Don't Let It Go

…or at least get a lot of good publicity trying.

This year will be the 4th annual Shorty Awards, which their website describes as “Honoring the Best Producers of Short Content on Social Media.” The awards seem to be based entirely upon votes in the form of Tweets, and anyone with an active Twitter account (an account that predated the beginning of the voting period, January 3) can vote. If you would like to help the Ayn Rand Bot (you can read more about the Bot here) stay near the top of the list in the #author category (as of this writing, it’s at #5), go to this page for more details and instructions on how to vote.

Thanks for your help! Because each person can vote only once, any help you can provide in spreading the word to other Twitter users is also greatly appreciated.

Those who are on Twitter know about the games people often play there. For example, yesterday people were playing one called “Less Ambitious Book Titles,” in which you are asked to make a variation on a book title that sounds less ambitious than the original and follow it with the tag, #LessAmbitiousBookTitles. One player offered, for example, “Atlas Took It” instead of “Atlas Shrugged.”

Another game I saw yesterday was called “Socialism In Eight Words,” and I couldn’t resist joining in. Here’s what I came up with:

Because your life’s work belongs to the state.

Who needs to work, when you can mooch?

Slaves as far as the eye can see.

Down the slippery slope from a mixed economy.

Trying desperately to pretend that stealing is good.

Your mind and body belong to the state.

“The common good,” taken to its logical conclusion.

And, my favorite (which I thought of second):

Sharing your toys was just a warm up.

One person on Twitter, and another on Facebook, thought that Rand described Socialism in eight words better than anyone:

Hatred of the good for being the good.

I wouldn’t be surprised if that quotation was the inspiration for the game in the first place…

The National Transportation Safety Board today said it “recommends” that states outlaw all non-emergency phone calls and texts by all operators of vehicles on the road.

We know how this goes. First it’s just a “recommendation.” Next, it becomes a string attached to federal funding that the states can’t afford to do without. Or maybe Congress — or perhaps even a regulatory agency without even a peep from Congress — goes ahead and promulgates the ban under the pretense that calling while driving and texting “affects” interstate commerce. After all, if your refraining from purchasing health insurance affects interstate commerce (as many smart appeals court judges apparently believe), then surely phoning and texting while driving does.

In a proper society we’d have private roads, with the owners of those roads deciding what rules to impose. And we’d have insurance company policies and tort liability rules geared to punish those whose calling and texting behavior caused accidents. Instead, today we have the increasingly interventionist nanny state giving us a “one size fits all” approach.

Thoughts?