Dave Friedman's Soul of Wit

Alito Supports Consensual Incest!

And sodomy too:

At Princeton, Alito led a student conference in 1971 called The Boundaries of Privacy in American Society which, among other things, supported curbs on domestic intelligence gathering, called for the legalization of sodomy, and urged for an end to discrimination against homosexuals in hiring by employers (see [1]).

During said conference, Alito stated that "no private sexual act between consenting adults should be forbidden."

Clearly, he is a tool of the liberal agenda.

So what is it that liberals don't like about this guy? He supports (or, at least, supported) the right of gays to have sex with one another and to engage with other adults in those sexual behaviors to which both parties agree.

What I Won't Be Doing Tonight

I won't watch the President waltz into the Capitol, shake everyone's hand in a fit of orgiastic splendor, and then expatiate on his Administration.

I plan to do something more edifying and productive. Like picking wax out of my ears.

Stupid Metaphor

Senator Frist, allegedly a smart man, comes up with an utterly stupid metaphor to describe the up-or-down vote for Alito:

The sword of the filibuster has been sheathed because we are placing principle before politics, and results before rhetoric.

A filibuster is a blunt tool, like, say a nuclear bomb (hence the "nuclear option" metaphor), not like a sword. A sword is a precision instrument, like a scalpel. When is the last time you heard someone boast about bludgeoning another with a sword?

With asinine metaphors like that, it is no wonder Frist is an exemplar of senatorial intellectual bankruptcy.

What Am I Missing Here?

The Wall St. Journal reports that the Stupid Bowl is a great opportunity for Domino's. They sell more "pizza"* during the Stupid Bowl than they do on a normal Sunday:

On Super Bowl Sundays, a lot of Domino's stores sell 50% to 100% more pizzas than they would on a normal Sunday -- some end up selling four times as many. Companywide, the chain sold 1.2 million pizzas last Super Bowl, compared with about a million on a typical Sunday.

So, let's see: last Stupid Bowl Sunday, Domino's sold 20% more pizzas than on other Sundays. Yet "a lot" of Domino's stores sell 50% to 100% more "pizzas" than they normally sell. In order for the company as a whole to register a 20% improvement on the number of "pizzas" sold, then we have to assume that, on Stupid Bowl Sunday, "a lot" of Domino's stores sell less pizza than they normally do.

Yet again the Stupid Bowl is shown to have minimal impact on the nation's economy. Let's jettison the idea that the Stupid Bowl somehow generates wealth for companies.

*"Pizza" is in scare quotes throughout this post because Domino's does not sell pizza. It sells cardboard with "tomato sauce" and "cheese" slathered on top. It is to pizza what Tom Clancy is to literature: that is to say, a pale imitation. Domino's is mass culture, blue-collar "food" that I would never consume.

Incompetent Police?

A woman admits to having her boyfriend chop up the body of a man who had a heart attack while having sex with said woman.

Except her admission was not taped by the police, and the police did not keep notes of their interview of the woman. Further, no body or body parts has ever been found.

Some will say justice prevailed: the woman cannot have been proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, in the absence of evidence.

Others will say justice has been perverted.

I leave it to you to decide.

Big Box Retailing

Interesting blog I stumbled across, The Box Tank which purports to explore the phenomenon of big box retailers moving into major urban areas.

So far as I can tell, the proprietors of this blog are not opposed to the presence of big box retailers per se, but rather are interested in contemplating the effects of big box retailers on the urban neighborhood and economy.

I have no problem with this line of inquiry: it's an interesting one, and a relevant one.

Their description of their blog's purpose:

Welcome to theboxtank, a weblog about big-box urbanism, what we consider to be one of the major forces driving the development of the American city and how we live. The focus of this blog is Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, and it’s role in shaping American cities and culture.

Though today marks our official launch, we have been posting for a while now. Material in the archives will give you a hint of what this site is about and where it may lead. In short, we are working from the belief that the essence of the American city isn’t Manhattan, or Boston, or Chicago [a dense urban core that supports industry, work, pleasure, housing and retail]; but rather the sprawl of Knoxville, Houston, or Omaha, generic cities that look the same and feel the same. In the sprawl of these cities are where most Americans live, where you can find the same Ruby Tuesdays, TGIFs, and Jiffy Lubes. Most architects and urban planners don’t spend enough time dealing with this part of the landscape; instead they are fixated with museums, high end residential houses, or downtown revitalization schemes. And it is here that you will find Wal-Mart.

On Working in the Wrong Field

A friend of mine manages an Off Off Broadway Theater.

Occasionally she sends out emails letting her friends know what's going on at the theater.

Curiously, she also included this note in a missive sent out this morning:

On Sunday, January 15, 2006, members of the cast and produc­tion team ventured to Scores: West Side on a working field trip to explore the world of strip clubs.

To which I responded that I must be working in the wrong profession.

Innumeracy

Interesting example of journalists' innumeracy.

Seems to me that journalism schools should focus less attention on whether they are about to obviated by blogs and more on increasing their graduates' quantitative skills.

Many Fewer

Despite it being grannatically correct English, I was once ridiculed by a boss for using the phrase "many fewer" in a presentation I gave.

Suffice it to say, that boss of mine was not too intelligent and he quickly lost my respect.

In any event, a person who is very smart, namely, Virginia Postrel, uses the "many fewer" construction here.

I'm A Sucker for These Quizzes

You Are Lightning

Beautiful yet dangerous People will stop and watch you when you appear Even though you're capable of random violence You are best known for: your power Your dominant state: performing

What Type of Weather Are You?

Via UrbanGrind.

Those Who Can, Do. Those Who Can't, Teach

Via Joanne Jacobs, a public school teacher's incoherent ramblings about people opposed to public education and teachers' unions.

I don't know what the guy is trying to say, other than he supports his union. Perhaps he should go back to school for some lessons in prose and concision? But I would advise him not to go to public school for such information.

So Can I Smoke a Joint at the Dutch Consulate?

A dead man was found in the basement of the Indonesian Consulate here in New York.

The article notes that the consulate is technically sovereign territory of Indonesia, and, therefore, NYPD could only enter at the invitation of the Consulate.

This raises a very important question, about which I have been curious for some time. Allegedly, one can smoke a joint in Amsterdam without breaking a law. Does it follow, then, that one can toke on the grounds of the Dutch Consulate? It being sovereign territory of the Netherlands and all?

And This Is Surprising Because??

I find the shock associated with the murder of Nixzmary Brown itself shocking: two very potent social forces created an inevitability. I'm not sure what there is to be shocked about.

The first social force, of course, is that this poor girl was being cared for by people who had no business caring for a child.

The second social force is that government is ill-equipped to make determinations about who is a good parent and who is not. The administrative and logistical challenges inherent in pursuing claims of child neglect are daunting. Add to those challenges the vagaries of dealing with a unionized group of low-skilled employees, and you are looking at a recipe for failure. No one is calling for a privatization of such services, in part because that would probably present its own challenges, but, as well, I can't conceive a privately-run company that would want to involve itself in the tragedies that unfold daily in the inner city.

There is a lot of talk of departmental reform, and people feel good about that, but one thing is certain: another child, allegedly under the protection of the City of New York, will be murdered at the hands of her "parents" and more wringing of hands will ensue.

UPDATE: Another child has been killed.

Chomsky and Post-Modernism

One of the scourges of the intellectual left is its embrace of postmodern and/or poststructuralist epistemologies. (The links provided give a good summary of these two schools of ignorant thought.)

Noam Chomsky, no enemy of the intellectual left, actually has some rather coherent and intelligent things to say about these schools of "thought":

I have spent a lot of my life working on questions such as these, using the only methods I know of; those condemned here as "science," "rationality," "logic," and so on. I therefore read the papers with some hope that they would help me "transcend" these limitations, or perhaps suggest an entirely different course. I'm afraid I was disappointed. Admittedly, that may be my own limitation. Quite regularly, "my eyes glaze over" when I read polysyllabic discourse on the themes of poststructuralism and postmodernism; what I understand is largely truism or error, but that is only a fraction of the total word count. True, there are lots of other things I don't understand: the articles in the current issues of math and physics journals, for example. But there is a difference. In the latter case, I know how to get to understand them, and have done so, in cases of particular interest to me; and I also know that people in these fields can explain the contents to me at my level, so that I can gain what (partial) understanding I may want. In contrast, no one seems to be able to explain to me why the latest post-this-and-that is (for the most part) other than truism, error, or gibberish, and I do not know how to proceed.

...

In fact, the entire idea of "white male science" reminds me, I'm afraid, of "Jewish physics." Perhaps it is another inadequacy of mine, but when I read a scientific paper, I can't tell whether the author is white or is male. The same is true of discussion of work in class, the office, or somewhere else. I rather doubt that the non-white, non-male students, friends, and colleagues with whom I work would be much impressed with the doctrine that their thinking and understanding differ from "white male science" because of their "culture or gender and race." I suspect that "surprise" would not be quite the proper word for their reaction.

(These quotes are copied from the Wikipedia entry on Chomsky, and the source cited for the quotes is here.)

A note about Wikipedia's entry on Chomsky: Chomsky is one of the more polarizing figures in contemporary American discourse. Many (including yours truly) find his thoughts on terrorism and its causes morally repugnant if not treacherous, and much of the animosity towards academia has its roots in the idea that people like Chomsky embody an insidious coterie of tenured radicals. That said, the Wikipedia entry is remarkably even-handed. I make no claims as to the veracity of claims made in the entry, or its thoroughness, but it is a remarkable testament to the communitarian spirit of the Wikipedia project that it is able to maintain civil discourse about one who condones terrorism.

Parents

I am of the opinion that there are those who should never have been parents.

This story lends credence to my opinion.

Unfortunately I do not know a solution to this problem: we would be a far worse society if people had to have permits to bear children. Though at least the kids would not suffer....

Interesting Blog Posts

Two interesting blog posts, via the venture capital blog A VC:

1) A recounting of being in the middle of a suicide bombing in Jerusalem in 1997. It is quite clear to me that Clinton et al have blood on their hands; Palestine should have been eliminated in the early 1990s. I would like to see Israel destroy it.

2) An interesting parable about business ethics and business school. I have been impressed by very few business school graudates, especially those who graduate from Harvard Business School. I do not think the paper they receive at the end of their two years is worth the paper it's printed on, and it is refreshing to see one of their own admit as much.

Markets

I've never used eBay. I went on their site once, when the company first started, saw that it was all rather very confusing and uninteresting, and have not been back. But I'm obviously not typical in that regard, because eBay has been one of the most successful internet companies over the past ten years.

It would seem that its success is directly dependent upon the integrity of the market it runs. If you couldn't be sure that the 100 shares of Microsoft you just bought really were 100 shares of Microsoft,, then other stock markets that could guarantee such a transaction would likely arise and shut down the poorly run stock market.

It would seem, therefore, that eBay has a vested interest in maintaining the integrity of its market. Apparently, a number of eBay customers are incensed at an increase in fake goods being sold through its auctions:

In 2004, Tiffany secretly purchased about 200 items from eBay in its investigation of how the company was dealing with the thousands of pieces of counterfeit Tiffany jewelry. The jeweler found that three out of four pieces were fakes.

The case will go to trial by the end of this year, said James B. Swire, an attorney with Arnold & Porter, a law firm representing Tiffany. The legal question — whether eBay is a facilitator of fraud — is a critical issue that could affect not only eBay's future but Internet commerce generally, said Thomas Hemnes, a lawyer in Boston who specializes in intellectual property.

"If eBay lost, or even if they settled and word got out that they settled, it would mean they would have to begin policing things sold over eBay, which would directly affect their business model," Mr. Hemnes said. "The cost implied is tremendous."

I don't pretend to have an opinion on the merits of this case. But how can a market survive if its facilitator can't guarantee the integrity of its operation? if eBay is nothing more than a market, then how does the company survive a degradation in the integrity of its market's operations?

Sports Will Not Rescue Local Economies

I blogged here about the problems Detroit is having in attracting very many people to come there for more than one day during the course of the Stupid Bowl and its attendant events.

I argued primarily from the perspective of intuition: Detroit has never recovered from the race riots of the 1960s, it is more well known for its urban decay and blight than it is for its cultural vim and vigor, and its home-grown industry, auto manufacturing, has been in decline for decades. It is the apotheosis of blue-collar, rust belt despair and anachronism. It is a dead city, consigned, as I am fond of saying, to the ash heap of history. Nothing the NFL does for a couple of days will do anything to revitalize Detroit. Detroit should be written off, like New Orleans, yet it persists for some sentimental reason.

In any event, some economists agree with my assessment: the presence of the Super Bowl will have somewhere between no impact and marginal impact over Detroit's economy:

Detroit natives are watching in amazement as their city, long the poster child for urban decay, has undertaken a massive effort to clean itself up for the 100,000 out-of-town guests expected for Super Bowl XL. Major highways have been repaved, long-abandoned buildings have been demolished, and there's a plan to get the homeless off the streets for Super Bowl weekend, Feb. 3-5 -- all at a cost of about $100 million in public and private money.

The NFL and the Detroit Super Bowl XL Host Committee put the projected payoff at about $300 million, which would make the investment seem reasonable. But that's a fiscal Hail Mary that's never likely to result in a touchdown. Or so say a bevy of sports economists who argue that the economic impact of the Super Bowl is as hyped as the halftime show.

"The NFL says $300 million, but I'd say it's closer to $50 million," says Allen Sanderson, a University of Chicago economist.

"There are numerous studies by reputable economists showing that the Super Bowl has a significant positive economic impact on host cities," said NFL spokesman Greg Aiello, who's all too familiar with the critiques from Mr. Sanderson and other sports economists. "Businesses and city leaders know the Super Bowl draws thousands of people to their city who spend large amounts of money and that the Super Bowl gives the host city unmatched media exposure. Cities want the game because it has tremendous value. It's common sense."

Tell that to Phil Porter, a University of South Florida economist who has looked at the economic impact of six Super Bowls. He found that Miami-area hotel rates and occupancy levels increased only 4.4% for Super Bowl XXIX compared with the same period in the prior and following years. Similarly, he found that Super Bowl XXXIII, also in Miami, had no more than a $37 million impact on the South Florida economy. Economists Robert Baade of Lake Forest College and Victor Matheson of Williams College pegged it at $21 million to $32 million, about one-tenth of the NFL's claims.

In assessing last year's Super Bowl in Jacksonville, Fla., Mr. Porter looked at taxable sales data and, based on the statewide increase from February 2004 to February 2005, taxable sales in Jacksonville's Duval County should have gone up to $1.178 billion. In fact, they rose to $1.219 billion, meaning it was reasonable to assume that the Super Bowl resulted in a $41 million increase in taxable sales.

But the key figure, Prof. Porter and others argue, is taxes collected, not taxable sales. With a 7% tax rate, the gross economic impact of Super Bowl XXXIX comes to about $3 million. Factor in that it costs about $15 million in infrastructure improvements, security, overtime for police, fire and EMS personnel, and the economists claim that hosting the Super Bowl actually cost Jacksonville about $12 million.

One Doesn't Know Where to Begin

(Note: some of the links on this post are decidedly not safe for work. Forewarned is forearmed.)

Althouse blogs about a guy who wants to wear skirts (kilts) but whose high school forbids males from wearing such clothes. This being America, the kid sues, and Althouse laments his atrocious fashion sense. All well and good.

But then a lovely lass named Sonia comments on Althouse's blog about how she doesn't like clothes at all, but if you're going to wear clothes it may as well be a skirt.

Turns out Sonia is a nudist. A rather good looking nudist but a nudist nonetheless. Oh, and she's married, but she's never cheated on her husband because she only has affairs with women. (That this is starting to read like a blog-version of Emmannuelle should not go unmentioned.)

What's disturbing about this "woman" is that, in addition to bearing all, she also apparently does not think rape is a big deal. Some explanation is in order. The French, being the French, made two movies in the past several years which featured brutal scenes of rape, namely, Baise-Moi (Fuck Me) and Irreversible. I had chance to see both of these movies while they were briefly shown in movie theaters here in New York City, and, well, let's say they are rather disturbing depictions of brutal violence toward women.

So, back to Sonia. On Irreversible:

So when the rape comes and the camera is actually still (for once), it feels strangely peaceful and calm. We feel sorry for Monica [Bellucci] to have her ass violated that way...

On Baise-Moi:

She didn't mind being gang raped because there was nothing precious inside her cunt. After that opening scene, the film becomes progressively more violent, while the sex scene, ironically, become more consensual. And while those are still very explicit, there is actually less and less nudity - a bit of a breast here, some pubic hairs there, but very little full frontals. Too bad!

By the way, this woman has kids.

UPDATE: This woman claims to have rape fantasies.

Polygamy on HBO

HBO is to air a drama about a polygamous Mormon family.

Here's hoping that it is an accurate reflection of the depths to which religion can sink man.

The Liberation of Woman

A Netflix-style service for designer handbags.

Call me cynical, but if I were a woman interested in designer goods, I would want to have the money to own such goods, not rent them as if they were nothing more than a gigolo.

Isn't the whole point of designer goods exclusivity?

UPDATE: In reviewing its "About Us" section, the company is mildly reminiscent of the late '90s dot-bomb period. I do not see this being a viable business. What's the population of women willing to pay a subscription fee for designer handbags they otherwise can't afford? Isn't that what middle class women who subscribe to Cosmo do anyway? The assumptions underlying this company's business model seem shoddy.

But then I'm an innate skeptic and other entreprenneurs have proven me wrong in the past (hello, Priceline).

Weird

Peter Falk, a.k.a. Columbo, doesn't have a right eye. It was removed when he was three.

Nicole Kidman to Accomplish Nothing

The UN has irrelevantly and pointlessly appointed Nicole Kidman a "goodwill ambassador" for women's rights.

Want to spread the notion of women's right around the world? The solution is quite simple: provide contraceptives and education to poor women, inculcate in males that they are not to treat their women as chattel or property, and compel countries to adopt free markets.

Kidman has nothing to do with any of this, and the UN's efforts to associate her with such issues points only to its inability to carry out the mission with which it was founded. The UN can do no more to promote women's rights than George Bush can do to get the Dow Jones Industrial Average above 11,000.

Despite the esteem with which many regard the UN, it is an impotent and incompetent organization that has no more hope of advancing women's rights than it has of brokering a lasting peace among Africa's warring tribes. The UN should be abolished.

Check Your Priorities, or, a Prelude to Liquidation

Detroit automakers, those dying exemplars of industrial anachronism, are developing in-car computers for their cars and trucks:

In an era when people can check email or browse the Web while doing everything from grocery shopping to lying on the beach, behind the wheel of a car has remained one of the few places where it just didn't happen. Over the years, auto makers have tried to introduce computers in cars, but they never really caught on with consumers.

Now, both auto makers and car-accessory companies are making a renewed push with products designed to allow drivers to do everything they can do on a desktop PC -- word processing, Internet surfing, email -- while sitting in the driver's seat. Screens can be mounted anywhere from near the dashboard to the back seat. While many models are meant to be installed in the dash and replace the radio entirely, car makers are betting more on tablet computers that aren't as integrated into the car or on features like larger consoles, trays and Internet connections for storing and operating laptops.

One could say that this is yet more evidence that the automakers have their priorities all screwed up. As our eloquent President said yesterday, just build products that customers want to buy and the rest will follow. It's not clear why people would buy cars and trucks with computers in them. Beyond a few people who like the novelty aspect, I do not see this as being a successful inducement to buy a product, along the lines that DVD screens in minivans are an inducement.

Focus on the basics. Leave computer installations to after-market installers. Detroit is too focused on addressing every possibly consumer niche and not focused enough on running their fucking business.

Just liquidate the fucking companies, pave over Detroit, and kill off America's auto industry. It is dead.

Ferrari

I'm a Ferrari 360 Modena!

You've got it all. Power, passion, precision, and style. You're sensuous, exotic, and temperamental. Sure, you're expensive and high-maintenance, but you're worth it.

Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.

(Admittedly, I juiced the responses until I got what I wanted. An Italian sports car. None of this German sports car silliness. Who the hell would ever drive a Porshce when there are Ferraris and Lamborghinis to be driven?)

Uh, no

Why I don't read the Village Voice.

How to Solve New Yorkers' Financial Woes

The New York Times has a long sob story about how people who live in the outer boroughs of New York City (that is, people who do not live in Manhattan) can't afford life in New York City.

Nowhere in the report is there any mention of the egregious rates of taxation foisted upon New Yorkers. Kill public education, eliminate rent control and stabilization, and adopt pro-growth economic policies, and well, you will find that many fewer people have to pinch pennies to survive.

None of this will happen, of course, so your only recourse if you want a nice life is to enhance your skills and knowledge and compete in the job market.

Or, you could just sit at home, read the New York Times, and wallow in its ignorance.

Google and Porn

the New York Times reports:

Kathryn Hanson, a former telecommunications engineer who lives in Oakland, Calif., was looking at BBC News online last week when she came across an item about a British politician who had resigned over a reported affair with a "rent boy."

It was the first time Ms. Hanson had seen the term, so, in search of a definition, she typed it into Google. As Ms. Hanson scrolled through the results, she saw that several of the sites were available only to people over 18. She suddenly had a frightening thought. Would Google have to inform the government that she was looking for a rent boy - a young male prostitute?

Ms. Hanson, 45, immediately told her boyfriend what she had done. "I told him I'd Googled 'rent boy,' just in case I got whisked off to some Navy prison in the dead of night," she said.

Ms. Hanson's reaction arose from last week's reports that as part of its effort to uphold an online pornography law, the Justice Department had asked a federal judge to compel Google to turn over records on millions of its users' search queries. Google is resisting the request, but three of its competitors - Yahoo, MSN and America Online - have turned over similar information.

Whatever you think of the propriety of the government requesting this kind of information, and the companies providing it, I think these types of concerns are misplaced. The results returned from a Google search of the term "rent boy" are hardly the stuff of child pornography or criminality. Googling "rent boy" doesn't constitute proof that one is looking to hire a hooker, any more so than googling cocaine proves that one is looking to snort some blow.

Show me a lawyer who thinks you are trafficking in cocaine because you Google that term, and I will show you an incompetent lawyer who should be disbarred. The vast majority of people who search for things on Google don't do so to engage in criminal activity, even if the thing they are Googling happens to be illegal.

That said, I do think the government's request is an inappropriate one, and the companies that have been served with such subpoenas should ignore or fight them, but not capitulate.

Blowing Smoke

From the New York Times:

Mark Twain is said to have had a good line about the pains of quitting smoking: It's easy. Done it a thousand times.

Twain was probably not on Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's mind on Monday when he announced that he was calling for a 50-cent increase in the city's cigarette tax. But getting smokers to quit clearly was.

"There's a clear correlation," the mayor said in Albany. "You raise your cigarette taxes, fewer children go and smoke."

The problem is that smokers are a stubborn bunch. If lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema and the like have failed to stop them, why, some asked, would a simple pair of quarters do the trick?

"We're hooked," said Lou Sepe, who was pulling on a smoke yesterday afternoon outside his Times Square office. "That's the problem."

If increasing the cost to get something causes people to want that thing less, then it follows that the War on Drugs has long since been won. Of course, that war has not been won. Increasing an addict's costs will not compel that addict to overcome his addiction. That's just not how addiction works. The government, if it is to be in the business of smoking cessation programs at all, should focus its energies on educating an ignorant public, not fleecing them to build more schools or pave more roads, or do whatever else it is that government supposedly does better than the private sector.

Those people, such as the Mayor, who believe that increasing the taxes on a pack of cigarettes is a panacea are simply wrong. The Mayor's suggestion may be good politics--if ever there was a despised voting bloc, it would be smokers--but it's poor economic analysis and even poorer public policy.

Even if we were to argue that the best solution to stopping people from smoking is to ban tobacco outright, it is doubtful that the impact would be sustained over the long term. If we were to ban tobacco outright, as has been done with illicit drugs like marijuana and cocaine, illegal (and violent) markets would arise, and smokers would risk lengthy jail sentences in order to feed their addiction.

It is folly to assert that smokers can be convinced to quit smoking on the basis of the amount of tax they pay.

Certainly, there will be a minority of smokers who, upon seeing the new taxes on cigarettes, decide that they will quit. And of those smokers who decide to quit, an infitesimally small number will actually quit. But the amount of smokers who do quit on the basis of increased taxation is not worth the costs associated with such interventionism.

Kanye West Does Jesus

I find this asinine.

Others likely find it offensive.

The Strokes: "Gay Music"

Apparently, the band that any self-respecting hipster loves, the Strokes, is a "gay" band.

I have no idea what makes them a "gay" band, but of one thing I am sure: look for your friendly neighborhood homophobes to call for a boycott of Time Warner.

Canada & Conservatives: What's the BFD?

Can someone explain to me why bloggers on the American right are having paroxysms of joy over conservative having been elected in Canada?

I'm not trying to insult Canada or Canadians here, but why the sudden interest in Canadian politics from American bloggers? As goes Canada, so goes America?

I don't think so.

Philadelphia Inquirer: A "venerable newspaper"?

The Wall St. Journal--a "venerable newspaper" if ever there was one--reports on moves made by Knight Ridder, publisher of the Philadelphia newspaper, among other such "venerable" ones, to improve its margins:

One question sure to be hanging over the process is how these financial changes may affect the quality of journalism at the publisher of such venerable titles as the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Charlotte Observer and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Some of the company's 18,000 employees, 28% of whom are represented by unions, have discussed their own buyout plan.

Pardon my New York-centric perspective, but what "quality" is the Journal referring to when discussing journalism? The Journal's quality of journalism is generally very high, but then it is a newspaper devoted primarily to business news, and its reporters often have some expertise in the area in which they are reporting. But newspapers published for secondary markets assuredly do not qualify as "quality" journalism in the way the Journal, or even that bete noir of conservatives everywhere, the New York Times, exemplify quality journalism.

Philadelphia is a big city, with its share of intellectual and cultural leaders. Of those people how many use the Philadelphia Inquirer as their principal source of mainstream media information? My suspicion is not many, given the New York Times and Wall St. Journal.

Where is the quality to be found?

Secondary and tertiary market newspapers seem to be dying. That does not indicate quality but rather a paucity of quality.

Religion and Modernity

Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolutions has some incisive comments about the intersection of religion and modernity:

In my view all religions of reasonable age and numbers contain traditions and teachings compatible with modernity and all religions of reasonable age and numbers contain traditions and teachings incompatible with modernity. Call it the completeness theorem.

It's how religions adapt and evolve to modernity that is important. Religions are constantly changing, emphasizing certain features, downplaying others, creating new interpretations. Given enough time, I believe that any religion will evolve towards compatability with modernity because it's the memes that combine modernity and religion which will survive and prosper.

The problem is that Christianity has had hundreds of years to adapt itself to modernity while Islam has had modernity thrust upon it.

Fish don't walk overnight and neither do religions.

His reference to fish evolving into amphibious creatures (the evolutionary precursor to land-based mammals, birds, and reptiles) is especially poignant, alluding as it does to evolutionary theory and not religiously-inspired abiogenesis.

(Of course, abiogenesis did occur in the distant past. But man was not created out of nothing; he evolved, just as monkeys and dogs evolved. And abiogenesis can still occur in laboratories. But abiogenesis is not spontaneous.)

Wilt & Kobe

And now for a rare post about sports.

Wilt Chamberlain played basketball in an era in which he was the only person close to seven feet tall. He scored 100 points in one game in 1962.

Kobe Bryant, who is Michael Jordan's height, falls squarely in the middle of professional basketball players' height distribution. Kobe Bryant scored 81 points in last night's game.

I aver that Bryant's was the greater achievement, given (1) there are many players around his height and (2) there are many players significantly taller than he.

The assumption in this argument is that height confers great advantages in basketball. It should have been easier for Chamberlain to have scored 100 points in an era in which he was the tallest player by far than in Bryant's era, in which Bryant's height is but middling.

Obviously, there is a caveat to this assumption: height alone is not a sufficient condition for a scoring advantage. Another condition is that a person of great height be able to move with celerity and efficiency. Shawn Bradley and Manute Bol were marginal players, but Shaquille O'Neal, David Robisnon, and Patrick Ewing were all very effective seven foot tall players. Robinson and O'Neal were more dominating than Ewing, to be sure, but it's still true that height confers great advantage to those players who can move effectively.

Just Liquidate

Ford proposes that the solution to its woes is to cut staff by 25,000:

The Ford Motor Company said today that it would eliminate 25,000 to 30,000 jobs and close up to 14 manufacturing plants in the next six years in an extensive restructuring that executives said would make the company's North American division profitable by 2008.

The job cuts and restructuring plan, which the company dubbed "Way Forward" and "Ford Fights Back," were larger than what many auto industry analysts had been expecting. Seven of the 14 plants Ford is closing are vehicle assembly plants, but the company identified today only five plants in Michigan, Georgia, Missouri, Ohio and Ontario that would be closed through 2008. Officials said it would identify two other assembly plants later this year.

I suppose that's a start, but it's clear that neither Ford's nor GM's is a viable business. Why not just liquidate and leave the market to those who can turn a profit (i.e., Toyota)?

There ought to be no shame in American companies abandoning the auto industry: it is a labor-intensive, capital-intensive job properly left to foreign firms. American labor and capital can be more efficiently deployed elsewhere, including, of course, the efficient non-union plants run by Toyota.

(For the "buy American" reductionists: how the hell is it "un-American" to buy a Lexus, when they are manufactured in Toyota's American plants? Oh, I see. Because Toyota is non-union, it is "un-American." That makes no sense, but then one should not expect cogency from union apologists.)

UPDATE: The Economist agrees, in part, with my assessment. Therefore it will come to pass. (OK, I'm stroking my ego there.) In any event, they say:

Ford, like GM, is suffering from two related faults that together threaten great difficulties. Both firms have to cope with the vast “legacy” costs of pension schemes and generous health-care benefits for retired workers, along with other benefits negotiated by the firms’ heavily unionised workforces. At GM this adds an average of more than $1,500 to the price of each car sold. Worse, America’s car-buying consumers have turned against the models pumped out by two of Detroit’s big three — though the other one, DaimlerChrysler, has managed to add a little market share.

Although overall car sales are down a little in America since a peak in 2000 the market is still buoyant. Nearly 17m cars were sold in 2005 and customers are expected to drive a similar number off the country’s forecourts this year. But America’s car giants are losing out to Japanese firms. Toyota is threatening to overtake GM as the world’s biggest car producer this year. Nissan and Honda have made impressive inroads in America. In 2005 the three Japanese firms, combined, grabbed over 28% of America’s market share. Mr Fields acknowledges that the industry’s “big three” is becoming the “big six”.

Japanese carmakers are nimbler not because they produce cars abroad: much of their output is from American factories. But the Japanese firms are not encumbered by the legacy costs of their American rivals. Nor are unions so dominant in the Japanese-run factories. Ford’s biggest challenge may be tackling the mighty United Auto Workers union. The UAW has already assured its members that most of the lay-offs announced by Ford, as well as the 30,000 job cuts announced by GM last November, will come about through natural attrition. A deal to limit health-care costs for current Ford workers was only narrowly approved last year, suggesting the union is not wholly supportive of reform.

The three Asian interlopers were also quicker in anticipating the changing tastes of America’s motorists. As the oil price rose last year, especially in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the popularity of the mammoth sports-utility vehicles (SUV) dropped. The SUV had propelled GM and Ford to big profits in the 1990s, but many Americans are now ditching the gas-guzzlers in favour of smaller and less thirsty Japanese cars. In contrast America’s love for German luxury vehicles, notably for BMW and Mercedes, seems no weaker than before.

UPDATE 2: The Liberal Order weighs in:

The UAW blames Ford for offering lower quality cars but fails to acknowledge their part in escalating Ford's costs, and hence the prices of Ford automobiles. American automobile consumers have gotten screwed for more than four decades by UAW members' exorbitant compensation packages and they don't want to admit it nor have to give it up. Look at the fate of the legacy airlines to see the future of Ford and GM in a more competitive environment.

Something I Want to Know

Of the people who oppose Roe v. Wade, what percentage of those people oppose it out of an aversion to the precedent it established?

My suspicion is that the number of people who oppose Roe v. Wade solely on the basis of its use of penumbras and emanations is rather small, because such an opposition implies a familiarity with constitutional interpretation utterly absent in the populace at large. Opposing Roe v. Wade on moral or religious grounds is a much easier concept to understand. (I'm not saying that the simplicity of one opposition to the decision is inferior to the more complex, abstract opposition.)

However, if we were to apply these two oppositions to the nation's population, I would aver that, were the nation sufficiently educated on matters of constitutional interpretation, far more people would oppose Roe v. Wade on that basis than on the religious or moral one.

I don't have any hard evidence for this; it's an intuition. And, of course, intuition is often not very accurate. But, nonetheless, if we assume that my hunch is accurate, then it suggests that pro lifers would do well to argue in terms of the legal implications of Roe v. Wade, and not in religious or moral terms. (I am aware that there are pro lifers who do argue in these terms, but the more vituperative and obvious pro lifers seem uninterested in issues of Constitutional interpretation.)

Duh

Proving once again the Drug War is a naive and dangerous exercise in futility, states that have moved to restrict the sale of cold medicines, from which methamphetamines can be derived, have found that purer, more potent forms of methamphetamines have entered their local markets:

In the seven months since Iowa passed a law restricting the sale of cold medicines used to make methamphetamine, seizures of homemade methamphetamine laboratories have dropped to just 20 a month from 120. People once terrified about the neighbor's house blowing up now walk up to the state's drug policy director, Marvin Van Haaften, at his local Wal-Mart to thank him for making them safer.

But Mr. Van Haaften, like officials in other states with similar restrictions, is now worried about a new problem: the drop in home-cooked methamphetamine has been met by a new flood of crystal methamphetamine coming largely from Mexico.

Sometimes called ice, crystal methamphetamine is far purer, and therefore even more highly addictive, than powdered home-cooked methamphetamine, a change that health officials say has led to greater risk of overdose. And because crystal methamphetamine costs more, the police say thefts are increasing, as people who once cooked at home now have to buy it.

This is a simple demonstration of the law of supply and demand, and no legislation will ever revoke that law. Supply and demand is as immutable as gravity: it is not something subject to the whims of individual contemplation. Supply and demand is not religion, it is not philosophy, and it isn't ethics: it's a law. If you try to kill the supply of something that is in high demand, the market will assuredly replace the supply you eliminate with a new supply. Al Capone can help you understand this phenomenon if you still don't get it. His wealth, criminality, and the violence wrought by him and his henchmen upon America, was inextricably tied to the United States' ill-conceived ban on liquor.

Just as Al Capone wrought misery for the country in the time of its alcohol prohibition folly, so does the criminalization of drugs bring misery to untold numbers of people.

(Yes, it should be noted that Prohibition, in its earliest incarnations, was religiously inspired. Again: what hath man wrought with religion?)

But Does She Want It?

I have no problem with the prospect of Condi as President. I think she would be good at it, but she has routinely said she has no interest in the position.

And yet there are those who can't but help but adduce why she should run and why she would make a good president. Dr. Helen observes:

I think [her] independence is what liberals hate about Condi Rice. She represents a woman who does not need them or their slogan of victimhood. This drives them crazy--so much so that they even look past her fairly moderate stance on abortion and the fact that she is an African American female who would make an amazing president.

There's not much to argue about there: liberals have always been rather racist. But it also seems rather irrelevant if, as Condi has repeatedly said, she does not want to run for president.

Why the sustained interest in her candidacy?

Because of the second coming of Slick Willie. Should Slick Willie the Second run for president in 2008, you will see an unprecedented amount of cash raised on the Republican side, in order to consign her to her proper place on the ash heap of history. It matters little if Condi is her opponent or not. The goal is Slick Willie the Second's destruction.

Ignorance

Red Guy in a Blue State has a post up about gay marriage.

Some of the comments demonstrate the shocking ignorance attendant with religious views of sexuality and marriage.

Red Guy, for the record, is sensible enough to support gay marriage.

When will man learn what religion has wrought upon society?

UPDATE: One of the more cogent commenters on the aforementioned blog post identifies himself as a gay Catholic. Being neither gay nor religious, I don't pretend to understand how one can be both gay and religious, but this commenter's thoughts on the subject, here, are interesting to read.

Tax Cuts Create Wealth

Reagan is known for two legacies: laying down the gauntlet to Gorby ("Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!")*, and creating wealth via tax cuts.

John Rutledge, who was an economic advisor to Regan in the early '80s, argues for making tax cuts permanent:

Tax cuts initially impact asset prices by making investors recapitalize, or revalue, the equities of existing companies to reflect higher after-tax returns relative to interest-bearing securities, tangible assets like land and collectibles, and foreign assets. The return gap -- more than 100 basis points for the 2003 tax cuts -- makes investors sell relatively low-return assets, driving their prices down, and buy relatively high-return assets, driving those prices up, until after-tax returns have been driven together again. My estimates showed an initial positive impact on equity values of $560 billion to $938 billion, or 6% to 10%.

The restructuring impact of tax cuts on stock prices plays out over several years but is potentially several times larger than the initial price impact. The 2003 tax cuts were larger for dividend income (from 38.6% to 15%), than for capital gains income (20% to 15%); tax rates on interest income were unchanged. The positive impact on a stock's value will be greater the more profitable the company is, the greater percentage of equity rather than debt on its balance sheet, the greater its payout rate, and the greater its duration (a stock with a greater duration is more sensitive to changes in cost of capital).

In 2003, U.S. companies were poorly structured to benefit from the changes. Decades of high tax rates on dividends prompted managers to reinvest profits and hoard cash for acquisitions rather than pay out dividends regardless of the company's prospects. Meanwhile, deductible interest payments had encouraged managers to finance companies with debt instead of equity, which reduced profits and increased bankruptcy risk. According to the American Shareholders Association, the number of S&P 500 companies paying dividends fell from 469 in 1980 to 351 in 2002. By 2002 the S&P 900 large- and mid-cap companies paid out just 53% of profits, and financed companies with only 27% equity and 73% debt.

Once tax rates were cut in 2003, managers quickly learned they could profit from lower tax rates by restructuring balance sheets. Companies like Nextel issued equity to buy back debt. Other companies, like Microsoft, initiated new dividends and cleaned out their cash hoards through one-time special dividends. Most increased dividend payout ratios: Dividend payments received by shareholders have doubled since the tax cuts.

*Bonus points for you if you are smart enough to know the wall to which Reagan refers in the above quote, without clicking on the link. The wall in question is not, as someone I knew in college tried to argue, Pink Floyd's album The Wall. This miserable excuse for a college student genuinely thought that Reagan was making a reference to Pink Floyd's album.

Music You Should Listen To

Kenny Wayne Shepherd.

Blues guitarist from Shreveport.

His album Trouble Is is a classic.

Check out the track "Blue on Black."

Finally, it's been fifteen years since Eddie Vedder came out with Ten.

If my parents had had the foresight to have named me Jeremy, I would end this blog post, pithily, with the words "Jeremy's spoken."

Alas, my name is not Jeremy, and writing "Dave's spoken" would just seem pompous, not ironic or clever.

Alas.

Satire

Just saw an interesting piece of satire called Saved! which follows the travails of a bunch of kids at a Christian high school. The plot is rather predictable: girl's boyfriend says he thinks he's gay, girl has sex with him to prove that he's not gay, boyfriend gets sent to be "cured", girl gets pregnant, and the in crowd rejects both of them.

Come to think of it that likely is not satire but rather life for many teenage kids of religious parents. No matter. An interesting attempt by Hollywood to look, satirically, at least, at many of the problems posed by religion.

Another interesting movie along the same lines is But I'm a Cheerleader, starring the intriguing Natasha Lyonne. In this instance Lyonne plays a naive cheerleader whose quarterback boyfriend suspects she's a lesbian because she's more interested in cheerleading practice than sucking face, he and her parents stage an intervention, and she is sent to be "cured" at a home run by a crazed woman played by Cathy Moriarty.

The irony there is especially poignant because, of course, Moriarty played a 15 year old girl in Raging Bull whom Bobby DeNiro's character seduced and eventually married. Moriarty's best known role is not known for being a paragon of sexual rectitude.

Detroit

There's no greater symbol of urban decay and neglect than Detroit. It is an ugly city, with terrible weather, located far from any major cultural center, other than Chicago. And, if you have Chicago in your vicinity, you may as well go there.

Detroit is, in a word, useless, but for the dying presence of Ford and GM.

And yet it is hosting this year's Super Bowl. Personally, I have as much interest in the Stupid Bowl as I do in, say, getting a root canal. But no matter. Not many people seem very interested in Detroit:

"People just don't want to come and stay in Detroit for three nights," says John Leggett, a partner in On Point Sports, a sports travel firm. He says about 90% of clients this year have booked trips of three nights or less; typically, Super Bowl travelers purchase packages of four nights or longer. And one trip that is selling fast -- a "high-roller" package that jets fans in and out of the city just for the game -- isn't exactly a ringing endorsement for the charms of a long stay in the Motor City.

Other travel companies have reported significant declines in business so far this year. David Lord, chief executive of RazorGator, whose PrimeSport subsidiary sells corporate hospitality packages for the Super Bowl, says several clients have opted to scale back their plans for this year's game and send a larger group next year to Miami. One of those clients, a major bank that Mr. Lord declined to identify, is bringing only 50 people to Detroit, compared with its usual 120 to 150.

TSE Sports and Entertainment this year has booked at least 100 fewer Super Bowl trips for corporate clients than the normal 450 to 500, and company president Robert Tuchman says many people are opting instead for Super Bowl-themed trips to Las Vegas or the Caribbean. One possible deterrent for the corporate crowd: The Super Bowl's traditional charity golf tourney has been replaced this year with an indoor pastime, bowling.

The stakes are huge, not only for the NFL, but even more so for Detroit. The Super Bowl and its accompanying media spotlight arrive smack dab in the midst of the hometown auto industry's most serious downturn in years. Both General Motors and Ford Motor are shedding thousands of jobs and facing grave financial problems. These are fresh blows to a city still working to recover from a history of crime and racial unrest going back decades.

Detroit is a dead city that should be properly consigned to the ash heap of history. That Ford would build a new football stadium there in the middle of planning for its bankruptcy, and eventual liquidation, boggles the mind. That anyone cares to go to Detroit in the middle of winter to see football played just illustrates the depths to which man can sink.

This Has Never Happened Before

Miners trapped in a mine.

Where have I heard this before?

Must we continue to consign miners to early deaths?

UPDATE: The miners, predictably, have died. Here's another opportunity to ask the question: why isn't there more reliance on nuclear power in this country? People make the point that uranium, too, has to be mined, and is therefore poses dangers to miners.

This is true, however, uranium is of course far more energy-dense than coal, which would mean, I suspect, that far lower quantities of it have to be mined in order to provide the same amount of energy as coal. The lower the quantity of the material needed, the fewer chances for death and injury among its miners. At least one would think. I maintain that environmental activists who have worked so assiduously to prevent any new nuclear power plants from coming on line in the past twenty years, have blood on their hands. Perhaps a class action lawsuit by the families of the killed coal miners?

Numeracy

Instapundit, his wife, and Ann Althouse have jumped on the boys-are-illiterate meme as of late. For those boys (and girls) who are literate, and therefore get a college degree, a greater risk awaits them in the real world: innumeracy.

There is a story that has been around for years, and I don't know if it is apocryphal or not, which says that an anti-gun organization came up with the statistic "each year since 1960 the number of children killed by guns had doubled."

Try that statistic out on someone.

Then sit down and calculate what that means: More people have been killed by guns in 2005 than have ever walked the face of the earth. Clearly, more people cannot have been killed than have walked the face of the earth--that's a paradox. A logical impossibility. Despite our ability to calculate such a number, it nevertheless could not happen.

Carl Bialik, who writes the Numbers Guy column for the Wall St. Journal notes that many journalists don't know much about numbers. He spoke with one Richard Holden, a former editor, who now runs seminars for journalists about how to use numbers correctly:

Mr. Holden focuses on numbers that probably are correct, but are poorly or mistakenly presented by newspapers. "An editor's job is to take things that don't make sense and try to make sure that they do," he says. "When readers plunk money down for a newspaper, they're not buying it to have questions raised; they're buying it to have questions answered."

I asked Mr. Holden, 56 years old, if journalists have gotten better at numbers since he began the seminars. "I haven't been disappointed in 10 years" of looking for new examples, he replied. He said attendees at his seminars often don't find the problems in his examples. "I'm surprised with professional newspaper people, how frequently it goes right over their head," he says. "Many times, I'm greeted by 30 blank stares."

Part of the problem is embedded in the culture of the profession, Mr. Holden says: "Journalists always prided themselves on knowing so little about math." (Specialists in business, economics and sports were notable exceptions.) He also points out that many journalists can sail through college and journalism school without taking a class in math or statistics. Numerical knowledge often gets acquired on the job. "You learn by doing, and learn somewhat from your mistakes," he says. "Hopefully we're kind of spreading the word a little bit by doing this."

Bialik ends his column with a quiz based on examples of erroneous or illogical thinking about numbers. I've copied the quiz here, and inserted my answers. I think I did fairly well:

1. Boosting the state's economy was a central tenet of Governor Smith's campaign as a challenger in the 2002 election. His supporters note that statewide economic growth of 3.5% in 2004 was a new record under Gov. Smith. This doesn't tell us anything about economic growth under other governments. For all we know the economy could have shrunk markedly in years prior to 2004. Growing an economy from a smaller base isn't necessarily an accomplishment, especially if the economy is still smaller than its largest size.

2. A crowd of 93,356 saw the U.S. women's soccer team beat China, 1-0, to clinch the World Cup. That was the largest crowd to witness a women's athletic event since the 1996 soccer final at the Atlanta Olympic Games, which drew a record 84,975 fans.
What year did the US women's soccer team beat China 1-0? For all I know this happened prior to 1996. (I actually know that this happend *after* 1996, but how many readers pay that close attention to the successes of US women's soccer?)

3. Visa announced that its new credit card will carry an adjustable rate set monthly at four percent above the prime rate, in line with other variable-rate cards.
What's the prime rate? Does the prime rate change on a monthly basis, which this sentence implies? According to Wikipedia, the prime rate is not adjusted frequently, so does it really make sense to say it's "set monthly at four percent above the prime rate"?

4. The glaciers that span much of Greenland are melting quickly; one of them has more than doubled in speed, moving at a rate of 5.2 miles an hour, compared with 2.3 miles an hour a year earlier.
Is the rate of 5.2 miles an hour unprecedented, or is the rate of 2.3 miles per house unusually slow? There is no context given to relate the speed of 5.2 mph to historical averages or medians.

5. College grades carry the most weight, making up 56% of the final score. Fourteen percent is composed of test scores, recommendations and activities. The final 29% comes from 10 other criteria.
56 + 14 + 29 = 99. Where's the other 1%?

6. Since the displaced soil had a volume of more than 450,000 square yards, construction required many cranes.
What's the capacity of one crane? What's the time frame in which the displaced soil had to be moved? What's the normal number of cranes to be used to move displaced soil? This is a statistic without context: it gives the reader no information regarding the volume of displaced soil, whether that amount is unusual, what the rate of displaced soil removal would be with one crane, etc.

7. The charity said it would keep 30% of the funds it raises, with the remaining 70% divided as follows: grants to professors, 35%; grants to students, 20%, and grants to universities, 15%.
35% + 20% + 15% does not equal 100%. So, where does the remaining money apportioned to grants go?

8. Battling Hunger, a food pantry, said it delivered 110,000 tons of food to Detroit last Thanksgiving. The food was delivered to help residents there overcome the effects of a severe economic slump, particularly in the automobile industry.
How many tons of food is normally delivered to Detroit?

9. The football program has a 100% graduation rate, near the top of Division 1 colleges. The national average is below 50%.
How does a college graduate more than 100% of its football players?

10. Chipper Jones is batting just .176 in 85 at-bats with the Braves. But he has had more success as a pinch hitter, with five hits in 30 at-bats, including one that clinched a playoff spot.
Hitting five times in 30 at bats gives a batting average of 16.6% which is less than 17.6%. How is a lower percentage of successful at bats "more successful"?

The English Language

George Orwell is most well known for giving us the concept Orwellian, as expressed in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. What he is less well known for is his essay "Politics and the English Language" which, along with Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, serves as a primer on cogency and clarity in writing.

Orwell concludes his essay:

I have not here been considering the literary use of language, but merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought. Stuart Chase and others have come near to claiming that all abstract words are meaningless, and have used this as a pretext for advocating a kind of political quietism. Since you don't know what Fascism is, how can you struggle against Fascism? One need not swallow such absurdities as this, but one ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase -- some jackboot, Achilles' heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno, or other lump of verbal refuse -- into the dustbin, where it belongs.

Orin Kerr notes that many academics fail to heed these writers' advice, to the detriment of the advancement of knowledge:

Blogging pushes you to write clearly and simply; the format rewards clarity of expression more than traditional law review articles do.

I think Kerr makes a very good point: too many academics, perhaps inured to the prose stylings of their peers, ignore clarity in favor of obfuscation.

On a related note, I am in the middle of reading physicist Brian Greene's book The Elegant Universe. Greene's prose is elegant and literary in the same way that Stephen Jay Gould's and Oliver Sacks' is: accessible, engaging, and, well, literate. Would that there were more academics like Kerr, Gould, Sack, and Greene who understand the importance of conveying their ideas clearly. Many would find, I suspect, a far greater audience for their ideas were they able to express them concisely and congently.

Derrida et al would have done well to heed Orwell and others of his ilk.

Wilson Pickett Dead

Wilson Picket has died of a heart attack.

Wikipedia has good background information on him, here. Oddly they refer to him as a soul singer, when he should more appropriately be called a blues singer. He was a soulful singer, but his singing is too good to be soul.

Disturbing

Disturbing.

Spitzer to Albany

There seems little to stop Spitzer from being New York's new gorvernor, which is a shame.

The Economist notes that factions within the state's Republican party, as well as a splinter group of people known as the Conservative Party, spell peril for any person seeking the Republican nomination in New York State:

To make life worse for the Republicans, they have a long-standing rival to the right in the form of the Conservative Party, founded in 1962 as a reaction against the social liberalism and big-spending habits of Nelson Rockefeller and other state Republican leaders. The Conservatives have only 155,000 registered voters against 3.2m Republicans. But the state's electoral law makes it relatively easy for minor parties to keep a line on the ballot paper in New York. If the Conservatives dislike a Republican candidate, they can run a competitor and divide the right's already small vote.

The Conservatives' endorsement gave Mr Pataki his margin of victory in 1994. At the time, the genial state senator was seen as a fiscal conservative. But he failed to make the necessary impact, according to a new report, “Albany Inc”, from the right-leaning Manhattan Institute. New