Life's tough for bookstores

The New York Times has a fascinating article by David Streitfeld about how the Internet is killing off traditional bookstores and hurting book publishers. It's not so much sales of new books by Amazon that's hurting so much as the ability of readers to buy used books very cheaply. There's little incentive to buy a book new unless you're an "early adopter" who has to have it right away when it's published.

Streitfeld emphasizes the sale of used books on the Internet, but my wife and I most often obtain our used books from trading sites such as PaperbackSwap.com and BookMooch. I still have to buy books when I want something that's brand new, such as the expensive new Dilbert hardcover I got for Christmas, or something from a hard-to-find cult author such as Robert Anton Wilson, but for most books the book-swapping sites work just fine.

Listening on the cheap

I seem to have acquired a new hobby -- buying very cheap MP3 players.

A couple of months ago, my current favorite electronics outlet, Ollie's Bargain Outlet, had a sale on remaindered MP3 players and I picked up a half-gig Coby MP3 player for $10. It also has an FM tuner, it has a screen giving information on the track, it can record....it has everything you need.

Evidently I 0verpaid, though, because some weeks later I noticed that Ollie's was selling MP3 players for $5. The package included cord allowing the user to connect it to a radio or stereo. One bummer: Only 256 MB of space, although if you can find one, you can add half-gig SD card. In any event, if you get tired of the 3 albums it can hold, you can change it out quickly -- like all of the other cheapo players these days, you plug it into your computer and it's recognized as another drive.

My wife's nephew left his iPod on a bus a few weeks ago and it was stolen. My $1o player works fine, and if it's stolen, well, it's not the end of the world. The important this is the music. The bulk of my MP3 collection is backed up, online at ADrive and on backup CDs.

For the Jane Austen fan, i.e. any literate reader

"Pride and Prejudice" is one of my favorite novels. You've read the book, you've seen the movies, what's left? Why, the Facebook edition. (Via Supergee and Jo Walton's blog.)

Paul isn't dead, man

Over at my newspaper blog, I bring up some surprising news: 66-year-old Paul McCartney has released a good album.

Two bloggers for the price of one!

Favorite blog post in the last couple of days: Duke prof Michael Munger explains what's wrong with bailing out bad home mortgages. Second favorite: the other blogger at Kids Prefer Cheese, University of Oklahoma Prof Kevin Blaine Greer, asks, "They can't really want Al Franken in the Senate can they? Isn't that eerily close to Caligula making his horse a Senator?" Don't forget to read the comments about the post.

Nice to see a good blog from someone at my alma mater.

Lots of books at the Times

The New York Times books section has posted its "100 Notable Books of 2008," with links to the original reviews. I'm afraid the fiction list does nothing for me, but the nonfiction reviews pointed me to several interesting-sounding books that I'd missed.

Who's our man (or woman) in 2012?

The Libertarian Party desperately needs a good candidate in four years, so perhaps it isn't too early to start talking about who that person should be.

Over at Reason's Hit and Run blog, Nick Gillespie has tried to get the discussion rolling by mentioning two people: Michael Munger, a Duke University political science professor who ran for governor of North Carolina this year, and Angela Keaton, identified as a Libertarian Party activist. Both seem initially more attractive to me than Wayne Allyn Root, who already is running for the nomination.

At first blush, Keaton seems to be kind of a performance artist candidate. I haven't seen any sign of a real organization. Then again, she works for the folks at Antiwar.com, so she seems likely to be strong on the peace issue, which will likely be an asset in four years, when the antiwar crowd has had time to become disillusioned with Barack Obama. It's really too early to express an opinion, but I've "friended" her on Facebook. A campaign Web site or blog would be a nice sign of seriousness.

As for Munger, I followed Nick's link to a Reason article about him and found that Munger said he was aiming for a final result of 3 percent to 4 percent of the statewide vote. He finished at 2.85 percent.

This is a big deal, because it bespeaks a Libertarian candidate who actually understands politics -- a 3 percent showing is GOOD for a Libertarian. He's also intelligent and well spoken.

Munger is currently planning to run for the North Carolina state senate in 2010, but his blog seems to refute the idea that he's running for president; in this post, he mentions the Reason post but says Gillespie is "having a little fun." I wrote to Munger, and he confirmed that he's not a candidate for president until at least 2016, and maybe not then. Still, he bears watching.

Libertarian vote up for grabs?

Before I forgot, I wanted to link to this post a few days ago by Cato's David Boaz, which posits (among other interesting points) that the libertarian vote is up for grabs between the two major parties: "A candidate in either party who presented himself as a product of the social freedom of the Sixties and the economic freedom of the Eighties would be tapping into a market that both parties have yet to nail down." (Given the Libertarian Party's latest failure to attract a significant number of votes, I wonder if some libertarians might be searching for an alterative.)

I also like this comment about the Republicans and educated voters: "If conservative Republicans continue to respond to the loss of educated voters by declaring themselves proud to be 'real Americans' who don't care much for book learning and Darwinism and elite stuff, they will only accelerate the process."

We're in Reason!

I joined the Libertarian Futurist Society a little less than a year ago, entitling me to vote for the Prometheus Award and the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award (I've been reading SF like a fiend for months as a result, particularly because, to my surprise, I was allowed to join two different committees, which come up with the nominees for the two awards.)

Reason magazine has just published a rather good article by Katherine Mangu-Ward on Tor books, the five nominees for the Prometheus Award this year (all were Tor books), the LFS and the Prometheus.

Of the five nominees this year, I loved two: Jo Walton's "Ha'Penny" and Ken MacLeod's "The Execution Channel." Harry Turtledove's "The Gladiator" is also very good. "Fleet of Worlds" by Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner is a quite readable "Analog" novel. The only one I really didn't like was "Ragamuffin" by Tobias Buckell. Very violent, but little of literary or ideological interest. Obviously, I must have some kind of blind spot, as other LFS members must have really liked it.

Another blog on the roll

I've added a link on the blogroll list for Wirkman Netizen, a particularly interesting blog I intend to pay closer attention to from now on. This guy is a left-leaning libertarian AND he loves Stravinsky. I mean, come on, does this guy have perfect taste or what?

Read science fiction, win a Nobel Prize

Want to know how economist Paul Krugman began his march toward fame and a Nobel Prize for economics? Krugman says Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" novel explain "how I got into economics: I wanted to be a psychohistorian when I grew up, and economics was as close as I could get." (Via the November issue of Ansible.)

A case for McCain?

Over at the Vokokh Conspiracy, blogger and law professor David Bernstein tries to make a libertarian case for John McCain. His arguments fail to sway me -- how anyone who cares about foreign policy or civil liberties can vote Republican this year is beyond me -- but he had one paragraph I loved, so I'll quote it here:

"I think there are two great moral issues in American politics today, the disastrous War on Drugs, and free trade. The War on Drugs, for now, is hopeless. Free trade though, is not. Over the past couple of decades, a (statistical) billion people, more or less, have moved from poverty to the local middle-class because of globalization and free trade, far more people than have been aided by all the liberal do-goodism Obama, or any else, has or can muster. McCain is the candidate of free trade; Obama is the candidate of "fair trade," which in practice means protectionism. McCain's policies have the potential to rescue tens of millions of additional people from poverty, who will stay mired there under Obama. (And I always had at least one soft spot for Bill Clinton, for standing up to the unions and the know nothing wing of his party in favor of free trade and NAFTA)."

At the same blog, Ilya Somin makes an interesting case for divided government, but not enough to overcome the nausea the McCain/Palin ticket induces in me.

Yes, Barack is better

I don't want my last posting to be misunderstood. I voted for Bob Barr in the current election, but I do think the Obama-Palin ticket is clearly superior to the McCain-Palin ticket. (I cast an early absentee ballot, like many voters in Ohio. I tried to arrange a vote swap, promising to vote for Obama in Ohio if a Democrat in a "safe" Democratic state would vote for Barr, but I got no takers and gave up.)

My big issues in the current election are foreign policy and civil liberties, and Obama is clearly preferable on both to John McCain, who in these two areas seems determined to follow in President Bush's footsteps.

That said, please spare me the rhetoric about how Obama is going to set a new tone in Washington or practice a new kind of politics. Here in Ohio, a key swing state, Obama supporters are engaging in vote fraud. His acolytes in the Strickland Administration are ransacking state databases to dig up dirt on Obama's opponents. Nationwide, the campaign that broke its promise to use public financing is engaging in campaign finance fraud. If anything, this time around the Democrats are dirtier than the Republicans.

Look what you're getting, Obama fans

Leftist writer Alexander Cockburn uncorks a fine rant, insisting that it doesn't make much difference whether McCain or Obama gets elected. I can't totally agree with him, but I think he's a lot closer to being accurate than my old friend Steve Browne, who insists unconvincingly that Obama's apparent impending election is "Russia, 1917, or the end of the Weimar Republic."

A couple of Cockburn's best points deserve amplification. Cockburn writes that Obama "stood against warrantless wiretapping" and then voted in favor of it. To be more precise, Obama promised he would filibuster against any bill that granted amnesty to telecommunications companies that broke the law. Then he voted for the bill without making any effort to block it. That's a hell of a reversal.

Cockburn also writes, "Obama wants to enlarge the armed services by 90,000." I didn't think Cockburn made that up, exactly, but it seemed kind of hard to believe. Maybe Cockburn is putting a negative spin on something a little more benign.

Well, here's the link to the official Obama Web site, which says, "Barack Obama and Joe Biden support plans to increase the size of the Army by 65,000 soldiers and the Marines by 27,000 troops." The page is headlined, "The change we need." A guy who is even more determined than the Republican Party to turn the U.S. into an armed camp does not represent "change."

Cockburn also tells his readers to "read the portions of Libertarian Party candidate Bob Barr's platform on foreign policy and constitutional rights." Exactly right. There's one political party left that has a decent platform on civil liberties and militarism — and it's not the Democrats.

My Bob Barr interview

I interviewed the Libertarian candidate for president, Bob Barr, along with two other reporters, when he spoke at Oberlin College last week. For anyone who is interested, large excerpts from the interview are here.

Selling libertarianism

The new issue of Reason magazine has a David Weigel interview with Bob Barr (not online yet, as far as I can tell) which includes a great Barr quote on how Libertarians should talk to the unconverted:

"Every citizen in this country, I believe, has some area of their lives — whether it's their personal behavior within their homes, whether it's how to educate and discipline their children, whether it's about how to run their business, their political thought, their religious practices — where they want to be left alone. The Libertarian Party, I think, needs to recognize that and appeal to that and draw that out from the American public and the American voters, rather than talk just generally about great philosophical principles."

Well, that didn't take long

The New York Times reports that the British publisher of "The Jewel of Medina," a historical novel about one of the Prophet Muhammad's wives, has survived a firebomb attack on his house.

The attack apparently was incited by inflammatory statements by Denise Spellberg, an associate professor of book burning and incitement at the University of Texas at Austin. The attacks apparently will continue until infidels stop saying that Islam promotes hatred and terrorism.

Chabon wins Hugo

Michael Chabon has won the Hugo Award for best novel for THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN'S UNION. (I haven't read it, but it also nabbed a Nebula, a good sign.) Details on the other Hugos here.

Music criticism hits new low

Here's a technique for critiquing performances that Alex Ross probably never thought of: Bring a claw hammer with you and use it to bang out a bad review for musicians you don't like.

The Sandusky Register reported that a Baldwin-Wallace College music graduate and music teacher named Richard Rice armed himself with a hammer before taking on a rock concert in his neighborhood in the small city of Huron, Ohio. "The band was out of tune and loud," Rice explained.

Accounts differ on whether Rice swung the hammer at music equipment and a spectator, depending on whether you believe other people at the scene or the allegedly drunk music critic. Witnesses says he did, although Rice said the hammer was just a prop.

"I had a hammer in my hand," he concedes.

Jimmy Carter: A fine libertarian president?

Jim Henley's claim that President Jimmy Carter could be termed a good "libertarian president" seems too interesting to be buried in a comment thread, so I'm pointing to it here.

Henley, who blogs at Unqualified Offerings, claimed in a Reason Hit and Run comment thread that Carter was "the greatest libertarian president in living memory."

Challenged on that assertion, Henley wrote, "I'm at least half serious. Carter deregulated trucking and air travel, two moves which have had more lasting economic benefit than just about anything else that happened in the last quarter of the 20th Century - except possibly allowing Paul Volcker, at enormous political cost to the incumbent president, to tighten money enough to kill core inflation until Dubya began his LBJ imitation (running phony wars on phony money). Of course, that was Carter too. Plus, to coin a phrase, He Kept Us Out of War. Not a bad record for a guy who had the bad fortune to become President when the bills for Johnsonism and Nixonism couldn't be stretched out any longer.

"On the other hand, Carter made a speech once wearing a sweater, and Nick Gillespie vaguely remembers hating him, so it totally makes sense to discount the massive good he did the country in trying circumstances."

I take it that under this formulation, Carter gave the country the Paul Volcker medicine, and Reagan reaped the reward. Reagan was not a libertarian in many ways, but he did cut taxes and help created Individual Retirement Accounts.