~~~~~~.

.

Mysteries of the staircase.

Two figures in black:



The cityscape was found cubism:



Self portrait as a shadow:



The transparent, huddled crowd:

"He told me the precise date he plans to retire."

Said Jan Crawford Greenburg. "He" is Justice Stevens. Fascinating. Am I right to interpret her use of the term "precise date" to mean that he doesn't intend to stay on until, say, his health or mental acuity declines. The use of the word "retire" should also mean that he did not say that he intends to stay on the Court until he dies. "Date" -- if used accurately -- means a specific day, month, and year. [ADDED: The general opinion in the comments is that this was just a joke. I guess my sense of humor is limited on this topic. More on what I think about Justices not retiring: here.]

The linked interview, by Howard Bashman, makes her forthcoming book sound exciting:

I was fortunate enough to talk to nine Supreme Court justices, and a lot of what I heard surprised me. Some of the conventional wisdom is just wrong, especially about Justice Thomas and his early role on the Court. When I was doing the research on his early years, my heart would literally jump up every time I came across a memo or document that was completely at odds with what people have long said about him. The book is about how the Rehnquist Court came to disappoint conservatives -- what went wrong from their point of view -- and how those perceived missteps influenced the Bush Administration's thinking on Roberts, Miers and Alito.

The book is called "Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme Court."

"Beady-eyed, cause-y people, more willing to take the veil."

Hmmmm.... yeah... that's kind of what I meant when I brought up that "much more brutal point" that John Roberts was too tactful to say. Thanks, Justice Scalia!

AND: Who can resist throwing Scalia's insult back at him? Only someone who already likes him.

Do I still love the new Democratic Congress?

On November 11th, a wrote a post called "Why I love the new Democratic Congress!" They were offering me a lot of money:

Democratic leaders this week vowed to make the alternative minimum tax a centerpiece of next year's budget debate, saying the levy threatens to unfairly increase tax bills for millions of middle-class families by the end of the decade.

But now:

The House voted on Friday to pull the shadowy tradition of Congressional earmarking into the daylight, requiring lawmakers to attach their names to the pet items they slip into spending or tax bills and certify that they have no financial interest in the provisions....

The vote on the new earmark measure was linked to a rule known as “pay as you go” that would prohibit the House from increasing the deficit by passing any new tax cuts or entitlement spending programs without offsetting them with spending cuts or tax increases....

[T]he rules will make it more difficult to repair the alternative minimum tax, which, thanks to inflation, penalizes millions of middle-class households as well as its original targets, the rich. Repairing the tax is estimated to cost as much as $1 trillion in lost revenue over 10 years.

Of course, I support reforming the earmarks procedure. But they just took away the tax cut they promised! The earmarks change is supposed to leave more money in the budget, so why does it provide the occasion for reneging on the AMT promise?

Who's calling you conservative?

I thought I was being annoying yesterday when I dredged up more evidence to use in my longstanding effort to convince you that I'm a political moderate, but it turned out that a lot of people got into taking the same test and comparing scores. It even got back to Andrew Sullivan, who was the one who prompted me to take the test in the first place. Sullivan now takes note of the fact that he's to the right of Glenn Reynolds and me. Sullivan has been engaged in an effort to convince people that he is conservative, and this is obviously important to him since he's titled his book "The Conservative Soul." Clearly, he was not happy at being chosen as the "Most Annoying Liberal" by Right Wing News. And it wasn't the "annoying" part at all. He didn't even mention that. Bloggers don't mind being annoying. It's kind of the point.

But Glenn Reynolds -- as far as I know -- doesn't claim to be conservative, and neither do I. We're just people who are perceived by other people as conservative, much as Andrew himself gets called liberal. And you don't have to look hard for the reason. It's all about the war. If you support the war, you get so many bonus "conservative" points that it doesn't matter what you think about anything else. And if you oppose the war, you get your bonus "liberal" points.

Now, Sullivan wants extra "conservative" credit for being "to the right of Glenn." But in order to think that means anything, you have to first accept the significance of the people who characterize Glenn as a right-winger, and then you're buying into the whole sordid matrix that gets Andrew called "liberal."

So what's the point of all this? Just blogging. Being annoying. Waiting for the "Most Annoying Centrist" contest.

"If I do discriminate, it's that I only want healthy, intelligent people."

If you accept a woman choosing her sperm donor, and if you accept a woman choosing which embryo left over from someone else's fertility treatment to have implanted, will you draw the line at the deliberate creation of an embryo from an egg and sperm donor of the woman's choice?

Before contracting for the embryos, clients can evaluate the egg and sperm donors, and can even see pictures of them as babies, children and sometimes adults....

"People have long warned we were moving toward a 'Brave New World,' " said Robert P. George of Princeton University, who serves on the President's Council on Bioethics. "This is just more evidence that we haven't been able to restrain this move towards treating human life like a commodity. This buying and selling of eggs and sperm and now embryos based on IQ points and PhDs and other traits really moves us in the direction of eugenics."...

"People can say, 'Oh, this is the new Hitler.' That's not the case," [said Jennalee Ryan of the Abraham Center of Life.] "I don't take orders. I say 'This is what I have' and send them the background. If they don't think it's right for them, they don't have to take them."...

"If I do discriminate, it's that I only want healthy, intelligent people," Ryan said. "People will say, 'You're trying to create the perfect human race.' But we've always done gene selection just by who women choose as their husbands and men choose as their wives. This is no different."

When you choose a husband or wife, you're picking the person you want to live with, not just the genetic material. If you've married, how much did you think about the quality of the genetic material you could procure for your offspring? But then, what genetic qualities would you select for your children that you wouldn't care about having in your adult companion? And are there some things you want in your spouse that you'd reject if you knew it was in that embryo you're about to have implanted?

I suppose the fact that I wrote those questions first reveals that I'm not especially concerned about this new step in reproductive technology. The cry of "eugenics" always goes up, but what are the people who raise it really worrying about? Not the return of the Nazis. It's all-too-convenient the way the Nazis pop up to assist in making the argument you already wanted to make. The real objection is to reproductive choice. Once you have disaggregated reproduction from the full human relationship between the parents, what makes you want to draw the line here? Perhaps your objection is nothing more than resentment that only rich people get to fulfill this preference. If so, who are you to intrude on their private life?

One argument against this new practice is that there are so many embryos left over from infertility treatments and that these embryos should be implanted instead. But, as noted in the article, those leftover embryos are made from the eggs of woman who: 1. is older, and 2. has a fertility problem. It still seems more charitable and unselfish to choose them, but does that make it wrong to want better? We have a sense -- don't we? -- that parenthood means an open acceptance of whatever child happens to arrive and that the desire to be selective reveals that one has not met the parenthood ideal.

Why are Americans pessimistic and optimistic simultaneously?

It's a mystery:

A new AP-AOL News Poll finds that while most Americans said 2006 was a bad year for the country, three-fourths thought it had been a good one for them and their families. Seven in 10 Americans feel good about what 2007 will bring for the country, and nearly 90 percent are optimistic about the new year for them and their families.

A Washington Post-ABC News Poll found similar sentiments about 2007. More than 60 percent of the public said it would be a good year for protecting against terrorist attacks, the state of the national economy and “the way things are going in this country.”

By contrast, more than six in 10 Americans tell pollsters the country is on the “wrong track.” Bush’s polls ratings are reaching historical lows. And most Americans don’t think the U.S. is winning in Iraq, according to a variety of surveys.

It's just human nature, isn't it? And it's not a bad thing either. You feel suspicious and critical about the government -- and you should. But then, as a healthy, balanced person, you trust things will work out all right.

"Is it possible to prepare for Intelligence tests?"

An Ask Metafilter question. The main piece of advice over there is exactly what you would expect: take practice tests. I'd add my classic piece of test-taking advice that I figured out by my own trial and error: Believe -- even if it's pure delusion -- that you're having a wonderful time taking the exam. Control your emotions. If you believe this test is going to destroy or embarrass you, you're doomed.

In which I annoy you once again with the asssertion that I'm a moderate.

I took this test -- recommended by Andrew Sullivan -- and scored a 21 on a political scale that ran from 0 (100% liberal) to 40 (100% conservative). Sullivan scored 26, by the way.

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds takes the test and, like me, gets a 21. Wouldn't it be freaky if he answered all the questions the same? Eugene Volokh critiques the test -- raising many of the points we've raised in the comments here -- but he doesn't reveal his number. I guess he refused to answer the questions.

In the comments, someone recommends this quiz: the World's Smallest Political quiz. I hate to tell you, dear readers, but that one puts me squarely in the "left liberal" quadrant.

Someone else recommends the Political Compass test. I think I've done this one before, but let's just say it's time for a check up. Here's where I am on their chart:

Economic Left/Right: -0.63
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.21

Did I take this one before? Actually, I don't think I have. I was confusing this with another one with a similar format.

The folk literature of those who choose not to exercise their right to remain silent.

It's the People’s Voluntary Disclosure Form, the VDF:

For many people, the urge to explain, if not to confess, is as urgent as it was for Raskolnikov in “Crime and Punishment.”

“My name is Paul Cortez,” is the Melvillian first sentence of the V.D.F. statement handwritten by Mr. Cortez, a yoga teacher who is awaiting trial as the suspect in the fatal stabbing of a dancer in her Upper East Side apartment.

What follows is a three-page roller coaster ride of love, sex and betrayal, culminating in an alibi. On the day of the victim’s death, Mr. Cortez wrote, “I knew something was wrong, so I called back several times.” When she didn’t answer, he called clients, watched a football game with a friend, “then read a little and went to bed. The next morning about 10:30 I found out from my mom Catherine was Dead.”

The last word, “Dead,” is capitalized for emphasis.

Prosecutors love to have defendants volunteer an alibi because it shows what they call “consciousness of guilt.”...

“Everybody talks,” said Daniel J. Castleman, chief of investigations for the Manhattan district attorney. “Almost nobody doesn’t talk. And the reason for that is that people think they can either talk their way out of it or mitigate the crime. It’s human nature.”

Human nature. Without it, there'd be no crime in the first place. The defense lawyers will keep their jobs, and they will tear their hair out forever over all those confessions. Go ahead. Confess! It's good for the soul. But that's not why they're doing it -- according to Castleman. People think they can either talk their way out of it.

Sacha Baron Cohen on "Fresh Air."

Hear him speak in his real voice. It's a little startling. He discusses, among other things, how the scenes for "Borat" were planned and accomplished. The scenes had to advance the plot, but they could not be sure exactly what people would do and say. The scene in the church was pivotal, and the predicted dialogue turned out verbatim. With fundamentalists, it seems, you actually do know what they will say, for example, if you say, "No one can save me."

On many occasions, people called the police, and Cohen stayed in character as "Borat" even after the police arrived. You never know what useful footage you'll get. I guess we'll see that on the DVD.

Cohen thinks he's the victim of his own success, or so he says. He's so recognizable that he can no longer go out as a funny character and trick people. Or can he? He's saying now that he'll have to write scripted movies and work with actors, but that would be a useful message to send out if he wants to keep up the real-life tricks. He's awfully good at disappearing into his characters -- note that he studied acting and has performed in Shakespeare plays -- and, as he says, people consistently believed Borat was real. I think the tricks will go on, in some way or other.

Don't squick Oprah!

Let me just transcribe Oprah's intro to her show today:

I'm very particular about where I bathe, you know, and the soaps, and I mean, 'cause there are a lot of people that don't change their soaps when you come to their house, and so if you go in there and if you're one of them, and you go into their house and you go to bathe and there're teeny tiny hairs on them that don't belong to you. Yleh, I hate that. So I was spending that night at a friend's... uh... relative's house, okay, and the pillow, the pillow, the pillow... I don't know if things were growing in that pillow or had they made a home in that pillow, so actually, I came back and I was talking about, when was the last time that pillow was changed? And I actually called them back and said, when is the last time you changed that pillow? 30 years. How can you sleep on the same pillow for 30 years?

ADDED: Okay, I watched this show so you don't have to. Do I watch "Oprah"? No. I set the TiVo to record it a while back when Madonna was on, and it's been collecting things, like the way your disgusting pillow has been collecting dust mites. But for some reason, I clicked on today's show. I'm not simulblogging this. Let me just say that if you've got kids with stuffed animals, you should be vacuuming those toys at least once a week.... .... .... yeah, I thought so. Forget about it. Who cares? There are bacteria and other microscopic things everywhere. Forget about it! If you try to kill them, you'll only leave the nastiest ones to take over. Get on with your life! This was a show about ooh-icky! You've got better things to do with your life.

YET MORE: Oddly, part of this show was about women who let their hair grow very long. In the intro, Oprah threw in the question, "How often do you cut your hair?" The question wasn't how often do you wash your hair, but simply letting your hair grow long was treated as if it were another squicky thing. Then it turned out that they had about six women on the show who hadn't cut their hair in many years, including one who had never cut her hair. There was nothing dirty about these women. In fact, they were coming forward to get their hair cut to donate their hair for wigs for young girls who had gone bald. This subject really had nothing to do with the other, but Oprah just combined the two topics as if they were related.

The long-haired women didn't complain, of course, They were on Oprah, and they got makeovers. In the end, they came out showing off their haircuts, with Oprah exclaiming about how much better they looked. They all acted thrilled as if they had discovered how deluded they'd been. They'd been dressed up in new clothes, and they twirled around looking delighted as we heard Oprah name the various department stores that had provided the garish duds. Oprah told us they looked just great, updated. But I thought they all had looked lovely in jeans and long-sleeved tops and with hair hanging well below their waists. Yet there was Oprah telling us what to think, and she never said they'd made a sacrifice for the purpose of helping others. These were just deluded women who let their hair grow, to go along with that woman who used the same sponge for a year.

A little girl wearing one of those real-hair wigs was sent up for Oprah to embrace in the closing moments of the show, and we were left to wonder how many dust mites were in that wig, how often should you throw out your wig, and why is Oprah willing to have that thing right next to her.

It was a day spent walking...

It was a day spent walking, stopping in one café after another (grading one exam at each stop), shopping (everything in my favorite store was 36% off), and lunching at Cocoliquot. Since I was alone and since I can't very well eat and grade an exam, I cued up a podcast to keep me company:



Lunch was chestnut soup and an eggplant sandwich:



The long view:

President Bush will nominate a Muslim to represent the United States at the U.N.

ABC News reports:

[Zalmay] Khalilzad has been U.S. ambassador to Iraq since June 2005. He is the highest ranking Muslim in the U.S. government and one of the few officials at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad fluent in Arabic.

A consummate dealmaker, Khalilzad played an active role trying to push the Iraqi government toward political reconciliation. Khalilzad's efforts aliented [sic] some in the Shia-dominated Iraqi government who complained that Khalilzad was biased in favor of Iraq's Sunnis. Khalilzad is a Sunni Muslim.

"The 'Ashley Treatment,' Towards a Better Quality of Life for 'Pillow Angels.'"

Parents of a girl who will always be a baby mentally procure medical treatments that permanently limit her size and weight and prevent her from reaching puberty. Here is their blog about it. Here is the BBC.com article that took me to it:

In July 2004 Ashley began hormone treatment, through patches on the skin, that is expected to reduce her untreated height by 20% and weight by 40%.

Ashley's parents said the decision to remove their daughter's uterus and breast buds was for the girl's comfort and safety.

"Ashley has no need for her uterus since she will not be bearing children," they said, adding that the decision means she will not experience the menstrual cycle and the bleeding and discomfort commonly associated with it...

The couple emphasised their love for their daughter and said the amount of criticism their choice of treatment attracted had surprised them.

"If the concern has something to do with the girl's dignity being violated, then I have to protest by arguing that the girl lacks the cognitive capacity to experience any sense of indignity," they said.

"The oestrogen treatment is not what is grotesque here. Rather, it is the prospect of having a full-grown and fertile woman endowed with the mind of a baby."

They call her a "pillow angel" because "she is so sweet and stays right where we place her — usually on a pillow."

MORE: Here:

"This particular treatment, even if it's OK in this situation, and I think it probably is, is not a widespread solution and ignores the large social issues about caring for people with disabilities," Dr. Joel Frader, a medical ethicist at Chicago's Children's Memorial Hospital, said Thursday. "As a society, we do a pretty rotten job of helping caregivers provide what's necessary for these patients."

The case involves a girl identified only as Ashley on a blog her parents created after her doctors wrote about her treatment in October's Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.