December 2008
The Sensitive Female Chord Progression →
My Blog Year in Review
My Best Blog Post: I still think it’s this post on Isolation, inspired by the picture of a primitive tribe in Brazil. I wish all my posts were like this. Some other posts that I’m reasonably happy with: What are the Odds; Strolling Through the New York Times Archives; Gambling and Monopoly; Inherited Wealth; Putting the Chicken Before the Egg; The End of Memorization and...
Don't Mess With You Don't Mess With the Zohan
We watched You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, an awkwardly titled, reasonably entertaining Adam Sandler film. I don’t usually like Sandler’s most outrageous works—give me Punch Drunk Love over the Waterboy—but I gave Zohan a chance, mostly because of A.O. Scott’s favorable review in the New York Times. Scott begins:
Let me be blunt: “You Don’t Mess With the...
“If someone was sending rockets on my house where my daughters were sleeping at...”
– The Gaza War - Jeffrey Goldberg
The Case for Pardons
Tucker Carlson makes the case for pardons. Here’s part of it:
Who should get pardoned? Contrary to myth, there aren’t a lot of innocent people on death row. But there are a quite a few guilty people who ought to be forgiven. Last week, for example, Bush pardoned a 50-year-old Missouri farmer named Leslie Owen Collier. In 1995, Collier accidentally poisoned three bald eagles. An...
“We’re in a race to see whether politics will become the dominant means of...”
– Tyler Cowen
Where Were They Ever? The 40 Greatest Lost Icons... →
Flickr: The Far side Reenactments Pool →
Putting the Chicken Before the Egg
The first joke I ever learned was this:
Why did the chicken cross the road?
To get to the other side.
I suspect that this is the first joke many kids learn. It makes no sense, however, as a first joke.
The joke is funny (to the extent it is funny) only because we are expecting a twist, but instead, we get a straight answer. The straight answer only works as a punch line because we are...
Another Abuse of Eminent Domain
When eminent domain is used to give someone’s property to another private interest, it isn’t just wrong—it’s almost certainly corrupt. For example:
When finished, the .09-acre patch of land near the Galleria will be the city’s smallest park. Too small even for a basketball court, Post Oak Lane Park might be big enough for a game of horseshoes, a few benches and...
“We got into this mess to a considerable extent by overborrowing … . Now,...”
– Martin N. Baily, a chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Clinton and now a fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Dave Barry's Year in Review
I think the best way to learn history is to go back and read Dave Barry’s Year in Review columns. An excerpt from this year’s:
JANUARY … which begins, as it does every four years, with presidential contenders swarming into Iowa and expressing sincerely feigned interest in corn. The Iowa caucuses produce two surprises: On the Republican side, the winner is Mike Huckabee, folksy...
beautifulordinaire:
4th Time Around - Bob Dylan
...
“Interphone researchers are pooling and analyzing the results gathered from...”
– Last Call? | Popular Science
“Almost 90 percent of major league teams have reached the World Series in the...”
– Think MLB is without parity? Just look at these amazing stats. - Joe Posnanski - SI.com
“The Afghan chieftain looked older than his 60-odd years, and his bearded face...”
– Little Blue Pills Among the Ways CIA Wins Friends in Afghanistan - washingtonpost.com
“A South Philadelphia man enraged because a father and son were talking during a...”
– Phila. man shot because family talked during movie | Philadelphia Inquirer | 12/26/2008
It is absolutely not okay to shoot someone for talking during a movie. But I hope the shooting in this case does not obscure the fact that it is absolutely not okay to talk during a movie.
“FROM the moment it was clear that Barack Obama was going to be president, people...”
– Advocates of Change in Food Policy Look to Obama With Hope - NYTimes.com
If food is politics, is there anything left that is not? Does anyone really believe that every facet of human existence should be subject to the whims of majority rule?
"Obama team probe of Obama team finds no Obama... →
This L.A. Times blog post headline pretty much sums it up.
“[S]he hails her own cabs … .”
– Al Hunt, explaining why Caroline Kennedy would be a good Senator
To be honest, had no idea that an ultra-rich person wouldn’t hail his or her own cab.
“We’re going to expropriate that and turn it into a hospital — I...”
– Chavez says mall to be expropriated in Venezuela: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance
Don’t you love the whimsical Chavez? Or maybe we’ll make it a park, or a zoo. I don’t know … it will be whatever I feel like whenever I get around to making the decision, and it will probably...
The Fundamental Fallacy of Expertise
I don’t really believe in Global Warming Climate Change.[1] Yes, I’m aware of the “studies” and the “consensus” and the long list of credentialed and honored experts that argue that the debate is over. I think they are probably all wrong. It’s not that I’ve studied all the data. (I haven’t). It’s not that I’m trained in...
“The city of Vallejo—population 120,000—declared bankruptcy earlier this year...”
– What If New York Goes Bust? - The Daily Beast
My take: For years, governments wasted money because money was easy. The good news … because so much was wasted and skimmed, there’s a lot that can be cut without it being felt in a measurable way by the public.
In my wildly uniformed...
The Wire, on DVD
I think the Wire is the greatest show in television history. Here’s a great price on the complete DVD set, as noted on SlickDeals.net:
The Wire: Complete Series 23-Disk DVD Box Set $90 Comments (51) | Share This | Permalink Amazon and Best Buy have The Wire: Complete Series 23-Disk DVD box set for $90. Free shipping from Amazon or with in-store pickup at Best Buy, otherwise it’s $2....
December 20, 2008: Blog like a parody of yourself...
squashed:
Because sufficient self-awareness to know how to parody yourself is good for you.
I understand what Squashed is saying here. We’ve all felt the temptation to tell other people how to live their lives … what to eat, what to drink, who to love, and, of course, what to blog. But Tumblr would be a rather boring read if everyone committed themselves to the same exercise. And...
The Story of How I Came to Love Michael Jackson
On August 16, 1978, a local radio station honored the first anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death by playing his records for 24 straight hours. For reasons no longer entirely clear, I was mesmerized by this radio tribute, and thus became completely obsessed with the music of Elvis Presley. I was six years old at the time.
Over the next few years, I listened only to oldies from the fifties...
Obama and Science
Fascinating/Troubling, from John Tierney:
Does being spectacularly wrong about a major issue in your field of expertise hurt your chances of becoming the presidential science advisor? Apparently not, judging by reports from DotEarth and ScienceInsider that Barack Obama will name John P. Holdren as his science advisor on Saturday.
Dr. Holdren, now a physicist at Harvard, was one of the experts in...
“Frankly, though, I don’t see how any review could really spoil what may be among...”
– Movie Review - Seven Pounds - An I.R.S. Do-Gooder and Other Strangeness - NYTimes.com
This A. O. Scott review is worth a look. I take it that the film is not.
I do hope for a Will Leitch review of this, though.
Dan Bern’s Christmas Song
Yeah, I know I...
“Ford Motor Co. said Friday it would not need a short-term loan from the...”
– Ford says does it not need short-term loans from bailout
This is weird. Bed, Bath & Beyond didn’t want the Government to save Linens and Things. FexEx didn’t want the Government to save DHL. Ford would unquestionably benefit if GM and Chrysler were to disappear; if nothing else,...
Behavior and Taxes
robot-heart:
The medical cost of obesity in this country is almost $80 billion/year. If you consider just how many of those people are poor and either uninsured or receive government aid for healthcare, you can begin to see how the financial burden of health problems related to obesity and to poor diet generally cost the government and the American people. Encouraging healthier eating habits...
“The bottom line is this: we are being asked to believe that a big, trillion or...”
– Tyler Cowen
WatchThis is the early, internet premiere of the first episode of Season Two of Flight of the Conchords. (I didn’t watch it. I’ll be waiting a month to watch it air on HBO because I need to see it in the full glory of HD, which makes me ridiculous.)
The Great Wait-Out
There are some who feel that Don Sutton made it into the Hall of Fame because of mere longevity … that this longevity helped him pile up stats that overstate his talent, and that at any given moment in his career, he wasn’t a Hall of Fame caliber player. For example, in 1988, Dan Shaughnessy wrote:
Is Don Sutton a Hall of Famer? If he ever retires, baseball writers will be faced with...
Weird Little Thing, by Dan Bern