Reading the Times in California

Unnecessary parody

2005-10-12T09:51:00.000-07:00

Does Maureen Down think she's writing for the Onion?! Her article of today (which, unfortunately, is behind a TimesSelect wall of registration and money, which I get because I subscribe to the paper version, and which you can if you do, too, or if you pay the fee to get the online content) is UTTERLY FUCKING RIDICULOUS.

Let's go through it bit by bit, shall we?

Her opening line:

W. was the best Harry ever had.

is just insulting. First, it takes the liberty of assigning a Bush-style nickname to the supreme court nominee Harriet Miers. Maybe this is a nickname she already has, but, AFAIK, it hasn't come out in the press yet. It's therefore just parody -- not lampooning based on fact -- to make one up one's self. Also, the line is sexual in its overtones, which is also insulting and completely unsubstantiated.

Next, she prints the text of one belated birthday card that Miers sent to Bush in 1997. Sure, Miers can't punctuate (which is, in itself, excoriable in a supreme court nominee):

"You are the best Governor ever - deserving of great respect!"

Eh. Sure, dumb card. But were those ten words sufficient to mock for the next several hundred?

Really. I'm considering registering maureendowdsucks.com and just ripping her apart every week. Not like I don't anyhow ... Hmm ...

Steel Magnolia

2005-10-04T02:15:00.000-07:00

This is not from the Times, but it's so egregious I had to post something. Up late coding, I'm listening to the news about Bush's latest Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers. Martin Frost (who was apparently "served in Congress from 1979 to 2005, representing a diverse district in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area") says:

There are other interesting aspects to her nomination. There currently are no Southerners on the court (individuals who spent their adult life in the South) and Miers is a somewhat soft-spoken Southern woman. However, no one should mistake her quiet nature for a lack of toughness or resolve. She is a steel magnolia Â something hostile senators from both the left and right will find out when they try to embarrass her during the confirmation process.

(Sorry for the Fox News link, but it was the only hit at 2:19 PDT for "steel magnolia miers").

To hear him say it (as he just did on NPR) is disgusting. "She's a real southern lady ... she'll be a real interesting presence on the court ..." So we're looking for steel magnolias now? This is just so ... disgustingly fetishist, somehow.

NYT Archive Link Generator

2005-09-20T11:16:00.000-07:00

Shoulda found this a long time ago:

http://nytimes.blogspace.com/genlink

Links permanently into the archives, with GET headers telling the Times that the link is coming from a blog. Cool!

FSM!

2005-08-29T21:36:00.000-07:00

The Flying Spaghetti Monster has finally made the big time. This image is just too good to not re-post:

I first heard about this maybe a year ago (6 months? Something small), but apparently now, the FSM (not to be confused with Finite State Machine) is endoresd by many educators, and is bringing a lawsuit against the Kansas Board of Education.

Hurrah for parody! And hurrah for snarky, anti-ridiculism parodies picked up by the NYT.

Grammar warms my heart

2005-08-29T14:45:00.000-07:00

There may be many things I don't like about Roberts as a Supreme Court nominee. But I can't help it that his apparent tendency as a grammarian who sent back briefs that had sound legal arguments but stylistic holes warms the cockles of my shoulda-been-a-journalist-or-at-least-a-copy-editor heart. :)

More EW

2005-08-11T10:06:00.000-07:00

As if fish additives in your bread weren't bad enough, now, just in case you're the type of person willing to drop $45k on a fur coat this winter, you have to be sure it's not coming from THE SKIN OF FETAL LAMBS. EW.

Food additives

2005-08-11T09:37:00.000-07:00

This article is just one of the reasons why I try to eat as much of my food as possible from local, organic, and unprocessed sources. How appetizing does this sound?

On a recent summer morning, he hovered over a whirling assembly line as a waterfall of gray liquid cascaded over slabs of breaded chicken. Then the magic began.

During the bath in the liquid solution, which consisted of water and protein molecules extracted from a slurry of chicken or fish tissue, a thin, imperceptible shield formed around the meat. When the chicken was submerged in oil, the coating blocked fat from being absorbed from the fryer.

The point, of course, is the next sentence, which states that the result contained 50% less fat than normal fried chicken. But who would want to eat chicken coated with a "gray liquid ... consist[ing] of ... a slurry of chicken or fish tissue"? EW!

Apparently, lots of Americans. And this is perhaps what most disgusts me:

The most obvious way to get more fiber into the diet is to increase consumption of whole and unprocessed fruit, vegetables and beans. But food companies say that many Americans are unwilling to make significant changes in their eating choices to do this, and food companies are more than willing to fill in the gaps.

...

Food companies insist that, unlike their critics, they are pragmatists. They say their consumer research shows that convenience and taste still outrank nutrition as the top priority for most people and that consumers have no intention of giving up their favorite foods.

That is good news for the industry. If Americans stopped eating large quantities of fried chicken, sweetened breakfast cereal, cookies and snack chips, the financial health of many companies would suffer. [emph. added]

Oh, I bet they are. Remind me NEVER TO BUY ANYTHING PROCESSED, EVER AGAIN, just in case I should get FISH EXTRACT in my bread:

Coming soon to your grocery store, for example, could be ... bread containing microscopic capsules of fish oil, enabling food companies to contend that the bread is "heart-healthy" because of the cholesterol and triglyceride-lowering omega-3 fatty acids found in fish oil.

Again, I say: EW! I don't suppose they'll even bother LABELLING this, so those of us that prefer to know what we're eating can avoid it, eh? Answer: no. To wit:

The label on the bread, [Jim Zallie, a food scientist and National Starch group vice president] says, is unlikely to advertise the fish oil content, but simply cite the presence of omega-3's.

Fuckers.

Sigh. All the more reason to get that sourdough starter going, and just make my own ...

Army discipline

2005-08-09T10:25:00.001-07:00

A special today on how US soldiers in Iraq can get sped-up citizenship. Good; they should.

But, a detail I did not know:

Some joke that the privilege of citizenship comes more easily now to American troops than sex or alcohol, both banned in a war zone. [emph. added]

Woah! Seriously? I'd heard the Army was Draconian, but ... wow.

Indulgences

2005-08-09T10:25:00.000-07:00

Reasons why I love the New York Times, #89,632: the following juxtaposition, from the international roundup:

Pope Benedict XVI plans to grant special indulgences -- remittances of punishment for sins -- to hundreds of thousands of young Roman Catholics expected to attend the church's World Youth Day ...

The church's practice of selling indulgences in the Middle Ages helped to spawn the Reformation.

No, really. Despite my ellipses, it reads just like that. Heh.

Nothing gained

2005-08-09T09:45:00.000-07:00

Apparently, someone else has done a lot more research on the whole daylight savings extension than I did before writing about it. I sagely said something like "who gets up that early, anyhow?"; what I didn't really consider was "getting up that early" in November means "before 8:30." I'll have you know I'm up by 8 on weekday mornings -- only my sister, who has a late shift, and my roommate's dysfunctional imbecile of a boyfriend (nothing to do with his sleep habits), who has no job and isn't bothering to try to find one, sleep that late.

So, I stand corrected. This op-ed is worth a read (they're the best part of the paper, esp. when Down/Vowell aren't writing -- pithy, short, and with license to be more direct than the rest of the articles), if for nothing else than the history of screwing with clocks in this country. Check it:

" ... the Germans were the first to try [daylight savings] in 1916, hoping that it would help them conserve fuel during the First World War. .... The fuel savings never materialized."
"That most Americans still believe we save daylight to help farmers tells you something about the quality of debate on this perennial controversy. In fact, farmers hated daylight saving." Uh, oops -- that's what I thought, too ...
"By 1965, 71 of the largest American cities practiced daylight saving and 59 did not."
"Richard Nixon infamously mandated year-round daylight saving in 1974 and 1975. This ... put school children on pitch-black streets every morning until the plan was scaled back."

Okay, great. When this provision made it into the energy omnibus, I just assumed that it had been well-researched and -vetted by dispassionate experts. Guess I still have too much faith that government is out to do the Right Thing.

Not, I'm saying, that this is the Wrong Thing. Just that it was perhaps a Poorly Researched Thing. Hmm ... guess time (no matter how you measure it) will tell.

I LIVE here

2005-08-05T10:27:00.000-07:00

An article on the tomatoes in the Berkeley Bowl in this week's Dining Out section. Oh god, the mouth waters -- and I live here! (Well, not quite in the Berkeley Bowl proper, but damn close to it!) Wheeee!

The author is clearly in as much slack-jawed, foodie-nirvana, dumbfounded ecstasy as I was the first time I went there. To wit:

You can't help it. The sun is beating down outside like some kind of Provencal demon and here amid the sawdust-strewn aisles of this bland, low-lying store, there are 20 - 20! - varieties of heirloom tomatoes stacked, strewn and otherwise arrayed, taunting you, the defenseless shopper.

Come hither. For $2.49 a pound.

Welcome to Northern California, ye defenseless New Yorker.

Their enumeration of the types of tomatoes available is worth reproducing in full (educational value, NYT, educational value):

The Pink Zebra looked like a cross between a Fuji apple and a peach; it was sweet, not acidic, with deep pink flesh inside. The Cherokee Purple was deep vermilion with dark green streaks on the outside. Cut open, it looked like a hunk of raw meat, with firm flesh and little juice. The Lemon Boy was pale on the inside, tart and less intense than the others. The Beefmaster looked like a gnarly pincushion on the outside; inside it had deep red flesh and burst with flavor.

I also tried the Wilgenberg hothouse, the Miyashita Nursery, the Momotaro, Big Beef, Dr. Wych's Yellow, Zebras (striped bright lime on the outside, kiwi-colored on the inside), Pineapple Stripe (squat and small), Mountain Delight (orange shaped and deep yellow in color) and the plum-colored Black Prince.

Whew.

And somehow, I've managed to miss this ... I think it's been my fast-paced weekends of late, or the fact that there are beautiful heirlooms in slices at one of the sandwich bars at Google, or my avoidance of the 'Bowl on weekends because of its craziness (which even the New Yorker acknowledges: "Such passion is not uncommon at the Berkeley Bowl, where the carts bang into one another in the narrow byways, even on a weekday afternoon. And this, I was assured, was a particularly calm hour." I think this weekend, I need to get back to the 'Bowl and get me some tomatoes. Yummmm ...

Daylight saaaavings

2005-07-27T10:26:00.000-07:00

There's a lot I could say about the broad energy bill on the table. I should maybe read up on it a little more to really comment on what's going on (though "defeat of the provisions to cut oil use and increase use of renewable fuels as well as the fact that the measure sidestepped the issue of global warming and ignored automotive mileage standards" sounds bad).

But the weirdest, perhaps, is this:

In a provision that may be most noticed by Americans, daylight savings time would be extended in 2007, beginning on the second Sunday in March and lasting until the first Sunday in November, to save electricity.

It was at this point I looked up and verified the byline on the top of the page, making sure that I hadn't accidentally picked up a copy of The Onion, or wasn't reading a post to the internal humor list at work. Uh. What?

On thinking about it for a minute or two, thought, it seems to make sense. During the summer months, when daylight savings time is in effect, it's lighter later. This means it doesn't get light quite as early, but really, who gets up that early, anyhow? This is probably what legislators were banking on, here: that by extending those months during which it's lighter later, effectively prolonging summer (if one can call it that from mid-March until early November! -- I suppose the only place in the country where residents won't feel extremely affected is California, where it's always fucking summer), people will come home while it's still light out, and not have to turn on more lights until an hour later. That's a lot of electricity to be saved, and it sounds like a good idea. (Never mind that autoefficientcy standards are also a good fucking idea, but that's another post.)

But it's certainly weird to realize in no uncertain terms that things I've perceived as facts of nature are subject to governmental whims. It makes sense, once I think about it, that daylight savings time is just something someone decided on, but it's felt like such an entrenched institution, that I would never have dreamed of suggesting it be changed. It's as if they were proposing that the east coast be less humid, to save on air conditioning bills, in my mind. It makes perfect sense that it's something someone can just decide on, and I can frame it in terms of doing something good for the country, along the lines of wartime rationing (even if it fucks with your seasons), but it still feels a bit weird, à la, "I know! Let's put 35 days in July!"

Crazy.

An unusual race

2005-07-27T10:24:00.000-07:00

I started reading this article because its protagonist was simultaneously running for Congress and calling Bush a "chicken hawk." Heh. But upon further examination, it appears that both candidates for this office are a bit
unusual. To wit:

The Democratic candidate, Paul L. Hackett, is a Marine, a veteran of Iraq, is calling Bush names for not having served in Vietnam, and is "harshly critic[cal of] the decision to invade
Iraq."

The Republican candidate, Jean Schmidt (I WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND HOW WOMEN CAN BE REPUBLICANS!), has completed 54 marathons. Holy shit.

That is all. Just, these ain't your run-of-the-mill politicians.

Lakoff on Dems, Language

2005-07-18T10:03:00.000-07:00

George Lakoff's is a name I've heard bandied about for a while. At Swarthmore, he was the dark side of linguistics -- they, like most institutions, taught the Chomsky party line, which is meaty enough to occupy the entirety of one's entire B.A.; but he was mentioned from time to time (more so, predictably, as I veered away from syntactical analysis and into cognitive science). I don't fully understand the rift that occurred between him and his mentor, the founder of modern linguistics (as Matt Bai says, a bit presumptuously, in the article I'm about to start talking about: "The technical basis of their argument, which for a time cleaved the linguistics world in two, remains well beyond the intellectual reach of anyone who actually had fun in college"), but I do understand that it's about embodiment -- the idea that human cognition, and therefore language, is fundamentally tied to the physical structure of our minds, and that to understand the mind is to understand the brain. More or less.

This is a fascinating argument, and I wish I knew more about it. But, embarrassingly, I've never read any Chomsky or Lakoff, and don't much feel like going back for a PhD in linguistics right now, which is the one context in which I can fathom having time to wrap my head around it to the degree I'd like to.

But Lakoff is apparently a rising star on the political scene right now, his ideas quickly becoming much more germane to the Democrats, and their approach to -- well, everything. Matt Bai has written the cover story to this week's New York Times Magazine, a nice, New-Yorker-length summary of, as Lakoff and now the DNC et al. call it, the "framing" problem. It's longish, but I'd print it out and read it on the way home from work if I were you. (That is, if I were you and not driving home from work -- it's hard to read while keeping one's eyes on the road.)

Basically, everyone knows the Dems fucked up the 2004 election big-time. What was clear to anyone watching the debates, watching Kerry's slow-on-the-uptake response to the swift boat brouhaha, was not that anyone candidate's ideas were better (or, in some cases, different) that the other's, but rather that one side did an amazing job of presenting them, and the other solidified his reputation as an intellectual elitist nuanced thinker -- to his detriment. (Sigh.)

Says Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND): "I can describe, and I've always been able to describe, what Republicans stand for in eight words, and the eight words are lower taxes, less government, strong defense and family values." That's important; the Dems can't do that. As he goes on to acknowledge: "We Democrats, if you ask us about one piece of that, we can meander for 5 or 10 minutes in order to describe who we are and what we stand for. And frankly, it just doesn't compete very well. I'm not talking about the policies. I'm talking about the language."

Enter Lakoff. Apparently, his most recent book, Don't Think of an Elephant!, has propelled the Dems to actually start listening to inside-the-Beltway consultants who have been urging them to stay on message for years. Hopefully, they will.

There's a lot more to be said about this article, but the gist is above. Now I want to read Lakoff's book, which is apparently a lot more nuanced than he lets on during his talks to sold-out audiences around the country. (It's on hold at the library for me -- such shame that I don't know my public library card barcode yet!)

As Bai points out, though, while language is clearly a crucial problem in the modern American bipartisan political arena, it's not the only one. A lot of articulating of what our core values actually are needs to be done. Lakoff proposes: "Stronger America, broad prosperity, better future, effective government and mutual responsibility"; Bai counters that these generalities are but a smokescreen for the lack of clarity of ideas. He ends: "The right words can frame an argument, but they will never stand in its place."

Pre-un-spinning

2005-07-11T09:58:00.000-07:00

Krugman, when he's writing in his area of expertise, writes a good column. (He writes well when he's out of his depth, too, but isn't always defensible then -- just ask Amelia.) Still, today's column is not surprising in the content (its author debunking the Bush administration's spin on and celebration of perceived decreases in the deficit), but rather its timing: before any such spin and celebration take place!

A year ago, I would have been more shocked at this; today, it seems normal. It's easy to predict how the President will choose to deal with these numbers -- just ask The Onion, whom Krugman quotes in perhaps the scariest part of the entire article. From a Jan. 18, 2001 article they ran:

"We must squander our nation's hard-won budget surplus on tax breaks for the wealthiest 15 percent," the magazine's spoof had the president-elect declare. "And, on the foreign front, we must find an enemy and defeat it."

So, why not preëmpt the budget-glorification song and dance today? Le sigh.

Civil disobedience

2005-07-07T11:56:00.000-07:00

Since this morning's bombings in London are way too depressing to post about, let's stick to something more concrete: Judith Miller of the Times is indeed going to jail over her refusal to divulge a confidential source. The Times presents a very cogent, well-written defense of both her actions and its in supporting her -- the kind of piece that makes me proud to be an American. And those moments are few and far between these days.

A Vowell I wouldn't buy

2005-07-06T09:38:00.000-07:00

Apparently, Sarah Vowell is as bad as Maureen Dowd. I rejoiced when I read that the latter was going to be on book leave (I just won't buy her new book); hoped her replacement would be someone with a little more coherency of thought, formality of speech, or at least not as insulting to her readers. It strikes me as a task not hard to do, to find that replacement.

Either the Times just didn't try to hard, though, or they were actively looking for a Dowdy clone. Vowell's was a name I recognized when a coworker showed me a book of hers he was reading; I have only her current article to go on. But it alone is enough to make most reasonable people quickly close the paper on a Wednesday or a Saturday when they reach the Op-Ed page, or, if you're me, masochistically read on.

Vowell's article starts off in the same tone as Dowd's do -- chatty, but not yet stupidly offensive. Not grammatically pleasing, but I'm not screaming yet:

Or when [Pat Robertson] said, "The husband is the head of the wife"? Or when he warned the city of Orlando that the flying of homosexuals' upbeat rainbow flags might incite divine retribution in the form of hurricanes or "possibly a meteor"? Yep, good times.

[Sentence fragments; a snarky colloquialism]

So far, not too bad. The first five paragraphs are factual, discussing Robertson's apparent about-face about the use of condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS, and Live 8. The sixth could be included, if you wanted to squeak in there that it was factual that Vowell has a recurring dream about shaking Republicans' hands.

The end of the sixth paragraph is, I think, where my nostrils really flared in annoyance for the first time. Sentence-fragmenting, she says:

But Robertson? He's always been a solid "No way!" as he sulks by the punch bowl with Strom.

One of my pet peeves (and I know I've done it; shows how damn insidious it is) is calling women -- especially women in power -- by their first names (c.f. "Condi," "Hillary"). One could argue that calling Strom Thurmond by his first name is a form of retaliation, of fighting fire with fire. If this is her tack, though, it just scratches another one of my pet peeves: there are so few occasions in which this is appropriate, from partisan mudslinging (from which I'd like to exempt myself and my party, but apparently Vowell -- who asserts that the main strength of the Democrats, of whose ranks she numbers, is "writing exceedingly eloquent concession speeches" -- would disagree) to all things feminist. Why does everyone else in that paragraph get two names, but "Strom" only one? (Yes, it's enough to identify him uniquely, but that shouldn't be reason enough, and it smacks of unprofessional familiarity.)

The seventh and eighth paragraphs could be construed as on-topic, were she to say something relevant afterwards. But instead, taking a leaf directly from Dowd's book, she proceeds to launch into the topic of Supreme Court justice confirmation hearings. Uhh ... what? This is only tangentially relevant at best, and that only if you count her previous paragraphs as tangentially relevant (which, you may recall, I granted only on a condition that she's now nullified).

Somehow back on the topic of the G8/Live-8 a few paragraphs later, she cites a statistic that the performers at the latter are apparently echoing in support of their cause: "Every three seconds, one person dies." Fact, one must assume.

But Vowell apparently thinks facts are "moronic":

That fact, that every three seconds an African human being dies from hunger or AIDS or, honestly, mosquito bites in this day and age, is literally the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Way, way, way dumber than that [Robertson's] thing about Orlando and a meteor from God. That every-three-seconds statistic is so moronic, and having the richest countries in the world do something about it is such a total no-brainer, that Pat Robertson will join up with Dennis-bloody-Hopper of "Blue"-bloody-"Velvet" to spread the word.

Aside from the gratingness of her iteration of "way" and the infixation of "bloody" into several public figures' names, why is this fact moronic? I agree that it's a no-brainer that the richest countries in the world should be helping out the poorer ones. That's a fundamental plank of most things Democratic. Maybe Vowell meant that it's moronic that that's not happening? (Note: I have no idea what aid the US is currently sending to Africa. I'm sure it's insufficient, but I'm not sure it's negligible. It's also notable that not all money given in aid goes directly to the source of the problem, as another Op-Ed from Sunday's paper points out -- worth a skim. The problem of hunger and poverty in Africa, apparently is anything but a "no-brainer.")

Conclusion: If the Times was looking for a replacement for Dowd as incompetent, poorly-lettered, and in general offensive to its pages as the original, they've found one.

Coffee on the Subway

2005-07-03T14:31:00.000-07:00

On the one hand, it's awesome that New Yorkers can drink coffee -- and whatever else they like -- on their subway. They should be able to, and as this article points out, their feeling of ownership to the subway is justified: not only are they taxed for it, but some "55 percent, use public transportation to get to work, and the majority of them use the subway".

So, now rules are on the table that would make illegal "drinking from open containers, moving between subway cars or straddling a bicycle on a moving train," and of course the city's riders are up in arms.

Chance has it that this will just crumble and be "shouted out of the system," like the ill-advised prohibition on photography within the subway last summer. No wonder it was buried in the front section.

But I'd like to point out, as does the article, that:

In other cities, passengers don't seem to mind tough restrictions. The Chicago El completely bans food and drink; it allows customers to carry bottled water during "periods of extreme heat." The Washington Metro is so adamant about keeping its uniform stations spotless that in 2000, its police officers handcuffed a 12-year-old girl for eating a single French fry.

I'm not advocating banning water (anyone who's spent a summer in DC will realize that that's impossible) or jailing preteens for minor infractions. But I would like to point out that the DC Metro is one of the cleanest of any I've seen in the world, with the possible exception of Vienna, Austria. It's certainly the cleanest Stateside -- no eau de urine wafting up from hot corners; relatively few rats scuttling about in the dark; well-lit. All this contributed to me feeling safe in every subway station in the District, even if above-ground were the more unsavory neighborhoods.

New Yorkers probably won't change their caffeination habits over a proposed rule. But they might do well to look at this one a little harder than they did the photography ban -- that is, if they value cleanliness ...

Grokster

2005-06-28T09:51:00.000-07:00

I haven't actually read the opinions on the Supreme Court case on Grokster vs. MGM Studios et al., and I suppose I should. But what I've read about it seems to be entirely reasonable. At first, when I read that the courts had ruled against Grokster, it seemed like they were stifling digital innovation, à la disallowing video tapes on the basis that they would make copyright infrigement possible. But it seems that this is being explicitly avoided here:

Grokster's supporters warned before yesterday's ruling that if the peer-to-peer networks lost, it would stifle new technology. But the court emphasized that developing a technology that could be used to infringe on copyright is not enough to make the developer legally responsible. The decision limits liability to companies and individuals who induce others to break the law through "purposeful, culpable expression and conduct." It "does nothing," the court underscored, "to compromise legitimate commerce or discourage innovation having a lawful promise."

Another article, actually reporting on it instead of just giving opinion, is here. Worth reading and thinking about. Take, for example, its opening sentence:

The Supreme Court handed a major victory to the entertainment and recording industries on Monday by reinstating a copyright-infringement suit against two file-sharing services.

Well, yes, in the good-guys-versus-bad-guys sense. What people fail to realize in lots of these digital rights cases is what Lessig keeps trying to hammer home (go renew your subscription to WIRED!): that it's not copyright infringement that is the digital democracy's goal, but rather the innovation of new technologies, and their use for awesome. It's easy to equate the RIAA et al. with The Law, and the little anarchist kids with their computors as The Lawless Punks, and forget there are people in the middle trying to use new technologies in ways that have been legal in an analog world, and should be legal in a digital world.

Conclusion: While the decision appears to be a good and well-reasoned one, the reporting on it misses some of the point.

Free as in speech, flag-burning

2005-06-22T09:57:00.000-07:00

I thought it was already settled that one could burn the flag with impunity. Well, in these kneejerk-patriotic, post-terrorist times, apparently that's up for debate again.

Apparently my impression was correct, though, at least since 1984 (when I was too young to remember anything different):

... the Supreme Court ruled in Texas v. Johnson that a protester who had burned a flag at the 1984 Republican National Convention, in Dallas, was protected by free-speech rights.

What I didn't know, though, is that all 50 states have some kind of "resolutions against debasing the flag." Really? How does it then follow that you can burn a flag in any state, and, while you're not held accountable federally, be accountable on the state level? It seems kind of weird.

Why this is all upsetting is that I completeley agree with Rep. Ackerman of NY:

"The reason our flag is different is because it stands for burning the flag," Representative Gary L. Ackerman, Democrat of New York, said in a speech on the House floor, wearing a flag-print necktie.

(It's unfortunate that he followed that comment up with one about "small men with press secretaries.")

I hope this goes nowhere. I'm not going to go out and burn a flag, but I want the freedom to do so, if that's how I want to express myself. Jesus. This seems so fundamental.

Global warming: Just a theory

2005-06-18T11:16:00.000-07:00

The headline alone here is enough to depress: G-8 Draft on Global Warming Is Weakened at U.S. Behest. Why, it makes you (well, me) want to tear your (well, my) hair out and shriek loud enough so they'd hear it in Washington. (But something tells me that, even when I was in DC, had I done that, my voice wouldn't have even carried the two blocks from my office to the White House; or, had it, I would have been promptly sniped, or at least surrounded by a cadre of FBI agents.)

This article doesn't even state the most appalling parts that I heard on NPR yesterday, but it still provides reasons to be appalled:

Drafts of a joint statement being prepared for the leaders of the major industrial powers show that the Bush administration has succeeded in removing language calling for prompt action to control global warming.

... Among the changes reflected in the May 27 draft was the deletion of an introductory statement, "Our world is warming." The annotated American copy of the document also offered comments to negotiators for the other nations like "we should avoid the term 'targets' " and "we should leave the definition of what constitutes 'ambitious' to each leader, given their respective national circumstances."

... Mr. Bush has said global warming is too uncertain a matter to justify anything more than voluntary measures to slow growth in fossil-fuel emissions.

What can one possibly say to this, other than to stand with mouth agape?

There was a recent three-week New Yorker series on global warming. It's well worth reading, if you can get your hands on it (if you can't, email or comment me your postal address, and I'll send you copies -- they're from the mid-May issues). One of the most memorable parts of that series was the bit that said that while usually it's the laypeople who are up in arms about any perceived environmental issue, while the scientists say that the actual risk is small. But in the case of global warming, the pattern is reversed: it's the scientists who are issuing warnings, hundreds of papers at a time, and the public -- and especially, those in power -- is/are taking no heed.

More omitted bits, this time from an article in the UK's Times Online:

[A] sentence in jeopardy is: “We know that the increase [in global warming] is due in large part to human activity”.

The US has also objected to: “[There is] increasingly compelling evidence of climate change, including rising ocean and atmospheric temperatures, retreating ice sheets and glaciers, rising sea levels and changes to ecosystems.

“Inertia in the climate system means that further warming is inevitable.”

The White House wants it to read: “Climate change is a serious long-term challenge that has the potential to affect every part of the globe.”

To have the fucking president of the United States, which, despite our ever-weakening credibility, is still a global authority, state point-blank that "global warming is too uncertain a matter to justify any more than voluntary measures to slow growth in fossil-fuel emmisions" goes beyond incendiary -- it illustrates the willful disregard this administration has show for all types of science, and, by extension, for humanity.

I tell myself that I want to understand Republicans. But it's shit like this that makes me feel completely at a loss. Tell me: if you were in charge of the world (or at least, a significant part of it), would you:

Allow the policies of your country and those like yours to gradually push the earth into a massive global climate shift, slowly destroying the planet; or

Fucking set an example, and do your utmost to clean up?

I can't fathom choice (a). But apparently that's the strategy that Bush is aggressively pursuing.

Just what we need

2005-06-10T10:01:00.000-07:00

I'm almost torn. Dean is apparently making disparaging comments about Republicans. Some part of me wants to pull out the it's-a-free-country rhetoric, yell that we shouldn't be centrists just because that's the only way to get anything done, and that I don't respect a lot of what Republicans stand for, either.

On the other hand -- what the fuck, Dean?! I'm allowed to say that kind of shit as a yelling-into-the-void blogger with an audience of two; you, as Chairman of the DNC, are most certainly not!

The quotes in question:

"The Republicans are not very friendly to different kinds of people," Dr. Dean said during a roundtable discussion in California this week. "They're a pretty monolithic party. They all behave the same, and they all look the same."

And now Dean's accusing Republicans of using this as a "smoke screen," a distraction from the issues at hand:

... Dr. Dean dismissed the consternation. "You know, I think a lot of this is exactly what the Republicans want, and that's a diversion," Dr. Dean said.

"We haven't had any discussions about what's going on in the media circus and all that stuff in the last two weeks," he said. "What we're focused on is how to have a decent Social Security system, how to have a strong national defense, how to have jobs in America again, how to deal with incredibly high gas prices and get a decent energy bill which actually will do something about gas prices."

Well, yes, the Republicans are past masters at diversions. But jesus, Dean -- when you open yourself for attack like that, you have only yourself to blame. I honestly don't think that the position of party Chairman is the platform from which to air generalized opinions about the character of your opponent.

Das Keyboard

2005-05-26T12:51:00.000-07:00

Oh my god: they make no bones about being übergeeky, here.

In short, it's a keyboard with no markings on it, claiming it'll speed up your typing by not having the option to look at the letters. I can totally substantiate this, and I've already done so. Having switched to Dvorak, people said my speed would improve. It didn't -- here's my theory as to why:

People who type a lot -- and by a lot, I mean the upper echelon of typers -- are likely to be geeks. Geeks as a whole type way more than the population at large, who use computers for sporadic email and word processing, but do not code up pages upon pages of TeX documents about obscure keyboard layouts just for the hell of it.
Geeks, therefore, are more likely to develop wrist problems than other people.
Being resourceful like that, geeks will look for a tech-y solution, and will find rumors of Dvorak.
Those intrepid enough to try the switch will be forced to learn to type (a) with the correct fingers, and (b) without looking at the keys.
Now, geeks are also the type to never have learned to ``touch-type'' in the first place. Given a manual, the geeks will take it as a challenge, and disregard it for as long as possible, trying to figure out how to work their new toys by themselves. This is why they break so much shit, and also why they end up knowing how to fix it all. Many geeks I know taught themselves to type by putting their fingers somewhere on the keyboard and moving them as little as possible to get the job done, but without much thought as to correct position, wrist angle, &c. (this is probably why so many of them developed tendonitis or carpal tunnel in the first place!). I can't tell you how many three- or four-fingered geek typists I know.
In learning Dvorak, as mentioned above, these same geeks will have to learn to touch-type, unless they intend to relabel not only their keyboard, but the keyboards of everybody on whose computer they'll ever need to type. So, this will be the first time in their lives said geeks will ever learn to type both (a) with the correct fingers, and (b) without looking at the keys.
It is precisely that touch-typing which brings about speed.

I learned to touch-type QWERTY when I was six years old with Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. Because of that, I learned to type really fast from the outset, so I could do all my friends' typing assignments for them in school and then play QBasic Gorillas with them all class period long.

Touch-typing was not new for me when I got to Dvorak, so my speed did not increase. It did not decrease, either, but it led me to believe the speed thing is a myth.

Similarly, typing without looking will force you to touch-type. It's cool and geeky (and therefore I want one), but won't increase my speed.

I should just take some whiteout to my M$ Natural ...

Things I Will Never Understand

2005-05-23T09:57:00.000-07:00

Not that I understand clubs to begin with. Not that I'd probably ever be caught at an event that offered mango caipirinhas and capoeira dancers (but that does sound cool) ... oh wait, except for that super-wack Red Bull party I went to at the Seaport Museum in Philly last year. But never mind that.

But club-like parties -- with oxygen bars -- to sell condos?! Something is totally wack in the state of Miami.

The theme was "A Day in the Life of Aqua [the condo complex]." Dancers in fringed shorts coaxed some guests to salsa to a 10-piece band while other guests hovered around giant pans of paella and ropa vieja. A lounge singer belted out "Respect" in a model living room while chefs whipped up crepes in the model kitchen. Near a newly planted mango grove, guests drank mango caipirinhas and gazed at the Intracoastal Waterway.

Ooh ... I could go for that "whipping up crepes in the model kitchen" part. Heh.

Seriously, though. To so blatantly play on people's need for image, social acceptance, and conformity ("Live with us, the parties say, and ooze wealth, sex, fitness and mystery") is just kind of amazing. Then again, I'm amazed whenever I happen to see a TV ad, and slinky women selling ice cream just by licking a spoon seem to have an effect, too.

Okay, so I'm out of touch with the mainstream. I'm still shocked this kind of shit works.

Newsweek's imbroglio

2005-05-17T08:50:00.000-07:00

Accounts this morning that Newsweek has retracted the bit they wrote about the Koran being flushed down a toilet in Guatánamo Bay. It did so at request of the Pentagon and the White House, who say they found it

... "puzzling" that Newsweek had not retracted the article. "There is a certain journalistic standard that should be met," [White House spokesman Scott McClellan] said, "and in this case it was not."

The Pentagon has apparently also expressed "surprising" anger (read that a day or two ago; will link once I find the quote), having been given a chance to vet the article, and not objected to the bit about the descration of the Koran.

The White House also says:

After Newsweek retracted the article in the afternoon, Mr. McClellan called it a "good first step."

Mr. McClellan and other administration officials blamed the Newsweek article for setting off the anti-American violence that swept Afghanistan and Pakistan. "The report had real consequences," Mr. McClellan said. "People have lost their lives. Our image abroad has been damaged."

WOW. Blame the press for inciting this violence? Blame Newsweek for people (read: Americans) losing their lives? This strikes me as dangerous spinning, folks. Of course it has nothing to do with anything the administration may or may not have had an indirect hand in -- America's treatment of prisoners all over the Islamic world, from Guatánamo to Abu Ghraib ...

I have to run to work. Maybe I'll try to figure out wireless on the shuttle today and finish this. But -- holy crap!!

Lucky numbers

2005-05-11T11:02:00.000-07:00

Maybe the Powerball people need to stop drawing their winning numbers from fortune cookies. Apparently, 110 people, playing all six of the "lucky numbers" at the bottom of a fortune-cookie fortune, won second prize. Oops. I love the factory owner's comment:

"That's ours," said Derrick Wong, of Wonton Food, when shown a picture of a winner's cookie slip. "That's very nice, 110 people won the lottery from the numbers."

(Also of note: This is by Jenny 8. Lee, with the awesomest middle name ever, and whom I've actually met. Sigh -- I want to write for the Times some day ...)

Music for the masses!

2005-05-09T16:55:00.000-07:00

If only anyone in this country would do anything like putting on Wagner's entire Ring cycle for cheap. Or having a government program to train little kids. Or enabling taxi drivers to see opera.

The opera house in Manaus, Brazil was apparently built during the rubber years (I guess the local analog of an oil boom in other parts), and has, by and large, stagnated until the 60s or so. Now:

"People attend the formal productions and other events by the thousands, and the performances in the opera house generally sell out."

Hot damn! For a city of a million and a half, I'm impressed. You seem to need at least three mil to put on an even halfway-decent production (cough Philly cough) in the States.

When the festival first began, an effort was also made to upgrade the orchestra here, with musicians ... [many of whom] also agree to give master classes to young people from Manaus who are preparing for careers as singers, musicians, stagehands and dancers.

A handful of graduates of the program were among the 75 musicians in the orchestra pit on Saturday night, including Elismael Lourenço dos Santos. He is a 20-year-old clarinetist who spent his childhood in a remote jungle community, helping his father fish and farm, and had never seen a live performance by a band until he moved here as a teenager.

"To have this opportunity to play not just Wagner, but the 'Ring' cycle is a real honor and a dream, one that is still a bit hard to believe," he said Friday after a rehearsal. "If it weren't for the government's program, there is no way I could have gotten this far, because my family is not rich and could never have afforded private instruction for me."

I suppose a few scattered programs like that exist Stateside. (Wasn't there some movie about a high-school strings teacher battling for an orchestra program recently? Not to mention Mr. Holland's Opus all those years ago.) But I don't often see evidence of them.

And, finally:

"It's not at all like pagode or forro," said Abner Correa Caleu, a taxi driver, naming styles of popular music. "You really have to concentrate, and because it's in a foreign language I don't really understand it all. But I was curious to see what it was all about, and I learned two things: it's good, and I've come to like it."

Opera for the masses!

Taxation Without Representation

2005-05-04T17:10:00.000-07:00

As the license plates in the federal capital say, DC has taxation without representation. I thought it was a joke for the first few months I was there; turns out, "Washington's lack of representation was one of the founding fathers' great pieces of unfinished business" -- we haven't gotten this right in a couple centuries?! How is it that this is still being overlooked?

The latest proposal to rectify this in the age-old war to give DC residents their constitutional rights of representation is not news to me, as I've been living in the District for a few years now. But it's still stupid.

The proposal, in case you don't feel like following the link (which will expire in 10 days, anyhow), is this: Give [the overwhelmingly liberal (we went 90% Kerry in '04)] DC a rep in the House, and balance it out with giving [the "Republican bastion"] Utah one more, too. Even it out back down to 435 in 2010, after the Census, which probably means letting Utah keep its vote.

Note that this doesn't solve anything -- DC residents get one rep (uhh, what about the Senate?), but it's cancelled out by beknighting Utah with an extra one, too. It placates some vocal advocates of the No Taxation Without Representation movement (didn't we get this over with the Boston Tea Party?), but doesn't actually address the issue, effectively declawing it.

There are reasons I've kept my residency in Wisconsin all these years. Fucking electoral college.

SATs Updated To Encourage Crap Writing

2005-05-04T16:18:00.000-07:00

As Emily, my non-profit,-NGO-working roommate-turned-SAT-tutor (it's way more lucrative) and every high school junior knows, the SATs are coming up this Saturday. And they're not just your mother's -- or, in fact, your -- SATs, where the number 1600 was sacred -- no, they've been updated to reflect what kids have actually learned in school, and, now with the pinnacle of achievement weighing in at 2400 points, now include a writing section.

This writing section is, of course, fairly scored, and all graders read each essay carefully. This is, after all, America, where we train kids to be real good riters in our public schools.

Sigh. As the article linked above points out, essays appear to be being graded exclusively along one parameter: length. Says the reporter of Dr. Les Perelman, one of the directors of undergraduate writing at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (first factual; then anecdotal):

He was stunned by how complete the correlation was between length and score. "I have never found a quantifiable predictor in 25 years of grading that was anywhere near as strong as this one," he said. "If you just graded them based on length without ever reading them, you'd be right over 90 percent of the time." The shortest essays, typically 100 words, got the lowest grade of one. The longest, about 400 words, got the top grade of six. In between, there was virtually a direct match between length and grade.

This reporter held up a sample essay far enough away so it could not be read, and he was still able to guess the correct grade by its bulk and shape. "That's a 4," he said. "It looks like a 4."

Gah. And for this -- a 25-minute writing sample that isn't even graded on reasonable parameters -- 800 points have been added to the test that determines a huge percentage of college acceptances?

Dr. Perelman's sad advice:

How to prepare for such an essay? "I would advise writing as long as possible," said Dr. Perelman, "and include lots of facts, even if they're made up." This, of course, is not what he teaches his M.I.T. students. "It's exactly what we don't want to teach our kids," he said.

Wonder if Emily tells her tutees that ...

Cellphones get bigger

2005-05-04T14:41:00.000-07:00

I recently got a new cellphone, my old one having died a glorious and ignominious death. Poking through the store to find a good replacement, I was struck with the fact that the shiny new models on the shelf seemed to be the same size -- or even bigger -- than the one I needed to replace. Doesn't Moore's Law hold for cellphones?, I think I wondered aloud.

Certainly it does. But even though, by rights, in the eighteen months since I scored my now-dead, beautiful, blue phone (and, for that matter, in the apparently six years since it was released), though the technology has gotten smaller, companise have chosen not to minimize their devices, but rather to overload them with multiple features. My new ~~camera~~ ~~address book~~ phone -- an LG VX6100, if you must know -- is at least three things in one, coming with just about all the amenities of my family's first digital camera and more: an 0.3-megapixel digital camera (complete with lenscover!); a 500-person address book; lots of features I haven't even looked at yet. And all I wanted was something to talk on that stores phone numbers!

But, that's aparently not the direction phones are going in, much to my dismay.

"This industry is in a period of incredible flux," Mr. Zander [Motorola's CEO] said recently in his office in suburban Chicago. "The big challenge for every company over the next five years is to figure out what you are and how you make money."

... And that, of course, is why i'm able to talk on my cellphone to begin with, why I'm able to blog this from an internet cafe, and why I'm not going to get what I want in a phone (minimalism): the market. Like it or not, it drives where companies are going to take this new world of communications.

It's also going to be dominated by the insane consumer. Apparently 59% of Americans have cellphones, a fact astounding to me, who got her first phone as she graduated from college, having had email and dorm phones to fill the communications need before then, and who can't really fathom what teenagers do with theirs, besides put sparkly covers on them and stick them in their painted-on, low-riding hip-huggers. (But then again, this blogger can't figure out what teenagers do with anything these days. This blogger feels old and jaded at age 24.)

Notable points from the article:

Apple's going to get into the market. Crap, I upgraded to an LG too soon! I want a sexy white phone to match my sexy white iPod and sexy white iBook. (Can you tell whom they snagged on their form-equal-to-function ploy?)

Again, the sheer number of customers: "There are 172 million mobile phone subscribers in America, or 59 percent of the population. By 2009, cellphone ownership will rise to 69 percent, JupiterResearch, a technology research company, projects."

"In surveys of cellphone users, respondents say there are three things they always take with them when they leave home: wallet, keys and cellphone." -- Okay, that's totally reasonable. That's what I take when I leave home. (And I'm the paradigmatic consumer, yes?) It goes on: "75 percent of cellphone owners in the United States kept their phones turned on and within reach 16 or more hours a day. And when asked if they had ever answered their mobile phones during sex, 15 percent said yes." -- Lines in the sand, people. Lines in the sand.

"Camera phones are common today, and many people routinely take pictures with them. But only 15 percent of people with camera phones send pictures over wireless networks." -- So stop making them come with cameras automatically, and give me a skinny, just-talk phone!

Stop quoting and start writing well!

2005-05-04T14:03:00.000-07:00

Dowd, again, pisses me off. Today's column refers to the recent study reported yesterday that ugly children may get less attention than pretty ones from parents. Instead of playing off this and offering extra facts, as someone like Krugman (note to self: stop deifying him soon; is probably bad for health) would, she offers a few anecdotes, and then to fill in the blanks, an Eliot allusion and a Shakespeare quotation that smacks of forced intellectualism.

Useful, illuminating anecdote:

I went out once with a guy who didn't care for his mother, partly because he felt she was not attractive enough. My brother Martin, on the other hand, tells our mom how proud he was when she picked him up from grade school because he thought she was the prettiest mother.

(What does that say? That she's shallow, for dating this guy; or that she's normal, for dating someone who's shallow; or that she's normal for dating someone who's normal, in light of this study? (Same with her brother, but with fewer dependent clauses.))

Unhelpful Shakespeare quote:

But the world can be harsh. Surface matters more and more, and the world ignores Shakespeare's lesson from "The Merchant of Venice": "Gilded tombs do worms infold."

(Is what you're trying to say that these pretty children are going to be wormy on the inside, Maureen? Because that's what this quote is saying, and not the point of the rest of the article. Maybe you missed the lesson in high school where they taught that quotations are only supposed to be used to illuminate something you're saying, not just to be thrown in to give you extra scholar points.)

Grating, totally egregious Eliot allusion:

A beauty bias against children seems so startling because you grow up thinking parents are the only ones who will give you unconditional love, not measure it out in coffee spoons based on your genetic luck.

Woah! This was used in the original to illustrate a life of experience, loneliness -- NOT of meting out affection, or of anything else, for that matter. It was not transitive. This is exactly the sort of thing I love in the Times when done well (e.g., a caption from a picture of a fashion show sometime this last year: "I shall wear my trousers rolled." Ha.), but do not expect to see abused within its pages, and deplore when I do! AAArrrgh!

Really, there is no point to her column. She talk about rotisserie chicken ovens, and restates the facts of the study and its article. Just what is she paid to write, again?

Words, word, words!

2005-05-01T15:34:00.000-07:00

I'm devastated that William Safire has stopped (as of last December, IIRC) writing a regulary Op-Ed for the Times. I have to now resort to getting my fix in the Sunday magazine. His column there of today is not the most objectively interesting subject matter -- he talks about the "blurbosphere," or the world of literary peer review and back-patting -- but it's a mandatory read, if only to hear the following words (and phrases) in context:

blurbosphere
hagiography
firmament
fulsome
oxymoronic
"prepublication pool of prevarication"
panned
"espionage tradecraft"
exegesis

He ends with titling an ongoing war of mine the "Language Snobs against Language Slobs", and intelligently admonishes:

Good writers are free to break the rules of grammar, but their freedom gains meaning when they know the rules and overrule them only for an artistic or polemical reason.

More on privatization

2005-04-29T13:17:00.000-07:00

Krugman, in today's column, laments privatization of everything (well, healthcare) more articulately than I've been doing of late. Of note:

Never mind the huge expense, the low life expectancy, the high infant mortality; it's a market-based system, so it must be good.

...

... even though all the evidence suggests that we would be much better off under a system of universal coverage, any such move will be fiercely opposed, on principle, by conservatives who want us to move in the opposite direction.

On the one hand, capitalism is fine and dandy. The big downstairs room in my house may not be worth $600, depending on how you slice it, but its current occupant is willing to pay that for it, so that's its market value, and all's fair. On the other hand, I try not to be dogmatic about things -- privatizing health care just because "capitalism is good" doesn't seem like a rational strategy by which to approach the problems ("low life expectancy"; "infant mortality").

He also uses the word "Panglossian." Heh.

The White House v. Network TV

2005-04-29T13:03:00.000-07:00

Isn't it the media's job to cover, let alone commentate, newsworthy events? I guess that only holds true if they don't conflict with high-ratings programming. Wow. Turns out that this is the fourth prime-time news conference Bush has held -- and the implication is, ever, not just in the 99 days of his second term -- and, instead of rejoicing that he's finally deigning to address not only the gritty details of his moribund Social Security plan, but to do it at a time when Americans would be willing to listen, networks grumble that he'll preëmpt their high-ratings programming. Yo, what is wrong with this country?

The Great American Dream, for a fee

2005-04-28T11:11:00.000-07:00

A pet peeve of mine is the lack of federal funding for public transportation in this country. Trains don't run on time, if at all, and it costs less to fly than to take them. This is ludicrous, and if I don't post about it often, I at least mean to.

Colin, in a recent conversation, pointed out that half of the problem is mindset -- many people view their cars as their birthright, guaranteed to them somewhere in the Bill of Rights along with freedom of speech, religion, and the press; to wrest them away from them would be fundamentally un-American. To this I say, Oy.

But, it's appearing that, while they can keep the cars, the price for using them will just continue to rise. In today's paper, an article about converting freeways to toll roads to avoid congestion. Yes, the statistics are appalling. From the article:

"The average commuter now loses 46 hours a year sitting idle in a car."
"Average peak hour speeds on the 91 Express lanes [the new toll lanes] were 60 to 65 miles an hour last year, versus 15 to 20 m.p.h. on the free lanes, according to federal officials."
"'Californians can't get from place to place on little fairy wings,' said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger."

Still, while the Governator is right about that fact, he could be proposing public transportation alternatives, rather than pushing a plan that promotes more pollution, congestion, and everything evil and baby-killing.

This is wrong on so many levels:

New quarter-mile wide highways are being proposed in Texas, to cut across swaths of farmland
It's inherently classist -- the lanes are priced according to how much congestion there is, so to escape a 10-mph commute, you end up paying $11ish on a round trip. Those who can't afford to live nearer to their jobs are the ones commuting anyhow, and probably won't be able to afford this extra surcharge. Arr.
The general trend towards privatizing everything. Health care, then Social Security -- now highways? Like I said above, I'm way more pro-public-transportation than I am pro-cars and the gas they consume, but I have a feeling that the government (and both federal and state, at that) could be spending money on highway improvements instead of just outsourcing it all. Call it a hunch.

The only possible way this trend could be good is that it's forcing more people to carpool -- apparently, these new toll lanes (at least in some implementations -- not sure about in general) are free to HOVs, or high-occupancy vehicles (a term one can't escape while living within the Beltway, as I've done for the past two years. This is good.

Part of this, I'll acknowledge, is just the fallout from urban sprawl. I've been lucky to have been at a job for a while to which I could commute by bike or or foot; now, the awesome job for which I'm interviewing is 40 miles away, and I would be using the highways to commute. Yes, I'd be on a company-run shuttle, and therefore carpooling; yes, there would be free wifi on the shuttle(!), and so I wouldn't lose work time if I didn't want to. But it sucks that, to get down there for my final interview today, I'll have to take three separate rail systems, which will cost me about $7 each way, and then a cab from the station to the site (paid for by the company, but still) -- the entirety of which will take me a little over two hours. I hate that this is the situation, and acknowledge that part of this is just going to be the reality of a mobile lifestyle. But I still think that more energy could be being focused on public, non-polluting transportation than on charging for highway use. Sheesh.

"The decision ... should rest with the parents."

2005-04-28T11:02:00.000-07:00

I know I haven't been following the news closely enough when I read a bill has passed that I didn't even know was coming up for a vote. Specifically, yesterday's House bill tightening parental rule for abortions.

First, the facts. It will now be a federal crime "for any adult to transport an under-age girl across state lines to have an abortion without the consent of her parents," with penalties up to $100,000 and a year in jail. Ignoring for the sake of brevity how false the supporters' claims that this measure is "pro-family" are, let me just focus the word "parent."

Forgive me if I find the wording in this whole story ironically ambiguous:

Supporters characterize the measure as pro-family, saying it will prevent abusive boyfriends and others from taking vulnerable young women across state lines to receive "secret abortions" against their will. They say that the decision to have an abortion should rest solely with the parents.
[Emph. added]

I believe that, too -- that the decision to abort a fetus should rest with the people who conceived it -- that is, the parents.

Jesus.

Buffalo buffalo buffalo Baltimore buffalo

2005-04-27T10:11:00.000-07:00

This account of bison escaping in Baltimore is, mostly, just like the recent news about exploding toads in Germany -- silly animal news.

Note at the end, however, the reaction of their rancher:

Gerald Berg, who raised the bison on his cattle farm in Stevenson, started his day by jumping on an all-terrain vehicle and chasing the escaped animals. Mr. Berg has been raising bison for about eight years, he said, but no more.

By midday, as the last of the bison were being herded into the trailer, Mr. Berg had decided their fate.

"It's out of hand," he said. "They're going to the slaughterhouse, and they're going to be buffalo burgers."

I don't know how long people usually try to raise buffalo for, but something tells me it's a skill that might take a little longer than eight years to master. Sending them away to be turned into buffalo burgers seems a little impatients. Vegan Porn would eat this up (no pun intended, har har).

Catch-22, anyone?

2005-04-25T11:09:00.000-07:00

No new government is really being formed in Iraq. Note two salient excerpts from the article:

... Shiites .. make up a majority in Iraq but nearly three months after national elections have yet to form a new government -- a failure that American officials fear is giving strength and confidence to the insurgents.

...

Many American officials say the political slowdown in Baghdad is hurting the ability of Iraqi security forces to repel and pursue insurgents.

Wait a sec -- the failure to form a government is strengthening the insurgents, but they can't "repel and pursue" them until they form a new government? Oy.

I love, by the way, the actual purpose of this article: "Rice and Cheney Are Said to Push Iraqi Politicians on Stalemate". "Uhh, just so you know, guys, it's bad to not have any government. I know we destroyed your old one, but now you're not ruled by evil, and so anything's better than that, right? Just ... get your shit together."

Also, how cute:

Ms. Rice on Friday telephoned Massoud Barzani, a leader of one of Iraq's main Kurdish parties, a senior State Department official in Washington said. The official stressed that Ms. Rice did not tell him how to work toward forming a government, just that the process needed to be concluded. [emph. added]

I bet this was news to Barzani. "Oh, we need a government? So that's what's been wrong!" Holy crap. And how patronizing this makes Rice -- and, for that matter, our entire position in Iraq -- seem.

I don't follow this issue as closely as I should, but every time I read about it (it was above the fold today), I get sick. Saw a bumpersticker on Telegraph Ave. yesterday: What's our oil doing under their soil?!"

Schönheit muß leiden

2005-04-24T13:58:00.000-07:00

Ever since I started picking up German about four years ago, I've always thought that language's version of our "No pain, no gain" expression is more accurate. "Schönheit muß leiden" literally means "Beauty must suffer." Not that I agree with this particular idea -- but it appears that a lot of women in New York do.

Friends have often thought it a bit weird that I mutter under my breath every time I see a woman coming down the street tottering on three-inch stilettos. The more I ran last year, though, the more I became attuned to the damage people do their feet by wearing the wrong shoes -- and it's clear that if you can't balance on a pair of shoes, you probably shouldn't be ruining your Achilles tendons trying.

Lacerating your feet is in the same ballpark, though one probably does less long-term damage to one's feet just by wearing shoes that have straps "like little knives."

"In the past four days we've been treating mobs of people, most of whom are exiting the winter without having done anything to get their feet ready for spring," said Anika Haynes, the spa coordinator for the Aqua Beauty Bar in downtown Manhattan.

"All the women who come here," Ms. Haynes said, "need emergency rescue. They're swollen, they're callused, and they're pleading, 'Can you buff, buff, buff?' "

Ouch! And I complain because I got a blister on the side of my ankle from wearing low-cut tennis shoes to a hip-hop class Wednesday, and more on the balls of my feet from doing barefoot salsa on a carpeted floor at a party last night. Apparently, real women's pedal pain is always sartorial.

Finally, adding insult to injury, is the amount people pay for these instruments of torture:

Ms. Gajzer faults the shoemaker, not the wearer. "When you're paying between $300 and $600 for a pair of sandals, you expect them to be remotely comfortable," she said. "Otherwise the designer should be smacked."

Ms. Korb, for her part, is resigned to her fate. "It's crazy, I know," she said with a mixture of pride and chagrin. "I just bought these shoes for $600. They're Valentino. They hurt, but I love them so much I even had a pedicure - another $50 - just so I could wear them."

The conclusion? Clearly, the women of New York are all self-hating, masochistic Imelda Marcoses.

News Flash: Women Still Totally Inequal.

2005-04-15T18:29:00.000-07:00

Two articles today illustrate just how far we haven't come, globally speaking, in the past umpteen generations: little girls having nose jobs and breast-reduction surgeries in Venezuela, and an article about women science in academia. The first is, is most ways, way more appalling than the latter, but the issues raised by both are equally deserving of ire.

"My mom says I should be a model, and I want to be one, too," said Ana, who attends six hours of [charm-school] classes a week, with girls aged 5 to 10. "She says I also have a pretty body."

...

Giselle Cesin, 18, a university student, said her mother had always put pressure on her to watch what she ate and, if necessary, to go under the knife. "When I was 14, she said, 'Get a nose job, have liposuction, get your breasts worked on,' " Ms. Cesin explained. She has had four nose jobs, the first at 14, and now plans breast surgery.

Thankfully, I don't know many US moms who would do that -- or at least, not a whole cultureful who try to turn their daughters into beauty queens from age 5 up (JonBenet's parents excepted, I suppose).

More on women in science later. Too much sun on my computer to see, and I'm hungry.

More Intolerance in Oregon

2005-04-15T17:06:00.000-07:00

After a hiatus brought on by having too much fun to have time to read the paper; because Rupa asked nicely; and because there's so much appalling in the news today, I'm back ... at least, for now.

Yesterday's ruling in Oregon invalidating last year's gay marriages is sickening, if unexpected. It's just incomprehensible to me that people can impose their own moral codes on others -- but that's precisely what's going on here. (Morality as tied to religion will be a subject for a whole nother post, and a much more vituperative one.)

Says one idiot:

Opponents of same-sex marriage said they were particularly irked by [the county's] issuing licenses not sanctioned by the state.

"The vast middle of the electorate out there was always worried that there might be some secret gay agenda," said Kelly Clark, a lawyer who represented Oregon's Defense of Marriage Coalition in the case. "And, lo and behold, there was a secret gay agenda."

"I think they set their cause back," Mr. Clark added.

Woah -- a "secret gay agenda"?! If that "secret" agenda was gay marriage, then there was no secret about it. If Mr. Clark means something else (by which I could infer "corruption of our nation's youth" or "the slow dismantling of the sacred institution of marriage"), he's not expressing himself very well. Hidden gay agenda, my ass -- their agenda is to have the same rights as straights, in the same fundamental way as blacks (on paper) do as whites; women (on paper) do as men (though again, a topic for a whole nother post of today).

This Mr. Clark may be onto something with the bit about "setting their cause back," though. The issue of gay marriage has been in the news a lot recently, and I've heard it said -- both now, but especially before the [craptastic] election of last November -- that this may be to the GLBT&c. movement's detriment, and to the religious right's benefit. I think there's some truth to this:

Gaining acceptance for being gay in a culture dominated by Christian ethics is going to be an uphill battle to begin with, given that the very thing that sets them apart (sex) is one of the most taboo things in the opposing culture. That's not helpful, and it sucks (no pun intended).
So, marriage is not what the gay rights movement needs to be focusing on -- it's a huge issue, and one that's easily wielded as a divisive tool to sway morally-conservative voters. It's not something good to begin with from the current starting point, where a majority of the country might not believe homosexuality is wrong, but a majority appear to think that homosexual marriage is.
Rather, the gay rights movement should be working to talk about tolerance in more basic forms -- maybe combating discriminatory hiring practices, &c. -- but not focusing on the 800-pound gorilla of its agenda.

[Oh god, but the bulleted list graphic here is hideous!]

I'm not sure I buy all this reasoning. I think marriage is a pretty fundamental right, given the tax benefits. But I can see how it tiptoes around the edges of Christian morality, and is therefore an easy one for the right to vilify. It may therefore be true that all this focus on marriage -- both in state courts, and election-time talk of an a constitutional amendment -- is, in fact, harming the movement.

No more Plaza

2005-03-20T16:50:00.000-08:00

I'm not a New Yorker, so I guess there's no reason I would have known, but I had no idea that the Plaza Hotel in New York was changing hands, and ceasing to be The Plaza. This woman writes a nice account of growing up in and around the hotel.

Everyone should go watch Big Business, now.

Fuckers Destroy World; Friedman Laments

2005-03-17T17:46:00.000-08:00

In what possible moral universe is it acceptable to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling?! Reducing dependence on foreign oil is good on the surface, but not only are dectractors saying that the oil, by simple geography, will benefit Asia primarily, but how about we reduce our dependce on oil, period? This shit makes steam come out of my ears. Bush can talk the talk all he wants about looking for alternative energy sources, but when this budget passes with language about drilling in ANWR, it just highlights what would have been different with a president whose name started with a K.

Also stunning, in a general sense, is the ease with which Republicans manage to cast their policies as good for Joe Worker:

"This project will keep our economy growing by creating jobs and ensuring that businesses can expand," Mr. Bush said, "and it will make America less dependent on foreign sources of energy."

Because we don't like them fer-ners.

What might create jobs, dear Bush, is not slashing the budget of the NSF -- as Friedman puts it in his column of today (linked above):

Finally, on competition policy, the Bush team and Congress cut the budget of the National Science Foundation for this fiscal year by $105 million. I could not put it better than Congressman Vern Ehlers, one of the few dissenting Republicans, who said: "This decision shows dangerous disregard for our nation's future ... at a time when other nations continue to surpass our students in math and science and consistently increase their funding of basic research. We cannot hope to fight jobs lost to international competition without a well-trained and educated work force."

I could just quote his whole column, but you should just go read it.

Too bad I'm a pacifist ...

2005-03-17T17:19:00.000-08:00

I remember hearing somewhere that opera used to be used as a punishment -- maybe in the military? I could be making that up. But certainly, as this article mentions, Kitchen Police ("K.P."), was "a dreaded punishment."

Now, the Army's offering culinary classes for its chefs, who sculpt lobsters out of sugar, and live in exotic locales?

Sgt. Karen Glanzer, leader of Team Hawaii's field cooking squad, said she had planned to become a chef from the age of 13, and free culinary training was one of the main reasons she joined the military. "They wanted me, so I asked for two things: cooking and Hawaii," she said.

...

The resources the Army is willing to expend on culinary education were evident in the well-equipped classrooms and in the piles of fresh chanterelles, baby beets, pickled tarragon leaves, lemon grass stalks and other exotic ingredients available for competitors' use.

Sweet; sign me up! (Uhh ... too bad I'm a pacifist, eh?)

Then again, it might not be the best option for a vegan who loves her kitchen:

The program's leaders are advocates - among the last in America - for the rigors of classical French culinary training. Little of that repertory is seen by soldiers in mess tents, but the training is intended to set a standard of quality for all military cooks.

"These are not established chefs with a base of knowledge to draw on," Professor Jones said. "So we try to give them that base." Curiously, few American chefs are as proficient in the French culinary canon as are these top-level [military cooks], who can produce roast pheasant, ice sculptures and rote-perfect pâtisseries like éclairs and financiers. "We are always evaluating the program, but no one yet has come to replace Escoffier," Professor Jones said, referring to the French chef who delineated the modern culinary canon in his Guide Culinaire, last revised in 1921. In one event of the competition, the chef is simply assigned a number from Escoffier's book and required to research and reproduce the recipe.

Also, the quarters are cramped:

In the field cooking event, all teams start with the same ingredients and tools, and spend three hours in a kitchen trailer with about 15 square feet of floor space, cooking dinner for 50 soldiers.

I'd guess I'd just prefer to cook for myself and a lover.

Vegan options!

2005-03-17T17:12:00.000-08:00

Nigella [Lawson] (we're like this) may be silly and overly florid and British in her colums, but recently she's been offering something for me to do more than just read about -- I can eat it, too.

Her column about colorful foods two weeks ago was welcome in grey Berkeley, and entirely vegan -- she even offered a de-dairyizing of the raita to go along with the already-vegan dal and, that day's winner, the bright rice.

While I can't yet vouch for the recipes in today's, and I disagree with her views on the necessity of meat ("As far as I'm concerned, the first spring meal has to be lamb. To me it is the natural order of things."), she does provide an accompanying garbanzo stew. Yum.

Do it on your own dime

2005-03-14T13:17:00.000-08:00

I was totally on this kid's side, agreeing that he should be able to play as much Texas Hold'em as he wants, until I read this (near the bottom of the article):

Mr. Sandberg said that he failed a midterm exam this fall because of his commitment to poker, and that he ranked in the bottom fifth of his class.

But, he says, "I'm not too concerned with what my G.P.A. is. You don't have to hand your résumé to the casino when you walk in or anything."

Wow, that's definitely something to do on your own dime, and not while you're wasting either your parents' money (or, giving you the benefit of the doubt, a scholarship) at Princeton.

What century do I live in, again?

2005-03-14T12:52:00.000-08:00

It's stuff like this that makes me want to learn how to projectile vomit:

The Borgata [Casino] ... recently put all of its bartenders and waitresses, called Borgata Babes, on a scale, and warned them that if they gained more than 10 percent of their weight, they would be suspended without pay for 90 days while they tried to lose it.

Absent a valid medical reason, if they had not lost the extra pounds after the suspension, they would be fired.

A "vaild medical reason"?! How about psychological trauma, or anorexia?

I'm not sure I can say anything coherent about this, except for reiterating that it makes me want to puke. This is exactly the kind of shit a certain unnamed Midwestern Lutheran university pulled when they trumped up charges to fire a gay secretary my mother had hired, apparently not thinking that the "do-unto-others" dictum of their religion might actually apply. The Borgata is claiming immunity from discrimination suits, as did C----- University, on the grounds that they're hiring performers (c.f. C's claim that they're an independent religious institution, and therefore exempt). At least they're being sued (but note that the lawsuit said unnamed secretary brought against above unnamed institution failed).

What makes me sicker is that it's generating positive publicity for this place:

"When you measure the benefit that results from this enormous amount of publicity you can't quantify it, because frankly, it can't be bought," said Michael Pollock, head of the Pollock Gaming Resource Group, industry consultants. "Because the person who is going to be attracted to the upscale, sexy image that a Borgata is trying to create is going to look at this controversy in a very different light than someone who is offended by it."

So it's win-win for them, even if they lose.

Puke.

Yet more defeatist gendering

2005-03-13T18:44:00.000-08:00

Another frustrating example of taking for granted that women are inherently different than men in causal ways comes in today's Modern Love column, Sleeping With the Guitar Player by Jean Hanff Korelitz.

In this, she describes and generalizes her husband's "Guitar-in-the-Basement phase" -- that in which her spouse of eighteen years purchases first one guitar, and then a whole band's worth, and aggressively pursuing his newfound hobby with the zeal and abandon of a never-been-burned amateur. She attributes this naïveté not to something in his character -- call it optimism, maybe? Or devil-may-care-itude? -- but to his gender:

... I'm a woman, which means that, in my heart of hearts, I have long understood that certain things are never going to happen in my life. I won't, by way of example, be modeling swimsuits for Sports Illustrated, representing my country as an Olympic gymnast or dancing Coppélia for the New York City Ballet.

I have dealt with these disappointments and, in the idiom of our age, moved on. But my husband - my wonderful, endearing husband, who is extremely successful at writing and teaching poetry - believed, at the age of 53, that it was utterly possible for him to become a rock guitarist. On a stage. In front of an audience.
...
Unlike women, for whom menopause serves as an unignorable transition, a line dividing one part of life from another, men have no midlife marker to brake before, or even to steer around, in the hinterland from their youth to their age; there is only a great, elastic middle. Is it any wonder they lose track of where they are, and think they can do anything? And evidence being what it is, I'm forced to concur.

I usually like Modern Love, this relatively new addition to the Sunday Styles section (admittedly, the first section I pick up on an indolent weekend morning, in which I shamefully skim the ages of the women getting married, and which schools they went to). In addition to being well-written (which is why I read the Times to begin with), it's often poignant without being soapy, a nice quasi-fictional addition to the paper, à la The New Yorker. And while this article didn't go too far towards tarnishing my fondness for the column, nor did it do anything to bolster it.

I mean, really -- "I'm a woman, which means that ... [I have a] midlife marker to brake before, ... steer around, in the hinterland from [my] youth to [my] age"?! Taken out of context, that statement is relatively benign: menopause as a divider in a woman's life, a biological change that will probably provoke self-scrutiny. But to chalk up the putative ambitiousness of an entire gender to the lack of such a division? Overstepping the bounds of biology, I believe, and doing women a disservice in the process.

Korelitz singles out what she knows of the Guitar-in-the-Basement Dudes, isolates a cultural phenomenon, and attributes it to their gender. I'm fine with the belletristic portrayal of the first two; her conclusion, I bristle at. Goddamn it, stop siding with Maureen Dowd and playing the help-help-I'm-just-a-little-woman card!

Stop whining, Maureen!

2005-03-13T15:03:00.000-08:00

Maureen Dowd has been pissing me off recently. I think I've just noticed this -- I used to accept everything on the Times's Op-Ed page as gospel liberal truth, until reading enough of David Brooks's column critically opened my eyes; to Krugman, on the other hand, I've always been an adherent.

Dowd is the latest to fall in my affections. I have an enumerated list of gripes about her, most of which I'll save for another post (her seeming inability to write a coherent column about one theme, for example; how she harps on the wrong themes for a liberal columnsit, further problematizing an issue that Republicans demonized to begin with, for another). But the latest, and currently highest on my list, is her whininess about the differences between women and men.

Let me begin by stating that I'm as much of a feminist as the next woman of my generation -- that is, brought up with a sense of entitlement about my gender's rights, and dismissive of any claim that there are more than skin-deep differences between boys and girls (fuck you, Larry Summers). I'll spare you the history of how these views have deepened (CS major; yadda yadda), but it boils down to this: Women and men are equal intellectually, and therefore need to stop carping about differences that aren't going to get them anywhere.

Take, for example, Dowd's statement in paragraph 4 of today's column:

Men enjoy verbal dueling. As a woman, I told Howell, I wanted to be liked - not attacked.

Dude. Man. Saying that is not going to help your case.

The rest of the article goes on to enumerate the other reasons why there aren't more prominent female opinion writers (the harpy perception; the fact that we're so easily undermined by kitchen-paraphernalia metaphors ("'Does she,' The L.A. Times's Patt Morrison wondered, 'write on a computer or a Ronco Slicer and Dicer?'"). While it's true that women't aren't yet always perceived on an equal footing with men in many intellectual domains -- opinion writing not the least of them, I'm sure -- taking as a premise that women are loath to engage in verbal dueling is defeatist, Summerian, and is going to piss off as many opinionated women as you're hoping to encourage.

Another example of the same kind of whining:

Gail Collins, the first woman to run The Times's editorial page and the author of a history of American women, told The Post's Howard Kurtz: "There are probably fewer women, in the great cosmic scheme of things, who feel comfortable writing very straight opinion stuff, and they're less comfortable hearing something on the news and batting something out."

(Emphasis added.)

Yes, the world is not yet an equal place. Yes, more women need to step up to the plate / be hired by major news publications. But averring that this imparity is due to innate diffences is counterproductive.

As an addendum, the following is a list of minor gripes about today's column:

'kerfuffle' -- Come on, Maureen. WordNet thinks it's a word, so I suppose I have to give it to you, but this is exactly the type of ten-dollar word you throw out all the time as garnish. It just distracts, I promise.

The haridan/haridelle etymology -- Did it really add anything to give the French there? It's a cognate, and therefore by itself tells us nothing about the origins of the word. Sheesh.