Watching some Indian equivalent of MTV, my housemate remarked, “Got good songs, now they need decent choreography. Call Paula Abdul!”

For three centuries beginning in 930, the Norse settlers of Iceland enjoyed the literate world’s nearest thing to a stateless society; possibly the largest non-nomadic society ever to lack territorial monopolies in government. Competition between the goðar (customarily and poorly translated as ‘chieftains’) is often blamed for the feuds that led to annexation by Norway in 1262; so why did the evils of anarchy happen only when the system became less competitive?

Roderick Long (cited at Gene Expression) concisely explains what went wrong. As usual, the fatal flaw was a non-competitive element: a church tax, imposed on the households of a territory. Another flaw was a restriction on the number of goðar – analogous to taxi medallions. These two features concentrated wealth and power in a few families.

I think it was indirectly through a link from Long’s essay that I found Sean Gabb’s “How to Destroy the Enemy Class”, a manifesto for the first libertarian Parliament.

When I returned from fetching her tacos and Hostess Sno-Balls, my One True Ex quoted a familiar aphorism. I asked who said it; she didn’t know; so I googled and found it attributed to one Ernestine Ulmer. Who? So I searched for “Ernestine Ulmer”, and found the name mentioned in one obituary and a couple of genealogy sites – and cited fifty times for the aphorism.

Here’s a webtoon I haven’t plugged before: Something Positive. Others recently read: Wigu; Rusty Shrapnel; Megatokyo.

Also volatile: GirlHacker’s Random Log

Heather Madrone has an interesting question.

My 13-year-old daughter downloaded some software this week. I asked her to check with me next time, so I could show her how to scan it for viruses before she installs it. Then I thought, “Now wait a minute. Can you still get viruses from downloading software?”

Back in the bad old days, viruses infected programs, and were handed around on diskettes or via download. When they infected your system, they might hitch a ride on another piece of software. I haven’t heard of a virus propagating itself that way in years.

So what’s the scoop? Does it still happen? Or is email such a superior tool for virus propagation that virus creators have given up on slipping viruses into software? Are download sites too well-protected for a virus to slip by their defenses?

John Derbyshire:

(Like any honest reactionary, I loathe the [New York] Times. I must give them credit, though, for their coverage of math and science, which is way above that of any other newspaper I know, except the even more politically deplorable London [sic] Guardian, which leads the world in this field. Why can’t conservative newspapers “do” science and math?)

One obvious hypothesis lies in the stereotype of Right and Left attitudes to Science – not that scientists don’t include all political tribes, but the Left believes in the power of Science to Improve Humanity, while the Right’s stereotypical attitude may be summed up with “leave the boffins to their fun” and Thoreau’s “If I knew a man was coming to my house with the fixed intention of doing me good, I would run for my life.” To such a Rightist, science is irrelevant to the function of the mass press, which is to keep an eye on the politicians.

Is that too obvious and stereotypical to be plausible?

(Link from Dave Trowbridge.)

Had a job interview today at a lawfirm which does consumer class actions in anti-trust — a field which I find ethically dodgy.

I’d like to get out of law entirely, and work in a business with real customers and some sense of cumulative progress. But who else will pay me $25/hour to sit and bang the keys?