Archives for August 2006
New England blend is wicked retarded
Thanks for visiting this blog for the first time. Check out the home page for the most recent posts, or the archives if you're looking for something in particular. Here are some of our favorite posts, which you might enjoy:
- The Moleskine GTD tabs hack
- No choice but to get things done (on retro computing)
- How to subscribe to toilet paper
If you like what you see, we hope you'll consider subscribing to the RSS feed.
The great tipping debate
Starbucks Gossip has started a new thread about tipping at Starbucks, coffee shops generally, and elsewhere. You can read the first thread here. Tipping is (arguably irrational) behavior that fascinates me and I hope to write about it soon. Ofer Azar of Ben-Gurion University in Israel has written a lot on the subject. Two good ones: “The History of Tipping — from Sixteenth-Century England to United States in the 1910s,” Journal of Socio-Economics (2004), and “Who Do We Tip and Why? An Empirical Investigation,” Applied Economics (2005).What a difference a little competition makes
From the NYT: “When workers from AT&T and Verizon visit homes to install their new television services, they come with blue hospital booties that they slip over their shoes before going inside. The sight of burly installers in dainty slip-ons might induce snickers. But the booties are just one of the many ways in which phone and cable companies are trying to reverse their reputations for shoddy service and win over customers who have a growing number of alternatives. For years, service was an afterthought for these companies because customers had little choice but to get their phone and cable services from what were effectively monopolies. … But service has improved slowly as satellite providers, upstart phone carriers and cellphone companies have provided attractive alternatives.”Heroes in Chicago
Heroes in Chicago. From the NYT: “In one of the more unlikely (and opulent) demonstrations of civil disobedience, a handful of restaurants here that never carry foie gras, the fattened livers of ducks and geese, featured it on the very day that Chicago became the first city in the nation to outlaw sale of the delicacy.” These people are heroes and I hope all the foodies in Chicago reward them and insist on being served foie gras all the time. Restaurants also filed a lawsuit yesterday. Hat tip Kathleen.Quote of the day
Quote of the day: Airline pilot to a security official at a British airport who told him he’d have to relinquish a fork that was in his bag: “[I] asked if the security guard would come up to the flight deck and stop me pointing the aircraft at terra firma. Also would the guard help me to decide if I should use the fork as a weapon against myself or the axe that sits beside me on the flight deck? Common sense seems to be a thing of the past.”Sailing to the U.S. on a Chevy. Twice.
Car and Driver has a great feature on Luis Grass the ‘camionauta’ who twice turned 50’s-era Chevy trucks into seaworthy vessels in order to escape Cuba.
Grass had more than just intuition to apply when modifying his truck. He had trained as a naval engineer in Cuba but dropped out of the program during the fourth of his six years of study when, he says, the military commitment and the Communist Party membership that go with such training kicked in. So, on an island nation where private ownership of boats is illegal, he was one of the few people who knew how to build them.”
The unmourned end of libertarian politics
Michael Lind in the FT: “For nearly a decade, the Republican party has controlled Washington and most state legislatures. And yet every big proposal of the libertarians has been rejected by the public and their elected representatives. Their only temporary achievement has been tax cuts, which are likely to be rolled back at least in part to reduce the deficit in the years ahead. With the disappearance as a significant force of the libertarian right, the centre of gravity inevitably will shift somewhat left in matters of political economy. But we will not see a restoration of the mid-20th century pattern because there will be no revival of the socialist left. The demise of both socialism and libertarianism pretty much limits the field to moderate social democracy and big-government conservatism.”Tullock Insults
MR is cataloguing insults from Gordon Tullock to colleagues. Some take them as compliment, others don’t. Tabarrok: “Call me a masochist but one of the great pleasures of being at George Mason is that I am regularly insulted by Gordon Tullock. You have to understand, however, that in my profession not to have been insulted by Gordon is to be a nobody. … Gordon is prone to pressing people with difficult questions. One of my colleagues responded, ‘Gordon, I’m not that good at thinking on my feet.’ Without missing a beat Gordon pulled up a chair and said ‘well sit down and we’ll see how you do then.’” I don’t know what to make of it, but whenever I see Tullock in the hallway and say good morning, he invariably just stares at me with a look that says, “Do you work here?”Now this is embarassing
From an e-mail I received today: “Dear Distinguished Policy Person, You’ve been nominated as a most beautiful person of your gender in the public policy world.” More here and here. This is a great ploy by Tank’d to raise traffic to its site. (See, I’m linking to them.) I doubt I’ll do very well, but I know I can kick Tim Carney’s ass any day. And how about that surly Gene Healy? He is sooo surly.San Franciscans for Fidel
From the SF Sentinnel: “In honor of Castro’s achievements — a socialist revolutionary who overthrew the corrupt government of Fulgencio Batista in 1959 and led the transformation of Cuba into a one-party socialist republic — San Franciscans across the political divide paid tribute to Castro during a spectacular evening ensemble of music, song, dance and poetry, including poetic recitals from San Francisco Poet Laureate Jack Hirschman. Dance Brigade headlined the evening’s lineup performing a graceful mix of dance to a rhythmic assortment of Cuban standards while archival film footage of Castro was simultaneously projected onto a 30 foot canvass screen. Krissy Keefer, Dance Brigade co-founder and Green Party candidate for the 8th U.S. Congressional District, wrote the performance’ accompanying monologue.” Click the link for pictures.In Maryland, Cardin Promises Cancer Cure
Via Political Wire: “Rep. Benjamin Cardin (D-MD) made “the mother of all campaign promises” by promising to cure cancer by 2015, the Baltimore Sun reports. “The health care push comes as he and other candidates fight to distinguish themselves from the crowd of Democrats and Republicans vying to replace retiring incumbent Paul S. Sarbanes, the state’s longest-serving senator. All are hoping to make their views and accomplishments known as voters start to pay more attention to the high-profile race.”On the implausibility of the explosives plot
On the implausibility of the explosives plot: An interesting explanation from a chemist of why the “liquid threat” might be overstated. “As near as I can tell, it is claimed that the terrorists planned to make organic peroxides in situ on board an airplane and use them to destroy the plane. This seems, at least given my initial examination of the idea, implausible.” I wouldn’t be surprised if it were an exaggeration the same way that Anthrax, VX gas, and the rest are consistently also exaggeratedly referred to as WMD.Sprint, WiMax, Net Regulation, and the WSJ
The Wall Street Journal gets it right in an editorial today, saying that Sprint’s announcement that it plans to invest $3 billion to deploy a nationwide high-speed wireless WiMax network by 2008 is another blow to proponents of Internet neutrality regulation who claim that the broadband industry is not competitive. Hooray for Sprint and the WSJ for pointing out “that out in the real world” competition grows despite the rhetoric in Washington. However, the same editorial gets it wrong when it reports: “WiMax, meanwhile, operates in unlicensed spectrum, meaning Sprint doesn’t have to shell out money in auctions to deploy the technology. WiMax is like a wireless home network or a hot-spot in a coffee-shop, but it works over much longer distances, allowing greater coverage and a wider variety of uses.”WiMax can be deployed over unlicensed spectrum, but that is not what Sprint is doing. Sprint plans to “put the wireless broadband network together across its 2.5GHz spectrum holdings,” according to The Register and other sources. As I’ve noted before, unlicensed spectrum is great for short-range applications but can’t viably sustain large networks with any serious quality of service.
Cross-posted at TLF. You can leave and read comments there. →
Castro death pool
Castro death pool. Via MR, “As Castro starts recovery, gambling website takes thousands of bets from exiles on when he will die.” Interesting tidbit from a commenter: “There’s been a much more liquid [market] in Castro’s death for a long time now: it’s called Batista bonds, the defaulted debt of pre-revolutionary Cuba. Every time that Castro looks like he’s going to kick the bucket, the price of that debt rises, sometimes as high as 40 cents on the dollar.”Cuba’s military money machine
The Miami Herald explains today that the Cuban military, which is Cuba’s only functioning institution, and which Raul Castro heads, is more than just an armed force, but also runs the economy. Under Raul’s leadership the army has taken over many of the profitable industries in Cuba, including tourism and tobacco. Raul has stacked the leadership of all these sectors of the economy with loyalists, known as “Raulistas.” These officers do well for themselves under this system and are fiercely loyal to Raul. Additionally, “Half of the now 20 members of the politburo are active military officers, and generals are in charge of several ministries, including sugar and fisheries.” What does this bode for Cuba’s future? To me it looks similar to the flourishing kleptocracy in Russia. And, like in Russia, the people might be happy to put up with limited freedom as long as prosperity inches up. It might be a long transition.Public Nuisance
My article on public access television for Doublethink magazine is now online. You can read it here. In it I explore the unique shows on cable access, the folks behind them, and who pays for it all (hint: it’s not them). A taste:
The most notorious public access show, however, might be The Great Satan at Large, a live call-in show produced in Tucson, Arizona, in 1991. The show featured a masked “Sexecutioner” who partially undressed women and fondled their breasts. It also contained exposed genitalia, masturbation, clips showing mutilation and real or simulated murder, and discussions with callers about bestiality and anal sex.Of course, those shows are the exception and not the norm of public access television. Nevertheless, they are a testament to the uncensored nature of public access. Uncensored not just in the sense of being free from editorial control, but also free of any check by market forces. For this same reason, the vast majority of public access television is not controversial, but simply banal.
Below is Harvey Wiesenberg, a very sweet guy who is one of the producers I interviewed for my article. He hosts a UFO-related show on Manhattan Neighborhood Network called Invasion Earth. (Photo by Alison Grippo.)
What is Conservative Culture?
An interesting essay at Design Observer in which Rick Perlstein tries to define conservative culture. As many have noted before, he finds that the key to fusionism is anti-leftism. “As the number of conservatives has grown, we read every day of how jerry-rigged the conservative coalition is. Nothing could be more deceptive. What is remarkable about conservatism is how easily it hangs together. Conservative culture itself is radically diverse, infinitely resourceful in uniting opposites: highbrow and lowbrow; sacred and profane; sublime and, of course, ridiculous. It is the core cultural dynamic — the constant staging and re-staging of acts of “courage” in the face of liberal “marginalization” — that manages to unite all the opposites. It keeps conservatives from one another’s throats — and keeps them more or less always pulling in the same political direction.”Shoot First, Eat Later
From Food & Wine: “Here, a user-friendly guide to taking perfect food photographs, from great cameras to simple techniques (use your water glass as a tripod!).” Hat tip Jacinda.Why there’s reason to believe Castro might be dead
For all their love of “news analysis,” I’m surprised that so far the networks and the major papers are refusing to read between the lines of the Cuban government’s words and actions. So far they only seem to be reporting the statements of the Cuban government (that Castro is undergoing surgery, etc.) as fact. Anderson Cooper was the only one I saw last night pressing the correspondent in Havana to clarify that everything she was saying she knew only because it was announced by the government. Well, here are the reasons to believe that Castro is incapacitated if not dead.- Raul Castro has taken over. Fidel has never transfered power before.
- Fidel’s health is never reported about or commented on by the Cuban media.
- Fidel did not deliver the message himself. In contrast, two years ago, when he tripped and fell at a televised public function breaking his knee and arm, he was on television within minutes to tell everyone that he was fine.
- His written statement says, “The operation obliges me to remain for several weeks resting, away from my responsibilities and duties.” That’s an unprecedented “several weeks” of absence from public view.
Anne Louise Bardach, one of my favorite writers on Cuba, seems to get this. She’s quoted in the Washington Post: “I find the timing peculiar and how it was handled in Havana post-surgery as opposed to pre-surgery,” Bardach said late Monday evening. The late Spanish dictator Francisco Franco “is the model here. When and if Castro dies, I think we will find out about it days later, once the succession is in order, which has been carefully laid down and fine-tuned the last few years.”
-
Welcome.
This is the personal site of Jerry Brito, a lawyer and writer in Washington, D.C. He’s an academic researcher and the creator of Unclutterer and several other blogs. More »
Categories
Search
Presently Reading
