The economics of religion.

Business Week has an article about the economic analysis of religion. Here's an interesting passage about terrorism:

The idea that religion involves rational choices extends even to suicide bombers who strike in the name of God. Studies show they are far from depressed loners or brainwashed robots. Instead, says Eli Berman, an associate professor of economics at the University of California at San Diego, suicide bombers typically are motivated young men -- and, rarely, women -- from average backgrounds. Berman, who has studied Hamas, the Taliban, and like groups, says the bombers share a sense of obligation to what amounts to a "mutual-aid society." Says Berman: "They think of themselves as making great sacrifices for a cause -- the way we would think of pilots in the Battle of Britain, or the way the kamikaze thought of themselves."

How should the West fight such terrorism? Berman says one approach would be to promote prosperity through freer markets, which would reduce the supply of potential bombers. [George Mason Professor Laurance R.] Iannaccone gives another answer to the question in a paper called The Market for Martyrs that he presented earlier this year to the American Economic Assn. He argues that the supply of would-be terrorists is impossible to suppress. Instead, it makes sense to reduce demand by disrupting the "firms" that sponsor them.

The article mentions that Adam Smith wrote about religion in "The Wealth of Nations." Here's a passage from Smith that I've used in my Religion and the Constitution class.

A drawing for the last Monday of the semester.

This was drawn while I listened to someone else speak last week, so let me use it to mark the last day my Monday-Wednesday-Friday class will listen to me speak. Who knows what doodles they've drawn in the margins of their notebooks? I suppose with laptop computers, far fewer doodles are drawn and far more games of solitaire are played. Of course, one could compose a blog entry. If I went to law school these days, I'd have a laptop, and I'd keep my fingers typing constantly, mixing observations about the teacher, my classmates, and my mood with the substantive content of the course. After class, I'd cut out the extraneous material as I compressed my notes down to a study-able outline. If I had the time, I'd paste the cut material into another document which I'd compress and rewrite for whatever insight and humor I could find. If I had the nerve, I'd make that a blog entry. Yes, now that I think about it, law school would be much better with a laptop and a blog than with a Pelikan pen to doodle in the margin of a legal pad.

Really "the other side of the ocean."

Keep an eye on Nina's blog this week:

In this one month I am privileged to be spending time in four cities and two villages that have easily been the most important places in my life. I have work to do, yes, but I also have time to spend with my Polish family and pals, and then with my residing-on-the-East Coast family.

And she's dedicated to blogging:

I have already told my sister (who lives in Warsaw) that I will basically not leave her apartment because I have too much blogging to do and so she may as well not coax me into any other activities.

Seriously, ever since I started blogging in January, I have wanted to post from Poland. I am traveling with my computer and my camera and my tested trusty world Internet access (dial-up, but oh well), so I should be fine. Ocean is crossing the ocean and she and I can’t wait to plunge right into my homeland with vignettes of life as I know it, remember it, miss it. The next 24 hours may be thin on writing as I am on a bus, then in the air, then in the air again, then on a train. But after that, if you are curious about life Over There, tune in.

Bob Dylan on "60 Minutes."

For the first third of the "60 Minutes" interview, I am racking my brain trying to figure out who he reminds me of, with his deliberately taciturn answers and his odd, wary look. Then I realize it's Tom Waits, maybe somewhere around the point when he says he always thought you were supposed to lie to the press (as opposed to God and to yourself). I can't tell how much he is playing a role and how much he is just a sad, strange guy. He speaks of his writing as magical, not in a boastful way, but wistfully remembering how the songs once flowed out of him. He recites...

Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child's balloon

... and wonders at how a person could just come out with something like that. But maybe he does know and pretending not to know is part of the mystique act, the lie he's been telling to the press and to the world. But what's his motivation? Who knows? If I had to guess I'd say that he's afraid he doesn't have enough inside to reveal. The phantom Bob is much more substantial.

The interview ends with Bob seeming to want to stir up a Robert Johnson-style legend of making a pact with the devil:

ED BRADLEY: You're still out here, doing these songs. You're still on tour.

BOB DYLAN: I do, but I don't take it for granted.

BRADLEY: Why do you still do it? Why are you still out here?

DYLAN: Well, it goes back to that destiny thing. You know, I made a bargain with it, you know, long time ago. I'm holding up my end.

BRADLEY: What was your bargain?

DYLAN: Get where I am now.

BRADLEY (smiling): Should I ask who you made the bargain with?

DYLAN (laughing): With, with, with, with, you know, the chief, the chief commander.

BRADLEY: On this earth?

DYLAN: On this earth, and in the world we can't see.

Dylan purses his lips, maybe to keep from laughing at himself or laughing at Bradley for letting him get away with saying such things.

Harry Reid on Scalia and Thomas.

The new Senate Minority Leader, Harry Reid, was on "Meet the Press" today. Tim Russert questioned him about Supreme Court nominees:

MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to judicial nominations. Again, Harry Reid on National Public Radio, November 19: "If they"--the Bush White House--"for example, gave us Clarence Thomas as chief justice, I personally feel that would be wrong. If they give us Antonin Scalia, that's a little different question. I may not agree with some of his opinions, but I agree with the brilliance of his mind."

Could you support Antonin Scalia to be chief justice of the Supreme Court?

SEN. REID: If he can overcome the ethics problems that have arisen since he was selected as a justice of the Supreme Court. And those ethics problems--you've talked about them; every people talk--every reporter's talked about them in town--where he took trips that were probably not in keeping with the code of judicial ethics. So we have to get over this. I cannot dispute the fact, as I have said, that this is one smart guy. And I disagree with many of the results that he arrives at, but his reason for arriving at those results are very hard to dispute. So...

MR. RUSSERT: Why couldn't you accept Clarence Thomas?

SEN. REID: I think that he has been an embarrassment to the Supreme Court. I think that his opinions are poorly written. I don't--I just don't think that he's done a good job as a Supreme Court justice.

Is that the tack the Democrats are going to take if Scalia or Thomas is nominated to succeed Chief Justice Rehnquist? Scalia has an ethics problem, and Thomas is an "embarrassment"? Roundly acknowledge that Scalia is brilliant, but slur Thomas as someone who can't even put his written opinions together?? It is my observation that liberals tend to lapse into the lazy belief that those who don't agree with them must be stupid or evil, and to me Reid's remarks look a bit like that. But I realize the Senators can't get away with opposing a judicial nomination on the ground that they simply disagree with their opinions. They've got to say the person either has an ethical problem or isn't smart enough. I'm prepared to put up with the Democrats hashing through the duck hunting controversy if Scalia is nominated, but to attack Thomas's intelligence is shameless. Even now, Reid is signaling to the President not to choose Thomas. Reprehensible!

UPDATE: Calling attention to Reid's attack on Thomas are: CNN, Washington Post.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Stuart Buck comments on Reid's remarks and quotes lawprof Mark Tushnet as saying, "It's nearly impossible to find anyone who is dispassionate about Justice Thomas." I'm glad he said "nearly." Let me make it easy for people to find someone: I'm dispassionate about Justice Thomas!

Protesting the "racist dress code."

A few days ago, I wrote about a protest planned for this Friday aimed at bars with dress codes deemed "racist." The MSM news coverage is thin--as well it should be. Fortunately, Law and Alcoholism has a detailed account here.

UPDATE: The Badger Herald reports on the protest. And The Daily Cardinal also reports: "When asked about the success of the protests, [Racist Dress Code Coalition spokesperson Kate] Losey was optimistic. 'I think we pretty much shut down their business,' she said." Both of these student newspapers do their reporting by interviewing a leader of the protest. Compare that to the eyewitness blog entry linked above. The reports are totally different. Either their were 60 or so highly effective protesters or there were 6 or 7 highly ineffective protesters. Those damned blogs, ruining media clarity even at the student level!

ANOTHER UPDATE: Law and Alcoholism mocks the above-cited news coverage.

Is it a blog if you only post once a week?

The Becker-Posner blog has finally checked in, with a post from Judge Posner. He begins with an introductory statement about what blogs are and then: "Initially we will be posting just once a week, on Mondays."

Is it a blog if you only post once a week? Maybe the answer is if you're Nobel-prize-winning economist and a federal circuit judge it is. Posner notes:

The rules of judicial ethics preclude Posner from commenting publicly on pending or impending litigation or participating in politics, as by endorsing candidates.

What an impediment to blogging it is to be a federal judge!

Anyway, welcome to the biggest new bloggers in the blogosphere.

UPDATE: Conglomerate answers my "Is it a blog?" question, but not really all that differently from the way I answered it. I don't care all that much about policing the meaning of the word, but I do think there is a sort of pseudoblogging, especially by MSM, that is really just column-writing, relabeled. Here's an example of a Madison newspaper that has a button to hit for its "blogs," and all you get is a collection of weekly columns. Those are not blogs!

Why I can't watch Nancy Pelosi.

Nancy Pelosi is on Fox News Sunday this morning, and I'm just fast-forwarding through the whole thing. It's nothing she's saying. I'm not even going to wait to hear what she says. It's that crazily overlifted face. The eyebrows are halfway up the forehead, and the eyes are in the permanently over-opened position. (Is this the same face lift people were commenting on back in January, or has she had the facial flesh rolled up a few more notches?)

She looks perpetually surprised and startled. Just looking at her, I find myself raising my own eyebrows and opening my eyes too wide. How can a person who needs to be a good communicator subvert the expressive power of her own face? It's one thing to keep an impassive facial expression to avoid getting wrinkles, especially if you're only resisting frowning and scowling. But it's quite another to have your face surgically adjusted into what looks like a very emotional expression that never goes away. You can never get back to an expressionless face and you can never show a true emotion again. Whoever looks at you feels a sense of alarm, either because they are simply reacting to the expression they see on your face as if it were a real, human expression, or because they are horrified, thinking about what you actually did to get your face to look like that.


UPDATE: Sissy Willis agrees. You know, I don't have anything against plastic surgery per se. If people want to spend their money and go through all that pain and trouble, it's their business. My problem is with losing sight of what is good and bad, focusing on lines and sagginess, and not seeing the overall effect. This is probably the doctor's fault as much as the patient's. Lines and sagginess are objective facts, and the overall effect is more subjective. The doctor can say I removed the bags under your eyes and the hoods over them, didn't I? Wouldn't the patient have pointed to those specific things if he didn't? And if the overall effect is really weird and inhuman, the doctor can deny that. The patient may deny it too. I think it may be inherent in the nature of facial surgery that the work will focus on the objective flaws and not take enough account of the subjective look. I'm perfectly happy to have men and women make themselves more beautiful through surgery, but I'm afraid surgery will not only detract from beauty but will detract from the capacity to perceive beauty.

A genuine doodle.

Exactly what if feels like to listen to a moderately interesting speech:



UPDATE: This email amused me:

Gloriosky, you're channelling the chaps who carved the wall art in the ancient Incan or Mayan Temples!

Quick, tell us how the Egyptian pyramids were constructed before you fall out of this trance!

Things I don't want to pay for.

The NYT reports--on the front page--on a new weight loss drug:

With an analysis limited to those who stayed in the study, rimonabant resulted in an average weight loss of about 19 pounds, Dr. Pi-Sunyer said. In comparison, patients who received a placebo and who, like the rimonabant patients, were given a diet and consultations with a dietician, lost about 5 pounds in a year.

Patients hit plateaus after about 34 weeks, when their weight loss ceased. If they stopped taking the drug, they gained back all they had lost, but the hope is that if people continue taking the drug indefinitely, they can maintain that weight loss and gain health benefits, Dr. Pi-Sunyer said.

For 14 pounds, you'd take a drug for the rest of your life? And I suppose you'd want the government/insurance companies to pay for it? Because obesity is an illness, right?

"Weighted to the rabid right-wing blogs. "

They are complaining about the Weblog Awards over on Metafilter--mostly, it seems, because Fark is beating Metafilter in the "Best Online Community" category, but also more generally:

what's up with these awards? I've never heard of most of the sites, it must be heavily weighted towards the politcal blog spectrum, and then also weighted to the rabid right-wing blogs.

That does so little to help me understand how I got nominated for "Best Conservative Blog." (Remember, you can vote every 24 hours. And vote in my "help me understand" poll.)

Traveling to Libya.

The Sunday Times Travel Section has an article on Libya, and I was just blogging about traveling to Libya—not because I want to go there myself, but because Michael Totten just came back from Libya and had some nice pictures. Click on the slideshow at the NYT article. Here's a telling passage:

Back at the hotel, I bought some of the most amusing stamps I have seen anywhere, a set titled "American Aggression." … [T]hey featured not only the requisite defiant images of the Colonel but also a series, in blazing comic book colors, of enormous Libyan surface-to-air missiles annihilating fully armed American fighter jets.

I guess things are going relatively well if that can be experienced as amusing. And then there's this:

The Tuareg fancy themselves as desert swains. Encouraged by their reported success with European women, various members of our Tuareg posse regularly hit on the unmarried women in our group, flattering them at the same time they unintentionally insulted them, by explaining, in halting French, their preference for "large" women.

"I'm not that big!" complained one oft-approached woman, the investment banker from Seattle.

Come for the 140 degree heat, stay for the sexual harassment.

Way too early.

For no good enough reason I'm up at 3:30 a.m.—not up in the staying up late sense, up for the day. Ugh! But I look out into the dark and see the Sunday NYT is here, and that makes me happy. Making extra sure not to lock the door behind me, I run out and grab it. I pile up the sections in the order that seems right for today. I open the magazine to the puzzle page. I know it's not an acrostic week, so what is the second puzzle? Diagramless! Okay. My second favorite second puzzle format.

What the hell kind of a mansion does Althouse live in, anyway?

My property tax bill from the City of Madison just arrived. It's $11,926.89.

Help me understand my nomination.

I've been puzzling for two days over why I was nominated in the Best Conservative Blog category over at the 2004 Weblog Awards. As you may know, despite my puzzlement, I still encourage readers to go over there and vote for me. But before you go, help me understand the nomination by answering this poll:

Bob Dylan on "60 Minutes."

Reports are out on Bob Dylan's "60 Minutes" interview, which airs tomorrow. It sounds as though he pretty much says what he says in his book, which I've read (and blogged). Nevertheless, I've set the TiVo. It will be nice to see old Bob saying whatever the hell he wants to say.

UPDATE: Ralph the Sacred River explains Dylan's moustache. And let me add this: Dylan has never used the word "moustache" in a song, though he has twice used the word "beard" (including the "very weird" statement "I like Fidel Castro and his beard," chosen to provoke the farmer in "Motorpsycho Nightmare" into throwing him out of the house.)

ANOTHER UPDATE: If you spell "moustache" "mustache," however, you do get a very famous one:

Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial
Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while
But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues
You can tell by the way she smiles
See the primitive wallflower freeze
When the jelly-faced women all sneeze
Hear the one with the mustache say, "Jeeze
I can't find my knees"
Oh, jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule
But these visions of Johanna, they make it all seem so cruel

An emailer had to remind me. I should have remembered this one! I have actually blogged at length about these lines before. To that post I'd add that the presence of Mona Lisa and mustache in the same verse ought to remind us of the famous Marcel Duchamp artwork, especially since "mustache" halfway reappears right next to Mona Lisa in the form of the word "musta."

So which is the right spelling? According to the Columbia Guide to Standard American English, "mustache" is more common, but "moustache" is not entirely a British spelling. Anyway, looking up the spelling question, I ran across this, which is kind of funny.

There, now, have I made up for my earlier, woeful omission?

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: My comments on the actual show are here.

What's next for Oliver Stone?

Page Six has this:

OLIVER Stone plans to explore the possibility of an affair between former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President Ronald Reagan in his next movie. Stone has apparently always been enamored of Baroness Thatcher, now 79, and wants to cast Meryl Streep ...

I think it would be great fun to see Streep play Thatcher. I don't know about the affair part, and I can't say I trust Oliver Stone to do anything right at this point, but Stone might actually do better portraying people whose politics he deplores. I remember the Nixon movie being fairly good and suprisingly sympathetic to Nixon.

If the cost is the same, does flavored or unflavored matter?

It matters a lot to some people when the state hands out free condoms:

Providing [flavored] condoms actually promotes sexual activity, said Julaine Appling, executive director of the Family Research Institute of Wisconsin.

The government "isn't even subtly saying, 'You're going to do this anyway, so you're going to be safe,' they're promoting it," Appling said. "When they came out with flavored condoms, (it says sex) is another form of recreation."

It's hard to picture the person who would decide whether or not to have sex based on whether the condom is flavored, but Appling's point is that the state, by choosing flavored condoms implicitly says sex is fun and thus promotes it. Obviously, though, the state's real intention is to make condom use seem fun, but there is no way to neatly contain the effect of the message. Interestingly, it's federal money that pays for these condoms, but the states are allowed to choose the type they want. Such are the benefits of federalism: the various states can make decisions that suit the preferences and tastes of their own citizens.

My eyesight and a doodle scrap.

Sometimes I get so involved in staring at the computer screen all day without taking a break that my eyes hurt and I can't see well the next day. Part of it is a failure to blink often enough -- as if I just don't want to take the time. Few people in this world have worn hard contact lenses as long as I have (since 1964), and I'm just conditioned not to pay any attention to eye irritation. But that last post is irritating the hell out of me, that Reznor 90s-font-nostalgia GIF. Remember when that hard-to-see fontage was everywhere? Remember Might magazine?

I'm sure there are great 90s graphic design nostalgia sites out there. Send me a link if you know of one.

Meanwhile, this is the last weekend of the semester, a good time to get some exam writing done. So today's doodle comes in the form of a scribbled post it, part of a scrambled corner of my office desk:

Trent Reznor, languishing in doom.

I wanted to go over and check Nina's blog, so I use the low-tech method I usually use, which is to type in the first few letters of her URL. "NI" is enough to make Safari fill in the rest, but I'm overeager and I type "NIN." I find myself magically transported to the Nine Inch Nails website, and I'm curious enough to wonder what Trent Reznor is up to. (Despite my advanced age, I have been to a Nine Inch Nails concert -- and loved it!) I click on current and the most current entry is November 4th:



I was going to say: Good God, man, you're almost 40. Get it together! But then I thought. What does it matter? Reznor is languishing in doom. Isn't that his source of artistry and inspiration?

UPDATE: Actually, Doom doesn't want Trent Reznor!

Trent Reznor has spoken on the official NIN website about Doom 3 [and] the reasons why his work did not make it into the game...

New frontiers of pleasure.

James Wolcott enjoys his colonoscopy:

I had a colonoscopy yesterday, an experience I highly recommend to anyone and everyone who should be tested. The Demerol drip alone was worth the price of admission. As the room began to float and time melted around the edges, I regretted even more keenly never having visited an opium den.

Actually, I think if you do find yourself in a medical situation where drugs of this sort are involved, you may do well to go into the frame of mind where you enjoy them. I know what a Demerol drip is like from having a C-section. I kept drifting in and out of a dreamworld, sometimes while holding the baby. I struggled constantly to get my grip back on reality, my reality at the time being something that, unlike a colonscopy, I wanted to participate in. Nevertheless, I also could tell how pleasant a place Demerol-world might be to visit (if you don't mind losing yourself).

That reminds me of this, which I read earlier today:

Dr. Mary Holley, an obstetrician who runs a Mothers Against Methamphetamine ministry in Albertville, Ala., and has interviewed men and women addicted to meth, said sex is the No. 1 reason people use it.

"The effect of an IV hit of methamphetamine is the equivalent of 10 orgasms all on top of each other lasting for 30 minutes to an hour, with a feeling of arousal that lasts for another day and a half," she said.

If that sounds great (as opposed to, say, painful and horrific), consider the consequences:

"After you have been using it about six months or so you can't have sex unless you are high," Holley said. "After you have been using it a little bit longer you can't have sex even when you're high. Nothing happens. It doesn't work."

Well, naturally. The brain is a regulator. If you overstimulate your senses, your brain thinks it is helping you out by resetting normal at that higher level. Now if you go back to the mere stimulation of ordinary life, it's going to feel agonizingly deficient.

In search of the Christmas spirit on State Street.

State Street Brats is decorating with inflatables this year. In this first picture, you see that the Statue of Liberty is still there, serving as a beacon to bratdom, but three sledding snowmen have been added:



At this end of the outdoor seating area, the usual Bucky has been replaced by a candy-cane wielding snowman:



Most of the holiday imagery is not at all religious. The emphasis is on greenery and lights. Many stores sell tree ornaments that are little bears wearing Wisconsin sweaters. But if you're looking for something sacred on State Street, there is always the Sacred Feather, a hat store. A hat makes a nice present. You can go buy a hat and make a contribution to the Salvation Army on your way in.



And there is also the New Age place, which has this sign in its holiday window:



Well, you can think about that. Or you can think about the question that occurred to me as I was putting up these pictures: why would a snowman wear mittens? Seems quite dangerous, actually.

"Best Conservative Blog" update.

I'm keeping my eye on this "Best Conservative Blog" vote, where I'm currently running in 5th place (out of 15). Just after me is Right Wing News, which, judging from its name, is way more into the enterprise of being conservative. Nevertheless, I encourage readers to vote for me. It's not an award for "Most Conservative Blog," and it's my only category. Somehow I missed out on "Best New Blog."

I'm not trying to promote conservative ideology, just saying what I think from my outpost in Madison, Wisconsin. Whether I deserve extra credit for managing to be at all conservative in Madison is a harder question than you might think. I might be naturally contrarian. Anyway, Madison is a great source of blogging material for me. It's been an inspiration.

I will say this too, something I've been meaning to write for a long time. In blogging, I have repeatedly noticed the tendency toward inclusion from the right and exclusion from the left. That is, people to the right of me tend to notice the points of agreement and respond in a very positive way, overlooking or tolerating the points of disagreement. People to my left tend to notice any points of disagreement and react negatively, which I find quite boring and unattractive. Of course, it is also a terrible political strategy.

UPDATE: Note that you're allowed to vote once a day. You have to wait 24 hours before revoting. So go ahead and vote every day. That's the way it's done.

Q-School.

I'm anxiously watching the Q-School leaderboard this weekend, as my nephew Cliff Kresge struggles to keep his status on the PGA tour. The first two rounds did not go so well. Today is the third round, out of a total of six harrowing rounds. The top 30 will make it onto the tour.

"This is a great victory of all people who have been standing at the square, a great victory for Ukrainian democracy."

The NYT reports on the court's decision here.

Puffery and bathos on NBC.

NYT TV critic Alessandra Staley writes with disdain about the Tom Brokow sign off on NBC:

However sad it was to see Mr. Brokaw leave on Wednesday night, it was sadder to watch NBC milk the transition for every drop of bathos and promotional padding. On "Today" and a special "Dateline" this week, the changing of the NBC news anchor was pumped up like the finale of "Friends." Mr. Williams's ascension was festooned with all the hoopla of a White House wedding - or funeral. One spot shown last evening on WNBC cameoed Mr. Williams's profile, solemn and bowed, against a backdrop of Nancy Reagan mourning over her husband's coffin.

I think NBC is desperate to retain its viewers, but letting your desperation show is usually a bad strategy.

I love when Staley punctures pomposity, but don't always agree with her, like here:

Mr. Williams was quick-witted and very funny on "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" on Tuesday night, making self-deprecating jokes and gracefully tacking around his host's more barbed questions.

No, no. "Mr. Williams" was corny and show-offy as he trotted out scripted material. I had to look away out of embarrassment for him.

By the way, I couldn't care less about losing Brokow and gaining Williams. I don't watch any of the nightly network news shows, and I could easily TiVo them and watch them at my leisure. I dislike the hammy tone of the presentation. I'd rather read the news or just catch up with the news on one of the cable news networks.

Compensation.

The Badger Herald reports:

Wrongfully incarcerated for 18 years, Steven Avery received $25,000 in compensation from the Wisconsin Claims Board Thursday....

DNA evidence successfully exonerated Avery from the rape conviction in 2003. By the time he was released, his wife had divorced him and two of his children — twin daughters less than a week old at the time of his imprisonment — had turned 18 years old.

Why only $25,000?

The $25,000 in damages was the maximum the board could award Avery under state law, according to Mike Prentiss, spokesman for board member Sen. Scott Fitzgerald. In ignoring the $1 million request, the board referred the case to the state legislature, which would have to change a state statute to allow for greater damages.

The legal work was done by law professors and students in Wisconsin Innocence Project here at the University of Wisconsin Law School.

UW law professor Keith Findley, one of the Innocence Project’s co-directors, said it is obvious a change must be made to allow those wrongfully convicted to claim more in damages.

It is obvious that the compensation cap is far too low. I don't think it's right, however, to say that someone was "wrongfully convicted," as the student reporter wrote, if he received a fair trial. If the DNA test that powerfully refutes other evidence was not available at the time and the evidence as weighed at the time of the trial was sufficient, the conviction itself isn't wrongful. Nevertheless, the man suffered terribly and the state ought to choose to give him far more than $25,000 -- not from a sense of culpability, but out of compassion.

UPDATE: As an emailer pointed out, Avery recently filed a lawsuit against Manitowoc County, seeking $36 million in damages. You can see in this linked article that the man was convicted based on the eyewitness testimony of the victim. I'm not a legal expert in this area, but it seems to me that the testimony of a rape victim is sufficient to convict a person, even when there are many alibi witnesses. The factfinder would have to weigh the credibility of the witnesses. A credible eyewitness could still make a mistake, unfortunately. We know from the DNA tests, which became available later, that the man was innocent, but his conviction is not necessarily wrongful. There's still a question whether failing to perform the DNA test and detect his innocence earlier was wrongful.

Doodle of the day.

A surrealistic still life discovered two days ago while idly wandering with the penpoint on my notepad and listening to a talk.

Christmas at the State Capitol.

Here is the beautiful state Capitol building in Madison, Wisconsin. The statue in front represents our state motto, "Forward." Note the wreaths along the balcony:



In the rotunda, there is a Christmas tree, called a "holiday tree" for official purposes. There will be a ceremony tomorrow at 11:45 am to turn on the lights.



You can walk up to the mezzanine level and see the top of the tree extending above the railing:



At this level you will also find a full-sized replica of the Liberty Bell:



You'll also find the Wisconsin Constitution (which begins "We, the people of Wisconsin, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom..."):



And you'll also find this large sign. The fine print says "Freedom from Religion Foundation."



UPDATE: I'm sure readers can come up with their own commentary on that sign in the last photograph, but let me add my comment nonetheless. That sign represents a concession to the Freedom from Religion Foundation, which is very critical of the tree. But the sign is extremely disrespectful to religious people and should be considered offensive not only by those who are religious but also by anyone who cares about treating other people with respect and about preserving a civil, pluralistic society. The sign can't properly be defended as a way to balance the tree, because the tree is not an expression of hostility to non-Christians. It is a festive, lovely object associated with the Christian holiday. I haven't looked closely at the ornaments, but I don't think they express hostility to atheists. If atheists want equal treatment, they might celebrate secularism or reason or nature, which the sign does up to a point. But about halfway through, it switches to outright nastiness. We wouldn't accept balancing a menorah with a swastika. Even atheists should object strenuously to this sign. The sign aligns atheism with reason, but what is reasonable about antagonizing the rest of the community? Reason demands that you align yourself with the facts, and the assertion that religion only "hardens hearts and enslaves minds" is clearly false.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Armchair Philosopher has some thoughts on the sign, which, along with some email I've received, has made me think more about the way that sign is phrased. It is phrased as a creed, an assertion of faith -- of all things. The first sentence, in its use of "may," reads like a prayer. And why mention the solstice unless you have some mystic tie to paganism?

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Sissy Willis comments on the sign. In case you, like Willis, are not familiar with the Freedom From Religion Foundation, here's its website. You may not be too suprised to learn it is based in Madison. Here is its own explanation of the sign:

This is the ninth year the national freethought association's sign has been placed in the Capitol. The Foundation seeks to balance the yearly nativity pageant which takes over the Capitol, the many Christmas activities, a menorah with a religious sign and other displays of religion at the Wisconsin State Capitol.

"The nonreligious are 14% of the U.S. population," according to Annie Laurie Gaylor, Foundation co-president. "If religious activities are going to take place in the Capitol, then there should be representation of the views of Wisconsin's nonreligious citizens as well.

"Our sign reminds citizens of the real reason for the season, the impending Winter Solstice (Dec. 21), the shortest and darkest day of the year, which signals the return of the sun. The Winter Solstice has been celebrated for a millennia in the Northern Hemisphere by festivals of light, decorations of evergreens, gift exchanges, parties and feasts.

"Freethinkers don't mind sharing the season with Christians, but we think the natural origins of many of the customs of this time of year should be acknowledged."

Note the presumptuousness of saying that the 14% of citizens who are not religious would feel represented by an anti-religion sign. And the sign does not does not even begin to try to educate people about the pre-Christian cultures who originated many of the customs that have become part of the Christmas celebration. In fact, if you're going to acknowledge that the lit-up tree represents the widespread human search for ways to raise the spirits in the darkest month of the year, why let the tree bother you at all?

Did I violate the Establishment Clause by putting the Christmas cases before the Christmas break? I mean, the winter break.

In my "Religion and the Constitution" class, I deliberately put Lynch v. Donelly and Allegheny v. ACLU last because they deal with Christmas decorations on public property. Lynch and Allegheny both involve creches (only one of which is held to violate the Establishment Clause), and Allegheny also involves a Christmas tree/Menorah combination (which is held not to violate the Establishment Clause). It seemed fitting to end the course that way. But why did it seem fitting? I wonder how many times in the long semester of talking about religion I said something that could be characterized as a violation of the Establishment Clause. Proposed exam question: if you had to argue that one thing about this course violated the Establishment Clause, what would it be? [Note to classmembers: that's not really the exam question!]

It's the lunch hour here, and I look out the window and see the first snowflakes of the season. Snowflakes are the theme used for the lamppost decorations on State Street. How thoroughly devoid of religious imagery can you get for your "winter holiday" theme? Maybe I'll go out and take a walk up to the Capitol Building, where there is a Christmas tree, which we officially call a "holiday tree." Tomorrow, a lighting ceremony takes place, but I'm going to assume the tree is up and in a condition to be photographed.

ADDED: A picture of the lamppost snowflake:

"End the Racist Dress Code."

That's chalked on the sidewalk outside the law school here in Madison. Two local bars are named. What could be the problem? The Badger Herald reports:

The dress codes in question at Brothers’, Johnny O’s and Madison Avenue ban such clothing items as sports jerseys, athletic wear and bandanas. Brothers’ also bans sleeveless t-shirts, hats not facing forwards or backwards, wave caps and headbands.

In an interview, Jon Okonek, owner of both Johnny O’s and Madison Avenue, denied any ties between the dress codes he puts in place and racism.

“How can you be racist against an article of clothing? We turn away 100 white people to every one African-American person,” Okonek said.

Okonek also said that the dress code his venues enforce encourages patrons to be on their best behavior. He said patrons who abide by the dress code “behave better and respect the place more.”Students at the meeting see the dress codes at Brothers’, Johnny O’s and Madison Avenue as racist, specifically discriminating against African-Americans.

The students have planned a picket at the two bars for tomorrow:

At their picket Friday night, the students plan to hand out fliers with information about their cause. Their goal is to convince patrons of the bars to go somewhere else for the night, specifically somewhere that does not have “racist” dress codes.

UPDATE: I don't go to these bars, and maybe some Madisonians who do can email me and correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that one reason a bar owner might want to impose a dress code is to make the place more appealing to women and get a better balance of the sexes.

"Best Conservative Blog."

So this blog is nominated for "Best Conservative Blog" in the 2004 Weblog Awards? This will do wonders for my reputation in Madison, Wisconsin. As long as I'm nominated, though, I'd be happy to win, so don't hesitate to vote for me.

Does a boy gymnast have a right to compete on the girls' team if a school only has a girls' gymnastics team?

Here in Wisconsin, the boy was barred:

"I just want to be able to compete and do gymnastics," the Stevens Point Area Senior High junior said. "I never really looked at it as having an advantage over girls."

The school's athletic director, Mike Devine, says the issue is simple: The state's sanctioning body for high school sports, the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association, does not allow boys to compete in girls sports.

"As a member school, we have to enforce their rules," Devine said Wednesday. "And we're not going to put the team at jeopardy. They would have to forfeit meets because he would be considered an ineligible player."

Unfortunately, the boys' events are also different from the girls' events, so it is hard to understand how this would work. Wouldn't the girls events -- especially uneven parallel bars -- be dangerous for a boy? The boy does practice with the girls' team and competes in YMCA events. The Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association doesn't have boys' gymnastics competitions because not enough boys are interested.

Drawing of the day.

I'll go with the tough woman image today. Note the double eyes.

Women as news anchors.

Maureen Dowd comments on the lack of female news anchors.

I know that women have surpassed men, in many respects, by embracing their femininity and frivolity. Katie Couric and Diane Sawyer, who mix news with dish, cooking and fashion in the morning, are the real breadwinners of their news divisions, generating more ratings and revenue than the cookie-cutter men of the night.

Yet, as Mr. Ailes says, "network anchoring is still Mount Olympus." I checked around for feminist outrage, but couldn't find any. Women told me the nightly news was an anachronism, so why shouldn't the anchor be? "Caring about having a woman in the showcase or figurehead role seems so 80's," one said.

Ailes's isolated quotes in this column make him sound like a jerk. (But how can a blogger complain about isolated quotes?) But it may be true that not enough people care about the mere gesture of giving the slot to a woman. People have to also want to watch the show, and they need to get the right woman or that won't work.

I can't imagine watching Katie Couric or Diane Sawyer as a nightly news anchor. These women have cultivated an appalling image. I rarely stop by those network morning shows. (If I watch morning news I flip around among the cable news stations. I'd rather have grizzled, old Don Imus on than those horrible network shows.) Both Couric and Sawyer appear insane to me. Couric with her giant Joker smile and Sawyer with her murmuring smarminess. I don't think they are insane. I think they have crafted a demeanor that reflects an opinion of the audience, which is: women are soft in the head. I see nothing feminist in wanting either of them as a nightly news anchor.

Elsewhere in today's Times is this story about Court TV anchor Nancy Grace.

Nancy Grace, the delightfully irascible star of Court TV, is never short on opinions - fiery, unabashedly blunt opinions. Ask her about defense attorneys, and she'll offer the following: "Their job is not to seek the truth; their job is to get clients off."

She's developed a great female style: beautiful, tough, sarcastic, passionate. Has anyone on TV ever sneered so well? You want a fashion tip from Nancy?

"I put everything in my bra - money, pen, paper," Ms. Grace shared in forthright way. "Never carry anything. I learned that from being a prosecutor walking through housing projects to find witnesses."

The Wheels on the Magic Bus.

Roger Daltrey, who has 10 grandchildren, is doing a children's video: "The Wheels on the Bus." And the Who are working on a new album, which just means Daltrey and Pete Townshend are working together, the other two being dead now.

I was a big Who fan in the pre-Tommy period. I was actually a member of the Who fan club before their first album was released in the United States, strictly on the basis of "I Can't Explain" (and maybe "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere"). I never cared much for the 1970s supergroup and all the over-touted reunions of the later years.

You are now entering the awards season.

The minor film awards are starting to come out. For example, the British film awards:

The London ceremony was attended by a raft of stars, including Christian Slater, Kelly Brook, Billy Zane and Gillian Anderson.

Is that the raft floating downstream toward oblivion?

The National Board of Review awards also came out:

"Finding Neverland," a fictionalized account of the creation of children's classic "Peter Pan," was named best film of 2004 by The National Board of Review on Wednesday in the first major award of the Oscar season....

"Finding Neverland" director Marc Forster, who was shopping in a supermarket store when he heard news of the award, said his film offered an optimistic tale of mortality and growing up.

"We live in very dark times right now," he said.

I guess he's working on the draft of his anti-Bush Oscar acceptance speech.

Hey, he got press.

And you just helped him. But isn't that art? I mean in the pop art/performance art way.

"How are you going to respect movies?"

I've already blogged about the real extra we're looking forward to seeing on the "Alexander" DVD, but there's also this, from Video Store Magazine:

The possibilities for disc extras are plentiful, from a reality-vs.-Hollywood study of the three-hour film and a look at the luxurious costumes to Greek mythology features and a behind-the-scenes documentary shot by Stone’s 19-year-old son, Sean.

While excited about the DVD future of Alexander, Stone isn’t entirely enthusiastic about the format itself. In fact, he thinks DVDs will destroy today’s cinematic experience.

“It’s the end of movie-movies the way we know them,” he said during a Los Angeles press event for the film. “It’s like mail-order sex, Internet sex. It’s an easier way to access the person. It’s not good for us.”

The DVD format cheapens movies, he added.

“If you walk into a room with 5,000 DVDs, how are you going to respect movies? How do you know the good ones?,” Stone asked. “It’s going to the LCD — the lowest common denominator. It’s making movies into supermarket-shelf items, which is probably the best you can get at Wal-Mart. … It’s hopeless.”

Yes, it really is terrible when people aren't limited to the crap that happens to be playing at the theaters in their town. If you know you can watch any of thousands of movies, "how are you going to respect movies?" Well, maybe if Stone tried making a movie that isn't atrociously bad.

And how about showing a little respect for your audience? Is there any reason at all to bring up Wal-Mart, other than to accuse the audience of lacking any discernment, tossing DVDs into the shopping cart along with the toilet paper? Stone wants people to be limited to what's in the theater so he can impose his film on them. He was planning to rely on their lack of discernment, wasn't he?

UPDATE: Stone recently invoked Wal-Mart to express his contempt for President Bush:

“He’s worse than Nixon in his vulgarity. He looks like he shops at Wal-Mart. That’s not what the president is supposed to be. He has no intellectual curiosity and is proud of it.”

Blawgging, conlaw.

Here's Ambivalent Imbroglio's piece from the Student Lawyer magazine talking to law students about reading and writing blogs. I'm quoted in there. So is Prof. Yin, whose post led me to the article.

Going to Ambivalent Imbroglio's website to get the link made me see this post of his:

You know you’re a professor of Constitutional law when you tell jokes and then have to explain ... them and then you still have to tell your listeners you’re joking.

Then he tells an anecdote in which the lawprof's original joke included the fact that he was describing a cartoon.

The thing about conlaw is that it's actually strange enough that if you say something as a joke, the students are prepared to believe that really might be part of the law.

A new distinction.

To each his own!

The hallucinogenic tea case.

The U.S. is seeking Supreme Court review of a Tenth Circuit case that relied on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to bar the federal government from enforcing drug laws against Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal. The drug in question is "hoasca tea," a hallucinogenic.

"Compliance with the injunction would force the United States to go into violation of an international treaty designed to prevent drug trafficking worldwide, which could have both short- and long-term foreign relations costs and could impair the policing of transnational drug trafficking involving the most dangerous controlled substances," acting Solicitor General Paul Clement wrote in a court filing.

Here's Prof. Marci Hamilton's excellent analysis of the legal issues in the case, including why there is no claim under the constitutional Free Exercise clause and how the Court of Appeals could rely on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act after City of Boerne v. Flores (which held that Congress's Fourteenth Amendment power did not support the act). Hamilton, you should note, is a strong advocate for the government's side of the argument.

UPDATE: The United States has won a stay:

Justice Stephen Breyer, acting on behalf of the full court, granted a temporary stay to give both sides time to file more arguments with the court.

Property taxes in Madison.

So what kind of property taxes do you pay? Here in Madison, the tax on the average house, worth $205,359, is $4,458.

News about "Alexander."

1. Those Greeks who were suing to vindicate Alexander's sexual reputation are calling it off until they get a chance to see the film. Critics caution against it.

2. Angelina Jolie reflects on her performance as Alexander's mother:

"I connected to her as a mother. I don't think I could have played her if I wasn't a mother... As a mother, I truly understand that you will do anything to protect your child. Yes, she is a dark, wicked person, but as an actress, you have to make the audience believe that her motives were pure. She always put her son first."

Judging from this article, motherhood has totally undermined the once-great entertainment value of Jolie's private life. Oh, well.

3. Here's quite a sentence from Anthony Lane's review in The New Yorker:

Farrell comes across here as twitchy, straw-haired, and buzzing with sexual mystification, as if he had researched the life of Anne Heche by mistake, and he seems bewildered by the film’s demands, uncertain whether to opt for a stiff-backed action man—an unironic legend, the sort of role that nobody has been able to master since Charlton Heston retired—or a tortured, more modern spirit, his taste for love dulled by his addiction to fame

4. The bogus homophobia angle appears in the Philippines press:

Would a big sector of our society raise hell about the film if it did not present without doubt the sexual and love choices of Alexander, the man? Look at all the tirades, they all point to things like the shaved legs of Farrell, his blonde locks and how they are wrongly dyed. One smells here the ether of homophobia rather than the essence of good taste.

Is anyone raising hell? I'm sure Stone dearly wishes hell had been raised.

5. Colin Farrell raises some hopes about the DVD version:

“I have no problem showing my ****,” says Farrell. “In fact, I did go naked in A Home at the End of the World, but they cut it out. During test audience screenings, they were advised it was too distracting. I don't know. I see my **** every day and am not distracted. But, hey, who knows? Maybe you'll get to see it in the uncut DVD version.”

A deserted city.

Don't miss Michael Totten's great pictures from Libya (via Instapundit). I was entranced by the pictures of the deserted city of Ghadames, especially the beautiful traditional Ghadames house. Googling to find out something more about Ghadames, which I had never heard of, I learned that the name means "yesterday's lunch." I see that this is referred to as "cake and icing architecture." Here's another picture of the interior of a traditional house. Here's a collection of Ghadames pictures. Here's another. Fascinating!

For those who eat Haagen Dazs by the pint.

A great gift idea. This puts the idea of taking my lunch to work in a whole new light.

A drawing for today.

I would have gotten started blogging late today anyway, because I overslept, but not this late. I'm starting this late because Blogger has been down all morning. I wasn't going to go with this drawing today, because it was not my mood when I started trying to post today, but it's a good time to use this one, which is, I know, the kind of drawing that makes people say, I'm worried about Althouse. This drawing also seems to say something about Jeremy's dying weblog, which I talk about in the previous post.

Jeremy writes a Dear Blog letter.

Jeremy Freese says he's "just not that into" it, but I think there is more going on in this relationship than he's letting us know. Let me repeat here what I wrote over there in the comments section:

Jeremy is going to break up with his blog because not enough people have posted comments. But if all of you post a comment here to show that you do love Jeremy's relationship with his blog, maybe they won't break up. ... This isn't enough enough. You didn't comment hard enough. Jeremy's relationship with his blog is dead. [Audience weeps.]

Jeremy was the inspiration for all us Wisconsin profbloggers. He set the tone and invented a style, which we played off of. So please, people, clap if you believe in Jeremy Freese's Weblog.

Analogizing law schools to the Boy Scouts.

As I noted yesterday, the Third Circuit relied on Boy Scouts v. Dale as it barred the enforcement of the Solomon Amendment. (The Solomon Amendment withholds funding from universities that don't give military recruiters the same access to campus facilities given to other recruiters.) It was ironic that a precedent that recognized a right of association permitting discrimination against gay persons provided the basis for saying that law schools had a right of association permitting them to exclude an employer that discriminated against gay persons. I've been reading the Third Circuit's long opinion today, trying to see how plausible the analogy really is. The court characterizes law schools as "expressive associations," then determines that the Solomon Amendment significantly affects the law schools' expression. The court writes -- there a link to the case here -- analogizing law schools' self-expression to the Boy Scouts:

Just as the Boy Scouts believed that "homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the Scout Oath," the law schools believe that employment discrimination is inconsistent with their commitment to justice and fairness. Just as the Boy Scouts maintained that "homosexuals do not provide a role model consistent with the expectations of Scouting families," id., the law schools maintain that military recruiters engaging in exclusionary hiring "do not provide a role model consistent with the expectations of," id., their students and the legal community. Just as the Boy Scouts endeavored to "inculcate [youth] with the Boy Scouts' values--both expressively and by example," the law schools endeavor to "inculcate" their students with their chosen values by expression and example in the promulgation and enforcement of their nondiscrimination policies. And just as "Dale's presence in the Boy Scouts would, at the very least, force the organization to send a message, both to youth members and the world, that the Boy Scouts accepts homosexual conduct as a legitimate form of behavior," the presence of military recruiters "would, at the very least, force the law schools to send a message," both to students and the legal community, that the law schools "accept" employment discrimination "as a legitimate form of behavior."

What concerns me about this analogy is the idea that "law schools endeavor to 'inculcate' their students with their chosen values." The Boy Scouts have decided to commit to a particular moral code and devote themselves to instilling it. Do law schools do the same thing? Aren't we devoted to empowering students by teaching legal skills and to fostering the expression of a diverse array of viewpoints with respect to issues that are subject to reasonable, professional debate? The law schools argue that they express themselves through modeling nondiscriminatory values. Having to accept a discriminatory recruiter on an equal basis with other recruiters, they say, interferes with their expression. That seems to me to go beyond Dale. The law school isn't chosing who will speak for them, while the Boy Scouts were choosing who will hold their leadership positions. We don't perceive the recruiters as speaking for the law school. That doesn't mean I think the law schools shouldn't win this one, but I do think there are some key differences from Dale.

Whatever happened to all the Madison photographs?

I haven't posted any Madison photographs in a long time. Not since that peace rally. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's the winter light: it's all glare or shadow and it's gone altogether in the late afternoon. Maybe it's that not much is going on out there now that it's colder. But it isn't all that cold. You still see guys in shorts and women in sandals. (Oh, it's in the 30s, so don't think I'm saying it's quite warm. It's just that people have a different attitude toward cold and clothing around here. We're pretty tough and we relish our freedom from bulky outerwear.) Maybe I'm just more likely to stay in if it's not genuinely warm. But let me get out today, camera in hand, and see what's going on. I'll at least get a walk.

UPDATE: Did you go for a walk? Yes. Did you see any guys in shorts? Yes, one. And the temperature is? 30 degrees. Anything photographable? I was about to come back and say no, but I paused on the Park Street bridge to take in the bleak scene and had a slight feeling that I was looking at something. This is, in any case, exactly what Madison is like today. If these vague clouds decide not to precipitate, we will have completed the month of November without snow.

No, no, not streetcars!

The Wisconsin State Journal reports on the continuing effort to impose streetcars on the city of Madison.

Mayor Dave Cieslewicz wants to press ahead with his idea for city streetcars regardless of other regional rail proposals.

Cieslewicz announced his plan to create a separate City Streetcar Committee at Monday night's Transport 2020 Implementation Task Force meeting.

Cieslewicz said he plans to present this new committee as a resolution at the Dec. 14 City Council meeting. Cieslewicz, who favors a plan to run electric streetcars Downtown, led a delegation of community leaders and developers to Portland, Ore., to study a trolley system earlier this year.

An emailer, who flagged this article, writes:

I am fascinated that no one brings up the fact that the cities that our city fathers & mothers are emulating all have much larger populations, very different demographics, and much longer commute times than Madison. And it is population, demographics and commute times which determine the market for light rail or trolleys. If someone can show me a similarly sized city to Madison that has a successful light rail/trolley system I might be convinced; but to the best of my research there is none. Chicago has about 3 million people. Portland has 1.7 million people. San Diego has 1.25 million. And, having lived in both areas, I can tell you that the commute from Middleton to downtown Madison IS NOTHING like the commute from San Ysidro to downtown San Diego. I am not hearing many people complain about the "grueling" 15 minute slow down on the beltline so where is the popular mandate for all this talk about light rail or trolleys? As an obviously enlighted conservative maybe you can explain to me what I am missing here.

You're missing this (to go back to the WSJ article):

The city has secured $300,000 from the federal government that will go toward a streetcar study, Cieslewicz said.

The feds are willing to pay for this particular boondoggle. And note that the main dispute within the city government is about the possible conflict with a separate commuter rail plan for the city (which also taps federal money).

"We need to have one vision about how we deal with transportation, and it needs to be regional," said County Board Sup. Scott McDonell, co- chairman of Transport 2020....

"I do think this is the wrong direction," said Michael Blaska, Transport 2020 committee member and former County Board member. "I always thought the problem was regional. It seems like that's where our priority ought to be. I really don't think that our community is large enough to support two systems."

McDonell said Transport 2020's next step is to figure out a process for dealing with the different ideas for commuter rail and streetcars and how they fit together.

There is $1 million in federal money for the commuter rail and $300,000 for the streetcars. I guess that ought to cover it. What's to worry about? Let's play with trains, trains, trains.

Is there anything wrong with selling a 1,420 calorie hamburger?

I say no. Hardee's is getting a lot of attention for its "Monster Thickburger." But the fact is that fancier places that sell hamburgers regularly sell things like this. All Hardee's is doing is selling something for much less.

I bought the DVD of "Super Size Me" a while back, and like the filmmaker trying to eat his super sized meal, I'm having trouble getting through it. Why? Well, partly because I'm exasperated listening to the soundtrack of a man chewing, which is disgusting, whatever he's eating. But what irks me more is the attempt to say something about real life by forcing yourself to eat what you don't even want and to eat a big McDonald's meal three times a day every day.

How about a little consideration for the many people who work hard all day, without eating much, and want to have a big, satisfying dinner without paying much? 1,420 calories is not that unreasonable for an adult man who is having his main meal of the day.

"The company got the idea from mothers just storing umbilical cords and navels in an album or what-not."

Yeah, what not.

Desperate film ad.

A two inch square on page B4 of today's NY: "Christian Bale Lost 63 pounds" and then some almost invisible writing ("It's one of the reasons the film works so well"), the name of the film, the fact that it's now playing, and a grungy little photo of said emaciated actor. The things one has to do to get attention.

Another last-week-of-law-school drawing.

Another drawing from the margin of my 1981 Federal Courts classnotes.



Law people may detect that the topic is habeas corpus -- FvN is Fay v. Noia -- a subject usually placed at the end of the fedcourts course. That placement seems to symbolize habeas as the last hope. The Supreme Court took certiorari in a significant habeas case yesterday, as Lyle Denniston reports over on SCOTUSblog:

The time period prison inmates have to file challenges in federal court to their convictions and sentences might be considerably longer than the one year set by Congress, depending upon how the Supreme Court decides the one case it agreed on Monday to hear, Dodd v. U.S. (docket 04-5286). The case, coming from the 11th Circuit, tests when that one-year deadline starts to run, under the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996.

Under AEDPA, Congress set the requirements federal and state prisoners must meet if they want to try to take advantage, through a federal habeas challenge, of a constitutional right that has been newly recognized by the Supreme Court. Among the provisions of AEDPA is a one-year limit on the time such habeas petitions may be filed in federal court. Congress, however, apparently did not speak plainly enough in saying when that period starts to run, because the circuit courts are split on that question. The Supreme Court agreed to rule on the Dodd case to clear up that conflict.

The law specifies that the period runs from the date on which the Supreme Court “initially recognized” a new right. But it goes on to say that the right must have been made “retroactively applicable to cases” that are still pending in post-conviction court proceedings. The question before the Court is whether that second provision is a separate factor in calculating the time period.

In the case of Michael Donald Dodd, who was identified by prosecutors as a leader of a large Jamaican drug gang in New York City called the “Sprangler Posse,” the 11th Circuit ruled that the one-year period starts to run as soon as the Supreme Court has issued a ruling setting up a new right. The time, it said, is not extended until the point at which a court decides to apply the new right to cases still pending – an extension that could run a year or longer after the Supreme Court’s initial decision. The Circuit commented: “It would not be logical for Congress to have enacted a strict one-year limitation and then qualified that time by reference to ambiguous events,” such as a later ruling on making the right retroactive. The clause specifying retroactivity, the Circuit added, “qualifies the right asserted – not the time limit.”

That view, cutting off habeas challenges at an earlier point, is shared by the Second, Fifth and Eighth Circuits, but conflicts with the views of four other circuits – the Third, Sixth, Seventh and Ninth. Those four have ruled that, unless a court has declared that a new decision applies to already pending cases, the filing window has not yet opened. That approach can considerably lengthen the one-year span.

Just deal with it.

You've got to learn how to behave in airports.

"I said if it's that big a deal, just keep it," he said. "But then the screener gets really officious with me. He's taking everything out and looking at it, and then they're calling my flight, which inexplicably they call 30 minutes early. I kept saying, 'Look, I got to get going.' I look toward the gate."

"The screener says: 'You cannot look away from me. You have to have your eyes on me at all times,' " Mr. Stevens said. "Every time I would turn, this guy would stop and say, 'Do not look away!' I said, 'O.K., I'm sorry. Please just get me out of here.' "

That only brought over reinforcements. "Then a big fat guy who was sitting there eating comes over and says, 'If he does that again, we're going to throw him out of here.'"

"Every time I tried to reason with them they got nastier and nastier..."

I say deal with it. The man who tells this story was trying to get on a plane with two bottles of carpet cleaner in his carry-on bag! It's irrelevant that he was bringing home his wife's favorite cleaning product. I want the screeners to take account of a person's behavior. Everyone has a flight to catch! You think you're special because you're really a nice person -- with a wife! and a dog! You have to be awfully self-involved not to realize the screener doesn't know that. The man in the anecdote should have thought about how his behavior affected other people and just apologized.

UPDATE: Hamilton's Pamphlets takes a much more negative view of the screeners. I don't fly enough to have a first-hand opinion of what it's like out there these days. I do think the men described in the Times article were being childish, and I'm certainly not saying people ought to put up with everything in the name of security.

An interesting turnabout.

The Third Circuit takes the Boy Scouts case, in which the Supreme Court found a first amendment right to exclude a gay scoutleader, and uses it as a basis to say that universities have a right to express their opposition to discrimination against gays by excluding the U.S. military recruiters on campus.

A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia, found that educational institutions have a First Amendment right to keep military recruiters off campuses to protest the Defense Department policy of excluding gays from the military.

The 2-to-1 decision relied in large part on a decision in 2000 by the United States Supreme Court to allow the Boy Scouts to exclude gay scoutmasters. Just as the Scouts have a First Amendment right to bar gays, the appeals court said, law schools may prohibit groups that they consider discriminatory....

"Just as the Boy Scouts believed that homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the Scout Oath," Judge Ambro wrote, "the law schools believe that employment discrimination is inconsistent with their commitment to fairness and justice."

Seinfeld on "Oprah."

Jerry comes out to a huge ovation. He looks at the audience and says: "This is something. You do this every day?"

The audience constantly over-applauds. Oprah notes that she and Jerry are the same age (50), and the audience goes wild.

Jerry's response is perfect: "I love being 50. It means I'm almost done." Oprah goes into no! no! mode and Jerry has to say "it's just a joke" and a few other things until he finally lands on "it doesn't matter how old you are," and the audience goes wild again.

Oprah asks why they've only released the first three seasons on DVD, and Jerry says, "That's 40 episodes. How much time do you have?" There's a very distinctively Seinfeld way to say "How much time do you have?" and you've got to imagine it to find it funny. It's impossible to render in type. Something like: "How … much time … do you … have?"

Oprah asks him what he finds funny on TV today, and he says he watches a lot of "Sesame Street," and he thinks about how people tell him he should do another show: "I sit there and I watch this Elmo guy. And he is so likeable and so funny and so charming. And I sit there with my daughter, and I think: let him bust his little red ass."

Jerry's wife is there (and moved to tears by the experience of being 20 feet away from Oprah), so the conversation turns to marriage. Jerry says he was surprised at all the questions. He thought "Do you take this woman?" would be the last one. But now it's "How long are you going to sit there watching TV?": "I wish I knew the answer to that one myself."

Jerry's wife tells us he's "sweet," but can't come up with much of an answer to Oprah's request for a story. He's nice to his kids.

Oprah asks him about his obsessions: dolphins (they have "nice smiles"), Bic pens ("Every joke for the Seinfeld show was written with a Bic pen"), sneakers ("I'm wearing shoes just for you.")

The Puffy Shirt is being put in the Smithsonian, we're told.

Seinfeld's wife says has not seen all the episodes of "Seinfeld."

Oprah brings out Jason Alexander. The crowd acts pretty thrilled, even though it's just Jason Alexander.

Oprah brings out Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Clearly, the audience (nearly all women) likes her more than Jason. She looks great, Oprah tells her. Truthfully! Oprah shows Julia a clip of several audience members imitating Elaine's little steps dance [added: technically, it's "The Little Kicks."]. Julia says "wow" but doesn't seem that enthused. She seems not to be so much like the people in the audience, even though they identify with Elaine. Jerry helps out with a joke: "It's really true that girls just wanna have fun."

Oprah brings out Michael Richards. His hair is slicked down. He describes looking for "little things" in the script, ad libbing "the sound effects," practicing lines off by himself, and feeling that Kramer was playing him and that what he needed to do was to "get out of the way."

We're told Jerry bought Billy Joel's house in the Hamptons and we're shown some photos of him and his wife and kids on a windswept beach and in a sparkling, white kitchen. The audience goes "aaah!"

Talking about the last "Seinfeld" show, Jason Alexander says that, as they were about to shoot, Jerry said to them, "For the rest of our lives, when anyone thinks of any one of us, they'll think of all four." The audience goes "awwww." Oprah goes, "That is sweet." When the show ended, Jerry took some parts of the set (which he keeps with his Porsches). He took the door, the couch, and one of the booths from the restaurant. Michael Richards and Jason Alexander just took their shoes and (Alexander only) his glasses. Julia Louis-Dreyfus took her wardrobe, and jokes that she doesn't know why. (On the DVD commentary, she often talks about how bad Elaine's clothes were, and also how bad Jerry's clothes were. George's clothes were always intended to look bad. Kramer's clothes were supposed to be strange, and it's noted in the DVD commentary that only Kramer's clothes look good now. That vintage look aged well.)

After the final commercial break, there's only time enough to push the DVD one more time and say good-bye, but Oprah whips the crowd back up into a hysterical, jubilant cheer. As the closing credits roll, Oprah hugs each of the "Seinfeld" castmembers, kicking one leg up when she hugs Jerry and again when she hugs Michael Richards.

UPDATE: The group continues, more casually, on "Oprah After the Show." Oprah talks about how Jerry and his wife invited her to dinner but she had to refuse because she's on a diet that has a rule against eating after 7:30 at night.

We're shown photos of Julia Louis-Dreyfus's house, which has a retractable roof is dedicated to ecological principles. "It has sustainable woods" causes Jerry to say "What does that mean?" The question isn't answered. It's a joke. The tile, we're told, is made from recycled carpet. "It is a totally green house," Louis-Dreyfus says. Much applause.

Jerry offers this piece of advice: "If you never make a career choice based on money, you'll always have money." Hey, it worked for him!

Oprah asks what's your favorite episode. Jerry: "The Marine Biologist." Jason: "The Parking Garage." Michael: "The Parking Garage." Julia: wasn't asked.

They talk about Jerry's favorite comedian, Bill Cosby. When he walks down the street, Jerry says, he's happy to meet everyone who comes up to him. Oprah tells us that when he appeared on her show, he was dropped off alone! She clearly thinks this is flat-out amazing.

What comedian does Michael Richards love? Charlie Chaplin, Stan Laurel, Jacques Tati, the early Peter Sellers. Good answer! So good it almost makes me cry to think that more roles have not come Richards' way. He adds: "And I love the great Red Skelton." Ah! I loved Red Skelton so much when I was a child. I loved him in that deep, childlike way where you completely believe that everyone loves him.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus? "I think Ellen DeGeneres is unbelievably funny." She also loves the funny actresses, specifically, Mary Tyler Moore and Lucy.

Jason? Jon Stewart. And Jerry.

What's next for TV?

I find this a little surprising:

Fox brass are said to be particularly high on a project that one could dub "That '70s B.C. Show": It imagines Jesus as a slacker teen under pressure from his parents -- God and Mary -- to enter the family carpentry business.

UPDATE: Actually, I don't think this is such a bad idea. Referring to it as "That '70s B.C. Show" was an incredibly lame joke, but I think the show could be well done. Have you ever watched the beginning of the DVD of "The Last Temptation of Christ" with the director's commentary on? Jesus is just writhing on the ground, but Scorsese is saying that what interested him was the idea that Jesus would have gradually understood and had to face the reality of who he was and that this would have caused him a great deal of personal turmoil. With that approach to the subject matter, go back to an even earlier period, where Jesus is a teenager. We have no Biblical text describing this period of his life, so a leap of imagination is required. You have to invent a character. I'm sure that would offend some people, but "The Last Temptation of Christ" offended some people and so do many TV shows for one reason or another.

I think the show seems as though it might be like "Joan of Arcadia," which handles the subject of a teenager singled out by God and dealing with it in an American teenager way. "Joan" is a drama, and I think the Jesus TV show is a comedy, but conceivably it could be well-written.

I'd like to see more sitcoms set in historical time. There's "That 70s Show" and other shows in the "Happy Days" mold that use the recent American past, but not much else. If you're as old as I am, you might remember "It's About Time," which took place in the Stone Age (and included some time traveling astronauts, one of whom was played by one of the "Car 54, Where Are You?" actors -- not the one who became Herman Munster ... the other one). "It's About Time," like "Car 54," had a very memorable theme song.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A correction. The "Car 54" actor (Joe E. Ross) played one of the cavemen.

The medical marijuana oral argument.

The first report looks good for the federal government on this, as Justice Souter seems dubious about the plaintiffs' argument:

Backers of California's law seem to think "everybody is going to get it from a friend or from plants in the back yard," Justice David H. Souter told the lawyer for the two women. "They're going to get it in the street. Why isn't that the sensible assumption?"

UPDATE: Justice Breyer also seemed unreceptive to the plaintiffs' argument:

Justice Stephen Breyer said supporters of marijuana for the ill should take their fight to federal drug regulators before coming to the Supreme Court, and several justices repeatedly referred to America's drug addiction problems.

But it's important to note that Breyer and Souter have strongly and consistently backed strong deference to the policy choices of the federal government and opposed the enforcement of constitutional federalism. To be principled and consistent, they really should be expected to reject these arguments, as I noted yesterday.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Justice Scalia shows some signs of agreeing with the federal government's position that it may regulate an entire market, even trivial parts of the market that seem quite separated from the ordinary trade in the product that gave rise to the motivation to control it:

Justice Antonin Scalia asked [plaintiffs' attorney Randy] Barnett how his argument of a trivial economic effect from medical marijuana would apply to federal laws protecting endangered species. Those laws ban possession of ivory or eagle feathers without regard to whether a person obtained them through interstate commerce.

"Are those laws likewise unconstitutional?'' Scalia asked.

The 9th Circuit had relied on the notion that the medical use of home-grown marijuana does not interact with the market in marijuana, and Justice Stevens asked a question that seemed designed to pursue this theory:

Stevens asked Barnett how allowing medical use of marijuana would affect the illegal market. The lawyer said it would slightly reduce demand and reduce prices.

"Reduce demand and reduce prices? Are you sure?'' Stevens said.

Barnette seems to have conceded a point that related to a key part of the 9th Circuit's decision, which is why Stevens express some surprise, saying "Are you sure?"

Justice O'Connor is reported as asking whether medical use of marijuana is "something traditionally regulated by states.'' It's hard to tell, without more, which way she may have been leaning by asking this. I'd like to see more of the transcript before speculating any more, but I'll just note that O'Connor's vote is often crucial. Still, from what I've seen so far -- admittedly little -- I think the Court will find the federal government has the power to regulate here.

UPDATE: Marty Lederman at SCOTUSblog predicts the decision for the federal government will be unanimous (though Justice Thomas might conceivably dissent). Lyle Denniston, also at SCOTUSblog, seems to perceive a ray of light for the plaintiffs. I'll read the whole transcript when it's available, but as indicated above, I agree with Lederman.

The last week of law school, and an old law school doodle.

It's the last full week of the semester here at the law school. Consequently, I feel a lot of pressure to get through the material--none of the usual expanding into areas that stimulate good discussion. It's time to be crisp and on task. You can't just increase the flow of information because it's close to the end. That's not fair. Yet you have to get to the end somehow. In one class, we've stayed on schedule and will finish simply by continuing at the pace we've followed all semester. In the other class, I've had to use the technique of cutting readings and switching to lecturing. But then there is a special obligation to make the lectures clear. Things we would have puzzled over, had we read a case on the subject, must be simplified now.

I'll have some more news-oriented blogging later. I'm especially interested in two federalism cases to be argued in the Supreme Court today. But, for now, I'll leave you with a doodle I did years ago in the margin of my law school class notes. I used to find drawing in the margins like this helped me focus on what I was hearing. The date was 5/6/81, sometime close to the end of the semester in Federal Courts, where maybe we were encountering new material, tying things together, and still leaving a few threads dangling.

Jerry Falwell's curtain imagery.

Jerry Falwell was on "Meet the Press" today. Tim Russert reminded him of the offensive statement he made shortly after 9/11:

I want to ask Reverend Falwell about something and broaden the conversation. We talked about Iraq and the war on terrorism. Something that you said two days after September 11, when you were with Reverend Pat Robertson: "I fear... that [September 11th] is only the beginning. ...If, in fact, God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve ... I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle ... all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say `you helped this happen.'"

Falwell answered:

And I went on to say in a sleeping church, a lethargic church likewise is responsible. I do believe, as Ben Franklin said, that God rules in the affairs of men and of nations. I believe that when God blesses a nation, as he's blessed America for a lot of reasons, things happen that don't happen other places. I believe when we defy the Lord, I think we pay a price for it. So I do believe in the sovereignty of God.

In our house, for example, my wife of 47 years and our three children, eight grandchildren, we begin every day in prayer. We ask the Lord's blessings. This morning in the shower I prayed for all 15 of our family by name, by need, because I want the curtain of God's provision upon them and protection along the highways and decision-making, God's wisdom.

Falwell praying in the shower? I could have gone my whole life without having that picture in my head. But now that he's said it, I have some idea where he gets his imagery. "God continues to lift the curtain ..." Was that the shower curtain? God as Norman Bates?

First, a multiple choice question, then some discussion of wabi-sabi.

Fill in the blank, completing the sequence:

sewing machine, fan, tea kettle, toaster, _________

a. iron

b. vacuum cleaner

c. vibrator

You can find the answer in this article, pointed to by Nina, who comments on something else about the article, wabi-sabi, to be specific. As to why she's sitting next to a potato-chip-spilling guy, read the previous post.

Wabi-sabi is a cool Japanese aesthetic.

It's about spare living spaces and well-worn handmade objects, and an appreciation of quiet pleasures — indeed, of plain old quiet. Sweeping a floor rather than vacuuming, taking up knitting, washing the dishes by hand — these are wabi-sabi activities....

Don't buy a new couch .... Try not to freak out when you come home to a dirty house. Turn the lights off and light some candles, making sure they're strategically placed away from the dirty dishes and the dog hair on the carpet.

Hmmm.... I've been following this aesthetic for years. Minus the dog and the knitting. Ideally, I want to live in a place with only wood floors and no carpeting and throw out the vacuum altogether. It's such an ugly thing.

Speaking of sweeping (and things Japanese), on Friday evening, we parked the car on the street in front of a lit up Aikido place. Inside were about ten men in traditional Japanese clothes, holding what at first I thought were swords. But they were brooms. They were sweeping the place, possibly ritualistically, and it was such a fascinating sight that I watched them as I walked a couple steps and knocked into a telephone pole. Even though the street was otherwise entirely deserted, at that very moment a man walked by, as if he had been dropped onto the earth for the purpose of laughing at me. Really, that happened. That was not a Freudian dream.

The marijuana case: a great test of law and politics.

Tomorrow the Supreme Court hears oral argument in Raich v. Ashcroft, the medical marijuana case, which sets the federal government's interest in comprehensive regulation of the marijuana market against the state's interest in controlling small, isolated uses of marijuana. In the case at hand, California would like to be free to legalize the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes.

Generally, judicial and political liberals have opposed the Supreme Court's enforcement of constitutional federalism, which limits the reach of federal governmental power and leaves room for individual states to experiment with their own policies, suited to local conditions and local political preferences. But some state policy experiments are appealing to those who did not like it when the Supreme Court used ideas about federalism to strike down the Gun-Free School Zones Act and part of the Violence Against Women Act.

So it will be interesting to see the response of those who have harshly criticized the majority's recent federalism decisions and have professed abject deference to Congress and the Executive branch about federalism matters. From a liberal perspective, one might want to think: I support the enforcement of federalism limits when federalism is really a stand-in for individual rights, and I support strong federal government power when the federal policy in question is really a stand-in for individual rights. But it is rather hard to translate that instinct into sound constitutional law.

Conservatives face a dilemma too, if their conservatism is the kind that puts great importance on strong anti-drug enforcement. But conservatives who take the libertarian position on drugs can happily seize a two-fold opportunity: they can demonstrate a principled fidelity to constitutional federalism and, at the same time, improve federalism's reputation among liberals.

My earlier posts about federalism and medical marijuana are here and here .

Drawing of the day.

Here's a photograph of a drawing that I like in part because on the left side you can see through to the drawing on the previous page. Another thing I like about the photograph is that red background, which happens to be the Corvette brochure that got me blogging about cars a while back. That gives me a good opportunity to save readers the trouble of sending any more "so are you buying the Corvette?" emails and say there was virtually never any chance I'd buy a Corvette (even though it won on the blogpoll)). So am I buying the Audi TT? That's what I'd buy if I were to buy a new car, but right now I'm keeping my Cosmic Green Beetle (to which I recently added a spectacular dent).

The President is fat.

The NYT is exploring new ways to knock the President:

Yes, the president of the United States, known for his robust good health, is officially overweight, according to the standards of the National Institutes of Health. At 6 feet and 194 pounds, his body mass index, or B.M.I., a measurement of height relative to weight, is 26.4, and 25 or above is officially overweight for both sexes.

Actually, I was just noticing in the video of the President from his visit to Chile that his Texan walking style now involves leading with a prominent belly.

Click on "graphic" at the link to see a chart comparing presidential BMIs. We all know who the fattest President was, but did you know what a teeny tiny man l'il Jimmy Madison was? At 5'4" and 99 pounds, don't you just want to pick him up and carry him around?

I should note that the article is also another one of the NYT's many attempts to remind us of the horrendous American fatness problem, which is always presented as a matter of health rather than aesthetics.

UPDATE: A medically trained reader notes that writes:

Just commenting on BMI. BMI is a cookie cutter measurement and we all know everyone is built different- some are beanpole, some are stout. A six foot 250 lb predominantly fat person would have the same BMI as a 250 lb six foot professional athlete. The BMI only uses two metrics: height and weight. It should be used as one tool in evaluating someone's health along with fitness, comorbidities, family history, etc... The problems are obvious when you consider muscle is heavier than fat.

Hey, the last person who mentioned that fact to me was the butcher that sold me a pork loin roast!

Gore Vidal bumbles to the defense of Oliver Stone.

Reuters reports:

Tired of watching the movie critics of America pile on director Oliver Stone - or perhaps sensing a golden opportunity to make headlines - novelist Gore Vidal leaped to Alexander's defense, calling Stone's film barrier-breaking for its frank depiction of bisexuality.

Vidal tells Reuters that Stone's $160 million Thanksgiving turkey was "a breakthrough in what you can make films about. Movies are always the last to register changes in society and this movie does it."

Except that since "Alexander" is a monumental flop, it would seem to stand more as a lesson in what you can't make films about. Which, of course, it isn't either, because it's really just a thuddingly non-breakthough reminder that people don't want to go to see boring, bad movies. But Vidal does have a point, and it's the point Vidal usually has: Look at meeeeeeee!!!!

Blogging self-censorship.

Tonya recounts part of a conversation she and I had last night at Harmony Bar, including a lot about beards. She writes: "Why should I spend so much time shaving, tweezing, exfoliating, moisturizing, deep conditioning, blow drying, curling and polishing when the men around me look like freaking Grizzly Adams?" But having said all that, she hits the real topic: how much should a blogger self-censor? Especially a blogging lawprof.

Democratic art.

Yesterday, I complained about the Wisconsin quarter. An emailer wrote:

If I do collect that one at all it will be like the daffy great-aunt, relegated to some attic room. Most of the state quarters have been, shall we say, "unfortunate," but that's what you get with a popularity contest amongst amateur designs. Compare that to the spring 2005 version of the nickel.

Yes, the new nickel is excellent. I note the entire bison is pictured, not just a head. The the new Jefferson profile is even less that a head now. Still, it looks nice, and it was designed by artists. Art cannot really be done by a democratic process.

For a demonstration of how bad art produced by democracy is, I strongly recommend "Painting by Numbers: Komar and Melamid's Scientific Guide to Art." This is from the Library Journal review:

In December 1993, the Russian emigre art collaborators Komar and Melamid began a statistical market research poll to determine America's "most wanted" and "most unwanted" paintings. Since then, the whimsical project has spread around the world. Polls in the United States, Ukraine, France, Iceland, Turkey, Denmark, Finland, Kenya, and China revealed that people wanted portraits of their families and always "blue landscapes." After conducting research, the pair paint made-to-order works that meet the wanted (landscape) and unwanted (abstract) criteria; they follow up with town meetings as virtual performance pieces.

The paintings in the book, produced to give people what they've said they wanted, are hilarious.
For a brilliant collection of ideas about art and facts about artists, I recommend David Markson's "This Is Not a Novel." It contains the too-snobbish Schoenberg quote: "If it is art it is not for all, and if it is for all it is not art." It also contains a quote, from Diego Rivera, at the other end of the spectrum of opinion about art: "Art which is not propanganda is not art."

UPDATE: Komar and Melamid have a terrific website, where you can read their surveys and look at the various paintings. The material is well-organized. You can click through all the countries on a particular question. I enjoyed seeing what color was the most popular in each country. It's always blue! And the second most popular color is nearly always green. Is that because we've adapted to the natural world?

Komar and Melamid (with David Soldier) also have a most wanted songs project, as one of my students just pointed out. Unfortunately, you can't listen to the most wanted song at this website, but here's their description of it:

The most favored ensemble, determined from a rating by participants of their favorite instruments in combination, comprises a moderately sized group (three to ten instruments) consisting of guitar, piano, saxophone, bass, drums, violin, cello, synthesizer, with low male and female vocals singing in rock/r&b style. The favorite lyrics narrate a love story, and the favorite listening circumstance is at home. The only feature in lyric subjects that occurs in both most wanted and unwanted categories is “intellectual stimulation.” Most participants desire music of moderate duration (approximately 5 minutes), moderate pitch range, moderate tempo, and moderate to loud volume, and display a profound dislike of the alternatives. If the survey provides an accurate analysis of these factors for the population, and assuming that the preference for each factor follows a Gaussian (i.e. bell-curve) distribution, the combination of these qualities, even to the point of sensory overload and stylistic discohesion, will result in a musical work that will be unavoidably and uncontrollably “liked” by 72 plus or minus 12% (standard deviation; Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistic) of listeners.

UPDATE: Prof. Bainbridge responds to this post, adding a point, which he predicts I'll agree with, and I mostly do. Art is best produced by artists, and it is usually best that they act separately from government. But I don't support the complete separation of art and government, because government must have its coins and paper money, monuments, signs, buildings, and so forth. In producing these things, it is best to rely on artistic experts and not simply put things up for a vote. I want such things to be beautiful, and it seems that many of the people who are doing the voting are thinking about things other than beauty, such as the representation of corn on the quarter. As to trusting markets to produce art, as Prof. Bainbridge recommends (and I agree), we end up with a lot of trashy but decently good pop art, and there isn't anything terribly wrong with that (although I insist on zoning to protect me from trash of the architectural kind). There will still be artists who chose to produce high art, and some people will pay money to some of them some of the time.

Today's drawing: Voltaire, pens.

This is the drawing I wish I'd used yesterday. It's from the same notebook as the Thanksgiving drawing of the wineglass, which was not drawn on Thanksgiving but in Paris a few years ago. The reason I wish I'd used this drawing yesterday is that yesterday was the day my Normblog profile ran, and there was a reference to Voltaire in one of my answers. I don't know when I'm going to have occasion to talk about Voltaire again and rather than try to work Voltaire into some future posting, let me use the Voltaire drawing today. This drawing was done at the Louvre, the bust is the work of Houdin, and the comment in the cartoon bubble was not something I heard but something I read on a card on the wall.



Going through my Paris notebook is always troubling to me because I remember how much I disliked the pens I took to Paris. They were India ink felt tips that just didn't feel right. I had recently taken a trip to Amsterdam and done my best travel notebooks, and I knew part of the reason the Amsterdam notebooks worked out well was the pen: a new gold-nibbed Mont Blanc pen, which I filled with fountain India ink. A fountain pen enthusiast emailed after I posted the law school notes drawing and asked if I still used a fountain pen. This is a bit of a sore subject with me, as I wrote back:

I lost the Pelikan pen that got me through law school, eventually admitted to myself that I wasn't going to find it, replaced it with a Mont Blanc pen, which I used a lot, including for drawings (with fountain India ink), finally admitted that it just didn't work right anymore and I wasn't going to be able to figure out a way to fix it, replaced it with another Pelikan pen, which I promptly lost. So I'm in the phase where I think I've got a shot at finding the lost pen.

The emailer sent me to a very nice website for pen enthusiasts, and I'm thinking maybe I can find some way to revive the Mont Blanc pen, which is the one that helped me so much in Amsterdam and was so sadly missed in Paris. I've never had a pen I liked so much as the Pelikan pen I had in law school. When I finally gave in and replaced the Mont Blanc with a new Pelikan, I really hoped to get back to the feeling of the best pen I ever had, the law school pen. But the truth is the new Pelikan did not feel like the one given to me 25 years earlier. Is it possible I lost it on purpose out of disappointment? Yet I still believe that I would have broken it in and made it feel like the old one. Maybe memories of how things felt 25 years ago cannot be trusted.

But back to Voltaire. Mont Blanc, I see, makes a Voltaire fountain pen. This seems fortuitous. Maybe I should buy one. What is the connection between pens and Voltaire? He was a writer, of course. But also, he used a pen name. It would be quite nice if it were Voltaire who said "The pen is mightier than the sword," but he did not, even though it seems like the sort of thing he might have said. Even that other great free speech quote, is apparently not actually his. But there is a Voltaire pen quote:

To hold a pen is to be at war.

"We don't need no education."

But we do want our royalties.

State colors, state quarters.

Here are the winners of a Crayola contest, with a color name for each state. You can buy the State Colors Collection of crayons here. Maybe a good Christmas present for someone who thinks the state quarters are cool.

Since they were producing a set of crayons, these are not the 50 best names they got. They needed names to cover a proper array of colors. In case you're wondering, black is "Abe Lincoln's Hat," the state color for Illinois. White is "Space Needle," the Washington crayon. Here's a local news story about the woman -- hey, it wasn't a contest for kids? -- who won the Wisconsin section of the contest. And, of course, yeah, it's cheese-related.

Speaking of cheese-related and the state quarters, the Wisconsin quarter came out recently, and, man, is it bad. Possibly the worst state quarter yet. I understand why something dairy-related was desired, but why a cow head and a block of cheese? And then why throw in an ear of corn? The corn farmers are jealous of the dairy farmers getting all the attention? And a block of cheese is not an interesting image. They should have used just the cow -- and the full cow, not the severed head of a cow. Look at the Kentucky quarter, which uses just a horse and it's the entire horse. I suppose Kentucky figured out that a horse's head, shorn of the horse's body, would have led to "Godfather" jokes.

Why haven't the states later in line learned from the mistakes of previous state quarters? The best state quarters show just one thing. The more items you throw together the worse it gets. And keep the words to a minimum! Wisconsin puts its motto on the quarter, on a dumb banner swirling from cow head to cheese block. It's true the motto is only one word, but what does that word say about Wisconsin?

Wisconsin adopted the State motto, "Forward," in 1851, reflecting Wisconsin's continuous drive to be a national leader.

So basically, we're admitting that we're backward and we need to catch up.

Chris peeks over at what I've just written and says: "You should note that the dairy product does not come out of the cow's head. The important aspect of the cow is not its head."

A cow's udder -- and nothing more! -- now, that would be a fabulous state quarter. If we had the guts to do that, why, then, we wouldn't be backward any more!

"The widespread parable version."

Virginia Heffernan, in today's NYT, reviews tonight's incendiary "20/20":

"20/20" takes the position that the description of [the Matthew Shepard] murder as an anti-gay hate crime is entirely wrong. After six years of sentimental theater, documentaries and television movies that have bolstered the hate-crime view, tonight's program is no less than iconoclastic. ...

None of this ... changes the horror of the murder, or the inspiration and awareness that people gained from the widespread parable version of the event. But getting the truth - in ABC's revisionist investigation, which seeks to overturn the powerful and canonical version of the facts and meaning of this crime - is worthwhile, as it thickens the description and adds to the mystery of what happened that night in Laramie.

"The widespread parable version" remains intact as a source of "inspiration and awareness"? "Getting at the truth" is "worthwhile" because it "thickens the description and adds to the mystery"? We like the mythological story, and the reason we also like the truth is because it makes the myth more mysterious???

Isn't the truth a bit more important than that?

Consider this commentary from JoAnn Wypijewski in the L.A. Times:

So was Shepard's murder a hate crime or was it something else? "20/20" comes down on the side of something else, amplifying the meth connection, which I first reported in Harper's in 1999, and exploring Laramie's drug subculture, through which Shepard seems to have become acquainted with McKinney. Some gay advocates of hate crime laws have already blasted the network for raising the question. Michael Adams of Lambda Legal Defense says ABC is trying to "de-gay the murder."

Scrapping over the nature of Shepard's victimhood is the wrong debate. Whatever his killer's degree of homophobia, Shepard is dead. Powerless to restore him, society is obligated to ask what is owed to the living — to gay people, who have suffered ages of abuse, and also criminal defendants. Tinkering with criminal law is a backward step in countering the deep cultural realities of homophobia, racism, sexism. Prosecuting murder as a hate crime only lets the rest of us think we're off the hook, while it tramples on justice.

If a legend is used as leverage to change the law, we need to be willing to think about whether the legend is true, and if it is not, we need to be willing to rethink our analysis.

Remember Cindy Dixon? She was the mother of Russell Henderson, one of the two men convicted of murdering Matthew Shepard. Henderson, the L.A. Times article tells us, "was the driver that night. He never hit Shepard, but, on McKinney's order, he tied him to the fence."

In January 1999, Henderson's mother, Cindy Dixon, was found dead. She had been raped and struck and left in the snow to die. No powerful advocates spoke for her. She was likely to come to a bad end, people said, what with the drinking and the men, and then her son….

Nobody took the measure of hate. By the time the Dixon case was wrapped up, they weren't even talking murder. A man pleaded guilty to manslaughter, and the same judge who sent Dixon's son to prison forever sentenced her killer to four to nine years. He got out last year.

Justice demands that we think clearly about criminal responsibility and not let our minds be clouded by evocative stories that mesh with our assumptions about the world and our social policy aspirations. I believe the cause of gay rights is a very good one, and I also think that if the cause is good, truth should serve it. If you think your cause is so important that you must put it ahead of the truth, you are deeply confused.

UPDATE: I've watched the "20/20," and it didn't impress me much. There were a lot of interviews with people who had plenty of reason to lie. Now that the public's strong reaction to the original "gay panic" story is known, the two murderers have every motivation to say it wasn't like that at all. And the people of Laramie can't appreciate having their town associated with bigotry, so they too have a motivation to retell the story. I have no idea what is true here. Since the men weren't convicted of a "hate crime" and, in any event, they pleaded guilty, their convictions are sound whether their motivation was robbery or bigotry. As to the question of whether there should be hate crime legislation, I do not mean to offer an opinion on the subject. I have not done the complex policy analysis that I think is needed to decide whether there should be additional, separately defined crimes in addition to murder and assault. The main point of this post is to highlight the importance of truth and to be critical of people who would subordinate truth to their political and policy goals.

Doodle of the day.

Profile.

My Normblog profile is up!

"The unexpected ruling, released in the evening darkness."

The NYT reports:

"There is a God," Mr. Yushchenko said to the crowd, and told them that complaints of election abuse would be heard in court. The square erupted in cheers and applause.

I understand the deep feeling that makes someone say "There is a God" in this situation, but there is also law: there is something in human beings that wills law into existence.

One more thing.

I'm sorry, but I've got to kick "Alexander" one more time, even as it dies at the box office. For anyone who thinks Oliver Stone is bestowing some sort of favor on gay people, read this insight from the Washington Post review:

In many ways the movie feels 50 years old already. It offers the standard 1950s melodramatic theory of Alexander's sexual orientation: the scheming, sexualized, domineering mother, and the distant, uncaring father.

A Thanksgiving-appropriate post.

Sorry for going off the Thanksgiving topic in that last post (my longest ever, long enough that I know that without looking over any other posts). Here's a Thanksgiving post as an antidote, in which Jim Lindgren, of Volokh Conspiracy, gives us a contemporaneous account of the original feasting and makes some observations about the history of gun ownership. And this is a good article in the NYT about immigrants experiencing some perplexity over Thanksgiving ("The children have Thursday off to eat a turkey?").

Rabies.

Read the amazing story of the doctors--here in Wisconsin--saving the teenage girl who developed rabies after being bitten by a bat. It is the first time a human being has survived rabies without receiving the vaccination. Sometimes people don't go in for treatment because they don't realize they've been bitten, but this young woman did know. A bat flew into her church during a service:

"As society has developed, people have forgotten the folklore about don't play with stray animals, or stay away from bats," Dr. Willoughby explained. The bat drew blood, he said, but the bite was quick and small, so Jeanna thought she had just been scratched. Her fellow churchgoers assumed that only healthy bats could fly, so they picked it up after it flew into a window and threw it out the door.

The girl was not taken to a doctor, or she would have received the vaccination. Ah! People need to know not to touch a bat!

I used to have problems with bats getting into my house. As I later figured out, they came in through the attic. More than once, I went up to my bedroom at night, turned on the light, and had a bat swoop right at me. I always scream, quite hysterically, but then I try to figure out a solution. One night, a few years ago, I had already prepared a box to trap the next bat. It was a shoe box with one edge of the lid removed so that the box could be placed over the bat when it landed on a surface and the lid slid under. Then, I planned to toss the box out the window. The first time I tried this maneuver, the bat squiggled its way out as I was trying to get the lid under. It flew lengthwise figure eights in the room over and over and never found the open window. Finally, it flopped onto a table, I got it in the box, and I threw the box out the window, feeling quite triumphant. I closed the window and went to wash my hands and saw a tiny wound --- just four little lines -- on the back of my right ring finger.

It took me a few hours to decide I ought to go to the hospital. It was such a tiny wound. I knew even a scratch could lead to rabies, but I kept thinking maybe I had scraped my finger on the sand-textured wall. What made me go to the hospital was the observation that the four little lines were symmetrical, like this: | '' |. That is the pattern of teeth. The wall might, by chance, produce such a symmetrical pattern, but that was much less likely. I felt silly going into the emergency room with such a tiny wound, especially when a moaning boy with gauze wrapped over his eyes came in. Later, I was in a room where the opthamalogist came in to get some equipment, and we talked for a moment. I asked what happened to that poor boy, and he said "I'm not at liberty ... someone poked him. He's going to need surgery."

I was apologetic when I arrived at the emergency room. I said things like "maybe I'm overreacting," but I also mentioned over and over again something I'd read in a Harper's Magazine Index about how many people die from rabies after they don't realize they've been bitten. In fact, as is usually the case, there were very few people using the emergency room at the University of Wisconsin Hospital. I was quickly seen by a nurse, then a doctor, then a second doctor. All three had me tell my elaborate story and expound my symmetry theory, and all three spent a lot of time puzzling over the wound. Doctor 1 thought maybe it was from the wall. Doctor 2 said it was my choice, but he'd get the treatment. He said, you could get 1000 bat bites and do nothing and nothing might happen, but considering that you would die if you bet wrong and the treatment, done now, is 100% effective, you should get the treatment. This puzzling over the wound process took three hours for some reason. Slow night? State law required them to call the police when an animal bites someone, and that call resulted in a long visit from police officer, who took pages of notes, apparently about how I caught the bat in a box and threw the box out the window and so forth.

Finally, I got the treatment. And the rabies shots, which were given in the arm, did not hurt any more than a tetanus shot. It did hurt to get one of the immunoglobulin shots that preceded the rabies shots, because it was injected at the site of the wound. It is damn hard to find a place to put anything in the middle of the back of a finger! But they did. Afterwards, I felt faint and they had me rest for another twenty-five minutes. At midnight, the nurse said "The witching hour," and I said "I'm going to turn into a bat."

The next day, when I came home from work, I found a legal notice posted on my door. It was a formal demand for me to surrender the animal that, according to a police report, had bitten a person. I had to call animal control and explain how I had thrown the bat, in a box, out of a three-story window. The person I talked to was very chatty, and I had a long interesting discussion about rabies and bats. She told me about Americans who get rabies shots before traveling to certain parts of the world where there is great danger of exposure and difficulty obtaining treatment. (The linked article notes that "rabies kills tens of thousands of people in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.")

Later, I was asked to come in and talk to two doctors at the UW Hospital who specialized in infectious disease research, and these two men also talked to me for a long time. I heard all sorts of stories about rabies. I asked if it was true that if you had the vaccination there is zero chance of getting the disease, and they told me that there are cases of people with very deep, tearing bites from wolves who still get the disease. The disease creeps slowly up through your nerves to your brain, and that time gives the vaccine a chance to work. But with the large wolf bites, the disease reaches the brain much too soon. In the cured case in Wisconsin, the treatment consisted of using drugs to induce a coma, to deliberately shut down the girl's brain while the disease passed through.

So, wonderfully, there is now hope for those who fail to get treatment, but it is much better, still, to go in for treatment, even for a tiny scratch. Once the symptoms appear, as in this recent case, it is too late to prevent the disease. The other thing I learned from my rabies experience was to catch a bat in a little plastic margarine container, with a snap-on lid, and take the bat in for testing. It wasn't that long after my experience, that I woke up one morning hearing that leathery flapping sound, and I tried to convince myself that I was still dreaming. Then I felt that leathery wing brush my hand, did some preparatory screaming, then got the margarine container and caught the bat against the window. I snapped on the lid and took it over to the animal testing lab. When I handed the container to the woman at the counter, she asked "How long has it been dead?" I said, "It's alive."

Not long after that, I spent $800 having the house bat-proofed. The bat proofing guy told me all the houses in my nicely wooded neighborhood probably had bats, unless efforts had been made to seal out the bats. I know he was in the business of providing that service, but based on my experience, I'd say get an older house bat-proofed. I haven't had a bat in the house since I did. I do still worry, though, when I hear a little noise in the night, and many times I've turned on the light to look around for a bat!

UPDATE: Let me add that awful as a bat in the house is, bats outdoors are perfectly excellent. Here's a bat conservation website. And here's a cool blog entirely devoted to bats.

Thanksgiving in NY/Madison.

Nina's in NYC for Thanksgiving, and she's got some relevant photos today, including "Kermit, still groggy after a year in seclusion." I'm jealous of her trip to the new MOMA--here, with photos, including one of a woman with a baby, which reminds me of how, back in 1981, I took my two week old baby way uptown to the Whitney Biennial, which I didn't want to miss, and felt guilty, because I was still skipping law school classes, having told myself I wasn't sufficiently recovered from my C-Section. That's how much I care about art museums.

I'm not so jealous of the ventures into food shopping in NYC, shown here at Balducci's, because Nina mentions that the Whole Foods in NYC has a one hour long checkout line! I just got back from the Madison Whole Foods, a mile down the street from my house. Granted, it was early, shortly after the 8 a.m. opening time, but I breezed though the beautiful place and did not have to wait in line at all. Two cheese attendants were ready to help me find things. And the meat guy not only got me that two-pound, securely tied, pork loin roast I needed, but he also offered an explanation for why the two-pounds looked so large (it has no bone, and muscle is lighter than bone, though fat is even lighter than muscle).

So, why did I rush out at 8 a.m. to buy a pork loin roast? After posting the previous entry, I worried that one or two of my Madison readers might suddenly decide they wanted the ultra-delicious arrosto di maiale al latte for Thanksgiving dinner too and would dash off to Whole Foods and get the last one. There were three luscious pork loin roasts there, and it was nice to get there so early and see the place almost empty of people but teeming with even more beautiful food than usual.

Speaking of loin, here's a bonus family story: When my sons were little, we often drove all the way to Florida to see my parents and my sister's family, and we always stopped to eat at Cracker Barrel restaurants. Three times a day, mealtimes were determined by the presence of a Cracker Barrel at an exit along the Interstate. Once, when Chris was pretty young, he tried to read the menu and cried out "Baby Lion Back Ribs! That's terrible!"

Doodle of the day.

Happy Thanksgiving. This was drawn some years ago in Paris, hence the big ashtray on the table. I don't recommend smoking for Thanksgiving. The Thanksgiving smoke--that's not a tradition, not for me anyway. But I do recommend a nice glass of wine, and whatever else you've decided to make.



I've decided to make arrosto di maiale al latte--pork loin braised in milk (which I know sounds horribly wrong from some religious perspectives). This is an old favorite recipe from Marcella Hazan's "Classic Italian Cookbook," which is by far my favorite cookbook. After cooking for two and a half hours, the milk is not at all recognizable as milk, but has become a delicious gravy.

I have not had this dish, which we used to make all the time, since 1989. I was just thinking yesterday about how much I love it and why I had not made it for so long. It took no time to remember the reason: the last time I sat down to eat it, I received a phone call and heard shocking news about my father. Shortly thereafter, my father died. Thanksgiving is a good time to gather with the family that you do have, but it can also make you think of the ones who have gone. Yet I didn't make a special Thanksgiving effort to think about my father. I was just running through my mental file of festive meat dishes and remembered that pork roast that became associated by chance so long ago with a sad memory. Nevertheless, it has been 15 years, and that pork roast was quite delicious. The moratorium is over.

Iconic character needed.

Yesterday, I said we need a character like Scrooge or the Grinch for Thanksgiving. And I mean I want an iconic character, a major, memorable character who embodies our hostility to Thanksgiving, through whom we can experience our antisocial feelings vicariously and who, in the story narrative, learns the true meaning of Thanksgiving so we can distance ourselves from our own unacceptable antagonism and feel good about ourselves in the end.

It's not enough to coin a term for a Thanksgiving hater. And it's not enough to say some character on some sitcom (e.g., "Friends") bellyached about Thanksgiving for whatever reason. People are always complaining about various things about Thanksgiving. In fact, one of the main things I don't like about Thanksgiving is having to listen to the same complaints every year: turkey makes you sleepy, it's dry, etc. I especially don't like hearing routine, flat statements about how your family members misbehave or are annoying. At least you have a family sizable enough to create an Thanksgiving-style crowd.

"Alexander" versus "The Aviator."

Oliver Stone's movie "Alexander" is getting such abysmal reviews that it can't all be chalked up to red-state homophobism. But if the movie weren't so horribly long and boring, it might be a laugh to see the Angelina Jolie performance. NYT meanie Manohla Dargis writes:

Mad of eye and teased of hair, Olympias, played with nose-flaring gusto by Angelina Jolie, was the mother of all monstrous mothers, a literal snake charmer whose love for her only son had the stench of incestuous passion and the tedium of the perpetual nag....

As the young marauder kills and enslaves peoples from Egypt to India, Mr. Stone repeatedly returns us to Olympias, snakes coiling around her body and chastising her absent son in a bewildering accent, part Yiddishe Mama, part Natasha of "Rocky and Bullwinkle" fame: "You don't write, you don't call, why don't you settle down with a nice Macedonian girl?" or words to that effect. Rarely since Joan Crawford rampaged through the B-movie sunset of her career has a female performer achieved such camp distinction.

Meanwhile, Roger Friedman of Fox News says Martin Scorsese's "The Aviator" "will not only be nominated for the Academy Award, but ... will win [it] without too much trouble." In a world where Oliver Stone has won an Oscar and Martin Scorsese has not, one last chance has come to restore justice and fairness, so that one day, we may hear that Martin Scorsese has won a Best Director Oscar.

UPDATE: Larry Ribstein points to one of the many older films that depict gay relationships. (Here's a great documentary on the subject of gay characters in films.) Ribstein writes:

The important point is Stone's reticence compared to a more than 30 year old film. Does this suggest, not that the public is not ready yet for gay relationships, but that a once-ready public is not so ready anymore?

First, as I've said before, I don't think Stone is displaying any reticence. He's just using current political issues to promote his movie and excuse its horrible badness. Second, he may show the relationship less graphically than this older film, but that doesn't say much at all about the culture then and now. He's crafting a hugely expensive Hollywood film that must bring in far, far greater crowds than an art film. Stone would like you to think people have gotten especially repressive and intolerant lately, but I am not buying it. Gay marriage is controversial, but it wasn't even mentioned thirty years ago. I'm quite sure that if it were, it would not have found a ready public. In fact, people are much more accepting of gay relationships now than they were then.

The "Seinfeld" DVD.

Somehow, I couldn't help buying the first "Seinfeld" DVD collection. I stopped by Borders for another purpose and there it was on one of the front tables, with an excellent price, so I picked it up. Once I decide to buy one thing, the chances of my buying any given other thing in at the store skyrocket. For some reason, I have no problem leaving with nothing, but I hate to buy just one thing. So if I'm going to buy one thing, it seems I have to find something else. Every other item near that item I've choosen suddenly becomes more desirable. Once I find the second item, I'm able to back off of this mania. It's basically an anything-but-one mania. Yesterday, what I picked up, from the same table, was "Eddie Izzard, Unrepeatable."

I sat down to read a few things for a while, because I had 20 minutes or so to kill before I needed to be at an appointment. A woman slumping in a chair near mine was reading "The Bush Survival Bible." She looked very glum. I tried not to let my get-over-it-already reaction show. The Democrats need to win new converts. How do they expect to do that as the Party of Deep Depression? And why mire yourself in books about your own oversensitive psyche? I thought the point of being on the left was your deep concern about other people. Sigh.

(I'd like to put in some Amazon/Borders links, but can't reach the site. Is Amazon down?)[UPDATE: Finally got through and have added links.]

So, the "Seinfeld" DVD. Seasons 1 & 2. That sounds like a lot, but it's just the first eighteen episodes. I watched the original pilot episode, with the written commentary on. These subtitles give you all sorts of trivia. It takes some doing to read this commentary and watch the show at the same time, clearly not the best way to savor the comic energy of the show, but there are lots of cool facts to absorb. Like: not only are they calling Kramer Kessler in this episode (because they haven't cleared the name Kramer with the real-life Kramer) but they considered calling Kramer Bennett. And: why Kramer had a dog just that one time. You can also get distracted trying to spot the 1 to 2 minutes of material that has been missing from each episode since its original airing. Unless you watch the DVD alone, there's sure to be a lot of talk in the room along the lines of: "Hey, that's it," "No, that's not it," "Yeah, I don't remember that," "Well, I do, that's not it."

This DVD collection makes a great Christmas gift, if you can avoid buying it now as a gift t0 yourself, as I did. If only I had one of those shrink-wrap re-wrappers and the will to resist blogging about the DVD, maybe I could have "re-gifted" this to one of my sons.

Doodle of the day.

Yesterday, I looked through a folder of class notes that I had kept since 1981, when I studied Federal Courts at NYU School of Law. I suppose I kept these notes (and not all my law school notes) because this was the first course I taught here at Wisconsin (where we call it "Federal Jurisdiction"). I've never referred to these notes, in my teaching preparations, but I've somehow always thought maybe I would. I still do!

There are 167 legal-pad pages of notes, written in black fountain pen. I'm shocked at how many topics we covered in that class, far more than I cover when I teach the course. How did we do it? A week of these notes is copied from someone else's: I had a baby on March 17th of that semester. That fell on spring break, luckily, but, having a C-section, it took another week to make my way back to school. Consequently, the Eleventh Amendment has always been a special mystery to me, but I have discovered over the years, that it is a bit of a mystery to everyone.

There are many marginal doodles in these 167 pages. Here's one:



UPDATE: An emailer writes:

I saw your doodle today and have to say that it looks like an individual contour from a contour map of steep terrain.

I used to be a mining engineer, and, to be more precise, would produce maps that estimate where mineral deposits would intersect the surface. Your doodle looks like a map that would be produced for such an investigation.

Its odd to see something so familiar in such an unusual venue. The unusual aspect is that the doodle looks like a mineral deposit that is dipping to the right where it intersects more surface than it does on the left. That your spacing would emulate this scenario surprised me. Of course you may have seen this type of map before.

Maybe I was a mining engineer in a previous lifetime. Spooky!

ANOTHER UPDATE: My email correspondent writes back:

Just checked your site and appreciate you including my comment. I probably didn't make myself clear but the previous doodle was the one I was referring too.

So if you get comments that my comments don't make sense, you should know that I was referring [this] doodle.

Since I work for NASA now, I'd have to say that the doodle the update is attached to looks more like a picture from the Hubble Space Telescope.

Well, that proves I didn't steal my ideas from mining engineering maps!

"The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind."

I didn't like this movie very much when I saw it in the theater, but I really enjoyed it at home on DVD, for some reason. The DVD has a couple deleted scenes and a nice interview with Jim Carrey and the director Michel Gondry. I went back and found my old post from when I saw the movie in the theater and was surprised to see that I wrote:

I prefer TV--including watching DVDs--because I don't like being stuck in the theater. Some things need to be seen on the big screen, but ES isn't one of them. It has a music video look that would do better on TV I think. There is a bluish pall over the whole thing, broken only by Kate Winslet's hair, orange sweatshirt, and a few other things. Okay, that's a color idea. I think color movies should have color ideas, but I think it is a video screen, not a movie screen idea.

Funny to read that! Before reading that, though, I had a big conversation about the difference between movies on TV and movies in the theater and what makes the experience so different. I was saying I have more patience at home, because I'm in control and I can pause it if I want, but that the theater can be good precisely because of the loss of control. Another thing I like about TV is that the frame is there, so you see the composition. And the picture is crisply rectangular. The theater screen has that ugly curve, which you're supposed to ignore, letting the big picture envelope you. Then, composition doesn't matter so much. But having the frame around the image can totally change the effect, greatly improving a well-shot movie (for me).

Christmas has Scrooge and the Grinch. What about Thanksgiving?

Isn't Thanksgiving more deserving of a naysayer? I mean, really, we eat dinner every day. Is it that for Thanksgiving--as opposed to Christmas--you are only asked to give thanks, not presents? To give thanks and eat dinner. But you must give thanks and eat dinner in a way that outdoes the thanks-giving and dinner-eating of other days. I do think there should be a Scrooge/Grinch analog. The Thankswithholder. The Ingrate.

UPDATE: Midwestern Mugwump suggests "Thanksgriper."

ALSO: More here.

Two polls on Bush.

The NYT/CBS poll, according to the headline, detects that "Americans Show Clear Concerns on Bush Agenda."

The CNN/USAToday/Gallup poll shows "Majority gives Bush good job approval marks."

Despite the headline, the NYT poll found:

[E]ven after this tense and vituperative campaign, 56 percent said they were generally optimistic about the next four years under Mr. Bush. Mr. Bush's job approval rating has now inched up to 51 percent, the highest it has been since March....

Across the board, the poll suggested that the outcome of the election reflected a determination by Americans that they trusted Mr. Bush more to protect them against future terrorist attacks - and that they liked him more than Mr. Kerry - rather than any kind of broad affirmation of his policies.

I like the way the NYT poll reexplored the question of support for "moral values" (which 22 percent of respondents called the most important issue on a well-publicized Election Day poll). In the Times poll:

[W]hen allowed freely to name the issue that was most important in their vote, 6 percent chose moral values, although smaller numbers named issues like abortion and same-sex marriage. On a separate question in which voters were given a choice of nine issues, 5 percent chose abortion, 4 percent chose stem cell research and 2 percent chose same-sex marriage.

The top issue was the economy and jobs, which was cited by 29 percent of respondents.

I didn't like the way the Times then went on to pad its article with material about the red state/blue state culture clash that it has been so wedded to since the election. If you've done a survey, talk about what the survey shows. I don't need the long quote from a Republican guy from Michigan and a Democratic guy from Georgia, especially when they seem to be selected to keep the big "moral values" issue going.

Distinguished diatribe.

The Wisconsin State Journal reports:

People who packed the Union Theater on Monday night expecting to hear about the best-selling book "Fast Food Nation" were instead served a diatribe from the author about his thoughts since the presidential election.

"Three weeks ago . . . I went into a real funk," said Eric Schlosser, author of bestsellers "Fast Food Nation" and "Reefer Madness."

"I really went into a depression. A really dark place."

A crowd of 1,100 had gathered to hear this lecture which was part of the university's distinguished lecture series.

UPDATE: Here's the coverage in the UW student newspapers the Badger Herald and the Daily Cardinal. Both of these articles make Schlosser's speech seem more coherent and focused (on the topic of legalizing marijuana). So who knows? I wasn't there and I don't have a text. Feel free to email me if you were there and can describe the lecture.

Doodle of the day.

Your shrinking brain.

So alcohol, it turns out, does not kill brain cells, according to the NYT. But a study associated back pain with brain shrinkage. And another study found brain shrinkage in obese women. I'm making a mental note to make an appointment with my chiropractor, to stop eating, and to worry even less (if such a thing is possible) about that glass of wine.

"The artful, undulant array of organ pipes captivated."

The NYT appreciates the pipe organ and the Overture Center that houses it, here in Madison.

Oliver Stone's new rant.

I have a new entry in my running account of Oliver Stone's attempts to prepare the American people for his grand opus "Alexander." This is Stone raving to the AP (the "thing" referred to is the movie):

"I started this thing before all this nightmare came down, this morass," Stone said of the Iraq war. "It's ironic, and I think there is a coincidence that's far beyond my understanding, but I would certainly not limit this to the current situation. This is an older situation, East vs. West. This is pre-Muslim, and there was always a conflict between Persian and Greek."

So you got the idea to make the movie, and then world events caught up with you, you brilliant, prescient man!

"Alexander was beautiful because he saw beyond that conflict into a synthesis," Stone added. "I'm not so sure our present administration does. It's great that they say, `Democracy, blah, blah, blah,' but you have to modify democracy to the local customs."

Even though the world has changed dozens of times over since Alexander's days - which predated Jesus Christ and Mohammed - lessons in ancient history remain for modern people.

"And what is the lesson?" Stone asked. "Alexander brought the Hellenic way which is, let's say, more freedom for the individual. He abided by the customs of, unlike our administration, of leaving the (opposing) armies intact and used the armies. He always needed more men."

After Saddam Hussein was toppled, the United States disbanded the Iraqi army instead of incorporating those not loyal to Saddam as a police force, a move criticized as making it more difficult to fight anti-U.S. guerrillas.

"(Alexander) was always inclusive, and we were exactly the opposite when we went into Iraq. We were totally exclusive. ... You could argue the policy was malformed from the beginning, misintended."

Stone said he considers that an error in strategy and has no interest in bashing the president.

"I would not put Bush down..." Stone said.

No, no, of course you wouldn't. You're just offering some military advice. Great. Thanks. That was really a very useful explanation how Bush can become "beautiful" by seeing "beyond that conflict into a synthesis."

UPDATE: Film critic Richard Roeper makes fun of the movie:

A group of Greek lawyers has threatened to file a lawsuit against Warner Bros. and Oliver Stone "for suggesting Alexander the Great was bisexual," as the National Post put it....

Having seen the film, I can categorically state that Stone does not in any way suggest Alexander was bisexual.

He suggests Alexander was absolutely, fabulously gay.

ANOTHER UPDATE: If you've come here from a link where I was characterized as part of a big Them that has a Plan to do something or other, I would encourage you to read around on my blog, including following the link that appears in the first sentence of this post to my earlier, much more substantive statements about the film "Alexander." I would encourage you to judge for yourself whether it makes much sense to characterize me as part of a politico-cultural scheme.

Christo.

Drudge is linking to this AP story headlined "Christo to Wrap Central Park in Fabric." Look at Christo's beautiful web page explaining this brilliant project. He's not wrapping anything! He sometimes has wrapped things, but this is not a case of wrapping. These are flowing, flapping hangings! You might enjoy reading Christo's "Most Common Errors" page. I've blogged about Christo before here and here.

TV on DVD.

Tomorrow the new "Seinfeld" DVD collection comes out and Entertainment Weekly is recommending it because you'll get to see the full-length original show (the syndicated version shaves off a minute or so), there are commentary tracks (with Julia Louis-Dreyfus partaking of episode one for the first time), there are deleted scenes, additional stand-up material, and there's a 60-minute documentary.

EW also has some recommendations about what other TV shows ought to come out in disc form. But they don't seem remember any shows before 1965, so they fail to mention the show I really want: "Dobie Gillis"! Oh, how I love that show! Warren Beatty was even in it--a minor character, but it's fun to see him as a high school student. There are all these people who love "Gilligan's Island," so there must be a fan base for Bob Denver: he was unforgettably great as the beatnik high schooler Maynard G. Krebs ("You rang?"). And no one has ever been more beautiful and funny at the same time than the brilliant Tuesday Weld (who played Thalia Menninger).

UPDATE: I picked up the first "Seinfeld" collection on Tuesday. Couldn't resist.

Desperate moral values.

The NYT, in a front page article, searches for meaning: if a lot of the voters in the last election polled that they cared about "moral values," why is "Desperate Housewives" such a big hit? I didn't get much out of this article.

For one thing, there's no serious discussion of the numbers and what those numbers represent. The article doesn't even mention that only 22% of voters said they voted based on "moral values" and the many criticisms that have been made of that poll. And the television ratings numbers aren't translated into percentages of voters in particular areas, so why are we inferring that the same segment of the population that picked "moral values" is watching that popular TV show?

Secondly, the article assumes that people who would say "moral values" and watch "Desperate Housewives" must be hypocrites, showing one face to the world and doing something else at home in private. But someone watching a TV show about adultery is not necessarily secretly embracing the immorality of the characters. You might watch people involved in adultery because you are struggling with temptations yourself and want to experience the good and the bad vicariously. I haven't watched "Desperate Housewives," but I know the series began with the discovery that a housewife has committed suicide. Is the show promoting adultery or warning people about it? "Desperate" is a word with multiple meanings. It may suggest the "housewives" in question are just eager to have sex, but it also connotes anxiety and despair.

There are many interesting things that might be said about wanting both to watch "Desperate Housewives" and to reelect George Bush, but this article doesn't say them. It's just a ragged hash of speculation. Why not do a real survey and find some people who both watch "Desperate Housewives" and voted based on moral values (and really meant traditional sexual morality); then follow up with some questions designed to understand these people? To me, this article, featured on the front page, is just one more example of the way the New York Times has decided to process its disappointment in the election results into a tale inferior red staters and their bogus moral values.

Doodle of the day.

Those religion-oriented law schools.

The NYT reports on the new religion-oriented law schools.

"The prevailing orthodoxy at the elite law schools is an extreme rationalism that draws a strong distinction between faith and reason," said Bruce W. Green, Liberty's dean.

The claim that professors at the leading law schools tilt to the left is supported by statistics. According to a forthcoming study of 21 top law schools from 1991 to 2002 by John McGinnis, a law professor at Northwestern University, approximately 80 percent of the professors at those schools who made campaign contributions primarily supported Democrats, while 15 percent primarily supported Republicans.

Hmmm.... that seems to equate "tilting to the left" with "extreme rationalism." What's needed are law schools that expose law students to the full range of professional debate. It doesn't make much sense to counter one law school with another law school: the poor student has to go one place or another!

But where mainstream law professors tend to ask questions about judges' fidelity to precedent and the Constitution, Liberty professors often analyze decisions in terms of biblical principles.

"If our graduates wind up in the government," Dr. Falwell said, "they'll be social and political conservatives. If they wind up as judges, they'll be presiding under the Bible."

Try saying that at your confirmation hearing!

But that's Jerry Falwell, the school's chancellor. What are the lawprofs really like? The Times makes the civpro teacher's class sound much weirder than perhaps it should:

In Professor [Jeffrey C.] Tuomala's civil procedure class, the topic on Wednesday morning was a law school warhorse: the Supreme Court's 1938 decision in Erie v. Tompkins, a case that has baffled generations of law students. Judging by the halting Socratic dialogue, Professor Tuomala's natural-law critique of the case did not immediately clarify matters.

The Erie decision, which is viewed as uncontroversial in much of the legal academy, represented a disastrous wrong turn, Professor Tuomala said. In ruling that federal courts may not apply general principles in some cases but must follow state laws, he said, the Supreme Court denied the possibility of "a law that's fixed, that's uniform, that applies to everybody, everyplace, for all time."

The "natural-law critique" of Erie is not just some quirky angle Tuomala cooked up! Erie overruled Swift v. Tyson, an 1842 case, written by the great Justice Story, which did in fact rely on principles of natural law. Any lawprof teaching Erie would need to talk about natural law. Erie is the one civpro case where you have to talk about natural law. And nearly any civpro lawprof (myself included) when attempting to teach Erie in the Socratic mode would seem "halting" and unclear much of the time. A good civpro lawprof would not polish Erie off as "uncontroversial," even though it must be seen as well-settled law, but would vividly present the different jurisprudence underlying Swift and the case that overruled it. It is the most interesting question to be found in Civil Procedure!

Tuomala isn't a bad lawprof if he happens to think Swift was right and Erie was "disastrous." That's a perfectly sensible thing to think. What would be wrong would be to teach students that they ought to go out into the world as lawyers and attempt to do legal work without understanding that they have to function in a system that accepts Erie as settled precedent. Lawprofs at all law schools are likely to convey to the students their opinion that key cases were wrongly, even disastrously, decided. There is nothing abnormal about that. What is important is to equip your students to work within the existing legal system (which, of course, includes working to change things).

"We're the good guys."

The NYT directs us to the web posting of the cameraman who photographed the shooting of the wounded Iraqi in Fallujah last week. Here is the post at Kevin Sites Blog:

[O]bserving all of this as an experienced war reporter who always bore in mind the dark perils of this conflict, even knowing the possibilities of mitigating circumstances -- it appeared to me very plainly that something was not right. ... [T]he rules of engagement in Falluja required soldiers or Marines to determine hostile intent before using deadly force. I was not watching from a hundred feet away. I was in the same room. Aside from breathing, I did not observe any movement at all....

I did not in any way feel like I had captured some kind of "prize" video. In fact, I was heartsick. Immediately after the mosque incident, I told the unit's commanding officer what had happened. I shared the video with him, and its impact rippled all the way up the chain of command. Marine commanders immediately pledged their cooperation....

For those who don't practice journalism as a profession, it may be difficult to understand why we must report stories like this at all -- especially if they seem to be aberrations, and not representative of the behavior or character of an organization as a whole....

Even if, in the end, it is determined that the act shown on the video was unjustified, the willingness of the military to include the reporters, to release the video, and to fully investigate the incident supports the belief Sites says he relied on that "We're the good guys."

George Carlin.

George Carlin was on Tim Russert's CNBC show this weekend, promoting his book "When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops." The show ended with Russert asking Carlin "Do you vote?" Carlin answered:

No, I don't. No. I voted up to McGovern. I feel, actually, a little purer, a little more detached emotionally from it. I really have no stake. If you dropped me from an airplane, I would come down left of center, because I believe more in humans than I do in property. But in terms of the minor machinations and the way they put these things together, I've no interest.

I think Carlin's distance from mundane political choice makes him a better comedian, which is so much more valuable than his individual vote.

"I loved Tang and I would sometimes eat it by the teaspoon, straight from the jar."

So writes Augusten Burroughs in the first true story in his new book "Magical Thinking." He's a school kid at the time, excited to be chosen to appear in a Tang commercial. One thing I love about Augusten Burroughs is, as soon as he brought up the subject of Tang, the first thing I thought of was eating it straight from the jar. And there he is, eating Tang out of the jar.

Reading about Burroughs and Tang brought back a flood of memories of a childhood spent eating sugary granules that were supposed to be mixed into some more conventional food substance. I was particularly fond of eating strawberry Jello mix straight out of the box. And of course there were always the lumps to be found in the brown sugar. Great, it got lumpy. And why not eat plain white sugar? We would eat spoonfuls of white sugar, but we preferred to sprinkle a thick layer of sugar on a slice of white bread, fold the white bread in half, and make a delicious and crunchy snack out of sugar sandwiches. We would also, routinely, sprinkle plenty of white sugar on tomatoes, iceberg lettuce, and cottage cheese. Much as we viewed mashed sweet potatoes as a way to eat marshmallows, we saw tomatoes, iceberg lettuce, and cottage cheese as a way to eat sugar. For a particularly thrilling, inappropriate sugary treat, we would eat Fizzies, undissolved.

UPDATE: A number of people have emailed me to say that they too ate sugar sandwiches but thought the bread ought to be buttered. We used butter too sometimes, but you need softened butter and butter would also melt the sugar a bit, making the sandwich less crunchy. Hardcore granule fans could do without butter. But butter is good too, and makes the concoction something more like cake--instant cake, you might say, or a homemade pseudo-Twinkie. One writer, from India, specified using two thick slices of white bread, slathering both with plenty of unsalted, softened butter, and sprinkling on either white or brown sugar. Well, as long as we're thinking of switching to brown sugar, I'm thinking, why not try sprinkling on some Tang, for a pseudo-orange-sponge-cake effect?

Tilt-a-Whirl.

Nice photo sequence!

That unidentified saucer.

Last spring, I had a temporary copy of the program iBlog, and I started a second blog, which I kept up until the software expired. But I still occasionally get email from people who protest this post, about trying to figure out the markings on a saucer that I'd had lying around in my kitchen for a long time. The saucer had a star on it, and I'd always assumed it was a souvenir from Texas. On closer examination I see letters arrayed inside the star: A-L-F-A-T. I can't figure out which letter to start with, so I go through the various options until I get FATAL, which I don't like very much. Anyway, I pursue the mystery a bit and end the brief personal essay. That was back in May. I still get email like this:

It is ... sad that you may now have been led to believe that your grandfathers may have some how been involved in some sort of evil secret society.

The anti-masons appear to forget or choose to ignore how Masons where involved in the founding of this country and the freedoms the anti-masons now have.

Well, she's right that I really don't know much about the Masons, but I don't go around worrying about them. Nevertheless, "FATAL" is one hell of a motto.

UPDATE: Apparently that crappy new movie that's number one this week--"National Treasure"--has a big Masonic angle:

[A child watching] this sluggish two-hour trudge through landmarks in Washington, Philadelphia and New York [might] come away believing the bogus mythology that detonates it with a squishy thud.

That mythology, derived from Freemasonry, holds that a map, drawn in invisible ink on the back of the Declaration of Independence, contains clues to the whereabouts of the Greatest Treasure Ever Told About. The Knights of Templar, some of whom were Founding Fathers, supposedly left a trail of coded clues that begins on a frozen ship north of the Arctic Circle and ends in the bowels of Lower Manhattan under a crumbling system of dumbwaiters.

It should be easy enough to acquire that treasure. All you have to do is steal the Declaration of Independence, unroll it on a kitchen table, apply a little fresh-squeezed lemon juice, heat with a handy hair dryer, and presto, letters and numbers appear. Another major clue can be deciphered only through special spectacles designed by the real-life Benjamin Franklin and hidden behind a brick near Independence Hall.

If I really had true blogging stamina, I'd go to see this piping-hot pile of patrio-tainment so I could blog about it.

Journey through the NYT completed ahead of schedule.

For some reason, I'm through the whole pile by 10 a.m. Only the crossword puzzle is left. I feel like the weekend has an extra day to it! Maybe I'll actually finish hanging those blinds I blogged about hanging last Sunday (when I only got one of the five blinds up). Perhaps a little breakfast and a look at what Sunday news talk shows the TiVo dragged in....

The intense sexual politics of the new literature Nobelist.

Elfriede Jelinek interviews:

I describe the relationship between man and woman as a Hegelian relationship between master and slave. As long as men are able to increase their sexual value through work, fame or wealth, while women are only powerful through their body, beauty and youth, nothing will change.

How can you cling to such dated stereotypes when you yourself are acclaimed internationally for your intellect?

A woman who becomes famous through her work reduces her erotic value. A woman is permitted to chat or babble, but speaking in public with authority is still the greatest transgression.

You're suggesting that your achievements, like winning the Nobel Prize in Literature, detract from your overall appeal.

Certainly! A woman's artistic output makes her monstrous to men if she does not know to make herself small at the same time and present herself as a commodity. At best people are afraid of her.

Filibustering.

You can't have a piece about the filibuster without a picture of Jimmy Stewart in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," a film that is much worse than people remember. Yes, Jimmy Stewart is great, and he's especially great in the scene from the movie that people remember as he talks about America! and Justice! and Democracy! until he passes out on the Senate floor. Do you even remember the part where the Senator played by the equally great Claude Rains is moved by Stewart's efforts into such profound remorse that he runs out of the Senate chamber and just shoots himself to death? Well, not only don't you see that sort of response to the filibuster, you don't even have the speechifying anymore.

[In the 1970s,] the Senate created a two-track process that allows senators to block action on a piece of legislation merely by invoking the right to filibuster, without actually having to stand before the chamber and drone endlessly on. Meanwhile, the Senate can take up other business.

The measure, intended to promote efficiency, inadvertently encouraged filibusters by making them painless, said Julian Zelizer, a historian of Congress at Boston University. "The filibuster exploded, and became a normal tool of political combat," he said. In 1995, he noted, almost 44 percent of all major legislation considered by the Senate was delayed by a filibuster or the threat of one.

Bring back the pain! In the era of C-Span and 24-hour news networks, we want to see the real-time, real-world blocking of debate, if that's the right these characters mean to invoke. You can't wave that cornball Jimmy Stewart image around and not put on the big Jimmy Stewart show. Bring back the politico-tainment. And then if what you are doing is foolish and obstructionist, we'll be able to say, "Senator, I've seen 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington'; I love Jimmy Stewart. Senator, you're no Jimmy Stewart."

UPDATE: As an emailer was nice enough to remind me, the Claude Rains character only tries to kill himself. He gets off a gunshot, but other Senators are wrestling the gun away from him. Rains emotes:

I'm not fit to be a Senator! I'm not fit to live! Expel me! Expel me! Every word he says is true!

Rains rushes back into the Senate Chamber confessing to all that he's comepletely corrupt and Mr. Smith's been telling the truth. Once Rains confesses, everyone instantly takes Mr. Smith's side and jumps around and cheers for Stewart, who is still passed out. Our last sight of Mr. Smith is a beaten, unconscious man being carried out of the Senate. The image reminds us of paintings we've seen of the dead Christ.

Mr. Smith, we should know, filibustered to convince his colleagues of the truth of particular facts--that Rains was corrupt. The filibusters we actually see in the Senate are not about getting facts straight, though, they are about policy or political preferences. The real filibusterer is not a crusader for truth, but simply someone who holds the minority position and wants to block the majority from having its way. The maudlin vanity of Senators identifying with Mr. Smith--and surely not Rains!--should embarrass them.

"Intelligent design is creationism in a cheap tuxedo."

A school district in Pennsylvania has authorized teaching "a new theory called intelligent design" to balance the teaching of evolution. No litigation yet.

Wisconsin plays defense against California... over stem-cell research.

When California voters authorized spending $3 billion on stem-cell research, that put pressure on Wisconsin, where stem-cell research originated, to preserve its leadership in the field. Now Wisconsin Governor Doyle has responded by proposing to spend $750 million on a biotechnology research institute here at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It's a matter of economic self-defense, according to the Governor.

"I know the vast majority of the people of Wisconsin understand how important this research is, and they want me to help the scientists that are working so hard to cure juvenile diabetes, and Parkinson's and spinal injuries," Doyle said. "And we also know how important it will be to the future economy of this state."

Not everyone is a member of Doyle's "vast majority":

"When you hear people talk about this and the biotech industry . . . it's all in economic terms," said Susan Armacost, legislative director for Wisconsin Right to Life. "They're willing to destroy human life to build an economic base.

"Is that what we're about in Wisconsin? I don't think so."

"I have always thought of New England as the last death-free zone in the United States."

So says a lawprof and former capital defense lawyer. Connecticut faces the fact that it has the death penalty:

Beyond resurrecting the vicious details of the killings, the pending execution is forcing a confrontation with a discomforting fact for one of the country's most liberal regions. It would be the first time in more than 40 years that an inmate has been put to death north or east of Pennsylvania.

Note that the impetus toward this execution is not coming from the state, which hasn't executed anyone in over 40 years and which has housed this man on death row for 20, but from the murderer himself, who has chosen to forgo more appeals. And not everyone in Connecticut feels a compunction against capital punishment:

"This guy is a poster boy for the death penalty," said Michael Malchik, the former Connecticut State Police detective who arrested Mr. Ross in 1984, after the body of his last victim was found hidden inside a stone wall bordering a field. "He deserves no sympathy from anyone. I think the problem is that the people who are against it have never seen the other side of it. They've never smelled it, looked at it, felt the weight of a dead body in a body bag."

A Whitmoresque Bush.

Wow, kind of like President Thomas J. Whitmore having to do everything himself.

Doodle of the day.

Let's just start off with the drawing, photographed on the window sill next to where I'm planning to sit all morning reading the Sunday NYT. I've sorted the Times into sections. Tossed in the far corner of the table are the things I'm not going to read: the special poetry edition of the Book Review, the travel section, the travel magazine, the business section. Piled in front of me are the things I'm going to read re-piled in the order I'm going to read them: front page section, Week in Review, Sports (only to check a couple things), Styles, Arts. Tossed over there is the thing I'm saving for last: the NYT Magazine (with the crossword puzzle but, sadly, no acrostic today).

Political humor of the maitre d' kind.

Gawker prints this "Gawker Stalker" item sent in by a reader:

Freemans, tuesday night the 16th of nov. the bush twins , along with 2 massive secret service men, tried to have dinner. they were told by the maitre'd that they were full and would be for the next 4 years. upon hearing, the entire restaurant cheered and did a round of shots... it was amazing!!! [Ed: We're hearing that this is actually true.]

Too ugly, of course, but it was a rather clever thing for the maitre d' to come up with to say.

It doesn't seem right to root for Ohio State...

Over my undergraduate school Michigan. But thanks, Buckeyes. And go, Badgers.

UPDATE: AAAAGGGHHHH! That was grim!

Life is a sport.

At the moment, one of the listings on the sports page of Google News is:

Oldest man dies at 113
CBC Montreal - 3 hours ago
SYRACUSE, NY - The world's oldest man, according to Guinness World Records, has died less than two weeks before he would have turned 114.

And this is on the sports page because ... ?

UPDATE: Several readers have emailed to say that the article has a line about the man being a Red Sox fan. One of the articles on Google's list under this heading does call the man a "noted Red Sox fan." I'm sorry, I don't like that answer. I think the answer is that we are all participating in a competition, refereed by Guinness, to try to outlive each other.

Out-of-touch Hollywood.

On last night's episode of "Joan of Arcadia," Joan's boyfriend said to her: "So what if you don't make Ivy League? Is it really that big of a deal? If George Bush is any indication..."

The actor says "George Bush" with a mild but scoffing inflection that invokes the Bush-is-dumb opinion it's assumed we share. But this a big, popular network show, and Bush just won a decisive re-election. Who do they think watches the show? Or maybe they are just trying to keep the Kerry voters from hating the boyfriend character for having such an evil last name: Rove.

Doodle of the day.

This one wasn't drawn today, but it looks like the ones drawn yesterday and the day before. And it is photographed on today's paper:

Oliver Stone conquers the New York Times.

The NYT is helping Oliver Stone lay the foundation for the excuse he's planning to use when his movie "Alexander" bombs. (I pointed out Stone's plan here.) Here's the NYT:

As the culture wars rage anew between social conservatives and their liberal counterparts, Hollywood is preparing to break fresh ground by releasing a high-budget epic film in which the lead character - a classic, and classical, action hero - is passionately in love with a man.

In Oliver Stone's three-hour [$155 million] drama, "Alexander," Colin Farrell, as the fourth-century Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great, has a number of tender love scenes with his best friend, Hephaistion, played by a long-haired Jared Leto.

We're being warned not to give in to our impulse to laugh as these two dopey actors -- in big close-ups and, we're told, heavy eye make-up -- declare their love in "tender" scenes. Don't laugh or you're homophobic! Yes, but what if the scene is laughably BAD, as tender love scenes in Hollywood ancient history movies usually are? No, you have to sit there and behave solemnly, appreciating the lesson in diversity and history that Oliver Stone is now going to teach you or you're a homophobe, you bad person! Now, just a minute, Oliver Stone is going to teach me history? Haven't we been there before?

[T]he director, who critics say took liberties with historical fact in films like "J.F.K." and "Nixon," said that his choice with "Alexander" was to hew to the record.

"I don't want to corrupt history," Mr. Stone said in an interview. "I don't want to say, 'How do I make this work for a modern audience?' Alexander to me is a perfect blend of male-female, masculine-feminine, yin-yang. He could communicate with both sides of his nature. When you get to modern-day focus groups, to who'll get offended in Hawaii or Maine, you can't get out of it."

Oh, yeah, that sounds really historically accurate. The Greeks with their yin-yang philosophy and their self-help books about "communicat[ing] with both sides of [your] nature." What's feminine about Alexander? I mean, even assuming he had sex with men, what's feminine about that? I love the way Stone is lecturing us, as if we are too backward to tolerate homosexuality, when he's relying on the stereotype that men who have sex with men are feminine. Are gay men supposed to be so damned pleased a big expensive movie is including them that they have to appreciate the way Oliver Stone defines them? And in the end, it will all be about Oliver Stone, won't it?

Mr. Stone said he was concerned that there might be a backlash. "I'd be naïve not to be concerned, in America, anyway," he said. "I didn't know there would be a parallel situation going on."

The parallel situation Mr. Stone refers to is that in the wake of the presidential election and the passage of prohibitions on gay marriage in a number of states, homosexuality has resurfaced as a focus of debate and controversy among cultural critics.

Oh, Oliver Stone will cry: I'm being politically persecuted! Ooh, the backlash! How was I to have known, when I set out to provide this useful history lesson, that there would be a -- gasp! -- political situation? Oh, no! So if you're not right-wing, and you wanted Kerry to win, you better get out there right away and see my movie and applaud me. And don't you dare laugh, because laughing means you're a homophobe.

Kerry credits bin Laden.

How awful of John Kerry to give Osama bin Laden credit for determining the outcome of the election! I'm sure bin Laden appreciates your acknowledgement of his influence, which is exactly what he seemed to want.

This is from "Special Report With Brit Hume" tonight:

In Little Rock, at the dedication of the Clinton Library, Fox News has learned, John Kerry said what tipped the election scales was the last minute Osama bin Laden videotape. Well, the tape surfaced the Friday before the election. Kerry says he didn't have enough time over the weekend to reassure voters that he could protect them as well as the President. Kerry told several friends of Bill, "It was the Osama tape, it scared them," meaning voters.

I'm sure Kerry feels a lot of pressure to explain his loss, but he really ought to resist giving bin Laden this affirmation. The fact that Kerry would say that bin Laden holds this power over the minds of Americans, for me, reinforces the mistrust of Kerry that made me decide to vote for Bush. And Kerry's contempt for us -- we're just scared, and without a bin Laden tape, we'd have forgotten about bin Laden! -- is just one more hearty shove in the direction he sent me two months ago. Thanks for making me feel sure it was right to vote for Bush.

UPDATE: Sissy Willis agrees (and has a great final zinger).

ANOTHER UPDATE: Thinking about Kerry's bin Laden comment and remembering Kerry's snub of Allawi makes me think Kerry really lacks good instincts about conducting foreign affairs!

Just when I thought I was out...

I watched "The Apprentice" again! I had stopped watching it. Prof. Yin even blogged about how I'd stopped watching it! Well, it was kind of interesting last night. Maria was nutty. Per Entertainment Weekly:

As Maria slowly but surely lost her mind, I got legitimately giddy. Like, Al and I kept pausing the DVR so we could make weird pointing gestures with our hands just like her and so I could write down the completely psychotically bizarre things that were coming out of her mouth. A couple fan favorites: ''Give me bitchy or give me death. '' Oh, or how about, ''If sexy is wrong, I don't wanna be right!'' Or, wait, my favorite: ''It angers me to be called a control freak, because I'm just quite simply not.'' Blink-blink. Blink-blink. BLINK-blink. Bli-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni. Blink-blink....

The word "ass" was said about a thousand times -- call the FCC! -- as the contestants made up an ad campaign for Levi's jeans and Trump excoriated the losing team for not fully appreciating how jeans are all about "ass" -- a word he says in a uniquely unattractive way. The winning team's reward was, as it often is, torture. This time: spending time with Billy Joel, which motivated the EW recapper to write this song parody:

''What's the matter with the show I'm watchin'?
(Can't you tell that it's out of touch?)
Will the P.M. ever not get fired?
(Don't you think that you ask too much?)
Nowadays you can't be too sentimental.
The best characters are gone, and everyone is mental.
Blond chicks, Trump's tricks, who picked these big —
Anyway, it's still rock & roll to me-heeeeeeee....''

UPDATE: Tung Yin has a long recap of the show, and somehow it doesn't include the word "ass." I don't get it. If I had a one word recap of the show it would be: Ass. And I'd say it like Donald Trump: ey-ess.

400 greatest movie quotes.

It takes a while to read through all 400 quotes nominated as greatest movie quotes by the American Film Institute, which Throwing Things threw at me. If you decide to read over the downloadable PDF document available at the first link, note that the list is in alphabetical order, not order of greatness: "All-righty, then" from "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective" is not the greatest quote in the history of film. I spent a moment contemplating how anyone could think such a thing. These are nominees, from which a final 100 will be chosen. Reading the standard the jurors are asked to apply helps makes some sense of some of the choices (e.g., "Damn!"):

CULTURAL IMPACT
Movie Quotes that viewers use in their own lives and situations; circulating through popular culture, they become part of the national lexicon.

LEGACY
Movie Quotes that viewers use to evoke the memory of a treasured film, thus ensuring and enlivening its historical legacy.

Well, so we're really trying to generate a list of greatest catchphrases. It's not so much great writing as a particular actor memorably getting off a "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" zinger at a key point in a big film. Once that's clear, it's fun to read the list.

"Sanctuary!" (from "The Hunchback of Notre Dame")

"Oh, no, it wasn't the airplanes. It was beauty killed the beast." (from "King Kong")

"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!" (from the "Wizard of Oz")

"Hey, lady!" (Jerry Lewis as Herbert H. Heebert in "The Ladies' Man")

Some work for me as beautiful lines:

"I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me." (from "In a Lonely Place")

"To God, there is no zero. I still exist." (from "The Incredible Shrinking Man")

And some are perfectly insufferable:

"It's amazing, Molly. The love inside, you take it with you." (from "Ghost")

Here's the most hilariously bad one:

"Oh, Moses, Moses, you stubborn, splendid, adorable fool!" (from "The Ten Commandments")

And somebody please teach these clowns some basic Italian. It's not "Take the cannolis."

UPDATE: A reader writes:

"Cannolis" may not be grammatically correct in Italian, but indeed the Godfather mafiosi called them "cannolis" in the movie, and so do all my Italian in-laws.

I haven't gone back and checked the movie. I'm seeing both versions on line. The DVD doesn't have this line as a chapter title. Sarah Vowell called her cool book "Take the Cannoli."

Important note: I don't mean to insinuate that anyone who says "cannolis" is a clown, only that if the original movie has "cannoli" and AFI corrupted it into "cannolis," they're clowns. They present themselves as an "Institute," suggesting an academic take on film. Now they produce these top 100 lists, that are more pop culture and promotional, so their reputation is on the line. They need to get the quotes right. As to what the right quote is, the emailer makes me doubt my memory of the film.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader notes something I didn't know about that "In a Lonely Place" quote.

And as long as I'm back here updating again, let me ask, with respect to the email quoted in the previous update, if the mafiosi say "cannolis," why don't the mafiosi say "mafiosis"?

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: I've checked the DVD, and it is "Leave the gun. Take the cannoli." It's a little hard to hear, and easy to imagine you hear an "s," but I listened to it four times and also put on the English subtitles, and it is definitely "cannoli." Which I'm sure is a relief to Sarah Vowell and to grammarians everywhere. And to people who think the AFI is not the high-tone outfit it might like to seem to be.

BONUS: Here's a good, amusing article about Americanized Italian-speaking.

Doodle of the day.

Drawn during a presentation about voting rights, at noon today, in the faculty library:

"Irritable Male Syndrome."

I think what we need is a term for the syndrome that involves coming up with a memorable but annoying name for a banal observation in order to sell books. Anyway, you'll be happy to know that if you're a male and you're suffering from this problem (basically, being a cranky bastard), there are some solutions available for you, according to this review:

[Jed] Diamond's many suggestions include buying his book, adding more zinc to the diet, decreasing licorice (he says it can reduce testosterone levels by 34 percent), practicing meditation and positive thinking, and avoiding circumcision.

Great, now he tells us.

"I now believe that this practice is one of the physical factors that contribute to IMS," Diamond writes with his typical surety based on no findings whatsoever. "Although there haven't been studies linking circumcision to IMS, there is enough evidence of the effects of early childhood trauma that I believe it's wise for parents to carefully consider the subject before making a decision."

Oh, what the hell? Just make stuff up. What's the difference? Why not encourage men to blame their penis (and their parents) for everything?

Local radio guy slurs Condoleezza Rice.

Here's the Wisconsin State Journal coverage of the story about Madison talk radio host "Sly" (John Sylvester). Note how gloriously polysyllabic Senator Feingold gets trying to distance himself from the guy:

"While it is not my intention to comment on every extremely inappropriate remark made in our society," Feingold said in a statement today, "given the proximity to the unfortunate comments made by another member of the media, I feel it is necessary to completely reject and repudiate these recent comments."

Feingold is referring to the fact that back in October, a Milwaukee talk radio host slurred Mexicans. That doesn't seem all that proximate to me. I think most observers would conclude that Feingold felt it was necessary to speak because Sly had intensely supported Feingold in his recent successful re-election campaign.

At the library.

Most interesting paragraph in Todd Purdum's account (in the NYT) of President Bush's remarks at the opening of President Clinton's library:

There was no mention of the sex scandal that led to Clinton's impeachment. Bush recalled that shortly before leaving office, "President Clinton said, 'Christ admonished us that our lives will be judged by how they do unto the least of our neighbors.' Throughout his career, Bill Clinton has done his best to live up to that standard and Americans respect him for it."

He did "his best," and we won't be uncivil and point out that he wasn't always perfect. And note how elegantly Bush implicitly takes a swipe at those who criticize his religiosity: he quotes Clinton beautifully connecting public service to religion (and not just amorphous "ceremonial deism," but Christianity.)

I wrote about the umbrella decisions yesterday, but there's good new detail here:

The wives of the four presidents walked out to the stage, each with an umbrella. Their husbands followed with no umbrellas.

As the men took their places, the women hurried to try to cover them. Bush first took refuge under Chelsea Clinton's umbrella, posing for pictures with his arm around her, then settled on pairing with his wife. Barbara Bush eventually prevailed in convincing her apparently reluctant husband, the elder Bush, to come under her umbrella as well.

So the undersized umbrellas were the women's umbrellas. The manly thing to do is to stride out there with no umbrella at all. (Don't want to be the "man with the umbrella.") But it won't do to look sodden in all the photographs. The hairspray melted out of Clinton's hair, de-pouf-ifying it into a Julius Caesar style. So the women rescued the men. Then, there they were with the undersized women's collapsible umbrellas, emasculated en masse.

UPDATE: A reader sends this link to the Army Officer's Guide:

There is a long-standing taboo against a male officer in uniform carrying an umbrella. However, it is authorized and proper for women in the Army to do so when not in formation.

Three of the four Presidents who went umbrella-less in the rain are, of course, former military officers. They may have a strong sense that carrying an umbrella is inappropriate for a man. Ironically, this left them open to being pestered by the women to hold dinky women's umbrellas after they'd paid the price of manhood and gotten soaked. Interesting that Bush got help from Chelsea before he "settled on pairing with his wife." I'll bet Laura, unlike Barbara Bush, did not prevail upon her husband to take umbrella-shelter, and Chelsea offered the umbrella and the two of them had a nice little relationship. Time to quote this Hollies lyric:

Bus stop, wet day
She's there I say
Please share my umbrella
Bus stop, bus goes, she stays, love grows
Under my umbrella
All that summer we enjoyed it
Wind and rain and shine
That umbrella we employed it
By August she was mine

The Mel Gibson movie-making model.

You may remember that Mel Gibson put up $20 million of his own money to make "The Passion of the Christ." But do you realize that Andrew Lloyd Webber put up $90 million of his own money to make "The Phantom of the Opera"? It's all about the deep belief and the strong personal vision. And having a huge load of cash.

Doodle of the day.

Drawn on page B11 of today's NYT, the page facing the crossword puzzle and the Alessandra Stanley review of the new Carrie Fisher talk show.



UPDATE: I caught the first episode of Carrie Fisher's talk show, the one where she interviews her father, Eddie Fisher. It was ragged, frighteningly raw, really, but very funny. He is an eely sweetheart of a man, and he sat there and let his daughter bounce zingers off him for an hour. She's bitter and good natured, and she let him have it about his life of heavy drug use and womanizing.

Abused by blogs.

Last night I had a blogger dinner with two bloggers who have in the past taken down posted statements after I've linked to them and a third blogger who has demanded that I clear it with her before I link to her blog anymore. Now, the one who demands the right of pre-link clearance has no compunction about blogging about my "hard-edged realism and cynicism" (i.e., I don't stoke romantic fantasies long and hard enough). One of the post-link tamperers is publicly blaming my hair for the fact that dinner was scheduled for seven rather than six thirty, and the other used his blog to invite the public to advise him whether he ought to attend the dinner or take an alternate invitation (i.e., please, ladies, fight over me). No links for any of you!

Presidential umbrellas.

Can't someone find a real umbrella for these men? Those short-handled, foldable ones look absurd on anyone, but if two Presidents are going to appear side-by-side at a major photo op, can't they find suitable props?

UPDATE: I think they had the usual big umbrellas, along with spiffy-looking guys to walk around holding an umbrella over each presidential head, but it was decided it looked silly to have four guys, and maybe Hillary and Chelsea too, followed around by umbrella-holders, and you couldn't have all of these people holding full-sized umbrellas, or it would have spoiled the photo op with comical bumping around, trying to decide whether to hold one umbrella higher or lower than the other guy's umbrella, and never getting the presidential faces close enough for a good group shot. That said, it was gutsy of Hillary to go with the optimistically beige-colored umbrella amid the uniform black of all the other umbrellas. Still, the NYT managed to center and flatter Chelsea in its front-page line-up of umbrella celebrities. (Can't find the picture on line, sorry.)

Augusten Burroughs.

Augusten Burroughs was just on Fresh Air. You can listen to the interview here. The show ends with him explaining how he changed his name and why he chose "Augusten Burroughs." It has nothing to do with William Burroughs, whom he'd never heard of at the time.

I highly recommend the audio versions of Augusten Burroughs's books. His manner of speaking adds a lot to the humor (and the horror) of his books.

2000 nostalgia.

Yesterday, Best of the Web wrote about nostalgia for the 2000 election.

History repeats itself, as Karl Marx observed, first as tragedy, then as farce. In the farce of 2004, the Libertarian and Green parties have raised enough money to pay for a statewide recount of presidential ballots in Ohio. "The recount would be conducted after the election results are certified in early December," reports the Associated Press.

There's no chance that it'll change the outcome in Ohio, where President Bush won by some 136,000 votes; in Florida four years ago, even multiple recounts by partisan officials in heavily Democratic counties were able to generate no more than 1,500 votes for Al Gore. The Washington Post reports even an aide to John Kerry "is rolling his eyes" when discussing conspiracy theories about a stolen election.

I've noticed a kind of nagging, low-level election 2000 nostalgia. We just had an appointments vote here at the Law School, and people could not get through it without saying "Florida," "butterfly ballot," and "hanging chads." Will that ever get old? I hope.

Can that kid get his quarters back?

U.S. News reports that Democrats are a bit irked about how much money Kerry has left over from the campaign.

"Democrats are questioning why he sat on so much money that could have helped him defeat George Bush or helped down-ballot races, many of which could have gone our way with a few more million dollars," said Donna Brazile, campaign manager for Al Gore's 2000 presidential race.

Apparently he had much more (at least $15 million more) than he could spend. Maybe next time candidates come around asking for contributions, people won't be so ready to believe they need to stretch to send in money. You didn't even use what we gave you last time! Remember this passage from Kerry's concession speech:

And I thank your families and I thank you for the sacrifices you've made. And to all the volunteers all across this country who gave so much of themselves. You know, thanks to William Field, a 6-year-old who collected $680 a quarter and a dollar at a time, selling bracelets during the summer to help change America.

Thanks to Michael Benson from Florida, who I spied in a rope line holding a container of money and it turned out he had raided his piggy bank and wanted to contribute.

I think little William and Michael have some reason to be irked too.

Oliver Stone's preemptive strike.

Here's how it looks to me. Oliver Stone's big, expensive, horribly bad movie "Alexander" is about to come out, and Stone is trying to lay the foundation for blaming moral-values, red-state Americans for his own embarrassing failure.

"Alexander lived in a more honest time," Stone told Playboy magazine.

"We go into his bisexuality. It may offend some people, but sexuality in those days was a different thing. Pre-Christian morality. Young boys were with boys when they wanted to be."

Yes, ancient Greece was all about honesty, and we're all just too Puritanical and repressed to appreciate your God-awful movie.

The political structure of academia.

The NYT reports on a study that shows (unsurprisingly) that Democrats greatly outnumber Republicans in academia. The ratio is 7 to 1, generally, 9 to 1 at Berkeley and Stanford. The article doesn't say where the Republicans are clustered (the hard sciences?), but it does say that the studies found a more extreme disparity among younger professors (183 to 6).

There are a lot of different theories on why this is so and what, if anything, should be done about it.

One theory for the scarcity of Republican professors is that conservatives are simply not that interested in academic careers. A Democrat on the Berkeley faculty, George P. Lakoff, who teaches linguistics and is the author of "Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think," said that liberals choose academic fields that fit their world views. "Unlike conservatives," he said, "they believe in working for the public good and social justice, as well as knowledge and art for their own sake, which are what the humanities and social sciences are about."

The other side of that theory would be that conservatives are less likely to have a problem with trying to make a lot of money, which causes academia to fall in their ranking of preferred options. Then there's this reference to The Federalist Papers:

Some non-Democrats prefer to attribute the imbalance to the structure of academia, which allows hiring decisions and research agendas to be determined by small, independent groups of scholars. These fiefs, the critics say, suffer from a problem described in The Federalist Papers: an autonomous "small republic" is prone to be dominated by a cohesive faction that uses majority voting to "outnumber and oppress the rest," in Madison's words.

It doesn't need to be a nefarious desire to oppress the minority here.

Martin Trow, an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley who was chairman of the faculty senate and director of the Center for Studies in Higher Education, said that professors tried not to discriminate in hiring based on politics, but that their perspective could be warped because so many colleagues shared their ideology.

"Their view comes to be seen not as a political preference but what decent, intelligent human beings believe," said Dr. Trow, who calls himself a conservative. "Debate is stifled, and conservatives either go in the closet or get to be seen as slightly kooky. So if a committee is trying to decide between three well-qualified candidates, it may exclude the conservative because he seems like someone who has poor judgment."

It's an ancient human foible to think people who don't agree with you must be uninformed or dumb.

UPDATE: The Times points us to a website where you can read the details of the study. And contrary to what I wrote above, the Times did have a bit of information about where the Republicans were clustered: "The ratio of Democratic to Republican professors ranged from 3 to 1 among economists to 30 to 1 among anthropologists." Looking at the survey itself, you'll see that it's 28 to 1 in Sociology, 13.5 to 1 in Philosophy, 9.5 to 1 in History, and 6.7 to 1 in Political Science.

A glance at the Clinton Library.

When I first glanced at this photograph of the inside of the Clinton Library (I didn't see the headline, just the picture), I thought: what a glamorous-looking prison!

UPDATE: You may have to scroll down for the picture that shows the big interior view. The picture at the top right now shows Clinton looking at models of Buddy the dog and Socks the cat in a glass case. That doesn't remind me of prison. It did make me wonder whether they actually had the freeze-dried or taxidermied bodies of the actual dead pets. My guess, based on an estimate of presidential library-style taste--is that these are sculptures.

What really sets us apart from the apes.

"Have you ever looked at an ape?" Dr. Bramble said. "They have no buns."

Dr. Dennis M. Bramble of the University of Utah has co-authored a study of the ability to run and its role in human evolution, reported in today's NYT.

Teaching evolution.

In my Religion and the Constitution class this week we're talking about a favorite topic of mine: teaching evolution in the public schools. It's especially timely here in Wisconsin, considering this recent report about Grantsburg:

The city’s school board has revised its science curriculum to allow the teaching of creationism ... School board members believed that a state law governing the teaching of evolution was too restrictive. The science curriculum “should not be totally inclusive of just one scientific theory,” said Joni Burgin, superintendent of the district of 1,000 students in northwest Wisconsin.

Last month, when the board examined its science curriculum, language was added calling for “various models/theories” of origin to be incorporated.

“Insisting that teachers teach alternative theories of origin in biology classes takes time away from real learning, confuses some students and is a misuse of limited class time and public funds,” said Don Waller, a botanist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

There is a 1987 Supreme Court case -- Edwards v. Aguillard -- striking down a Louisiana law that required schools that teach evolution to also teach the scientific evidence that might support creationism. In Edwards, the Court said the statute had no secular purpose. The idea that it protected academic freedom was rejected on that ground that it did not give teachers any new flexibility in designing their curricula; it deprived them of the option of teaching evolution without creationism. The Grantsburg curriculum, on the other had, allows the teaching of creation theory, as a way to balance the evolution that the state already requires teachers to cover. So I don't think Edwards dictates the outcome here, and I don't know how any litigation might play out.

But I tend to doubt that teaching creationism in public school will prove very satisfactory for anyone. Some parents and kids will chafe at having their time wasted on the topic or at having religious subject matter presented in public school. And people who are eager to have creationism taught may change their minds as science teachers invite kids to compare the evidence and look critically at a subject people normally approach through scripture and faith. In practice, there is a lot of potential for holding up religion for scorn among the students and offending the creationism-believing students and parents who are now hoping to find their beliefs supported and accommodated. Asking students to take a scientific and critical approach to religion seems more likely to undercut religious belief than just teaching evolution without mentioning religion. I think Grantsburg will abandon its creationism experiment soon enough, with or without the intervention of a court.

Back when I was in 9th grade in the mid-1960s, we were taught evolution by a teacher whose last name makes me infer that he was probably Catholic. One day in class I made a statement, which I can't precisely recall anymore, that indicated that I accepted the theory of evolution as a true account. The teacher snapped at me: "You're not a good Christian!" I was stunned. I bet they don't do that in public school anymore. And this was a very fine high school in an affluent suburb in northern New Jersey. For many years, I felt that I had been deeply wronged by this teacher, and understanding the Constitution now, I can easily see how wrong he was. But it has only been in teaching the constitutional religion clauses these last few years that I became able to understand what could have made him say such a thing. I think he was forced to teach evolution in order to keep his job and that he must have thought that he was committing a sin if his teaching made students believe it was true. Faced with plain evidence that I believed the theory, he lost it and said something completely inappropriate. And no, I didn't think of things like phoning up the ACLU. I just went around for a couple years feeling bad that my teacher said I wasn't a good Christian. After I got through that, I had a long period of feeling he had outrageously wronged me. Only in the last couple years have I been able to see the way in which he suffered.

It's a difficult topic.

UPDATE: Speaking of difficulty, I should acknowledge (as several emailers have pointed out) that Catholics do not have the same problem with evolution that Protestant fundamentalists have. I don't want to purport to distinguish among theologies, but from what I've read, Catholicism has been harmonized with evolution. Still, at some point God plays a role in the process within that harmonization. Since I can't remember what I said that triggered the over-the-top response from my ninth grade biology teacher (a man of Italian descent), I'm left with a mystery. Maybe my newfound sympathy for the man is not called for. Maybe he had no problem with teaching evolution generally, and I'm just imagining he suffered. Should I get pissed off at him again?

And what about Condoleezza Rice?

Having just relayed the NYT description of Kerry's lonely lunch, let me pass along the description (by Elisabeth Bumiller) of the Condoleezza Rice lifestyle, which includes lunch:

Her entire life has been instilled with ... discipline, from her training as a concert pianist and competitive ice skater to her service on the first President Bush's National Security Council staff and as provost of Stanford University. Even now, Ms. Rice still packs her lunch many days as a way of avoiding the expense and calories of the White House mess. She rises at 5 a.m. to run on the treadmill ... that she keeps in her sparse Watergate apartment, is in the office before 7 a.m. and is in bed by 10 p.m.

But what does she eat for lunch? Broccoli and green beans? Bumiller needs to get some writing tips from Purdum (see previous post). But Bumiller does have the good fashion details in this nice account of the surprise party Bush gave her:

Ms. Rice, who has never married, celebrated her 50th birthday last weekend with a black-tie surprise party at the British ambassador's residence, attended by Mr. Bush, who put on a tuxedo and spent a rare night out in formal Washington.

Ms. Rice, who arrived in casual clothes en route to what she thought was to be a dinner at a restaurant with relatives, changed into a red gown that the designer Oscar de la Renta had created for her for the occasion.

Wow! Beautiful! And there's good material here too about her preference for Brahms:

"I love Brahms because Brahms is actually structured," she said in the interview a year ago. "And he's passionate without being sentimental. I don't like sentimental music, so I tend not to like Liszt, and I don't actually much care for the Russian romantics Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, where it's all on the sleeve. With Brahms it's restrained, and there's a sense of tension that never resolves."

Bumiller ends the article with that point, and you know she means for you to take that statement about Brahms and to read it as Rice's description of her own personality.

What is Kerry doing these days?

He's back in the Senate, the NYT reports in this nicely written article by Todd S. Purdum:

Mr. Kerry attended the morning caucus in the Old Senate Chamber where his fellow Democrats selected the new minority leadership, in which he has no formal role, and got a warm reception and multiple ovations....

But Mr. Kerry skipped the weekly Democratic caucus lunch of chicken, salmon and salad in a meeting room off the Senate floor in favor of takeout shrimp, broccoli and green beans with a side of rice, ferried from Hunan Dynasty on Pennsylvania Avenue by his trusty assistant, Marvin Nicholson, to his cubbyhole up a winding stairway above the Little Rotunda in the Capitol's Senate wing.

Nicely observed details. Broccoli and green beans, eh? Sounds so sad and grim. New Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said this of the Senator who retreated for a solitary lunch in his cubbyhole:

"Senator Kerry is not a shrinking violet," Mr. Reid said. "We are looking for John Kerry to find what he wants to do.''

The news story continues:

In a parliamentary system, Mr. Kerry himself would loom as a likely leader of the opposition, but Mr. Reid already had that job locked up before Mr. Kerry could even really decide whether he might be interested. Mr. Kerry has won praise from his fellow Democrats for running a strong race, but the Senate is now as full of potential rivals as it is his supporters, especially should he decide to run for president again in four years.

I wonder what the climate in the Senate really is for Kerry right now. Sounds chilly. The Times article doesn't mention it, but Kerry has $45 million left over from his campaign, giving him a big headstart over anyone else who may want to run in 2008. One can imagine Hillary Clinton having an easy time raising a lot of money, but what about everyone else? I would not be surprised if his Senate Democratic colleagues, already struggling to make a show for themselves from the minority position, want to block him from finding a shining new role for himself in the Senate.

UPDATE: The $45 million number is from mid-October. The estimate is that the final number Kerry will report having left over is $15 to 16 million. And note note that he seems to be on the receiving end of a lot of bullying about it:

Democratic Party leaders said Wednesday they want to know why Sen. John Kerry ended his presidential campaign with more than $15 million in the bank, money that could have helped Democratic candidates across the country.

Some said he will be pressured to give the money to Democratic campaign committees rather than save it for a potential White House bid in 2008.

"Democrats are questioning why he sat on so much money that could have helped him defeat George Bush or helped down-ballot races, many of which could have gone our way with a few more million dollars," said Donna Brazile, campaign manager for Al Gore's 2000 presidential race.

"It's okay to eat fish, 'cause they don't have any feelings."

So sang Kurt Cobain, not so many years ago. But now PETA says they do have feelings. (Via Drudge. Hey, do we have to "via" Drudge? He never "vias" anyone else.)

Check this photo, of PETA's big plush fish-with-feelings. See how they put the eyes in front? It makes them seem more human. You can't identify with an animal with eyes on either side of its head. That's why we love owls more than other birds. And note that the PETA fish has eyelids. We don't identify with a beast that has gaping ever-open eyes. That's one of the reasons Wesley Clark did so poorly in the primaries.

Time's Person of the Year.

Hasn't it been leadenly obvious for the past two weeks that George Bush will be Time Magazine's Person of the Year? But Time ran a panel discussion on the subject of this year's choice, and Andrew Sullivan, one of the panelists, describes it. I guess if you're on a panel like that you have to come up with interesting things to say. You can't just say, duh, it's Bush! Sullivan came up with "Karl Rove, Muhammed, or a mix of Michael Moore and Mel Gibson." Doesn't the person have to still be alive? Why? Check out 1988: the person doesn't ever have to have been alive. Time can do what it wants. The wonder is we care.

The swimming pool boondoggle.

Madison has five lakes and many beaches, and it has private swimming pools that are undersubscribed, not to mention a short swimming season, but some public leaders here have long pushed for a lavish public swimming pool project. The current political momentum for the project has been generated from a private donor pledge of $2 million. Here's the description of the pool that is supposed to get us all enthused:

[T]he pool ... would offer something for everyone: The preferred option is a $4 million, 16,400-square-foot "family aquatic center" with capacity for 1,000 people. It would have an eight-lane, 25-meter lap pool with two diving boards, a pool with beach-style entry and water fountains for young children, a deep well pool with two waterslides, dressing and shower rooms, concession stands, a sand volleyball court, group shelters and a sand play area for young children with outdoor showers.

Something for everyone? Well, there's nothing for those of us who don't want to go swimming, but I assume there will be something for me in the form of a tax bill. Oh, but there are private donors? That description says it's a $4 million project, which is already twice what the donors are offering, and that project described sounds as though it's going to cost a lot more than $4 million. Even if the described fantasy pool could be built for $4 million and the full amount could be raised privately, there will be no end to the costs for maintainance, employees, insurance, and the like. One must be awfully naive not to see all the tax money that will flow into this huge pool. How about raising a private endowment that would actually pay for the ongoing costs of the luxury of maintaining a elaborate public pool in Madison? I'm tired of the public fawning over two donors whose donation is a small part of the real costs. It is as if these two have simply bought the right to direct public policy!

UPDATE: An emailer writes:

I think your concerns about the public swimming pool are spot on. I live in California, in a community that highly values its swim teams - summer is just not summer if we aren't at the pool every day for practice and every Saturday a.m. and Wednesday evening. for meets. An "aquatic center" was built several years ago on the grounds of our high school due to a large grant from a donor. It is a huge 20 lane or so pool, bleachers, changing facilities etc. plus 2 separate pools for warm-ups and water polo. From what I understand, the pool has consistently lost money every year, even though it gets $$ from user fees. Every year our swim league holds a huge 2 day meet there (1000 swimmers plus spectators) and even with the fees that meet generates the aquatic center can't break even. And the center is used year-round, due to our weather! You are right to be concerned.

That reminds me. I forgot to mention: our high schools already have indoor pools! Our high schools are terrific, by the way, and I don't mind paying taxes to make these schools great. Read about East High School here and West High School here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I just fixated on the expression "family aquatic center." What an absurd phrase! Why say "aquatic center" instead of "swimming pool"? It's as if you wanted to be made fun of. And, more seriously, why "family"? If there is "something for everyone," why use a restrictive term? Are you trying to telegraph that this is about parents and young children, and no one else belongs here? (Ah, it would be so much cheaper for the city to just subsidize memberships at the private pools for lower income residents!) Or is "family" just a word that is supposed to mean "good, clean fun" or "uplifting, wholesome activity"? How I detest that cornball use of the word! But maybe the point is to make the place seem so hopelessly square that no teenager would want to set foot in the place and the parents with young children can feel warmly cosseted at the swank aquatic center.

Beatles Faux Sale!

My son John responds to the previous post:

The decision to release the American albums does not "make the most sense"; it distorts the Beatles' artistry. The fact that certain songs are on Revolver and certain songs are on Rubber Soul matters a lot; you can't just mix them around. For some reason, some executives decades ago decided that Rubber Soul would be better starting out with "It's Only Love" (John's least favorite song of his; intended to be on Help!, not Rubber Soul; and totally inappropriate as an opening track) and that Revolver would be better if it had more George songs (3) than John songs (2).

Some people, like you and me, understand this point, but a lot of people are going to be misled by these "albums." It's particularly bad because the original misleading was completely deliberate. It wasn't just saying, "Let's take out some filler to make the album shorter" (though that would have been bad enough). It was saying, "Rubber Soul starts with Drive My Car--that's bad, because we want the selling point to be that the Beatles are turning 'folk'--so start out with a slow acoustic song." Drive My Car sets the tone for the whole album. (It makes sense to have Drive My Car on the same album with Norwegian Wood, Michelle, and Girl; they're all joke songs.) If there are people who feel that it's "wrong" for the album to have Drive My Car, that's all the more reason to have it on there.

The only John songs on Revolver are the two side-closers, She Said She Said & Tomorrow Never Knows---creating the impression that Paul is the leader, the brains behind the Beatles, while John turns up every once in a while to do something heavy and far-out. Only the original album--with 3 extra John songs--gives a complete picture of the band. Again: This is not a problem for YOU, because you're aware of this. But if "Revolver" is being sold as a CD, teenagers are going to buy it mistakenly thinking, "I heard that this is the #1 album of all time."

(I know that those albums aren't being released yet, but presumably they'll be in "Volume 2" or something.)

UPDATE: Somebody emailed to tell me: "Your son sounds like a music snob." Somebody else emailed about this nice website dedicated to the Beatles' American albums.

"'Something New'? That can't be a Beatles album because we have all the Beatles albums and we don't have that."

That's something that a Generation Y-er said to me a few years ago. And my own son likes to say to me, when I say something like, "That's my favorite song on 'Beatles 65,'" "There is no 'Beatles 65.'" My answer is something like: ""Beatles 65' is more real to me than whatever it was released as in England and on CD. 'Beatles 65' is part of the structure of my brain! 'Beatles 65' is my youth!"

Of all the packagings and repackagings of the Beatles music, the decision to release the original American albums on CD makes the most sense. These albums may be dismissible to later generations because they are not the collections the Beatles themselves made, but they have everything to do with memory and feeling for those of us who made these albums a part of ourselves, one by one, as they were released to us in the 1960s.

Funny, my previous post talks about the problem I had when "Ruby Tuesday" followed "She Smiled Sweetly" when Margot played "Between the Buttons" in "The Royal Tenenbaums." The records you play as a teenager make a deep and meaningful imprint!

"The Life Aquatic," "The Royal Tenenbaums," "Nico Icon," "Between the Buttons."

I'm so looking forward to the new Wes Anderson movie, "The Life Aquatic" -- which has a cool webpage -- that I got out the old DVD of "The Royal Tenenbaums" and watched it today. I don't know if there is a movie made in the last five years that I like better. The part that precedes the opening credits is perfect. Gene Hackman and Owen Wilson could not be funnier. Gwyneth Paltrow is perfectly un-show-offy as the deadpan Margot, who wears a mink coat (when she's not soaking in the bathtub and turning off the TV with her toe) and smokes (when she's not huffing on her nicotine inhaler). Danny Glover also takes a low key role as an accountant (whose book is wonderfully titled "Accounting for Everything"). Angelica Huston is beautifully repressed (telling Glover her secret: she hasn't slept with a man in 18 years). And Bill Murray and Ben Stiller are there too.

I loved the music in "The Royal Tenenbaums," especially the singing by Nico (and if you like Nico, don't miss the documentary "Nico Icon") and the use of "Between the Buttons," which Margot plays on the record player in the great scene in the tent in the ballroom, where Margot and Richie declare their love. They let "Ruby Tuesday" play after "She Smiled Sweetly." I guess they think you won't notice that's the wrong order. The real album deprives you of the comfort of hearing the two slow songs in a row. "Between the Buttons" is one album that really takes me back to a painfully specific time and place, so the effect of those songs playing in that scene is overwhelming to me. And it's hard not to think of poor Brian Jones: look at what a weird gnome he had turned into by 1967--at age 25!--when that album came out (he's in the center). Just a few years earlier he had looked like this, and a couple years later he was dead.

UPDATE: A "Royal Tenenbaum" character name was corrected.

"Beavers weave stolen cash into dam."

Yes, that happened:

A bag of bills stolen from a casino was snapped up by beavers who wove thousands of dollars in soggy currency into the sticks and brush of their dam on a creek in eastern Louisiana.

So: Condoleezza Rice for President in '08.

ABC News reports:

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, one of President Bush's closest counselors, will be nominated to replace Colin Powell as secretary of state...

UPDATE: Andrea Mitchell on Hardball tonight, giving a reason why Rice may be more effective than Powell: "She is really an extension of George Bush."

The chaplain's view of Iraq.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has a story about a Wisconsin native who serves as a U.S. Army chaplain in Iraq:

[Ken] Sorenson said he had talked and prayed with two wounded soldiers who were leaving an aid station in Fallujah and were eager to rejoin their unit. After spending eight years as a military chaplain, he said he is amazed by the spirit of American soldiers.

"Over the course of this year, I've seen a number of wounded soldiers," he said, and "their attitude is phenomenal. It's - 'Get me back in the fight.' They really look after each other. It's wonderful to be a part of it."

"We have been silent enough."

The Washington Post has a compelling account from one of the 2000 Iraqi soldiers who fought with U.S. troops against the insurgents in Fallujah:

"If we could control Fallujah and defeat the terrorists in the city, all Iraq will stabilize," Mustafa said. "I've seen nightmares for the last few days, all about the fighting in Fallujah, but when I think of the results, I feel better."

Mustafa said that after the city is secure, the 1st Battalion will head to the northern city of Mosul, where U.S. and Iraqi forces have been clashing with insurgents for the past several days.

"I think people there are waiting for us," Mustafa said.

He said he would never think about giving up now, not when his country needed him. "If I don't try and others don't, those rats will spread with their diseases," he said. "We have been silent enough."

Americans need to give more respect to these Iraqi soldiers. In fact, we need to give more respect to the American fighters. The NYT quotes Maj. Gen. Richard Natonski, a senior Marine commander in Iraq:

"People will never appreciate the movement of soldiers down here, what it took to move them and immediately conduct a relief in place with the soldiers. It ought to go down in the history books."

But the Times article emphasizes the devastation of the buildings in Fallujah and the movement of rebels to other cities. Military victories are never celebrated anymore. They are barely recognized.

UPDATE: Don't think you need to email me to point out things that did not go right in the battle in Fallujah. I am aware of these things too. But what is your message to the Marines and the Iraqis who are doing the fighting? That if anything goes wrong, you will deny them credit for all that they have done? Since war cannot be done perfectly, then either you want people to fight but to keep it to themselves like a dirty secret or you want to delegitimate all war.

A woman's view of Carville's smashing that egg on his face.

Okay, it was pretty funny when James Carville smashed a raw egg on his face on "Meet the Press" yesterday. It's hard to do self-abasement well, and he does. But my immediate reaction was that the egg went flying everywhere and his wife Mary Matalin was sitting right next to him -- dressed and coifed (wigged?) to the hilt for the big Sunday show. Mary's always got a bit of a sneer on her face anyway, but she was not laughing, not prepared, and pretty disgusted at James's antics. Much as I like James Carville -- he was great in the documentary "The War Room" -- this female viewer was worrying about Mary's clothes. Tim Russert handed her a handkerchief to wipe the egg slime off her husband and she gave his suit shoulder a quick swipe before tossing the icky, salmonella-contaminated handkerchief on the table. Or was Mary actually prepared for the stunt and just did a great job carrying out her part in their comedy duo routine?

Interesting times ahead.

Bush is buoyant, Colin Powell is resigning, Arafat is still dead, there was quick victory in Fallujah, new places may open on the Supreme Court. There are interesting times ahead. From the first linked article:

The West Wing is buzzing with a new sense of possibility...

The president is moving briskly to seize the moment. He is consolidating power at the White House, channeling ever more influence to Vice President Dick Cheney, his closest confidant, and counselor Karl Rove, architect of his November 2 victory. Senior White House officials tell U.S. News that Bush plans to replace at least half his cabinet over the next few months. His aim is to remove officials who have become lightning rods for controversy or who seem to have lost their desire to serve in Washington. ...

White House officials say they've rarely seen Bush so upbeat. "He's got the wind at his back," says a senior aide. "He's in very high spirits. He looks at the election as strong validation of his agenda."

"Had we done in April what we did now, the results would've been the same."

Marine Maj. Gen. Richard Natonski, who designed the ground attack on Fallujah, describes the brilliant, ahead-of-schedule takeover of the city:

"Maybe we learned from April ... We learned we can't do it piecemeal. When we go in, we go all the way through. We had the green light this time and we went all the way."

The linked article has some nice details on the military tactics:

Natonski described the six days of ground war as a "flawless execution of the plan we drew up. We are actually ahead of schedule."

Several pre-assault tactics made the battle easier than expected, he said.

Insurgent defenses were weakened by bombing raids on command posts and safe houses. Air-dropped leaflets may have also demoralized some defenders and convinced some residents that the city would be better off under government control, he said.

In the days before the raid, ground troops feinted invasions, charging right up to Fallujah's edge in tanks and armored vehicles. Natonski said these fake attacks forced the insurgents to build up forces in the south and east, perhaps diverting defenders from the north, where six battalions of Army and Marine troops finally punched into the city Monday.

The deceptive maneuvers also drew fire from defenders' bunkers, which were exposed and relentlessly bombed before the ground assault.

"We desensitized the enemy to the formations they saw on the night we attacked," Natonski said.

Are the blue-state secessionists learning they love federalism?

Andrew Sullivan is promoting this Dan Savage piece and this article in the Stranger, both of which go on about various liberal urban areas and how they ought to withdraw from the dominant national trends and do things their own way (which they think is better). That is, they want to take advantage of federalism values. But don't look for that phrase anywhere in these articles. For years, liberals have been decrying federalism as a nefarious conservative plot.

Politics and storytelling.

Rational Explications had a post (via Instapundit) a few days ago that sorted occupations into two columns. Column A listed several occupation -- Actor, Lawyer, Teacher, Writer -- and tied them, first, to "the ability to tell a story well" and, second, to the Democratic Party. The Republican Party by contrast was tied to other occupations -- Business Owner, Physician, Engineer, Soldier -- and to "the ability to perceive the facts of a given situation clearly." The election results were explained as "a clash between the realm of talk and the realm of action."

With that in mind I was struck by this passage from the today's Boston Globe article, "On the Trail of Kerry's Failed Dream," describing Paul Begala's advice to Kerry:

Begala, knowing the senator was a former prosecutor, asked the candidate to present his case to voters to hire Kerry and fire Bush. Kerry responded by naming six issues, according to Begala's notes of the conversation: Jobs, taxes, fiscal policy, healthcare, energy, and education.

This was a list, not a "case," Begala fretted.

That is, Kerry was failing to put his issues into a story form to persuade the voters (like a good lawyer).

Today, on "Meet the Press," James Carville had this analysis of why Democrats keep losing presidential elections:

By and large, our message has been, we can manage problems, while the Republicans -- although they say we can solve problems, they produce a narrative, we produce a litany. They say, I'm going to protect you from the terrorists in Tehran and the homos in Hollywood. We say, we're for clean air, better schools, more health care. And so there's a Republican narrative, a story, and there's a Democratic litany.

So is Rational Explications wrong about the Democrats being the "storytelling" party, or are Begala and Carville just coming up with a story -- the story of the lack of a story -- to explain Kerry's defeat? I know what Carville means. Kerry was going around listing things everyone cares about, as if people would vote for him simply for naming the problem. Yet, what is the main thing Carville says Bush did differently? Is it that he specified that he was going "protect you" from various problems, or that Bush had a different list of problems? I don't see how saying "I will protect you" from the problems is much more than the implicit promise of a solution when a candidate cites a problem. Neither is enough. The candidate must inspire trust in his competence and willingness to solve those problems. And in the end, saying things is not enough. But, of course, the belief that the solution lies in telling a better story -- as opposed to doing things that inspire trust -- is what "Column A" types do.

The kitten bowler hat.

This discussion on Metafilter about an optical illusion involving a paper cutout of a dragon led one poster to write "I just found perhaps the ultimate optical illusion, the kitten bowler hat," which I found terribly funny.