BOGUS
- Oh, sure — but did he phone all of them? No, I thought so — just the ones he doesn’t hate/fail to support.
- The stupid leading/being led by the stupid
- Speaking of Coenesque locutions (see below): “mental reservations”
- This is just a terribly written feature
- Well, that’s a sentiment to clap the clammy hand of torpor over the gasping maw of your hopes and dreams:
If you want to see civil liberties championed, that’s going to have to come from congress.
- I’m not at all convinced this is a good idea
- Wow, what a load of crap. What th– ?!? And how in the hell is this not discounted by at least another, I dunno, 75%?
AWESOME
- I like this idea — I’m surprised that Krugman doesn’t get to the nub of the argument: that it would essentially start pricing (some of) the larger social risks/costs that speculation currently avoids
- Calcaterra is almost as compulsive a Coens quoter as myself
- Add John Cole to the legion of Kraut fans
- We can win this
- I have to do it: I’m adding Polanski Release to the Euphemism Directory
B6: Why’s it a bad idea to throw them out the temple?
B7: If it was, would you buy it?
B6: (a) Not every lobbyist is on the side of the demons — various anti-industry (to adopt an unfortunate shorthand) groups have lobbyists. (b) The spox quoted in the article has a point re years of industry/sector/topic expertise. (c) Given the Admin’s financial reliance on Goldman vets (and, for that matter, defense/intel revolving-door folks), this lobbyists bit rings a bit hollow/false.
(b) This is the big one for me. I had heard that these types rotate between admin and lobby, depending on the political bent of the admin. While there’s some danger letting the inmates run the asylum, it’s not clear which one is which. Additionally,I think it’s (generally) a bad idea to artificially deplete the talent pool when trying to fill important positions.
As for (a), the shorthand is unfortunate but the sentiment is well-received. I know that several scientific projects or arts foundations that receive federal funding have consortia that are represented in DC by lobbyists. Without their efforts, lawmakers may not have a good idea of the goals and successes of various projects.
It’s up to lawmakers and policy makers to understand the peculiar biases of the lobbyists, whether they are from industry, trade groups, non-profits, etc. I’d rather they have information from those groups than not.
It’s for that reason that I’m not opposed to the idea of lobbyists in general (although their behavior can leave something to be desired.)
B7: Heck, yeah!
No accounting for taste.
Hey, when I was an Indians fan, my favorite player was always Charlie Nagy.
Um …
Not exactly Chappaquiddick. He rolled their SUV in front of their house.
No, I wasn’t going in that direction. I was going in the “cops arriving to see him lying bleeding on the street with his wife standing over him brandishing a golf club” direction.
Yeah. At least we know alcohol was not involved. Other drugs?
I breathed a sigh of relief when I didn’t see the phrase “but not before he burned down the sign shop” …
as well you should.
How much would Marco Scutaro have got at arbitration? He made $1.55M in 2008 and $1.1M in 2009, before PA bonuses.
The Jays have signed Alex Gonzalez for $2.75M/1-year and John McDonald for $3M/2-years instead, which I guess is good news for Marco since his type A free agency won’t now be an albatross.
This whole acquiring-depth-at-the-30th-percentile-instead-of-competing-for-the-70th-percentile-guys (not that Scutaro is really a 70th-percentile guy) is getting out of hand.
not til 2012. S/he’s still alive.
Since this is like his fourth one, I take Selig’s retirement announcements much like I do a pro fighter’s: presumed to be full of shit, but bound to be true one of these times.
So, Mia’s back in the hospital, thanks to Jack Hannahan-H-2N. Wife and I are both defensive-minded infielders, as well.
1. I’m sorry to hear that. I hope everybody get better soon.
2. Can someone explain the origin of the flu-related nicknames for Hannahan and Giambi?
1. Thanks. It’s not a lot of fun. I just got back from the hospital, where I had a not-so-awesome run-in with a nurse who told me not to bring my other daughter with me to the hospital, as though I have loads of options re: daycare when my wife is admitted with the baby.
2. I just know that someone (probably Poppy or Jennifer) coined the H2N3 nickname based on how many Hs and Ns were in Jack’s name. I guess Jack’s offense was even more internally destructive than the H1N1 flu strain. I don’t even remember Giambi’s nickname.
The original version of the nickname, H2A3N3, goes back over two years, and I think it was supposed to be like a chemical formula. It turned into the current version after all the swine flu publicity this year.
Incidentally, H2N3 really is a strain of influenza active this year, and H2A3N3 is a postal code in Montreal.
Chemical formula, eh? Well, I think we can rule out Ag … (Au is also unlikely, but more apt)
Also like Jack, you both boast impressive patience and discipline. Hope everyone gets better.
“Honey, have you seen Patches?”
Idaho dog. She slept with every mutt in the neighborhood.
Without re-hashing an affirmative action debate, I find this kind of ridiculous.
{ snerk }
“women bag”
I concur.
Gladwell and Pinker fight on in regards to NFL QBs and draft position.
For those interested, it’s in the letters of the NYT Book Review section. Here’s the link, but because of registration and all that, no direct linky…
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/books/review/Letters-t-LETSGOTOTHET_LETTERS.html?ref=review
…have I mentioned I like not working? Not working is preferable to working.
huh. made its own link.
This website…is learning…to feel…it’s learning to love…
Don’t look behind the curtain!
Socially useless activity: appeasing conservatives.
There are three explanations that make sense to me:
• Obama is actually an idealist, but not the idealist his fans would like him to be: he’s a process/internal US politics idealist, and there is no endgame/goal/ideal for any of his foreign involvements beyond Centrism (sort of the photonegative of, say, Wolfowitz)
• He’s basically being held hostage by the military and foreign-policy establishment, and without a supermajority won’t/can’t try steering the boat away from the iceberg regardless of whether he wants to
• He’s gotten assurances from DoD/CIA that we will nab bin Laden by, say, late fall 2010 (or mid-summer 2012 at the latest) with the additional resources and he’s rolling the dice
So did everyone just fucking die or what?
I got sent to middle-of-nowhere Louisiana to review LIGO, which is close.
I was in OK for the holiday, so also close.
So I hear it’s a giant interferometer. What kind of path length are we talking about?
4km arms here in Livingston, and 4km and 2km at Hanford. They also try to triangulate with a 3km system near Pisa.
The sensitivity is amazing … today they couldn’t take science data because of the waves crashing onto the Gulf coast ~100 miles away.
They have also known from the outset (10 years ago) that they almost certainly won’t see anything, and this whole project is really just a technology demonstration for advanced LIGO in 5 years time.
You know, I played with LIGOs when I was a kid. They didn’t have the cool pirates or the medieval warriors, either–just the crappy spacemen.
Big Physics is so weird. I hear ITER is essentially the same: a tech demonstration for the real fusion reactor to be built 25 years from now.
I recently read a reflective article by Gino Segre (Emilio’s nephew, also a physicist) who suggested that EO Lawrence was the driver behind the big machine physics of the last 50-70 years.
Whoever does their long-range planning/funding should have a word with Geithner and Summers.
What, and have their bonuses blocked?
Heh.
Oh I forgot to snark: speaking of socially useless activities…
That was meant as a reply to the initial LIGO ref. Man, I screwed this up.
Failure to snark: nomination #2 for FK’s first CG
Actually not so. Because of the technical need to be in very quiet places, both parts of LIGO are in remote rural areas that are otherwise very poorly served by science education. Both sites have really impressive education and outreach activities, bringing students on-site to be exposed to some amazing science and, as they put it, “see nerds in their natural environment”.