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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, September 20, 2003 :::
My parents and I visited Plymouth. I was surprised to learn how much abuse and vandalism Plymouth Rock has seen, all of it government-sponsored. Read into that whatever you are inclined to.
::: posted by Steven at 11:04 PM
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I haven't had time to read all of this piece yet, but I definitely will. I don't always read Victor Davis Hanson, but that piece seems particularly compelling. My folks are in town, though, and I'm to go meet them.
::: posted by Steven at 7:49 AM
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Friday, September 19, 2003 :::
As you've probably heard, the Ninth Circuit has agreed to re-hear the recall case en banc. This usually means all appelate judges in the circuit hear the case, but the Ninth is very large, and tends to hear cases sitting a few judges short of a full banc.
Eleven of the twenty-six have been selected; Professor Volokh explains the methodology, while Bashman (start there and scroll up) has complete coverage, including a pointer to these profiles.
::: posted by Steven at 11:49 PM
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When John Derbyshire writes an instant classic, it's sure to be depressing; today's lesson is that we're rewarding evil and punishing good. If you're going to read that one, and haven't read City of Brass by Kipling, you might as well check that out, too.
::: posted by dWj at 11:50 AM
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An OpinionJournal piece by Colin Powell is inherently newsworthy, innit? On progress in Iraq.
::: posted by dWj at 11:49 AM
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It's good to check the Forbes list of the richest Americans every year to check whether one's on it yet; even if one presumes otherwise, it would be terrible to be rich and not know it.
::: posted by dWj at 11:48 AM
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Actually, Steve, I was after the excess energy thing they mention. I wanted to use p + B11 to 3He4, but the design I came up with was going to require much closer tolerances than would have been practical, and quite possibly would have radiated away more energy in radio waves than it released from the boron nuclei.The article does raise an interesting question: does the writer know what "sine qua non" means? Let's not be to quick to assume otherwise; he may have merely felt that it was worth misusing just to have it in there.
::: posted by dWj at 11:48 AM
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Statement as of 5:00 am EDT on September 19, 2003Surface observation suggest the central pressure of Isabel has risen considerably over the past few hours. The lowest pressure observed recently has been about 991 mb in the Staunton Virginia area. This is the basis for the 987 mb in the advisory...and even that might be a stretch. Surface observations from the Atlantic coast... Chesapeake Bay...and Delaware Bay indicate sustained winds of 35-45 kt...so the initial intensity is lowered to 45 kt. Isabel should continue to weaken as it starts to lose tropical characteristics over the next 12-24 hr.
::: posted by dWj at 11:15 AM
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Dean was talking about doing this once: Wallace, a baby-faced tennis player fresh out of Spanish Fork High School, had almost the entire physics faculty of Utah State University hovering (and arguing) over an apparatus he had cobbled together from parts salvaged from junk yards and charity drops.
The apparatus is nothing less than the sine qua non of modern science: a nuclear fusion reactor, based on the plans of Utah's own Philo Farnsworth, the inventor of television.
::: posted by Steven at 10:52 AM
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As you may have heard, they're planning to release a de-Specterized version of the "Let It Be" album this November. I'm interested, though I hadn't realized Specter had much of an effect on anything besides the title track.
::: posted by Steven at 9:09 AM
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Thursday, September 18, 2003 :::
In today's Bleat, Lileks compares his daughter to the Saddam Hussein regime; mostly, though, he critiques a Star-Tribune editorial on the situation in Iraq.Every day I read a piece like the Strib edit. They all have an inescapable conclusion: Saddam should have been left in power. No, they don’t say that. Yes, the writers would surely insist that Saddam was a wretched tyrant, and the world is better off without him in power, BUT, Baghdad’s electricity service is now undependable. No, but. Yes, but. Perhaps, however. Perfection has not been achieved; the depredations of a three-decade nightmare have not been banished in six months, and that really is the issue, isn’t it. What irritate me are the letters to the editor in the Globe, every other day or so, saying Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz should be fired. What frustrates me about those letters isn't this conclusion, it's the invariable presumption that everyone agrees. They're not trying to persuade people that things are going badly in Iraq, and that it's Rummy's fault; rather, they use phrases like "obviously" and "everyone knows", and "no one I know voted for Nixon", while page three of the same paper reports a new poll indicating 60% approval for the administration's handling of Iraq.
::: posted by Steven at 11:55 AM
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In baseball, the Giants have claimed the National League West, and the Braves have clinched a tie in the East; unless they lose the rest of their games and the Marlins with the rest of theirs, including a playoff with the Braves, the Braves win the division. The Astros lost, so the Cubs are just a half game back in the Central; in the A.L. Central, the White Sox have gone in one week from two games ahead to two and a half behind, in part because of an 0-4 record against the Twins in that period of time. The Red Sox and the Marlins are each a game and a half ahead in their wild-card races, and the Tigers can go 4-7 the rest of the way to tie the Mets' record for losses in a season; that would be a better winning percentage than they've had this year, so they have a decent shot at the record books.
::: posted by dWj at 11:37 AM
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Do you suppose the junior senator from North Carolina has any special pull in getting Red Cross aid to her state?1-800-HELP-NOW to give the Red Cross money, though it's worth noting they've not been so well administrated in the past few years.
::: posted by dWj at 10:02 AM
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Ahoy! Tomorrow is talk like a pirate day.
That's assuming today is September 18th. I'm testing some new blogger features, specifically the ability to write something and have it automatically posted later.
::: posted by Steven at 2:21 AM
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Wednesday, September 17, 2003 :::
I was spelling it "Isabelle" until recently.
::: posted by dWj at 5:51 PM
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A lot of our recent visitors have been people searching for "Hurricane Isable". I misspelled it a few days ago (I later corrected it). I suppose if I'd spelled it correctly, we would have been the 5000th site listed for "Hurricane Isabel", but I inadvertently filled a niche.
::: posted by Steven at 4:44 PM
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North Korea threatens retaliation over naval exercisesNorth Korea has warned it will take 'merciless retaliatory measures' if the United States and its allies proceed with plans to intercept suspicious ships in international waters. Of course, North Korea says a lot of things.
::: posted by Steven at 3:57 PM
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I'm also late to this:Representatives of the 2003 U.S. Physics Team won five medals and four special prizes at the 34th International Physics Olympiad held August 2-11 in Taipei, Taiwan.The awards were presented at the closing ceremonies on August 10. Pavel Batrachenko was the absolute winner (first prize) of the 238 student competition. Pavel also received one of the two prizes for the best score in experiment. He was tied with Thaned Pruttivarasin from Thailand. Daniel Gulotta received a prize for the best score in theory and Emily Russell received a prize as the best female participant. All five students placed in the top ten percent. Pavel Batrachenko (ranked 1), Daniel Gulotta (ranked 13th), and Chintan Hossain (ranked 19th) received gold medals. Emily Russell (ranked 21st) and Immanuel Buder (ranked 23rd) received silver medals. Although the competition is among individuals, an informal summary of scores showed that the United States was the top-ranking country out of the fifty-four participating nations followed by South Korea, Taiwan and Iran. Back in my day China always won.Gulotta went (goes?) to school at the Illinois Math and Science Academy in Aurora.
::: posted by dWj at 12:53 PM
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Here's a story I'm late to:The cash-strapped WUSA called it quits Monday just five days before the Women's World Cup, bringing an abrupt end to a soccer league built on the success of the 1999 tournament.... The WUSA hoped another World Cup this fall would bring last-minute corporate sponsorships to save the league, but that hasn't happened, said John Hendricks, chairman of the WUSA board of governors. I visited my brother in July, and waiting in Logan airport for a flight back I had a conversation with a woman seated next to me, who was waiting for a different flight that would take her to a WUSA match, where she was the referee.
::: posted by dWj at 12:46 PM
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A garbage truck got entangled in overhead power lines in Streamwood this morning, bringing wires down atop a school bus and cutting power to 2,100 northwest suburban customers. The Trib requires registration.
::: posted by dWj at 11:57 AM
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I just want to add a couple notes — or rephrasings, maybe — to my brother's post on bailing auto-makers out of their obligations. - I'd like to make explicit that the pension obligations are a debt incurred in attracting labor. "Deferred compensation", as my brother says, but I want the wording I've used to compare this to asking foreign auto-makers to service American companies' debt.
- The guy says the taxpayer shouldn't have to bear the burden of this, and then procedes to coyly acknowledge that what he's proposed is a tax. Kudos for brazen honesty, I guess. But he's right the first time; if the company can't more than meet the requirements of the obigations it's taken on, it should go through bankruptcy. The shareholders should be on the hook for this.
- Above all, we shouldn't reward anyone for taking on obligations it can't meet. Do we tell Cedar Fair to share the debt of Six Flags because it's "not fair" that they've financed their operation differently? What does this tell companies to do in the future?
::: posted by dWj at 10:16 AM
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The U.S. Constitution was signed on September 17, 1789.
::: posted by Steven at 3:45 AM
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Tuesday, September 16, 2003 :::
I was just reading Taranto's take on how pushing the recall election to March 2 -- coincident with the Democratic primary -- would affect the outcome of the recall. This led me to think about how it would affect the outcome of the primary. We know that Democrats are easily confused by ballots, right? Can you imagine the reaction when people wake up on March 3 and learn that most of California's delegates to the Democratic National Convention are going to Cruz Bustamante?
::: posted by Steven at 10:50 PM
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The Globe's Brian McGrory is writing about John Heinz Kerry's problems again: "The unvarnished truth is, I want to like him. I want to write positively of him. I want to highlight his great potential, his uncanny ability to grasp the human plight.But then he whines or haplessly hollers or passes blame as he feels every bump, every conceivable slight, along an uncommonly gilded path.
The thing is, I know for a fact that Kerry can do better, and hopefully, eventually, he will. But unless and until he does, the voters of Iowa and New Hampshire can do better as well. Now he knows how I felt about Bob Dole.
::: posted by Steven at 9:51 PM
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The Instapundit (all hail the Instapundit!) linked to this top ten list based on this story: CNN's top war correspondent, Christiane Amanpour, says that the press muzzled itself during the Iraq war. And, she says CNN "was intimidated" by the Bush administration and Fox News, which "put a climate of fear and self-censorship." In other words, she claims that CNN's American bureau operates like its Iraqi bureau.
UPDATE: It seems Instapundit's other link on the matter already points this out.
::: posted by Steven at 9:29 PM
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Colby Cosh and Cosmo Macero are both pointing out a piece predicting that newspapers will become tabloidized (my word) over the next 20 years. Macero affirms without comment, while Cosh overturns on appeal.
I think Cosh makes a pretty good case that the successful newspapers will recognize that they can't compete with real-time information sources, but I can see a lot of less successful newspapers trying to do so and failing. Go read and make your own decision; in 2023, we'll all meet at my place and compare notes. Whoever is the most wrong brings the wine.
::: posted by Steven at 6:44 PM
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Ambit asks: How Come the Iraqi Body Count Meter isn't Running in Reverse?So if the UN's estimate was accurate - and if it wasn't where's the outcry that those who opposed the sanctions on humanitarian grounds were lying - and there is no evidence that Iraqis continue to die of privation, then, by my calculations, the war has already resulted in a net savings of over 15,000 Iraqi lives since the war's end using the war casualty figures compiled by Iraq Body Count. By rights the odometer-style counters should be running in reverse subtracting 5,000 Iraqi deaths per month. Link from Instapundit. All hail Instapundit.
::: posted by Steven at 6:03 PM
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The Big Three auto-makers are having pension troubles. Here's a bad way to solve them:Any plan should have these parameters: The promised pension and health care benefits must be paid. They shouldn't drive GM or Ford or Chrysler under. I can't see why not. If a company's costs are higher than its revenues -- whether these costs are in cash, in opportunity costs of capital, or in pension benefits to be paid in the future -- it dies. This is a good thing -- the company is destroying value.Every automaker--foreign ones, too--would collect a $500 "assessment"--for political reasons let's not call it a tax--on the sale of each new car and truck in the U.S. The amount would be built into the sticker, like a destination charge. At 16.5 million sales, that is $8.25 billion a year for the fund. This money would pay benefits for the retired workers of the three U.S. companies. If $500 isn't enough, up goes the levy.
Prices needn't rise. The carmakers set aside $500 to $1,500 a vehicle now to fund the pensions and health care. To the extent they are now allowing for more than $500, they could cut the car price. Or they could keep the difference as profit. I'd prefer that. Detroit has next to no profit on vehicles right now.
That screaming you hear is coming from Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Mercedes and all the other foreign manufacturers. This plan makes them share the burden of promises that their competitors GM, Ford and Chrysler have made to workers. Or, to express it more concisely, we impose a tariff on foreign cars to pay for a subsidy to two domestic auto-makers and a domestic/German hybrid.It is unfair that someone should get a competitive advantage of $1,000 a car because he hires young workers and the other guy is doing the right thing paying pensions. If I buy a house with a mortgage, and you buy your house with cash, is it unfair that I have a mortgage payment and you don't? That's what he's suggesting. And why is defering a big chunk of your employees' compensation "the right thing to do"?
It is unfair that hundreds of thousands of workers be put on the street when companies go down because of this unfair age advantage. Perhaps. It's certainly unfortunate that employees of declining industries have to adapt, often after years on the job. Perhaps some transitional assistance is called for -- protectionism is not.
::: posted by Steven at 5:10 PM
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Kate Malcolm is back, and making an argument for federalism.
::: posted by dWj at 5:07 PM
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Town changes name to Viagra, OK. Only temporarily, because a radio station offered concert tickets to all of the town's residents (which didn't seem all that strange to me until I typed it out). I want to know whether Pfizer has grounds for a lawsuit; I'm guessing they don't, unless the renamed town goes into a health-care-related business. This entry is just getting weirder and weirder, innit?
Link from Dave Barry, who also offers a re-printed Hurricane Preparedness Guide which he wrote a few years back. "It has some specific references to South Florida," he says, "but it should be just as useless to residents of other areas."
::: posted by Steven at 4:47 PM
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Bonds and stocks have both rallied since the announcement; lower interest rate expectations will do that.
::: posted by dWj at 3:56 PM
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As expected, the Fed left rates unchanged. Policy directive continues to suggest an easing bias.
::: posted by dWj at 2:27 PM
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If you're interested in Reason Magazine's post-mortem on the WTO talks in Cancún, well, there it is. It's not very long.
::: posted by Steven at 9:51 AM
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Monday, September 15, 2003 :::
Happy Birthday to Robert Benchley.
::: posted by Steven at 2:44 PM
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A three-member panel of the good old Ninth Circuit has postponed the California recall, pending whatever appeals may come.
::: posted by Steven at 1:51 PM
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Virginia Postrel has a tale of supply, demand, and "free" health care. An old tale, and an important one.
::: posted by Steven at 12:29 AM
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Sunday, September 14, 2003 :::
I haven't blogged much on the WNBA -- neither of my teams made the playoffs, and I didn't get drawn into the regular season this year -- but I'll mention that the title game will be Tuesday night, Detroit at Los Angeles. Today's penultimate game ended up close.
::: posted by Steven at 6:52 PM
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In North Korea news:Japan's Defence Minister has stressed his country's right to strike North Korean missile sites if an attack is thought imminent.
In an exclusive interview, Shigeru Ishiba told The Independent: "The Japanese constitution permits my position. Attacking North Korea after a missile attack on Japan is too late. If North Korea orders its military to send a missile to attack Japan and the missile is raised to vertical in preparation for launch, then Japan will assume that an attack has begun and has the right to attack that particular missile launch site. What else can the missile be used for but to attack us?" Whee! Mind you, this is from the paper that employs Robert Fisk.
::: posted by Steven at 6:46 PM
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Gray Davis gets an endorsement:LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Perennial presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche weighed in on the recall Thursday, calling on Californians to defeat the measure he claims was backed by the same political forces behind power deregulation. I'm sure it was. Meanwhile, the recall is being challenged in court in front of three fairly liberal judges and -- as I saw pointed out somewhere, though I can't find it -- the Attorney General of California wouldn't be required to appeal a ruling against the state.
::: posted by Steven at 6:43 PM
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If you didn't hear of the murder of the Swedish Foreign Minister, you're relying on us too much for your news. Anyway, this was amidst the final stretch of the campaign for a non-binding referendum on whether to adopt the Euro. The no side had a big lead, but Minister Lindh was one of the leading proponents of the euro, and last-minute polls showed a tight race.
Based on exit polls, the noes seem to have it by five or six points. Official results are expected in a few hours.
UPDATE: The actual results are not as tight as the exit polls were.
::: posted by Steven at 2:55 PM
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Sasha Volokh sees patterns in history. If you won't read all three stories, at least read the last.
::: posted by Steven at 2:19 PM
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I'd caught yesterday that Iowa's football team beat Iowa State, 40-21. I hadn't known that it was all special teams.
::: posted by Steven at 1:18 PM
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I saw this in the Globe this morning, but surprisingly buried: Indiana's governor died yesterday morning. You remember his stroke earlier in the week; he never woke up.
::: posted by Steven at 1:10 PM
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Hurricane Isabel draws closer. Here's a National Hurricane Center projection I took from their website.
::: posted by Steven at 10:41 AM
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George Will writes that school choice is a civil right. He's discussing the motion passed (barely) last week creating a small ($10 million) school choice program in DC. The only reason I'm aware of that someone might oppose it is the fear that it might succeed.
The relevant amendment is roll-call vote 490 in this list.
::: posted by Steven at 9:37 AM
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The California Republicans held a convention yesterday. Conservative congressman Dana Rohrabacher made a point I hadn't seen:He said that McClintock will drag down conservative Republicans if he stays in the race -- and not only if Bustamante wins.
"If Arnold wins, he's going to look at conservatives and say, 'What do I need them for?' " he said. The flip-side, though, is that he also has no reason to acknowledge you if he knows that you'll automatically "come home".
The last paragraph in the article is my advice to California voters. If you're polled, though, say you're supporting McClintock.
::: posted by Steven at 9:11 AM
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I haven't commented on the killing of Iraqi police by American troops, primarily because I don't know what to say (though one could point out that that rarely stops me). I consider it our worst failure over there since major hostilities ended, and, yes, I'm including the failure to prevent attacks on sites whose officials had asked us to stay away. I wonder to what extent it was caused by the difference between a soldier's training and mindset and a policeman's training and mindset. I hope it doesn't impede our recruitment of Iraqi police too much, or our transition to civilian government.
As I said, I have nothing to say beyond "oh, crap".
::: posted by Steven at 8:37 AM
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