I went to watch the Arizona Wildcats beat Northern Arizona University in the first home game of the season last night in front of a happy home crowd. I’ve only been to one other American Football game in my life, so there was a whole novelty dimension. During the halftime show, as the “marching band”:http://www.arts.arizona.edu/band/athletic/marchingband.html played Led Zeppelin favorites and marched in complex, quasi-aesthetic formations (it looked and sounded like you might imagine), the “color guard”:http://web.cfa.arizona.edu/colorguard/ drew a disproportionate amount of attention. (The color guard join in the band routines, twirling and throwing large flags. It looks tricky.) The color guard wore blue pants and sparkly, ruby-colored bustiers … except for one of them, whose whole upper body was covered in sparkly goodness. His presence was hard to miss, partly because he was the only male in the colorguard, partly because he was about twice the size of his fellow flag-bearers, but mostly because he twirled more effusively and pirouetted more extravagantly than anyone else. He flung himself _en arrière_ and _en avant_, he pirouetted under the posts and _jeté _-ed across the fifty yard line. He was terrific. Some people in the crowd got a little wound up, apparently annoyed that a gender boundary might be in danger of subversion on the very altar of American masculinity’s defining ritual. There were some catcalls and cries of “Get that guy outta there!” But mostly people loved it. And the guy himself could have cared less, blissed out as he was in front of 40,000 people, having reached a kind of camp Nirvana.
From the category archives:
Et Cetera
I’ve been very busy over at Lifehacker. A friend of mine says it’s like “quirky academic meets Martha Stewart”. I’m not sure how I feel about that, but it’s a reasonable description of what I’ve been up to. Here are some posts I put up in the past couple of days. I will have a roundup of all the free downloads later in the week. If you can’t wait, feel free to check out the site directly.
General tips
- Request hold-mail service online (in the US)
- When to call across time zones
- Turn postcards into wall decorations
- How to fold a shirt
- Tips for public speaking
GMail/Flickr tips
Eugene Volokh has been “arguing”:http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_08_21-2005_08_27.shtml#1124731507 that by pushing for a society where homosexuality isn’t illegal, repressed or stigmatized, gay people are out to convert those who might not have otherwise engaged in homosexual activity. In much the same way, I suppose, many 16 to 18 year olds are out to convert one another to various forms of heterosexual activity. The post is a good example of Volokh’s approach to the social scientific end of legal thinking: a bit of initial data followed by some big hypotheticals followed by a lot of speculation about the motives of some person or persons unknown. The end result is a very narrow argument (on one reading he’s just arguing that bisexuals are more likely to engage in homosexual sex if homosexual activity isn’t illegal or stigmatized), but one that’s nevertheless shot through with unpleasant undertones about the gay rights movement and its supposed efforts to “convert” ordinary decent people. The whole thing depends on equivocating between the narrow denotation of the word “convert” and its broad connotations.
Meanwhile, the NYT presents some doctor arguing that observing childbirth is “such a horrible experience”:http://nytimes.com/2005/08/23/health/23case.html that many men never recover from the trauma and lose their “romantic view of their wives.” Naturally this disgust and revulsion is the woman’s problem: “Women may want to consider the risks as they invite their partners to watch them…” Belle has already given this the “response it deserves”:http://examinedlife.typepad.com/johnbelle/2005/08/would_it_hurt_i.html (my advice: bring a bag of boiled sweets, lads, and you’ll be fine). But based on the reactions of “some people”:http://www.unfogged.com/archives/week_2005_08_21.html#003934, the link to Volokh’s post becomes obvious. It’s not just gay people who are trying to recruit straight men to homosexuality, it’s also women, who entrap men in delivery rooms. By having sex with them 40 weeks or so earlier, and then putting them through this awful experience, they surely drive men away from a healthy heterosexuality. These heartless women may also be part-timing it as agents for secular Darwinism, as they show God-fearing men that while the Intelligent Designer might have done a nice job with the fine detail of mitochondria, He really was not paying attention in other departments.
Flaming the Left is a difficult matter,
It isn’t just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, you’re going to need THREE DIFFERENT FLAMES.
First of all, are the flames that the bloggers use daily,
Such as Ignorant, Jerk-in-the-Box, Leftist or Lame,
Such as Asshat or Poopy-head, Liberal or Crazy–
All comprehensible, everyday flames.
There are fancier claims if you think they sound neater,
Some for the heated times, some for the tame:
Such as Clintonite, Keynesian, New Deal, Single-Payer–
But all of them regular, everyday flames.
But I tell you the left needs a flame more particular,
Something less honest, a bit more cockeyed,
Else how can we keep up our image testicular,
Or cook up the data, or tell garish lies?
Flames of this kind are by now ten a penny,
Such as Darwinist, Feminist or Stab-in-the-Back,
Such as Idiotarian, or else Fifth Columnist,
Codes the wingnuts all listen for, on their antennae.
But above and beyond there’s still one name left over,
And that is the charge you by now have all guessed;
The thing that no liberal will ever admit to–
But RIGHT-WINGERS ALL KNOW, and have “often”:https://crookedtimber.org/2005/08/16/witchfinders-general/ “expressed”:http://www.thepoorman.net/2005/08/19/back-down-the-road-a-while/.
When you engage a liberal in argumentation,
Your tactic, I tell you, should be to defame
His motives, his background, his disloyal mother,
And be sure to
Cry Treason,
With no sense of shame.
Super smart and super nice blogger Jeremy Freese is calling out to the blogosphere in a desperate plea to help him figure out how to get his sofa into his new place. Jeremy just moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts and it turns out his beloved sofa won’t make it up the stairs into his new apartment. Even before his furniture arrived earlier this week he had already succeeded in finding wifi and keeping his blog readers updated regarding his move. Not having any furniture for a night didn’t pose any major challenges, but the sofa’s arrival yesterday meant the start of some real stress. It is still standing in the hallway its legs now only held up by the remaining three screws that won’t come off.
Anyone with suggestions on how to solve this puzzle, please leave a note on Jeremy’s blog.
I’m sure everyone has and knows of hellish moving experiences. One of the worst stories I recall concerns a friend gearing up for her last year in graduate school. The university’s housing office told her that they could not accomodate her any longer so she had to move. She packed up all her stuff and transferred everything to the new location. Unfortunately, it turned out that several items among her possessions would not fit through the doorway and hallway of her new apartment. In the end, the univ housing office let her back into her old apartment. But so why exactly was all that packing up necessary?
The winner of the most unfortunate move in my circles is my brother. He was in the midst of moving in between cities and spent a night in a motel. His truck in the parking lot got broken into overnight. The culprits managed to take all the really personal stuff that could never be replaced leaving the few things that were perhaps of any objective value (e.g. a computer). Go figure.
It seems that moving always entails some hellish experience, the question is more about the magnitude of the unfortunate events that will unfold.
UPDATE: Thanks to some helping hands and some power tools, Jeremy’s sofa is now in his apartment.
More interesting things from around the WWW.
Scott McLemee is back from a break, with two great columns. The “first”:http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2005/08/16/mclemee is on Alfredo Perez’s “Political Theory Daily Review”:http://www.politicaltheory.info/, which is one of my daily reads, and imo a simply terrific resource. It beats the better-known “Arts and Letters Daily” hands-down in terms of depth of coverage and (for me) interest. Somebody needs to give this guy a paid job doing this full-time The second is an “essay”:http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2005/08/18/mclemee on the mutual disdain of academia and journalism for each other, defending intellectual border-crossing and amateurism, in the original sense of the word.
The American Institute for Contemporary German Studies has set up a “German elections blog”:http://new.aicgs.org/news/ with commentary in English from German journalists and experts. Speaking of which, I’ve been meaning to give a plug to “Sign and Sight”:http://www.signandsight.com/intodaysfeuilletons feuilletons page for a while; it’s a great way of keeping up with the intellectual debate in Germany and elsewhere.
Tim Harford and others have set up the World Bank’s first “blog”:http://psdblog.worldbank.org/psdblog/, which aims to promote private sector approaches to international development.
My old colleague, Ron Deibert has set up “Civiblog”:http://www.civiblog.org/, a free blogging service for people involved in NGOs and civil society organizations.
Jesse at Pandagon finds Kathryn Jean Lopez wondering why the media isn’t covering an Amnesty International report on terrorism in Iraq. He notes, among other things, that “this may constitute the first time since September 11th that any conservative commentator has honestly admitted that Amnesty writes anything that isn’t a direct attack on America.”
Publius at Law and Politics has a marvelous look at Hitchens’ “sister cities” article.
I understand the emotional need to attack those who you don’t care for anyway. But the idea that the anti-war Left and the sister city program have one damned thing to do with our problems in Iraq is nothing short of full-blown delusion (though it is interesting from a psychological perspective)…
Just to be clear, if we are unsuccessful in Iraq, the people to blame are the people who caused the war to happen, not the people who didn’t want it to happen. If we are unsuccessful, the leaders who executed the war are to blame, not the liberal groups who had exactly zero influence in the war planning and execution.
You may hate the Left so bad that you’d like to wring all their necks. But that hatred has exactly zero relevance to the larger truth that you may or may not be willing to confront – if this war is lost, then Bush lost it.
I’m afraid that we might be having this argument a lot more in the future.
Beautiful Horizons is a just a terrific blog that doesn’t get as much attention as it deserves, because few other bloggers can talk on Randy Paul’s level about Central and South America.
During the Vietnam war, John Steinbeck was writing to the White House with ideas about weapons and tactics, including the idea for a baseball-sized napalm weapon. Funny old world.
Living in Texas can drive a liberal crazy, but the people here do some things right.
Finally, Brad DeLong has the Concord Coalition’s plausible forecast of budget deficits.
Spotted yesterday morning at the Amish Market in Battery Park, NYC.
!http://nicoleandhenry.smugmug.com/photos/32473971-S.jpg!
I recently traded in a 2000 Toyota 4-Runner to buy a new Prius. It’s great. My gas mileage tripled – over its 1500 miles so far, it has averaged around 50 mpg. The sight-lines take a little getting used to – or maybe it’s just the adjustment after climbing down from an SUV – but it handles well and I’ve had no problem with power. I’m very happy with it and its “super ultra low emissions.”
It will also be nice to claim a tax credit next April. However, starting next year, a provision of the new Energy Bill will cap at 60,000 per company the number of hybrids that can claim a credit. “This year alone, Toyota projects it will sell 140,000 hybrids.”
During the two quarters immediately after the cars and trucks of the automakers become ineligible for the full credit, buyers would receive 50 percent of the credit. The next two quarters after that, the credit is 25 percent. The credit is phased out entirely at the end of the fifth full quarter after the automaker sells 60,000 hybrids or advanced diesels.
“By capping the credit, Congress has limited the incentives available to companies that have been at the forefront of hybrid technology” – namely, Toyota and Honda. Way to get those incentives right, guys!
Meanwhile, Toyota is taking full advantage of its remaining incentives. The new Lexus hybrid uses its additional electric power not to increase its gas mileage, which in real world conditions stays exactly the same as its gas-powered equivalent, but to boost its horsepower. (However, the additional power seems to be largely offset by the increased weight of the hybrid system.) And, yes, it still does qualify for the tax incentive – up to the 60,000 cut-off, of course.
Kevin Drum is “mystified”:http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_07/006789.php by “cricket slang”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/cricket/england/4711875.stm. Me, too. The important thing to remember is that England are losing in a really entertaining way.
In honor of the first manned Moon landing, which took place on July 20, 1969, we’ve added some NASA imagery to the Google Maps interface to help you pay your own visit to our celestial neighbor. Happy lunar surfing.
Be sure to zoom in all the way.
[thanks]
Two addenda to posts I wrote last week.
First, the “New York Times”:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/16/politics/16immigrants.html?ei=5094&en=ed9000bb0979f7ff&hp=&ex=1121572800&adxnnl=1&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print&adxnnlx=1121702930-H0vhXu9rNu0DeaqhsRIh8A picks up on the “OSHA sting”:https://crookedtimber.org/2005/07/12/impersonating-osha/ story; it appears that the immigration officials responsible are getting a lot of flak, as they should be. Thanks to Matthew Lister for the tip.
Second, Sean Carroll provides contact details for WBEZ, the radio station which “cancelled Odyssey”:https://crookedtimber.org/2005/07/14/odyssey-cancellation/ last week. Anyone who wants to suggest politely that they reconsider this decision should contact:
Torey Malatia
General Manager, WBEZ
848 E. Grand
Chicago IL 60611
312-832-3312
tmalatia@wbez.org
Sean and a group of other physicists have just started a new group-blog, “Cosmic Variance”:http://cosmicvariance.com/. Looks good.
While I’m here in Australia (which is not for much longer), my address can be written out almost entirely in acronyms:
Kieran Healy
“SPT”:http://socpol.anu.edu.au/, “RSSS”:http://rsss.anu.edu.au/, “ANU”:http://www.anu.edu.au/,
“ACT”:http://www.about-australia.com/act.htm 0200, Australia.
All of these acronyms are actively in use, so a letter addressed this way would be properly delivered. Some kind of record, shurely?
“Steve Bainbridge”:http://www.professorbainbridge.com/2005/07/inside_informat.html makes an interesting argument about prediction markets.
bq. On the one hand, just as Henry Manne justified insider trading in stock markets by arguing that it improved the accuracy of stock market prices, bets by knowledgeable insiders will significantly enhance the predictive power of markets like the TradeSports contracts. Indeed, given the limits on the power of insiders to affect prices in the stock market, the effect is likely to be much stronger in prediction markets, where the ratio of activity by informed traders to that of uninformed ones is likely to be much higher than in stock markets. … On the other hand, in commercial prediction markets like TradeSports contracts, the proprietor of the market presumably has an incentive to eliminate informed insider trading. If there’s a fairly high probability that you’d be betting against somebody with inside information, who thus can’t lose, would you bet? Me neither.
Bainbridge’s argument here reminds me a little of this old “post”:https://crookedtimber.org/2003/08/05/hayekian-markets-reconsidered/ of Dan’s, which argues among other things that Hayek’s notion of the market as a knowledge-creating entity sits rather uneasily with more standard economic arguments such as efficient-market theory. But Bainbridge’s argument is somewhat different and points to a different tradeoff. If you want to use markets to make the best predictions possible on the basis of available information, you’ll want to allow insider trading, which is, by definition, trading by those with valuable hidden information. But this means that you’re likely to lose liquidity by driving out ordinary punters who don’t want to be fleeced by those in the know. And without ordinary punters, insider traders have no incentive to transact (the only reason that they would want to transact is to fleece suckers who know less than they do). The only way in which this contradiction can really be resolved is if there’s a supply of suckers out there, who are willing to make bets against people who are better informed than they are. As Bainbridge points out, this is a condition that can be satisfied. But by and large, it’s only satisfied when people have extraneous reasons to make a bet (they enjoy a flutter). Bets that aren’t “fun,” or otherwise attractive in some way aren’t likely to attract suckers. Thus, they’ll have low liquidity, and not be very useful as a source of information (this seems to be borne out by the empirics; as the authors of “this paper”:http://faculty-gsb.stanford.edu/zitzewitz/Research/Five%20Questions.pdf note, “as the wonkishness of the contract rises, however, volume and liquidity falls rapidly.”) Thus, even apart from the objections that Dan and John Q. have raised in past posts, prediction markets aren’t likely to be very useful for a very wide variety of important policy issues.
If I had all the time in the world, I’d have more to say about these links that I’ve been sleeping on: