July 4, 2009
And there are people who want the State to run health care...
Liquorless in Seattle. Really, go read this: the state of Washington operates with a single state distribution center for liquor. And their new system doesn't work. Liquor stores, bars, restaurants...no one has a full stock.
Leviathan is not your friend.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:15 AM | Comments (2)
July 1, 2009
Don't worry, the economy is practically improving!
Best misleadingly optimistic headline I've seen (via news.google.com) lately:
Euro-zone June manufacturing PMI hits 9-month high MarketWatch - 39 minutes ago LONDON (MarketWatch) -- Activity in the 16-nation euro zone's manufacturing sector continued to fall in June, but contracted at the slowest pace in nine months, according to the Markit manufacturing purchasing managers index released Wednesday.
I'm sorry, but one only hits a high when one is rising, not falling.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:12 AM | Comments (1)
June 30, 2009
Celebrity deaths in threes
Michael Jackson, Farah Fawcett, and now Billy Mays? I guess the rest of them can sleep peacefully for a few weeks.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:47 AM | Comments (1)
June 24, 2009
How - Biblical.
Eli Raz was peering into a narrow hole in the Dead Sea shore when the earth opened up and swallowed him.
I avoid Dead Seas. They sound like places where the wrath of God would cause the earth to swallow you up.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:58 AM | Comments (2)
June 19, 2009
David Bowie makes even MORE money off my generation than he has already.
Lincoln MKZ. Talk about target marketing. Here's a picture of the car.
Here's the video with music. Tell me, people over 35, that this doesn't say "buy me! buy me!"
Maybe there's SOME hope for the American car industry after all.
Here's the whole cover version.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:35 PM | Comments (3)
June 18, 2009
NOT a good summer for aviation
Pilot dies mid-flight; plane lands safely in NJ
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:16 PM | Comments (0)
June 16, 2009
Sorry, Judge Sotomayor - Google makes it seem all so clear
Sotomayor belongs to an elite single-sex club.
"I do not believe that my membership in the Belizean Grove violates the Code of Judicial Conduct," Sotomayor wrote. She told senators that the group involves men in some of its events and that she was unaware of any man who had tried to become a member.
Yeah. Try this from the first google hit, the group's own website:
Having observed the power of the Bohemian Grove, a 130-year-old, elite old boys' network of former Presidents, businessmen, military, musicians, academics, and non-profit leaders, and realizing that women didn't have a similar organization, Susan Stautberg and 26 other founding members created the Belizean Grove, a constellation of influential women who are key decision makers in the profit, non-profit and social sectors; who build long term mutually beneficial relationships in order to both take charge of their own destinies and help others to do the same.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:29 PM | Comments (0)
June 10, 2009
Cuba or Palau?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:17 AM | Comments (3)
June 1, 2009
If you didn't already think that American auto corporations were a thing of the past . . .
"There was a time between Nov. 4 and mid-February when I was the only full-time member of the auto task force," Mr. Deese, a special assistant to the president for economic policy, acknowledged recently as he hurried between his desk at the White House and the Treasury building next door. "It was a little scary."But now, according to those who joined him in the middle of his crash course about the automakers' downward spiral, he has emerged as one of the most influential voices in what may become President Obama's biggest experiment yet in federal economic intervention.
I'm very sorry that those who joined him in the crash course don't describe him as competent or right or visionary - "influential" can be a very bad thing. The most complimentary thing the article says about him is reading a compliment into Larry Summers not hating him:
"Brian grasps both the economics and the politics about as quickly as I've seen anyone do this," said Lawrence H. Summers, the head of the National Economic Council who is not known for being patient whenever he believes an analysis is sub-par -- or disagrees with his own.
via Prof. Althouse.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:10 PM | Comments (0)
May 30, 2009
Beautiful irony
Nice!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:01 PM | Comments (0)
Economists and historians
It is hardly surprising, then, that the bond market is quailing. For only on Planet Econ-101 (the standard macroeconomics course drummed into every US undergraduate) could such a tidal wave of debt issuance exert "no upward pressure on interest rates".Of course, Mr Krugman knew what I meant. "The only thing that might drive up interest rates," he acknowledged during our debate, "is that people may grow dubious about the financial solvency of governments." Might? May? The fact is that people - not least the Chinese government - are already distinctly dubious.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:23 AM | Comments (0)
May 21, 2009
Megan McArdle on the NYT Reporter and his Bankruptcy Book
Megan reads the NYT magazine excerpt from a forthcoming book on debt by a NYT business correspondent. She sympathizes.
Megan reads the book - questions mount.
Megan hears something about personal bankruptices. What, the 2nd wife wasn't so fiscally nice? Megan does legwork.
It's worth reading them in order. Miss McArdle is a very sympathetic person. I had lunch with her last week and we compared notes on all kinds of things personal, world-phenomenal, and gadgetical. I trust her to read things carefully and say interesting things about them, which she did from the first installment. The most recent entry, though, starts to ask really unfortunate questions - and her comments are harsher.
Few of us have room to cast even third stones - but few of us have the nerve to write a book blaming our cracked glass walls on the world financial crisis.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:17 PM | Comments (0)
April 26, 2009
Forza Italia!
Separately Sunday, the captain of an Italian cruise ship said his security staff fought off a pirate attack in the region Saturday with pistols and a water hose.Commander Ciro Pinto told Italian media the ensuing gunfight damaged the ship, but the 1,500 passengers were unhurt.
He said six armed pirates attacked the ship from a small speedboat in the Indian Ocean, off the Somali coast. After the attack, the ship continued toward its destination, the Jordanian port of Aqaba.
Until someone looks at international law and decides that ships under attack may respond with force this is not going to stop.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:23 PM | Comments (1)
April 14, 2009
All you have to know about the decline and fall of Britain...
Procol Harum's hit "A Whiter Shade of Pale," with its haunting organ melody and largely meaningless lyrics, is the most-played song in U.K. public places in the past 75 years, the London-based Times reported, citing PPL, which licenses music for public use on behalf of more than 3,500 record companies.The song, recorded in 1967, beat out Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" into second place with the U.S. Everly Brothers harmony duo coming third with their 1958 recording of "All I Have to Do Is Dream," the newspaper said.
The King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley could only manage seventh place with his 1957 hit, "All Shook Up," while Abba's "Dancing Queen" took the eighth slot and Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" was 10th; the Beatles' highest placing was 11 with "Hello, Goodbye," and the Rolling Stones "Honky Tonk Women" was the 19th most-placed, the Times said.
PPL defined public places as including radio stations, sports stadiums, jukeboxes, elevators and supermarkets, the Times added.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:04 PM | Comments (0)
April 6, 2009
There are those in favor of life and those in favor of death.
And Dignitas, the Swiss group that kills people, is in favor of death.
Ludwig Minelli described suicide as a "marvellous opportunity" that should not be restricted to the terminally ill or people with severe disabilities.
At least he's not coy about it.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:18 PM | Comments (0)
March 24, 2009
Missing America
And unnecessary quotation marks.
Oh - I did fine on my test. What did you expect? Lots of us are in the field because we were ALWAYS good at school and performed for the least incentive - like smiley faces at the bottom of the homework.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:23 PM | Comments (2)
March 23, 2009
He gives the UK PM a box of dvds and he writes a letter to the previous president of France.
Please explain to me again why we should believe President Obama is so very smart. Of course, Sarkozy is an anti-book president, and we know how seriously Obama takes books - he's told us so.
Hint to Hillary in case she gets consulted on these, you know, foreign affairs things - Romano Prodi may have opposed American policy, too, but he's not president or prime minister of Italy anymore. They are checking with State before they drop these letters in the mail?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:07 PM | Comments (2)
March 16, 2009
Finger pointing
If you want a television host, or network, to blame all of our troubles on, you'd do better to cast your ire on Home and Garden Television, and Flip This House. They're the ones who told Americans, over and over and over and over, that it was possible to get rich by installing granite countertops.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:42 PM | Comments (1)
March 10, 2009
Richard Gere thinks we should cut Hillary some slack
Because, you know, "she's more complicated than that."
Actually, this Wolf Blitzer piece makes me think that Richard Gere might be smarter than I've ever imagined. It's actually pretty clever.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:49 PM | Comments (0)
March 8, 2009
Let's just hope they get RESET right in Pashtun
Obama talks about dealing with the Taliban.
Further: What makes a moderate Talib - by Tunku Varadarajan, who's met two of them.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:28 PM | Comments (1)
March 6, 2009
My former (praise Jesus!) Senator at work.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton opened her first extended talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov by giving him a present meant to symbolize the Obama administration's vow to "press the reset button" on U.S.-Russia relations.She handed a palm-sized box wrapped with a bow. Lavrov opened it and pulled out the gift: a red button on a black base with a Russian word
peregruzka printed on top. [my emphasis]"We worked hard to get the right Russian word. Do you think we got it?" Clinton asked.
"You got it wrong," Lavrov said.
Sounds like she went to Staples and relabeled a gift.
Hope! Change! Imaginative but cheap people in the White House who want to try symbolism before substance - and get their symbol wrong. Having spent years telling us the Bush administration was incompetent this makes a difficult narrative for the surviving legacy media to relate. Me, I'm amused. Doesn't Hillary! have someone to consult about these gift exchanges involving exotic languages? Or should, perhaps, we wonder about the State Department in general?
I'm certain there are folks in Washington busily denying that the native speaker knows what he's talking about and that their relabeling of an EASY button as RESTART was correct.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:54 PM | Comments (3)
Projection?
Obama, the empty screen on which so many people project their desires, needs a glass screen to project his speeches on - otherwise he doesn't speak particularly well.
"It's just something presidents haven't done," said Martha Joynt Kumar, a presidential historian who has held court in the White House since December 1975. "It's jarring to the eye. In a way, it stands in the middle between the audience and the president because his eye is on the teleprompter."Just how much of a crutch the teleprompter has become for Obama was on sharp display during his latest commerce secretary announcement. The president spoke from a teleprompter in the ornate Indian Treaty Room for a few minutes. Then Gov. Gary Locke stepped to the podium and pulled out a piece of paper for reference.
The president's teleprompter also elicited some uncomfortable laughter after he announced Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius as his choice for Health and Human Services secretary. "Kathy," Obama said, turning the podium over to Sebelius, who waited at the microphone for an awkward few seconds while the teleprompters were lowered to the floor and the television cameras rolled.
Obama has relied on a teleprompter through even the shortest announcements and when repeating the same lines on his economic stimulus plan that he's been saying for months -- whereas past presidents have mostly worked off of notes on the podium except during major speeches, such as the State of the Union.
Funny, it's the reverse of what people accuse bad lecturers of doing - reading their PowerPoint slides. Without his slides, people think Obama's really not very good.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:01 AM
March 3, 2009
Communists? All nuts. All.
Here's an amazing story of someone with a Ph.D. who decided that Kampuchea was a good idea - and someone shot him in Phnom Penh for his troubles. No, really - this is a depressingly excellent example of why advanced degrees mean very little about an ability to understand the world. You know, the real, phenomenal world. Here's a lovely example of the article's subject and his inability to see the world:
Caldwell was supportive of both the Vietnamese and Cambodian regimes and believed that the Cambodian-Vietnamese conflict was 'detrimental to the broader interests of Third World liberation struggles.'
I mean support 3rd world liberation struggles all you want (me, I don't - the record runs against them lately), but don't delude yourself that neighboring peasant reigmes will get along.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:12 PM | Comments (0)
February 26, 2009
No TSA waiver for you!
"We have one boat. It's pulled by two mules. On a good day they might go 2 miles per hour," said Sarah B. Hays, the park's director of operations.The park's two-mile canal does not pass any military bases, nuclear power plants or other sensitive facilities. And, park officials say, the mules could be considered weapons of mass destruction only if they were aimed at something resembling food.
Still, the operators count as "mariners" and need criminal background checks.
Your Federal Government at work.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:29 AM | Comments (1)
February 17, 2009
How to sell old books inside the law
Have you read about the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, passed to keep us safe from lead paint on toys and such? Talk about unintended consequences! Evidently book dealers - both those selling used books for children to read or collectibles for grown ups to hoard - are supposed to test their wares for lead. Here's a reasonably detailed explanation.
No one can afford to do that!
Jeff Sypeck points out a Canon Law precedent for evading this bit of congressional whimsy.
Years ago, while researching a now-dated piece for Salon, I learned that even though the sale of first-class relics--i.e., actual bits of saints' bodies--is prohibited by canon law, it's fine to sell a reliquary and then throw in the relic as a "gift."The charming dishonesty of this loophole notwithstanding, rare book dealers can learn a few tricks from latter-day simoniacs. If, for example, I were selling a $4,800 signed, first-edition set of The Chronicles of Prydain, I'd update my listing to reflect post-CPSIA reality: that the lucky buyer who agrees to pay $4,800 for a lovely (if slightly used) cardstock Amazon.com bookmark will also receive a rare set of autographed novels--an elaborate bookmark-holder offered purely as a gift.
I like the idea!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:15 AM | Comments (0)
February 10, 2009
A first sentence indicative of the times
The annual Hedge Funds Care benefit - - backed by Kenneth Tropin and Michael Vranos -- will downsize from a black-tie dinner to a cocktail party tomorrow night in New York.
It's on Bloomberg.com/muse - but I can't get the link to work. I guess we'll have to live in suspense about how much money they raise.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:23 PM | Comments (0)
Ann Landers says go to Sunday School
Glenn Reynolds says give blood. It gets you to some of the same places, gentlemen.
If I were single, I think I'd donate more often -- there are lots of young, attractive women there, they're presumptively healthy and probably somewhat altruistic, and it's natural to strike up a conversation since they keep you waiting a lot. (I chatted with a lovely oncology nurse today). I didn't really start giving blood until after I got married, so this is all academic to me, but you single guys out there take note. And besides, it's embarrassing that men are so underrepresented.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:04 AM | Comments (0)
January 30, 2009
Well, at least Samantha Power wasn't a lobbyist.
She wasn't, was she?
But still! Obama, who fired her for being exceptionally rude to Hillary Clinton has hired her to work with Hillary Clinton. In fact, it will require her to work between Obama and Clinton, won't it? She'll be giving him advice on the foreign policy that Clinton is conducting?
Power will be the NSC's [National Security Council's] senior director for multilateral affairs, a job that will require her to work with the state department, headed by Clinton.The appointment is expected to be announced shortly, said the aide, who requested anonymity.
Power, a foreign policy adviser to Obama during his primary race against Clinton, drew fire when she told the Scotsman newspaper in an interview that the then-New York senator's campaign would do anything to try to win the Democratic presidential nomination.
"It looks like desperation," the newspaper cited her as saying. "She is a monster, too -- that is off the record -- she is stooping to anything," Power said, according to the paper.
On March 7, Power issued a statement saying that her comment was "inexcusable" and resigned. She said her remarks were "at marked variance from my oft-stated admiration for Senator Clinton and from the spirit, tenor and purpose of the Obama campaign."
But unless she's been a registered lobbyist for a foreign government she won't need a waiver.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:33 AM | Comments (0)
January 28, 2009
Bill Clinton's Millions
I guess we should be glad that Hillary is at State rather than Commerce. Though I'm sure there's a waiver for this kind of conflict of interest risk.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:01 AM | Comments (0)
January 26, 2009
Politics from the point of view of the Kennedy Clan?
"I'm sure the family is going to protect her," one source said. "What did Caroline do to deserve getting dragged through the mud?"Ummm - she put her name forward for appointment to a very important office? Just imagine what would have happened over the course of a campaign!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:10 AM | Comments (2)
January 24, 2009
Even Paul Krugman . . .
But my real problem with the speech, on matters economic, was its conventionality.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:20 AM | Comments (0)
January 23, 2009
Why did Paterson wait?
I've read a lot of people commenting about why the replacement for Hilary Clinton took so long. I think that Gov. Paterson was waiting to see if Clinton was actually confirmed as Secretary of State. I don't think he was wrong to wonder whether or not she'd go through with the appointment, if WJC would actually submit his financial information, and whether she would make it past the Senate. He was being cautious, and I don't blame him a bit.
Finally he appoints Kirsten Gillibrand and people are asking "why not Andrew Cuomo?" Well, maybe two things are going on. First, he might not be as worried about Cuomo competing with him for governor as some people think. Second, he may not be worried about Gilliland and Cuomo - according to her wikipedia entry she worked for Cuomo back in the HUD days. SHE might have enough on him to keep him from running against her.
I've only lived up there for 9 years and don't really understand New York politics; I'll just watch and see.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:22 PM | Comments (1)
Waiver policy for some lobbyists
Only the ones Obama wants to appoint. Otherwise, you lobbyists can't serve in government for at least two years! Be sure to read the comments, one of which suggests that the unnamed senior White House official is either wrong or disingenuous about one lobbyist-appointee not needing a waiver. But hey - if you're going to announce a policy and immediately offer waivers, why worry about the spirit or the letter of the policy?
Because I tend to read the press with an eye tuned by reading the same damn story over and over again (you know, world literature doesn't have that many new plots) I've noticed two stories that could be written by pushing F11 in the last week:
1. New president pursues physical fitness despite pressures of White House (there was a bit of that towards the end of this story - I expect more of them over the weekend).
and
2. New administration the most ethical ever.
Haven't we all read those before? I seem to remember video of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush running early in their administrations, and surely every president since Nixon has pledged to clean up the revolving door system. How long will Obama keep up his workout routine?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:57 PM | Comments (0)
January 22, 2009
Want to know why Obama creeps me out?
Want to know why Cardinal Daneels felt he needed to say that Obama is not the Messiah? Followers like this. Watch the whole thing - especially around 3:54
Scary. And they call themselves Americans.
Further: I go on at some length in a response to a comment below. Short version - if you thought Bushism = Fascism, this particular video at least demonstrates a scary cult of personality among Hollywood youth role models. If rhetoric/advertising is important - and I think it is - this is bad stuff. If you think that rhetoric/advertising is unimportant, why do you think so many people voted for Obama? If you think the text of pledges is unimportant, why do you think Obama went to the trouble to take his again?
Further still: Parody, found via Mr. Tiemann. Best moment? "Oh come on, this is a practical joke, right? It's an episode of Punk'd, and Kutcher picked a bunch of random hipster people out of a Santa Monica coffee house to play a part in some sort of elaborate prank to see how many people he could fool into thinking they were actually celebrities."
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:40 PM | Comments (7)
Damaging the Kennedy Brand
I am very happy with Caroline Kennedy's performance this last month or so - she has done more damage to the Kennedy brand than anyone since her Uncle Teddy in his youth. She is vague, a poor speaker, and indecisive. You couldn't have said that with much credibility before yesterday - but the to and fro over whether or not she wanted to be senator makes it clear.
I'm not impressed with Andrew Cuomo as a human being, but at least he's not a Kennedy.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:04 AM | Comments (1)
January 21, 2009
Chappaqua Real Estate Watch
In an exchange with a friend yesterday it occurred to me to wonder how soon Hillary will sell the house in Chappaqua. She doesn't need it any more, and it's never been a very convincing backdrop.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:29 AM | Comments (0)
January 19, 2009
In contrast to the Clintons . . .
The Bushes prepared to leave on time.
You know, that whole delusional thinking bit about Bush-Cheney and the refusal to surrender power is looking pretty silly right about now.
But then it always did.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:26 PM | Comments (1)
How appropriate! Black Death and al Quaeda!
The Black Death has reportedly killed at least 40 al-Qaeda operatives in North Africa.
I'm very fond of the "Justinian's Plague brought on the conditions that allowed the quick success of the early Caliphate" argument - so this is an interesting, if unpleasant, occurrence.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:18 AM | Comments (1)
January 18, 2009
Heaven
In honor of a discussion over at Prof. Althouse's, I'm playing this while I cook dinner for the 'rents:
Title - Artist - Album - play count (since the last time I messed up my iTunes db)
"Heaven" - Talking Heads - Popular Favorites 1976-1983 - 34
"Heaven" - Kim Wilde - Wolvie, Dance 2001, #2 - 8
"One Night In Heaven" - M People - Elegant Slumming, 1993 - 14
"Closer to Heaven" - Pet Shop Boys - Nightlife, 1999 - 16
"Heaven" - The Psychedelic Furs - All of This and Nothing, 1988 - 12
"Heaven Must Have Sent You" - Bonnie Pointer - Mega Hits Dance Classics Volume 3 - 16
"Sheep go to Heaven" - Cake - Prolonging the Magic, 1998 - 18
"Heaven" - Frazier Chorus - Ray, 1991 - 13
"Heaven's Gonna Burn Your Eyes" - Thievery Corporation - The Richest Man In Babylon, 2002 - 10
"In Heaven There Is No Beer" - The Bluebeats - Skankaholics Anonymous, Under The Influence Of Ska, 1997 - 14
I'm not through the list yet, but so far I stand by my comment at Althouse - Talking Heads are Thomists.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:44 PM | Comments (1)
Tuesday a whole new game begins . . .
. . . just like every other old game.
Inaugural committee staff members attributed Obama's success to both small and large donors and said that special tickets are given in appreciation to big contributors but that there is no quid pro quo."Although the Obama campaign was unprecedented in its aggressive outreach to small donors, it is a fact in American politics that large donations are necessary as well," said committee spokeswoman Linda Douglass. "Nothing has ever led any donor to believe they will have special access to President-elect Obama."
Yeah. Right. Nothing has ever led anyone to believe that.
Read the article for the amounts involved. And the sky-box seats at the Inaugural and wonder why those donors might have thought they'd have special access.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:25 AM | Comments (0)
January 9, 2009
Bureaucracy will save us!
So what makes anyone think that future bureaucrats, no matter how vast their authority, will be able to do better? Advocates of stricter regulation often talk as though the choice for protecting investors is between imperfect market mechanisms and foolproof government regulations. In fact, governments, like every other institution, are staffed by fallible individuals who can be fooled as easily as anyone else.Ah, silly libertarian! You don't realize that a national service academy for bureaucrats will make them effective as well as vast in auctoritas! I'm not sure if Obama is on board with this, but goodness knows it's in the air.
Here's a blog from advocates of such a beast.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:07 AM | Comments (0)
January 8, 2009
Backbone, we hardly knew ye
Pelosi caves on Panetta. I guess she works for Obama.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:50 AM | Comments (0)
January 6, 2009
Politics as usual
Republicans used to try to blame the rise of al Qaida on the Clinton administrations by saying that in the 1990s America treated terrorism as a criminal and policing problem - sending the FBI to investigate the USS Cole, for instance.
So appointing Leon Panetta is a sign of what? That the Obama administration is sending in a political fixer because Intelligence is a political issue?
Oh, well. We all knew Obama himself didn't have any intelligence or international relations experience - but didn't we think that meant he would bring in people who did?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:58 AM
January 5, 2009
Durbin too busy to meet Burris
Burris said he attempted to arrange a meeting with Durbin on Monday or Tuesday but learned he was too busy. He said the two made an appointment for Wednesday, the day after new senators are set to be sworn in.
Too busy until after the swearing-in. I wonder if they're going to swear in Burris?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:23 AM | Comments (1)
January 4, 2009
Journalists. What drives their analytical processes?
I really don't know sometimes.
The Washington Post has a front page story with the headline Jobless Rate Up for College Educated. Their poster-child? Well...
Having worked in residential construction for 20 years, she was used to finding work by flipping through her Rolodex."Usually it's three phone calls, three job offers, and off you go," she said.
Ummmm...could her 20 years of work in the residential construction field be holding her up more than her college degree - also more than 20 years old - is advancing her? Maybe?
The other two examples offered, a programmer (I guess - he started out that way), and a "veteran financial consultant." Somehow I don't think the Washington Post is looking hard enough.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:42 AM | Comments (1)
January 1, 2009
The problem with giving nephews board games for Christmas
Is that you have to be a graceful loser when one of them beats you fair and square. In my defense, I haven't played Stratego in decades.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:49 AM | Comments (3)
December 31, 2008
This is why I don't want any 'professionals' thinking they have the training to decide to euthanize me or not
Because you know, they will. By neglect or by active murder. But that's the culture of death for you. Happy New Year.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:54 PM | Comments (1)
December 29, 2008
Whatever happened to "don't put all your eggs in one basket"?
From an interesting Madoff article at Bloomberg.com:
U.S. foundations that invested with Bernard Madoff donated more than $73 million to nonprofit organizations in 2007, according to a tally based on foundation tax returns.The Dec. 11 arrest of the 70-year-old New Yorker has directly affected some 400 U.S. nonprofits, from Amnesty International to the Death Penalty Information Center to the Lymphoma Research Foundation. A precise accounting of Madoff-related losses isn't possible. Each week brings new disclosures, and several foundations that said they had money with Madoff haven't indicated how much. He is accused of operating a Ponzi scheme.
. . .
The JEHT Foundation -- which gave away $24.2 million last year, primarily toward criminal justice reform -- and the Picower Foundation -- which distributed $268 million since 1989 -- both recently announced that they've been forced to close.
I don't really understand the chart at the link - how the JEHT foundation had assets of $7.5 million but gave away $24.2 million, but still. Maybe they left out a zero or two? The Picower foundation, which seems to have lost everything, had $958,425,057.
By the way - look at the number of higher education recipients in the lists. Ripples.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:44 AM | Comments (1)
December 27, 2008
Poor little rich girl
"Voting is the minimum thing that you can do, and she hasn't done that. The next thing you can do is you could donate money, and she hasn't done that," said Doug Muzzio, professor of public affairs at Baruch College.
That's Caroline Kennedy being asked to have done the minimum in the New York Daily News. Actually, I think that for a woman with something like $100 million, giving money would have been a lot more useful than voting.
via an article on the unserious candidate for Senate in these serious times at Commentary.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:55 PM | Comments (0)
Where's a camera when you need one?
I went with my mother to a craft shop today to exchange a photo album and to get some other stuff (yes, we were doing our level best to jump start the economy). Did you know they sell little hammers covered with FLOWERS for scrapbookers to use to pound eyelets into things? I couldn't believe all the different colors of needle-nosed pliers available, either.
Whole folk arts developing and I don't even notice them! Mother assures me there was a scrapbooking CONVENTION in Chattanooga this year.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:01 PM | Comments (0)
A proper use for presidential clemency
I agree with Kathy Shaidle. President Bush should pardon this culture hero: Phila. man shot because family talked during movie.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:46 AM | Comments (1)
December 26, 2008
The CIA practices Chemical Warfare
They give Afghan warlords Viagra. Devious. Even though I think it's profoundly immoral, I'm glad they're bright enough to think of it. Little of my recent reading about the CIA has impressed me with their human intelligence skills so much as this.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:47 AM | Comments (1)
Little girl with a big future
One of my current daily reads is PassiveAgressiveNotes.com. Their December 24th entry shows that nanny-statism starts young!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:43 AM | Comments (0)
December 24, 2008
Best headline: Mexican beauty queen arrested in gun-filled truck
I'm home where the Aged Ps still subscribe to two analog newspapers. I saw this headline over my mother's shoulder - Mexican beauty queen arrested in gun-filled truck. I assumed she was a FORMER beauty queen gone bad - you know, like the fevered Democratic imaginings of Sarah Palin - but no! She is the CURRENT Miss Sinaloa, and until this arrest was headed to the 2009 Miss International contest to represent Mexico (she was 2nd runner-up in the Nuestra Belleza Mexico pageant, which feeds Miss Universe).
Zuniga told police that she was planning on traveling to Bolivia and Colombia with the men to go shopping, Solorio said.When the former preschool teacher won Miss Sinaloa in July she gave an impassioned speech about how society should value women more, especially mothers. In October, she won the Hispanoamerican Queen beauty contest in October against competitors from across Latin America.
I guess she was demonstrating that women could be empowered by gunrunning? Or maybe she was just going to go to Bolivia for the shopping?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:25 AM | Comments (0)
December 22, 2008
Why Dynasticism Happens and an Apologist for the Kennedy Dynasty
"Who wants to go into politics today except people who are born into it?" opines veteran Democratic political consultant Hank Sheinkopf. "It's not pleasant, it's full of incessant disclosure and oversight, you have no personal life. You don't meet the best class of people. If it isn't in the family, who would do it? The other alternative is the very rich, who can afford to go into it."
And why this dynasty would be a good thing for Progressives, from Al Giordano:
On a policy level, it would be an even more brilliant move from the perspective of liberalism and progressivism: Attorney Kennedy is underestimated by some only because she's lived by the "no drama" approach to politics long before Obama made it popular. Most people have little idea of her accomplishments because her style has been to seek results not credit for them. I know, because in the 1990s, as political reporter for the Boston Phoenix, I covered the Kennedy family and all its doings - including Ted Kennedys 1994 reelection battle against Mitt Romney - very closely. Caroline, at the helm of the Kennedy library, has served as the true executive director of the family and all its political and policy interests. She has also been the family's ambassador nationwide and around the world: the one that attended funerals and other matters of statesmanship on the family's behalf. That she generally avoided the spotlight in doing so, and always avoided personal scandal - a particularly difficult challenge for anybody named Kennedy - is testimony to her skill and finesse at the political game.The Kennedy policy machine is nothing to shake a stick at: Senator Ted Kennedy has, during 46 years in the Senate, installed a generation of policy wonks as lead staffers on almost all the key committees in the upper house of the Capitol dome, and no small number in the lower one. When Teddy nods his head subtly in a given policy direction that network marches as an army and has steamrolled over Republican and business interests time and time again. When progressive legislation has been passed - when reactionary legislation has been killed - on civil rights and liberties, health care, jobs and wages, education, and on other issues, the fingerprints of current and former Kennedy staffers have been on each and every one, even as Teddy shined the spotlight on other legislators who took the public lead. Joe Biden and John Kerry are among the Senate veterans that have benefited from Kennedy's generosity when it comes to sharing or assigning credit.
Paterson and New York, thus, would not just be getting a Senator. They would get, with Caroline, the driver with the keys to the most finely tuned and influential progressive national political network in American politics, reaching (in many cases invisibly) into levers of power in all branches of government and in many states far from Massachusetts, including among the networks planted by the Southern Civil Rights movement and among Hispanic-American political leaders and organizations from Texas to California for whom "Tio Ted" has been mentor and unflinching ally. (The Kennedys have long been central to the push for multi-racial movements in US politics, one that just became realized with Obama's election as never before: that will also serve Attorney Kennedy and so many of her constituents well in New York.)
I find this vision of the Kennedy machine terrifying - and the idea that Caroline is the quiet consigliere to take control of it an excellent reason to oppose her appointment.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:49 AM | Comments (1)
December 19, 2008
I'm always posting things about metal detector finds...ever wondered where the machines come from?
From retired rockers. Well, some of them from one of them:
So what do you do when you're too old to Rock 'n' Roll but too young for the carpet slippers and pipe?Well, you can try music management, the media or a respected career in academia.
But if you once played bass in the Rolling Stones, there really is only one obvious career choice: designing and marketing your own-brand metal detector.
In the roster of strange career moves for ex-rockers, Bill Wyman is out there in a field of his own, digging it up.
The man who quit the Stones in 1993 is now a leading light in the metal detectorist movement, designing and selling his own machines.
The Bill Wyman Signature Detector is a 'lightweight and adjustable implement and comes with a free informational DVD', according to the press release for this unlikely piece of rock 'n' roll merchandise.
"Metal detecting is not just for anoraks or eccentrics," says Bill.
"It's probably the best and the most enjoyable way of learning about our history.
"On any garden, country field, footpath, woodlands, beach or moorland, you can find a huge variety of historical objects, all easily located with this high quality metal detector."
And don't worry, the Bill Wyman Signature Detector comes with a money-back guarantee, just in case you can't get no satisfaction.
Follow the link to find out who's designing gardens, serving as chaplain to the Royal Academy of Music, breeding fishery fish, and more. Not everyone needs a reunion tour to stay busy.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:57 AM
December 18, 2008
Caroline!
The Caroline! campaign has got big momentum! An anointing is in the offing! This is a great story about her trip to Central and Western New York - perhaps for the first time.
She declined any questions in Syracuse, grudgingly answered a few in Rochester, and then gave what almost felt like -- but was not -- a full-fledged news conference in Buffalo, joined by the mayor there, Byron W. Brown."I know that I'm fortunate to be in a position where people know who I am," Ms. Kennedy said. "And I want to put that to work."
. . .
"I think, in the last year I've spent a lot of time campaigning across this country in a lot of communities that are struggling with the same kind of issues," said Ms. Kennedy, who spent weeks campaigning for Mr. Obama's presidential effort. "And obviously New York State has been hit harder than most. And I saw, really, the need for people who are strong advocates and have relationships in Washington. And I would do everything I can."
Then she was asked how many times she had been to Buffalo.
"Three or four?" Ms. Kennedy said, and walked away.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:46 AM | Comments (2)
December 15, 2008
Because if there's a name that screams "too pure for the grubbiness of politics," it's definitely Kennedy ...
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:44 PM | Comments (0)
Czar Harmonization?
Mickey Kaus points out that:
We need a Czar Czar, to crack the whip on all the czars.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:55 AM | Comments (0)
December 13, 2008
The birthday from hell
"The biggest problem is you have a bunch of adults acting like juveniles," says Town of Brookfield Police Capt. Timothy Imler. "There's a biker bar down the street, and we rarely get calls there."
What restaurant is the captain comparing unfavorably to a biker bar? Chuck E. Cheese!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:00 PM | Comments (2)
December 12, 2008
Hope. Change. Unicorns!
The New York Times -- which, according to Wall Street analysts, is weeks from holding editorial-board meetings in a refrigerator box -- created the journalistic equivalent of CSI-Wasilla to study every follicle and fiber in Sarah Palin's background, all the while treating Obama's Chicago like one of those fairy-tale lands depicted in posters that adorn little girls' bedroom walls. See there, Suzie? That's a Pegasus. That's a pink unicorn. And that's a beautiful sunflower giving birth to a fully grown Barack Obama, the greatest president ever and the only man in history to be able to pick up manure from the clean end.
It is beautiful, hunh?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:30 PM | Comments (0)
You know how the presidency ages men?
Here's an example of why. Anti-smoking groups hope Obama will be role model.
Poor guy.
Oh - I'm certain serving as president will age women, too, but let's not pretend that we've had that happen yet.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:03 PM | Comments (0)
December 11, 2008
"if you're stuck for what to slip in your favourite lover of totalitarian kitsch's Christmas stocking, then your problems have been solved."
Now here's an entry for Christmas shopping guides, "if you're stuck for what to slip in your favourite lover of totalitarian kitsch's Christmas stocking, then your problems have been solved." I found that in a review of Love me Turkmenistan, a coffee table book about the late dictator of Turkmenistan and his cult of personality.
For ordering information - and pictures! - Love me Turkmenistan.
The Amazon page is much duller.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:55 AM | Comments (1)
December 10, 2008
Bow down before the power of SANTA!
via, of all places, Camille Paglia.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:30 AM | Comments (0)
December 9, 2008
Chicago politics at its best.
Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was arrested Tuesday on charges of conspiring to get financial benefits through his authority to appoint a U.S. senator to fill the vacancy left by Barack Obama's election as president.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:15 AM | Comments (1)
The Mayor of Boston looks hard at payment in lieu of taxes - and wants more.
The mayor of Boston wants to renegotiate and standardize the payments in lieu of taxes currently in place between non-profits and the city. The article claims that non-profits of one kind or another own 50% of the property, but are paying $32 million in taxes. Here are two paragraphs you need to read:
Combined, tax-exempt institutions give the city $32.4 million annually in payments in lieu of taxes, a drop in the bucket when compared with what the city spends on police, fire, and other services. If their properties were taxable, the institutions would be writing checks for 10 times that amount - between $350 and $400 million each year, city officials estimated yesterday.. . .
For example, Boston University contributes $4.6 million each year, the highest of any institution, while Harvard University - which owns twice as much land in Boston - pays $1.9 million. Northeastern University contributes only $30,600.
What a mess. I wish him luck.
via Inside Higher Ed
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:50 AM | Comments (1)
December 8, 2008
I guess I have something to talk about with the doctor next week...
One of those signs of middle age - one of your maintenance medications gets written up as perhaps causing excessive deaths. Oh, well - my annual physical is next week. Gives me something to talk about.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:58 AM | Comments (0)
December 7, 2008
So when you were voting for change, did you think it meant light bulbs?
Light bulbs first. They're supremely important! They will save us all! Light bulbs!
And bear in mind, the linked blogger voted for change. And hope.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:28 PM | Comments (0)
December 2, 2008
The City of Atlanta wants a bailout?
Really. I say no. Talk about a time to resurrect Gerald Ford vs. NYC.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:07 AM | Comments (0)
December 1, 2008
The Paralysis of Style Sheets
There was a photograph that appeared in many of the British papers, taken by a Reuters man and captioned by the news agency as follows: "A suspected gunman walks outside the premises of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus or Victoria Terminus railway station." The photo of the "suspected gunman" showed a man holding a gun. We don't know much about him -- he might be Muslim or Episcopalian, he might be an impoverished uneducated victim of western colonialist economic oppression or a former vice-president of Lehman Bros embarking on an exciting midlife career change -- but one thing we ought to be able to say for certain is that a man pointing a gun is not a "suspected gunman" but a gunman. "This kind of silly political correctness infects reporters and news services world-wide," wrote John Hinderaker of Powerline. "They think they're being scrupulous -- the man hasn't been convicted of being a gunman yet! -- when in fact they're just being foolish. But the irrational conviction that nothing can be known unless it has been determined by a court and jury isn't just silly, it's dangerous."
That's Mark Steyn. You may not believe him that we are engaged in a long-term ideological war against Islamic imperialism (a tendency or movement for the restoration of the khilafa), but this is a good one to read if you intend to disagree with him.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:14 AM | Comments (1)
November 26, 2008
Office of the President-Elect?
Home for the holiday (well, got here last night and leaving for some house in North Georgia this afternoon for a gathering of Tinklers).
My father, like many sensible people, would like to know when we created a constitutional position for the president-elect. And wouldn't that be after the electoral college meets, anyway? I couldn't help him there, but then I don't believe in a very lively constitution, either. I found this, though. The lectern-frontal is really annoying.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:25 AM | Comments (4)
November 24, 2008
The American West - Wild and Free? Not really.
Have you ever thought of collecting rainwater to supplement your water supply? Doesn't that sound green and responsible? Well, if you live in some western states, only do it if you don't intend to ask permission.
All Mark Miller wanted to do was wash some cars and water the grass in front of his new car dealership.As the proprietor of Utah's first LEED-certified, environmentally friendly car dealership, Miller wanted to minimize his reliance on water from Salt Lake City's public utility. So his extensive remodel of the building included two large new cisterns designed to capture rainwater for irrigation and car washing. But Miller was surprised to learn that trapping water on his own roof would be illegal.
"The state said no," he explains. "In order to use the system, we had to have an existing water share. It's ludicrous."
Miller is not the only water-conscious Westerner to run afoul of the region's prior-appropriation doctrine. Conservation advocates, including many utilities, have embraced the idea of using water collected from roofs, and stored in cisterns or rain barrels, to reduce reliance on dwindling surface water or groundwater supplies. Yet in Utah, Colorado and Washington, it's illegal to do so unless you go through the difficult -- and often impossible -- process of gaining a state water right. That's because virtually all flowing water in most Western states is already dedicated to someone's use, and state water officials figure that trapping rainwater amounts to impeding that legal right.
No one actively enforces these laws, as Boyd Clayton of the Utah Division of Water Rights notes: "We're not like cops out looking for speeders. Spending time enforcing these cases is not a priority."
As a result, would-be water harvesters often learn about potential legal trouble only when they try to do the right thing, as Miller did, by asking for a state permit. That's what happened to Kris Holstrom, who runs an organic farm outside Telluride, Colo. The well she's relied on for years provides less water than it once did -- a change she attributes to drought and increased development. So she asked the Colorado Division of Water Resources for a permit to collect runoff from building roofs -- and was denied.
"They felt that the water belonged to someone else once it hit my roof," she says. "They claimed that the water was tributary to the San Miguel River" -- which runs some three miles from her place and is fully allocated to other users downstream.
This is one of those moments I'm glad I live within sight (well, if I climb up to the third floor balcony where I've got my porch furniture) of 42 trillion gallons of fresh water.
via The Volokh Conspiracy
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:43 AM | Comments (1)
November 17, 2008
Those crazy youths!
German youths are smoking air freshener. What will they think of next?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:26 AM | Comments (2)
November 15, 2008
Remember that Obama Questionnaire? How will Hillary do?
The AP is asking about Bill's effect on Hillary's chances at Secretary of State. Can she fill out the questionnaire?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:24 PM | Comments (2)
November 14, 2008
Beautiful Headline from the AP
I am accustomed to journalists using the verb "distance" to mean "put space between self and something widely regarded as repugnant." And is he really an ex-radical, or just an old radical? In the linked article he still doesn't sound regretful enough to be "ex."
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:06 PM | Comments (0)
November 13, 2008
The Obama Administration (as opposed to the O. Campaign) has a rigorous standard for vetting
This is a hoot - go look at some of the questions the Obama folks are asking potential appointees and imagine what Obama's own questionnaire would have to include!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:54 AM | Comments (0)
November 12, 2008
That whole Drug Czar thing has worked out so well . . .
Let's appoint a Car Czar!
No, let's let Obama do it.
Then people like me get to laugh when it fails.
President-elect Barack Obama wants a high-profile point person to oversee reforms in the ailing auto industry, according to members of Obama's transition team.Specifics about the proposal remain unclear. But the transition team says Obama suggested to President Bush on Monday that aid to the auto industry could be coupled with the appointment of "someone in charge of the auto issue who would have the authority" to push for reforms. The details came from a more extended readout of the White House meeting provided Tuesday.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:34 PM | Comments (0)
November 9, 2008
Doug Kmiec - bad father?
Hey - his endorsement of Obama on the grounds of superior pro-lifedom is irrelevant here. According to Wikipedia his five children are named:
Kloe Kmiec, Kolleen Kmiec, Kiley Kmiec, Katherine Kmiec, and Keenan Kmiec.
That's probably actionable.
I grew up with a family of double-Js. I always felt faint pity for the children, and hope that it was not a multi-generational problem.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:06 PM | Comments (4)
November 8, 2008
Admissions
The Washington Post ombudsman reviews their election coverage.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:42 PM | Comments (0)
November 5, 2008
Hope. Change. It's a small world after all.
The Midtown Plaza, an early downtown mall in Rochester, closed up lately - but they moved the touchingly sweet 1962 Clock of Nations to the Airport.
The "It's a Small World" mindset seems appropriate on this, the first day of Change.
Further: Yes, I believe that optimism in world affairs is akin to believing in a Disney version of the world. I checked the history of the ride-from-hell only to find out that it post-dates the Rochester Clock of Nations - it went up, according to the Wikipedia entry, for the New York World's Fair of 1964 and was subsequently moved to Disneyland. Wikipedians said (which, of course, may not be what they're saying when you go there - Wikipedia is a beautiful idea, too):
In 1956, Walt Disney attended a conference, along with many other notable celebrities of the time, at the invitation of President Eisenhower. The conference was about founding a national organization to help promote world peace through international civilian travel. (This dream became a reality in 1956, when Eisenhower founded the People to People Student Ambassador Program.) Inspired by the ideas from the meeting, Disney returned to California and set to work, creating the "It's A Small World" ride at Disneyland.Peace through tourism. Sounds about right.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:07 AM | Comments (2)
November 4, 2008
Exercise your franchise!
I already did - while the coffee was brewing. That's easy for me because I vote in the church hall next door. I was voter #34 today.
I don't really know how to describe this, but there were a lot of presidential candidate lines and it got muddled at the bottom. In New York State everyone runs with as many partisan endorsements as he or she can, so the Republican candidates usually but not always show up on the Conservative (that is, specifically anti-Rockefeller Republicans, if I remember correctly) and the Democrats usually but not always show up on the Working Families line.
We use the old mechanical lever voting machines here, which are supposed to have been phased out after the 2006 midterm elections, but here they still are. Down at the bottom were the Libertarians, on row I or some such and the Greens on row J - but they had run out of levers, so Bob Barr was lever one in row I and Ralph Nader was lever two in row I. It's not a butterfly ballot, but it will confuse people!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:12 AM | Comments (1)
November 3, 2008
Halloween costumes - Sarah and Hillary
I've heard of a bajillion people going as Sarah Palin (which is probably because she's pretty normal looking and wears pretty normal clothes that people already have in their closets, and don't you deny it - everyone has both a nice jacket AND a fleece is an awful color, though not necessarily with moose on them). Did anyone go as Hillary? Anyone?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:49 PM | Comments (3)
Vote for Obama or Andrew Sullivan will just DIE.
From a comment on a post at Althouse:
I wouldn't say that it's the very best reason to elect McCain, but it surely has to be fairly high on the list of motivations that if McCain wins, Andrew Sullivan's head will explode. (It will "open in a fundamental way,"* perhaps.)
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:14 AM | Comments (1)
November 1, 2008
Weren't Segways designed to be peaceful people movers, not police chariots?
One of my regular reads is Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools, which is much more than a gadget site. He and his readers offer reviews of lots of gadgets, but they also look at books, hardware, websites - ways to make life simpler or more interesting.
KK has some other websites which I check more rarely, including Street Use, which documents ways people re-create technology. In his own description, Herein a collection of personal modifications, folk innovations, street customization, ad hoc alterations, wear-patterns, home-made versions and indigenous ingenuity. In short -- stuff as it is actually used, and not how its creators planned on it being used.
One of the creepiest things I've ever seen, appropriate for yesterday, is this entry with lots of pictures, Guns on Segways. "When the lovable Segway was unveiled, who would have guessed that its chief street use would be a platform for cops and soldiers.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:15 AM | Comments (1)
October 29, 2008
Apportioning Blame
If Greenspan is to blame for the financial crisis, is Dan Brown to blame for Doubleday cutting 10% of their staff? They deny it, but you know, they would!
Mr. Drake said the decision was not related to the delay in the delivery of the next novel by Dan Brown, the author of "The Da Vinci Code," the blockbuster best seller published in 2003.Back in 2004, Doubleday said the target release date for the next book was 2005, but Mr. Brown has yet to deliver a manuscript. Sales from even a single title -- if it is as significant as "The Da Vinci Code" -- can make a substantial difference to a publisher's sales.
Nevertheless, "the changes we've made are quite separate from anything to do with Dan Brown," Mr. Drake said.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:15 AM | Comments (0)
October 28, 2008
Francophonie retreats - Rwanda officially turns to English
In another blow to the language of love, the Rwandan government has decided to change instruction in schools from French to English.All government employees are now required to learn English, and everyone here from lawmakers to taxi drivers to students to businesspeople seems to believe that the usefulness of French, introduced by Belgian colonizers, is coming to an end.
"When you look at the French-speaking countries -- it's really just France, and a small part of Belgium and a small part of Switzerland," Theoneste Mutsindashyaka, Rwanda's state minister for education, said in English. "Most countries worldwide, they speak English. Even in China, they speak English. Even Belgium, if you go to the Flemish areas, they speak English, not French."
. . .
As a minor bonus, Mutsindashyaka -- who is in charge of rolling out the English-language curriculum for 2.6 million students and 50,000 teachers -- said he was happily surprised to find that English textbooks are far cheaper than French ones. A fourth-grade English math book costs 70 cents, for instance, compared with $4 for the French version.
Economies of scale, I guess.
Further: I thought I'd google around on the issue and found this blog: The Worldwide Decline of French, whose tagline describes it thus: "This is the only web log to specialize in the declining use of the French language, both globally and within France itself. We use recent and less recent web articles, blog entries and books written in French, English, German and other languages to document the failure of costly Francophonie policies in- and outside France."
Here's the Unfrench Frenchman on Rwanda.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:28 PM | Comments (3)
Presidential Gothic at Infocult!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:02 PM | Comments (1)
Colin Powell's latest endorsement as a character witness?
Colin Powell's latest endorsement? Senator Ted Stevens.
Here - "One of the nation's best-known retired Army generals, Colin Powell, described Sen. Ted Stevens in court today as a "trusted individual" and a man with a "sterling" reputation."
Here - "Two senators -- Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii) and Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) -- and former secretary of state Colin L. Powell testified to Stevens's reputation for integrity."
Oh, well.
Further: so far as I can tell from their clunky search engine, the only mentions at the New York Times so far is on their election blogs, not news stories.
Further still: I was wrong. Gosh it's clunky! I found one reference to Powell being SCHEDULED to testify - but no report of his praise of Stevens.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:55 AM | Comments (0)
October 24, 2008
Do Baby Drop Offs (and associated laws) help?
The number of infanticide cases has not been reduced since the 2000 introduction of the "baby hatch," where parents can safely and legally surrender their infants to state care, experts said on Thursday.
Authorities have counted the same number of baby killings - an average of 25 per year - though there was a slight increase in 2007, German Ethics Council member Ulrike Riedel said in Berlin during the organization's monthly plenary meeting.
"We can't assume that baby hatches hinder infanticide," she said.
Germany has some 80 baby hatches located at hospitals nationwide, and 130 places where mothers can give birth anonymously, the Ethics Council said. But the number of babies given up each year varies depending on the source.
The federal government reported that since 200, some 143 babies were left in baby hatches and 88 babies given up after anonymous births. But adoption expert Christine Swientek estimated that some 550 babies have been left in baby hatches and 600 left in anonymous birth clinics.
Experts at the meeting did agree that counseling for young women who are considering anonymous birth has been successful. Five of eleven mothers chose not to give up their babies after counseling sessions, Monika Klein, head of a Cologne Catholic women's social service said during the meeting.
I noticed this in the wake of the Nebraska problem with their "drop your minor child off without consequences" law. The picture of a Babyklappe is from Flickr. You really should click on this link to the story to see the stick-figure sign showing how to use such a facility. Überdepressing.*
*I do my best not to steal photographs, which is why I so seldom post things I've just lifted off the web. Think of it as modeling good behavior to my students.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:49 AM | Comments (0)
October 23, 2008
Look! The NYT is NOT blaming Bloomberg's total solipsism on the Republican party!
The vote was a major victory for Mayor Bloomberg -- a billionaire and lifelong Democrat who was elected mayor as a Republican in 2001, won re-election in 2005, became an independent last year, and decided just weeks ago that he wished to seek a third term for himself in 2009 -- and for the Council's speaker, Christine C. Quinn.
I call that mighty objective of them. Michael Bloomberg (For Himself).
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:39 PM | Comments (1)
October 22, 2008
"I think Joe sometimes engages in rhetorical flourishes."
You think? Here's how the Washington Post reports it.
Democrat Barack Obama said today there is no reason to believe that he is more likely to be tested by an international crisis if elected than if rival John McCain is, and said the important question is how the next president responds.. . .
He was responding to a question about an assertion by his running mate, Joe Biden, over the weekend. "Mark my words," Biden had said. "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking."
McCain's campaign has used the statement to imply that Obama is not ready to lead in a dangerous world.
Even though Biden's words suggested that Obama would be singled out for the test, Obama brushed the comment off, saying, "I think Joe sometimes engages in rhetorical flourishes."
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:04 PM | Comments (1)
Even Acorn's own lawyers were worried
Internal memos! Concerns! Remember their story about the embezzlement by the founder's brother? It's all there, and this problem isn't the least bit bipartisan.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:47 AM | Comments (0)
October 20, 2008
You know, I'm really not all that afraid of spiders . . .
. . . but this big?
Everything about the cave is big from its towering entrances to its phobia-inducing spiders, which can be 10 inches (25 centimeters) across, Pollack added.
Great pictures. No spiders included.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:35 PM | Comments (3)
Best headline and subhead so far for the effect of the financial crisis on the art world!
ART adviser Michael Reid calls them the "alpha male business people who need to own more than they want to own".
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:25 PM | Comments (0)
October 19, 2008
Better than free wireless - free CAR recharging
Pardon me for not seeing why this attorney gets to recharge his car at civic expense.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:37 PM | Comments (0)
October 16, 2008
Mark Liberman didn't watch the debate, either
Mark Liberman didn't watch the debate, either, but he's a linguist. He ran some word counts on the transcripts:
In the abstract, "Obama business wants wealth" vs. "here economic McCain policies" seems like a plausible account of a debate between these two men. Alas, this misses (what most people took to be) the big stories of the evening.Luckily, it's all on YouTube, including pre-digested thematic excerpts or collections, from the size of Joe the Plumber's health-care fine to Senator McCain's "I'm not Bush" line, the "health of the mother" exchange, the whole exasperation factor, and so on.
Still, I think my trivial word lists are not entirely without interest. In particular, I'm curious about something less down-to-earth than plumber: why did Barack Obama use the little words if and some more than three times as often as John McCain did?
Go read his speculations about IF and SOME at Language Log.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:17 AM | Comments (2)
October 15, 2008
Once again, Miss McArdle rulz
All right, let's get down to brass tacks: which one of these two candidates has more pull with the Fairy King? Because that's where you get the really cool sustainable technology. You never see fairies using fossil fuels, do you? No you don't.
Maybe I'm just weak because I've met her and can HEAR her say this . . . but hey. It's a great line.
And then there's this:
10:16 I don't know why it's so hard for these two candidates to admit that each election is, in part, a war over Roe and who gets to cram the court with justices who support their position. The kabuki ritual in which both claim there is no litmus test, while attempting to clearly indicate that they will not nominate any justice who disagrees with them, is both ridiculous and tiresome. I believe we may have actual issues that could be discussed during this useless time.
I agree that I wish we could take this as a given, though I'm sure Megan and I disagree about Roe. Litmus tests are what we call substantive disagreements about reality and jurisprudence. Yes, Fr. Baker, J.D., I know I'm contradicting my "oh, let's just throw in the towel on the legal fight and convert America's hearts" emails of last week, but it's mid-October now and I'm feeling more combative.
Though if you believe in experience over litmus tests, here's what Prof. Althouse had to say:
9:07: The Supreme Court. McCain notes his record of voting for judicial nominees based on their qualifications. This is a good point, because Obama has voted against highly qualified Supreme Court nominees, while McCain voted for Justice Ginsburg. They're both against "litmus tests" (of course).
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:08 PM | Comments (2)
October 10, 2008
Culture of greed
"People are referred into that department as 'very important people.' You're told that your loan is priced from Angelo. As the 'Friends of Angelo department,' [the department] has to give them a sense of importance and explain the reduction of fees and the rate as a result of being a 'Friend of Angelo,'" he says. According to a report by Dan Golden in Condé Nast Portfolio in August, other VIPs included Senator Kent Conrad. Mr. Golden reported that "Countrywide also offered special discounts to congressional staffers involved in housing issues." [my emphais]
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:52 AM | Comments (0)
October 6, 2008
One figure for Russian demographic collapse
Scary. Read the whole thing.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:22 PM | Comments (0)
October 3, 2008
I'm a Rice alum . . .
. . . from the mid 80s. We were the anchor of the Southwest Conference. We lost almost every SWC game - but often enough we beat the spread.
Sarah Palin obviously beat the spread.
And sometimes that's enough to stay in conference play. We'll see.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:38 AM | Comments (0)
October 2, 2008
Human Resources for Dummies
I can't bear debates - they're even worse than conventions - but I love snark about the process.
10:28 Gwen Ifill asks if there's a time when they've been forced to change their mind about a policy issue. Suspect she ran out of time and started copying questions out of Human Resources for Dummies.10:26 After this election, I am going to have to hit myself in the head with a small hammer to get the monotonous thrum of the word "maverick" out of my head.
10:24 Joe Biden too, offers for the "Rambling Grandpa" style of response. Still waiting for him to say that he's too much of a perfectionist, or has trouble delegating.
10:21 Not content with the earlier blather, Gwen Ifill actually asks them what their greatest weakness is. Sarah Palin rambles about how great America is. Has she forgotten the question? Because I'm having trouble remembering what we're supposed to be talking about. The persuadables, however, love it. On topic responses are for weaklings!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:52 PM | Comments (0)
September 30, 2008
Obama's Teleprompter - such simple demands!
SO IF YOU WANT US BOTH
ON THE SAME PAGE
SOME THINGS ARE GONNA
CHANGE HERE.
Extortion? I think Teleprompter XD-235 is working from a position of strength!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:13 AM | Comments (1)
September 26, 2008
British Identity Card featuring Europa's Bull?
"A British ID card without a British flag on it? Instead we have the symbol of Europa, and we know what Zeus did to her."
Really - it rises to the level of mythological illiteracy of the Nike Air Icarus. Some of my Latin students noticed that one on their own.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:54 AM | Comments (2)
Who says there will always be an England?
Geoffrey Robertson QC, the constitutional lawyer who has represented the paper in challenges to the constitutional restrictions, said last night: "I welcome this as two small steps towards a more rational constitution."The Act of Settlement determined that the crown shall descend only on Protestant heads and that anyone 'who holds communion with the church of Rome or marries a Papist' - not to mention a Muslim, Hindu, Jew or Rastafarian - is excluded by force of law.
"This arcane and archaic legislation enshrined religious intolerance in the bedrock of the British constitution. In order to hold the office of head of state you must be white Anglo-German Protestant - a descendant of Princess Sophia of Hanover - down the male line on the feudal principle of primogeniture. This is in blatant contravention of the Sex Discrimination Act and the Human Rights Act."
The next stage, he said, was for the government to challenge the notion of a head of state who achieved the position through inheritance.
[my emphases]
Modernity takes another step against continuity and in favor of rupture, this time in the name of Human Rights. By the way, I'm not at all sure there's a current problem with mixed race descendants of Princess Sophia of Hanover, so long as they're Anglicans. William or Harry could marry nice Nigerian noblewomen (and goodness knows there are lots of kings there!) and their children would have no constitutional problem.
We see that all this is a pretext. Labour doesn't really care about Catholic princesses or hypothetical Rastafarian princes - the goal is the abolition of the Windsors as hereditary heads of state. They messed with the House of Lords and this is next on the agenda. Not that the craven Tories seem like they'd be likely to resist something like this particularly fiercely, but they might not propose it.
Of course the pressure of Modernity has already reduced any sense of majesty a great deal - I feel more like a historic preservationist than a partisan, as though my feelings in favor of keeping a monarchy around are antiquarian. Alas!
I won't even comment on Robertson's use of the f-word in the 3rd paragraph.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:37 AM | Comments (1)
September 25, 2008
"Green Intentions"
People who believe they have the greenest lifestyles can be seen as some of the main culprits behind global warming, says a team of researchers, who claim that many ideas about sustainable living are a myth.According to the researchers, people who regularly recycle rubbish and save energy at home are also the most likely to take frequent long-haul flights abroad. The carbon emissions from such flights can swamp the green savings made at home, the researchers claim.
Stewart Barr, of Exeter University, who led the research, said: "Green living is largely something of a myth. There is this middle class environmentalism where being green is part of the desired image. But another part of the desired image is to fly off skiing twice a year. And the carbon savings they make by not driving their kids to school will be obliterated by the pollution from their flights."
Some people even said they deserved such flights as a reward for their green efforts, he added.
Is this hypocrisy, or simply the revelation that green concerns are class-bound?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:20 PM | Comments (0)
Always the last to know . . .
Scholastic Books just figured out that promoting the Bratz kinda equals promoting Arschgeweih. I don't have any children - I only frequent toy aisles for gift-buying sprees - but I knew the line brought a new trashiness to the concept of doll.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:35 AM | Comments (1)
September 24, 2008
Think the economy has you worried?
Bloomsberg.muse has a story with a great teaser paragraph:
In a village in southern China, Wu Ruiqiu is worried about the effect of an economic slump on the art market. He should be. Wu represents artists that make 60 percent of the world's oil paintings.
60% of the world's oil paintings? Well, they may be right. Dafen is an industrial production center for paintings - original and replicas. I'm sure their sales are down.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:15 AM | Comments (0)
September 23, 2008
Double entendre, or just dim?
Idaho cheerleaders ditch skimpy uniforms after complaints from fans
Did they strip, or have they chosen a more concealing outfit? Click and find out.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:02 AM | Comments (0)
September 22, 2008
Lovely. Russian naval squadron heads for Venezuela
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:37 PM | Comments (1)
Prada Meinhof?
I hadn't heard of Prada Meinhof tshirts, a particularly repulsive form of terrorist irony; I shuddered. Read about this new German movie, an attempt to demystify the Red Army Faction.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:23 AM | Comments (0)
September 20, 2008
Nashville Panics?
Well, there sure isn't any gas there. I talked to a friend a little while ago who had run out of town to check out a conference site out west and was headed back into town - and there was no gas to be found in Nashville.
The linked story suggests that it's a mass panic.
He likened it to Southerners rushing out to stock up on bread and milk when they hear it might snow. As stations began running low, the situation snowballed, he said.
By the way, Yankees rush to grocery stores and buy bread and milk, too.
People.
Coverage from The Tennessean.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:50 PM | Comments (4)
September 19, 2008
The Party of Lawyer-Candidates vs. the Party of Non-Lawyer Candidates.
I guess some of one's reaction depends on one's opinion of lawyers. From Eugene Volokh. A lawyer.
[Democratic] Attorneys (10 out of 12 total [since 1980] - 83%)
Obama
Biden
Kerry
Edwards
Lieberman
Clinton
Dukakis
Bentsen
Mondale
Ferarro
[Possibly Gore, who never graduated — if he's included, the percentage is 92%]
Carter was the only non-lawyer, non-law school attendee.[Republican] Attorneys (2 out of 9 total - 22%)
Dole
QuayleNon-lawyers - McCain, Palin, Bush 43, Cheney, Kemp, Bush 41 and Reagan
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:05 PM | Comments (1)
September 18, 2008
The Horror of Barrier Islands
Before and after Ike in Texas.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:58 PM | Comments (0)
New Minneapolis Bridge
Somehow 13 months seems very fast!
Between the horrible weather and the horror of de-icing chemicals (salt and such) I'm amazed any bridge survives long north of the ice and snow line. They've built this one with lots of high-tech internal sensoring. I hope that helps.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:06 AM | Comments (0)
September 15, 2008
How much for a Million £ Note?
The 8-inch-wide green banknote, numbered 000008, was issued by the Bank of England on Aug. 30, 1948, in connection with the Marshall Aid Plan in the aftermath of World War II, said the specialist auctioneers and dealers Spink in an e-mailed statement. The company said the defunct note, entered for sale by the U.K.-based banknote collector Bill Parkinson, may fetch 35,000 pounds to 40,000 pounds at its Oct. 1 sale of world banknotes.It is believed that only nine notes of this denomination were produced for internal "records of movement'' during a period of six weeks. Only numbers seven and eight -- presented as mementoes to the respective U.S. and U.K. Treasury Secretaries --are thought to have survived, said the auction house.
. . .
Faull said that though technically legal tender, the million-pound note was more of an IOU than a usable banknote.
Spink sold number 000007 through a private sale for 8,000 pounds in 1977, when the note was listed by the Guinness Book of Records as being the highest denomination in private ownership.
"We would have sold it at auction, but the Bank of England asked us to sell it privately because it didn't want the publicity,'' said Faull. "It was horrified there was a million- pound note still in private hands.''
Then there's the Gregory Peck movie, based on the Mark Twain short story.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:35 PM | Comments (0)
September 14, 2008
Busy weekend
Lots of SEC football (yes, HDTV on the bigscreen is just better) and a reunion cookout with the students from the Rome program. Phew!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:27 PM | Comments (0)
September 12, 2008
Baldest Energy Independence Lie
OK - I think that McCain and Obama are both exaggerating when they announce plans to make America energy independent in the forseeable future. I don't see that there's any way, short of a magic wand, to do that. You can't build nuclear plants fast enough, speed up innovation in solar, etc. Remember - hydrogen isn't energy, it's a storage and delivery technology for electricity. And that's not going to happen quickly, either.
But hey - if you believe what you see on t.v., all it's going to take is a first term congressman from Upstate New York with a comprehensive plan for energy independence. That's right, folks, vote for Eric Massa. I was so intrigued I went to the web site and looked for energy policy. I didn't see a magic wand.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:00 AM | Comments (0)
September 11, 2008
Pentagon 9/11 Memorial
CNN has good coverage, including lots about the design of the memorial.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:22 AM | Comments (0)
Not impressed with pig and lipstick analysis? Try this.
First, everyone I’ve read has misread it. It’s not about Palin being a pig, but John McCain. McCain’s trying to wrap himself in the image of a reformer (and, hence, changer), and by picking Palin, has tried to make it pretty, but it’s just lipstick. This isn’t a gross sexist remark — Palin’s a pig — but a sly sexist remark: she’s just gussying up the old wreck. So much of the dextrasphere’s loud indignation (now being picked up by some of the media), is as off the mark, as the attempts of the Obama camp to dismiss the topic. Palin Derangement Syndrome can apparently affect friend and foe alike.. . .
As for the MSM, I get the impression that they’re playing this up — obviously Fox, but even the allegedly pro-Obama other stations. Wouldn’t this be a good time to remind both candidates that there are issues to deal with, rather than invoke the “in politics perception is reality” clause as a justification for covering such a silly controversy. (Coming from the people who have an enormous say in our perceptions, I’d say this is pretty cheap.)
So the Obama people know what it’s like to have the press jump on your mistakes. Not fun. So unfair. They should talk to the Israelis about it. Might help them if they ever get their hands on the levers of power.
But still, what’s with the media? In my read — and I have limited access to the daily news these days, so I welcome correction — it’s not that the MSM don’t have “ideological” predispositions (they have plenty), but they are so addicted to attracting attention, that they’d sooner play up an issue stupidly — “he dissed her, man…” “no he di’nt” — than focus on less exciting but more important issues. So given the conjunction of being in danger of losing credibility for their partisanship, and having a “People magazine” moment available, the MSM jump the shark express: feeding frenzy. Don’t need to read boring policy papers and ask serious questions if you can ask, “Well, how’s Obama going to get out of this one?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:42 AM | Comments (0)
September 10, 2008
What? The Obama Girls go to a Non-Government School?
So it is with huge grief-filled disappointment that I discovered that the Obamas send their children to the University of Chicago Laboratory School (by 5th grade, tuition equals $20,286 a year). The school's Web site quotes all that ridiculous John Dewey nonsense about developing character while, of course, isolating your children from the poor. A pox on them and, while we're at it, a pox on John Dewey! I'm sick to death of those inspirational Dewey quotes littering the Web sites of $20,000-plus-a-year private schools, all those gentle duo-tone-photographed murmurings about "building critical thinking and fostering democratic citizenship" in their cherished students, living large on their $20,000-a-year island.
And it's in the New York Times.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:57 PM
Snobbery - my interiority is finer than yours
Prof. Soltan on intellectual snobbery: My interiority is finer than yours, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:08 AM | Comments (0)
The End of the World as We Know It
Well, it has been a bad year for dictators. First Castro, now Kim Jong-Il? I don't think I realized the Dear Leader was 66 - that brush cut was really working for him!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:05 AM | Comments (0)
September 5, 2008
Comparing speeches so I don't have too.
If one compares Palin’s speech to Obama’s, it appears to me that they used similar amounts of sarcasm (not much), but Obama made considerably more extensive negative comments about McCain and Republican administrations than Palin did about Obama and Democrats. Palin’s negative comments, however, were on balance funnier, better written, and more pointed than Obama’s. Neither candidate’s comments were entirely fair in every characterization of their opponents’ positions.By continuing to spread false memes about the nature of Sarah Palin's speech as if they were true, the press marches forward in the most biased season of political reporting I've seen since at least 1998.
That's Jim Lindgren at the Volokh Conspiracy, who had the patience to go through the speeches more than once. Feel free to dispute his numbers after reading the whole thing. The link goes to only one of several entries on the topic. Shouldn't journalists be doing this kind of thing?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:21 AM | Comments (2)
Why I have watched absolutely nothing from the Conventions
Just as with Obama, the actual policy/issues content could have been taken straight from the RNC! Greatest Hits 1980-2004 compilation album.
Well, I've never bothered with watching conventions. Has anyone actually ever said something surprising? Something you didn't expect them to say?
Inspiring? Well, you may be inspired by politicians. I am not, even the good speechwriters.
Thank you, Megan, for taking the risk of PTSD for those of us who aren't brave enough.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:05 AM | Comments (0)
September 3, 2008
Look! It's a stupid AP headline about Palin!
Palin casts herself as Washington outsider
Is there any question about THAT?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:30 PM | Comments (1)
Big Arm Woman gives up
Just one of her bullet points:
6. Women are more than their uterus. And to prove it, we will divide into camps based upon uterine policy. It makes perfect sense when you think about it.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:04 AM | Comments (0)
September 2, 2008
T. Boone Pickens. Billionaire. Visionary?
One-third?
That seems like a lot in 10 years. Though it's not 1/3 of 100%, but 1/3 of the 70% we import.
Still. I guess no one got rich enough to run Oklahoma State University football as a private club by being cautious.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:54 PM | Comments (1)
September 1, 2008
Weird Anti-Republican Reactions to Palin
This is hilarious. Andrew Sullivan wants medical staff to confirm that Palin's baby is hers. Talk about the presumption of guilt for the accused!
You can't make up this kind of hostility. It seems like desperation to me.
-----
Update: He's still doing it:
Now they've cleared the air on this - and good for them - what harm would it do to release the medical records showing that Sarah Palin delivered Trig on April 18 in Wasilla? This is not hard: there must be an obstetrician, medical records, and data that can easily refute this rumor. It is not out of the ordinary either: candidates routinely issue medical records. So let's have them. And then we can move on.I like the use of the phrase, rather loaded in contemporary political life, "move on" to describe what he's willing to do if he gets his way. Remember the sex-scandal that MoveOn.org was founded to counter?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:26 PM | Comments (1)
August 30, 2008
Barack Obama: He Completes Us
"Every time Barack Obama speaks, an angel has an orgasm."
And/or, depending on your satire preferences, a song for Governor Palin* (you have to click on the play button in the little grey bar above the pretty lady's picture).
*isn't it funny how the usually intitulatio-obsessed media isn't using this?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:19 PM | Comments (2)
In this, the anniversary week of Women's Suffrage
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:35 AM | Comments (1)
August 29, 2008
Just because it was a fraud doesn't mean it didn't SELL well.
Remember the woman raised by wolves while she fled from the Nazis, combining two of the most popular narratives of the 20th Century in one fraudulent memoir? She's back in the news. Maybe she should go to a detox program now.
An author who fabricated a best-selling memoir about surviving the Holocaust by living with wolves asked a judge Thursday to affirm a $32.4 million jury award in her favor.Misha Defonseca said her publisher is too late to try to overturn the 2001 verdict the author and her ghost writer won in a fight over the book's profits.
Publisher Jane Daniel claims the jury sided with the authors because they believed Defonseca's harrowing tale of a tortured childhood was true.
Defonseca acknowledged earlier this year her stories of being taken in by wolves to escape the Nazis, killing a German soldier in self-defense, and walking across Europe in search of her parents were her own fantasies. In fact, Defonseca admitted she isn't even Jewish.
However, she and ghost writer Vera Lee argue the statute of limitations has expired on Daniel's attempt to throw out the verdict, and the veracity of the tale is irrelevant.
"Nothing was concocted to defraud the court," Defonseca said Thursday. "I had been telling my story for years and believed it to be true."
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:09 PM | Comments (1)
Palin and child care
I'd think the VP job would give Sarah Palin a lot more time on her hands for child care than the governor position. She's the pro-time-with-the-family candidate!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:04 PM | Comments (2)
August 27, 2008
The Party of the Little Guy has a big party - and someone has to pay
In fact, one of the country's leading lobbyists, Steve Farber, was chosen by the Democratic party chairman Howard Dean in 2006 to serve as co-chair and chief fundraiser of the Denver host committee that puts on the convention.Farber, a Denver lawyer, is the founding partner of Brownstein, Farber and Hyatt, one the most prominent and active lobbying operations in Washington.
Outside an elaborate private party he hosted Sunday night at Denver's Museum of Art, Farber told ABC News he does not agree with Obama's attempt to exclude lobbyists and their money from the campaign.
"I respect the position that's been taken by the Senator, but I don't necessarily agree with it," said Farber.
Farber said his efforts, and the corporate contributions, had less to do with access and influence and more to do with "democracy."
There's more, if you're not already depressed.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:20 PM | Comments (0)
August 26, 2008
The Modern Parallel to the Rotten Borough
. . . many candidates who represent places in the United States without much disposable income raise the millions necessary to run for office these days.Increasingly, they’re not bothering to ask the folks whom they are actually paid to represent for campaign cash. Instead, they are flocking to a handful of super-wealthy ZIP codes in places like Hollywood; the Upper East Side of Manhattan; Greenwich, Conn.; and suburban Washington, D.C. - the "political ATM's" of the campaign trial.
While one can find occasional media coverage of these kinds of high-dollar fundraisers, a recent study by three political scientists is the first to document the extent to which congressional candidates of both parties now depend on out-of-district donors to help them finance their campaigns.According to an analysis by University of Maryland political science professors James G. Gimpel and Frances E. Lee and graduate student Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz, as of 2004, more than 2 out of 3 U.S. House campaign contributions (70.2 percent) came from somewhere outside the district. That’s a steady increase from 54.5 percent in 1996 and 63 percent in 2000.
Moreover, as of 2004, only 1 in 5 congressional districts provided the majority of contributions for the candidates seeking to represent that district. And in 18 percent of congressional districts, more than 90 percent of money now comes from out of district.
The professors write in their analysis that the new donor class is “disproportionately wealthy, urban, highly educated, and employed in elite occupations.”
One of my indulgences this summer was watching The Pallisers on DVD and reading up again on the Reform Act of 1867, especially about some of the unintended consequences of rising campaign expenses. Campaign inequity has always been with us. The article linked above is an interesting version, though. I'm reminded of Plantey Pall, hat in hand, talking to his uncle the Duke of Omnium about being handed a family-controlled seat in the House of Commons, in exactly the way the gentry and nobility of England controlled who served as rectors in Anglican parishes. I'm not at all certain is was more or less corrupt than the system which came after it.
via Instapundit.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:45 PM | Comments (0)
August 24, 2008
Do you have a Celebrity Life Traveling Companion?
You know, the famous person who is more or less your age?
Amy Welborn starts with Valerie Bertinelli and moves on to Madonna. Not the one she's written books about, but the Scary Lady in Charge of Sinews.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:12 AM | Comments (3)
August 23, 2008
Biden?
Well, at least he won't come with a devout corps of followers to be subsumed into the Obama supporters.
Is there any occasional candidate for president with less interested campaign workers?
Oh - maybe Lamar Alexander. No one cares if he gets elected, even in Tennessee.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:37 AM | Comments (1)
August 22, 2008
How Many Houses does CINDY McCain Have? Prof Soltan tells you why you ought to care
Prof Soltan, consulting diagnostician of modern living, explains what's sad about the many mansions in Cindy McCain's house. And there's a Philip Larkin poem.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:14 PM
August 13, 2008
How Hillary Lost
Via Megan McArdle*I came across a fascinating article about How Hillary Lost and offer you the introduction as a temptation to read the whole thing.
For all that has been written and said about Hillary Clinton’s epic collapse in the Democratic primaries, one issue still nags. Everybody knows what happened. But we still don’t have a clear picture of how it happened, or why.The after-battle assessments in the major newspapers and newsweeklies generally agreed on the big picture: the campaign was not prepared for a lengthy fight; it had an insufficient delegate operation; it squandered vast sums of money; and the candidate herself evinced a paralyzing schizophrenia—one day a shots-’n’-beers brawler, the next a Hallmark Channel mom. Through it all, her staff feuded and bickered, while her husband distracted. But as a journalistic exercise, the “campaign obit” is inherently flawed, reflecting the viewpoints of those closest to the press rather than empirical truth.
How did things look on the inside, as they unraveled?
To find out, I approached a number of current and former Clinton staffers and outside consultants and asked them to share memos, e-mails, meeting minutes, diaries—anything that would offer a contemporaneous account. The result demonstrates that paranoid dysfunction breeds the impulse to hoard. Everything from major strategic plans to bitchy staff e-mail feuds was handed over. (See for yourself: much of it is posted online at www.theatlantic.com/clinton.)
Two things struck me right away. The first was that, outward appearances notwithstanding, the campaign prepared a clear strategy and did considerable planning. It sweated the large themes (Clinton’s late-in-the-game emergence as a blue-collar champion had been the idea all along) and the small details (campaign staffers in Portland, Oregon, kept tabs on Monica Lewinsky, who lived there, to avoid any surprise encounters). The second was the thought: Wow, it was even worse than I’d imagined! The anger and toxic obsessions overwhelmed even the most reserved Beltway wise men. Surprisingly, Clinton herself, when pressed, was her own shrewdest strategist, a role that had never been her strong suit in the White House. But her advisers couldn’t execute strategy; they routinely attacked and undermined each other, and Clinton never forced a resolution. Major decisions would be put off for weeks until suddenly she would erupt, driving her staff to panic and misfire.
Two thing struck me as early as paragraph 4: The result demonstrates that paranoid dysfunction breeds the impulse to hoard. Everything from major strategic plans to bitchy staff e-mail feuds was handed over. First, Joshua Green is using the wrong word - they're not hoarding; they haven't had time to go through and sort, let alone treasure the broken fragments of a failed campaign. Second, why on earth, other than malicious attempts at score settling between members of the campaign staff, would people hand things over at THIS stage to a reporter? Talk about the cycle between action and history getting shorter! No time for reflection at all!
Oh, well - a fascinating article!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:55 AM | Comments (2)
August 4, 2008
Shanghai - City of Terror and Delight
The Washington Post has a great Philip Kennicott story this morning on urbanization and Shanghai. I'm fascinated and terrified; I know I'd love to be there but I know I'd feel an ache for anyone who lives there. I have enough trouble with NYC.
The print story follows a great photograph of dozens of folks looking at a 1:500 model of the city - sad to say, I can't find it in the web version.
It is said that to get a sense of this, you need to visit "the map." It has become one of the strangest tourist attractions in this city that doesn't lack museums, shopping or the distractions of nightlife. The map is located in the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Center, a history museum and a shrine to all things urban, located in People's Square in the heart of downtown. It is a 1:500 scale representation of the city, sprawling over 6,400 square feet -- and even then it all won't fit onto a full floor of the exhibition hall. It is surrounded by walkways, and it can be viewed from a balcony above. With the flick of a switch, artificial night falls, and its thousands of lovingly rendered buildings begin to twinkle. It is surreal, and beautiful, a bit absurd, and it seems to offer, in one comprehensive glance, a sense of the city in its massive, skyscraping, outward-spreading totality. Here, perhaps, one can absorb what it means to build some 10,000 high-rise buildings in a quarter-century.
Huang Qi Min is a modelmaker, and it is his company that makes and maintains this mini-colossus. Modelmaking is a competitive sport in China, and that's how Huang got his start. But in the early 1990s, when Shanghai was released from the economic and social strictures that kept its potential in check for more than four decades of communist rule, city leaders decided they needed some way to get a handle on it. The map was an early effort to take the measure of the city. And it just keeps growing. Every few months, Huang says, he must swap out the "white" buildings, which represent projects in the planning or drawing-board stage, for finished models, rendered in color. When necessary, he will walk on the Huangpu River to get to the center of the city.
The map, although it makes the city comprehensible and puts man in charge of it -- the modelmaker walks on water-- misses so much else. There are, of course, no people and no traffic. The thousands of construction sites spread around the city are missing, too. New buildings, on the map, happen as if by magic, without cranes and scaffolding and fences to hide the gaping pits and buzzing hives of migrant workers.
It also leaves out the darker facts of Chinese urbanization: the 750,000 premature deaths (according to the World Bank) caused annually by China's choking pollution. The map shows only construction, and none of the destruction, the loss of old neighborhoods in the center of the city, and with them, the loss of tradition and community. The map doesn't show the massive relocations necessary to reconfigure Shanghai for yet more millions of people. The tens of thousands of residents who have been moved to make new green spaces, to construct new bridges, to build new high-rises, are not heard from.
You may remember me posting about Rome's similar map - the 1:250 version of Rome in A.D. 300, a time when Rome's population might have hit a million. Since I can't find a picture of Shanghai's model quickly, I give you Rome's.
Kennicott has it exactly right - these giant models fascinate, inform, and obscure. Rome can never have been so clean, Shanghai can never be so unthreatening. Both were built on the exploitation of labor on a scale almost unimaginable to recent Americans - one of the reasons we don't build this way any more is that we are unwilling to tolerate construction work deaths.
The article goes on at some length about the interior spaces of cities, as opposed to models. These models, with their insistence on the exterior features, obscure the ways people live inside the clean buildings. Kennicott explores this a little - the article is well-worth reading.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:43 AM
August 2, 2008
P-Day
9 hours and counting until the wetting down party - 100 people have said they're coming. Aiee!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:49 AM
August 1, 2008
Anthrax - remember that?
Remember the 2001 Anthrax mailings that left us all so confident in the abilities of the FBI? The first suspect has been paid $5 million or so. Yes, he was almost an comically obvious suspect - a nasty man, but not guilty.
FBI Director Mueller told CNN that, "in some sense, there have been breakthroughs" in the case.Luckily, the FBI Director said that BEFORE the latest suspect killed himself - on my first read I thought it was a comment on the FBI's expert analysis of the suicide.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:06 AM | Comments (0)
July 25, 2008
Opening the Hadrian Show in London
There's a big Hadrian show at the British Museum - and here's a description of the opening from Bloomberg Muse:
For the first time in many years, the ruler of London addressed the assembled populus in Latin. Boris Johnson, mayor of the U.K. capital, climbed onto the podium at the opening of the British Museum's Hadrian exhibition and began spouting classical prose.After awhile, he paused to ask the audience, ``How much more of this do you want? There's yards of it.'' The July 23 audience didn't demur, and perhaps some of them understood what he was saying since there were several professors of classical studies present.
So the mayor plunged on. He is himself, as Neil McGregor, director of the museum, pointed out, the ruler of a vast empire, namely the London government machine.
It was an impressive performance. Tony Blair is able to speak in passable French; President John F. Kennedy famously declared "Ich bin ein Berliner'' in German. But most British officials nowadays probably no longer have a working knowledge of Latin.
It may be that this was the best Latin speech made by a British politician since the Romans departed in the fifth century. Mayor Johnson studied Greats -- a four-year program in classics -- at Oxford, and is evidently a master of the Latin language. MacGregor, thanking the Italian ambassador for his help, described him as "the representative of the former colonial power.''
Here's a review of the show, as opposed to a love letter to Boris Johnson, from the 24 Hour Museum. It's getting great reviews; maybe because I'm just back from Rome I'm not all that thrilled - but they'll have things on show from all over the place. Still, they can't bring the Pantheon - and all the portrait busts in the world can't make up for that.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:01 AM
July 24, 2008
Passive Aggressive Notes meets Big Brother
This could become a great cultural tradition.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:42 AM | Comments (1)
July 23, 2008
Mickey Kaus and the Undernews Theory
In the context of the John Edwards Love Child story Mickey Kaus speculates on 2 other Two Americas - those who keep up with politics vs. those who don't, and those who really only get their news filtered by the Mainstream Media and those who don't. When those who don't usually keep up with politics look around right before they vote, they sometimes get their information from what Kaus called the undernews - and he did so back in December.
One place where he sees some explanatory power is the volatility of polls - like when voters find out that Giuliani had been married 3 times. I'm curious about the effect of web-only journalism on the young; I very seldom see our students reading newspapers, even though there's a bin of freebies (New York Times, USA Today, and Rochester Democrat & Chronicle) at the door of the student center; it says something about the popularity of the print media that I can usually snag something to read as late as 10:30 a.m. when I stop by the café.
The really interesting question Kaus asks today:
Will this be the first presidential-contender level scandal to occur completely in the undernews, without ever being reported in the cautious, respectable MSM? That's always seemed an interesting theoretical possibility--a prominent politician just disappears from the scene, after blogs and tabloids dig up dirt on him, but nobody who relies on the Times, Post, network news or Mark Halperin has the faintest idea why.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:05 AM | Comments (2)
July 21, 2008
The Main Stream Media and Their Savior.
The New York Times publishes an Obama opinion piece.
The New York Times rejects a McCain opinion piece.
My favorite dissection is from Neo-Neocon. Your mileage may well vary.
Just don't tell anyone the media isn't in the tank for Our Lord and Savior Barack Obama - because we all know that part of the election is over. But you know, Al Gore is busy making excuses for his big ol' Belle Meade Mansion while George W. Bush's house in Crawford, Texas, gives back to the Earth, so all is not lost.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:22 PM | Comments (0)
July 17, 2008
Those damned capitalists!
They’re accusing Apple of concocting the whole thing as some sort of profit-making scheme.
That's John Gruber on the Free Software Foundation on the iPhone.
Me, I just hope that TIAA-CREF owns a LOT of stock.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:58 PM
July 15, 2008
Hugo Chavez and Erastianism
How did I miss this? Hugo Chavez founded his own Bolivarian church - and they're using the Spanish translation of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer! How exciting for the Anglican Communion on the eve of a Lambeth conference!
read here.
and here.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:46 AM
July 11, 2008
The ready availability of blank yard signs for personal expression - boon or bane?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:14 AM
July 2, 2008
Talk about pushing back against the forces of darkness!
Ingrid Betancourt and some Americans freed!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:32 PM
July 1, 2008
The Nanny State is right about this one!
Police in Yorkshire, England, have ordered pubs to ban people wearing hats from their premises. The police say that the presence of a hat makes it hard to identify people with surveillance cameras. They also note that banks and post offices have, because of that same issue, already banned people wearing hats.
Of course, if Nanny had had her way, you wouldn't be wearing your hat indoors, anyway, you lout!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:30 PM | Comments (2)
June 28, 2008
Harsh book review? Yikes!
On David Rieff's book about his mother's death:
What might have been an affecting narrative of a highly intelligent woman's decline and death is buried beneath layers of noisy subjective assertion.Clearly, Rieff wants to be a great writer, not just a peddler of reportage. Signs of this anxiety are everywhere.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:36 AM | Comments (0)
June 26, 2008
The Importance of Being Earnest
Have you read about the Sustainability Conference where they're also going to formally nominate the Democratic party candidate for the presidency?
Wild earnestness. I'd already heard about the colorful food requirements, but I hadn't heard about compostable utensils:
Compostable utensils, she [one of the caterers] says, are often shipped from Asia on fuel-guzzling cargo ships. As for the plates: "Is it better to drive across town to have china delivered to an event and then use hot water to wash it, or is it better to use petroleum-based disposables?" she asks.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:07 AM | Comments (1)
June 25, 2008
Political Tightropes
This is a (n in)famous neocon.
This is a really, really sharp Swarthmore professor who is a specialist in modern Africa. (click and read more of his stuff).
Compare and contrast. I keep doing it without any resolution. Luckily, I'm a medievalist - no one wants to know what I think.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:09 PM | Comments (0)
June 18, 2008
Reduce, reuse, recycle
Since taking steps to make his home more environmentally-friendly last June, Gore devours an average of 17,768 kWh per month –1,638 kWh more energy per month than before the renovations – at a cost of $16,533. By comparison, the average American household consumes 11,040 kWh in an entire year, according to the Energy Information Administration.In the wake of becoming the most well-known global warming alarmist, Gore won an Oscar, a Grammy and the Nobel Peace Prize. In addition, Gore saw his personal wealth increase by an estimated $100 million thanks largely to speaking fees and investments related to global warming hysteria.
Al Gore - role model.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:20 AM
June 12, 2008
Oh my! The Future just ain't what it used to be!
Did you remember that Blade Runner is set in 2019? Seen any flying cars yet? In 1982 was it more convincing that 37 years would bring us flying cars?
I'd settle for an umbrella with a neon stick.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:49 PM
The Wheels of Justice Grind Slow, BUT
In a stinging rebuke to those who see America sliding in fascism, we read:
WASHINGTON - In a stinging rebuke to President Bush's anti-terror policies, a deeply [5-4?] divided Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign detainees held for years at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba have the right to appeal to U.S. civilian courts to challenge their indefinite imprisonment without charges.Bush said he strongly disagreed with the decision — the third time the court has repudiated him on the detainees
[hmm, not looking good for the Fascists, so long as they actually observe the laws, like maybe a peaceful transfer of power in 2009] — and suggested he might seek yet another law to keep terror suspects locked up at the prison camp, even as his presidency winds down. [Like one of those would pass now. Obama's bringing hope, after all, along with the Big D Political Machine.]Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the 5-4 high court majority
[Yep, deeply divided.], acknowledged the terrorism threat the U.S. faces — the administration's justification for the detentions — but he declared, "The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times." [Sounds like a definition of a rule of law to me.]In a blistering dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia said the decision "will make the war harder on us. It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed."
[Now is that "blistering?" I can imagine that if he impugned the mental ability or the character of Justice Kennedy that we might call that "blistering." But I don't read Supreme Court opinions and I'm not a reporter - but if someone wants me to believe that a dissent is blistering that reporter had better pick a stronger quotation.]Bush has argued the detentions are needed to protect the nation in a time of unprecedented threats from al-Qaida and other foreign terrorist groups. The president, in Rome, said Thursday, "It was a deeply divided court,
[o.k. - "deeply divided" are Bush's words. He's wrong, too - 5/4 is not an uncommon division.] and I strongly agree with those who dissented." He said he would consider whether to seek new laws in light of the ruling "so we can safely say to the American people, 'We're doing everything we can to protect you.'"Kennedy said federal judges could ultimately order some detainees to be released, but he also said such orders would depend on security concerns and other circumstances. The ruling itself won't result in any immediate releases.
[Does that make us all Fascisti now, since the 5 who voted for Habeas Corpus don't just shut down the prison by judicial fiat?]. . .
Lawyers for detainees differed over whether the ruling, unlike the first two, would lead to prompt hearings for those who have not been charged. Roughly 270 men remain at the prison at the U.S. naval base in Cuba.
[Yeah, sounds like the Gulag to me. Oh - if we're Fascists, maybe Lipari is a better comparison.] Most are classed as enemy combatants and held on suspicion of terrorism or links to al-Qaida and the Taliban. [By the way, lest you assume that I'm a Fascist, too, I'm all in favor of bringing people to trial and imprisoning the actually guilty, as opposed to the accused. Maybe that makes me a bourgeois liberal, in techincal terms, though. Guilty as charged. Bourgeois and proud of it.]Some detainee lawyers said hearings could take place within a few months. But James Cohen, a Fordham University law professor who has two clients at Guantanamo, predicted Bush would continue seeking ways to resist the ruling. "Nothing is going to happen between June 12 and Jan. 20," when the next president takes office, Cohen said.
[Big surprise, there!]. . .
Charles Swift, the former Navy lawyer who used to represent Hamdan, said he believes the court removed any legal basis for keeping the Guantanamo facility open and that the military tribunals are "doomed."
Guantanamo generally and the tribunals were conceived on the idea that "constitutional protections wouldn't apply," Swift said. "The court said the Constitution applies. They're in big trouble."
[There you go - we end up extending constitution protections to all kinds of folks even off shores, when the administrative branch tries not to. Typical Fascist behavior.]Human rights groups and many Democratic members of Congress celebrated the ruling as affirming the nation's commitment to the rule of law. Several Republican lawmakers called it a decision that put foreign terrorists' rights above the safety of the American people.
[Partisan difference of opinion. Is it all a Bilderburger coverup? Or is it the Masons, who are opposed to revealed religions, like Islam? How many members of the Executive, the Legislative, and the Judicial branches of government are members of Skull and Bones?]
The article goes on to affirm my belief in the essential effectiveness of the American system in dealing with problems. It's lack of expeditiousness is not encouraging, but hey - I'm a medievalist. I expect that wheels grind slow. Your opinion of the way the World works may vary.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:48 PM
June 10, 2008
"How Will Bill Clinton Manage His Brand?"
What a great headline from Business Week - "How Will Bill Clinton Manage His Brand?"
Former President Bill Clinton last year earned around $50 million in speaking fees, giving 80% of that to his philanthropic foundation. He once cleared $700,000 in a single weekend delivering three speeches, one of which was by videoconference. The Bill Clinton Show ran in venues last year from Las Vegas to Dubai, as he paraded his increasingly Bono-like persona before industry, political, and investor groups around the world.That was then. Now, the White House hopes of Senator Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) are in tatters. And the former President's reputation and image have been dented by his role in her campaign—after many pundits and analysts blamed him for overreaching in denigrating the electability of Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.). After the South Carolina primary in January, Bill Clinton was criticized for seeming to belittle Obama's win there, comparing it to the 1984 and 1988 primary victories by the Reverend Jesse Jackson. Thus, the question facing Bill Clinton is what he should do about his brand to protect his legacy, as well as the moneymaking machine he has come to count on.
I'd never thought of it as a branding issue, but then I don't work for Business Week.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:58 AM
June 6, 2008
The Culture of Death
Harriet McBryde Johnson on Peter Singer:
He is the man who wants me dead. No, that's not at all fair. He wants to legalize the killing of certain babies who might come to be like me if allowed to live.. . .
Even as I am horrified by what he says, and by the fact that I have been sucked into a civil discussion of whether I ought to exist, I can't help being dazzled by his verbal facility. He is so respectful, so free of condescension, so focused on the argument, that by the time the show is over, I'm not exactly angry with him. Yes, I am shaking, furious, enraged -- but it's for the big room, 200 of my fellow Charlestonians who have listened with polite interest, when in decency they should have run him out of town on a rail.
. . .
He responds by inviting me to Princeton. I fire off an immediate maybe.
Of course I'm flattered. Mama will be impressed.
Read it and weep for the West. If we can kill anyone who doesn't currently meet our standards of acceptable consciousness we are really not being very nice, let alone the other words we might argue about applying there.
If you can't read the whole thing, skip ahead to page 10. I don't think she's being unfair to Singer at all. It was that last sentence that grabbed me when I read it in 2003. I mean, I was already in entire agreement with the author - but the idea that she might have argued with Peter Singer in public because her Mama would be impressed . . . .
via Eve. I'd read this article before - Eve tells us that Ms. Johnson has died. And how didn't I notice that Megan mentioned it first?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:00 PM
May 9, 2008
The government is subsidizing the development of robots as caregivers for the old.
That's from an article about the slow-moving demographic collapse of Japan.
The number of children has declined for 27 consecutive years, a government report said over the weekend. Japan now has fewer children who are 14 or younger than at any time since 1908.The proportion of children in the population fell to an all-time low of 13.5 percent. That number has been falling for 34 straight years and is the lowest among 31 major countries, according to the report. In the United States, children account for about 20 percent of the population.
via Cronaca
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:10 AM
May 7, 2008
The power of the visual
Stage-managing a rally to create a sense of the overwhelming enthusiasm for Change for the Sake of Change - go look. Yet another sign of the normal behavior of the Obama campaign. Everyone on both sides does this kind of thing, but it's always nice to get it confirmed.
Be sure to scroll down for the bumpersticker, too.
via Instapundit
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:30 AM
April 12, 2008
The Elections
Even though the price I pay for skipping this portion of the American campaign season is being here in Italy for all of theirs (see my flickr set with a lot of campaign signs and now a rally), Italians frequently ask me who will win. Until yesterday I was saying that I wasn't sure. Now I'm sure it's McCain - though Obama still might win the D primary I don't think there's any way after his recent remarks to the millionaires of San Francisco about the ways of small-town Pennsylvanians that he can win a general election. I've seen people post audio versions - and then there's this lovely post of the venue for his statement, Billionaires' Row in San Francisco.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:01 AM
April 4, 2008
The Italian Right Reaches Out for the Gay Vote . . .
. . . and hangs disco balls in campaign office windows.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:07 AM | Comments (0)
April 1, 2008
How many cannibals could YOU feed?
Created by OnePlusYou - Free Online Dating
But you know, I'm well-marbled - they'd be HAPPY Cannibals.
via Dr. Virago
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:30 PM | Comments (3)
March 28, 2008
Visual Culture Shock - what does that X mean?
When I saw these posters (and the hundreds like them for every other candidate) I thought they were "[NO] Belusconi" signs. What they mean in American is "Check this box on election day!" Took me a while - but it made a good example for the students to think about.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:27 AM | Comments (1)
March 27, 2008
What not to wear
The Dressing in accordance with our people's emotion and taste program vies with the Let us trim our hair in accordance with Socialist lifestyle for dominance. I fear I'm headed to a re-education camp - I haven't had a haircut in the last 15 days.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:37 PM | Comments (2)
March 22, 2008
The Pathetic Fallacy
I've been living in the midst of the pathetic fallacy for the last two days - all Creation weeps over her Savior's tomb . . . .
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:33 AM | Comments (2)
March 14, 2008
Well, this is a comfort
So here I am being paid in dollars while I try to live in Euro-land and I read this:
So there's still a glimmer of hope that we will avoid complete and utter financial meltdown?
Yes. Although that's no reason not to stock up on canned goods.
Via Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution.
I guess my return ticket will work.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:26 PM
February 29, 2008
Où sont les neiges d'antan?
No other act can project simultaneous hints that he is in the act of playing Commodore of the Yacht Club, Joseph Goebbels, Robert Mitchum, Maverick, Savonarola, the nice prep school kid next door and the snows of yesteryear.The horrific Norman Mailer on the not-quite-sublime WFB in the decreasingly useful NYT. Requiescat in pace.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:18 PM
February 26, 2008
Sardinia, Sardigna
I've seen a number of folks ask "if Kosovo, why not North Ossetia" and the like. Well, why not Sardigna? I saw this very fresh (the paint was still glossy) graffiti on Saturday morning - Sardigna no est Itaglia. Note that the Italian for this would be Sardegna non è Italia - the graffitisti is writing in Sardu, I suspect. Later that day I saw a flyer for a film-and- discussion of the mainland oppression of Sardinia in the 19th Century. I guess up in Pisa on the Tyrrhenian Sea (one of the local papers is Il Tirreno) there's enough of a Sardinian population to make this kind of issue vivid. But really, once one starts questioning the lines of nation states, what claim does Italy have to Sardinia?
Handy find, given the topic of our team-taught course: Inventing Rome, Inventing Romans. We read an article called 'Imagined Italies" for today on the construction of Italy as a nation through media - this was an excellent way to begin.
Further: Wikipedia's article about Sardu is quite interesting - especially on the state of Sardinian in the Kingdom of Sardinia - you did remember that controlling Sardinia was the way the House of Savoy got to call themselves Kings of something?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:14 PM
February 25, 2008
Things that make me glad to be living far, far away from American media
This is the classic rhetorical device that is technically termed "I'm rubber, you're glue."
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:28 PM
February 7, 2008
Brian Tiemann discovers that he, too, is a people.
I guess people with weekday time on their hands are able to create a market for places like this. It's a world with which I'm largely unfamiliar, encountering the world of retail and service business mostly in the context of quick lunch places near the office and service contractors one must wrangle as part of the game of home ownership. Weekends, I venture outside for supplies, groceries, movies—the necessities. Quaint shopping districts or downtown areas were never of any interest to me when my basic human needs could be fulfilled in a mall or a box store. But now, just in recent months, that I've started seeing businesses that simply had been invisible to me before—clothing stores, for example—it's like every town is suddenly twice as big and twice as dense with possibilities, all of them aimed at people, after all—and am I not a people?
Go look at the pictures of what helped him to self-realization. It looks luscious.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:07 PM
February 6, 2008
Mentally undressing them...
Martha-the-future-Rome-resident is mentally Sixtyfying people in suits. Well worth the read.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:32 PM
December 27, 2007
Zoo-going
Will attendance go up or down at zoos in the wake of the tiger attack?
I was reading an article this morning about the tiger attack - yes, she got 3 people. Perhaps it's more significant that she got 1/7th of the people in the Zoo at the time - it was an hour before closing on Christmas day and there were only 20 people in the park!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:33 AM
December 11, 2007
When your life starts to fall apart . . .
I hate it when beloved small appliances start to go.
I own a George Foreman grill, but I don't care about it. I have a very nice electric toothbrush, but it stirs no passions. My coffee maker, however, I love. I've owned or dealt with so many bad ones, after all. My mother has an awful thing that grinds and brews - the cleaning one must engage in to make a 2nd pot is distressing. The Cuisinart on my counter is dependable. It doesn't have a heating element in the base, so I don't have to worry about forgetting to turn it off; I averaged two or three times a month with that before this coffee maker. The thermal carafe really works.
Now, sad to report, I'm having to jiggle and fiddle the ON button to get the brewing process started. It's not long for this world. Will it last out the month, until I leave? I'm praying for it.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:46 AM
November 30, 2007
The Great Beer Robbery
The national police force, the Garda Siochana, said a lone man drove into the brewery — a Dublin landmark and top tourist attraction — on Wednesday and hitched his truck to a fully loaded trailer awaiting delivery to city pubs.. . .
Police said the raider took 180 kegs of Guinness stout, 180 kegs of U.S. lager Budweiser and 90 kegs of Danish beer Carlsberg. Guinness brews both of those brands under license for sale in Ireland.
. . .Each keg holds about 88 British-sized pints, the most common serving size in Ireland equivalent to 20 ounces (568 milliliters) each. The total theft involves 39,600 pints with a retail value exceeding €160,000 (US$235,000).
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:07 AM
November 22, 2007
Translation into Arabic
This is a fine, fine thing for which to give thanks:
Books by Stephen Hawking, Umberto Eco, Haruki Murakami and other star writers past and present have been chosen as the first works to be translated into Arabic, in a major initiative to widen access to foreign literature.The Abu Dhabi-based project, Kalima ("word" in Arabic), aims to publish 100 books in its first year and 500 titles a year by 2010, it announced yesterday.
The first 100 are from 16 languages, including Greek, Japanese, Swedish, Czech, Russian, Chinese, Yiddish, Italian, Norwegian, Latin and ancient Greek. Half the candidate titles are English.
Four years ago the UN's Arab human development report identified a lack of translated foreign works as an issue restricting Arab intellectual life. The UN report noted that Spain translates in one year the number of books that have been translated into Arabic in the past 1,000 years.
"The rest of the world enjoys a wealth of domestic and translated writing, why should the Arab world be any different?" Karim Nagy, Kalima's Egyptian chief executive, said as the first titles were announced. "We can start putting Arabic readers back in touch with great works of world literature and academia, and begin filling the gaps in the Arabic library."
The selection process is designed to strike a balance between different genres, juxtaposing the works of classic authors with contemporary writers. Academic, business and educational material is also being translated.
The organisers point out that in Europe's "dark ages" and until the end of the first millennium Arab scholars and libraries led the world in producing and preserving knowledge in science, medicine, philosophy and the arts. Since then, however, very few foreign works have found their way into Arabic.
"In past centuries Arabic learning was a source of great riches for the western intellectual tradition," said the British author Ian McEwan. "It is a cause for celebration that this major translation initiative is able to offer riches in return."**
Other titles due out in Arabic this year are by Nadine Gordimer, Khaled Hosseini, Albert Camus, George Eliot, Albert Einstein, Jacques Lacan and Spinoza.
Muhammad al-Mazrouei, of the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage, which is financing the translation and publishing project, said: "We want to give Arabic readers the opportunity to read and enjoy a breadth of quality writing from around the world in their mother tongue. Arabic is a beautifully expressive language, and one that should be more widely celebrated and valued."
**Arabic learning? Well, Greek learning, Syriac translations, then creative Arabic learning. That process of acquisition of foreign knowledge all stopped a LONG time ago, as the article makes clear with the comparison with Spain. Arabic readers never seemed much interested in post-Hellenistic non-Arabic knowledge. One also wishes things were being translated into Arabic because of demand, rather than this supply-side approach. Of course, an English reader should talk about that problem of disinterest in other language traditions - we're pretty poor at that. In fact, there's a good argument to be made that much of the best work available in English is "anything translated from a foreign language," because so little makes it past the filter that almost all of it is good.
Further: I'm reminded by a comment to ask "Into what kind of Arabic will these be rendered?" I blogged about the interesting question of modern Arabic this summer.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:54 PM
November 18, 2007
Splinters and slivers and early death.
I got a splinter yesterday. It was bad enough that I went over to friends to have them help me get it out. People wonder why single men die earlier than the married? Falling off ladders while changing light bulbs (I always call a friend upstairs and tell her that if I don't call back in 5 minutes she should call 9-1-1 and use her key to let them in). Not going to the doctor when they get sick (I'm slowly training myself to actually listen to colleagues on that one). Infected splinters.
Oh - I wonder what the isoglosses for splinter vs. sliver look like? I'll have to remember to ask my father - but I'm certain that the parents' busy social life has them away from home at the moment.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:03 PM
November 14, 2007
Harry Potter in China
Yow! I'd never thought about Harry Potter sales in China! 1.8 million?
One of the things that occurred to me about the Potter Universe is that though Hogwarts is quite multicultural in population, those British Asians and West Indians and other diverse populations don't seem to have introduced either ethnic food or ethnic magic to Great Britain. Oddly parochial. But then I haven't read the last two.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:36 AM
November 10, 2007
Gore Vidal is for now the happiest man in America
Gore Vidal just outlived Norman Mailer. I'm sure he, as the one of the two interviewed for tomorrow's literary section articles, is dancing a teensy weensy octogenarian jig.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:07 PM
October 5, 2007
Cricket fighting!
Can anti-bloodsport activists get exercised about fighting insects? Go watch the video. I am having a hard time feeling any sympathy for the bugs. Michael Vick shoulda tried this.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:32 AM | Comments (1)
September 28, 2007
Ignorance never stands in the way of fame
It is impossible to overstate how little she knows about Latin American economic history. One could glean a more accurate and comprehensive view of Latin American economic conditions by renting Evita.
That's Megan McArdle on Naomi Klein. I've already had Klein's most recent book recommended to me on campus.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:17 PM | Comments (0)
September 20, 2007
Those kids today!
Seriously: why on earth would the definition of a "conservative" court in 1980 be some sort of lodestar by which all future courts should be judged. By the standards of 1880, the current court would be a bunch of wild-eyed socialist libertine radicals bent on undermining everything that made America great. Does that entitle me to re-nominate Oliver Wendell Holmes, or his modern day equivalent?Cass Sunstein (who graduated from law school in 1978) seems to be under the delusion that the conditions of his youth are the golden mean by which all future events are to be judged and found wanting. I mean, we all feel the same way, but most of us don't expect anyone younger to take us seriously when we drone on about how much better The Pogues were than any of this modern noise.
Megan McArdle on the world and change.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:28 AM | Comments (0)
September 13, 2007
Achieving a state of detachment from possessions - at least his house.
My wife and I wanted to put an addition on our house here in the City of Los Angeles. Our general contractor told us that the first thing we had to do was get up-to-date zoning and property information from the Building Pemits Department. He recommended that we hire a "fixer" who was used to dealing with the bureaucracy. That was 2 months ago. Today, we were informed by the City zoning department that they could not give us the necessary zoning information ... because, according to zoning records, our house does not exist! On top of which, the zoning folks also had no record of the street on which we live.
It get's better. Go read the whole thing.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:24 AM | Comments (0)
September 6, 2007
Should Economists rule the world?
Short answer? No. Political scientists, either. Now art historians - has anyone tried that? Not that I'm volunteering for any new assignments this semseter . . . .
via Tyler Cowen.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:35 AM | Comments (0)
August 28, 2007
Movies I won't see but that make me think
Megan McArdle has a fascinating post on status hierarchies - but it's still not enough to make me see a movie about Donkey Kong. We're all part of networks of hierarchies - good or bad at all sorts of things that no one else really cares about.
An odd point - I picked up the post through Net News Wire (where I have my daily reads saved). I usually just click and open blogs in a new window, but for some reason I skimmed through this one in NNW, the newest version of which seems to display a few revisions and additions - some sentences will be picked out in green, for instance, and there will be a few strike-throughs in red. I'm not sure if NNW is showing me just the last couple of versions of the post or what. I learned that Megan has trouble with Sweden, too - she struck it out and retyped it without altering it. That Nordic nation is one of my spelling problems, too. Imagine the semester I'm going to have with this course, BiDis 291: Medieval Art & Literature - the Vikings.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:33 AM
August 23, 2007
Airloom Tomatoes spotted at the Geneva Farmers' Market
Sign makers. What're you going to do?
I buy mine from the people who label them Brandywines anyway.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:12 AM | Comments (1)
August 9, 2007
Ah, for a world with less euphemism
You know, we underestimate the past - who can face reality? Us? With signs like Pediatric Admissions?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:47 AM | Comments (0)
July 30, 2007
Spitzer's non-apology
Here's a beautiful rhetorical analysis of Spitzer's non-apology.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:27 PM
July 23, 2007
Spanish as she is spoke on the stump.
Google news turned up an article about H.Clinton and Obama speaking at a convention of the National Council of La Raza. Of course you can guess what they said (despite an egregious use of "unique" by the Miami Herald to describe Obama's rhetorical contribution).
I actually clicked not because I was curious about their speeches, but because I was curious about language usage. Did either of them attempt stump-Spanish? Evidently not.
You see, Language Log has a little list of the linguistic ability of presidential candidates. Clinton is listed as 'apparently monolingual.' Obama, 'Speaks Indonesian and limited Spanish.' I think the Miami Herald would have mentioned if he used more than standard greetings, so I guess Clinton doesn't have to worry about Obama walking away with the La Raza vote on linguistic grounds.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:29 AM
July 11, 2007
The Summer of TB
Man quarantined with TB flees hospital. Not the man from Georgia - but this one is infectious.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:12 PM | Comments (1)
June 27, 2007
Diamonds are a guerrilla's best friend
This sounds like an interesting book - The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:53 PM
June 26, 2007
Darfur drags on
I wasn't very surprised - are you? - to read this headline on Google news: Session on Darfur ends without action plan. But I clicked anyway. Hope springs eternal.
France had said the meeting was aimed at backing a UN-African Union peacemaking effort, offering political support to those trying to bring together splintered rebel groups, and providing funds for a hybrid UN-AU force due to take over from 7,000 beleaguered AU peacekeepers.Sudan itself was not invited, and the African Union declined to send a delegation.
And then this piece of diplomatic amazingness:
Despite the absence of specific action from the meeting, a UN special envoy, Jan Eliasson, said it had been useful."There has been a long period now of sometimes competing initiatives. Now there was general agreement that we should have a convergence of initiatives," he told reporters.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:46 AM
June 22, 2007
Argentinian Wine and Word Choice
An article at National Geographic News attracted my attention because I figured I'd been to the place - and I have. Wine Boom Threatens Native Argentine Water Source - it's all about the Mendoza region and the desert below it. Here are some pictures - click to see bigger!
Mendoza is laced with narrow, deep, stone-lined irrigation canals fed from the Andes. The system was begun in pre-Columbian times. You can see the cut outs for individual trees and can see that the trees are planted nearer the water level at the bottom of the channel. Of course I've forgotten what they're called in Spanish.
This space-age looking winery (whose name I've also forgotten, but it's not Salentein) isn't far from town - and you can see the desert setting. The National Geographic article suggests that big operations like this use drip irrigation - I guess that makes them socially responsible beverages! AHAH! via Wines of Argentina I found 'em - it's Bodegas y viñedos O. Fournier!
And this is how close the Andes are - the view is from the open deck of the winery. The shift from the piedmont to the mountains is amazingly dramatic. I'd go back to Mendoza in a heartbeat!
The article is interesting - and reminded me of what a dry place Mendoza would be without the irrigation channels that run everywhere in town.
But to move on to the word choice issue - maybe this is one that my students will get!
Most vineyards in the Mendoza Valley use the mantle irrigation system, in which an entire field is flooded. However the larger, more profitable, vineyards use drip irrigation, which targets specific rows of trees.A rubber lining is placed along a line of
grape trees and water is pumped through holes in the lining. (my emphasis)
The first "trees" was strange enough, but the second occurrence made it clear. The author means grape trees. Alright - the question for students: is the journalist working in a language in which he or she is not perfectly fluent? Was this originally written in a language other than English and translated imperfectly? Is the journalist perhaps ignorant of botany? Where are the editors?
Correct word choice is difficult to teach because if a student makes an error in usage or word choice that student probably doesn't know the difference between the right and wrong word. Perhaps grape trees will get us past that so students can see why incorrect word choice makes for jarring reading.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:47 AM
June 20, 2007
Talking 'bout my generation...
What does it say about the inherent pitifulness of my demographic unit that when I watch tv I see a lot of ads for e.harmony.com?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:43 PM
June 16, 2007
Australian English
In poking around to find a story with a picture of the missing Dutch painting I came across this headline - Former Hell's Angels bikie arrested. I'm sorry, but bikie just doesn't strike terror into American ears.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:05 AM | Comments (2)
May 29, 2007
At this price, health is cheap!
Calloo, callay! Zithropax have gone generic! My standard bronchitis treatment (5 days of azithromycin, 5 days of prednisone) just cost me $8.60 in copayment!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:27 PM
May 28, 2007
What's your O.Q.?
I'm not making this up.
Political correctness, all too often overstated and exaggerated on the Right, has been reduced to a grading rubric.
When we label sensitive terms for Random House Webster's College Dictionary, there are a lot of factors to consider. The way we decide has to do with how offensive a word is (the degree to which a word offends the person it is used to describe) and how disparaging a word is (the degree to which the person who uses the word intends for it to be hurtful).To decide how to label a word, we go through a process that is something like the chart we give below. We call it the O.Q., or "offensiveness quotient"--modeled after the more familiar I.Q. (Intelligence Quotient). This is only a rough guide, designed to help dictionary users understand what the labels mean.
Basically, the O.Q. is the average of a term's rank on the scales of Disparagement and Offensiveness. To see how this works on specific words, go to Examples of How the O.Q. Works.
Via Right Reason.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:32 PM
May 15, 2007
Touring North Korea
This is a great story of a trip to North Korea - a few excerpted paragraphs:
Cao said there were few police in North Korea because everyone polices each other. He meant it as a compliment. Our minders were polite, vigorous debaters, showing genuine pride in their country, where they said all people were treated equally.
. . .
The highlight of the tour was the ``Arirang'' mass games. Opposite the spectator bleachers in the massive May Day Stadium, thousands of performers held up painted cards to make dot-matrix pictures. Through uncanny choreography, the images moved, shimmered and changed in a blink. On the field, thousands more danced, did gymnastics and swung flags.
The story was a stylized history of Korea in 1 1/2 hours, ending with a plea for reunification. It was an amazing spectacle and, with actors outnumbering the audience by at least 2-to-1, a showcase of socialist economics.
I believe, based on the tags, the photo I found on Flickr is the mass game mentioned in the article.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:37 AM
May 2, 2007
I couldn't resist the cheap laugh. . .
The ABC News Law & Justice Unit has calculated that for $67 million Pearson could buy 84,115 new pairs of pants at the $800 value he placed on the missing trousers in court documents. If you stacked those pants up, they would be taller than eight Mount Everests. If you laid them side by side, they would stretch for 48 miles.Pardon the cliché, but why shouldn't we start by killing all the lawyers? $67 Million lawsuit over a pair of lost pants.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:19 PM
May 1, 2007
Unraveling the Passage of Time
We have many ways to mark the passage of time, but lately the metric I'm using is sock-lifetimes. I have discarded 5 socks in the last 10 days.
I tend to buy my socks in exactly the same pattern and color in bulk (well, 5-8 pairs at a time) at the nearby Eddie Bauer outlet, which means that they lose their color and eventually their heels and toes at about the same rate.
This is a big month for sock-death. Luckily this sad period coincides, for once, with the end of the school year and a sudden reduction in dress sock wearing, so I may not have to make a trip to the outlets (believe me - my recent move revealed previously unexamined strata of khaki shorts and polo shirts - I don't need any summer clothes) until August.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:45 AM
April 30, 2007
Cistercians and High Modern Architecture
There is an interesting piece in Bloomberg.com: Muse today by Colin Amery on a new Cistercian monastery in Czech Republic, the first new Trappist community established in former Communist Europe. The article celebrates the buildings, by John Pawson. No pictures.
Luckily, the community has a website! The Monastery of Novy Dur. I start you with the choose-a-language splash page because some of the best photos are there. Sit and contemplate for a while - let the pictures change.
The best information on the monastery's own site about the buildings is under "Benefactors and donors." The best reading is under "Dedication of the church."
In a trampled, dechristianised and secularized country, one would logically expect the foundation of an apostolical convent having a charitable end; and yet we come with a monastery, a church built from the ground up, an enclosure. Certainly, there is an act of faith in this that not everyone can understand. There is even more: our monastic life, which we strive to live poorly and seriously in a western world, pagan in the east as in the west, consists in the unique praise of God and in the intercession for mankind. A limited comprehension but that we know in faith the extraordinary and mysterious extension. The Constitutions of our Order express this even better: a secret and mysterious apostolical fertility.–––
In the context of the actual dechristianisation, one often hears:
The absolute priority ought to be given, even for the religious, to apostolic work, the contemplative work will come after! This might appear to be a reflection of common sense, but in reality it is a shortsighted judgment that translates for the least pusillanimity of faith. We have known and we know what are societies without art, or even worse, with an art imposed by an ideology. They result in a debased, sterilized people. It is the same for the Church without prayer.
Whoops - I did that without linking to the original story that started me off. Here it is.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:26 AM
April 28, 2007
What you can't say
You can't say that dogs aren't overbreeding. Read the whole thing - it's an interesting study of moral fashion.
Disclaimer - I don't have any idea to what extent Mr. Scheie is correct or incorrect, but I hasten to add that he isn't morally wrong. If you disagree, go argue with him.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:30 PM
April 25, 2007
Ortho-Chant
Boris Yeltsin, the first state funeral in the Russian autocephaly? 20 years ago who would have thought it could have happened?
Yup - the L.A. Times noticed, too.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:43 PM | Comments (0)
April 17, 2007
The Growth of Wealth
From CNNMoney.com:
Richest households pass 1 million mark
Report finds households with net worth of at least $5 million grew 23 percent to 1.14 million in 2006.
I wonder how many of those are TIAA-CREF households? Time, compound interest, and sound management . . . .
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:48 AM | Comments (0)
April 12, 2007
Of the course, the real question is always, what does the important woman wear when meeting the murderous potentate?
The Manolo ponders the question.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:56 PM | Comments (0)
April 1, 2007
Anniversaries
Talk about a benign way to observe an anniversary - I got an email this morning from Zappos about my shoe purchase 1 year ago today asking if I liked them and if I'd like to order another pair, since they are still available. I'm considering it. Those shoes were one of the better things about the last 12 months, even if I bought them for an eventuality that never came off. Maybe in raisin this time?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:06 PM | Comments (1)
March 29, 2007
Ain't America Great? Bill Clinton's Reward
"I never had a nickel to my name until I got out of the White House, and now I'm a millionaire, the most favored person for the Washington Republicans," Clinton told a friendly audience in Kentucky last fall. "I get a tax cut every year, no matter what our needs are."Who needs book deals? Clinton has made $40 million in the last 6 years giving speeches.
The link goes to an interesting story in the Washington Post about who hires WJC to talk and how that may or may not be related to HRC's campaign. Plenty of them aren't - some of the groups clearly want him for star power - they hire him to fill their charity luncheon $500 seats.
Here's the list of where, for whom, and how much the Washington Post published.
My bemusement is non-partisan - everyone does this. My bemusement is also constitutional - in the sense that I am not like everyone else (not that anyone really is), but I don't tick this way. If I were home for the evening and had walked the dog I wouldn't walk back to campus to hear a speech by any politician, current or former, unless I were specifically invited to the dinner or reception and my absence would be noticed. As a group they and their opinions, especially those of former elected officials, don't interest me very much - and you can get 'em for free on television.
I came across this story (don't know how I missed it back in February when it ran) at the 2 Blowhards.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:56 AM | Comments (3)
March 21, 2007
Weird Phenomena of Modern Living
I just walked in the door at 1.30. The TV was on but not doing anything. I mean that the picture from the Weather Channel was frozen. You see, I leave the TV or a radio on for the dog's amusement (poor girl - she's having to hang out in the crate when I'm away because of some housebreaking issues that were driving me nuts). So I change channels. Another still picture. And another still. And another.
So I fire up my browser to see if the cable modem is working. I'm having no problem creating this entry.
Modern life is sometimes very odd.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:44 PM
March 20, 2007
CPUSA Trove to NYU
The Communist Party USA has donated a huge collection of material to NYU - lots of fascinating stuff to sort through and eventually study.
I'm a little bemused the New York Times files it in the ARTS section. I guess they're thinking that it's like a museumy-kinda-thing?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:12 AM
March 17, 2007
Wine Fraud
Here's a fascinating story about fraud at the high end of the wine business.
There’s no telling what’s actually in a bottle of counterfeit wine. It could range from complete plonk, which might easily be written off as corked or otherwise flawed, to something that is quite delicious even if it’s not the advertised wine. In a case like that, the scammer might have taken, say, a bottle of a coveted wine like Henri Jayer Cros Parantoux from an ordinary vintage, like 1982, and changed the label to reflect an in-demand vintage, say 1985, increasing the value of the bottle by five or 10 times, or even more.Or, the scammer might slap a label on a bottle of good but unrelated wine. A collector investing in old Burgundy might find himself drinking an old Hermitage — very good, but not what he paid for.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:51 AM | Comments (1)
February 26, 2007
Perhaps the most depressing story in the world
The female feticide of India and China - this story, "India's imbalance of the sexes," is the first of 4 parts. There's gonna be hell to pay.
via Fr. Jim Tucker
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:00 PM
February 25, 2007
First Lake Erie, then the Thames, now the Bronx River?
First Lake Erie, then the Thames - that was a post I wrote a while ago. Now the Bronx River has "things living in it again."
Many people really don't believe in the recuperative powers of the natural world - they really don't. They really believe that global warming will somehow break things, and that it's all our fault.
Here's a story about a beaver living in the Bronx River. Read the various forms of disbelief, from the scientist who says that beaver habitat is shrinking* when a beaver is showing him that beaver might be able to live in non-pristine areas. Read the politician's cyncial disbelief quoted above. Then wonder what these people think all the spending on the environment is - penance? It doesn't seem from the things they occasionally say in public that they believe anything can be done.
*oh - anyone who believes that New York is less forested now than it was in the 19th century is delusional. The forest may be different, but there's more tree cover. Pristine it's not, but the reduction in farming and the industrial use of waterways Upstate is so remarkable that it would be a shock if the beaver don't start causing serious flooding problems eventually.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:43 AM | Comments (1)
February 21, 2007
Did you know that James Brown hadn't been buried yet?
Well, neither did I. Evidently the family has just settled that part.
Brown died Christmas Day at age 73. His body is in a confidential location, said Charles Reid, manager of the C.A. Reid Funeral Home, which handled Brown's funeral.He said he checked on Brown on Tuesday, opening the gold casket to view the body.
"I do that constantly," Reid said. "That's the only way I can actually check him ... go in, open the casket and close it. And he's fine."
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:35 AM | Comments (2)
February 20, 2007
Soviet Foot Wraps and Canvas Boots - reminds ME of Tolstoy
The last link to muzhik-wear is going to be phased out by east European armies.
Advocates of the tradition say cheap and virtually indestructible boots and foot bindings suit the cold Russian climate better than the refined footwear of Western armies.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:11 PM | Comments (0)
Down to 700 Samaritans...
Oh my - there aren't many Samaritans left - and because there are 4 single men for every 3 single women they're having to find women outside the community.
I came across this article via Fr. Jim Tucker.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:54 PM | Comments (0)
February 16, 2007
Why some people are on my blogroll . . .
Well, one person. In re: North Korea, Miss McArdle asks:
So what do we get out of the negotiations, other than a way for earnest people who believe in diplomacy to get the same emotionally loaded, adrenalin-soaked thrill that the rest of us got out of being on the Prom Committee?Click. Read.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:07 PM
February 14, 2007
Death of an Icon
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:48 PM | Comments (2)
January 11, 2007
New calendars for a new year
No one gave me a calendar this year for Christmas (other than the free ones from charities my parents were shuffling off along with the boatload of compact umbrellas they received this year - an umbrella apiece for me, my sister, my brother-in-law, and my two nephews - and they still have several for their own use). The best part of buying your calendar in January is that they are on sale - and I decided on a calendar of Paul Klee paintings from the Phillips Collection in DC. It has a good mix of paintings I've never seen (January is Figure of the Oriental Theatre, 1934) and things I know and love (The Way to the Citadel, 1937). Flipping through last year's calendar (Charles Rennie Mackintosh paintings, which I bought in part because they reminded me of a recent and happy visit to Glasgow) was a melancholy thing.
Time to move on.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:59 AM | Comments (0)
December 31, 2006
2006
Good riddance.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:10 PM | Comments (0)
December 27, 2006
Presidential History
I'm about willing to hear historians speculate on the Gerald Ford legacy or Gerald Ford as a president now - after all, it's actually a legacy rather than current events once someone is dead. How could one evaluate Jimmy Carter without his most recent publication, for instance? If there's not some distinction between history and journalism I don't want any part of the former.
Though from my point of view most American history is current events, and talk of presidential i.q. and presidential rankings are the intellectual equivalent of squabbling in the departmental mail room. That's a medievalist for you, though.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:32 AM
December 17, 2006
Iron law of ladder storage
I've had to haul the ladder out of the closet on 4 occasions in December. The trauma of maneuvering a 6 foot ladder past the the partial case of wine, the little Igloo cooler, and the bag-of-shopping-bags has finally motivated some rearranging back there, which is good. And now I have two (2) new light bulbs in the kitchen installed on separate occasions with separate incidents of ladder maneuvering. I also had to remove a battery from a smoke alarm (during a party! The salmon glaze was smoking! I guess we could call it a floor show!) and then put it back the next day. I rehung a pair of prints, too. Oh, well - the closet is a little bit neater.
The iron law of ladder storage dictates that I will now not need to use the ladder until my resolve has weakened and things have piled up in front of it again.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:03 AM
December 15, 2006
Progress against malaria? Let's hope!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:46 AM | Comments (0)
Seeking Christmas gift suggestions for the brass-inclined
O.k. - I'm a little stumped. Can anyone think of a good gift to give a sweet nephew who has recently taken up the trombone? You see, his father's side of the family is musical, not us. Still, I want to be supportive.
Update - I found a great little wooden box to buy him that holds a polishing kit I found at a music store! Yay! Thanks for the suggestions.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:40 AM
November 28, 2006
For the want of a nail the ROOF was lost . . .
Maybe the secret to hurricane-resistant housing is a better nail? Bostich/Stanley seems to think it might! Here's the story behind the nail.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:04 AM
November 24, 2006
Camelot
Is it at all possible that Bobby is so bad that it will finally put a stake through the heart of Kennedy worship? No - nothing will save us from that. Maybe the horror that will be fourth generation Kennedy politicians will end the nightmare. I'm looking forward to Son-of-Patrick.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:54 PM | Comments (1)
November 16, 2006
Behold, the Nanny State!
Click and read. It is delightful that this comes out of Great Britain the same season that brings us the movie version of The Children of Men, however bad the adaptation will be (and "pretty bad" is the answer I'm guessing from reviews I've read).
via Joanne Jacobs
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:02 AM
November 9, 2006
Outcome Based Politicking
So the world likes us again, right? No more terrorism? YAY!!!Yeah.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:03 PM | Comments (0)
The saddest sentence I've read this week
"I don't see him as being that far below someone like Omarosa (from "The Apprentice") on the Hollywood food chain once the fallout settles."The 'him' refers to Britney Spears' soon-to-be-ex.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:05 AM
November 8, 2006
Piercing Reasoning
"I told her I was thinking of getting one on my nose, but she said, 'No more piercings,' " Funderburg recalled. "I know my mom thinks it's a form of mutilation, but it's not. It's a matter of self-expression." The only downside of her eyebrow ring is that she had to remove it for her job, which has a no-facial-piercings policy.It's mutilation AND self-expression. What's so hard for the young to understand about that? I love the anecdote about the girl catching her belly-piercing on a slamming car trunk. Me, if I were in med school I'd be going into piercing-hole-reconstructive-surgery, along with tattoo removal. There's going to be a lot of work in the future.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:19 AM
November 7, 2006
One of the weirdest sentences in political coverage tonight
Oh my. I popped over to the Nashville Tennesseean in hopes of seeing news about a Ford defeat and read this sentence:
Corker, in part, drew the outburst from Ford by comparing his Memphis family to a political machine and suggesting conflicts of interest between Ford's congressional work and his father's lobbying duties.Comparing them to a machine? I hope he called the Ford family a political machine. I can't think of any other word that's really appropriate. Here's the story.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:16 PM
Michael Kinsley on Trinitarian logic in Pelosi's Platform
The document is full of bromides, of course, and like all good bromides, they come in threes. The Democrats promise "security, prosperity, and opportunity" in "diverse, safe, and vibrant communities." Not to mention "integrity, civility and fiscal discipline." They will "protect Americans, secure our borders, and restore our country's position of international leadership" through "homeland, energy, and diplomatic strategies." And we're just up to Page 3.Read his take here. Kinsley wants to vote D and Pelosi is not helping.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:37 AM | Comments (0)
November 5, 2006
Praying for Wednesday . . .
I am very tired of getting phone calls from Bill Clinton. Pray God that will all stop after Tuesday.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:28 PM | Comments (2)
October 31, 2006
If Rome burns, she's gonna fiddle...
And frankly, if I were diagnosed with a terminal disease today, the first damn thing I'd do is buy a pack of Camel Lights.I love Megan!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:10 PM | Comments (1)
October 3, 2006
Oh my. Click and keep scrolling.
This is the best photo essay in the blogosphere this week.
via BAW.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:57 PM | Comments (0)
October 2, 2006
A scootch of economic information
Here's one of those reasons I vote R (and part of that is that voting Libertarian is just plain silly):
Yes, my friends, that's right . . . in five years of fiscal mismanagement, the Bush administration has driven us from debt at German levels to a national debt that is . . . 3% of GDP less than Germany's. Wait, that's not right. He's driven us from 13th place in the OECD debt rankings to . . . 15th place. Okay, but look what that means! We've gone from a national debt that was a sane, manageable 34% of GDP, to an unsustainable . . . 37% of GDP.
Oh - that blogger is the answer to the Bogart movie question - not that the 2,000 gardenias haven't already been claimed by TTBDAN.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:34 PM
Taste and Politics
Tyler Cowan, an interesting economist at George Washington University, asked a parenthetical question the other day:
(By the way, my wish list of research projects for other people includes a serious study of how well political views predict cultural tastes. And are libertarians people with the meritocratic intuitions of the right but the cultural preferences of the left?)
It didn't take long for one of his readers to start working on an answer, based on the big social science database by correlating music preferences and attitudes towards things like income redistribution and sex.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:58 AM | Comments (0)
September 27, 2006
MY Favorite Humphrey Bogart Movie
Prophets unhonored in their own countries -- David Larrabee in Sabrina suggesting plastic champagne glasses, 'just in case' after his sitting-on-the-glasses-in-his-hip-pocket incident. Me, I prefer glass, but the plastic champagne flute has been a wonderful, wonderful thing for the world -- I'm all for the democritization of champagne flutes!
Bonus excitement! What blogger's real name is implicated in the Larrabee office staff?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:59 PM
September 16, 2006
Fishermen
Every now and then I get a bit of visible proof that there are whole types of people I just don't know anything about. This morning as I walked the dog the north end of the Lake was studded with little fishing boats - they clearly know something I don't know. Not that I mind not knowing about what's biting when and where, but it's interesting to see that I don't know. The world is a wonderful place.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:53 AM | Comments (0)
September 15, 2006
Political Punctuation
I don't know how many of my readers are residents of New York state (I really should look at the statistics thingie more often), but I am relieved to report a unilateral reduction in political emphaticness on the part of the campaign to re-elect Senator Clinton. Her signs this time around no longer say Hillary! -- it's just plain Hillary.
The calm, measured punctuation of incumbency, I guess.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:27 AM | Comments (0)
September 13, 2006
Pull, pull, the party lever!
Why will conservatives stay home on Election Day? Well, that is not the right question, as it is the natural inclination of the conservative to be at home. The question then is: why should a conservative vote Republican?Some people seem to think that I am a Republican. I am actually a conservative. There is a difference. Mr. Cusack, author of the above, explains quite ably.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:01 PM
September 11, 2006
Clintonistas and the past
Not content with editing history, Sandy Berger succeeds in censoring fiction.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:55 AM | Comments (0)
Modernity confronts Islamism
The best essay I've read on our current state of war is by Martin Amis in The Guardian. This is a paragraph from section 2.
Suicide-mass murder is astonishingly alien, so alien, in fact, that Western opinion has been unable to formulate a rational response to it. A rational response would be something like an unvarying factory siren of unanimous disgust. But we haven't managed that. What we have managed, on the whole, is a murmur of dissonant evasion. Paul Berman's best chapter, in Terror and Liberalism, is mildly entitled 'Wishful Thinking' - and Berman is in general a mild-mannered man. But this is a very tough and persistent analysis of our extraordinary uncertainty. It is impossible to read it without cold fascination and a consciousness of disgrace. I felt disgrace, during its early pages, because I had done it too, and in print, early on. Contemplating intense violence, you very rationally ask yourself, what are the reasons for this? And compassionately frowning newscasters are still asking that same question. It is time to move on. We are not dealing in reasons because we are not dealing in reason.
His neologism, and one well-worth having, is horrorism. Amis isn't in favor of Bush, but he's in favor of Modernity - and of almost anything other than Islamism. Amis was writing a novella and had to stop: "But with Islamism, with total malignancy, with total terror and total boredom, irony, even militant irony (which is what satire is), merely shrivels and dies." I don't think that Amis's answers are particularly satisfying, but the essay is worth reading.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:38 AM
September 10, 2006
Khatami at Harvard. Call it openness to the World?
This is actually kind of inspiring - a fair number of people showed up to protest at the Harvard appearance of lead Perso-fascist Khatami. Maybe there's hope for Massachusetts, after all?
There's openness to international experience and then there's inviting the president of a barely-veiled hostile regime to speak on the campus of one of the richest institutions of the West on 9/10/06. The Thanatos Syndrome reveals itself in the most interesting places.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:58 PM
September 7, 2006
James Frey Refund Opportunity!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:10 PM
September 6, 2006
Plame. Yeah.
I love the formulation White House outsider for Mr. Armitage. It expresses the powerlessness of the powerful oh so well.
History, luckily, is written in the long term. By 2050 the poison of the hatred expressed by living historians of America (I am an American historian - but I think about Europe ca. A.D.* 800) will have passed..
*Wanna argue about A.D. vs. C.E.? Go ahead. Make my day.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:32 PM
Microsoft oddities...
So far as I can tell, ctrl-alt-del is a legitimate spelling in Word.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:59 PM
September 2, 2006
What a TRAUMATIC afternoon!
So I head to the gym at 1.30, planning to see the field hockey game (match? tourney?) that one of my first year advisees has invited me to. I walk in the front door and pull out my i.d. to run it through the scanner and realize that my debit card is gone. My panic is mild, becausse I know where I used it last. On a whim yesterday - such a lovely day! and I knew the weekend would be a weather misery - I rode my bicycle to the marina and back. I stopped at the lakefront hotel and ate lunch on the waterfront and payed by debit card (since I had $2 in my wallet).
So, at the fieldhouse I ask for a phone book and call the hotel. They don't have my card. Despair! I head home to check. It's not in a pocket of yesterday's shorts or in the laundry basket. I pull out the phone book to call the bank (the branches are of course closed already - it's Saturday afternoon!) and decide to call the hotel back. This time I get a manager, and he tells me that the General Manager has my card in the safe. Of course the GM is off today - I have to wait half an hour for him to come in and open the safe. Still, my card is safe! I don't have to cancel it (and reset all the things billed to it, like Netflix and Audible and, and, and...). Yay!
So I go get my card. On the way home I notice that the local bar y grille has one of my favorite sandwiches as the Saturday special (beef brisket - yum!) so I stop to celebrate. And my debit card (I still have $2) fails to go through. So I walk home briskly, get a $20 out of the vacation fund, head back, pay my bill, and walk down hill to the ATM at my bank's main branch. I withdraw $200 without problem and the balance is where I expect it to be.
So what was that about? Just another jab from fate? A reminder to have a cash account with 6 months of expenses just in case? Argh! I certainly don't need any cardio anymore - my heartrate is quite stimulated enough, thank you very much.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:53 PM
August 31, 2006
Lightbulbery
The same wizardry that gives us Hallmark birthday cards that play "Love and Happiness" makes possible CFLs at $2.60 instead of $25.
Of course, if it's Walmart helping to save the world, they'll get no credit. They'll mainly get blamed for changing the lightbulb market so that people buy fewer of them. Whaddya do in a world of people who think by brand names (or brand name hatred) rather than by results?
Read the whole article. It covers all of it.
Though earlier in the article I have to worry seriously about GE. They have someone who is the ecomagination vice president.
"The real issue is, if we don't do it, someone else will," says GE's ecomagination vice president, Lorraine Bolsinger, of Wal-Mart's effort to push CFLs. "It's old thinking to imagine that you can hold on to a business model and outsmart the consumer. You can't." My emphasis.
An "ecomagination vice president"? Maybe they hire imagineers.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:24 PM
August 25, 2006
Hillary!
Beautiful! The Hillary! campaign commercial I just saw ends with a tearful father asking "How do you thanks somoene for saving your child's life?" Oh! By appearing in her campaign commercial? Yeah. That's it.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:41 PM
July 25, 2006
No one will be able to make change
Here's another reason no one will be able to make change soon -- Parker Brothers is going with Debit-Card-Monopoly.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:39 AM
July 14, 2006
Collapsing Tunnel Nightmares
And for those of you with nightmares about collapsing tunnels, yes, there are further problems in the Big Dig.
Or do you have Flooding Tunnel Nightmare Syndrome? Then there's this story from the Washington Post about New York City tunnels and flooding.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:53 AM
July 13, 2006
Hollywood.
Not long ago I heard someone joking about "Snakes on a Plane" (no link! never!). I thought it was a stoopid joke. Evidently I'm wrong. Too bad.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:15 PM
July 12, 2006
Stop Theocracy Now!
Oh - the article's about Tibet, not the American Taliban. Free Tibet!
In late July of 1999 (I was packing up my life in Atlanta to move here, which is why I can remember the relative date) I saw an S.U.V. in a parking lot in Buckhead with two bumper stickers - on the right, "Free Tibet." On the left, "Stop Theocracy Now!" I wanted to leave the driver a note explaining what the Dalai Lama's serious followers believe him to be and want him to do, but I restrained myself.
The article from the Washington Post is pretty interesting, really. I had no idea there wasn't railroad service to Lhasa before this year!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:31 AM
Cold Comfort
I was reading the New York Times story about the person killed by falling concrete in the Big Dig tunnel in Boston and came across this sentence: "It was the first time in the long history of the project that someone riding in a tunnel was killed by what seems to be a construction failure, the state police said."
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:44 AM
July 5, 2006
A Prophet unhonored in his own land
It has now become clear, that despite the best efforts of the Manolo once again, the nation it is sinking into the slough of bad shoes, and just when the curse of the Uggs had abated.
The Manolo speaks of CROCS.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:45 AM
June 26, 2006
Preservationist Versions of History
You know, one of the joys of my sad, twisted, medievalist life is seeing people who live in the right now jump around about the past.
The headline on this story might make you think that the bookstore being saved is OOOOOOLLLLD; 'venerable?' Well, lemme tell you, it wasn't there in 1984 when I was a senior at Rice. I don't remember anyone mentioning it to me (a notorious bookstore person and, in those days, regular visitor to Houston) before 1987. It sure didn't have the Bissonet Theater before 1984.
And the last time I was there? I'd prefer a Borders. Big box book stores should be good. This was a bad big box bookstore with poetry readings.
It looks like a case of fundamentalist preservationism to me. Let me give you a big hint - just because you don't remember life before a certain fact doesn't make it historical. Just older than you.
Via the bookslut blog.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:47 PM
It's all in the stars
I find the astrology exposé about Jerome Anderson at MyDD amusing - and am reminded about the Emory aftermath of the Heaven's Gate Cult. A professor of political science, Courtney Brown, gave a press conference alleging that the Heaven's Gate group were a fraud. He knew this because he was in psychic contact with the aliens in the Hale-Bopp comet.
Emory reeled. He had tenure. He's there at Emory - but I note that he's still an associate professor. The website linked above not only has scholarly matters, but I'm interested to see a link under his publications to speculative nonfiction.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:48 PM
June 22, 2006
Wilma!
In December, United announced it was switching to something it called WilMA, for "window-middle-aisle." At the time, United officials said the system would save four to five minutes per flight and $1 million a year.That bit of good news is from this article, which I found via Tea, Lemon, Old Books - another blogging medievalist.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:30 PM
June 20, 2006
Passing time
I do hate it when good works make me tense! I survived a 2.5 hour version of what is more usually a 1 hour monthly board meeting and fully expect to hear from people tomorrow about "what did you really think?" Knowing the good and agreeing on the good course are two different things. We forget that at our own risk - at the risk of being appointed to ad hoc committees to chart the good course.
Groove Armada and a rum tonic are helping.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:30 PM | Comments (0)
June 8, 2006
The hermeneutic of Suspicion
This is not because government qua government is somehow necessarily unable to design a good computer system, or because their technical people are morons. Rather, the procurement process that big government projects must go through in America practically guarantees that whatever system is purchased will be, by the time it is installed, bloated, inefficient, and sadly outdated.Me, I tend to think that government qua gov't is indeed unable to design systems well. I have no idea about the moron quotient. I agree that procurement systems are not very efficient.
Oh, well, Megan is being nice.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:01 PM
May 26, 2006
Friday Evening Weather
Oh western wind, when wilt thou blow
that the small rain down can rain.
Christ, that my love were in my arms,
and I in my bed again!*
But then, on my return through the small rain from untenured faculty happy hour (attended by 3 out of some 30 eligible invitees), I find Shaun of the Dead** in my mailbox. All is not rain and darkness. Or maybe so, but in a funny way! Cricket bat as tool of salvation!
*And I got to recite the poem to a professor who specializes in Greek lyric who evidently had never heard it before - this poem which rivals: "They told me, Heraclitus, they told me your were dead..." for sheer lyric loveliness and loss.
**Netflixed on Big Arm Woman's recommendation.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:54 PM
April 12, 2006
Education Policy: Partisan. Bi-partisan. Non-partisan.
Jay Mathews has an interesting article in the Washington Post on education policy and partisanship. He's looking at a dispute between various folks about the identification of policy suggestions as non-partisan, whether by the suggesters themselves or by the press.
Read the article here.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:17 AM
March 31, 2006
Another reason you people are lucky I'm so lazy
Here's another reason you people are lucky I'm so lazy -- I wear oxford brogues most days when it's not snowing. Otherwise I'd be the Napoleon of Crime.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:48 PM
March 27, 2006
Health Care Costs
Megan McArdle takes on healthcare - and we have one of the annoyances of blogging: the reverse order entry.
Healthcare, Part II
Healthcare, Part III
Healthcare, Part IV
Here's her plan: "Have the government pay for all health care expenditures above 15% of adjusted gross income, and cover 100% of health care expenditures by people living under 200% of the poverty line." Go read and see.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:58 AM
March 3, 2006
What's the Unintended Consequence of Fertility Drugs?
The unintended consequence of fertility drugs? Horrid competition for preschool slots in Manhattan.
I'd say a 500% increase in triplet births would be noticeable - and since these are (let's admit it, we don't need a qualifier of 'probably' here) people willing to spend money to have children, they're willing to spend money on schools.
After years of decline, the number of children under 5 in Manhattan, where the most competitive programs are located, increased by 26 percent between 2000 and 2004, according to census estimates. Yet the number of slots has not kept apace....
Part of the problem is that the number of twins and triplets born to women in New York City has increased, according to city Health Department statistics.
In 1995, there were 3,707 twin births in all the boroughs; in 2003, there were 4,153; and in 2004, there were 4,655. Triplet births have also risen, from 60 in 1995, to 299 in 2004. Because preschools strive for gender and age balance in generally small classes — and also, some parents suspect, as many potential parental donors as possible — it is harder to get multiple slots in one class.
"I tell families that they may increase, hopefully double or triple, their options, by telling schools they are willing to separate their children," said Emily Glickman, whose firm, Abacus Guide Educational Consulting, helps parents win admission to private schools.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:52 AM
February 20, 2006
Great Metaphors Gone Dead as Technology Changes
Singles remind me of kisses,
Albums remind me of plans . . . .
Name that tune!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:12 PM
Washington's Birthday - How President's Day Used to Be Celebrated
I'm going to post again on the 19th century celebration of Washington's Birthday in Upstate New York (here's a link to what I posated last year's President's Day):
This is an entry from the journal of Abner Jackson, president of Hobart College from 1858 to 1867:
February 22nd.
Washington’s birthday. A holiday in College. Morning Prayer at 8:30. College celebration in Linden Hall at 7:30 P.M. Washington’s Farewell Address was read by George Boswell. There was an oration by B. F. Lee and also a poem by Henry H. VanDeusen. Very frequent applause. I presided as President of the College. Music from a brass band. All went off well and felicitously.
I wrote a prayer to-day for this festal occasion.
Some notes: Linden Hall was an opera house in downtown Geneva which the College rented for special events. The holiday in College seems to have been annual (from 1858 until 1861, at least, which is how far I've read), though of course it didn't always conflict with the Church Year; there was always a reading of the Farewell Address and an oration. Hobart is an Episcopal college and in those days had daily prayer. William Smith College, by the way, is not church related. William Smith was himself a Spiritualist and in the Charter for William Smith College it is specified that the young women will not be required to attend any religious services. Hobart men were required until 1967 to attend at least a certain number of chapel services each week. Jackson mentions writing a litany or prayer for the occasion three or four times in the years he was at Hobart.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:24 AM
February 14, 2006
Generation Parental-Involvement
Read it and weep. Here are the first two paragraphs as a temptation:
Beverly Hills psychiatrist's office is an unlikely triage center for the mash-up of generations in the workforce. But Dr. Charles Sophy is seeing the casualties firsthand. Last year, when a 24-year-old salesman at a car dealership didn't get his yearly bonus because of poor performance, both of his parents showed up at the company's regional headquarters and sat outside the CEO's office, refusing to leave until they got a meeting. "Security had to come and escort them out," Sophy says.A 22-year-old pharmaceutical employee learned that he was not getting the promotion he had been eyeing. His boss told him he needed to work on his weaknesses first. The Harvard grad had excelled at everything he had ever done, so he was crushed by the news. He told his parents about the performance review, and they were convinced there was some misunderstanding, some way they could fix it, as they'd been able to fix everything before. His mother called the human-resources department the next day. Seventeen times. She left increasingly frustrated messages: "You're purposely ignoring us"; "you fudged the evaluation"; "you have it in for my son." She demanded a mediation session with her, her son, his boss, and HR--and got it. At one point, the 22-year-old reprimanded the HR rep for being "rude to my mom."
via Joanne Jacobs
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:39 AM
February 7, 2006
Things people didn't buy me for Christmas
Damn it. So I had to buy my own pair of slippers after Christmas (and stapler, which I thought was SUCH a clever thing to suggest for nephews to get me!). One of the reasons I retired the last pair of slippers - besides the sheepskin lining worn to the leather - was that the left slipper lace would not stay tied.
So these - new in December. The left one WON'T STAY TIED. I think Bass is unloading factory second slippers on us in Upstate New York.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:45 AM
January 13, 2006
Unbanning polygamy
The argument seems to be if polygamy is illegal, only criminals will have more than one wife.
For an overview of contemporary polygamy (including Bountiful, BC, where the Canadian process seems to have begun) you might read or listen to Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven (I listened via Audible). One of the things Krakauer makes clear is how the cross-border movement of multiple wives works.
via Kathy Shaidle
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:36 AM
January 10, 2006
Best Celebrity Endorsement in Decades
Kirstie Alley, It's Raining Men on behalf of Jennie Craig. Impressive use of twentieth century confessional celebrity -- someone give that woman a new TV show!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:10 PM
December 28, 2005
Lying for the Cause, Sacco and Vanetti version
Oh, my. Were Sacco and Vanzetti really guilty all along? G as in good . . . pointed me to Betsy's page from which I then went to an LA Times story about a rediscovered Upton Sinclair letter.
I gave my father In Denial: Historians, Communism, & Espionage, a short book about historians willing to lie for their cause for Christmas - so this revelation seems well-timed. I'll have to tell mother to print the LA times story for him.
If Sacco and Vanzetti were guilty as charged there are a lot of people who ought to remove one of their key examples of what they perceive as the injustice of the American judicial system. Would they? Let me predict that this evidence won't make the slightest difference for a very long time. I think it'll take a generation for the Venona decrypts to break down resistance to Soviet espionage.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:45 AM
December 26, 2005
In the news? Well...
This morning's "in the news" aggregator box on Google News:
In The News
Ricky Ponting......LK Advani
Rex Grossman....Banda Aceh
Wild Oats............Merry Christmas
Mark Brunell.......Jesus Christ
Kobe Bryant.......Tamil Nadu
I guess. I mean, it was his birthday yesterday and all.
Click Jesus Christ and see what the first story was.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:24 AM
December 24, 2005
Well, that's ONE less letter of recommendation to write.
(oh - and - the story and comments here at Inside Higher Ed are perfect.)
further:
Differently Authentic is ahead in the polls as a new term for "fake but accurate" to describe this sort of meretriciousness at Mr. Treacher's blog. Go vote.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:24 PM
December 23, 2005
Brush with greatness
Tennyson great-grandson murdered. I guess that's news.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:29 AM
December 21, 2005
Execution. Gangs. Repentence.
The AP story about the Tookie Williams funeral certainly makes it seem like the Crips still claim him, even if he had repented of founding them, but it doesn't sound as though they were invited inside to hear the inspirational message of peace, since they're watching from the parking lot.
The Reuters version mentions that: "Outside the church, several dozen young men wore the signature blue T-shirts and baseball caps of the Crips gang. Some wore blue bandannas over their faces to conceal their identity." Guess they didn't read the children's book?
The article ends:
A brief scuffle broke out between apparent members of rival gang factions after the funeral and was broken up by security personnel by the Nation of Islam.I'm sorry that didn't make the AP version.Despite the repeated calls inside the chapel for peace, three gunshots rang out from one of the streets nearby as the crowd broke up, prompting some to duck for cover.
Police said that no one had been hurt and that no arrests had been made.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:46 AM
December 20, 2005
The Virtues of Fair Trade . . . hmmmmm.
I'd never really thought about the implications of fair trade coffee, but leave an economist alone and you get speculations like this one from Tyler Cowen:
How about a genre called "Exploitation Coffee"? You pay less, and they promise to treat the workers especially poorly. That wording is a less effective marketing ploy, but that is what quality differentiation and indeed "fair trade" boils down to.I just ordered 5 lbs of Ring of Fire from Dean's Beans because I like it and it's cheaper than Wegman's by-the-pound whole beans. I'm glad to know that I can go on buying for reasons of price and flavor rather than imputed virtue!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:39 AM
December 17, 2005
Santarchy?
The world has gone to hell. Need evidence?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:18 PM
November 30, 2005
Propaganda
This is deeply amusing -- Moveon.org bungles their visuals. Masters of propaganda should, you know, master things.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:31 PM
How Much Education? Well, a Ph.D. might be too much.
Here's the posting at Angry Bear that set off Winterspeak yesterday that encoruage me to say "interesting!". Megan's commented on it now, quoting the sad old joke:
Q: What did the English major say to the Engineering major after they graduated?A: You want fries with that?
I guess this is the most important part of Angry Bear's post:
This reward to education has grown over time. For example, a Census Bureau summary of major economic trends in the US over the past half century reported that the median income of workers with at least a Bachelor’s degree was only 35% higher than those with only a HS diploma in 1963. By 1997 that premium had risen to 88%. And in 2003 the earnings gain from having at least 4 years of college was over 100% of a HS graduate’s earnings, according to the data cited above.That's what folks are talking about. I'm very much interested in this final paragraph:Perhaps most strikingly, this massive increase in the relative wages that firms pay for a college education has happened at the same time that the supply of college-educated workers has exploded. In the mid-1960s less than 10% of individuals in the US had a college degree, compared to about 20% in the mid-1980s and about 30% today. We can only conclude that the demand by firms for relatively well-educated workers has grown even more dramatically than the supply of such workers, which is to say, by a lot. (Kash's emphasis)
Regardless, it seems beyond dispute that the way to succeed in the US economy today is to get more education. And with each passing year, this is only becoming increasingly the case.Is more always better? Is there a good place to stop? I had one of those conversations about graduate school with my senior seminar yesterday (you might remember that I went to listen to a presentation about Jan van Eyck rather than reading Kash's post immediately). My refrain is "I loved it, I've been lucky, I think I'd do it again, don't you go, there are no jobs!"
I don't worry too much about our students who go on to museum studies sorts of degrees (though I wonder if they'd be better off with an MA in art history and an MBA) but I find it very difficult to recommend folks to Ph.D. programs in good conscience. That's not the question the econobloggers are concerned with, but it's the question that I begin thinking about every time.
The credential creep upward is matched by credential devaluation at the bottom -- and I'm sure readers can guess my opinion about what came first, a dismissal of high school diplomas as meaningful or the actual meaninglessness of most high school preparation in America. When is my line of work, BA preparation, going to be dismissed as preparatory? Not long, I fear.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:27 AM
November 24, 2005
2 Kinds of pie and one cobbler later . . . .
Oooooh! That was dinner! That's the first time I've ever eaten wild turkey, too.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:50 PM
Amazon Recommendations From the 'sphere
I tell you - you order a couple of books by notable bloggers as Christmas presents and the recommendations go wild! I do NOT want to read a book about blogging! I do NOT want to read ANOTHER book about blogging! Thank you, I'd really rather not read any book slapped together out of the collected columns of an op-ed type (which, as we all know, is what almost every book written by op-ed and humor types are). Of course I'm stuck with dozens of books about classical world sex right now because I ordered a few for my honors student to read; I need to go in and uncheck that as a recommendation generator, too.
And no, I'm not going to link to the books that I've ordered because SOME relatives read the blog on occasion and I don't want to give anything away.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:39 PM | Comments (0)
Walmart and Microsoft - BAD for America!
Riot over a game thang. Pitiful.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:58 AM
November 16, 2005
Another Professor with no sense of history
"It will change . . . the way children everywhere think about themselves in relation to the world," said Seymour Papert, a professor emeritus of education and media technology at MIT, believing that the result may be less violence and dissension as kids plug into education and international culture.Well, evidence of the 20th century aside. Germany was the most literate country in the world . Education doesn't make people better - it makes them more efficient. That doesn't reduce violence and dissension -- it just makes it more murdereous.
This is all in praise of a promised $100 laptop to revolutionize education in developing countries. I always read articles like this and think that if computers are so great why don't we do something about making them cheaper here, first?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:59 AM
November 12, 2005
Images of the Prophet Muhammad - a Zombie Error
So - are images of the Prophet Muhammad illicit in Islam? From what some people do and say you might think so.
Not so fast. This is a classic zombie error - a commonplace belief that will. not. die!
I am not a specialist in Islamic art, but I teach an occasional low-level survey of the field at these Colleges, where we have an excellent Visual Resources Collection for a school of our size, a collection which is unfortunately for your visual delight very observant of copyright laws, so I can't post any pictures. I popped some terms into the search engine and came up with this list of paintings of the Prophet Muhammad executed by Muslims that we happen to own slides of; this is not an exhaustive list!
So, journalists, don't tell us this is a taboo subject matter in Islam. The physical depiction of the Prophet Muhammad may be a taboo subject matter in some sects of contemporary Islam, but let's all be clear -- this is not a universal prohibition.
Here are LOTS of examples for you arranged in chronological order:
From Rashid al-Din's Jami al Tawarikh (Compendium of Chronicles) - here's a page from the Met (with pictures) explaining some history of the book.
-----Khalili Collection Ms 727, Rashid al-Din's Compendium of Chronicles, f3a: Muhammad conquers Mecca, 1314, painted Iran.
-----Edinburgh University Library MS Arab 20, Rashid al Din's Compendium of Chronicles, Scene of the Birth of Muhammad, 1315, painted Iran. The baby Muhammad has a visible face. Here's a link to an image of ONE folio, though not one showing Muhammad.
---Topkapi Sarayi Library, Istanbul, B.282 Kulliyyat-i Tarikhi of Hafiz-i Bru, folio 171A: Muhammad Conquers Mecca, 1415-1416, painted Afghanistan -- Muhammad's face is a golden wash of fire and he stands in front of a gold background. F 169A shows Ali storming a fortress.
---Topkapi Sarayi Library, Istanbul, MS Hazine 2154, F 107:Muhammad describing Jerusalem, 1400-50, painted Iran -- FULLY FACED Muhammad.
---Paris, Bib Nat, SupplTurc 190, Hari-Malik Bakhshi, Mi'rajnama, folio 34B: Muhammad and the Angel Gabriel, 1425-50, painted Afghanistan. Fully faced Muhammad, both Muhammad and Buraq encased in flames.
---Khalili Collection MSS 620, The Giant Uj* and the Prophets Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, 15th Century book, painted Iraq - click this link, choose Publications, choose Vols XXV-XXVI, scroll down - it's the image in the left margin. I can't find the folio information without going to our library and the Khalili collection doesn't allow access to pages deep in the directory. Sorry.
---London, British Museum. Mi'raj, 1497, painted Iran. The thumbnail image I can see looks like a fully-faced Muhammad, but it won't enlarge and I'm not sure.
---Worcester Art Museum, page from a Khamseh of Nizami, Mi'raj, Muhammad on Buraq, 1550, painted Iran. Here's a link to a page from the book, but like the Edinburgh link not to the correct page. It begins to make me wonder if the curators are avoiding controversy by keeping the Muhammad images off the internet?
---Freer Gallery, Washington, Jami, Haft Awrang (Seven Thrones), F 275A, Mi'raj, Muhammad on Buraq, painted Iran, 1556-65. Go here, scroll to Arts of the Islamic World, choose the last virtual exhibition -- your tax dollars at work!! Choose the first poem of the 7 - "Chain of Gold." The Ascent of Muhammad (the Mi'raj) is the 4th page in. There's a nice note on the use of the veiled prophet (anyone from St. Louis reading? That's where it comes from.).
---Topkapi Sarayi Library, Istanbul, MS.Hazine 1221, Kitab Siya-i Nabi (Life of the Prophet), multiple scenes from the life, including the Birth, Call by Gabriel, the Call to Prayer from the top of the Kaba, the Mi'raj, and the Death of the Prophet, 1594, painted Turkey.
Some other useful things
Here is a useful piece on the Night Journey of Muhammad, the Mi'raj, from Wikipedia. Perhaps its explanation of the mystical content will help you understand why this is such a common IMAGE of Muhammad.
The Wikipedia article on Buraq, the steed of Muhammad, even has a picture optimistically described as "public domain." I don't recognize it (it's not a great reproduction and, like I said, I'm not a specialist). It shows a veiled Muhammad.
*Uj is, I think, Og of Bashan in the Hebrew versions.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:41 AM
November 5, 2005
Killer SUVs!
O.k., so I just got out of bed and the coffee is still brewing, but I don't see any "more" here - just an assertion of a number of dead children. And you have to do it for the children, you know. Whatever that might be. Backup radar systems seem to be the 'whatever' being advocated. Before I'd vote for them I'd want to know a lot more about these two sentences: More than 2,400 children are backed-up over every year in the United States. Of those, about 100 are killed. How many more than 2,400? Is that number increasing? I know one can't expect CNN.com to provide everything, but couldn't a professional journalist have asked that?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:06 AM
October 24, 2005
Scowcroft admits he prefers stable dictatorial governments
Scowcroft, in his interview, discussed an argument over Iraq he had two years ago with Condoleezza Rice, then-national security adviser and current secretary of state. "She says we're going to democratize Iraq, and I said, 'Condi, you're not going to democratize Iraq,' and she said, 'You know, you're just stuck in the old days,' and she comes back to this thing that we've tolerated an autocratic Middle East for fifty years and so on and so forth," he said. The article stated that with a "barely perceptible note of satisfaction," Scowcroft added: "But we've had fifty years of peace." (my emphasis)If ever 50 years deserved a title other than "Peace," it might be the last 50 years in the Middle East.
Read the whole Washington Post thing.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:20 PM
October 14, 2005
Prohibitionism or Revenue Generation?
Sometimes it's hard to tell if they're arrest-happy prohibitionists or revenue-seeking politicians. The result is the same.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:40 AM
October 6, 2005
Consequences
What would be an appropriate consequence for failing to predict the 9/11 horrors? Forced retirement? Heads rolling? What about "never being trusted to 'predict' again"? Here's a Wshington Post story about the decision to reject discipline (their headline) for the 9/11 failures.
"Of the officers named in this report," he said, "about half have retired from the Agency, and those who are still with us are amongst the finest we have."My fear is that Goss is right -- those people are the finest he has.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:52 AM
September 27, 2005
Senator Affleck?
This is, it seems not a joke -- Ben Affleck for senator in Virginia.
It was about that time that party officials started batting Affleck's name around. "It's spread pretty widely, at least in the political underground," University of Virginia professor Larry Sabato, Virginia's premier pundit, told Michael Shear, The Post's Richmond correspondent.Well, not entirely a joke -- just a cry for help.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:01 AM
September 20, 2005
Messages from a lost world...
Isn't this tacit admission that Roberts will be confirmed? Isn't the amazing disappearance of stories about the Roberts confirmation from the web pages of the New York Times an admission of the same?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:05 AM | Comments (1)
August 23, 2005
Technology!
I do a lot of online shopping for 3 reasons. First, I live in Geneva, NY. Second, I've never really liked malls. Third, I love online package tracking.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:55 AM
He went to the LSE, after all
Kathy Shaidle, who wishes the Boomers would move on even more than I do, offers a quick summary of The Rolling Stones' political songs without even making an age joke. I'm impressed!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:41 AM
Evil Union Presidents and Mr. T. Talk!
I love reading about the Washington, DC, government schools -- they are a glowing example to us all. The former administration of the Washington Teachers' Union is on trial for embezzlement; in the trial of the former administrative assistant to the [evil] president the defense lawyer said about the [evil] president: "I pity the fool who has the nerve to ask this woman about her spending." Mr. T. Lives!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:20 AM
August 18, 2005
Further Tales of those wacky stars . . . .
A former personal assistant to Carlos Santana has filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against the veteran rocker, claiming he was fired after his consciousness was calibrated and determined to be too low.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:09 PM
Artists! Make up your minds! No more of this "formerly known as" stuff.
"I felt like the 'P' was getting between me and my fans and now we're closer," Diddy said."During concerts, half the crowd is saying 'P. Diddy'--half the crowd is chanting 'Diddy'--now everybody can just chant 'Diddy.' "
via the Old Oligarch
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:51 AM
August 3, 2005
At Least Two Billionaires Left Behind
George Soros and his friend Peter Lewis, that is. America Coming Together fades away, sucking $196 million dollars with it. Soros offers comments only through a spokesman for the Washington Post story; that's appropriate, since he's supposed to be in a monastery.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:08 PM
July 21, 2005
En Espanol
I was watching Law & Order last night -- a syndicated episode, not the network one -- and saw a Century 21 ad in Spanish, complete with a Hispanophone 800 number (1-800-8TU-CASA or some such). I wonder how locally targeted that advertisement was.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:17 AM
July 15, 2005
The Metrics of Recovery
I'm better today -- know how I can tell? I actually wanted a 2nd cup of coffee. Pitiful.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:35 AM
July 10, 2005
IMDB joy
I've watched a lot of movies in the last 6 days -- if I'm over 100.8 I can't do anything but sleep; between 99.6 and 100.6, say, I can watch television; this is the first time that I've been ill enough to be useless AND had Turner Classic Movies, AMC, and all the regular movies of non-premium cable. Having wireless means that I can sit here watching movie after movie and learn the answers to all my trivial questions by looking the celluloid up on the Internet Movie Data Base -- you know all those "is that the same person who was in . . . ?" questions. IMDB can answer them all.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:15 AM
July 5, 2005
The Politico-Marketing Complex
I find this a tremendous waste of money and energy:
Under the scenario of an ideological battle, participants predict the competition for cash will turn the Senate confirmation into the most expensive nomination fight in the nation's history, certain to break $50 million and, if the nominee is especially controversial, likely to approach $100 million.All the familiar players are mentioned in the article. Every fight is a proxy fight for the Apoclypse.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:30 AM
June 30, 2005
Verbal PC Games
I'd say this beggars the imagination, but that would offend someone:
David Brent would never approve. 'Brainstorming', the buzzword used by executives to generate ideas among their staff, has been deemed politically incorrect by civil servants because it is thought to be offensive to people with brain disorders.Instead staff at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment (DETI) in Belfast will use the term 'thought-showers' when they get together to think creatively. A spokeswoman said: 'The DETI does not use the term brainstorming on its training courses on the grounds that it may be deemed pejorative.'
Sources inside the department said there was concern that the term would cause offence to people with epilepsy as well those with brain tumours or brain injuries.
via Radley Balko
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:28 PM
June 26, 2005
The State is All.
The left once dismissed the "you care more about spotted owls than you do about people" line of argument as a caricature of its position.That's Radley Balko on recent Supreme Court decisions, the Left, Washington Post editorials, and bedfellows that some of us don't find all that strange -- statism is statism.No more. Eighht-of-an-inch cave bugs get to live. Cancer patients who rely on medical marijuana to keep their medicine down can suffer and die, for all the Post cares.
Actually, it's worse than that. The cancer patients must suffer, so that the federal government can adequately protect the bugs.(Balko's emphases)
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:04 AM
June 25, 2005
The Horror of Movie "Marriages"
So I'm watching Outbreak (It's a sick day - leave me alone -- it's too hot to do anything else) and I'm once again weirded out by the idea that Dustin Hoffman is married to Rene Russo. Dustin Hoffman graduated from high school when Rene Russo was 1 year old (thanks, imdb!).
Michael Blowhard noted this list of actresses who are now older than Anne Bancroft was when she played Mrs. Robinson (she was 35 -- and Hoffman was 29 then).
Jennifer Aniston
Christy Turlington
Debra Messing
Catherine Bell
Lucy Liu
Olivia Williams
Jill Hennessy
Parker Posey
Naomi Watts
Chastity Bono (Chastity Bono is over 35?)
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:59 PM
June 24, 2005
Bleh.
There is NOTHING less fair than a summer cold. On the other hand, because I was feeling so useless today I took advantage of living on what ought to be a bigger vacation spot lake I went down to the Colleges' dock (or here, lay in the sun, read a little of a Charles Portis novel, and took a plunge. Refreshingly cool! Made me feel somewhat better.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:16 PM
June 21, 2005
I have come to understand that . . . .
Durbin said in his apology: "I made reference to Nazis, to Soviets, and other repressive regimes. Mr. President, I've come to understand that's a very poor choice of words."
Here. I remain very fond of this apologetic formulation.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:45 PM
June 19, 2005
Stop the ribbon magnet madness! JPII RIP white ribbon
Click to be horrified.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:59 PM
June 8, 2005
More Amnesty Gulagery
Here's an honest admission of why people use bad historical analogies:
SCHULZ: Chris, I don't think I'd be on this station, on this program today with you if Amnesty hadn't said what it said and President Bush and his colleagues haven't responded as they did. If I had come to you two weeks ago and said, "Chris, I'd like to go on FOX with you just to talk about U.S. detention policies at Guantanamo and elsewhere," I suspect you wouldn't have given me an invitation.WALLACE: So you're saying if you make irresponsible charges, that's good for the cause?
SCHULZ: I don't believe that they're irresponsible.
Howard Kurtz asks:Excuse me, but did Schulz say that it's okay to unleash words like "gulag," even if it's not an "exact or literal analogy," because it gets him booked on Fox News? Is that the new standard? Yes, Chris, I called the president a war criminal because it was the only way I could get on Hardball? Kurtz also notes that this has produced a minor miracle -- agreement between the Washington Post and Washington Times editorial pages!
This helps. Satire, of course, but it helps.
And even further . . . Amnesty tries to get a former prisoner of conscience to agree with their formulation. He not only refuses -- he writes a Washingont Post oped which concludes:
Words are important. When Amnesty spokesmen use the word "gulag" to describe U.S. human rights violations, they allow the Bush administration to dismiss justified criticism and undermine Amnesty's credibility. Amnesty International is too valuable to let it be hijacked by politically biased leaders.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:44 AM
Liberals and I.Q.; professors and grades
Steve Sailer has the best of the Kerry Transcript coverage, because he understands, as he likes to point out frequently:
First, that IQ is a meaningless, utterly discredited concept.That's why the Kerry transcripts matter. Because Howell Rains said: "Does anyone in America doubt that Kerry has a higher IQ than Bush? I'm sure the candidates' SATs and college transcripts would put Kerry far ahead." Well, yes, Mr. Rains, some of us did doubt it then and now we know.Second, that liberals are better than conservatives because they have much higher IQs.
Now as a college professor who just attended a college reunion weekend I can tell you that grades are not a particularly useful predictor of life performance -- something that irritates academics to NO end. That's part of why lots of academics were eager to believe that John Kerry had higher grades and a higher I.Q., because we not particularly secretly resent our C students who do well. Colleagues and other professors regularly allege that poor student who do well must have used family connections, family money, or well-planned marriages for advancement.
Good grades tell us something about raw ability, but they tell us a good bit about hard work and more about study skills (the last being why senior science majors with nary a humanities course often do so well in humanities electives if they get interested). What bothers me isn't that our C students (or, nowadays, our low B average students) do so much better than we might think they should, but that we have so failed to interest them.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:29 AM
Age - It's all Relative
I know this 50th anniversary edition DVD box set is making some people feel old.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:23 AM
June 6, 2005
Amnesty.
'If you look globally today and want to talk about human rights, for the vast majority of the world's population they don't mean very much. To talk about freedom of expression to a man who can't read the newspaper, to talk about the right to work to someone who has no job; human rights means nothing to them unless it brings some change on these particular issues.'Nick Cohen comments in the Guardian. It's a interesting essay about priorities and poverty and human rights.This clunking and faintly sinister statement did not come from a colonial administrator explaining that liberty was all well and good for freeborn Englishmen but the half-savage natives needed order. Nor was it a communist apparatchik saying that there was no need for bourgeois freedoms in the proletarian paradise of the Soviet Union. Nor was it Edward Heath or Henry Kissinger announcing that the Chinese liked autocracy or Abu Musab Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden denouncing democracy as a Greek heresy.
Rather, it fell from the lips of Irene Khan, the new secretary general of Amnesty International, an organisation which used to believe that human rights meant everything.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:44 PM
June 2, 2005
Amnesty International defends "gulag" statement
Amnesty International insists on its analogy between the gulag and Guantanamo. I think this is a miserable use of historical analogy.
Please see my previous comment and disclaimer. Go here if you want photos. Professor Reynolds links to a number of responses.
I hope they come to their rhetorical senses before their next fundraising mission, because they've just burned a lot of bridges.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:38 PM
June 1, 2005
Where DO all those little bracelets get made? In China. By Slaves.
In England a group of 400 charities launched a new entry into the horrific world of little rubber bracelets -- this time a white one to signify a desire to "Make Poverty History." Unfortunately, someone noticed that the little white bracelets were being made under conditions that violate Chinese law, let alone the elevated ethical standards indicated by wearing such tat.
Another audit at the Fuzhou Xing Chun Trade Company in Fujian province found workers were paid at below the local minimum hourly wage of 2.39 yuan (under 16p) and some as little as 1.39 yuan (9p).I always like the "We now see that . . . was a mistake" clauses in these public confessions of wickedness.The revelations have now caused infighting between the various charities, with Christian Aid claiming Oxfam failed to tell other charities that it had decided to stop ordering from the Shenzhen company.
A spokesman said: "If Oxfam had concerns about ethical standards it did not pass them on for a considerable time."
An Oxfam spokeswoman responded that they informed their coalition partners in January, but added: "We could have perhaps put it in writing to make it absolutely clear. We bought an initial 10,000 wrist bands from the Shenzhen company in November. We now see that purchasing this before we saw a full audit was a mistake."
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:37 AM
May 31, 2005
Contemporary History
Here's an amusing little article about Deep Throat by Timothy Noah -- Deep Throat, Antihero. It seems that Deep Throat hated Nixon for all the wrong reasons.
further:Professor Bainbridge expresses it well in the conclusion to his post on Noah's piece:
What Noah fails to consider is the possibility that those discrepancies might reveal a deeper truth: Maybe Deep Throat was really a composite character all along. We don't know because we tolerate a culture of anonymous sourcing and journalistic dissembling.
Or there's Big Arm Woman. More succinct.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:56 PM
May 28, 2005
"I know you're Ward Crutchfield, and I know you're a senator, and I know you're good, and I know this state needs you"
Did you read my Tennessee corruption entry the other day? This story from the Nashville Tennessean is too wonderful -- here's the first paragraph:
The legislature largely closed ranks around its indicted members yesterday, starting with a prayer by Lt. Gov. John Wilder condemning the tactics of federal agents who arrested seven people in the Operation Tennessee Waltz sting.Or a little further, we have an "on the one hand / on the other hand" situation:
On one hand, Wilder defended the elected officials who were indicted after the FBI formed a fake company to seek state recycling contracts and paid bribes for legislation to favor the company.It couldn't happen to a nicer legislature. Read the story -- it's a great example of the way government works.On the other hand, other lawmakers seemed to acknowledge that the ethics legislation they passed earlier this session was not enough.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:31 AM
May 27, 2005
Clowns. Jugglers for Jesus. "Low" Mass?
I'm usually pleased to say that Hobart College has a special relationship with Trinity Church, Wall Street; Bishop Hobart was the rector of Trinity Church, and the support of the Trinity Vestry was very helpful many times in the first 40 years (at least) of the College. From my professional point of view I enjoy the connection because it's one of the most significant Gothic revival churches in America (there are almost no photographs of the building on their own site, so I link to Wikipedia), designed by Richard Upjohn. Hobart and Geneva have a long relationship with the Upjohn family, too (at least 5 credited buildings in town, and the firm did work for us as late as World War II).
This week I'm distracted from all that by their clown ministry. There's the Clown Worship on Trinity Sunday Then I go to their own site and see the photo set of Bom Bean, the Parish Clown. A Clown-in-Residence? On Wall Street? How - umm - pastoral. He's the celebrant at the Clown Eucharist.
The saddest thing is the solemnity on the faces of most of the celebrants. I mean, if you're going to wear a pair of horns to the altar you should at least look like you're enjoying it. And if you don't enjoy it, why not stick to the fancy get-up that I can only imagine one of the richest Episcopal parishes in America must own.
Oh, and let's not justify this with the Juggler of Nôtre-Dame -- he did his act at night and (he thought) alone. Someone was watching, but he wasn't performing at the Mass. Not a precedent. Besides the fact that the "Juggler of Nôtre-Dame" is a nineteenth century short story. I'm not aware of a medieval source.
I guess I don't mind a clown ministry per se, though if a pastor dressed as a clown ever comes to my hospital room I'm not asking him to stay. I think this is the worst sort of liturgical experimentation, though. Well, not the worst. It's tied with liturgical dance. And, like liturgical dance, seeing is understanding. It's bad enough that so many of the clergy can't sing, but we know they won't be able to shake it or waka-waka-waka.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:05 AM
The World of Surrogacy
In their best non-judgmental way they report, we wonder -- the New York Times on women who bear children for gay couples. Specificially male couples. There's a woman reported who did one for a lesbian couple but didn't like them. That didn't stop her from "surrogating" again.
The typical surrogate, according to the Center for Surrogate Parenting, is a woman of 21 to 37, who has had two children and 13 years of formal education. In many cases, she is motivated by a desire to be pregnant, as well as by a desire for attention.Working with gay couples, psychologists say, minimizes the need for a certain kind of emotional vigilance that can displace the surrogate's own needs from center stage. "Surrogate mothers who work with heterosexual couples need to be incredibly sensitive to the loss and trauma that the infertile woman has suffered," Dr. Hanafin said.
Some surrogates also say they find the sense of defiance in providing gay couples with children meaningful.
Here's a weird side effect of surrogacy:
And Ms. Buras remains committed, and plans to return for another attempt in June, despite the limitations their efforts have placed on her intimate life. According to her contract, Ms. Buras cannot have sex with her husband from one month before the transfer to one month after. Though her husband has been very supportive, she explained, "I can't say that it doesn't bother him, because it does."So could her husband sue the gay couple for alienatin of his conjugal rights? That's 8 months of their married life (she's tried three times already and is gearing up for a fourth) that they are not having sex in order that . . . . The world is a very odd place.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:25 AM
May 26, 2005
The Perpetual Election
I know they're always running for office, all of 'em, but someone's* about to announce for Hillary!'s senate seat, which means she'll begin the campaign for 2006 soon, to be followed (probably) by the presidential campaign for 2008. SIGH. Living as I do in a hotbed of Hillary!ism I'm sure we'll see her at least once in the next 18 months.
*some deeply unimpressive Republican who's larger claim to fame than his public service is the fact that he's Richard Nixon's son-in-law. Charming. At least her last opponent, the one who looked like a teenager, was actually a member of the House of Representatives. He still has a website up, by the way.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:13 PM
Gulag? Oh? Hmmm.
The Gulag of out times is North Korea. The Laogai are the Gulag of our times. The camp at Guantanamo Bay is bad, but it's barely even as big as a good-sized county work farm. Ever seen Cool Hand Luke? I'm not sure that camp wasn't bigger.
Of course, I'm a medievalist, so I really shouldn't be carelessly drawing analogies to modern history, but I've read Solzhenitsyn (all of the fiction - honest) and Courtois's The Black Book of Communism. I've visited Auschwitz. I've been to the Fosse Ardeatine.
According to this site it's population is in the 520s. Amnesty International has no sense of proportion. But then I don't expect anyone to have one of those any more.
via Michael Totten
Mr. Wretchard at the Belmont Club had this to say about it:
I'd have to say that Amnesty International's Report claiming the US is the world's worst human rights violator condemns itself far more than it does the United States. Anyone who has lived in the Third World or any of the places which Amnesty International purports to care about knows -- and I mean knows for a fact -- what police abuse, torture, arbitrary detention, etc. really are and that it cannot be compared in any wise to the "Gulag" in Guantanamo Bay. Moreover, anyone who has lived in such places knows that the last place where victims can find practical help is from Amnesty International.Let's not blame Amnesty International for being impractical -- after all, they mean well. Let's instead ask them why they wish to ally themselves with such silly falsehood?
Please don't begin any comments with attacks on me. I don't think the camp at Guantanamo Bay is a good thing. But I believe that the Gulag was a considerably worse thing by so many orders of magnitude that they are not comparable, especially for the political and fund-raising purposes of an annual report.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:56 PM
The New South - Bipartisan, Racially Diverse Corruption Indictments
I misremembered Representative Harold Ford's relationship to State Senator John Ford earlier in the month, but I have high hopes that today's news won't help. I like Mr. Hobbs' headline, too -- NEWSFLASH: Passel of Legislators Arrested!
At least two and possibly three members of the Tennessee legislature were arrested hauled out of Legislative Plaza in handcuffs this morning and my sources indicate it may be based on allegations that they accepted money to sponsor legislation.Even better news -- there's a member of the Hamilton Country school board involved -- my mother's least favorite elected group in the world lately.
By the way, this is a bipartisan and racially diverse scandal. See how far we've come in the New South?
update: I couldn't resist changing the title to what appears now. My heart swells with pride in the progress of the New South . . . .
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:44 PM
May 25, 2005
No Such Thing as an Unopposed Judge
The folks at the Volokh Conspiracy are trying to think of someone who would pass the Senate 100-0. Here the most recent post on the topic, though I'm sure there'll be more. They're failing. The discussion shows how even the well-informed professional can be oblivious to the political reality of advise and consent, and the number of groups drawn up on either side whose only interest is blocking every judicial nominee from the other side.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:52 AM
Two Favorite Genres Collide - Murder Mystery and Blogging
This is beyond creepy. Read this blog entry. Then this newspaper article. Blogging about your own murdereer!
And Patterico thinks about how to Law'n'Orderize this story!
via the Volokh Conspiracy
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:45 AM
May 24, 2005
Sex Offender Viagra
I'm certain this example of blatant discrimination will be litigated and lost.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:01 AM
May 22, 2005
Readers of the World, Unite!
So what's going on with Google and the EU? Read this Wired article and find out a little more.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:41 PM
May 17, 2005
Respect Your Elders!
Professor Zywicki notices a conspicuous example of Supreme Court Codgerdom --
Today many Americans, paricularly those members of the yonger generations who make policy decisions, regard alcohol as an ordinary article of commerce, subject to substantially the same market and legal controls as other consumer products.That's Justice Stevens on whippersnappers who don't respect their elders. Prof. Zywicki asks
. . .
The views of judges who lived through the debates that led to the ratification of those Amendments are entitled to special deference. Foremost among them was Justice Brandeis, whose understanding of a State's right to discriminate in its regulation of out-of-state alcohol could not have been clearer.
Is this a real canon of law? He cites no authority for this novel "respect your elders" canon of construction, so I am not sure what to make of it. Does it apply to statutes as well? If a judge lived through the enactment of the Clean Air Act, does that mean he is entitled to greater deference because he remembers Pittsburgh in the 1950s?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:12 PM
May 16, 2005
Wine Shipping - Lots of Happy Upstate New Yorkers!
If the decision really does allow unfettered wine-by-mail, there will be lots of happy Up Staters. The vineyard owners will be happy. Those of us who live here and would like to mail vinous presents to family and friends will be delighted (that's me). The UPS shipping folks will be thrilled beyond endurance -- I'd bet they'll have to expand the Geneva distribution center.
The Supreme Court has ruled on wine and commerce.
Also read here for detail.
I took the wine course this fall at these Colleges. We share our home in the heart of the Finger Lakes with the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station, home of world-class wine scientists who do most of the lecturing for the course. The folks who do the business and marketing end of the course are retired wine scientists who now run their own vienyards (like this one, Billsboro); believe me, these folks are ecstatic -- I'm surprised I can't hear the excited shouts from here.
This following is anecdotal, but the anecdote comes from actual vineyard owners -- most Finger Lakes wine is sold across the counter at winery or consolidated tasting rooms . This means it's an impulse buy. Their long-time dream has been that laws would change so that they could include an order form in the box so that happy customers could buy more. The current patchwork of legal-to-ship-illegal-to-ship jurisdictions is so confusing that UPS more or less refuses to ship because they refuse to accept the liability for being certain that particular addresses are in legal-to-ship jurisdictions.
further -- Professor Bainbridge drizzles on the parade. I will say that the New York wine makers have a model that isn't old-fashioned-prohibitionist-South based -- they say that the liquor distributor interests are the big problem in state legislatures. We'll hope for the best, since I'm hoping to ship to Tennessee . . . ..
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:18 PM
May 12, 2005
How to choose that lottery number . . .
I always wondered if anyone played the fortune cookie numbers.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:43 AM
May 9, 2005
I Love History
Otis Ferry, son of Bryan Ferry, is a pro-hunt protester! He looks like his father, too - click and see. In his honor I'm listening to "Kiss and Tell" right now, and have "Slave to Love" and "Avalon" cued up. "Avalon" makes me cry, and I'm an anti-Arthurian.
Fight the Power, Otis! I'd sometimes rather live in the 18th century, too - but only if I could wear jackets like that (I have a serious thing for Humphrey Clinker). The last link is well worth clicking and reading.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:55 PM
And I thought canning tomatoes was a lot of work!
Even when one could find pasta on grocery shelves, a good cook always chose the homemade version. But very few made their own. The common practice was to hire a pastamaker and have a year's supply prepared at home. My mother had to schedule the pasta lady months in advance for a full day, provide a list of the varieties she wanted, and supply the flour and eggs.Neat story of pasta-making in Hungary -- home-industry!
via Mirabilis.ca
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:08 AM
May 5, 2005
Best Anti-Euthanasia Headline Ever!
David Carr at Samizdata.net, a British group Liberty-Blog, spots a piece of euthanistic hubris -- on the eve of the elections in Britain the ational Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence released a guideline that refusing treatment on the basis of age was appropriate (though it stopped short of allowing the ending of treatment for the fat). Carr quotes the BBC search for balance (finding a charity to quote) and exposes it for the feeble grab for a shrub or tree root on the slide down the slippery slope it is:
BBC: Charities representing older people said the recommendations were outrageous and sent out mixed messages.Carr: Wrong. The message is quite clear and will gradually become more acceptable. Within five years, people over 75 will be offered euthanasia when they get sick. Within 10 years it will be mandatory.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:24 AM
May 4, 2005
This is why I can't take talk about Harold Ford seriously
Harold Ford for President? Let me put it this way -- he has more family baggage than Hillary!. Read this one about his father the state senator.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:43 AM
May 3, 2005
Doing Business in China
Doing business in China has its dangers -- this article goes over some of the not-yet-ready-for-world-investment problems. "Anderson was right about the demand for electricity. But he was wrong about his ability to recoup increased costs, and wrong about the protective function of his relationships with officials: Provincial authorities shot down his formal filings for higher rates."
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:07 PM
May 2, 2005
See. They're COMMUNISTS
Chicoms, I tell you. THAT'S what the food fascists are. And their evil Hong Kong branch is trying to stamp out Dim Sum because it's bad for you!:
But based on laboratory analyses of 750 dim sum samples, Hong Kong's Food and Environmental Hygiene Department found high fat and salt and low calcium and fiber in everything from fried dumplings to marinated jellyfish. The report suggested that local residents eat these kinds of dim sum in moderation, and choose more dim sum like steamed buns and steamed rice rolls.Regular dim sum diners should order plates of boiled vegetables to go with their meals, the report said, and should beware of some steamed dim sum for which the ingredients are fried, like bean curd sheets.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:06 AM
April 30, 2005
I guess you can't outsource union staff?
The AFL-CIO could be forced to lay off a lot of staff.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:14 PM
Why I WANT Hillary! to Run for President
If Hillary! runs for president all of this will be reviewed. The woman is deeply embedded in a political culture in which it seems that people around her -- and maybe she herself -- believe that the ends (her election) justify all means.
Further: Not that we should be surprised! I have a bad opinion of all politicians, really; anyone who would do that for a living is probably not a nice person. But you see, whoever is the first female nominee of a party (whether Hillary! or someone else) will benefit enormously from the stooopid commonplace that women are somehow nicer, better, more nuturing than men and should be rewarded in politics for that. More women are nuturing than men, but far from all -- and I think that to get where Hillary! is she had either to be or become what she is today. Nothing I've seen in the early life as lavishly massaged and presented during the WJC presidency convinced me that it wasn't be rather than become. So far I'm reasonably pleased with her behavior as my senator; when she's not engaging in a roll-call partisan activity she's smart and engaged. Because she has ambitions beyond Chappaqua she's executing a move to the right (and it wouldn't be hard to move to the right of Schumer), which means that I would tend to like her more as the march to the right goes on, even if I see it as strategic rather than "growth".
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:09 PM
Marriage Abduction
Would you like an example of an evil that canon law succeeded in stamping out in the West during the middle ages? Bride-kidnapping. The consent rules of canon law make this one very difficult. "Secret marriages" took longer, but eventually the rules that the giving of consent had to be public (in front of a witness) took hold. The carrying-over-the-threshhold part of our wedding customary may be the last signs of abduction left in America (the "so she doesn't trip" explanation doesn't ring nearly as true as "bringing her to the marital home forcibly." Yes, it could be both.)
The article is about Kyrgyz marriage abductions and begins: "When Ainur Tairova realized she was on her way to her wedding, she started choking the driver.
It's technically illegal in Kyrgyz law, too, but no one's enforcing it.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:26 AM
April 29, 2005
Gumpery.
Prof. Althouse calls us to the barricades! Another actor is attempting the "developmentally disabled" strategy for Oscar-pursuit! This time it's Rosie O'Donnell!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:45 AM
April 26, 2005
Judge Fines Himself When Cellphone Rings
In the interests of justice he doubled the fine.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:38 AM
April 25, 2005
Mike Davis and the Ecology of Just Making it Up
Thinking of the contemporary, I was sad to learn via Mickey Kaus that Mike Davis's Ecology of Fear isn't very well grounded. Pity. Don't you just love to loathe L.A.? Well, go read the exposure. Southern California might not be so loathesome after all.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:57 PM
April 23, 2005
Smart Cars! Yay!
Smart Cars come to America! Let me predict that these will be HUGE urban sellers; they will be useless for anything else, but they're great for that. This is a picture I took of one in Rome -- sorry I don't seem to have any of the leopard-skin ones.
Engadget says Daimler-Benz’s diminutive SMART car is coming to America. Specialty vehicle company ZAP (for Zero Air Pollution) has won approval from the U.S. government to distribute a version of the popular car that’s been modified to meet U.S. emissions and safety standards. Pricing is said to run from about $12,000 to $20,000.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:54 AM
April 22, 2005
Headline: "Older Riders Add to Rise In Motorcycle Fatalities"
Older Riders Add to Rise In Motorcycle Fatalities says the Washington Post. "No fool like an ol' fool," says my mother. Just think, the resurgence of Harley-Davidson might help save Social Security! Let's lobby against helmet laws and see what the data tells us.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:49 AM
April 21, 2005
Why Public Transport Doesn't Work
If the densest population in America has this to live with it's no wonder public transportation is such a joke elsewhere. By the way, a colleague of mine is quoted - Cliff Hood, whose 722 Miles: The Building Of The Subways And How They Transformed New York is evidently a really good thing.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:36 PM
April 20, 2005
Best Benedict XVI Coverage
Go read the Anchoress. Here're a few excerpts:
I have one thing to say to all of this - to all of the breathless ranting from the left and the grim, woe-is-us prognostications of SOME members of the press. It is this:
Fer cryin’ out loud, CHILL OUT.
God, through the Holy Spirit, is NOT DONE WORKING ON THIS MAN - OR FOR THAT MATTER, ANY OF US.
Take a pill, take a breather, take a belt of tequila and consider that maybe, just maybe, the same people who thought they knew everything about John XXIII and were wrong, will think they know everything about Benedict XVI, and they will be wrong, again.
. . .
And maybe consider giving Benedict XVI at LEAST the same benefit of a doubt you would want for yourself, were you put into a job for which others thought you unsuited.
. . .
Jesus did say the path was a narrow one, but we’ll put that aside for now.
. . .
I don’t know what they actually expected. It has always seemed very odd to me that people would think the Catholic church will suddenly put a finger to the chin and say, “you know, we’ve been all wrong about this stuff, all this time! Abortion is okay! Jesus didn’t really mean it about divorce! That whole thing about marriage being between a man and a woman, why that was just written in by some homophobe or other!”
. . .
I must say, they really, really HATE him, and they’re not even trying to hide it. No honeymoon for Benedict XVI. I just heard someone on CNN call him a “Catholic NEOCON.”
You KNOW how much they hate neocons! Basically the press seems to be saying, “Oh, no! They elected a CATHOLIC! Liberals are doomed! DOOMED!”
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:17 AM
April 18, 2005
Back to the Hunnic Hegemony - Cranial Deformation Comes Back
Back to the Hunnic Hegemony! In an entirely predicatble development, obsessive parenting has led to selective cranial deformation, or, as I'm sure they see it, "making sure the baby looks right." The Huns (and people who wanted their children to grow up "advantaged" -- that is, to look like Huns) did that too -- only "right" for a Hunnic baby was more like a cone head than a basketball. Unfortunately, there's not a lot on the web about it -- any handy references, ADM? Here's a better one.
The graduate students at Emory once suggested to one of our colleagues that she dump her dissertation topic and just bind her soon-to-be-born first child's head and write it up.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:22 PM
April 11, 2005
Knock on Wood - Abundant Sunshine
About this time of year everyone starts reminding each other and nodding "You know, it snowed on Mother's Day in 1998 . . . . " Still and all, the weather channel prediction for today begins "Abundant sunshine . . ." and I can't tell you how good that sounds.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:22 AM
April 4, 2005
Talk about a middle class nightmare . . .
If you are a nice, normal, decent mom and dad*, and your son claims he assassinated a police officer in a revolt against multinational corporations -- what do you do?Here's the story in the Washington Post. Is he a McVeigh of the Left or another Kaczynski? The article is very disturbing.
*his parents are professors at Wittenberg and Dayton!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:41 AM
Dante, Beatrice, Tristan, Isolde, Johnny, June
The young are often such optimists that sometimes its hard to teach literature. I find it hard to convince them that love hurts, despite the evidence all around them. It's particularly hard to teach the big, great, burning loves - Dante and Beatrice, Tristan and Isolde. Do you think they'd get Johnny and June Carter Cash?
I just listened to an amazing 10 minute This American Life reflection on their 40 year passion - complete with three different versions of "Ring of Fire." The episode was first broadcast 9/19/03 and is called "What is this Thing?" Good stuff. Maybe worth making them listen to next time I try to teach 'em the lesson. I'm thinking of a whole-year course on Dante next year, so little contemporary resources like this may help.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:22 AM
April 1, 2005
We Are Mature
Yes, my friends and compeers, we are mature. Fidelity is now using Call Me to sell mutual funds.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:53 PM
April Fool's? More-disabled-than-thouism? Who can tell.
So is this an April Fool's Day item? While checking on JPII via CNN I see Ms. Wheelchair stripped of title for standing up. Who can tell anymore?
Candidates for the crown have to "mostly be seen in the public using their wheelchairs or scooters," said Judy Hoit, Ms. Wheelchair America's treasurer. "Otherwise you've got women who are in their wheelchairs all the time and they get offended if they see someone standing up. We can't have title holders out there walking when they're seen in the public."
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:09 PM
Sandy Berger, Bad Man
Mr. Berger shredded the documents? And he gets a 3-year suspension of his national security clearance? I suppose he agreed to that becaause by the time a Democrat is in power again he can be rehabilitated. He's only 60, after all.
The terms of Berger's agreement required him to acknowledge to the Justice Department the circumstances of the episode. Rather than misplacing or unintentionally throwing away three of the five copies he took from the archives, as the former national security adviser earlier maintained, he shredded them with a pair of scissors late one evening at the downtown offices of his international consulting business. [my emphasis]The only good news here? He says he put the documents in his suit jacket, so stop with the stuffed pants statements.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:38 AM
On Jokes.
Pfffft. I just finished reading through my regular morning blogs and spotted nary an April Fool's joke. Google, on the other hand, is offering a nicely crafted one - down to the privacy statement. Can I hope for more at the Faculty lunch talk on Values Added Assessment?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:43 AM
March 8, 2005
Dynamic Models
This is an interesting essay on an interesting blog I read on occasion - Department of Defense, a new business school?:
The military organization was once a lot like Hobbes’ Leviathan. Decision making was resident on high—in the senior officer’s corps. The ordinary soldier was a limb operated at a distance—by someone else’s intelligence.The blog post is about the change and what it might mean for the MBA school. Among the reasons I found it interesting is that we're having the military-recruitment-on-campus debate right now -- this at an institution whose president is the former director of the Peace Corps. Maybe the Progressive Student Union representatives also spoke against soft imperialism, but I was out of town the night of the debate.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:09 PM
March 5, 2005
And if Mr. Bender's Motto isn't enough for you, try Kirstie Alley
"I think it's tragic what women are doing to their faces, trying to look like dolls," Ms. Alley said. "It doesn't make women look younger; it makes them look weird. When you hit a point when you're looking at yourself like a doll, you're gone. As a spiritual being, you're dead."Really, that's Kirstie Alley, who can laugh at herself. I'm not sure I've always believed in her lips -- though Awful Plastic Surgery doesn't turn up any hits.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:42 PM
The Trials of the Rich
"People who really want prewar Park and Fifth are considering these $3 million or $4 million condo apartments starter apartments," Ms. Kleier said.
Snarkiness aside, the requirement of having liquid assets to match the purchase price seems a bit stiff. On the third page someone makes the obvious comparison to highly selective college admissions. It all sounds like a reason to live in Jersey City to me, but then I actually live in Geneva, NY.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:30 PM
Wichita Serial Killer
Here's a long article in the New York Times about the Wichita killer. Lots of human interest quotations assembled, and the author looks at some of the questions about why Rader wasn't caught before this, since he "was hardly hiding away."
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:41 PM
March 4, 2005
The Tragedy of the Poncho
While Martha was serving time, Manolo came into our lives - and now we all know that the poncho it is indeed over. Perhaps he will forgive her -- country club prison or not, I'm sure it didn't have a decent wireless network.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:57 PM
March 2, 2005
The Examined Life
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:40 PM
February 27, 2005
Censorship Withdrawn - the Terri Schiavo Advertisement
Read this entry if you haven't been convinced of the power of reader demands over media decisions -- or that the underlying bias of the media extends as far as the advertising department. See what the newspaper wanted to cut from the advertisement. Notice that they've backed down.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:13 AM
February 26, 2005
Repeat Offender
Hmmmm - think they're watching him closely?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:35 PM
February 23, 2005
Rich Women Feel Pain, Too
But it's still fun to laugh at 'em. I read the Newsweek story (conference, hotel room, free copy - you don't think I'd pay for that stuff, do you?) story. This is a not entirely inappropriate response. Or there's Big Arm Woman's take - just as pointed, and not a bit satirical.
I found the Iowahawk piece via Joanne Jacobs. I have Big Arm Woman's Tightly Wound on my RSS feed reader.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:26 AM
February 22, 2005
Washington's Birthday and Civic Piety
I'm working on a non-medieval project this term for which I'm allowing myself 1 morning a week in the Archives of these Colleges (our archivist blogs about being an archivist at a small college, by the way). I'm reading everything there is to read about the chapel (which, since it's a lovely little example of Gothic Revival and by a big-name architect isn't an entirely off-topic project for me; I promise.).
In pursuit of understanding what they were up to in 1860 I've been reading (and guiltily* transcribing) excerpts from the journal of the president of Hobart College in the late 1850s and the 1860s, Abner Jackson. One of the things I've noted is the annual celebration of Washington's Birthday - let me give you an example:
Tuesday, February 21st, 1860.Some notes: the holiday in College seems to have been annual (from 1858 until 1861, at least, which is how far I've read), though of course it didn't always conflict with the Church Year; there was always a reading of the Farewell Address and an oration. Hobart is an Episcopal college and in those days had daily prayer.** Linden Hall was an opera house in downtown Geneva which the College rented for special events.
Holiday in College after Morning Prayer on account of celebrating Washington’s Birthday. To-morrow being Ash Wednesday, the celebration occurs to-day. A wonderfully beautiful day, so bright and glistening, and so warm. The ground was covered with snow in the morning, but it vanished before night.
Even. Preside at the celebration in Linden Hall. T. J. Rundle read the Farewell Address. E. L. Fitzhugh gave rather a brilliant oration—did very well. Hall crowded, all passed off very well.
*"guiltily" because I really shouldn't be shilly-shallying around with current events like this when fascinating articles about the burial of Charlemagne have already arrived via Interlibrary Loan. I'm even more guiltily thinking about what could be done with this interesting document (transcribe, post as a blog?), but I must resist the allure of primary documents in a language I understand natively!
**William Smith College, by the way, is not church related. William Smith was himself a Spiritualist and in the Charter for William Smith College it is specified that the young women will not be required to attend any religious services. Hobart men were required until 1967 to attend at least a certain number of chapel services each week.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:46 PM
February 20, 2005
The Silliness of the Drug War and the Media
And here I thought we were over this stuff. Oh, well -- secret tapes hint Bush tried marijuana. Was he dealing? Did he do smack? Bill Clinton, of course, will go down in history as the Man Who Didn't Inhale. And let's not talk about prescription drug use in high places, let alone the media (just read the mildly unblanced Thomas Szasz on the Carter Whitehouse, prescription drugs, and hypocrisy).
I hope these tapes are more interesting than THAT.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:16 PM
February 15, 2005
Real Defense of Marriage?
At the Right Side of the Rainbow, a simple prescription for social conservatives who wish to defeat same-sex marriage.
Of course, some of 'em are trying: Covenant Marriage in Arkansas, complete with an invitation to the Governor's renewal of vows.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:26 PM | Comments (1)
February 14, 2005
Unintended Consequences - Habitat for Humanity Housing Crisis
I'd never read much about the restrictions on Habitat for Humanity houses - but this Washington Post article makes it clear that things are not as simple as I thought. House values are rising quickly in Northern Virginia, which means that property taxes rise quickly. Habitat house owners can't sell at a profit until the 20 year mortgage is paid off, so they can't sell and move somewhere cheaper. Etc, etc. Interesting.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:41 AM
February 10, 2005
Well, at least Al Franken Wouldn't be a Carpetbagger
Franken is as least a native of the state where he might run for Senate. My junior senator? Well, I wonder how many nights she's actually slept inside the state in her whole life. It would also be an honorable way out of his Air America contract....
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:51 PM
Foreign Language Follies
The doctor speaks English. The patient speaks French. Read to the end, though - it's really quite a nice article.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:09 AM
February 8, 2005
Mmmmm, Vampires
Shamelessly cribbed from Cacciaguida:
Romania: what the State Department travel advisories don't tell you about.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:32 AM
February 2, 2005
Ethiopian Legitimism
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:51 PM
February 1, 2005
Ducking Jury Duty
So, to balance things -- do you want to write a book? Be assured of minor "what ever happened to . . . " fame forever? Or have a life? Michael Jackson trial jury panel. I think I'd run.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:57 AM
January 29, 2005
Iraq's Own Election Coverage
Go here to read coverage of the election in Iraq. Perfect elections happen in social scientists' dreams -- this is a real one, it will be imperfect, but it will be more than the Iraqi people have had in a long time.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:10 AM
January 27, 2005
I Miss "Film" Sometimes
It's all the VCR's fault. When I was in college long ago and far away we went to the River Oaks at least once a week (often twice, sometimes 4 times). Those once-a-weekers were usually a time when the Rice Film Whatever It Was Called was showing something irresistable (they had the worst seats in the world, or I would've gone more often). We divided movies into "film," "movie," and "celluloid," with a marked preference for the first and 3rd categories (did you see Ator in the theater? I did. And then again and again on Channel 17 when I lived in Atlanta.)
Film is harder to find on college campuses nowadays than it used to be. I think of this because I'm going to Fritz Lang's Siegrieds Tod on Monday. The colleague with whom I taught "The Anglo-Saxons" last term is teaching "Male Heroism" this term and is showing the film in the last large-scale sponsored film series on campus. Yes, the language people show a more than occasional film, but no one seems to go other than their students who are checking off boxes.
Of course, they'll all have Netflix in 20 years and they'll discover all this amazing stuff and wonder why we never showed it to them, the same way that people I meet tell me "I hated history in school, but now it's all I read...." Oh, well. The youthful ability to stay up late is wasted on the young.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:29 PM
January 25, 2005
Bill Gates -- not a nice operating system person, but a good man?
This is a great good thing the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is doing -- continuing support for the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:15 PM
January 24, 2005
Demography and Change.
Here's an interesting factoid from a New York Times article on the record numbers of immigrants in New York City
nearly 80 percent of Bangladeshi households are married-couple families, as are more than 6 in 10 Indian, Chinese, and Pakistani homes, compared with only 31 percent of native-born New Yorkers' households.You have to get past the jump to have a comparison of this "record number" to past numbers (which comparison makes this article better than many articles on "record gasoline prices" or "presidential inauguration expenses," which manage to neglect any adjustment for inflation
A century ago, when immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe poured through Ellis Island, the foreign-born made up more than 40 percent of the city's population - 80 percent when their American-born children were counted, too. But the city's total population was then only 4.7 million. At 36 percent of today's 8 million New Yorkers - up from a low of 18 percent in 1970 - the size of today's foreign-born population is a record, and taken together, foreign-born residents and their offspring account for more than 55 percent of the city's population. More than 43 percent of the foreign-born arrived after 1990, and 80 percent after 1980.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:25 AM
January 23, 2005
Christmas is Over!
Finally! Just in time for Lent!
The Methodist Church in Geneva has a nice clock tower which plays tunes on the hour. Finally, sometime this weekend, the Christmas tape came out of the machine (we've been hearing "Go Tell It On the Mountain" for the last 4 or 5 days). I had seriously considered approaching them, check in hand, to beg them to switch tapes.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:56 PM
January 21, 2005
Blogroll
Hmmm - the way MT 3.14 works is probably far more satisfying for the computer-comfortable out there, but for those of us who cut'n'paste our way to HTML success it's tricky to figure out. I created two new templates, one for my contact info and one for my blogroll (and haven't taken time to edit the blogroll, much -- it needs some care).
Speaking of which, does anyone know if Prof. Cole is going to do anything about his proposed Americana in Arabic library? I occasionally toy with the idea of joining the yahoo group (except that 'groups' horrify me -- MORE email! ugh!) and then I notice that he's posted 3 messages since last July. It doesn't look like he's making much progress. Soooo . . . is anyone already doing (as opposed to proposing) any translation INTO Arabic or funding distribution of Arabic versions already translated?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:34 PM