[It’s long so here’s a key: 1. Disco, 2. British TV, 3. Whale sushi, 4. Manly vegans, 5. LB To Do List, 6. Shock collars, 7. Mitt Romney, 8. Languages, art]
1. I had this song in my head all day yesterday:
It was a strange experience. I think I might have even bobbed my head and half-hummed the tune a couple of times, which, I have to tell you, was somewhat out of character for me. Usually when I am walking down the street, I am brooding about consumerism and mentally sticking pins in Eric Cantor voodoo dolls.
I decided to attribute the shift to HCR afterglow. And you know what, bouncy exuberance is not half bad.
2. DVD recommendation: Wallander
It has all the trappings of the crime/thriller genre: a grizzled cop with a checkered past tracking down murderers (Kenneth Branaugh, sporting heavy stubble to call your attention to his grizzledness), clues, red herrings, sordid reveals, people racing to save endangered innocents in the nick of time, etc. So it’s all of that, but in a weird way, it’s not any of that, at all.
Each of the three films has the feel of an art house horror movie: vivid images that are sickening and beautiful at the same time (as when a girl sets herself on fire in a vast field of yellow flowers, against a deep blue sky – it is like watching a Van Gogh painting come to life), and a tone that trades seat edge suspense for a queasy sense of the inevitable.
While the crime aspect is heavily stylized, the portrait at the center of it all, of a middle aged man quietly (very Swedishly) enduring the consequences of an unexamined (or maybe misexamined) life, is presented quite matter of factly. The actor (Branaugh) is an important part of this of course, but mainly it’s the spareness, the preference for burdened silences over talk talk, that folds a dignified sadness into all the sleuthing and bad guy catching.
So, yeah, thumbs up.
3. What is the point of sneaking endangered whale meat into your sushi offerings? Is it *that* scrumptious?
4. I’m all for mainstream media stories about how animal products are problematic. So, good job Boston Globe. On the other hand, why do these sorts of articles always have to contain sentences like “While no one was looking, guys were stepping up to the wheatgrass bar”? First of all, wtf is a wheatgrass bar? Second of all, wtf is wheatgrass?
Also a new term has apparently infiltrated the vernacular: “hegan”. As far as I can tell it refers to men who are vegans but also have muscles, do athletic things, and hate yuppies.
5. LB To Do List, 3/25/10 (official):
– Locate Tampa area news article involving chimps, automatic weapons, pornography, possibly a counterfeiting ring. Post to FK. Remark that Florida is problematic.
– Proceed to AN. Woo LCJ. Remember the lessons of HCR: sell hard, but manage expectations.
– Pack. Books in boxes, kitchenware in bubble wrap, TV out the window.
– Dead of night. Break into sign shop. Crank up assorted machinery. Produce as many FK stickers, magnets, posters as you can fit in your car. Sweep up, lock the door behind you. Arson didn’t work for James Caan in Thief, and it won’t work for you now. (well, it kind of worked for him, but only after an extended gun battle, and as you’ve acknowledged being somewhat out of shape, you may not be physically able to a) wear the tightest jeans ever made, or b) glide horizontally through the air in slow motion while firing two guns)
– Put gas in the car, make mix tape for trip. I’d go old timey and wistful. Songs with a sense of personal history. Songs about leaving, seeking, the thrill of being neither where you were nor where you’ll be (best to be thrilled about it now; you can shit your pants later). Maybe Joni Mitchell, Chuck Berry, Guy Clark. The Boss. Cat Stevens. Obviously Willie Nelson. Emmylou to kick it off:
6. Wales bans shock collars. I think that if you have to shock your dog to get him to obey, there is something wrong with either you or the dog (probably you).
Duncan McNair, of the Electronic Collar Manufacturers’ Association, said: “It’s a bad idea because more dogs will die, more dogs will have to be re-homed and more owners will have to be distressed at having to give up their pets.”
I know, Duncan. I’m worried too. Back when they made it illegal to stab your dog in the shoulder with a screwdriver, I thought it was curtains for the canine kingdom for sure. Luckily it didn’t turn out that way, but this is a bridge too far. Electric shocks aren’t “cruel”, after all. They’re an enhanced disciplinary technique!
I think Mitt’s done. Unless Health Care Reform ends up having no part in the 2012 presidential election. And even if that’s true, too much of the early spadework for the nomination will have to be done in the period where the GOP is the anti-Health Care Reform party.
By 2012 the apocalyptic rhetoric will have faded so far from memory that Mitt Romney will be able to run as a Republican, without having to run from himself.
The first argument is straightforward: the GOP has organized itself in strident opposition to health care reform, and Romney passed something suspiciously similar to Obamacare while he was governor of Massachusetts. Given the mood of the party, he could hardly do more damage to his candidacy if came out in favor of liberal judges and bank nationalization. Game, set, match.
The counter: since unravelling HCR in toto is a pipe dream, Republicans will eventually have to come around to the reality that they need to attack it at the edges or not at all. Which means that post-November 2010, the cries of unconsitutionality and socialism will fade into “well, the excise tax is too big”. So Romney will get to say that when he passed health care, he didn’t destroy small businesses along the way, or some such thing, and his apostasy will be forgotten.
(Snark interlude: I feel obligated to point out that the inevitable GOP line of attack against HCR will be that it should have been unfunded)
My view is that it isn’t this complicated. The base sees him as a weasely flip-flopper elitist with problematic religious beliefs, and however the narrative around HCR plays out, that isn’t going to change. He didn’t fail in 2008 because John McCain was a shrewd opponent, he failed because he didn’t have the right story to tell. Romney is a square peg. GOP primary voters are a round hole. Simple as that.
I will save my Huckabee 12 dimensional chess theory for another time.
8. The Last Samurai, page 53:
[I]t seemed very quaint that in England books were in English & in France they were in French and that in 2,000 years this would seem as quaint as Munchkinland & the Emerald City, in the meantime it was strange that people from all over the world would go to one place to breed a nation of English writers & another to breed writers of Spanish, it was depressing in a literature to see all the languages fading into English which in America was the language of forgetfulness.
What will language look like in the year 4000? I don’t know the first thing about linguistics, but I’ve no doubt this is an enormously complicated and probably unknowable question. Perhaps the underlying assumption is a safe one, though? That is, whatever the particulars, the evolution of language is inexorably in the direction of blendedness. Whether or not English is what they’ll blend into, who knows.
Noted shit disturber Woody Guthrie, by way of noted shit disturber Billy Bragg, expressed the hope that in 10 million years, every damn thing’ll be blended:
And all creeds and kinds and colors
Of us are blending
Till I suppose ten million years from now
We’ll all be just alike
Sort of like living on the Cylon base ship, I guess, or in Portland.
A few pages later:
If you say that in a book the Italians would speak Italian because in the actual world they speak Italian and the Chinese would speak Chinese because Chinese speak Chinese it is a rather naive way of thinking of a work of art, it’s as if you thought this was the way to make a painting: The sky is blue. I will paint the sky blue. The sun is yellow. I will paint the sun yellow.
… a painter would think of the surface he wanted in a painting and the kind of light and the lines and the relations of colours and be attracted to painting objects that could be represented in a painting with those properties.
Sure. Painters, sculpters, filmmakers, even photographers select for representation aspects of reality that slot into the kind of art they want to create. They’re artists after all, not annotators. But this particular analogy (color is to art as languages are to writing) doesn’t really hold up, not in the way she means it here.
She goes on:
Perhaps a writer would think of the monosyllables and the lack of grammatical inflection in Chinese, and of how this would sound next to lovely long Finnish words all double letters & long vowels in 14 cases or lovely Hungarian all prefixes, suffixes, & having first thought of that would then think of some story about Hungarians or Finns with Chinese.
… I kept hearing in my mind snatches of books which might exist in three or four hundred years. There was one with the characters Hakkinen, Hintikka, and Yu, set provisionally in Helsinki – against a background of snow with a mass of black firs, a black sky & brilliant stars a narrative or perhaps dialogue with nominative genitive partitive essive inessive adessive illative ablative allative & translative, people would come on saying Hyvää päivää for good day there might be a traffic accident so that the word tieliikenneonnettomuus could make an appearance, and then in the mind of Yu Chinese characters, as it might be Black Fir White Snow, this was absolutely ravishing.
… languages related like a circle of fifths, I would see languages with shades of each other, like the colours of Cezanne which often have a green with some red a red with some green, in my mind I saw a glowing still life as if a picture of English with French words French with English words German with French words & English words Japanese with French English & German words …
That’s kind of great, but also kind of preposterous. I’m sure you could mix a dozen languages to construct quite graceful sounding sentences that I might like to hear Christoph Waltz read aloud, but writing is only part music – last I checked, it was rather important that the reader know what the words mean.
She might say that she’d like to annul the boundaries of contemporary decipherability in order to write for those people in the year 4000. Maybe so, and I grant that there is a romantic, ebullient quality to the idea of casting your voice ahead through the centuries and rejecting constraints, however practical, in the name of making a more beautiful thing. But I would say that if you are not writing for the world around you, you cannot write about the world around you. Walling off your work in pursuit of an aesthetic doesn’t evolve the form, it impoverishes it.
I wonder, though: what if God got bored one day, waved his wand (or whatever it is he uses to decree stuff; maybe he just points and bellows or something), and bestowed fluency in all languages to all people? So, instantly, all of us, and everyone everywhere, could speak/read/write Hindi, Arabic, Russian, German, Pashto, Czech, and so forth.
Would we continue to speak the language of our geographical region, just as before, embedded as it is in tradition, culture, etc.? Or would we immediately enter a period of frenzied mixing, combining, experimenting? Would the blending accelerate to the point of vertigo, culminating in a chaotic worldwide mashup, where nobody knew how to talk to anyone else? Would this cause people to retreat, en masse, to a single language with (more) defined boundaries? Would we then embark on a project of willful forgetting, relinquishing this new fluency in return for order and simplicity?
Probably nothing so dramatic.
Whatever. I’m sure some science fiction novel from 1978 has answered all these questions.
Somebody alert Dubner/Levitt
Surely there’s a bias in this data – if you’re purchasing a custom size condom, you are more likely to fall outside of (say) a standard deviation of the mean.
But then you’d expect a bimodal distribution, not the perfect bell curve the company describes.
In a world where nobody within a std deviation buys a custom condom, sure. But if it’s more like (prob of buying a custom condom) = 1 – exp(-abs(size-mean)/stdev), then it might be manifested as a bell curve with a larger stdev, no?
No. The distribution of purchasers penis size would then be the product of the distribution in the population (presumably normal) and the purchase-likelihood function. For example, taking mean=6, stdev=1
Ah. In light of the overwhelming graphical evidence and mk’s crack market research (below), I stand corrected.
Sal, I have researched the matter, and it appears that Condomania offers the full range of prophylactics: “custom fit”, “average size”, “snugger fit”, etc. So might I suggest that the bias is less to do with endowment, and more in the direction of folks who are too shy to buy them off the rack at Rite Aid?
This reminds me of a story: when I was in high school, my best friend, who is a girl, and I decided to buy some “adult” gifts for a mutual friend’s 18th birthday – lottery ticket, pornographic magazine, cigarettes, etc. (We were the mature type, you can tell.)
One of the items on the list was condoms. When we pulled up to the convenience store, my friend refused to get out of the car. She didn’t want to be seen with me around town buying condoms (we had been a somewhat conspicuous non-item among mutual friends). For reasons I couldn’t fully articulate (nor, at this point, recall), I was furious with her.
So in I went to purchase the condoms, and of course the woman behind the counter was sub-continental, and did she ever give me the *most* disappointed “what-is-happening-to-our-immigrant-children” look.
I don’t think I had a point, other than to recall the incident.
I wonder if the Internet availability of embarrassing purchases (condoms, pornography, Papelbon jerseys, etc.) has increased the gross sales of those things, or simply shifted sales from over-the-counter to the cybersphere.
Re: Papelbon jerseys, that’s an increased sale of gross things.
Speaking of which, the “going to Harvard” euphemism takes on an interesting meaning when you consider their comically large endowment.
But, according to Yglesias, they never actually do anything useful or fun with it.
It’s purely to spite those of us who went to more fun schools with smaller endowments (in other words, the global population)
But these aren’t the only choices – why would anyone buy the presumably more expensive Condomania “average size” rather than just buying regular condoms online?
Excellent point. I don’t know the answer, but whatever conclusion we reach, I feel like what is happening here is a victory for science.
For the record, this has more to do with ego “I buy XL condoms, hur hur” than actual size. You could put your fist in an over-the-counter trojan, and if you’re bigger than a human fist you don’t have a need to buy condoms.
That’s not what they are reporting though (they’re claiming a normal distribution), and with anonymous purchasing that’s likely less of an issue.
I’m saying condom size has nothing to do with actual size.
But if you’re saying that a significant fraction of men order over-sized condoms (hur hur), that would skew the distribution towards the high side – not a bell curve.
If we exclude the possibility that as many men under- as over-exaggerate, then the observation of a normal distribution has to reflect the population as a whole, in which case I’m still left wondering what the benefit for the “average” buyer is.
Now that I’m home I can see the website; I’m guessing that their distribution reflects only the orders for their “Custom Fit” line, which has 70 size-choices, with the right one determined by printing out and measuring off against their “FitKit”. So now my question is:
What the fuck is the wizard about?
About sal’s height?
Egads, why is buying condoms turning into buying shoes.
Must be awkward for the salesperson in charge of lacing them up.
The condom is the glass slipper of our generation.
When Mr. Poppy & I were
imprisonedliving at Stanford, we used to {snerk} at the name of this place every time we drove by it…Were you guys part of that famous study with the prisoners and the guards?!
Only if “prisoners” = undergrads & their families living on campus, and “guards” = grad students’ wives who were my neighbors and for some reason didn’t need jobs while their husbands were in school, so they had lots of time to make little judgmental comments to/about me and the fact that I never brought my baby over for the kaffeeklatches they liked to have every weekday morning… while I was working.
I had similar experiences at Chicago. Well, not with wives, but with other students. And it was all grad school. And it was mainly the prefect of my cohort, who I wanted to stab repeatedly in the neck with a salad fork. And about four or five others, who were haters. And I like the word kaffeelatches and I can kind of guess what it means, but I don’t know that I heard it before. And I didn’t have a husband in Chicago.
But other than that, it was just like that.
Have you had a husband elsewhere?
maybe.
If it’s anything like grad students where I am, it’s that the wives can’t work because of visa issues.
Can’t speak for current demographics, but most of the families in our little housing court at that time (1990-91) — certainly the women that were the bitchiest toward me — were American.
did you slash their tires?
probably b-student wives.
More on dicks.
1. The author has no idea what “game of inches” means.
2. How does the size of Gosselin’s member relate to the stereotype of Asian penises? If he’s got a small dick, he’s got a small dick. None of the jilted exes mentioned his ethinicity as far as I can tell.
3. The author asserts that the Asian penis isn’t that much shorter, but the plot that he links to doesn’t really support that case.
4. He didn’t mention the size of the Asian porn actor’s penis. Did he break into the industry with an average penis, an average Asian penis, or the average porn penis?
5. From the comments: “Dude, I should have studied ethnic studies. I could be sitting around thinking about the size of different minorities wieners. I blew it.” Was the second sentence intentional?
1. No kidding. Insert joke about “blowing your lede”.
Also, I am interested after that article to know what, if any, the correlation between physical stature (height and weight) and penis size is, and whether that explains the ethnic differences observed.
This reminds me of the (unrelated) hype a few years ago around the Hydrogen Economy and the fuel cell car. Who’s going to voluntary ride in seats that ride atop a canister of highly compressed hydrogen?
Oh wow – four cars out of about 30,000 is a defect rate of 133 ppm. According to the standards given by the automotive industry to its suppliers, that is 133 ppm too high. Something tells me Tata Motors has a little bit of work to do.
Re: 1. Nothing wrong with disco. Some of it was pretty darned good. The people who hated disco were mostly white guys who couldn’t dance.
This one was one I liked:
“>
STOMP!
Re: 2. Conspicuous consumption, perhaps? I’ve never had caviar, but is it really any good, or is it just a status symbol? Another version of that story that I read said that the undercover diners who busted the restaurant were vegans. Why would you use vegans for that purpose? Couldn’t they find any whale-loving carnivores?
I don’t know, I got the impression they were disguising it as something else (like, it didn’t say “illegal endangered whale meat” on the menu), which would invalidate the conspicuous consumption theory. The story is vague on that aspect, though.
Just seems like an absurd failure of cost-benefit analysis. I mean, I’m no foodie, but aren’t there about a billion different things you can make sushi out of, many of them plenty pricey/elitist, if that’s what you’re aiming for?
I was under the impression that intheknowdiners would order via code (“3×3, animal style”), and that this was a well-known if not well-publicized fact. I could be wrong, though.
If you don’t know how to order it you can’t afford it.
Weird. Anyone else think Target Field looks like they skinned the Coliseum and cinched it over the superstructure of Warrantless Wiretap Park?
It does seem that so long as the definition of “personality disorder” is elusive/evolving/endlessly caveated, attempts to pigeonhole it for the purposes of civil commitment will by definition be fruitless:
NOTY bracket
I’ll be rooting for X’Zavier Bloodsaw. Bad luck for him being in the same bracket as Nohjay Nimpson, though.
Didn’t Dr. Festus Dada show up in some news story recently?
Oh, right. Lenny Dykstra ripped him off
Love xbx’s snark on that one.
The sequiturs in that thread are very non
No, because that would mean DL’ing either Braden or Duke to start the season.
re: Wallander.
On Monday nights, KCSM shows an international mystery subtitled in English. They rotate among ones from different countries – Italy (Montalbano and Coliandro), Germany (Ballauf&Schenk), France (Maigret), Sweden (Wallander), Norway (Varg Veum). Anyway, the original Wallander is quite good. I can’t compare with the BBC remake, which I haven’t seen (but will look for).
I was wondering if the original was worth queueing, thanks.
The BBC version takes place in Sweden, and all the writing and signs and whatnot are in Swedish, though of course the actors are speaking English. The juxtaposition is less jarring than I though it would be.
Being in Sweden, surrounded by Swedish writing and signs and whatnot, but hearing English all around us was our experience in Stockholm and Gothenburg last summer. I felt very uncomfortable that Swedes who struggled with English would apologize to me – I come to your country as a tourist, don’t bother to learn even the basics of your language, and you’re apologizing to me?
Greenbacks.
Also, I liked Wallander when they ran it on PBS’s Mystery franchise.
Finally, all references to Ken Branagh remind me of this classic moment in Blackadder.
Herzog narrates the life of a plastic bag (first person):
“And the darkness began. I don’t know for how long, and what did it really matter? That world decomposed. It was eaten by monsters, some too small for me to even see. Not me. I remained. I was strong and smart and I would find my maker.”
Uh-oh.
If true, it conforms to my belief that loonies know no political boundaries (cue monkeyball with a conspiracy theory).
Also:
Are those really threatening messages? Surely they are impolite, but they sound more like angry disapproval then threatening. I’m sure various lefties wanted to say the exact same thing, without the baby-murdering remark, to Stupak in the HCR run-up. I mean, if he’s going to say he received a threatening message, I want some serious Elijah Dukes style voicemails. I ain’t even shitting, dawg.
Uh-huh. Suuuuuuuuuuuure, Eric:
Police are inquiring as to Al Davis’ whereabouts.
Take the Skinheads Bolling
ForLt GovernorColumbineI read “Boiling For Lt. Governor” and wondered if that’s like Dialing For Dollars or Bowling For Soup.
I’m just hearing & reading things really oddly today (see my comment below [soon] re: odd hearing)…
{looks up “b918, sal” in Boston phone book}
Aaaaaaaaaaaand debunked
Douche.
Ezra had a typically cogent take on this yesterday:
The uh-oh gets uh-oh-ier
Palin around with terrorists.
Out of curiousity, why does MY call this nutjob a “tea party” blogger? Is “tea party” a general term for *any* right wing whackjob?
Not MY, but a different blogger for his parent org.
Yeah, looks to me like he’s not TP-affiliated.
OK, that’s what I thought. Thx.
I think it sort of has. Which is in part too bad, but in part understandable(as there are like 1000 different competing tea party orgs)
So Cantor is full of shit (although he personally may only have been told the (true) story that a bullet came through the window.
I agree that the Supak call isn’t that bad. Apparently others have gotten calls involving words like “sniper” and “noose”, though, which probably cross the line.
Yeah, those definitely cross over to threatening.
Wait — pictures of gunsights, following an admonition to “Reload,” do not cross over, but mere pictures of nooses and the word “sniper” do?
Not pictures, phone calls.
The Giants have done a pretty decent job, but they could really be a good team if they had any idea how to improve themselves at the margins rather than to stupid stuff like this.
I walked past a Latino guy advertising dollar tacos somewhere on or near campus (I assume… they at least weren’t near him right then). He had a sign and was also shouting, “Tacos a dollar! Tacos a dollar!” But he had a very thick accent, so I heard “Tacos a dolor!” Why would I want those?
I’m going to open a taco truck called Lorem Ipsum Dollar Taco.
… and it’ll serve Greek food?
Admit it, you played theremin for The Greek Taco, didn’t you?
I’ve never even met Arianna Huffington!
In the Journo/Mass Comm student lounge right now. There’s an Advertising Club group working on some project related to gender-specific alcohol marketing or something… I wasn’t really listening until their faculty advisor came in to check on their progress and recommended (seriously, for research purposes) that they should think about drinking more than usual next week (Spring Break). I started laughing.
good
I’m anticipating JL’s take on the proposed LDS reform.
I’m anticipating FSU’s take on the proposed LSD reform.
LSD re-forms you.
TJS reforms DLS
Cable reforms DSL
Cable deforms TMJ
Mets de-trade GMJ
Soviets degrade GNP
WADS derides GNC
1 day.
This is an awesome grill, mk.
Is it okay if I prefer The Oak Ridge Boys version of that song? I was raised on it, not that Emmylou can’t sing her ass off.
Is it okay if I prefer The Oak Ridge Boys version of that song?
No.
damn.
Why you don’t actually do full-obstructionism.
Holy crap — Butler’s out to a 10-1 lead on Syracuse. That’d drag Ice Cream back to the pack …
and who doesn’t like packed Ice Cream?
Syracuse loses. Now the race is beginning to tighten up.
Archie Bell and the Drells?! Rock on!
What a day. That and K State.
Anyone have an opinion as to whether marijuana legalization has a chance of passing in CA (and whether or not it’s a good idea)?
The economics of pot are a mystery to me, but the complaints voiced in the article sound suspiciously like the hyperventilating martyr boilerplate Chamber of Commerce types roll out anytime anyone suggests a tax on anything.
Here is a somewhat measured public health take.
I would guess that legalization for adults would result in increased pot somking for teens. If Gurley is correct that pot smoking among teens is a public health issue, then that would be a potential downside to legalization.
Meh. Kids who would smoke pot would or do smoke cigarettes now.
I doubt that it would be a one-to-one mapping, especially because the cost is likely to be so high. I wonder if the price of pot will go up or down?
Lots of people smoke pot but don’t smoke cigarettes. Especially in California.
On the other hand, I’m not convinced that teens smoking pot is as big a problem from the public health point of view as teens smoking tobacco. Tobacco is highly carcinogenic, highly physically addictive, and just about everyone who smokes starts as a teen. None of those things is true of marijuana.
I don’t think it’s obvious that it would result in more smoking for teens, as it would likely substantially kill the black market. Probably not a huge effect. A lot would depend on what depend on what happens to the price; from that article it looks like the price would probably go down which would lead to higher use. In any event, it’s hard to see how getting some tax revenue out of it isn’t a good idea.
I wonder if a marijuana tax would be more likely to take money out of the pockets of the poor or the wealthy, or if there would be no difference.
If someone’s cool older cousin would be willing to buy them some booze, then that cool older cousin will probably pass some weed as well. I would guess that legalization would open this route to marijuana transfer to teens.
I don’t know enough of the science, but if MJ is as bad for you as some say (and I know it can do damage) then it shouldn’t be legal except as medicine. Not allowing it as medicine is just plain stupid.
I’m (unsurprisingly) a big fan of legalization. And I think Gurley’s second-hand smoke and childproofing concerns are silly. But the schizophrenia connection is interesting, and I’ve always been fascinated by the driving-while-high subject. Speaking clinically, of course.
The problem (from law enforcement’s view) is not being able to test for it so a slam dunk DUI (vc 23152(b)) that requires a BAC of .08 or higher is not possible. there is another charge that requires only that the driver being “under the influence.” “under the influence” is rarely sought when someone shows signs of meth, cocaine or mj now.
The cops DAs and courts will be just fine. they will charge a ton of people with DUI and the arresting officer will come in and recite the list of bogus objective symptoms of intoxication that they do now and get their conviction.
I don’t know what the statistics on whether driving high is as dangerous as drivng drunk are.
Having done plenty of both, I can assure you from an anecdotal standpoint, it’s MUCH MUCH worse to drive drunk, particularly if you’re really drunk.
I don’t know. Back when I commuted into the city for school, I saw a dude in traffic with his entire car smoked up with MJ. I’d be shocked if he could see where he was going let alone drive straight while high as a moon.
I love the old Cheech & Chong bit where they get pulled over on the freeway by a cop:
Cop: “Do you know how fast you were going?”
Chong: “I don’t know, maybe 60, 65.”
Cop: “You were going five. Miles. An hour.”
They copied that in Black Sheep too. And they pulled into the center of the road. Ro-ad.
Sure, the DA can always get a conviction if he wants one and has a cop who’ll testify to symptoms, but that still is way more unwieldy than a clean .08, esp since there’s an on-the-spot test for BAC. AFAIK there’s no curbside test for pot, and even clinically I don’t know that a test can distinguish time and volume of use…supposedly a regular smoker tests positive even if he hasn’t smoked for several days.
The length of time after smoking that it takes for any impairment to dissipate has no commonly accepted standard and hasn’t been very well studied. I imagine that if pot became legal they’d pass some sort of standard like any use w/in ___ hours of driving (4? 6?) is an automatic DUI.
In my, um, experience, pot’s effects on motor skills are less significant and subside much more quickly than alcohol. But I sure wouldn’t want to have to try and convince a cop/judge/jury of that.
I was listening to NPR down in LA the last couple of days, and they had a retired judge supporting the bill. In addition to the $1.4 billion in revenue, there is roughly another billion in savings from reducing law enforcement efforts and incarceration of non-violent pot offenders. And he addressed the issue of teen use, saying regulation would make it harder for them to get it, as it’s easier for them to get it now than to buy alcohol. (I’m not sure how well that’s supported by statistics, but it is often asserted anecdotally.)
I think the risks and the economic benefits to the state are both being overstated.
The latter is complicated, and will depend on how much what is currently a large underground economy moves above ground, which in turn will depend in part on whether the federal government decides to respect the new state law or enforce federal law. I think it’s extremely unlikely, for several reasons, that mainstream stores will start selling pot. If the feds take a hands off approach, we may start to see places like the current medical marijuana clubs, but not requiring a prescription, spring up. (Berkeley actually had one of these for a couple years in the late 90’s. It was … amusing.) In that case, I would think the state could start to collect a significant amount of tax revenue. If not, then I wouldn’t expect much change at all, except maybe a few more people growing for their own use, and the state wouldn’t stand to collect much at all, as there would be little incentive (and possibly negative incentives) for a dealer or grower to report their activity to the state.
which in turn will depend in part on whether the federal government decides to respect the new state law or enforce federal law
Holder has indicated pretty strongly that DOJ will defer to state law.
For medical use, yes (even though it is still Schedule 1, which, by the way, is completely insane). The political calculation may be different for recreational use.
And for the next GOP-run DOJ.
Yeah, that too.
Right, but I think the implication is clear that they intend to pull back regardless, as part of a more general reorientation of DOJ priorities.
I could be off base here, but I don’t see California’s drug laws gaining traction as a nationwide issue (and therefore informing administration decision-making in the way you suggest). Too many other big ticket fights eating up the narrative oxygen.
Boy, that sure ain’t how I see it. Dope-smoking destroyers of family culture sounds like a classic righty campaign bogeyman to me.
Just because it’s a good issue doesn’t mean there’s space for it, or that it’s the best issue. HCR, immigration, financial regulation, carbon pricing … given the BFD national legislation the GOP will be mobilizing to derail/running in opposition to, and which will be preoccupying the media, I’d be shocked if much attention were devoted to this outside of California.
I’ll bet you and andeux a single serving kraut packet each.
I want in, if it were legalized of course.
It would fill the “Dems = communists” space since that one’s silly and “Dems want your kids to smoke weed” is more immediate/true.
Upon further rumination, I have concluded that I am correct, and I’m happy to put my kraut packets where my mouth is. So to speak.
You have no single serving kraut packets.
I’m the only one with access to those and I’m not sharing.
Though I might have to make a trip to the Trop early in April and load up for my return…it would go well with the late night swag run…
Punching hippies is fun. Punching pot-smoking California hippies is way better.
Don’t underestimate the red state love for the green weed.
I’ve known a lot of hillbillies that smoke weed. Hank III is the poster child for illegal drug use and rednecks.
I thought that was meth.
Well, meth goes along with all that, too.
Finally watched both Breaking Bad s3e1 and the pilot of Justified. BB was … ok. Not bad, not disappointing, just … ok. Needed more Saul. Justified was … ok. I’m not as sold on it as Goodman was, but not quite so down on it as xbx. Good to see Walton Goggins turning on the homicidal hillbilly charm, and I’m a huge fan of Olyphant, but … it all felt a bit … sketchy/underdeveloped.
Holy crap.
X v KS.
Amazing game. X just kept hitting preposterously big shot after preposterously big shot, until they finally ran dry.
Made all the better by Gus Johnson, the best dramatic finish play-by-play guy in TV today.
he does get excited.
“Screamin’ Gus” from a game last September (WARNING: CONTAINS FOOTBALL CONTENT):
Denver at Cincinnati, Sept. 13, 2009
He gets a bit too high-pitched for my taste.
thanks for linking to that.
Why don’t you book a plane trip to Sarasota and come kick me in the nuts, too?
You officially just made my day.
Thanks for reveling in my football version of Jeremy not sliding.
I’m sorry for your pain, however I’m only reveling in my football version of Scutaro’s walkoff against Mariano Rivera.
Also, Broncos rule, Bengals drool.
Remind me to not send you any booty from my super secret late night swag run.
Yeah. I’m sort of surprised they never launched from half court.
So here’s my question (and I know nothing of basketball) …
The announcers were singing the praises of X’s 3-point shooter’s 40% success rate, which implies an expected points-per-play of 1.2, so you’d have to have less than a 60% chance of making the 2-point play for that to be a better option. Is it really that low?
Assuming a 70% free shooter (is that reasonable?), the outcomes and expected points are
* the 2-point shot – 2.0 x P(hits 2)
* the 2 free throws – 1.4
* the 3 free throws – 2.1
* the no-play turnover – 0.0 x P(turns)
So playing sudden death overtime, if half the plays end in fouls and half in 2-point shots (i.e. you don’t rely on or make mistakes) then wouldn’t you have to have a less than 50% chance of making 2 to risk 3?
All of college basketball as a whole hovers around a 50% “true shooting percentage,” which is points from each type of attempt divided by attempts (with free throw attempts being .5.) So a 40% 3-point shooter is at 60%, which is way above the 50% average. Another way of saying that is the average is roughly 1 point per possession (1.008 this year.)
D-I averages are 34.4 3P%, 47.7 2P% and 68.9 FT%. It looks from that like teams maybe take too many 3s by a hair, but it’s pretty efficient. In any case, for the most part teams are trying to get whatever good shot they can, and don’t really face the choice of “going for a 2” vs. “going for a 3.” A layup is always a good shot, and an open 3 by any reasonably good 3-point shooter will also pretty much always be a good shot.
Some of that first paragraph doesn’t make sense(ignores turnovers.) stats from here. not sure what the “offensive efficiency” (the 1.008) is, since it’s different from the 48.9 effective fg%…
iFSU mikeA criticizes mikeA
Thanks – that’s what I was looking for.
I enjoyed listening to part of it on the radio with Ted Robinson calling it.
I’ve always liked Ted Robinson, a great multi-sport pro. He could do solid, informative pxp of a quilting bee.
This is a fine McGrill-LD, mr. mk, sir.
Also: Strawberry Letter 23.
huh, I always thought that was Kool and the Gang…
Shuggie Otis, originally.
MK – I just wanted to say I enjoyed the Grill starter you put together. I’m just checking back in now after a day on the road, but it was interesting and fun to read this morning. Just goes to show random esoterica can’t compete with genitalia.
Here ya go, Bloomy
You turned it into a Bloom Box.
This is pretty good.
This is pretty bad. (if true)
It’s pretty much impossible not to laugh at Romney
‘s book.I’d like to propose a shout out for Ice Cream, who nailed St. Mary’s run.
Thanks but I’m hoping I didn’t nail their run and that it continues this afternoon.
Screw the pool. If they could beat Baylor … I’ll be crying big-time.
I love rooting for the underdog especially when it’s a local team.
[See 1972 A’s]
Ditto. I’m also rooting hard for Northern Iowa, as the little guy, out of general dislike for MSU, and because I have ’em in my Suicide Pool this round.
I’m deeply conflicted. Mrs. Nevermoor went to Baylor (which always sucks at everything), so this is a big deal for her too. Baylor hadn’t won a tourney game since like 1950.
So really, they’re both underdogs.
That, and also, how can you not love a basketball program on the rebound from a teammate-on-teammate murder and coverup scandal which nearly destroyed it?
They are mean to bears.
You calling them Self-hating bears?
They *are* mean to bears. I mean, the bears are adorable, but making them live in an outdoor area during the summer in Texas? Not nice. (They have a waterfall and pool and small indoor area too, but still.)
Also, everything on campus/in Waco is named after bears. Dancing Bear (pub), Bad Bear Liquor (liquor store), Bear Trail (running path), Bearathon (half-marathon), BearBucks (money that students [well, students’ parents] put on their ID cards to use on campus), BearWeb (internal website)… it goes on. That’s cruelty to the word “bear.”
That said, people are pretty excited about this whole basketball thing…
they got pretty colors and the crickets are huge there, I hear.
Cal students are unimpressed.
You Are Here:
Fuck, I’m a geek.
I think I’m a dweeb, but I’m not sure.
I’m clearly “intelligence”
Social Ineptitude … for men.
That’s okay, I’m a dweeb.
I think I’m a dweeb. I’ve been looking at this for a really long time, thinking about it for the last 24 hours (no, wait… 23.5 hours), poring over old diaries, trying to get my husband to help me analyze it…
Okay. Nerd. I’m a nerd.
All I see is giant overlapping Easter M&Ms.
well, you got the obsession part down…
Fun A’s trivia from my baseball page-a-day 2010 calendar:
That happened on March 26th? I didn’t realize they played the Series so early back then.
Barton: 0-0 4 BB. 7/14 K/BB for the spring. .543 OBP.
For the record, I share your (and sal’s) Barton optimism for this year.
I continue to expect Barton to suck. Though I want very much to believe the encouraging words from all you learned folk, I ain’t feeling it yet.
OK, but I have it on good authority that the three of us are never wrong about baseball.
I’ve been pro-Barton for over a year (you’ll recall my pre-FK anti-Giambi stance)
Oh, I’m not optimistic, just hopeful.
Crazy good A’s ticket deal (h/t ** diary)
First week of season, Value Deck tix $8, including $6 concession credit.
That’s a great deal.
it certainly is
I won’t be back yet. Sad panda.
Ah, I see. Sorry, sal, you were right.
I usually leave it to Catholics and ex-Catholics to make fun of their religion, but this is extremely messy here.
I’m in big trouble.
I’m in an NCAA pool with a bunch of people I’ve known for 20+ years. About 15 years ago I convinced Mrs. Upgrade (Girlfriend Upgrade at the time) that she too should enter a bracket. I was searching for a way to make the household-dominating 80 hours of hoops on TV more acceptable to my sports-agnostic partner. And the strategy has worked brilliantly…she follows games and gets excited because she has a stake in the outcome, and I get to drink beer eat bad food and watch TV hoops for days on end.
She usually asks me to take a look at her bracket pre-submittal to suggest changes to any really, really bad choices. This year, I saw one thing which I thought was be sure to knock her out of the pool by the first Sunday, so I talked her out the pick. It was Butler in the Final Four.
Boo!
Tler!
Looks like your pre-submittal review days are over!
Hey, you guys — Jaclyn Friedman is available.
What if you liked the first third of Fight Club?
When I am screening for mates I usually say it is okay to dislike Fight Club but not okay to willfully misunderstand it. You are also automatically disqualified if you constantly throw around pseudo-provocative phrases like “pro-sex feminist” and “rape culture” but never stop posing long enough to say anything interesting about them. Musing about people “internalizing their feminism” is a dealbreaker as well.
That’s just wrong. I’m pretty sure I understand what men mean by “drama,” and it isn’t opinions. (Feel free to disagree if you’re going, “Uh, no, we do mean opinions = drama.” I’m not gonna throw a drink in your face and tell all my friends how invalidated you make me feel.)
Right. I won’t presume to speak for the other three billion or so men on the planet, but when I deride “drama” I am talking about ridiculous dramatic people who conjure a lot of ridiculous drama out of nothing, and in so doing cause hassle and anguish for those unlucky enough to be within range of their dramatic ridiculousness. Which is somewhat different than saying women should not have opinions. Though it’s possible I just haven’t internalized my feminism enough to understand the psychological dynamic at play here.
You heteronormative bastard.
I think you both have it right as far as I’m concerned. Absolutely nothing wrong with a woman having and sharing an opinion. In fact, what’s the fun in not having both. But the “I’m going ape shit because I couldn’t have my way or someone rubbed me the wrong way or because
I tell ya, it’s just like a woman to hit dmoas on the back of the head with a skillet while he’s mid-post.
Ow… my head
I’m pretty sure we weren’t disagreeing …
Never implied you were.
Oh. I read “I think you both have it right as far as I’m concerned” as “I think you both have a point”, which is a mediation device I’ve often used when two co-workers are glaring at each other across a conference room table, one having proposed a “kitchen sink approach”, the other advocating “core competency focus”. Calm down. Lower your voices. Set the constantly fucking buzzing multimedia devices on the table. I think you both have a point here. What I’d like to do is synergize this brainstorm into a team-centric framework …
Yeah, if only my whole post actually showed up instead of being hit over the head with Betty White’s frying pan. It was mainly just a “Poppy’s comment was correct and your furthering of that thought from a guy’s perspective was inline with how I see it too.”
Concur. Drama = mountains out of mole hills and stirring shit up.
YOT111thC:
That was fun.
Would that the Reagan era were truly as ineffectual as that construction suggests.
I think there’s a growing body of analysis that pretty convincingly lays out the case that the Reagan admin didn’t actually make (m)any significant “conservative” achievements, strategic or tactical, with the possible exceptions of firing the air-traffic controllers and letting all the crazy people out onto the streets. Even his SC justices turned out to be not entirely nuts.
The highest income tax rate went from 70% to 28% (briefly) and has stayed in the 35-40% range since then.
And I think in practice a lot of federal regulatory agencies are a lot weaker now than they were in 1980.
The undoing of the progressive income tax code and commitment to a meaningful social safety net was a profound and (to date) permanent change to the very notion of what the U.S. gov’t should give to and ask of its citizens. The very range of national discourse moved to the right, the Democrats followed, and we haven’t remotely recovered. Reagan re-framed the purpose of the nation (as described by its political actors, anyway), and his supporters are justifiably proud that legacy.
Comment #3.
And.
I think the damage is permanent, regardless of which side “succeeds” or “fails” in any given part of the cycle.
Eh, I wouldn’t worry about this — it’s clearly just a misunderstanding by local supporters of non-politician ess-Arah al-In, whose exhortation to RELOAD and drawing targets on her opponents were merely metaphorical.
Palin’s Facebook page is kind of addictive:
Uh oh … I guess I’d better get some UPS envelopes for those kraut packets I’m going to owe andeux/FSU/nevermoor:
Longshot I know, but do any of you work at Target or have contacts at Target?
my brother used to work closely with their corporate headquarters in Minneapolis, but he relatively recently moved somewhere in the south and bought some kind of business.
Whatever you do, don’t follow him down there. And if you do *that*, don’t work for him. I hear that’s just nothing but trouble.
I heard something similar.
Wasn’t the movie “Nothing But Trouble” from around those parts? At least the same state. That should have told you something right there.
(and, for the record, he followed me down here)
May I suggest next time not telling him where you’re going. 1) It keeps him from following 2) It keeps you out of business together (no longer an issue I’d imagine 3) Adds a little extra spice to family life and be honest, you’re relationship could use a little spicing up.
I don’t think I’ll tell them where I’m moving next.
He’s going to North Logan, Utah! I know it!
(maybe)
Bloom wins Kraut Pool before Final Four even starts.
The fact that a Duke victory sealed it will make parting with my $5 all the more painful.
I won?
Seriously?
Yup, on the strength of getting two Final Four picks right. Three of us got one Final Fourist correct, and five krauthors whiffed the Final Four completely.
To be fair, it was quite a funky final four. Especially compared to how good they’ve been at seeding the last few years.
Pats all around! Pats all around!
Congrats, Bloomie (and all you other players)!
And a big THANKS to you, FSU for setting it up.
Yes, thank you, FSU!
iFSU, yes thanks you.
It’s about time that ungrateful bastard Jon Anderson said thank you.
does it makes any of you think less of me that this prompted me to dl “Leave It” from the oh so wonderful 80’s? When they made like 25 different versions of this video that were all essentially the same video.
Yes, but only a little. Not enough to matter from a practical point of view. I’d still split the last Kit Kat with you if we were on a life raft in the middle of the ocean.
On the other hand, I had to dock you a couple of esteem points for that Oakridge Boys comment upthread, so maybe you’d only get 40% of the Kit Kat. I’d still give myself up to the sharks first, though.
I was raised on the Oak Ridge Boys, though. That’s not fair. I demand my remaining 10%!
Dude.
A) He’s so scared of you that he’d rather die first by shark than be around you.
B) While the shark is full, you could beat it to death with one of mk’s legs and you’ll gain significantly more than the 10% of Kit Kat he’s not giving you.
C) mk deserves a last meal if he’s going to safe your life. Give him the whole Kit Kat.
I’d agree to 40%, since you put it that way. Especially since I’ll essentially be eating again when I eat the shark that ate him.
even iFSU everyone hates YES
do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do
The only reason I like that song is because MTV bored it into my skull.
I meant this blight on humanity.
oh, those bastards. Yeah, fuck them.