Wednesday
Also, they were tired of being thrown in jail
In England, a long time ago, there were people called Pilgrims who were very strict about making everyone observe the Sabbath and cooked food without any flavor and that sort of thing, and they decided to go to America, where they could enjoy Freedom to Nag.Calvin Trillin, writing as part of his campaign to have the main dish for Thanksgiving changed from turkey to spaghetti carbonara. Read the whole thing. Yglesias is also on an anti-Turkey kick today, but personally I'm in favor. You just have to spend a lot of time making sure it doesn't dry out while cooking it.
Also, to whomever I lent my copy of Alice, Let's Eat, I'd like it back. I regretted not having it when I was at a party/fundraiser Trillin attended, I could've got it signed.
Tuesday
Wear layers
On Saturday, I walked this route (if you click on the link using Microsoft Explorer, there is a very good chance that the page won't finish loading and you won't be able to see the map. Stop using Explorer). It was very fun and very, very cold. I'd hoped to steal that map and embed it in this page, but either I can't figure out which parts of source from that page I need to copy, or blogger's platform just doesn't allow it, or both. If anyone reads this and wants to advise me (either on the html issue or what mental problems lead one to go on walks like that), I'll appreciate it.
|
Monday
That was some week, huh?
11/18
Finally, some details on the logistics of attending inauguration, including, as I've been telling everyone I speak to about it, that you don't need tickets to attend (just to attend in the most choice seats).
Joe Lieberman voted to de-fund troops in the battlefield, accused (now, but not then) President-Elect Barack Obama of the same, was rewarded for it.
Everyone, please take off your Obama/Biden buttons and other paraphernalia. Walking around wearing the President's name, outside of a campaign, suggests a fundamental confusion about the proper relationship between the American electorate and the American President. How was Bob Dylan's reaction to Obama's victory not picked up as a news story? The reaction was very restrained, but, as that first link also mentions, Dylan is purposefully enigmatic and almost never reacts publicly to anything these days, so the very fact of reaction is important. I was in a really wonderful mood on Nov. 5, nevertheless I had two very different Dylan songs in mind that night, both for the out-going administration. Perhaps Dylan is closer to tranquility than I. George Packer really does a number on Bill Kristol. Fully deserved, but cruel. Then again, I still have some animus towards Packer (see the sixth comment, it's a true story). This post recommending a course of action for dealing with pirates off Somalia sounds like something Jack Aubrey would approve of, which recommends it to me. However, I do worry that it includes no perspective as to how the U.S. Navy and others are currently dealing with this issue, treating it as a blank slate for Pres. Obama to be acting on. Also, for a site about international law, it's strange for the post to mostly be about military tactics and strategy, with international law (for example) as a side issue to be discussed later.
11/19
If one wanted to be snarky, they could dismiss this David Leonhardt column as just pointing out that infrastructure spending needs to be done wisely. But in fact, it contains some good, specific advice and the comparative aspect, noting that other countries do manage to handle infrastructure spending with more wisdom is important, though it leaves unanswered the difficult question of how we get from where we are to where they are. This site from Minnesota Public Radio is mostly interesting for seeing the various ways in which voters messed up their ballots in the Coleman v. Franken contest and the absurd claims the campaigns are willing to make in order to interpret a ballot to their liking (e.g., the voter was underlining the name, not crossing it out). Also, Lizard People! These two Yglesias posts on how so far the noises coming out of the Obama transition team all point towards really positive steps for the liberal agenda are good and worth reading. I remain somewhat worried about executive power, domestic surveillance, and war on terror detention/legal policy issues, but I'm hopeful for positive developments there too.
11/20
The New York Times wisely notes that the electoral college is an absurd anachronism which needs eliminating, and even mentions the National Popular Vote movement. Here's my usual reminder to find out the status of the bill in your state legislature and then contact them about moving on it. Contact info for New York state assembly members and senators available at that link. I'm thrilled that we're going to stop keeping at least five innocent Algerians imprisoned after seven years. Are we going to return them to Bosnia, where they were captured? To Algeria? Release them in the United States? Pay compensation? For all I know, there's already a framework for dealing with these questions, but I'm not aware of any. Waxman over Dingell. It's kind of a big deal. “It's no one's fault, per se. It's written into our constitutional structure.” Josh Marshall, in reference to the lag time between electoral victory and inauguration. Sandy Levinson, who both generally hates people treating constitutional deficiencies as just facts of life, rather than problems to be solved, and specifically hates the provisions causing that lag (e.g.), will not be pleased.
11/23
Yglesias correctly notes most of the foreign policy differences which came up between Senator Clinton and Senator and now President-Elect Obama during the primary season, and wonders what her appointment as Secretary of State, when it happens, will mean for the direction of U.S. policy in these areas.
11/24
I haven't been following the Guantanamo detainee litigation as closely as I used to, so I can't provide an analysis of the legal arguments in play in this case right now. But I'm pretty sure that in response to two of the three judges on the panel indicating in oral argument that they're amenable to the government's arguments against the release of the Uighur detainees (not the Algerian detainees mentioned above), Pres.-Elect Obama should announce his intention to release those particular detainees (who, to the best of my knowledge, there is no reason to believe pose a risk to the United States) as soon as he is inaugurated. Such an order is both required by justice, and, more practically, would quite possibly (depending on timing of the order) make the appeal moot and thereby remove the possibility of a bad precedent on the powers of federal judges to order release.
|
11/19
11/20
11/23
11/24
“Pop quiz, hot shot”
“So, I have a confession and a suggestion. The confession: I go into restaurants these days, look around at the tables often still crowded with young people, and I have this urge to go from table to table and say: ‘You don’t know me, but I have to tell you that you shouldn’t be here. You should be saving your money. You should be home eating tuna fish. This financial crisis is so far from over. We are just at the end of the beginning. Please, wrap up that steak in a doggy bag and go home.’Is Thomas Friedman confessing:
A) That he is very rich, but young people aren't;
B) That he is stupid, and assumes that the young people he sees eating out eat out regularly;
C) That he is confused and thinks net reduced consumption is a good way to respond to a recession;
OR
D) All of the above
?1
The above wasn't about politics, and therefore this post doesn't violate last Monday's “no politics” announcement:
A) True;
B) False
?
My favorite quote from Speed is:
A) The title of this post
B) The part where Alan Ruck relays “Fuck me!” as “Oh, darn”
C) “And to Jack for shooting Harry. Something we've all wanted to do for a very long time.”
1. The column also fails to ever again reference the “suggestion” mentioned in the first sentence. I think he means his proposal to have Paulson resign and Geithner take over as Treasury Secretary immediately, but it could also be referring either to the suggestion he wants to make to diners or the fact that if he had his druthers, he'd move inauguration day up to the present (though he says he thinks this is impossible).
Friday
Calling a movement "metaphysical art" is kind of obnoxious
Reading through Dreams From My Father, I noticed a mention of “De Chirico shadows.” Which reminded me of my favorite painting, so I'm off to the Museum of Modern Art to stare at it in person. Lucky you though, you can see it here.
I may have posted this before, I can't remember and a quick search of my archives doesn't find it.
|
I may have posted this before, I can't remember and a quick search of my archives doesn't find it.
Thursday
Overkill
Last night I spoke with a friend and reader who enjoyed my recent Ethicist post, and not having anything else I wanted to get off my chest today, I'm writing another one. It follows the same format as the last one, wherein I quote the advice-seeker's question and then provide my answer (which differs from Cohen's, that's why I'm choosing to answer this particular question as opposed to others), without quoting his answer.
But it's also an unfair gain to the State of New York if they don't have to pay the winnings to someone. The state creates a certain number of winning tickets and the lottery business model assumes they will be paid out, it's an unfair gain to the state if they don't have to pay just because the tickets were stolen from the store.
There's no similar unfairness in allocating the gain to the grocery store owner, but there's also no justification for it, she's already been returned to where she was in the status quo before the theft.
So there's a problem with the money going to anyone, because it's a windfall gain. The way to deal with this is basically to create a state fund which provides relief to people who suffer windfall losses, and have the money delivered to them, but creating such a fund probably isn't an option for this advice-seeking prosecutor. As a second best option, demand that the thief give the money to the New York State crime victim's compensation fund. Crime victims have, in many cases, suffered a windfall loss.
Also, I'm not sure whether this really is an ethical dilemma for the Prosecutor, because even if he made a very poor choice as to how to deal with the winnings, it would be strange to criticize that choice as unethical. Unless he took the money himself, but that's not the topic being discussed.
|
I am a prosecutor. As part of any case, we demand that the defendant pay restitution to the victim. Recently a disgruntled employee stole instant-lottery games from her employer, a local grocery store, and a few of those tickets were winners. She must repay the grocer the face value of the stolen tickets. But who should get her winnings? The defendant? The state lottery system? The person who bought the first tickets after the theft (who buys only winning lottery tickets)? — ANDREW BONAVIA, ITHACA, N.Y.Me: Mr. Bonavia asks a difficult question; there is going to be a windfall gain for someone. There's also a fact question of whether the disgruntled employee knew the tickets were winners before stealing them (I do know that it used to be, a little less than a decade ago, possible for employees to determine whether some tickets were winners by scanning their bar codes, I don't know if this has changed). If the employee did know they were winners, obviously she can't keep the winnings, that would create a perverse incentive to steal tickets and then pay the face value of them, though other penalties for theft may offset the incentive, depending on the size of the winnings and the size of the penalty. But then it turns out that perverse incentive exists whether or not the employee knew, so it can't be right idea to allocate the winnings to her.
But it's also an unfair gain to the State of New York if they don't have to pay the winnings to someone. The state creates a certain number of winning tickets and the lottery business model assumes they will be paid out, it's an unfair gain to the state if they don't have to pay just because the tickets were stolen from the store.
There's no similar unfairness in allocating the gain to the grocery store owner, but there's also no justification for it, she's already been returned to where she was in the status quo before the theft.
So there's a problem with the money going to anyone, because it's a windfall gain. The way to deal with this is basically to create a state fund which provides relief to people who suffer windfall losses, and have the money delivered to them, but creating such a fund probably isn't an option for this advice-seeking prosecutor. As a second best option, demand that the thief give the money to the New York State crime victim's compensation fund. Crime victims have, in many cases, suffered a windfall loss.
Also, I'm not sure whether this really is an ethical dilemma for the Prosecutor, because even if he made a very poor choice as to how to deal with the winnings, it would be strange to criticize that choice as unethical. Unless he took the money himself, but that's not the topic being discussed.
Wednesday
Kids say the darndest things
“After lunch, if that’s what you call a large meal of meat that you finish just before 9 A.M., I had a chat about Snow’s origins with its management team. We talked near the pits, so Miss Tootsie could pull off sausage links now and then. ‘I felt like with her name and barbecue and my personality with people we could make it work,’ Bexley told me. He’s a short, outgoing man whose résumé includes—in addition to rodeo clown—prison guard, auctioneer, real-estate agent, and shopkeeper. He already had the location—a place where he’d run a farm and ranch store in 1992. The name came from a nickname he’d had since before he was born. According to the family story, his brother, then four years old, was asked whether he was hoping for the new baby to be a boy or a girl, and he replied, not unreasonably, that he would prefer a snowman. Kerry (Snowman) Bexley and Miss Tootsie opened Snow’s in March of 2003—Bexley had built the pits—and it did well from the start. ‘For the most part, we cooked two to three hundred pounds of meat,’ Bexley told me. ‘We sold out by noon.’”Calvin Trillin, “By Meat Alone” The New Yorker, 11/24/08 (emphasis supplied)
On another New Yorker related matter, (and if you count the McPhee post below there have been a number of those lately), whatever else is true of Malcolm Gladwell, whoever runs his publicity is very good. His new book came out this week, and suddenly he is everywhere.
Though to be honest, that was just a, quick, gut reaction. I was just saying the first thing I thought, and not really deliberating. I'm not sure whether the evidence really supports my hypothesis.
Tuesday
Every time I try to get out
For a time, one of the main things this blog did was gently, and sometimes not that gently, point out that Randy Cohen is not good at giving people advice. And there's no time like the present to get back in the habit:
If the sale would make a difference, even marginally, don't do it, for categorical imperative (first formulation) reasons.
If it turns out you're correct that your sale doesn't matter, ask for more money. Encourage your neighbors to ask for more money. If you get more money, publicize that fact. Give a substantial portion of any money you receive to a reputable charity which either purchases land to preserve it from drilling, takes action to reduce greenhouse gas levels, or lobbies to make it more difficult for natural gas companies to purchase mineral rights.
Cohen's answer, which I encourage you to look at for yourself, is wrong in a variety of ways. His claim that “[b]ut the most potent argument for your declining to sign what you regard as a devil’s bargain is this: It violates your own principles” is especially misguided. It's not the case that all principled reasons for opposing drilling entail, or even suggest, the wrongfulness of taking money from a company which drills.
In the past I've worried that I'm being unfair to The Ethicist by using a lot more words in answering than he does, since he's constrained by his column word count. So let me note that he used 241 words, and I used 154 (and a supplementary link which improves, but isn't required for, my argument).
|
Natural-gas companies in our area can drill in one spot and extract gas more than a mile away by using “horizontal” drilling. These companies offered to lease homeowners’ mineral rights — about $4,000 for my partner and me. For environmental reasons, we strongly oppose this drilling, but most of our neighbors are enthusiastic about the profits, so drilling will likely be done under our house whether or not we agree to the lease. What should we do? JESSICA MAY, FORT WORTHMe: First, make serious efforts to confirm that you're correct about whether or not selling your mineral rights in particular will change the total amount of natural gas extracted from your area. Talk to your neighbors to ensure that you're correct about their intentions, local or national environmental groups about their understanding of the situation and your options, and possibly a geologist.
If the sale would make a difference, even marginally, don't do it, for categorical imperative (first formulation) reasons.
If it turns out you're correct that your sale doesn't matter, ask for more money. Encourage your neighbors to ask for more money. If you get more money, publicize that fact. Give a substantial portion of any money you receive to a reputable charity which either purchases land to preserve it from drilling, takes action to reduce greenhouse gas levels, or lobbies to make it more difficult for natural gas companies to purchase mineral rights.
Cohen's answer, which I encourage you to look at for yourself, is wrong in a variety of ways. His claim that “[b]ut the most potent argument for your declining to sign what you regard as a devil’s bargain is this: It violates your own principles” is especially misguided. It's not the case that all principled reasons for opposing drilling entail, or even suggest, the wrongfulness of taking money from a company which drills.
In the past I've worried that I'm being unfair to The Ethicist by using a lot more words in answering than he does, since he's constrained by his column word count. So let me note that he used 241 words, and I used 154 (and a supplementary link which improves, but isn't required for, my argument).
The moral compass of Tom Sawyer
“All along I've been wanting to be a robber, but I knew I'd got to have a thing like this, and where to run across it was the bother. We've got it now, and we'll keep it quiet, only we'll let Joe Harper and Ben Rogers in—because of course there's got to be a Gang, or else there wouldn't be any style about it. Tom Sawyer's Gang— it sounds splendid, don't it, Huck?”One hundred and twenty eight years after this was published, a bad episode of The Simpsons (with guest star Thomas Pynchon!) used the same orgy joke (Bart reads issues of Playdude with the nudes cut out, and then tells Milhouse they should have orgies in the treehouse but doesn't know what orgies are), though not as effectively. As far as I can tell, despite the countless man-hours (and woman hours, but mostly man) that have been devoted to finding every reference or allusion made on The Simpsons to anything, no one has ever made note of this, possibly because it is not a reference or allusion but rather independent invention of an obvious joke involving children not knowing what orgies are.
“Well, it just does, Tom. And who'll we rob?”
“Oh, most anybody. Waylay people -- that's mostly the way.”
“And kill them?”
“No, not always. Hive them in the cave till they raise a ransom.”
“What's a ransom?”
“Money. You make them raise all they can, off'n their friends; and after you've kept them a year, if it ain't raised then you kill them. That's the general way. Only you don't kill the women. You shut up the women, but you don't kill them. They're always beautiful and rich, and awfully scared. You take their watches and things, but you always take your hat off and talk polite. They ain't anybody as polite as robbers -- you'll see that in any book. Well, the women get to loving you, and after they've been in the cave a week or two weeks they stop crying and after that you couldn't get them to leave. If you drove them out they'd turn right around and come back. It's so in all the books.”
“Why, it's real bully, Tom. I believe it's better'n to be a pirate.”
“Yes, it's better in some ways, because it's close to home and circuses and all that.”
. . .
“Now less fetch the guns and things," said Huck.
“No, Huck -- leave them there. They're just the tricks to have when we go to robbing. We'll keep them there all the time, and we'll hold our orgies there, too. It's an awful snug place for orgies.”
“What orgies?”
“I dono. But robbers always have orgies, and of course we've got to have them, too.”
Monday
On the oddity of Alaska
“On his head was a brown Stetson—the only Stetson I've seen that was made of hard plastic. It had a crack in it that was patched with grout. He said the horsepower of a D9 Cat was about half the horsepower he had coming out of that hose—look out, you could burn your fingers on the water. To be burned by water seemed irresistible. I put my fingers on the solid ice-cold projectiling cylinder a few inches out from the nozzle tip, and pulled them away in an instant, burned.”
John McPhee, Coming into the Country
|
John McPhee, Coming into the Country
Scheduled Programming Update
For the next week, at least one post every day and no posts, or links to posts, about politics, internationally, nationally, or locally. An experiment to remind/convince myself that there are other interesting things in life. Nothing about presidents, Putin, bailouts, Bayh, status of forces agreements, or Somali pirates. Clearly, this post doesn't count as one for Monday, and the week starts now.
|
Friday
David Chang runs New York
I haven't done linked to any food-blogging for a while.
|
Thursday
Two people whose writing you should read
Dahlia Lithwick
Jamal Crawford
Michael Lewis
The number in the post title is not a typo.
|
Jamal Crawford
Michael Lewis
The number in the post title is not a typo.
Wednesday
And what does she have against John Ashbery?
“The mystery of Bernardine Dohrn: How could such a personable, attractive, well-educated young woman end up saying such things at a 1969 political rally as this (omitted in the film) about the Manson murders: "Dig it. First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them. They even shoved a fork into a victim's stomach. Wild!" And how could Dohrn have so ruthlessly pursued a decade-long crusade of hatred and terrorism against innocent American citizens and both private and public property?”The mystery of Camille Paglia: How could someone who thinks there's a fundamental tension between a young woman being “personable, attractive, well-educated” and that same young woman taking part in, and believing in the necessity of, horribly immoral acts make a living by writing about her ideas?
Think “progress”
Read this. The fifth commenter's criticism is correct, but doesn't take away much of the original point.
On a separate matter, and possibly clearing up an ambiguity, I'm planning to eventually put up some back-dated posts fixing and completing the “Memory Lane” series of terrible Bush Administration-related events for each year 2001-08 (1,2 and 6 were posted on schedule). Not including September 11th in 1 is deliberate, because while Pres. Bush could and should have had a greater focus on terrorism in general and al-Qaeda in particular before 9/11, I don't take the view that he could have prevented it. On the other hand, not mentioning anthrax for 2001 is accidental.
|
On a separate matter, and possibly clearing up an ambiguity, I'm planning to eventually put up some back-dated posts fixing and completing the “Memory Lane” series of terrible Bush Administration-related events for each year 2001-08 (1,2 and 6 were posted on schedule). Not including September 11th in 1 is deliberate, because while Pres. Bush could and should have had a greater focus on terrorism in general and al-Qaeda in particular before 9/11, I don't take the view that he could have prevented it. On the other hand, not mentioning anthrax for 2001 is accidental.
Tuesday
poppies grow
I'm pretty happy with my post from 11/11/05, and since I doubt anyone who read that one will read this one, I'm just going to link it. It's interesting reading the links contained therein, especially the first one, with the perspective of four additional years and, of course, last week's election. The video mentioned in the first, non-Veteran's Day part of the post, is still available here.
|
Monday
Inconceivable
In early May, David Broder wrote an op-ed complaining about the Democratic Primaries in which he noted that,
1) Why does anyone ever listen to David Broder?
2) Wouldn't it be crazy if we had an electoral system where gaining a vote in any state fully offset losing a vote in any other state, so that politicians had incentives to compete for all of our votes? Some kind of national, popular vote, perhaps?
|
“The two states that voted on Tuesday — Indiana and North Carolina — are so unimportant to Democratic chances of electing the next president that it is unlikely Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama would make more than a token appearance in either after one of them is nominated.Two question in response:
Unless John McCain butchers his campaign, he will be an odds-on favorite to continue the Republican winning streak in both states.
. . .
Lots of people complain that Iowa and New Hampshire enjoy disproportionate influence because of their place at the start of the process. But both are closely contested in November — not throwaways.”
1) Why does anyone ever listen to David Broder?
2) Wouldn't it be crazy if we had an electoral system where gaining a vote in any state fully offset losing a vote in any other state, so that politicians had incentives to compete for all of our votes? Some kind of national, popular vote, perhaps?
Friday
New toy
I'm not sure what I'm planning to do with this data, or what points I want to make about it, but until I figure that out I'll just share it. All vote totals are as reported by the New York Times at approx. 7 PM on 11/6. I know California was only at 97% reported at the time, so even if there are no other errors I'll have to change that number eventually.
|
Wednesday
The guarantee, ii
President-Elect of the United States of America Barack Obama, in his victory speech last night/this morning, “This is your victory. And I know you didn't do this just to win an election. And I know you didn't do it for me. You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime -- two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century.” (Emphasis supplied).
Enormity does not mean “a great magnitude.” It means “a great magnitude of evil; monstrousness.” You could look it up. Yes, this bothered me during the speech.
Many people have worried that blogs which did an outstanding job of criticizing Bush's enormities are going to defend President Obama no matter what it is he does, including if he engages in the same kind of pernicious power grabs for the executive branch that Bush did. This would remove an increasingly effective liberal influence from play. Fortunately, as this post demonstrates, liberal bloggers will have no problem criticizing President-Elect of the United States of America Barack Obama.
By the way, did you notice that as soon as he won saying The Middle Name switched from being an underhanded attack to a declaration of joy that someone with The Middle Name won?
|
Enormity does not mean “a great magnitude.” It means “a great magnitude of evil; monstrousness.” You could look it up. Yes, this bothered me during the speech.
Many people have worried that blogs which did an outstanding job of criticizing Bush's enormities are going to defend President Obama no matter what it is he does, including if he engages in the same kind of pernicious power grabs for the executive branch that Bush did. This would remove an increasingly effective liberal influence from play. Fortunately, as this post demonstrates, liberal bloggers will have no problem criticizing President-Elect of the United States of America Barack Obama.
By the way, did you notice that as soon as he won saying The Middle Name switched from being an underhanded attack to a declaration of joy that someone with The Middle Name won?
