Positive Liberty

Leitmotif: “I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence. There’s a knob called ‘brightness,’ but it doesn’t work.” — Gallagher

Did the dairy industry encourage us to drink our milk? Of course it did, in part because the U.S. government forced it to. And did a group of citizens actually drink their milk, only to find that it made them sick? Yes once again! And are they now suing those wicked dairy producers? You bet they are.

Did Texas Just Privatize Marriage? “Marriage Wins in Texas,” proclaimed gay marriage opponent Maggie Gallagher this morning, noting the lopsided victory for Texas Proposition 2.

I might have been inclined to write “Marriage Loses in Texas,” as I’m convinced that using marriage as a weapon against gays — and defining marriage solely by the ability to procreate — only cheapens and trivializes the institution.

But there’s another reason why marriage may have “lost” as well: the bizarre wording of the Texas amendment. The relevant text reads as follows:

Sec. 32. (a) Marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman.
(b) This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage.

As one website opines, “(A) defines marriage as between one man and one woman. (B) prohibits recognition of (A).”

Clearly this isn’t what the voters had in mind, but the suggestion that Texas has fully privatized marriage didn’t come from a gay-rights organization. On the contrary, it came from a group hoping to preserve the exclusive state sponsorship of heterosexual marriage.

If the issue weren’t so politically charged, I think few would doubt that their interpretation is facially correct (links via In The Agora).

Note that it’s quite unclear whether the amendment also prohibits joint adoption, which is “similar” to marriage, covenant marriage, which is “similar” to marriage, and so forth. Contrawise, Texas may yet recognize same-sex civil unions, as these are 1. by definition not “marriage” and 2. arguably not “similar” enough to trigger a ban: Given that the essential quality of marriage is now defined as heterosexuality, one may easily argue that civil unions are entirely unlike marriages.

Did China Just Nationalize World of Warcraft? Not quite, but they sure came close. Having forsaken the dream of a proletarian revolution, the communist government is instead re-writing the rules of online roleplaying games. Evidently they figure that if they can’t have a communist utopia in the real world, they can still get what they want in a fantasy one:

General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) vice director Kou Xiaowei said at a press conference in Beijing on Tuesday that the fatigue system for online games will be launched on October 1, Donews reports. The purpose behind the fatigue system is to reduce the amount of time gamers spend playing online role playing games. The system will only award players full experience points for the first three hours of each day, half experience for the next two hours, and no experience after five hours.

It’s not fair, you see, that those who put in more effort get more rewards than the rest of us.

And apparently you can’t have a workers’ paradise if the workers are too busy playing. (Man, the jokes just write themselves on this one…) Read more on the new policy here. A private news source (actually, syndicated from Investor’s Business Daily) also informs me that protests are already underway:

A large group of players in The9 Limited’s licensed online game World of Warcraft, developed by Vivendi Universal’s Blizzard Entertainment, recently committed coordinated mass suicide in the game to protest against a “fatigue system” that was mandated by regulators to combat addictive play by limiting the number of hours that gamers can play. The carnage occurred on the third day after the experimental system’s launch at the end of October, when players lined up along a road in the game and littered the scene with cadavers.

Creative protests notwithstanding, investors will be listening to earnings conference calls for any indication that the fatigue system is impacting the performance of the most popular “massively multiplayer” games such as Netease’s Westward Journey II and The9’s World of Warcraft. Industry watchers suspect that gamers’ creation of multiple game characters will serve to limit the effectiveness of the fatigue system.

Note the distinct air of moral panic about online gaming “addictions.” (”Someone seems to be having fun out there, and in a way that I don’t fully understand! Quick — We’ve got to do something!”)

Lastly, give yourself a pat on the back if you noticed that creating multiple characters — whose novelty encourages spending more time online — offers another example of our old friend, the perverse incentive.

Saving Our Cultural Heritage:

“The last two times they evacuated the city, I stayed,” says [Ted] Breaux, 39, a chemist and environmental microbiologist. But when he woke up on Sunday, August 28, the hurricane had become a Category 5 and was still bearing down on New Orleans. He decided it was time to get out of his house on the floodplain just south of Lake Pontchartrain. He packed his Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution with all the essentials: clothes, toiletries, a laptop, some World War II rifles, ammo, and $15,000 worth of absinthe.

The article is well worth reading. It surprised me, though, when it claimed that absinthe was first produced in 1792: I distinctly recall one historical source from the mid-eighteenth century mentioning a “vin d’absinthe.” I don’t have the notes in front of me, but I am quite certain that it was written prior to 1762. A curiosity.

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