Category Archives: Human Accomplishment

UPDATED: A Leg Up For Ladies

Affirmative Action, America, Feminism, Gender, Human Accomplishment, Labor, Law, Regulation, Sport

Like the “good” conservatives that they are, the women at Fox News support Title IX regulations. I heard quite a few celebrate the fact that the US has sent more women than men to the 2012 London Olympics.

“There are to be 269 women and 261 men on the team.”

This skewed outcome is a result of gender-based affirmative action.

Writes Phyllis Schlafly:

Title IX regulations, which impose gender quotas on sports for institutions that receive any federal money. …
Title IX regulations have forced educational institutions to eliminate men’s teams until the number of men and women on sports teams is the same ratio as the number of men and women enrolled in academic classes. In the numerous colleges that are now 60 percent female in academic enrollment, Title IX requires that men’s teams be eliminated until only 40 percent of the athletes are men.
Title IX quotas have caused the elimination of all but 19 men’s college gymnastics teams. This deprives boys of the scholarship incentive to take up gymnastics as a sport in high school and takes away the competition needed to improve their skills in college.

Granted, they are sweet. Look at these eager young faces; the lithe, lean bodies, the unabashed pursuit of victory, the brutal regimen required to become the best, the irrepressible spirit that compels athletes to submit to the grueling grind. It is all so very exhilarating.

But c’mon: if you are a basketball fan, for example, how can you settle for the inferior game the women play? For me, the high point of the competition is the American-dominated, testosterone-fueled, always magnificent, 100-meter men’s dash.

Forget it ladies: You are not in this league.

UPDATE (July 15): In reply to thread on Facebook:

“Yes, MM, sports is important. I have been a runner for the last 22 years—and not because my (Israeli) high- and middle school instilled the love of the effort in me. And, as to who would I rather watch play: Kobe Bryant for the U.S. men’s basketball team? Or the equivalent woman star (whose name no one, but her parents, cares about, b/c she is incapable physiologically of matching the thrill of watching Bryant)? The answer is obvious. The reality cannot be tweaked by central planning. Not should it be legislated away.

UPDATE II: SURFACE By Microsoft (Leaves The Idiot Pad In the Dust)

America, Business, Human Accomplishment, Technology

At 15:14 into the unveiling of the Microsoft Surface tablet, Windows chief Steven Sinofsky says that Surface “provides the best WiFi reception of any tablet today.” The Surface’s dual Wi-Fi (“wireless networking technology that uses radio waves to provide wireless high-speed Internet and network connections”) antennae are the part My Contact in the bowels of the beast nailed.

Well done, genius.

Congratulations to all for bringing to market this “well-designed, very cool” product, over which industry experts are already gushing: It goes “toe to toe” with Apple’s iPad, says one, and even bests it (as “it runs as a full computer,” and sports a physical keyboard), says another.

Although I’ve been kept in the dark until now, I’m looking forward to receiving one of these as soon as possible. What piques my interest in that the Surface is a transportable PC, a facility the idiot Pad never offered. (I don’t need mindless entertainment; I want the ability to transport my work wherever I go, without the burdens imposed by a cumbersome laptop.)

UPDATE I (June 20): This is the stuff that makes one patriotic, right guys? American-coordinated ingenuity (with wise division of labor, naturally). Damn straight. (Wives are always kept in the dark … but, all I can say is that they deserve a medal. What a marathon effort The Surface has been.)

And, as someone who has never been tempted by the Idiot Pad: Yes, my instincts, on seeing what this thing accomplishes were very much, “This is a good fit for me.” And it has a keyboard and the easy ability to use a mouse with it, as opposed to the frenetic finger f-ck the traditional laptop requires.

UPDATE II (June 21): In this context, and on a personal note, the pressure of the effort above over months has had some unexpected consequences. (I heard it said that in the US there are two types of engineers: overworked or unemployed. A tough economy would indeed force increases in productivity: fewer and fewer workers are doing more and more of work.) The upshot: My husband has come down with pneumonia. I will be taking some time to look after him (and hoping to remain uninfected).

THE WND COLUMN will resume next week. RT will be featuring a golden oldie. Make sure you Click to Like, Share and Tweet it.

UPDATE III: Planet Facebook Owns It (The Little Guy/Gal Needs Social Media)

Business, Democracy, Economy, Free Markets, Human Accomplishment, Internet, Labor, Pop-Culture, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, Technology

“Planet Facebook Owns It” is the title of my new column, now on WND. Here’s an excerpt:

“The more you hear from your average, financial-markets hater—the more you wish you could transport each one back to a mud hut in a far-away land, where women wear grass skirts, and carry their groceries on their heads, and where no man dares to or is capable of dreaming-up businesses like Costco, Overstock.com, or Facebook.

Planet Facebook, in particular, is a global, social, political, and potential economic revolution. Had the idea for this social-networking site not come into being, we’d be the poorer for it.

Facebook users love it and cannot imagine life without. Yes, they complain endlessly—but largely because they can. Unlike government (and CNN’s Anderson Cooper), you can keep private enterprise honest. Business aims to please its constituents, the consumers. Complaints encourage compliance.

Facebook went public. In the process of going public, some people got rich, or richer; others didn’t.

INDIVIDUALS VS. CORPORATIONS: To the media, these are two antagonistic and atomistic solitudes, never the twain shall meet. This ‘angels versus demons’ caricature is lapped up by the masses, even though most of them own shares in major American companies, through their pension funds.

Most Americans benefit from and are heavily vested in corporate America.

True to this cartoon, the Little Guy is depicted as good; Big Players as bad. Invariably, those who can’t get rich off an initial public offering (IPO) are labeled sympathetically as ‘small investors,’ or ‘retail investors.’ Those who land in the lap of luxury for the umpteenth time, because of their capacity to invest vast sums, are dubbed derisively ‘big investors,’ ‘Wall Street.’

SIMPLIFIED: People with oodles of money make a killing. People without much money would kill to be in their shoes.

U2’s Bono exemplifies the first type. Bono might be a chap who fronts a three-chord band of unimpressive droners, but he knows a good business deal when he sees one. In 2009, the singer invested $90 million in Facebook stock.

Cui bono, you ask. And the answer as to who benefits from Bono’s industry is this: The singer has pledged the $1.5 billion he reaped from his Facebook investment to charities in Africa.

Business, in contrast to Barack Obama, is a positive-sum game. …”

Read the complete column, “Planet Facebook Owns It,” now on WND.

If you’d like to feature this column (WND’s longest-standing, exclusive libertarian column) in or on your publication (paper or pixels), contact ilana@ilanamercer.com.

Support this writer’s work by clicking to “Recommend,” “Tweet” and “Share” “Return To Reason” on WND, and the “Paleolibertarian Column” on RT.

UPDATE I: Myron, “that FACEBOOK is overpriced” doesn’t contradict what I wrote, to the effect that “… prices are supposed to fluctuate continuously, as market forces bring supply and demand into balance.” Does it?

UPDATE II: To “Old Man”: I don’t hang out on Facebook, much less on twitter. Rather, I use social media quite efficiently to promote my work, only. I’ve gotten good at this efficiency. I waste no time at all, engaging in little extraneous discussion. In fact, when that “Hi, baby” chat window pops up at me (you can no longer disable the thing with ease), I “Unfriend” the creep right away.
For the little gal with no promotional assistance, Facebook is business. If you look at my pages, you’ll see that all my blogs propagate to Facebook and twitter (now, there’s a useless forum) mostly automatically through special applications interfaces. (Of course, these often malfunction, but not nearly as badly and as routinely as the government does.)
My book I advertised on Facebook, managing to reach 3 million pages, if I recall. That was a bit of creative work.
How cool is that? Very cool when you have no other promo support. As hard as it is to fathom, I’ve worked uphill to get my book out on Amazon, the Only Bookshop That Matters. As I noted in the “MAÑANA” blog post, “the softcover of The Cannibal is coming ‘Mañana,’ Pacific Time.” (The hardcover is available, for now.)
Although the soft-spined (but never spineless) Cannibal has been collated (in-house by myself and my husband) and features bonus material, its Publisher disavows Amazon, and is in no rush to supply the Only Store Worth Supplying with Cannibal softcover copies. (“After almost a decade in the Pacific Northwest region, I can safely say that, with a few treasured exceptions, people outside the Microsoft workforce (who, with Boeing, is the main employer here) have a hard time acting professionally and honorably.”)

So, yes, Facebook can be valuable for the Little Guy/Gal, who has no other option but to work it .

Incidentally, employers can, through Facebook, find out something about the bums they are about to employ. For example, I had employed a social media person, initially. This being America, the paid personnel rarely responded to my inquiries. Busy was she? Not on your life. She was chatting frivolously on Facebook, in real time, as I tried to reach her via email. Since then, three more potential “workers” have conducted themselves similarly. (It’s America. We are, for the most, unmotivated by obligation, professionalism, contract, intellectual honestly, or proprietary; but by how things make us feel. Doing the right thing we frame as an act of heroism.)

UPDATE (May 26): Thanks for your support for this work, Nell. As I said, the writer in this instance has no influence. Readers will have to use their clout to get the softcover issue to the Amazon market, where most readers prefer to shop. Do contact the publisher.

UPDATE III: Planet IRS (Police State USA)

English, Europe, Human Accomplishment, Ilana Mercer, IMMIGRATION, Literature, Media, Private Property, Regulation, South-Africa, Taxation

The following is excerpted from my new, weekly column, “Planet IRS”:

“You can check-out any time you like, but you can never leave!” Those are the chorus lyrics to Hotel California,” the haunting rock classic by the Eagles.

Americans who try “running for the door”—in the evocative words of Glenn Frey, and the Dons Felder and Henley—soon discover that they “are all just prisoners here …”

Prisoners of Uncle Sam’s device.

If he can tolerate TSA assaults as he departs the country, an American who chooses to live and work overseas cannot escape the Internal Revenue Service. The United States is perhaps the only country “to tax its citizens on income earned while they’re living abroad.”

To loss of privacy and property, add the prospect of prison—and you get why, as Reuters has reported, droves of Americans are “renouncing their U.S. citizenship or handing in their Green Cards.”

On pain of criminal charges and “penalties of up to $100,000 or 50 percent of undeclared accounts, whichever is larger,” the expatriate must report his own bank accounts and all conjoint accounts—a spouse, a client, or business partners.

The victims of this shakedown are residents who have foreign bank accounts (the Canadian equivalent of a small USA 401K, in this scribe’s case), in addition to “an estimated 6.3 million U.S. citizens living abroad.” The aims of their pursuers, the IRS, are control and compliance. The rogue agency’s source of revenue, in this context, is derived primarily from penalties for forgetfulness or faulty filing.

All fear bankrupting fines, even imprisonment.” …

Click on the link to read the complete column, “Planet IRS.”

If you’d like to feature this column in or on your publication (paper pr pixels), contact ilana@ilanamercer.com.

Support this writer’s work by clicking to “Recommend,” “Tweet” and “Share” the “Paleolibertarian Column” on RT and “Return To Reason” on WND.

UPDATE I: On Facebook, Anthony Michael Miceli writes this: “You’re one of the most honest writers that is publicly known. This and a lot of your work SHOULD be carried by major newspapers but when most are controlled by just a handful of corporations the writing and thought pool becomes the same incestuous crap ppl haven been exposed to for years.”

I reply: It takes concerted pressure from readers like yourself, AMM, to sway the editorial gatekeepers across the country. What should irk you is not that opinion such as mine (also yours) is shunned; it’s the mediocrity and piss-poor, unimaginative writing that is embraced instead. Also, to help restore standards, let us separate writers from TV show men and women. Let us restore the division of labor. Only a few people manage to straddle both worlds (Ann Coulter, for instance, who is a Republican through-and-through). Most TV showmen with a large presence, or politicians, ain’t writers.

UPDATE II: I shouldn’t, but I will. I mean, there is a need to say IT, simply because few know better. And, after all, to a contemporary journalism teacher, instructing the aspiring young writer, creativity equals, “Sharing your passion” (“I love myself, and my dog, and me again”), “showing your feelings (“I feel like Obama is trying to feel for us, but like…”). So, you need to hear this from someone who learned the hard way (from tough veterans):

The lead to this column (used to be written “lede”), the Hotel California segue, is bloody good. Just saying.

UPDATE III: An example of the above necessary division of labor: Judge Napolitano. Great orator; poor writer.