|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jens 'n' Frens
Idle thoughts of a relatively libertarian Republican in Cambridge, MA, and whomever he invites. Mostly political.
"A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures."
-- Daniel Webster
|
|
|
|
|
|
Saturday, September 13, 2003 :::
Shelby Steele wrote a piece belittling Jesse Jackson, but the passage I most liked was more general:The great test of all protest is whether it is truly instructive to the society it challenges. Protest should enlighten society about those problems that its bigotries and ignorance keep it from facing--problems it must grapple with for its health and survival. When protest is truly instructive, it gives society a much greater vision of itself. It doesn't just complain. It says this society is already great (or protest would be a waste of time), and this is how much greater it will be when the problem being protested is solved. Truly instructive protest is exciting and flattering for everyone because it holds out the possibility of personal and social growth. Potential protesters should consider this when they make their plans.
::: posted by Steven at 12:57 PM
(0) comments
Colby Cosh has posted a brief history of Alberta's smoking laws, which I assume is not out of line with the history of these here fine United States. To sum up, as of 1970 one could smoke pretty much anywhere except churches and cinemas.
I find it puzzling that there's no middle ground. Either smoking is allowed, and done, everywhere, or it's forbidden unless you're in your own home with the windows shut and the blinds pulled. I understand that in Europe, it's still more or less impossible to find a non-smoking section. I would think a restaurant owner would be able to clean up by serving plausible food at plausible prices and advertising heavily that the restaurant is smoke-free. Unless they're not allowed to prohibit smoking on their property, which is possible.
::: posted by Steven at 7:10 AM
(0) comments
Friday, September 12, 2003 :::
Ontario's provincial elections are coming up, it seems, and the campaign is getting heated. Dalton McGuinty is the leader of the Liberals; the Conservatives recently released a statement summing him up."Dalton McGuinty," the statement said. "He's an evil reptilian kitten-eater from another planet."
Conservative Leader Ernie Eves blamed the release on a staffer who apparently "had too much coffee this morning ... too much time."
But he refused to retract the statement. [emphasis added]
Naturally, the liberal media took the line out of context and blew it out of proportion. I'm only half-kidding -- if you actually read the press release, you'll find that the charge makes sense in context. It wasn't just thrown into a random statement, it was thrown into a press release complaining about Liberal attacks on the Tories. Rather than whining about the attacks, the staffer chose to respond in kind, to illustrate the silliness.
But what I find most interesting is McGuinty's ambiguous response: "I love kittens, and I like puppies too." Yes, Mr. McGuinty, but in what kind of sauce? Link from Dave Barry.
::: posted by Steven at 6:36 PM
(0) comments
Thoughts on the Palestian problem from FrumThe Palestinians gambled everything on this war. They lost their gamble. Now it is time for them to be cashed out. Israel should invade the West Bank and Gaza, extinguish all Palestinian political authority, round up and detain as many Palestinian leaders as it can catch, put them on trial for war crimes, and reassert its pre-1993 status as the occupying power in all of the West Bank and Gaza. and Krauthammerpeace plan, every road map, every truce is bound to fail until the Palestinians make a historic collective decision to accept half a loaf and build their state within it.What should the United States do now? The editorialists are issuing the usual knee-jerk call for the Bush administration to intensify its efforts in the peace process. What peace process? Intensify efforts with whom?
::: posted by dWj at 4:30 PM
(0) comments
I didn't tell you to visit the September 11th edition of Lileks's Bleat yesterday. This was mostly because I figured I shouldn't have to. One never wants to read, "I am resigned, in advance, to the loss of an American city by a nuclear weapon." But it's probably realistic.
I've been thinking about this $87 billion budgeted over the next year in the war on terrorists. I've been thinking of it as $300 per American -- one of my better habits is to divide any federal budget number by 300 million, or a little bit less. It's not out of line with what I would have expected; in fact, the only real surprise I've had with respect to the Iraqi campaign was the speed with which the city of Baghdad fell. [Correction -- I naively thought we'd find more evidence of WMDs than we have.]
$300 per American is a good indication of general size, but it's not the way to look at it if we're figuring out whether it's worth it. The questions there are more along the lines of how much we're reducing the risk of what, and how much the "what" would cost us in, as they say, blood and treasure. None of these figures can be estimated within an order of magnitude, but they're the sorts of things we should consider. And $87 billion can be justified by a pretty small reduction in the risk of losing downtown Buffalo in the middle of a work-day.
::: posted by Steven at 12:47 PM
(0) comments
Professor Schuck of Yale Law School critiques the majority opinion in Grutter, the affirmative-action case won by Michigan Law School. Link from John Rosenberg.
::: posted by Steven at 12:09 PM
(0) comments
Nick Gillespie, at Hit&Run, writes about the upcoming Republican state convention, and quotes the San Francisco Chronicle: "Conservatives want to win, but they want to win on principle," said Dan Schnur, who was running Republican Peter Ueberroth's campaign until the Orange County businessman dropped out on Tuesday. "McClintock has to convince them he can win. Schwarzenegger has to convince them he has the principles." Well said.
::: posted by Steven at 11:58 AM
(0) comments
British Foreign Minister Jack Straw had some surprisingly candid things to say yesterday:"There isn't any question but that a significant part of the way in which the French political diplomatic class defines itself is against America, and this has been a continuing neurosis amongst the French political class for many decades," Straw was quoted as saying. Damn right, but one doesn't expect to hear it from a top government official.
::: posted by Steven at 11:18 AM
(0) comments
Cubs playoff tickets go on sale on Sunday, September 14, at 8:00 a.m. CDT. I don't quite get how this works, but you can see whether you get what you need from that website.The White Sox are selling tickets today. My MLB standings are moderately up-to-date, but CNN's will be more reliably current.
::: posted by dWj at 10:07 AM
(0) comments
Johnny Cash died last night. If you saw the MTV Video awards (I saw a few pieces), you saw him nominated for best male lead in a video, or something along those lines. Justin Timberlake won that award, and said, essentially, that Cash had been robbed.
Perhaps more surprisingly, John Ritter died of a burst aorta.
::: posted by Steven at 8:14 AM
(0) comments
Thursday, September 11, 2003 :::
Virginia Postrel has a short, interesting piece in today's New York Times.To put it a different way, does every product become a commodity online, driving all prices down so far that they just cover costs? Or can online retailers find ways to make significant sustainable profits? In theory, things could go either way.
Testing the question empirically means doing more than checking the prices listed on Web sites. Just because an online retailer offers a product at a particular price doesn't mean anyone's buying. Researchers need to know how much is actually selling at those prices. And that information is hard to come by.
Enter the Amazon and BN.com ratings. By measuring sales for exactly the same goods at competing sites, the book rankings provide the missing information.
In an article in the June issue of Quantitative Marketing and Economics, Professor Goolsbee and Judith Chevalier, an economist at the Yale School of Management, figured out how to turn the book rankings into sales figures. They then recorded prices and sales for more than 18,000 titles at three points in 2001, when Amazon tested various pricing strategies and BN.com responded. With that information, they examine how price changes at one site affect sales by both that retailer and its competitor. (The paper can be downloaded from http://gsbadg.uchicago.edu/vitae.htm.)
::: posted by Steven at 4:02 PM
(0) comments
As a regular reader of Dave Barry's blog, I've known about this story for several days. I was a bit surprised, though, to hear it mentioned on the radio this morning.[Miami] Herald columnist Dave Barry is famed for his humorous views on life's foibles. Unfortunately for the American Teleservices Association, many readers did not take his Aug. 31 piece as a joke.
Encouraging readers to call the ATA ''to tell them what you think'' about the group's telemarketer members, Barry included the organization's toll-free phone number in his column, titled ''Ask not what telemarketers can do to you.''...
''I feel just terrible, especially if they were eating or anything,'' the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and author said Wednesday. Well said.
::: posted by Steven at 2:51 PM
(0) comments
Lily's picked an apt quote of the day:"I fear that all I have done is awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve."
~ Admiral Yamamoto, December 7, 1941
::: posted by Steven at 2:30 PM
(0) comments
Go visit A Small Victory's Voices: Stories From 9/11 And Beyond. I prefer anger to sadness, but there's time for both.
::: posted by Steven at 12:21 PM
(0) comments
Submitted for your perusal, the transcript of the campaign-finance arguments before the Supreme Court. PDF format. Link from How Appealing.
::: posted by Steven at 12:14 PM
(0) comments
62 years ago today, ground was broken on the Pentagon. 30 years ago today, Salvador Allende was overthrown by Pinochet. And 2 years ago today, President Bush got his gravitas.
::: posted by dWj at 9:32 AM
(0) comments
Wednesday, September 10, 2003 :::
I dropped my mouse, and now it only scrolls horizontally. I still have a trackpad and such, but I'm disappointed.
As long as I'm just wasting space, I'll mention that blogger has recently offered us some new features. My fourth post here expressed a desire to be able to send email to post; we aren't getting that, I don't believe, but we are getting the ability to have our posts sent as email (like Volokhs do).
I'd forgotten it was so far back that I started this thing. My brother seems to have joined on August 29, 2002, which I think is a more appropriate starting milestone.
BTW, does anyone want to suggest changes to our template (i.e. the layout of the page)? I've considered spiffing it up, but have better things to do with my time. Not that the things I actually do with my time are better -- it's just that there are other things I should do which are better.
::: posted by Steven at 5:29 PM
(0) comments
Yahoo! News - Black Hole Strikes Deepest Musical Note Ever HeardAstronomers have detected the deepest note ever generated in the cosmos, a B-flat flying through space like a ripple on an invisible pond. No human will actually hear the note, because it is 57 octaves below the keys in the middle of a piano. I think it's clever of their marketing people to interpret a ripple with a period of millions of years as a sound wave. Don't get me wrong -- I'm not disputing that it qualifies as sound (though it clearly doesn't qualify as "heard"), but I don't think most people, upon seeing a ripple in interstellar gas, would calculate that it's a B-flat. Though Dean probably would.
I'd also like to say that, if you're looking for a name for an album, I think you could pick a title less appealing than "A Cacophonic Symphony of Inaudible Tunes" (for example, you could call it "Gilbert Gottfried Hums the Power Ballads of the Eighties", or "Barbra Streisand's Greatest Hits").
Link from Reason's Hit&Run.
::: posted by Steven at 5:17 PM
(0) comments
CNN reports:The Arabic language news network Al-Jazeera aired what it says is a new videotape of Osama bin Laden and his top deputy today, the eve of the 9/11 anniversary. Bin Laden reportedly praises the hijackers who crashed jetliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field. His top deputy warns "the real battle has not started yet." I'm sure your favorite news source has something about this to read.
::: posted by dWj at 2:37 PM
(0) comments
Rev. Jackson can't bully me, Daley says
Mayor Daley said Tuesday he will not be bullied into accepting the names of African-American candidates for police superintendent suggested by the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Good for him. Link from the Corner.
::: posted by Steven at 11:57 AM
(0) comments
Lily Malcolm draws my attention to an excellent piece by Christopher Hitchens — it gets better as it goes along — with which I'd like to take the following slight exception.There were other reasons to oppose flagification. (Very many of the immediate victims were not American, for example, and most of those murdered and enslaved by Islamic fascists have themselves been Muslims.) In the rest of the world it may mean something different, but in the United States, or at least the parts with which I'm most familiar, the Stars and Stripes represent the principle that an individual should control his own destiny more than they represent a particular geographic region or population (though, to be sure, they aren't entirely distinguishable). Hitchens goes on to say I was glad for similar reasons when the order was announced that “coalition” flags would not be flown in Iraq. And, indeed, it makes sense that we should consider how the flag might be understood elsewhere, but if Iraqis understood it in the same way, liberating Arab Muslims under that flag with no imperialist intentions would have made absolutely perfect sense.As for commemoration, I still want to see that day through rose-colored glasses, not as the day we took our biggest hit but as the day we started to fight back. This is how Hitchens ends his essay (but read the whole thing yourself): If there is anything to mark or commemorate, it is the day when that realm of illusion was dispelled — the date that will one day be acknowledged as the one on which our enemies made their most truly “suicidal” mistake.
::: posted by dWj at 11:10 AM
(0) comments
Accents have advantages: A foreign tongue can be easier to understand in the mouth of a non-native.
People speaking English as a second language find each other just as intelligible as they do native English speakers, US linguists have found. The effect works regardless of the speaker's mother tongue.
It isn't hard to see why a Korean, say, might find another Korean's English easier to follow than an English person's. The two share a phonetic vocabulary lacking some of the vocal effects that render the language alien in a native's mouth. A foreign accent hinders a native but helps a fellow non-native.
But what about speakers with different first languages? One might suspect that only some languages, like Korean and Chinese, or Spanish and Italian, share sounds that help their mutual intelligibility. But that doesn't seem to be so.
Instead, there may be features of the target language that all non-natives omit, suggest Tessa Bent and Ann Bradlow from Northwestern University... I'd like to point out that the picture that accompanies this story adds nothing.
::: posted by Steven at 11:07 AM
(0) comments
Bloom County's Opus Returns To The Funny Pages, Sundays this fall. Link from Jonah Goldberg at the Corner.
::: posted by Steven at 11:05 AM
(0) comments
Jessica won, so if you missed her you'll get another chance. She was rather more Madonna-like than I expected, to be honest.
::: posted by dWj at 9:59 AM
(0) comments
Edward Teller is dead. You know, the H-bomb guy.
::: posted by Steven at 9:11 AM
(0) comments
Tuesday, September 09, 2003 :::
Oh boy!Gov. Rick Perry has called a third special legislative session that is set to begin Monday, his spokeswoman said Tuesday.
The decision follows two special sessions on congressional redistricting during the summer. Neither produced a new redistricting plan as Democrats in the Texas Senate blocked a floor vote on a proposal. Much like the California recall, I like watching this from a distance. I'm sure Beldar will be running with it again soon. The Dallas Morning News requires a semi-onerous registration process, but I'll be keeping tabs on them, too. The Houston Chronicle doesn't require registration.
::: posted by Steven at 5:42 PM
(0) comments
Peter Ueberroth is dropping out of the race for governor of California.
::: posted by Steven at 5:31 PM
(0) comments
There's a lawsuit in Virginia claiming that colleges can't legally enforce policies of rejecting illegal immigrants because -- get this -- it intrudes on Congress's exclusive authority to set immigration policy.
As a great man once said, I'm not making this up.
::: posted by Steven at 4:51 PM
(0) comments
Dave Barry wrote for the Miami Herald what he describes as semi-obit, semi-column for Warren Zevon. He describes how he knew Zevon:One of his closest friends was The Herald's Carl Hiaasen, a fellow twisted mind whom Zevon sought out at a book signing after Hiaasen mentioned him in his book Native Tongue. Through Hiaasen, Zevon became an honorary member of the Rock Bottom Remainders, a band of writers (I'm one) who periodically attempt, without success, to play rock 'n' roll. In 1998, at Hiaasen's urging, we invited Zevon to perform with the band; to our shock, he agreed, and flew to Miami to join us on stage for a performance at the Miami Book Fair.
We did several of his songs, including Poor, Poor Pitiful Me; the hilarious Hula Hula Boys; and the legendary Lawyers, Guns and Money. We also did Werewolves of London, but Zevon insisted that it had to be sung by Stephen King. King happily agreed, belting out a truly frightening version of the song, much to Zevon's delight.
::: posted by Steven at 4:20 PM
(0) comments
How's Sarbanes-Oxley going? Could be better.
::: posted by dWj at 3:59 PM
(0) comments
A high-school associate of Dean and me will be performing as Madonna tonight on Fox between 8:00 and 9:00 (or an hour earlier, Central time).
::: posted by Steven at 3:45 PM
(0) comments
The musician Moby thinks that John Heinz Kerry "has the best chance of beating George Bush". Also in today's Globe, local columnist Brian McGrory doesn't agree, but seems to wish he did.
::: posted by Steven at 3:36 PM
(0) comments
Instapundit links to this: White Racist Endorses Bustamante in California Recall -- 09/08/2003
I have nothing to add.
::: posted by Steven at 3:01 PM
(0) comments
Update: Indiana Gov. Frank O'Bannon remained in critical condition in a drug-induced coma at Northwestern Memorial Hospital this morning. I think the Trib requires registration.Update: Indiana Gov. Frank O'Bannon appears to have suffered brain damage from a massive stroke but his outcome remains uncertain, a hospital spokeswoman said today.
::: posted by dWj at 12:04 PM
(0) comments
The search is underway for a new head of Chicago police, and when the three finalists were announced the first thing that certain people noticed was that none of them is African-American. Apparently 4 of the 23 applicants were African-American, and it's been mentioned that one of them probably would have been one of the three finalists had he not pulled his name very shortly before they were announced.It's possible, of course, that none of 17% of the pool would make it to one of the final three slots because of racism, but other possibilities seem to exist, and seem the way to bet; of the nine-member committee that selected the finalists, four members are black, including the chair. Compelling evidence as that is, it's not enough to get between Jesse Jackson and a racially divisive grievance; he and a number of co-extortionists have formed their own panel to recommend an African-American to be added to the group. A prediction I've heard, that makes sense to me, is that one of the three (probably the one currently serving on an interim basis) will probably be appointed, but that there will probably be a concerted effort to count the racial beans when the position of first deputy is filled shortly thereafter.
::: posted by dWj at 9:40 AM
(0) comments
There's a new California recall poll. It's 55-40 for the recall. Candidates to replace are at:
Bustamante: 30
Schwarzenegger: 25
McClintock: 13
Ueberroth: 5
Huffington: 3
::: posted by Steven at 8:17 AM
(0) comments
Is South Korea deluding itself about North Korea? Yes. Yes, it is.
::: posted by Steven at 7:29 AM
(0) comments
Over on Slate, Dahlia Lithwick and Julia Turner attempt a serious examination of the "Patriot Act". I think of Lithwick as center-left, certainly reasonable; I don't know Turner.Although it passed in Congress almost without dissent in the aftermath of Sept. 11, it's suddenly being revisited, and this time around some of the folks holding opinions have actually read the thing. Some, perhaps. I tend to agree more with this almost-contradiction of their leading statement:Since almost nobody has read the legislation, much of what we think we know about it comes third-hand and spun. Both advocates and opponents are guilty of fear-mongering and distortion in some instances. They're a bit slow about getting to the point, but who am I to complain about that? Link from Juan Non-Volokh, of The Volokhs.
::: posted by Steven at 5:25 AM
(0) comments
Monday, September 08, 2003 :::
How do people feel about telling bad news over email, and how does this differ by generation? I appreciate that one would prefer to tell bad news in person, but where it's not practical to do that for a period of several weeks, I would think I would prefer to know about something by email than not to know about it. The other problem with not telling someone bad news until the right time is that, particularly if one develops a history of this, one might inadvertently send signals, making the person one is trying to protect worry for several days about what is going on, whether there is something going on or not. This would seem to have an effect opposite to that intended.Presumably telephone is better than email; also, presumably, the answer is different if the delay involved is short than if it's longer. Any thoughts?
::: posted by dWj at 2:07 PM
(0) comments
Warren Zevon is dead.
Long live Warren Zevon.
Both links from Postrel.
::: posted by Steven at 10:20 AM
(0) comments
Colby Cosh responds to comment on pain-and-suffering caps. In the course, he makes the following point:Civil law is supposed to confine itself to specifiable recompense to individuals who have lost tangible value by an offence against social or contractual order. But "pain and suffering" awards are, essentially, punitive, sometimes explicitly punitive. You harmed me; pay up. However noble the idea behind these awards, their effect is to turn a civil proceeding into a criminal prosecution. The resulting problems are obvious: we risk creating a legal system wherein double-jeopardy is universal, and wherein criminal issues can be tried in disguise according to the laxer evidentiary standards of civil court. An important point, and well-put. Though a civil trial can't result in jail time, which is why O.J. is free to search for the real killer.
::: posted by Steven at 10:14 AM
(0) comments
Sorry about the delay, but I don't think I ever posted this:
Instapundit found a story about a documentary from inside al-Qaida: Inevitably one thinks of the low life who staff the IRA, but it is a false comparison. The people Sifaoui writes about are on an even more debased cultural and psychological level. By their very nature, their grievances against the world can never be removed, and they are capable of pretty well anything. Sounds like the Earth Liberation Front.
::: posted by Steven at 7:03 AM
(0) comments
Glenn Reynolds likes talking about cool cars, but this amphibious car is cooler than anything I've seen him discuss. Link from Dave Barry.
::: posted by Steven at 6:59 AM
(0) comments
As I've said before, I think Bush could have a lot of fun if the Dems nominated John Heinz Kerry. Bob Novak writes of his appearance on "Meet the Press":Moderator Tim Russert ended the hour-long program with the last blast from his massive research. Kerry was quoted by Vogue magazine last March as talking about George W. Bush's "lack of knowledge," and adding this: "He was two years behind me at Yale, and I knew him, and he's still the same guy."... But when Russert twice asked Kerry just what he meant, he shrugged off these questions ("I believe that President Bush is a very likable fellow.").
The conclusion widely drawn from that exchange is that Kerry never knew Bush at Yale and that he simply fibbed to Vogue's interviewer in trying to denigrate the president. In fact, there is an eyewitness: George W. Bush. He tells aides he certainly did not know John Kerry at Yale. Kerry... looks like a trickster running for president. He gives other examples, too.
New Hampshire's Democrats are still leaning toward Howard Dean over him. I can't imagine why.
::: posted by Steven at 4:01 AM
(0) comments
Sunday, September 07, 2003 :::
I hate to admit it, but part of me hopes that McCain-Feingold gets upheld, with no majority opinions. Mitch McConnell is doing the right thing, but if he loses, it'll be good for the Republican party, if not the first amendment.
That's a New York Times link, so registration and skepticism may be required. I believe I got it from the Kitchen Cabinet. If you stopped reading because they stopped writing, well, they've started writing again.
If you wonder why I flag NYT articles for skepticism, and Jayson Blair isn't enough for you, check out the latest NRO column on the NYT and guns.
::: posted by Steven at 10:50 PM
(0) comments
The substantial and stylish Virginia Postrel was on Fox News Channel this afternoon promoting her book, "The Substance of Style". I was reminded of something while watching: anti-globalization types complain that big companies like Wal-Mart and Starbucks are forces for homogenization. Ignoring the fact that good local shops still exist, consider what you see when you go into one of the stores. I went to Walgreen's a few weeks ago to buy shampoo, and was overwhelmed by the array of options. In the parts of Europe I've seen -- and, I've been told, in many parts that I haven't -- there aren't nearly as many different options, especially for those with lower incomes.
Frankly, I could have done with that lack of options regarding shampoo. In general, though, I think it's good that we are wealthy enough to have a variety of options.
::: posted by Steven at 10:38 PM
(0) comments
The President's speech; link from the Corner.
::: posted by Steven at 10:28 PM
(0) comments
|
|
|
|
