Big Changes

Humblest Apologies, Faithful Readers, for my prolonged absence. You know how it goes; you go a week without writing, and suddenly there's so much to write about, and so you wait a little longer until you have time to catch up, and then there's more, and more, and more...

And then there's College Nationals, the Ultimate tournament which basically devoured the last week of my life. The good news is that the tournament went quite well, with everything falling into place and the teams, players, and spectators all pretty much universally saying it was a great tournament. I know that I had a great, albeit entirely exhausting, time.

But the good news is that I'm Back!

The bad news is, I'm Moving!

From now on, I will be blogging at a new home, a co-blog with frequent commenter, and target of my snark, Shane. We've already set up tent at

http://damnlefties.wordpress.com

Please click on over and join us! Hope to see you there...

Google's Done It Again!

Let me be the first to praise Google for their new invention, Google Custom Time. The idea is simple: you can pre-date your e-mails so that it appears that they were sent at the appropriate time (birthdays, anniversaries, before the big presentation was due), and they will appear at that time, in the proper place in the recipient's inbox. It will appear that they simply got 'lost in the ether' during the interim.

Good times! Now that the concept of 'on time' is slowly being eradicated, I look forward to the day when concepts such as 'date' and 'time' lose all meaning altogether, which will allow me to finally live in a nirvana where every meal is breakfast (what? Time for pancakes with whipped cream again?), and every day is both a Saturday and my birthday, simultaneously.

Although, I would like to know a little more about their 'e-flux capacitor' before signing on whole-hog...

Liberal Praises Liberal Paper - Counterintuitive!

Okay, just to prove that I'm not entirely a New York Times-basher, a couple plaudits for its pundits.

In today's op-ed section, the oft-maligned (and deservedly so!) David Brooks writes really well on the subject of behavior and discipline, and how good habits brought on through rote and routine can lead to perfection of execution in the physical sports. He doesn't really go into it in great depth, but I think the point he's getting at, which is something I am really a firm believer in, is how these sorts of habits can help you in your everyday life as well.

For instance, with all these new responsibilities at work, I am finding myself having to be, roughly, a billion times more organized than I've had to be in the past. Which is to say, fairly organized.

Now, strictly speaking, my ability to organize my thoughts and processes have nothing to do with my ability to, say, keep a very clean desk. Indeed, if you listened to Will Wilkinson's diavlog with Richard Florida over the weekend (sorry for the lack of a dinglelink, but I'm too busy!), you'd know that people who score very high on the 'open to new experiences' axis in Five-Factor Personality Analysis tests, like me, tend to have very messy desks.

Nonetheless, I am now aspiring to keep a clean work area, both at my cube and in the lab, the idea being that if I can keep order in my physical surroundings, that will assist my brain in keeping itself neat and tidy as well.

It's really a nice column by Brooks, and a reminder why the hell the Times pays him to write three times a week. I find his political columns to fall in a fairly narrow space between uninformative and uninformed, but when he writes about behavior and sociology, which is the area where he got started, he really can be both interesting and insightful.

On another note altogether, bravo to the Times, via the Freakonomics blog, for giving my brother-in-law's father, the weird-and-wonderful Daniel Hamermesh an outlet for his economic thoughts. Daniel is quite the character, as anyone who has spent a Passover dinner with him can absolutely attest. But he's also, I'm told, quite an insightful economic thinker. I've been to one of his undergrad lectures, and he is definitely an engaging speaker, and his occasional posts to Freakonomics have been fun to read. And he's definitely the most famous blogger that I'm related to by marriage, although since I am very loosely related to David Copperfield by marriage, he's not the most famous person to meet that qualification.

Welcome Mat

And let me be just the latest, if not the first, to welcome Kathy G to the blogosphere. As someone who called for her to be made a guest-poster at Ezra's back when she would occasionally post these random, incredibly insightful comments to some post-or-other of his, I'm very happy to see her finally have her own outlet for thoughts and comments.

Although, I have to say - if I'm saying that you ought to learn how to write some slightly shorter posts, you probably have a real brevity issue.

I Waited A New Week For This Post, And All I Got Were Some Lousy Ellipses?

Best intentional misreads of the day:

World's Hackiest Hack, Bill Kristol:

Most Americans want to be told we can leave Iraq sooner rather than later. McCain has chosen instead to tell Americans the hard and unpopular truths that...there’s no...path to defeating our enemies and securing a lasting peace.

And the occasionally anti-Bushian Paul Krugman:

[T]he Bush administration actively...tried to protect families against predatory lending.

Of course, those aren't the real quotes, but wouldn't it be funny if they were?

You gotta love the blatant, unrepentant hackosity of Kristol's rantings. I don't know how long a contract the Times signed him to, but it's already been going on too long, as far as I'm concerned. Senators Clinton and Obama have many faults, but accusing them of holding a "stale liberal orthodoxy" can only be the opinion of a fool or a madman. Unlike Charles Krauthamer, I do not hold a Ph.D. in psychology, and will not speculate as to the mental state of my ideological opponents, so I'm left believing Kristol to be a fool.

Although, I must admit, I do appreciate Kristol's confidence in his own manhood to publicly declare his appreciation for the qualities of John McCain's 71-year-old buttocks:

The qualities of a young military hero may not be those of a successful president. McCain knows this. As an elected official, he’s never rested on his P.O.W. laurels, remarkable though they are.

My Favorite Least Favorite Coach

Sorry for the overload on b-ball coverage, but I'm in that kind of mood right now.

I know that I'm contractually obligated to hate Roy Williams, the head basketball coach at the University of North Carolina. For one thing, he's the former long-time coach at Kansas, who was the best team in the Big 12 back when I was a regular attendee of University of Colorado basketball games (there's no real defense for this, except that sometimes it was fun to be one of 300 fans in the arena for early-season games.) Anyhow, he was always so snide and snotty and easy to hate, and the one magical year that CU went undefeated at home in conference, including wins over #13 Oklahoma State, #6ish Texas, and #2-ranked Kansas, he nearly threw an apoplectic fit at the end of the CU-KU game, insisting that star player Kirk 'Frodo' Heinrich had been fouled on their last possession, I thought he was going to have an aneurism.

Very immature.

Anyhow, now he is the coach of UNC, and since Michelle and LJ, official BFFs of The Consistent Fool, are NC State alums, I am still contractually obligated to dislike him.

But, despite myself, I find him occasionally quite charming. The #1 example of this was back when he left Kansas, and told Bonnie Bernstein, standing outside the locker room moments after his team narrowly lost to Carmelo Anthony's Syracuse team, that he didn't "...give a shit about Carolina right now."

And just today, in a post-game interview after his team absolutely dismantled Arkansas, he told the interviewers, regarding star player Ty Lawson playing at full capacity; "when he plays like that, I'm a much better coach."

It doesn't quite count as humility, but it's still pretty funny and fairly charming stuff.

Further Basketball Thoughts

What Shane said.

Also, it's a testament to how absurdly well Stephen son-of-Dell Curry has been shooting through two rounds that I was surprised to see that he was only an 89% free throw shooter. I figured him for a Reggie Milleresque 93-94%, one of those 'misses a couple a month' sort of guy. Then, he actually missed one which would have sealed the game, putting Davidson up 4 with a few seconds to play. Of course, it was the front end of a 2-fer, and he hit the second, rendering the whole argument moot.

But that kid has a future in The Association. Oh, and, suck it, Hoyas.

Basketball Thoughts

This post is probably two weeks too late, but early March is traditionally when I really start paying attention to basketball. A few weeks' decompression from the end of football season, and it's time for some roundball.

But, with being busy and all, I really haven't had time to become as aware as I usually manage. Throw in the fact that I don't have cable, and I really am pretty solidly not knowing what's going on. A fact which is well-reflected by the way my NCAA bracket completely self-destructed in the first 4 days of the tournament.

A few random thoughts from the first 3 days of NCAA play:

• It may be the fact that my TV is aging a bit, or the fact that my eyes are aging a bit, but it seems like the text that CBS is putting up is nearly impossible to read on my screen. In particular, the scores of the other games going on are so small, they're almost impossible to read. I'm guessing that this is an outcropping from the prevalence of high-res HDTV's these days. On those screens, I'm sure the smaller text is quite readable, and leaves more room on the screen for the game being shown. But it's irritating for those of us who think there are better things to spend money on than expensive toys...
• So, wait. You're telling me that Duke is a slow, unathletic team which is overly-reliant on distance shots, who is highly ranked based mostly on owning the best home-court advantage in the game? And they flame out early in the tournament, losing to some unheralded lower seed? Man, that is some seriously new story. I never saw that coming.
• Every year, I run the bracket at work. I put in some extra brackets for reference. This year I only put in two - one where the higher RPI team wins the game, and one where the higher-seeded team wins every game, called 'Old White Men's Committee'. As of this writing, OWMC is tied for second, and also tied for second for most possible points remaining. I think the point is not that there were almost no upsets, but instead that the upsets were difficult-to-call ones, like Siena, that very few people got right. That's what I think. But, then again, I am tied for 17th, so my thoughts ain't worth much.
• Kansas has definitely looked the best through two rounds. But it's still Kansas, and I have faith that they will find a way to blow it before all is said and done.
  

Seasonal Thoughts

I'd like to wish a Happy Easter to all those out there who celebrate such things. Personally, of course, I am mostly excited about the prospect of half-priced Peeps starting tomorrow. I have a funny relationship with Easter candy. I don't like the chocolate bunnies, if only because a) they tend to be hollow, hence a big disappointment on a chocolate-per-inch basis and b) they are made from grade triple-Z chocolate, the kind of stuff that aspires to generic chocolate chip status. It used to be the case that every year, Easterish time would roll around, and I would say 'oh yeah, a Cadbury Egg! I haven't had one of those in a year!' So I would buy a 4-pack, bite into the first one, and then say 'oh yeah, this is why I don't like them at all! They're disgusting!'

Fortunately, I seem to have grown past that point, so I don't try them anymore.

But Peeps? I mean, come on - how can you not love sugar-coated marshmallows (in other words, sugar-coated sugar), pressed into whimsical animal shapes, and dyed some unnatural color that, in the wild, would indicate 'WARNING! This animal is made almost entirely of poison! Do not eat!' That's gold, Jerry!

Also, I do apologize for the total lack of posts since Monday. Firstly, after that marathon post that night, I was pretty well spent of things to say. More important, I found out on Tuesday that I am being promoted. My lead's job is being split about 2/3-1/3, and I got the 1/3 put under my belt. So I am now the lead for the build line of the laser.

It's a classic InPhase promotion, in that I get more responsibility and more work, but no more money. But still, it is exciting to have some faith shown in my basic ability, and also a good thing that more focus is being put on improving the quality and reliability of the build line.

I'm sure that I'll get better at it, but for the first week at least, managing is really hard! Trying to keep track of not just what I ought to be doing, but also what 6 other people ought to be doing, and what they are doing, and whether what I think they ought to be doing is actually right? That's a lot of mental balls to keep juggling.

Additionally, this week is a Hunter Education course, in case I can find the time next fall to get out and try and plug me a winter's worth of dinners.

So, I just don't know how much posting I'll be able to do in the short term, while I get put in place some systems to help keep track of all of those things. I hope I will be able to get some brief stuff online, but I can pretty much guarantee no Big Thought postings, at least not during the week...

On The Perils Of Substance Abuse

Reihan is apparently suffering some sort of traumatic come-down from his weeklong SXSW bender, and has chosen to commemorate the occasion with a typically brilliant, but bit of a downer of a post, starting with accurately describing the inherent tensions between 1) the basic concept of a leftist philosophy and 2) certain behavioral tendencies that are quite specific to the American psyche. He then pivots, a bit incongruously in my opinion, to the subject of Senator Obama's pastor, Rev. Wright, and the current controversy surrounding a video of him which recently hit the airwaves.

I'm not going to get into the details of the controversy, because I mostly feel that it's a serious case of trumped-up charges, for reasons which I'll get into in a bit. If you want to know more about it, your favorite major news outlet will have at least one story from the last couple days.

Instead, I'm going to deal with some of Reihan's arguments in a bit more detail, and try and use these specific instances to get to a bit more of a general philosophical discussion.

Also, as a warning - I'm not exactly famous for my brevity, and the post I'm responding to is not exactly short either. So it's unlikely that I'm going to be able to keep this easily digestible. Humblest apologies, and such like. At least you're getting your money's worth today!

Regarding the American constitutional arrangement, and its somewhat "elitist and anti-majoritarian dimensions," Reihan writes:

For example, it shapes and some would say perverts the kind of redistribution that occurs. As Ed Glaeser and Alberto Alesina have argued, it seems that ethnoracial fragmentation cuts against redistribution — taxpayers are reluctant to subsidize members of outgroups, a gut instinct that is easily characterized as racist. But perhaps this impulse is a useful corrective, and one of the virtues of diversity — i.e., perhaps greater homogeneity leads taxpayers to overinterpret a kind of nationalist sameness, thus leading to higher levels of redistribution than are in fact desirable. Now, I don’t think this is obviously true, but it’s no less plausible than the other story, namely that the interrelationship between extreme homogeneity and social democracy is an unambiguously good thing.

I certainly don't argue that extreme homogeneity and social democracy are, ipso facto, an unambiguous good. I don't think that many things, once you get past the realm of tautologically good things like puppies, Twizzlers, and reruns of Thundercats, qualify as universally good, no justification needed.

And keeping in mind the fact that absolute redistribution should not be the goal of any society which hopes to maintain a vital, growing economy is a very important reason to be inherently suspicious of redistributive policies. The problem I have with America's economic system is not that it is not sufficiently redistributive. It is that it's built backwards, funneling the water of economic growth uphill through arrangements which benefit primarily the supremely wealthy, and the rest of us in roughly inverse proportion to our demonstrable need of the benefit.

The best recent example is obviously the federal bailout of Bear Stearns over the weekend, ensuring the value of investments made at a point when it was becoming increasingly obvious that they were questionable-at-best. For much better-written outrage on this topic look no further than Kevin Drum, or, even better, Sir Charles over at Cogitamus.

I can think up many morally defensible positions in favor of an economic policy which says "when enough poor and under-educated get caught up in a bad financial scheme that threatens the health of the economy, the government will help them out at least enough to keep us afloat." Alternatively I can't think up a single morally defensible argument for the policy that "when enough poor and under-educated get caught up in a bad financial scheme that threatens the health of the economy, the government will bail out the creditors who financed this harebrained scheme, ensuring that their risky capital investments aren't damaged, while leaving those who were less well-informed about the risks to simply flap in the wind."

And yet, time and time and time again (if I was a better blogger, or possibly less gainfully employed, each of those 'times' would have a link to a story about some other example of such a governmental policy, but it's after 10:30 already so get over it) this is exactly the type of policy which we enact.

So, maybe reducing the ethnoracial fragmentation would drive our policies too far in the downward-redistributive direction. You know what? It's a chance I'm willing to take, because I'd rather make the wrong decision for the right reasons than the wrong decision for the wrong reasons.

Anyhow, Reihan then turns towards the Obama/Wright flap. Quoting from Chris Hayes' excellent piece in The Nation, Reihan writes

So while Ann Coulter can call John Edwards a faggot, Grover Norquist can say he wants to drown the government in the bathtub, and a host of imperialists can foment an illegal and pre-emptive war based on lies, Barack Obama’s pastor isn’t allowed to mention that America has been throughout its history the site and cause of much evil in this world.

This, of course, is a fairly straightforward result of the nationalism of most Americans, and the (mostly correct) view that while America has been been “the site and cause of much evil in this world,” surely we’re not unique or even terribly distinguished in this regard. Mind you, this is more of a sad commentary on the world, but it is true nonetheless.

I'm sorry, I'm just not buying this attitude at all. Specifically, I want to see a quote from anyone who is being very critical of Rev. Wright who says 'well, yes, America has committed many sins in her past, but compared to Imperial Britain or Napoleonic France, she's really not doing so badly.'

Incidentally, I think that this view would be entirely justified. In antagonistic conversations with my politically active South African ex-girlfriend, I would often point out that, as singularly dominant world powers go, the U.S. has undoubtedly been the most beneficent, the least likely to exploit native peoples and resources, purely for its own benefit. Not to say that we are blameless, or maybe even a net good for people around the world. But a hell of a lot less likely to be out exploiting the natives with the raw power of the US government. And that ought to be worth something.

But that's not what gets said. Instead, there is hateful bile about Rev. Wright, baseless accusations that Senator Obama, in contrast to anything he's ever said in public, will be supporting Palestinian terrorists over the Israelis. Claims that Senator Obama believes the white government brought crack and AIDS to the ghetto.

Most of the reasonable conservatives, the types of people who I would read (like Ross Douthat or the good folks over at The American Scene) aren't engaging in speculation about the specifics of Rev. Wright's comments, or what they really say about Senator Obama's beliefs. Instead, the speculation is all horse-racey, about how 'Obama will have to come out and really distance himself from this', or 'well, this is really something Obama is going to have to work to explain.' The closest anyone I read has come to accusing Senator Obama of holding any questionable views is Ross (say, here and here), and he doesn't approach the realm of the absurd (let's call it the 'Ace of Spades line'), not by a factor of 10 or more.

So it kind of appears, to me, that the types of people Reihan is defending, the good faithful who believe that America is "not unique or even terribly distinguished in this regard," don't actually exist, or not in sufficient numbers to really be discussing in detail.

Reihan continues, writing about the possibility of a white Rev. Wright-like figure.

Of course, documentary evidence of a white man doing the same would surely have a similar impact. I grew up watching television, and I have a keen appreciation for the power of images. By layering race over this simple and familiar fact, Chris takes a mundane fact, that people respond to images more readily than text, and makes it seem alarming and suspect.

I'm sorry, but again, I simply don't buy this. Not to get caught up in the same arguments that everyone else is having, but powerful and popular douchebags like Pat Robertson and James Dobson come out all the time and say things which are, at least to my mind, equally (or more) controversial and repugnant. And yet, they are embraced by the standard-bearers of the right. Maybe the presidential candidates are not members of their specific congregations, but this is splitting hairs, to my mind, and not a valid reason to sweep their embrace under the rug.

To me, the metaphor here ought not to be with Rev. Wright, but with someone like Louis Farrakhan. Senator Obama has, right, denounced and rejected Mr. Farrakhan's beliefs and endorsement. To me, if there was really a symmetry in how we treated controversial utterances from ministers, regardless of skin tone, there would be an equal radioactivity to someone who publicly met and accepted endorsements from a Robertson or a Dobson as there would be to someone who did the same with Farrakhan.

But, of course, there is not. And hence, I don't believe for one second that a video of a white minister, speaking along similar lines as those of Rev. Wright, would have equal valence.

Finally (finally!), Reihan says

I have no doubt that Senator Obama is as devout as he claims, yet he’s also reluctant to wear an American flag lapel pin. Though he’s embraced a devotional, very public brand of religiosity, it could be that his thoughts on faith are decidedly complex, and not well suited to being enthusiastically discussed on the campaign trail.

Where to begin here? Firstly, what the hell does a meaningless, tacky display of "patriotism" have to do with religious devotion? Reihan, of all people, should know that wearing a "Ra-Ra-Riot" t-shirt is no evidence whatsoever that you really and truly get what they are saying. In fact, for almost any band who is saying anything worth listening to, wearing their t-shirt is almost guaranteed evidence that you don't get it. Because, part of what they are saying is 'hey, man, go figure shit out for yourself, don't let the Pepsi or KFC or me tell you what to think.'

Since I think America has a hell of a lot of things to say that are worth hearing, many of them having to do with exactly that same line of thought, I will not be wearing an American flag lapel pin anytime soon. But I still fail to see any link between my opinion and Senator Obama's devotion, or lack thereof.

And, lastly (I promise!), and once again, nobody is talking about Obama's faith. All that is being said involves triple-bank-shots based on whether or not he can be reliably proven to be nodding during a certain part of a certain sermon that was delivered 8 years ago. If you want to know about the man's faith, go ask him. Or, better yet, read his book, which conveniently spends whole chapters discussing this very subject!

So, in the immortal words of Inigo Montoya: "There is too much. Let me sum up."

I believe that the American constitutional system has some inherent unfairnesses built into it, which I acknowledge are there for a reason, but I would like to weaken nonetheless.

Rev. Wright, using language stronger than I would use, but then again he's a preacher and I'm an engineer, pointed out some of those structural difficulties and their historical context.

Senator Obama has never made any public statement which would lead you to believe that he holds truck with any of Rev. Wright's more controversial utterances.

Nonetheless, because he is a black man speaking angrily, the video of Rev. Wright has found great controversy-generating power in the media.

This controversy has led to much speculation about Senator Obama's beliefs, even though, as already explained above, there is zero factual evidence to indicate that there is reason to doubt what he has been saying all along.

Wow, what the hell is wrong with you that you're still reading this far?

The Soft Violence Of Limp-Wristedness

I've been called many things before, both good and bad, but I've never been referred to as an 'electrical elf' or a 'banana fairy'.

While I do enjoy the hell out of my Wii games, I will freely admit that playing them probably looks entirely ridiculous, especially the party games like 'Rayman's Raving Rabbids' or 'Warioware'. Oh well, if you can't look ridiculous in the privacy of your own home, where can you?

New Traditions

Courtesy of Faithful Reader E.S., a new annual tradition for St. Patrick's Day: 'Danny Boy', performed by perhaps the finest trio of voices since the Three Tenors:



Beaker's solo is absolutely heartwrenching. The emotion was so apparent that Simon, Official Dog of The Consistent Fool, woke from his nightly 7-10 PM nap (not to be confused with his nightly sleep from 10 PM - 7 AM, of course) and howled along in participation. Or at least, barked along once at the computer.

My 15 Minutes Redux!

The beauty of the blogosphere is that the definition of fame has been so watered down, that you can have your 15 minutes of it over, and over, and over again.

Once again, I find myself linked to from a 'legitimate' blog, this time after accusing Reihan of blatant libertinism, and also of being a dirty, dirty drug user (which I guess is better than accusing him of Bangladeshism, but, well, whatever.)

And Reihan calls me 'entertaining'! Right back atcha, little man...

UPDATE: I should also welcome any American Scene readers who click their way over here. If you're a regular TAS reader, our politics probably don't particularly line up, but I do hope you stick around for a bit...put your feet up, get comfortable, that sort of thing. You never know - you might find something entertaining after all.

Weekend Food-blogging: The Chocolate Mousse Is Not In Season Edition

If it's good enough for Ezra, it's good enough for me!

Courtesy the fine folks at Bon Appetit, and via epicurious.com, a quite delicious and most simple chocolate mousse recipe.

I made this last night for a little dinner party, with a small variation of my own: in lieu of the 1/4 cup water, substitute 2 tbsp of Kahlua liqueur, and two shots of fresh espresso. What, you don't have your own espresso machine? Shame on you! If this is the case, maybe try instant espresso powder , enough for a single serving.

Personally, for chocolate I used Ghirardeli dark (60% cocoa) chocolate chips. These are my favorite new find at Safeway...from what I can tell from the ingredients list and the nutrition information, they are exactly identical to the chocolate in the bars for sale right next to them on the rack, only at a little under the price on a per-ounce basis. And really, chocolate chips are superior to bars in almost every way! Just as easy to eat plain, easier to put in cookies, and just as easy to melt for recipes like this.

Anyhow, the combination of dark chocolate and coffee flavor is absolutely to die for. Try it!

Serious People, Acting Unseriously

Courtesy of Paul Krugman's blog, a very silly paper written in the 1970's analyzing the economics of interstellar trade, written by, well, Mr. Krugman himself. It's quite amusing, although maybe not quite as amusing as it thinks itself. My favorite two lines:

It should be noted that, while the subject of this paper is silly, the analysis does make sense. This paper, then, is a serious analysis of a ridiculous subject, which is of course the opposite of what is usual in economics.

Then it (the [Trantorian] merchant) may have in its mind (or equivalent organ) a series of transactions of the following kind.

I Learned It From You, Alright? I Learned It By Watching You!

Hmmm, let's see...Reihan is at a world-famous indie music festival in a famously libertine college town, writing late night glowing encomiums to little-known bands, blathering endlessly about how cute all the members are, being unusally emotive, even for Reihan, and claiming dehydration, a well-known side-effect of certain mood-altering substances?

Two plus two equals what now?

Cross-posted to bloggingheads.tv.

And That Is Why

Usually, I read Bill Simmons for some light entertainment. He was recently called something like the 'king of the bar argument', which is about right.

But, the fact is, he's not just a funny guy with similar cultural markers as me. He's also a pretty decent writer. Occasionally given over to some slightly over-the-top sentimentalization, but he's no Mitch Albom or anything. When he tries to write serious, he actually does a pretty good job, which is one reason I keep coming back to him.

Today's column, about the tragic death of an L.A. high school star athlete, is along those lines. It's not a light, easy read, but it is one of those things that leaves you (well, at least me) remembering how good, generally, my life is, and how appreciative I ought to be of that fact. I can't say I recommend it, exactly, but it's something I still feel I ought to point out.

Two-Minute Rant

Okay, there's one thing I simply have to get off my chest this morning after breaking my vow and reading a little of the horserace coverage.

There's a good reason that the Obama campaign is winning the delegate count. Because they're a good, smart political campaign. They read the rules, and they knew that the only way to win the election was to win a majority of the delegates. And so, they set out to construct a plan which would lead to them winning a majority of, you know, the delegates.

All of this bullshit talk spewing from the Clinton campaign and its supporters about the popular vote, or Ohio and Texas and Florida being the only states which count, is simply beside the point. I wish that our system were less Byzantine, and that every election was conducted purely on a popular vote basis. But it's not, and to pretend that those statistics have real-life meaning when they don't is the kind of foolish, utopian crap that distracts the attention of Democrats all the time.

Now, it does so happen that, the way the Democratic party is constructed, with the superdelegates making up about 40% of the delegates needed to win the nomination, that it's nearly impossible, in a tight two-way race, to get to the magical 2,025 number without a decent number of them flopping your direction. The Clinton campaign knows that they got outhustled and outsmarted in the pledged delegate race, and so their only option is to try to win over the superdelegates with a variety of tactics, the current one seeming to be the scorched earth tactic of 'we're going to destroy Senator Obama so thoroughly that he'll be radioactive to the touch, and they'll have to come crawling back to us! Mua ha ha!'

But previous, less scurrilous tactics to win over the opinions of superdelegates, like the 'important state' campaign or discussions of electibility, were totally valid campaign tactics. I don't like them, but I am rather biased.

And, if they work, and the Clinton campaign can convince the lion's share of the superdelegates to fall their way and win, then good for them. They won, according to the rules as they were laid out at the beginning of the game. I won't like it, but I won't be crying messiah-shaped tears in my beer, either.

Incidentally, the whole 'rules as they were laid out at the beginning' thing sort of defines what ought to happen with regards to Florida and Michigan as well. A smart party will reward the campaign that does the best job of playing to the rules as they are. That is the campaign most likely to be able to succeed in the general election, where the rules won't be changing midstream. And so the votes in Florida and Michigan ought not to count for anything. If we can agree to seat the delegations by splitting their delegates 50/50 for each candidate, fine. Otherwise, screw the states. They'll get over the slight.

Zen And The Art Of Olbermann

I also haven't been paying much attention to the details of this Geraldine Ferraro thing. The promise I've made myself in order to try and preserve what's left of my sanity between now and the Pennsylvania primary is to avoid as much primary coverage as I can, so as to ensure that the only stories which really broach my consciousness are the major ones.

That said, Ms. Ferraro's comments really are pretty detestable. Of course it's true that Senator Obama wouldn't be where he is if he weren't a black man. As my people say: "as di bubbe volt gehat baytzim volt zi gevain mayn zaidah."

Come on, you have Google. Google speaks Yiddish. Oh, alright, translated: "if my grandmother had balls, she'd be my grandfather."

The point is, if Senator Obama weren't a black man, then he wouldn't have had all the various and sundry experiences that led him to become the person he is today, with the core beliefs that make him who he is. And so, your point is?

Needless to say, if Senator Clinton were not a woman, specifically if she were not the wife of a particular ex-President, I think it's safe to say that she would not be where she is, either. But that doesn't have anything to do with her specific qualifications to the job for which she is applying.

At the base of it, though, all of these lines of argument are both ridiculous and hateful, and examples of the very, very worst forms of identity politics. I'm not going to dignify it with a coherent response, firstly because that would, well, dignify it, and secondly because it's late and I'm tired.

Oh, and thirdly, because Keith Olbermann said it much better than I ever could. Hit the 'Play' button - it's 10 minutes of your life that you won't regret having spent sitting in front of the computer.

Sins Of The Flesh

I have nothing much to add to the ongoing story of Eliot Spitzer's disgrace in New York. Seems to me vaguely possible that you could manage to avoid doing things which are blatantly illegal while you actually resided in the Governor's Mansion, especially things which you specialized in busting people for while serving as AG. But, you know, that's just me. I'm not an egomaniacal dunderhead who's had much of his life handed to him on a silver platter. Okay, most of that last sentence actually refers to me quite accurately, but at least I'm not a dunderhead!

Anyhow, the most interesting thing I've read about it is the Slate piece which proposes that the main mistake Spitzer made was getting a too-cheap call girl! In particular, I like the story of Melissa, the 38 year old professional who worked for a single client, a high-flying lawyer type, saying

I never tell him he's a piece of shit; I make him feel like superman.

$10,000 a month to make someone feel good about themselves? As they say; good work, if you can find it.

The Right Tool For The Job

I never got very involved in the minute details of the Hollywood writer's strike. Specifically, I didn't really know much of anything about the disagreements. It certainly makes sense that the writers ought to get a piece of the revenue from forms of distribution that didn't exist a few years back, like On Demand and iTunes downloads.

Honestly, I don't even know how it got settled. Who won? Who cares? Either way, mostly, I'm glad that it's over. Even though I don't really watch a lot of TV, I am glad that my favorite shows, House and Lost, will be having more new episodes this season. And the possibility that a short season will inspire the Lost writers to keep things tighter throughout the season definitely excites me.

But mostly, I'm glad that Real Time with Bill Maher is back to top form. Like most of the talk shows, he came back on the air before the strike had ended, but it was clearly an inferior show. It's amazing how much of a difference the exact wording of a good joke makes. In his monologues, especially, even when the setup was there and the joke was obvious, but punchline was always a little off, whether in wording, or timing, or whatever.

Just 3 examples of great lines from his monologue this past week (all paraphrases):

3) John McCain tied up the Republican nomination this week, which was made official when Mike Huckabee dropped out of the race, throwing his support to McCain. Which is just perfect - a guy who doesn't believe in evolution, supporting someone who remembers it!

2) The media has been trying to get Obama to really wade into the race, trying to get him to 'take the gloves off.' Which may not be the best strategy, really...a young, black man attacking a 60 year old white woman?

1) But, really, when it comes to foreign policy, John McCain and George Bush are basically the same person, right? Both think that the problem we have is that we just don't have enough wars yet. For instance, McCain said this week, regarding the problems in South America, that if our ally Columbia is attacked, then the U.S. would have to intervene. Because, you know, it's not like our troops are busy or anything. Someone really needs to tell these guys that 'Army of One' is a slogan, not a goal.

Baby When You Call Me, You Can Call Me Al

Ezra, you can call me anytime, for any reason, or for no reason at all. You want to talk about your day, and how difficult it was to stay awake at that health care conference? I'm down. Want to chat about how freaking awesome the last episode of The Wire was? Even though I'm still watching Season 3 on DVD, I'll be happy to hear about it. Want to bitch about how much of a jerk Yglesias is, and why doesn't he return your calls, and how Reihan isn't nearly as funny as he thinks? I am so there.

Okay, more seriously, I have to completely disagree with the legions bemoaning the antiquity of telephonic technologies. Of course there is something different about speaking over the telephone. It exists in this strange netherworld of communcatory obligations. When you are speaking to someone who is in the same room as you, it's unspeakably rude to multitask - to play video games, or read a magazine, or go to the bathroom. When you're communicating via IM, or e-mail, or Pony Express, it's entirely expected that you will be doing other things in the interim between conversational episodes, and that you won't necessarily drop all other activities the moment a new IM, letter, whatever arrives.

But the phone is different. You can't consume it at entirely your own pace, because the information arrives only as fast or as slow as your conversational partner chooses. But, because they're not there in the room with you, you can have something else going on in the background. In particular, because it only engages your mind and your ears, not your eyes or your hands, you can be doing something like cooking breakfast or sweeping the floors while on the phone. I like that. It's the best kind of multitasking, combining something necessary but both unenjoyable and uninteresting with something entirely interesting and stimulating at the same time.

And, I don't know about you guys, but my phone call range over a vastly wider array of topics than any normal, 'catching up' e-mail tends to. In an hour's time, I can catch up on months' worth of topics with an old friend, and not feel like a single second was wasted. And that's worth something.

Musical Stuff

So far, so good in the recovery process. At the moment, there's no pain, although I am keeping up with the pain pills and the icing, just in case. Also, I appear to have stopped oozing blood, which is, needless to say, a Good Thing. The stitches on one tooth are hanging loose, which is irritating, but there's not much for it but to wait a few days for them to dissolve.

I don't think I mentioned having gone to see Stomp Thursday night before the surgery. It's playing at the Denver Center. For those who don't know, it's a quite rousing percussive performance, done by people making various noises using all sorts of objects which are not actually musical instruments. Rubber pipes, plastic carboys, trash cans and trash can lids, brooms, sand-covered floors. Almost anything except for proper instruments.

Here's an example I found online from one of their cable specials, featuring basketballs in section 1, and kitchen implements in section 2:



Pretty amazing stuff; and the show does not disappoint. We had seats in the very back row of the auditorium, but it was still a completely wonderful night. They mike up the stage so that even the quietest noises are well amplified. If any Coloradan Faithful Readers don't have plans this Sunday, you could do a lot worse than checking out one of the shows.

Also, the section with basketballs (they have one of those in the show in Denver also) reminded me of this, one of my favorite commercials of all time:



All told, I think I prefer the quality of the Stomp piece. But, nonetheless, it's impressive how musical a piece the Nike commercial can make from nothing more than bouncing basketballs and squeaking sneakers, no?

32 Little Bundles Of Joy

Well, I appear to have survived the great Wisdom Tooth adventure of '08.

I can't say that it was exactly a pleasant experience, but it wasn't really all that bad either. The wait was rather excessive - according to the surgeon, there was some sort of emergency shortly before I arrived, so I got called back about 80 minutes after the nominal scheduled start time.

But, after I was called back, it all went quite quickly. A few minutes of vitals taking, a few minutes of basic chit-chat with the nurses, and then with the doc. I remember getting the IV, and when they put the Versed in. It's such a great feeling when you realize 'well, whatever happens from here on out, I'm probably not going to remember it at all.' A couple minutes more chit-chat. I think I gave the doc some sort of half-assed advice on how to throw a forehand (I was wearing an Ultimate shirt.)

I do have a vague memory of a little drilling - apparently I came up just a bit at some point during the operation itself. But not enough to keep me up at night, I think.

A slow waking up, although significantly faster than usual. For whatever reason, I recover remarkably well from general anaesthesia. The two patients who came out of the office while I was waiting were barely able to keep their eyes open, and were leaning heavily on the nurse who was helping them. After about 10 minutes of waiting, I was able to stand of my own accord after getting some quick take-home directions from the nurse.

The doc did stop in before leaving to explain how things went. He said the bottom two came out very easily, but the top two both broke, meaning there was some drilling involved. He expects that means more pain and swelling for those two. He also claimed that the roots went quite deep, up near the sinuses. So he said don't blow my nose, and also warned me that, if I have to sneeze, I ought to do it through my mouth instead of my nose. He didn't say exactly what would happen if I didn't follow these instructions, but I assume it would be something like this:



Anyhow, after that we were on our way. My ride and caretaker, Sara, very kindly drove me home, including a stop at Safeway to drop off the prescriptions for Amoxicillin and Percoset. And also to pick up a huge mocha Frappuchino at Starbucks.

For those curious, so far I have eaten the following items:

• Large mocha Frappuchino
• Protein shake (1 orange, 1 banana, 3 strawberries, 2 scoops protein powder, 1 tbsp peanut butter)
• Bowl of Breyer's coffee ice cream with chocolate sauce.

I figure that if I alternate vaguely healthy things with vaguely unhealthy things, keeping in mind that for at least another 18 or so hours everything has to be soft and non-chew-requiring, I'm doing alright.

I was hoping to be able to post some humorous photo of me with giant chipmunk cheeks, but sadly my mouth has failed to swell to any sort of inhuman proportions. Instead, the best I can give you is a too-cute picture of man and dog, relaxing on couch.


Right now, we are settled in, just starting disc 2 of the extended cut of 'Fellowship of the Ring.' Pain levels are quite low, but I definitely plan on keeping up with the Percoset for at least another day. My experience with the ACL recoveries was that it's much easier to stay in front of the pain than to catch up to it, once you let it get the lead.

Otherwise, everything appears to be going pretty well. I will keep you updated over the weekend, although I hope to have the energy to post about some more interesting topics than my oozing mouth wounds...

Coffee Coffee Coffee Coffee Coffee!

I am sure that it indicates nothing so much as that there is something rather severely wrong with me, but reading about the new Clover coffee brewing system, my thought process is not 'how much for a coffee maker?' Instead, it is 'how fucking cool is that?! Where can I find a local brewhouse that's using one?'

I find it interesting to watch my own palette evolve as time goes on.

When I was younger, up until my late teens really, I had a kids' palette. Fast food, sweet stuff, the like. I didn't drink, because I had no particular desire to be drunk, and the drinks that people drink for the real enjoyment, like good scotch or microbrew beers, had no appeal to me at all.

Then, throughout grad school, I learned to appreciate various new and interesting flavors. I learned to appreciate good beer - in retrospect, this might be the single most useful thing I learned in school. Also, thanks to my cousin's husband, I started to learn the joys of a good scotch. I branched out into other liquors. At the same time, I was learning and practicing new cooking techniques (thanks, Michelle, for guinea pigging so many new recipes!).

But my tastes definitely were still at the stronger side of things. Dark coffee. Porters and stouts, when it came to beer. Deep, smokey scotches, instead of lighter, fruitier ones.

But my palette is definitely still evolving. I came home from Hawai'i in September with several pounds of Kona coffee from Greenwell Farms, the world's leading supplier of Kona beans. After giving a gift of a pound to a friend, I tasted the result and oh sweet lord, that was some good coffee. I ended up keeping a pound for myself that had originally been intended as a gift for friends (sorry, Drew and Daisy). I'm very much enjoying the Glenfarclas that LJ got me for a groomsman gift at his wedding last year, which is definitely less smokey than my usual tastes run. And the wheat beer that Drew and Daisy recently brewed is only the second wheat beer I've ever enjoyed, and is actually one of my more favorite homebrews ever.

So, after reading this article, I am so crazy excited to get my hands on one 'a' them there fancy-schmancy coffeemakers. Not $11,000 excited, but still. You know. Excited.

Fame! I'm Gonna Live Forever...

Well, it's not as exciting as when man-crush Ezra linked to me, but this is still pretty cool:



The face Mickey makes at the 30-second mark



shows that he clearly acknowledges the general truthiness of my claim.

Oh, and for those who are dying to know what exactly I predicted would happen to Mickey if the aforementioned set of circumstances ever came to pass, check out the full comment here.

She Blinded Me...With Science!

Okay, although I don't like it, I have come to grips with the fact that the Republican Party is, at its heart, anti-science. The fact is, there are a lot of stupid people out there, with very silly beliefs. Someone has to represent their interests.

But I've always thought that the anti-science tenets came in two basic flavors. The first is pro-religious. Charles Darwin says that we descended from monkeys, but Pastor William, when he's not busy fondling small boys, says that we were created in the image of god. I like feeling special, rather than just being a monkey with a job (LJ, I'm looking at you here), so I'm going with the second story. Hence, evolution must be wrong, or at least 'controversial', or at the very least, 'hey, it's just a theory.'

The second, more important flavor of Republican anti-science beliefs is pro-corporate. Science says that it's a problem for our power plants to be dumping mercury and smog precursors into the atmosphere? That's ridiculous. How would you like to go back to a world lit by candles and whale oil lamps. No? Didn't think so. Electricity is good, therefore whatever we have to do to get it must be okay.

Similarly, driving cars is a good thing, would you like to go back to riding a horse to get anywhere? No? Then, there must not be such a thing as global warming. Oh, wait, the data is incontrovertible? Well, it's just natural climate cycling, not anthropomorphic. Oh, it is caused by people? Well, the outcomes will be neutral, or maybe even positive. More summer weather! Who doesn't like warm weather? Communists? Besides, putting a tax on carbon will destroy our economy, we could never afford it. And besides, if China doesn't do anything, then any improvements we make will be dwarfed by their coal-burning plants. So it's hopeless to even try.

So, again, while I don't like it, I've come to accept the battle lines. But, when I read about things like John McCain pandering to the 'mercury in vaccines causes autism' crowd, I lose all hope. Good lord, it's supposed to be the wacko left-wingers who accuse Big Pharma of killing our babies with poisonous vaccines, while Republicans defend the interests of their major donors. Especially given that, in this case, they happen to be right! Removing thimerosol from childhood vaccines has done exactly, ummm, nothing to halt the increase in autism diagnoses the last few years.

Please, for the love of all that is holy, can we try very hard not to elect this man, who only has informed opinions on issues which involve dropping bombs on people with funny-sounding names, and has incredibly ill-informed opinions on those topics? It's fine to have your supposed strengths be in the fields of national security. But we've seen what happens the last 8 years when we have a President whose interest wanes in topics which aren't of direct, personal interest to him. I don't think the one thing we need is more of that.

Storming The 90's

Although this could have been done way more informatively with moving people rather than arrows just pointing the way (if you've ever watched NFL Matchup on ESPN on Friday nights, you've seen examples of how well you can diagram a play with replays and a telestrator), this very basic explanation of various NBA defenses is actually fairly informative.

Although it is a little odd that they paced the graphics such that Van Gundy, normally a lively and funny speaker, sounds vaguely retarded while explaining what's going on.

Still, it's good to see the Times get into the whole 1999-era multimedia presentation, even if it's less graphically entertaining than I would expect from a high-school programming project these days.

Please Have Mercy And Just Shoot Me Now

Well, it looks like the political groundhog saw his (her?) shadow, and we are going to have six more weeks of electoral winter.

I'm depressed this morning. Not because Obama lost all the contested primaries, although that is reason enough, but because I am only human. More because I was just hoping that we would have a chance to end this primary season and maybe, briefly, take a break from the 24-hour silly season. I find my ability to stay interested in the daily ups and downs on the campaign waning quickly. Perhaps I am just a victim of the human limitations of the Feiler Faster Thesis, but there are only so many ups and downs and twists and turns that I can stomach to watch, and I feel myself rapidly approaching that point.

Only, I am also a total news junkie, and reading blogs and listening to news podcasts which discuss these issues is part of my daily routine. I'm going to need some new distractions. Fortunately, there are still new episodes of Lost to keep me occupied, but House is still about a month away from new episodes airing.

On the up side, I am getting my wisdom teeth pulled on Friday, so maybe I'll get some sort of horrible infection and die, and then I won't have to worry about paying attention any more. In the immortal words of Bill Murray from Caddyshack: so I've got that going for me. Which is nice.

Women As Microtrends?

Over at Obsidian Wings, Hilzoy puts up a very well-written piece examining the question of whether a woman who votes for Obama over Clinton in the primary is abandoning the cause of feminism, or even the cause of women everywhere.

Probably needless to say, I don't buy this idea. I hate identity politics. I understand their necessity, in some contexts. I am, at heart, the living, beating heart of the patriarchy. I'm a professional, overeducated upper-middle class white dude. That means that, at best, I can only achieve a rational-level understanding of the difficulties that people who don't have all the head starts I had will suffer. Minorities, women, the handicapped. I can try to understand where people are coming from when they complain of discrimination, but I will never feel it in the same way that they do, the people who are actually experiencing it.

So, I know that sometimes you can only have your deepest interests represented by someone who really, truly, deeply feels them.

But, at the same time, identity politics are self-limiting. If, for instance, blacks think that only a black can represent them and their interests, then aren't I, a white guy, stuck feeling that there's no way a black could ever represent me or mine? And now we're heading down the road of tyranny of the majority, which is entirely antithetical to the entire American project.

And all of this is ignoring the fact that, in general, there is much more variety inside any given group than there is between the average of two different groups. For instance, although it is generally accepted that men, on average, have superior spatial reasoning skills to women, it's completely foolish to lock all men into a spatial reasoning-depended career track, while locking out women, since the range between the best and worst man is so much more than that between the average man and the average woman. So, in general, assuming that someone is similar to you just because they hail from your group (race, gender, hobby, whatever) is simply foolish.

So, I guess, I think that identity politics have a place, but you can't get locked into them, or else you will never overcome your demographics.

So, like Hilzoy, I hope that people aren't voting the way they are voting simply because of basic facts of personal identity. I can accept that some people are going to vote for a particular candidate because they think that candidate best represents their particular interests. Ideally, they would understand that knowing who that candidate is isn't quite as simple as knowing who looks the most like them.

Unfortunately for Clinton's campaign, their head strategist is Mark Penn, the author of last year's Microtrends. (Read man-crush Ezra's take here.) I'm not going to get too deep into the weeds of the book; if you want to know about that read Ezra's piece. But the short version is that Penn thinks that Americans can be grouped into tiny little groups, who have common interests based on common characteristics (Archery Dads! Wannabe Snipers!) and appeal to them based on those characteristics.

But, the problem is that there's no reason to expect that Archery Dads, whatever the hell they are, have anything at all in common beyond being dads and having interest in archery. So, policies about kids and tax breaks for arrows might help with this group. Otherwise, what are you supposed to do with this arbitrary group-making?

But Penn is stuck in this mindset. If we find a policy that appeals to some women, then by extrapolation it must appeal to all women! And so, if women aren't voting en masse for Hilary, that means they are abandoning their group, and can be blamed for her loss.

In short, (I know, I know - too late!) I don't buy it.

I Can Has Cheezburger In Can!

As an occasional camper, just reading about the new 'Cheeseburger In A Can' debuting in Germany disturbs the hell out of me. The thought of dropping a can in a pot of boiling water, while looking out over some glorious sunset, then opening it up and digging in to a warmish, greyish, burger-like object is just...so...wrong!

I'm having a very bad daydream (is that a daynightmare?) about being camping somewhere off in the woods, at 14,000 feet, suffering from some sort of awful combination of meat sweats and food poisoning from my canned cheeseburger.

Ugh. Pardon me, I think I just threw up in my mouth, a little.

Gotta Get Away Gotta Get Away

Okay, after a couple of weeks of too much work, not enough fun, I am getting the hell out of Dodge.

I'm off to Beaver Creek for two days, with no computer. I'll be taking my cell phone, but hope to hell not to use it. I'm looking forward to a couple of days 'off the grid'.

So, in my absence, go learn something new. Make a friend. Feed a tree. Have fun! I know I will be. And, I'll be back and in a more...sociable mood come Sunday.

Legends Of The Absurd

I'm glad that I will never be famous, because if I did become famous, some day Michael Kinsley might write an article about me, like today's take-down of the New York Times for its mismanagement of the McCain/Iseman story of last week.

What I wrote was that some people had expressed concern that the Times article might have created the appearance of charging that McCain had had an affair. My critics have charged that I was charging the Times with charging McCain with having had an affair. Such a charge would be unfair to the New York Times, since the Times article, if you read it carefully (very carefully), does not make any charge against McCain except that people in a meeting eight years ago had suggested that other people eight years ago might reach a conclusion—about which the Times expressed no view whatsoever—that McCain was having an affair. I have no evidence to suggest that the New York Times suggested with no evidence that McCain was having an affair.

And, if ever such a thing were to be written about me, I should be very sad, indeed. Although, it would be pretty fucking cool if Mike Kinsley knew who I was. That might make it all worthwhile.

From The Not-Quite-So-Funny File

And, not so much funny 'ha-ha' as funny 'hmmmm', apparent astronomical evidence of the existence of large pockets of dark matter. I'm very skeptical about concepts like Dark Energy and Dark Matter: just like string theory, they upset my notion that in order to qualify as science, a theory damn well ought to be testable. To explain the problem of cosmological reacceleration (the fact that the rate of cosmological expansion, in the wake of the Big Bang, slowed for several billion years, then started to accelerate again), I prefer theories of Modified Newtonian Dynamics.

Traditional Newtonian Laws of Dynamics are just approximations, which quantum laws approach as you change the scale from the micro to the macro (the so-called Correspondence Principle). You need quantum mechanics to describe the actions of a single electron, but if you start talking about amps of current flowing through a resistor, traditional electrodynamics do the job just fine.

Similarly, MOND posits that our traditional law of gravity is also just an approximation, perfectly describing the behavior of balls falling through air, or planets flying around a sun. But when you start to talk about extremely large distances, like that between various galaxies, maybe the rules change a bit. That could explain the reacceleration in a way that avoids having to propose that we don't know where 95% of the mass-energy of the Universe is hiding, as dark matter/dark energy theories claim.

Anyhow, my point is just that if, as claimed, we've seen some real evidence for the existence of dark matter (large pockets of mass whose existence we can presume from experimental evidence, although we cannot see it directly), that is a big feather in the cap of Dark Matter/Energy theorists.

Like any good modern physics argument, this one probably won't be solved anytime soon. But it's something worth keeping an eye out, at least if you are one of the 14 or so people not actually working in the field who still cares about this stuff.

Tuesday Laughs

For a few yuks on this fairly apolitical Tuesday:

Cracked.com's list of the 5 Most Badass American Presidents. About Teddy Roosevelt:

Did we mention he had asthma growing up? He did, and after he beat asthma to death, he ate asthma's raw flesh and ran 100 straight miles off the energy it gave him.

Even better, the 9 Manliest Names In The World. All I can say about this is "Staff Sgt. Max Fightmaster."

And, from the home of funny, something vaguely political: "Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results of 2008 Election Early."

The Death Of Conservatism Redux

Okay, after re-reading my rant from yesterday, I realized that I didn't quite get around to making the point that I was trying to get at, which was that conservatism, as it is currently constituted, is going to have to figure out a way of adapting to a Brave New World if it is going to survive.

Both conservatism and liberalism make a lot of coin playing off the concept of tribalism. But there is a distinct difference, in my mind, in the way that they do so. Liberalism plays off tribalism in an inherently positive sense: the explicit goal of affirmative action is not to bring down whites, but to raise up blacks, for instance. Not to say that it doesn't sometimes come with some ugly undercurrents of quotas and guilt-tripping, but they're just that - undercurrents.

Conservatism, on the other hand, uses the definitions of 'self' and 'other' in a more negative sense. Keep those (blacks, women, convicted felons) from getting the right to vote. Keep those (interracial couples, gays) from getting the chance to marry. Keep those (Germans, Irish, Mexicans) back on the other side of the border, where they belong.

And that's an inherent problem. While we're always going to have tribal identities, at least so long as we are members of the species homo sapiens, the ongoing march of technological advancement is going to break down our ability to ignore the unhappiness of others.

Which is not to say that there won't be conservatism. There always will be. For one thing, so long as there are tribes (which, again, will be the case so long as we're human beings), there will be wars, and arguments about which ones are good ones (all of them, if your last name happens to be Kristol) and which ones are not. But it is sure as shit going to have to reconstitute itself on several axes. That's what I mean about the imminent death of conservatism; conservatism, as we know it, will not exist in 50 years. About that, I am quite confident.

The Death Of Conservatism

I've mentioned before, I think, about how ridiculous the current hullabaloo about the 'Defense of Marriage' is. For starters, it's a completely ridiculous argument, one which does not hold up to the slightest bit of critical scrutiny. I think of myself as fairly intelligent, and I've never been able to figure out how two dudes in San Francisco tying the knot affects my ability to get married, or the decision-making process that leads me there. For another, and more important, it's a completely wasted rearguard action, since I am 100% confident that my grandchildren will someday think it absolutely as weird that two men weren't able to get married as I think it that, in the not-so-distant past, people of two different races couldn't get married.

In large ways, the ongoing and never-ending march of technological progress has a lot to do with these events. As technology opens our minds, expands our horizons, and forces us to interact daily with people and places and events that, previously, would never have even made it onto our radar screens, we grow to learn that other people are, well, people too, and equally deserving of our respect and the protection of law as we ourselves are.

Anyhow, the point of this meandering is that the technological march of progress will not be stopped, and Reihan is absolute right: if conservatives want to avoid a future which includes universal, government-delivered health care, they had better get off their ass and figure out a way to beat it. As technology gives us, and our doctors, and the insurance companies, more and more information about what the future holds for us (such as the likelihood of developing various diseases), more and more people are going to be dealt out of the private insurance game.

As Reihan said: read the N.Y. Times article on how this trend is already beginning, then read Stephen Cecchetti to learn about how its progression is inevitable, and what the only possible outcome may well be. As Cecchetti says, as markets fail, which the health insurance market is bound to do, in the long run, the government is always the body to step in and pick up the pieces.

Personally, I think it would be just super if we could, for once in the history of this godforsakenly shortsighted country, actually see this latent emergency as it's developing, rather than in hindsight, and actually take proactive steps to grease the wheels, rather than enact more shortsighted legislation to try and take care of an ongoing emergency.

But, having lived for 30 long years in said country, I'm not quite so naive as to expect it to actually happen. But still; a guy can dream, right?

Feminism Is Funny!

Via Matt (who got it via Jessica Valenti), the funniest video I've seen about feminism, well, ever.

The best line? Definitely 'Which means she kept her name, mother****ers!'

Yes, Yes

Via Ezra, Publius, and god knows how many other mushy liberal bloggers, the best comic ever, thanks to XKCD.

See, it's funny, because on the Internet, people are wrong all the time. And if one were to stay up every time they found something inaccurate, then they would...never...oh, nevermind.

National Treasure

I try not to throw around phrases like 'National Treasure' lightly, but I do firmly believe that Fred Kaplan, who often pens explanatory pieces about the military and national defense at Slate, fits that profile to a T.

His latest piece, on this week's Navy shoot-down of a falling satellite, is a good representative of his too-often unheralded quality.

A lot of the coverage this week has made the implication, although it's never outright stated, that this is somehow a good indicator of our ability to develop a functional missile-defense program. And make no mistake - a bullseye hit on a flying satellite is a remarkable achievement. As Kaplan says:

Think of it: An SM-3 missile, fired from a cruiser in the Pacific Ocean, ascending 133 miles and colliding dead-on with an object the size of an SUV that's zooming through outer space at 17,000 miles per hour. Truly remarkable!

Remarkable, indeed.

But, as Kaplan points out, like the much-ballyhooed successful missile defense shield tests, all this test proves is that we can build a shield capable of protecting us from a single projectile, launched at a known time, from a known place, flying ballistically (i.e. launched to a high speed, but now flying only under the influence of gravity, like a very large cannonball.) Or, as Kaplan succinctly puts it:

The satellite shoot-down, as well as some previous testing, suggests that the missile-defense system, once it's installed, might be able to shoot down a) one decoy-less missile b) fired from a distant, known site c) along an arc within range of our radars and interceptors.

But the key point, really, is that even if we could overcome every technical obstacle, the concept of a missile shield is almost self-defeating. No shield could possible defend against hundreds of missiles, launched from multiple sites towards multiple targets almost simultaneously. So, the existence of a missile shield encourages our enemies to radically build their stock of deadly weapons, not exactly an ideal outcome for anyone who likes being alive and wishes to minimize the chances of those events which might alter that status.

The fact is, it's much cheaper to build a missile than a missile defense, so any expenditure on a shield system could be counteracted by a much smaller expenditure by whatever enemy nation we're supposedly protecting ourselves from, while the vastly larger number of missiles in the world increases the chance of an accidental launch, or the missile falling into the wrong hands, or any of a dozen other calamitous possibilities.

Finally, as Kaplan says:

The smart way to play an arms race is to develop weapons that force the enemy to spend more money to counter them. A ballistic-missile-defense system pushes the enemy toward alternatives that cost less.

Submarine-based cruise missiles, attacks on a subway system, or even Eli Lake's wet dream of a suitcase bomb set off in an American city. These are the sorts of things that we really ought to be defending against. Instead, we are spending $10 billion a year to defend ourselves from an attack that only a madman would dare attempt to perpetrate. It's enough to make even this Fool feel a little cynical about the whole affair.

What I'm Watching

Right now, the opening scenes of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Quite enthralling; I don't want to say only Kubrick could do it, but it certainly takes a talented director to make scenes of monkeys dancing around and howling so interesting to watch. His eye for how to frame a scene is just about perfect.

It strikes me that this kind of movie could never be made today. No Hollywood flick would have 10 minutes with no dialogue, with no introduction or explanation of what the hell is going on beyond the line 'The Dawn Of Man' flashed at the beginning. If I recall correctly, the movie is quite short on explication of what exactly is going on; much is left up to the viewer to decipher.

Movies simply aren't made like that anymore. It can't be assumed that the viewer is intelligent enough to figure out anything on their own, and must have their hand held through the whole experience like a gaggle of giggling schoolgirls.

Whether through the Star Trek-ian 'Captain's Log' entries, the awful 'how we got here' stories in the Transformers embarrassment of last summer, or the ubiquitous voiceover by Morgan Freeman, any movie with an non-trivial background story has to have every detail spelled out, because the worst impossible thing would be to challenge the audience to actually think for themselves.

After all, we all know that thinking leads to reading, which leads to, you know, critical thinking, which leads to lower profits for the crap-machine known as Hollywood.

I'm not sure what my actual point is here - after all, I appear to lack the attention span to watch a very richly detailed movie without blogging about it at the same time. Maybe I'm just another child of my generation after all...

A Cynic's Take

A cynic might look at the fact that the Republican party has apparently decided to double-down on the idea that electing a Democrat is, in effect, opening the door for another terrorist attack to occur on American soil, and the fact that the Republican party is currently in charge of the security apparatus in America, and conclude that we are in for a royal ass-fucking sometime between now and November.

A cynic would think that.

He might also note that it's somewhat ironic that the Republicans have become, in essence, the party in search of bad news. I remember that, in the early days of the insurgency in Iraq, it was fashionable for Republican blathering heads to talk about how horrible, truly awful!, it was that the Democrats (or, in the rightist parlance, 'members of the Democrat Party'), were, basically, hoping for bad things to happen to our brave sons and daughters, in the front line War on Terror in Baghdad, and Mosul, and Faluja. How unpatriotic it was for the Democrats to opening be cheering for the terrorists, since that was the only route they could regain power in Washington.

Well, a cynic might point out that the Republicans, who have adopted the mantle of the Party of Terror, have adopted the same position with regards to an attack on our home soil.

I wouldn't say such a thing, because while I think the Republicans have some awfully juvenile and shortsighted ideas as to how to prevent terror attacks from happening, it would never occur to me to suggest that they don't have the best interests of America at heart.

But a cynic? He might say such things.

Captain Obvious To The Rescue!

With all apologies to Faithful Reader M.S., who is the original Captain Obvious, she's been promoted to Major Obvious, and the title of Captain has been bestowed on Jim Manzi, primarily for a post he had yesterday, while guesting at Andrew Sullivan's, on the subject of poverty and behavior.

I like Jim's writing; he's been one of the people I most enjoy reading at The American Scene. But his piece really struck me as quite inane. I don't know if it's supposed to be some sort of Telling Truth To Power, but when he says

Human agency matters. Many people have it within their control to improve their economic standing.

I really don't know how I'm supposed to respond. Should I be slapping my forehead in shock? "Oh, Dear Lord! He's right! Human agency does matter!"

Of course he's right. There I would go further and say that, with the exception of people who are really mentally deficient, only human agency matters. Our reaction to events affects our circumstances, and especially our attitudes about them, much more strongly than the actual events.

But it's incredibly simplistic to say that Adam Shepard, the kid written about in the post, had no advantages over the other folks in the homeless shelter he showed up at. He's a college-educated, young male. Jim admits this point, but tries to gloss over it, saying

He also had the accumulated social capital represented by his upbringing and education.

There's a whole lot of weight being carried by that phrase, 'accumulated social capital.'

Let's do a thought experiment. Andrew and another fellow, Bob, from the homeless shelter both decide they want to apply for a job, say as a sales clerk at Office Max. Imagine they are both white, with similar age, health, and other demographics. But, while Andrew is a college grad, Bob didn't finish high school. Andrew can speak in complex sentences, using grammatically correct English, while Bob speaks the local street slang, the only language he's ever really known.

Assuming that Andrew and Bob give the exact same answers to every question the interviewer asks, the only difference being Andrew speaking all civilized-like, who do you think is going to get that job?

And, I would argue, the question of grammar is a very small example of Andrew's vast inherent advantages over Bob in the competitive job market. There's knowledge, self-confidence, the fact that Andrew has a lifelong habit of waking up at a certain time because he's knows he has to be somewhere (job, class, swim team practice) by a certain time. Maybe Bob has never held a steady job, and he hasn't woken up at a particular time since he was in sixth grade. That might be a tough thing to learn how to do at the age of 25 years old.

These are the sorts of things that I sort-of take for granted. I'm damn sure Jim does, at least while he was writing this post. I've had limited experience with folks who didn't have the advantages I had growing up, of a set of educated parents who had high expectations of me, but also high confidence in me, and raised me to believe that I could accomplish anything I set my mind to. I know that things that seem as obvious to me as walking or breathing are absolutely not that way for them.

While I may not make millions in this life, I know that I will never starve, because I was raised, as I expect Andrew was, to understand and be able to execute the sorts of things that are necessary to get ahead in our culture - punctuality, neatness, the ability to understand new problems and apply my intelligence to figure out how to solve them.

I'm not saying that these skills can't be gained later in life. But I think it is pretty obvious, bordering almost on tautological, to say that it was a hell of lot easier to gain them when they were part of the background noise of my life growing up than it would be to pick them up in adulthood.

So, while I would never argue that people are slaves to their circumstances, and would agree that people can have remarkable success coming from the roughest of backgrounds, the sort of attitude that 'we just have to expect people to act better' is really, well, unhelpful. Behavior does matter more than circumstances, but lifelong circumstances shape behavior, and failure to acknowledge this is a serious flaw in any political worldview.

Look, Ma, Look At The Horsey!

I've been avoiding saying much in the way of direct horserace coverage of late, mostly because my predictive abilities have proven to be significantly inferior to those of Princess the football game-picking camel. I have realized that I, lacking the information of political insiders, but believing myself to possess a modicum more humility and common sense, ought to be smart enough to realize that trying to predict the outcome of a tight political race is as foolish as trying to time the stock market.

But, after tonight, I do feel obligated to jump in with a little bit of roundup coverage.

According to Nick Beaudrot (who ought to be Cajun, if he's not. I'm envisioning Wilford Brimley's Uncle Douvee from Hard Target shouting 'Nic-o-las! Nic-o-las! Get your littol Beaudrot ass over he-yah!'), Obama won every major demographic in today's election except for older women, even achieving marginal victories in demo groups like 'all women', and 'high school grads'. Since those are, traditionally, his weakest areas, I think that shows the upwards momentum of his trajectory. A 17-point win in a state where the Clinton campaign chose to actually try, unlike the 'if we don't try, it doesn't count' strategy they employed along the Chesapeake last week, is definitely a meaningful win.

Now, especially in the Feiler-Faster era in which we live, the two weeks between today and Texas/Ohio are, essentially, three eternities, plus a really long time on top. There's enough times for things to change, un-change, re-change, and un-re-change by then. So I'm not foolish enough to speculate about what the long-term prospects for the campaign are.

The only two things I think I can say without a doubt are first, that Obama is trending upwards, with polls moving in his direction in Texas (haven't seen any recent Ohio polls), and second, that we have not seen the last of the Clinton campaign. If they go down, they will go down fighting, and pulling no punches. I don't think Clinton will really go dirty; she knows that the best she could achieve there would be the Pyhhric victory of winning the nomination, only to lose the general. But you will certainly see the campaign do its best to besmirch Obama's fairly saintly reputation.

It's already beginning; see these posts by Kevin Drum for more info.

But, still; a good night for this Obamaniac.

Frogs!

From the News Of The Weird file, the announcement of the discovery of fossils of Beezebufo the Devil Toad, a 10 pound amphibian once living in Madagascar.

I have no comment about this development, except to say that a 10 pound frog would be either very cool, or scary as shit. Also, I wonder why God didn't drop a big handful of those motherfuckers on the Egyptians back in the day. Now that's a plague.

Confusion About What To Be Confused About

Add me to the list of people, like Matt Yglesias, distinctly unhappy with this line from Senator Clinton last week.

Speeches don't put food on the table. Speeches don't fill up your tank, or fill up your prescription, or do anything about that stack of bills that keeps you up at night. My opponent gives speeches. I offer solutions.

But, chalk me up as being in distinct disagreement as to the actual point of disagreement. Matt says

And, clearly, speeches don't put food on the table. But it's not as if Hillary Clinton doesn't give speeches. Giving speeches is part of being a presidential candidate. Indeed, it's also part of being president. And, again, both candidates deliver speeches. So it would seem that Clinton is accusing Obama of giving speeches well.

And, indeed, it's not so much that I disagree with Matt. It's more that I find other aspects of what Senator Clinton had to say much more risible. Frankly, I don't want the government to fill up my tank, or to do anything about my bills. And I'm a fucking liberal!

This is the kind of thing that gets picked up by the wingnut factory. I don't know whether it actually was mentioned, but I can certainly see Hannity or Limbaugh taking this sort of line and twisting it into 'Hillary Clinton wants the government to pay your bills! Hillary Clinton wants to buy your gas! Hillary Clinton wants to make all your problems just go away...'

I'm a liberal. Proud of it. I think it's a fine philosophy, with solid underpinnings which are based with a pretty equal measure of realism about the way people actually are and optimism for what our society could become. But, I'm also aware that the word is pretty loaded. For better or worse, most people in America think that they're conservative, although I would definitely argue that point, since most people are in favor of things like equal rights for women and minorities, Social Security, and protection of civil liberties from bodies both corporate and public.

But, again, the reality of the situation doesn't matter against the perception, which is that most people think of themselves as 'conservative', and have an inherent distrust of the concept of 'goverment', even though the actuality is very different (what comes to mind is the old story of one of John Breaux's constituent's coming to him and telling him 'Senator, make sure you go to Washington and keep the government's hands off my Medicare!')

So, when Senator Clinton comes out and talks about things like how speeches don't put gas in your tank, it sounds like she's implying that her brand of government can do just that. And I don't like the sound of that. It's bad policy, something I don't really agree with - I think the job of government is to ensure equality of opportunity, not to make sure gas is cheap. But, even more seriously, it's really tone deaf to start making extravagant promises about what your administration can achieve. It's too easily parodied, too easily plays into the unjustified fears people have about liberals. And, maybe it's playing a bit too scared, but I'm still concerned about what effects such an attack could have in the fall's campaign...

I Wish I Could Quit You

I find myself at a bit of a crossroads today, pondering one of the great existential questions of our time:

Is it possible to have a simultaneous man-crush on two completely different bloggers?

My feelings for Ezra Klein are well-known and, I believe, quite understandable. He has much the same politics as I, cares deeply about the issue of public health, which is something I am also quite interested in, and he's so damn cute! Plus, he's a Good Jewish Boy, which would make those Faithful Readers who happen to be my mother happy.

Also, apropos of very little, I tried his most recent kung pao tofu recipe with Faithful Reader Daisy Saturday night, and holy crap! it is good. You should try it. It would work fine with chicken, for the soy-phobic amongst you. I made the following substitutions, due to the fact that I live in white trash-ville, and Safeway was the most diverse place I could shop for ingredients: plain black peppercorns instead of Sichuan, dry red cooking wine instead of rice wine, a 50/50 mix of balsamic and white vinegar instead of Chinese black vinegar, and small dried new mexico chiles for Chinese peppers. But still, it is fantastic.

Anyhow, the point is, I am also starting to get that little murmur of my heart beating extra fast in my chest these days when I read Reihan Salam as well. It's a bit less expected, though, I must admit. We have somewhat different politics, and I really don't know what mom would say if I brought a shaved-head Bangladeshi neoconservative to dinner.

But still, I dare you to read musings like this, posted while he is guest-blogging at Andrew Sullivan's house, and declare him not to be a national treasure:

And what will follow Generation Z, you ask? I see two distinct possibilities: (a) all of our celebrities will be digital composites, Max Headroom-style or (b) we are headed straight for something like the Biblical apocalypse. Which is why I'm investing in gold doubloons. (See Chapter 5 of Captain Jack's Guide to Management.)

You see? Precious!

Also, he is in fine form carrying Kerry Howley through this entire diavlog over at BH.tv. I don't know why some people are so impressed that Reihan stood through the entire conversation - I'm pretty sure I can stand for an hour without too much trouble - but regardless of that, it's a great performance by Reihan and you should check it out.