Zillow: where it works, where it doesn't

Zillow's been around for less than two months now. It seems longer.

Here's some expectations regarding Zillow.

1. Zillow does better in some areas than others. They're quite good in urban California, and can be downright crappy in small towns. They somewhat acknowledge this, by the range they report. In small towns, the range can be over 1:1.5. This isn't a lot of information.

2. Zillow has no magic source of information. If you finished your basement, Zillow doesn't know that, and it won't be reflected in the value presented.

3. Zillow does worse in areas where the assessed value is erratic. This includes more places than you might think. In states with high real estate taxes, a lot of people are given a break on the assessed value, while others are not. Out of state landlords, not. Grannies, the max. This results in Grannie's house being underestimated.

4. An important portion of the data which Zillow bases its estimate on is flawed. It's usually not totally nuts, but there are a lot of little flaws. These flaws can easily affect the estimate by 10%, but often they're detectable. Two side by side houses, very similar, one estimates 10% higher than the other. But, whoa, that one shows 5% more square feet. Now if you know that they're the same size, you can adjust accordingly. Sometimes square footage was reported by overly exuberant realtors.

5. Real estate appraisal in illiquid markets is nearly impossible even for professionals. Zillow can't do it either. Illiquid markets come to exist in areas with very few bank financed sales, and none of those financed > about 70%. Some vacation markets are illiquid. Some rural markets are illiquid. Sales prices are all over the map in these markets. Shrewd cash buyers with no realtor involved can buy at under 50 cents on the dollar as compared to seller financed risky deals. How you going to appraise? Erratically. That's why the usual sources of financing avoid such areas.

6. Anone who thinks that the real estate industry earns $60k from the typical $1m house sale is on the receiving end of part of that $60k.

Another song about heroin.

Johnny Cash once said "drug abuse runs through this family like turkeys through a cornfield".

Perhaps that's why he was able to produce the second of great songs about drug addiction. The comparison with "just say no" is breathtaking.

The song was in my rotation, and after hearing it a few times, but not actually paying attention, my wife looked up, with a pained expression, and said "that just seems painful". "Of course", I replied.

Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails actually wrote and popularized the song.

And who put Johnny Cash together with a modern grungy rock song would be an interesting story.

But the masterpiece is Cash's, not Reznor's. Not that I have a beef with Reznor, but, for one, the NIN version of the song is hard to extract the lyrics from. Johnny Cash, as usual, focuses on delivery of the lyrics with precise articulation, with intense emotion.

The song of course is Hurt.

The powerful concept is that addiction drives one away from people. The awesome line:
You are someone else, I am still right here. captures it all. The pain is deep enough from the needle, but even deeper from the lack of socialization, the knowledge that the person here right now trying to help, or offering affection, will eventually leave, tired of abuse.

It's as bleak a vision of drug addiction as could be painted on any canvas, and intensified by the fact that it cannot be rejected as Reefer Madness hysteria.

Google Video Here

Update:
The Wikipedia entry for Hurt answers some of the questions.
A professor of theology at Baylor analyzes Johnny Cash's life during the time he recorded Hurt.
"If I were going to believe in God, it would be the God of Johnny Cash."

Near as I can tell, the internet video has been available for free only recently.

Heroin is beautiful

I'm a total believer in the truth. Let kids know the truth, and they're generally well equipped to survive the assutlt of drugs which they will encounter during highschool & college age.

Understanding why people do drugs is part of that truth.

For example, why, if it's so miserable, do people choose a life of heroin addiction?

Jim Morrison has the answer, encoded as a poem within The Crystal Ship.

Before you slip into unconsciousness, I'd like to have another kiss.

As we look deeper we find that heroin has a truly beautiful era; the song builds to the crescendo:

The crystal ship is being filled, a thousand girls, a thousand thrills, a million ways to spend your time...

(Recall that in the 1960s the rig, the syringe, was made of glass, crystal).

It's this era of beauty that heroin addicts bit on so long ago. An era which devolves into powerful rushes which last only a few seconds but are absolutely required to stave off tremendous pain. But an era, lasting 2-3 weeks, with uncompromised beauty.

We don't have to experience this for ourselves; Morrison has explained it with intensity.

Further, the girl's not going to rescue the impetuous boy this time. She's going to die too.

Answers from classic rock

Here's the answer, what was the question (answer in comment):

"When all the joy within you dies."


..yes, google would work.

But was she a Christian?

Christian minister's wife kills husband, runs off with kids.

A significant portion of Christians feel authorized to pronounce who is and who is not also a Christian.

Classic case is in response to P6's coverage of the story.
Quote:

I like to inform you that the poeple who protray them selfs as christians in comit these crimes are not christian. If it could be for people that would be able to see the true diffrence in these people and call them for what thay are and quit putting them in a place or labeling them with improper labels as to let other people think of what you inplay them to be.

I know that a true christian would not be able to comit to such things and a true christian would be able to know the differance between the two also.

The problem here is insecurity by "Tommy (not verified)". Tommy thinks that we can draw generalizations about Christians, and he would like to exclude, in an absolute sense, murder from those generalizations.

It's a classic case of misunderstanding generalizations. Generalizations aren't absolute, ever. They might not apply to the case in front of you right now.

I do believe we can make generalizations about Christians. I'm not a Christian myself, but I know many Christians, and know them well. Christians are not murders is an accurate generalization.

Let's go one more step: people are not murderers. It takes a person way off track to have the capability to pull the trigger. A person who can disregard the sick, painful feeling that blocks most of us from murder. But when someone does murder, it doesn't remove their humanity. Nor does it remove their Christianity, should they be Christian.

The immigration solution

1. Anyone with $4000, a clean criminal record, and an absence of communicable disease can come to America and legally accept employment. Anyone.
2. The $4000 is kept as a bond. The person is a "bonded worker". A DNA sample is required.
3. The bond is returned upon exit from the country. It can be used to purchase passage out of America.
4. A request for welfare of any description results in forfeiture of the bond, and expulsion after any emergency is over. Welfare deportations last two years.
5. Any felony conviction, or three misdemeanor convictions results in forfeiture and expulsion.
6. Working in the country without a posted bond is a felony, as is hiring such a person.
7. Children born to workers are not automatically citizens, and must have a separate bond posted. Such children become citizens at age 18 if they have continuously lived in the US, otherwise they become bonded workers.
8. After 20 years, the bond is returned, and the worker becomes eligible to apply for citizenship as a permanent resident.
9. Public education, or use of public facilities available to everyone is not to be considered welfare.

====
So what would life be like?

1. More Mexicans feeling better about themselves as real, legal participants in America.
2. Far lower demand on emergency medical services without payment.
3. Private charities which would cover most emergency requirements, and selected welfare requests.
4. People bringing in their relatives...but being financially responsible for them.
5. A broader mixture of immigrants from all over the world, but not so diverse on the dole axis.

Isaac Hayes had a stroke?

Strokes rob one of intelligence.

Diminished intelligence shows up in ways which might not be predicted.

The primary generalization is that a stroke victim becomes far more self centered, incapable of understanding, and unwilling to consider perspectives beyond his own.

Andrew Sullivan points out that Isaac Hayes, in very recent times, demonstrated a highly intelligent personality. He was able to sort out being a bit in the criticism quite well.

And then, he went off, and sounds like the village dolt.

The good news, there is hope. The effects of a stroke are mitigated by time, particularly the first year. Chef may well be back for real.

Update:
Chef's death, and more about the stroke here.
Apparently, Hayes himself didn't say any of those things. Some Scientologist spoke on his behalf.

Cupertino Schools & white kids

Here's yet another report showing how well Cupertino schools are doing.

We all know the context: Cupertino's school population is mostly Chinese. Not exclusively, but mostly. The rest consist mostly of white kids, with a few Koreans and Indians.

Unique perhaps in the whole world, an important portion of Cupertino's white kids avoid Cupertino schools because they can't compete.

On the surface, this might indicate that the Chinese kids are smarter than the white kids. There's no doubt, the parents of these kids are some of the best China had to offer, and the Cupertino kids, in counter-Lake Wobegon sense, are all above average.

But living here yields a different primary answer. White parents are less involved in their kids' education than Chinese parents. White parents are more likely to allow their kids to spend all evening, every evening, on entertainment. White parents are more likely to allow their kids to skip school. White parents are more likely to tolerate drug usage. When those kids don't seem to be competing very well in school, what else can you do? Don't want the dears to lose confidence. You take them out of the Cuptertino public school system. Good riddance, we can hear it blocks away with no amplification.

Chinese kids may well be chomping at the bit to get loose once they graduate high school, but with a very high probability they graduate with the kind of credentials which allow them an unlimited future. Plenty of white kids join them, but plenty do not.

It has little to do with the kids, and everything to do with the parents.

On NASCAR

I've watched stock car racing since as early as I can remember, but of late, it's on the wane.

I hear that Nascar is doing better than ever, but , well, I think the high point is near. Here's the problems:

1. The way rough driving is currently handled removes excitement. Now there is a time when official sanction should be applied, but we've come to a place where an overly aggressive move which doesn't work out results in official punishment. In the old days, there was less official sanction, and more unofficial sanction, which, to say the least, was exciting.
   
2. Yellow flags. Way too many of them, and they last too long. Yellow flag laps are boring. We hardly see any green flag pitstops any more.
   
3. No racing back to the yellow. They've lost the point of car racing. Picking one's way through a big wreck should be rewarded. Even worse, we find the car which caused the yellow avoiding the natural penalty.
   
4. A point system which does not reward actually racing for the lead of the race at all times. Leading the current lap should always result in points.
   
5. The 200 MPH speed limit. Fix the tracks and the cars to keep cars out of the stands, don't slow down the cars.
6. Overly similar modern tracks. Nascar is quite proud of the multiple-lane nature of the modern tracks, but you know, they just don't compare, excitement wise, with Talladega or Bristol or even Darlington.
7. The inner line. WTF? Can't pass on the grass? Some of the most exciting moments in stock car racing came from the aggressive inside move.
   

Cory Maye

http://www.theagitator.com/archives/cat_cory_maye.php

Radely Balko is writing a magazine article on the Cory Maye case.

A public suggestion to Balko: don't waste time and words trying to show that other drug suspects found the police to be "cowboys". How many arrested drug suspects report the police to be professional and polite? This weak evidence dilutes the message.

Stick with the body of facts, which is both compelling and growing.

Excellent work.

Democracy in Islamic countries

...ain't gonna happen.

The closest we find to an Islamic democracy is Turkey.

But it's not a real democracy. Not because people can't vote, they can, and in elections far more free than anywhere else in the middle east except for Israel.

But because it's real authority is its military, who answers to no one.

Three times the democracy has gone off track.

Three times the military has intervened: 1960, 1971, and 1980.

As coups go, these were quite benign, and mostly welcomed by ordinary Turks. Crucially however, all were the result of rising power of Islamic theocrats seeking to return Turkey to being an Islamic state, run by Islamic clerics.

The military set up a new, secular democracy, and turned things loose.

But what if the military had somehow acquired a general like Saddam Heusein, a power hungry sort who was disinclined to hand power back to the people? Nothing there to stop that.

So the prospects for a democratic Iraq are dim at best. It's a misguided goal.

We need to redefine our goals for the middle east, and to pick goals which are realistic.

One such realistic goal is to remove governments which threaten our national interests, which is different thatn governments which might piss us off on occasion. We're good at removing governments. Three days tops. We're bad at governing. Three years and counting.

Here's the rules: you fuck with us, we take you out. We don't much care who picks up the pieces. If they fuck with us, we take them out.

Deconstructing the slavery pony

Where people go wrong regards two questions:
1. Are American blacks better off than the descendents of their ancestors in Africa?

This question can be answered, factually, yes.

2. Does that show that the slave trade which brought slaves from Africa to America had its good parts?

This question has no factual answer, and supplying either a "yes" or a "no" says more about the speaker than it says about the slave trade.

Here's an analogous situation.

I'm luckily unpalatable to fleas. I've never been bitten by a flea. I've had them jump on me and quickly jump off.

How could that be? My guess is that some importantly large group of people died of a flea borne disease, while my ancestor(s) who posessed the flea repellant genetic combination survived.

Am I better off being flea resistant?

Sure.

Does that mean that the death of those people had its good parts?

Well, not really.

Limit vs No Limit

Poker, that is. Are you a limit player, or a no limit player?

Some people are nervous playing no limit; they don't like the fact that their metaphorical life is at stake all the time. They perceive an opponent with a bigger stack to have an advantage over them. These players choose limit poker.

Other players enjoy the excitement of considering "all in" at any turn to act.

What is less considered is whether you can play more hands or fewer, given a limit. Intuitively, one might imagine that having a limit means a player can play more hands, because the maximum loss is limited.

However, so is the maximum win limited.

A winning zone exists on the graph with aggression on one axis and looseness on the other. An aggressive player can play looser, because he makes more on the wins than he loses on the increased losses. He gets action. The tight player has to hope someone else has created action when he makes a hand, because he sure isn't going to get it on his own.

This zone is substantially limited when playing limit poker. That is in fact a benefit to players who don't like to confront a bluff, but it also restricts one to playing tight. In no limit Hold 'em, it is perfectly sensible to see every flop if the bet is at the big blind and a raise is unexpected. Sometimes those 2-5's match a 5-5-2 flop, and there's plenty of money to be made to cover the small bets. Got to get away when they miss, though, which is most times. Omaha/8 with a limit is just the opposite. In a full game (9-10 people), the majority of hands need to be discarded before the flop, and a significant portion of the time when you see the flop the hand should be discarded rather than calling even the small bet for that round. This makes for a boring game, and, inevitably, results in players choosing between being bored and being winners.

Something to consider when deciding whether you are a limit or a no limit poker player.

y'all

One of my more treasured roles in life is explaining Americana to immigrants.

And when I encountered "ya all" in written communication, a broad discussion of nonstandard English broke out. The kind of English not taught in English classes where English is not the daily language.

Dictionary.com has an excellent discussion on the use of "you-all", and it's contraction, y'all.

Quick before you look:
1. Is you-all grammatically correct?
2. Can y'all ever be used as singular, a replacement for the singular you?

"Actually" poor

Over at p6 today, we find this reference to an article by Anna Bernasek. It includes one curious quote:

Economists have long argued that the poverty line should be revised to provide an accurate picture of who is actually poor.

We should, you know, look it up and get in line with reality.

I don't know if such writers are deliberately deceptive, or they're really that clueless. There is no objective definition of actually being poor. Sure, there are some people who are obviously poor, and there are some people who are obviously not poor. But where to draw the line is in the eye of the observer. And observers tend to draw the line to advance whatever poltical agenda they have in mind.

Consider for example.
Mother with three kids. No father around. Lives in government supplied housing of modern standards. Receives Foodstamps, and a dole which covers all basic expenses, plus a bit more.

Poor or not?

By historic standards, meaning as recently as about 1965, this person is far, far from poor. People who found themselves in such a condition were forced to find family or friends to rely upon for housing. Usually, they couldn't, and were forced to give the kids up for adoption simply because they couldn't come close to supporting them.

Let's try another case. 19 year old girl, recent high school graduate, working at McDonalds. Makes $7/hr, 30 hours per week. Lives at home in her childhood bedroom, pays parents $75/week in rent which includes food. Owns her own car.

Poor or not?

By the standards of Ms. Bernasek, these people are all poor. They do not make enough to sustain what she would call a minimum quality of life.

Consider the two examples in question.

What kind of changes do these examples compel?

International Relations from Walla Walla

I'd spent the night, or part of it, sleeping in the cab of a pickup truck, in a place where the highway is cut deep into the soil, resulting in a wind break.

Shortly after daylight, I headed out, arriving at Walla Walla around 6:30. A breakfast place was easy to find. I sat down at the counter, ordered coffee & breakfast.

"You know down in San Francisco, they used to have a problem with stray dogs and cats..."

I looked over, was this guy talking to me? From two stools over, he apparently was, since there wasn't anyone else plausible.

I'd head this introduction before, of course, but, up for entertainment, I looked over to acknowledge him.

"...but then the Chinese came in. And you know, within a year there were no more stray cats or dogs, and people's pets started disappearing. It turned out that the Chinese were setting up traps and eating the cats and dogs they captured."

"When did this happen?", I asked in amusement.

"The Chinese started arriving in San Francisco during the gold rush of 1849. They believed it was the location of a fabled gold mountain, and came in by the shipload to take the gold back to China."

"Really" I replied, waiting to see where this would end up.

"Yes. Did you know that they believed China to be the center kingdom, the center of the whole fuckin' universe?"

"Where did you learn so much about the Chinese?" I asked.

"Chinese civilization is 8000 years old, much older than European
civilization".

Breakfast had arrived. I carefully spread a half tub of mixed
fruit jelly onto a diagonally sliced piece of toast.

On poker.

No limit hold 'em game with a limited buyin.

$200 limit on the buyin. No more, no less, except as you're on your way out.

You arrive, buy $200.

You sit down in the seat after the big blind ($5). Ten in the dark, you say brashly. You're going to be noticed.

One caller to the button. Button raises. $50 total. Fold back to you.

You look at your cards. Not because you care what you have, but because that's what the script calls for. Call. Other guy folds.

The flop comes. You look it over, not because you care what it is, but because that's what the script calls for.

All in, you say. $150.

The next time you raise in the dark they won't be so quick to reraise.

The next time you go all in, they may be more willing to call.

It's the script.

Two problems with Brokeback Mountain

I'm all up for the great American gay love story, in the same sense I was way up for To Sir With Love showing a black teacher succeeding during the civil rights era.

But Brokeback Mountain misses in some crucial ways.

1. The murder of two gay men by the heads of neighbor families, in Wyoming, during the 1960s, simply never came close to happening.

While those of us who were there know this intuitively, it's not hard to grasp for younger or more urban sorts. For one, during that era, homosexual behavior (sodomy, the crime against nature) was illegal and the law was enforced. Feeling disgusted by two gay cowboys? Call the police. And the police would come and haul them away. No need to go on a murderous rampage. For two, if you look at the class of people who express their bigotry with violence, what you find are young, unmarried men. 18-22 or so. Family men don't go out fag bashing. This whole part of the story is a slander of Wyoming ranchers of the 1960s, analogous to basing a story line on an episode where a group of adult men in stable gay relationships set out to molest the neighborhood 13 year old boys.

2. The notion that it's ok to just abandon your spouse because a better one comes by... well, let's be clear. This is my opinion, not some statement of a universal truth...that notion totally destroys any love story which might follow.

The Call of the Wild

Jack London's The Call of the Wild was written in 1903. Of late, we've seen it presented as a children's story. It's not. It's an incredibly insightful treatise on human nature. What we find is not pretty, and while we're inclined these days to ignore ugliness, actual wisdom is frequently useful.

The children's versions either defocus, or ignore all together this crucial quote from very early on in the book. Buck (the 140 pound dog who's never known either adversity or challenge to his mastery of his surroundings) has been kidnapped, and shipped by rail to Seattle. The year is 1897, and the Klondike gold rush is on:

Four men gingerly carried the crate from the wagon into a small, high-walled back yard. A stout man, with a red sweater that sagged generously at the neck, came out and signed the book for the driver. That was the man, Buck divined, the next tormentor, and he hurled himself savagely against the bars. The man smiled grimly, and brought a hatchet and a club.

"You ain't going to take him out now?" the driver asked.

"Sure," the man replied, driving the hatchet into the crate for a pry.

There was an instantaneous scattering of the four men who had carried it in, and from safe perches on top the wall they prepared to watch the performance.

Buck rushed at the splintering wood, sinking his teeth into it, surging and wrestling with it. Wherever the hatchet fell on the outside, he was there on the inside, snarling and growling, as furiously anxious to get out as the man in the red sweater was calmly intent on getting him out.

"Now, you red-eyed devil," he said, when he had made an opening sufficient for the passage of Buck's body. At the same time he dropped the hatchet and shifted the club to his right hand.

And Buck was truly a red-eyed devil, as he drew himself together for the spring, hair bristling, mouth foaming, a mad glitter in his bloodshot eyes. Straight at the man he launched his one hundred and forty pounds of fury, surcharged with the pent passion of two days and nights. In mid-air, just as his jaws were about to close on the man, he received a shock that checked his body and brought his teeth together with an agonizing clip. He whirled over, fetching the ground on his back and side. He had never been struck by a club in his life, and did not understand. With a snarl that was part bark and more scream he was again on his feet and launched into the air. And again the shock came and he was brought crushingly to the ground. This time he was aware that it was the club, but His madness knew no caution. A dozen times he charged, and as often the club broke the charge and smashed him down.

After a particularly fierce blow he crawled to his feet, too dazed to rush. He staggered limply about, the blood flowing from nose and mouth and ears, his beautiful coat sprayed and flecked with bloody slaver. Then the man advanced and deliberately dealt him a frightful blow on the nose. All the pain he had endured was nothing compared with the exquisite agony of this. With a roar that was almost lion-like in its ferocity, he again hurled himself at the man. But the man, shifting the club from right to left, cooly caught him by the under jaw, at the same time wrenching downward and backward. Buck described a complete circle in the air, and half of another, then crashed to the ground on his head and chest.

For the last time he rushed. The man struck the shrewd blow he had purposely withheld for so long, and Buck crumpled up and went down, knocked utterly senseless.

"He's no slouch at dog-breaking, that's what I say," one of the men on the wall cried with enthusiasm.

"Druther break cayuses any day, and twice on Sundays," was the reply of the driver, as he climbed on the wagon and started the horses.

Buck's senses came back to him, but not his strength. He lay where he had fallen, and from there he watched the man in the red sweater.

" `Answers to the name of Buck,' " the man soliloquized, quoting from the saloon-keeper's letter which had announced the consignment of the crate and contents. "Well, Buck, my boy," he went on in a genial voice, "we've had our little ruction, and the best thing we can do is to let it go at that. You've learned your place, and I know mine. Be a good dog and all will go well and the goose hang high. Be a bad dog, and I'll whale the stuffing outa you. Understand?"

As he spoke he fearlessly patted the head he had so mercilessly pounded, and though Buck's hair involuntarily bristled at touch of the hand, he endured it without protest. When the man brought him water, he drank eagerly, and later bolted a generous meal of raw meat, chuck by chunk, from the man's hand.

He was beaten (he knew that); but he was not broken. He saw, once for all, that he stood no chance against a man with a club. He had learned the lesson, and in all his afterlife he never forgot it. That club was a revelation. It was his introduction to the reign of primitive law, and he met the introduction halfway. The facts of life took on a fiercer aspect; and while he faced that aspect uncowed, he faced it with all the latent cunning of his nature aroused. As the days went by, other dogs came, in crates and at the ends of ropes, some docilely, and some raging and roaring as he had come; and, one and all, he watched them pass under the dominion of the man in the red sweater. Again and again, as he looked at each brutal performance, the lesson was driven home to Buck: a man with a club was a lawgiver, a master to be obeyed, though not necessarily conciliated. Of this last Buck was never guilty, though he did see beaten dogs that fawned upon the man, and wagged their tails, and licked his hand. Also he saw one dog, that would neither conciliate nor obey, finally killed in the struggle for mastery.

And as the story continues, we find Buck applying this lesson time and time again. He's been trained by humans. This passage describes that training.

Read the whole book here.

Music Reviews

I've learned more about music from one guy than from everyone else in my life put together.

George Starostin.

The guy's a Russian. Half my age. Still lives in Moscow. And a genius in more ways than one.

His prizes are bitterly clever putdowns of crappy music, but they come in a contex of providing an far deeper appreciation of stuff you already liked..but didn't necessarily understand what it was you liked. Try this regarding the pleasant, but not-considered-deep song "Calfornia Dreamin'", by Mamas & Papas:

Lately I've been trying to imagine something. I've been trying to imagine how a song like "California Dreamin'" would have sounded like if sung by just one guy/gal with an acoustic guitar. And eventually I cam to the conclusion that it wouldn't have sounded interesting at all. Basic folksy chord progression, a stable, simple vocal melody that never shifts - where the heck is the chorus? - away from its one-line pattern. Boring, to cut a long story short. Boring and unremarkable.
But the vocal harmonies aren't there just for the sake of adding pretty decorations. They form a conversation - a male-female one - that makes the final result lively and agitated where it would have been stiff and cramped. Normally one tends to view "backing vocals" as exactly just that, backing vocals; here, every time I get convinced to sing along, I find myself trying to keep up with all the singers until I'm panting as a racehorse, and it does not enter my mind that I could just follow John and Dennis (or Michelle and Mama Cass, for that matter). That is the song's melody and the song's backbone, and that is the complex, jaw-droppingly beautiful and elegant sonic construction that makes the band - if only for a short while - the first-rate artists they could be.

Dude, Where's my Civil War

Dude, Where's my civil war

Quote:

It wasn't the Age of Aquarius. The people had serious concerns. And security was No. 1. They wanted the Americans to crack down harder on the foreign terrorists and to disarm the local militias. Iraqis don't like and don't support the militias, Shia or Sunni, which are nothing more than armed gangs.

Cory Maye

While libertarians and American liberals spend a lot of energy disagreeing, we actually agree on most things, some of them intensly.

The Cory Maye case is one of those.

A mirror of this case happened some 20 years ago in San Jose. The police had obtained a drug warrant on a house, but decided to exectute their search by crossing the neighbor's back yard. Perhaps because the neighbor was black, he wasn't trusted to be in on the bust.

However, the police were apparently none too silent as they crossed the fence into the neighbor's backyard. The neighbor armed himself with a shotgun, and went to the back door to confront whatever was going on.

Pointing his shotgun toward the unanounced intruders resulted in the usual "hail of gunfire", and the neighbor died.

As sympathetic as I am toward the police and the need to cut them some slack while dealing with violent people, in this story, as well as the Cory Maye story, we don't have a story of the police and the criminal. We have a story of the police and a well behaved citizen.

I suggest that we, and the police, need to put a clear line separating such cases from the usual cases where an uncooperative, violent criminal is killed by police. No beef from me on those, good riddance.

But when a citizen, in his own house, behaving non-violently, encounters an intruder, that citizen should be expected to defend his house, and we need to see who is the aggressor in that story: the police.

These days, those stories all get treated the same, very confusing to both citizens AND the police.

Honorary Whites

In this thread we find

one of P6's common references to "honorary whites", or "honorary whiteness".

We all know that there's more to humanity than whites and blacks.

And we know that blacks fail with a higher likelihood than whites.

A spurious explanation to that is that whites, leveraging their historical status as slaveholders, manage to suppress blacks to this day.

The success of other races might seem to contradict that, but ever quick on the draw, we'll declare them "honorary whites".

And successful blacks too, at least those who succeed conventionally by going out and joining the existing economic and power structure. Let's declare them "honorary whites" as well. Condoleezza Rice. Colin Powell. Throw in all successful, working blacks. Honorary whites. We'll keep as blacks the ones who have made money while retaining their alienation from real white people, the rest of them are "honorary whites". Oprah, well, we'll rule her off the chart entirely.

Once in this state, check out what you can demonstrate. God damn few black people succeed. A few rappers. Some professional ballplayers. Some college professors. Spike Lee. That's about it. On the other hand, half of all whites are honorary, and all of that half succeed. Adding in all those winners to the calculation, we observe that nearly all white people succeed.

What seems utterly bizzarre about this place where we've landed is how in hell do we convince anyone to join us.
Well, it turns out there's a way. Youth of all description are looking for a way to avoid the hard work and discipline required to achieve success in the ordinary way, as, you know, an honorary white.

So all we have to do to recruit them is to show a plausible case as to why they don't actually need to work. We convince them that those old people with all the money are the enemy, and we convince them that with enough votes we can win the battle. For credibility, we point to a few locally powerful politicians saying the same thing. We point out what black people want out of politicians, and we point out that sometimes we get it. All we need is more like that. We claim that the enemy is white people, including the honoraries.

The young man bites.

And when he ends up in prison, we blame whites, all of honorary etc.

Wardrobe malfunction

Purely an accident

Quote: How it happened or who's responsible is a mystery eight years after the fact.

Another earmark, I guess.

goads

P6 reports an unpleasant experience:

[some ass] Sent me an email once notifying me of a post he made about me, title of the email was 'Why you hate Jews."

Not at all my style, p6. Besides, I never believed you hate Jews.

I may in fact be a goad upon occasion, but the bait will be a fastball you have a genuine chance to hit, and I hope you find the experience to be other than unpleasant.

Hard core black liberals

I referred to p6 and some of his posters as "hard core black liberals". They take exception, but I did not intend it as a pejorative.

Liberals tend to be defined by their recommendations regarding the economic underclass, and the black underclass in particular.

The crucial question involves "are the underclass being oppressed". Liberals suggest that they are, and more toward the extreme, we find people who feel hostile toward the middle and upper classes (even as some are actually members of such).

Money, by its nature, grants the holder power over other people. Liberals seek to use the force of government to reduce the power that money holds over the economically deprived.

Should p6 or ptcruiser or any other self-described liberal wish an apology based on an explaination that the above doesn't describe them, I'll be pleased to oblige.

Discovered

How'd that happen so fast?

It's cool, of course. I was going to send p6 an email today.

A fan blog? I hadn't thought of it as such, but maybe it is. I found the experience remarkable, which is why I'm remarking.