Sunday
All good cretins go to heaven
1) On Thursday, I was getting lunch at a small pizza place. While sitting there, two men came in to pitch their services to the pizza place. These two men wore matching uniforms which included hats labeled with the words "Table Shox," and they were carrying four bulky looking tool kits. Their pitch was that they would level all the tables in the restaurant such that they would never be wobbly again (this involved putting small springs at the ends of each of the legs in order to make it (the table) self-leveling); they would do one table for free as a demonstration, and then it would only cost $120 for them to do the rest of the tables.
I found this utterly mind-boggling for the following reason: I cannot imagine any diner who might be considering this restaurant for their eating options (as opposed to a more upscale establishment, where even the most minor problem with the dining experience may rankle) weighing the wobbliness of the tables at all (consciously or otherwise) in deciding whether to eat there. Admittedly $120 is not a particularly large investment. However, since the expected return on investment is, according to me, zero, I don't get how the Table Shox guys are expecting to make a sale here. But perhaps I'm just insufficiently imaginative about diners' calculations, or wrong to expect the management will make an ROI calculation at all.
2) One of my earliest posts, over a year ago (that post is terribly formatted and I no longer agree with all the claims I made in it), lamented the tendency (primarily exhibited in the United States by Bush-supporters) to call one's political opponents "traitors." I further noted that this should only be done if you think that person being so described should be executed, or at least put in prison for a very long time. I was hoping this would have the effect of leading to fewer accusations of traitor-hood, but the other consistent response is to call for your political opponents' deaths. Today, I learned from Glenn Greenwald that Michael Reagan had, back in December, chosen the second option. Reagan responded to Howard Dean's, "[The] idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong," with, "Howard Dean should be arrested and hung for treason or put in a hole until the end of the Iraq war!"
3)Kiss of Death? Really? I saw that with you in 1995, and if I recall correctly it was mostly made up of shots of Samuel L. Jackson wiping his eye with a handkerchief over and over again.
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I found this utterly mind-boggling for the following reason: I cannot imagine any diner who might be considering this restaurant for their eating options (as opposed to a more upscale establishment, where even the most minor problem with the dining experience may rankle) weighing the wobbliness of the tables at all (consciously or otherwise) in deciding whether to eat there. Admittedly $120 is not a particularly large investment. However, since the expected return on investment is, according to me, zero, I don't get how the Table Shox guys are expecting to make a sale here. But perhaps I'm just insufficiently imaginative about diners' calculations, or wrong to expect the management will make an ROI calculation at all.
2) One of my earliest posts, over a year ago (that post is terribly formatted and I no longer agree with all the claims I made in it), lamented the tendency (primarily exhibited in the United States by Bush-supporters) to call one's political opponents "traitors." I further noted that this should only be done if you think that person being so described should be executed, or at least put in prison for a very long time. I was hoping this would have the effect of leading to fewer accusations of traitor-hood, but the other consistent response is to call for your political opponents' deaths. Today, I learned from Glenn Greenwald that Michael Reagan had, back in December, chosen the second option. Reagan responded to Howard Dean's, "[The] idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong," with, "Howard Dean should be arrested and hung for treason or put in a hole until the end of the Iraq war!"
3)Kiss of Death? Really? I saw that with you in 1995, and if I recall correctly it was mostly made up of shots of Samuel L. Jackson wiping his eye with a handkerchief over and over again.
As any maven would tell you
|Friday
At a minute or two 'til two
Apparently I'm way behind in keeping track of the news in sports, because I hadn't heard about the person personifying (Yes, I wrote "person personifying". It's not so bad, in an article I was reading yesterday someone wrote "explanations explain.") the Stanford tree losing her mascot-ship. But my roommate noticed an article mentioing it in this week's issue of Sports Illustrated. I don't have anything to add to the story, except to say that I've known that girl since about 1998, since she was a year behind me in High School.
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So how does the difference principle apply?
I noted it in comments at another blog yesterday, but since it's so obviously relevant to this United Arab Emirates port purchase, I link you to a John Holbo classic, Poetic Justice as Fairness.
Update: Just wanted to note that I posted this about five hours before Belle did, but I guess seeing as the author of the original piece is her husband she might have some priority claim to the link.
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Update: Just wanted to note that I posted this about five hours before Belle did, but I guess seeing as the author of the original piece is her husband she might have some priority claim to the link.
Sunday
I will say good day to you sir
I'm going to go see the Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada in either five or eight hours, at which point this post will expand to include some thoughts on it. Until then, of the critics at the link, the only ones whose opinion I tend to trust (Tobias and Dargis), both like it. Also in its favor, no one whom I trust at all dislikes it.
If you want something to read for now, I recommend scrolling back through the archibe of these well-written musings by a Northeasterner displaced to Mississippi (previously, Japan). Here's the author of that blog being mentioned in one of Matt Yglesias's earlier posts. That makes him only a step or two away from being a blog celebrity, right?
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If you want something to read for now, I recommend scrolling back through the archibe of these well-written musings by a Northeasterner displaced to Mississippi (previously, Japan). Here's the author of that blog being mentioned in one of Matt Yglesias's earlier posts. That makes him only a step or two away from being a blog celebrity, right?
Friday
Admission against interest
I think of this as being an ogged-esque post, in that it reveals something that's going to not cast me in the most positive light, and has to do with gender relations (one example of the kind of posts I'm thinking of, though the archive there is just full of them). Though he probably wouldn't have bothered noting that he knew it would make him look bad, being a fan of pith.
I haven't seen Brokeback Mountain yet, though I believe I'll enjoy it, having heard pretty much exclusively postive things about the film. But I'm not willing to go see the film with exclusively male friends. In fact, it's worse than that. I don't think I'd see it with a large group of guys and a girl or two. Even seeing it alone might be problematic, though not as much so. Really, the only way I'm sure I'd be happy to go see it is with a girl (or woman), and not in a group. Yes, I am this insecure about certain things.
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I haven't seen Brokeback Mountain yet, though I believe I'll enjoy it, having heard pretty much exclusively postive things about the film. But I'm not willing to go see the film with exclusively male friends. In fact, it's worse than that. I don't think I'd see it with a large group of guys and a girl or two. Even seeing it alone might be problematic, though not as much so. Really, the only way I'm sure I'd be happy to go see it is with a girl (or woman), and not in a group. Yes, I am this insecure about certain things.
Thursday
Assignments
I'm frequently unsure about how to write my blog posts, because my (tiny) readership is very heterogeneous in its reading habits, and it's always important to mind who you're writing for. That is, a couple of readers are inveterate political-blog readers, and won't gain anything by me just pointing out other blog posts (or news articles which have already generated other blog posts) which I think are valuable in terms of staying informed, because they already saw them just about at the same time I did. But, my understanding is that some of you (mostly people who know me personally) don't read other political-blogs (I hyphenated "political-blogs" above because I was worried the sentence could be read as describing the readers, rather than the blogs, as political. I have no such worry in the sentence this parenthetical is appended to, but probably should still hyphenate for consistency), and I feel like I should point out important things for them to read. I don't know how to resolve this generally, but I'm going to just list a couple of posts that the less political-blog inclined of you should read, let's see how much ground I can cover:
A City on A Hill: Hilzoy posts on the release of new photos of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. One very unsettling photo is part of the linked post. I wish I'd never had reason to learn to spell "Abu Ghraib".
Selling Healthcare: Kevin Drum ponders why anyone would find a Health Saving Account more appealing as a political matter, temporarily leaving aside their failings as policy.
Mystery Waste: Matt Yglesias riffs on Bruce Willis explaining his political views to make some important points about misconceptions of federal spending. The interview with Willis isn't bad in general, but I also used to think he had an uncanny instinct for role selection, (I actually still think this is true for the period between Die Hard and The Jackal, inclusive at the start of the range and exclusive at the end, despite at least two of the films he was in in that period being notable box-office disasters) so what do I know?
Wage Wedge: Sam Rosenfeld discusses both policy and political issues involving the minimum wage, with lots of valuable links if you're interested. The links are actually there whether or not you're interested.
A Political Framework For Security Discourse: Michael O'Hare says smart things about how Democrats should think about, and talk about, national security. The letters "N-S-A" don't appear in that order anywhere in the piece but it's very useful for thinking about issues involving their illegal spying on Americans as well. See especially the part about Patrick Henry, it's excellent rhetoric.
Civil War Scenarios: Like the one above it, the title of this post pretty much tells you what to expect in it. In response to a terribly stupid treatment for a new TV show about a second U.S Civil War, Rob Farley suggests two more interesting scenarios. In the film version of the post, Rob will be most likely be played by Chris Walken.
That's all I got, hope those of you who hadn't seen these before got something out of them.
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A City on A Hill: Hilzoy posts on the release of new photos of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. One very unsettling photo is part of the linked post. I wish I'd never had reason to learn to spell "Abu Ghraib".
Selling Healthcare: Kevin Drum ponders why anyone would find a Health Saving Account more appealing as a political matter, temporarily leaving aside their failings as policy.
Mystery Waste: Matt Yglesias riffs on Bruce Willis explaining his political views to make some important points about misconceptions of federal spending. The interview with Willis isn't bad in general, but I also used to think he had an uncanny instinct for role selection, (I actually still think this is true for the period between Die Hard and The Jackal, inclusive at the start of the range and exclusive at the end, despite at least two of the films he was in in that period being notable box-office disasters) so what do I know?
Wage Wedge: Sam Rosenfeld discusses both policy and political issues involving the minimum wage, with lots of valuable links if you're interested. The links are actually there whether or not you're interested.
A Political Framework For Security Discourse: Michael O'Hare says smart things about how Democrats should think about, and talk about, national security. The letters "N-S-A" don't appear in that order anywhere in the piece but it's very useful for thinking about issues involving their illegal spying on Americans as well. See especially the part about Patrick Henry, it's excellent rhetoric.
Civil War Scenarios: Like the one above it, the title of this post pretty much tells you what to expect in it. In response to a terribly stupid treatment for a new TV show about a second U.S Civil War, Rob Farley suggests two more interesting scenarios. In the film version of the post, Rob will be most likely be played by Chris Walken.
That's all I got, hope those of you who hadn't seen these before got something out of them.
Tuesday
Magic words
Law students, lawyers, and other people who wisely spend their time reading judicial opinions notice that most dissents end with the phrase, "I respectfully dissent." However, I've recently noticed that this is not the case for all dissents. Some simply say, "I dissent." I've been wondering a) if this is intentional (the Judge or Justice means to note their lack of respect) b) if the content of these dissents is different from dissents which do include the word "respectfully," c) whether or not dissents which fail to include the word "respectfully" are less predictive of future doctrinal paths then dissents which do include the word. While I started thinking about this as something amusing, I'm now thinking that there might be a paper topic here, so any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. I of course have not done a preemption check, so I'd even appreciate the thought "You're obviously not familiar with the literature in this area, get a clue." Also, I'll add cites to two "disrespectful dissents" later today, I don't have my books handy right now.
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A Trite Observation
After two data points, I have concluded that if I watch a great movie every night, I will be in a much better mood every day. Actually, I should wait until I wake up tomorrow to see if rewatching 12 Angry Men tonight does as much good for my disposition as rewatching Network did last night. Sorry, I normally try to avoid these diary-type entries.
Update: Yes, I did wake up in a good mood, have been in one generally all day, and I've been more optimistic about the possibilities for the law than general.
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Update: Yes, I did wake up in a good mood, have been in one generally all day, and I've been more optimistic about the possibilities for the law than general.
Monday
Shorter Fish: Torquemada was right
This just in: Law Professor Stanley Fish thinks that I would be a better person if I was willing to kill him for his repugnant moral beliefs. The preceding was a 100% fair reading of his Op-Ed in today's yesterday's (I realized after looking at a hard copy of today's) N.Y. Times, and I'll explain why if anyone disagrees.
(Hat Tip: DeLong)
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(Hat Tip: DeLong)
Game, Book, Film (not in that order)
Since a search of this blog's archive indicates that it's never been mentioned, and I re-watched it last night, let me note that Network is one of the twenty best films ever made. Twenty is a rather arbitrary number which is being used because I don't want to actually sit here and figure out my all-time rankings, and I also can't imagine being able to come up with of nineteen movies I think are better. I used to be under the impression that its depiction of the "Mao Tse Tung Hour" was strongly prophetic of current trends in "reality television", but I've changed my mind recently; the differences between the two are larger than I'd previously realized. I remain a conscientious objector, with very few exceptions, from the practice of actually watching reality television.
I really recommend, especially in light of the Presidential birthday which occurred this weekend, Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation. I described it in comments on another blog as, "... basically a long essay on Lincoln/Booth, followed by two shorter essays on Garfield/Guiteau and McKinley/Czolgosz to pad it out to book length. Not that the padding isn't good reading, but it seemed clear to me that the motivation for writing the book is her interest in Lincoln far more than it is anything else." Bruce Handy's review of it from the N.Y. Times Sunday Book Review is pretty good, though I have two issues with it. First of all, while the book contains a good deal of (quite deserved) criticism of the current President, I don't see what the crack about Bush taking too many vacations adds to the review. Second, and more importantly, towards the end of the review Handy claims that the book is trying to make a serious point about the meaning of Presidential assassinations, but fails to make it. Maybe Handy wishes the book had done this, but I just didn't see anything in the text that suggested this was part of the book's project.
The last two times it has occurred, my team, which is fairly new to the game, has won the Big Quiz Thing. Since we're missing one of our regulars, I'm not totally optimistic about a three-peat1 (also we got lucky last time with a number of questions being in areas about which we were able to make good guesses, no real reason to expect that to happen again), but it's a really good time and anyone who is in NYC and wants to take a shot at the reigning champs should show up at 8:00 tonight, or earlier if you want a seat.
1 - I purposefully do not credit Pat Riley for my use of this term.
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I really recommend, especially in light of the Presidential birthday which occurred this weekend, Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation. I described it in comments on another blog as, "... basically a long essay on Lincoln/Booth, followed by two shorter essays on Garfield/Guiteau and McKinley/Czolgosz to pad it out to book length. Not that the padding isn't good reading, but it seemed clear to me that the motivation for writing the book is her interest in Lincoln far more than it is anything else." Bruce Handy's review of it from the N.Y. Times Sunday Book Review is pretty good, though I have two issues with it. First of all, while the book contains a good deal of (quite deserved) criticism of the current President, I don't see what the crack about Bush taking too many vacations adds to the review. Second, and more importantly, towards the end of the review Handy claims that the book is trying to make a serious point about the meaning of Presidential assassinations, but fails to make it. Maybe Handy wishes the book had done this, but I just didn't see anything in the text that suggested this was part of the book's project.
The last two times it has occurred, my team, which is fairly new to the game, has won the Big Quiz Thing. Since we're missing one of our regulars, I'm not totally optimistic about a three-peat
1 - I purposefully do not credit Pat Riley for my use of this term.
Saturday
Eat at Sal's
I really like the trailer for Inside Man. I actually quite like trailers that start with one of the characters looking directly into the camera and seeming to talk to the audience. For instance, I still remember (because I was such a fan of) the teaser for Face/off. Actually, I thought there was a version which was only the first half of the one at the link, not sure if that's right or if I'm mis-remembering a trailer I thought had made such an impression.
However, it's very hard to detect Inside Man's director's hand at work in the preview. This could just be because previews aren't usually assembled by the director, or it could be that Spike Lee's touch isn't as obvious as usual in what will be the first action/suspense film of his career. I haven't seen anything he's does since the excellent 25th Hour; maybe his style is changing for all I know.
On a final Spike Lee related note, I renew my old lament: Why are the Knicks so bad?
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However, it's very hard to detect Inside Man's director's hand at work in the preview. This could just be because previews aren't usually assembled by the director, or it could be that Spike Lee's touch isn't as obvious as usual in what will be the first action/suspense film of his career. I haven't seen anything he's does since the excellent 25th Hour; maybe his style is changing for all I know.
On a final Spike Lee related note, I renew my old lament: Why are the Knicks so bad?
Thursday
Rhetorical choices
Given the building's iconic status, it is easy to see why America-haters would rejoice at seeing it fall — as some rejoiced when the Twin Towers in New York collapsed.Not that there's anything inaccurate about that sentence in a narrow sense, because the people being described (Osama Bin Laden, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and whomever they would recruit for their plan to fly a plane into the U.S. Bank (f/k/a Library) Tower in L.A). pretty certainly do hate America, but it is a little strange to see it in a news article. I suppose the problematic thing about it is that some conservatives use the phrase "America-hater" more broadly than to describe people who are avowed enemies of the United States, and instead use it to talk about people who have less positive views of United States history than they do. So one can imagine some conflation going on.
Time management
After a semi-thorough scan of what looked to be the relevant parts of the New York Vehicle and Traffic Law, I am willing to assert that it doesn't contain an analog of the Alabama "Walking while Drunk" law which is brought up in this blog post. I have no idea if such a prohibition exists in either a) another part of the Consolidated Laws of New York or b) the laws of political sub-divisions of the state.
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Tuesday
He hasn't written any posts yet, but since I've known him since second grade, I personally guarantee that the contributor to Bolton Watch (a new blog in Josh Marhsall's ever-expanding empire) who neither works for the American Prospect, nor is the proprietor of the Washington Note, will have some interesting things to say. If you don't know who I'm talking about, and you care (and I think the intersection of those two groups might be an empty set), click on the "Contributors" button at the link embedded in the first word of this post.
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Complainers
Congratulations to Vanity Fair for its understanding of the zeitgeist of attractivness. Insofar as that applies to whom people who are attracted to women like to look at, this (click "launch" at the link) gets it spot on. To repeat an old joke, it is quite unclear how many such people acutally read or purchase Vanity Fair, but nice work anyway.
On a different note, is there some way Senator Feingold can get a larger audience for remarks like this one?
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On a different note, is there some way Senator Feingold can get a larger audience for remarks like this one?
This administration reacts to anyone who questions this illegal program by saying that those of us who demand the truth and stand up for our rights and freedoms somehow has a pre-9/11 world view. In fact, the President has a pre-1776 world view.It's topical, funny, and makes its point well.
Thursday
Also, Aaron Burr got a bad rap
I'm sure the following anecdote must have been big news around the time of his confirmation hearings, and I am a convert to the semi-contrarian "Gonzales is worse" school of thought, but I recently encountered the following John Ashcroft story, related in Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation, and just thought it was worth passing on, though the lesson appears to be that the areas on which Ashcroft was bad were more superficial than substantive. I'm going to use the version from a Molly Ivins column, but it's exactly the same as the version in Vowell's book except that she keeps us in suspense about who is being quoted for a little while.
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Ashcroft was interviewed two years ago by Southern Partisan magazine, which the New Republic calls "a leading journal of the neo-Confederacy movement" and "a gumbo of racist apologias."
Ashcroft praised the magazine, saying that it "helps set the record straight. You've got a heritage of doing that, of defending Southern patriots like Lee, Jackson and (Jefferson) Davis. Traditionalists must do more. I've got to do more. We've all got to stand up and speak in that respect or else we'll be taught that these people were giving their lives, subscribing their sacred fortunes and their honor to some perverted agenda."
Wednesday
Tauromachy
I haven't done the Ethicist blogging thing for a long time, nor have I been reading the column. But I do have my own really trivial ethical issues. Very recently, I was involved in a contest in which the winning team receives money, and my team won. This is a fairly organized thing, and I don't personally know any of the members of any of the other teams, but I do participate in this event most weeks. Like the vast majority of contests, this one is won by the team with the highest score, and the contest organizers/officials keep track of everyone's score. But my team also tracks our own score independently, and when scores were announced at the midpoint of the event, we had one more point than we could account for. We later won by one point. There is also a later question which we did not get a point for, and think the officials got wrong. What are my ethical duties, or what do you think I should do in general? This isn't a request for advice, treat it like the person I'm talking about isn't me, since I've already made up my mind about the course of action I'm taking.
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