New Blog

Sorry for the three month delay in posts. KC and I have set up shop elsewhere.

Come visit.

 
Crazy like a Kristof

Kristof has some infatuation with China. Atleast I hope he's infatuated with China and not Chinese authoritarianism, cronyism, and barbarous government.

As I compare Karapchiv with my wife's village, though, it seems to me that the best explanation for the different paths of China and the former Soviet Union is not policy but culture. I'm sure I'll regret saying this, but there really is something to the caricature that if you put two Americans in a room together, they'll sue each other; put two Japanese in a room together, and they'll start apologizing to each other; two Chinese will do business; and two Ukrainians or Russians will sit down over a bottle of liquor.

Wow. The editors certainly missed a big one. If you are going to make crass generalizations, atleast make vaguely accurate ones.

Americans are litigious, but they're also the most successful economically. The Japanese also happen to be no slouches in the business of business either. Since when does Chinese real GDP even come close to those two.

Put two Chinese people together, and one will arbitrarily expropriate the other in the name of order and law.
Put two Americans together, they'll start three businesses, a couple will fail, they'll learn from their mistakes, and third wil succeed wildly.

Put two Japanese together, and they'll make a bunch of quality stuff, and get slowed down by a messed up banking system.

The rebuttal, of course, is that Chinese growth rates over the last X years have outpaced the US and Japan. Thus, the characterization of the Chinese as fine businessmen. Of course, that data is based on official Chinese government reports of their economic data. Reports which are lies. Sure, there have been impressive gains in China due to one-time increases in agricultural efficiency, but don't mistake that (like many did long ago about the Soviet Union) for true sustainable growth.

 
White Man Values

I hate to bore you by recounting an argument, but since I see one of the primary purpose of this blog as some sort of anger management, I'm going to go ahead and do it. I don't think I'll be making any jokes below, so feel free to skip the whole thing. I probably would.

I was told by a friend last night -- a Brown grad, if that helps explain it -- that my values are white and male-ish. She said I'm a proponent of the White Man's Burden. ('Welcome to sixth grade social studies,' I wanted to answer.) Of course I told her my beliefs are absolutely ethnic-neutral, to which she responded that values cannot be separated from race, that disapproval of darker skin tones is always the predominant factor in our judgment of other cultures. I think I respondind with a snide remark about how I wouldn't trust a Brown mathematics professor to do my middle school algebra homework, so I'm sure as hell not going to credit the race-bating rantings of a disciple of Brown's political science department. And when I say "I think" what I mean is I did.

The values in question were my belief the oppression of women and homosexuals is wrong. As simple as that. I'm not kidding. Brown Grad told me that if a woman or a gay person chooses to live in a community in which discrimination is practices, she should be presumed to approve of the practice, and no one outside the community should have any say in the matter.

I told Brown Grad that I disagreed, but that I would let her comment stand if she admitted that, according to her reasoning, the Supreme Court ought to overturn Roe v. Wade. After all, if there are no natural rights that every state ought to safeguard, let alone rights only inferred in positive law like our Constitution, each state should get to decide for itself whether to permit abortion in the first couple terms of pregnancy. And if a woman who wants an abortion happens to live in Alabama, she'll eather have to leave the state for the procedure or else carry her fetus to term. Crossing state lines in the US should be a lot easier than crossing national boundaries, or even skipping continents, on the other side of the world, right?

Of course Brown Grad wasn't so keen on my argument.

So: if your typical Southern woman isn't privy to univeral mobility, universal wealth, and cost-free chanelling of law and mores from public and private institutions to every citizen, how can we expect those circumstances of a woman or homosexual in sub-Sahara Africa or the Middle East? I shouldn't even have to point out this argument, because it's so obvious.

I was just reminded of the discussion by a picture up on the front page of The Washington Post web site. It's shows a Palestinian protest. Most of the young men could pass very easily for Caucasians. At least they're no darker than your typical Sephardi Israeli.

White Man's Burden my ass.

 
Again, Hurray for Mandatory Minimums!

Life in prison for stealing a bicycle valued at $16.

I know exclusively anecdotal evidence makes for a weak argument, but hell, the stories add up.

A little wisdom from Judge Posner:

"We should ask how many 35-year-olds would rob a bank if they knew that if they were caught it would mean 20 years in prison without parole, compared with the number who would do so if it would mean life in prison," Judge Posner wrote. "Probably very few would be deterred by the incremental sentence."

 
Quotation of the Day

Here I am, rock you like a hurricane.

It's on the radio right now, just to give you an idea of the sort of radio stations I listen to.

The simplicity and boldness of the refrain is astounding. I feel like I've been rocked. By a hurricane.

 
Couple of the Week

A feelance writer and a lawyer, the former a former writing for the Washington Blade, the latter, chairman of Lambda Legal Defense. Both men, both in their early 60s.

UPDATE: I like this couple, too. One of the guys is a financial consultant who advises AIDS and gay organizations, and he's also a stand-up comedian. The only trouble with these guys is that they met in synagogue, and I insist that my Couples of the Week be non-observant. Also, they don't have a picture, and I thought the two guys above look kinda cute, especially together.

 
The Ariel Sharon of the Academic World

A great feature profile on Larry Summers in the NY Times Magazine. Two days before I head to Boston, this is very encouraging.

Some of my favorite excerpts:

''The idea that we should be open to all ideas,'' he said when I saw him in mid-July, ''is very different from the supposition that all ideas are equally valid.''

But Summers's temperament was troubling to some members of the corporation. The word from Washington was that he could be peremptory, condescending, impatient with lesser mortals. He had, as Robert Rubin, Summers's mentor and predecessor as treasury secretary, delicately put it, ''a rough-edges issue.'' ... In the end, the wish for boldness won out over apprehensions of abrasiveness.

Summers is an intuitive meritocrat, and he has many misgivings about affirmative action, though he will now discuss them with candor only off the record. [He still supports it on the record, though.]

He appears to have been a garden-variety nerd, a math whiz who loved to play with numbers, though he says that he cared about current events and politics in a way that the other math dweebs did not.

He was considered a great person to collaborate with, generous and indefatigable ... ''He was a prince to work for,'' Eizenstat told me. ''He was considerate of my views, he included me on all major decisions, he did not make snap judgments, he fought through decisions, he gave me a wide swath of jurisdictions.'' Several noneconomists who worked either for or with Summers said that he never condescended to them and that they always felt he was arguing in order to get to the merits.

''Over time, I came to see that mutual interest was often a more important catalyst to agreement than compelling logic.'' [That sounds like a soundbite from an appellate decision.]

While much of the university world took the view that the United States must in some important way have been responsible for the attacks, Summers says that he felt called to speak up for patriotic values ...Indeed, one of Summers's oldest friends at Harvard, the economist Dale Jorgenson, said that Summers ''feels that universities in general have forgotten that they're part of the nation'' and wants to restore a sense of ''moral clarity'' to campus discourse.

In the spring of 2002, he attended a discussion about globalization with the faculty of the Graduate School of Education. ''They were going in the direction that globalization pointed to the need for more education directed at multicultural understanding,'' he said. ''And I said that I thought globalization meant global competition, and that it made the basic capacity to read and do arithmetic more important.'' I asked Summers what the response had been. ''It was,'' he said dryly, ''seen as a distinctive perspective.''

He said, with a nervous laugh -- he knew he was treading on thin ice -- ''It is more important for students to have a basic understanding of literature than of the current fashions in literary theory.''

 
The Greatest Sentence In Yale Pundits History!

Go two posts down.

"Here's the alethestate profasis, truest explanation, if you will."

That sentence alone will make moving in next to you in four days seem like no work at all. After all, if I have that sort of diction to look forward to ...

And perhaps the greatest sentence combination, found right below:

Bob Herbert's solution is crazy. Not crazy like a fox, crazy like a stupid.

KC, is crazy like a fox a common expression?

 
Arnold Watch

Krugman rags on Conan the Deceiver. His criticisms, for the most part, seem valid to me.

In the same vein, one weighlifter/author talks about how he was conned by Arnold. If you read his story, the columnist seems kind of like an idiot for not using the muscle between his ears and following Arnold's advice about a bicep workout. People have different physiologies. I don't know, maybe Arnold was trying to mess him up, but it why would Arnold be gunning for some 44 year-old amateur? I don't really have trouble believing that Arnold was a ruthless body-building competitor, but this particular anecdote seems more like some star-struck dude whining.

The Nytimes Op-Ed page seems to have it out for Arnold today.

The Washington Post Op-Ed page isn't any kinder, saying,

TO GO STRAIGHT to the inevitable movie metaphor, Arnold Schwarzenegger bombed in his long-awaited premiere as would-be governor. In the two weeks since his "Tonight Show" announcement that he would run in the California recall election, Mr. Schwarzenegger had pretty much disappeared.

The Post also has an interesting fashion article on Arnold's style.

Schwarzenegger has an image that runs contrary to that of the typical politician. Most candidates spend their days emphasizing the ways in which they are just like the electorate, implying that they dropped off the kids at soccer practice on the way to the stump speech. Schwarzenegger has etched out a public image, through accouterments, that says: I am bigger than you. I am richer than you. I am stronger, luckier, lustier, ballsier.

...
But as a candidate, Schwarzenegger has taken to wearing a four-in-hand, channeling his inner politician and selecting some of the most banal and unattractive specimens ever to be knotted around a man's neck. On a recent cover of Time, he wore the Washington standard -- the red, white and blue rep tie that looks as though it has been wrenched from the neck of the debate team captain on his way to the state finals.
...
Schwarzenegger has always worn the clothes of a company man dressed for casual Friday. The bold jewelry, however, suggests that he owns the company.


I like the author's writing style. It's an interesting topic for one, and, well, stylistically, it's more than just the facts, ma'am.

 
Lessons in Sophistry

Bob Herbert says that "we are paying a terribly high price."

Lesson One: You don't have to prove wild assertions if they come in packaged as dependent clauses.


How long is it going to take for us to recognize that the war we so foolishly started in Iraq is a fiasco — tragic, deeply dehumanizing and ultimately unwinnable? How much time and how much money and how many wasted lives is it going to take?

I don't know how long is it going to take?

See how much crap he can cram into the opener like that.

we started the war.
we foolishly started it.
it's a fiasco.
it's tragic, deeply dehumanizing and ultimately unwinnable.
the time, money and lives are wasted.

This is perhaps my mom's favorite tactic. When do you want to mow the lawn? The question of whether or not I actually desire to mow the lawn is ably sidestepped. We go to the real question, when do I want to mow the lawn.

Lesson Two: Get inside other people's heads

The American people still do not have a clear understanding of why we are in Iraq. And the troops don't have a clear understanding of their mission.

I'm sorry, I'm just pissed off now. Breaking my cutesy format thing, going into rant mode.

Why are we in Iraq? Is that not crystal? Do people not understand? Here's the alethestate profasis, truest explanation, if you will.

The Middle East is one fucked up region of the world. It produces terrorists which come attack us. We're there to make it better, to make it less fucked up. We're there to provide good government and kill terrorists. That's the mission.

We want a confrontation with the terrorists. That is a good thing. We want to go where they breed and infect others. We want to go them, so they stop coming to us.

Bob Herbert's solution is crazy. Not crazy like a fox, crazy like a stupid.

we should turn the country over to a genuine international coalition, headed by the U.N. and supported in good faith by the U.S.

The guys we're fighting don't distinguish between the U.N. and the U.S. Hello? Didn't that last bombing get the message across? Those guys aren't interested in navigating the subtleties of international politics. They'll hit whatever ships they can. If, as he contends,

The American occupation is the problem.

how would handing over control to the UN fix the problem? Wouldn't the terrorists simply view the UN as a US puppet or as another agent of infidel colonialist western power?

 
Coming From America

I question the sort of American Jews who would make aliya to Israel. Very few will find a quality of life / standard of living higher than they would have had in the United States. They're even less likely to find as rewarding and lucrative employment as they otherwise would here. As this column points out, one in four US immigrants to Israel return to America. If Israel were a college, its retention numbers would disqualify it from inclusion in the first few tiers.

That's not to say there's anything wrong with Israel. America's just a better place to live. It's better for Jews than anywhere else in the world -- by a long shot -- just like it's better for everyone else. You could say I have no grounds to make such a claim, having lived only in the Northeast US for all my life, save a semester in England. I'd respond that I'm well aware of potential bias, and yet I'm still confident enough to make such a bold claim. Considering my reputation for thoughtfulness and fair-mindedness (and if I don't have such a reputation, I'd like to get it started right here), that should be enough to satisfy the most skeptical reader.

If it's a purely ideological thing, moving to Israel from America, then okay. Obtaining dual citizenship might be a nice gesture of support. But to go to Israel to live, permanently? I tend to think they won't find what they think they're missing unless they're observant.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. The above linked article discusses strategies Israel might use to encourage aliya. An interesting read.

 
I'm for Pipes.

Because he writes like this.

 
Since He Did So Well Predicting The Outcome of the Iraq War ...

What sort of a person do you have to be, the day of a bus bombing that kills twenty people, to write an op-ed entitled "No Stalling on the Road Map"?

 
One in Sixteen Hundred

Seems like every Harvard Law student has a blog of his own. I guess that could be another reason the author of Unfashionable Observations transferred in. (How subversive does it feel to end a paragraph with a preposition! Sadly, these are the sorts of thrills that keep me going.) (Come to think of it, do these parentheticals count as part of the paragraph? And if so, has my subversion failed?)

Anyway, many of my friends thought I should go to law school in California. UO's post on the topic reassures me a little that I made the right choice.

It's a good blog. I like the author's voice a lot.

I'm a little disturbed that he gave Old School an F ...

 
"Unctuous Self Righteous Busy Bodies"

Like Waddling Thunder, I'm not persuaded that public interest law is any more virtuous than private practice. Depending on where and how well a lawyer does his or her job, both afford the potential for making profound contributions to worthy clients, the law, and to the overall justice within a community.

So I was thrilled to see WD's posting of Judge Learned Hand's "answers on a recommendation form for one of his old clerks."

To what extent is he motivated by professional ethics and considerations of the public good, rather than by the desire for personal profit?

I suppose he wants to make a living. I decline to answer such a silly question.

What contribution has he made without fnancial gain to himself to the well being of his community?

I don't know. Do you want competent lawyers, or unctuous self righteous busy bodies? You can get here a perfectly reliable, capable young man with a sense of obligation to his job. I can't tell you more and would not answer such an absurd inquiry if I could.

From six sentences you can see that Judge Hand was not a boring person. By that I mean he was smart enough to answer stupid questions either caustically or not at all (or both, as in these cases), and he wasn't overly concerned with appearing always amicable. He wasn't your typical 'nice guy'.

There's edge for you.

 
Yale Dining III

I don’t think KC’s disapproval of Yale dining is typical.

Mama Chang’s cooking is gourmet, and no un-homecooked meal could ever compare. So almost by definition, no dining service will over satisfy KC. But the plurality of students at Yale come from homes with Jewish mother who never cook or else do so only infrequently, and then only reluctantly and poorly. So it’s a delight for us just to trust we’ll be fed every day at regular hours.

KC is right that it’s difficult to live on campus and go off the meal plan. To do so, a student would either have to buy nearly all his or her food or else use a residential college kitchen, which are few in number. Our residential college, Calhoun, for example, has only one. But no one has to compete for usage time. The kitchen goes months at a time without being touched by a student. In fact, I contend that one of the reason so many students stay on campus all four years -- 85% of us never leave our residential colleges, I’m told -- is the precisely due to the dining halls. Those who dislike the food generally move to an off-campus apartment. I believe the fact that so few students leave -- and those that do usually go for different reasons: fraternity compulsion, sports houses, etc. -- is partial evidence of the quality of the dining halls.

True, Berkeley is indisputably the greatest of the dining halls. But one of the best aspects of Yale’s food service is that undergraduates can always eat at any of 16 or 17 different dining halls. And the dining halls aren’t standardized, so that there are options in menu as well as quality. If you feel like organic food, check out Stiles. I’ve heard JE has good Chinese. And for the best pizza? The med school. If KC knew of a dining hall he enjoyed but chose to eat elsewhere nearly every night, he has nothing to blame but his own laziness. But I’ll be generous and take KC at his own terms, speaking only to our own residential college, Calhoun.

To start, the selection of entrees and accessories is outstanding. Each night there are four or five featured meals, and if these don’t strike your fancy you can always order grilled cheese, burgers, hot dogs, or chicken. Or else you can choose from seventy or eighty brands of cereal or build from the deli sandwich stand. The soups are diverse and usually well made. The salad bar is beyond reproach. Desserts are fine, including each day: ice creams, puddings, fruit, cookies, and one or two specials. And there are plenty of other extras. If you can’t find things you like, and enough of them to fill you, you probably just don’t like food.

Beyond the selection, though, I think most meals are actually pretty good. This is pretty subjective, so there’s not much I can say here, except that I visited several other colleges over the last few years, and if KC was dissatisfied with Yale food, he probably would have transferred out of most other schools.

Each term every college dining hall puts on two special theme dinners. I don’t think I ever missed a Calhoun theme dinner while I was on campus. They were definitely highlights.

Finally, the sense of community in Yale dining halls is exceptional. Since there are so many halls and they’re so small, students quickly become comfortable in their colleges and intimate with their friends, largely because of the time they spend at meals. KC and I have a friend who used to spend nearly four hours each day in our dining hall, split between lunch and dinner, just sitting around and talking until the hall closed for cleaning between meals. That’s extreme, but as for me, the time I spent in the dining hall with friends was probably the best part of many, if not most, of my days.

And our dining hall staff was just exceptional. All of them -- ALL of them -- were warm and helpful. I can’t tell you what an impact that has.

In sum, I’m perfectly happy to leave complaints about food to the YDN. I only wish there were an alumni meal plan.

 
Jews and Guns, Installment Way-Too-Many

I wonder whether leftists would defend Jewish terrorism in the same way they rationalize Arab terrorism.

No, wait, I don't wonder. They wouldn't. They won't.

I love this sentence:

If such a militant group exists, it is no surprise that it exists here in Hebron, where roughly 500 Jewish settlers live among more than 100,000 Palestinians.

Jews have had nearly a continuous presense in Hebron since thousands of years before a single Arab occupied the city. But somehow they're the "settlers" while the Palestinians are written in as the natural inhabitants.

This, at least, is a fair comparison, even though it comes too far down in the article and inappropriately distinguishes between Israelis in Israel Proper and Israelis in the territories:

The argument about whether Jewish vigilantism is justified can quickly become contentious. One of the few points of agreement is that attacks by Israeli civilians against Palestinians are rare. According to B'Tselem, 32 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli civilians in the last three years. At the same time, 328 Israeli civilians have been killed by Palestinians inside Israel, and 190 more in the West Bank and Gaza.

 
Yale Dining or More Proof MW is whacko

Um, hello? The reason why everyone stays on the meal plan for all four years at Yale is because most people live on campus. Living on campus and cooking your own food isn't worth the effort for most people.

The quality of the dining halls varies enormously. Berkeley, of course, is great. I found the food in mine to be less than adequate. It sucked. Incidentally, me and MW went to the same dining hall for four years.

Why did I put up with it? Inclement weather. The dining hall was in the same building as my room.

 
Yale Dining

This sort of program is why everyone stays on the meal plan for all four years at Yale.

 
Looks Aren't Everything

But that's probably small consolation to this guy:

I know love is about more than just looks or a nice body, but something is bothering me. My wife and I have been married for almost two years now. A few months ago, we were talking about some friends and how they were discussing peoples' looks. Suddenly it hit me that my wife had never told me I was attractive or good-looking or handsome or anything, so I just thought I'd ask her. When I did, she floored me by telling me that I was "OK" and that I probably thought I was exceptionally good-looking but that I was just average. I know being honest is really nice, but isn't there such a thing as being too honest? Since then, she is always talking about how the guys on TV and in movies are real hunks. The other night we were watching a TV show, and there was a really good-looking guy (to her at least), and it turned out he was gay. My wife joked, "Darn, all the good-looking ones are gay." I said, "Well, I'm not gay," and she said, "Yeah, I know." And that was it. I don't mean to sound insecure, but all my life I have thought of myself as above average, and I feel one's wife should find him fairly attractive. When I asked her again, she still would not say I am attractive to her. She says that I am sweet. But I am concerned that she may find someone who's good-looking and then begin to find HIM "sweet."

Prudie responds:

It is a fact of life that even people who may not be objectively attractive seem so to the people who love them. And as anyone who's married a drop-dead gorgeous mate can attest, the looks aspect fades with time—as do the looks. Affection for someone is much more tied to personality ... Try to get past this subject because not being movie-star handsome is not yet grounds for divorce.

Prudie misses the point entirely. How do you marry someone without ever talking about each other's appearance? There's something wrong with their communication channels. And once the subject does come up, how can you face a partner who doesn't find you attractive?

There are some other interesting letters as well, but mostly about the typical stuff: in-laws, cyber-searching, teen girls. Although I don't generally agree with Prudie's advice, she picks some good questions.

 
Christian Zionists

After spending some time in the deep, dark South, I'm convinced that the Evangelical motivation for supporting Israel is not necessarily exclusively, nor even primarily, religious. It's about shared values and language that are as easily secular as not.

I found it refreshing to discuss the Middle East in a context where terms like justice and injustice and tyranny and freedom are not just political buzz words but meaningful ethical concepts.

Bauer expressed what many Israelis think. He admires and respects President Bush, but cautioned that Israelis would be making a terrible mistake if they took the administration's support for Israel for granted. He was pessimistic about the road map and observed that there were already signs of a drift back to the pre-September 11 State Department approach, which amounted to moral equivalency.

 
Wrong About Abbas

US Jewish leaders sometimes forget that what they say can have life and death consequences in Israel. ZOA President Morton Klein, in A Jerusalem Post column, points out:

YET, INCREDIBLY, many Jewish leaders are now making the exact same mistake about Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) that they made about Yasser Arafat. And now it's even worse because while Arafat publicly made commitments but did not fulfill them, Abu Mazen says openly, "I have no intention to dismantle Hamas and Islamic Jihad" and declares that the PA police "will not go house to house in search of weapons."

Perhaps in another year or two a major Jewish organization will take out yet another ad headlined "It takes a big organization to admit it was wrong." But what in the meantime? How many more one-sided concessions will be squeezed out of Israel? How many more terrorists will Israel be pressured into setting free?

 
McCain Backs Security Fense

McCain said the US and Israel could reach agreement on an acceptable route for the fence. But he said final decisions about security-related matters should be left to the Israeli government.

Asked whether he thinks loan guarantees should be linked to fence construction, McCain said: "I absolutely do not."

Senator McCain is easily my favorite politician in the world right now. I wish I hadn't blown my one chance to vote for him.

 
Good Descriptor

Nothing too remarkable about this column except that it uses the term "blandly good looking." I like that. I think it describes a lot of people, men and women alike, who are conventionally pleasant looking, maybe even attractive, but not especially interesting to look at. I think you need a little edge in your appearance. (And I don't mean 'you' in general. I'm talking about you out there, you reading this blog right now. Grow your hair out. Smirk more. And for Christsake, wear tighter clothes.)

One great paragraph, too:

Missing, too, from Rascal Flatts is any of the vaunted "realism" in which country has always stood head and shoulders above every other form of American popular music. Lyrically, "I Melt" could be any pop song. The lust has no context, the characters have no jobs, the sex yields no children or complications.

 
What is a base? What is an ally?

Victor Hanson on words our government doesn't understand.

Such a good column. I smiled repeatedly while reading it.

 
News Flash: Gay Guys Acting Sissy Are Funny!

TNR's Kara Baskin gets it exactly right:

So he summons a team of fastidious men who embody every conceivable stereotype of gay culture. Jai, Thom, Carson, Ted, and Kyan are the homosexual dream team: worldly, witty, and enchantingly au courant on the latest issues of home decoration, European chocolates, and ostentatious hair products. They give John B. an overhaul, he ends up looking luscious, and America thinks it's just the funniest thing ever. Oh, those adorable gays! What will they do next? It's the pop culture equivalent of watching exotic animals in a cage.

[...]

We're welcoming homosexuality into our homes, sure; homosexuality as a socially palatable diversion--in the form of a snug, smug stereotype. Shows like this subliminally reinforce a dangerous notion: We're comfortable allowing gay people to choose our wallpaper patterns but they're not always welcome living as married partners in our neighborhoods. We'll let them coach us on cufflinks, but we're still not cozy with them sitting next to us in classrooms. The show elevates deluded archetypes to an art form; and, because it focuses on homosexuals, a segment of society not always given abundant airtime, it becomes edgy entertainment.

UPDATE: David Skinner points out another troubling aspect of the show.

Indeed, little concern has been shown for "Queer Eye"'s stereotyping of heteros as ill-kempt and culturally-deprived--which is just as well, actually, since there is truth to the charge that many hetero men have no idea how to dress or decorate their homes or cook a decent meal and, besides, complaining about stereotypes is generally a wimpy--I did not say gay--thing to do.

Putting the last two lines aside -- because they make me sound "gay" -- I complained about the stereotyping of straight men. I hate the way the show excuses, even glorifies, sloppiness and stupidity in straight men. After sharing co-ed bathrooms and classes for the last four years, it's been my experience that hetero men are no messier or less culturally aware than gay men or women.

 
I won't be 23 for another month.

That's my excuse for not yet publishing a cover story for the Weekly Standard.

So I guess I better get my ass in gear, but oh, to be young and still obscure ... Someday I'll miss this feeling, I'm sure.

All kidding aside, it's a tremendous, measured, but damning article on an important and very interesting topic. Well done, Josh.

 
Recommended Reading

I was looking online for my textbooks for next semester, and I couldn't help cracking up at reading the Amazon customer reviews for The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation.

Scroll down to the last section of customer reviews, past the "spotlight" reviews. I'm not sure if the customer reviews show on that page are randomly selected, so check out the ones by Jackie from Bohonk, NY, and one by someone from Silver Spring, MD.

 
Shock and Awe, or an Angry Hawk or if I knew how to use bling-bling properly I might use it here

Tom Friedman says the reconstruction of Iraq isn't going so well. Reports of fuel riots this weekend seem to confirm his judgment.

Articles like this lead me to sort of buy the idea that the NYtimes' coverage is biased.

Rising Tide of Islamic Militants See Iraq as Ultimate Battlefield. Maybe it's just me, but my spin meter goes off when I read that article. Read the thing and judge for yourself.


In much the same way as the Russian invasion of Afghanistan stirred an earlier generation of young Muslims determined to fight the infidel, the American presence in Iraq is prompting a rising tide of Muslim militants to slip into the country to fight the foreign occupier, Iraqi officials and others say.


Two Points

1) The upside to all of this is that the battlefield against fundamentalist Islamic militants is Iraq, not America, not Russia, not Europe.

2) It is supremely important that we win this battle, so that the next battlefield is on their turf, not ours. Bush and company made a smart choice in choosing to advance, to engage the enemy rather that react to him. You don't win wars by building walls. Now, they, we, have to follow through.

a) How do we do this? We dredge up a concept called "shock and awe." You remember that one? Didn't work so well the first time, maybe the second time will be better. We apply shock and awe to the reconstruction of Iraq. We pump up their economy (a side effect would be the pumping up of ours as well, economics not being zero sum). People are cutting the power lines? We fly in extra generators. We treat our soldiers right and give them money to spend in the Iraqi economy. I want all the Iraqi shopkeepers and restaurateurs to love those arrogant, spendthrift Americans. We flood the streets with American goods. I want to the Iraqis to learn that real wealth doesn't flow from the ground. Bush has an opportunity here to prime the American economy by rebuilding a country devastated by dicatatorship. Let's send over

Iraq is going to be reconstructed, one way or the other. In the worse case scenario, escalating successful guerilla attacks alter the American public's will to fight, and Iraq gets rebuilt by Islamists. More likely, Iraq will be rebuilt, in a slow, miserly fashion, but I think that course would miss an huge strategic opportunity. Shock and awe. Rebuild Iraq in the most flashy, ostentatious way you can, and the world will be floored. All the Iraqis won't help but think that the greatest thing to happen to them since Sumerians set stylus to clay tablet was the Americans coming. If we impress the Iraqis and the world with our reconstruction efforts, then the stories Al Jazheera is reporting won't be about Americans shooting rioters or successful "martyrdom operations," they'll be about how fat, happy, and content the Iraqis are. Cut to commercial break. Look what a great deal I got on this SUV at Baghdad Ford...

 
What?

From the-what-kind-of twisted-sick-people-would-think-that-this-is-okay or Sometimes any publicity is not good publicity department. Nazi-mart?

 
Couples

While we're on the subject of notable couples, here's an unusual one: Yuri Malenchenko and Ekaterina Dmitriev.

They recently got married under some unusual circumstance. Yuri is a cosmonaut currently orbiting the Earth. Beyond the logistical difficulties, they also faced pressure from the Russian government.


The space wedding got a cool reception from Malenchenko's superiors at the Russian space agency. As a colonel in the Russian Air Force, he was supposed to have prior permission to marry an American. Officials also frowned because the nuptials were definitely not part of the official flight plan of the space station and cosmonauts are not encouraged to partake in things that aren't on the official agenda.


Also, here's a pretty interesting bio of would-be Governor Schwarzenegger from MSNBC/Newsweek.

 
Counter-Haiku / Cross-Haiku

MW got me all inspired with that last post. He struck a muse, so to speak

MW is crazy
Such a geech, but what does that
Say about KC?

 
Couple of the Week / My Take on Love, Vitamins

This is the best one yet! At the end of their first date they composed haikus together. How cool is that?

Their last haiku of the evening read:

Tom and Eloise

Movie, dinner, bookstores, tea

Who can say what's next

It gives me hope. If there's anything I like doing, its writing haikus. Haikus for Jews, Haikus for Justice, Haikus for Breakfast. You name it, I haiku it. I wrote these four just this morning, er, afternoon:

Woke up late today,
No breakfast past 1 pm,
Smart Start tomorrow.

Tuna fish on wheat,
Pre-hydrate with ice water,
A vitamin too.

Should I take the pill?
I miss Flinstones Chewables,
This one's large and grey.

Tongue, sip, and swallow.
Nutrition is over-hyped.
But I'm a sucker.

The bride-to-be is finishing up at HLS this year. (She also has a masters in English Literature, which makes her, perhaps, the perfect woman.) (Did I mention she's Jewish? That neither enhances nor diminishes her desirability; I'm just glad to see she's part of the Tribe, being the perfect woman and all.) As soon as I have my account set up I'm definitely going to shoot her an e-mail and tell her she has my blessings. Because God knows the third year students look to the first years for relationship endorsements.

UPDATE: I noticed this week there are an unusual number of couples in which the woman is slightly older than the man. Never by more than a year or two. I used to think that was kind of gross, an older woman with a younger man. I mean, isn't it just natural that a woman wants to show off an older man with a settled/established life-course, while a man wants to show off the younger woman he's fooling around with? But I've changed my mind. I actually like seeing the older woman-younger man couplings now, simply because it goes against traditional gender roles. It shows that maybe women aren't as "success-oriented" in their search for a partner as they're portrayed. Maybe men aren't just interested in youth and sex.

Maybe feminism has made a difference.

 
The State Department: Doing Its Best To Get Jews Killed Since 1933!

Breckenridge Long is the model State Department official. Always has been. Whether the SecState is Marshall, Baker, or Powell, it always seems like State is doing its damndest to keep Jews out, call them kikes, or get them killed.

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