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Jens 'n' Frens
Idle thoughts of a relatively libertarian Republican in Cambridge, MA, and whomever he invites. Mostly political.
"A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures."
-- Daniel Webster
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Saturday, November 16, 2002 :::
Incidentally, the Packers just need to win and for the New York [sic] Jets to beat Detroit in order to clinch the division; the Bears have lost more division games than the Packers will have left. The Packers have had trouble in Minneapolis for a while, but if the Jets -- who are really from New Jersey -- fall behind Detroit, I'm sure Lautenberg can beat the Lions.
::: posted by dWj at 2:54 PM
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Friday, November 15, 2002 :::
The Instapundit points us to a tale of capitalism vs. communism in Bulgaria.
::: posted by Steven at 7:01 PM
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CNN.com - Actor Jeffrey Jones faces child sex charges - Nov. 15, 2002
Link from The Corner. I'd just like to point out that Jones wears a mustache, or at least did in "Ferris Bueller".
::: posted by Steven at 6:47 PM
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Sir, You report (November 12) that the private sector now produces half of China’s GDP. A few weeks ago you reported that 53 per cent of the GDP of France is accounted for by the State and state-owned enterprises (Economic View, October 15).
If China is described as communist, how is one to describe France?
Yours faithfully,
DAVID C. COLLARD,
45 Montserrat Road, SW15 2LE.
November 12.
::: posted by dWj at 5:33 PM
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Wow, hey, it's, like, legible.
::: posted by dWj at 5:11 PM
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I've been futzing (is that the right word?) with the template for this page a bit -- I copied one they had in stock, so I don't know it inside-out, but I can read HTML -- anyway, let me know if I do something that looks screwy to you, or if you have suggestions (I've increased some font sizes in the stylesheet, by request).
::: posted by Steven at 4:53 PM
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On a personal note, I gave my two-weeks notice a week ago, and may be posting less when my employment resumes its normal status. (Honestly, I am getting some work done; there's a Big Important Project I want to finish before I leave.) Anyway, what I wanted to share just now is that I just got a cold call from a headhunter (who, incidentally, mentioned how bad the economy is). I told him his timing was bad and that if he sends me email I'll fill him in on that.
::: posted by dWj at 4:24 PM
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A letter to the Chicago Tribune (requires registration) asks of the program to reward schools for improvement, Is it really the best idea, however, to give those extra dollars to the schools that are already doing so well? Couldn't that money be put to really good use by the schools that need to improve the most? I may be writing in with a response, attempting to inform him of the successes of the "rathole" model of government bureaucracies.On a not unrelated note, high kudos to Bush for using common sense in spite of labour opposition. In the past two years he's looked awfully cozy with labour, and it's good to see the trend bucked.
::: posted by dWj at 11:20 AM
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Kate Malcolm brings to our attention a column by Bill Safire, who supports privacy rights as usual. I've been reading recently a book called The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, covering the better part of the second millenium -- the period of European ascendency -- and exploring the reasons Europe was so ascendent. One of the things one notices is that, over a long period of time, repression of new ideas and private initiative stunts growth. (This will come, of course, as a great shock to those of us who have been arguing for years for Big Brother and central planning.) Spain hit its apogee as it became less tolerant of dissent, after which it began its descent. China was institutionally afraid of new ideas long before that.That's not exactly what's going on here, but there is the expectation that the invasion of privacy will lead to a reluctance to explore certain kinds of ideas, and it is probable, for our long-term good, that many of them should be allowed to be explored. There's a certain risk-aversion here that strikes me as peculiarly -- well, I want to say "unAmerican", but I know that's going to be taken less literally than I mean it to be. It stands in contrast with the character of the country noted by de Toqueville; is that better? I don't think we should do nothing, and I do think more synthesis of public information is a good idea, but I think we should be in less of a hurry to make private information public. It has famously come out that we had, in different portions of our intelligence apparatus, the information we needed to see September 11 coming; better synthesis may be all we need.
::: posted by dWj at 11:13 AM
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Al Gore is back, and much that needs saying has been. A few things to add, though: - NORC has established that all the ballots actually cast, with almost any interpretation -- including that sought by Gore in the courts -- gave a plurality to Bush.
- Those "who tried to vote" presumably don't include the voters in the panhandle who didn't make it to the polls after the national media called the race too soon. Not that those votes should count, as they weren't cast, but neither should the votes that were cast that weren't cast for Gore.
- I've been told that it's very difficult to produce a dimpled chad in normal operation. (I've voted with punch cards and have had no problems, by the way.) The way, I'm told, to produce a dimpled chad is to try to punch several cards, stacked on top of each other, at the same time.
I think Bush won by at least a couple thousand votes, excluding Democratic cheating.
::: posted by dWj at 10:47 AM
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Hillary Clinton backs "voluntary" prostitution. To be honest, I'm not sure how I feel about this.
::: posted by dWj at 10:35 AM
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Steve will be comforted to know that I've shaved my mustache. Nobody ever suspects the butterfly.
::: posted by dWj at 10:04 AM
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A Palm Beach County jury has assigned blame in that teacher-shooting a couple years back.
...[T]he jury found gun distributor Valor Corporation 5 percent liable for Grunow's death. The owner of the gun and the school board held the most of the liability, the jury found.
The jury didn't find any liability for Nathanial Brazill, who pulled the trigger. Brazill stole the unloaded gun and bullets from a cookie tin stashed away in a dresser drawer of family friend Elmore McCray.
Remember all the talk a few years ago about disenfranchising people down there? I've decided I'm in favor of it.
Link from Sasha Castel.
::: posted by Steven at 4:28 AM
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The Instapundit comments on the attack on Harry Potter, and draws a connection to an other leader.
::: posted by Steven at 4:17 AM
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Speaking of hair, I can't be the first to have noticed this, but what is it with evil men and mustaches? Hitler's was famous -- not as famous as his killing twelve million people and annexing Poland, but more than a footnote. Stalin was also famous primarily for killing tens of millions of people and annexing Poland, and he had a bushier mustache, which befits a Russian, though we all know he was Georgian. Saddam Hussein has a mustache, and seems to like killing and conquest, though these might both be attempts to emulate Stalin, whom I understand he regards as his big brother, not so much in a 1984 sense as in an "I'm going to be just like him, once I'm old enough and have my troops near Poland" sense. Groucho Marx also had a famous mustache, and he, um... well, I think he squeezed the toothpaste tube in the middle. Repeatedly and without remorse, I'm sure. Probably made some callous crack about it, too.
::: posted by Steven at 4:13 AM
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Hair is weird. If there's life on other planets, I'll bet it doesn't have hair.
::: posted by Steven at 3:09 AM
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Thursday, November 14, 2002 :::
Harold Ford writes that if he were minority leader, In the short term, we would take immediate action to stimulate our economy. We would shift the tax cuts that do not take effect for several years into immediate tax relief for all Americans and businesses. Can we replace Trent Lott with him?
::: posted by dWj at 3:59 PM
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I closed the flue to my chimney this morning, as we're getting a cold front today; anyway, it's way, way too narrow for anything larger than, say, a guinea pig to fit through. (I'm speculating here. I think I'll end this post now.)
::: posted by dWj at 3:42 PM
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Also always read George Will.Nancy Pelosi, whose understanding of America surely is conditioned by her habitat's 85 percent Gore-Nader majority, now will referee the Democrats' intramural rumble between those who ascribe the party's failure to its message and those who blame only the ``articulating" (Daschle's word) of it. Actually, the party's message, frequently communicated with ruinous clarity for five decades, is condescension toward the American people.
::: posted by dWj at 3:37 PM
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From the Instapundit, Harold Ford on Why I Should Be Minority Leader (washingtonpost.com). He made a good case.
You'll note that my earlier advice to Pelosi would be more naturally taken by Ford than by her.
::: posted by Steven at 3:18 PM
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The Kitchen Cabinet points out an other story about a stupid person blaming the media for giving them ideas.
Speaking of the Cabinet, check out this quote of the day. And their song of the day is one that I know, which is unusual.
::: posted by Steven at 2:42 PM
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Colby Cosh summarizes and links to a story about idiot-populism by the Newfoundland government -- essentially, they're enforcing the creation of jobs which destroy value. The world would be better off, in other words, if the people who held those jobs were paid to sit on their butts, which is something else Newfoundland has tried.
Cosh also links to this parody of The Onion, pointing out, among other things, that their headlines are always better than their stories. Case in point this week: "Those Chechen Rebels Stole My Idea".
Speaking of the Onion, they appear to be really bitter about the elections last week. As the saying goes, "neener, neener."
::: posted by Steven at 2:36 PM
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Now that Pelosi has been elected leader of the House Democrats, I'm going to give her some advice on how to get back in the majority: switch parties.
Seriously, though, the two obvious strategies for the Democrats to try to re-take the House are running toward the center and running to the left. Neither will work.
If they follow the first option, they'll lose their base, and won't gain any ground. Without a base, nobody will be enthusiastic about their campaigns, and nobody will be pushing their message. And the swing voters will still need a reason to vote for them rather than their opponents.
If they follow the second option, they'll lose the middle. Their base will be more excited, but the swing voters will be turned off. This may work in the long-run, the way Barry Goldwater attracted people who worked to eventually build a winning coalition, but if the Democrats don't want forty years in the desert, they need a different way.
The way for the Democrats to re-take the House is to change the debate. This is largely option number one with a twist. Republicans are trusted over Democrats right now primarily on national security issues. The Democrats need to neutralize this advantage, but then push the issues that both excite their base and please the suburban voters. For example, the public still trusts Democrats with the environment. If they can bring back environmentalism as a salient issue, the base will be excited and the public will support them.
::: posted by Steven at 12:40 PM
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You should read Jonah Goldberg's N.R. column, where he notes that This vote may be a moral victory for the U.N. — since it's normally a parliament of crapweasels — but it's at best a tactical or strategic victory for the United States, and it remains to be seen whether the strategy will work. But then, you should always read Jonah's column.Whether you support American use of force in Iraq or not, it's hard to argue that it's Syria's acquiescence that makes it moral.
::: posted by dWj at 12:26 PM
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I know I, as someone who doesn't subscribe to cable, was hoping HBO would get the Emmys. (See the story, say, here. I get a lot of my news from the radio, which doesn't handle hyperlinks well yet.) I tend to notice these awards shows when they preempt something I want to watch, and it would be good to have them out of the way.
Ironically, though, I did watch much of the show last night where Newhart received the Twain award. I wanted to see some of Newhart's old stuff, and it was pretty good.
::: posted by dWj at 11:46 AM
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Author Faces Computer Sex Charge (washingtonpost.com)
Lantana, Fla. (AP) -- The author of two books on stupidity has been charged with trying to meet a teenager on line for the purpose of sex.
Unlike the previous entry, this is a real story. Link from PermagrinGirl.
::: posted by Steven at 2:42 AM
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ScrappleFace: Voice on Tape Said to Be Al Gore
::: posted by Steven at 2:36 AM
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Wednesday, November 13, 2002 :::
Boston grabs Dem Convention for '04
::: posted by Steven at 2:03 PM
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The Kitchen Cabinet publicizes the suggestion that Wellstone was murdered, with the professor at Buffalo State who has put forth this idea quoted as saying, "I felt that Paul Wellstone's life, more so than any other politician in Washington, was in danger." His reason for this speculation is only that Wellstone was a left-wing nut; the implication is that, rather than wait for him to lose his reelection bid, someone who had been patient for almost twelve years finally took it on himself to speed up his exit from the Senate by three months.
The history of assassinations seems to feature as many heretics as heathens (e.g. Gandhi, Rabin, Sadat), and I think McCain is the politician most likely to be assissinated by a lone right-wing screwball. A more organized attempt might see a different target, though.
::: posted by dWj at 12:21 PM
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Slate has a column with an interesting suggestion on realigning interests in the hiring of public auditors. I've suggested that the exchanges that list the stocks -- audits are only required for public corporations, after all -- be responsible for the audits, but the audit insurance idea put forth in Slate has advantages in terms of how different costs are imposed on different companies.
::: posted by dWj at 11:45 AM
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"Nancy Pelosi is true to her ideals. What a disaster for the Dems." So says Pete du Pont.
::: posted by dWj at 10:08 AM
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Tuesday, November 12, 2002 :::
Lily Malcolm questions Robert George's suggestion that last week's election included a mandate on human cloning.
My impression is that there's broad support for a cloning ban, but not deep support, and she's certainly right that nobody was voting based on it. From a political point of view, I don't think there's a lot to be gained from this issue. And, actually, there were a few campaigns that mentioned Social Security reform, which he discounts.
Really, the only reason I mention this is that Dean and I have never had a problem with cloning, because we're clones of each other. Maybe if either of us tolerated political enforcement of "God's will", we might have to grapple with it, but we never really saw a need to prohibit the artificial replication of a natural phenomenon.
::: posted by Steven at 11:16 PM
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NFL rankings. Pittsburgh's half a point above San Diego, if you care.
::: posted by dWj at 5:19 PM
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Harvard seems to have mixed feelings on how much to tolerate various forms of "hate speech".
::: posted by Steven at 2:29 PM
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An interesting read about things the Fed can do after it gets the funds rate to 0. I've always felt 2 is unnecessary because 1 is available; 5 is actually very similar to 1, though that may not be obvious. Raising interest rates occurred to me about a year or two ago, mostly as a way of killing expectations that rates would keep falling; I acquired the sense somewhere that certain economic actors were waiting for rates to drop more before taking on debt, and if they lost that expectation they might act sooner. Mind you, at least in theory those expectations are reflected in the longer term interest rates before the drops occur, and these people should just take advantage of those long-term rates immediately, but it seemed possible to me that people wouldn't act on that as they should.
If marginal product of capital (in nominal terms) for a company is exceeded by its perceived default risk, no amount of rate cutting is going to make it better to lend to that company than to sit on one's cash. I really don't think we're at the point where a large portion of the productive economy is freezing because banks are simply afraid to lend anybody money -- which may have been the case in the Great Depression -- but if it gets to that point, deliberately creating significant inflation is the only thing that can be done.
(To end with a slight digression, someone who once (recently) worked in a bank told me of an old lady -- i.e. of Depression vintage -- who came into the bank twice a week, withdrew her entire account, counted the cash, and then redeposited it. Trauma can cause fear to exceed rational levels.)
::: posted by dWj at 12:20 PM
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Schools Receive $10,000 For Improved Test Scores (WBBM seems to have removed the link)
Sixty Chicago public schools are reaping the rewards of their significant improvement on test scores with receipt of $10,000 each.
Schools chief Arne Duncan had previously announced the plan to give schools the private grants as part of an ongoing push for accountability and a change in emphasis from raw scores to year-to-year progress. Duncan was set to name all 60 schools on Tuesday.
This stands in contrast to the world reflected by the Simpsons:
Edna: Remember, class: the worse you do
on this standardized test, the more
funding the school gets, so don't
knock yourselves out.
If we want to fund the schools that "need it" more than the ones that don't, the way to do so is to reward poverty rather than failure, and hope that the sort who are inclined in that direction won't be thinking long-term enough to seek the rewards of the former.
::: posted by dWj at 10:47 AM
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Monday, November 11, 2002 :::
The Volokh Conspiracy illustrates how backwards Europe is.
::: posted by Steven at 6:10 PM
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Those who care about the NFL will have heard about the 34-34 tie between the Falcons and the Steelers; what surprised me when I first heard about it was the score. They put 68 points on the board in four quarters, but in the fifth nobody could score. I wonder what was the highest scoring tie in NFL history -- at least since the introduction of the 15 minute sudden death.
::: posted by dWj at 4:53 PM
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Election results by state senate district
Let me start by telling you how I'm lying. My results are based on unofficial city-and-town data from the Globe the day after the election. The towns of Chilmark and Leyden had not yet reported, so they've been ignored. Cities and towns split across senate districts were treated as homogenous -- for example, three of Northborough's four precincts are in the First Worcester district, so I assigned three quarters of each vote in Northborough to the First Worcester. I'm comfortable having done this for places like Northborough. I'm less comfortable having done this for Boston, Worcester, Springfield, and Cambridge -- take the Suffolk County (i.e., mostly Boston) districts with an extra grain of salt.
That said, here's what I found:
Six districts voted yes on Question 1 (to repeal the state income tax). None are held by a Republican. In order, starting with the most supportive, the districts are Worcester and Norfolk; First Essex; Cape and Islands; First Plymouth and Bristol; Plymouth and Barnstable; and Second Plymouth and Bristol. Second P&B passed it by 25 votes, though, and some of those towns are fractional. The First Bristol and Plymouth rejected it by 54 votes out of 40,000; no towns are split there, but, as I say, results are unofficial. All six districts which passed it supported Romney over O'Brien (First P&B did not).
27 of the 40 districts went for Romney over O'Brien (I excluded votes for the other candidates for Governor). The top three Romney districts are all held by Republicans (Tarr, Sprague, and Hedlund) -- whether this is because their districts just naturally lean Republican or whether the (incumbent) Senators helped Romney is left for speculation. The fourth most pro-Romney district was Norfolk, Bristol, and Middlesex, held by leftist Cheryl Jacques (who was re-elected with 60% of the vote).
Every senator who ran for re-election won -- Jacques was actually in one of the closest races.
I reserve the right to add to this entry without notice.
::: posted by Steven at 2:13 PM
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The Lowell Sun has an article about the Massachusetts GOP's attempts to grow.
::: posted by Steven at 12:33 PM
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Peter King of CNNSI writes:
I have never heard of a team clinching a division after 10 games. But if the Packers beat Minnesota next week, the Bears lose at St. Louis, and the Lions lose to the Jets, the Pack will be 9-1, Detroit 3-7 and the Bears and Vikes 2-8. Let's say the Lions go 6-0 and the Pack 0-6 over the last six weeks. That would make Detroit and Green Bay 9-7. In that case, Green Bay wins the division because of its two-game sweep over Detroit in the regular season. Somehow, I don't think Detroit's going 6-0 from here.
::: posted by dWj at 11:55 AM
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Incidentally, Truman's reason for commuting Collazo's sentence -- I don't feel obligated to link to posts from the day in which I respond to them -- was for not making Collazo a martyr. Carter's reason for pardoning him, of course, was that Carter is, well, the kind of person who wins the Nobel Peace Prize (or at least the better such type of person).
Anyway, I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the martyr argument. It makes more sense to me where there are very few -- e.g. one -- people under consideration who might inspire a potentially quite large number of vigilantes. Once you get a group of ten or twenty malefactors, or more, I think it's more valuable to let everyone know you're serious, and to relieve yourself of the need to keep maintaining this detritus in the prisons.
::: posted by dWj at 10:40 AM
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Does Steve remember that I mentioned, about a year ago, going through the records and finding a pronounced correlation between the President's margin of victory and the number of seats his party lost in the ensuing mid-term? This would argue for the coat-tails effect -- and, since the correlation I noted was with the size of the popular vote victory, would actually have predicted the Republican gain.
::: posted by dWj at 10:35 AM
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I'm not sure how I ended up at this page of Presidential Assassination Attempts, but this caught my eye:
HARRY TRUMAN
During the three-year renovation to the White House, the Truman's lived at Blair House, across the street from the Mansion. On November 1, 1950, two Cuban Nationalists attempted to shoot their way into the home resulting in the death of two secretservicemen. One of the assassins, Griselio Torresola was killed. His accomplice, Oscar Collazo, was taken into custody and sentenced to death in 1951.
Truman commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment. In 1979 President Jimmy Carter granted Collazo a full pardon.
Yeah, that sounds like Carter.
::: posted by Steven at 1:10 AM
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Sunday, November 10, 2002 :::
Howie Carr suggests budget cuts
Another long-overdue reform: no former elected official must ever be allowed to hold another state job.
That's an intriguing thought. I've talked to Republican insiders about prohibiting state employees from serving on the party's state committee -- this idea would similarly damage the hackocracy. Howie's idea probably goes too far, but it's worthy of discussion.
::: posted by Steven at 12:53 PM
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Volokh, and subsequently the Kitchen Cabinet, has pointed to a tongue-in-cheek column about Harry Potter being a "pampered jock, patsy, [and] fraud." As Lily Malcom quotes:
He's a glory hog who unfairly receives credit for the accomplishments of others and who skates through school by taking advantage of his inherited wealth and his establishment connections.
This has elements of truth, but he's not really a glory "hog", in that he doesn't really seek it out. His legend grew for ten years without his knowledge. His later adventures add to his reputation, but he doesn't undertake them for that purpose, and he doesn't take credit for more than he does.
The "patsy" charge does ring particularly true with respect to the fourth book, and it's one of the things that bothered me about that book -- even more than most of his adventures, he falls into, or is pushed into, his successes.
The books are named after Harry Potter, of course, because the stories are told from his point of view.
A few people have noticed the quip I've added just above the blog entries; I've already rotated it several times in the ten days or so that I've had it up. I do plan a Harry Potter quote soon, in honor of the opening of the second movie.
::: posted by Steven at 1:01 AM
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