Vroom Zoom
on 11.28.03
I'm away for the weekend, and likely not connected. Back on Monday. I'm sure Unf...sigh...
No Waco for Wackos
on 11.28.03
Clark's involvement in support of the Waco operation a decade ago was indirect and fleetingand slugs it "Wesley Clark Indirectly Involved in Waco." Skillful, no? You can read the article and decide for yourself.
Here, Let Me Help
on 11.28.03
Fickett said he was heating up about 3 gallons of oil before the fire started. He adjusted the temperature to the recommended 350 degrees, then stepped into the house to get the bird.
Next thing he knew, smoke was pouring out of the garage.
By the time firefighters got there Thursday afternoon, the garage was in flames, said Gene Kostreba, acting assistant fire chief. He said the fire was contained to the garage, which was destroyed.I haven't checked the records, but I'd guess that every year, one guy sacrifices himself to the gods of Thanksgiving so that all the other guys can escape with their homes and lives. Thank you, Bill Fickett.
I Know For a Fact
on 11.28.03
Just about every David Brooks anecdote in this story seems embellished to the edge of credibility, but there are a lot of good anecdotes, and the guy can't be all bad.
He had two turtles named Gladstone and Disraeli.
Honey, Do You Mind If I...?
on 11.28.03
The latest on the trials of polygamy from Indonesia.
Her sense of betrayal is never far from the surface. "I can accept him, but with a lot of question marks and exclamation points and commas -- never a period."
Asked if her husband was a good Muslim, she paused. "I think he is a good Muslim, but he should appreciate his wife more," she said. "Love cannot be divided. If you have only one wife, you will focus on her. What makes me saddest is wondering: When will I have a husband who is totally mine?"
Erlangga said he had never expected to have more than one wife, even though his father had three and his grandfather two. And he truly loved Titin, whom he had met in college and wed in 1983. But 13 years and two children later, he fell in love with Mardiana, now 37, who was a widow.
"It was a mix of passion, love and social responsibility," he explained, sitting in a Pizza Hut restaurant in Jakarta one afternoon. "She is the type of person who needs protection."
He feels that he is a better Muslim for helping a widow without financial means. He acknowledged that most women, Titin included, object to polygamy. But he said, "A woman should accept that it is part of the religious institution of marriage in Islam."
I suppose writing a check wasn't socially responsible enough. Polygamy can work, but without the consent of the first wife, it's just the abuse of privilege.
"If religion allowed us to take another husband, I would be the first person to do that!" she said, laughing. "But of course, the religion does not allow that."
Say Terra Haute
on 11.28.03
This is truly odd, and more than a little sad.
An American woman has been left with a British accent after having a stroke. This is despite the fact that Tiffany Roberts, 61, has never been to Britain. Her accent is a mixture of English cockney and West Country. Doctors say Mrs Roberts, who was born and bred in Indiana, has a condition called foreign accent syndrome.
It's really complicated her lfe.
via blogalization
An Assessment of Clark
on 11.26.03
There a very good and fair examination of Wesley Clark as a candidate for president at Open Source Politics.
via jacob levy
Shmoo schschmoo
on 11.26.03
I bring you a meaningful sentence from Wi-Fi Networking News.
Shmoo offers Airsnarf, a proof of concept that a fake gateway page could act as a honeypot for legitimate hotspot users.
Since it turns out to be the public's business
on 11.26.03
My girlfriend and I have been together for more than four years. We own a car and a house together, and we plan someday to reproduce together. We have no plans to get married.
Neither of us is particularly anti-marriage. For myself, I just don't think our relationship is the business of the government, and I don't want to go through the steps of declaring to our other loved ones exactly how deep our romance is or how storybook we think we are.
Marriage should not be the default destination of a dating couple on the road to long-term commitment, and the feds should recognize that unmarried partnership can be a supremely valid alternative to marriage.
By the way, brava Dahlia.
Safe and Sound
on 11.26.03
Julia is considering the purchase of her very own $20 Marriage Defense Kit.
Also, should Unfogged's comments include (require?) pictures of the commenters?
Overtraining
on 11.25.03
Oh, people, this is so wrong!
PersonalsTrainer.com is a team of experts dedicated to helping you look better online. We'll study your ad from top to bottom, from your photo down to the last word in your profile, and give you our honest, experienced opinions on what you're doing right -- and what you're doing that's hurting your chances. Then we'll give you specific, useful recommendations for improving your ad.
The whole point of a personal ad is to see what the person you're going to meet managed to write. There is no better way to get a first impression than to read what people write about themselves. Now we'll see ads edited by professionals, and this site has lined up some rather attractive editors.
Perhaps you'd like Aury Wallington, writer for Sex and the City, to spice up your ad; maybe Em & Lo, "Authors of the sex manual The Big Bang and original creators of the Nerve Personals," are right for you. For $59, they'll give your ad a makeover. Or maybe you can only afford the services of an anonymous underemployed humanities grad for just $30.
Yeah yeah, complain complain, the end of the innocence. Who am I kidding? It was bound to happen and now the deed is done. Who but the arrogant, the impecunious, and the already married will post unedited ads now? Go ahead. Get the makeover. You deserve it. You owe it to the real you; you know, the you that's just a small army of very clever people away.
Fool Me Twice
on 11.25.03
Very good post by Jack O'Toole about the double-game the media plays around the presidential debates.
You're a public official, and you've spent your whole life preparing to offer yourself to the people of this republic -- your core beliefs, your deepest hopes for the nation, your fundamental vision of just what this grand old experiment called America is all about -- and what you discover is that "the process" is essentially a dumbed-down game show (more Hollywood Squares than Jeopardy) created and produced by an (often) well-intentioned but (usually) willfully ignorant press corps who've completely bought into the thoroughly corrupt idea that responsible citizenship is, in Mr. Quayle's famous formulation, just another lifestyle choice ... if you play by the rules as they exist -- the rules that the press has imposed on a game that they control -- reporters call you a sell-out, and bask in the warm glow of smug self-satisfaction as they look down their noses at you and the rest of men and women who would be President of the United States.
If you've managed to sit through any of the coverage and analysis surrounding the debates, you know Jack is absolutely correct. Two things get covered: "personal" conflicts between the candidates and "inconsistencies" in their positions. The rest, which would require knowledge of the issues and the presumption that the audience cares, is ignored. I'm not sure, as I commented at Jack's site, what the hell to do about the problem.
Howdy
on 11.25.03
Here's an excerpt from a book as seen on Political Wire.
"The book salaams quickly to Rubin's boyhood and education and then gets to the grand chapters of his life: his work at Goldman Sachs, where he rose to be co-chairman; his years in the Clinton administration, first as head of the brand-new National Economic Council and then as Secretary of the Treasury; his return to private life and a move into Citi's office of the chairman."
"Salaams." It's in the dictionary. I can't say I'd never heard it before because I say it every day in Farsi, but I had no idea it had this English meaning. Interesting though, that in English, "ceremonial" can slide into "rote" or even "cursory," while in Farsi (or Arabic, which is the original language, I think) the ceremonial is quite serious (and don't you forget it, kid).
Show the Birth!
on 11.25.03
A baby has been conceived after two contestants had sex on the Danish version of Big Brother.
It is believed to be the first conception in the history of the reality television show.
Danish TV has been showing intimate scenes between Sissel, 20, and Robert, 21, for the last month.At least we know it wasn't immaculate.
Supersize that, Mr. Bear?
on 11.25.03
Clarity
on 11.25.03
When President Bush laid out the potential threat that unconventional weapons posed in Saddam Hussein's hands last year in his State of the Union address last year, he became tongue-tied at an inopportune moment.
The line read, "It would take one vial, one canister, one crate, slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known." But Mr. Bush stumbled between the words "one" and "vial." And when at the word vial, he pronounced the "v" as if it were a "w."
Yet in a new Republican commercial that borrows excerpts from that speech, Mr. Bush delivers that line as smoothly as any other in the address, without a pause between "one" and "vial," and the v in "vial" sounds strong and sure.
Republican officials acknowledged yesterday that the change was a product of technology. The line, they said, was digitally enhanced in editing "to ensure the best clarity."
He Understands. Maybe.
on 11.25.03
Lawyers do what lawyers do.
For five years, Robert P. Scamardo defended the Roman Catholic Diocese of Galveston-Houston against lawsuits by people who claimed to have been sexually abused by priests.
As general counsel, he vigorously resisted accusers, he said, fending off their lawsuits and collaborating with church officials to send them away quietly, with as little money as possible.
But it's not always easy.
While representing the church as a trusted insider, Mr. Scamardo said, he was secretly struggling to cope with his own sexual abuse as a teenager by a priest and a lay youth minister. The conflict between his inner and outer selves brought anguish, thoughts of suicide and finally a confrontation with the diocese. When he sought compensation from the church as an abuse victim this year, he came up against a bishop and lawyers aggressively guarding church assets.
My god. For more on how the church rebuffs claimants, and on how Scamardo coped, by all means, read the whole thing.
The Limits of Civility
on 11.25.03
It looks like at least once a week Paul Krugman is going to write a "Hey, David Brooks, go fuck yourself" column. I'm cool with that.
Break Out the Pen
on 11.24.03
Gary Farber's been sick and so he's lost his job, and his bank account, and now he may lose his apartment. Please go help him out.
UPDATE: Gary informs me via email that he's already raised about half of what he needs. Every little bit helps...
Boy Meets Girl
on 11.24.03
As I just wrote someone by email, I'm leaning about 51 to 49 that this is not a parody. (via pejmanesque)
For most people, deciding which bathroom to use in the Regenstein Library does not require mental gymnastics. But for some, a trip to the restroom is less simple, with gay, lesbian, and transgendered students worried about the implications of which bathrooms they enter.
...
[Mary Anne Case] pointed out that many women's restrooms have a caricature of a person in a dress on it. "Going into it implies that we are willing to be associated with that image. There are only two [images] to choose from. This moment involves an act of self-labeling."
Just academic, you say?
Nate Claxton, another panelist, knew people who had contracted bladder infections because choosing a gender bathroom bothered them so much that they did not go to the bathroom all day.
Wow.
There is a very simple, progressive, solution to this problem, but I wonder if the radical maroons are up to it. When I visited a friend back in the day at one liberal college, the bathrooms (which also contained the showers) were truly communal: no locks, no "singles," no gender designations. Boy brushes teeth while girl pees in stall and vice-versa. Also, the person showering next to you (on the other side of a divide) was often of the opposite sex.
Why does this remind me of an Ezra Pound poem?
Salutation
O generation of the thoroughly smug
and thoroughly uncomfortable,
I have seen fishermen picnicking in the sun,
I have seen them with untidy families,
I have seen their smiles full of teeth
and heard ungainly laughter.
And I am happier than you are,
And they were happier than I am;
And the fish swim in the lake
and do not even own clothing.
UPDATE: Ben W-lfs-n, currently toiling away at the University of Chicago, informs us in the comments that the "gender neutral" proposal mentioned in the article is precisely the sort of communal arrangement I described (and not just the removal of designations from private bathrooms, as I had assumed). Good for the U of C if they do it. Though this is not to say that the people who are traumatized by the choice aren't milquetoasts.
Worm In Winter
on 11.24.03
If you like smart political analysis, Mark Schmitt has really been on a roll lately.
SAO
on 11.24.03
Funny Vision
on 11.24.03
I'd love to discuss this, but the caption seems plainly wrong to me. Is it really a trick of the eyes? Who can see?
Captioned thus,
NEW LOOKS. Each face in the top row has different eyes and mouth, those in the middle row differ in external contour but have matching features, and faces at bottom differ only in the spacing of the eyes and mouth. People deprived of sight to the left eye as infants, but not those who lacked sight to the right eye, had difficulty discerning the differences in the bottom row. Both groups could recognize the variations in the top two rows.
Sputter
on 11.24.03
And I Don't Have a Day to Spare
on 11.24.03
The New Zealand study focuses on 22 states that raised their limits to 70 or 75 m.p.h. almost immediately after the repeal of the federal cap. Trends from those states are compared with trends in 12 states that kept their limits at 65. The study found 1,880 more deaths on the Interstates in those 22 states from 1996 to 1999, though the authors noted that geographical effects might have skewed the results because most of the states that went to 75 were in the West.What? "geographical effects might have skewed the results" You think? If you're not controlling for geography, doesn't that mean you're not controlling for weather either? The Car and Driver man has clue.
Csaba Csere, the editor of Car and Driver magazine noted how difficult it was to conduct studies that factored out everything but speed.
And he was skeptical of tests financed by the insurance industry, which he said might prefer lower speed limits.
"If you get a ticket, your rates go up," he said. "From their standpoint, the more tickets the better. You have to take what they say with a grain of salt."I think I'm about to declare myself lily-white and move to Montana.
Although most researchers said that raising speed limits had been bad for safety, Colonel Driscoll of the Montana Highway Patrol said a speed limit that would be appropriate in New York City would not work in Montana.
"A lot of people go to the hospital in Billings," he said. "If you're in Sidney, Mont., and need to go to Billings, you have to go 270 miles. In New York, you probably have to go 2.7 miles to get to a hospital.
"You can lose a whole day going 55."