The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz writes an interesting article on the problems in Howard Dean's presidential campaign. Internal rifts and power struggles are not uncommon in campaigns, successful or otherwise. There was one aspect, however, that really did catch my attention:

Behind the facade of a successful political operation, senior officials plotted against each other, complained about the candidate and developed one searing doubt.

Dean, they concluded, did not really want to be president.

In different conversations and in different ways, according to several people who worked with him, Dean said at the peak of his popularity late last year that he never expected to rise so high, that he didn't like the intense scrutiny, that he had just wanted to make a difference. "I don't care about being president," he said. Months earlier, as his candidacy was taking off, he told a colleague: "The problem is, I'm now afraid I might win."

I'm reminded of an idea for a novel that I had a few years back. Since I'm not going to write it, I'll go ahead and share it with you. It dealt with a popular Missouri governor that was term-limited out of office. He didn't deal with retirement all that well. Both senators were members of his own party so other than the speech circuit, there wasn't much for him to do. His suggests that he makes a doomed bid for the White House to get some of his ideas out there. If nothing else, she joked, it would get him out of her hair. His rise and fall was initially patterned after John McCain's, but it actually follows Dr. Dean's more closely. With nothing to lose, he starts throwing out ideas that his party's presumptive nominee (or his presumptive opponent) wouldn't touch. He becomes a media darling and the next thing he knows he's winning primaries (okay, slight departure from Dean here). Tired and exhausted, he starts looking for inconspicuous ways to lose without tarnishing his name or diminishing his ideas. Part comedy, part political exposition, and part character drama. Could have made a neat book.

Unfathomable!

What's the point in having a powerometer on a phone if it's going to say "full power" for two days of chatting away and then dwindle from "full power" to "low battery" less than two hours? My old phone had this problem and, unfortunately, my temp phone has the same thing.

Sean C. Rothstein-Jacobson has an interesting office-place story.

James Bowman of the American Spectator has a column about performers bloviating on the issues of the day. The article is well written, but I've lost count of the number of items I've read (and written) on the subject. Actors and singers are not politicall astute! Film at 11!

Bowman, however, touches on an irritation I often have with such columns:

Not long ago I read that Ethan Hawke -- who is a movie actor, for those of you fortunate enough not to have had to witness, as I have had to do, any of his characteristically hang-dog appearances on the silver screen -- said that President Bush was "probably the least prepared person to be president of the United States that's been elected in a long time, if not ever." The quotation speaks for itself. As does the fact that the Washington Post reported it with a straight face, demonstrating no apparent shame for citing as an authority on the President's preparedness for office a man who has never in his life done anything but impersonate other people in front of a camera.

Does being a competent actor make one more qualified to knowledgably discuss political issues and figures? I think Bowman would agree with me that it does not. So as such, why does it matter if Bowman thinks that Hawke is a bad actor? Sure, being an actor can help a politician be suggessful at getting his ideas across, but it has little or no bearing on whether or not they generate or attach themselves to good ideas. I've noticed that whenever a stupid celebrity utters stupid ideas, one of the first things out of their mouths is "Well they can't act/sing anyway."

I consider Alec Baldwin to be a good actor. Same with Ethan Hawke. I think that Natalie Maines has a great singing voice. But their views are no less idiotic than Ben Affleck, who can't act.

I find it interesting how many people will talk about how presumptuous it is that the artist links their talents to political wisdom and then turn around and imply that their lack of talent makes them less politically wise.

The New York Times has an interesting article on autism. I don't know anyone with a serious case of autism (though my roommate Danforth believes, or at one point believed, that he has Asperger's Syndrom, a less severe form of the disorder). From what I have read about it, it's a dreadful (and expensive) ordeal for a parent to have to go through. It's hard to say from the child's point of view since the more serious it is, the less communicative they are.

The accuracy of my results on Match.com's Ph.D.-formulated Physical Attraction Test depends somewhat on your definition of "large and lovely", but yeah, as I get older I do have more appreciation for fuller figures. I find it interesting that 40% of guys agree with me, but then again I've long told female-types that guys don't generally want girls as thin as girls think guys do. That's a subject for another time, though. The 40% figure could be self-selecting among those that are looking for dates online. Without saying anything negative about people knocking around singles web sites (I've done it before), they are disproportionately (though not exclusively!) people that have difficulty finding dates otherwise. Sometimes it's due to shyness or some personality trait, but I'd suspect that weight would also play a factor. The question then is whether or not the 40% was a part of the original PhD study or whether they're collecting statistics from people like me. On the whole, though, women are much more critical of excess weight on other women than men are on women.

Part of the reason for my attraction might well be due to my own weight, which is larger than healthy to be sure. In yesteryear I tended to be attracted to a vastly different type (short and skinny) than I am now. Whether or not that is a function of my not being as thin as I used to be or whether it's just a matter of growing up and freeing myself from more conventional standards of beauty I'm not sure. At the same time that my desired weight went up, my desired height went up, too. I think that's in part so that being with the person feels natural. There's nothing less natural looking that a 6'5" man dating a 5'2" girl. In college, I had a brief stint with a girl about that height and it was a bit odd. I was also with a girl that was 6' and grew to appreciate her height. My weight preference could have been a similar comfort matter. Of the Big Five girls in my past (and present), three express(ed) dissatisfaction with their weight. Since weight wasn't a factor for me in the relationships (accuracy of the phrase "relationship" varies) I began to have a greater appreciation for a softer structure. That and the aforementioned 5'2" bone-thin girl may have irreversably turned me off of thin girls forever...

Ultimately, I found it rather difficult to gauge attraction from the pictures because it was just a picture. A lot of physical attraction is, to me, about demeanor. Few of the girls in the pictures were smiling and a good smile goes an extraordinarily long way with me. As do factial expressions, body expressions, and the other things that can't be encapsulated in a picture. I include all of this under physical attraction because I can be utterly unattracted to their personality but still be physically attracted to a person that looks, smiles, and acts a certain way.

But I still found it enlightening. There are aspects of the test that I would change. The heightometer wasn't particularly helpful for me because I thought that the first picture was going to be the tallest girl they'd show. She was a bit too tall (if I was the drawing standing next to her, she'd have been 6'3" or so), so I put a low rating. Much to my surprise, she was actually the shortest and the tallest girl proportionally would have been 6'7" or so, which is taller than I'd go.

I did like the "which one would be attracted to you" portion. It harkens back to a phrase that Jay and I use often called "attainably attractive." To put it short, the likelihood that the girl might be also attracted to us made her more attractive to us. It's kind of like going to a discount furniture sail and looking at pieces of furnature for scratches and other imperfections. With those, the value of the furniture goes up considerably. The same is true for imperfections on a girl. Somehow that feeds on he and myself and those very flaws (assuming they're nothing major) actually become somewhat attractive to us. They become more human. We become more equal. We are all, in many ways, defined by our flaws. As such, the Carmen Electras are not generally what he and I are attracted to.

Once I was derailed from the "conventional beauty" train, I began to find that I appreciated some "flaws" more than others. I found that a little extra weight is a good thing, but that disproportion was unattractive. I also found that there are some conventional traits I still look for (long legs, for example). Eventually I carve out what my "type" physically is. Though, at the end of the day, how attractive I am to someone physically is highly dependent on personality. One of the reasons that I'm attracted to a good smile, for instance, is that I wouldn't want to be with someone that doesn't smile (or has a smile that looks fake). Physical attraction is a necessary, but not sufficient, trait.

[via Reactuate]

[Read More!]

Democrat Greg Wythe interestingly appears to be just on my right on the gay marriage issue:

Differing with Dean, I'll point out that "the difference" is not that "some pretty religious people" are freaked out by gay marriage, but that marriage should be left left as defined by religious doctrines over the years (now, if someone wants to point out vagaries and inconsistencies on this point, go nuts ... I have to limit the amount of time I devote to a few things here and there, so I'll spare the reader a discourse on amateur theology). The delineation that might be made is something like "Well, what about a justice of the peace wedding? There's nothing strictly religious about a legal wedding as its defined by law, anyway." Fair enough. But to the extent that it is covered by law, and even non-believers are allowed to engage in this practice, I would argue two things.

One - much of what is written in law is based on religious doctrine (thou shalt not kill ... remember that one?). This firewall we occassionally imagine between religion and state is sometimes too starkly drawn by those freaked out by the religious right. That marriage is codified does not remove it from religious terms. But that the state recognizes a religious ceremony for a wedding indicates a devotion to at least some of our better traditions.

Two - non-believers certainly get a free pass and sometimes that's the fault of the couple, and sometimes the fault of the church. How many of us have friends that have had a church wedding in a church they've never been to? To be sure, non-believers would, if they were more consistent with their beliefs, join in a heterosexual version of civil unions. In fact, one might suggest that commonlaw marriages are effectively similar in many ways (again, I leave the particulars to the diehards).

Update: Republican Martin Devon, on the other hand, is to the left of myself:

It really bugs me that the president is backing amending the constitution to prevent whack job judges from legislating gay marriage. Yeah, I think that the mayor of San Franscisco and the supremes in Massachusetts are way out of line, but what else is new? This is the classic case of the cure being worse than the disease. You don't mess with the constitution for this. No good will come from it.

Just last night Eel and I were talking about Jesus productions (movies, musicals, etc.). She was telling me about the time she saw Jesus Christ Superstar in Oklahoma and that they had the original actors for Jesus and Judas. I'd never really thought too much about that musical and haven't talked to anyone about it since our Austrian exchange student a decade ago. But last night Eel and I talked about it and today the actor for Judas died.

It just makes ya think.

No, really, it doesn't. Weird coincidence, though.

And I thought my life was too dramatic.

Michaels Morgan and Duff have apparently discontinued their blogs.

Bummer.

Update: Or not. Duff's blog is back and Morgan's is being relocated in a couple months. Consider my "bummer" retracted!

RAW: I finally got my CDs ripped today. I need to not procrastinate on that so much. A couple only ripped after MUCH reluctance
Jay: Your CD's?
Jay: Trying to put everything on mp3?
RAW: Yeah. It's my policy
Jay: For break-ins?
RAW: And so I can sort my own CDs
Jay: Ah, I see.
Jay: So you can see what you have?
RAW: So I can get rid of tracks I don't want and put them in a more suitable order :)
Jay: I like having the other ones on there, just in case.
RAW: Other ones on there?
Jay: Other tracks on the CD...and usually the order given suits just fine.
RAW: I don't want songs I don't like to listen to on CDs that I listen to. I'm funny that way...
RAW: AND I can make the CDs longer than a piddly 45-50 min!
Jay: I just skip over 'em
Jay: yeah
Jay: I dunno
Jay: I'm fine with switching 'em out
Jay: Call me non-progressive.
RAW: Reactionary.
RAW: Oh well, I like how my way is just so completely superior to yours. It makes me feel better about myself [nodnod]
Jay: I imagine so
RAW: It depends on the artist. For some I'd be just fine listening to the CDs through.
RAW: But for others I only like about half their songs
Jay: True, true.
Jay: I usually find a smattering of the songs I like and make a disc of it (a la Frank Black and Pixies)_
RAW: For my part, once I have that 80-minute good-song format going, I start liking the plain jane CDs less, so I start collapsing them. It's kinda neat how 2 CDs fits into 1 pretty well for most good artists. 3 CDs fold into 1 for hit-and-missers or 2 CDs if they're really good
RAW: The only problem I've run in to are those with more than 3 CDs... I never know quite what to do. That's why I have no CDs burned for some of my favorite acts (Phil, Great Divide, Counting Crows, etc.)
RAW: It's depressing sad.
RAW: Just not in a way that makes my way of going about it anything less than utterly superior to yours.
Jay: Why don't you just make more than 1 CD with them on it?
RAW: I do... for instance, 3 CDs by a good artist get welded into 2 CDs (Matchbox 20 and Blue October are good examples)
RAW: But once there are four, it gets more spotty
RAW: I could make two 2-1 folds
RAW: I've been mulling that over for Great Divide
RAW: But then you have artists like Phil and TMBG, whose material changes a lot over the years and two sequential CDs may not match eachother particularly well
RAW: And then there are live CDs... oh man, those things screw up EVERYTHING!
Jay: You think about this entirely too much.
RAW: EVERYTHING
[RAW explodes]

As a Republican surrounded by liberals and Democrats, I've gotten to hear a lot about the gay marriage issue the last few days. Most of my friends are aware that this is an issue that I don't particularly agree with Republicans on and so it's used to suggest that perhaps I am really not the Republican that I think I am because President Bush is going out and saying something - loudly and frequently - that I vehemently disagree with. The idea of changing the constitution to specifically ban gays from getting marriage is outrageous to them and, they say, ought to be outrageous to me.

Except that it isn't.

I haven't changed my view on the issue. I still believe that gays should be allowed to marry. But it to referrendum and I will vote for it. I will campaign for it. But while I believe in gay marriage, I believe in democracy more. While I disagree with Republicans on this issue, I agree with them on tangental issues that make me completely uncomfortable with the tactic used by the pro-gay marriage folks (whose ends, less we forget, I do agree with) to ram their issue through the will of a reluctant public.

So while I don't agree with what they're doing, I completely understand where they're coming from.

Right now the public is not on board with gay marriage. If it were the attempts to wrap the gay issue into the non-existent privacy clause and the gay marriage issue into something that's implied in amendments dealing with racial minorities would not be necessary. I firmly believe that in another ten years the public will be on board and it won't be necessary. But right now it's unpopular and those on my side of the issue don't seem to care what the public wants. I believe that this will result in long-term backlash and will do the gay marriage cause a lot of harm. I'd not like to see that happen.

Which brings me to attempts by conservatives to write marriage into the constitution. It's not outrageous - it's exactly what liberals are trying to do without the extra effort of actually getting it into the constitution. If one is against gays being allowed to marry and they're told that the constitution says it's okay, what other recourse is there than to change the document in question? There is none and their response is completely logical.

It is liberals and not conservatives that are making marriage a constitutional issue. As of right now, marriage is legislative. If Alabama wants to make it so that twelve year olds can get married without parental consent and in New Hampshire someone has to be eighteen, that's unfair but constitutional because that's what their respective legislatures agreed on. If New Hampshire wants to expand marriage to homosexuals, then it can do so they same way that they could make it open to sixteen year olds. Or, for that matter, to allow people to have more than one spouse. They chose not to do that and as such I can't muster a whole lot of outrage that Republicans are fighting constitutional fire with fire.

Ultimately, I believe the marriage amendment will fail. I don't believe that there is nearly enough support in blue states to meet the required 3/4 legislatures to get it through. I also believe that Bush knows this and is straddling the issue for largely political reasons. Before one asks what that says about Bush, they ought to note that Kerry's response is even more political. Does anyone truly believe that Kerry does not believe that gays ought to be allowed to marry? Yet he's taking the untenable civil unions stance. So what does that say about him? It says he's a politician. Just like Bush is.

Last night I was ripping CDs. It's generally been my policy to rip CDs as soon as I buy them in case they get stolen. Unfortunately, I didn't do that and I discovered another reason to rip sooner rather than later. CDex, the program I use to rip CDs, doesn't have much in the way of error protection and some of my older CDs are coming up with hundreds of errors. The CDs play perfectly fine and there are no visible scratches on them, but the problem CDs are the oldest that I have (Thrift Store Cowboys being chief among them). Since they play without a problem, I don't think that ripping them should be the problem that it's become, so I have to conclude that CDex is letting me down. What programs do you guys use to rip CDs?

Also, I need to clean my laptop monitor. Anyone know the best way to go about doing that?

My cell phone subscription ran out a couple of days ago. For the remainder of my time down here I get my folks' cell. They just signed a new contract with my brother and sister-in-law that, for obvious reasons, I'm not a part of. Anyway, part of the deal was new cell phones.

It's more than a step up from my old phone. It actually has a lit display compared to my gameboyesque gray and black one from before. Instead of snake, it has bowling! Pretty rad!

The buttons, on the other hand, take some getting used to. Whereas most phones have twelve buttons or so for the numbers and * and #, this one has six buttons. The 1 and 3, 2 and 5, 4 and 6, 7 and 9, 8 and 0, and * and # buttons are connected to one another and which part of the metabutton determines which number you're hitting. It's no problem except when I'm trying to dial without looking. I suppose I'll just have to get used to it.

The rationale for the unique button configuration is for, I think, the games on the cell phone. They've sacrificed utility on the phone's primary function (being a phone) for the tangental functions. Part of me objects to that out of principle, except that it makes the bowling game a lot more fun and easy. And the bowling game is rad!

It reminds me a bit of the TI-8x series of calculators. They were all the rage when I was in high school. In addition to being a graphic calculator (and for many poor students with rich parents in leiu of being a graphing calculator), it was a game console for a lot of Atari 2600esque games. It was enough that I was waiting to find out when TI was going to come out with a Windows 95 version.

So now phones have downloadable games and keyboard-configurated buttons. That's just low-budget phones (which is pretty much all I'm ever going to own). There seems to be some convergence between PDA's and cell phones and I guess that's pretty natural.

Whatever. I wanna go play some more bowling!

You are HOBBES! You are a great friend. You are
also have a little rebelish side to you. You
like looking at the babes but that doesn't get
in the way of your friendship, most of the
time.


Which Calvin And Hobbes Character Are You Most Like?
brought to you by Quizilla

There's a fellow named Richard Florida who has some interesting ideas. Namely that U.S. economic dominance is threatened due to, among other things, it's unwieldy size and "unlivability."

On the latter point, I recall a press conference conversation between President Clinton and Prime Minister Chretein. The latter commented that Canada was "objectively" a better place to live than the United States and that various studies or polls had said so. Clinton, as one would expect of even a Democratic president, disagrees.

It wasn't long after that when I took a trip to Canada. Lovely country. Nice people. There was an article in the Toronto Star about the "brain drain"... the tendency of the most qualified Canadians to emigrate to the US.

Canada may have been an "objectively better" nation in which to leave, but we were attracting their best talent.

Florida suggests that the opposite is about to occur (or is occuring):

"The labour market for creative people is global," he insists. "Quality of place matters. It's not just about low taxes and cheap goods. The message is that we need to invest in people and places. That means schools and the urban realm, not giant projects. We must emphasize what's unique about a place, not what's generic.

"We're moving to a multi-polar world," Florida continues. "Countries like Canada, Australia and New Zealand, these are the real competitors now. The U.S. lead is not invincible. There is a general sense that the U.S. is a far less tolerant place than it used to be. It's not just a product of the Bush administration. Historically, the U.S. was able to attract the brightest and the best, but we no longer hold that position."

Though Florida has yet to set his sights directly on Canada, he anticipates that will happen within six months. So far, he is impressed with what he sees.

"I expect Canada would do rather well," he says. "At the forefront of countries that have the ability to attract immigrants is Canada. You have the mosaic instead of the melting pot. That means you can keep your identity and still be a Canadian. Europe is as tolerant as Canada in its attitudes to immigrants, but bad at assimilation."

Other major indicators, he adds, are tolerance of gays and minorities. Canada, Florida feels, scores well in both those categories.

I'd be very interested to hear immigration rates to the US vis-a-vis Canada. If, in fact, they are attracting more of the talent then it could indeed pose a problem. Attracting the best and the brightest is something that contributes heavily to my argument.

Florida offers no statistics to this effect, however. Maybe that's what I'm supposed to buy his book for. Regardless, something else he said casts suspicion over the rest:

Though the U.S. and, to a lesser extent, Canada have put their faith in tax cuts as an economic stimulus, Florida claims they are wrong. "The highest tax locations in the U.S. have the fastest growth," he notes. "Low tax rates and deregulation don't attract people. They're looking for economic opportunities and lifestyle opportunities.

How so? With the big exception of California, the fastest growing states are predominantly conservative/libertarian ones. In fact, the 2000 census shifted electoral votes (which are, of course, based on population) away from Blue states and towards Red ones.

People are still trending away from (cheap) towns and towards (expensive) big cities, but that can't be the crux of an article titled "small is beautiful", can it?

My cell phone is out-of-order, so I cannot be reached by it. Emails sent to me are likely to rebound, but I did get the email! I just need to get it to stop sending to my phone.

I'll have a new cell phone and a new number shortly.

Gregg Easterbrook has an interesting thought on why John Kerry's war record resonates with a lot of folks:

Set aside what John Kerry said to a college newspaper in 1970 about Vietnam--anything that anybody said to a college newspaper in 1970, on any subject, is likely to sound silly today. Surely one reason Kerry is doing so well in the Democratic primaries is that he embodies the middle-American consensus about the Vietnam War. That consensus seems to be that Vietnam was a bad war, but there was a duty to serve and those who fulfilled the duty should be admired.

That's fair enough, but most people that I see praising his efforts are much more concerned with the possibility that it would make his utter lack of any foreign policy with which Americans would agree with beyond reproach.

What I find so interesting about the Kerry ascendancy is how much of it is based on polls. Bush and Clinton both used electability as a selling point to keep their respective party's outliers in line and there's nothing wrong with doing that. But whatever your personal feelings on Bush and Clinton are, they came to the table with more than electability. Some people, well, actually liked them. They liked their ideas and the direction that they wanted to take the party. They liked their optomism and ability to inspire. Does anyone have a clear idea of where precisely Kerry plans to take the party?

People seem to settle on Kerry because he's electable without much of a semblence (that I've heard, anyhow) of why he's electable. The only thing I've heard thus far is his war record. His war record has indeed innoculated him to the point that anyone who questions his ideas is accused of questioning his patriotism. To suggest that this will last and that people are not interested in where Kerry would take the country and that they will repeatedly fall for the "How dare you question the Purple Heart?" line for the next nine months is not giving the public very much credit.

Kerry does, however, have plenty of time to establish himself. I think by this point in the race Al Gore still had two complete metamorpheses in him, so Kerry can mold himself into someone with some ideas beyond heel-biting the administration. I think it's a fool's wager to pass over candidates of more style (Edwards) or substance (Gephardt) on such speculation, though.

I've written before about how awful tech support over the phone is. I've said it before and I'll say it again: whether you're a techie or not, you need to learn how a computer works. Or be married to someone that does. Or give birth to someone that does.

Absent that, you need to get the Gold Unlimited Warrantee Plan or whatever that means that you drop your computer off and they have to fix it before giving it back to you. Technical support over the phone is not a long-term solution. Not only is it incredibly difficult to help someone over the phone, but the operators in particular have little reason to help you.

Nothing illustrates that more clearly than this first-person account of working at a tech support call center.

Loni is a great guy. Like me, he keeps track of Ken's more outrageous meltdowns and we compare notes over lunch. We have a good time. I like him. But Loni is a punter. I don't condone it, but I understand. Since hitting the floor we've all learned the sad truth. Actually solving problems is by far the slowest way to handle a call. We've each got 12 minutes from the moment we say hello to find a way to say goodbye, and after two weeks of trying to fix computers he knew nothing about and racking up average call times north of half an hour, Loni decided that if he was going to survive, he was going to have to change his approach. So he became a punter.

A punter is someone who gets rid of problems by giving them to someone else. Punters tell customers that their problem is not really with their computer, but with their software, their printer, their phone lines, solar flares, whatever they can make sound believable. Then a punter will look at the piece of paper hanging above their phone and read you those four magic words. We don't support that. If you want your problem fixed, a punter will tell you, you'll have to call someone else.

[...]

Mr. Davis is threatening to shoot his computer. What this will accomplish is unclear, but he seems convinced it will make him feel better. Looking over his call log, I'm sympathetic. A run of givers have sent him six monitors in the last two and a half weeks, none of which has solved his problem. It seems safe to say that whatever his problem is, it's not with the monitor. Still, that hasn't stopped another giver from offering to send him a seventh one earlier today. When he refused that present he was promptly punted. He's been punted a total of four times today. Now he's had it. He just wants me to bear audio witness as he guns down his system.

Fortunately after a little prodding I discover that Mr. Davis' problem is one of a growing number that I recognize and know how to fix. We go through a few simple steps, and in a matter of minutes I've determined that his video card is bad. I explain what we've done and that I'll be sending a new video card to address his issue. He seems much calmer now, grateful that I've listened, and hopeful that I've really figured out the source of his frustration. All I need to do now is send him the part.

But because the givers have been sending out thousands of dollars' worth of unnecessary parts and equipment lately, it's not that simple. Now I have to call a special inside number and wait for the opportunity to explain to a manager why Mr. Davis needs the part I think he needs. With one manager set up to handle this post and hundreds of techs trying to dispatch parts, both legitimately and otherwise, it turns out that I'm in for quite a hold. So while the problem is actually something I know how to fix, and while I've gotten to the solution in only eight minutes, I now have to wait on hold for 16 minutes just to send out the necessary part. By the time this call ends, it will have taken almost 25 minutes and to anyone studying my stats I'll continue to look completely clueless.

When I finally get back to Mr. Davis his goodwill is gone. The quarter hour of exposure to soft rock he's endured has prompted him to get the gun and begin threatening to murder his machine all over again. I promise him the part is on its way and that his problem is finally solved. But it's clear he doesn't believe me. He calls me an asshole and slams down the phone. I begin to wonder if I might not be better off learning how to punt.

... and still truckin'.

It happened on the way to San Marcos. I was going to wait until I got a picture of the car to post with it, but unfortunately I'm having battery-related issues, so you'll just have to take this picture that I took on my last trip out there.

You are Schroeder!


Which Peanuts Character are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

YOU ARE RULE 11!

You were designed to make sure that attorneys in
federal cases make reasonable inquiries into
fact or law before submitting pleadings,
motions, or other papers. You were a real
hardass in 1983, when you snuffed out all legal
creativity from federal proceedings and
embarassed well-meaning but overzealous
attorneys. You loosened up a bit in 1993, when
you began allowing plaintiffs to make
allegations in their complaints that are likely
to have evidenciary support after discovery,
and when you allowed a 21 day period for the
erring attorney to withdraw the errant motion.
Sure, you keep everything running on the up and
up, but it's clear that things would be a lot
more fun without you around.


Which Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

[via Unbilled Hours]

Yankee or Dixie:

86% (Dixie). Did you have any Confederate ancestors?

Most likely. Both sides of my family have routes that run pretty deep in their respective states (Texas and Virginia).

Since Mom and Dad are both wonderfully healthy, my brother and I have never thought about calling dibs on our inheritance with one major exception. On our back porch is a print of a painting of Robert E. Lee and his generals. I used to think it was the coolest thing ever and told Mom that I wanted that some day. It turned out that my brother did the exact same thing, except that I got dibs first.

On the whole, though, I'm reluctant to call myself pro-south. In some ways I'm quite the opposite. I don't have a whole lot of romantic imagery regarding the Old South and the War Between the States. I'm also, relatively speaking and particularly for a southerner, somewhat hostile to the Confederate battle flag.

But as far as language goes, it's pretty clear. "Y'all" is a word.

Like Adrianne, I didn't realize that "feeder" was largely a Houston term. It's what I've always used. In fact, once upon a time I thought "Frontage Road" was like MLK Blvd... there seemed to be one in every town!

[via Owen "One-third Yankee" Courreges]

Owen has a post up on a couple new movies with anti-gun messages. Anti-gun is nothing new for Hollywood, of course, but both movies target gun manufactures the same way the left has targetted Big Tobacco. Not only as soulless corporations, but malicious ones:

In both these films, the gun industry is portrayed as if it's the new tobacco industry; all-powerful oligarchs perverting justice with the sole intention of placing guns in the hands of criminals (oddly enough, we are led to believe that this is a burgeoning market). This scenario particularly plays out in Runaway Jury, which was based on a John Grisham novel. In that film, the gun industry, rallied together, is fighting a lawsuit claiming that it sold assault weapons to distributors who then sold them to third-parties who then sold them into the black market -- and the manufacturer knew about all of this.

As if to underscore Owen's point, the Runaway Jury movie actually changed the villain from Big Tobacco to Big Munitions. In the original novel, the bad guy was a tobacco company targetting kids and the poor. Apparently the movie changed that to gun manufacturers marketting directly to evil-doers.

Hollywood (and it's defenders) might argue that making the movie about gun manufacturers makes it more "topical" since most tobacco lawsuits have been settled. But it betrays a bias among the left (which Hollywood exemplifies in many ways) that views the two as being somewhat interchangable. The gun lawsuits have been going on a while now, but they haven't taken hold among the public as the tobacco lawsuits did. The general public simply doesn't see the connection that the left does. With enough propaganda they might, though.

I hope not.

Stephen Green notes a town that once required a breathalizer in every bar:

I never saw one of the things in person, but I heard they looked kind of like an arcade game, complete with cute little graphics showing just how drunk you were at rising blood alcohol levels.

That's not exactly how things went. Instead:

Very Drunk Person: I'm not drunk. Gimme that straw. Heh -- lookit that, I'm double the legal limit, but I can walk just fine.
Other Drunk Person: I can beat that. [Blows into machine] Thing says I should be in a coma. Top that!
Third Drunk Person: [Throws up on machine]

I have seen the things. When my brother and I coincidentally converged on Austin (he from Virginia and myself from Houston) we went to this bar called Nasty's that had one. It really does look like an arcade. Actually, it looks a little more like one of those machines where you touch the metal hemi-sphere or a sensor or something and it will give you your fortune or tell you whether or not you're a good lover or whatnot. It's about as accurate, too.

There were a lot of people there, including a number of my brother's frat brothers. For a dollar a pop a few of them tried to test their sobriety.

First Drunk: [Hiccup], see, it says I'm not drunk.

Second Drunk: That's because you have the straw on the coin depository.

First Drunk: Oh.

Third Drunk: My turn.

First Drunk: Dude! Point-six! You're dead!

Okay, okay, I made the first part of this dialogue up, but the dude was technically dead.

This is probably old news, but I just ran across if (via Politics1):

The Pembroke Pines mayor's race is becoming X-rated.

There is talk everywhere about an incident three years ago involving Mayor Alex Fekete, and it's now part of his re-election campaign against Commissioner Sue Katz. That's when he says a virus infected his city and personal computers with pornography. He also says the computers may have been used by others.

I've never heard of a virus that can infect a computer with thousands of porno pictures, but here is the mayor's story:

The X-rated pictures were found when Fekete brought his laptop to city computer technicians to get rid of viruses. The techies found such explicit material that they were embarrassed and offended, according to a memo on the incident.

City Manager Charles Dodge launched an investigation and asked the State Attorney's Office for help. Prosecutors called computer experts from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

The investigation, never disclosed before, found that Fekete had as many as 23,000 computer file images of pornography on his laptop and a city computer. Sexually explicit material was in files labeled "My Favorites," "Temporary Internet Files" and "Cookies," according to documents on the probe.

The page takes a bit of time to load up. Second item.

Hostik was down for most of Wednesday. Sitemeter is still down. Argh.

Andrew Olmsted has a marvelous post that sums up a lot of thoughts that I've had recently:

After two and half years on maintaining this weblog, I often get the impression that people think that what I write is considered (by me) to be some kind of holy writ. While it doesn't happen too often (low traffic can be a blessing of sorts), I will sometimes get comments from people hammering me for taking a position on a topic of interest to them. In particular they seem to love locating some statement I made that is either factually incorrect or that can be compared to a different statement I made at some earlier date that seems to contradict it. Their conclusion is then some variant of 'since I've proved you wrong/hypocritical here, you should recant your opinion and apologize for ever having held it.' I find this line of thinking fascinating.

I'm going to take a moment to let you all in on a little secret: most of what I write here is about things I'm not sure about.

[...]

I confess that I often envy many bloggers. There seem to be a great number of people out there who are absolutely convinced of the rightness of their conclusions. Indeed, no amount of evidence or argument can sway them an inch from those beliefs. I imagine there is a certain comfort in having that level of belief. You make a decision, and it's the right one, come Hell or high water. No need for second guessing or reflection there.

Certainly that sounds a lot better than watching the war continue in Iraq and asking myself over and over again whether I was right to support it. Granted, it's not like my selecting a different position would have prevented the war, but I firmly believe that my decision to support the war carries with it a moral burden regarding the consequences of the war. So the continuous flow of casualties and the numerous (perceived) errors on the part of the Coalition are more than just news reports for me, they're a steady drumbeat of reminders and questions: did I make the right decision?

There are some things that I am certain about. My views on school choice, gun control, the market, free trade, the death penalty, and a host of other subjects are broadly unalterable. I can be convinced of the pros and cons of specific proposals, but by-and-large I expect to hold these views until the day I die.

These are, incidentally, things I don't post on very often. Instead, when I write politics it's about affirmative action where my views are murky, predictions that are often wrong, speculation that can't be proven or disproven, and new issues that I'm not always sure what to make of.

When I look at my Full Blogrolodexical, I find it interesting how rarely I visit many bloggers whose pages used to be a staple in my surfing. The ones that I don't visit much anymore are often the most certain and the most assertive. Even when I agree with most of what they say, when I know their response to any given issue it doesn't tend to keep my interest.

As far as blogging goes, I'm a lot more interesting in reading about personal thoughts and intellectual exploration than I am in personal position papers. That's what the National Review and New Republic are for.

Don't get me wrong, some of my daily reads are strident in tone, but that's not really what I'm doing here most of the time.

In fact, there are times I eat crow and, honestly, I'm happy to do it when I'm wrong. That's what interblog conversation and comments are about. I didn't have comments when I first started, but I can't imagine not having them now.

None of this is to say that I am wishy-washy or perpetually uncertain about anything. Anyone that has argued politics with me in the past will attest to this (Adam and Mike surely will). Sometimes I will post position papers here, but for the most part I'm putting thoughts out there and, often, waiting for them to be challenged.

Brian and Sama don't live on the Texas State campus, but they do live across the street from it. Nearly everyone who lives in this complex goes to the University (or went there, as in Sama's case). Texas State is the sixth largest university in Texas. It's a Masters College and University as defined by the Carnegie Foundation, which puts them on the top of the second tier of universities below the biggest five universities in the state and a few UT and A&M affiliate schools. Up until six months ago, it was named Southwest Texas State University.

They have a number of good programs (teaching and computer science chief among them) that draw students here, but a large part of the student body are students that wanted to party near Austin and couldn't get in to the University of Texas.

Their football program is in Division I-AA and competes in the Southland Conference with smaller schools such as Sam Houston and McNeese State. Attempts to move up to Division I-A are thwarted by, among other things, low attendance numbers.

That said, whenever I'm in San Marcos it's striking to me how - unlike U of H - how few people there are wearing apparel of larger universities. In fact, I see a lot more Texas State (and SWT) apparel here than I see UH apparel on the Houston campus.

I wonder why that is. Neither UH nor TSUSM have the profile that Texas, A&M, and Tech do. Few outside of Texas have heard of Texas State or Southwest Texas (more are familiar with UH). So I find it interesting that a lot more students spend their money on licensed shirts, caps, and so on than do at Houston.

I guess it's largely the function of a traditional student body. I haven't spent much time in Huntsville or Nacadochus, but I would guess the college students there are probably the same as they are here. Given how the three towns are, to various degrees, built around their universities, they are having a college experience more like those in Austin and College Station than those in Houston.

Sama and her previously-quite-serious boyfriend broke up tonight. We got home and she was finishing off a bottle of tequila, toasting her emancipation and then locking herself in her room.

Sama and I used to be a lot closer than we are these days. Our friendship started sliding when we both got significant others. I think she was looking for some comforting words from Brian, but he really didn't have any. She's awake in her room now. Part of me feels like I should knock on her door and lend her an ear, but I'd guess that there's a reason that she's locked herself in her room.

I've been in few traditional relationships, so I've had few traditional breakups. Not that untraditional breakups are easier, mind you. But it does make it harder for me to know what to say.

When I was a kid, during the winter holidays there would be all kinds of bowl games on between schools that my 8-year old self was completely unfamiliar with. Wanting to be involved, I still cheered. I remember once, in Fort Worth, Dad noticed that I had changed the teams that I'm rooting for and he asked which won I wanted to win. I answered "whichever one was winning."

I recalled this when I read Jack Sparks's amusing aside on Yankee fans:

I'll restate what I've said before in this space, coffeehouses, and bars, all across America. If you weren't born in New York, if your parents weren't born there, and/or if neither you nor your parents have spent the majority of your lives in New York, and, you root for the Yankees, you're a fucking no-good front runner. If you own, wear, or have even tried on one of those powder blue and white Yankees caps, you should be killed and left in the street as a feast for vultures.

In addition to remembering Fort Worth circa 1986, I also recall A&M-mania at Clear Lake High School. Everyone wore A&M attire and rooted for A&M. I heard endlessly about how bad UT was (which they were, Mackovic years and all). Of course, few of these people actually had connections to A&M and fewer still would be good enough students to get in to it. They were rooting for A&M and wearing A&M gettups cause it was the school with the best football team in Texas at the time.

I imagine that if I were to go back today, there would probably be a lot more UT and OU attire and I suspect people whose father's actually went to A&M get to hear about how bad their team is.

I'm also reminded of the University of Houston, which amusingly enough had Aggie and Longhorn booster clubs. There were, and presently are, more people with an affection for a university they didn't go to than ones with an affection for the one they were actually attending. Heck, today there's probably a Sooners booster club.

The people with an affection for the Yankees or the Sooners (exceptions for those from New York, live in Oklahoma or went to the University of, and those that rooted for each of these teams during their down-years) in many ways have similar mentalities to my eight year old self. They want to be associated with winners.

It's the male equivalent to the female fashion mafia. A lot of fashion is built around being associated with those more popular, glamorous. or wealthy than those that are less so. Fashion trends born, live, and then die as the most popular, glamorous, and wealthy move on to something new. The rest follow like sheep.

The same is true of athletic allegiances. A&M was big in the late nineties because they were winners. They are less so now because they aren't.

I must confess that I am, in many ways, a fair-weather fan. I watched basketball playoffs for the first time in my life when the Rockets were on top. I'm going to pay more attention to the Astros next year because they might just surpass the first round of the playoffs.

At the same time, though, I will root for the University of Houston over the University of Texas any time they meet. I'll root for the Rockets or Astros over any other team in their respective sports. I hate the Houston Texans name, but I'll root for the team because they're from my home town. Whether or not I watch the games depends on how well my team is doing, but I don't forget where my roots are and my connections are.

Of course, most NFL football games don't involve the Texans. The team I root for in those games is pretty arbitrary. I was rooting for the Carolina Panthers throughout the playoffs because Lex keeps writing about them. When I was a kid I liked the Green Bay Packers because of their colors, so I'll still root for'em. My "system" for college teams is quite a bit more complex, involving where I went to school, where my family went to school, where my lady friend goes to school, in-state schools, schools that I considered going to, ones that my friends went to, and so on. It's an inexact science (sports is meant to be fun and there's nothing fun about science), but one factor I don't consider is whether or not they are the reigning champions.

(attached in the "Read More" section is a loose list of the teams that I root for and in what order) [Read More!]

RAW: Hey, is that 7-11 open?
Brian: Sure. Mountain Dew?
RAW: No.
Brian: Not convenience store hot dogs, I hope!
RAW: Uhhh, no.
Brian: Then what?
RAW: You'll see.
Brian: Uhm, okay.

[pull in to 7-11]

RAW: Now, keep in mind, you said no tacos.
Brian: Uhmm... yeah. Oh no!
RAW: Oh yes!
Brian: Oh no!
RAW: Oh yes!
Brian: Tequitos!
RAW: Yeah. They have two flavors! One that tastes chili-ish... and one that tastes really good!
Clerk: What will you have?
RAW: One of each, please!

From a purely ideological standpoint, this seems outrageous.

Yet, as the technology becomes cheaper and easier to use, it's harder to justify not doing it and saving lives.

Anyone have any idea how much those suckers presently cost?

Update: Eugene Volokh does a comparison with fingerprint recognition on guns. Volokh takes those that oppose the former but support the latter to task. I don't know enough to have a firm opinion, but I think I might have the opposite view (I could find myself supporting the interlocks, but oppose required fingerprint recognition on guns). Interesting.

(Note: I forgot to put the link on earlier. It's there now)

Update II: Both Owen and Adrianne (search "anti-catholic cars") rip the idea. (also, if you haven't already, check out Mike's contributions in the comments section.

The log Mike mentions that it keeps is very troublesome. While I doubt that they will start assigning tickets for "attempted DUI"s, I view that as an invasion of privacy that I don't view the simple breathing into a straw as.

Adrianne argues that the breathalizers for convicts doesn't work. That brings up an interesting trade-off. If they're easy to disable, as Adrianne suggests, then they would be cheap to replace if they start malfunctioning, as Owen fears. On the other hand, if it's difficult to disable, it would likely be difficult to replace. Neither of those situations are particularly desirable.

Getting someone else to breathe into it seems more problematic than Adrianne suggests, though. If you have a person in your crew that hasn't drunk, that person is likely to be the designated driver. If you have a sober person there, you're less inclined to drive drunk in the first place.

Unless, of course, the scenario is that four people go to a bar in seperate cars. Three drink and one does not. The non-drinker then breathes in to all four cars to get them going. That would be a motivation to have to re-validate your sobriety while driving, which Mike says would be required. Such a requirement would, in my opinion, be absurd. On the whole, though, a single person going to three additional cars would be a rather conspicuous way to avoid the test. Would it work? Maybe.

Owen's points (both in the comments here and on his post) about the unsanitary nature of such a device is a very good point. I'd be interested to hear how New Mexico would account for this.

A column by the chairman of the NM House Judiciary Committee suggests that innovations could eventually lead to ways that don't even require a breathalizer:

Current technology will prevent a car from starting if an alcohol detection unit senses alcohol on the driver's breath. New "transdermal" technology detects alcohol on the driver's skin— as simple as touching a detection device.

However, the same column actually makes me more skeptical of the idea as a whole. It implies that if you have "alcohol in your system" you won't be able to start. How much alcohol? The column doesn't say you have to be intoxicated. It would be insane to install a device that wouldn't let a car start because someone took Communion at church (as Adrianne says happened in Germany).

On the other hand, Mr. Martinez may be on to something with the proposed tax incentive. In fact, that combined with the possible insurance break that might occur opens up the avenue for a less invasive (and more market-based) solution: create the financial incentives for such a device, but make it entirely voluntary. Make them more available on new cars being produced and then allow the driver to decide. If someone chooses to then they would likely get lower insurance breaks for the assurances that the person would not drive drunk. If someone chooses not to, such would be their right, but their insurance burden would carry the weight of those that choose not simply because they do intend to drive drunk.

This site claims that such devices reduce recidivism by up to 95%. The Department of Transportation says that the reduction would be 75%.

This, on the other hand, backs up what Mike says about re-validating sobriety and if this is the device they're going to use, Mr. Gallegos is right and it will cause a lot more problems than it would solve:

A Santa Fe distributor and installer of ignition interlocks tells KSFR News that a well-meaning bill that had been discussed in the state legislature may not work. Steve Gallegos manages Santa Fe Preventive Services, a company that has installed interlock ignition devices on cars of convicted drunk drivers longer than any other service in New Mexico. He says a Grant, N.M., lawmaker's bill to install an interlock device on every car in the state would likely cause more problems than it's worth. He says the driver not only has to blow into the device to start the car, but the device requires periodic checks while the car is in motion. That means the driver would have to pull over and restart the engine. And he says the car would have to be brought in for service every month or so, at a cost of $60 a month by today's rate schedule.

Yowzers, according to this, the limit on these things in Pennsylvania is .025, which is ludicrous.

The most startling thing about this is that the New Mexico legislature really does not seem to have thought this out in the slightest. They apparently just started requiring it for drunk drivers in January of this year. They want to go from a pilot program to mandatory without any experience with, you know, actually using them?

With certain possibilities accounted for, I am open to the idea of checking for sobriety before the car starts. Preferably through a market-incentive program. From the looks of it, though, they are nowhere close to where they need to be. Maybe the technology is there (or will be there by the time of the mandate in 2008), but to say that they are jumping the gun is an understatement.

As I said at the top of the post, as the technology gets better, it may be difficult to justify opposing it. Right now, though, it seems pretty easy.

FoxNews.com takes delight that the two frontrunners in the Democratic primaries are wealthy individuals that are pulling from the "people versus the powerful" message of Al Gore (another wealthy individual, incidentally).

Kerry was born into wealth and has consistently utilized it for his own political career, much like the President utilized his for his own business and political career. So does that mean he can't be a populist? Well actually Kerry can't because he's John Kerry.

John Edwards, on the other hand, has made a career out of litigating for the "little guy." He's made his fair share of money doing so, but I'd say that speaks more of his success than of any implied hypocrisy. Unlike Bush, Kerry, and Gore, he was not wealthy growing up and therefore the issue is not quite as theoretical to him.

TheOnion also has its own take.

When I was ardently pro-choice, one of my rationales was how plainly illogical it was to crowd up our foster homes with more unwanted children. Of course, what I failed to realize was that there was a difference between most kids that end up in foster care and those that are born that would otherwise be aborted. A great number of those kids would likely not go into foster homes because there is a premium on adopting newborns to the point that there are waiting lists 7 years long and many would-be parents are going abroad to adopt.

Jane Galt has a thought-provoking post on the legitimacy, or ill-legitimacy, of the argument that these kids would end up in foster homes:

As it happens, I was acquainted, a few years back, with a couple that was trying to adopt; the husband was a research analyst, and his conversation on the topic was, er, excruciatingly thorough. There are a number of children in the system, disproportionately minority ones, who can't get adopted. But that isn't because they're minorities; if you'll notice, many of the couples who can't adopt here end up going to China, South America, or Africa for babies. This couple was desperate for a baby; they were happy to take any or all races. But they were stymied by the system.

The primary reason most children who are eligible for adoption can't be adopted is not that they're black; it's that they're old. Most couples (I'm sure not all) seem to be pretty flexible on race, but they don't want a kid older than two or three, certainly not one older than five. Older children mean you miss a lot of magic moments, such as first steps. Older children also often have active memories of abuse, which makes them difficult to deal with. Or they've been in institutions, collecting bad habits and emotional problems from kids who mostly grew up in extremely difficult circumstances. They are not the happy, well adjusted children that we all imagine we can raise until we actually have the little hellions.

In the post and the comments section, various statistics are bandied about to determine whether every child that is aborted could in fact be adopted.

It's a good question and one without a clear answer.

I'm going to investigate this without regard to my personal views on abortion and while comments on this post are encouraged, I'd prefer it not become about the moral and ethical implications of the procedure itself and keep it focused on the practical implications of adoption vs. abortion.

Also, the numbers I'm going to use are very inexact, but I'm going to use them anyway as a starting point.

According to the CDC, in 2000 there was (approx.) one abortion for every four live births. The statistic I've most heard for medically necessary abortions is around 6%, so using that number there were 238 medically necessary abortions for every 1000 live birth. There were 857,475 legally induced abortions that year

In 1995, there were approximately 500,000 women or couples seeking adoption. Simply using those numbers, that would suggest that if there hadn't been any abortions, somewhere around 350,000 newborns would be without homes (if the number held up to 2000).

Except that there are a number of X-factors involved. First, if abortion were not available, it's quite possible that there would have been more attention paid to contraceptive methods that would have prevented the births in the first place. Secondly, there were probably other potential parents that never looked into it because they immediately planned to adopt from abroad or knew what an expensive process adoption is. Lastly, this assumes that all of the women that had abortions would choose adoption instead of keeping the baby, and that's very unlikely. The process of carrying a baby in one's womb would create an attachment that would make it very difficult to give the child up upon birth.

So with those two factors in mind, chances are that the number of babies needing homes would, in fact, go down significantly.

On the other hand, one must keep in mind that the women giving birth to the children are likely reluctant mothers. Though they may keep the child, there is also a solid possibility that they are unequipped to deal with the trials of parenthood and many of those kids would end up in foster care, too old to be adopted.

If the number of kids kept-but-later-lost exceeds 350,000, it's actually possible that there would be a waiting list for adoptions and more kids put in to foster care. On the other hand, if the number of lost kids is marginal and more kids are contracepted, than it is quite feasible to have a home for every child.

Honestly, though, there are too many X-factors to truly gauge what would actually happen. It's presumptuous to say, as Jane Galt does, that there would be a home for every child. On the other hand, the argument of overloaded foster homes walks is not nearly as clean-cut as many pro-choice advocates suggest.

At the end of the day, it's a value judgment that weighs the (legal and/or moral) rights of the unborn against the (legal and/or moral) rights of a reluctant pregnant woman. I suspect that the way that people interpret the data says a lot more about what their views on the rights scale are than it does anything else.

Owen Courreges has this to say about federalism and constitutional jurisprudence:

People are emotionally invested in [constitutional jurisprudence], and so even if their views are somewhat dubious, they'll generally stick with them in order to help their side achieve political goals. Now I don't believe Barnett believes he is being intellectually dishonest or anything, or that he knows his opinion is wrong. However, I do believe he is driven by a desire for a certain outcome, and that controls his philosophy for interpreting the Constitution.

As for myself, you could argue the same thing, but then I usually tend to argue for a restrictive view of the Constitution where issues are left up to democratic institutions, not unelected judges. In this, I know that history is with me, which I hope gives me an edge over everyone else.

Owen's wording is strange so we may agree if I'm misunderstanding, but the part I emphasized above struck me as completely wrong.

I think if there is any particular political subject where people are *less* loyal to their "cause" it's federalism. Republicans support federalism right up until it comes to the "right to die" or the "right to abortion." Democrats oppose federalism except when it comes to gay marriage.

In the sense that someone often tailors their views of the constitution around their political leanings, he is indeed correct. Liberals argue on one hand in favor of a non-existent privacy clause (which would be a broad interpretation) and then turn around and argue that the second amendment only refers to government-issued guns to military personnel (which would be a narrow interpretation). Conservatives argue that the tenthamendment delegates only those powers to the federal government that are enumerated (narrow interpretation)... except when it comes to certain state's efforts to legalize marijuana.

But that tells me that people are not dogmatic in their views of federalism and constitutional interpretation. Conservatives do generally take an originalist view of the constitution while liberals view it as a "living document" (this disagreement being one reason among many that I'm a Republican). But both liberal and conservative federal judges (that are not subject to being voted out) will often reconsider when it offends their sensibilities (classic example: Gore v. Bush USSC ruling).

There's a recent episode of SouthPark where a Mormon family moves in. They reveal themselves to be disgustingly nice and well-adjusted people. When Stan is goaded to beat one up, the little Mormon boy says that he completely understands why Stan has to beat him up to look good in front of his friends. They end up going to the Mormon household and the family is disturbingly close and obnoxiously earnest. They share their beliefs with Stan and when confronted by his father, apologize profusely for accidentally offending him by sharing their beliefs by answering Stan's question, horrified at the thought that they were "pushing" their beliefs.

Funny episode.

Captain Planet and the Planeteers is presently playing on the Cartoon Network. They remind me of the Mormons. It's such an obnoxiously earnest show. Bad guys are so bad that it's almost funny and yet, when it tries to be funny, it falls so flat that it's like that friend everyone has that thinks he can make up for a bad joke by making a joke about how the original joke was so bad that it was cheesy, but instead of the joke about the joke making up for the lack of humor in the original joke, it makes all the jokes unfunny forever more.

It reminds me of another episode of SouthPark where this group called Butt Out gives a presentation to convince kids not to smoke. Their presentation is (inadvertently to them, but not to the writers of SouthPark) so bad that it is perhaps the two funniest minutes on television ever produced. It's so bad that Kenny starts eating his arm and that, when it's all over, the kids smoke just to spite the group and differentiate themselves from them.

Watching Captain Planet makes me want to go out and litter.

Caution: This doesn't contain any particularly big or surprising twists, but it does vaguely refer to events that occur in the first or second season of 24.

- Keifer Sutherland's character's name isn't actually Jack Bauer, it's Jackbauer, or "Jack" for short. I say this because in the two seasons I've watched this show, I can't recall a single time he's been referred to as "Bauer"... often Jack, often Jackbauer. Kinda weird.

- If you're a black woman and are transferred to the CTU in Los Angeles, your only purpose is to be antagonistic and to seriously undermine whatever it is that Jackbauer's team is trying to accomplish.

- Chapelle took some Rogain between seasons.

- Mason wore a wedding ring during the first season. During the second it's established that he divorced his wife a long time ago while his (20-something now) son was a kid. It was established that he was single in the second season. I suppose last season he was married to a second wife?

- Kate Warner looks WAY old for 29. I was sure that I was going to bust them for trying to use an older actress to play a part too young for her, but it turns out the actress was only 29 or so during filming.

- Marie Warner looks way hotter in that wig than she does with her bleach blond hair. Since I don't have a preference between blonds and brunettes, I have no idea why (particular since the brunette wig looked just as fake as the bleached hair).

- I can count, offhand, twenty people that died and/or were seriously injured due to Kim Bauer's actions.

- Never, ever be a cop transporting Kim Bauer from one location to another. It's bad for your health.

- Government agents never say "goodbye" to one another on the phone.

- Perspective. When the entire city of Los Angeles is about to be blown up, it's hard to garner much emotional impact to the fact of a singular little girl. Even if her father is a real, real meaniehead.

- If this hadn't been filmed prior to the Second Gulf War, it would quite obviously be anti-war propaganda and an egregious example of Hollywood's anti-Bush political agenda.

- If you're a black CTU-LA agent that is not a woman transferred from division to CTU-LA, you might as well be a cop transporting Kim Bauer.

RAW: I noticed something weird the other day. I don't like Chef Boyardee ravioli anymore.
Eel: Yuck. What's wo weird about that?
RAW: I've always LOVED the stuff. I mean it used to be one of my favorite meals.
Eel: Ewwwww...
RAW: It's good! Or, it used to be...
Eel: Well, you'll be all the healthier for not eating it anymore.
RAW: It's not that bad for you.
Eel: [skeptically] Uh huuuh.....
RAW: No, really. When I was watching what I ate, it was one of the few things I could eat! Less than 1/3 fat calories...
Eel: There's more to nutrition than fat, Alex.
RAW: Yeah, but it's not particularly high in carbs, either.
Eel: There's more to nutrition than carbs, too.
RAW: Like what?
Eel: Like fiber, protein. Good stuff.
RAW: Well, even without those things it doesn't have a whole lot of good stuff, doesn't have a whole lot of bad stuff, and it fills me up...
Eel: I can just imagine you talking to my Aunt Selma the nutritionist.
RAW: Ack!
Eel: What? She's a nice woman. She's probably even nicer about this than I am.
RAW: I'm sure, loo...
Eel: You're what?!
RAW: [looks outside and suddenly a doghouse appears out of nowhere on the front lawn with RAW's own name on it] I mean, there's no way she's nicer than you cause you're the nicest person in the whole wide world... I was saying that I'm sure she's a nice person and... and...
Eel: I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree.
RAW: Good plan!

30 minutes and a goodbye later...

Ring. Ring.
Eel: Hello?
RAW: I hope you hadn't fallen asleep yet.
Eel: No, no. What's up?
RAW: 44% of my daily allotment of protein. 32% of my daily allotment of dietary fiber.
Eel: What?
RAW: Chef Boyardee Ravioli.
Eel: I knew I shouldn't have answered the phone... you've got to be kidding me.
RAW: By calling you again just to prove that I'm right for once or about the health contents of canned foods.
Eel: Yes.
RAW: I... uhmm...
Eel: So how much fat? How much saturated fat?
RAW: 14% and 20% respectively.
Eel: See?
RAW: That's not so bad. A lot less fats than fibers.
Eel: And carbs?
RAW: Well, 22g of sugar. That's not great, I know, but I'm not on the Atkins or anything. But that's equal to the grams of protein...
Eel: [sigh] Goodnight, Alex. Unless there's something else you want to tell me about the health content of Chef Boyardee canned ravioli?
RAW: 50% of my daily allotment of Vitamin A! Sweet dreams...

When I got back home last night, I actually went straight to sleep. Considering that I've been unable to get to sleep before 6am lately, that was quite a feat.

I discovered something, though. There is absolutely nothing to do when you get up early!! Nothing is really open, not that it matters cause I can't leave cause my car is boxed in. Can't go downstairs cause there's a guest on the couch. No one is updating their blogs cause everyone smart is asleep and everyone holy (and with transportation) is at church. Established web sites have closed shop for the weekend.

I'm never getting up early again! Ever!

I've never actually lived alone before. I lived with my folks, then with Adam in the dorms, then with Danforth (and Hutch) in a couple apartments and now with Danforth, Jaquin, and Tigger.

Sometimes I've thought it would be cool to live on my own. In fact, when I was making all kinds of money with UFC, I was looking at getting an apartment for myself. Didn't work out when I got canned, though.

This weekend I discovered a couple plusses and minuses of living with other people.

Plusses: Two nights back, I was headed out the door when Jaquin insisted that I try some soup that he and his girlfriend cooked together. They cooked their first meal together to celebrate V-Day (all together now, "awwwwwww, how cute!!"... they are a really cute couple, though). Anyway, on top of being free, it was quite good!

Minuses: I woke up this morning and had a hankering for some fast food breakfast. Unfortunately, Jaquin parked his car behind me. I measured the width of my car and the width of the space and determined that I had an opening that was about two inches shorter than a disaster waiting to happen and ultimately decided that I was trapped. Not really his fault since I told him I rarely get to bed before six and he probably thought it was safe to park without blocking me in. Given the state my stomach has been in all day, though, it's probably a good thing that I didn't have any fast food.

So, let's see, I had some reasonably healthy and homecooked soup for free, but was unable to go out and spend $5 on food that would have made me sick(er) to my stomach... score one for roommates!

Kim Bauer

Hi! My name is Kim Bauer. Bet you didn't know I was literate, eh?

I just found out that my father has died and a nuclear bomb is about to be detonated. Even though I am safely in a car to my aunt's house in San Jose, I think it would be best if I just get out of the car!

After all, nothing bad ever happens to me! Except getting kidnapped twice last year and starting a domino effect that eventually endangered the lives of both of my parents!! Oh yeah, and the whole getting arrested for that drug deal that I had nothing to do with. Oh yeah, and getting arrested for murder and kidnapping a whopping 6 hours ago and still being wanted by the authorities on both charges and putting my kung-fu boyfriend (and an innocent cop) in the emergency room. Oh, and nearly getting kidnapped by that weirdo woods guy with the bunker. Other than that, why the bloody heck not just get out of the car in the middle of nowhere and watch my only chance of actually getting anywhere safely for once in my entire life drive away?

No, much better to risk it because, you see, I'm dumb as a doornail... err... I mean, I'm sad.

I discovered a neat resource on the University of Houston website that reprints all kinds of articles on higher education and updates every weekday.

Looking through the archives I found a couple of interesting articles that lead me to a question for you guys out there.

Back when I was gainfully employed by UFC, I looked at going back to school to pick up a higher level degree or teacher certification. One of the places I looked was University of Phoenix (on a side note, never contact these people unless you're serious. They will keep calling you long after you've told them you've put your plans on indefinite hold). Before deciding to save money by going to Sam Houston State, Danforth found an online university to his own liking names ACCIS. My boss at UFC picked up an upper level degree at Kennedy-Western. It's no secret that alternative higher education is exploding right now, but even having looked into it myself I had no idea how successful (and controversial) the industry has been until I read this article by Businessweek Online:

If nothing else, the for-profits have shown that there's money to be made in higher ed. For-profit entrepreneurs have struggled in the kindergarten-to-high school arena, as exemplified by the ongoing fiscal woes of Edison Schools Inc. (EDSN ) But Phoenix and others are running financial circles around conventional colleges even though they survive on tuition alone, with no endowments or taxpayer subsidies. In fact, they were one of the stock market's best-performing sectors during the bear market. Five of them -- Apollo, Corinthian Colleges (COCO ), Career Education, Strayer Education (STRA ), and ITT Educational Services (ESI ) -- ranked among the top 25 of BusinessWeek's Hot Growth Companies this year.

For-profit colleges have been a part of U.S. higher education almost as long as Harvard College, the nation's oldest. But as recently as 1990, virtually all of what are still called "career colleges" were little more than trade schools for auto mechanics and secretaries. Since then, a government crackdown on shoddy operators, combined with the economy's insatiable demand for college grads, has sparked a change in the industry. Of today's 4,500-odd remaining for-profits, about 800 now grant degrees (almost all are accredited), up from just 316 in 1990, says John Lee, a Bethesda (Md.) educational consultant.

Essentially, the new for-profits have taken the ethos of the traditional trade school -- delivering specific, marketable skills -- and applied it to higher education. For example, Katharine Gibbs, the century-old secretarial school, has exploded from 2,000 students to 15,000 since it was bought by Career Education in 1997. Gibbs now offers degrees in business and technology to a student population that's 40% male, vs. 2% before.

Gibbs and others have succeeded by focusing on programs aimed at furthering students' careers. Indianapolis-based ITT Educational Services Inc., which teaches technology subjects such as electronics to 37,000 students at 76 sites, created its curriculum after surveying employers to find out what they need, says CEO Rene Champagne. The payoff: ITT placed 73% of its graduates last year amid a jobs drought that savaged the prospects of many grads of conventional colleges. "We benchmark ourselves against the best customer-service organizations in the world," says Brian Mueller, CEO at the University of Phoenix Online, a separate entity from the main university whose 79,000 students take all of their courses on the Internet.

New York Times wrote late last year about the rising costs of tuition. It does an excellent job of putting things in perspective. The good news for Texans is that despite the recent hikes, we're still below the national average. The bad news is that the national average is rising fast in both public and private universities. Without some sort of change in public university we run the risk of a two-tier university system with private universities catering to an increasingly wealthy student body and providing a superior education. But it's still not as bad as many people think it is:

News articles about the Ivy League's $40,000 annual cost -- and reports of 10 and 15 percent increases at state colleges -- have had an effect. Call it panic. Seventy percent of Americans think college tuition is ''beyond the reach of the average family,'' the Republican report says. But do they know what they're talking about? In fact, Americans wildly misstate tuition levels. In 2001, according to a survey by the American Council on Education, the typical American thought in-state tuition at a public college was $11,600. (It was $3,750 that year.) Asked about the full cost, including room and board, they still guess double the actual costs.

And then, colleges are quick to add, you have to remember the role of financial aid. For example, at the University of Maryland -- one of the most expensive public colleges in the country, with an annual cost, including room and board, of $14,000 -- three-quarters of the students get financial aid: an average $7,000 each.

Once you factor in financial aid, the net cost of a four-year public-college degree rose only 7 percent from 1992 to 1999, according to Sandy Baum, an economics professor at Skidmore College. (Note, though, that that leaves out the last few years of erratic increases.) And many institutions still qualify as genuinely inexpensive: San Francisco State University: $2,480 for tuition and fees. The University of Florida: $2,780. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: $3,527. It is still expensive, of course, to forgo work to attend college, and federal grants aren't growing as fast as living expenses. At public colleges where tuition is creeping up to $6,000 and $7,000, debt levels are also inching dangerously close to private-college levels, proving a serious hurdle for low- and moderate-income families. But still, with aid, many more people can afford college than think they can.

There are a lot of interesting questions in both articles pertaining to what a university's purpose is. There are some interesting ideas batted around in the NYT article for how to cut university costs. A number of smaller universities are making cuts in expensive athletics programs while a probe in Massachusetts suggested that smaller universities work together to cut redundant programs (the Texas equivalent would be SFA eliminating its psychology major because SHSU also has one).

So the question of the day is what you would consider important - or ideal - for a university and, to a greater extent, for a university education. For instance, would you consider the University of Phoenix and its ilk less legitimate because they don't offer a classical education? As an employer, would you give greater weight to someone who clocked in more social science and literature hours over someone who had more specialized training? As a student, how much is it worth to you to go to a traditional university with a grassy campus, an athletics department, dorms, and a classical university atmosphere?

My answer is in the "Read More" section. If you plan to answer the question (and I'd like as many responses as possible), think about it before reading my answer.
[Read More!]

With TCU headed to the Mountain West Conference, C*USA has an opening. There are presently four serious candidates:

Temple University - Temple has just been kicked out of the Big East for being an all-around lousy team. But since they have the luster of being a soon-to-be-former BCS team, they're being kicked around as a possible replacement for TCU in the C*USA, and not without good reason. They are the largest of the four candidates with approximately 34,000 students. Like my own UH, they are an urban university (Philadelphia). As the second largest of three major public universities in Pennsylvania, they ought to have a lot of potential, though their football program has never been the equal to Pittsburgh or Penn State. They do have a really good basketball program, but from the looks of it there basketball program would likely be staying in the Atlantic 10. Another factor to consider is that incoming member Marshall University is geographically distant from the rest of the C*USA universities and may wish for more focus on the east coast. As we are lucky to have Marshall joining us, their input should be taken very seriously.

University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) - Currently a member of the Western Athletic Conference, they are also a candidate for the Mountain West Conference. If the MWC invites them, it would be a moot point, but that seems unlikely. Like Temple, UTEP is more well known for its basketball program. Their football program has been nothing short of pathetic over the past couple of years (in a not-very-competitive conference to boot), but they hope to change that with the high-profile hiring of the morally challenged but gifted Mike Price. Price is known for being the Alabama coach that never actually coached when he was let go after a night in the Mobile strip clubs on the company card. Still, Price had some serious success up in Washington and is in a good position to turn the UTEP program around in the short term. In the long term, if he does turn UTEP around he will likely head for greener pastures. UTEP's primary advantage is that they have a large stadium (Sun Bowl) and from what I understand draw huge crowds. As attendance was one of the reasons TCU cited for leaving, it's not something that ought to be overlooked. In addition to that, they are the only I-A university in that region this side of the Texas border and I'm told that they have loyal followings in Houston and Dallas (where UH and SMU are respectively), which would make them a good match. On the downside, they are in a different time zone and are a 6-8 hour drive from the nearest C*USA school. Despite being in Texas, they have more geographical ties to New Mexico than their fellow Texas schools. El Paso is closer to Los Angeles than it is to Houston.

Louisiana Tech University - Lousiana Tech is the most obvious candidate to replace TCU. They've been playing with incoming Rice, Tulsa, and SMU in the Western Athletic Conference. With the departure of those three (and TCU a few years ago) they are the only WAC school in the central time zone and the nearest university is UTEP. The only other conference where they would be a good fit is the uncompetitive Sun Belt, but it's been said that they don't want to be in a conference with nearby University of Louisiana at Monroe. Because of this situation, they are the only candidate actively campaigning to become member. If they are not chosen, however, the WAC will likely pick up another school or two in the area (North Texas and Louisiana-Lafayette are often mentioned). They are the smallest candidate with approximately 11,200 students and have historically had attendance problems. Since they are not located in a major market, TV revenues are likely be negligable. Geographically, however, they are a perfect fit and they have a successful football program for a public university of its size (more successful than the large University of Louisiana at Lafayette). With that in mind, however, they may have maxed out on their potential.

University of North Texas - North Texas only recently advanced to Division I-A, but have successfully made their mark since doing so. They dominate the Sun Belt Conference and the year before last defeated outgoing C*USA member Cincinnati in the New Orleans Bowl. For a university of its size (it boasts more than 30,000 students) it has had a lackluster athletics program until recently. A large quasi-urban university (located 30 minutes north of DFW), they have attendance problems that mirror both those of University of Houston and Temple. They do have the advantage, however, of being in a large media market. However, they share that market with two other I-A schools (SMU and TCU). It's reported that SMU is steadfast against UNT membership, which is a shame. To be frank, SMU is lucky to be an incoming member at all and if TCU had announced its intentions earlier it likely would not be. With that in mind, North Texas is in a lot better position to improve their program in a better conference than the floundering SMU (as well as Rice). However, they are presently the big fish in the very small Sun Belt pond and their ability to build on that is unproven.

There have been other candidates mentioned, but I seriously doubt that Toledo and Miami (OH) would really consider leaving the Mid America Conference. To be honest, I'd just assume they didn't and keep the C*USA a regional conference. If I hear noises from either of those two schools that they're interesting in leaving the MAC, I will evaluate them more closely. The same for Baylor, which is sadly unlikely to be leaving the Big XII any time soon.

As for what I would personally like to see, just take the list above and reverse it. I'd really like to see North Texas included because I believe that they are an upwardly mobile program. They would also be a good counterpart for the University of Houston as the two share a lot in common. This could be a double-edged sword however, as the two draw from the same recruiting base. All things being equal, I'd like to keep the Texas schools together as much as possible.

Absent North Texas, I think Louisiana Tech makes a lot of sense. They'd make a good replacement for TCU in the West Division of the C*USA while providing a school close to somewhat isolated Memphis and an in-state rival for Tulane. However, Tulane has a preference for private schools (they were instrumental in bringing in private Tulsa, Rice, and SMU) and Memphis is making noises about preferring a basketball power (which would be either UTEP or Temple). There is a lot of politics involved and my biggest fear is a deadlock. More on this later.

UTEP and Temple would both bring strong basketball programs to the C*USA, but UTEP is the one more likely to actually bring the basketball program with them. If Temple wants its basketball to stay in the A10, that should be a disqualifying factor. C*USA is on the cusp of being a