semiquark

Looking for the next best thing

2006-03-23T10:10:00.000-06:00

Why am I first?

This post is the latest in an irregular, navel-gazing series on searches that brought visitors here. Also, I predict the next wave in spam sites.

1. bush appoints chief justice

Google coughs up more than twelve million pages on this query, and my satirical blog post is number one. "Bush Appoints His Mountain Bike as Next Chief Justice" sits ahead of pages from unimportant sites like supremecourtus.gov, cnn.com, jurist.law.pitt.edu, and en.wikipedia.org. I don't understand. I did do a few things Google likes:

I've written on the subject before (when I suggested someone Bush was even unlikelier to appoint);
the post has the search words in the right order;
even better, the search terms are in both the page's title and url;
and there are links to authoritative sources (like Slate, several newspapers, and, especially, Wikipedia).

But the post also has something Google dislikes: there are no external links to it. Zero. Once upon a time, I complained that Google hated me. But this is a little more Google-love than I'm comfortable with, at least for this search. I suspect they're playing with their ranking algorithm, and things will soon return to normal.

2. what does riding shotgun mean
Second out of 1,300,000. The post title is "Riding shotgun", and the post's body has the word "mean", so the post's words are in the same order as the search.

3. ANWR map
4. chicago crime map
My top search referrers. The search term is in the post title, and there are links from other sites. Yes, I am a map geek.

6. beedogs
Sixth out of 24,000. Post title, and Wikipedia link.

7. grandiose behavior
Why third out of 583,000? Because I am such a good example of it! I am the bestest example of it EVAR! (Well, third bestest.) "Grandiose behavior" isn't in the title of my post, but is at the start of a list. Also, there's a Wikipedia link.

8. hermione elf liberty
First out of 22,000. The search words appear in tables. And there's a W-pedia link.

9. anders celsius college education
First of 24,000. Yeah, there's a Whiskeypedia link. But the keywords are in two different posts. The posts are consecutive, but Google may need to improve its recognition of implied delimiters, since horizontal lines, <div> tags , and dates are often used to separate fields and records (but not always, because that would be too convenient). A good implied record separator for blogs is a link to a page on the same host containing all the text immediately preceding (or following, depending on layout).

10. gold smelter design
Fortieth out of 256,000. I mentioned a gold smelter in one post, and two weeks earlier I had blogged on intelligent design. Another separator problem. If I'd stuck in a Wikipedia link, it would have been fourth instead of fortieth, I betcha.

11. Famous incidents of book burning
Second out of 7.1 million. I haven't written on this topic, but I write about books a lot, and I've mentioned book-burning in passing. This looks like Google teasing out meaning that isn't quite there.

12. sucka dj's who think they're fly!
Fourth of 26,000. I'm glad to rank so highly on such a crucial issue.

13. tom delay mugshot
Twelfth of 146,000. Another case where Google likes post titles — alt text, too. Tom DeLay is not my favorite mugshot, though. Cops suspected this guy of huffing spraypaint. What do you think gave him away?

Not a lot of suspense here. The next wave in spam sites is gratuitous Wikipedia links. As spamdexers and splogs grow more evil, their links will become ever more useless. We just have to come up with a name for their tactic. Wikipedophelia? What do you think?

Wingnuts

2006-03-21T16:32:00.000-06:00

The Illinois primary is today. The Republican candidates in the 8th congressional district have been running hard. The historically-Republican district (Philip Crane for decades, before him, Donald Rumsfeld) is represented by freshman Democrat Melissa Bean, and is considered a top pickup opportunity for the Republicans. I doubt the Republicans will take the seat back, because the tide is against them, but the winner would have a good start in the Republican House — the primary campaign is expensive, vicious, and stupid.

The two major candidates, Kathy Salvi and David McSweeney, are trying to win the primary by running to each other's right. The result is that they get bunched up together, almost indistinguishable on the fringe. They're afraid to attack each other for being too conservative. And there may be no such thing, at least in the primary. But they are so far out on the edge that every attack makes its target sound reasonable and responsible — almost like a Democrat. This rosy picture isn't reliable, though. If you look at what they say about themselves, each snaps back into focus as your standard wingnut.

Most of the charges and counter-charges have been broadcast on TV and radio. Ad nauseam: Each candidate has dumped more than a million dollars of personal money into the race. They don't have the guts to put their own hit pieces online, though. From their opponents' advertising, it sounds as though

• McSweeney isn't insanely opposed to abortion. (He actually is, though. He's just slightly less anti-choice than Salvi.)

• Salvi might show insufficient deference to the whims of big corporations. (She's a personal-injury lawyer. But she supports tort "reform".)

• Neither Salvi nor McSweeney is true to the legacy of Ronald Reagan. (Wrong. They were both baptized in the festering juices of Reagan's corpse.)

If, instead of relying on their opponents' attack ads, you look at their own material, you'll see them both parrot the failed Republican orthodoxy:

• Fix the deficit by cutting taxes.

• Fix Social Security by killing it.

• Fix Iraq by wishing for a pony — wishing really hard.

It's as formulaic as spam email promising you a naked, eighteen-year mortgage, but not as well-crafted.

Just as spammers who depart from their templates become even more obviously fake, Republicans who depart from their templates become even less convincing. When Salvi and McSweeney don't follow the blueprint, they show how confused they are by taking stands that feel good, but don't tie in with the rest of the message. Salvi takes a controversial stand on traffic congestion. She's against it. McSweeney hates child molesters almost as much as he hates trial lawyers like Salvi. These programs (well, implied programs; they're too savvy to offer any specifics) may sound good, but neither fits with its candidate's alleged principles. Salvi doesn't explain how she'll bring home major pork while cutting spending to the bone everywhere else — and we're talking huge gobbets of pork to address the district's traffic problems, the kind of pork that brand-new congress-critters don't get anywhere near. McSweeney wants to introduce federal laws for state crimes, yet he claims he wants to return power to the states. And he will somehow reduce the burden of pointless federal regulation by passing unnecessary laws.

Most of what the Republican candidates say is either horrid or inane. But there's also what they don't say. They talk about the deficit. They talk about getting the troops in Iraq the materiel they need. They talk about cleaning up the mess in Washington. But they never mention whose fault it all is. They never mention the elephant in the room, the Republican party. The Republicans created the mess in Washington. Sending more Republicans will only make it worse.

Driving blind

2006-03-10T20:11:00.000-06:00

In the Bush administration, bureaucratic stupidity can be a design feature (you don't really need me to give examples, do you?). Elsewhere, bureaucratic stupidity is usually a bug, an emergent property when a well-intended program gets poorly-considered implementation.

My old favorite was a classic example. A classmate had reported on a questionnaire that his family sometimes spoke Spanish at home. So he got pulled out of class for testing, to see whether he would benefit from instruction in English as a Second Language. So far, nice and proactive. But he got yanked from an advanced placement English class, which means he was pulled from a subject where he was in the 98th percentile so that he could be tested for a program designed to improve his skills, in that very area, all the way up to maybe the 25th percentile. It was a complete waste of time, both his and the tester's. Plus, there was the opportunity cost of not using the resource for a kid who actually needed it. But my friend only missed one class, so all in all, the waste was small, cheap, and amusing. Every bureaucratic foul-up should be like that.

I have a new favorite bureaucratic foolishness. The state of Illinois requires that all high school districts offer driver's education. Given the large number of people who apparently don't know what a red octagon means, this can only be considered a good thing. Chicago Public Schools go further, requiring driver's ed for graduation. Since a car crash is the likeliest cause of my accidental demise, and I would prefer to avoid such an event, making driver's ed mandatory is even better. But CPS might be just a liiiittle too enthusiastic. They require everybody to pass driver's ed, even the blind kids. Yes, the blind kids. Read the story in the Chicago Tribune.

The chairman of the Illinois High School/College Driver's Education Association says it's not a waste of time. But even he, presumably a big booster of driver's ed, concedes that it may lack "a little common sense." I suppose you could argue that it also teaches the kids a healthy disrespect for authority, but high school already does that, and splendidly.

There's actually something surprising about this whole incident — a positive outcome. This silliness is being used as a teaching moment. The kids are writing to their aldermen and other elected officials. The requirement will surely be eased. So the kids will have the experience of petitioning the government for redress of grievances and of making a difference, however small, in their own lives. Nice.

Media watch

2006-02-24T05:45:00.000-06:00

So, the spouse and I are about to break our media fast, and we're kinda bummed out. There are so many movies we've missed lately, and it's so hard to know whether a given movie is any good. By "good", I mean "yes" answers to little questions: "Does the film fulfill the dramatic unities?" And to big questions: "Does the movie score high on the Patty-meter?"

To rate high on the Patty-meter, a film has to have lots of things that are cool (fights, frights, and explosions; wonder and joy; stuff that's shiny). It must present them in an interesting and original way (to avoid the classic Onion headline "Movie Praised For Not Being As Bad As It Could Have Been"). And it must have a minimum of stuff that sucks (You know: stuff that isn't cool.).

It's a simple idea, but nobody's doing it quite the way we'd like. Joe Bob Briggs does some of it — noting body counts, breast counts, quarts of blood, and varieties of fu —, but not all, and anyway, he doesn't seem to be very active lately.

There's lots of other quantitative film criticism. The helpful reviewers at Family Media Guide count all the profanities in a film and list the highlights. The censorial bible-thumpers at capalert.com are even more systematic. They rate every movie from 0 to 100. CAP's quantitative, "objective" methodology is so scientifical that it has its own acronym:

Wanton Violence/Crime
Impudence/Hate
Sex/Homosexuality
Drugs/Alcohol
Offense to God
Murder/Suicide

It looks like a great idea, although giving lower scores to better movies makes their scale seem backwards (like Anders Celsius' original centigrade system). But CAP isn't measuring the amount of neat stuff in a movie; really, they're measuring how hot and bothered it gets them. A funny, heartfelt movie whose theology they dislike bothers them a lot more than a pious snuff film. When a good movie pushes their buttons, it's a hoot: check out their "analysis" of Sin City. Unfortunately, they sometimes like good movies and hate bad ones — so they're not a reliable contrary indicator — rendering their exegeses more entertaining than useful.

Talking about metrics in film criticism reminded me of Wikipedia's List of films ordered by uses of the word "fuck". Which linked to a handy category, Lists of films, which in turn included such useful compendia as List of films by gory death scene and List of films about independent body parts. So there's still hope for the Patty-meter.

Riding shotgun

2006-02-14T04:37:00.000-06:00

By now everybody knows that Dick Cheney accidentally shot a fellow hunter Saturday. Harry Whittington was shot at fairly close range — he took over 200 pellets to the face, neck, and torso. And Whittington contributed to both Bush/Cheney campaigns!

The initial spin (from the ranch owner, a big-time Republican fundraiser) tried to blame Whittington, saying he snuck up on Cheney from behind. That explanation doesn't wash for two reasons. First, you're supposed to approach shooters from behind because you certainly don't want to approach from the direction they'll be shooting in. Second, the hunter has an absolute responsibility to know where he's pointing his gun (hint: not at other hunters).

This incident isn't really a big deal. Cheney won't even have to pay a fine, unlike Bush did when he shot a killdeer in 1994 (That's because lawyers aren't a protected species.). Mostly, it's an excuse for good, mean jokes: Steve Gilliard reports on Cheney's other hunts; and The Angry Sicilian points out ten ways Dick Cheney can kill you without a gun.

The shooting incident isn't a big deal, but a couple of things around it are. First, it reinforces the Bush administration's "ready, fire, aim" approach to problem-solving. More importantly, it underlines the Bushies' penchant for secrecy. Michael Froomkin points out that Cheney took much longer to talk to the law than Teddy Kennedy did after the the Chappaquiddick accident. Steve Benen says

I'm hardly the type to give these guys the benefit of the doubt, but I wasn't the least bit suspicious about the incident until the White House started dissembling. Leave it to the Bush gang to take a story in which the Vice President shot a guy and make it look worse.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

2006-02-03T03:34:00.000-06:00

With corruption poster-child Tom DeLay under indictment, House Republicans had to pick a new majority leader. Showing their deep and abiding commitment to reform, they chose John Boehner (R-OH). Boehner — whose name, unfortunately, isn't pronounced the way it looks (instead, it rhymes with "complainer") — has demonstrated his belief in responsive government by handing out tobacco lobbyists' checks on the House floor. He is also one the leading recipients of luxury travel from lobbyists.

Bonus corruption: Josh Marshall points out that the Republicans had to re-vote because, "the first count showed more votes cast than Republicans present at the Conference meeting." One of his readers comments, "That's right, the Repubs are so corrupt they can't even hold an honest INTERNAL election." This tidbit isn't in the most of the news coverage because it isn't really news, since it's such an old, dog-bites-man kind of story by now. For example, it's how Karl Rove got his start.

Realism

2006-02-01T23:33:00.000-06:00

I didn't watch President Bush's State of the Union speech yesterday. I wanted to see a realistic assessment of America's problems and plausible approaches to solving them. And I knew I wouldn't get any of that from Chimpy.

Instead, I watched a DVD from season 4 of Alias, a much better choice. Alias makes a lot more sense than anything from the Bush administration, and this was an especially choice episode. Marshall, the tech wizard, is the main character in "Tuesday" because everybody else is either under biohazard quarantine or buried alive. The episode features a novel use for a spork (even better than fomenting revolution). And it has the best lullaby EVAR:

Hush, little Mitchell, don't you cry.
Daddy's gonna teach you about lanthanides.
Cerium is first, yes it leads the way.
Hexagonal structure and it's iron gray.
Praseodymium is next and it looks like brass...

Concrete achievements

2006-01-23T14:42:00.000-06:00

I can geek out on a variety of subjects, the range of which is a little distressing (or, if you hold your head just right, rather comforting). I usually think of geekery as relating to high tech, perhaps because folks in computer subcultures were among the first to claim "geek" as a compliment to their interest and expertise — rather than the traditional comparison to the lowest sideshow performers. Or I may see geekery as high tech because because technology is involved in many of my enthusiasms, most of which which are formed by technology (science and technology), or informed by technology (science fiction), or transformed by technology (books and maps).

Today's Trib has a nice obit describing a low-tech geekery that's new to me. Gordon Ray was a civil engineer who was "an expert in concrete road and runway design". He literally wrote the book on it.

"He would talk passionately about concrete paving to anyone at any time, whether it was at a lecture or in a social setting," said George Barney, a senior vice president with the Portland Cement Association. "He was easygoing, but he was very intense in whatever he was focusing on at the time, whether it was concrete pavements or how to sink a putt on the golf course."
..........
"He had all of these pictures of Paris, and his favorite slides were of Charles de Gaulle International Airport," his daughter said. "He was so proud of everything you could do with concrete."

Go read the whole obituary.

Another fine meth: a whine

2006-01-15T02:52:00.000-06:00

An annoying law goes into effect in Illinois today. The state will try to combat illegal methamphetamine production by hassling innocent allergy sufferers. The Methamphetamine Precursor Control Act is Illinois' latest move in the ritual panic over the drug du jour. The new law requires retailers to keep products containing pseudoephedrine behind the pharmacy counter. Consumers purchasing them must show ID and sign a log. Additionally, a consumer cannot buy more than 2 packages at once, and no more than 7500 mg per month. I'm sure the law is well-intentioned, but, as the owner of overly-productive sinuses, I don't like it. It will inconvenience me, cost me money, and possibly make me a criminal — all without really affecting the illegal drug trade.

The state already requires pseudoephedrine to be kept behind the counter, which is annoying enough. Signing a log means that now there's more to do, so buying it will take longer. Another gripe is that packages don't come larger than ten days worth, so I can't even get a month's supply at a time.

And it will become more expensive. Over-the-counter drugs with pseudoephedrine have gone up fifteen or twenty percent since last year's round of state restrictions. The new rules will drive costs up and volume down, so prices will ratchet up again.

The new law may turn me into a criminal. I'm allergic to everything, including the nitrogen in the earth's atmosphere. Without allergy drugs, I am a veritable geyser of mucus. With recommended doses, I am still a fountain of snot. It takes more to get my flow down to a reasonable level. The new law will criminalize ordinary behavior by regular allergy sufferers, too. If you pick up medicine for both yourself and a family member, you will probably purchase more than 7500 mg in a month (a month's worth for one person is 7440 mg). The first time you do it, it's a Class A misdemeanor, you criminal. Third time is a Class 4 felony (and you're eligible for the House Republican leadership).

The new law won't do much to reduce illegal meth production. In the short term, it will have the same effect as crackdowns in other drug panics: there may be a brief drop in supply as the as small-timers (like this amazing loser) get forced out, but the big guys will consolidate, and end up bigger than ever. In the long run, they'll find another process to make speed. That's exactly happened when phenylacetone became a controlled substance: crooks started making meth from pseudoephedrine. The next wave in crank manufacture may involve brewer's yeast, which suggests a new selling point: organic meth. (So what if organic meth is nasty, processed, harmful shit that goes against everything the organic movement stands for? So are organic Cheetos.)

There's only one difference between today's meth mania and other drug panics. Previous crackdowns targeted drugs associated with minorities and city folks. Meth tends to be a larger problem in rural areas.

This isn't a complete and utter whine, because I still have something to be grateful for. I'm just glad the authorities haven't restricted every meth ingredient with an innocent use. For example, dihydrogen monoxide (DHMO) is still widely available. DHMO is essential for meth production (and is also used to increase marijuana yields). But DHMO is necessary for legal industry and agriculture, and so — despite the many dangers associated with DHMO — it is pretty easy to get. I take DHMO every day.

We're number one!

2006-01-10T07:55:00.000-06:00

Men's Fitness magazine recently named Chicago the fattest city in the country.

I'm doing my part. I'm on the Fatkins diet:
Nestle Crunch + Mr. Goodbar = complete protein.

Does "W" stand for "wasted"?

2006-01-10T07:42:00.000-06:00

It's symmetrical: Bush cuts brush; brush cuts Bush.

President Bush is often described as a "dry drunk", an alcoholic who has stopped drinking, but whose mind still travels in ruts eroded by booze. Dry drunk behavior is characterized by

Grandiose behavior
Pomposity
Exaggerated self-importance
A rigidly judgmental outlook
Impatience
Childish behavior
Irresponsible behavior
Irrational rationalization
Projection
Overreaction

That sounds just like our Fearless Leader, doesn't it?

But at Bottle of Blog, Ricky suggests that Bush isn't so dry. The president recently appeared with yet another facial injury, a cut on his face from clearing brush. Ricky reminisces:

when I was in college, it wasn't unusual for me and my friends to cut and clear so much "brush" that, by the next day, we couldn't even remember where we cut that brush.

Sometimes, we'd wind up, in the early hours of the morning, holding onto a toilet, just vomiting up all the "brush" we had "cut". That's called "clearing" "brush", I guess.

And he points out that

there are only two kinds of grownups in modern American life who show up in public with as many contusions, lacerations, and bruises on their faces on such a regular basis as George W. Bush:

1. Prizefighters; and

2. Falling down drunks.

He makes a case that's all too convincing.

Happy New Year!

2006-01-01T23:02:00.000-06:00

Happy New Year, everyone.

A minor typographical joy of the new year gets a little less common with each calendrical rollover, a casualty of better education and better access to fancy fonts.

Many businesses, hoping to appear more cosmopolitan — or simply extending good fellowship to every customer with a spare buck — festoon their advertising with holiday wishes in many languages. Since Spanish has the second-most speakers in the U.S., there's a lot of "Feliz Año Nuevo" out there. What you see less of now is "Feliz Año Nuevo" rendered without a tilde (~), "Feliz Ano Nuevo", which means "happy new anus."

In related news, astronomers have discovered a faint ring around Uranus.

Off Target, or: which decade is this?

2005-11-10T14:24:00.000-06:00

Target rhymes with "garget".

Walmart is still the most evil of the big retailers, but Target tries hard. P is unhappy about a promotional email she received:

I'm not sure I feel so good shopping at Target anymore. Look at the "Girls' Toys": Horse World, Dolls & Accessories, Arts & Crafts. "Boys' Toys" are Science & Nature, Trains & Train Sets, and Tech Toys. Girls get doll strollers and cribs, quiet pastoral play with the horsies, and jewelry making, while boys get a head start on well-compensated careers in science and technology with cool stuff like "Snap Circuits Jr." I would expect that kind of gender norming in the '70s and maybe '80s but in 2005? Why not just call them all "toys" and leave it for grandma to decide that little Sally needs yet another item from the Pink Aisle?

Target doesn't just short-change girls in the career department and the all-important fun department — Target literally short-changes them. The pictured girls' toys total a mere $85 vs. $180 for the boys ' stuff. The girls' toys average less than the cheapest thing Target recommends for boys.

And Target has little excuse for "wen only" and "Snap circuts". I guess the same nine-year-old boy who chooses the toys also proofreads outgoing email.

The busy lad may have been in charge of Target's web design. P concluded

I'm also pissed that there doesn't seem to be any way to easily provide feedback on this to Target thru their website, even once you wade through their "Commitment to Diversity" statement.

Just like Watergate?

2005-11-08T17:08:00.000-06:00

Increasingly, President Bush has been compared to Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal. Shoot, I implicitly did it in my last post. But that's really unfair — to Nixon. Bush could just as easily be likened to any recent Republican president.

George W. Bush is like

Nixon, without the ethics and sense of fair play.
Ford, without the grace and quick wit.
Reagan, without the intellect.
Bush I, without the common touch.

And Cheney ... Dick Cheney is like Spiro Agnew without the sex appeal.

Election Predictions 2005

2005-11-08T16:48:00.000-06:00

This is a little late to make an election prediction, but I haven't consumed any media today. I predict a near-sweep for the Democrats. Any race that's even vaguely close, the Democratic candidate will win. Same thing with propositions: if there's a chance for a Democratic proposition to carry, or for a Republican one to be defeated, that's what'll happen (Texas Proposition 2 will probably pass, despite the fact that as written, it wouldn't just ban gay marriage, it might prohibit all marriage.). And 2006 will be a Democratic tidal wave, like 1974, for much the same reason.

My predictions are tinged by partisan hope, and my record as a prognosticator reflects this. For example, I called the last presidential race in June 2004 for Kerry. It seemed so obvious. The Bushites frantically tried to claim Ronald Reagan's conservative mantle. But as Reagan ascended bodily into heaven, He failed to give W the necessary benediction. The way the Busheviks carried on, I expected Ronnie to say, "Well, this is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased." But Reagan didn't say a thing! After that, I expected the voters to realize that W was no folksy conservative, but an out-of-touch radical — and they would reject his sorry ass. Maybe I was just a little early ...

Worse than killer bees: beedogs

2005-11-06T05:32:00.000-06:00

Remember killer bees? Aggressive wild bees were threatening to hybridize with mellower domesticated bees. Killer bees turned out to a minor threat that was amusingly overhyped.

Now there's a new type of hybridization, and the results are frightening. As you can see from the images below, bees have begun hybridizing with a number of dog breeds. Many more are documented on Beedogs.com, which has over 20 pages of photos on this emerging ecological threat (via The Wisdom of the Illiterati). There are several pages on Flickr, too.

Beware of beedogs.

Ooooh, that smell

2005-11-04T12:37:00.000-06:00

One of the things I most enjoyed about living in Chicago was the smell. Really. Not every smell — not the sharp tang of ozone and burnt oil from an El train running through a tight curve, not the scent of corruption wafting from the fifth floor of City Hall. But there's one particular smell ...

If you're in the right place (it's not far from the fork of the Chicago River), especially in the wee small hours of a still night, you'll get a good whiff of the Blommer Chocolate Co., one of the country's biggest chocolate manufacturers. If you're expecting the odor, it's one of the minor pleasures of life in the big city. But if you're not expecting it, the cocoa smell just slams you. Imagine a brick, made of joy and life — hitting you upside the head. It's a sweet surprise that can brighten a whole day.

Naturally, some sorehead hated it and complained. The EPA cited Blommer for particulate emissions. Sounds like an amusing anecdote of bureaucracy run wild, right? But there's a context: the EPA has not cited Midwest Generation, which has six coal-burning power plants (of which five are in the Chicago area) that have over 7,000 violations (documented by the Illinois Attorney General's office).

Midwest Generation produces electricity and sells it to power companies. It was spun off from one utility and sold to another, a product of the Enron-ization of electric power markets. A little search through opensecrets.org shows that when Midwest Generation executives donate to candidates or parties, over 90% goes to Republicans. Suddenly, something smells, and not sweetly.

I think I need to wash off. Either

a bath, with one of Blommer's Vertical Chocolate Holding Tanks (capacity up to 25,000 pounds);
a shower, with one of their Chocolate Pumps (capacity: 500 pounds per hour to 1,000 pounds per minute).

Bush's popularity: falling like autumn leaves

2005-11-04T01:09:00.000-06:00

Down, down, down. (Photo by Mark Twells, used under a Creative Commons license)

The American people are becoming ever more unhappy with President Bush. The latest CBS poll puts his approval rating at just 35%. That makes him the most unpopular president since Nixon during Watergate. Thirty-five percent means he's down to his hardcore conservative base.

Avedon Carol points out that Cheney's approval rating is only 19%. That's worse than Nixon's when he resigned. Even conservative true believers are beginning to abandon the veep. Cheney is down in Agnew territory.

The proximate cause of all this love is Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, and his investigation into the unmasking of CIA agent Valerie Plame. He indicted Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, last week, and continues to investigate Karl Rove, Bush's alleged "brain". Most Americans think Scooter Libby is a mascot for canned peaches and have no idea who Karl Rove is. But among those who have an opinion, 78% disapprove of Rove and 86% disapprove of Libby. More Americans think the Plame affair is a big deal than were upset by Watergate at a similar stage of its investigation.

The partisan part of me wriggles in post-Fitzmas glee. But the nonpartisan part is unhappy. Bush and his gang being so unpopular is a good thing only in the limited sense that it's harder for them to arrange more bold fuck-ups: no Social Security phase-out, no more tax cuts for billionaires, and no more wars under false pretenses. On the whole, it's bad to have a leader who can't lead. Far better to have a president who's both popular and competent. Like the last one.

Halloween fun!

2005-10-28T02:30:00.000-05:00

Life is tougher for kids today than it was back in my day. Nowadays, cartoons aren't as funny, penny candy costs a nickel (or a dime!), and the Earth's gravity is a lot stronger than it used to be. But one thing has gotten a lot better: Halloween candy. Sure, there are still problems — like candy corn (In The Onion, Brach's CEO tells us that Generic Candy Corn Will Give You AIDS[*]).

Although some perils remain, Halloween candy has improved dramatically. When I was a kid, there wasn't anything a tenth as cool as "Dr. Scab's Monster Lab".

You get chocolate versions of five different external organs: crunchy fingers, toes, and ears; peanut butter–filled lips; and fudge-filled eyeballs. Note the attention to detail on the foil wrappers: the eyeballs have several iris colors, and some of the ears have hair sticking out. And the price is pretty good, too (The link is kinda expensive, but at Jewel, Dr. Scab's confections are cheaper than Hershey or Nestle.). Even better, there is tons of other body-part snackage for young Donner Party animals.

More Halloween treats:

Excessive cuteness.

Halloween safety tips from America's finest news source

Something truly scary: Google has 163,000 results for [dick cheney hentai]. Fortunately, almost all of it is just comment spam. Almost all.

The year's best jack-o-lantern?

--------------------
[*] That's really an old problem, though — all brands of candy corn cause disease. That's why flu season begins right after after the period of peak candy corn consumption.

Some good news for a change

2005-10-27T14:16:00.000-05:00

Joy in Mudville

Sox win! Sox win! Sox Win!

Bill Veeck smiles down.

Oy in Dudville

Harriett Miers withdrew her nomination. You can express your sympathies at her blog. John at AMERICAblog has a good post on what happens next.

2,000

2005-10-27T04:00:00.000-05:00

I'm sure you've seen it elsewhere: 2,000 Americans have been killed in Iraq.

It looks like this.

Rosa Parks, R.I.P.

2005-10-25T13:47:00.000-05:00

Rosa Parks, who wouldn't stand for discrimination, died. Steve Gilliard has a nice post. Billmon has her mug shot.

ANWR map conveniently "lost"

2005-10-21T06:06:00.000-05:00

The official USGS map of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was lost, just in time to expand the area to be drilled. Today's NY Times tells the story:

Arctic Map Vanishes, and Oil Area Expands

WASHINGTON, Oct. 20 - Maps matter. They chronicle the struggles of empires and zoning boards. They chart political compromise. So it was natural for Republican Congressional aides, doing due diligence for what may be the last battle in the fight over the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, to ask for the legally binding 1978 map of the refuge and its coastal plain.

It was gone. No map, no copies, no digitized version.

The wall-size 1:250,000-scale map delineated the tundra in the biggest national land-use controversy of the last quarter-century, an area that environmentalists call America's Serengeti and that oil enthusiasts see as America's Oman.

The map had been stored behind a filing cabinet in a locked room in Arlington, Va. Late in 2002, it was there. In early 2003, it disappeared. There are just a few reflection-flecked photographs to remember it by.

All this may have real consequences. The United States Geological Survey drew up a new map. On Wednesday, the Senate Energy and Commerce Committee passed a measure based on the new map that opened to drilling 1.5 million acres of coastal plain in the refuge.

The missing map did not seem to include in the coastal plain tens of thousands of acres of Native Alaskans' lands. On the new map, those lands were included, arguably making it easier to open them to energy development.

How conveeeenient for the Bush administration.

"People have asked me several times, 'Do you think someone took this intentionally?' " said Doug Vandegraft, the cartographer for the Fish and Wildlife Service who was the last known person to see the old map. "I hope to God not. So few people knew about it. I'm able to sleep at night because I don't think it was maliciously taken. I do think it was thrown out."

I can understand why he thinks that. People who archive information are appalled by the idea of destroying it. It's the same as book-burning to them — and they're right. But the Bushites have censored ANWR information before. They have even censored ANWR maps before.

In 2001 a USGS cartographer, Ian Thomas, posted maps showing how ANWR drilling would affect caribou. He followed the same procedures he had followed for 20,000 other maps. This time, though, he was fired. And Thomas's caribou maps, and thousands of others, disappeared from the web.

We know they've done it before. Why should we believe they didn't do it again?

Plame wars

2005-10-21T03:41:00.000-05:00

Patrick Fitzgerald will wrap up his investigation of the Valerie Plame leak by October 28th, when his grand jury expires. Unlike Kenneth Starr, who leaked like a firehose, Fitzgerald and his crew have kept very quiet — he has said only that he won't issue a report. (For background on the scandal, see the excellent Wikipedia article; for info on why it's not just politics as usual, Steve Gilliard excerpts a Stratfor piece on why it's really, really bad to uncover secret agents.)

No report means one of two things. Either Fitzgerald will finish up next week and say nothing, or much more likely, he'll issue indictments. His near-silence has just fueled speculation. It looks like Fitzgerald is hunting some big game: Karl Rove, Deputy White House Chief of Staff, aka "Bush's Brain" (was there ever a more left-handed compliment?); and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff.

The fun part is speculatin' on who else is a target. There will almost certainly be some henchpersons, whom I should care about. But I'm more interested in how high up it goes. My money is on Cheney, but ...

My hope is for Monkeyboy. Bush knew about the leak two years ago, and rebuked Rove — not for essentially committing treason (since Rove uncovered a spy in wartime), but for doing it sloppily. (If W were better edumacated, he might recall Talleyrand's quip "It's worse than a crime, it's a blunder." But I suspect the only Talleyrand quotation he knows is "Come Mr. Talleyrand, tally me banana.")

I can't help but feel sweet, sweet joy at the prospect of a little justice. But at the same time, my fear is: how will the Bushites react? They respond to ordinary political setbacks by crying wolf by issuing terror alerts. But this is a lot bigger. So what will they do?

Jack Balkin says Bush could just pardon everybody. It kinda runs in the family — that's what Bush I did about Iran/Contra.
At Wampum, MB Williams recalled out that yesterday was the anniversary of the Saturday Night Massacre, when Nixon axed his attorney general — and kept chopping top Justice Department officials until he found a hack willing to fire the Watergate special prosecutor, Archibald Cox (BTW, Wampum is holding a pledge drive to pay for their sponsorship of the Koufax Awards. A worthy cause!). Ray McGovern says, "Fitzgerald is at least as vulnerable as Cox was."
Devon at TPM cafe wonders "What's the worst case?" I suspect it's pretty bad, especially since ...
As Brad DeLong is fond of pointing out, "The Bush administration is worse than we imagine — even after taking account of the fact that the Bush administration is worse than we imagine."

Tom Delay mugshot

2005-10-20T15:34:00.000-05:00

"Dispense with all delay!" — Marcus Annaeus Lucan

Tom Delay was just booked on charges of conspiracy and money laundering (from The Smoking Gun via Talking Points Memo).

Which Republican criminal will be charged next?

• Frist?
• Rove?
• Rumsfeld?
• Cheney?
• Bush?

I can hardly wait to find out ...

... but I bet I won't have to wait too long.

If it wasn't for bad sex ...

2005-10-16T01:25:00.000-05:00

... I wouldn't have no sex at all.

At Shatter, Doug Hoffman is running a Bad Sex contest. Rules are here. Read the entries (heh-heh, he said "entries") here.

I'm still searchin'

2005-10-11T04:12:00.000-05:00

Search engines have been sending a lot of readers to this site lately. A few of the searches match my preoccupations, and on some of them, semiquark scores a little better than I would expect:

Google Images: Chicago maps (#173 of 12,400)

MSN Search: cow farts as source of pollution (#10 of 49).

Searches where this blog ranks high tend to be either typos:

MSN Search: gorge bush farts (#2 of 1514)

or obscure. I'm number one! on this search:

Google Images: bush cake new orleans

out of two results ...

But there are some searches where this site does much better than one would expect.

Google: what happens when knocked unconscious

This site was #2 of 481,000! You can sort of explain that by the odd phrasing of the query. But Google must be fussing with its algorithms and indexes: on retrying the search this site wasn't even in the top 1,000.

But what really surprised me was the number of visitors who came here via Dobby image searches. Out of over 16,000 results for

Google Images: dobby

this occassionally humble blog comes in at number 24. Even more strange, for

Google Images: photo dobby

Google Images: image dobby

out of the same 16,000+ results, this site is first! Something is broken.

What I won't miss, part two: attack of the spambots

2005-10-10T23:56:00.000-05:00

Spam spam spam spam. Lovely spam! Wonderful spam!

I was perversely flattered when this blog began to receive comment spam. At first, I thought it was a sign that I had arrived. Then I realized that it was just another example of Moore's Law in action. Equipment and bandwidth keep getting cheaper, so the marginal cost of a new spam attack keeps getting smaller.

And the latest comment spam here were very marginal indeed:

• a small fraction (who clicks on traditional mortgage-enlargement spam?);
• reduced even smaller (even fewer care about mesothelioma-casino links);
• of a tiny number (this site's readers are a select group, but a small one).

The amount of spam was still small, so it was easy to delete. Unfortunately, the spambots weren't consistent enough for me to set up something like the amusing honeypot for spammers at chez Driftglass. So if you enter a comment (and you should), you'll have to prove your existence with a little Turing test, a captcha, where you'll see a distorted word and type its letters into a box (Blogger calls it
"word verification").

There are problems with captchas. They are really, really bad from an accessibility standpoint: computers can't read the distorted images, but neither can visually-impaired humans. And captchas may not work for long. The obvious tool, optical character recognition, is good enough to decode weak captchas; in the future, OCR will break strong ones, too. And right now, spammers can crack captchas with free porn. So captchas are a flawed and temporary solution.

But they are the best we have for now.

What I won't miss, part one: a key attack

2005-10-10T23:49:00.000-05:00

As I was cleaning out the old apartment, somebody took a key to my car's paint job. It was clearly no accident because the scratch goes all the way around the vehicle. What really irks me is that I know who did it, but I can't prove it. And without proof — or a confession from the miserable, skulking bastard — I have no recourse. It's almost enough to make me long for simpler times ...

In an earlier, simpler time, I would have slapped him twice across the face with my gloves (preferably the chain-mail ones), and said, "Sirrah, I find thee a knave, a coward, and a big ol' poopyhead. Make whole your mischief or meet me on the field of honor at dawn." And, craven that he is, he would have forked over the repair cost.

Realistically, though, in an earlier, simpler time, I would have been a peasant(*) — a miserable peasant growing membranes between my toes from living in the bogs. In such a state of webbed serfdom, I would have had scant property and less recourse. So I'm better off now.

--------------
(*) Of course, as an Irish-American, I am a descendant of kings — it's difficult to avoid such a blot on one's pedigree. But where my ancestors lived, a man was reckoned a king if he was rich enough to own two pigs, so it hardly signifies.

Timing the market

2005-10-07T23:41:00.000-05:00

The bubbly housing market(*) has been getting a lot of attention. Writers more perspicacious than I have discussed it often, and in depth.

But my understanding of markets is so complete that I can pinpoint the exact moment when the housing market reached its peak. It wasn't when USA Today published a story about a million-dollar mobile home (although that's a good guess). It was at noon CDT on September 14th.

That's when we closed on our new place.

---------------

(*) One could argue that housing markets are local, so there must be more than one. Some say that about 300 markets matter, out of more than 3,000 housing markets in the U.S. (if you take this to its logical extreme, there are 80 million housing markets, 'cause every home is unique). Since demand for houses depends heavily on the availability of mortgage money, and since the mortgage market has become increasingly national (contributing factors include the savings and loan crisis of the eighties, the consolidation of evarthang, the rise of Fannie Mae, and the internets), I think it's fair to call it all one market. (Yay! This footnote is longer than the rest of the post.)

Location3

2005-10-06T23:14:00.000-05:00

The new place is in Zion, Illinois. We had to meet some special criteria. That's why we're about halfway between a regional airport and a shuttered nuclear power plant.

The airport is small enough to be free of O'Hare's congestion, but big enough for a Learjet. The nuke plant is right next to a state beach, where the fishing is reputed to be most excellent.

I'm not dead yet.

2005-10-05T12:47:00.000-05:00

He says he's not dead.

Tetricus asked, "Is this blog dead?"

No, but after 3½ weeks, it's beginning to smell that way. There have been a few distractions in my personal life.

After our offer on a house was accepted in mid-August, we experienced a stuttering escrow, a slow move, and a long time unwired. Fortunately, I didn't miss much in the wider world. It's not if the past month has seen any hurricanes, pennant races, or political news.

Coming soon: an auspicious location, timing the market, someone I won't miss, a broken mnemonic, and the secret origin of glube — plus the usual kvetching.

Words fail me

2005-09-09T02:30:00.000-05:00

I'm so pissed off at this grinning gang of corrupt fools.

Bush Appoints His Mountain Bike as Next Chief Justice

2005-09-05T13:30:00.000-05:00

(09-05) 08:02 CDT WASHINGTON (AP)
President Bush on Monday announced a surprise choice to succeed William Rehnquist as chief justice of the Supreme Court. Following the lead of the Roman emperor Caligula, who tried to appoint his horse as Consul of the Roman Empire, the president has nominated his beloved mountain bike to a seat on the high court. The bicycle, named Incitatus, is expected to face a difficult confirmation in the Senate. Critics charged that the speedy announcement was an attempt to shift attention from the administration's handling of Hurricane Katrina.

Incitatus, a Trek Fuel 98, is best known as the president's favorite workout partner. The mountain bike, if confirmed, will be the most-inexperienced Supreme Court justice in history. Unlike every previous Supreme Court justice, Incitatus is not a lawyer and has never held a job.

In recent decades, most high court justices had served on federal or state courts of appeal — Rehnquist was the only member of the current court who had not. Historically, Supreme Court justices usually have been experienced political figures, and those who weren't politicians or judges were prominent attorneys or legal scholars. However, the Constitution has no minimum qualifications for Supreme Court justices.

The White House portrayed Incitatus's inexperience in a positive light. "Tater doesn't have elite credentials, but he has a good heart," Bush said in a televised announcement. "He'll be a justice for regular American folks. The important thing is, Tater is a strict constructionist, thanks to his carbon frame." The president called on the the Senate to confirm Incitatus before the Supreme Court opens its fall term on Oct. 3.

The president attempted to deflect charges that Incitatus would not be independent. "Tater can stand on his own. He has a kickstand," Bush said. "And he's thrown me off of him twice. Nobody in the Democrat party has done that."

Senate Republicans were quick to praise Incitatus. "He will be the best chief justice of my lifetime, maybe the best ever," Tom Cornyn (R-Tex) said. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said, "I don't care that he never attended law school. Neither did Abraham Lincoln." Trent Lott (R-Miss) compared the black bicycle to Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas. Rick Santorum (R-Penn) sniffed Incitatus's bicycle seat and declared, "He is an excellent choice."

Senate Democrats had mixed reactions. "That bicycle has never even seen the inside of a courtroom," Ted Kennedy (D-Mass) said. "Incitatus is absolutely unqualified to serve on the Supreme Court."

Dick Durbin (D-Ill) called the nomination "an attempted distraction from the administration's mis-handling of Hurricane Katrina." Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif) issued a statement saying that Incitatus's repair records would be carefully examined to ensure that the bicycle did not steer the court hard right. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn) offered support for the nominee.

Advocacy groups geared up to offer their own spin. Liberal groups expressed dismay, and voiced concerns about the bicycle's qualifications and independence. A spokesperson for People for the American Way saw a silver lining, saying, "It could have been worse. We were expecting the president to appoint John Roberts as chief justice."

Most conservatives were enthusiastic, but a spokesperson for the Traditional Values Coalition said, "Incitatus is a bi-cycle, which is just as bad as a gay-cycle. He doesn't belong underneath the president's buttocks or on the Supreme Court."

Ever since he saw the controversial 1979 biopic, Mr. Bush has expressed admiration for Caligula, who historians portrayed as "a crazed megalomaniac given to capricious cruelty and harebrained schemes." When asked why the president did not fully emulate Caligula by naming a horse to the Supreme Court, a senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, replied, "That was the original idea. And the president is happy with the leadership of his his horse expert. But the president has always been afraid of horses, even before he tried to milk a male horse."

Myth management

2005-09-04T08:46:00.000-05:00

It's tough enough trying to match the great achievements of history. But President Bush and his crew are inspired by great stories. They take famous incidents and re-enact them in a way that's true to the underlying myth, rather than boring old historical fact.

Imelda Marcos had 3,000 pairs of shoes. (*)

On Wednesday and Thursday, as the scope of the disaster became obvious, ten or twelve other countries offered to help. The administration dithered, then declined assistance before reversing itself. During this sideshow to the main circus of incompetence, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice saw Spamalot and spent $3,000 on shoes.

Nero fiddled while Rome burned. (**)

On Tuesday, as New Orleans filled up with water, Bush fiddled with a guitar (poorly).

Marie Antoinette said, "Let them eat cake." (***)

On Monday, shortly after the first levee broke, Bush enjoyed some of John McCain's birthhday cake.

In less than a week, the Bush Administration managed to hit the lowest points in two millennia of corrupt entitlement.

The Bushies matched or exceeded historic fact every time. We have history that's too new to be improved upon; even there we have a perfect match on the numbers (so what if the units differ). We have a ruler playing an contemporary instrument, rather than an obsolete one (although I'm sure a lyre would feel at home in the Bush White House). And we have actual cake rather than imaginary cake.

The Bush team is a miracle at myth-management: they achieved legendary performance every time.

Too bad they can't match legends (or history, or the recent past) about anything involving competence or integrity.

----------

(*) This is too recent to become very embellished.

(**) The violin was yet to be invented. Nero played the lyre.

(***) Just a story. She didn't really say it. And it's a mistranslation, to boot.

Hurricane relief

2005-09-03T23:55:00.000-05:00

Give now.

Give now for hurricane relief. The American Red Cross is a good place to start. If you want to support somebody else, Billmon has an annotated list of relief organizations.

Republican corruption watch, #271828

2005-08-30T04:50:00.000-05:00

The past couple days have had a couple of great examples of Republican corruption, well-timed to be lost in coverage of Katrina and the Waves.

First, Bunnatine H. Greenhouse, the senior civilian procurement official in the Army Corps of Engineers, was demoted Saturday. She is being punished for whistleblowing. She objected to long-term, no-bid contracts for Iraq reconstruction. The contracts with KBR (part of Halliburton, Dick Cheney's old firm) wasted billions. This continues the Bushite tradition of punishing the honest and rewarding the incompetent.

Another cover-up may be even more symptomatic of Republican ethics. Kentucky governor Ernie Fletcher is facing a hiring scandal involving senior members of his administration (something that's utterly unfamiliar to us Chicagoans). He has a unique way of dealing with the investigation. Yesterday, as Josh Marshall puts it, he "basically pardoned everybody". Then he said he will refuse to testify before the grand jury (presumably by taking the Fifth).

The AP story explains the wide scope of the mass pardons

The governor's decree pardons the nine people already charged as well as anyone else [my bold] who might be accused by the grand jury of violating any section of the penal code [mine again], not just the personnel laws. The pardon extends to crimes that may have been committed up to Monday.

Mark Kleiman notes

This matters outside the borders of Kentucky; Fletcher's "amnesty" could be a test-run for pardons in the Plame/Rove/Libby scandal.

I hope Bush follows Fletcher's brilliant strategy. Fletcher's underlings can now be compelled to testify, because the pardons remove their defense against self-incrimination. And Kentucky legislators are already talking impeachment on multiple grounds. (BluegrassReport.org has great coverage of the scandal.)

As they say, "It's not the crime. It's the cover-up."

I'll have to try harder.

2005-08-30T03:54:00.000-05:00

Dr. E. Scientist, phD. was kind enough to add me to his blogroll, even though I fall short of his exacting standards. I'm categorized as "[n]ot very evil". Pirate Lass will be disappointed.

Maybe I'll be worthy if I try some of the Republican tactics in the next post.

Joust: doused, oust? groused! espoused.

2005-08-27T02:29:00.000-05:00

It's a great formula for a story. A popular pastime nearly dies out, a casualty of changing times. Then it comes charging back, and even makes it onto national TV. The Washington Post has a good article about the resurgence of Maryland's official state sport, jousting. After some hard times, jousting will be featured on ESPN this weekend.

Almost any story about a subculture will mention a feud — it's practically mandatory. It is best that the dispute be ancient, acrimonious, and, to outsiders, petty:

The long-standing rivalry between jousting and lacrosse fans in Maryland has grown increasingly bitter.

Here's how it happened: jousting's flame dimmed and almost died, while lacrosse's shone brighter. Lacrosse fans wanted the state to honor their sport in an official way, by naming lacrosse the state sport, thereby ousting jousting. Jousting fans resisted. Last year the legislature reached a compromise which satisfied none of the disputants: jousting stays Maryland's official state sport, and lacrosse is now the official state team sport. Today's story has lots of snippy quotes from both sides.

Back in the tournament ring: I thought Maryland jousters would armor up and try to spit each other on their lances. But they do not. They don't even get medieval on lacrosse players. Instead, the Post explains,

The object is simple: Spear three rings, hanging from arches set up on an 80-yard course, with a lance while on horseback. Accomplishing that is no easy feat. The rings range from 1¾ inches to a quarter of an inch across (about the size of a LifeSavers candy), and the rider must complete the course within nine seconds.

That sounds a lot more difficult than spearing each other, and less fun to watch. But I can understand why jousting became less violent. It had to change, because the old way was cruel to the ponies. Water polo changed for the same reason.

A splendid sentence

2005-08-21T10:59:00.000-05:00

I just had to share a striking sentence from John McPhee's "A Forager", a profile of Euell Gibbons collected in A Roomful of Hovings.

Some background: McPhee and Gibbons are canoeing on the Susquehanna River. After explaining that the once-mighty Appalachians are now worn down to stubs, McPhee writes:

The remnants, the forested mountains of central Pennsylvania, with their flat ridgelines, looked as soft as Scottish wool — their trees gray and bare against a background of fallen leaves on rising ground — and the implied mountains of Pennsylvania, miles high between the actual ones, cast a kind of shadow that was colder than the wind on the river.

Damn. That's quite a sentence.

My writing already gives me enough trouble. But after reading something like this, everything I write is as awkward and unsatisfying as sex on a unicycle.

Check these out

2005-08-17T07:19:00.000-05:00

The wonders of technology make it easier to check out interesting things. Like these additions to the blogroll:

All Points Blog
Balkinization
Banana Stew
Bloodless Coup
Carol's Chaotic Collection
a Commonplace Book
Defense Tech
Dependable Renegade
The Esoteric Science Resource Center
GEEK/WONK
Happy Hour
Head Butler
Ideopolis: Moving Ideas..
In the Pipeline
marccooper
Night Light
Old Hag
the Opinion Mill
Opinions You Should Have
Pen and Sword
a Perfectly Cromulent Blog
phronesisaical
Plep
Sirotablog
the Slumbering Lungfish
the Speculist
Tenser, said the Tensor
the Watley Review
westerblog
Where's the Ka-boom?

There's a lot of meat on the long tail

2005-08-17T03:34:00.000-05:00

Tastes like chicken.

The long tail is the idea that less-popular items, in the aggregate, constitute a large fraction of what we buy. And that the web and other digital technologies make it easier for us to find niche stuff, and cheaper for sellers to make, market, and distribute it.

These pieces can combine in interesting ways.

Charles Platt mentions (in passing, the article is about the inventor of the neutron bomb) the main problem at the skinny end of the long tail.

He told me that I was the only reader who had bothered to write to him about his book, which did not surprise me, since print-on-demand publishing means precisely what it says. It prints copies only if there's a demand, but it never creates a demand, and therefore it is unlikely to print many copies.

Tom Bozzo describes how several long tail elements — digital creativity, empowered customers, mass customization — combine to realize the coolest frickin' idea in the world.

Turning the corner

2005-08-16T02:28:00.000-05:00

turning another corner ...

We've turned the corner in Iraq. ~~The new Iraqi Constitution means we're making progress in building a strong, stable society.~~ The Iraqi government feels free to put off American demands for a constitution. And that's a good thing. It means they're feeling strong because we're making progress building a stable society. Yep, we've turned the corner.

Transportation insecurity

2005-08-15T11:01:00.000-05:00

Here's some good news: The Transportation Security Administration is going to get a little more sensible about airport searches. They're looking at new regulations that will allow passengers to carry nail scissors and pocket knives. And they won't make everybody take off their shoes.

The reduced hassle will be good. And it should mean that resources are deployed more efficiently. Right now, security standards are wildly inconsistent. Major airports vary by over 2800% in how likely they are to fine passengers for carrying forbidden items. Better rules can give us less "security theater" (as Bruce Schneier has dubbed it) — and more real security.

But, this is the Shrub administration, and they'll screw it up somehow. They already have a good start. The Washington Post points out:

The proposal also would allow ice picks, throwing stars and bows and arrows on flights.

Since shuriken are illegal in many states, Trotskyites aren't the only ones who will find this a bad idea. Some toys should just stay home.

Why do they hate America?

2005-08-14T02:09:00.000-05:00

The Trib reports that Lake County, IL is attempting to enforce an ordinance prohibiting lap dances in strip clubs.

This sounds like a restriction of free speech, since it presumably also bans lap dances in churches and government offices.

Even worse, Lake County officials are failing to support the troops, since

Baby Dolls says it will provide free lap dances for members of the military with active-duty identification cards.

The lair switch project

2005-08-13T21:37:00.000-05:00

Sorry I haven't posted lately. The SpouseBot™ and I have been really busy. We just bought a house.

The place is big enough for all of our books and henchpersons. The next step is the home inspection. There's a whole bunch of stuff we have to make sure of for the new lair:

• The electrical system can power both the gold smelter and the X-ray laser.

• The ventilation ducts are too small to crawl through.

• All deathtraps have only one way in or out.

• The place is secure against zombie attack.

Nifty news

2005-08-03T14:44:00.000-05:00

Here are some nifty news items, ~~painfully shoehorned~~ cleverly placed into an astronomical theme.

A new planet: Astronomers may have found a tenth planet. At the very least, they found a big old chunk of rock and ice — bigger than Pluto — beyond Pluto's orbit. If it doesn't count as a planet, it's because Pluto's not one either. And there's a little bonus: the object, 2003 UB313 (but nicknamed "Xena"), was found by a telescope at the Palomar Observatory. I thought that Palomar was falling behind: that it had been surpassed by newer, bigger, shinier telescopes; and that light pollution from creeping urban sprawl had hurt the seeing at Palomar, the way it did at Mount Wilson.

A new star: Paul Hackett ran a great race in the special election for Ohio's 2nd Congressional District. He lost, but by a small margin, in what was supposed to be a very safe Republican seat. You can blame a poor Republican candidate (Jean Schmidt) and her distracted campaign manager (Joe "Spanky" Braun). But the Democratic candidate in 2004 lost by 44 points — which was better than average for that district! Hackett lost by just 4 points. To get that kind of a swing, you need both a motivated electorate and an inspiring candidate.

A new ~~sun~~ son: It's good to see that at least one other country has a brilliant ruler whose genius approaches that of our own Dear Leader.

My big asteroid: Who can resist chunky bacon ice cream? (via Economist’s View)

We now return to our regularly scheduled pessimism.

The most thankless job in the world?

2005-08-03T09:16:00.000-05:00

There's more on the President's "intelligent design" idiocy. Monday, Bush told a group of Texas reporters "both sides ought to be properly taught." Yesterday, creationist nutjobs celebrated, while Bush's science adviser, John H. Marburger III tried to backpedal.

Mr. Marburger said in a telephone interview that "evolution is the cornerstone of modern biology" and "intelligent design is not a scientific concept." Mr. Marburger also said that Mr. Bush's remarks should be interpreted to mean that the president believes that intelligent design should be discussed as part of the "social context" in science classes.

I didn't even know Bush has a science advisor. I've seen more news stories quoting Bush's tailor. Hell, I think I've seen more stories quoting Bush's dog.

George W. Bush's science advisor might have the most thankless job in the world.

At best, Bush's science advisor is simply ignored, like Rush Limbaugh's fact-checker or the safety chief at Chernobyl. After all, research is an inefficient way to dole out pork, since most of the dollars would end up going to blue states, or blue areas in red states.

But that's a best case. Lefty bloggers didn't come up with the phrase "reality-based community"; it was coined by Bush staffers who mocked the idea. Science advice for the Bush White House is like ethics advice for Enron, or ecumenical outreach advice for Torquemada: the whole organization is fundamentally opposed to the job's purpose.

Pollution attribution

2005-08-03T06:49:00.000-05:00

Mooove along. Nothing to see here.

In the part of the United States with the worst air pollution, guess what the biggest source of smog is. Do you think it's cars? Or maybe trucks? How about oil refineries? Or coal-burning power plants?

Those would be good guesses, but the answer is cows. Over the last six years, California's San Joaquin Valley has been worse than either Los Angeles or Houston, especially for ozone. L.A.'s air has cleaned up dramatically over the past several decades, thanks to the Clean Air Act. Meanwhile the San Joaquin Valley has seen dramatic increases in both urbanization and factory dairy farming.

The San Joaquin Valley has about 2.5 million cows, and each one produces almost 20 pounds of "volatile organic compounds" per year. I was disappointed to find out that methane and other VOCs mostly come from "the front end of the cow" — they are mostly not from cow farts. Darn, there goes my joke about tailpipe emissions.

Family business owner dies

2005-08-02T07:57:00.000-05:00

The leader of the world's second-largest family business has died. King Fahd of Saudi Arabia died Monday in Riyadh, the headquarters of the House of Saud. King Fahd is survived by approximately 6,000 members of the royal family. A half-brother, Prince Abdullah, succeeded him as monarch and CEO.

Last fiscal year, Saudi Arabia was surpassed in gross revenue by another family-controlled concern, Wal-Mart ($285.2 billion for WMT, but only $284.9 billion for SA). The two companies may seem very different: Saudi Arabia specializes in one product, while Wal-Mart sells over 100,000 items; Ibn Saud's heirs control everything in their kingdom, but Sam Walton's heirs own about half the shares of theirs. But the similarities outweigh the differences. By way of promoting traditional, conservative values, both firms:

• vigilantly monitor immoral magazines like Cosmo and Redbook, while remaining tolerant of hate literature;
• stay close to the Bush family;
• prohibit unions;
• mistreat immigrants;
• discriminate against women.

If oil stays at $60 a barrel, Saudi Arabia will retake the lead, for a few years.

Fortunately for Fahd's heirs, there is no estate tax in Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately for those who would encourage hardworking entrepreneurs like the Sauds, the US Senate has delayed eliminating America's tax on large estates.

President Bush: genius and mighty warrior

2005-07-29T05:40:00.000-05:00

Truly a genius

Hindrocket got in trouble for speaking his mind:

It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can't get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.

Liberals are mocking Hindrocket for this. But not I. I applaud him for telling the truth, while admonishing him for his undue restraint. President Bush is more than an uncommon leader. His brilliance and military prowess can be compared to those of Biblical heroes.

President Bush's uncanny wisdom calls to mind the young Jesus visiting the Temple: "And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers" (Luke 2:57). When Dear Leader speaks, his obvious depth of understanding and his felicity of expression also fill one with astonishment.

But President Bush is more than a man of wisdom. He is also a great warrior. As Commander-in-Chief, he compares favorably with Samson, generally reckoned the mightiest warrior in the Bible. In fact, Dear Leader beats Samson at his own game. Samson boasted,

With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps,
with the jaw of an ass have I slain a thousand men. (Judges 15:16)

Using the exact same weapon, President Bush has killed almost twice as many Americans (and many times that number of Iraqis). History will remember President Bush's military leadership as fondly as it does his intellectual brilliance. Both are of a magnitude that cannot be forgotten.

DeLay of game

2005-07-29T04:01:00.000-05:00

Tom DeLay has really surpassed himself. The energy bill already was a feast for the usual special interests, with oozing gobbets of pork for everyone — well, not you or me, but everyone who matters. But that wasn't enough for the Bugman. Josh Marshall explains:

Seems DeLay slipped over a billion dollars of privately-administered pork for oil companies in his district into the energy bill after the bill was out of conference committee.

Judd at Think Progress has the details:

Tom DeLay thinks the federal treasury is his personal piggy bank. DeLay slipped “a $1.5 billion giveaway to the oil industry, Halliburton, and Sugar Land, Texas” into the energy bill.

But this isn’t a normal case of government pork. DeLay has completely dispensed with the democratic process. From a letter Rep. Henry Waxman just sent Speaker Dennis Hastert:

The provision was inserted into the energy legislation after the conference was closed, so members of the conference committee had no opportunity to consider or reject this measure.

The $1.5 billion won’t be administered by the government by a private consortium in DeLay’s district:

The subtitle appears to steer the administration of 75% of the $1.5 billion fund to a private consortium located in the district of Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Ordinarily, a large fund like this would be administered directly by the government.

This is really brazen. It's not just DeLay's French name that would make him feel at home in the court of Louis XIV. His corporatism updates the beloved aristocratic notion that the purpose of government is to distribute largess to one's friends. By that measure, Tom DeLay is a a true aristocrat.

Turns of phrase

2005-07-28T22:07:00.000-05:00

Each of these well-turned phrases is piquant by itself, but even tastier in context. Go and read the complete posts.

Teresa Nielsen Hayden:
Why is the tone of so much magazine and newspaper writing as unnatural as silicone breast implants on a snake?

Wonkette:
We would like to apologize for our characterization yesterday of Scott McClellan as a puppy dog. ... now we feel that a more accurate analogy would be that Scott McClellan is like a hapless baby rodent of some kind. Perhaps a gerbil or a weasel. Small, hairless, blind, and dependent on a larger rodent for all his information.

Bobby Lightfoot:
You have to wake up and realize that every time we let something like this happen we suck just a little chrome off the Trailer Hitch Of Life, if you follow me. Oh, the Trailer Hitch Of Life is unlustrous as of late.

TNH:
I haven't been so surprised by the efficacy of a blade since the day I played pop-up baseball with a bowl of withered half-dry apples and a katana.

Howard Waldrop on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory:
See it with someone you love, especially if they're shorter than you.

The blogroll keeps expanding, ...

2005-07-28T05:14:00.000-05:00

... but that's not why I'm blue.

About Last Night
Agent 007 on Publishing
the Alien Online
Calculated Risk
CapitolBuzz
catch.com.
Chiba City Razorgirl
Crime Fiction Dossier
David Galbraith
defective yeti
Emerald City
General Glut's Globblog
the Girl Gets Away
GLOBALIZE THIS!
Goblin Mercantile Exchange
Google Maps Mania
the japing ape
jwz
Kokogiak
languagehat.com
Lawrence Lessig
the Lipstick Chronicles
the Liquid List
Maud Newton
Miss Snark, the literary agent
My Left Wing
mythago performs a blog dance
NewDonkey.com
Operation Yellow Elephant
Osblog
Scrivenings
Tom Watson
Union Park
Yankee Pot Roast

We'll go no more aRoving

2005-07-21T20:30:00.000-05:00

The White House is worried about the Karl Rove story. The one-sentence version is: Karl Rove hurt national security for partisan political reasons when he blew a CIA agent's cover. The ensuing criminal investigation has the administration worried — they're especially worried about the flood of news coverage.

The Bushites tried to change the subject by rushing the President's nomination of John Roberts for the Supreme Court. It worked. For two days. The lead story in today's Washington Post is about Rove, again.

(This post is mostly summary, plus snark. Major sources include recent news, Defective Yeti's Roving Reporter: A primer for the Karl Rove / Valerie Plame scandal and Wikipedia's Valerie Plame entry.)

What Wilson did

Joe Wilson did two things. He told the truth to the Bush administration, and he told the truth to the American people.

The government's chief justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein was building weapons of mass destruction. The clincher was that Iraq was seeking uranium ore from Niger for nuclear weapons. A natural person to investigate was Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former career diplomat with experience in both countries. Wilson's 2002 investigation found that the Nigerien government was not exporting yellowcake uranium ore to Iraq and could not plausibly sneak it past the foreign consortium that operated the mines.

Wilson told the State Department, which enthusiastically ignored his report. In fact, Bush repeated the bogus claim in his January 2003 State of the Union speech. The US invaded Iraq March 20, 2003. On July 6, 2003, Wilson published an op-ed in the New York Times demolishing the administration's main reason for war.

What Rove did

After Wilson had the temerity to speak out, Rove quickly retaliated. Rove told several reporters that Wilson's trip was a junket arranged by his wife, Valerie, a CIA operative (She uses her married name, Valerie Wilson, in both professional and private life, but most coverage refers to her by her maiden name, Valerie Plame, because the first story did.) This was somehow supposed to discredit Joseph Wilson, because any sane person would leap at the opportunity to navigate bureaucracy in the world's fifth-poorest country.

This leak had two real purposes:

• punish Joe Wilson by attacking his family
• intimidate other potential dissenters.

Only the blindest partisan hacks attempt to justify it (see "Republican spin", below).

Why it's wrong

Going after a whistleblower by attacking his family is just cowardly and low, which is standard for Rove. But this is far worse. Karl Rove burned a covert CIA operative for short-term, partisan advantage. Besides uncovering Valerie Wilson, Rove exposed and potentially harmed her front company, every American she worked with, and every foreigner she ever came in contact with. This could harm her field, the unimportant area of nuclear proliferation. Burning Valerie Wilson will do immense harm to future American intelligence gathering, as well. Fewer foreign informants will dare talk to American agents when the Americans (and their networks) are at risk of being outed by a bilious apparatchik.

You know it's wrong to blow a spy's cover. And so does everybody who can count to 007.

Republican spin

Republicans have tried to justify Rove's actions. Everything they say is either false or irrelevant, and, as Josh Marshall pointed out, it all sounds like the excuses of a child caught stealing. Here are some of their talking points:

• Valerie Wilson wasn't covert.
• She was covert, but Rove didn't know it.
• Rove knew, but found out her covert status from an unclassified source, either

* a reporter, or
* Johnny the shoeshine boy.

• Rove didn't tell any reporters, but merely confirmed what they asked him.
• Rove didn't refer to Valerie Wilson by name, but only in a very sneaky and indirect manner, as

* Valerie Plame, or
* Joe Wilson's wife, or
* alerie-Vay ilson-Way.

• Rove's leak was justified because Joe Wilson is a big meany.
• Rove didn't do it. Somebody else is the source of the leak. Maybe the One-Armed Man?

It's a regular cascade of bullshit, isn't it?

Back to reality

When Republican spin-meisters are faced with the facts of the Rove case, their spinning slows way down. Time's Matt Cooper testified that

• Rive first mentioned and identified Valerie Wilson (as Joe Wilson's wife, but not by name);
• Rove said she was CIA, working on WMD;
• Rove said he was revealing classified information.

Maybe Rove was exaggerating, or maybe the secret was something else? An article in today's Washington Post points out that the CIA considered her identity secret, and it was marked as such in a classified State Department memo.

The facts don't look good for Rove, but the law looks even worse. The "Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement" Rove signed, and relevant laws on identities and espionage, mean that

• Rove can't reveal classified information;
• no matter what the source;
• Rove can't confirm classified info;
• it's Rove's duty to know whether something is classified or not;
• his motives don't matter.

Also, it looks like Rove lied to the FBI. Prosecutors hate being lied to, and convictions for perjury and obstruction of justice are easier to get than ones for technical-sounding intelligence crimes.

More questions

What will President Bush do? He previously promised to fire anyone who leaked classified information. But when Rove's name surfaced, Bush flip-flopped. The new standard is that he will fire anyone who "committed a crime". I suspect that means he'll fire Rove only if Rove

• committed a crime;
• is convicted;
• loses all his appeals;
• fails to get a presidential pardon.

Who else broke Valerie Wilson's cover? Robert Novak attributed his information to "two senior administration officials" (my bold). So Rove has at least one co-conspirator.

The big question in Plamegate goes way past "Did Karl Rove burn a CIA agent?" The big question is a classic: "What did the President know and when did he know it?"

And finally, what will the American people do? In the Washington Post, Dan Froomkin wrote,

More than four in 10 Americans, according to a recent Zogby poll, say that if President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment.

Zogby notes

The latest poll shows more support for impeaching Bush now, than there was for impeaching Clinton when Congress did so in 1998.

Rudie can't fail

2005-07-19T06:46:00.000-05:00

The incomparable Rude Pundit will be doing a one-man show, The Rude Pundit in The Year of Living Rudely, at the New York International Fringe Festival. See rudepunditshow.blogspot.com for details.

Somewhere, Ogden Nash is smiling

2005-07-16T23:59:00.000-05:00

The July/August Poetry magazine is a "special humor issue." Michael Miner notes that the lead-off poem 'rhymes "quote 'em" and "scrotum."'

House Elvis

2005-07-15T21:56:00.000-05:00

Sock it to me, baby.

What's up with the house elves in the Harry Potter books? They seem like another whimsical group of magical beings — like Gringotts' goblins, or the centaurs of the Forbidden Forest — but I think there's more to them than that.

To my American sensibilities, their enthusiastic servility sounds a lot like slaves as depicted by slavery's apologists. Since JK Rowling is a Brit, they're more likely modeled on Victorian servants, who could be more snobbish than their upstairs employers. Either way, Hermione comes off as a lame do-gooder who is utterly ignorant of those she's trying to help. And her organization, Society for the Preservation of Elvish Welfare (SPEW), has the worst acronym since Nixon's Committee to RE-Elect the President (CREEP).

I suspect both Hermione's cluelessness and her group's name are hangovers from the early books, when Hermione was much more a standard type from boys' books, the silly, know-it-all gurl. So, as Hermione has become more an individual, and less a type, maybe we'll see her become more engaged with house elves as individuals, rather than as an faceless cause. If we're lucky, Hermione's elf-rights group will get a better name.

Better Elfy Acronyms Now

ELF Elf Liberation Front (from a chapter title in book 4)

THE Together with House Elves

SHE Support House Elves

HEHE Help Enfranchise House Elves

HEAL House Elves Are Lovely

HELP House Elf Liberty Plan

ELF	Elf Liberation Front (from a chapter title in book 4)
THE	Together with House Elves
SHE	Support House Elves
HEHE	Help Enfranchise House Elves
HEAL	House Elves Are Lovely
HELP	House Elf Liberty Plan

Draco could start a counter-organization. Besides, it's more fun to think up snarky, snotty names (and for me, it's more natural).

Malfoy Is Largely Fascist

ELF Elves Love Families

HELLO
House Elves Love Living Oppressed

HEALTH
House Elves Are Less Than Human

ELVIS
Elves Love Voldemort's Innocent Supporters

HERMIONE House Elves Resent Mudbloods Interfering in Our Normal Endeavors

ELF	Elves Love Families
HELLO	House Elves Love Living Oppressed
HEALTH	House Elves Are Less Than Human
ELVIS	Elves Love Voldemort's Innocent Supporters
HERMIONE	House Elves Resent Mudbloods Interfering in Our Normal Endeavors

Even without Hermione's organization, house elves' contradictions have a lot of dramatic potential. They love Harry Potter, but many are devoted to Voldemort's supporters among the aristos. They're everywhere, they're pretty powerful, and yet they're almost invisible. They are ideally situated for either side to use in gathering intelligence, or even as a fifth column. Or they could develop an independent perspective, with independent actions. In our muggle world, elves have begun to assert their rights — although that seems to be centered in Iceland, so far.

I'm going to go get the book, and find out for myself. So I'll put a sock in it.

Pottering about

2005-07-15T19:52:00.000-05:00

The Dr. Dementor Show

It seems there are dementors roaming my neighborhood. I'm still looking forward to getting the new Harry Potter book on opening night. I have a lot of questions, just like everybody else.

Some of the questions have become standard for each book in the series:

* What l'il beastie will Hagrid adopt this year?

* Who is the new Defense Against the Dark Arts Teacher?

We have more information on, and more opportunity to debate, other notions:

* What word games is JK Rowling playing? I suspect a connection between Dumbledore and Voldemort. Their names are nearly anagrams, especially when you consider how pronunciation shifts: d ≈ t; v ≈ b (like in Spanish); u ≈ o (imagine Arnold Schwarzenegger's accent).

* What about Harry's romantic life? Will he end up with Hermione? Ginny? Draco?

* What big secret is being concealed from Harry this year?

* Who dies in this book? In Britain, there's been heavy betting, suspiciously centered on the town where the books were printed. In honor of this, the Grauniad ran a contest to tell the death of this character in the style of a writer other than Rowling. I especially liked the one after PG Wodehouse. Harry Flashman's account, as told to John M. Ford, is also excellent.
I would like to point out that Bloomsbury could have generated this hype and misdirection for very little money. I would also like to point out that there are an awful lot of Weaselys running around.

* And of course, what happens to Harry?

The really big question, though, is : what's up with the house elves? I'll save that for a future post.

Ho ho ho

2005-07-15T13:34:00.000-05:00

Saucy little thing

Cookie Jill at skippytopia points out the worst car name EVAR: Laputa from Mazda. I'm sure some exec thought naming a vehicle after a floating island in a Miyazaki film was really swift, but didn't realize that it was a vulgarity in Spanish:

The "Laputa" is derived from the name of the floating island in the book Gulliver's Travels. This name was chosen to evoke images of fun, sportiness, and casualness.

Given what "La puta" means in Spanish (it's something you never call somebody's mama), some of Mazda's publicity can be read in a new light.

* Of course Laputa has an affordable price.

* Laputa is targeted at young customers, especially recent university graduates.

* Laputa provides a smooth and comfortable ride.

* And in-out easiness.

* Now Laputa comes with additional equipment.

Somehow, I don't think many consumers will buy Laputa. But it will be very popular as a rental.

Ebbers so humbled

2005-07-14T14:41:00.000-05:00

Bernie Ebbers is going to jail for his crimes as head of Worldcom. He was behind an eleven-billion dollar fraud that resulted in the company going bankrupt. Yesterday, a federal judge sentenced him to 25 years in a low-security federal prison.

Jeralyn Merritt argues at TalkLeft that the sentence is too harsh, that a nonviolent criminal shouldn't be given what is, in effect, a life sentence (Ebbers is 63). I think he got off easy, and the sentence may not be enough to deter other corporate criminals.

Let's look at what he did. Ebbers helped destroy $120 billion in value — Worldcom's market cap peaked at $120 billion in 1999, and was down to $280 million when it filed for bankruptcy.

Maybe that's too harsh. The whole telecom sector has had problems, so it wasn't all Bernie's fault. So maybe we should just consider his accounting fraud, which was a mere $11 billion.

But even that may be too high. Criminals usually don't act for the joy of destruction (except for the pigfelcher who slashed my tires a few years ago) — they're in it for the money. So we shouldn't look at the damage Ebbers did, but what he hoped to get away with.

What did Ebbers gain? His highest net worth was about $1.4 billion. But the company had some value before he destroyed it, and its stock did, too. Let's look at his most direct illegal gains: a relatively puny $400 million in sweetheart "loans" from Worldcom's board.

So Ebbers got a year for every $16 million. That doesn't sound like a huge deterrent to me, especially since the chance of prosecution is small: Forbes calls the case "a freak".

I've said before that the Mafia is in the wrong business(es). The crooks can make more money, with less risk, by going legit.

Scott McClellan told the truth

2005-07-13T23:44:00.000-05:00

People have been giving Scott McClellan a hard time for his apparent lies regarding Karl Rove and Valerie Plame. But McClellan told the truth, one time.

The Washington Post says

In September 2003, McClellan said that anybody found to be involved in the Plame unmasking "would no longer be in this administration."

I'll assume that Rove was one of the leakers — because everybody thinks so, and because it seems pretty darn obvious. How can we reconcile McClellan's statement with Rove's continued presence in the White House?

It's simple. McClellan's said those words in September 2003, during Bush's first term in office. "This administration" referred to Dear Leader's first administration, which ended in January, 2005. Now we're in Bush's second administration. So McClellan spoke the truth, because nobody is in Bush's first administration anymore, because that administration is over.

What McClellan said was true only in a narrow, technical sense. I suspect he meant to utter a straightforward lie, and a tiny bit of truth crept out by mistake.

This small, lonely scrap of accidental truth doesn't excuse, or even mitigate, any of the lies, misdeeds, and crimes perpetrated by McClellan and his superiors.

Shocked and appalled

2005-07-13T23:31:00.000-05:00

Like everybody else, I was shocked and appalled by last week's London bombings. I didn't say anything because I didn't have anything new to say (Not that that's ever stopped me before.). Anyway, Billmon said it best:

The cold blooded murder of Londoners is no more horrifying than the murder or New Yorkers or Madrilenos -- or Baghdadis. But today's target still has a special hold over my emotions. If your mother tongue is English, and you loved stories as much as I did as a child, then London is the city of your imagination, of Mary Poppins and David Copperfield, of London-bridge-is-falling-down and the prince and the pauper. And if you've been there, and visited the places you dreamed about as a boy, and ridden the tube to Picadilly Circus, and climbed the stairs of the Tower of London, and strolled through Hyde Park in the morning fog, then what happened today hurts more than maybe it should, logically.

We are all New Yorkers, we are all Madrilenos, we are all Baghdadis. But I was a Londoner from the time I learned how to read. I know it shouldn't make any difference, but it does.

Supreme beings

2005-07-07T02:43:00.000-05:00

So, Audio Goddess is going to the racetrack with some pals from work. "Do you know anything about handicapping horses?" she asks. "In Chicago, I think they use a hammer," I sez. I don't play the ponies, and it turns out my information is out of date. Your traditional blunt instrument leaves obvious marks and is too severe, besides. Nowadays, they convince recalcitrant equines with stress positions and waterboarding.

I follow politics a little more closely and feel slightly more qualified to opine on Supreme Court nominations.

Most of the field has been extensively analyzed. I strongly favor the consensus top ten picks: a combined 2/5.

Normally, I'd bet on Alberto "Abu Ghraib" Gonzales at pretty short odds. But I'm so sure a filly will win this race that I'm tempted to scratch Torture Boy. I'll leave him in, but bet him to show; to win, he's at 15/1. He's 2/1 for the Rehnquist Stakes, though.

If they hadn't just run hard races, Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown would be higher than 10/1 each.

Driftglass has a brilliant suggestion for a nominee. She's a dark horse, though: 20/1.

Russell D'Arby at The Swift Report points out that "Most Americans Back Judge Judy, Joe Brown for Supreme Court": 7/1 for Judge Judy, a combined 5/1 for all the others.

I still like my old prediction, even though it's less likely than any of the above: 1000/1.

NOTE: All odds are for entertainment purposes only and do not constitute an offer to wager. However, you are encouraged to pay Semiquark Holdings, LLC anything you like.

IKEA bookcase coffin

2005-07-07T01:36:00.000-05:00

Done with the bookcase?

A Cøffïn from IKEA is the ideal product for the tasteful after-lifestyle. Artist Joe Scanlan tells how to build one in his book DIY, or How To Kill Yourself Anywhere in the World for Under $399. (via Boing Boing)

The book is available from Scanlan's site at $22. If you order it from the page with Scanlan's coffins, it's more artistical, though, 'cause it's $27.50.

Chronovore: Google Maps Transparencies

2005-07-05T10:26:00.000-05:00

North Loop

Google Maps Transparencies is going to be one of the biggest time-eaters ever. Kokogiak has overlaid translucent Google maps onto satellite imagery. (via robot wisdom)

You get all the zoomy goodness of Google's satellite images. And you can adjust the transparency of the map layer. The image above is about 55% transparent. Zero transparency gives you a map square with no photo visible underneath. Plus, you can toggle between layers, so the main image can be a map with the photo transparently over it.

This is a great hack on the new Google Maps API. Besides being a fascinating way to lose hours, it will be a great tool for learning geography and cartography. The NGA will love this (if they don't already have something better).

Check it out.

Featurismo

2005-07-05T02:41:00.000-05:00

After a holiday weekend, there's a shortage of real news, so papers get analytical and feature-y. Today's NY Times follows that pattern.

There's a little bit of breaking news. There's new religious strife in India. The Deep Impact space probe hit a comet (as planned!).

There's lots of analyis. Surprise: after Supreme Court Justices get lifetime appointments they become all independent and stuff. Developments in Iraq are causing the Pentagon to re-evaluate its strategery.

There are some good features with news pegs. Valerie Plame is, like, a real person, with something resembling a life. Tight security around the new Harry Potter includes everything short of the Cruciatus Curse.

There are a lot of pure features with little, if any, breaking news. One of them has what may be the best Times headline since their obit of the actor who played Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever, which was titled "Charles Gray, 71, Cats' Friend, Bond's Enemy". My favorite headline today corrals a whole herd of contrasts and paradoxes: "Iranian Women's Dress Code Is Modest but Golf Friendly".

2005-07-04T18:40:00.000-05:00

I can't even spell "M I T" but they still let me take the weblog survey.

More independent blogs

2005-07-04T17:36:00.000-05:00

the Agonist
AlterNet: Home
Book Standard News .
c h i _ t o w n _ c h i c a
Chris C Mooney
Cool Tools
Damn Liberals
DownLeft
the Gadflyer
if:book
the Left Coaster
the Liberal Coalition
Martini Republic
Needlenose | We Needle. You Decide.
Paperback Writer
Portentia
snarkout
SoapBlox Chicago
the spectacularly obtuse blog
splinters: books, authors, literature,..
Ted Weinstein Weblog
Tenebris
ThatColoredFellasweblog.
Unqualified Offerings
Waxy.org
Windy City Blues
Windy City Lefty
the Wisdom of the Illiterati
wotisitgood4
WTF Is It Now??

Declaration

2005-07-04T16:11:00.000-05:00

For Independence Day, my reflex is to post the Declaration of Independence and weave in descriptions the many ways our current ruler is following the lead of the previous George III. But that's been done before, and done better.

Instead, here's the Declaration of Independence, translated into American by H.L. Mencken:

When things get so balled up that the people of a country have to cut loose from some other country, and go it on their own hook, without asking no permission from nobody, excepting maybe God Almighty, then they ought to let everybody know why they done it, so that everybody can see they are on the level, and not trying to put nothing over on nobody.

All we got to say on this proposition is this: first, you and me is as good as anybody else, and maybe a damn sight better; second, nobody ain’t got no right to take away none of our rights; third, every man has got a right to live, to come and go as he pleases, and to have a good time however he likes, so long as he don’t interfere with nobody else. That any government that don’t give a man these rights ain’t worth a damn; also, people ought to choose the kind of goverment they want themselves, and nobody else ought to have no say in the matter.

Read the rest.

Don't follow leaders, watch the parking meters

2005-06-30T22:18:00.000-05:00

Feed me, Seymour.

Another of life's little victories gets more scarce. The WSJ reports (via The Obscure Store)

In Pacific Grove, Calif., parking meters know when a car pulls out of the spot and quickly reset to zero -- eliminating drivers' little joy of parking for free on someone else's quarters.

Bummer. Like you, dear reader, I have better things to spend my quarters on. At least there's still the thrill of actually finding a space. I have poor luck in that arena, but often benefit from Caffeinatrix's legendary parking mojo.

In other high-tech parking meter news, Chicago has installed a few "pay and display" boxes. There's one box per block; a driver pays at the box and displays the receipt on the dashboard. These pay boxes sound like they're worth the hassle of the small extra walk. They allow more cars to park on a block, because spaces don't have to be sized to the largest cars. And you can pay by credit card.

Not only is that easier for drivers, it makes it harder for the likes of John "Quarters" Boyle to add to their coin collections. Of course, some of Mayor Daley's pals will consider that more a bug than a feature.

Bush vs. reality

2005-06-28T22:12:00.000-05:00

President Bush's speech on Iraq was completely divorced from reality. He failed miserably in addressing the reasons for war, poor planning for its aftermath, and how to get America out. He's tapdancing on the edge of a quagmire.

Bush made five references to September 11th; he talked Iraq as part of the "War on Terror"; and he used the words "terror", ""terrorism", "terrorist", or "terrorists" 34 times. But Saddam Hussein wasn't involved in 9/11, and neither were any other Iraqis. Al Qaeda wasn't active in Iraq before we invaded because Hussein didn't allow it. All of the terrorism in Iraq now is a consequence of our involvement. So when Bush talks about "our mission" in Iraq, he's talking about spending American lives and money to fix a foul-up he created.

He doesn't discuss how his rush to war led to America going in with:

too few allies
too few troops to maintain peace
too little equipment for the troops.

He claims we're making progress in Iraq, but many things are worse, worse than they were a year ago and worse than they were before the invasion. Sure, they've had elections, but compared to either one year ago or before the war:

Fewer Iraqis have access to fresh water.
Iraqi infant mortality is higher.
More Iraqis are being killed.
More Americans are dying.

Worst of all, Bush has no serious plan for getting out. He'll bring the troops home when there is a stable society in Iraq. But he hasn't committed the resources to build such a society; we don't have enough to build society by ourselves; and Bush has so alienated the international community that we won't get help from outside. So unless Iraq magically fixes itself, Bush has no plan to extricate America. Meanwhile, U.S. military recruitment and retention is so far down that the current catchphrase is "broken army".

Bush actually harmed his case with this speech. The only people it will convince are the blindest believers. Everyone else will be appalled by the fog of irrelevance. Rather than talking about progress and victory in Iraq, Bush would have been better off talking about something plausible, like

How do you hunt a T. rex? (via The spectacularly obtuse blog)
Could a man armed with a knife successfully fight a grizzly bear?
Can you fight a leopard bare-handed?

Tandem headlines?

2005-06-28T02:06:00.000-05:00

Today's Washington Post has a story on the "Downing Street Memos," the British government documents which describe how the Bush administration stampeded into war with Iraq, with Tony Blair stumbling blindly behind. The understated headline is "From Memos, Insights Into Ally's Doubts On Iraq War".

Today's New York Times has another story — on another subject entirely — whose headline serves as an arch comment: "Where the British May Reign but the Monkeys Rule".

Criminal freakonomics

2005-06-28T00:55:00.000-05:00

Nicholas Kristof has a column today about the Freakonomics of LoJack. Since LoJack cars aren't stickered, thieves face much greater risk of capture for stealing any vehicle. It works out that "every $1 invested in LoJack saves other car owners $10."

Kristof suggests extending the model to home burglary alarms:

What if we encouraged hidden silent alarms to change the economics of burglary?
Granted, most people don't want hidden alarms that entice a burglar to stay until the police show up. But suppose communities adjusted the fees they charge for alarm systems - say, $2,000 a year for an audible alarm, but no charge for a hidden LoJack-style silent alarm.

Then many people would choose the silent alarms, more burglars would get caught, and many of the criminally inclined would choose a new line of work, perhaps becoming chief executives.

That's a great idea. Except the criminals wouldn't become CEOs — they would become Republican members of Congress.

Add to the must-own list

2005-06-27T15:49:00.000-05:00

This fall, the New Yorker is releasing a complete set of its first 80 years on DVD-ROM. That's ~4000 issues for only $100. (via DeLong, Boing Boing, PW)

Mellow yellow

2005-06-25T01:51:00.000-05:00

The Army faces a recruiting crisis. Kids have heard about increasing casualty rates, inadequate force levels, inadequate equipment, and extended deployments. And they are staying away in droves. In May, the Army fell short of its original recruiting target by more than 35%. Military recruiting is so difficult that recruiters are going AWOL.

The Republican Party doesn't seem interested in fixing these problems. They claim to "support the troops", but they would rather cut taxes for the rich than buy enough body armor for the infantry. People are beginning to say that Republican war cheerleading is hypocritical.

The awesomely heterosexual General JC Christian has come up with a brilliant solution: OPERATION YELLOW ELEPHANT. He wants to help Republicans show they truly support the war — by fighting it.

The objective of OPERATION YELLOW ELEPHANT is to recruit College Republicans and Young Republicans to serve as infantry. They demanded this war and now viciously support it. It's only right that they also experience it.

The General and his team have put together a bunch of special ops. Check it out!

I doubt the General will enlist many soldiers. The unofficial Republican tax policy is the same as Leona Helmsley's: "Taxes are for the little people." I suspect they support the war the same way: "Death is for the little people, too."

The blogroll that ate Chicago

2005-06-24T01:24:00.000-05:00

Added to the blogroll:

The Big Picture
BlondeSense
blue girl
Bradford Plumer
Conversational Reading
Cooking For Engineers
Dark Bilious Vapors
The eGullet Society for Culinary Arts ..
Gravity Lens Weblog
Hypothetically Speaking
Jeremy Zawodny's blog
Legal Fiction
The Liberal Avenger
The Maelstrom
mimi smartypants
Paper Frigate
Pub Sociology
Saucy magazine
ScribeStalker
skimble
soul sides
TPMCafe || The Coffee House
Total Drek
TwoGlasses

Whole lotta shakin'?

2005-06-23T06:56:00.000-05:00

A quarter-inch of snow is a big deal in L.A. or San Francisco — or anywhere with year-round allergy seasons. Those of us in colder climes (Chicago's winter motto: "The wind blew the glaciers away.") are amused that such a minor event is considered newsworthy.

Californians feel the same way about pitiful Midwestern earthquakes. This story ran recently on the Trib site:

Illinois, other states feel 3.9 earthquake

Items compiled from Tribune news services
Published June 21, 2005

CLINTON, KENTUCKY -- A small earthquake centered in western Kentucky rattled residents across parts of Illinois, Kentucky and three other states Monday morning. No damage was reported.

The 3.9 magnitude quake centered near Clinton hit at 7:21 a.m. and was felt in southern Illinois, western Kentucky, southeast Missouri, northwest Tennessee and eastern Arkansas, said Diane Noserale, spokeswoman for the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, Va.

It was the second quake to hit the area in a matter of hours along the New Madrid Fault System, Noserale said. A 2.7 magnitude quake Sunday in the same area was felt in southern Illinois and Kentucky.

As a native of California, I feel an obligation to point out that 3.9 is a pretty small earthquake. It feels like a truck going past. Many people won't even recognize that it's an earthquake. And 2.7 is so tiny that USGS calls it a "micro earthquake." I can fart harder than a 2.7 magnitude quake.

This is what real earthquake activity looks like:

That's just for the past week.

dept. of hard-working marsupials

2005-06-21T23:56:00.000-05:00

you can make skippy the bush kangaroo the happiest marsupial in blogtopia. skippy's goal is to reach exactly one million visitors on july 10, skippy's third blogiversary. click through the way we vote in chicago — early and often.

Duke of discussion: more Republican sleaze

2005-06-21T19:34:00.000-05:00

There hasn't been any Tom DeLay news lately, but there's never a shortage of Republican sleaze and corruption. The latest story is that of Randy "Duke" Cunningham. (Josh Marshall has been all over it.)

Cunningham represents California's 50th District, in northern San Diego County. A couple of years ago he made a lot of money when he sold his house. That's no big deal in California's bubbly real estate market. It's interesting that the buyer, Mitchell Wade, is a defense contractor Cunningham has supported.

And it's a big deal because after Wade bought the house, two things happened. Wade resold the house and took a loss of over $700,000. And Wade's company, MZM Inc., got a lot of government business, overseen by the defense appropriation subcommittee Cunningham sits on. Other details make it clear that this is the most obvious case of political bribery since the ABSCAM videotapes.

Cunningham promised a full explanation, but has been silent for many days. Wade has been unable to find a telephone for over a week. The FBI and a federal grand jury are investigating.

It looks like Congress won't look into the matter because Tom DeLay's allies have crippled the House Ethics committee. Pete Stark (D-CA) ran a satirical ad saying "Attention Powerful Lobbyists! House for Sale By Influential Member of Congress ."

Darrell Issa, a Republican representing a neighboring district, tried to defend Cunningham, but didn't do very well:

"Wade was either a fool (as a businessman) or a fool in how he tried to curry favor," Issa said. "He accomplished what he wanted to accomplish, but that doesn't mean Duke was in on it."

This interpretation is awesomely fragile:

"Too stupid to realize he's being bribed" is the weakest defense since Marion Barry said (after smoking crack on camera) "Goddamn bitch set me up."
It wasn't an arms-length transaction. Cunningham and Wade appear to be buddies: Cunningham's DC residence is aboard a yacht Wade bought for him.
Darrell Issa is a poor choice for a character reference. He's been accused of car theft. Three times.

Fantasy economics

2005-06-18T02:29:00.000-05:00

No, this isn't a rant about the Bush administration.

My last post got me thinking about about the economics of fictional worlds. As Diana Wynn Jones points out in The Tough Guide to Fantasyland (now sadly out of print in the US), "The Economy of Fantasyland is as full of holes as its ECOLOGY." Here are a few scenarios I'd like to see:

* Dragons hoard gold. This contracts the money supply, causing deflation.

* After a dragon is slain, its hoard gets spent, and there's a big inflationary shock.

* Thanks to their small size, hobbits have a competitive advantage in lace-making and other delicate crafts.

* House elves unionize (coming next month, "Dobby the Wobbly").

* After Jack returns from the Beanstalk, there's a speculative bubble in magic beans.

Faster faster

2005-06-18T01:56:00.000-05:00

Charlie Stross has made his new novel, Accelerando, available as a free e-book (via a bunch of blogs). It should be a lot of fun, even if you would prefer to wait for the tree-book. Stross takes classic sf tropes, thoroughly rethinks them, and packs them full of Neat Ideas and eyeball kicks.

Singularity Sky hangs out at the playground with Iain M. Banks and Ken MacLeod. It's a space opera about a backward society undone by affluence, including "the brightly colored sporks of revolution."

The Atrocity Archives takes HP Lovecraft, mixes in the classic British spy thriller, and updates the mix for the Information Age. Alan Turing's obscure theorem on "Phase Conjugate Grammars for Extra-dimensional Summoning" explains how it all works.

The Family Trade has been described as "Amber with economics." An investigative journalist takes on a quasi-magical aristocracy.

Redistricting

2005-06-17T23:50:00.000-05:00

There's an apparent paradox. I like the idea of nonpartisan redistricting (see The Carpetbagger Report for a good nationwide plan). But I don't like the nonpartisan plan Arnold Schwarzenegger is pushing for California.

Most current redistricting schemes follow one of two models, both of which are bad for voters. States with strong one-party government, like Florida, tend toward partisan gerrymanders that further strengthen the party in power. For 2004, Texas tilted the scales with an unprecedented mid-decade remap, which gained the Republicans five seats in the House. States with divided government or weak one-party government (in 2001, Illinois and California, respectively) tend to optimize for bipartisan incumbent protection. Their lucky politicians have hand-tailored "designer districts." Illinois' last remap was particularly elegant that way: every serious challenger to an incumbent congressman got shifted into another district.

Either way, the voters get ripped off. Partisan gerrymanders make delegations less representative of the electorate. Bipartisan gerrymanders make it harder to challenge entrenched incumbents. Both schemes make politicians less accountable to voters.

Schwarzenegger's ballot initiative would take redistricting power from the state legislature and give it to a panel of retired judges. Why don't I like it? It's a matter of fairness. Republicans in Texas have given an unfair advantage to the national Republican party. Democrats in California should keep the ability to fight back. Arnold certainly won't help Democrats redistrict, but he won't be Gubernator forever. A nationwide solution hits both sides the same, rather than just one of them.

Arnold's redistricting is unilateral disarmament for one side, while his side breaks all the rules. When a charismatic Austrian pushes that kind of scheme, should you do what he wants?

Pissing on the third rail

2005-06-17T03:02:00.000-05:00

Tip O'Neill was right when he said, "Social Security is the third rail of American politics." Step on it and you'll get a big jolt. President Bush isn't just touching the third rail, he's pissing on it.

Bush's plan, to the extent that he has one, is not designed to fix any problems. The system isn't "bankrupt;" it's healthier than the rest of the federal government. Private accounts would have a terrible rate of return and seem designed to drive people out of the system. Bush's benefit cuts are huge — bigger than if we did nothing but wait passively for the crunch. The President doesn't want to save Social Security: his plan is unsocial and insecure. Republicans have always hated Social Security, and their plan seems designed to phase it out. Those College Republicans who chanted, "Hey hey, ho ho, Social Security has got to go!" were just saying the unofficial Republican party line. Bush isn't just touching the third rail, he's whizzing on it like a frat boy after a kegger.

Congressional Republicans know there's a problem. That's why they're looking frantically for an exit strategy. Holding Bush's hand is painful when there's 600 volts zapping through it.

The White House knows there's a problem, too. Bush's approval rating on Social Security is in free fall; it's down to just 26%. That's why they keep changing the name — first "privatization," then "private accounts," then "personal accounts" — I bet the next name is "freedom accounts." That's why Bush is now attempting to blame Democrats for his party's reluctance to act. He doesn't like the way the current is arcing, and he's trying to move the stream of urine away. If he can't break the connection, at least he can try to splash some onto the Democrats..

Democrats should stay up on the platform, away from the puddles. They can help the poor, crispy Republicans by tossing buckets of water on them (salt water is best). If the electricity doesn't put the GOP out of its misery, well ... the light at the end of the tunnel is a train.

(crossposted at Daily Kos.)

Searchy fun

2005-06-15T06:51:00.000-05:00

Inspired by a dismayed Neddie Jingo, I tried a bit of googlery. There are at least three phrases where I currently sit atop Google, numba one with a bullet point.

This is surprising: "just like Pagliacci"
This will not have any real results for some time, I hope: "jar jar slash dobby"
This is unique, but probably not for long: "little monkey prostitutes"

Glimpses of an alternate history

2005-06-15T01:52:00.000-05:00

So, I was reading John McWhorter's The Power of Babel: a natural history of language. After describing how a creole language develops (a pidgin, usually from colonialism or slavery, grows up), he follows the sentence, "Similarly, there is no Italian creole," with a wistful footnote:

In the strict sense, this is a good thing, because, the tragic truth is that most creoles have have arisen amid conditions of unthinkably stark and ineradicable social injustice. However, if we can allow ourselves to very briefly take a purely hypothetical perspective, a creole based on an encounter between Italian and West African languages would most likely be a ravishingly beautiful tongue to both Western and African ears.

It reminded me of Calvin Trillin on "The Italian West Indies," collected in Third Helpings (now part of The Tummy Trilogy).

I daydream of the Italian West Indies. On bleak winter afternoons in New York, when the wind off the Hudson has driven Alice to seek the warmth she always draws from reading the brochures of ruinously expensive Caribbean resorts, I sometimes mumble aloud, "the Italian West Indies." Alice gets cold in the winter, I yearn for fettuccine all year round.

"There is no such thing as the Italian West Indies," Alice always says.

"I know, I know," I say, shaking my head in resignation. "I know."

But why? How did Italy end up with no Caribbean islands at all? ... When I happen into one of those conversations about how easily history may have taken some other course ... I find myself with a single speculation: what if the Italians ... had emerged from the colonial era with one small Caribbean island?

I dream of that island. I am sitting in one of those simple Italian beach restaurants, and I happen to be eating fettuccine. Not always; sometimes I am eating spaghettini puttanesca. Alice and I are both having salads made with tomatoes and fresh basil and the local mozzarella. That's right — the local mozzarella. The sea below us is a clear blue. The hills above us are green with garlic plants. The chef is singing as he grills our fresh gamberos. The waiter has just asked me the question that sums up for me what I treasure most about the Italian approach to drinking wine: "You won raid or whyut?" I say "whyut," and lean back to contemplate our good fortune in being together, soaking up sunshine and olive oil, on my favorite Caribbean island, Santo Prosciutto. "Ah, Santo Prosciutto ... " I found myself saying out loud one brutal winter day.

Beating on the Long Tail: an infinite sum game

2005-06-14T00:44:00.000-05:00

I think the Long Tail is a great idea. But I have to take issue with how Chris Anderson expresses some of it. I don't intend this as an attack on Anderson and his ideas. It's more of a rant on Wired style and its excesses, inspired by a recent post in his blog. He writes,

But where you have unlimited shelf space, it's an infinite sum game

What does "infinite sum game" mean? "Game" is a term of art from economics (via game theory). A game is a strategizable interaction with quantifiable results, which, in English, means: you and other participants put money in (Or you put something in: effort or prestige, maybe), you do stuff, and you get money (or something) out. A zero-sum game is one where the total gains and losses of all the participants (players) add up to zero, as in a friendly poker game. In a negative-sum game, individual players may win, but in general they lose, as casino gamblers do. In a positive-sum game, everybody is better off on the whole, as in a good baseball trade where both teams are improved; however, a positive-sum game may still have individual losers, as a growing economy usually does.

An infinite-sum game is the ultimate positive-sum game because the return is infinite. But all the inputs are finite — money, eyeballs, time, the universe —, and all the outputs are finite, so an "infinite-sum game" is impossible and the term is therefore meaningless.

Ultimately, "infinite sum game" is just an poorly-constructed metaphor. The master of this style is Thomas Friedman, who builds grand metaphorical castles (and malls and office parks) from blocks of warm Jello mortared with a thick slurry of bullshit. To build in Friedman's style, simply pile nifty, loosely-connected ideas atop each other: We've got an interaction with a payoff, so it's a game; everybody wins, so it's a positive-sum game; and it's a big sum, a really really huge sum — what's bigger than big and huger than huge? infinity; it's an infinite sum game! "Infinite-sum game" does not, thank goodness, rise to the height of to Friedman's towers of babble, nor is it an essential part of the argument for the Long Tail.

I think "infinite-sum game" is symptomatic of the tech buzz that Wired is prone to. In the "trees grow to the sky" milieu of Silicon Valley promotion, it's too easy to go from "neat idea" to "best thing ever." I keep turning away from Wired because of its hyperbole (along with unreadable yellow-ink-on-white-paper). But articles like "The Long Tail" are why I keep coming back.

The long tail

2005-06-14T00:21:00.000-05:00

The "long tail" is a brilliant idea. It combines elements of a lot of stuff I'm interested in: genre, niche, midlist, backlist, gatekeeping, economies of digital distribution.

The Long Tail is the sort of Big Idea I really like. If you rank stuff by popularity, all the attention gets focused on the left side — the popular side of the graph. In the bestseller region of the chart, sales fall off quickly. The bestseller region looks like a big head, and the rest looks like a very long tail. After the popular stuff, sales trail off slowly, and for a long, long time: there's a lot more stuff out there. If you add things up, the area under the curve (i.e., total sales) is larger on the right side of the graph.

That means that there are a lot of opportunities there, opportunities that have been under-explored because most attention and promotion have been for the popular stuff. Some of these opportunities didn't even exist thanks to financial and technological limitations. One limitation is the cost of shelf space: A bookstore generally has to sell two copies of a title per year (and four is a lot better) in order to pay rent and other expenses after cost-of-goods. Quick special orders allow the bookstore to expand its inventory beyond what it can physically afford to carry. Another limitation is printing cost: offset printing is cheaper than hot lead, and allows many more books to be profitably published and kept in print. But a publisher still needs to sell a minimum number in the first year to initially publish the book, and afterwards must sell enough per year to afford keeping it in print. Print-on-Demand allows a publisher to print a smaller initial run of a title and keep it available at a lower level of sales. These and other factors (blogs discussing neat stuff, small online communities, digital distribution of music, etc.) can combine, sometimes dramatically, which means that although there's more stuff out there, it's easier for consumers to find and for retailers to sell it to them.

Check out the article and Chris Anderson's blog on the topic.

In which I am briefly nice, but recover

2005-06-12T00:32:00.000-05:00

Normally, when I hear the word "inspiring" I reach for my power tools.

</snark>

But this is swell story about a kid who worked hard, was given a chance, and had a dream come true. It's a good piece of feature writing, too. Go read it. (via)

<snark>

Humans and other animals

2005-06-11T06:34:00.000-05:00

My inner twelve-year-old has been reading the news lately.

Stock market investors are as rational as little monkey prostitutes.

Clever vengeance for wretched customer service is not a crime.

Sheep urine helps prevent air pollution. (via)

Robot slugs will crawl up your ***. (via)

Search 'n' replace reveals Harry Potter's hidden meaning.(via)

X-Rated fringe benefits will aid recruitment of airport screeners.

Female orgasm has no evolutionary purpose, so it must be proof of God.

The musical baton

2005-06-10T23:09:00.000-05:00

Tom Bozzo passed the baton a fortnight ago. Since then, I have (in no particular order) dropped the baton, kicked it around in the dirt, stuck it up my nose, taken it out of town, and dropped it again.

Total volume of music on my computer: 4 songs, 16MB. The new hard drive is going in Real Soon Now.

Last CD I bought: Bob Dylan, Live 1966: the "Royal Albert Hall" concert

Song playing right now: Toots & the Maytals, "Funky Kingston."

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me:

In no particular order,

Louis Armstrong, "Saint Louis Blues."
The Kinks, "Waterloo Sunset."
The Gourds, "Gin and Juice."
Talking Heads, "Don't Worry About the Government."
Howlin' Wolf, "Killing Floor."

Passing the baton to: Whoever wants to pick it up. You don't know where it's been for the last two weeks, though.

Effective elective invective perspective

2005-06-10T17:27:00.000-05:00

Political invective just ain't what is used to be (Of course, nothing has ever been what it used to be.). Via Brad DeLong, the Valve laments the current low standard of political insult and recalls Eugene Debs on Teddy Roosevelt:

This political pet of the plutocrats, this bogus reformer, this shreiking charlatan, this raving mountebank, this crazy-horse of Oyster Bay ranch, this blood and thunder prophet, this opera bouffe ghostdancer, this blatant quack hero, this freak of froth and foam and buncombe, this nauseating moralizer, this dysenteric scold, this chattering midwife and meddler and all-around nuisance has buncoed the people long enough and they at last know him for what he is, at least those of them who have mentality above a shell-fish, and who can tell a jibbering fraud after he has exhibited himself to them daily for a score of years.

Mrs. Semiquark recently came across this in Put Downs: A Collection of Acid Wit. H.L. Mencken describes the virtues of Warren G. Harding as a prose stylist:

... the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.

Does that remind you of anybody in the White House today?

Nowadays, Republican skins are oh, so tender. Crybaby conservatives raised a huge stink about Howard Dean and his recent words. Dean didn't howl a Menckenesque aria of vituperation. He merely pointed out a couple of simple truths. First, Dean said that many Republican leaders "have never made an honest living in their lives."

And second, the Republican party is

not very friendly to different kinds of people. They're a pretty monolithic party. They pretty much--they all behave the same and they all look the same, and they all--you know, it's pretty much a white, Christian party. And the Democrats here adopt everybody you can think of in our party.

To illustrate this, John Aravosis at Americablog helpfully provides a group portrait of all the black Republicans in Congress. It's empty white space, with an ornate frame.

What Dean said, and how the Republican reacted, reminds me of Harry Truman's, "I don't give them hell, I just tell them the truth and they think it's hell."

Where I didn't go last weekend

2005-06-10T15:58:00.000-05:00

Last weekend, we got out of town. Since I'm no longer a bookseller, I didn't go to Book Expo America. It's the country's largest trade show for the publishing industry. It looks like I didn't miss much. There are the usual duelling headlines.

The show. How was this year's show?

Little glamor, few surprises.

Glamorous and surprising.

Part of the glamor I missed was this giant hot dog (via). It's obviously a New York dog, for Chicago hot dogs are much better-dressed.

The industry. How is the book bidness doing?

The number of titles published is up

Unit sales are down.

Returns. Unlike most products, books are sold returnably to stores: Bookstores can return unsold books to publishers for credit. The system started during the Depression. Too many stores sharply curtailed orders because they hadn't sold their old stock and couldn't afford newer stock, so publishers began allowing returns of unsold books in order to unclog the distribution pipeline. After WWII, returnability became standard. But the returns ratio kept growing. Now, 34% of adult harcovers are returned. The consensus seems to be that returns are the worst possible system, except for all the others.

Returns suck.

Returns really suck.

Independent bookstores have had a bad decade or three. Their decline may have halted.

Independent stores are surviving.

Indies are thriving.

One bad benchmark: All independent bookstores, combined, sell less than Amazon.

The future.

The industry hasn't addressed the problem of authorgeddon, when there will be more people writing books than reading them. (It only seems like that now.)

The Donner Party Cookbook

2005-06-09T22:27:00.000-05:00

Hurray for stoopid web aggregators. In a previous post I joked about a Jungle Cookbook in honor of the centenary of Upton Sinclair's novel. That post ended up excerpted on several cookbook pages. Apparently, somebody is collecting RSS feeds with likely keywords and slapping them onto their lame, uninformative ad pages. Obviously, my post either wasn't seen by human eyes or was reviewed by eyes that didn't know the novel at all. We can test by running copy that human editors should reject even though it's loaded with tasty keywords.

The Donner Party Cookbook will commemorate the 160th anniversary of the famous expedition. The Donner Party Cookbook features dozens of delicious recipes. The recipes are based on authentic frontier cookery, but are adapted for the modern chef. Many of the recipes highlight outdoor cooking methods, such as grilling and barbecue. The book tells how to cook popular cuts of meat like loin, shoulder, and ribs.

There are chapters on food selection and storage. There is also a special section on nutrition for Atkins and other high-protein diets.

The Donner Party were early innovators in the development of California cuisine. They also inspired singing gourmet Alferd Packer.

Surprise the guest of honor at your next celebration. Mmm, steak's on the grill — Chuck steak!

update: I guess I shouldn't be surprised that there's a real Donner Party Cookbook. But its recipes are from "before the food ran out."

The shirtless ones

2005-06-09T16:59:00.000-05:00

Whiskey Bar is one of the best political blogs out there. Billmon writes both passionately and well. I'm surprised to catch him in an error, albeit a small one.

Personally, I've come around to the idea that any Social Security fix based on accumulating surpluses now to balance shortfalls decades down the road is strictly a sucker's game, since the neo-Peronist wing of the GOP will only use the money to "pay" for more tax cuts and spending boondoggles -- albeit for billionaires, not the shirtless ones.

Bush is committed to "the shirtless ones." That's why he's celebrating Flag Day by having dinner with porn star Mary Carey. Americablog and Daily Kos have the details.

The ever-expanding blogroll

2005-06-09T15:40:00.000-05:00

Blogger Forum
A Consuming Experience
Crooked Timber
Dan Gillmor's blog | Bayosphere
GeekPress
Left2Right
The Long Tail
The Mandate of Heaven天命
NewPages Weblog
Northcoast Exile
Paine's Law
rebelbookseller.com
"...she's a flight risk."

Mmm, crunchy

2005-06-08T19:48:00.000-05:00

I'm a
Crunchy Crustacean
in the
TTLB Ecosystem

How'd I get such a high rank?

Hallelujah, I'm a bum

2005-06-08T17:33:00.000-05:00

I haven't posted for a while (as if anybody would notice).

First, a coupla days preparation for a road trip. Then, without polite notice of non-posting, off on a trip. Then, recovery for a coupla days.

More soon: new and improved — with verbs!

Welcome to the jungle

2005-05-28T03:34:00.000-05:00

David Plotz went on a mouthwatering "American Barbecue Pilgrimage" in Slate this week. He didn't say anything about Chicago 'cue, but I forgive him because he mentioned the stockyards. That, combined with all this talk about Chicago hot dogs, did two things.

It made me hungry.

And it made me realize that next year is the centenary of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. What kind of celebration there will be? My neighborhood bookstore ~~already~~ always has a wide variety of different editions in stock.

There's an important question for any food-related anniversary: Will there be a cookbook?

Walkin' the dog, walkin' the dog

2005-05-28T02:34:00.000-05:00

Steve Gilliard talks about NYC hot dogs. Which are fine, in their place. But he went out of his way to deride the noble Chicago hot dog:

OK, can people explain one thing: why do the people of Chicago hide their hot dogs under a salad?

Driftglass corrects the record.

... Mr. Gilliard – so right about so many things – has ventured into those, sad barren lands occupied by the Vaseline-spined MSM, where false comparison suck up valuable airtime and straw men make war.

Like the debate between Creationism and Evolution, one is honor-bound to point out that there really is no debate here. On the side of all that is Good and Virtuous are Facts, Evolution and the Chicago Dogs. On the side of Perfidy are Superstition, Creationism and All Other Pretenders to the Hot Dog Throne.

Maybe Gilliard has only experienced imitations. Regional delicacies can be tough to duplicate.