March 03, 2005

Bullet points

Posted by Daniel

Lots of post ideas stacked up, so time to clear them by just publishing my notes:

Lessons from the Argentinean crisis and default, with applications to the current state of the US economy
  • Massive devaluations work

(this could be part of a series including “Lessons from the UK experience, Lessons from the Asian crisis, the Mexican crisis etc etc etc)

Thoughts on current developments in Lebanon
  • The important thing to note is that when the USA acts alone, a hundred thousand people die. When it stands together with France, putting the rogue state on notice that it can’t depend on its historic friends, we win without firing a shot. And this is a victory for unilateralism in foreign policy?
An introduction to Linear Algebra for Econometricians, pitched at a level which ought to allow you to read a graduate-level econometrics textbook
  • X’X means a sum of squares
  • (X’X)-1X’Z is a linear regression of Z on X
  • Most of the rest you can pick up from context.

That’ll do for the minute, cheers.

January 31, 2005

Odds and ends

Posted by Ted

- The biggest news today, the election in Iraq, seems to have gone better than I would have dreamed. It’s no secret that I don’t think that the Bush administration has much to be proud of. But they deserve credit, along with the courageous Iraqi voters, for the first real elections in half a century. When Bush said that the terrorist hostility to the elections showed the emptiness of their vision, he was exactly right.

Iraq isn’t out of the woods. There may come a time when we look back and see how the elections made inevitable the Iraqi civil war/ next brutal strongman/ rise of our robot overlords. However, let the record show that, as of 1/30/05, I certainly didn’t have any better ideas.

- On the subject of forced investments in ideologically offensive companies, Greg Klass has a paper on the “compelled subsidization doctrine”, which holds that entities have a First Amendment right against being forced to subsidize speech with which they disagree. He writes, “If one could make out the case that limiting investment options “compels” investment in certain companies (because it prevents you from investing only in the high-return companies whose speech/policies you agree with), it would be possible to extend this odd First Amendment doctrine to the SS privitization proposals.”

- I believe that there was only one other response from an mp3 blogger to the “greatest hits that never were” challenge: Keith at Teaching the Indie Kids to Dance Again recommends (and posts) a few great poppy tracks by the short-lived punk band Osker.

January 05, 2005

The Garden State

Posted by John Holbo

Zoë likes They Might Be Giants, "No!". Santa brought it. Amazing how many of the things Santa brought daddy likes, too. "The Edison Museum", for example:

The Edison Museum, not open to the public
Its haunted towers rise into the clouds above
Folks drive in from out of town
To gaze in amazement when they see it

Just outside the gate I look into the courtyard
Underneath the gathering thunderstorm
Through the iron bars, I see the Black Mariah
Revolving slowly in its platform
In the topmost tower, the lights burn dim
A coiling filament glowing within

The Edison Museum, once a bustling factory
Today is but a darkened cobweb covered hive of industry
The tallest, widest and most famous haunted mansion
in New Jersey!

Behind a wooden door, the voice of Thomas Alva
Recites a poem on a phonograph
Ghosts float up the stairs, like silent moving pictures
The loyal phantoms of his in house staff
A wondrous place it is, there can be no doubt
But no one ever goes in, and no one ever goes out

The Edison Museum, not open to the public
Its haunted towers rise into the clouds above it
The largest independently-owned and operated mausoleum.

As Henry James might have said, for actual implies possible (see p. 18): "It was an adventure, unmistakeably, ... to be learning at last, in the maturity of one's powers, what New Jersey might 'connote'."

Not what 'New Jersey' might connote, mind you.

Consider this an open thread only for those in the maturity of their powers.

May I remind you, and this goes as well for those with lesser powers: there are disaster victims who need your help. Please consider donating generously. And - I am sorry to repeat myself - if you were going to buy something from Amazon anyway, please consider using the Search Box under the fold to do so. Costs you the same, and that way 5.75% goes to me and I give it to the Singapore Red Cross. Thank you, those of you who have helped already. (And, to our anonymous drunken monkey offerer of matching funds: they have been met. You may donate your 200 euros now. Thank you!)

Search Now:

October 02, 2004

Political LazyWeb

Posted by Kieran

If anyone has a copy of “There’s No Land Like Poland” from Not the Nine O’Clock News in convenient MP3 format, this would be a good time to send it to me.

September 27, 2004

Sometimes I doubt my commitment to SparkleMotion

Posted by Ted

Imaginary correspondent R. writes to say,

You seem to be going through your regularly scheduled bimonthly funk, in which you are frustrated with blogging. Why not work your way through it by writing a list recommending some of your favorite things, rather than waste everyone’s time with a “whither blogging” post? It’s quite charming when McSweeney’s does it.

Out of the mouths of imaginary constructs, as they say. As it happens, I have some recommendations…

Shaun of the Dead: When I walked out of that movie, I immediately said to my friend, “People are going to be watching that movie thirty years from now.” (Virgina Postrel illustrates what I mean.) Funny, scary, and completely original. If the Oscar-bait biopic Ray has 1/10th of the humor and humanity of Shaun of the Dead, I’ll be a happy camper.

Get Right With God: How often have you said to yourself, “I’d sure love an album full of uptempo vintage gospel, but I have no idea where to look”? Pretty darn often, I’ll bet. I came across this over the weekend, and haven’t stopped playing it. The recordings vary in quality, but it’s worth it. I can’t remember the last time I got an album which oozed with so much joy.

The Heart of the Matter, by Graham Greene. Set in colonial Africa during the Second World War, it’s a sort of moral suspense story of a good man struggling with guilt.

Pants from Express Men: Pants are a very personal thing, and your mileage may vary. Personally, I doubt that I could get custom-made pants that fit better. I bought a pair of jeans from Express Men, and they quickly became my favorite pants. Later, I bought a pair of dress slacks for work, and they also became my favorite pants. Long may you run, Express Men.

No More Mister Nice Blog and The Slacktivist: If either one of these guys posted more, they’d be the ones being profiled in the New York Times.

Chicken with two lemons: I saw this recipe in Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. The introduction said that this is recipe produced incredibly juicy chicken with no brining and no added fat. Frankly, I didn’t see how that was possible, but I appreciated the ease of the recipe and thought I’d give it a try. (It’s a great cookbook, but most of the recipes are more complicated.)

The book was right. The skin is sort of tough, but the meat itself is astoundingly juicy, with a delicate lemon perfume that you can enhance at will with the juice from the baked lemons.

3-4 pound chicken 2 small lemons
Salt
Pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Wash chicken inside and out. Thoroughly pat dry with paper towels.

Season skin and cavity generously with salt and pepper.

Roll lemons on countertop to soften them. Stab lemons with fork about 20 times and stuff into cavity. I sew up the cavity with a pin from a trussing kit, without completely sealing it. If you don’t have a pin, a toothpick or two would work.

Tie the legs loosely- you don’t want to bind them to the body of the bird, you just want to prevent them from spreading apart when the skin swells.

Put the chicken in a roasting pan, breast down, and cook for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, turn chicken breast-side-up. Cook for 30 minutes.

Raise heat to 400 degrees F. Cook another 20 minutes.

Remove from oven and let sit for a few minutes. Carve and serve. Squeeze lemon juice at your discretion.

August 29, 2004

Load the flying bats

Posted by John Holbo

Link

After Flatworld, the sight of Oklahoma senator James Inhofe buckling on a virtual reality helmet at ICT headquarters seems positively old school. A technician shouts “Load the flying bats!” and the senator is transported to a damp tunnel near a farmhouse that may be an enemy hideout. Insects whir and water trickles in surround sound while digitized bats swoop and dive overhead. Inhofe is impressed. “It’s the closest thing to reality that I’ve ever experienced,” he says. “My feet felt wet.”

The senator is the institute’s most powerful advocate in Congress; he cosponsored the clause in the 2003 Defense Appropriations Act that gave ICT $7 million to build the Fort Sill installation. Last spring, the institute locked down another five-year contract with the Army.

A Republican who ran on a platform of “God, guns, and gays,” Inhofe revels in making statements that don’t play well in the liberal precincts of Blogistan. “I look wistfully back to the days of the Cold War,” he says, resting his cowboy boots on a chair after doffing his VR helmet. “Now someone very small can pose a greater threat than the Soviet Union.”

Some questions:

1) If the closest thing to reality Inhofe has ever experienced are simulated bats, what’s the thing farthest away from reality that he’s experienced? (And does this seem like a winning slogan? ‘Bush/Cheney ‘04: Load the Flying Bats!’ It trips off the tongue better than ‘jumping the shark through the looking-glass’.)

2) Why do Republicans love gays so much? (I’ve heard all the arguments: if gays are outlawed, only outlaws will have gays. Fair enough. But still. Should everyone have the right to carry a concealed gay? Isn’t that taking ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ a bridge too far?)

3) When did the liberal precincts of Blogistan become the paradigm liberal precincts?

4) Wouldn’t it make an better story if somehow Inhofe found himself trapped in the damp tunnel near the farmhouse. FOREVER.

5) Wouldn’t it be weird if it turned out Inhofe was, after all, a complex simulation run by flying bats?

6) If X is a thing that makes your feet feel wet, how much more likely is X to be real than Y, if Y is a thing that doesn’t make your feet feel wet?

7) Cool! Where can I get one?

8) I wonder what Timothy Burke thinks of all this cool game stuff?

March 30, 2004

big girl's blouse

Posted by John Holbo

Is this thing on? OK this question is really more of a digression. The Poor Man’s proposed Bush reelection ad raised a lot of hackles … and a lot of questions. Specifically, I have long known that the English - perhaps all denizens of Great Britain and (some) former British colonies? - use the phrase ‘big girl’s blouse’ in a derogatory manner. But I don’t know how to pronounce it. I don’t know where the stress should fall. Presumably on the element that makes the item of apparel self-evidently bad. But I am afraid my moral intuitions fail me on this point. Is it bad to be a girl, or a BIG girl (hence the blouse is only bad by metonymic association); or is it bad to be a blouse, or a BIG blouse, or a big GIRL’S blouse, or a BIG GIRL’S blouse, or all of these at once? (In which case the stress would naturally fall evenly on all three elements?)

It all just goes to show that English is a tonal language. All answers should be formulated, likewise, as digressions.

UPDATE: Woah. I posted this thing after Kieran and Quiggin posted theirs, but here it is underneath. That’s time zones for you, I guess.

February 28, 2004

Damn you, Bill Gates!

Posted by John Holbo

Isaiah Berlin’s “Two Concepts of Liberty” contains a sentence fragment, which, in context, constitutes an answer to some such question as ‘what are we on about, eh?’ Typed it in today, and had occasion to consult MS-Word about spelling overall. And no way to do that without getting two-cents worth about grammar. So what do you suppose the Beast of Redmond thinks we should do about “That which a man cannot give up without offending against the essence of his human nature”? Answer: “consider revising.”

February 27, 2004

Space Merchants

Posted by Henry

Has anyone else come across the new ads on the NYT’s website with both animation and sound (I hit one reading this piece)? It’s offensive and obtrusive; when you’re trying to read an article, the last thing you want to deal with is some bloke yelling inanities about the latest box-office stinkeroo. We’ve moved from static banners to animated banners, to popunders, to popovers, to popthroughs, to flyovers to this. Mozilla Firefox doesn’t seem to block it. If this sort of thing becomes standard on the Times, it’ll be enough to stop me reading the paper (I use my computer as my sound system, so don’t want to have to disconnect my speakers).

February 09, 2004

Panopticon

Posted by Ted

Just a few links and announcements:

  • I’ve had a generous offer from a reader to match my contribution to the “Punk the NR” contest. I don’t expect anyone to get a letter printed, but if they do, they’ll get a gift certificate for $20 instead of $10, and they’ll be competing for a $40 first prize instead of a $20 one.
  • Katherine at Obsidian Wings is taking a break. Entirely understandable, but a shame; her exhaustive blogging on the Maher Arar case is a terrific example of the best of the medium.
  • Kevin Drum appears to be seriously moving the ball forward on the AWOL story. (Maybe.)
  • Adam Felber has a great post on gay marriage:
We’re all for the separation of church and state, naturally, but if the government doesn’t define marriage as the sacred union between a man and a woman, who will? Are Jeanne and I expected to treasure our union solely on the basis of our deep love, personal beliefs, public vows, and the government’s blessing? Sorry, Judge Pinkypants, but that’s just not good enough. Not for us. We need to know that we’ve got something that’s only available to 90% of the population, the select and upstanding few.

Sure, some of us are criminals. Murderers, even. Some of us have committed rape, beaten children, tattooed swastikas on our bodies, abused animals, broken into houses, bilked the government out of millions of tax dollars, lied under oath, cheated on previous spouses, dishonored our fathers and mothers, failed to keep the Sabbath holy…

But we’re straight, and that means we can get married. And that’s special. Or, at least, it was.


* Gary Farber asks a question that has continued to bother me: since it’s turned out that people like Hans Blix and Joseph Wilson were correct, will any of their critics bother to apologize? (I spent some time earlier this week looking up pre-war quotes about Hans Blix, and actually found myself too depressed to continue. I should note that Andrew Olmstead has said something.)
* I’ve noted before that I don’t think highly of blogger triumphalism. But I defy anyone to compare Dwight Merideth to Maureen Dowd on the infamous Cheney-Scalia duck hunt, and then explain to me why Dowd gets paid for this.
* Finally, is it just me, or has this blog improved tremendously with the addition of John Quiggin? Sorry to get meta, but I’m just so pleased to have him here.

December 22, 2003

Big tent politics

Posted by Daniel

Via email, I discover that there is something out there called the Libertarian Green National Socialist Party, operating under the slogan that “National Socialism is neither leftist nor rightist; it is naturalist, and inherently environmental.”

Though their choice of URL does rather give the game away.

October 07, 2003

Capitalisme sauvage

Posted by Henry

For heartless capitalists only: the Financial Times advises us that stuffed kittens may be a sound investment. As long as they’re high quality stuffed kittens, of course.

October 04, 2003

L. Ron at Ground Zero

Posted by Kieran

The New York Times reports that a number of firefighters have been receiving treatment for stress at a clinic located near the site of the World Trade Center and run along lines prescribed by L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology. The “detoxification program” has the Firefighters “take saunas, engage in physical workouts and swallow pills.” The precise composition of the pills is unclear. Tom Cruise has paid for many of the treatments.

Ah, Scientology. Was there ever a more entertaining belief system embedded in a more ruthless organization? (Apart from the obvious one, I mean.) And then there is L. Ron Hubbard himself — a man whose abilities and achievements were quite literally incredible. But don’t take my word for it.

Instead, read and ponder “L. Ron Hubbard: A Chronicle”, an official summary of Hubbard’s life and legacy. My favorite section of this biography is the period between 1970 and 1973, when L. Ron turned his gargantuan intellect to topics in sociology and philosophy:

Having developed a successful and standardized pattern of organizational form and function, Ron turns to resolving the problems of how to manage an international network of organizations. Ron streamlines organizational management technology – laying out highly workable principles of personnel, organization and financial management and handling which are found today in the Management Series volumes.

This work forms the cornerstone of graduate-level reading in the sociology of organizations. Whenever I teach Orgs, L. Ron gets the first six weeks to himself. Then maybe we move on to Weber or Herb Simon or one of those guys.

His breakthroughs at this time include the first significant advances on the subject of logic since ancient Greece.

Consult your local copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica or any work on the history of the field for further information. Bandwidth constraints mean I can only make passing mention of Hubbard’s Begriffsschrift, his Calculus of Logic, the Hubbard-Lowenheim-Skolem theorem, Principia Lronica, his subsequent “On Formally Outrageous Propositions of Principia Lronica and Related Systems” and finally Hubbard’s Completeness Theorem for Modal Logic which proves Scientology correct in all possible worlds.

Ron conducts a comprehensive study of all existing public relations theories and practices and also releases his discoveries in the field of public relations, providing an entirely analytical and ethical approach to the subject.

L. Ron’s ethical approach public relations is exemplified by this very Chronicle, and throughout all of Scientology’s websites.

In 1972 L. Ron Hubbard carries out a sociological study in and around New York City. Through the remainder of the year and into 1973, he researches vitamins and nutrition which will later become significant in his breakthroughs in the handling of the residual effects of drugs.

L. Ron’s attentions shift to the Arts in 1974. If you’ve done six impossible things before breakfast then it’s time to shake your booty:

In February 1974, while aboard the Apollo [his ship, and — surprisingly — not the spacecraft — KH], Ron forms a music and dance troupe to provide entertainment and goodwill at Spanish and Portuguese ports of call. He personally instructs the musicians and dancers in artistic presentation, music, composition, sound, arranging and recording.

But back to the serious stuff, and our Firefighters:

Ron discovers that drugs remain in the body even years after usage has ceased. Consequently, he develops the Purification Program to rid the body of harmful residual substances. … These techniques [are] used by churches of Scientology and drug rehabilitation organizations around the world…

The many success stories just cry out for publicity. Incidentally,

It is also in 1979 that Ron isolates and solves the problem of increasing illiteracy.

Just in case you thought he was slacking off with the Iberian Cabaret.

September 12, 2003

So who are the people in your neighborhood?

Posted by Henry

Via Laura at Apartment 11D comes this fascinating website. Enter your zipcode, and you can find out which cheesy and facile marketing categories inhabit your neighborhood. Are you going through difficult times along with other Hard Years Sustaining Families, or hanging out with hip and happening Successful Singles? Details also provided on the likely purchasing habits of your neighbours (‘Struggling Metro Mixes’ are likely to buy jewelry, and own more than four televisions). You could waste hours if you’re not careful.

Neal Stephenson and his uncle had a lot of fun with these kinds of marketing labels in their pseudonymously written Interface (purportedly written by ‘Stephen Bury’). Among the subcategories that Interface’s crazed political-demographic operatives identify in their efforts to manipulate the American voting public are:

* Mid-American Knick-Knack Queens
* Post-Confederate Gravy Eaters
* Frosty-Haired Coupon Snippers
* Mall-Hopping Corporate Concubines
* Debt-Hounded Wage Slaves
* Trade School Metal Heads
* Depression-Haunted Can Stackers

By their labels shall ye know them.

August 09, 2003

Paranoid Android

Posted by Henry

And while we’re being snippy with tech-crazy rightwing bloggers, has anyone checked out Steven den Beste lately? His topic du jour is how European males don’t like rugged, manly Harley-Davidson bikes, and have persuaded them to come out with a ‘castrated,’ ‘effeminate’ version. Whatever. I dunno - I’ve never been able to get the den Beste thing myself. He’s always reminded me of the bloke in Searle’s Chinese Box - parsing and recombining facts without ever understanding them. I imagine him locked in a cubicle somewhere, endlessly surfing the web for factoids which he weaves together into vast conspiratorial ‘explanations’ that are almost, but not quite, unlike real political analyses. His posts are vaguely interesting on the level of spectacle, but I can’t for the life of me imagine why anyone takes him seriously. Evidently, the WSJ Opinion Journal disagrees.

July 09, 2003

Uqbar

Posted by Daniel

Up until recently, I had rather arrogantly assumed that a lot of people were either terribly ignorant about world affairs or were telling lies on purpose. However, ever since the run-up to the war on Iraq, I have been troubled by a much more worrying possibility. In the first few months of this year, I read a number of short articles containing references to the appeasement of Hitler in the 1930s which, from the context, caused me to suspect that my internet connection was in some way dragging in material from a parallel universe; one in which the USA entered the Second World War in 1939 as a pre-emptive measure rather than 1941 in response to an attack. It just began to seem more plausible explanation than to assume that so many people were making precisely the same error.

When you start thinking this way, of course, you begin to notice all sorts of other examples. Below, I’ve listed a number of statements that are definitely true in my universe. If any of them strike you as being definitely false, then something very interesting indeed is going on. I would particularly like to get in touch with several of you (not all), as I fear that your mathematics is beginning to leak into my world. I had previously to this date established to my own satisfaction certain propositions relating to the amount of money available for pensions in the future, but a person, who I am sure I remember from university, is currently making arguments which appear to me to breach fundamental adding-up constraints. My list follows:

  • The total death toll attributable to Stalinist Communism was much closer to 20 million than 60 million
  • “Don Quixote” was written by Guillermo de Cervantes
  • The murder rate in Australia did not suddenly spike upwards as the result of new firearms legislation in 1996
  • There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq
  • The Zahir is no longer kept in the British Museum; it has not been there for some time
  • Native-born British people are citizens of the United Kingdom and have not been referred to as “subjects” since the reform Acts of 1832.
  • It is not possible to introduce tobacco genes into a maize plant by a normal process of cross-breeding
  • Sydney is the capital of Australia
  • Senator Joseph McCarthy falsely accused a number of people of being Communists during the 1950s.
  • Osama bin Laden is an enemy of Saddam Hussein and has repeatedly denounced the Iraqi government
  • Dunsop Bridge in Northumberland is at the centre of gravity of the island of Great Britain
  • The land mass currently occupied by the United States of America was formerly occupied by human beings, who were largely exterminated during its settlement by Europeans
  • The polar ice caps are melting.
  • The West Bank of the River Jordan is not part of the State of Israel
  • Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote the majority of his work in Spanish
  • The Gross Domestic Product of Russia fell by 42% during the years 1991-1994.

For obvious reasons, I have not provided hyperlinks backing up these assertions, as it is the very source of those hyperlinks which is the matter in question, but you must please accept my assertion as sincere that none of these facts is in the remotest doubt. Thank you in advance for your help