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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, December 06, 2003 :::
If you're trying to teach yourself to play the guitar, check out the JavaScript gimmick at the bottom of Jumprope's "Sound Clips" page. It lets you select the name of a chord, and it shows you where to stop each of the strings. Quite simple, but a pretty slick idea, I think.
::: posted by Steven at 1:41 PM
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Newish at Townhall.com, Dr. Krauthammer has a column on "Bush Derangement Syndrome". Similarly, Brent Bozell sees the Hollywood left being taken over by its nuttiest elements. Thomas Sowell writes about the high cost of busybodies, and in an earlier random thoughts column describes one of my problems:Impractical men especially need to get married. The problem is that practical women may have better sense than to marry them. A month and a half ago -- if you read exactly one of these columns that I'm linking to, read this -- George Will wrote about Gov. Bill Owens of Colorado, who should be considered a reasonable prospect for president in 2008.
::: posted by Steven at 1:26 PM
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Friday, December 05, 2003 :::
I should mention before the day is out -- I should have mentioned before, actually -- that today is the 70th anniversary of the ratification of the 21st Amendment. Drink up!
::: posted by Steven at 8:34 PM
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Lily Malcolm wishes she had a subscription to Playboy.
I might have taken that out of context, just a little.
::: posted by Steven at 4:30 PM
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I had a great time last night at the University of Chicago Physics department's holiday party. If I find the script to "Bob Wald tells a joke", I'll be sure to post a link.
::: posted by dWj at 11:40 AM
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Thursday, December 04, 2003 :::
I, for one, would be surprised if one couldn't find the sound of a herring farting on the web. Link from Dave Barry's latest column.
::: posted by Steven at 3:18 PM
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As I was walking down Comm. Ave. this morning, there was an attractive woman walking the other direction, carrying a computer. I caught myself staring at the computer. That happens more frequently with people carrying books. When I get on the subway, the first thing I look at is what people are reading. If I can't read the title of a book, it can frustrate me.
I was originally going to write more on this thread, but it got a little bit too weird, even for me.
::: posted by Steven at 2:47 PM
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At The Volokh Conspiracy, David Bernstein passes along thatAccording to MEMRI, the Alexandria Library in Egypt, restored with UNESCO funds, displays a copy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion next to the Torah in a display of "Jewish Holy Books." Surprised? Me neither.
Moving along, Lily quotes a letter in the Wall Street Journal about treating teachers as professionals. I'm in favor of it. The NEA can start by reforming itself from a union into a professional society, like the National Society of Professional Engineers or the Association for Investment Management and Research. Professionals don't get monopoly power.
::: posted by Steven at 7:46 AM
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Wednesday, December 03, 2003 :::
Ludicrous Laws, as it says. Number 2 raises first amendment problems, doesn't it? Or can it be interpreted in a substantially viewpoint-neutral manner?
::: posted by dWj at 3:28 PM
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Gun Laws do Not Reduce Criminal Violence According to New Study. This is in Canada.
::: posted by Steven at 10:10 AM
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Tuesday, December 02, 2003 :::
I'm going to prepend a comment, because this is likely to leave some readers on the curb. Relativity suggests that any particular choice of time frame is arbitrary; chaos theory, however, defines in particular one very important parameter in terms of the time-evolution of a system. (So does quantum mechanics, hence much of the trouble of modern physics. But I digress.) The concern was that ambiguity in the concept of time would lead to systems that could be considered chaotic in some reference frames but not in others. It turns out they can't. Now, believe it or not, this is where I was going to start this post:Relativistic chaos is coordinate invariant The noninvariance of Lyapunov exponents in general relativity has led to the conclusion that chaos depends on the choice of the space-time coordinates. This has been further supported by the well known results that mixing is coordinate dependent and Lyapunov exponents in a cosmological model can be made positive or zero for different time parametrizations. Strikingly, we uncover the transformation laws of Lyapunov exponents under general space-time transformations and we find that chaos, as characterized by positive Lyapunov exponents, is coordinate invariant. As a result, the previous conclusion regarding the noninvariance of chaos in cosmology, a major claim about chaos in general relativity, necessarily involves the violation of hypotheses required for a proper definition of the Lyapunov exponents.
::: posted by dWj at 5:42 PM
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Also in today's Best of the Web, Taranto points out that a polygamist's lawyer is citing Lawrence. The nested blockquotes are the AP (as quoted by Taranto), followed by Taranto.
The nation's high court in June struck down a Texas sodomy law, ruling that what gay men and women do in the privacy of their homes is no business of government. It's no different for polygamists, argued Tom Green's attorney, John Bucher, to the Utah Supreme Court. "It doesn't bother anyone, (and with) no compelling state interest in what you do in your own home with consenting adults, you should be allowed to do so," Bucher said.
One can make a principled distinction between gay rights and polygamy; we did so back in April. The again, these distinctions have a tendency to break down under legal scrutiny. Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 case that discovered a constitutional right to contraception, was rooted in the right of marital privacy. By the time the court decided Roe v. Wade in 1973 the right to reproductive privacy had been severed from marriage and applied to abortion. In 1986's Bowers v. Hardwick the court declined to establish a right of sexual privacy to gay couples--but 17 years later in Lawrence v. Texas it reversed itself. The court in Lawrence drew the line at same-sex marriage, but the Massachusetts Supreme Court quickly stepped over that boundary.
It may be worth pointing out that Goodridge (the Massachusetts gay-marriage case) was decided on the Massachusetts Constitution, and not on rights which are now covered by the ninth and fourteenth amendments to the US Constitution, but which weren't covered by said amendments when they were ratified. As such, it's not a descendent of Lawrence.
It's certainly worth pointing out that while Lawrence is being used by a lawyer to claim a constitutional right to polygamy, no court has bought such an argument. A lawyer could claim a first-amendment right for his client to stick his neighbor's head* on a pike, but that wouldn't mean that we need to re-think the first amendment, that would mean that the client needs to re-think his lawyer. He might also re-think putting heads on pikes, at least where they can be seen from the road, but I've long since left the realms of both relevance and good taste.
* The lawyer's neighbor, or the client's neighbor? Does it matter?
::: posted by Steven at 12:09 PM
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Today's "Best of the Web" points out Jimmy Carter's choice of phrases at the end of a New York Times article about a new mid-east peace plan:Mr. Carter, defeated in his quest for re-election by Ronald Reagan in 1980, speculated that "had I been elected to a second term, with the prestige and authority and influence and reputation I had in the region, we could have moved to a final solution." Emphasis added.
::: posted by Steven at 11:55 AM
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Colby relates the story of an admitted enemy combatant who makes an interesting plea for our sympathy.
::: posted by dWj at 9:41 AM
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Monday, December 01, 2003 :::
For the Iraqis, a Missile Deal That Went SourFor two years before the American invasion of Iraq, Mr. Hussein's sons, generals and front companies were engaged in lengthy negotiations with North Korea, according to computer files discovered by international inspectors and the accounts of Bush administration officials.
The officials now say they believe that those negotiations ? mostly conducted in neighboring Syria, apparently with the knowledge of the Syrian government ? were not merely to buy a few North Korean missiles.
Instead, the goal was to obtain a full production line to manufacture, under an Iraqi flag, the North Korean missile system, which would be capable of hitting American allies and bases around the region, according to the Bush administration officials.
As war with the United States approached, though, the Iraqi files show that Mr. Hussein discovered what American officials say they have known for nearly a decade now: that Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader, is less than a fully reliable negotiating partner.
In return for a $10 million down payment, Mr. Hussein appears to have gotten nothing. I have nothing to add.
::: posted by Steven at 6:27 PM
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Last week I extended praise for Bush's Iraq trip into a point about judging the candidate, not just his stated policies; OpinionJournal today presents a piece that made the same point 35 years ago.You don't ask a surgeon to tell you exactly what's he going to do before he operates, for the simple reason that an honest surgeon doesn't know until he's had a look. You just pick the man who give you the best sense of confidence by reason of training, experience and character — and then hope for the best.
::: posted by dWj at 3:45 PM
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One more thing about the Iraq trip -- reports are that the idea was first floated by chief-of-staff Andrew Card, a Massachusetts guy.
::: posted by Steven at 12:15 PM
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Lily Malcolm brings up the point that Libertarians can't be happy with Bush's profligacy; I would expect most Libertarians aren't happy with his foreign policy, either. A while ago I went back to previous election and worked out the state from which the median electoral vote came; for each state, I calculate the number of votes for the President-elect divided by the highest number of votes for any other candidate, and I rank the states in order, accumulating total electoral votes from the top until I get to 269. I can then classify states as being more Republican than the median or more Democrat than the median; thus Ohio might go for Bill Clinton but by less of a margin than most other states, and counts for that election as more Republican than the median.Where I'm going with this is that New Hampshire provided Bush's 243rd through 246th electoral votes, ordered in this fashion, but my projection is that NH will be more Democrat than the median next year; if Bush carries New Hampshire, he wins reelection, while any Democrat who wins the election will carry New Hampshire. This is based on the premise that more residents of New Hampshire who vote Republican are strongly libertarian than is true of the nation at large. (Hence its choice of U.S. Senators. By which I mean, take this theory with a grain of salt.)
::: posted by dWj at 11:59 AM
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There are a couple new covers of 70's songs. Connected with the movie "Gothika" is a new version of The Who's "Behind Blue Eyes". I don't know who to blame for it, but the most positive adjective I can give it is "pointless". It starts fairly true to the original, but adds some unnecessary sound-effects and -- most egregiously -- replaces the climax with a new verse. The new verse almost works (it would be fine if it didn't rhyme a word with itself), but "Behind Blue Eyes" needs the climax in order to pull the song together. Besides, without it you're really stuck in front of the blue eyes.
Meanwhile, Kid Rock has a new version of Bad Company's "Feel Like Making Love". If I were a Kid Rock fan, I'd be a big fan of this song. I prefer the original -- I think Kid Rock is trying to add intensity where he's mostly adding rawness, but he certainly has his own take, and I could see someone with different tastes than mine prefering his version. I can't say that about the new "Behind".
::: posted by Steven at 10:09 AM
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President To Drop Tariffs On Steel:The Bush administration has decided to repeal most of its 20-month-old tariffs on imported steel to head off a trade war that would have included foreign retaliation against products exported from politically crucial states, administration and industry sources said yesterday. It's too bad it took the threat of a trade war to do this -- one hopes for better from a Republican president -- but a win is a win.
::: posted by Steven at 8:03 AM
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Sunday, November 30, 2003 :::
David Brooks in the New York Times, on the Republican Medicare bill that just passed:Minority parties are pure but defeated; governing parties are impure but victorious. George Will, on This Week, didn't dispute it:Well, if it's an impurity contest, the Republicans are in there neck-and-neck.
::: posted by Steven at 10:17 PM
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Until they won the coin-toss to start today's football game, the New England Patriots had lost 11 straight coin flips. Having beaten a good team in Indianapolis today, 38-34, they've won eight straight games and are 10-2 for the first time in franchise history. If they beat Miami next week, they'll clinch the AFC East.
Before today's game, Terry Bradshaw called them the best team in the NFL. They made a better case for that in the first half today than they did in the second half (or against Houston last week). Their offense didn't look as good -- and their defense wasn't nearly as bad -- as the score indicates.
::: posted by Steven at 10:09 PM
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As my brother says, the lying to the press wasn't the best thing about Bush's stunt, but it was pretty neat that the most-followed man in the world was able to sneak out without the press finding out about it. I would like to know what the head of the secret service thought when he (she? -- I'll guess he) was told about the plan. I hope he had a clean pair of pants.
The Washington Post is whining that their reporter wasn't allowed to tell his supervisor where he was going over an insecure channel. If the WaPo can't abide the secret service, I'll bet there's a newspaper out there that can.
People in several corners of the blogosphere (I'm writing this off-line, but I believe that Beldar and Andrew Sullivan were not the only two) have made much of the president's off-hand comment that he (a white man) and Condi (a black woman) looked like "a normal couple", and what it says for race relations. Hopefully race relations will eventually get to the point where it doesn't occur to anybody to point that out; I think there will always be pockets of racial strife, but I didn't think the president's phrasing was a big deal even today. Forty years ago it would have been.
::: posted by Steven at 4:43 PM
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