WHY MODERN NOVELS are boring.
Archive for May, 2007
May 30, 2007
A LOOK AT POLITICS AND CIVILITY — we’ve got rather more of the former than the latter.
HOW CUSTOMER SERVICE undercuts advertising in the blog age.
John Kerry spent $1.4 million more than federal rules allowed during his 2004 presidential bid, primarily on customizing two campaign planes, according to a draft audit by the Federal Election Commission.
If the commissioners approve the staff findings at a meeting Thursday, Kerry’s campaign could have to repay the overspending to the U.S. Treasury, since his unsuccessful general election campaign was funded by tax dollars.
This makes Kerry look silly, but if you read the story it also underscores the silliness of campaign-finance rules.
SOME IMPORTANT ADVICE on breasts. But is an E cup really the new C cup? Seems as if I would have noticed that . . . .
But then, there’s apparently a whole book’s worth of information on this topic, so I guess my education on the subject is incomplete.
UPDATE: Boy, it didn’t take long for readers to write that they prefer “first hand knowledge” to “book learning” on the subject. That was predictable! Meanwhile, I’m reminded of this headline from The Onion.
A MODEST ADVANCE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS, in Arizona.
MICROSOFT SURFACE: A coffee table that will change the world?
UPDATE: Read this, too.
A BEAR FOUND IN DOWNTOWN KNOXVILLE: “Police corralled a black bear early today in the Old City after it spent hours wandering around Knoxville. . . . Reports of the bear began coming into the E-911 Center a little after 10 p.m. Monday. The first caller said they had seen a bear near Rohm & Haas off Dale Avenue. The bear also was seen later in the Fort Sanders area, and then ambled down Summit Hill Drive to the Old City. Officers found the bear near the railroad tracks at Jackson Avenue and State Street.”
Sounds like something that might have happened 200 years ago. Shades of David Baron.
DIVIDED VIEWS on the Research and Experimentation Tax Credit.
SHARE FIRST, LECTURE LATER.
WHY WE HAVE KIDS, even though they’re a lot of trouble: When I got up this morning, I looked in on the Insta-Daughter, who’d been a bit ill last night. She was sleeping and I kissed her on the cheek. She smiled, murmured, “I love you Daddy,” and went back to sleep. My day is already made.
May 29, 2007
MORE PROBLEMS FOR TED “BRIDGE TO NOWHERE” STEVENS:
The FBI and a federal grand jury have been investigating an extensive remodeling project at U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens’ home in Girdwood that involved the top executive of Veco Corp. in the hiring of at least one of the key contractors. . . . Ted Stevens, the most senior Republican in the U.S. Senate and Alaska’s most famous political figure, has not been directly connected with the corruption investigation.
The wide-ranging federal inquiry surfaced in August when agents raided six legislative offices, including those of then-Senate President Ben Stevens, one of Ted Stevens’ sons. The FBI said at the time that it also had executed a search warrant in Girdwood, among other places, although the location of that search has never been officially disclosed.
Veco, an oil-field service company that has long been a strong lobbying presence in Juneau, was one of the early targets of the agents, according to some of the search warrants that became public. On May 7, the company’s longtime chief executive, Bill Allen, and a vice president, Rick Smith, pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy, bribery and tax charges. They are now cooperating with authorities.
The investigation spread to the commercial fishing industry, including Ben Stevens’ consulting clients and associates. Federal subpoenas served on fishing companies in Seattle last year sought records concerning both Ben and Ted Stevens.
Four current or former Alaska state lawmakers have been indicted and are awaiting trial on corruption charges, and an Anchorage lobbyist has pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges.
It’s not clear where the remodeling fits in. More at TPM Muckraker.
TRIUMPH OF the will.
THE MCCAIN CAMPAIGN dead pool.
PHOTO-WRECKBLOGGING, from Brendan Loy.
UPDATE: Hey, check out the updates to Brendan’s post — several of his photos wound up being used by local TV and newspapers.
I DON’T LIKE THIS NEWS:
A man with a rare and exceptionally dangerous form of tuberculosis has been placed in quarantine by the U.S. government after possibly exposing passengers and crew on two trans-Atlantic flights this month, health officials said Tuesday. It is the first time since 1963 that the government issued a quarantine order. The last such order was to quarantine a patient with smallpox, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC urged people on the same flights to get checked for tuberculosis.
The government issued the order after a CDC official reached the man by phone in Italy and told him not to take commercial flights, but he flew back to North America anyway, said Dr. Martin Cetron, director of the CDC’s division of global migration and quarantine. . . . The man was infected with “extensively drug-resistant” TB, also called XDR-TB. It resists many drugs used to treat the infection. Last year, there were two U.S. cases of that strain.
Ugh. (Via Michael Silence).
NEW ZEALAND: A Christian nation? There seems to be a strong current of opinion among Maoris.
UPDATE: Thoughts from Eugene Volokh. And, via the comments to Eugene’s post, here’s more background.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON is deconstructing the news.
TRYING TO BUY THE DANGEROUS BOOK FOR BOYS at a Borders leads to this conclusion: “Brick and Mortar Blows.”
A REPORT ON THE SURGE from Baghdad. Very much in the “no single coherent narrative” vein.
UPDATE: A useful roundup here.
A LIVE MUSIC VIDEO from my brother’s band, 46 Long. No chili is involved.
SOME BRADY CAMPAIGN AL QAEDA disinformation.
A NEW LOOK FOR The Huffington Post.
HATE CRIME BILL UPDATE: In the latest National Journal, Stuart Taylor writes on Hate Crimes and double standards:
Consider three criminal cases.
No. 1: Christopher Newsom and his girlfriend, Channon Christian, both students at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, were carjacked while on a dinner date in January, repeatedly raped (both of them), tortured, and killed. His burned body was found near a railroad track. Hers was stuffed into a trash can. Five suspects have been charged. The crimes were interracial.
No. 2: Three white Duke lacrosse players were accused in March 2006 of beating, kicking, choking, and gang-raping an African-American stripper, while pelting her with racial epithets, during a team party.
No. 3: Sam Hays bumped against Mike Martin in a crowded bar, spilling beer on Martin’s “gay pride” sweatshirt. Martin yelled, “You stupid bastard, I should kick your ass.” Hays muttered, “You damned queer” and threw a punch, bloodying Martin’s lip.
Now the quiz.
Which of these would qualify as a federal case under a House-passed bill — widely acclaimed by editorial writers, liberal interest groups, law enforcement officials, and many others — expanding federal jurisdiction to prosecute “hate crimes”?
Bonus question: Why have the interracial rape-torture-murders in Knoxville been completely ignored by the same national media that clamor for more laws to stop hate crimes — the same media that erupted in a guilt-presuming feeding frenzy for months over the far less serious Duke lacrosse charges, which were full of glaring holes from the start and turned out to be fraudulent?
The answers.
The interracial Knoxville rape-murders would probably not qualify as hate crimes. The reason is that although the murderers were obviously full of hate, it cannot be proven that they hated their victims because of race. (Or so say police.)
Both the Duke lacrosse case and the (fictional) barroom scuffle, on the other hand, would probably be federally prosecutable under the bill that the House passed on May 3 by 237-180. This is because the angry words attributed to the accused could prove racist and homophobic motivations, respectively.
Do such distinctions make any sense? Not much, in my view.
He also notes a media double standard: “The reason that the national media have ignored the Knoxville case is that the defendants are black and the victims were white. The media would also be uninterested if both the victims and the defendants were black. But had the victims been black and the accused white, the media would have erupted into the same politically correct sensationalism that characterized the Duke case. And many would have cited the case as proof that we need more hate crime laws.”
I think that’s probably right. The link above is subscriber-only, but you can read the whole thing for the next few days at this link.
Meanwhile, A.C. Kleinheider says “Nazis! I hate those guys!”
UPDATE: More from Nat Hentoff.