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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, May 08, 2004 :::
Yogi Berra has asserted that "you can observe a lot just by watching." Well, maybe not:Scientists have gathered some remarkable evidence which shows that it is possible to see something without observing it, in research that sheds new light on traffic accidents that occur when a driver "looked but failed to see", and other examples of mayhem and mishap in everyday life.
[...]
In one experiment, people who were walking across a college campus were asked by a stranger for directions. During the resulting chat, two men carrying a wooden door passed between the stranger and the subjects. After the door went by, the subjects were asked if they had noticed anything change.
Half of those tested failed to notice that, as the door passed by, the stranger had been substituted with a man who was of different height, of different build and who sounded different. He was also wearing different clothes.
Despite the fact that the subjects had talked to the stranger for 10-15 seconds before the swap, half of them did not detect that, after the passing of the door, they had ended up speaking to a different person. This phenomenon, called change blindness, highlights how we see much less than we think we do. See, Katie? It's not just me.
::: posted by Steven at 6:20 PM
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Mr. Kerry also spoke about the abuse case in a speech yesterday before the Democratic Leadership Council.
"The chain of command goes all the way to the Oval Office," said Mr. Kerry. "America does not merely need a new secretary of defense. We need a new president." I'd like somebody to ask Kerry what he would have done differently that would have prevented the abuse of the prisoners.
A lot of Kerry's comments strike me this way -- they're just empty assertions that since something bad happened, Bush is failing and Kerry would be better. Maybe Kerry can point to a Bush policy that increased the likelihood of abuse, and maybe Kerry can make a credible case that he would have seen the problem coming ahead of time, rather than just complaining about it after. If he can, he should attempt to do so.
::: posted by Steven at 5:51 PM
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I don't think politicians (or their surrogates) should question each other's patriotism without a compelling reason.President Bush's campaign on Friday criticized the wife of Democratic candidate John Kerry for calling Vice President Dick Cheney "unpatriotic" while defending her husband's service in Vietnam against critics who had avoided the military.
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In an interview with Telemundo, NBC's Spanish-language network, Teresa Heinz Kerry said, "To have a couple of people, who escaped four, five, six times and deferred and deferred and deferred calling him anything regarding his service is in and of itself unpatriotic. Unpatriotic." NBC's "Nightly News" aired part of the interview Thursday.
Said [Bush-Cheney campaign chairman Marc] Racicot: "Every time the discussion focuses on John Kerry's Senate record of voting against weapons systems, voting against support for troops in the field or his positions on both sides of critical questions of national security, his campaign falsely claims that his patriotism is being attacked."
::: posted by Steven at 5:38 PM
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My brother suggested at one point that I post a weekly physics paper here. (This was back around when the WMAP results came out; I'd owe y'all about sixty or seventy papers by now.) Anyway, here's one on an experiment in which a corn starch suspension was shaken; a bubble placed in the vibrating suspension could be stable, rather than immediately working its way out as happens in water (or also happens if the suspension is not being shaken). Here's the main website.
::: posted by dWj at 5:12 PM
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Friday, May 07, 2004 :::
Real torture's one thing, and it's wise that the military's taking seriously its investigation of the serious charges against the guards at Abu Ghraib. But humiliation? Making captured Iraqi terrorists wear ladies' undergarments is tantamount to what, exactly? Treating them like British comedians? I'm not sure I fully back Boyles's point, but I thought this was funny.
::: posted by dWj at 11:44 PM
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I do hope, in the future, to blog about things other than personal items about people I know, but those of you who know Pamela Siska ought to know that her birthday is tomorrow, and it's one ending in a zero.
Also, my last class has just ended, and I'm going drinking.
::: posted by Steven at 4:09 PM
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Thursday, May 06, 2004 :::
I could never figure out why Friends was any better than any sitcom, except for that theme song. In college I'd go turn on the TV for the theme song, then turn it off when that was done. Did the same for L.A. Law in its last years.
::: posted by dWj at 9:32 PM
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This oil piece plays up the possibility of political turmoil in Saudi Arabia, on the grounds that not only do the Saudis produce 8 million bbl of oil per day, but they also have better capacity than most countries to pick up the slack if supply drops off elsewhere. What might be more important, though, is that this excess capacity only amounts to 3 million bbl/day, against an 80 million bbl/day -- and growing -- global demand. Other regions may also have some excess capacity, but from what I understand, not much.
If demand for energy keeps growing, it will either have to find a substitute, or prices will keep going up, or both. The right answer in this sort of economic problem is almost always "both".
Det är cross-posted.
::: posted by Steven at 7:07 PM
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Peter Wood explains why college is so expensive:Title IV funds and other federal financial aid are seen by colleges and universities as money that is there for the taking. Tuition is set high enough to capture those funds and whatever else we think can be extracted from parents. Perhaps there are college administrators who don't see federal student aid in quite this way, but I haven't met them. But I don't mean to imply that college administrators are driven solely by profit maximization. One reason that many prefer sky-high tuitions is that it enables them to act as social engineers. The larger the income from tuition, the more money they have on hand for scholarships for students who cannot afford the tuition. This, surely, had occurred to most of the people who will be reading this, but perhaps we weren't sufficiently cynical to come up withBut maybe we have just decided that high prices for a college education are a good way to organize our society. Those prices are high enough to discourage large families and to provide a strong incentive for both parents to work. They also force a lot of people to work more years before retirement, and they amount to an early form of inheritance for children. Anything parents spend today on college bills will be subtracted tomorrow (along with interest) from the last will and testament. Never mind the old inheritance tax; college tuition is its functional equivalent.
::: posted by dWj at 7:00 PM
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I'm not sure the average University of Iowa student knows that the school's mascot derives from Chief Hawkeye, but that might be because I'm an Iowa State fan and we have a rivalry with Iowa, so I'm prone to think U of I students are ignorant.
::: posted by dWj at 6:59 PM
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In case you hadn't heard the latest regarding Sasha Volokh, his clerkship-induced blogging hiatus has begun, as has his engagement.
::: posted by Steven at 6:59 PM
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Adhering to a policy instituted 10 years ago, but not always followed, the UI athletics department recently canceled a baseball game with Bradley University of Peoria, Ill., because of the school's mascot.
The game was originally scheduled to be played today, but the athletics department canceled the nonconference game in February, recognizing that Bradley's nickname - the Braves - falls under the university's policy to not schedule nonconference games with teams that have American Indian mascots. The Iowa Hawkeyes have a policy of avoiding teams with American Indian nicknames?
Even if there weren't a wee bit of hypocrisy in that, shouldn't they expand coverage to all ethnicities, rather than single out American Indians? How often do they play Notre Dame, anyway?
::: posted by Steven at 6:42 PM
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I had a dream last night about making beer with Colby Cosh and one of the Queer Eye guys.
For the record, I've never made beer, I've never met Colby Cosh (as far as I know, I've never been within 500 miles of him), and I don't know which network carries Queer Eye.
::: posted by Steven at 6:26 PM
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In case you've spent the last ten years on Mars, with your eyes closed and your fingers in your ears, the last episode of Friends is tonight. (Relevant to the dependant clause in that sentence, the finale of Frasier is in a week.)
I liked Friends when it first came on. I didn't have to see it, but I knew when it was on, and watched it if I had nothing else going on, even if I didn't happen to be in front of a television. I don't think that changed because the show changed so much as because I'd had my fill of it.
::: posted by Steven at 6:07 PM
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Wednesday, May 05, 2004 :::
Bombings in Athens last night. Better than a 1 in 5 chance of a major terrorist event. I'd offer a bet if I could clarify "major"; the bombing in Atlanta was not "major".
::: posted by dWj at 10:19 PM
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A point on the hazing of Iraqi POWs that I'm not hearing anywhere is that this is a war zone, and that sometimes steps are required to respond to situations that are presumed not to exist in normal society. Most of the incidents seem pretty clearly to be excessive and intolerable, but — the lesser point — some things, like actions that were taken in response to a prison riot, are at least mitigated by circumstances and should not be completely folded in with situations in which this was unprovoked and unjustifiable, and — the greater point — I would really hope that the result of this is not more bureaucratic rules that will unwittingly train our soldiers not to enforce discipline in situations and in ways that are called for.
::: posted by dWj at 9:39 PM
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Y'all might have better clothes driers than I do, but I find my clothes seem to get drier more quickly if I stop the drier after half an hour and clean the lint trap again.
::: posted by dWj at 9:33 PM
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For some reason, I just can't let a post by Kate Malcolm complaining about "the disposable society" without responding.... it made more economical sense for consumers to purchase the oversized Wal-Mart jar, eat half or a quarter, and throw away the rest, than it did for consumers to buy the smaller jars at a price slightly lower than Wal-Mart's gallon-sized jars. And it's better to waste the resources that go into inefficient distribution? To waste more man-hours of labor, gasoline, advertising, and whatever else might be the difference between Wal-Mart and another retailer? Is it better to throw away more packaging per pickle consumed, as will likely happen when buying in smaller quantities?This is a good example of how it can often be better to produce more and apparently "waste" more, rather than to forego — "waste", if you prefer — things that are never seen because they never get produced while resources such as labor are spent inefficiently.
::: posted by dWj at 9:31 PM
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I just barely voted for Governor Romney a year and a half ago, but I've increasingly been a fan:Gov. Mitt Romney handed out licenses to new charter schools on Wednesday, defying a House-approved moratorium that would prevent most of the new schools from opening.
The House legislation, approved last week during budget deliberations and likely to win support in the Senate, would strip the charters from schools scheduled to open this year in Lynn, North Adams and Salem. Two other schools scheduled to open in 2005 -- in Cambridge and Marlboro -- would also lose their charters.
The Republican governor, however, remains a staunch supporter of charter schools and promised Wednesday to veto the charter moratorium if the Senate approves it in its budget debate later this month.
"Let there be no doubt, I will veto any charter school moratorium that reaches my desk," Romney said during a news conference at the Roxbury Preparatory Charter School in Boston.
Senators passed a similar charter school freeze last year, but it fell short in the House. It's not clear whether there would be enough votes in the Legislature to override Romney's veto.
::: posted by Steven at 1:16 PM
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Tuesday, May 04, 2004 :::
I missed this story over the weekend:U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter was assaulted by two men Friday night and taken to a hospital with minor injuries, a court spokeswoman said. Apparently, he's back on the bench. Which would mean "out of the game" if he were a football player, but in this case it means he's in the game.
::: posted by Steven at 1:10 PM
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George Will made a similar point, if a bit more soberly. (It's dated May 1 on townhall, but I'm pretty sure it was in the Washington Post the day before.)But before the games can begin, the war must be won, and no war is won until the losing side knows it has lost. He, like Owens, writes to clarify Churchill's maxim: magnanimity after victory.
::: posted by dWj at 12:51 AM
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