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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, June 07, 2003 :::
Apparently that would have been a good call.
My reasoning was that Funny Cide won a couple of short races on dryer tracks fairly recently, and might have trouble winning a third race that quickly, especially since it's longer and muddier; besides, he had even odds. Empire Maker seemed a good non-Funny Cide choice, just because he was the favorite at the Derby. That's the entirety of my reasoning.
Incidentally, it is possible to change an entry at a blogspot-hosted blog after you've written it (I've edited this one a couple of times), and it keeps its original timestamp. So the only evidence you have that I wrote that last post before the race is that I'm telling you I did.
::: posted by Steven at 6:51 PM
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Since the Belmont hasn't quite started yet, I'd like to say that if I were betting with the odds they're showing, I'd go for Empire Maker. I'll further note that I have been to a track once, that I placed several bets there, and that I won none of them.
::: posted by Steven at 6:41 PM
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You probably thought the Volokh Conspiracy couldn't get any cooler. But they just added Randy Barnett. Don't you feel silly for being so wrong? Or am I projecting again?
Unfortunately, his first entry is misguided:
Is anyone besides me disappointed at Howell Raines' resignation from the Times? Now the paper can go back to posing as an objective arbiter of the truth rather than the spirited ideological publication it's always been. By taking the white gloves off the Grey Lady, Raines did truth in advertising a great service. Now he's gone and the Times gets to go back to pretending. 'Tis a pity.
Even under Raines, the Times has been "posing as an objective arbiter of the truth". It hasn't done this posing quite as well, in large part because it hasn't done the truth quite as well. But in spite of what Barnett, Andrew Sullivan, or I think of the Times, there are still a lot of people who buy the paper. I'd venture to say that most of these people don't see it as an alternative to Mother Jones; they see it as an alternative to the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, or the Cambridge Chronicle. Raines may have hurt the Times' credibility, but that credibility which remains is all the more dangerous in his hands, and I think the latter effect more than compensates for the former.
Tangentially related, some Republicans (for example -- this happens in both directions) will vote in the Democratic primary for the more leftist of the two leading candidates, thinking the Republican candidate will have an easier time. I tend to think this is a bad idea, in that the danger a more leftist Democrat will pose if elected outweighs the extra difficulty he or she will have in actually getting elected. After Pat Buchanan won the New Hampshire primary in 1996, Al Gore was asked whether he thought Buchanan would be easier to beat than Dole or Alexander. Gore responded that after Reagan won the Republican nomination in 1980, he had celebrated, assuming that Carter would win easily, and hadn't worried about the Republican primary since. Since this is Al Gore, he probably made up the anecdote, but I think the point is valid.
The Conspiracy's other new JD, Sasha, has implied that, of their Jewish group of 13, he's the Christ figure. Perhaps that new degree is going to his head.
::: posted by Steven at 12:21 PM
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The French tend to think that they're civilized, but we know better.
::: posted by Steven at 11:56 AM
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Friday, June 06, 2003 :::
The Cubs are down 5-2 in the bottom of the fourth. Tomorrow's game, I think they have a good shot; both Wood and Clemens have been having off years, but Wood's a better hitter. (No DH at Wrigley Field.)
::: posted by dWj at 6:07 PM
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The Wall Street Journal editorial board speaks up about the New York Times:It's a free country, and perhaps the Times has decided it wants its reporters to explain the world in this partisan tendentious way. This is the tradition in Europe, where newspapers and their staffs are understood to be right (Le Figaro) or left (Le Monde), and it was once true of American papers too. If the Times wants to return to those days, its editors would do better to come out and admit their bias. The confusion--for readers and especially for impressionable young reporters like Jayson Blair--comes when a newspaper preaches one standard of fairness and objectivity but practices another.
::: posted by dWj at 12:47 PM
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The second biggest sports story in Chicago this week has also been about the Cubs; the Cubs play the Yankees today for the first time since before World War II. As of last night, you could still get tickets for today's game for as little as $65, but for tomorrow's matchup between Kerry Wood and Roger Clemens, the latter going for his 300th win and 4000th strikeout, has been going for $700-$1500 all week.
::: posted by dWj at 9:56 AM
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The Bleat is mostly about pornography again. Though there is this entry:
10:03 Andrew Sullivan just floated six inches off the ground and gently revolved in mid air, and when he touched down he said to himself: Howard [sic] Raines has just resigned. I can feel it.
::: posted by Steven at 5:35 AM
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The Guardian has retracted the Wolfowitz war-for-oil story.
::: posted by Steven at 12:03 AM
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Thursday, June 05, 2003 :::
Law, to a certain extent, has to deal in reality, and I think that's where I put pain and suffering caps. I regard pain and suffering as real costs that could exceed, say, $1M, but when I hear that a court has arrived at such a figure that it's correct isn't the way I bet; introducing a cap would introduce less harm than it would prevent.
::: posted by dWj at 4:46 PM
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Colby Cosh has a couple entries on the differential between American pharmaceutical prices and Canadian prices. In his first entry, he suggests that the primary difference is that Canada has an oligopsony. That's what I've always assumed, and it's bugged me -- if some third-world country wants to pay marginal costs, I'm okay with that, but Canada should share the R&D costs that Americans have to pay. But here's a follow-up entry:
John Hall points out that in 2000, the Fraser Institute (Canada's analogue to the Cato Institute) studied the pharmaceutical price differential using 1990 data and concluded that the reason for it was American litigiousness. "There is evidence that one-third to one-half of any pharmaceutical price differentials... were due to the higher cost of protection from legal liability in the United States. In Canadian courts, compensation for personal injury is capped at CDN$250,000 and judges rarely award large liability settlements." Unfortunately John's link to the original study doesn't work, but I'll trust him to have cut and pasted the quote properly.
$180,000 American seems a bit low to me, though Canadians don't pay their own health care, or at least most of it. So -- unless I'm mistaken -- that's basically pain and suffering.
I think the Massachusetts legislature was talking about capping medical malpractice punitive damages at $500,000, with no limit for compensation. I could go for a pain-and-suffering cap, too, but I think $500k to $1 million is about right.
::: posted by Steven at 3:02 PM
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Neither Williams sister will be in the finals of the French Open. Venus lost pretty early (round 3?). Top-seed Serena in the semi-finals.
::: posted by Steven at 2:52 PM
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In today's WSJ, a North Korean defector writes as follows:
My experience as a North Korean weapons official and defector, and my knowledge and ongoing relations with other defectors and current North Korean officials, led me to a few critical conclusions that may be of value to American officials who now, in a post-Iraq world, are confronting full-force the reality of Pyongyang's lunatic regime.
First, "understandings" with Pyongyang that cause the exchange of hard currency for "guarantees" that the regime will discontinue its nuclear and WMD programs are both immoral and doomed to failure. Immoral because such understandings come, in the end, to this: promises by Pyongyang not to export terrorism are exchanged for assurances to Pyongyang that it is licensed to commit as much terrorism against its own people as it wishes. And doomed to failure because, as the Clinton agreements prove, any effort to finance, legitimize or empower the regime only strengthens its desire and capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction.
I come from a country whose rulers are indifferent to the mass starvation of their own people--one whose citizens are on average more than seven inches shorter than their Southern brothers and sisters, and one that requires its citizens to rise early in the morning to join screeching public-address systems in singing absurd songs of praise to a deranged leader. But--and this is now increasingly true and true to a degree that would have seemed impossible 10 years ago--my fellow countrymen know and openly acknowledge that Kim Jong Il is both evil and lunatic and doomed. More and more, midlevel officials like me in the North Korean military and WMD industry see the regime's blustering threats against other countries as evidence of its isolation, desperation and declining hold on power.
Emphasis in the original. RtWT.
::: posted by Steven at 2:50 PM
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I'm not sure what to think. I know, intellectually, that it's been bad for Raines to be at the Times. It would be better for the Times to be a better paper. If everyone recognized that it was no longer a reliable news source, and switched to the Washington Post, or the Wall Street Journal, or USA Today, that would be fine, too, but that's not what Raines has done to the Times. He's made it substantially worse, but only hurt its reputation a little. People have still trusted it, and if people are going to trust a paper, we're better off having it actually be trustworthy.
On the other hand, it's disappointing not to have Nixon to kick around anymore, if one has enjoyed kicking Nixon. I haven't read Andrew Sullivan today (I'm composing this off-line), but if he is reacting to Raines's downfall with unmitigated glee, he's a better man than I. Which I expect of him.
Speaking of newspapers getting things wrong, the Guardian claims Wolfowitz said that the war was about oil, which wasn't at all what was said. And this guy has collected a bunch of links to similar errors.
::: posted by Steven at 2:49 PM
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Executive Editor of The Times and Top Deputy Step DownNew York Times Executive Editor Howell Raines and Managing Editor Gerald Boyd resigned on Thursday in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal."This is a day that breaks my heart," Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger told staffers at a morning newsroom meeting. The Times announced that Joseph Lelyveld, the paper's former executive editor, has been named interim executive editor, assuming the responsibilities held by Raines.
::: posted by dWj at 11:12 AM
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Kate Malcolm points us to a story on a three-year old with a Reebok endorsement. She also mentions the recent landmark deal with Lebron James; I have a bad record of sports predictions, but anyone who's been to a sports bar knows that doesn't stop one from speaking up, and I'd like to predict now that Carmello Anthony will prove to be a better NBA player than James, just because of a single year in which he was able to develop without the weight of expectations of an entire NBA franchise on his shoulders.
::: posted by dWj at 10:05 AM
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Wednesday, June 04, 2003 :::
Say, look what the House passed Monday. Rough timing.
::: posted by dWj at 12:18 PM
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If you wish to, you could read this MSN article on debt, but I just want to comment on her warning against moving credit card debt to a home equity loan. She may actually have a deeper point here, one I can broaden with abandon to "you can't rely on expert advice; advice that's good for experts may not be good for you." Most people who carry around a lot of credit card debt are exactly the people who will spend more if that debt is moved to somewhere else; it may be that they have to play different kinds of games to discipline themselves than is required of the kind of person who becomes a financial advisor for whom, if dropped into a situation in which she had a lot of high interest rate credit card debt, would be well served by reducing the interest rate by moving it to a home equity loan. Then again, she wouldn't be in that situation in the first place.I wonder whether Kissinger should be said to have been bad at running the foreign policy of a democracy insofar as he seems to have set up a system that was more complicated than the Carter administration could handle. If Ford had been reelected things would have worked out fine, but effectively it's as though Kissinger paid off the credit cards with a home-equity loan, and Carter was dropped into a situation in which the credit cards had no balance. Had we never engaged with China, Carter would have had more difficulty screwing things up quite so badly. (This is how my brain works. Sorry about that.)
::: posted by dWj at 12:09 PM
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This is one of those days that makes me wonder whether life is a trick question. In particular, here at work I think I'm being tricked into trying to figure out what some sound and fury is signifying. I have a guess.Let's then move on to something more consequential to our daily lives: sports. I'd like to know whether the news station in any station other than Chicago was reporting last night, hours after Sosa's ejection, that he had been ejected for "allegedly" using a corked bat. If it really was an accident, one wonders how many times this accident has happened in the past, a question that was hinted around but not quite raised at the press conference at which the Cubs' manager made something of an ass of himself. (I don't know that he actually denied knowing what a corked bat is, but he came close.) On the other hand, MLB has Sosa's other bats now, and Sosa claims that no cork will be found in any of them. If that's the case, we can believe that this was essentially a one-off, and a ten-game suspension seems sufficient.
::: posted by dWj at 11:07 AM
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Tuesday, June 03, 2003 :::
Our good friend Kate notes that poor writing is not necessarily good writing — cf. Alan Sokal — but I think what she says loses the point that there are times when precision is to be valued over broad accessibility — i.e. when writing for specialists. Writing for the public will necessarily be hampered by the need to avoid a degree of jargon, as well as the need to spell out what might be taken as common knowledge elsewhere. I think it is more the case in physics than in law (though it is probably true in both) that a degree of writing for the public consists in figuring out how to lie in the least egregious manner possible without losing the reader; it is more true of economics (and perhaps law) than of physics that there are terms that are spelled and pronounced just like words outside of the field, and have meanings that only superficially resemble those to which they are cognate. ("Efficiency" is the example that keeps pounding in my brain.)In either case, the goal of writing should be clarity, except where it's poetry, which I suppose is how I try to defend my own writing. Different things will be clearer to people of different backgrounds, though, or merely of different ways of thinking. I remember watching a chemical engineer teach something I didn't know to a group of nonscientists, and being quite unable to understand it until I got her later to write down a single equation, something she had been straining herself not to do so as not to confuse the students.
::: posted by dWj at 2:42 PM
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My brother points to Will's column, noting the penultimate paragraph. Paul Krugman has accused the Bush Administration of this, and should get some credit for it; while I do like the restructuring, too, my brother is right that that's one of my favorite parts of the tax cut. Read your Austrians.
::: posted by dWj at 11:15 AM
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Watched much of the hockey game last night. Game 4 in a best-of-seven occupies an interesting place in my mind, largely because of the way games are quantized; 4-0 is a sweep, 3-1 is a huge lead, 2-2 and you have a best of three. If you're not watching for a sweep, you're watching to see whether the team down 2-1 can catch up or be put away.David Frum the other day [second item] was critical of "The Mighty Ducks" as a name, but I can tell you that name is one of the two reasons I'm cheering for that team. (The other is that I've lived in New Jersey.) As my brother correctly remembered, I once "played for" (viz. "got in the way of") an intramural basketball team called "The Little Fuzzy Bunnies"; as he did not mention, I joined the team only because of its name. Go Ducks!
::: posted by dWj at 11:15 AM
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A reporter named Peter Maass writes for Slate thatSalam Pax, the most famous and most mysterious blogger in the world, was my interpreter.
::: posted by dWj at 10:14 AM
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We all know Lileks for his bleats, but he also has a "Backfence" column. He mentioned chiggers in a column last week, and I responded. On Sunday, he quoted my letter (I'm the one identified as "Steven"). The pun at the end wasn't actually intended, it just spilled out onto the keyboard that way and I thought I should keep it.
::: posted by Steven at 2:40 AM
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George Will writes about the recent tax bill, and the President who signed it.
The sunset provisions serve the transparent fiction that the new cuts will deprive the government of no more than $350 billion over 10 years, the number that several deficit-phobic Republican senators insisted on. But given the success of Republican rhetoric--a success deriving from the public's common sense--in arguing that allowing a tax cut to lapse is equivalent to increasing taxes, the sun will set on few, if any, of these cuts.
So the 10-year cost to the government may exceed even the president's original goal of $726 billion, which he supposedly ``compromised'' in half. Democrats, noting that Bush has achieved all this with almost no help from congressional Democrats and with little enthusiasm from the public, are probably muttering to themselves, as they have been muttering since election night 2000: It is a good thing George W. Bush is dumb as a stump or we'd really be in trouble.
George Will does subtlety well. Read down to the penultimate paragraph to see my favorite thing about the tax cut (and, I suspect, my brother's).
::: posted by Steven at 2:33 AM
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Monday, June 02, 2003 :::
I hadn't known until today that Cambridge's anti-anti-smoking contingent has a web site.
::: posted by Steven at 5:45 PM
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Kate Malcolm asks what's wrong with kids these days, and the story to which she linked provides the answer:They were taken home but no prosecution is possible because they are deemed under the age of criminal responsibility. It may be that a criminal response to this is not yet appropriate, but parents who assume that children don't respond to incentives will create more of these little heathens. Some kind of "fix this or we will" response from the state (or the victim) would seem to be called for.I was thinking recently about the bad-childhood defense. My take on this alternates between - If you lack any moral responsiblity, and are merely an automaton, then you have the moral worth of an automaton, too, and may be dealt with as a destructive machine that's gone out of control; and
- If you don't respond sufficiently to normal incentives of criminal punishment, we'll have to intensify them to acheive the necessary effect.
I'm really only that hard-hearted when people try to raise vice-development into an industry; the notion of rehabilitation appeals to me, but it absolutely has to start with a willingness to be rehabilitated.
::: posted by dWj at 1:53 PM
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It's official -- he's running again.
Yes, I am running for president. And this time around, I do not intend to be cheated out of victory the way I was in the 2000 election, when the so-called ''U.S. Supreme Court,'' defying the clear wishes of the American people, failed to declare me the winner, on the so-called ''legal grounds'' that I did not receive any so-called ''votes.''
I actually wrote in "Dave Barry" for President in 2000. I considered (Libertarian) Harry Browne, and I considered voting for Bush (who I clearly would have voted for if there had been any chance of his winning Massachusetts), but I ended up choosing a compromise candidate.
::: posted by Steven at 1:32 PM
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My brother's comments on why social conservatives might withhold support from a less-conservative Republican are not wrong, but are incomplete. Some social conservatives will think the way he is thinking -- in terms of providing an incentive not to take them for granted -- but there's an other motive which is often forgotten by geeks like us.
Most people's lives -- even most political activists' lives -- are not 100% driven by politics. A lot of those conservatives have families, jobs, and/or stamp collections which also attract their interest. Most will probably help Bush some, but if he's less attractive to them than Gary Bauer would be, they'll put less effort into his campaign than they would into Bauer's, not so much out of spite as because his re-election effort is less valuable to them. As a result, when a Bush campaign has to compete for their time against their kids, their jobs, or their stamp collections, it simply doesn't compete as well as a Bauer campaign would.
::: posted by Steven at 1:22 PM
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My friend David, who works for a textile trade association, told me a story the other night. He commented that it makes him more libertarian, and it really is kind of ugly, but I'm telling it to be entertaining. So ignore, if you would, that this is your tax money I'm talking about.
The story begins with a particular type of wool fabric. As of a few years ago, this fabric was protected by a tariff of 35%. Imported suits made of the fabric were taxed at 25% -- in other words, domestic suit-makers were hurt by tariffs more than they were helped.
A few years ago, the suit-makers lobbied for, and got, a law that not only reduced the fabric tariff, but reimbursed American suit-makers for whatever tariffs they had paid in 1999. The law was poorly written, and the Treasury Department took a while to figure out how best to implement it. Eventually they solicited applications for reimbursement from suit-makers.
David goes to a tailor who runs his own shop, and makes his own suits. The tailor received a notice from the Customs service that he could apply for reimbursement. He knew that David worked with the textiles industry, and asked him for help. David said that, yes, he knew what that was about, and helped him submit papers to be reimbursed for $240.
Customs collected the applications, accompanied by documentation, by August of 2001. This paperwork was collected at New York City's World Trade Center.
In amongst the post-9/11 legislation, the Congress re-wrote the suit-makers' reimbursement law. The big suit-makers were impatient by this point, and didn't want to wait for the government to figure out how much every little tailor was to be reimbursed, so Congress decreed that any suit-maker owed over $5000 would be reimbursed based on what they had paid, and that those who had paid under $5000 would split up a pool of $1.7 million.
David's tailor got another letter, and submitted another application, again with David's help.
Not long ago, David got a call from his tailor. The tailor had received a check from the government, in response to the application. "I want to cash this check," he said, "but I don't want to go to jail." When he had seen the check, he assumed there had been a mistake, but, no, only 15 small suit-makers had applied for the money. The check for $110,000 wasn't a mistake.
My friend David has a new suit.
::: posted by Steven at 1:04 PM
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Kate (one name) reacts to a threat by social conservatives that Bush's election will be in jeopardy if he doesn't get more anti-homosexual. She asks what the threat is, whether these people would withdraw support, and the answer is that, yes, they quite possibly would. As to whether that makes them stupid, the answer to that question is an open one.Primitive classical economics suggests that if you want the car at the price the dealer offers you, you buy it at that price. Experience shows that, even if it looks like a good deal, you might be able to get a better deal if you act as though the price is more than you're willing to pay. It might take longer for you to get the car, but in the long run it's a winning strategy; similarly, he will try to make you think he's not willing to sell it much lower. In a situation of bilateral monopoly, it can be in the interests of each side to present false information about how much they want what they want, even to the point of failing to make certain deals that were otherwise makable — you were willing to pay more than the dealer really needed, but you couldn't find a price that he was willing for you to believe he would accept and you were willing for him to believe you would accept. (If that sentence doesn't parse after two goes, give up and move on.) The point here is that by strategically shooting yourself in the foot, you can establish incentives for the other party that might, in the long run, prove to your benefit. If everyone knows how low the car dealership will go, the car dealership may have trouble meeting overhead; similarly, if everyone knows that the social conservatives will always turn out for a Republican, the Republicans will ignore social conservatives. It is in the interests of social conservatives that Republicans believe they are willing to withdraw support, and may be sufficiently in their interests that it is worth establishing their credibility once in a while, even at the cost of electing a Democrat. Libertarians get this a lot, and it's worth noting in that context that if you never support the Republican they're going to ignore you as well; those Libertarians who will never vote for someone with an (R) or a (D) next to their name have to be hoping to elect an (L) someday, as they won't do their cause any good by pulling the major parties in their direction. (Insofar as the major parties know this, at least; what matters is establishing the perception, regardless of how often I write as though the perception and reality will be perfectly aligned.) Similarly a social conservative whose goal is to pull Republicans in that direction need to make their demands plausible to Republicans; anyone who goes too far will simply make himself irrelevant.
::: posted by dWj at 1:03 PM
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Annika (one name) won an LPGA event this weekend, a couple miles up the road from where I live. She bogeyed the last two holes and won by three strokes. Which is why she thought she'd try a go at the men's tour.
::: posted by dWj at 12:49 PM
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I don't know what I had on Friday, but it came with flu-like symptoms, which pretty much rules out athlete's foot and maybe AIDS. By mid-Saturday I decided I'd had as much sleep as would do me any good and I was going to Iowa as originally planned. Shortly across the border I felt much better; if you've never been to Iowa, I strongly recommend it for its therapeutic benefits if nothing else. The corn, maybe a month from planting, is several inches above the ground, giving the formerly barren fields an aesthetic similar to the head of a baby just mustering hair. Being from Iowa may aid in finding the beauty in that, but I can't imagine it would hurt others to come try.
::: posted by dWj at 11:32 AM
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The FCC voted 3-2 to do what it was expected to vote 3-2 to do.
::: posted by dWj at 11:27 AM
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Mark Steyn has been en vacances down Iraq way. He thinks it's looking pretty good, despite the "relief organizations".
Last Saturday, I was back in Rutba, a town I rather like in its decrepit way, and stopped for a late lunch at a restaurant with big windows, a high ceiling with attractive mouldings and overhead fans, and a patron who looked like a Sinatra album cover, hat pushed back on his head. As I got out of the car, I noticed across the street a big, white sports utility - a sure sign that someone from the welfare jet set was in town. This one was marked Oxfam. "Hmm," I thought. "Must be some starvation in the neighbourhood."
The winsome young Arab boy with a face as lovely as Halle Berry's and a lot less grumpy brought me a whole roast chicken - stringy but chewy - piled with bread and served with a generous selection of salads. I managed to determine that the Oxfam crowd was holding a meeting with the Red Cross to discuss the deteriorating situation. But just what exactly was "deteriorating"? As my groaning table and the stores along Main Street testified, there was plenty of food in town. Was it the water? I made a point of drinking the stuff everywhere I went in a spirited effort to pick up the dysentery and cholera supposedly running rampant. But I remain a disease-free zone. So what precisely is happening in Rutba that requires an Oxfam/ICRC summit? Well, the problem, as they see it, is that, sure, there's plenty of food available but "the prices are too high". That's why the World Food Programme and the other NGOs need to be brought in, to distribute more rations to more people.
Can you think of anything Iraq needs less? If prices really are "too high", it's because storekeepers are in the first flush of a liberated economy. Given that the main drag in Rutbah has a gazillion corner shops lined up side by side, competition will soon bring prices down to what the market can bear, if it hasn't already. Offering folks WFP rations will only put some of those storekeepers out of business and ensure that even more people need rations. But perhaps that's the idea.
Perhaps. But I'm more inclined to see good intentions that lead to bad consequences than to see malice.
::: posted by Steven at 1:06 AM
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