of the way there).

My oil consumption is almost the same as AutoWeek’s. I had my oil changed 3000 miles ago and have added 1.5 quarts.

The other most common complaint of the RX-8 is the snow performance of the tires. I’ve never driven in the snow (we don’t get much over here), and I don’t plan to.

I am VERY satisfied with the car. My wife, on the other hand, is not so happy with it. We have a 3 year old daughter and there is not much room in the back seat for her. Therefore, when all 3 of us are in the car, my wife doesn’t have much room in the passenger seat because we have to move it up just to fit our daughter. Plus, it’s kind of awkward to get our daughter in and out of the back seat.

The back seats work (and my daughter fits behind me OK without me moving the seat up, but she’s old enough not to need a carseat), but their chief virtue is that they exist. You can put a small-to-medium adult in them for short distances, but you wouldn’t want to go far.

Meanwhile, reader Steven Headley emails:

Regarding your posted comments about your RX-8 … I am glad that you really like your vehicle, and definitely have been looking at the car as the wife’s “next car”, but have to take issue with your characterization of the RX-8 as “fast”.

As an owner of an American musclecar (2000 Pontiac WS-6 Trans Am) there is nothing like the experience of 400+ horses from the GM Gen III LS1 engine (“slightly modified”) coupled through a 6-speed tranny to the rear wheels.

0 to 60MPH in a little over 4 seconds, now THAT is “fast” … !

No, that’s “absurdly fast.” And reader Paul Music thinks I should get this car, but he seriously overestimates my tipjar proceeds . . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Charles Austin emails:

I’ve had mine for about 4 months now and I love it. My daughters (8 and 15) fit comfortably in the back seats tooling around town. I get 16-20 MPG depending on how I’m driving and added 1 quart for the first 4,000 miles.

What’s not to love about this car? It is fast, though clearly not the fastest, but I do enjoy the off ramps where I zoom zoom by the Mustangs, BMWs and 350Zs that pass me on the straightaways.

Yes, it’s good on the “twisty bits.”

VINCE CARROLL NOTES that academic freedom seems to be a one-way street:

Remember the proclamation of 29 professors at the University of Denver College of Law denouncing the inquiry into Ward Churchill because “the critique of conventional wisdom, or the accepted way of doing (or seeing) things, is essential to fostering the public debate that is necessary to prevent tyranny”?

Remember the ringing declaration of 199 faculty at the University of Colorado at Boulder, also in defense of Churchill, on the importance of an “environment in which ideas may be exchanged even in the face of widespread doubt, incomprehension and hostility”?

Does such an unfettered intellectual environment actually exist on any Colorado campus?

In the journal Academic Questions, former Gov. Richard Lamm recounts an incident that suggests, once again, the answer is emphatically no.

Lamm, who is a tenured professor at DU, tried to publish an article in The Source, a newspaper run by the administration there, “in response to a particularly offensive screed on white racism by one of our affirmative action officials.”

Yet despite personal pleas he took up the DU ladder right into the chancellor’s office, his essay was repeatedly rejected.

It is now online at educationation.org/blog/?p=51. Provocative? Undoubtedly. Offensive? Obviously to some. But if Churchill can call for violence and the destruction of America, surely Lamm can argue that the cultural component in personal success is much larger than many of us wish to concede.

Or can he?

On the Internet, speech is still free.

AUSTIN BAY HAS THOUGHTS on gang warfare and insurgencies.

GLENN FLEISHMAN RESPONDS to my column on municipal wi-fi.

YOUR FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE AT WORK: Roger Simon has thoughts on the Bolton nomination. “By playing the child’s game of partisan politics, these same Senators are ultimately helping to destroy the reputation of the very institution they think they are trying to preserve – the United Nations. What dumbbells.”

UPDATE: In an update to the post above, Roger reports that two out of three Volcker Committee investigators have resigned in protest over the failure to follow up on leads. Sounds like a whitewash to me.

THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF EDUCATION IS UP: Since I only write about education occasionally, you probably ought to venture over there if the topic interests you.

KEN SILBER offers a positive review of Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner’s new book, Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything.

I haven’t read it, but I like the discussion of the chapter entitled “Why do drug dealers still live with their moms?”

The upshot is that the crack trade, even at its market peak, was lucrative only for those at the top of a selling organization. The gang’s foot soldiers made less than minimum wage and faced a 1-in-4 risk of being killed over four years. (In the same time, being a timber cutter, the most dangerous legitimate job in the U.S., carried a 1-in-200 risk.) These drug dealers struggled desperately to reach the gang’s upper echelons, but few would make it.

I don’t know Levitt’s answer here, but one explanation (besides the obvious “they’re idiots”) for why people become drug dealers when the economic returns are poor is that being a drug dealer offers — and, especially during the crack boom, offered — nonmonetary returns, by having much more status than working minimum wage. (Read Richard Price’s excellent book, Clockers for some very good illustrations of that phenomenon).

My historian-brother often says that one of the most interesting phenomena that he’s observed is the cross-cultural willingness of people to trade away economic benefits for status. I suspect that this is one example of that. So, in a surprisingly similar way, is being a politician. That’s an obviously poor economic move for most folks. But one of the drug dealers in Price’s book talks about how he likes the way he becomes the center of attention when he enters a room full of junkies. Politicians, I think, get the same thing, especially in the bubble-environments of Washington, or state capitals. I suspect, in fact, that people are, to varying degrees, hardwired to get an endorphin rush from that sort of attention, just as they’re hardwired in varying degrees to respond to drugs.

As I say, I don’t know if Levitt talks about that or not, but I think it’s one possible explanation for a lot of stuff that looks economically counterproductive.

UPDATE: Stephen Skaggs emails:

Take out “drug dealers” and “crack” and replace with “bloggers and
“Blogosphere.”

Heh. And Greg Hlatky emails:

Take out “drug dealers” and “crack” and replace with “professors” and “universities.”

I guess that makes me a double-dipper. No wonder I’m always so cheerful! It’s the endorphins! [So why isn’t Brian Leiter happier? — Ed. No theory is perfect.]

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Steve Barnes emails: “Talk to your budding rock-star brother and he can probably tell you about ‘non-monetary’ benefits.”

Heh. Indeed.

UNSCAM UPDATE: Everything old is new again:

Yet more scandal at the United Nations? Secret deals, millions in bribes, leading to billions in global kickbacks? What to do?

Have no fear, reform is here. The United Nations has already put in place a sweeping set of improvements, with Secretary-General Kofi Annan reorganizing and streamlining the world body to bring about, according to a U.N. reform dossier, “a culture of greater openness, coherence, innovation and confidence.” A blue-ribbon panel has “set more stringent standards for judging the performance of peacekeepers, in the field and at Headquarters.” And there is now a system for dealing with U.N. staff, that “gives more precedence to merit and competence and less to tenure and precedent.”

All of which sounds terrific. Except that the reforms cited above, heralding the new era of openness, coherence, competence, integrity and improved peacekeeping are all plucked from a U.N. dossier released almost three years ago, in June 2002. These reforms were shepherded through by Mr. Annan starting in the late 1990s, with the help of his handpicked special adviser, Undersecretary-General Maurice Strong.

In the course of telling the press on Monday that he “cannot recall a single instance” of contact or discussion with officials responsible for the scandal-plagued Oil for Food program, Mr. Strong did confirm that he has been friendly for years and had a business relationship back in 1997 with a Korean, Tongsun Park. Mr. Park achieved prominence in the 1970s as the go-between who shuttled hundreds of thousands in bribes from the regime of former South Korean dictator Park Chung-Hee to assorted members of the U.S. Congress, in the scandal that became known as Koreagate. . . . U.S. federal prosecutors charged Mr. Park last week with accepting some $2 million from Saddam Hussein to convey yet more millions to two (so-far unnamed) high-ranking U.N. officials in an effort to shape the 1996-2003 Oil for Food program to facilitate Saddam’s sanctions-busting embezzlement of billions meant for the people of Iraq.

It’s like they’re all a bunch of crooks, or something.

UPDATE: Here’s more on the Canadian scandals, which, as noted earlier, do seem to overlap with the oil-for-food scandals.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader emails:

I believe that Kyoto, with the carbon credits will be one of the biggest boondoggles around. Who’s going to check that everything’s on the up and up, the UN? Kofi? Strong? Martin? The French?Chinese? Iranians?

If I were an American company or worker or citizen I’d be keeping a close on on this program. Why do you think they’re holding up Bolton’s appointment? He won’t them get away with it and they know it.

There are already many ways of cutting back on greenhouse emissions by using new technology, scrubbers on coal fired plants, etc. without resorting to
this. The further the international organization is from the local voter, the easier to pull off scams. There aren’t enough forensic accountants in the world that will be able to track the money once it gets revved up.

Though it seems like a growing field . . . .

THOUGHTS ON MUNICIPAL WI-FI and telco opposition thereto: My TechCentralStation column is up.