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 (1)
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 (2)
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 | Comments (5)
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 | Comments (1)
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 revision