|
|
|
|
|
|
|
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
|
|
|
|
|
|
Saturday, January 04, 2003 :::
Howie Carr's column today was about the big local news from yesterday afternoon:
[Former state senate president Billy Bulger] took another body blow Friday. That was when the local FBI leaked a story that his gangster brother Whitey listed the former state Senate president as the contact person for a cash-stuffed safe-deposit bank box Whitey rented in London.
::: posted by Steven at 11:22 PM
(0) comments
Dean emailed me from his cell phone, presumably while watching the Packers lose:
I hate to see my team play better than its opponent and lose. At least we're being spared that.
Regarding the other game, if the Jets keep playing the way they did against the Colts, they'll go far. The Colts didn't exactly fight it, mind you, but they could have played well and still lost.
::: posted by Steven at 11:09 PM
(0) comments
Friday, January 03, 2003 :::
Yale's men's basketball team has now lost two straight; as of the beginning of this week, they looked pretty good. Princeton has a tough game tonight; right now Yale and Penn look better than Princeton.
::: posted by dWj at 5:52 PM
(0) comments
I suppose I'll mention that I'm cheering for Miami to win the game tonight by a long, last-minute field goal. The kicker Todd Sievers is from my high school; Steve and I played soccer with his brother Scott in a city league in junior high. In a game against Fort Dodge when a drive stalled around midfield late in a blowout, he set a record for the longest kick in Iowa high school football history at something like 64 yards. I'd like to see him do that again for the national college championship.
::: posted by dWj at 4:29 PM
(0) comments
Kate Malcolm liked not knowing how the election was going until the results were in. Interestingly, it was reported that the Republican party had good enough internal exit polls that President Bush was congratulating winners two hours before the results were public.
::: posted by dWj at 4:24 PM
(0) comments
Bruce Bartlett likes blogs, and suggests a few.
::: posted by Steven at 2:09 PM
(0) comments
Massachusetts got a new governor yesterday. Tom Keane is hopeful.
::: posted by Steven at 2:05 PM
(0) comments
Lily asks: Is something not charity if the government does it?
I would say that, indeed, it isn't. My understanding of the word "charity", at least, refers to voluntary, private decisions. The original meaning of the word is as a synonym for "love". Government isn't based on love, it's based on fear and power. Even when the government does good, it's because it pushes around people who should be pushed around in the ways they should be pushed around.
Maybe the dictionary disagrees -- I'm not going to contest, or even bother to check. But I wouldn't consider food stamps "charity". Food stamps are welfare (which is, of course, an other word whose more common meaning is a derivitive of its original meaning).
::: posted by Steven at 1:56 PM
(0) comments
My brother hasn't blogged this morning's top story.
As for the game last night, might as well that Iowa should lose at some point to a better team than Iowa State. Iowa looked dominant through much of the first half, even though it ended up tied; Iowa looked less dominant in the second half, particularly in the opening minutes.
::: posted by dWj at 12:13 PM
(0) comments
Yahoo! News - Meet Harry's New Dumbledore Contrary to rampant tabloid reports over the past several days claiming the current Gandalf portrayer would pull double wizard duty as Hogwarts' Professor Albus Dumbledore, E! Online has learned that another acclaimed British thespian has in fact been tapped for the role vacated by the death of Richard Harris.
Michael Gambon, who picked up Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for his virtuoso performance as Lyndon Johnson in HBO's Path to War, will be donning the robes as Dumbledore for the upcoming Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, according to a source familiar with the production.
I'll be following this important story until I get it right.
::: posted by Steven at 10:14 AM
(0) comments
Thursday, January 02, 2003 :::
Oh, and there's a Harry Potter blog.
::: posted by Steven at 2:41 PM
(0) comments
McKellen to Replace Harris as Dumbledore
I.e., in the third Harry Potter movie, Dumbledore will be played by the guy who played Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings movies. I'm sure a lot of people immediately thought of him as a replacement when Richard Harris died -- I know I did.
::: posted by Steven at 2:38 PM
(0) comments
I wouldn't expect crop circles this far east, Steve, but I know they have some of what I'd describe that way in western Nebraska; I think that's central-pivot irrigation. Illinois gets enough irrigation the natural way for the crops that are generally grown here that one doesn't see that here.
::: posted by dWj at 1:13 PM
(0) comments
Some time ago, calling for Lott to be forced out, I suggested that it would be "worth it" to use his Thurmond comments as a pretext. This was clarified to my brother in conversation a couple weeks ago, but I'd like to note here that I am somewhat bothered by the precedent of someone losing his job for this kind of reason, just as I'm bothered by Al Capone being selectively prosecuted for tax evasion. Any good fan of the rule of law should be a bit annoyed by both, but I guess some of my principles aren't absolute, i.e. priced at infinity.
::: posted by dWj at 1:12 PM
(0) comments
When I mentioned that I support Hussein thinking we'll attack if he pisses us off, I meant to imply that also he should think that he won't be attacked if he doesn't piss us off. This is the way incentives work. It's worth noting explicitly, though, because the failure of this second point seems to me the greater risk; I hope he thinks there's a way to avoid conflict, and that he deems it worth what he needs to do to do so. And if he doesn't, let's pick him up and throw him against a wall.
::: posted by dWj at 1:12 PM
(0) comments
Yahoo! News - Jack Ass Sues Over 'Jackass' TV Show A Montana man who legally changed his name to "Jack Ass" in 1997 has sued media giant Viacom Inc., claiming its stunt-heavy, gross-out TV show and movie "Jackass" had defamed his character.
I have nothing to add.
::: posted by Steven at 12:48 PM
(0) comments
We're getting more snow, much like last week's: a couple inches from the combination of a system's northern reaches complemented by some lake-effect.
::: posted by dWj at 11:21 AM
(0) comments
I've been thinking a bit more — after the recent note to Kate — about the English language; it occurs to me that if you knew nothing about English or French, but were told that the United States spoke one language, the French another, and that one was simply a natural, dynamic language to which neologisms were added on the fly and words and terms accepted or filtered out by the individual decisions of millions of people, while the other had a centralized organization to decide whether a particular word was worthy of inclusion, you would probably guess correctly which was spoken where.
This is the problem, incidentally, that I have with English only laws — they require that the government either define what is English, or not define it, either of which I'm somewhat wary. (On the whole, incidentally, I support the notion, but I hope it can be done in such a way as not to rob the language of its liberal nature and vitality.)
::: posted by dWj at 11:19 AM
(0) comments
Senator Frist gives Republicans better extracurricular headlines than Senator Lott did.
::: posted by dWj at 11:19 AM
(0) comments
Frist aids victims at Fla. accident Incoming Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist stopped minutes after a rollover accident on a Florida highway Wednesday, helping tend to the four survivors until paramedics arrived. Neat that he happened along then.
::: posted by Steven at 12:25 AM
(0) comments
Wednesday, January 01, 2003 :::
Howie Carr thinks Acting Governor Swift was worse than Dukakis.
I think Swift has been under-rated, especially by Carr. She's not great, mind you, but she did put up some token resistance to the latest tax hikes.
::: posted by Steven at 11:41 PM
(0) comments
I had several reasons for starting this site. I wanted a place to articulate my opinions. If someone stumbles across this site and joins the city committee because of it, I won't be disappointed. But my main reason for getting a blog was simply that all the cool kids had them. With that, let me say a few words of introduction for some of the cool kids on the right side of this web page.
James Lileks posts his bleat weekdays around midnight (i.e. Sunday night through Thursday night). It's a mostly personal column about raising his daughter ("Gnat") in Minneapolis. He gets into politics occasionally -- mostly regarding national security -- and is generally center-right. His insights aren't necessarily more original than yours or mine, but we're not as funny or good with words as he is. At least I'm not.
The Corner is written by the staff of National Review Online. That's all I should need to say.
The Instapundit and the Volokh Conspiracy are both good blogs read by everyone -- Instapundit is a little newsier, Volokh a little eggheadier and legally-focused -- though the Conspiracy is a little too long-winded to read everything. I tend to read almost everything by Eugene, Sasha, or Juan, but pick and choose among the other writers.
Colby Cosh is a writer/editor in Edmonton, Alberta. He comments on politics and culture, just like everyone else, but frequently better. And he has a link to us on his extensive blog-roll.
Discriminations is about affirmative action and the like. The Kitchen Cabinet, with which you're familiar if you've read Jens 'n' Frens for any length of time, is a general politics/personal/cuture blog, primarily by a pair of Yale law students who could do well in either the kitchen or the cabinet. Both blogs seem to be gaining attention from the blogosphere at large, but both are still under-appreciated. Go correct that.
Honestly, I rarely read "Ex Parte", Reason magazine's "Hit and Run", or appellate-law blog "How Appealing". The latter two are fine blogs, if you have the time for them; the former is a little too angels-dancing-on-pinheads for me (and I consider myself something of an egghead), but I like the Federalist Society and they're in Cambridge, so they're staying on the blog-roll. Hub Blog -- a good local news source -- and A Good Oman, by Harvard Law Student Nate Oman, are also listed more because they're local and don't suck than because they're unusually brilliant. That sounds worse than I mean it.
Go read.
::: posted by Steven at 11:37 PM
(0) comments
Juan Gato writes:
You know, I'd feel a lot better about the world if I could find some "rebel" group out there actually fighting for liberty rather than for the priviledge of stamping everyone under their particular boot.
What he said. Link from Instapundit.
::: posted by Steven at 3:51 PM
(0) comments
Happy New Year's!
This entry is entirely personal, so if you're here for the politics, skip it. And if you can infer my wine and beer, well, it's no calamity, but I tried to edit it away.
I flew from Des Moines to Boston today, via Newark. The DSM-EWR flight, I saw crop circles in Illinois and, in Pennsylvania or New Jersey, rainbows. The crop circles were, I believe, south-southeast of Dixon -- I'm relatively certain that was the Rock river, but I'm a lot less certain of towns. They were groups of concentric circles or semi-circles, and I'm curious whether there was a reason. The rainbows were complete circles, with the shadow of the airplane in the middle, which was really damn cool. I also spent that flight interrogating
the flight attendant (asking her, probably too often, to ignore me if I interfered with her job). I'll call her Sofia, since I think that's close to her name. I learned that flight attendants spend four days on the job, then three days off (which, truth be told, I may had learned earlier), that she flies different routes with different crews each week (not even keeping the same model of airplane), that the biggest surprise to her is the fourteen-hour days, and -- least generally -- that she keeps an apartment in the hub city where she's based -- Newark -- and one in her home-town of Los Angeles. And that Continental Express is hiring, if anyone's interested. She also told me it was the last flight on the four-day shift she was on. On my way off, I wished her a good "week-end".
Tonight I went to a party with a couple of my friends, which was, to be honest, disappointing. I guess I did get a chance to talk to a few acquaintaces I hadn't seen in a while, but I didn't really meet anyone knew. I was, however, dropped off at a bar near my house ("The People's Republik") around 11:55. As it happened, the People's Republik, which had at least a hundred people in a few hundred square feet, honored the new year with '80's music -- I considered calling one of our few regular readers who is a particular fan of the stuff, but I didn't think she'd hear me on my cell phone over the din. I did meet a few Rhode Islander/BU students, who were even younger than I am. I expect I'll never meet them again -- and I hope so, since I don't remember that their names are Liz, Shana, Matt, and maybe Derek, let alone that Liz is the one trying to quit smoking. Incidentally, I pondered how old Dick Clark is -- both of the young women guessed low, with 70, but were closer than I thought.
So, that's my New Year's Eve. I hope yours was at least as good.
::: posted by Steven at 2:07 AM
(0) comments
Tuesday, December 31, 2002 :::
Not only is that a George Will column, but he refers to "rent-seeking". What fun!
A lot of things are either information discovery or rent-seeking or healthy amounts of both, and I'm trying to figure out how I'd go about measuring how much of each. Advertising — political (lobbying and campaign), commercial, non-profit — is the example I think about (fecklessly) the most, but even normal pricing activities (commodity markets, putting price tags on goods in a store, etc.) have something of this to them; indeed, many people speak of the stock market and futures markets and the like as though they were primarily rent-seeking (and among short-term speculators they may be), though they're almost certainly mostly productive.
::: posted by dWj at 12:53 PM
(0) comments
Monday, December 30, 2002 :::
George Will writes today about a paper co-written by a professor of mine (Ansolabehere) about where campaign contributions come from.
::: posted by Steven at 11:21 PM
(0) comments
This weekend I heard on a national news summary on the radio mention of the equanimity with which identical twins are going to face the prospect of human cloning. That point sufficiently established, I'll go conceding to the other side for a bit; the notion of someone churning out millions of copies of himself is fairly prolific in the squeamishness department (though not, at least for me, any more than some people over reproducing in the traditional means, even with their genes diluted by half). This is the image that people worry about: not ordinary people producing two or three copies of themselves, but the creation of millions of superhuman clones prepared to do battle against all we hold dear. Maybe we should outlaw the cloning of superhumans. (Or the admission of impressionable people to science fiction movies.)
The main point where I do have a problem with cloning right now, though, is the imperfections of the science, and the moral questions of bringing severely deformed humans into being and assigning parental responsibility to keep them going. I think it's good for people to be born with at least two hands — more if they're going to be expected to do soldering at some point in their lives — and should generally be capable of taking care of themselves after chewing through $10,000 a year of consumer products for 18 years, and two parental figures of a diversity of sexes is probably helpful to that end. Get this resolved and keep it small scale and, sure, clone away.
::: posted by dWj at 12:42 PM
(0) comments
We're enjoying a bout of global warming in Chicago this morning; the snow pack has quite literally melted away. (I saw the phrase "quite literally melted away" refering to a figurative melting recently, and felt compelled to use it correctly. I'm not big on the figurative use of the word "literally". I'm bigger on referring to global warming as though it were a phenomenon of weather, rather than climate. Just try to stop us.)
::: posted by dWj at 12:42 PM
(0) comments
I saw half of the first Lord of the Rings movie last night. This morning I picked up the book and tried to read it. I don't have the memory required, I don't think; a lot of it seems written as to make the Old Testament compelling. "Then King Erenfel of the Korloks did slay Carbondale of the Salukis" or some such; just like the old testament, I find it fine interesting insofar as I can keep the names straight — which isn't actually sofar.
The movie, then, is an improvement, in that I have somewhat more success keeping the characters straight: that tall dark fellow, Liv Tyler, that guy from the Matrix. No problem. But the movie does seem a bit overproduced at points, to the extent that I spent part of the movie trying to remember what other movie I recently found "overproduced" so I could compare them. I fully intend to watch the rest of it in the near future, and the next one, regardless.
::: posted by dWj at 12:42 PM
(0) comments
It's last night, Steve, that the Bucs failed to find a way to lose. Coldest game the franchise has ever won, in fact. The only suspense in tonight's game is the order of the draft.
::: posted by dWj at 12:42 PM
(0) comments
If you're interested in privacy law, you may want to read this story.
Lawyers for a rape crisis center are defying a judge's order to hand over logs of a teenage victim's visits, arguing an accused rapist's lawyer wrongly learned about her counseling by quizzing her grandmother.
::: posted by Steven at 11:23 AM
(0) comments
Also in the Herald, Billy Joel appears to have found a nice girl in Boston. And the Food Network is coming to Boston next month for auditions for "Food Fight", an amateur "Iron Chef". I wonder whether anyone from Yale would be interested in that.
::: posted by Steven at 11:17 AM
(0) comments
Interesting story in the Herald this morning:
Fed up over a billing dispute with a customer, a Palmer builder decided to send a Spencer woman a Christmas message she couldn't refuse, police said.
The contractor dumped the freshly severed head of a deer on the front seat of the woman's car, police said.
The Herald also reports on some hostility between the teams of incoming governor Romney and outgoing acting-governor Swift.
::: posted by Steven at 11:11 AM
(0) comments
Sunday, December 29, 2002 :::
As those of you following football may have noticed, the Patriots squeaked out an overtime win today, but the Packers blew it. This means that the Patriots will not be in the play-offs, and the Packers will have to leave the comfy confines of their frozen tundra to win the NFC title. They probably won't even get a bye, though they will if Tampa Bay pulls off a loss tomorrow.
::: posted by Steven at 11:18 PM
(0) comments
Charles Krauthammer regularly plays chess with an Iowan. I wonder if it's someone Dean and/or I would know. The odds are strongly against, but when you shrink your universe to Iowan chess-players, it's getting finite.
::: posted by Steven at 11:04 PM
(0) comments
I may just be seeing what I want to see, but there appear to be increasing signs of a war between the City Council and the School Committee.
::: posted by Steven at 10:19 PM
(0) comments
Steve Chapman's column from last Thursday says happy things about global progress toward freedom and democracy. If you need a lift...
::: posted by Steven at 10:15 PM
(0) comments
|
|
|
|
