Dan Cole's Dubious Memorabilia

Daniel Cole's Publications

 I recently learned that my old friend and co-author, John Clark, died in late January from COVID-related complications that he fought for over a year.  John was a super-interesting and smart guy. In 1990, he and his dissertation supervisor, Aaron Wildavsky, co-authored a terrific book, "The Moral Collapse of Communism: Poland as a Cautionary Tale." I read that book several months before I met John, who moved from Berkeley to take up a research position at the Hudson Institute, which was then headquartered in Indy. Somehow, he found out that I was working on a book about the failure of environmental protection under communism in Poland, and he called me one day. I failed to recognize his name, so when he told me about his research interests, I recommended he read his own book. We became fast friends (as did our spouses), and started working on projects together, most notably a conference that led to a jointly edited book, "Environmental Protection in Transition: Economic

I've been quite content with my Mytek Brooklyn+ Digital-to-Analogue Converter. But I had read so many posts on audiophile websites praising a new DAC by a little-known Chinese company, Musetech (formerly LKS Audio), that I thought I might give it a try. Users referred to it as an "end-game" DAC, i.e., a piece of equipment they never expected to be surpassed in quality. Some even said that they had sold off $15K DACs in favor of Musetech's $3.3K MH-DA005. I'm always a bit suspicious of such glowing reviews, especially in the absence of reviews from well-respected audio journalists. In this case, however, I read so much enthusiasm, from several different quarters, that I decided it was worth the risk.  Deciding to purchase the Musetech 005 turned out to be a lot easier than actually buying one. Musetech has no official presence in the US, and the few dealers who carry Musetech-LKS products have long been out of stock. I didn't want to order it from China, so I&#

For a long time now, academic institutions - especially Tier 1 Research Universities - have acknowledged (or paid lip-service to) the importance of interdisciplinary scholarship. Realizing that the theories, methods, and insights of no single academic discipline can provide more than a partial explanation or solution to any complex social or combined social-ecological problem, they have sought to diminish the hard boundaries that traditionally have prevented scholars from (a) conducting cross-disciplinary scholarship and (b) co-producing such scholarship with scholars from other disciplines. However, as Elinor Ostrom, Amy Poteete and Marco Janssen explained in their 2010 book, Working Together , efforts to support interdisciplinary research have run up against structural impediments that still exist and may be ineradicable.  First and foremost, academics can be tenured in only one discipline. In order to obtain tenure, they must publish articles that can be understood by their intra-di

Below are a few paragraphs I recently wrote for a book chapter, explaining why the concept of natural law is both rhetorically attractive and pernicious. They will likely be cut from the chapter because of space limitations. So, I thought I would post them here (for possible use later): John Locke first argued that individual liberty and property are rights under "natural law." Each person owns herself, and because each person requires sustenance to survive, so her acquisitions must become her inviolable "property" (so long as she doesn't claim too much and leaves "as good and enough" for others to claim). Some liberal thinkers, especially self-described libertarians, continue to embrace Lockean “natural law” on behalf of individuals and their property. But they are not the only theorists that claim the mantle of "natural law" for their preferred political values and policies.  Many progressive and conservative scholars also subscribe to theo

 The Thorens turntable on the left was not might, and I don't recognize the other one. The rest of the equipment is my own, including a Yamaha A600 integrated amp, Soundcraftsman equalizer, and a brand new (at the time) Pioneer RT-707 reel-to-reel deck.

 I signed up for a subscription for Vance AI, an online photo restoration software app that uses artificial intelligence to edit old pics. Here is the result of the first experiment. The band Rock Service (Kevin Kelly, Rock Joseph, John Osmon, and myself) at a gig on July 4, 1976 (just before I moved to LA for college). The results are, I think, quite good (I wasn't expecting miracles).                                        Before                                        After

 "Tweaks" are all the rage among audiophiles, looking to improve a system's performance without replacing pricey components. Ranging from tens of dollars to tens of thousands of dollars, tweaks include (among many others): sorbothane isolators and platforms placed beneath components to reduce mechanical vibrations; room treatments; and cable risers designed to reduce static interference from cables resting on carpeted floors (though decent, double-cased speaker should be immune to any static interference in the first place). Based on advice from a column written by eminent audio guru, Herb Reichert, I just replaced the thin, cloth mat that came with my Pioneer PLX-1000 turntable with a soft rubber mat made for the Technics 1200 series of turntables, which are nearly identical to the Pioneer, but twice the price. The cost of the mat was $30 from Amazon. Of all the tweaks I've tried (it's not a long list), it has provided by far the greatest bang for the buck. Herb

 My Lyngdorf TDAI-1120 is now paired with the Philharmonic BRM speakers in the bedroom. My old Snell Jii speakers have been moved to the living room, where they are paired with the Pioneer Elite SX-S30 A/V tuner and amplifier. Having the larger speakers in the living room makes sense, but the Lyngdorf/Philharmonic pairing is magical, with special credit to Lyngdorf's RoomPerfect software.

 After a three month or so hiatus, while my drum teacher got settled into his new job as an endowed professor and head of the jazz program at UMKC, we got back together this past week, with two lessons in seven days. During the hiatus, my practicing trailed off because, I guess, I really need the pressure of upcoming lessons to keep my nose to the grindstone. Since the first lesson back, I've practiced every day for at least an hour (almost nothing for those with grand ambitions, but it's a good start for me). Meanwhile, group practices have become more regular. I have two groups - a trio that meets weekly and a quartet that meets every other week. Having regular lessons and group practice sessions is a big deal for me. It really helps me to improve at a fairly consistent rate (albeit with plateaus between periods of clear improvement). 

I'm g lad to have Izabela with me after a month in Poland looking after her mom. Today, I celebrated by buying three used LPs (actually, five since two are double-albums) in really fine condition: CSN&Y, "Four Way Street," Todd Rundgren, "Back to the Bars;" and Tears for Fears, "Songs from the Big Chair." I'm now only buying vinyl that is from analogue recordings (mostly pre-1990s). It took a while, but I finally figured out that buying analogue pressings of digital recordings makes little, if any, sense.

 I've been waiting for this LP to arrive for months. Bravo, the great Bobby Watson.

The Lyngdorf TDAI-1120 integrated amplifier has replaced the Peachtree Decco 125SKY in my bedroom audio system. It's about twice the money of the (now discontinued) Peachtree, but it's at least twice as good. For one thing, it has an HDMI ARC output, so it serves more effectively as a two-channel A/V system. Although it has less power than the Peachtree, its Class D amplifier is a lot better. I can hear a lot more detail out of my old Snell Jii speakers. It's in-house app is much better than the Muzo app on which the Peachtree depends. And, best of all, it comes with Lyngdorf's proprietary Room Perfect system to tailor the sound to the dynamics of the room. Without Room Perfect, it's still a better amp than the Peachtree. With Room Perfect, it's miles ahead. My Snells have never sounded so good. Special thanks to Lyngdorf dealer Jeff Stake Hifi for the great service.

 I'm currently in my second year of a three-year phased retirement from IU. After this semester, I will have one more course to teach in the 2022-23 academic year. I don't know whether the inclination is natural or not, but I've already begun reflecting on my career, the ups, the downs, the in-betweens. My reflections are not intentionally structured or organized. This will not be a chronological narrative; and it certainly will not be complete. It is not an exercise in nostalgia - I am not normally a nostalgic person, though I am sentimental. In other words, I care about the people and places currently and formerly in my life, but I have no desire to return to some earlier time in the mistaken belief that life was better then. Finally, I don't presuppose that anyone outside of my family will find any part of this, let alone the whole thing, interesting or valuable either in itself or as a socio-historical reference. For the most part, I'm writing this for myself an

One of the all-time great jazz-funk organ masters.

Joe Biden is not a "moderate" Democrat. He's always been among the more progressive members of that party. These days, however, he is flanked on the left by a growing group of radicals who refer to themselves as "progressives." Representatives Tlaib, Bush, Bowman and Ocasio-Cortez are all members of the Democratic Socialist Party of America. That party's platform calls for central planning of the entire US economy, which, if history is any guide, would make every American a lot poorer, and less free. It is not progressivism as defined by scholars or politicians such as John Dewey, John R. Commons, and Robert LaFollette. Nor is it Joe Biden's progressivism or Barack Obama's progressivism or Hillary Clinton's progressivism. It is equally a mistake to refer to those politicians and scholars as "moderate" Democrats, a term that better describes Bill Clinton and his "New Democrats" (similar to Tony Blair and the "New Labourite

 A conference under that title just finished. A few papers were commissioned focusing on, respectively, the EU, the UK, and the US. My old friend Jurek Jendroska and two authors presented a paper on the EU's "Green New Deal." Richard McCrory (UCL) presented his paper on the UK's new Office of Environmental Protection. And I presented a paper explaining why the nature of US policymaking by Executive Order, which has become the norm in this century, prevents the US from making credible commitments to its international partners on issues such as climate change. Those papers, and others, can be freely accessed here .

 I haven't enjoyed teaching as much as I am now for the past several years. I think its party a function of the course and the readings - it's Lin Ostrom's Seminar in Institutional Analysis and Development, which I first taught the semester after Lin passed away, and last taught it in 2015, before the Ostrom Workshop was taken in a new direction (from which it is now recovering). It helps that I know the materials quite well, but that's also true of other courses I teach but no longer enjoy. I think it also has something to do with the fact that I'm more relaxed knowing that I'm halfway into retirement. It's not that I'm working any less hard on class preps; I just feel less pressure. Mainly, though, it's just more fun to teach because of the mix of PhD students, Visiting Scholars and faculty members participating in the seminar. It feels less like teaching and more like discussion. 

Izabela left today on her regular fall trip to Poland (a little earlier than usual this year) to visit her mother. She'll be there for a month. I'd like to say that I've gotten used to her being away for a month twice a year. But it would be more accurate to say, paraphrasing Thomas Mann, that I've gotten used to not getting used to it. 

Rauch hones in on the major threats to liberal democracy stemming from political threats to conceptions of fact and truth on which liberal democracy depends, from both the right (commentators, trolls, bots spewing falsehoods that go viral in an instant) and left (political correctness taken too far chills rational discussion). He offers hope that classical liberal notions of fact and truth may yet prevail, pointing to websites like Wikipedia that manage, thanks to an army of editors, fact-based despite the best efforts of trolls. But have we already lost our "herd immunity" to dangerous bullshit?  Rauch makes one very practical suggestion in which I wholeheartedly concur. Next to, or in place of, the "Like" button on FB and Twitter, there should be "True" and "False" buttons.

 

Granted, it didn't involve any soldering. As noted in an earlier post about a new (used) pair of tweeters I bought on Ebay, the original tweeters on my 1980s Snell Jii speakers had gotten tired-sounding. If I had been smart, I would have done a Google search about that problem before buying the new tweeters, but when they arrived, they were a bit loud compared to the Snell's woofers. I had anticipate that they might, given that their sensitivity is 92dbs, compared to the woofers' 90dbs. So, either I was going to have to add a resistor to each of the new tweeters or try a different fix. That's when it finally occurred to me that there might be some way of repairing the old speakers. I learned from some online audio discussions that the problem I was having with the original Snell tweeters could be fixed, and I found several recommendations on how to go about doing it. Apparently, the cause of the problem is that the sealant on the old tweeters had become dry and brittle,

My preference for solid state over tubes is not conclusive. I can imagine buying a tube (or hybrid) amp in the future, but I consider it unlikely for a couple reasons. First, the traditional sound-quality disadvantages of solid state (especially, perceived lack of warmth) have all but disappeared, while its traditional advantages of lower distortion, lower noise, and greater clarity have not. To be fair, tube and hybrid amps, especially those that cost over $3000 or so, have greater transparency, lower noise floors, and less distortion than those of the past. Still, there's no question that they remain noisier and higher in distortion than solid state, at least up to price points beyond my budget constraint. Those who tout the ability of tube amps to cast a wide and taller sound stage, separate and isolate instruments in the mix, etc., may be correct, but many of those advantages are, in fact, consequences of distortion. The tubes are, in effect, creating artifacts out of the origi

I've finally deleted (not just disabled) my FB account. For a long time, I've been staying on just to remain in touch with old friends, with whom I'd reconnected on the platform (it's greatest virtue). But I grew so sick and tired of the posturing, the virtue-signaling, gang-style rivalries, and clubbiness. And that's just my own  posts! 😁  ( OK, maybe I felt the same about others' posts as well.) As for the evilness of FB's management, that didn't factor much into my decision. After all, I still buy a lot of stuff from Amazon.  Having abandoned FB, I've decided to resuscitate this blog and repository page, in order to have an alternative venue on which to signal my dwindling intellectual capacity and lack of virtue.

Actually, the first class of the Ostrom Seminar was last week, but I was unable to be there. My flight home from a wedding on the East Coast was canceled because of the remnants of Hurricane Henri. Fortunately, I had enough advance notice to get a colleague to substitute. In my view, it was probably an upgrade for the students. In any case, it's my turn today. My first class session of my 34th year of teaching, all but the first four years at IU. By the end of this school year, I will have completed 10 years here in Bloomington, after 20 years at the IU-McKinney School of Law in Indianapolis.    Today's topic: An Introduction to Different Schools of Public Choice and the Ostroms' Polycentric Turn

Today, the new Texas anti-abortion law went into effect. The law bans all abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy (at time at which women might not yet know they are pregnant), without exception for cases of rape or incest. The law creates liability on the part of anyone involved in any way with facilitating the abortion, except the woman herself. This conceivably could include an Uber driver, who transports the woman to the clinic, regardless of whether or not the driver has any knowledge of the woman's purpose for going to the clinic. The law is not criminally or civilly enforceable by state officials; but any private person, within or outside the jurisdiction of Texas, can bring suit against clinic staff, transporters and others who deemed to be involved in the abortion (but, again, not the woman seeking the abortion) for up to $10,000 in damages.  Here are a few interesting legal/constitutional aspects of the new Texas anti-abortion statute: 1. Apparently, the Texas legisla

 In Chapter 5 of his book, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2017), Yuval N. Harari treats all modern -isms (Communism, Conservatism, as types of religions, defined as: " anything that  confers super-human legitimacy on human social structures. It legitimizes human norms and values by arguing that they reflect super-human laws. Religion asserts that we humans are subject to a system of moral laws that we did not invent and that we cannot change.... Other religions, from Buddhism and Taoism to Nazism, Communism and Liberalism, argue that the super-human laws are natural laws and not the creation of this or that god. Of course, each believes in a different set of natural laws discovered by different seers and prophets, from Buddha and Lao Tze to Hitler and Lenin."  He might (or might not) be right about the others, but what he writes is decidedly untrue of small-l liberalism. Liberalism emerged, with science, from the Enlightenment, as a challenge to the cruelties of impo