Wow, Ross Douthat has replaced Bill Kristol as a token conservative at the Times. This is a big improvement. (That’s not sarcasm, it really is a big improvement.)
Personally I think they should have hired Paul Gottfried but I’ll take it.
This Matt Asay guy at News.com has written a post taking Mac users to task for not using Firefox as much as Matt Asay thinks they should. He writes:
In the midst of counting the total number of Linux users in the world, Mozilla’s Asa Dotzler reveals a startling statistic:
The Mac only accounts for roughly 7 percent of active Firefox browser installations.
Sure, Windows has massive market share, but I would have thought more Mac users would be running Firefox than their Windows peers. Meaning, I had assumed that whereas Windows users would be content to let inertia guide them to Internet Explorer (IE), a greater proportion of Mac owners would make the choice for Firefox, instead of Safari that comes preinstalled on the Mac, netting the Mac a greater percentage of active Firefox installations.
[...] Imagine what Mozilla’s Firefox could do on a level playing field.
Um… what?
First, what does this 7% number tell us? I assume it is measuring worldwide share of Firefox users. Does that tell us anything? It seems like we would have to know the overall share of Mac users to give that number any meaning.
Over here, we see that the Mac’s share of retail sales, presumably in the US only, is about 13% and was recently as high as 16%. But a lot of computers are bought outside of retail channels, particularly in business where Windows is more dominant, so the real US share is probably much lower.
What’s more, the Mac’s worldwide share is lower still — outside the US they don’t sell nearly as well. And Mac market share has risen dramatically over the past couple of years, so the Mac’s worldwide installed base is even lower yet, probably in the low single digits. This is all kind of rough but at least it shows that saying that “only” 7% of all Firefox users are on Macs tells us absolutely nothing about what percentage of Mac users are using Firefox. Heck, it could be all of them for all we know.
What’s more, who cares? People on Windows switch to Firefox from Internet Explorer because IE sucks. IE has laughable standards support and pathetic security. But the Mac’s preinstalled browser, Safari, compared to Firefox, has better standards support, renders pages faster, launches faster, runs scripts faster, is less ugly, and is better integrated with the Mac’s user interface. About the only thing FF for Mac has going for it is that it runs extensions and you can install new themes, features that you can hardly blame anyone for not giving a crap about. So saying that those Mac-using dullards have failed to see the light regarding FF’s self-evident superiority and general awesomeness is a bit unconvincing.
I’m not trying to rip Firefox here, it’s a perfectly decent browser and in fact I’m using FF for Mac right now because I like some of the extensions. But still. Come on.
Over at the Donnybrook, Karl responds to my previous post, and I respond to Karl’s response to me. I think we basically agree that there probably isn’t any hope, except that maybe there is a tiny bit of hope.
Thomas Woods’s “Meltdown” is going to make the New York Times Bestseller List. Holy cow!
I’ve been thinking about whether there is actually any hope for a genuinely free-market critique of statism and government interventionism breaking through into some kind of critical mass amidst our current travails.
In the 1930s, nobody seemed to notice the abject failure of the New Deal, which, instead of discrediting government economic “management” forever, served as the opening chapter in an era of a vastly enlarged centralized state that has continued to this day. And now who knows what we’re in for? Now, as before, laissez-faire is written off as utterly discredited. Is there any more hope for opposition now than there was during the Depression?
On the one hand, you’ve got Woods hitting the NYT Bestsellers with a full-throated Austrian-school manifesto. And there’s the Ron Paul phenomenon — with the hodgepodge character of the Paulite movement, there are some inherent centrifugal forces acting against its keeping any coherence, and the end of the presidential campaign inevitably led to some loss of momentum. But that’s counteracted by the newfound attention to Paul’s pronouncements in light of his dire predictions pretty much coming true, and the emergence of some promising Paul-affiliated follow-on organizations.
And we also have the Mises Institute, constantly churning out new freedom-minded scholarly work and popular polemics, and making a tremendous volume of scholarship available for free to all through its invaluable and heavily-trafficked Web site.
On the other hand, Henry Hazlitt wrote editorials for the New York Times during the 1930s. Can you imagine?
Austrian economics has never dominated the academy, but in the 1930s, F.A. Hayek had a prominent post — and a formidable reputation — at the London School of Economics.
But little laissez-faire outposts in the establishment did nothing to stop the onslaught of statism during the 1930s, and those lights didn’t last long before they were extinguished. Hayek was eclipsed by Keynes, and The New York Times is The New York Times. I guess that’s just the nature of establishments — they represent powerful interests by definition, and power inevitably seeks more power. There’s no room there for decentralizers.
I mean, look what happened to the conservative movement when it became inextricably wedded to the Republican party. From Goldwater to George W. Bush. “Extremism in the defense of libery is no vice” to TARP.
It seems that if there’s any prospect for meaningful opposition, it’s through the kind of new pathways being forged by today’s alternative Right.
So maybe there’s some hope after all.
On the subject of bailouts and inflation, here’s a lively Taki’s Magazine podcast with Thomas Woods, Jack “The Southern Avenger” Hunter, and Takimag’s Richard Spencer. Woods has been making the rounds promoting his new book on the financial crisis, which, last I checked, was #1 in the economics category on Amazon.com.
I wrote a little piece on the Austrian theory of the business cycle for Doublethink Online. Check it out.
Since I’m no expert in Austrian economics, to say the least, I asked Jeffrey Tucker of the Mises Institute to read it over before it was published, which he graciously agreed to do, for which I am very grateful. What a nice guy!
Jeffrey Tucker of mises.org wrote a piece on LRC a few years back about the scourge of shaving cream dependency.
Why is the world hooked on this stuff? Here’s what happens. Early on in a person’s life, when whiskers and stubble begin to appear on the skin, the young teen is presented a razor and a can – a can with a squirting top that releases a foam. It is a charming little foam. The child is taught to rub it on and then shave it off.
Oh how funny looking it is when the foam is on us! And how fun to zap it off. We are left with clean and smooth skin. Pure magic. But the magic doesn’t last.
It never occurs to this child – so innocent, so naïve, so trusting – that he or she has been hooked into a lifetime of shaving hell. That foam, that sweet looking puff of magic, is in fact the great enemy of a good shave – black magic that relies on perpetuating dependency and ignorance.
I stumbled across this manifesto recently and it inspired me to cast off the shaving cream yoke, and I can confirm that it has been a life-changing experience. Better shaves, no shaving cream, no cuts. It’s been a revelation!
As a bonus, by eliminating a periodic expense, this also dovetails nicely with my recent decision to cut my own spending as an act of civil disobedience from the President’s Krugmanite stimulus stratagem. Take that, Obama!
Richard Spencer has a pretty good postmortem on the semi-defunct webzine Culture11.
I’m sad to see C11 go, as their heterogeneous collection of conservative-libertarian contributors seemed to promise to enliven the conversation beyond the intellectual cages in which such GOP organs as National Review lock themselves. But it never managed to find its voice.
Spencer suggests that C11 had its plug pulled by its funders Bill Bennett and Steve Forbes for other than financial reasons, speculating that they might have been a bit befuddled at the direction Culture11 had taken. Of course, if C11 had succeeded in cultivating an alternative rightist voice, the plug might have been pulled even sooner, I reckon.
Meanwhile, head to Conservative Donnybrook for my latest thoughts on the stimulus!
Look! It’s a graph of US real estate prices plotted to an animation of a roller coaster.
Unfortunately the data ends at the end of 2006. But I guess it’s pretty easy to imagine.
Read it. Obamanomics satire!
Free sample:
WASHINGTON — President-Elect Barack Obama called on Congress to quickly pass a new fiscal stimulus package that would provide nearly $100,000 trazillion gaquillion frijillion in an effort to revive the U.S. economy, which some experts believe has entered a recession.
“Every economist I’ve ever heard of agrees what we need now is significantly more government investment to offset the negative effects of whatever it is that is happening,” Obama said at his Monday press conference. “Accordingly, I and my team of advisors have developed a comprehensive plan that will shore up our financial institutions, put jobless Americans back to work, allow everyone in a house to keep it no matter what, rescue any failing bank or business, provide a hot meal to anyone who is hungry, improve the well being of all citizens, and give a puppy or kitten to every child who wants one.”
Hi, everyone! Have you all missed my blogging? Hello? Well, I’m back with a little roundup of some health tidbits culled from the healthblogosphere (by which I mean the three or so blogs I visit).
From the NYT:
And yet, Mr. Blagojevich, 52, rarely turns up for work at his official state office in Chicago, former employees say, is unapologetically late to almost everything, and can treat employees with disdain, cursing and erupting in fury for failings as mundane as neglecting to have at hand at all times his preferred black Paul Mitchell hairbrush. He calls the brush “the football,” an allusion to the “nuclear football,” or the bomb codes never to be out of reach of a president.
Design guru Zeldman lists 20 signs that you don’t want that web design project, based on real life experience. Pretty good stuff, even for non-web designers, I’ll warrant.
2. Client shows you around the factory, introducing you to all his employees. Then, behind closed doors, tells you: “If you do a bad job with this website, I’m going to have to let these people go.”
Ha ha!
5. Client, who manufactures Russian nesting dolls, demands to know how many Russian nesting doll sites you have designed.
Greetings all. Today, the Drudge Report sports this exciting teaser: “Boy, 3, saved by puppies…” which links to this story, headlined “Puppies save three-year-old boy lost in freezing Virginia woods.” Sounds promising!
So what was it that these four-legged heroes did to rescue our wayward toddler? Did they haul him out of a pit of quicksand? Stoutly fight off an angry bear? Leap through a plate-glass window, knock over a telephone and dial 9-1-1 with their wet little noses?
No, they snuggled up to him when it got cold. Let us leave aside the obvious naked self-interest involved in these puppies exhibiting totally normal snuggling behavior (the puppies were cold, too!). When I see a headline promising to tell the story of puppies “saving” a little boy, I demand Disney Movie of the Week-scale heroics! What we see here, my friends, is nothing less than the soft bigotry of low expectations.
Now, I am as gratified as anyone that this little boy was recovered safe and sound by his grateful family. All I’m asking for is a little truth in advertising. How about this: Puppies, boy snuggle in furtherance of mutual aim of heat preservation.
Look, it’s a blog called “Headset Hotties” dedicated to gathering stock photos of comely call-center lasses. What will they think of next?
