How tough will the upgrade be?
I'm not too sure, I only gave the guide a Congressional Review.
January 21, 2012
Urban Dictionary Word of the Day: Congressional Review.
"To loosely read or breeze through a document, likely missing a fair amount of the information contained within."
Did Gingrich win?
I'm hearing reports that he's the projected winner (in South Carolina), but it looks even with 1% reporting.
ADDED: The link above goes to CNN. Here's Wapo.
MORE SHOCKING NEWS: Heidi Klum and Seal are getting divorced!
AND: I know, I know. Exit polls. But remember exit polls in 2004? Here's what I wrote that strange November evening:
ADDED: The link above goes to CNN. Here's Wapo.
MORE SHOCKING NEWS: Heidi Klum and Seal are getting divorced!
AND: I know, I know. Exit polls. But remember exit polls in 2004? Here's what I wrote that strange November evening:
Yes, I care a lot about the outcome of the election, and I'm sitting here waiting for the news to come in, sampling the dribbled out exit polls, and fretting. But at the same time, I feel complete assurance that as soon as the outcome is known, I'll fully accept it. Either man will make a decent enough President. I think Bush deserves to continue in office, but if it is to be Kerry, Kerry can handle the job too.... It is equanimity that flows through me. Time for a nice glass of win, a plate of pasta with Bolognese sauce, and a calm absorption of reality.IN THE COMMENTS: AJ Lynch said:
UPDATE: "A nice glass of win" -- ah, so hope does live on! Time for a nice glass of wine and toast to hope! A glass to be refilled later, perhaps, in a quenching of sorrow!
ANOTHER UPDATE: 10:53 p.m. Maybe I am going to get that nice glass of win after all. I'm really surprised. I let those exit polls affect me. Then I called up my sister in Florida and ended up talking with her for a long time, just watching the numbers on the TV screen with the sound off, so I wasn't getting any punditizing and wasn't drawing conclusions about much of anything. I got off the phone, and it took a while for me to absorb it, but eventually I got the message that everything was trending toward Bush.
Seal got pissed when Heidi asked him for an open marriage with Newt?
I think Gingrich is going to win in South Carolina.
And then what will happen?
ADDED: Gingrich is doing well because of his performance in the debates. Perhaps if Gingrich is the candidate, Obama won't debate him. Why give him a chance to shine? Here's why. Obama will predict that the majority of Americans will prefer the nice man who is President over the strange and brash man who is attempting to crush him. Think how we felt back in 2000 when this happened:
All Obama will need to do is stand his ground and be the normal person, and Gingrich will look like a jackass. Do not fear the Newt. He is self-limiting. Just like ManBearPig.
Now, picture Mitt Romney and Barack Obama in a debate. Come on, wake up and picture them. Hey! Come on! Look, it will be 2 low-key stammerers lulling you into a deep slumber. But before you drift off, something emotional will happen to you. One man will have made you feel some warmth. You'll care about him. Not you, my readers, the majority of you. But you, the American voters, the majority of you. You will feel something that you won't ever need to subject to a process of rational judgment. You will float on, half-asleep and into your polling place where you will make your mark next to the name Barack Obama.
ADDED: Gingrich is doing well because of his performance in the debates. Perhaps if Gingrich is the candidate, Obama won't debate him. Why give him a chance to shine? Here's why. Obama will predict that the majority of Americans will prefer the nice man who is President over the strange and brash man who is attempting to crush him. Think how we felt back in 2000 when this happened:
All Obama will need to do is stand his ground and be the normal person, and Gingrich will look like a jackass. Do not fear the Newt. He is self-limiting. Just like ManBearPig.
Now, picture Mitt Romney and Barack Obama in a debate. Come on, wake up and picture them. Hey! Come on! Look, it will be 2 low-key stammerers lulling you into a deep slumber. But before you drift off, something emotional will happen to you. One man will have made you feel some warmth. You'll care about him. Not you, my readers, the majority of you. But you, the American voters, the majority of you. You will feel something that you won't ever need to subject to a process of rational judgment. You will float on, half-asleep and into your polling place where you will make your mark next to the name Barack Obama.
PETA appeals denial of roadside memorials for cows that died in the wrecks of 2 cattle-hauling trucks.
"The state previously denied the application, saying the [Illinois] Roadside Memorial Act specifies that only relatives who lost loved ones in highway crashes may request memorials."
So, it's not that the dead were not human. It's that nonhuman animals have relatives who are incapable of requesting a memorial. PETA says "the cows suffered and are 'worthy of remembering.'" But Illinois can't be accused of discriminating against nonhuman animals, which seems to be the issue PETA is pushing. Roadside memorials are for relatives who request them, and no relatives of the dead have applied. And let's be sensible, even assuming cattle remember their dead relatives, symbolic displays don't jog their memories.
So, it's not that the dead were not human. It's that nonhuman animals have relatives who are incapable of requesting a memorial. PETA says "the cows suffered and are 'worthy of remembering.'" But Illinois can't be accused of discriminating against nonhuman animals, which seems to be the issue PETA is pushing. Roadside memorials are for relatives who request them, and no relatives of the dead have applied. And let's be sensible, even assuming cattle remember their dead relatives, symbolic displays don't jog their memories.
"Ask me an interesting question... and I'll answer 10-15 every week..."
A simple enough Twitter project, by Yoko Ono.
It seems that the real project is stating one imagined project after another. Think of it, then let it go. Imagine all the unwritten books. Have you read them?
do you consider the internet to be a nutopian space?Ha ha. I like Yoko Ono. I was thinking of her today because I was thinking of my habit of thinking up ideas for books, which I don't write. That made me think of Yoko's old book "Grapefruit," which — yes, it is a book — describes projects, things that could be done easily, things that could be done but are too tedious or too hard to do, and things that are completely impossible. The descriptions are charmingly minimal. I'd quote some, but you'd get the wrong idea. Go over to the link and check some pages out. You can search inside the book. Try, for example, searching for "cloud."
It is one of the nutopian spaces....
I recently watched the film LET IT BE and I wonder why you didn’t smile through the whole thing. You have such a lovely smile.
My smile was erased....
How do you always stay so grounded? So often I find myself floating away from all this.
Look at the steps we take when we walk. Our steps are made of floating and grounding, each time we take the step. So don’t worry. You are grounding and floating, every day, as you walk. You should walk more.
It seems that the real project is stating one imagined project after another. Think of it, then let it go. Imagine all the unwritten books. Have you read them?
Cougar mascot rejected as offensive to women.
It was the students' top choice, but "principal Mary Bailey said carries an ugly connotation that is disrespectful to women."
Mary Bailey? Where have I heard that name before?
"She's an old maid... she never married... she's just about to close up the library."
Mary Bailey? Where have I heard that name before?
"She's an old maid... she never married... she's just about to close up the library."
Judge Posner includes a photograph of Bob Marley in an opinion and sloughs off worries about copyright.
The case was about dreadlocks (and the prison officials who cut them off), and Posner said his use of the photo fit the "fair use" doctrine:
Posner seems to think it's quite fun to toss photographs into judicial opinions. It reminds me of the way some judges like to quote song lyrics or lines from movies. Blogging, I always feel that it's more questionable to use an image that someone else created than it is to cut and paste a block of text, but why should that be? I quote blocks of text all the time, but I remember, when I started blogging, worrying quite a bit about whether it was acceptable to copy that much text, so I'm relieved to hear a judge take a broad view of fair use and set an example.
Here's an opinion where Posner includes a picture of an ostrich with its head in the sand and a picture of (presumably) a lawyer with his head in the sand as he criticizes a lawyer who failed to cite a case that should have been cited. The lawyer filed a grievance against Posner for funning with him like that. The grievance was dismissed, and Posner offers the classic nonapology "I'm sorry he was upset by it."
There's more going on here than copyright. There's also the idea that judges are supposed to be neutral and sober. They wield power against real individuals, and it's a power that's supposed to come solely from law, not from any will of the judge's own. In that light, when the judge displays that he's enjoying the experience or playing to the crowd, entertaining the audience, we may fear that he's doing something wrong. This is why most judicial opinions are so godawful tedious, as the judges all sound alike and phrase everything in the dullest possible way. And there are no pictures!
This reminds me. We lawprofs have to make students read these texts, and we use casebooks that have edited the tediously verbose writings down, but the casebooks are still ponderous — in more ways that one. I'd like to take iBooks Author — an amusing new app — throw all the cases I assign into it. (All the judicial opinions are in the public domain, so there's no copyright issue at all.) Edit the cases down, summarize some things, and embed some pictures in a Posneresque way.
For example, take Griswold v. Connecticut (the old birth control case that flummoxed Mitt Romney in the debate the other day). There's a point in Justice Harlan's concurring opinion where he writes:
IN THE COMMENTS: Freeman Hunt said:
"It's not as if we're selling our opinions in competition with a photographer... Using the photo in a judicial opinion couldn't conceivably be hurting the copyright holder."Posner did not give the photographer credit, though it's a commercial photographer who uses Getty Images to collect fees. But Posner just grabbed the photo from the internet. He says "With the Internet, it's extraordinarily easy to find photographs of anything," so there's a good chance he encountered the photograph on a website that didn't name the photographer.
Posner seems to think it's quite fun to toss photographs into judicial opinions. It reminds me of the way some judges like to quote song lyrics or lines from movies. Blogging, I always feel that it's more questionable to use an image that someone else created than it is to cut and paste a block of text, but why should that be? I quote blocks of text all the time, but I remember, when I started blogging, worrying quite a bit about whether it was acceptable to copy that much text, so I'm relieved to hear a judge take a broad view of fair use and set an example.
Here's an opinion where Posner includes a picture of an ostrich with its head in the sand and a picture of (presumably) a lawyer with his head in the sand as he criticizes a lawyer who failed to cite a case that should have been cited. The lawyer filed a grievance against Posner for funning with him like that. The grievance was dismissed, and Posner offers the classic nonapology "I'm sorry he was upset by it."
There's more going on here than copyright. There's also the idea that judges are supposed to be neutral and sober. They wield power against real individuals, and it's a power that's supposed to come solely from law, not from any will of the judge's own. In that light, when the judge displays that he's enjoying the experience or playing to the crowd, entertaining the audience, we may fear that he's doing something wrong. This is why most judicial opinions are so godawful tedious, as the judges all sound alike and phrase everything in the dullest possible way. And there are no pictures!
This reminds me. We lawprofs have to make students read these texts, and we use casebooks that have edited the tediously verbose writings down, but the casebooks are still ponderous — in more ways that one. I'd like to take iBooks Author — an amusing new app — throw all the cases I assign into it. (All the judicial opinions are in the public domain, so there's no copyright issue at all.) Edit the cases down, summarize some things, and embed some pictures in a Posneresque way.
For example, take Griswold v. Connecticut (the old birth control case that flummoxed Mitt Romney in the debate the other day). There's a point in Justice Harlan's concurring opinion where he writes:
The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment stands, in my opinion, on its own bottom.That's just begging for a photograph grabbed from the internet.
IN THE COMMENTS: Freeman Hunt said:
Posner is The Crack Emcee of judicial opinions?
January 20, 2012
"Occupy the Courts" protests hit the U.S. Supreme Court building and other federal courthouses today.
Why pick on the courts? The protesters wanted to express the opinion that Citizens United was decided the wrong way. As if it's admirable for courts to decide cases the way protesting throngs want them decided!
The protesters say they'd like a constitutional amendment. Cut back on the First Amendment? I remember a few years ago when there was a clamor to cut back the First Amendment to protect the flag which the Supreme Court said people had a free-speech right to desecrate. It turned out to be an embarrassment for everyone who didn't revere the Bill of Rights.
The protesters say they'd like a constitutional amendment. Cut back on the First Amendment? I remember a few years ago when there was a clamor to cut back the First Amendment to protect the flag which the Supreme Court said people had a free-speech right to desecrate. It turned out to be an embarrassment for everyone who didn't revere the Bill of Rights.
Asked if a constitutional amendment is a realistic goal, Joan Stallard, a demonstrator from D.C., said, “The constitution has been amended 27 times, and we can do it again.” She said more and more of the public is beginning to understand “the power of corporations in our political system” and will be receptive to a constitutional chance.Yeah, but we never cut back the First Amendment.
"Senate Delays Vote on Piracy Bill as House Balks, Too."
Okay. But why doesn't that NYT news story have the word "Dodd" in it? This story the NYT put up last night had "Dodd" in it. Have you noticed the role of the former Senator in the SOPA fight? He's kind of a lobbyist (for the movie industry), except that he can't actually be a lobbyist, because it's illegal for a former Senator to lobby Congress in his first 2 years out of office.
Hired as the consummate Washington insider to carry the film industry’s banner on crucial issues like piracy, Mr. Dodd ended up being more coach than player.He's more of a coach, less of a player, because it's illegal to be a player — if in this ridiculous sports metaphor, a "player" is a lobbyist — so he's less of a player.
He helped devise a strategy that called for his coalition to line up a strong array of legislative sponsors and supporters behind two similar laws — the Stop Online Piracy Act in the House, and the Protect I.P. Act in the Senate — and then to move them through the Congress quickly before possible opposition from tech companies could coalesce.Oh, my! Isn't that elegantly phrased! It's nice to be nice to Mr. Dodd — who plotted behind the scenes to ram this thing through Congress before it was noticed by "tech companies" — i.e., all the ordinary people who like to use the internet.
But slow pacing gave the Internet and free speech advocates time to wake up and mobilize, turning what might have been a relatively simple exercise for Mr. Dodd and his allies into a bitter struggle.His plot failed, but it should have been easy for the consummate insider, don't-call-him-a-lobbyist, Mr. Dodd.
The delays violated a cardinal rule among professional lobbyists, who generally believe the worst enemy of a proposed law is the legislative clock.Oh, those damned delays, foiling the plots of consummate insiders, violating the rules of professional lobbyists, of which Mr. Dodd is not one, because that would be illegal.
Why are textbook publishers going along with the transition to ebooks?
Because students won't be able to buy used textbooks anymore.
Why are the schools going along? Presumably, the price to students will be kept reasonably low, at least enough to make up for the lack of cheap used books. Since the publishers (and authors) don't make money on resold used books, that's a new income stream to them, and they ought to respond by making the new copies cheaper.
(By the way, I've downloaded the new iBooks Author app and have started throwing together an experimental project to see how things flow. It seems pretty intuitive so far. I like the way you can easily toss in photos. If it works, the idea is to upload it to iTunes, and perhaps charge some piddling amount for it.)
Why are the schools going along? Presumably, the price to students will be kept reasonably low, at least enough to make up for the lack of cheap used books. Since the publishers (and authors) don't make money on resold used books, that's a new income stream to them, and they ought to respond by making the new copies cheaper.
(By the way, I've downloaded the new iBooks Author app and have started throwing together an experimental project to see how things flow. It seems pretty intuitive so far. I like the way you can easily toss in photos. If it works, the idea is to upload it to iTunes, and perhaps charge some piddling amount for it.)
The Gingrich grandiosity.
Mitt Romney just put out this press release — a compendium of Newt Gingrich's "grandiose thoughts" over the years. It's pretty amusing, e.g., "I Have An Enormous Personal Ambition. I Want To Shift The Entire Planet. And I’m Doing It. … I Represent Real Power."
The occasion for the press release is, no doubt, the discussion of grandiosity at last night's debate. Rick Santorum started it. The moderator, John King, had just pointed out that Gingrich has been saying there should be only one conservative in the race now to face off against the seemingly inevitable Romney nomination, and it should be Gingrich, because Santorum doesn't have "any of the knowledge for how to do something on this scale."
Santorum said:
King then turned to Gingrich and asked what he meant by "the knowledge for how to do something on this scale." Gingrich laid out his past accomplishments and finally came around to the "grandiosity" accusation:
Romney then raised his hand to come into the conversation, and he went into a pretty babbly sequence of words that included:
But anyway... Gingrich was grandiose, and Mitt put out a press release to enumerate lots of things that he didn't have in his head to spew out at the right point in the debate last night.
The occasion for the press release is, no doubt, the discussion of grandiosity at last night's debate. Rick Santorum started it. The moderator, John King, had just pointed out that Gingrich has been saying there should be only one conservative in the race now to face off against the seemingly inevitable Romney nomination, and it should be Gingrich, because Santorum doesn't have "any of the knowledge for how to do something on this scale."
Santorum said:
Grandiosity has never been a problem with Newt Gingrich. He -- he handles it very, very well. (Cheers, applause.) And that's really one of the issues here, folks....With Gingrich, Santorum said, you've always got to worry "that something's going to pop." Meanwhile, Santorum — by his own assurances — is a "steady... solid" guy.
King then turned to Gingrich and asked what he meant by "the knowledge for how to do something on this scale." Gingrich laid out his past accomplishments and finally came around to the "grandiosity" accusation:
You're right: I think grandiose thoughts. This is a grandiose country of big people doing big things, and we need leadership prepared to take on big projects. (Cheers, applause.)That was an elegant rejoinder (and a warning to those of us who want a break from the federal government doing "big things"). Santorum spoke next, giving Gingrich "his due on grandiose ideas and grandiose projects" but faulting him on execution, the reason why "he was thrown out by the conservatives."
Romney then raised his hand to come into the conversation, and he went into a pretty babbly sequence of words that included:
If we want people who spent their life and their career -- most of their career in Washington, we have three people on the stage who've -- well, I take that back. We got a doctor down here who spent most of his time in the -- in the surgical suite -- well, not surgery -- the birthing suite.And:
Now you asked me a(n) entirely different question. What do you -- what's -- (laughter) --He looks over to Gingrich for help, and Gingrich is all "Beats me. I don't know. Where are we at, John?" Romney struggles to find a track:
Let's -- let's -- let me -- let me say -- let me say one -- one of the things I find amusing is listening -- is listening to how -- how much credit is taken in Washington for what goes on on Main Street. I -- I mean, Mr. Speaker, it was -- it was -- you talk about all the things you did with Ronald Reagan and -- and -- and the Reagan revolution and the jobs created during the Reagan years and so forth. I mean, I looked at the Reagan diary. You're mentioned once in Ronald Reagan's diary. And it's -- and in the diary, he says you had an idea in a meeting of -- of young congressmen, and it wasn't a very good idea, and he dismissed it. That -- that's the entire mention. And -- I mean, he mentions George Bush a hundred times. He even mentions my dad once.Dad! Help!
But anyway... Gingrich was grandiose, and Mitt put out a press release to enumerate lots of things that he didn't have in his head to spew out at the right point in the debate last night.
Should we be outraged at how little Mitt Romney (like Warren Buffet) pays in taxes?
The Wall Street Journal notes that Romney (like Warren Buffet) makes his money from investments, so the income he receives has already been taxed "at the corporate tax rate of 35%." The 15% tax he pays sounds unfairly low, compared to the tax rate on wages and salaries, but it's not low at all if you see it as a second tax.
All income from businesses is eventually passed through to the owners, so to ignore business taxes creates a statistical illusion that makes it appear that the rich pay less than they really do. By this logic, if the corporate tax rate were raised to, say, 60% from today's 35% and the dividend and capital gains tax were cut to zero, it would appear that business owners were getting away with paying no federal tax at all.But Romney needs to be able to explain this persuasively to the American people. He needs to be able to explain this while his opponents are gleefully screeching "15%!" It's a good test of his ability to be persuasive, as a good candidate must be. So step up and take the test, Mitt!
This all-too-conveniently confuses the incidence of a tax with the burden of a tax. The marginal tax rate on every additional dollar of capital gains and dividend income from corporate profits can reach as high as 44.75% at the federal level (assuming a company pays the 35% top corporate rate), not 15%....
[T]he average effective tax rate on the richest 1% is already twice as high as that of the middle class.
Did you see the story about the architecture professor whose extravagantly architectonic house caught on fire?
It's in the Daily News:
Parousia is a term used importantly in the New Testament:
Unawares means "without design." Without design, in the overdesigned house of the design professor.
Shortly before noon on Tuesday, firefighters received a report that the waterfront home of 76-year-old Gamal El-Zoghby was ablaze. They doused the flames, and were checking for hidden pockets of flame behind the walls by pulling down panels of sheet rock, when [a 'magazine from the 1970s with pornographic images of pre-pubescent girls'] fell from behind one of the panels....El-Zoghby, who teaches "Judgment and Criticism of Architectural Expressions" at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, has been charged with child endangerment and put on leave of absence from his work. One magazine, stuck behind the wall, of the house that he built following the "principles of astronomy, mathematics, philosophy" with windows "positioned to capture the sunrise and sunset at the spring and autumn equinoxes...."
He named the house "The Parousium" from the Greek word "parousia," meaning "presence or appearance."Appearances matter. The story, as presented in the Daily News, looks awful for the aging professor. Perhaps the "magazine from the 1970s" was some kind of art journal. Were the "images" even photographs? Perhaps they were drawings or paintings.
***
Parousia is a term used importantly in the New Testament:
The word is used 24 times in the New Testament. Of these, 6 uses refer to the coming of individuals... The other 17 times refer 16 times to the Second Coming of Christ, and in one case to the coming of the "Day of God" (2Pe.3:12, see also The Day of the Lord).Matthew 24:27:
For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.And so you orient your house toward the sunlight... and the light that catches you unawares is a fire.
Unawares means "without design." Without design, in the overdesigned house of the design professor.
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