December 7, 2008
RjDj -- "That is something very similar to the effect of drugs."
An iPhone app, explained and demonstrated well here:
I love this app and enjoy making, say, going shopping aurally weird and arty and challenging. It's cool to be connected to your environment and disoriented at the same time. A bit like being crazy, but you can turn it off. I was walking around a bookstore with "Echolon" playing, and it picked up snippets of conversation and echoed and transformed them in a highly amusing way.
ADDED: I realized that running this app into your own ears is like imposing a "Harrison Bergeron" program on yourself. Are some children smarter than others? Let them listen to the teacher through "Echolon."
I love this app and enjoy making, say, going shopping aurally weird and arty and challenging. It's cool to be connected to your environment and disoriented at the same time. A bit like being crazy, but you can turn it off. I was walking around a bookstore with "Echolon" playing, and it picked up snippets of conversation and echoed and transformed them in a highly amusing way.
ADDED: I realized that running this app into your own ears is like imposing a "Harrison Bergeron" program on yourself. Are some children smarter than others? Let them listen to the teacher through "Echolon."
At the Doomstruck Café...
... gah... why did I ever leave the house? Cheer me up, man. It's like a Bergman movie out here.
Life with fluorescent bulbs.
You know what it will be like -- don't you? -- this life with fluorescent bulbs that Obama and his cadre of environmentalists are about to foist on us all. It will be like this:
I'm not arguing that with you...
I'm not arguing that with you...
Obama on "Meet the Press."
I'll link to the transcript when it becomes available. And here are a few idle observations:
1. He keeps talking about changing light bulbs! This reminds me of the old tire-gauge solution to high gas prices. What will he do about the economy? First, replace a lot of government light bulbs.
2. His biggest rhetorical tic: breaking up answers into "the short term" and "the long term." Anything he wants to do now is "the short term," and it doesn't much need to make economic sense other than to "jump start" the economy. To the extent that there are other things that we should be doing, he puts them in the "long term" category. Having the 2 headings helps make disparate things look coherent.
3. Obama's idea of the auto bailout is a little opaque, but it's clear that he wants to get the companies to make small cars. But how will he do that? How can they become economically viable on small cars, especially with the low gas prices of today? Brokaw suggests imposing a tax on gas to make the price $4 again. Obama won't go there, of course, but I don't understand where he will go.
AND: One more thing about the light bulbs. (First, watch the movie clip in the next post.) In yesterday's address -- the weekly radio address of the President elect -- he said:
MORE: Here's the transcript. Striking my ear the wrong way:
Also, this bugged me:
Finally, he gets to the arts, which by now, I'm convinced he cares little about:
1. He keeps talking about changing light bulbs! This reminds me of the old tire-gauge solution to high gas prices. What will he do about the economy? First, replace a lot of government light bulbs.
2. His biggest rhetorical tic: breaking up answers into "the short term" and "the long term." Anything he wants to do now is "the short term," and it doesn't much need to make economic sense other than to "jump start" the economy. To the extent that there are other things that we should be doing, he puts them in the "long term" category. Having the 2 headings helps make disparate things look coherent.
3. Obama's idea of the auto bailout is a little opaque, but it's clear that he wants to get the companies to make small cars. But how will he do that? How can they become economically viable on small cars, especially with the low gas prices of today? Brokaw suggests imposing a tax on gas to make the price $4 again. Obama won't go there, of course, but I don't understand where he will go.
AND: One more thing about the light bulbs. (First, watch the movie clip in the next post.) In yesterday's address -- the weekly radio address of the President elect -- he said:
Today, I am announcing a few key parts of my plan. First, we will launch a massive effort to make public buildings more energy-efficient. Our government now pays the highest energy bill in the world. We need to change that. We need to upgrade our federal buildings by replacing old heating systems and installing efficient light bulbs. That won't just save you, the American taxpayer, billions of dollars each year. It will put people back to work.See? Light bulbs first. They're supremely important! They will save us all! Light bulbs!
MORE: Here's the transcript. Striking my ear the wrong way:
You know, tomorrow, you had mentioned earlier, is when we commemorate Pearl Harbor, and so I'm going to be making announcement tomorrow about the head of our Veterans Administration, General Eric Shinseki, who was a commander and has fought in Vietnam, Bosnia, is, is somebody who has achieved the highest level of military service.Tomorrow? That sent me checking the calendar. (Brokaw, earlier, had said "today.") [CLARIFICATION: At the beginning of the transcript -- watching live, I'd missed the first few minutes -- Brokaw said the interview was recorded "yesterday." Later, he said: "Sixty-seven years ago this day, one of your predecessors, Franklin Roosevelt, faced Pearl Harbor." I guess he meant that 67 years ago to the day, FDR "faced" the events that would occur the following day.]
Also, this bugged me:
MR. BROKAW: ... Let me ask you as we conclude this program this morning about whether you and Michelle have had any discussions about the impact that you're going to have on this country in other ways besides international and domestic policies. You're going to have a huge impact, culturally, in terms of the tone of the country.The question was arts.
PRES.-ELECT OBAMA: Right.
MR. BROKAW: Who are the kinds of artists that you would like to bring to the White House?
PRES.-ELECT OBAMA: Oh, well, you know, we have thought about this because part of what we want to do is to open up the White House and, and remind people this is, this is the people's house. There is an incredible bully pulpit to be used when it comes to, for example, education. Yes, we're going to have an education policy. Yes, we're going to be putting more money into school construction. But, ultimately, we want to talk about parents reading to their kids. We want to invite kids from local schools into the White House. When it comes to science, elevating science once again, and having lectures in the White House where people are talking about traveling to the stars or breaking down atoms, inspiring our youth to get a sense of what discovery is all about.
Finally, he gets to the arts, which by now, I'm convinced he cares little about:
Thinking about the diversity of our culture and, and inviting jazz musicians and classical musicians and poetry readings in the White House so that, once again, we appreciate this incredible tapestry that's America.So that, once again, we appreciate this incredible tapestry that's America? Once again? Is there any reason to think that the arts events in that George Bush had at the White House were lacking in cultural or ethnic diversity? And Obama doesn't name even one artist, perhaps for fear of leaving someone out. Speaking of diversity: he merely ticks off the high-class categories: jazz, classical, poetry. Some incredible tapestry! Then he comes out with this:
I--you know, that, I think, is, is going to be incredibly important, particularly because we're going through hard times. And, historically, what has always brought us through hard times is that national character, that sense of optimism, that willingness to look forward, that, that sense that better days are ahead. I think that our art and our culture, our science, you know, that's the essence of what makes America special, and, and we want to project that as much as possible in the White House.Nothing like specificity.
Pay attention!
You have the capacity to remember much more than you might imagine, but you have to pay attention.
(Via Science Central.)
(Via Science Central.)
Clay Shirky says "Dear Mr. Obama" was the most "affecting" video of the campaign.
Per Shirky:
I am an anti-Iraq-war Democrat, and it nevertheless brought tears to my eyes (and I don't cry easy -- will.i.am's Yes We Can left me fairly cold.)...By the way, it was "homophilously" forwarded to me many times, and, though I posted many videos, from different sides, I chose not to post that one. Shirky notes that few of his students (in NYU media studies) had seen that video, and, basically, it wasn't meant for them. It was the perfect viral video:
This is a video made by people who knew exactly what they were doing. Stuff like the American flag draped just in frame looks hokey to the godless/ sodomite/ baby-killing wing of the Democratic party (my people), but is part of a "plain speaking and right thinking" package that clearly hit just right with the target audience. It was seen 13 million times in 3 months, which topped Obama Girl in absolute views, and I've got a Crush...on Obama was up a year and a half.
This is why this video is really really important: the simple message and Blair Witch production values (good enough to be effective, bad enough to seem unplanned) made this video like Democratic kryptonite. The video was largely circulated via homophilous forwarding along conservative channels.
For the base, a muscular but polite attack on the very issue that brought Obama into the spotlight. For the undecided, the emotional charge is much likelier to sway them than argumentation. And for the Dems -- nothing. The video might as well not have existed for all it was seen in Democratic circles. Since the video's sole speaker can't be criticized without making the criticizer look churlish at best, almost no Dems forwarded it, linked to it, talked about it.That is, it couldn't be used in a negative way by McCain's opponents, so it didn't backfire, as many videos do: "Dear Mr. Obama was music to Republican ears while being inert in Democratic hands." Bottom line: "expect it to be a template for 2010."
IN THE COMMENTS: Freeman Hunt said...
I had never seen this video before. I must be odd. While I agree with the guy, I don't find the video affecting. Or maybe I'm not odd and Shirky is wrong.Interesting. Me too: I agreed with the man in the video, but he didn't play my heartstrings. He was stating the obvious as far as I was concerned, and the revelation of the prosthetic leg did not change anything for me. Whether he had lost a limb or not, I know plenty of others have. There is no new information or argument, just an emotional appeal that works if you've somehow failed to know the most basic things about the war.
So then, perhaps the interesting question is: Why did Shirky cry? The video was, in his view, "inert" for people like him. I think he means only that war opponents felt like suppressing it because they perceived it as having the power to generate support for the war. But he may be quite wrong about that, since he is imagining the effect on people who don't think the way he does. And it may be that war opponents tend to be people who react very strongly to the sight of physical injuries -- to the point where emotion gets the better of reason. In that case, the video is not inert, and it could be used for the anti-war cause, the way any war injury and death is used.
Barbara Walters interviews Rush Limbaugh.
Hot Air has the video -- and highlights the line "I love Sarah Palin" (adding "How does Huck expect to compete with her among the base when Rush, Hannity, Ingraham, et al. are head over heels for her?"):
Here's what Rush himself said about the interview on his Friday radio show. First, there's this observation about the difference between TV and radio:
Next, he complains at length about the way they edited his answer about how much money he makes in a recession. They chose to air the funny line -- "I just choose not to participate" -- and to skip the economics lecture -- which is that all he gets is a percentage of what the show brings in. He claims they took it out because it didn't fit their script. They want to portray him as someone who's cold to the suffering of others. (Barbara stresses that he grew up rich.) He's right but only part right. They were also making him more interesting.
Rush goes on to emphasize that he -- and none of the other "10 Most Fascinating People" -- got Barbara laughing: "We were yucking it up and having a good time." I noticed that he had a strategy of laughing. He responded to almost every question by laughing. He also uses laughing a lot on his radio show. There's a difference between saying funny things that make us laugh and using your own laughing as a form of communication. Be aware: Rush loves to laugh in the face of liberals, to give the impression that whatever they say is plainly foolish. If Barbara laughed along with that, I suspect that she was following her own strategy, letting him feel like the 2 of them were just having a good time, so he'd spill something she could use. Rush said "There was nothing really confrontational about it." Ah, yes. How do you think Barbara does what she does? She helps you get comfortable. He saw that too, because he goes on to say: "The whole thing was a challenge."
Hmmm. Contradiction. It wasn't confrontational, but it was a challenge? That, my friends, is a typical Rush change of direction. He doesn't admit he's wrong when he sees he's wrong. He just starts saying something else. As a law professor, I'm very familiar with that technique. I know you can do it. You realize you're saying something that is wrong or off for some reason. You can either: 1. Shift to getting it right and pretend there was never a problem, or 2. Stop and deliberately point out the problem -- look, that's wrong and here's why -- and then go on to get it right -- to openly show your work as you get to the right way of putting it. I understand why commentators and politicians protect themselves by using #1, but I think #2 is the ethical approach.
Here's what Rush himself said about the interview on his Friday radio show. First, there's this observation about the difference between TV and radio:
[O]ne of the reasons, ladies and gentlemen, I am not enthusiastic about television is that it drives me nuts getting feedback every time I'm on television. When I had my own show, I would go home, I'd check the e-mail, whatever, and nobody was ever satisfied. Everybody always had a complaint. I never get complaints about this radio show. I never have people say, "What you shoulda said was… and why did you let 'em ask that? You shoulda thrown it right back in their face." I said, "What's the point? What's the point?" Nobody is ever satisfied with television because all that matters is how you look and nothing else matters. Nobody remembers what anybody ever says on television. I give you Obama. It's how you look; it's how you come off.Well, Rush's style has evolved on the radio, and it's not so good on TV. I watch the radio show on the webcam sometimes, and I can see what the problem is. He puts his body into producing that voice. He doesn't worry about how it looks. It's all about producing the sound. And it doesn't look relaxed and natural. You can see the effort. It's tiring to watch it, but for listening, it fits the material perfectly. I think he's wrong in saying that TV is only about how you look, but his demeanor is so radio that when he's on TV, we're distracted by the unsuitable visuals. People on TV have honed their style. Walters is brilliant at what she does, and Rush ought to admit that great TV technique really is something, just as his radio voice is.
Next, he complains at length about the way they edited his answer about how much money he makes in a recession. They chose to air the funny line -- "I just choose not to participate" -- and to skip the economics lecture -- which is that all he gets is a percentage of what the show brings in. He claims they took it out because it didn't fit their script. They want to portray him as someone who's cold to the suffering of others. (Barbara stresses that he grew up rich.) He's right but only part right. They were also making him more interesting.
Rush goes on to emphasize that he -- and none of the other "10 Most Fascinating People" -- got Barbara laughing: "We were yucking it up and having a good time." I noticed that he had a strategy of laughing. He responded to almost every question by laughing. He also uses laughing a lot on his radio show. There's a difference between saying funny things that make us laugh and using your own laughing as a form of communication. Be aware: Rush loves to laugh in the face of liberals, to give the impression that whatever they say is plainly foolish. If Barbara laughed along with that, I suspect that she was following her own strategy, letting him feel like the 2 of them were just having a good time, so he'd spill something she could use. Rush said "There was nothing really confrontational about it." Ah, yes. How do you think Barbara does what she does? She helps you get comfortable. He saw that too, because he goes on to say: "The whole thing was a challenge."
Hmmm. Contradiction. It wasn't confrontational, but it was a challenge? That, my friends, is a typical Rush change of direction. He doesn't admit he's wrong when he sees he's wrong. He just starts saying something else. As a law professor, I'm very familiar with that technique. I know you can do it. You realize you're saying something that is wrong or off for some reason. You can either: 1. Shift to getting it right and pretend there was never a problem, or 2. Stop and deliberately point out the problem -- look, that's wrong and here's why -- and then go on to get it right -- to openly show your work as you get to the right way of putting it. I understand why commentators and politicians protect themselves by using #1, but I think #2 is the ethical approach.
Joe Biden plans to do nothing as Vice President.
And he's preening as if he's being upstanding and virtuous. Is it even something he's doing as opposed to having done to him?
"Garfield Minus Garfield Plus Garfield."
"Urg, the commenters on that page manage to miss the point so gloriously I'm tempted to read it as some kind of PoMo metacommentary. Now my head hurts."
Every time I go to add the "philosophy" tag, Blogger tries to auto-complete the word to "Phil Gramm." Can I have my Garfield without Garfield, and my philosophy without Phil Gramm?
***
Every time I go to add the "philosophy" tag, Blogger tries to auto-complete the word to "Phil Gramm." Can I have my Garfield without Garfield, and my philosophy without Phil Gramm?
Fascist cars?
Why aren't we more hostile to cars? Are we deluded about what they are doing to us? Jon Garvie is reviewing a couple books. Here's a challenging excerpt:
Nineteenth-century English conservatives detested the car, believing that it would destroy the looks and manners of the countryside. Italian Futurists exalted “the beauty of speed” in the 1920s, hoping that it would usher in a new violent age, shorn of “emasculating tendencies” like democracy. Mussolini and Hitler followed through such ideas, the latter bequeathing the autobahns and the Volkswagen to subsequent road enthusiasts. [Brian] Ladd's explicitly anti-car study ["Autophobia"] questions why machines associated with individual freedom have appealed so greatly to fascists of all stripes (Russian and Chinese central planners were both great admirers of Henry Ford).
Opponents of cars have laboured the same points for more than a century: damage to the environment, social atomization and, of course, a high risk of accident and death. In opposition, the pro-car lobby requires abstract arguments which refuse to address the same set of “facts” and foreground ideology instead. From Hitler to Margaret Thatcher, car advocates have seen them as literal engines of change; vehicles by which to remake society, whether on the basis of individualism or collectivism.
December 6, 2008
Martha "Sunny" von Bulow has died -- after 28 years in a coma.
Her husband Claus von Bulow was accused of trying to kill her. Their story was depicted in the movie (and book) "Reversal of Fortune." A clip:
That's Jeremy Irons as von Bulow. The lawyer -- Alan Dershowitz -- is played by Ron Silver. (Unconscious, on the bathroom floor, playing Sunny, is Glenn Close.)
Von Bulow was convicted, and Dershowitiz won the appeal that got him a new trial. He was then acquitted. Where is he now?
That's Jeremy Irons as von Bulow. The lawyer -- Alan Dershowitz -- is played by Ron Silver. (Unconscious, on the bathroom floor, playing Sunny, is Glenn Close.)
Von Bulow was convicted, and Dershowitiz won the appeal that got him a new trial. He was then acquitted. Where is he now?
Claus von Bulow is living in London, "mostly taking care of his grandchildren," said Alan Dershowitz, the defense lawyer who won his acquittal at the second trial.
"It's a sad ending to a sad tragedy that some people tried to turn into a crime," Dershowitz said. "I hope this finally will put to an end to this terrible tragedy."...
Claus von Bulow's main accusers were his wife's children by a previous marriage, Princess Annie Laurie von Auersperg Kniessl and Prince Alexander von Auersperg. They renewed the charges against their stepfather in a civil lawsuit a month after his acquittal.
Two years later, Claus von Bulow agreed to give up any claims to his wife's estimated $25 million-to-$40 million fortune and to the $120,000-a-year income of a trust she set up for him. He also agreed to divorce her, leave the country and never profit from their story.
"Imagine an America with no more Corvettes! No more Caddies, Trans Ams, Camaros or Mustangs."
"No Ford or Chevy pick up trucks; no Jeeps or Suburbans. Not one PT Cruiser. All gone, our shared national automotive legacy and collective memories stretching back a century, and millions of jobs, all looted by ultra-conservatives eager to punish generations of American workers for the sin of not voting for the GOP in acceptable numbers. Gone forever. In their place will be rice burning Nissons [sic] and Toyotas, maybe the occasional German model. Models that legions of newly unemployed Americans, standing on the precipe [sic] of Bush's Depression, will never be able to afford."
IN THE COMMENTS:1jpb said...
Who cares about the iconic appeal? Losing Duesenberg and Packard (the early Packards, like mine) that was the loss of icons.Don't get me started. My family's tragedy was the death of Pierce-Arrow!
"Some bands are reluctant to admit that they take things from other artists... We're shameless in that respect. We don't mind telling."
Coldplay openly admits ripping off Kate Bush:
I think that is admissible evidence in this new lawsuit by Joe Satriani, who says Coldplay ripped off his song. Here's a good (and blessedly short) video comparison of the 2 songs:
I can't cite cases, but there's got to be a rule that melodies that generic can be copied with impunity. Isn't it about what you'd sing off the top of your head if you whimsically decided -- instead of speaking -- to sing the next few things you had to say.
Satriani's song is insipidly titled "If I Could Fly," which sounds like the title of every horrible "American Idol" finale song. There are about 10 reasons why I hope he loses this lawsuit, and not one of them has to do with Coldplay being any good.
I think that is admissible evidence in this new lawsuit by Joe Satriani, who says Coldplay ripped off his song. Here's a good (and blessedly short) video comparison of the 2 songs:
I can't cite cases, but there's got to be a rule that melodies that generic can be copied with impunity. Isn't it about what you'd sing off the top of your head if you whimsically decided -- instead of speaking -- to sing the next few things you had to say.
Satriani's song is insipidly titled "If I Could Fly," which sounds like the title of every horrible "American Idol" finale song. There are about 10 reasons why I hope he loses this lawsuit, and not one of them has to do with Coldplay being any good.
"Barbie has finally kicked her rival Bratz doll to the curb."
The legal battle the Daily News (predictably) calls a "catfight."
Feel free to discuss the legal issues:
But law and commerce are not everything.
Let's talk about aesthetics. There's a lot of talk about the difference between Bratz and Barbie, but look at the picture of "Chat Divas Barbie" at the link. Not only does Barbie now look about 13 years old, she's got her mouth open in the can't-stop-talking position. I have never even accepted Barbie smiling. To me, Barbie has always been this face:
She doesn't smile. She's not a child. She's a glamorous, sophisticated woman. She's not an empty-headed chatterbox. She's a deep mystery. What are her thoughts? She will not tell you.
Feel free to discuss the legal issues:
Mattel claimed the sassy Bratz dolls were the brainchild of one of its own designers, before he went to work for the rival and gave the upstart its signature toy....And the dire commercial consequences: "MGA must immediately stop making all 40 dolls in the line and has until after the holiday season to remove them from store shelves." Presumably, there will be some sort of settlement that will allow the dolls to continue to be made, with Mattel raking in much of the money.
Earlier this year, a jury awarded Mattel $10 million for copyright infringement and $90 million for breach of contract after members agreed that Bratz designer Carter Bryant had developed the concept for the dolls while working for Mattel.
Mattel subsequently requested that MGA be banned from making and selling the Bratz dolls, and Federal Judge Stephen Larson made it happen Thursday.
"Mattel has established its exclusive rights to the Bratz drawings, and the court has found that hundreds of the MGA parties' products, including all the currently available core female fashion dolls Mattel was able to locate in the marketplace, infringe those rights," Larson said.
But law and commerce are not everything.
Let's talk about aesthetics. There's a lot of talk about the difference between Bratz and Barbie, but look at the picture of "Chat Divas Barbie" at the link. Not only does Barbie now look about 13 years old, she's got her mouth open in the can't-stop-talking position. I have never even accepted Barbie smiling. To me, Barbie has always been this face:
She doesn't smile. She's not a child. She's a glamorous, sophisticated woman. She's not an empty-headed chatterbox. She's a deep mystery. What are her thoughts? She will not tell you.
"She tried to 'catch people's eyes, but every person I walked by was listening to music.'"
Here's a story about a 14-year-old girl who, fortunately, saved herself from a kidnapper. But she went through a terrifying experience that could have ended a lot sooner if people on the street were more attentive to their environment instead of off in their own private iPod space.
In "The Death and Life of Great American Cities," Jane Jacobs writes:
Cops said it appeared that the man had randomly approached the teen as she walked into the lobby of the W. 180th St. building. The victim said her kidnapper dragged her outside by the arm, where he hailed a livery cab on Broadway. On the way, she said, she tried to "catch people's eyes, but every person I walked by was listening to music."We should be safe when the streets are crowded with people. That is the community that should be protecting us. But are all those people really there, or somewhere else? We're all abstracted.
"I kept asking him, 'Why are you doing this? Where are you taking me?'" she said, sitting safely between her parents in their apartment.
In "The Death and Life of Great American Cities," Jane Jacobs writes:
Some of the safest sidewalks in New York City... at any time of day or night, are those along which poor people or minority groups live....
[T]he public peace -- the sidewalk and street peace -- of cities is not kept primarily by police, necessary as police are. It is kept primarily by an intricate, almost unconscious, network of voluntary controls and standards among the people themselves, and enforced by the people themselves... No amount of police can enforce civilization where the normal, casual enforcement of it has broken down.
Even atheists should object to Freedom From Religion's sign that sneers religion only "hardens hearts and enslaves minds."
I said that back in December 2004 about the sign in the Wisconsin Capitol. Here's my old post and here's the picture I took of the sign:
An identical sign is causing a stir now in the state of Washington. Here's Bill O'Reilly getting steamed up about it.
Another December, another battle in the "War on Christmas." I think the sensible people don't want to fight about religion, but there are always extremists -- pro-religion and anti-religion -- who seek glory in the fighting. Tolerance and peace is the better path. Please take it.
Another December, another battle in the "War on Christmas." I think the sensible people don't want to fight about religion, but there are always extremists -- pro-religion and anti-religion -- who seek glory in the fighting. Tolerance and peace is the better path. Please take it.
The dumbest Americans: "those born from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s."
WaPo reports:
IN THE COMMENTS: Jeff with one 'f' said...
AND: Palladian said...
What am I trying to say? We didn't start the fire.
Compared with every other birth cohort, they have performed the worst on standardized exams, acquired the fewest educational degrees and been the least attracted to professional careers....Is that dumb or a different way of being smart?
Early Xers are the least bookish CEOs and legislators the United States has seen in a long while. They prefer sound bites over seminars, video clips over articles, street smarts over lofty diplomas. They are impatient with syntax and punctuation and citations -- and all the other brainy stuff they were never taught.
IN THE COMMENTS: Jeff with one 'f' said...
Talk about moving the goalposts. The last I heard the Baby Boom was defined as those born between 1946 and 1964. Now this clown wants to cut the generation in half to make the Xers look bad? Please.We talked about that back here when the subject was whether Barack Obama, born in 1961, counted as a Boomer. [DATE CORRECTED.] I say he is not. To be a Boomer, you need to have grown up in the post-war afterglow, when parents and communities were psyched about living a normal, conventional family life. You have to have seen what the world was like before the Civil Rights Movement, before the Kennedy Assassination, before Vietnam. If you experienced the Beatles when you were a teenager, you're a Boomer. If you had disco, you're not.
AND: Palladian said...
"Is that dumb or a different way of being smart?"I too suspect that the dumbness attributed to the X-ers was produced by the culture of the previous 2 generations. It's not just the Boomers. We were sucking up that culture and promoting it, imbuing it with the power of the young, but people like John Lennon and Bob Dylan were not themselves Boomers. They were born in 1940 and 1941, respectively. Timothy Leary was born in 1920. Allen Ginsberg was born in 1926. Abbie Hoffman was born in 1936.
It's called the influence of the Sixties, man! Even though the Boomers caused the Sixties, they were lucky enough to have had a pre-Sixties education and exposure to pre-Sixties culture. Not so for the poor younger folks, whose brains were permanently damaged by firsthand exposure to the catastrophe of the Age of Aquarius.
What am I trying to say? We didn't start the fire.
December 5, 2008
The perils of hands-on classroom activities.
WCBS-tv reports:
[A] Rockland County teacher [is] under fire for binding the hands of black students and having them sit under a desk during a lesson on slavery....Emily Bazelon and I were just talking about the perils of hands-on classroom activities on Bloggingheads, and I suggested a return to good old-fashioned book-learning:
In a social studies class at Haverstraw Middle School, teacher Eileen Bernstein chose Gaby [Shand] and another girl for a demonstration of conditions on ships that carried slaves out of Africa....
Wilbur Aldridge, the regional NAACP director, went with the Shands Thursday to meet Bernstein.
"She said she apologized for causing any problems for the child, but she was not apologizing for using that simulation during the class," Aldridge said.
But Principal Avis Shelby apologized, calling the slave ship demonstration a "bad decision."
Barack Obama's chief speechwriter, Jon Favreau (on the left).
(Via WaPo.)
IN THE COMMENTS: Joan said...
Typical frat-boy-type tomfoolery.
Am I supposed to be offended? I laughed. It's just a goof.
I'm really starting to love Hillary, though. The response from her camp:
Clinton senior adviser Philippe Reines cast the photos as evidence of increased bonhomie between the formerly rival camps.
"Senator Clinton is pleased to learn of Jon's obvious interest in the State Department, and is currently reviewing his application," he said in an e-mail.
Pitch perfect.
Yeah, excellent use of the word "bonhomie."
This could be a real turning point in feminist attitude. I did think we were supposed to get mad....
Wanna not?
"I'm a man without conviction."
Sang Boy George in "Karma Chameleon." As Sonicfrog notes, Boy George is not a man without conviction anymore.
"I can't tell the difference between Whizzo Butter and a dead crab."
This came up...
... back here (where we talking about the contrived outrage over the "Whooper Virgins" taste test).
Of course, it was our wonderful Bissage again.
Surely, you can tell the difference between Bissage...
... and Quayle...
... back here (where we talking about the contrived outrage over the "Whooper Virgins" taste test).
Of course, it was our wonderful Bissage again.
Surely, you can tell the difference between Bissage...
... and Quayle...
I hate [when people say something is just so wrong on so many levels that they can't even begin to explain why] because people that say that all the time always try to imply that they deal with multitudes of levels all the time.... and Chip Ahoy...
But seriously – how many levels are there?
Two? Maybe three, tops?
I actually know a guy that commonly dealt with five levels, but he was from Bayonne, New Jersey.
But this idea that there are so many levels is pure post-modern, crit-studies rubbish.
It is all an urban myth that has its origins in a particular budget fight in the humanities department of an well-known Ivy League University.
The contrived outrage is ridiculous on so many levels I must put down my game of multi-dimensional chess and set aside my 3-D puzzle for the moment and stop multi-tasking this four-course luncheon while responding to this blog entry while doing laundry while simultaneously playing with my puppy to respond to this while keeping open ten other windows and holding three conversations through instant messaging and solving this crossword puzzle.
1) the contrived outrage is ridiculous on the psychological level
2) the contrived outrage is ridiculous on the political level
3) the contrived outrage is ridiculous on the sociological level
4) the contrived outrage is ridiculous on the economic level
4) the contrived outrage is ridiculous on the international level
5) the contrived outrage is ridiculous on the sexual level
6) the contrived outrage is ridiculous on the contrivance level
"Apparently living as a man was stressful enough to induce a nervous breakdown."
"I can understand that," Glenn Reynolds jokes.
From the book's Amazon page:
From the book's Amazon page:
Norah Vincent’s New York Times bestselling book, Self-Made Man, ended on a harrowing note. Suffering from severe depression after her eighteen months living disguised as a man, Vincent felt she was a danger to herself. On the advice of her psychologist she committed herself to a mental institution. Out of this raw and overwhelming experience came the idea for her next book [Voluntary Madness]. She decided to get healthy and to study the effect of treatment on the depressed and insane “in the bin,” as she calls it.I haven't read "Self-Made Man," but I have never understood how it was supposed to represent the actual experience of being a man, when it also involved the disturbing and weird experience of misrepresenting yourself to everyone.
O.J. Simpson gets at least 15 years in prison.
He said he was "stupid" and "sorry" and "didn't know [he] was doing anything illegal," that he thought he "was confronting friends" and "retrieving [his] things." But it will be at least 15 years for the 61-year-old football great.
Here he is in happier times.
Here he is in happier times.
"One toke over the line."
Orin Kerr -- for some reason -- is looking for the cheesiest Lawrence Welk clip on YouTube. He challenges his readers with a truly profoundly cheesy video -- which you can see over there -- and then a reader comes up with this:
The original version of the song was by Brewer & Shipley, and here you can see them playing it live -- and talking about that Lawrence Welk version (as well as how they got on Spiro Agnew's enemies list (or something)):
Everyone knew this was a drug song, and it's impossible to believe that the people on the Welk show didn't know. Welk says -- with a "straight" face -- "there you've heard a modern spiritual by Gail and Dale" -- Jesus and Mary do appear prominently in the song -- but there is a limit to how dumb functioning human beings can be. The show was populated by musicians. They may have been sublimely square musicians, but they were musicians.
The original version of the song was by Brewer & Shipley, and here you can see them playing it live -- and talking about that Lawrence Welk version (as well as how they got on Spiro Agnew's enemies list (or something)):
Everyone knew this was a drug song, and it's impossible to believe that the people on the Welk show didn't know. Welk says -- with a "straight" face -- "there you've heard a modern spiritual by Gail and Dale" -- Jesus and Mary do appear prominently in the song -- but there is a limit to how dumb functioning human beings can be. The show was populated by musicians. They may have been sublimely square musicians, but they were musicians.
"Maybe Palin had an anomalous pregnancy that showed far, far less than her previous ones..."
"... one that went from close to nothing to a serious bump in two weeks. Maybe the angle in the photo is misleading, and leaning toward us her pregnancy is concealed. Maybe her fifth labor really did take 26 hours combined via a speaking engagement (as amniotic fluid was leaking) and an 11 hour airplane flight (when a birth could have begun at any moment at extreme risk to the child), and maybe the bizarre and, to my mind, incredible stories she has told about the pregnancy and labor are true (there is still a chance they are). But if all these things are true, the Palin camp has had months to provide what would be instantly available records to dismiss all and every 'insane' blog speculation about this. And yet none came - on or off the record."
Andrew Sullivan is still on the case. Why?
Andrew Sullivan is still on the case. Why?
Maybe I am crazy to even wonder. Or maybe we have witnessed one of the biggest frauds in American political history and the biggest failures among the American media in a very, very long time.At every moment? Come on. The baby was used against her more than it was used for her. Much more. She was criticized for thinking she could properly attend to a "special needs" baby and take on a job with heavy responsibilities.
All I know is: the media refuses to ask and doesn't want to know and failed to demand medical records. All I know is that some journalists - like the Washington Post's Howie Kurtz - even tried to discredit the integrity of bloggers for asking. And yet in the campaign, the pregnancy and baby were offered at every moment as a reason to vote for Palin.
If the Bridge To Nowhere is worth checking out, why aren't the pregnancy's bizarre details?Because the Bridge to Nowhere involved public, government actions, and the pregnancy was something happening inside her body as a result of purely private behavior.
Without the Down Syndrome pregnancy, Palin would not have had the rock-star appeal to the pro-life base that contributed to her selection.Oh, yes, she would have.
She made it a political issue by holding up the baby at the convention.All the candidates display their children at the convention, and the public normally keeps a respectful distance. We note that they are sweet and cute and we move on to matters of public concern.
I do not know the truth and have never claimed that Palin is lying. I have always stated that bringing a baby with Down Syndrome into the world is a noble and beautiful thing. I have simply asked, given the implausible, if possible, circumstances, that a person running for vice-president provide some basic evidence for a very strange and unclear story. For a photograph of Palin pregnant with one of her previous children, [follow the link]. Compare and contrast. Remember that, as a general rule, pregnant mothers show more with each successive pregnancy...Oh, for God's sake, stop obsessing over that woman's belly!
Does the 6-year-old boy want to be seen reading "Freakonomics" (the book) on Freakonomics (the blog)?
It is a cute picture, especially if you love kids reading, but:
And more generally, I do wonder about putting pictures of children up on line. People love to see pictures of kids. It's a nice, happy part of life to see children. Yet some people seem to think that children should not be seen -- that it's dangerous for their children to be visible at all.
On the subject of children reading: I can see why "Freakonomics" and "Blink" make excellent reading for the young. We're so intent on foisting fiction on children, but there is a lot of nonfiction out their to stir their thinking.
My husband is K.C. and the kids are Jacob (10) and Jared (6). We live in Connecticut, and K.C. commutes into New York City to work as a portfolio manager. I am a stay-at-home mom with a medical degree.First commenter, one "sunshine" says:
A few months ago, I thought Jacob would like reading Freakonomics, which he thoroughly enjoyed. After he finished that, I thought he might also like Malcolm Gladwell, so he is now in the midst of Blink.
Our copy of Freakonomics was lying around the house, so Jared started to get interested as well...
I have to share a funny story with you. When I told/asked Jacob about being included in your blog, at first he seemed pleased, but then a slight cloud passed over his face, and he said, “Well, I don’t want to be recognized …” Whereupon my husband reassured him that he would not be followed by paparazzi.
Weird, a child asked not to have his photo put up on a highly-read Web page and both the parent and the editor refused to honor his request. Nonconsensual blogging. This concern may seem like a trivial joke, but look for this issue to increase in coming years.Is sunshine's criticism apt? Or can we see from the context that the child imagined that once his photograph appeared on a popular blog, strangers would accost him in the street?
And more generally, I do wonder about putting pictures of children up on line. People love to see pictures of kids. It's a nice, happy part of life to see children. Yet some people seem to think that children should not be seen -- that it's dangerous for their children to be visible at all.
On the subject of children reading: I can see why "Freakonomics" and "Blink" make excellent reading for the young. We're so intent on foisting fiction on children, but there is a lot of nonfiction out their to stir their thinking.
Babu Sassi, the man who lives in his crane, at the top of the Burj Dubai, the tallest building, and hasn't been down to the ground for over a year.
BLDGblog is entranced:
Whether or not this is even true – after all, I never think truth is the point in stories like this – 1) the idea of appropriating a construction crane as a new form of domestic space – a kind of parasitic sub-structure attached to the very thing it's helped to construct (perhaps raising the question: what is the ontology of construction cranes?) – is totally awesome; 2) further, the idea that crane operators are subject to these sorts of urban rumors and speculations brings me back to the idea that there might be a burgeoning comparative literature of mega-construction sites taking shape today, with this particular case representing a strong subgenre: mythic construction worker stories, John Henry-esque figures who single-handedly assemble whole floors of Dubai skyscrapers at midnight, with a cigarette in one hand and a hammer in the other (or so the myths go), as a kind of oral history of the global construction trade; and, finally, 3) there should be some kind of TV show – or a book, or a magazine interview series – similar to Dirty Jobs in which you go around visiting people who live in absurd places – like construction cranes atop the Burj Dubai, or extremely distant lighthouses, or remote drawbridge operation rooms on the south Chinese coast, or the janitorial supply chambers of inner London high-rises – in order to capture what could be called the new infrastructural domesticity: people who go to sleep at night, and brush their teeth, and shave, and change clothes, and shower, inside jungle radar towers for the French foreign legion, or up above the train tracks of Grand Central Station because their shift starts at 3am and they have to stay close to the job.This is, of course, a wonderful subject for movies and books. Perhaps you can help me think of some. I thought first of one of my favorite movies, the one where Shirley Temple lives in a lighthouse. Then I thought of "Bartleby the Scrivener" -- spoiler alert:
Upon more closely examining the place, I surmised that for an indefinite period Bartleby must have ate, dressed, and slept in my office, and that too without plate, mirror, or bed. The cushioned seat of a ricketty old sofa in one corner bore the faint impress of a lean, reclining form. Rolled away under his desk, I found a blanket; under the empty grate, a blacking box and brush; on a chair, a tin basin, with soap and a ragged towel; in a newspaper a few crumbs of ginger-nuts and a morsel of cheese. Yet, thought I, it is evident enough that Bartleby has been making his home here, keeping bachelor’s hall all by himself. Immediately then the thought came sweeping across me, What miserable friendlessness and loneliness are here revealed! His poverty is great; but his solitude, how horrible! Think of it. Of a Sunday, Wall-street is deserted as Petra; and every night of every day it is an emptiness. This building too, which of week-days hums with industry and life, at nightfall echoes with sheer vacancy, and all through Sunday is forlorn. And here Bartleby makes his home; sole spectator of a solitude which he has seen all populous—a sort of innocent and transformed Marius brooding among the ruins of Carthage!
"For the next 55 years, each time he met a friend, each time he ate a meal, each time he walked in the woods, it was as if for the first time."
Henry Gustav Molaison -- victim of an experimental brain operation -- dead at 82.
His amnesia did not damage his intellect or radically change his personality. But he could not hold a job and lived, more so than any mystic, in the moment....He became an extremely useful subject for experiments relating to memory. Through him, scientists discovered the difference between "declarative memory" and "motor learning."
[Molaison] sensed from all the scientists, students and researchers parading through his life that he was contributing to a larger endeavor, though he was uncertain about the details...
He was ... a self-conscious presence, as open to a good joke and as sensitive as anyone in the room. Once, a researcher visiting with Dr. Milner and H. M. turned to her and remarked how interesting a case this patient was.
“H. M. was standing right there,” Dr. Milner said, “and he kind of colored — blushed, you know — and mumbled how he didn’t think he was that interesting, and moved away.”
Ravaging "The Whopper Virgins."
Here's an ad from a Burger King campaign that's causing outrage:
Now, I have a problem with this that is entirely different from the outrage I'm reading about. My problem is the use of sexual innuendo: "virgins," especially in connection with an encounter with a "Whopper." Don't tell me "Whopper" isn't a sexual reference. Yes, a "whopper" is also a lie, but I have seen novelty underpants stamped with the Burger King logo and the slogan "Home of the Whopper." Even if it wasn't the original intention behind the name, the association is easily enough made that you don't want to stimulate it with the word "virgin" -- unless you actually do want people to think about your product that way. You may say that's crazy -- that would be disgusting! But creating associations between food and sex is extremely common -- all that orgasmic groaning and grimacing over food in ads -- and people eagerly scarf down far more obviously phallic foods than hamburgers all the time -- such as the hamburger's classic competition, the hot dog.
But that's my problem. The problem other people are having with the ad campaign goes like this:
1. Is it wrong because some people in the world are poor and hungry? Is everyone who isn't us part of one big undifferentiated mass? If the commercial showed hungry, poverty stricken individuals, there would indeed be something offensive about offering a few of them big hamburgers and expecting them to report an opinion about which of the 2 relatively similar objects was marginally better, but the people in the commercial don't look food deprived or oppressed. They are just ordinary people from some specific, relatively isolated location.
2. Is it wrong because we shouldn't be intruding on -- colonizing! -- foreign cultures with our food? Presumably, those who have this problem would not have a problem with a commercial showing an American midwesterner or American rural southerner -- we don't call them "peasants" -- eating, say, Thai food or Indian food for the first time. Isn't it hypocritical and paternalistic to think it's wrong show some non-American trying our food for the first time?
3. Is it wrong because hamburgers are bad -- like guns! -- and we shouldn't be spreading them around the world? A hamburger is nothing more than a sandwich -- some meat and a few assorted trimmings between 2 slices of bread. There are plenty of things to worry about in this world. Do not fear the sandwich.
I got to that article today via Copious Dissent, via Conservative Grapevine. But I read about it yesterday on Rachel Lucas. Rachel said:
Now, I have a problem with this that is entirely different from the outrage I'm reading about. My problem is the use of sexual innuendo: "virgins," especially in connection with an encounter with a "Whopper." Don't tell me "Whopper" isn't a sexual reference. Yes, a "whopper" is also a lie, but I have seen novelty underpants stamped with the Burger King logo and the slogan "Home of the Whopper." Even if it wasn't the original intention behind the name, the association is easily enough made that you don't want to stimulate it with the word "virgin" -- unless you actually do want people to think about your product that way. You may say that's crazy -- that would be disgusting! But creating associations between food and sex is extremely common -- all that orgasmic groaning and grimacing over food in ads -- and people eagerly scarf down far more obviously phallic foods than hamburgers all the time -- such as the hamburger's classic competition, the hot dog.
But that's my problem. The problem other people are having with the ad campaign goes like this:
"It's outrageous," Sharon Akabas of the Institute of Human Nutrition at Columbia University, told the New York Daily News. "What's next? Are we going to start taking guns out to some of these remote places and ask them which one they like better?"I hate when people say something is just so wrong on so many levels that they can't even begin to explain why. Make the effort!
Marilyn Borchardt, development director for Food First, called the campaign insensitive.
"The ad's not even acknowledging that there's even hunger in any of these places," she told the Daily News.
The campaign has also stirred up a welter of online commentary. Brian Morrissey, writing on Adfreak.com, likens the campaign to colonialism and declares it "embarrassing and emblematic of how ignorant Americans still seem to the rest of the world."
"It doesn't get much more offensive than this," noted The Inquisitor blog. "If visiting poor people in remote locations, some who would be at best surviving on below poverty levels and throwing a burger in their faces isn't bad enough, it gets better, because they also ask the Whopper Virgins to compare the taste of the Whopper to a McDonalds Big Mac as well.
"It's hard to place exactly where this begins on the level of wrongness."
1. Is it wrong because some people in the world are poor and hungry? Is everyone who isn't us part of one big undifferentiated mass? If the commercial showed hungry, poverty stricken individuals, there would indeed be something offensive about offering a few of them big hamburgers and expecting them to report an opinion about which of the 2 relatively similar objects was marginally better, but the people in the commercial don't look food deprived or oppressed. They are just ordinary people from some specific, relatively isolated location.
2. Is it wrong because we shouldn't be intruding on -- colonizing! -- foreign cultures with our food? Presumably, those who have this problem would not have a problem with a commercial showing an American midwesterner or American rural southerner -- we don't call them "peasants" -- eating, say, Thai food or Indian food for the first time. Isn't it hypocritical and paternalistic to think it's wrong show some non-American trying our food for the first time?
3. Is it wrong because hamburgers are bad -- like guns! -- and we shouldn't be spreading them around the world? A hamburger is nothing more than a sandwich -- some meat and a few assorted trimmings between 2 slices of bread. There are plenty of things to worry about in this world. Do not fear the sandwich.
***
I got to that article today via Copious Dissent, via Conservative Grapevine. But I read about it yesterday on Rachel Lucas. Rachel said:
Do you ever find yourself reading an article, and you get pissed off at the subject of the article, like this is so stupid, but then wham, then you get to the part where a critic of the subject says something even more stupid about the original stupidity? And you can’t decide who is the most stupid...
December 4, 2008
Is Justice Alito harboring a grudge against Joe Biden?
AP seems to think so, in this report on a speech he gave last night at a dinner celebrating the anniversary of the "conservative" American Spectator magazine:
In case you've forgotten, here's how Biden acted back then:
Alito made several joking references to Vice President-elect Joseph Biden... including Biden's withdrawal from the 1988 presidential campaign over plagiarizing parts of a speech from a British politician.AP surmises that he's still pissed about questions Biden asked at Alito's confirmation hearings.
"To coin a phrase, in the spirit of the vice president-elect, you can't always get what you want, but you get what you need," Alito said, an imperfect rendering of a Rolling Stones lyric.
Then, he added, "Did someone say that before?"
A bit later in his talk... Alito said he was about to quote liberally from a magazine article. "In the spirit of the vice president-elect, I want to honor the copyright laws," Alito said.
In case you've forgotten, here's how Biden acted back then:
"I understand, Judge, I am the only one standing between you and lunch, so I'll try to make this painless," he began, with some promise.But I don't think it's necessary to infer that Alito's still pissed about that and getting back at the garrulous old VP-elect. We all make fun of Biden whenever we feel like it.
Mr. Biden then dived into a soliloquy on Judge Alito's failure to recuse himself from cases involving the Vanguard mutual fund company, which managed the judge's investments. After 2 minutes 50 seconds - short for the senator - Mr. Biden did appear to veer toward a question, but abandoned it to cite Judge Alito's membership in a conservative Princeton alumni group. Mr. Biden discoursed on that for a moment, then interrupted himself with an aside about his son who "ended up going to that other university, the University of Pennsylvania."
Judge Alito, who had been sitting without expression through Mr. Biden's musings, interrupted the senator midword, got out three sentences, then settled in for nearly 26 minutes more of Mr. Biden, with the senator doing most of the talking. With less than a minute to spare, Mr. Biden concluded, thanked Judge Alito for "being responsive," then said to Mr. Specter that "I want to note that for maybe the first time in history, Biden is 40 seconds under his time."
2 Madison fights: the mattress-on-car prank and the "Get a light" bike rage.
1. "Police said the victim was punched multiple times in the head after he asked a group of young people about the damage to his parked car after the car's antenna was broken, thanks to the mattress being tossed on the car's roof."
2. "Two bicyclists came up behind [Colin O'Brien, 51], with one saying they were going to pass him on the left. As they passed, O'Brien said, "Get a light." ... [Dustin Dunlavy, 28] apparently then tried to run O'Brien off the road.... The pair followed O'Brien to his home... Dunlavy still was upset and clamped his hands around O'Brien's head, according to a police report. The report added that he twisted O'Brien to the ground and kicked him in the ribs, but Dunlavy denied doing so when he was arrested.... When asked why he didn't just ride away after the 'get a light' comment, Dunlavy apparently told police he felt extremely insulted by the statement."
2. "Two bicyclists came up behind [Colin O'Brien, 51], with one saying they were going to pass him on the left. As they passed, O'Brien said, "Get a light." ... [Dustin Dunlavy, 28] apparently then tried to run O'Brien off the road.... The pair followed O'Brien to his home... Dunlavy still was upset and clamped his hands around O'Brien's head, according to a police report. The report added that he twisted O'Brien to the ground and kicked him in the ribs, but Dunlavy denied doing so when he was arrested.... When asked why he didn't just ride away after the 'get a light' comment, Dunlavy apparently told police he felt extremely insulted by the statement."
I have never understood how the immense, ultra-glamorous Overture Center fit Madison.
Now, there are huge financial problems, and big cut-backs have been announced. I know these are economic hard times, but how was this immense architectural monument ever deemed viable in our small city? I often wander in there, looking for something to buy tickets to, and the offerings are nowhere near commensurate with the ambitious size of the place. So, they're cutting back jobs and shows, but they can't shrink the building -- which never seemed to offer more than we were already getting at the much smaller arts center we already had.
Here's the PDF of the announcement.
Here's the PDF of the announcement.
The approved budget includes deep cuts to administrative costs....You know what that means. They want us taxpayers to pay for the insane hubris that made them take over an entire city block and build it up with extra theaters and giant expanses of glass and marble.
Overture Center leadership will host a series of ‘‘community conversations’’ at various places around Dane County through the spring, inviting people to share their thoughts regarding Overture Center’s future.
"Janet's perfect for that job. Because for that job, you have to have no life. Janet has no family, perfect."
What Gov. Ed Rendell said about Gov. Janet Napolitano.
Okay, now, how bad is this? Rendell's getting ripped for being a big old sexist, but does he deserve it?
He was caught speaking casually, using the jocose expression "no life," which may not be as insulting as it sounds to some people. I don't think he meant anything like: She's not much of a woman (or human being) because she has no husband or children/she must be emotionally unfulfilled/cold/stunted.
I hear this as: She will be able to give absolutely the entirety of her attention and energy to a job that truly requires it.
Now, this may upset some people who want to believe that everyone has to live a life in which work is leavened and enriched with time in the warm embrace of a family. What's worse is the idea that a job requires all of a person's attention, so that anyone with a family is disqualified. And of course, there's one terrible implication: That men can have a family and a highly demanding job, but women cannot.
Did Rendell's statement contain that terrible implication? Perhaps! I do get a little whiff of: Normally, you don't send a woman to do a man's job, but that doesn't apply to Janet Napolitano. It's not that she has "no life," but that she has no female life. She can run with the men. I hear a bit of that.
But perhaps Rendell meant to boost opinion of Napolitano, to rebuff accusations that her lack of a family would make the job too tough for her. Remember when Laura Bush said this about Condoleezza Rice?
Okay, now, how bad is this? Rendell's getting ripped for being a big old sexist, but does he deserve it?
He was caught speaking casually, using the jocose expression "no life," which may not be as insulting as it sounds to some people. I don't think he meant anything like: She's not much of a woman (or human being) because she has no husband or children/she must be emotionally unfulfilled/cold/stunted.
I hear this as: She will be able to give absolutely the entirety of her attention and energy to a job that truly requires it.
Now, this may upset some people who want to believe that everyone has to live a life in which work is leavened and enriched with time in the warm embrace of a family. What's worse is the idea that a job requires all of a person's attention, so that anyone with a family is disqualified. And of course, there's one terrible implication: That men can have a family and a highly demanding job, but women cannot.
Did Rendell's statement contain that terrible implication? Perhaps! I do get a little whiff of: Normally, you don't send a woman to do a man's job, but that doesn't apply to Janet Napolitano. It's not that she has "no life," but that she has no female life. She can run with the men. I hear a bit of that.
But perhaps Rendell meant to boost opinion of Napolitano, to rebuff accusations that her lack of a family would make the job too tough for her. Remember when Laura Bush said this about Condoleezza Rice?
"Dr. Rice, who I think would be a really good candidate (for President), is not interested. Probably because she is single, her parents are no longer living, she's an only child. You need a very supportive family and supportive friends to have this job."It could be that Rendell knew the way not having a family is used against women and he wanted to get out in front of that criticism to help Napolitano. There's sexism in that, but it's not Rendell's sexism. He's proactively defending her from attacks. Now, I might concede that it's better feminism to behave as if sexism does not exist, and maybe Rendell's proactive defense against sexism unwittingly promotes it in some ways, but I'm inclined to give him a pass.
Hip to prank calls, Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen hangs up on Barack Obama twice.
Good for her! You can't just call people and say you're Barack Obama, even if you're Barack Obama.
It was only a few weeks ago that everyone was laughing at Sarah Palin for talking to a Nicholas Sarkozy impersonator -- and here's that Slate "Explainer" piece -- a propos of the Palin humiliation -- explaining how world leaders actually make phone calls. It's some sort of my-people-call-your-people dance -- but what's to stop pranksters from learning the steps?
After Ros-Lehtinen's first hang up, Rahm Emanuel called and said:
It was only a few weeks ago that everyone was laughing at Sarah Palin for talking to a Nicholas Sarkozy impersonator -- and here's that Slate "Explainer" piece -- a propos of the Palin humiliation -- explaining how world leaders actually make phone calls. It's some sort of my-people-call-your-people dance -- but what's to stop pranksters from learning the steps?
After Ros-Lehtinen's first hang up, Rahm Emanuel called and said:
"Ileana, I cannot believe you hung up on the President-Elect," Emanuel said.She hung up. Good! I approve. Emanuel sounded like a jackass -- like a prankster.
A short time later, Ros-Lehtinen received an urgent call from Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, who informed her that she indeed hung up on Obama.Joked? Or was she still trying to ensure that she would not suffer a Palinesque public humiliation.
So, Obama tried again and this time he was successful. (Phew!)
"It is very funny that you have twice hung up on me," Obama said. Ros Lehtinen responded by telling Obama that radio stations in South Florida always make these sorts of jokes. Obama said similar pranksters reside in Chi-town.
"You are either very gracious to reach out in such a bipartisan manner or had run out of folks to call if you are truly calling me and Saturday Night Live could use a good Obama impersonator like you," Ros-Lehtinen joked with the president-elect.
Can Plaxico Burress be a constitutional hero, vindicating gun rights?
David B. Kopel -- of the Cato Institute -- thinks the NYC gun law is unconstitutional -- and the case of the famous football star, facing ruin, is just the place to prove it.
Kopel concedes that Burress was an idiot to carry a gun in a sweatpants waistband (from which it slipped, so he grabbed it, pulling the trigger and shooting himself in the leg). But he moves on to his big point, using the Supreme Court's new Second Amendment decision -- District of Columbia v. Heller -- against NYC's "draconian" gun laws.
Kopel concedes that Burress was an idiot to carry a gun in a sweatpants waistband (from which it slipped, so he grabbed it, pulling the trigger and shooting himself in the leg). But he moves on to his big point, using the Supreme Court's new Second Amendment decision -- District of Columbia v. Heller -- against NYC's "draconian" gun laws.
The Heller decision did not say that requiring a license to carry a gun was unconstitutional. But in New York State, nonresidents cannot even apply for the licenses to possess or carry a handgun. Unlike most other states, New York refuses to honor carry permits issued by sister states. Most observers believe that the Supreme Court will eventually make state and local governments obey the Second Amendment. If it does, New York's discrimination against nonresidents will probably be ruled unconstitutional.
"What's a little matter like the Constitution among friends?"
The Emoluments Clause.
It's strange the way we feel we can ignore -- or massage away -- words of the Constitution that don't seem to serve the purpose for which they were written.
But since it is the way we are, I would like to encourage Arnold Schwarzenegger to run for President.
AND: Lawprof Larry Tribe is giving massages over here:
It's strange the way we feel we can ignore -- or massage away -- words of the Constitution that don't seem to serve the purpose for which they were written.
But since it is the way we are, I would like to encourage Arnold Schwarzenegger to run for President.
AND: Lawprof Larry Tribe is giving massages over here:
My recent book, "The Invisible Constitution" (Oxford University Press 2008), argues that much of what we both do and should regard as the United States Constitution is neither expressed by, nor plausibly inferable from, the document's text. The book develops six models -- geometric, geodesic, global, geological, gravitational, and gyroscopic....
Study abroad -- it's much more popular with female students than male students.
Why?
And isn't it ironic that, with all of this interest in appreciating cultural diversity, the researchers don't simply appreciate gender difference? Why is it something to change? Some people like one thing and some like another. Why is that a problem?
“Initially the problem was perceived to be curricular, meaning the curriculum of study abroad was likely to be in the humanities, social sciences, with a strong language dimension. To the degree that women were more likely to study in those areas, and the curriculum of study abroad was in those areas, it meant men that were studying more in science and business and technologies didn’t have the curriculum overseas,” said [William Hoffa, an independent practitioner in study abroad]. He continued, however, that while there’s likely still a bias toward the humanities and social sciences in study abroad, “The curriculum of study abroad is actually pretty much across the spectrum these days.”Even if the courses are offered, it must be that some areas of study are more usefully studied abroad, beginning with the obvious, foreign language. Then, there's also the fact that women outnumber men in colleges these days. And once study abroad is perceived as something women do, men may avoid it. You might say men ought to do it, since they'd be able to form more relationships with women, but the numbers are also in their favor at home, and maybe they don't want to compete with -- or deal with -- foreign men.
Among the many conventional wisdom-type explanations pervading in the study abroad field: differing maturity and risk-taking levels among 18- to 21-year-old men and women; a sense that females, concerned about safety, are more inclined to attend a college-sanctioned study abroad program than travel on their own...Ah, interesting. Study abroad as the safe alternative to freestyle travel? Do women travel on their own less often? Maybe women are just more interesting in traveling. Maybe women are less interested in staying at home. Why assume women are more risk-averse? Maybe men like the home territory better.
“The further from the sort of comfort-zone area [outside Western Europe, for instance]... the more likely that females will be in that program,” said Michael Vande Berg, vice president for academic affairs at the Council on International Educational Exchange. In a research project that spanned 61 study abroad programs and about 1,300 students, Vande Berg has found differing outcomes among the men and women who do choose to study abroad. For instance, on a test of intercultural development, females on average start higher, with a score of 97.19 on a pre-test. They finish at 100.94. By contrast, and of concern, males actually lose ground from pre-test to post-test, their average scores dropping from 94.31 to 93.81.Hmmm. I wonder what "a test of intercultural development" is? Are we looking at whether students change their beliefs?
“Sort of the nicest thing you can say about the males is that difference, going mathematically from the first test to the second test, is not significantly different. That is, the good thing you can say about males is they’re not learning anything interculturally,” said Vande Berg, who has argued the need for targeted mentoring and intervention to improve students’ learning outcomes abroad.What? Difference... is not significantly different? Not learning anything is good? Could he say that in a way that makes sense? Perhaps he's afraid of offending. It could be that he means: The males have a strong sense of personal identity and a mature set of beliefs that are not unsettled by exposure to other cultures. But that would make women look worse then men, and researchers are not allowed to say that.
Tying his findings on gendered outcomes to the participation trends, Vande Berg asked, “What is it that students expect study abroad to be? Is it the case that male students are expecting study abroad to be a different experience than female students? And if so, are those expectations getting in the way of learning where the male students are concerned?”I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Whenever a study shows a gender difference, whatever is true of the female is good.
And isn't it ironic that, with all of this interest in appreciating cultural diversity, the researchers don't simply appreciate gender difference? Why is it something to change? Some people like one thing and some like another. Why is that a problem?
December 3, 2008
Wish fulfilled.
Back here, I had this picture:
Bissage said:
IN THE COMMENTS: peter hoh said...
Bissage said:
That’s a nice, strong dominant leader your neighbor’s got going there.I said:
I just consulted the Magic 8-Ball (arborist’s edition) and it said, “Split crotch unlikely.”
And that’s a fine prognosis!
Actually, it breaks up into three parts just above the top of what you see in the photo. I've often looked at that spot and thought: 1. You could sit there, 2. It would be scary. 3. Even if I wanted to sit there, it would be hard to get there. 4. No matter how long I live and how many times I look at that spot, I will never sit there.Chip Ahoy responds: "Alternate reality. Ann in a tree."
IN THE COMMENTS: peter hoh said...
Maybe you can ask to have your ashes deposited in that spot.Christopher Althouse Cohen said...
If you truly wanted to sit there that badly, you could find a way to sit there.Hey, I said wish fulfilled. Yeah, maybe I could find a way to have myself hoisted up there -- about 4 stories high -- and maybe I can be overcome with vertigo and tumble out and you could have my lifeless body transmogrified into a pile of white grit which you get somebody to pile up there in the tree-crotch for the squirrels to rake their claws through. But as I said: wish fulfilled.
The first victim of global warming.
There now, it's extinct! The white possum of the Daintree Rainforest, Queensland, Australia. Aren't you ashamed? Gone, gone, gone forever. Never to return. Because you drove a car, you heated a house, you breathed, you bastard.
Mary Elizabeth Althouse, a 12-year-old girl in 1917.
Paintdancer reads an old diary -- "the daily writings of 12 year old Mary Elizabeth Althouse, daughter of Elmer and Margaret Althouse of Sellersville, Pa." -- her husband bought for 50¢ at a garage sale:
I found it utterly amazing that she invariably ended up in bed at around 11:30PM or 12 AM every night after a day that was chock full of activities that didn’t include TV, the Internet, movies, organized team sports for girls, or visits to the King of Prussia mall! I’d certainly have thought that kids back then were in bed by 8 o’clock out of sheer boredom!ADDED: Playing rook? Ah!
Mary warmed my heart because she seemed to have been an old-fashioned girl much like another Mary I knew all too well- very studious, musical and creative.
Her time was totally filled with school, studies, music lessons, church activities, tatting, embroidering, painting, drawing, a scrapbook, a stamp collection, crocheting, making a pocketbook for mama, candy for friends and playing rook with her brother Sam when he came home from his college (Cornell?) in Ithaca....
This child was obviously from a somewhat privileged family, since the family’s frequent jaunts to the theatre in Philadelphia and shopping outings to Allentown were unusual in an era where auto trips were likely a luxury. Yet, beyond those hints of a refined lifestyle, there was much within the scope of her daily activities that painted a picture of a child who was not merely cultured and well-educated, but who also had to contribute to household chores that included lawn mowing, flower planting, ironing clothes and baking goodies for the preacher’s new tenants, as well as going with mama to visit the sick and elderly.
This demonstrated to me that a privileged child need not be just an entitled child, as much of today’s affluent kids seem to be.
I also observed that Mary wrote almost nothing about her own feelings, thoughts and opinions. Her entry on Thursday, January 4th, 1917 surprised me:
Fair weather today. Went to school. Took my music lesson after school. Mrs. Krug was here for supper. Cousin Helen’s baby suffocated. Spent the evening at home, crocheting and studying. Retired at half past ten.How strange that she didn’t comment about her feelings regarding the death of the baby! Was it because a woman’s thoughts and opinions meant so little in those days? She recorded the ritualistic performance of her daily mundane feminine tasks of sewing, tatting, baking, etc. with a conscientiousness that would be unusual in a twelve-year-old today. Yet she failed to express one iota of sadness or concern about her second cousin’s untimely death! Why???????????
Rook is a trick-taking game, usually played with a specialized deck of cards. Sometimes referred to as "Christian cards" or "missionary poker," Rook playing cards were introduced sometime in the 20th century....
The Rook deck consists of 57 cards: a blue Rook Bird card, similar to a joker, and 56 cards divided into four suits, or colors. Each suit—black, red, yellow, and green—is made up of cards numbered 1 through 14.
AND: The brief entry about the smothered baby reminds me of this passage in Sarah Vowell's "The Wordy Shipmates" (which, btw, I highly recommend -- especially the audio version):
[John Winthrop's] earliest American journal entries are understandably brief. "Monday we kept a court," reads one. "My son, Henry Winthrop, was drowned at Salem," says another.
"'Concessions, I used to cringe at that word. But now, why hide it? That’s what we did.'"
"At a news conference in Detroit, the U.A.W.’s president, Ron Gettelfinger, said that his members were willing to sacrifice job security provisions and financing for retiree health care to keep the two most troubled car companies of the Big Three, General Motors and Chrysler, out of bankruptcy."
Meanwhile, in the Senate, the votes aren't there to help.
Meanwhile, in the Senate, the votes aren't there to help.
It's me and Emily Bazelon -- on the new Bloggingheads!
They've called this one "Playground Edition" -- because all the topics involve children -- also law, Lori Drew, suicide, dressing like stereotypical Indians, book-learning, and the Pledge of Allegiance:
"Your pea soup doubles as a salt quarry. Your hamachi sashimi comes with two incongruously gargantuan bread sticks..."
"... which Babe Ruth could have used to hit homers. The mussels in your seafood platter don’t taste right. A pork chop with a hot-cool chili glaze requires the incisors of a jungle cat."
A very bad review, for the Mercer Kitchen, from Frank Bruni. (I ate there once myself. It was bad.)
The review is from a couple years ago. I was drawn to it today after reading "Brad Pitt's Mustache Eating Dinner?" Well, that's from a few weeks ago, so I have to confess to Googling Brad Pitt's mustache after seeing this picture of him, in which he looks like someone who should not be walking with that woman.
A very bad review, for the Mercer Kitchen, from Frank Bruni. (I ate there once myself. It was bad.)
The review is from a couple years ago. I was drawn to it today after reading "Brad Pitt's Mustache Eating Dinner?" Well, that's from a few weeks ago, so I have to confess to Googling Brad Pitt's mustache after seeing this picture of him, in which he looks like someone who should not be walking with that woman.
"Everybody is disadvantaged by bankruptcy, including our economy, so that’s not an option."
Says Nancy Pelosi.
So bankruptcy is an unthinkably bad process -- yet it is the process that Congress designed.
So bankruptcy is an unthinkably bad process -- yet it is the process that Congress designed.
"In the summer because of the heat and high humidity, you could literally smell the tourists coming into the Capitol," sniffs Harry Reid.
He's glad they've opened the $621 million Capitol Visitors Center to subject the rabble to air-conditioning before they get anywhere near the elite.
IN THE COMMENTS: Lawgiver said...
IN THE COMMENTS: Lawgiver said...
And that's not all. "We have many bathrooms here, as you can see," Reid continued. "Souvenirs are available."And I've heard -- Harry told me -- it doesn't stink.
Souvenirs in the bathroom? Eeeewwww.
I wonder what a Congressional turd costs now days?
About that time the ABA Journal called me "right-leaning, at a minimum."
I highlighted that characterization in this post the other day, and I got some comments like this:
Verso said...I just want to clear up a misconception, because I'm starting to see it jump into the comments in other posts. I'm not upset by or trying to control people who call me right-leaning/right-winger/conservative. There's nothing for me to do, nothing for me to deny or accept. I'm just saying what I have to say at any given moment, which is sometimes to note what other people say about me and sometimes to express amusement at all the liberal things I can say and still be considered a right-winger. And let me say now that one thing I love about being a right-winger in the sense that I'm said to be a right-winger is this amazingly wide range of freedom of opinion it provides. There is no such liberation for the lefty.
Only the ABA would call this place "right leaning."
LOL! I hate to break it to you, but EVERYBODY calls "this place" right leaning. The only people who deny it are Althouse herself, and her loyal conservative followers.
Why is this so hard to accept?...
"Kate Winslet's very naked performance was denied a spot on Mr. Skin's Top Celebrity Nude Scenes of 2008."
Defamer asks: "Could this be an Oscar precursor?
Too bad for Kate. Will she ever win an Oscar?
Poor Harvey Weinstein just can't catch a break for The Reader.I read "The Reader." Eh. I also read Mr. Skin's list and it's pretty funny. You can get an idea what his standards are. Maybe Kate's scenes weren't brightly lit enough. All females though, which reduced the competition.
Too bad for Kate. Will she ever win an Oscar?
"Those who hated India, those who sought to ruin it, would need to ruin Bombay."
Wrote Salman Rushdie wrote, in The Moor's Last Sigh, Christopher Hitchens tells us:
I'll change my "Mumbai" tag to "Bombay." (My "Burma" tag was always "Burma.")
ADDED: From Hitchens's book "God Is Not Great":
[H]e was alluding to the Hindu chauvinists who had tried to exert their own monopoly in the city and who had forcibly renamed it—after a Hindu goddess—Mumbai. We all now collude with this, in the same way that most newspapers and TV stations do the Burmese junta's work for it by using the fake name Myanmar. (Bombay's hospital and stock exchange, both targets of terrorists, are still called by their right name by most people, just as Bollywood retains its "B.")Andrew Sullivan resolves to write "Bombay" from now on.
I'll change my "Mumbai" tag to "Bombay." (My "Burma" tag was always "Burma.")
ADDED: From Hitchens's book "God Is Not Great":
Bombay... used to be considered a pearl of the Orient, with its necklace of lights along the corniche and its magnificent British Raj architecture. It was one of India's most diverse and plural cities, and its many layers of texture have been cleverly explored by Salman Rushdie... and in the films of Mira Nair. It is true that there had been intercommunal fighting there, during the time in 1947-1948 when the grand historic movement for an Indian self-government was being ruined by Muslim demands for a separate state and by the fact that the Congress Party was led by a pious Hindu. But probably as many people took refuge in Bombay during that moment of religious bloodlust as were driven or fled from it. A form of cultural coexistence resumed, as often happens when cities are exposed to the sea and to influences from outside. Parsis -- former Zoroastrians who had been persecuted in Persia -- were a prominent minority, and the city was also host to a historically significant community of Jews. But that was not enough to content Mr. Bal Thackeray and his Shiv Sena Hindu nationalist movement, who in the 1990s decided that Bombay should be run by and for his coreligionists, and who loosed a tide of goons and thugs onto the streets. Just to show he could do it, he ordered the city renamed as "Mumbai"....
"Yeah, it's been a little slower than usual. I’m taking a semi-vacation from blogging this week."
Writes Glenn Reynolds in his 27th post of the day.
Your assignment: Make up parallel concessions attributed to notable characters in various fields of endeavor.
Your assignment: Make up parallel concessions attributed to notable characters in various fields of endeavor.
Lolsportz.
With a hat tip to our wonderful Bissage.
And as long as we're lol-ing, let me acknowledge the much-emailed "vortex kitteh"…
... which was nicely animated by our wonderful Chip Ahoy:
And as long as we're lol-ing, let me acknowledge the much-emailed "vortex kitteh"…
... which was nicely animated by our wonderful Chip Ahoy:
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