JOHN TIERNEY: “It looks as if personality differences between men and women are smaller in traditional cultures like India’s or Zimbabwe’s than in the Netherlands or the United States. A husband and a stay-at-home wife in a patriarchal Botswanan clan seem to be more alike than a working couple in Denmark or France. The more Venus and Mars have equal rights and similar jobs, the more their personalities seem to diverge.”
Archive for 2008
September 9, 2008
IT’S NOW LOOKING LIKE IKE WILL MAKE LANDFALL IN TEXAS: Brendan Loy has a roundup.
GOOD NEWS or maybe not: “Oil prices slumped closer to $100 a barrel this morning ahead of the start of today’s Opec meeing in Vienna, putting more pressure on the oil producers’ cartel to cut supply to the markets.” I suspect we’ll see production cuts. I’m not sure it’s a good thing if oil drops much below $100/barrel anyway, as it will kill off alt-energy and conservation efforts that we’re very likely to need anyway.
GETTING DESPERATE FOR SCANDAL at the Washington Post?
JEREMIAH WRIGHT IS BACK IN THE NEWS:
He almost wrecked Barack Obama’s presidential dreams, and now firebrand pastor Jeremiah Wright has helped destroy a Dallas church worker’s marriage – and her job, The Post has learned.
Elizabeth Payne, 37, said she had a steamy sexual affair with the controversial, racially divisive man of the cloth while she was an executive assistant at a church headed by a popular Wright protégé.
When word of the unholy alliance got out, Payne’s husband dumped her, and she was canned from the plum job at Friendship-West Baptist Church, she told The Post.
Good grief.
A DO-IT-YOURSELF HYBRID CAR KIT? “It’s no secret that many hybrid drivers are smug enough as it is. Allow them to brag about having built the damn cars themselves and we might be entering obscenely smug territory.” We’re not smug. Just “self-esteem enhanced.”
OBAMA SUPPORTERS vandalizing Sarah Palin’s Wikipedia entry? That’s not nice, children.
UPDATE: Professor Bainbridge on entitlement and desperation. I blame the SATs for producing a sense that if you’re good enough, you don’t actually have to work for things or take chances.
ADVICE TO OBAMA, from Ann Althouse: “Obama! Listen to me! You are at your best when you have somebody to push up against! You were so much better on O’Reilly. . . . Do those town hall meetings with McCain, why don’t you? Stop protecting yourself so much. Get out there and fight with people who don’t particularly like you. Expose yourself to disagreement.”
ALAN BOYLE ON THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER and totally fictional doomsdays. Just remember, Alan — if the false vacuum collapses, you won’t be wrong — in fact, you will never have been wrong!
CLEAN AND GREEN: Rediscovering Hydropower. “Hydropower generation has tripled since 1949, when it produced a third of the country’s electricity—yet today it meets just 7 percent of demand. In the rush to keep up with ravenous consumption, legions of small, distributed resources have been overlooked. A Department of Energy study found 130,000 sites that could provide small-scale hydropower, some in every state. Many have the potential to produce 1 megawatt of electricity or less. That’s couch-cushion change in a world of behemoth energy projects, but it adds up—to an average of 30,000 megawatts a year. The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) estimates that 2700 megawatts could be developed by 2025. That equals the power produced by three nuclear power plants or six coal-fired ones. “
September 8, 2008
NICE V.P. CHOICE, KID. DON’T GET COCKY. Lots of Republicans are excited about the Palin pick. My email is full of stuff (if I missed your email, sorry — I’ve been flooded even by my usual drinking-from-a-firehose standards), Memeorandum is overrun with items, and the enthusiasm of the G.O.P. grassroots is at levels that would have seemed impossible just a couple of weeks ago.
But I think that Republicans should be careful about launching a cult of Sarah Palin. She’s the V.P. pick, not the head of the ticket. She’s still a relative newcomer to national politics. She’s virtually sure to commit at least one major mistake between now and November. And — yes, I know I said this before — she’s the V.P. pick, not the head of the ticket.
The Dems built a cult around Barack Obama. It energized some folks, but it ultimately backfired. Republicans might want to restrain themselves just a bit, here.
UPDATE: Reader James Doherty emails:
I totally agree about not getting cocky, but I do not fear that happening.
Now, if Palin holds a rally for 200,000 Germans and the entire American media unites behind her with praises of leg-tingling proportions, I might change my mind.
Again, I do not fear that happening.
I think you’re safe on the leg-tingling unity.
DON SURBER: “In the Biden-under-the-bus pool, I’m taking 3 a.m., Saturday, Sept. 20th.” I don’t see that happening — but, then, this has been an election season with so many twists and turns that, well, who knows?
Surber’s not the only one thinking this way. And Mortman asks: After 36 years, shouldn’t more people like Joe Biden by now? But I still don’t see it.
MOCKERY AND RIDICULE.
MICKEY KAUS on what Obama should say. Plus, MSNBC’s management problems: “Does NBC realize that MSNBC has become a freakish joke? … Guess so!”
When I was there the people seemed quite fair — but then, the Web operation is very different from the cable operation.
AT JWF, A POLLING ROUNDUP. Plus, where are the white women?
SOUTH SIDE VETERANS for truth?
ORIN KERR: “The Sixth Circuit is well-known for its ideological divides and sometimes-nasty dissents in habeas cases, but the dissent in Tucker v. Palmer last week from Judge Damon Keith seems to set a new standard.”
HEAVEN CAN WAIT, but the IRS won’t.
JIM LINDGREN corrects ABC News on the “Troopergate” / “Tasergate” story. “Tasering a child is wrong, whether he asks for it or not. If the tasering was motivated by the stepson trying to seem tough to his cousin — and Wooten knew this — then it would show him to be as childish as his stepson. I wish I knew what happened; I wish the national press cared what happened.”
GEORGE KORDA: Is Sarah Palin “seducing” her audiences?
UPDATE: Christopher Hitchens on the press, the left, and Sarah Palin.
THE GOOD NEWS: Pictures of the production Chevy Volt are out.
The bad news: They’ve made it look boring.
A BIG camera and video sale at Amazon. I should really get one of those Flip Video cameras.
AIRBRUSHING IN ALASKA: Alaska Democratic Party Deletes Page Crediting Sarah Palin with Killing ‘Bridge to Nowhere’.
UPDATE: Obama goes after Palin on bridge.
ANOTHER UPDATE: More here. “Until John McCain selected her as his running mate, it never occurred to anyone to deny that Palin stopped the bridge.”
MORE: Undercutting Obama’s attack: “Sen. Biden and Sen. Obama voted for funding the Bridge, even when given a second chance by Sen. Tom Coburn, who proposed shifting earmark funds to Katrina relief.”
Plus, here’s the Obama ad.
STILL MORE: Reader Michael Pate emails with what the New York Times reported in September of 2007:
Gov. Sarah Palin ordered state transportation officials to abandon the ”bridge to nowhere” project that became a nationwide symbol of federal pork-barrel spending. The $398 million bridge would have connected Ketchikan, on one island in southeastern Alaska, to its airport on another nearby island. ”Ketchikan desires a better way to reach the airport,” Ms. Palin, a Republican, said in a news release, ”but the $398 million bridge is not the answer.” She directed the State Transportation Department to find the most ”fiscally responsible” alternative for access to the airport.
Plus, from the September 27, 2007 USA Today, ” Alaska’s governor has officially dropped plans for one of two spans critics called ‘bridges to nowhere.’ Gov. Sarah Palin said this month she was scrapping the proposed $398 million bridge from Ketchikan to its airport on an nearby island where 50 people live.”
But TNR is siding with Obama.
MORE STILL: No, I don’t know why the Obama video is no longer available on YouTube. Did the Obama campaign pull it? If so, why?
JIM TREACHER: “Sarah Palin has put the entire mainstream media on timeout. No wonder they’re crying.”