It is unfair for ATF to hold individuals to a standard that they cannot articulate themselves.

In a prime example of Lazy Law, the Washington Times describes how the ATF hurts the firearms industry with capricious, secret, and at times contradictory bureaucratic rulings on what manufacturers can build. The Bureau issues approvals for products that it can arbitrarily revoke at any time without compensation to those who lose money as a result.

Today, there are an estimated 4,500 federal crimes on the books, a significant increase from the three in the Constitution (treason, piracy and counterfeiting). There is an additional, and much larger, number of regulations written to enforce the laws. …

Many of these federal infractions are now easier to prosecute than in the past because of a weakening in a bedrock doctrine of Anglo-American jurisprudence: the principle of mens rea, or “guilty mind,” which holds that a person shouldn’t be convicted if he hasn’t shown an intent to do something wrong.

Whether you’re buying metal for investment or for jewelry the relative merits of palladium are compelling:

• Unlike gold, palladium has significant industrial uses (similar to platinum) that provide price support near its current trading levels.
• Palladium is as rare as gold and platinum, but currently sells at less than half the price.
• Palladium is stronger than silver and gold.
• Palladium is light — half as dense as gold and platinum, almost as light as silver.
• Palladium doesn’t tarnish like silver.

Score: Bubbles & manias – 1; Efficient Markets – 0.

Traditional American schooling is in constant crisis because it is based on two poor models for children’s learning: the school as a factory and the child as a blank slate.

From Angeline Lillard’s Monetsorri: The Science Behind the Genius.

Medical students learn from real doctors in a real hospital during their education. In law, we’re learning from a bunch of academics who have deliberately elected not to pursue law as a profession.

From a WSJ article about how some law schools are finally deciding that they had better teach law students how to practice law.

Is Yale Worth It?

In the debate over whether expensive and highly selective colleges lead to higher salaries, the latest answer is “no”—with a few exceptions.

The exceptions: black and Hispanic students and students whose parents didn’t get past high school. Top schools give such students access to networks otherwise out of reach, the researchers suggested.

One thing elite universities — or at least Harvard and Yale — seem to do exceptionally well is admit and befriend people disposed to give them money:

Yale University raised $3.88 billion amid tough economic times, finishing the largest fund-raising campaign in its history that will help pay for its biggest expansion in decades, extend its international reach and make its school of music tuition free. The campaign exceeded its goal of $3.5 billion. More than 110,000 alumni, parents, friends, corporations and foundations contributed.

It appears they’re referencing a study published in the March 2000 Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology. The performance metric was the Mental Development Index of the Bayley Scales of Infant Development (BSID) II.

Anyone who has had a baby in this country knows that there is a raging war between breastfeeding fanatics and their opponents who maintain that (1) not every woman has the capacity or luxury to exclusively breastfeed her babies, and that (2) formula is a reasonable alternative to breastfeeding. The former “breast nazis” tend not to tolerate exceptions to the “breast is best” mantra: Failing to exclusively breastfeed is considered tantamount to child abuse because even modern formula fails to confer all of the health benefits of breast milk. Meanwhile, two generations of adults who were often raised exclusively on formula say, “Relax, we turned out alright.”

Without wading into the debate or the data, I had sympathies for both groups: One would presume that human milk is the optimal food for human babies, and it seems unlikely that scientists have identified and mass-produced every nutrient that breasts distill. On the other hand, it’s obvious that the full range of human potential has been realized in people who never tasted breast milk, and while we may not have perfected it there has been plenty of scientific attention to producing a formulaic substitute.

There exist many legitimate circumstantial obstacles to breastfeeding, so individual feeding practices should generally be respected. But this Enfamil study makes a strong argument for the “Breast is Best” camp: After all, up until ten years ago formula lacked two nutrients that contribute to a significant and measurable improvement in infant development. Oops! So what else is our formula missing, and what is the associated price we’re paying in human health and performance? The short answer: We’ll never know.

Formula has three extraordinary hurdles to jump before it can even begin to address this sort of question:

1. A specific nutrient has to be identified that is lacking in the existing formula but is present in breast milk
2. A performance test has to be created that can be applied to babies
3. A double-blind test has to be run that shows a statistically significant difference in performance between babies fed with and without the nutrient

Perhaps the greatest obstacle is the second. For example, what developmental benchmarks are missing from the BSID? Not only is it hard to measure a baby’s performance on anything, but there is also quite a limit to the performance they can even display at such an early stage of development. Our best current tests might still be missing some testable characteristics, but they are certainly missing untestable or latent characteristics that manifest themselves later in life. However, by the time a human is fully developed any “breast vs. formula” effect has been so muddied by other nurturing factors that it can’t be statistically discerned.

The ban on law firms accepting nonlawyer investors is nationwide, with the exception of Washington, D.C., under ethics rules established largely by state supreme courts. Violations of the rules can lead to disbarment.

The restriction on investors is decades old and stems from even older strictures against lawyers sharing fees with nonlawyers, for fear that might compromise their professional independence.

The present system of ownership restrictions “perpetuates economic inequity,” Jacoby & Meyers said in Wednesday’s court filings. “The small [legal] practice does not have access to the capital markets that the Wall Street [law] firms have,” it added.

“Universities are like the General Motors of the 1970s,” said Mr. Thiel, a graduate of Stanford University and Stanford Law School. “They’re incredibly dominant, incredibly arrogant and impervious to change.”

“I don’t think there’s anything controversial about an education bubble,” he said. “Price is up by a factor of 10; quality hasn’t really changed. There’s something really crazy going on here.”

Now ignore all my other arguments against buying precious metals as a hedge against inflation. Even assuming the gold bugs’ best case scenario — that gold retains its real value — you still have to pay storage and transaction fees on the metal, so an investment in gold has at least a slightly negative real rate of return.

Except for the last few months TIPS have sold with positive real rates of return. So any rational gold bug (I know, oxymoron) should prefer the TIPS real-return strategy to investing in precious metals when TIPS offer positive real returns.

Granted, there are two risks associated with using the TIPS real-return strategy:

1. The inflation measure used to calculate TIPS values might differ significantly from what you value. E.g., TIPS price food, clothing, and shelter, but you want to preserve your ability to buy silver bullets and steam engines.
2. The U.S. government could actually default on its debt.

I’ve admitted in the past I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Treasury inflate its way out of debt. But in the dire situation that the Treasury actually defaults on its debt I believe you’re mistaken if you think gold bars are going to be any comfort. At that point you’re going to want stockpiles of real real value.

Law is not just an idealized system of rules: It also involves the public administration of those rules by a wide range of elected and appointed officials in an endless array of particular circumstances. For those who would defend a just legal order, the basic challenge is to strike a proper balance—between limiting the discretion of these officials so that they do not undermine the rule of law, while also allowing them enough leeway to perform their essential roles.

Lately in America, we have done a poor job of preserving this balance. In practice—and, increasingly, in legal theory—government officials have been given unprecedented ability to make exceptions to the law, both in enforcing it and in respecting the rights granted under it. Indeed, the past year has seen two of the most enormous pieces of legislation in U.S. history—the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act—make the imbalance far worse. Both laws seek to dramatically transform vast swaths of the American economy; both give enormous power to the government to bring about these transformations. And yet both laws are stunningly silent on exactly how these overhauls are to take place. The vague language of these statutes delegates much blanket authority to government officials who will, effectively, make the rules up as they go along.

A few years ago, following the Heller victory in the Supreme Court, I reached out to some of the pro-RKBA organization strategists and asked if it wasn’t time to push for broader access to silencers. One theory I suggested was that obstacles to acquiring silencers unreasonably discriminate against pregnant women, who can’t safely practice shooting sports without them (because fetuses can’t wear hearing protection). Their responses were all along the lines of, “Yes, we ultimately need to get silencers out of the NFA, but one adverse court ruling could set us back. This is not yet the time.”

Apparently the time may finally be upon us. I have seen a growing awareness of the benefits of suppressors within the shooting community: In real life they don’t “silence” guns, but they do make them quiet enough to shoot without hearing protection and not risk permanent hearing damage. They also reduce recoil and trap toxic gases produced by some firearm loads. Ten years ago many shooters weren’t aware that civilians can legally own suppressors. Now they routinely show up on the firing lines of shooting clubs. And state governments are beginning to realize that more suppressors are probably a good thing.

The Kansas legislature has passed a measure allowing the use of suppressors for hunting, fishing and trapping. It’s been sent to Governor Sam Brownback for his approval.

Suppressors for hunting? Absolutely.

One state has finally realized that the suppressor isn’t the whisper-quiet instrument of choice for assassins, terrorists or other undesirables. It’s a safety device which not only protects the hearing of the hunter, it protects everyone’s hearing within ear shot (ouch) of the firearm.

Hopefully, this common-sense recognition of a tool to control noise and protect hearing will kick-start more attempts to get suppressors removed from the ATF’s list of “generally terrible things that don’t belong in the hands of average citizens”.

For years, we’ve pushed the fact that most European countries not only approve their usage, they encourage it. It might be the single example of elected officials who are anti-gun not using a “European model” as the example of a rule we should follow.

Everyone who owns a firearm should be learning about suppressors – and pushing for their removal from the ATF’s Class 3 regulations. They should be approved for ownership under the same guidelines as any firearm accessory. It’s not a firearm, cannot be made into a firearm (think very quiet zip gun -at best), and is, in fact, a protective device that should carry the same restrictions as eye and ear protection.

It’s time that another voice of the people campaign remind a relatively receptive bunch of elected officials that there’s a need for review and revision of many ATF practices and policies.

For example, imagine a world in which the formal education system ends with high school. Society might tell high school graduates that to get ahead in life they have to spend a year digging a hole by hand and then another year filling it back in. Employers might reasonably conclude that people who perform that ritual have demonstrated a level of diligence, motivation, and responsibility that is not manifest, if not utterly lacking, in those who haven’t spent two years digging a hole. Furthermore, the fact that a person could waste two years in a hole instead of earning money also suggests they come from a supportive and resourceful family, so they are likely to have been natured and nurtured to produce excess wealth. Hole graduates would then justifiably get preference over non-graduates in the job market, marriage market, and any other situation in which their skills and aptitude can’t otherwise be measured or verified.

Yes, I think in too many cases American “higher education” is a waste of time and resources.

I’m not afraid of corporations. They don’t have men with guns enforcing the collective will of the rent seekers, parasites and zealots who animate the government.

The most darkly humorous aspect of this often hilarious book is its depiction of an admissions process that corrupts everything it touches. It’s a process that discourages reticence by requiring students to write revealing and disingenuous personal essays; discourages thrift by regarding parental savings as fair game in the financial-aid evaluation; discourages intellectual curiosity by encouraging students to pursue grades rather than knowledge; and discourages honesty by transforming adolescence into a period of cynical calculation.

Akst reiterates arguments I have frequently made against higher education:

Most students (and their parents) have no clear idea why a university is the reflexive next stop after high school, and yet roughly 70% of American high-school graduates go on to college. Are they supposed to marinate themselves in the best that has been thought and written? Is the point to learn how to think? To gain marketable skills? To make social connections? Or merely to signal to potential employers and spouses that here is a person with the patience and cleverness to navigate a great deal of folderol on the way to a degree? Although nobody can quite agree on what college is for, Americans and their leaders have embraced higher education with cult-like devotion—which is one reason the cost of tuition at many institutions has climbed into the stratosphere.

Collective bargaining in the public sector is less a negotiation than a conspiracy to steal money from taxpayers.

That’s from James Taranto’s excellent review of the arguments against public sector unions.

Clay Johnson ofers an excellent summary in a WSJ letter yesterday:

The public sector is not a free market, it is a government-imposed monopoly. The final “customer” has no choice or alternative. There is no outside competition, and we all must buy the product.

There cannot be a legitimate collective bargaining negotiation without the discipline of a free customer able to say no. If we must have public-sector monopolies, we should require that they provide maximum value to the taxpayer at minimum cost. They may always join us in the private sector if they wish to freely negotiate a better alternative.

Indeed, private unions can drive their business into bankruptcy. (Or at least they could before the federal government got into the business of bailing out private companies.) Public unions, no matter how greedy, only drive their employers to raise taxes.

Given this innate instinct why don’t humans develop full-fledged sign languages unless they are deprived of hearing? The advantage of having a gesticular language to back up a spoken language seems compelling, as Matt Ridley suggests:

At loud parties, on trains or during ambushes, we could resort to signing, instead of having to shout, distract fellow travelers or alert our quarry.

It’s been an almost universal rule of civilization that girls became women simply by reaching physical maturity, but boys had to pass a test. They needed to demonstrate courage, physical prowess or mastery of the necessary skills. The goal was to prove their competence as protectors and providers.

It has been two generations since we fought a war for survival or had large numbers of young men pressed into military service. There is no test or ceremony to mark a boy’s transition into manhood; there is not even a vague social consensus about what “manhood” might entail. I proposed some standards a few years ago, but they haven’t caught on yet….

This is the largest natural disaster the country could face and it is certain to happen…

Scared? Have another look at my post on stockpiling for survival.

A lethal injection sequence of three separate drugs, beginning with thiopental sodium, has become the standard in most states, which is why the absence of the first drug threatened to derail the process. But why has this become the standard means of execution? After all, you have to strap down the condemned and get a needle into a vein before you can even begin administering the toxins.

If the goal is a reliable and painless death, you can save the trauma and pain associated with placing an IV, not to mention issues with stocking reliably potent drugs, through simple oxygen deprivation. One might think this is what is practiced in states that use “gas chambers” for execution. But apparently the only gas chamber executions ever performed by U.S. governments have used poison gas (some variant of cyanide) which, if not painful, at least tends to cause a somewhat spectacular death typically accompanied by violent convulsions.

Nothing could be more painless or less traumatic than death by oxygen deprivation (hypoxia). Anyone who has gone for a ride in a hypobaric chamber without an oxygen mask (as many military pilots have to do) knows that severe oxygen deprivation results in painless and almost instant unconsciousness. Left in a sufficiently low-oxygen atmosphere a person will be dead within ten calm minutes. And if the ear-popping associated with a low-pressure chamber is too discomfiting a low-oxygen atmosphere can instead be produced by scrubbing oxygen from a room and replacing it with physiologically inert gases like nitrogen. Unlike other means of execution, the failure of a hypoxic chamber cannot cause suffering: If oxygen levels can’t be brought down low enough or fast enough the worst that happens is that the subject feels light-headed instead of unconscious. (In fact, hypoxia is notoriously lethal because its symptoms are so hard to recognize; pilots are put through hypoxia to try to train them to recognize the symptoms and put on oxygen masks before they are incapacitated.) And unlike poison gas chambers a hypoxic chamber poses no risks to bystanders or executioners.

So why isn’t hypoxia the preferred means of execution?