Thursday's Findings
US News will drop "yield" as a factor for its college rankings. The article doesn't mention this point, but I always thought it was strange they counted "reputation" in addition to yield, as the former certainly influences the latter.
Also worth taking a look: Kerry Howley, Reason's awfully talented new intern, has a characteristically quick-witted article on prescription drug benefits.
And Mark Steyn has a great piece for The Spectator on Howard Dean beginning: "It’s always slightly discombobulating when someone you’ve known for years and always written off as a mediocrity with no talents suddenly leaps to phenomenal success.."
Derivative narrative clichés work with children because they are comfortingly recognizable and immediately available to the child's own power of fantasizing.
Byatt dared to suggest Harry Potter is lazy culture. Not bad, not good -- just lazy. And it is. Adult fanatics will all admit The Order of The Phoenix, apparently J K Rowland at her zenith, was never to be War and Peace. But so what? You've had a long day at the office, you want to relax, and hey, reading -- reading anything -- is at least more intellectually stimulating than TV, right?
Still, rather than concede that much, Byatt is greated with hostility from Potter-fans. I don't get it at all. Then again, Harry Potter has never appealed to me. I do enjoy good children's books -- especially pre-sci-fi like A Wrinkle in Time and Roald Dahl's stuff -- but this series seemed exactly like Byatt describes it: magic without intrigue. Good thing I'm not too lazy to restrict my fiction bookshelf to large print paperbacks, I get a lot more out of anything by the writers Byatt suggests (and Byatt herself, she's writen dozens of exciting novels) than I imagine all volumes of Potter might do
Tuesday, July 8, 2003 03:00 p.m.
Homeless Men Can Get Jobs
A friend of mine writes this today:
i wrote about this situation in my journal this morning...as i was about to face, yet another day, of walking around this hellhole of a city being harassed...and yes, as soon as i sat down on the bus--some waste of society behind me opened his mouth..."excuse me ma'am" --no response from me...and then "can you spare a quarter." now, on the street, i rarely respond other than to shake my head "no" but on the bus--an intimate surrounding--i had to open my mouth. "my money was used for bus fare." i didn't turn around while speaking at him, but when he got off a couple of blocks later--i saw exactly what i expected--a wideeyed cracked out fucker who stumbled off the bus only to harass another person.
now, joanne, i'm sick of the bum's version of racism/"classism"...surely, because i'm white and i dress tolerably well, it shouldn't be assumed that i'm a stupid investor. now, here's the question of the day: how do libertarians theorize getting rid of these foul creatures?
i think all the lefty bullshit about throwing my fucking tax money at them--give them a nice place in the projects, send their kids to rotting schools, give them low-wage jobs--has turned bunk. what now?
To which I replied:
N. B. my spelling, grammar, and punctuation gets progressively worse as my aquaintance with a person grows stronger.
ummm... we think they get what they deserve. they're
lazy, unwilling to work -- they're not working for
incentives. A homeless guy can theoretically get a job
if he works hard enough, but his lack of dignity and
immunity to the stigma of his class makes him act
otherwise. Let him prowl the streets from breadcrumbs
like a rat -- he chose to do that.
Sure, he's a nuissence to us, but so are thunderstorms
and misquito bites.
well...call me a libertarian, joanne. i'm with you on the 'get what they deserve' part. personally...i'd like to see them all rounded up and taken off the streets so i could relax...but that would be an unnecessary use of my tax monies as well...
let um fry in the heat and freeze in the cold. i have absolutely no sympathy.
and the mosquito analogy tore at my heartstrings. ahh...pests...
Tuesday, July 8, 2003 01:02 p.m.
Articles I Read on My Lunch Break Everyone should print out a copy of David Brooks' beautiful column in the June Atlantic Monthly, "Building Democracy Out of What?" He touches upon some themes in Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism to explain the impossiblity of instant recovery in Iraq. He quotes Kanan Makiya, TRN's Iraqi web-diarist, "And remember while you are trying to imagine what this person went through, that this is the human raw material that you want to build democracy for. "
Another good choice is The Nation's slam of Amitai Etzioni masked as a book review of his recently published memoirs.
We witness him regress from a passionate intellectual to a Loman-esque figure, desperately hawking his communitarian wares to anyone who will listen. He tries to sell communitarianism to Helmut Kohl (not interested), Bob Dole ("There was no sign of their Christian spirit, that of reaching out and caring for vulnerable members of the community, which is so much a part of the values they were anxious to uphold." Shocking!), and George W. Bush ("His tone and demeanor were often soft and conciliatory; that is, communitarian"). Etzioni implores Janet Reno to rethink her commitment to the Fourth Amendment (she demurs).
Sure, Maureen Dowd should be a Cosmo staffer not an NYT columnist, but when the pressure's off, she comes through zingers. Here's one (from her review of Hilary Clinton's tome):
Poor Bill Clinton. He's trying to deal with Osama bin Laden and he's got a bunch of angry women on his case, and a sex-obsessed special prosecutor. He's like Ethan Frome, a guy who just wants to take a joy ride on a sled, and ends up getting stuck for life in a cramped cabin with the wife he betrayed and his now irritating and ubiquitous former dalliance.
Tuesday, July 8, 2003 11:39 a.m.
"We Were Duped!" No, you were stupid. Brendan O'Neill writes an article I wish I had, for Spiked today.
There is something distinctly disingenuous in all this dupe-talk. Weapons and intelligence experts were picking holes in Britain and America's evidence long before the war kicked off. In the USA, there were newspaper headlines like 'Evidence on Iraq challenged' and 'Doubts over administration's case' as far back as September 2002 (2). Britain's main dossier of evidence was ridiculed six weeks before the war started, for having been plagiarised from a student's 12-year-old PhD thesis (3). Who could possibly be duped by such dopey claims?
The mainstream press pulled the thread on the Iraq- al Quaeda link almost a year ago, and yet, agent provocateur self-loathing, dandyish TRN-liberals and libertarians, emphasized for months afterward about how "difficult" it was to come to their decision. Perhaps one's virility is directly correlated to his willfulness for militaristic intervention. It's about the worst excuse for hawkishness I can think of, but the only thing that explains the real libertarian fence-sitters.
But O'Neill takes on the politicians trying to save their hides, like Clare Short, "Blair's former secretary of state for international development says she and the rest of Britain were 'duped all along' by Britain's dodgy evidence." And Jane Harman, "a Democrat Congresswomen from Los Angeles who sits on the USA's House Intelligence Committee. Harman has kicked up a stink in the USA by alleging that the Bush administration's claims about Iraq's WMD were 'based on circumstantial evidence rather than hard facts', and that she and other right-thinking Democrats might have acted differently over Iraq if they had known the whole truth."
Monday, July 7, 2003 04:14 p.m.
Liberia: Now With Less Liberty Slate dispells a common myth about Liberia, that is was founded by free slaves.
Not quite. Although some freed American slaves did settle there, Liberia was actually founded by the American Colonization Society, a group of white Americans—including some slaveholders—that had what certainly can be described as mixed motives. In 1817, in Washington, D.C., the ACS established the new colony (on a tract of land in West Africa purchased from local tribes) in hopes that slaves, once emancipated, would move there. The society preferred this option to the alternative: a growing number of free black Americans demanding rights, jobs, and resources at home
Even I go that wrong, and I represented the country for Model UN three years back.
Monday, July 7, 2003 03:24 p.m.
Hey Noddy, Noddy
Noddy is mischievous little wooden boy in a series of UK-based children's books and TV series. He is Toy Land's resident taxi driver with his Parp-parp car. Are you naseauted yet? How's this then: the copyright holder of Noddy has sent a cease and desist notice to a Lincolnshire man who likes to wear a Noddy costume and drive around on a model Parp-parp built just for his charity appearances.
Friday, July 4, 2003 08:28 p.m.
Even Without the Glasses
I was going to post something erudite and substantive on Liberia, but then I saw this. Justin Theroux is weird in a good way. Sorry about that. It was a long day at the office
Friday, July 4, 2003 07:15 p.m.
Hack Attack Hackers will 0wn the net July 6, for a defacers challenge The site, www.defacers-challenge.com was shut down but hop on any L33t-sp33k IRC chat and you'll find out the details (1f U c4n und3rst4nd wh4t th3y r wr1t1ng.) Undoubtably RIAA is working day and night to protect their server
Friday, July 4, 2003 06:44 p.m.
More Hamidi
Jerry has a far better post than mine on Intel v. Hamidi.
Friday, July 4, 2003 06:39 p.m.
The State of the Pita So I've finally registered my domain name and now I'm trying my best to make heads and tails of Moveable Type. The new site may be up by the end of the week.
