Notes

1. As everyone knows by now, Mitch Daniels is not going to run for the Republican nomination for President. I'm disappointed. He seemed the most libertarian-ish of the guys who had a shot at winning the nomination. I was sorry to learn that he apparently supported an individual mandate back in 2003, which would have made it difficult for him to sound convincing on probably the most important limited government issue in the campaign.

So I'm left without a candidate. I do see a lot to like in Gary Johnson, for the reasons Pnin outlines there. But I don't think I can get even my "social conservative, but with significant libertarian sympathies" friends to sign onto his candidacy -- much less those elements of the GOP that are socially conservative but without any libertarian sympathies whatsoever. I suppose his protest run does have educational value, though, and I certainly support him running on that ground.

If there is anything that I should read that might convince me to support one of the other candidates, though, let me know.

2. Once again, John McWhorter has a good column on the War on Drugs.

3. It bothers me that FICO scores are calculated on a spectrum that is sort of like the SAT scale, but yet not. It should not be possible for a perfect score on anything to be an 850. It like shakes up my entire test-conditioned, meritocracy-obsessed worldview too violently.

4. I have read PUA/Game blogs on a few occasions when some big political blog links to them, but mostly avoid them because they are infuriating. That said, there is an interesting essay waiting to be written on whether Tyrion Lannister from George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire trilogy is an alpha/is deploying Game tactics effectively. He seems really good at projecting the cocky, funny and confident parts of the Game ideology, despite all of the drawbacks associated with being a disabled dwarf. (I am not sure whether it's right to say that he doesn't fall into the typical PUA traps of being a vile misogynist. He's not exactly a feminist, but he lives in a quasi-medieval society where nobody really is. And while he's not exactly a nice guy by upper-middle-class lawyer dude standards, he's basically less vile than the rest of the Lannisters.) I do not actually know or care enough about Game and the PUA guys to write this myself, but someone who does should try. I would make a temporary exception to my practice of avoiding their blogs to read it.