I just wrapped up The Substance of Style. My positive opinion thereof stands. What struck me though, is that the notes I was looking for were indeed there. At the end, with no reference to them whatsoever in the text.

It seems strange to me that a book explaining, and in no small way, advocating style, would be presented thusly. I obviously didn't care for the way the notes were presented, and I think that from a stylistic perspective, footnotes and in-text references fare better than notes presented at the end of a book, with no prior reference.

That in itself, is an instance of "not in my back yard... and not in yours either", an attitude that Postrel addresses, in detail, in the book.

For more on the theme of you are what you like, be sure to check out Virginia Postrel's The Substance of Style. It's a good book on style, how it develops and how we use it to "make the invisible [e.g. political and social statements] visible". I would have prefered more explicit references and more details, perhaps in the form of footnotes that expand on the stories Postrel presents.

Reason magazine interviewed Johan Norberg in their December issue. Here are some quotes:

When unions, when protectionists, when uncompetitive corporations in the U.S. say that we shouldn’t buy from countries like Vietnam because of its labor standards, they’ve got it all wrong. They’re saying: "Look, you are too poor to trade with us. And that means that we won’t trade with you. We won’t buy your goods until you’re as rich as we are." That’s totally backwards. These countries won’t get rich without being able to export goods.

...

I was extremely skeptical towards modern industrial society for a long time, so I understand these sentiments. If you live in an urban, developed area and your main experience of rural areas is secondhand, they’re quite understandable. You feel very sad about countries that are modernizing and building factories, and about people who will be buying espresso machines that make loud noises instead of, I don’t know, sitting around listening to the birds singing.

My attitude changed as I began to read history and understood what kind of circumstances my ancestors lived in. The world they lived in was far from ideal. It was starvation, it was children dying in the first year of their lives. And of course, backbreaking labor, including child labor, was everywhere. I think the best way to rebut this romantic, aesthetic challenge to globalization, to our modern project, is by actually looking at the circumstances of pre-industrial society.

"City's educrats can't get it write":

Highly paid educrats at the Education Department shocked the city's 80,000 teachers this week by handing out barely literate curriculum guides riddled with grammatical gaffes, spelling errors and misused words.

[As seen on Reason Hit&Run]

On politics in cartoons:

YOU'RE SITTING down to watch TV. One channel's showing a presidential debate, another a cartoon. Which do you watch?
If you want entertainment, you'll pick the cartoon. But if you want a smart take on current events - well, you still might want to pick the cartoon.

The editorial touches on the political views of South Park, The Simpsons and King of The Hill.

[Via Reason.com]

From the definition of ethnic:

Relating to a people not Christian or Jewish; heathen.

and WordNet's definition

heathen, heathenish, pagan, ethnic -- (not acknowledging the God of Christianity and Judaism and Islam)

Huh!

Check out the Remail Website for a glimpse of IBM's Collaborative User Experience group's research on email clients. Some of the ideas (list separators, dynamic collections, annotations) are available in Outlook 2003. The support is sparse though, and I can't get dynamic collections to work with IMAP folders.

[Via Slasdot]

From a speech by Michael Crichton:

Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it's a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.
...
Increasingly it seems facts aren't necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It's about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them.
...
They got one prediction wrong; they're human. So what. Unfortunately, it's not just one prediction. It's a whole slew of them. We are running out of oil. We are running out of all natural resources. Paul Ehrlich: 60 million Americans will die of starvation in the 1980s. Forty thousand species become extinct every year. Half of all species on the planet will be extinct by 2000. And on and on and on.
With so many past failures, you might think that environmental predictions would become more cautious. But not if it's a religion. Remember, the nut on the sidewalk carrying the placard that predicts the end of the world doesn't quit when the world doesn't end on the day he expects. He just changes his placard, sets a new doomsday date, and goes back to walking the streets. One of the defining features of religion is that your beliefs are not troubled by facts, because they have nothing to do with facts.

He then goes on to list the DDT Ban and the hazards of second hand smoke (which reminds me, Kudos to South Park for the episode titled "Butt Out") as examples of such unscientific nonsense.

These facts themselves are no surprise, I am just glad to see a celebrity such as Crichton criticize - some instances of - environmentalism as religion.

[Via ecoNot.com]

The joys of badly organized health care:

By better educating doctors about the most effective pneumonia treatments, IHC Health Care says, it saves at least 70 lives a year. By giving the right drugs at discharge time to more people with congestive heart failure, IHC saves 300 lives annually and prevents almost 600 additional hospital stays.
But under Medicare, none of these good deeds goes unpunished.
IHC says its initiatives have cost it millions of dollars in lost hospital admissions and lower Medicare reimbursements. In the mid-1990s, for example, it made an average profit of 9 percent treating pneumonia patients; now, delivering better care, it loses an average of several hundred dollars on each case.

I came across the following interesting morsel in the January & February 2004 issue of the excellent Cooks' Illustrated:

We couldn't help but wonder how the salt "pig" got its name and so contacted a couple of lexicographers, one of whom - George H. Gobel, an editor of the Dictionary of American Regional English at the University of Wisconsin, Madison - made his way to the Scotish National Dictionary. This reference indicated that this use of "pig" is an old one found mostly is Scots and northern English dialect, where it means an earthenware vessel, specifically "a pot, jar, pitcher, [or] cork" ... according to the same dictionary, "pig" or "penny pig" can mean an earthenware money-box, now sometimes made in the form of the animal 'pig,'" while the "piggy" in "piggy bank" originally meant "made of earthenware."

As if the excellent recipes and thorough reviews weren't enough, this sort of tangential tidbit is more reason to subscribe to the magazine or the web site. (Or both.)

Because we care:

... since cigarette smoking is a disease, we should make it a crime. The best way to help those poor tobacco junkies is to put them in jail. Someday they'll thank us--just like all those pot smokers who are grateful when the police guide them back to the straight and narrow. Or should I say, cure them?

Isn't sarcasm great?! If like me, you get a kick from this sort of sarcasm, you may like The Lumpenblog.

David Boaz of the Cato institute writes on the conservative betrayal I've ranted about:

Federal spending has increased by 23.7 percent since Bush took office. Education has been further federalized in the No Child Left Behind Act. Bush pulled out all the stops to get Republicans in Congress to create the biggest new entitlement program -- prescription drug coverage under Medicare -- in 40 years.

and notes that:

In the late 19th century, the Democratic Party of Jefferson, Jackson and Cleveland was known as "the party of personal liberty." More so than the Republicans, it was committed to economic and cultural laissez-faire and opposed to Prohibition, protectionism and inflation.

[Via Reason Hit&Run]