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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, February 15, 2003 :::
The Instapundit continues to follow France's economic interests in Iraq.
::: posted by Steven at 11:31 AM
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Friday, February 14, 2003 :::
In Men's College Basketball, Wake Forest beat Duke in double overtime. It looks like someone hasn't been speaking enough French.
::: posted by Steven at 4:11 PM
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Incidentally, David Trumbull, my immediate predecessor as chairman of the Cambridge Republican City Committee, was elected chairman of Boston's Ward Three Republican Ward Committee on Tuesday night.
::: posted by Steven at 3:28 PM
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Kathryn Lopez at The Corner has pointed out the cover of today's New York Post.
::: posted by Steven at 2:58 PM
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Opera says 'bork' to MSN standards. That's not the "Bork" that our legally-inclined visitors will be thinking of:
Opera Software has released a new version of its Opera 7 Web browser with just one tweak--it turns Microsoft's MSN Web site into gibberish that was inspired by the Swedish Chef from "The Muppet Show."
The "Bork Edition" of Opera 7 isn't designed so much to win over new visitors as to make a point about how browsers and Web sites should work together. It is Opera's response to what the company alleges are dishonest tactics by Microsoft to make Opera look like it is displaying pages improperly when people view MSN.
::: posted by Steven at 12:54 PM
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I was talking to a friend of mine last week about the concept of a "favorite movie". If I'm asked, I generally list a few -- I can't really narrow it down to one. She said that she's the same way, and I think Derbyshire, at NRO, has expressed similar sentiments.
I bring this up because I saw Signs yesterday. I give the story a B+ -- it's very good, it's just not clever enough to get an "A". It's presented wonderfully, though, and it's found a place on my "favorite movies" list.
It was, needless to say, not nominated for an Oscar. Nor was Abigail Breslin, who played the little girl -- though I'm sure her acting would have impressed me a lot less if she wasn't five.
What was nominated for an Oscar? Well, Chicago was nominated for Best Movie, as you likely know -- I would think there have to be five better movies from last year, but I'm not particularly worked up about this. I discovered last night, though, that Chicago was also nominated for its cinematography. Regular readers will remember that one of my first reactions to Chicago was that "[t]he cinematography warranted a beating."
::: posted by Steven at 12:44 PM
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Re the spike in the markets this morning, the talking heads on CNBC were suggesting it had something to do with a Hans Blix speech. I didn't catch the specifics -- I was just sort of listening while lacing my shoes, which I washed last night. They're a little lighter in color than they were, and I can't smell them anymore (the latter was my goal).
::: posted by Steven at 12:22 PM
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Anyone here watching the markets? I have to say I find what they've done this morning a bit interesting.
::: posted by dWj at 12:10 PM
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There's a company I go by on the train in the morning that makes "closures" — bottle caps, for example. Every time I see that I think about how diverse and broad our economy is. For better on this than I could ever write, see the first chapter of "Free to Choose".
::: posted by dWj at 10:19 AM
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Mortgage rates are almost low enough now that a recent entrant to the labor market might reasonably expect salary to grow at that rate. You could construct a mortgage, then, where the nth to last payment is just the balance left on the mortgage divided by n; the payment will then grow at the interest rate.
Now, for a thirty year mortgage the payments, for a little while, wouldn't cover the interest; to have a loan in "repayment" that's growing in nominal terms might make bankers nervous, but the principle can be generalized, if less elegantly: if inflation is likely to be 2% (if you think higher, you and I have an argument with the bond market), calculate the first payment based on an interest rate 2 points lower than you mean to assess, and carry on from there.
There was (is?) a form of mortgage that was (was) popular in Britain until recently in which the part of the payment that was supposed to go toward the principle instead went into an investment account; the balance on the loan per se was to be constant for the term, at the end of which the investment account would be used to pay off the principle, with the homeowner keeping the difference. A lot of people with principle coming due recently have found themselves with a problem. (I would think one could roll over such a thing; even if the account has only half of what's needed, that's a great down payment for a new mortgage, isn't it?)
::: posted by dWj at 10:19 AM
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Thursday, February 13, 2003 :::
The House voted yesterday to authorize a national "do not call" list for telemarketers. I'd like to be on a "call once in a while" list; set an amount of money (probably with a minimum) that a telemarketer must pay into the fund to maintain the lists every time it calls you. If a company has enough confidence that I'm interested in what they want to say that they're willing to pay an amount that isn't big, but isn't miniscule either — a dollar or two — then I'm willing to listen. (Ultimately, perhaps allow one to file a schedule, charging more at some hours than others and blocking all calls during certain hours.)
::: posted by dWj at 4:29 PM
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Al Qaeda seems to have bought into the notion that the American economy is overly dependent on foreign oil. The notion of Saudi Arabia disappearing tomorrow doesn't frankly scare me that much.
::: posted by dWj at 11:33 AM
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Wednesday, February 12, 2003 :::
Colby Cosh finds the true meaning of "political activism".
Politics is just that portion of the Hobbesian "state of nature" that we haven't managed to stamp out.
::: posted by Steven at 6:46 PM
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Thirteen preprints on Wilkinson-MAP. Go nuts; I know I will.
::: posted by dWj at 6:02 PM
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Big Bang Confirmation:
The most detailed and precise map yet produced of the universe just after its birth confirms the Big Bang theory in triumphant detail and opens new chapters in the early history of the cosmos, astronomers said yesterday.It reveals the emergence of the first stars in the cosmos, only 200 million years after the Big Bang, some half a billion years earlier than theorists had thought... ... In a nutshell, the universe is 13.7 billion years old, plus or minus one percent; a recent previous estimate had a margin of error three times as much. By weight it is 4 percent atoms, 23 percent dark matter — presumably undiscovered elementary particles left over from the Big Bang — and 73 percent dark energy. And it is geometrically "flat," meaning that parallel lines will not meet over cosmic scales.
I'll be looking for the pre-print and may well post a link to that if/when I find it.
::: posted by dWj at 2:06 PM
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Reliable sources — as opposed to the ones I've used previously — indicate that Penn beat Princeton last night. The top four in the Ivy League right now (by conference record and plausibly by strength of the team as well, though Harvard's not bad) are the 'P's and Yale and Brown; the latter pair plays the former pair this weekend.
::: posted by dWj at 12:37 PM
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Happy Birthday, Mr. Lincoln.
::: posted by dWj at 12:33 PM
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There's something appropriate about the first time a woman coaches a D-I men's team being in the state of Tennessee.By the way, when I mentioned Pat Summit as one of the three top basketball coaches of all time, the other two I really had in mind were John Wooden and Mike Krzyzewski.
::: posted by dWj at 12:32 PM
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Tuesday, February 11, 2003 :::
Dean wonders about Snape in "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" (the third in the series) relative to the first two books.
I think his character is stronger throughout the books than in the movies. Most of the characters are. The movies are kind of rushed. Did Snape even show up in the second movie? Snape is a particularly un-even character, though -- he's often nasty for the sake of nastiness, but Dumbledore clearly trusts him, and in the first book it's pretty clear that this isn't entirely unfounded.
The third book is, in my opinion, the best so far. I enjoyed the fourth book more the second time through -- this may be because I was more accepting of the fact that most of it happens to Harry (and his friends), rather than because of them. You might be able to read the beginning and skip to the end, though. The ending suggests that we're moving out of the opening now, and solidly into middle-game (I believe the last chapter is called "The Beginning").
::: posted by Steven at 10:49 PM
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Apparently I was mistaken on some basketball scores. I was right in my predictions, but will desist in getting basketball scores from the Quad City Times. (If I'd stayed on in theoretical physics, I'm sure I would have known better than to trust data that didn't conform to my expectations.)
::: posted by dWj at 6:13 PM
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I'm not feeling entirely right, so I'm going to head home, take some vit C, drink some wine, and see if I can't zonk out in time to fit in some convalescence before I get up tomorrow. I had to say hi, though, and felt I'd mention that I read the third Harry Potter book this weekend. I've seen the first two movies, but not read those books — I've not seen the third movie, either — so I don't know whether it's a movie-versus-book thing or just that the third installment differs from the first two, but I thought Professor Snape was less cuddly in the book than in the movies. A certain basic decency he typically carried in the movies was AWOL from the start in this book. Good book, though. Last hundred pages much fun.
::: posted by dWj at 6:05 PM
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Berkshire Hathaway is going into textiles. Didn't we try that once before?
::: posted by Steven at 4:44 PM
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BTW, BU won their hockey game, 3-2.
::: posted by Steven at 12:58 AM
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John McCain says:
Just as some Arab governments fuel anti-American sentiment among their people to divert them from problems at home, so a distinct minority of Western European leaders appears to engage in America-bashing to rally their people and other European elites to the call of European unity.? Some European politicians speak of pressure from their "street" for peaceful solutions to international conflict and for resisting American power regardless of its purpose.? But statements emanating from Europe that seem to endorse pacifism in the face of evil, and anti-Semitic recidivism in some quarters, provoke an equal and opposite reaction in America.
There is an American "street," too, and it strongly supports disarming Iraq, accepts the necessity of an expansive American role in the world to ensure we never wake up to another September 11th, is perplexed that nations with whom we have long enjoyed common cause do not share our urgency and sense of threat in time of war, and that considers reflexive hostility toward Israel as the root of all problems in the Middle East as irrational as it is morally offensive.
I'm sure he became less ambiguous later on.
::: posted by Steven at 12:53 AM
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Monday, February 10, 2003 :::
I asked one of my classmates whether being a student at BU meant I had to be a hockey fan. He suggested that it wouldn't hurt.
They're about to play BC for the Beanpot, a rotating trophy given each year to the winner of a two-round single-elimination tournament of BU, BC, Harvard, and Northeastern. This is the 51st. BU has won 24, and all but two of the last twelve or so, but they're the underdogs tonight.
::: posted by Steven at 8:10 PM
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Are state-funded anti-tobacco ads unconstitutional, too? What if the states merely extort anti-tobacco ads out of tobacco companies?
::: posted by Steven at 7:27 PM
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Another court decided last month that the "Choose Life" plates in South Carolina were unconstitutional, in that the state was promoting only one side in the debate. Immediately, a South Carolina legislator introduced a "Choose Death" license plate, which he insists fairly expresses the other side in the debate.
Slate. If the state can demonstrate more demand for one plate than another, and that that determination is being made in a viewpoint-neutral manner, I say go nuts. There's a lot of the type of Constitutional reasoning lately that suggests a steel tarriff would be unconstitutional because it infringes on the right to bear arms and that human sacrifices are protected if they have religious significance (or convey a message), and while these specific examples aren't in our immediate future, I have increasing tolerance for the view that the motive of the legislature is relevant to whether a law is Constitutional.
::: posted by dWj at 6:04 PM
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UPI reports Joe Lieberman saying, "I fear during the last two years our administration has not listened to Europe."
Colby Cosh responds:
I think people have enough native suspicion of politicians, if not outright intelligence, to decode what Lieberman's saying when he whines that "I fear during the last two years our administration has not listened to Europe." [...] Kyoto and the ICC are international agreements the U.S. hasn't ratified. Until that happens, these things are offers, not contracts, and they've been rejected by Congress, not merely the executive branch--so by saying "The administration has not listened to Europe," Lieberman really means that "The U.S. hasn't bent over for Europe."
There's a difference between cooperation and genuflection.
::: posted by Steven at 2:32 PM
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Sunday, February 09, 2003 :::
In Dorchester (a neighborhood of Boston), there's an intersection of Park and Adams (for those of you who know the area, this is right at Fields Corner). This intersection has a traffic light. At a particular point in the cycle, a driver on Adams southbound will see a green arrow to the left and a green arrow forward. At the same point in the cycle, a driver on Adams northbound will see a green arrow to the right and a green arrow forward.
To recap -- green arrow to the left in one direction, green arrow forward in the opposite direction.
I just thought that was curious.
::: posted by Steven at 5:09 PM
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