Soaking up the thaw.

From some angles, it may look stark here in Madison, Wisconsin:



Reminds me of this place.

But look this way:



Snow was melting like mad today as the temperature shot up to 48°. I bet more snow melted today than on any other day that I've lived in Wisconsin. There were rivulets of ex-snow everywhere. Those ice fisherman have been enjoying things all winter long. But it's balmy enough that a casual couple take a stroll onto the ice and then just stand around having a conversation.

Step a little further back and you're on the Terrace -- which is officially closed, as I read on a sign as I was leaving. See all these piled up chairs and tables?





Soon it will be like this:



But we don't have to wait for it to get like that for you guys to get like this -- picture taken today:



And while we're checking out Madison fashions, how about something for your innocent babe?

For some crazy reason, fashion designers want guys to...

... dress like Pee Wee Herman.

And there seems to be some fashion designer rule that a man's body must be called his "physique."

Rhymes with "vortex."

It seems there's some sort of competition going on for the title Poet Laureate of the Althouse Blog. Omaha1 wants it, but I think someone needs to alert Lonely Donut Man that there is a challenge.

Here's an old Lonely Donut Man contribution:

Lo! If I could'st but work my will
like a veritable nymph on the pill
would'st the uncouth have their fill
of verse and meter and prose n'er shrill
verily to forgo the Blogsphere's usual swill
Fie! Like a strumpet's fingers at the till
most bloggers be'th naught but a politician's shill

-LDM (lonely donut man)

I love poetry contests. It's cool when the competitive spirit breaks out in the field of poetry. Omaha1 opens with:

behold the frightful power of the vortex
o'er the powerless cerebral cortex
Marcotte, Campos, professors of the law
mere puppets, sucked into its cold, dead maw
Althouse! Althouse! the dreadful siren song
no blogger can resist a force so strong
no democrat is she, if she is for
Chimpy McHitlerburton's Iraq "war"

I say I'm impressed with the vortex/cortex rhyme, and Ron parries with:

Maybe if you get bedeviled by that crazy woman from Yale again, you can rhyme "vortex" with "whore text!"

From this cascade of verse, I'll protect myself with Gore-tex.

It's me and Glenn Reynolds...

On Bloggingheads.tv. With special guest, Dr. Helen. Topics (and times):

Glenn and Ann finally speak to each other (01:31)

The perils of discussing ethnicity in law school (14:47)

Are we really all that politically polarized? (04:49)

Dr. Helen joins the show and talks about abused women... like poor Ann (04:35)

Creepy chatroom guys and blogging feminists (06:59)

Watching reality TV... (04:46)

...and videotaping reality (09:01)

"This is not Dodge City in the 1800s."

A DC Circuit panel adopts the individual rights theory of the Second Amendment and throws out the District's ban on handguns inside the home:

Tom G. Palmer, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and one of the plaintiffs who prevailed yesterday, said he once used a handgun to ward off potential attackers when he lived in San Jose. He said the ruling would help residents protect themselves.

"Let's be honest: Although there are many fine officers in the police department, there's a simple test. Call Domino's Pizza or the police, and time which one gets there first," Palmer said....

D.C. resident Kenny Barnes, who became a gun control advocate after his 37-year-old-son was shot to death on U Street NW, called the ruling "crazy."

"What kind of message are you sending?" Barnes asked. "This is not Dodge City in the 1800s."

The Dodge City image is one of guns in the streets:



This case is about guns kept at home to protect against intruders. How about a Hollywood movie image where someone with a gun kept in the home for protection goes all wrong?

My choice:



"No. I care. This is where I live. This is me. I will not allow violence against this house."

Let's take a closer look at Antonella's photographs.

Lisa de Moraes covers the Antonella Barba story:

Barba may be the best-known "Idol" contestant who didn't make it to the finals, thanks to a bunch of photos of varying degrees of raciness that recently hit the Internet: Antonella on the toilet, Antonella flipping off the person with the camera while smiling her beautiful smile, Antonella with a bunch of gal pals and holding a box of suggestive pasta (don't ask), Antonella dripping wet in a T-shirt and undies in the World War II Memorial on the Mall, Antonella cupping another woman's breasts, Antonella sunbathing topless -- which, sadly, passes for racy in this great country of ours.

A second batch of photos popped up soon thereafter, showing someone who looked like Antonella in a sex act with a guy. But those photos have mostly been dismissed by many, including Coluccio, who said the chick in those pics is wearing acrylic nails, something Antonella would never do. The controversy raged, on "Idol" chat sites and on ABC's morning show "The View," among other places, about whether she is fit to be on the show that is the most popular in the country -- with an average audience of about 30 million viewers, including millions of children, as well as their parents and grandparents -- and whether "Idol" should sack her given that it previously kicked out D.C. area contestant Frenchie Davis over pictures she did for an Internet porn site.

A few comments:

1. I guess the search is on for photos that are obviously Antonella, showing her wearing acrylic nails.

2. I loved Frenchie Davis fan way back in the second season of "American Idol." We were huge suckers, chez Althouse, for her singing "Band of Gold" with Kimberly Locke. When Frenchie got booted, we vowed we'd never watch "American Idol" again. (What would I have done with those hundreds of hours if I'd kept my vow?)

3. Some people like to say that Frenchie was treated worse than Antonella because Frenchie is fat and black and Antonella is thin and white. I doubt it. There's a distinction between what the two women did. Frenchie posed as a model for a sex website. Antonella seems to be posing for fun. But also they had a chance to learn from the Frenchie incident that people sympathize with a young woman who's posed for sexy pictures. There will be more and more of these things with all the digital photography and photo sharing sites. We're going to have to learn to take it in stride. It would be ridiculous to make pariahs out all the young women who let someone take their picture.

4. I took the trouble to look up the (undisputed) photos of Antonella that everyone has been looking at, and really, I don't see what the big deal is (other than that she's really pretty). These are the kind of cute, fun-loving pictures friends take of each other nowadays. You shouldn't casually put them up on the internet, but obviously some people do. Others put them up quite intentionally. Some of what looks casual may be quite intentional. Was Antonella helped or hurt by this? Someone thinking this through in advance might calculate that it's a good way to self-promote. The look of a lack of intent to go public is part of why people are fascinated. And you've got that deniability too.

5. Why is it "sad" that a picture of a topless woman is considered racy in America? Because she was sunbathing? I realize that you have to act nonchalant in a real life naked sunbathing situation, but it's a photograph. The whole idea of a photograph is to gawk at an image. Or is it just "sad" that Americans -- unlike those sophisticated Europeans -- think sunbathing naked is sexy? Should we aspire to lose the feeling that things are sexy? Why is it considered better to drain the feeling out of life? Since when is numbness an accomplishment?

"I'm not going to scream First Amendment here because let's face it: I don't know the doctrine."

I love that. It's a classic line in the annals of lawprof blogging. Written by Dan Filler, who does have a lot to say about "vagina."

CORRECTION: I had wrong the Concurring Opinions author named originally. I apologize for invoking poor Daniel Solove's name. He probably knows plenty about the First Amendment and may very well have little to say about "vagina." I vow to be more careful in the future when blogging at 3 in the morning. I did get the first three letters of the name right...

The trick of "insulting upward."

Ann Coulter uses it, and so does that lawprof columnist Paul Campos -- who went to University of Michigan Law School with her -- Dave Kopel observes.

[P]ick somebody more famous than you. Vilify the person in some outrageous way. Ideally, the target gets upset and responds, and the press covers your public argument. By engaging in a public fight with you, the target has implicitly raised you to his own level of importance....

His column ... insulted upward at University of Wisconsin law professor Ann Althouse (bizarrely claiming that she is part of a conspiracy to protect Coulter). Althouse is far more famous than Campos on the Web and in academia; her record of scholarly publications in law journals is significantly larger than his. She responded to Campos on her blog, thus giving him more publicity.

A couple of weeks ago, Campos also successfully insulted upward when he accused University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds of advocating murder, and urged that the school censor Reynolds. Reynolds too has a vastly larger record of scholarly publication than Campos, and Reynolds' Web log, InstaPundit, is the most influential in the world (based on incoming links statistics at truthlaidbear.com).

Kopel notes that Campos also tried the insulting upward trick on Coulter but she used the correct response of ignoring it, while Glenn and I fell into the trap by responding. Well, it's not as if I don't know not to ignore an insulter who stands to gain from the attention. I do ignore insults every day. Some days, like yesterday, I ignore a whole slew of insults. But I choose some to respond to for various reasons. One reason I responded to Campos is that he's a fellow law professor. Another is, I actually know him. Also, he's got a column in a major newspaper.

Hey, I guess I should perceive Kopel as using the trick of defending upward! He got me to write about his damn Rocky Mountain News column.... at 3 a.m....

(Can you trust your own judgment, blogging at 3 a.m.?)

The philosopher's perspective on the Kaplan story.

Now let's hear from the education and philosophy professor, Francis Schrag, in this letter to the Cap Times editor. He says he's learned 5 lessons. Here's #1:

1. Despite their evident distress, the Hmong students displayed an admirable ability to rally supporters and "get their story out." In other words, within a generation, the Hmong have learned how to be effective American citizens...

The punk rock opinion on the Kaplan story, etc.

Hey, Ben Weasel is talking about me. Hi, Ben. Let me just say we have many Screeching Weasel CDs at my house. But Ben isn't talking about my taste in music, he's weighing in on the law school's Kaplan story. Here's the pub

The story is pretty much always the same: A professor tries to fan the dim and flickering flame of intellect he sees in his students and makes the tragic mistake of not using "I'm Okay You're Okay" language. The little Marlos and Phils get an attack of the vapors from hearing such hateful words and go whinging off to the dean who, typically, says, "There, there, my little lambs" as he announces to the world that such slights against their feelings will not be tolerated.

Cue outrage from the vast majority of Everyone Else In The World who can't believe that such weak-minded crybabies are going to enter the adult workforce so ill-prepared to co-exist with their fellow man without having somebody to whom they can run and blubber. The latter assertions, sadly, miss the point that these sensitive muffins will likely live and work their entire lives within arms length of any number of willing wet nurses who will file lawsuits on their behalf every time their precious feelings are bruised. Such a world does indeed exist.

It certainly exists in punk rock - and especially on the West Coast, where witch hunts of this type have been conducted with regularity as long as I can remember. Even in a subculture that on the face of it would seem to be a bit more muscular, these sorts of Romper Room antics thrive (at least in the fertile soil of the SF Bay area). You'd be right if you pointed out that punk is as much a fantasy world as college life, but one can conceivably earn a living in punk - it's hard to be a professional student.

As it is, nobody's career was ever on the line when some punk dingbat who read too much Naomi Wolf and Susan Faludi decided that those of us who weren't gay were de facto rapists. And there were always enough people in punk who loathed such nonse[n]se that it really was and is relegated to the absolute lunatic fringes. As many times as I've been targeted in the crosshairs of some delicate flower who didn't care for my choice of words and who tried to sabaotage some this or that of mine, it's never actually worked.

Oh, there's some nice potential here for connecting the Kaplan story to the current feminist attacks on me for mocking a Yale law student for overreacting to a stupid chat board where guys talked about her picture.

I like this Ben Weasel character, who lives here in Wisconsin. (See, here he is shoveling snow.) He looks a lot like the guys who played punk rock -- and, less to my taste, prog rock -- in my basement throughout the 1990s. I'm putting him on the blogroll.

I appreciate his take on this story, and I guess I should go read some of the lyrics to those old songs of his. My son John tells me a lot of the songs have pretty amusing satirical lyrics. He mentions "I Want to Be a Homosexual." I Google that and the first thing that comes is an FCC opinion!

Several complaints filed with the Commission indicated that on July 12, 1992, Radio Station KNON(FM), Dallas TX, broadcast the song "I Want To Be A Homosexual" (lyrics transcribed in Attachment 1) at 3:55 p.m. during its "Lambda Weekly" program."...

KNON's broadcast, while relatively brief, details sexual activities in very vulgar and explicit terms, warranting, on these grounds, a substantial forfeiture. Taking into consideration, however, the licensee's prompt response to the complaint (before a Commission investigation began), and the licensee's financial records submitted in response to the NAL, we believe a forfeiture of $2,000 is reasonable.

So let's check out Attachment 1:

Oh, Ben, gee, I think you're really cute and sexy,
and well, I know you're straight.
But look, I know you have a girlfriend.
But if you really want to have a...

Go read it over there if you want! What I really like about it is that it includes the subject of guys wearing shorts, which you know is one of my big concerns.

UPDATE: Ben notices this link and says about me: "Her stuff seems to annoy the living hell out of reactionary leftists, who insist on calling her a conservative even though she really isn't." He also expresses sorrow over that typo I kind of couldn't help drawing attention to. So never let it be said that concern about spelling does not exist in the punk rock community. About that FCC case, he says:

I remember reading about this years ago as the station was under attack by some Christian fundamentalist group for playing the song. In our early days we tried to ignite this sort of hype for ourselves several times, phoning and faxing Chicago TV stations pretending to be members of one outraged group or another who were protesting a Screeching Weasel performance. It never worked, of course. By the time the Dallas thing happened we were already doing okay for ourselves so we didn't really care so much. If I'd known they'd been hit with a 2K fine I would've chipped something in!

And he makes fun of the FCC for getting his lyrics wrong. They heard "beat-me-leather fag" for "beefy leather fag," not "beat-me-leather fag."

It's an important distinction because "Beefy leather fag" is funny whereas "Beat-me-leather fag" sounds like something translated from French by Babel Fish.

Leave it to the FCC to miss the funny.

Radio morning.

I've just finished the "Week In Review" show on Wisconsin Public Radio, which you should be able to stream here sometime soon if not already. Now, I'm passing half an hour, sitting in a café and chewing my way through a glass of orange juice before going back to the radio station to do a Milwaukee Public Radio show called "Lake Effect." So I'll be WUWM 89.7 at 10. [NOTE: Recorded for broadcast next week.] We'll be talking about blogging and related things. I'm recording a Bloggingheads.tv show in the early afternoon too, so I may not talk again until Monday. Or will that statement cue demands for a podcast? You know, I want to do a podcast!

Walkable cities. Is Madison really #1?

Just yesterday, in my other life as off-blog Althouse, I was having a conversation about walkable cities. Walkability is the first thing I want from a city. It's what I want from the city I choose to live in and any city I travel to. I like a beautiful, drivable landscape around that city, but inside the city, I want to have great walks, from home to work and from the office to cafés and restaurants, with things to see along the way — shops, people, parks, posters.

I was saying how much I loved living in New York City and Boston. I loved living in the West Village -- on Jane Street -- and walking to NYU every day circa 1980, and I loved living on Hereford Street, near Newbury, in Boston, in the fall of 1990, when I taught for a semester at BU and left my car back home. I'd walk back and forth to work and wander around Back Bay in my spare time. By comparison, in Madison, I have a good walk from home to work, and I love the walk from Bascom Mall down State Street and around the Capitol, but it can't compare to the much grander and more variable walks in New York and Boston -- and, traveling, in Paris and London and Rome.

The other city we were talking about was Austin. I haven't been to Austin in 15 years, but I remembered it as seeming more urban than Madison. Still, if I was moving out of Madison, I didn't think I'd pick Austin. I'd want more of a change from Madison. And, besides, isn't Austin more car-oriented? And how can you walk when it's so hot? Which, of course, provoked the usual reminder that in Madison, it's so cold, followed by the usual rejoinder that at least you can breathe in the cold and you just put on some extra layers of clothing, but when it's hot, you have to hole up inside in the air-conditioning.

Later in the evening, we see this. Prevention Magazine has come up with a list of the top 10 most walkable cities in the United States and Madison is #1. Incredibly, Austin is #2!

Factors contributing to the ranking were air quality, the percentage of people who walk to work, access to parks, number of athletic shoes sold, and (believe it or not) weather....

Madison was the only city in the walking top 10 in a state that's not in the South or the West...

Madison is no stranger to No. 1 rankings. People still talk about Money Magazine naming it the best place to live in 1998, although that ranking dropped to 53rd last year. Outside Magazine named it the best road biking city in August, and other high rankings have come for its being vegetarian-friendly, gay-friendly, environmentally friendly, and, well, according to Midwest Living in 2003, the overall friendliest city in the Midwest.

Friendly, friendly, friendly. Don't forget! In case I've been reminding you of the downside of things around here too much lately.

Anyway, Prevention Magazine's idea of walkability is not going to align perfectly with mine. I don't care so much about maximizing the wearing of the sneakers. I'd give points to a place with more fashion variety. I care more about seeing interesting things -- including unusual shoes -- than in whether people are getting a lot of exercise. But if they get a lot of exercise, they may get into better shape -- I'm always trying to get back to what I think of as my "Boston weight" -- and that improves the aesthetic experience of people-watching.

Did Burt Young spam me?

Scroll down to the one comment on this old post from the days before I turned on the comments.

"Prof pays price for causing offense: Sensitivities take precedence over truth and academic freedom."

That's the striking headline in Isthmus, as Jason Shepard covers the Kaplan story. Read the whole thing. It is very strongly critical of the way this incident was handled here:

[I]t appears that both students and the UW administration were too quick to act without all the facts. The students cried racism based on questionable information, then got carried away by the politics of group victimhood. UW officials, meanwhile, saw student offense as all the proof they needed to immediately and unequivocally apologize. (Opined Law School Dean Kenneth Davis to the Wisconsin State Journal, “I think a number of our students were entirely justified in being deeply offended.”)...

Hundreds attended a campus forum on March 1 organized by seven Asian women who’ve led the attacks on Kaplan. Many came expecting a fair airing of views at what was billed as an “open forum.” Instead, they witnessed further condemnation of Kaplan at what professor Howard Schweber afterward called a “political rally.”

At the forum, Moua acknowledged that her initial e-mail was misinformed as to precisely what Kaplan had said. Nonetheless, scores of speakers drew from it over the next two hours to peg Kaplan as racist and ignorant.

Two women in the class, who’ve since transferred out, described their shocked reactions to Kaplan’s comments. Mai Der Yang, a first-year student who missed class that day, said the real harm came in a meeting days later when Kaplan gave “insult after insult.” Among those insults, Yang said, was that Kaplan “believed his statements to be true.”

Nancy Vu, another organizer, stressed the women’s collective victimization, saying they’ve felt “so intensely alone” and “at every corner have been dismissed” by faculty and students. “You have made us feel alienated.”

Additional speakers from student and community groups accused university leaders of not doing enough to promote diversity and sensitivity. Madison school board member Shwaw Vang, who is Hmong, said Kaplan’s speech “degrades and dehumanizes me.” Activist Peng Her drew parallels between the seven women and Rosa Parks and the civil rights marchers in Selma, Ala. And the women were called the “Magnificent Seven” to great applause.

Near the end, Dean Davis again apologized to students, saying they’ve exhibited a “remarkable thoughtfulness and grace that makes me proud.” He did not bother to put in a good word for the idea of academic freedom.

The Kaplan case, as it’s played out so far, represents a low point in UW-Madison’s storied history of defending academic freedom, dating back more than a century to a case that generated the famed “sifting and winnowing” plaque on Bascom Hall. It shows that the fad of political correctness that rose in the early 1990s, giving rise to student and faculty speech codes, still has great power....

“The rush to judgment in this case has been extremely unsettling,” says professor Donald Downs, author of Restoring Free Speech and Liberty on Campus. “How can you make a valid assessment about whether a line was crossed in this case unless you seriously consider the academic freedom issue? That hasn’t been part of the discussion that’s come out of the law school.”....

“It’s not just a question of whether faculty members — or students, for that matter — are punished for expressing the ‘wrong’ views,” says [Professor Howard] Schweber. “It’s whether the university is a place where people feel free to explore controversial topics and express unpopular arguments.”

This is a very tough article, which is sure to send (another) shock wave through the school.

Amanda Marcotte, into the vortex.

Thought you'd like to know, since she got so famous and all, that Amanda Marcotte has a nutty tirade about me here:

Ann Althouse is exactly the sort of shallow, petty, mean person who would try to imply that being hot/having breasts means that the be-breasted hot person should be treated like a sex toy and not be taken seriously as a career-minded individual. If there are plenty of mean-spirited assholes out there like Ann—and there are—then yes, having people gossip about you on the internet might mark you as a sexualized female and hurt your career chances, particularly in a field like the law.

And she continues with the wacky, lying assault here:

[W]here I grew up, people tended to be a bit more blatant [about sexism]. Classic example, since we’ve been talking about the Ann Althouse mentality where women are basically expected to exist for men and certainly not to compete with them academically—when I was in high school, I got in trouble for dress code violations a lot.

Okaaaay.... That's just weird, Amanda. Enjoy your fevered life of the mind, you goofball. Don't go and "gossip about [anyone] on the internet." That would be so wrong.

ADDED: What you are witnessing here is, I think, the full-out punitive mode that victimologists lapse into if you fail to buy into victimology. To be fair, it makes some sense. It's sort of like: Don't believe in victims? I'll show you how it feels to be a victim! So, I can't very well cry "poor me," can I? It would be conceding the (crazy) argument. I'm just going to laugh.

"How Low Can Kresge Go?"

Wow! I go to the PGA website to check the leaderboard and see how my nephew Cliff Kresge is doing, and I see this splashed on the front page: