Reprise: A Paean For Packaging

Noticing this morning how easy it was to peel off a single slice of cheese, I was reminded of a post I did two years ago on packaging. I thought it was worth repeating.

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Sometimes what seem like small things in life are actually of larger significance. Think for a moment about what has happened to packaging over the past 50 years.

The variety alone is stunning. Simple stereo boxes filled with specially shaped foam and bubble wrap keep delicate equipment secure across continents. Soup cans pop open with the lightweight pull of a small metal ring. Frozen orange juice containers open with an easy tug on a plastic strip.

Think of the advances in food safety, weight reduction, and more. A simple plastic mayonnaise jar closes with the twist of a perfectly fitting lid. At the same time, eliminating glass has made them lighter to ship and much less likely to break.

The examples and benefits could be multiplied a hundredfold. All this thanks, in large part, due to the ingenuity of a type of engineer who rarely receives any public notice or praise. Not regarded as glamorous, or even notorious, like structural engineers, they nonetheless make our lives immensely better in a thousand ways.

I've found myself in restaurants wanting to shake the hand of and to pay the bill for a returning soldier. If I could so easily identify a package engineer, I'd want to do the same.

There are some devils among them, to be sure. Whoever designed those seals on the tops of some CDs deserves jail time. But that was as much a marketing decision by someone with a lack of imagination about theft reduction as anything. You shouldn't blame bullet manufacturers for the scum who use a weapon on the wrong person.

On the whole, though, they deserve all the paeans they almost never receive, except perhaps from their colleagues. (And, knowing corporations as intimately as I regrettably do, not often from them, I'd bet.) It's altogether fitting that the word "paean" was coined to describe a hymn of praise to Apollo, the god of reason.

Package designers, I lift my goblet to your divinity.

D-Day, A Tardy Remembrance

I'm ashamed to admit that in the rush of starting work on a new book I entirely forgot about D-Day, June 6th. I often think of this event and wonder how I would have behaved on that fateful day. What I do know is how many others acted then, and the heroic stories available to be told from that historic occasion could serve as material for a thousand novels. There are times when life really is larger than fiction.

It's a pity there's no longer a market for them, nor much of one for the many similar acts of bravery from the current struggle against Islamism and the jihad.

Be that as it may, this is a good time to remember those heroes - some of whom survive to this day.

"Thank you" is so pitifully inadequate, but it's the very least I can offer, even a day late.

Yet Another Pin-Up Girl: Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Robert Andrews has a terrific smackdown of Nicholas Kristof's utterly revolting NYT review of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's new book, Nomad. Defending the uber-heroic Ms. Ali is of course completely appropriate since she is one of the finest public personalities on the planet. Rational, factual, totally dedicated to the right and the true, and with the most horrific bona fides of any public intellectual in memory. Yet, she has never lost her charm and sense of life's possibilities.

How ironic the timing, then, that PBS should choose this week to re-broadcast a documentary called Cities of Light: The Rise and Fall of Islamic Spain (2007) I confess I haven't even seen it and I can already safely predict it's point of view. There's a big clue in the dead-giveaway title. One usually applies Rise and Fall to glorious civilizations (though there are exceptions, like the Nazi regime). But the "Cities of Light" moniker is the real kicker.

Still, it's the program description that really cements my certainty:

An examination of a time during the Middle Ages when Christians, Jews, and Muslims peacefully coexisted in southern Spain, and what led to the disintegration of the society.

I researched Moorish Spain fairly well for a novel some time back and I can assure you that all was not sweetness and light in early 8th to late 15th century Al-Andalus.

Set aside that nobody had any rights in Iberia during those years. That region had been, and continues to be, dominated by the Catholic Church (now overlaid with a huge dose of modern socialism). The results were not pretty even before the Islamic invasion. But forget that for now. Ask yourself instead what kind of 'peace' individuals in those groups would have enjoyed during the period.

Then, as now, any non-Muslim was a second-class citizen and, at that time and place, "second class citizen" meant something a good deal more onerous than even that of a black person in Georgia circa 1960. To a Christian or Jewish male it was: just pay your Jizya and keep your mouth firmly shut or suffer the consequences.

And what were those consequences? Then as now: imprisonment, beheading, or banishment (which often meant death by starvation). Women, of course, didn't even register on the scale as fully human, a situation that persists in Islamic countries to this day.

And, as a side note, Kristof's (and the filmmaker's) belief that Christians got by real well during that time is belied by the many armed revolts led by Christian kings over almost the entire period. That continued until Queen Isabella and her husband completed the final transfer that ended the Caliphate in all of that region. The fate of Jews, not only in Spain but everywhere prior to the mid-20th century, is too well known to require discussing.

How modern so-called liberals can decry Rand Paul's mild disapproval of one aspect of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and enthusiastically embrace Islamic Spain as a garden of delights and an era of religious brotherhood is almost beyond comprehension. It's as if one were to look at the Soviet Union in 1933 and declare that everything was hunky dory because there was 'peace' among Kulaks, Tartars, and Russians. Peace under rule by gangsters is not the same as peace of mind under freedom.

Truthfully, I don't think creatures like Kristof and that documentary maker lack historical knowledge nor are lying. I suspect their minds simply refuse any connection to reality when the facts are not as they wish. It's cherry picking raised to the level of a psychotic break.

Fortunately for us, we have Ayaan Hirsi Ali to keep us grounded, and that slender woman's weighty thoughts far outweigh any foolishness the Kristofs of the world can spew.

Hero of the Day: Li Li, Pig Researcher

From pig guts to riches. I love this guy.

A pharmaceutical researcher who discovered a way to harvest blood thinner from pig’s intestines has become the richest man in China.

Mr Li owns about 40 per cent of the company and his wife holds 32 per cent.

Interest was fueled by the fact that Hepalink is the only Chinese company accredited by the US Food and Drug Administration to export heparin – a blood thinner harvested from pigs’ intestines and used in kidney dialysis and many types of surgery.
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After failed attempts to co-operate with state-owned firms, the couple set up Hepalink in 1998 to produce heparin using a procedure that Mr Li had been perfecting for 25 years.

He certainly doesn't need the charity, but given the chance I would buy dinner for Mr. Li in the most expensive restaurant in New York. So far, knock on wood, I have no need for his discovery. But the mere fact that he created it — and made a bundle off it — is such a joyous sight, that I would consider it money well spent.

Bravo, Mr. Li!

My Other Pin-Up Girl: Veronique de Rugy

As some of you know, I'm in love with Ann McElhinney, the documentary filmmaker because of her heroic work on environmentalism. (Full disclosure: Ms. McElhinney knows nothing about this!) Well, I openly confess to being a complete cad, because I'm also in love with economist Veronique de Rugy.

Ms. de Rugy works for the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and writes regularly for Reason and NRO.

Well, be still my beating heart, she's going to appear tonight on John Stossel's Fox program The Big Ripoff. They'll be discussing Social Security and Medicare.

I'll be tuning in because, as I said about Ann, I just can't resist a woman with big brains and Veronique's are ginormous.

My New Pin-Up Girl: Ann McElhinney

Nicole Gelinas and Heather MacDonald at City Journal, Kimberly Strassel at the Wall St. Journal, Caroline Baum at Bloomberg, the mighty Veronique de Rugy at Reason and NRO... all fine thinkin' dames. But — fickle heel that I am — I have to declare my new devotion to the heroic Ann McElhinney.


Ms. McElhinney is the director/producer of "Not Evil Just Wrong" – a smackdown of Gore's An Inconvenient Truth and other viro nonsense — and a defense of mining called, "Mine Your Own Business."

Writing at Big Hollywood, Ms. McElhinney urges James Cameron, director of Avatar* to grow up. That will never happen, of course, but in the process she does a superb job of defending human extraction of the Earth's resources for human benefit. Her argument is so simple even a Hollywood director could follow it:

Mining makes everything about James Cameron’s life and our lives in the developed world, beautiful, possible, bearable, majestic, gorgeous and full of promise.

The people of the rain forest on the other hand who live the simple, organic, back-to-nature life so adored by the Hollywood elite such as James Cameron, also have short lives of misery, disease and squalor. They would do anything to have a piece of the James Cameron life and escape their subsistence hunter-gathering nightmare.
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Mining companies bring jobs, roads, infrastructure, health clinics and opportunities to some of the poorest people on the planet.

James Cameron, even more than rest of us, uses the earth’s resources for his pleasure and his very profitable business. His films all employ enormous quantities of heavy metals in planes, boats, trains and the latest cutting edge camera, lighting and computer technology.

Everything about Cameron’s work uses metals mined from somewhere and his gigantic transport needs are fueled by oil.

So that's why I'm in love with Ann McElhinney, 'cause I just can't resist a woman with really big brains. I'm pretty sure this one's gonna last.


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* Best quote ever on that silly piece of viro propaganda:

Hollywood: For their own gain, Military and corporate villains kill and pillage a peaceful indigenous population that is in tune with Mother Nature.

Reality: In Haiti, Mother Nature kicks the hell out of a backward, indigenous population and American military and corporations immediately come to their comfort and aid. [from a commenter at HotAir, Feb 22, 2010 - 2:11 pm]

Celebrating Oil Business Heroes

Because it's even more important to celebrate the good than excoriate the bad, here's a snippet from an IBD guest editorial by Alex Epstein. In it he shows just why we should be, paraphrasing Rand in an essay from her anthology The New Left, kissing the nearest oil derrick.

Producers of oil-based kerosene won out due to superior quality and price. Where whale oil was lighting homes for $3 a gallon in 1860, kerosene was lighting homes for 9 cents a gallon by 1880 — giving millions of Americans the gift of illumination at night.

In the early 20th century, as the electric light bulb outcompeted kerosene, oil producers focused on producing automotive fuel — and beat out steam, ethanol and — the front-runner at the time — electric batteries, through a combination of affordability, safety and convenience.

The men and women of the past several generations who have created and sustained the oil-related businesses are true unsung heroes. Celebrating their birthdays, and those of their achievements, is infinitely more important than marking Earth Day or Labor Day.

I live on 5 acres of heavily forested land, surrounded by hundreds of similar plots. But I'm still of the view that there is more beauty in an oil platform than a giant cedar, even though I love both.

In that spirit, I offer tribute to the engineers who envisaged British Petroleum's Thunder Horse, a "$5 billion semi-submersible platform 150 miles southeast of New Orleans. Fifty percent larger than the next largest such rig in the world, it includes more than 100 technical firsts that will enable it to process 250,000 barrels of oil and 200,000 million cubic feet of natural gas per day - enough to supply 6.5 million American homes with energy."

Thank you, David Rainey, Mary Heinking, and all the other unsung heroes in the world. I am forever in your debt.

New Biography of Cornelius Vanderbilt

The New York Times reviewer snarks his way through the column (you'd expect something else?), but this new biography by T.J. Stiles of the great Cornelius Vanderbilt sounds like a helluva good read.

“His admirers saw him as the ultimate meritocrat, the finest example of the common man rising through hard work and ability. ... His critics called him grasping and ruthless, an unelected king who never pretended to rule for his people.” But Mr. Stiles plainly gets a charge out of Vanderbilt’s raw nerve.

Cornelius Vanderbilt grew up on Staten Island, the son of a modest farming family. He attended school for only a few months, developing what Mr. Stiles calls “a lasting contempt for the conventions of written English.” He was born in the right place at the right time.

“Unlike most country folk,” Mr. Stiles writes, “the Vanderbilts lived within sight of the place of the most densely concentrated possibilities in North America: the city of New York.”

As a young man, Vanderbilt began working on ferries and schooners and then, with their increasing popularity in the 1820s and ’30s, steamboats. He made a name for himself in business for his “elbows-out aggressiveness.”

He made a name for himself, too, with his imposing appearance. A contemporary described him as “a man of striking individuality, as straight as an Indian, standing six feet in his stockings and weighing about 200 pounds.” Frugal and abstemious, Vanderbilt had one vice: the constant presence of a lighted or unlighted cigar.

The most flat-out enjoyable sections of “The First Tycoon” are those that deal with New York’s great steamship wars of the first half of the 19th century. Vanderbilt began to build and operate his own fleet, picking up the nickname the Commodore in the process. He engaged in price wars, cutting fares until competitors went out of business or paid him to go away. He slowly developed a chokehold on commerce.

By the late 1840s, Mr. Stiles writes, “almost everyone who traveled between New York and Boston took a Vanderbilt boat or a Vanderbilt train.”

Naturally, there is the requisite 'robber baron' bashing:

Mr. Stiles is clear-eyed about his subject’s nearly amoral rapacity. He writes that Vanderbilt “exacerbated problems that would never be fully solved: a huge disparity in wealth between rich and poor; the concentration of great power in private hands; the fraud and self-serving deception that thrives in an unregulated environment.”

But it's generally not too hard to separate the wheat from the feces in these types of biographies.

More after I've read it...

Happy Birthday, Thomas Jefferson

"Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread." -- Thomas Jefferson

In this season of Tea Parties and more, it's especially important to remember the man who, more than any other apart from Madison, was responsible for us having the country we do.

So, Happy Birthday, Thomas Jefferson. And thank you, 300 million times over.

“To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.” — Thomas Jefferson, letter to Joseph Milligan, April 6, 1816

“A wise and frugal government… shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.” — Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801

Finally, because its been in the news, it might be interesting to some to explore how our third President dealt with the issue of pirates.

Thomas Jefferson and the Pirates

When Jefferson became president in 1801 he refused to accede to Tripoli's demands for an immediate payment of $225,000 and an annual payment of $25,000. The pasha of Tripoli then declared war on the United States. Although as secretary of state and vice president he had opposed developing an American navy capable of anything more than coastal defense, President Jefferson dispatched a squadron of naval vessels to the Mediterranean.

As he declared in his first annual message to Congress: "To this state of general peace with which we have been blessed, one only exception exists. Tripoli, the least considerable of the Barbary States, had come forward with demands unfounded either in right or in compact, and had permitted itself to denounce war, on our failure to comply before a given day. The style of the demand admitted but one answer. I sent a small squadron of frigates into the Mediterranean. . . ."

The American show of force quickly awed Tunis and Algiers into breaking their alliance with Tripoli. The humiliating loss of the frigate Philadelphia and the capture of her captain and crew in Tripoli in 1803, criticism from his political opponents, and even opposition within his own cabinet did not deter Jefferson from his chosen course during four years of war.

The aggressive action of Commodore Edward Preble (1803-4) forced Morocco out of the fight and his five bombardments of Tripoli restored some order to the Mediterranean. However, it was not until 1805, when an American fleet under Commodore John Rogers and a land force raised by an American naval agent to the Barbary powers, Captain William Eaton, threatened to capture Tripoli and install the brother of Tripoli's pasha on the throne, that a treaty brought an end to the hostilities. Negotiated by Tobias Lear, former secretary to President Washington and now consul general in Algiers, the treaty of 1805 still required the United States to pay a ransom of $60,000 for each of the sailors held by the dey of Algiers, and so it went without Senatorial consent until April 1806.

Nevertheless, Jefferson was able to report in his sixth annual message to Congress in December 1806 that in addition to the successful completion of the Lewis and Clark expedition, "The states on the coast of Barbary seem generally disposed at present to respect our peace and friendship."

Update: Christopher Hitchens, writing in City Journal, has a fine article (with many useful references) on Jefferson versus the Muslim Pirates.

But one cannot get around what Jefferson heard when he went with John Adams to wait upon Tripoli’s ambassador to London in March 1785. When they inquired by what right the Barbary states preyed upon American shipping, enslaving both crews and passengers, America’s two foremost envoys were informed that “it was written in the Koran, that all Nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon whoever they could find and to make Slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.” (It is worth noting that the United States played no part in the Crusades, or in the Catholic reconquista of Andalusia.)

Ambassador Abd Al-Rahman did not fail to mention the size of his own commission, if America chose to pay the protection money demanded as an alternative to piracy. So here was an early instance of the “heads I win, tails you lose” dilemma, in which the United States is faced with corrupt regimes, on the one hand, and Islamic militants, on the other—or indeed a collusion between them.

Ayn Rand's Birthday

Late to the party (she was born Feb 2, 1905), but here is one of my favorite quotes from Atlas Shrugged, spoken by Hank Rearden, one of the greatest heroes in literature, defending himself in court:

“I work for nothing but my own profit—which I make by selling a product they need to men who are willing and able to buy it. I do not produce it for their benefit at the expense of mine, and they do not buy it for my benefit at the expense of theirs; I do not sacrifice my interests to them nor do they sacrifice theirs to me; we deal as equals by mutual consent to mutual advantage.”

That one, simple — and unquestionably valid — paragraph, if understood and accepted, would alone wipe out 90% of the evils currently inflicted on us by the Federal and State governments, along with the underlying causes of them: the invalid moral views of most educators and the pundits in the chattering class.

Cure for Common Cold A Little Closer

Despite all the ugly events of today, and the uglier ideas driving them, there are still heroic actions by individuals making real progress. It's worthwhile to pause from time to time to celebrate them.

One recent item is a breakthrough in the discovery of some underlying elements in the rhinovirus that produces the common cold. Dr. Ann Palmenberg and Dr. Claire Fraser-Liggett and their teams recently published a report in Science discussing the work. (From the International Herald Tribune:)

A further obstacle to drug development is that colds are mostly a minor nuisance. So people will not pay for expensive drugs, the Food and Drug Administrations seems unlikely to approve a drug with any serious downside for so mild a disease and pharmaceutical companies have had little interest in investing to find new treatments.

A research team headed by Liggett and Ann Palmenberg, a cold virologist at the University of Wisconsin, may have broken this chain of problems with new insights into the rhinovirus's evolutionary strategy. With the help of Claire Fraser-Liggett, a leading genome researcher at the University of Maryland, they have decoded the genomes of all 99 strains of rhinovirus, they report in the issue of Science published electronically on Thursday.

The virus has a genome of about 7,000 chemical units. These encode the information to make the 10 proteins that do everything the virus needs to infect cells and make more viruses. By comparing the 99 genomes with one another, the researchers were able to arrange them in a family tree based on similarities in their genomes.

From the family tree it is evident that some regions of the rhinovirus genome are changing all the time but others don't change at all. The fact that the unchanging regions are so conserved over the course of evolutionary time means that they perform vital roles and that the virus cannot let them change without perishing. They are therefore ideal targets for drugs since, in principle, any of the 99 strains would succumb to the same drug.

Billions will owe a debt of gratitude to these two heroes and that is one more debt I will happily take on. Let this be considered a small down payment.

One Leader Understands: Vaclav Klaus

It's a perpetual puzzle why, out of the thousands of decent, highly educated men and women around the world, there should be only one well-known political leader who sees things rightly. But, thankfully, there is that one: Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic.

The economic crisis should be regarded as an unavoidable consequence and hence a “just” price we have to pay for immodest and over-confident politicians playing with the market. Their attempts to blame the market, instead of blaming themselves, are unacceptable and should be resolutely rejected. The Czech government will – hopefully – not push the world and Europe into more regulation, nationalisation, de-liberalisation and protectionism. Our historical experience gives us a very strong warning in this respect.
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Aggregate demand needs strengthening. One traditional way to do this is to increase government expenditures, probably in public infrastructure projects, on condition these are available. It would be much more helpful, however, to have a great reduction in all kinds of restrictions on private initiatives introduced in the last half a century during the era of the brave new world of the “social and ecological market economy”. The best thing to do now would be temporarily to weaken, if not repeal, various labour, environmental, social, health and other “standards”, because they block rational human activity more than anything else.
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Our historical experience gives us a clear instruction: we always need more of markets and less of government intervention. We also know that government failure is more costly than market failure.

Consistently on the side of reason and freedom, Klaus continues to give fits to the Greens, the Reds, and every other putrid anti-liberty color around the world. This year he assumes the rotating presidency of the EU. Would that our own Presidents had half his wisdom.

I'm not fond of the idea of leaders, in general. Those who need them tend to be the kind of uncritical, passive persons who encourage those who lust for authority, which describes nearly all leaders. But, for Klaus, I'm willing to make an exception. It's the only time I've ever regretted the inclusion of the 'natural born' clause of Article II in the Constitution.

Thank you, Mr. Klaus.

Bailouts In History: The Railroads and J.J. Hill

Transportation bailouts have been tried before in the U.S. and failed miserably.

During the 19th century, few businesses were considered as vital as the railroads. In a developing country that stretched 3,000 miles wide and over 1,000 miles from North to South with no major highways, cost-effective long-haul transportation was essential. Then, as now, many in the Federal Government decided that if it was essential, it was essential the Feds have a hand in it.

Railroad subsidies were common. Land, capital, and much else was on the table for the asking, provided the right palms were greased, of course. The result: lines started but never finished, route selections made on the basis of politics not potential return, bankruptcy, and endemic corruption.

One entrepreneur, aided by his partners, eschewed government subsidies: James Jerome Hill. Beginning in the 1878 Depression with the purchase of the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad (renamed the Great Northern in 1890), Hill built a transcontinental railroad with all private capital. It was worth $725,000 and had 10 miles of track. By 1885 it had grown to a value of $25 million and tied together half the country. Often laying track at the unheard of rate of a mile per day, by 1893 he reached Seattle, prompting the transformation of that small town into a metropolis.

Granted, he had some advantages over businessmen today. While his competitors tried very hard to put him out of business, the legislative and social environment presented only modest barriers. He had no UAW to contend with. Best of all, unlike the majority of corporate executives today, he genuinely knew how to create and run a business. He didn't become a success the Peter Keating way, by flattery, political correctness, and politicking.

During several economic downturns, Hill's businesses stayed afloat, and even turned modest profits — all with no government handouts. Where no markets existed, he created them. Among many innovations, he bought up thousands of acres of timber land and sold them to Frederick Weyerhauser, starting a huge wood and paper business that continues today. He lowered rates 50% below other railroads.

By contrast, his coddled competitors — with subsidized lines through highly populated areas — went belly up right and left.

It's a pity that today's auto executives and politicians have probably never heard of J.J. Hill and wouldn't approve of him if they did. The lessons his life and work provide are the only thing that could save them and us from the destructive decisions now being made in Washington.

[Hat tip: Gods of the Copybook.]