15 KIDS AND ADULTS WERE INJURED, SOME CRITICALLY, AT A SCHOOL in Los Angeles, as a car veered into a crowd. It was a Mercedes. Will we hear calls for "car control," and explanations that "no one needs" a car with "that much power"?
So, you know, if you really want guns and gun ownership to be treated in the same fashion as cars and car ownership, I can't say that the gun-control lobby will be unhappy with you.
Oh, and one last thing: You do need specialized education and a special license to operate nonstandard vehicles like motorcycles and large trucks. And I daresay that Mercedes drivers tend to pay more for liability insurance than, say, Geo drivers.
One of the things Houston has been doing in an effort to comply with the Federal Clean Air Act has been to install bike lanes on various city streets. This has had the unfortunate effect of increasing traffic congestion on some of these streets.
I certainly favor all reasonable ideas to make Houston more accessible to non-drivers. Encouraging bike riding, even in our frequently sweltering climate, is a good idea and worth the trouble. However, I have a lot of sympathy for the people who do drive on this stretch of West Alabama. Any time you reduce a street from two lanes each way to one lane each way, you're going to cause bottlenecks. Houston's notoriously out-of-sync traffic lights, with their annoyingly long red cycles, make this problem even worse. Throw in a bus route and it's a recipe for disaster.
Part of the problem is that the city, which is a bit more than halfway through completion of its planned master bikeway program, has done a poor job of publicizing these alternatives. Thus, drivers who sit steaming through three or four red lights at a given intersection wonder why they suffer but see so few bicycles actually use those lanes. I've certainly cursed the bike lanes a few times myself, and I seldom drive this part of West Alabama, partly because of the squeeze on auto lanes.
I'd like to see this succeed, if only for the selfish reason that more bikes means less traffic to bother me while I drive. There are of course many more pieces to this puzzle - rail, sidewalks, city centers - but each piece is important and deserves to be treated properly.
Got a note from another local blogger today. Take a moment and check out The People's Republic of Seabrook. Thanks to him, I found this amusing piece about the Mormon Church's attempts to upgrade its image as the world comes to their Mecca for the Olympics. I'm a better man for having read it, for now I know of The Utah Bikini Team. This being Utah, one of their more recent engagements was at the 2002 Utah Bridal Expo. And to think that some people think Texas is a strange place.
I don't know what Linda Lay hoped to accomplish with her bid for sympathy on the Today Show recently, but judging by these letters to the editor, she failed pretty miserably.
Nice article today in USA Today about the men's basketball program at Gonzaga. As a Rice fan, I have a lot of respect for the success that they've acheived. It's also good to know that they haven't lost sight of who they are and what they stand for. Here's to another visit to the Sweet Sixteen, guys.
Oliver Willis has his say about what jail should be about. In a word, says Willis, it's about punishment. I think this position, while emotionally satisfying, is wrong on several levels.
First, I'll stipulate that certain crimes and certain criminals deserve harsh punishment and nothing more. It is for this reason that I do not oppose the death penalty. I have problems with how cavalierly we issue it, with the restrictions on appeals, and with the overly skewed number of non-whites on death row, but at the end of the day I believe that death is sometimes the only appropriate response.
Similarly, I have no qualms with long sentences for violent crimes. Nor do I quibble with making violent and hardened criminals serve the full extent of their sentences, or with throwing away the key on habitual reoffenders. Parole is a privilege, and it belongs to those who earn it.
Finally, I'd be perfectly happy if we got serious about white collar criminals. You know, the kind who merely wipe out people's life savings instead of bashing them over the head. If someday Jeff Skilling does a ten-spot in Huntsville, you won't see me crying for him.
The problem is that there are plenty of people in jail who don't fit any of the descriptions above. Most people who enter jail are going to get out before they're eligible for Social Security. It seems to me that it's in society's best interests to do something to convince these people that they're better off joining the ranks of the productive citizens rather than go back to the old habits that got them sent up the river in the first place. Lots of prisoners are illiterate. Libraries and literacy programs help some of them overcome that, which in turn makes them more likely to find a job when they get out. Isn't this a win-win situation?
Well, maybe we should just lock 'em all up and throw away the key. One strike and you're out. I hope you're prepared to pay for that. States are already running out of money for prisons. Would you like to drain resources from education, road-building or law enforcement to keep the prison building industry humming? Don't forget that most people start their criminal careers when they're young. Locking them up for good means not only are we removing a potential contributor to the economy just as he's entering his wage-earning years, it means we have to pay for that person's upkeep for decades. That just doesn't sound like good economic policy to me.
If it costs so much to feed and shelter them, why not just kill them all? Well, that's what they used to do in Afghanistan. Do we really wanna go there?
I believe that criminal justice has three goals: Deterrence, rehabilitation, and punishment. Jail should be bad enough that people don't want to risk going there, but not so bad that it regularly spits out worse people than it takes in. In an ideal world, the justice system would take those who are merely young and foolish and show them the error of their ways, thus not only setting them back on the right path but providing a good example for those around them. (Yeah, I know, but I'm idealizing here. Work with me.) Rehabilitation and deterrence work hand in hand. By deterring crime and reforming criminals, we can spend less on jails and more on things that actually enhance our lives. And let's not overlook the idea that some crimes really don't deserve prison sentences. Think "mandatory sentencing for drug offenses" here. If we stop locking up pot smokers for thirty years, there will be plenty of room in prison for those who really need it.
The funny thing is that throwing more people in jail for longer periods does not necessarily correlate with a drop in crime. I cite the Justice Policy Institute report on the 1990's, which says
The connection between incarceration and crime rates appears as elusive at the end of the 90s as it has been in previous decades. There is little correlation between states with skyrocketing incarceration rates and the recent crime declines witnessed across the country. The "New York Miracle" - the sharp drops in homicides and violent crime rates experienced by America's largest city between 1992 and 1997 - have occurred at the same time that New York State had the second slowest growing prison system in the country, and at a time when the city's jail system downsized.New York's modest prison growth provides a solid contrast to the explosive use of incarceration in other states. During the same 1992-97 period, California's prison population grew by 30%, or about 270 inmates per week, compared to New York State's more modest 30 inmates a week. Between 1992 and 1997, New York State's violent crime rate fell by 38.6%, and its murder rate by 54.5%. By contrast, California's violent crime rate fell by a more modest 23%, and its murder rate fell by 28%. Put another way, New York experienced a percentage drop in homicides which was half again as great as the percentage drop in California's homicide rate, despite the fact that California added 9 times as many inmates per week to its prisons as New York.
It was an appeals court judge in New York who pointed out in a magazine article that a penniless mother who steals powdered milk for her baby and a thug who steals powdered milk to cut heroin have committed the same crime. Does anyone really want to see them given identical, "mandatory" prison sentences?
According to this annual survey, incoming college freshmen are more liberal than any time since 1975. As a college student from the Reagan years, in which the joke on campus was that our boomer-era profs were more liberal than the students, I am generally heartened by this. Of course, if this really means that more students are on the anti-globalization, blame-the-US-for-everything fringe, then it's not so good. The numbers mentioned in this article are too vague to draw any firm conclusions. Besides, nowadays "liberal" and "conservative" are too broad. I'm a liberal who's for free trade, against hate crime and hate speech laws, and in favor of the death penalty with certain reservations. Does this make me a moderate, a traitor to the cause, or just confused? I don't know, but I bet I wouldn't be considered "liberal" by this survey.
There's a woman right here in the Houston area who claims to be a "pet psychic". You can see her do her thing tonight on Animal Planet. Now, I don't know about you, but I don't need to pay some poofter $300 an hour to tell me what my dog is thinking. I know exactly what he's thinking at all times: "Feed me! Pet me! Worship me! Take me for walkies! Let me on the couch! Did I mention feed me?"
I saw an ad for this bizarre show last night while watching Blue Planet: Seas of Life, all four hours of which will be rerun on Friday night. Make time to watch it, it's excellent and fascinating. And let your pets sit on the couch with you while you watch. I have a feeling they'd like that.
Duncan Fitzgerald confesses that he doesn't read Tom Clancy any more. Says he
I got about 2/3 of the way through The Sum of All Fears. It was at that point I realized Clancy was just another poser in the mold of Zane Grey and Danielle Steele. A sell-out. A fake, a fraud, a user of template-based-MadLib-fill-in-the-blanks-book-writing.
I haven't read John Grisham in years, either. Once you come to the realization that all Darby Shaw had to do was tell someone else about the "Pelican Brief", it becomes hard to take his plots seriously. Then there's Patricia Cornwell, whose first couple of books were outstanding. Unfortunately, her plots got more contrived and her characters got less interesting. I vowed to quit after reading Cause of Death, easily my all-time candidate for Book By A Big-Name Author In Greatest Need Of An Editor, but I came across a used copy of the first book in her other series, Hornet's Nest, and gave it a try. Wrong!
I think all three of these authors started out doing good books (Clancy's Red October, Grisham's The Firm, Cornwell's Postmortem, which is still the gold standard for medical examiner thrillers). I don't know if they simply ran out of original ideas, or if their success meant that no one was able to tell them that they had turned into hacks. Take my advice, people - go read Michael Connelly, Jill McGown, Robert Crais, Jan Burke, Harlan Coben, Peter Robinson, Rick Riordan, John Sandford, Aaron Elkins, Kathy Reichs, or Elizabeth George. You can thank me later.
A New Jersey man is charged as an accomplice in a DUI fatality even though he wasn't in the car. Kenneth Powell was called to pick up his friend Michael Prangle, who'd been busted after blowing a 0.21 on the breathalyzer, from jail. Powell took Prangle back to his car, where Prangle proceeded to crash headon into a car driven by Navy Ensign John Elliott, killing Elliott and himself, and injuring Elliott's girlfriend.
Powell maintains that he wasn't fully informed of Prangle's condition. The state police says that Powell was fully informed, was told that Prangle shouldn't drive, and that Prangle was visibly intoxicated besides.
Complicating matters is that state law at the time of this incident was unclear. A new law was passed last year in response to this that would allow police to impound drunk drivers' cars for 12 hours, and also spells out what to tell someone who comes to bail out a drunk driver, including what penalties they may face if they let the driver get back behind a wheel too soon.
I'm inclined to think that Kenneth Powell bears some responsibility for John Elliott's death (and Michael Prangles', for that matter). I don't know that his level of culpability rises to manslaughter charges, though. It's the same problem I have with laws that make party hosts and bartenders partially responsible for DUI accidents - ultimately, the fault lies with the person who gets behind the wheel. Some people don't look as drunk as they are, some people will sneak off when you're busy elsewhere - it's a lot to ask to make a third party their keeper.
It will be interesting to see what a jury (and most likely an appeals court) makes of this.
Vice President Dick Cheney is refusing to turn over documents connected to President Bush's energy plan. The GAO may file a lawsuit against the White House to force them to give it up.
I don't know what Cheney is hiding, but I doubt that it's as bad as the negative press they're gonna get for all this stonewalling. The latest polls say that 67 percent of Americans think the President is lying in part or in whole over Enron. I know you guys read the polls, Dick. What were you thinking?
In other news, Ken Lay's wife Linda says they're trying to avoid personal bankruptcy. That sound you hear is my heart breaking for them. Here's some free advice, Linda: Get a job. And don't put all of your 401(k) in company stock.
This op-ed piece by Bart Busker in today's Chron says exactly what I think about the Katy Freeway expansion. Busker highlights an issue that I didn't, which is that the I-10 expansion is several times as expensive as the current light rail project. The light rail project had to fend off lawsuits, ballot challenges, City Council shenanigans, and Tom De Lay, while all of the so-called champions of fiscal responsibility make no mention of the billion dollars that will be spent here. Nice to have friends in high places, isn't it?
So Tiffany and I have started to look for a new house. There's nothing wrong with our current house, but if we ever want to have kids, we're gonna need more room. Plus, we've done all the renovating and remodeling that this house can take, so Tiffany needs a new challenge.
There's a house we have our eye on in the same neighborhood. This is good, because we want to stay in this neighborhood. We really like it here. There's a long road to travel before we get to the point of completing any transactions, but we know where we want to be going.
Tiffany and I have looked at a lot of houses in the four-plus years we've been at this address. Early on, before we performed major surgery on the kitchen and master bedroom/bathroom, we looked at other houses to get ideas about what we could do and what we shouldn't do. Later on it was just plain old curiosity on our part. Going to realtor open houses around here is somewhat of a spectator sport. Most of the agents know us on sight by now.
We've seen a lot of new houses, and a lot of old houses that have been refurbished and added on to. I'm always amazed at some of the things that builders do. Since this is a desireable neighborhood, all the new and refurb construction is aimed at the high end. Builders like to put a lot of money into flashy things like countertops, moldings, and light fixtures. They clearly hope to impress young couples with more money than sense and older couples who've sent the last of their kids out into the world and want to return to civilization from the wilds of the suburbs.
The thing is that while they spend all this money and attention to frou-frou things like that, they often don't give a lot of thought to how real people will actually live in these dwellings. I see houses with very little useable wall space because of odd placings of windows and light switches. Houses with 3000 or more square feet will have only three bedrooms, all of which are way larger than most people need.
Today we saw a house that was a refurb. It used to be a smallish bungalow, but it's on a big lot and has since been expanded on the ground and had a second story put on. It has a large kitchen, which is nice, but was one of the poorest designs I've ever seen. The sink is a long way from the stove and refrigerator, with a countertop in the way. The fridge is crammed into a tiny space because it's underneath the stairway, but to the left of the fridge is a pantry with a normal height ceiling. Instead of swapping the place for the fridge and the pantry, this arrangement would force you to have a smaller fridge than you would want. If they'd consulted someone who actually uses the kitchen to cook, they'd have changed the peninsula countertop into a center island with a gas cooktop and moved the space for the fridge closer to the sink.
Another time I saw a brand new house that had a little enclave on the second floor that was intended to be a computer area. It had a built in desk on one wall. Problem was, the phone jack was on the other wall, so if you wanted to hook your computer up to the Net you'd have to run the wire across the floor. Not very bright.
The house we're looking at has a few problems - no large closets, a small master bath, one odd light-switch placement - but for the most part you can imagine someone living there. Most of what's wrong should be fixable or at least livable. The ironic thing is that it's been on the market for several months. The builder didn't splurge on doorknobs and fixtures, which perhaps made the house less attractive to those who notice that sort of thing. Perhaps their loss will be our gain. We'll see.
The Houston City Council recently announced that it was considering selling naming rights to city buildings as a source of revenue. This has drawn predictable derision, but this article in the Chron explores the ways that other cities, notably San Diego, have formed partnerships with business for goods and services. In tough economic times, it makes sense to see what can be done to stretch limted municipal budgets.
I'm ambivalent about this. Put aside issues of good taste - one can certainly hope that we never have the Dynegy City Hall building or some such - it's hard to argue against finding innovative ways to increase municipal services without increasing taxes and fees. For example
In perhaps the most unusual marketing marriage, San Diego is partnered with a defibrillator company. Cardiac Science will pay that city $225,000 over three years to be San Diego's official partner.The city also will get a cut of the company's defibrillator sales in San Diego during the contract term.
The deal came after the city bought defibrillators for its municipal buildings. Teaming up on a public-safety campaign for defibrillator training seemed a natural, said Mary Braunwarth, director of San Diego's Corporate Partnership Program.
"It's not just designed as a revenue (generator)," Braunwarth said. "It was tied with the city's desire to provide a new level of service that we did not have the money for in our regular budget."
In addition to getting free publicity, Cardiac Science gets its brochures distributed by city fire officials during commercial building inspections. The fire department also provides defibrillator training.
The problem, of course, is that there's a nontrivial potential for corruption when you start throwing around millions of free dollars. It's just a matter of time before some city official is accused of taking kickbacks in return for steering a deal to a particular company. Any city that pursues this line of revenue needs to keep its eyes wide open for that possibility.
A former Enron employee is making money by selling T-shirts which bear anti-Enron slogans. Head over to his site if you'd like to buy a shirt that says "My boss got a retention bonus, all I got was this T-shirt."
Conventional wisdom (scroll to "The Gating Factor"), even in Blogland, appears to be settling on the idea that the Enron mess is a business scandal, not a political scandal. That may be true, but with all of the money that Kenny Boy and Company poured into politics and the access to the high and mighty that they had, it's way too early to discount the possibility of political laws being skirted or broken. For example, there's this story, which says that top Bush political advisor Karl Rove helped Republican strategist Ralph Reed land a consulting contract at Enron while Dubya was deciding whether or not to run.
The Rove associates say the recommendation, which Enron accepted, was intended to keep Reed's allegiance to the Bush campaign without putting him on the Bush payroll. Bush, they say, was then developing his "compassionate conservatism" message and did not want to be linked too closely to Reed, who had just stepped down as executive director of the Christian Coalition, an organization of committed religious conservatives.At the same time, they say, the contract discouraged Reed, a prominent operative who was being courted by several other campaigns, from backing anyone other than Bush.
Enron paid Reed $10,000 to $20,000 a month, the amount varying by year and the particular work, people familiar with the arrangement say. He was hired in September 1997 and worked intermittently for Enron until the company collapsed.
"If Karl Rove was partly responsible for [Reed] getting the job at Enron, it illustrates the close relations between the Bush political world and Enron," said Trevor Potter, a Republican, who is a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission. "If it was done for the avowed reason to keep Reed satisfied and out of someone else's political camp, it illustrates what everyone in the Republican world has known for years: Enron has been an important source of political power in the party."Potter said Reed's hiring could have been a violation of federal election law if it turned out that "it was a backdoor way of getting him extra compensation for the time he was spending on Bush activity."
Looks like perhaps Ken Lay won't walk away from all this with his spoils intact. Pretty much all of the income he got from Enron is apparently fair game in the multitude of civil lawsuits that have been filed by those who lost retirement accounts. This is as it should be. CEOs are bountifully compensated for the greater exposure to risk that they supposedly have, but in real life they tend to all have golden parachute clauses that make them impervious to any damage they cause to their companies. Ken Lay was ultimately responsible for Enron, and if Enron has turned to dust, then that's what he should get.
The Ballpark at Union Station is shopping for a new name. That's what Enron Field was called before it hitched up with Enron and changed its name. The Astros are in the market for a new suitor, and there's no lack of choices.
If you're not completely Enroned out by now, listen to this interview from NPR (you need Real Audio) with Erica Bess Duncan. Erica is a friend of mine who is still with Enron. Her unit, Enron Online, has been bought by UBS Warburg, though the deal is not finalized. As you might imagine, things are a bit different now for those who are still there.
UPDATE: Alas, UBS Warburg has pulled out of Houston, and Erica is now unemployed. She wasn't too unhappy about it when I last spoke to her, though. She was glad to be out of the energy trading business.
Two interesting transportation stories in today's Chron. The Katy Freeway will roughly double in width now that the feds have approved a a $1 billion plan which is slated to begin in May, 2003. Also on the west side but further south, Metro has taken the first tentative step towards expanding the light rail line outwards by funding a study of the feasibility of running a line out US 90. This route would go through Sugar Land and Missouri City into Richmond and Rosenberg. One possibility would be to share tracks that run along US 90 and are currently in use by Union Pacific.
I can't argue that the Katy Freeway (that's I-10 from the west side of Loop 610 out about 20-25 miles into Katy for you non-locals) doesn't need expanding. Traffic is congested on that stretch of road pretty much whenever you drive on it. What saddens me about this project is this blip from the article:
Most of the widening will occur along the former railroad right of way north of the freeway, but some will be on the south side, [Texas Department of Transportation spokewoman Janelle] Gbur said.
I sure hope this is the panacea that westside residents want it to be, because the next time our options won't be so nice and easy. I salute the people of Fort Bend County who are considering ideas other than more asphalt.
Record label EMI is buying out Mariah Carey's $80 million four-album contract for $28 million. Now the two sides are fighting over who dumped whom. Sheesh. Y'know, I remember the old days when people took their millions and shut up about it.
By the way, Carey recorded exactly one album, "Glitter", for EMI. It sold about 500,000 copies, which is to say it was a massive failure. Adding the $28 million buyout to the $21 million Carey had already been paid, this venture cost EMI $98 per copy sold, and that's before marketing and the cost of Carey's flopola of a film, also called "Glitter". In case you were wondering why CDs cost so damn much.
It's a sweet story about a young girl who is following her dream. When she finally reaches it, her parents disapprove. So, she had to raise the money for the trip on her own. Her friends, sympathizing with their pal's plight, decide to pitch in and lend a helping hand. The story is that of the Texas Cowgirl Cheerleader wanna-be in Debbie Does Dallas, which made its way from the curtained section of video rental stores to the New York stage as part of the New York International Fringe Festival. The highly anticipated adaptation received mixed reviews but sold out its run at downtown Manhattan's Kraine Theatre Aug. 10-19.Here's the full story. Link courtesy of Oliver Willis.
Thanks in part to an increase in Democratic candidates as well as a general increase in partisan nastiness, there's been a sharp increase in challenges to ballot applications.
This isn't right. A technicality shouldn't abrogate the voters' right to pick who they want. Fortunately, the Texas Supreme Court appears to see it that way. Good on them.
This being Texas, there had to be at least one case with a weird twist. Here it is, scroll down to the "Heidi Ho! Ho! Ho!" subhead to read it.
This article in Salon claims that the Enron collapse has been a September 11-like shock to Houston.
"Whereas Sept. 11 was a shock for the nation and indeed the world, this is a second shock for Houston, certainly not of equal magnitude, but up there on the Richter scale," says Peter Bishop, chair of the studies of the future department at the University of Houston-Clear Lake. "Ken Lay. You couldn't find a fairer person, a person who did more for the community, and just like the World Trade Center, that doesn't exist anymore."It's a sign of how shocked Houstonians are about Enron's ignominious demise that Sept. 11 can be invoked -- and is frequently -- to explain the shock of the company's collapse.
"They had rock-star status here," says Carlos Hernandez, a native Houstonian and business consultant of the Enron top dogs. Last year, before Enron's downfall, when Jeff Skilling was still CEO, he'd be approached in local bars like a celebrity. "Out of nowhere people would come up to him and tell him how great he was. A friend of mine saw him at Volcano unshaven, wearing a leather bomber jacket, a white T-shirt and jeans," says Hernandez. "He was a god, and Lay was king."
I really have no idea where this story came from. Any Houstonians reading this, did I miss something? Do you feel this way? Please let me know.
UPDATE: Ginger beat me to the publishing punch. Her take is a bit different, but we agree that the article didn't resonate for us.
I've already mentioned that Texas is looking at a shortfall in its unemployment insurance fund. Well, today we find that as things stand right now, the well runs dry in March. This will force the state to borrow money from the Feds (at 6.27% interest) as well as to hike taxes on businesses by $1.6 billion in 2003.
Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office has lowered its surplus projections from $5.6 trillion over ten years to $1.6 trillion. The CBO had once projected that most of the national debt would be retired by 2008, but now "the loss of surpluses means the debt is expected to remain high, at $2.8 trillion, and continue to cost hundreds of billions of dollars each year in interest payments."
Note to Senator Daschle: I'm waiting for you to make the honest and straightforward case that much of the $1.35 trillion tax cut that was passed last year was wrong and should be rolled back. You're going to be pilloried by the ideologues no matter what you do, so you may as well do the right thing. Blaming the president for the current mess without taking the argument to its logical conclusion is disingenuous at best. You know what to do, so do it.
Brian Linse makes the case that President Bush is tainted by his association with the Enron crowd. Says Brian
Regardless of what illegal shenanigans the Enron boys may or may not have gotten up to in the past, Bush will and should be judged for having such a miserable scumbag as a close friend and supporter.
[15] And it came to pass, that, as Jesus sat at meat in his house, many publicans and sinners sat also together with Jesus and his disciples: for there were many, and they followed him.
[16] And when the scribes and Pharisees saw him eat with publicans and sinners, they said unto his disciples, How is it that he eateth and drinketh with publicans and sinners?
[17] When Jesus heard it, he saith unto them, They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
In short, if I refused to judge Bill Clinton by his disreputable friends, I cannot judge George Bush by his.
UPDATE: Apparently, Brian drew a fair bit of disagreement. I'm never comfortable aligning myself with Clinton-bashers, but I gotta call 'em as I see 'em.
For the record, I quoted the same Bible verses to the Clinton hater I sparred with back then. I suppose that's a stronger rhetorical device when dueling with Republicans, but oh well. My point in making that citation was that I believe the tactic of attacking a person by attacking that person's associates can be used against anyone, regardless of their degree of actual guilt.
I do understand the point Brian is making, and perhaps I'm just splitting hairs, since there's no question that Dubya's friendship with Lay is closely entwined with their business and political dealings. I still believe that we should be examining Bush's actions, and that anything else is misdirection.
The Federal Trade Commission is considering a national no-call registry that would appear to put some real restrictions on telemarketers. The Direct Marketing Association hates it, so this must be good. Says their spokesbeing:
"The government may be overstepping its boundaries by spending taxpayer dollars to limit communication that is protected by the first amendment,'' said H. Robert Wientzen, president of the Direct Marketing Association. He said the proposals could cost the telemarketing industry money and jobs by having companies relocate to other countries to avoid the regulations.Wientzen said people who do not want to be called can request that their names be added his group's list, which now has 4.1 million names. The bulk of telemarketers voluntarily participate in this service and abide by the list, he said.
Second, the DMA's no-call list is inherently flawed precisely because it's voluntary. There's nothing to compel a telemarketer to live by those rules. The fact that some do just makes them marginally less slimy.
Finally, why should the burden be on the private citizen to prevent these intrusions into their homes? The DMA's assumtion is that unless you specifically say you don't want to hear from them, you must want to hear from them. Why isn't it the other way around? In other words, don't call me, I'll call you.
There's nothing original about this opt-in versus opt-out argument - it's the same tack the anti-spam crowd has taken all along. That's the kind of law I'd really like to see pass. It'll never happen, and maybe that is taking regulation too far. What's being proposed here is realistically the best we'll ever do. I'm OK with that.
Legendary retailer Stanley Marcus, longtime chairman of Neiman-Marcus, passed away at the age of 96 yesterday. Contained within his obit was the following:
Known as "Mr. Dallas" for his devotion to the city where he was born and lived for much of his life, Marcus nevertheless infuriated the conservative establishment in the 1950s and 1960s. He championed civil rights and free speech.During the height of the "red scare" in the 1950s, he publicly defended the Dallas Museum of Art, accused of showing "communist art" in showcasing works by Picasso and other artists.
He was among the first Dallas merchants to hire blacks as salespeople and welcome blacks to shop at his stores.
Despite threats of boycotts, picket lines and canceling of charge accounts, Marcus' business never suffered much, because the wives of the most conservative Dallas leaders couldn't bear to live without shopping at Neiman's.
One guy who won't be sorry to see the Summerall-Madden team split up is Sports Illustrated's Dr. Z, who rated that pairing as the worst in football this year. I guess I can see his point, and I should note that others, including Slate's Tuesday Morning Quarterback, have criticized Pat and John for being slipshod. Maybe I don't pay very close attention to broadcasters any more, or maybe I'm still listening to their reputation, I don't know. But I'll miss this partnership anyway.
Like son, like father I'm somewhat amazed to say that I just walked my father through setting up a blog. Mom and Dad have been on email (with just a bit of help from their slightly more technical son) for two years now, since they left the ancestral home in New York and moved out west to Oregon. It's been an adventure in a number of ways. Dad has found a groove sending out anecdotes and reminiscenses via email. I'm grateful that there's such a thing now as blogging to give his words a bit more permanence. There's just a test post there now as I write this, but do check back to The Dudstoevsky and see for yourself where I get it from.
UPDATE: Sadly, this blog didn't last very long. Dad was never very comfortable with the interface, and one day ran into a weird bug where he could sign into Blogger but never saw a link to edit his blog. Blogger support was even less useful than it is now, and we never got any help on this, so it went the way of all flesh. Too bad.
Got into a bit of a debate with Karin today about the Harry Potter movie. Karin has written that while she liked the movie, she felt it lacked by being a straightforward recapitulation of the book. Why do such an adaptation in the first place, she asks?
I can understand this criticism, but frankly it doesn't bother me. I saw the movie and enjoyed it, and never felt that it needed to have some director's vision imposed on it. I certainly respect and admire those who can cover someone else's work and turn it into something new and wonderful while remaining faithful to the original artist's intent, but it's no sin to me to merely reproduce another's work in one's own style. (Insert Stephen Ambrose joke here.)
I'm a big fan of a Grateful Dead cover album called "Deadicated". It features a diverse group of artists, all of whom have run their number through their own filter. Several of the songs, such as the Indigo Girls' version of "Uncle John's Band" and Dwight Yoakum's "Truckin'", are better than the originals. On the other hand, I've got a CD called "A Tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughn", which features faithful covers of his best-known songs by a variety of blues legends. There's nothing new to discover there, but good material performed by skilled artists is valuable in its own right. I file the Potter movie in the same general bin.
By the way, did anyone happen to catch the A&E Biography of JK Rowling last night? She's obviously very protective of her creation, which lends another reason for Chris Columbus' choice of a stick-to-it narrative. Interestingly, the bio we saw last night was pretty much all Rowling speaking, rather than the usual panorama of interviews with friends and associates. The description on the page I linked, which describes a standard Bio formula show, is not what we saw last night. Curious.
Larry pointed me to the story of Pat Summerall and John Madden splitting up as broadcast partners after the Super Bowl. I had at first thought it meant Summerall was retiring, but apparently not. So, I'm not sure what to make of this. Time for a change, I guess.
Whoever Fox gets to pair with Madden (assuming Madden wants to go on with a new partner), that person should be as brief and succint as Summerall to complement Madden's bluster. The article mentions Joe Buck, and I think that would be a good choice. Tough act to follow, though.
The Minnesota Court of Appeals has upheld an injunction that requires the Twins to play in the Metrodome this season.
Look, anyone not related by blood or money to Bud Selig knew that the whole contraction idea was about as smart as the CIA's plan to humiliate Fidel Castro by making his beard fall out, though not quite as likely to acheive its ultimate aims. Can we just move on here and address baseball's real problems? Sheesh.
The Wall Street Journal blames the fall of Enron on Bill Clinton. Well, more specifically, they attempt to blame Enron's sharp practices on "the moral climate" of the Clinton years:
We'd say it's also impossible to understand Enron outside of the moral climate in which it flourished. Those were the roaring '90s, when all of America reveled in the economic boom. They were also the Clinton years, when we learned that "everybody does it." The culture wanted to believe in Enron's promises, which helps explain why 16 of 17 Wall Street analysts rated Enron a "buy" as recently as last October.
Europe's first brothel for women has gone bankrupt. Wonder how many of those 17 analysts the WSJ refers to above rated this stock a "buy"?
From today's Chron, a story about how hard times are forcing states to spend less and even cut back on prison building. All I can say is it's about time. Building more prisons has got to be the least efficient way of dealing with crime. I'm not arguing that some people shouldn't be locked up for good or at least for many years, but I am arguing that our ever escalating git-tuff policies have mostly filled the jails with folks who aren't hardened recidivists. Much of this is due to ridiculous mandatory sentences for drug possession and use.
I've long wondered why no one has ever run for state office on a platform of more fiscal responsibility in criminal justice. Surely someone could make the case that handing out 30-year sentences to pot smokers translates to higher taxes for prison construction as well as early releases for violent offenders. Maybe now someone will finally try.
The Compaq Houston Marathon was this morning. Thanks to the rail construction on Main Street, the race was rerouted to pass within a block of my house. Tiffany and I got up early to join our neighbors and cheer the participants. It was pretty cool. There's not much prize money available in this race, so it doesn't get the topflight runners, though to my eyes there was a pretty decent turnout. And hey, it could be worse (warning: cheap shot coming): It could have been the Enron Houston Marathon.
A lot of libertarian types regularly ridicule efforts by local governments to control or at least manage their rate and means of growth. Virginia Postrel and the Chronicle's Jim Barlow are among those who've made their cases against "smart growth". They like to frame the debate as inner-city rail-loving townhome dwellers versus SUV-driving suburbanites. Here's Postrel:
Harried commuters just want fewer traffic jams. But anti-sprawl technocrats have something more grandiose in mind. They want everyone to live the way I do: in an urban townhouse off a busy street, with no yard but plenty of shops and restaurants within walking distance. Their "smart growth" planning means confining family life to crowded cities so that the countryside can be left open for wildlife, recreation and a few farmers. They crave "density," which they believe is more efficient and more interesting.
Jim Barlow takes on the same strawman:
For smart-growth supporters, the enemy is the suburb. It's urban sprawl. Sprawl should go, replaced by more people living in the inner city in multifamily dwellings and putting severe limits on driving.
Comal County is a rural part of the state, in between San Antonio and Austin on I-35. Its population has boomed lately, more than doubling to over 78,000 since 1980. It has had to contend with critical water issues as well as a fundamental change in their way of life.
This story in the Sunday Chron does a good job covering how Comal County has tried to manage its growth. What it comes down to is simply this: Letting the market be the sole determinant of how and where communities grow leaves the current residents the choice of accepting what the developers do or moving out. I'd prefer a Third Way, thanks very much.
The other problem, of course, is that the market doesn't know or care about the big picture. Developers like Perry Homes in Houston are infamous for cramming townhomes and McMansions on ever-smaller lots on side streets. They are not made to be responsible for things like whether or not the street can handle the additional traffic and parking, or whether or not there will be any drainage issues now that there's more concrete and less green space to handle runoff. It's not part of their profit-and-loss considerations unless zoning laws make them take it into account.
Similarly, out in the Texas Hill Country, there's the issue of the Edwards Aquifer. There's a finite amount of water in Central Texas, and population growth is outstripping the Aquifer's ability to provide. If you're a developer in an unfettered free market, it's rational and profit-maximizing to build as much as you can in the Aquifer area. The question of when the area gets sufficiently overpaved to cause a critical water shortage is not your concern. Would regulation limiting development in this area push up the cost of housing there and make it less appealing to those who would like to live there? Yes, and that's exactly the point. Overdeveloping that area would impose a cost on everyone. It makes sense to impose the brunt of that cost to those on the outside who want in. Maybe that's not fair to those who weren't born there or who weren't smart enough to move in back when environmental issues were less of a concern. Tough luck.
And finally, as these suburban Houston residents have learned, having no real controls on development may result in your next neighbor being a nasty concrete batch plant. After all, if it makes sense to build houses out where the land is cheap and easy, it makes sense to build industrial plants out there, too. There's a great irony when a Republican housewife has to turn to a zealous free-marketeer Congressman like John Culberson for help in a battle like this, but I daresay it was lost on both of them.
So when I say I favor smart growth, it's for a very simple reason. We've had stupid growth for a long time now, and it's caused nothing but trouble. Could we at least try something different?
Well, we've known for awhile now that former Governor Bush would be leaving office just in time to avoid a very messy financial situation here in Texas. Ginger has a nice recap of things as they now stand. Today, the Chronicle reports of another messy problem, this time having to do with the state's unemployment insurance fund. Not only is the fund operating at roughly a $700 million deficit, it's in a cash-flow crunch. A rise in the unemployment rate from 4.6 to 5.6%, along with the usual lack of foresight to plan for such a rainy day, is the culprit.
What makes this case more interesting is that the Chron had to fight to get the information released in the first place. It's not the first time that Governor Rick Perry's staff had tried to hide information that would make him look bad. From the Chron article:
The involvement of Perry's staff in keeping the growing deficit secret last fall marks the third time his office has tried to block the release of information potentially embarrassing to the governor.Perry's office last month under questioning from the news media dropped a lawsuit against Cornyn over his ruling that the governor's office had to make public documents about the eligibility of three of his appointees to serve in office.
Perry's staff also had to admit that it had altered the appointment application of former Public Utility Commissioner Max Yzaguirre, hiding his conviction for accidentally shooting a whooping crane to death during a goose hunting trip. The application had been requested under the state's open government law by a Democratic gubernatorial campaign. Yzaguirre resigned from the Public Utility Commission last week.
Speaking of such things, I saw a TV ad for Tony Sanchez the other day. A pretty nice job introducing him to the people, if you ask me. As is often the case with multimillionaires running for their first office, it stresses his just-plain-folks, up-from-the-bootstraps creds. (You can view the ad, in English or Spanish, from his web page.) Sanchez has the backing of the AFL-CIO, though in Texas I'm never sure if that's a net positive.
In any event, I came away with a favorable impression of Sanchez from his ad. I'm still gonna vote for Dan Morales, but at least I'm somewhat reassured that if my man loses there I won't be pulling the lever for a slightly less appalling version of Clayton Williams in November.
So the other day my wife is watching Home and Garden Television when all of a sudden I hear her cry out "Come quick! You've got to see this!" I ran in to the living room, and there on the screen is a brand new, fully modern Kitchen Triever.
The house we live in has a Kitchen Triever in it. Made by Sperry Rand and installed in 1973, it's something you'd have seen on a "Homes of the Future" newsreel from the late 1960s. You can see a complete schematic at the Kardex site linked above, but basically it's a big Ferris wheel of shelves, fourteen in all in our case. Most people, ourselves included at the time we bought the house, have never seen anything like it. Tiffany's mom says they use a similar device for document storage at the Harris County courthouse.
Anyway, HGTV was at the International Builders' Show 2001, which is where they found the updated Triever. This one has a numeric keypad so you can enter the number of the shelf you want it to rotate to. It even has a bar code scanner. You can program it so that if all canned goods are on a particular shelf, then when you come home with a bag full of groceries you scan a can and it goes right where they belong. Hey, we may not have flying cars yet, but by God we've got bar-code automated shelves.
By the way, the keynote speaker for this year's show is Rudy Giuliani. I don't really have a point to make about that. I just found it amusing.
An Australian TV reporter was fired for asking Aussie swimming star Ian Thorpe an "inappropriate" question. Nicki Voss had an interview with The Thorpedo, and noting that he wears a size 17 shoe, she asked "if it was true what they say about men with big feet". Thorpe apparently didn't care for the question and complained to station management, who gave her the gate.
Make of that what you will, I guess. On the one hand, a male reporter who asked a female athlete about her breasts would surely get in trouble for it. On the other hand, firing seems a bit extreme to me. Voss wound up getting a settlement from the station, so maybe they weren't sure they could win a lawsuit. In any event, I suppose the lesson is that unless it's your business to ask about such things, it's none of your business.
Guess Tim Cavanaugh doesn't much care for blogs, or at least for most bloggers. Whatever. I can't speak for anyone else, but I'll repeat what I said in my first entry: I'm doing this for fun, for the exercise of regular writing, for the sheer ego of seeing my words in print, and for the occasional thrill of feedback from a reader whom I don't already know.
Ultimately, if no one besides my wife and parents read this, I'll still consider it to be time well spent. It's helped me clarify my own thoughts, helped me to understand certain issues better, and absolutely exposed me to a much wider range of opinions than before. I've also connected with some local folks. All this in less than three weeks.
I do agree that some bloggers have an overinflated sense of their own importance in the world. But so what? So do a lot of folks who do get paid for what they write. I have no illusions that my words will change the world. I have a hard enough time keeping my dog from eating the mail.
So I don't really care what Tim Cavanaugh thinks of me. He didn't quote or mention me in his piece anyway. I'm doing this for my own reasons.
Some people were not terribly bothered by Cavanaugh's piece. Others really let him have it. By the way, I think the ironic thing is that I'd have never heard of Tim Cavanaugh or OJR or this particular article had it not been for bloggers, and I won't be the least bit surprised if that's true for a fair number of other folks who hit that page. Hey, Tim, how many times does your referral log have to show a blog as point of origin before you rethink your assessment?
One last thing: If blogging is such a silly little hobby that no one who isn't a blogger cares about, then why would such a Serious Jounalist as yourself spend so much time and effort taking it down?
So another nugget which was carefully obscured by Enron's opaque accounting was the fact that the company paid no income tax for four of its last five years. They took advantage of numerous loopholes which allowed them to launder profits through offshore tax havens, and actually wound up with $382 million in tax rebates.
The ironic part of this story is that the new Bush-appointed head of the SEC, Harvey Pitt, is saying that the need to do something about the inadequacies in financial reporting rules "cannot be ignored any longer". Pitt, in case you've never heard of him used to make his living fighting the SEC as a securities lawyer. Our president has a long and not-distinguished career of putting foxes like this in charge of the various regulatory henhouses. There's more than one way to reach Deregulation Nirvana.
In fairness, Pitt is saying the right things about reforming oversight accounting. We'll see.
Many people have said it by now, but the real scandal in the Enron case is that pretty much every sleazy thing the company did was perfectly legal. Keep all this in mind when you hear a business lobbyist pushing for deregulation and less oversight in his industry. Whatever case can be made for dereg (and there often is one), the question we should be asking is how are we going to ensure that the market will not be gamed?
Oh, and by the way, it looks like the claim that Enron's fall was a surprise to one and all has been pretty much debunked. Salon has a piece on just how much pre-collapse warning there was down on Smith Street.
Yesterday I wore a turtleneck shirt to work. It was a new shirt my wife had bought for me. I've never been a turtleneck kind of guy - I think the last one I had was a sweater when I was 12 or so. It was a bit odd - half the time I felt like Mort from the Bazooka Joe comics, the rest of the time I thought I needed a tweed jacket with elbox patches and a pipe. Well, my wife liked how it looked on me, so that settles that.
Students at Princeton have been having trouble staying in their bunk beds recently. I'm not exactly sure how one can "exercise more care while sleeping", but whatever. I slept on the top bunk my sophomore year, and my roommate and I built a loft for our junior and senior years which was even higher off the ground than a standard bunkbed. I managed to avoid falling out, even when I was drunk. Kids today, I just don't know.
I'm the newest member of H-Town Blogs. It's a little weird to make a local connection through a so-global-it's-a-cliche medium like the Internet, but I mean that in a good way. Thanks to Elaine, the group's fearless founder, for finding me.
Damian Penny talks about why he so dislikes the far left. He's right, of course, but I hope he recognizes that the same is true of the far right. I always have one of those it'd-be-funny-if-it-weren't-so-sad moments whenever I hear a Falwell type complain about how Christians in America are put upon, even oppressed. Never mind the fact that 85% of Americans identify themselves as Christian and each of the major Presidential candidates for the past I don't know how many elections have courted churchgoers and played up their own faith. Similarly, I can only chuckle when a David Horowitz goes on every news show on the dial to proclaim his victimhood when a few college newspapers refuse to print his ad about reparations for slavery. The man has his own magazine fer chrissakes, and he gets mileage by saying he's been muzzled. Gimme a break.
The problem here, and it's one that's found on both ends of the spectrum, is that the bigmouths and blowhards need to feel like they've been victimized. It validates their worldview when they're feeling put down by Big Gummint, or Secular Humanists, or The Patriarchy, or whatever. It's the same reason why a lot of advocacy groups become marginalized as they become successful, and a big part of the reason why the biggest enemy of these groups is often some of their own leading spokespeople - think feminists and Andrea Dworkin, blacks and Al Sharpton, the NRA and Wayne LaPierre.
Those of us who like to believe we inhabit the pragmatic center hate being tied to folks with nominally similar beliefs who live out on the fringes. I'm a liberal, but I am not Noam Chomsky, Ralph Nader, Alice Walker, Katha Pollit, or Gore Vidal. I'll listen to and respect your views a lot more if you'll respect mine by not lumping me with people like that. That's why I agreed with Jacob Wesiberg's oft-derided piece in Slate about the anti-war left. Yes, Weisberg missed the boat in defining the scope of the anti-war left, but the point I took from his column is still the same: If you want me to see what you're saying, starting with a strawman attack on my views is not going to help.
For my part, I promise not to lump my colleagues on the right side of the pragmatic center with fools like Ann Coulter, Jerry Falwell, Pat Buchanan, Dan Quayle, and Phyllis Schlafly. Deal?
Will Vehrs cites some sobering comments from Joseph Britt about Enrongate and its magnitude as a news story. I've had my fun piling on Enron and will continue to do so, but Britt is dead right - In the end it's just a distraction from what's really important in the news, and if we lose our focus or let the government lose its focus, bad on us.
Guess saying "Enrongate" means Matt Welch won't be reading this. So I like shorthand - sue me.
Today Arthur Anderson fired the lead Enron auditor, citing the "massive destruction of documents" as the SEC started investigating Enron. Other accountants on this team were recalled from Houston and/or put on administrative lead.
Stay tuned, kids. It's gonna be even more fun from here on out.
By the way, even if nothing illegal is ever tied to Team Bush (and I don't think anything will, nor do I really think there's anything there), the following paragraph from this story is a reminder why Enron's incestuous ties to Dubya really are a Bad Thing:
Repeal of the alternative minimum tax sought by Enron was included by President Bush as part of an economic stimulus package that stalled in the Senate. The measure earlier passed the House, where a provision was added that would have given Enron a $254 million infusion of cash if the legislation had become law.
Two new game shows on ABC and Fox battle it out in court over who had the idea first. Apparently, both shows require contestants to answer questions under extreme conditions, like 150 degree heat and high winds. That sort of makes them a "Who Wants to Survive the Fear Factor to Become a Millionaire?" kind of thing. Add in John McEnroe as the ABC show's bitchy host and you've got a "Weakest Link" tie-in. If I'm Fox and I want to differentiate my show, I'd make one of the adverse conditions be answering questions while getting a lapdance from busty bikini babes, so as to tie in with "Temptation Island". Or maybe make the penalty for answering a question wrong be marriage to Rick Rockwell or Darva Conger. Hey, it's not like Fox would be violating their standards, right?
The always entertaining Tuesday Morning Quarterback goes off on a tangent about pickup lines, noting that "Hi" and "Would you like another beer" work over 90% of the time on women at the University of Louisiana. He then speculates on lines women could use to pick up men:
But should DirecTV be part of any female pickup strategy? Reader Jack reports that on a recent episode of Boston Public, former Star Trek mega-babe Jeri Ryan-freed from the prissy Trek realm and now specializing in gratuitous cheesecake scenes-tried to pick up another character with the line, "I have a great body and a satellite dish." TMQ guesses that 100 percent of heterosexual males, including Thomas Merton and Thich Nhat Hanh, including all men on their wedding days with their brides standing at their sides, if offered Jeri Ryan's body would immediately agree. The question is, what would happen once you got back to Ryan's apartment and were forced to choose between her bod and the satellite dish? There might be some really good games on.
Tom Tomorrow takes us back to "those fabulous days of yesteryear, The Eighties!" I can't speak for the bad hairdos and shoulder pads, but the music is already here and has been for awhile. I know I'm not the only person in Houston to be a regular listener of the all-80s station KHPT, which showed up on the airwaves with an awesome 10,000-songs-in-a-row commercial free block last year.
Surely I'm not the only person to ever notice that we've been fetishizing and reliving the antepenutimate decade for awhile now. In the 70s, we all worshipped the 50s - think "Happy Days", Sha Na Na, "American Graffiti", "Grease". In the 80s, it was the 60s, with all of the Vietnam War-related movies. In the 90s we went back to the 70s, with "That 70's Show", "Boogie Nights", and that whole inexplicable revival of disco and bellbottoms. Now that we've crossed into the 2000s, 80s nostalgia has begun. In addition to 80s music appearing on your radio, "That 70's Show" has spawned the spinoff "That 80's Show". It's just a matter of time before parachute pants and feathered haircuts make a full-fledged comeback. Hmmm - it may be too late.
By the way, I'm just assuming that this trend started in the 70s, mostly because I can't imagine anyone wanting to relive the decades that included World War II and the Depression. I can't speak from personal experience, so if you know better, please drop me a line. Also, while movies like "American Graffiti" and "Animal House" were technically set in the early 60s, they were really about the 50s. The 50s as we nostalgize them lasted until 1964.
The real question to me is how will this work when it's time to remember the 90s? I'm really too young to remember most of the pop culture of the 70s, though there will always be space in my brain for roller skating and K-Tel commercials. Most of the pop culture in the 80s that I actually noticed I didn't care for - it's amazing that I listen to and like the all-80s station, because I had some pretty violent hatred for Madonna and Depeche Mode back then. I'm a wee bit old to be Gen X, so by the time the 90s hit, pop culture had passed me by. Still, when I think of the various flavors of "oldies" radio today, it's pretty amusing to imagine that someday a fortyish DJ is going to be spinning Eminem and Kid Rock for the minivan crowd.
So, ready or not, the 80s are back. Is there a Miami Vice reunion movie in the works? Get my agent on the phone, I've got a script to pitch!
Redskins owner Dan Snyder has fired coach Marty Schottenheimer one year into his 4-year $10M contract. Looks like Steve Spurrier will step in, for five years an $25M.
Considering that Snyder and Spurrier are two of the most egotistical jerks in all of sports, this has serious amusement potential. It's possible that one or both of them will some day spontaneously combust after being sufficiently annoyed by the other. What red-blooded American doesn't look forward to that?
So apparently Steven Speilberg is going to digitally remove guns from the FBI agents' hands in the upcoming re-release of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Seems Drew Barrymore, who's Spielberg's godchild, asked him to do this because she's "fanatically opposed to weapons of any kind".
Man, you can hear the NRA propaganda machine whir into action from here. How often do they get a juicy straight line like that? I can't believe Glenn Reynolds isn't peeing his pants over this, but so far I've not seen a mention from him.
One thing that we should keep clear before any feeding frenzy occurs. "E.T." is a movie. It was made by Steven Spielberg. It's his work of art, for some value of the word "art". He has the incontrovertible right to do what he wants with his art. If he wants to add in deleted scenes, update F/X with newer technogadgets, or digitize out guns, that's his right. He could digitize in clown makeup for Dee Wallace, or replace the six-year-old Drew Barrymore with the version that got nekkid in Playboy if he wants. The fact that he chose to remove the guns may well be ridiculous and worthy of whatever razzing he gets for it, but it doesn't mean Rosie O'Donnell is gonna break down your door and confiscate your guns. Just give it a snort of derision and organize a Joe Bob Briggs Drive-In Movie Festival, and the world will continue to spin on its axis.
Read all about the Houston Beer Can House and the efforts of the Orange Show to restore it. Houston is not known for its public art, so it's always encouraging to see this sort of thing. And if you ever get a chance to see the Beer Can House, you should do so. It's a hoot.
Damian Penny gives a spanking to The Globe and Mail's Heather Mallick for getting into a snit over Dubya's use of the term "Pakis". I've read enough British books to know that "Paki" is frequently used derisively over there, but then the Brits often use words like "French" and "Irish" with equal derision. In other words, just because a word can be used derisively doesn't mean it's an insult per se.
There's also the fact that Pakistanis call themselves "Paki". One of the most colorful stars in the world of tournament bridge is Zia Mahmood, a Pakistani now living in New York. In his vastly entertaining memoir Bridge My Way, he refers to himself and his countrymates as "Pakis". He even jokes about their variation on the popular ace-asking convention, which he calls "Paki Blackwood". I can't imagine Zia working up a sweat over Bush's use of the word.
Penny goes on:
This whole kerfuffle reminds me of an incident which occurred here in Newfoundland a couple of years ago. The provincial community college changed its name to "College of the North Atlantic", with the acronym "CONA", naturally. T-shirts, jackets and other trinkets were printed up with "CONA" written on them. Then, someone raised a major stink about what how shocking and offensive the acronym was - it turns out "Cona" is a slang term for the female anatomy.In Norwegian.
Formerly bankrupt dot-com Internet Advisory Corp is in talks to buy notorious New York nudie bar Scores and take it public. "We are charting a new course for the company,'' Internet Advisory's Chairman and Chief Executive Richard Goldring said. ''We intend to become the industry leader in adult nightclub entertainment.''
Well, good luck. I know that the "sin" industry is supposed to be recession-proof and all that, but that doesn't mean it'll be any better a stock than Pets.com was, though at least their business plan makes more sense. Still, I wouldn't quit the day job and bet it all on Scores' IPO. Rick's Cabaret stock closed Friday at $2.89, not exactly 1999-level Amazon numbers, y'know?
My wife likes to sleep in the car. If she's a passenger and she's not engaged in conversation, off to dreamland she goes. Doesn't matter how short the trip is - she can zonk out returning from the grocery store.
On longer trips, she likes to recline the seat for maximum comfort.
Unfortunately, reclining the car seat puts you at higher risk of injury. Sorry, Tiffany.
Today is one of those days - warm, sunny, bright blue sky - that my friend Matt calls a "convertible revocation day". Matt, who has an old Cabriolet convertible, says that if you're not driving with the top down on a day like today, you don't deserve to own a convertible. If you ever wonder why Houstonians put up with the brutal heat and humidity of the summer, it's because of days like today.
Ginger Stampley takes on the city of Bellaire for whining about some new construction to link the service roads on the West Loop. I have a little more sympathy for the Bellaire folks than she does because my neighborhood recently had to deal with TxDOT doing a Major Investment Study to "specifically study the transportation needs from US 59 at Spur 527, just south of the downtown Houston, north along IH 45 to Beltway 8 in north Harris County." This could have meant widening I-45, which runs east of my neighborhood, which in turn would have meant possibly bringing the freeway a lot closer to where I live. All of the proposed expansion would have had to be in our direction because there's a cemetary on the other side which isn't going anywhere.
The various neighborhood associations sounded a call to arms on this one, and as far as I can tell the MIS has been pretty much shelved. Given the way I-45 flooded during Tropical Storm Allison, I'm glad that no more pavement is going to be created for it. It's my hope, and I know others in my neighborhood agree, that the I-45 corridor will be one of the next in line for rail expansion. If they build a rail line near my house that runs up to IAH, I'm never driving to the airport again.
Thus, I have some sympathy for the Bellaire folks. Of course, the new construction won't uproot any current houses. And I won't be surprised if these folks complain when and if rail expansion comes to the West Loop. So it's not too much sympathy.
Boy, the hits just keep on coming for Enron, don't they? Let's see, we have Ken Lay calling Paul O'Neill and Don Evans to warn them about the impending implosion (bet some Enron employees would have liked the heads-up, too), John Ashcroft and the U.S. Attorney's Office in Houston recusing themselves from the investigation because they're too closely tied to Enron (Ashcroft got $57,000 from Ken Lay and Enron for his 2000 Senate bid), and everyone's favorite accounting firm saying that they, uh, might have destroyed some Enron documents that maybe they shouldn't have.
You know it's gonna be a good scandal when it provides plenty of moments of unintentional comedy. First, there's Team Bush's pathetic attempts to downplay his buddy-buddy relationship with Ken Lay by saying that Lay was friends with Ann Richards, too. Hey, guys? Ann Richards has been out of office since 1994. Dubya beat her in the governor's race that year. Does the word "irrelevant" mean anything to you?
The funniest bit, of course, is this priceless quote from press secretary Ari Fleischer:
"I think that people need to remember that the American people are sick and tired of partisan witch hunts, and endless investigations, particularly in the case here, if people try to make hay out of one party's involvement and contacts or relationships with Enron"
I'm sure the Houston Chronicle has hated having to write all of these stories about Enron and Bush. Houston's Only Information Source has been a very pro-Enron paper, and of course they've been on the Bush bandwagon ever since the Allen brothers first pitched a tent out here. Even when they criticize their favorite sons, they're always careful to point out that whatever naughty thing the boys have been up to, the Clintons did it before and did it worse. We should all have such staunch friends.
I'm not sure what to make of this article in InfoBeat in which Mira Sorvino claims that actors and actresses have really done the nasty while filming movie love scenes. She is in a position to hear this sort of thing, but with so little information I just can't say.
What prevents me from dismissing this outright is the fact that Sorvino claims that an actress told her that she had done it herself. In cases where there's been a rumor or claim of onscreen nookie in the past, it's inevitably the man who says it happened. The woman either denies it or remains silent. It's hard to take that kind of claim seriously.
Frankly, until both parties involved say they did it, and at least one witness confirms it, I'm not buying it. And I don't expect to hear such a claim any time soon.
Well, well. Seems Bud Selig may have violated baseball's rules by accepting a loan from Minnesota Twins owner/tightwad Carl Pohlad. The fact that Pohlad stands to make $250 million from the proposed contraction of a team that is both profitable and likely to challenge for the division title this year as they did last year is a mere coincidence.
This is precisely the problem with having an owner be the commissioner. Never mind the fact that he has no credibility with the players (or the public in the post-contraction shenanigans), it's an inherent conflict of interest. Ask yourself this question: Would Bart Giamatti have gone forward with that stoopid contraction scheme? Peter Ueberroth? Fay Vincent? Hell, even Bowie Kuhn was smarter than that, and he's got more integrity in his big toe than the entire Selig family does to boot.
The commissioner of baseball serves at the pleasure of the owners, as Fay Vincent discovered. That's how Selig, who was initially installed as an interim commish, got there in the first place - the owners were tired of paying someone who didn't jump through their hoops, so they gave the office to one of their own. He's a puppet and a farce and the worst thing to happen to baseball in a long time.
Rep. John Conyers was right to call for Selig's resignation. He's backed off a bit, but still thinks Selig should step aside until things can be clarified. Rep. Conyers, you were right the first time. Keep at it.
I should note that Ray Ratto sees it differently. I think we both agree on what kind of commissioner baseball needs, though:
Selig's resignation may be an intriguing notion to some, but he is still an employee rather than an emperor. If he is someday to be replaced, it should be not by another guy with a daughter who can run the store while Dad's away, but by someone who is paid by both the owners and players, who has a sufficiently long and lucrative contract and a sizable enough buyout to give him (or her) freedom of action to lead baseball with a clear, understandable, fully beneficial vision.In other words, a kind of commissioner baseball has never had.
Dan Wetzel give the Ratings Power Index (RPI) the dissecting it deserves. Remember, kids, it's all about the big boys hogging the money.
This brings up Off the Kuff's Immutable Law of NCAA Tournament Pools: Some team you've never heard of with 25 wins is a good bet to upset an overseeded 19-win BCS conference team that finished with a near-.500 conference record. In my mind, in many of these cases it's not an upset when a 12 seed with a sparkling record knocks off an overrated 5 seed. After three straight Sweet Sixteens, can anyone really call Gonzaga a Cinderella team? Now that they've spent some time in the Top 25, we'll see if they get a commensurate seeding. Don't hold your breath - the power of RPI is hard to resist.
Jonathan Chait tackles the conventional wisdom in college football that players from Southern schools are faster than players from Northern schools.
Now that I've started on my pledge to write more, I suppose I can't ignore my other annual New Year's resolution, which is to lose weight by eating better and exercising more. I could bore you by talking about how I hope to change my eating habits, but I'd rather bore you by talking about how I plan to exercise.
I've been playing pickup basketball at the gym across the street from where I work on a semi-regular basis (which will be more regular now, I promise!) for awhile now. If you can get past the fact that I'm a short, dumpy, slow-footed white guy who can't jump, you quickly come to the conclusion that I still suck. Fortunately, the guys there (mostly my coworkers) let me play anyway. I've at least developed a somewhat-credible outside game. And I've managed to avoid getting any teeth knocked out. So overall I'd classify this as a success.
Seriously, it's a pretty good workout. We play hard and have fun, which is important because I hate working out. It's a chore and it's boring, so anything that makes it less so makes it harder for me to find excuses not to go. I'm aiming for at least twice a week from here on out.
I see that I'm not the only blogger with a weight loss goal. Good luck!
UPDATE: Sigh. Another year, another unreached goal. Maybe this year...
Andrew Sullivan recently wrote a piece that compares President Bush to Frodo from Lord of the Rings. This prompted a reader to write in and claim that Bush is really Sam Gamgee:
Bush is most clearly NOT Frodo...Frodo has the legacy of the ring thrust on him, but he lacks a great deal of strength and moral dimension...The credit for the successful completion of the quest goes to Sam, whose virtues are simple but essential: faithfulness, determination, endurance, love and hope...Bush is not Frodo. Bush is Sam.
For a different take on the qualities that have made Bush do so well in the War on Terror, read this piece by Jacob Weisberg. If you want a more pessimistic outlook on the progress of the war, try this Robert Wright article.
Man, if you're not watching 24, you're missing some excellent TV. After watching tonight's episode, all I can say is wow. Find a friend with the tapes and dig in.
One of my readers (yes! I have readers! woo hoo!) wrote in to recommend Damian Penny's Daimnation blog for a good alternate viewpoint. I like his style and will add a link for him when the template server is up again. Thanks much for the tip.
I've also decided to give InstaPundit another try, which paid an instant dividend here - scroll down a bit and you'll see what I mean.
Getting back to Damian Penny, he criticizes Roger Ebert for a recent "Movie Answer Man" response. Penny says:
A writer to Roger Ebert's Movie Answer Man reports that a school district in Fargo, ND, cancelled a school trip to see the "Harry Potter" movie out of fears its portrayal of witchcraft would violate the separation of church and state. That's bad enough, but Ebert's response - that "I can understand the principle involved" - is even worse. I hope to God he was being sarcastic. I've feared for Ebert's critical faculties ever since he thrashed the hilarious Zoolander for being offensive to Malaysians.
Q. A school district in North Dakota did not allow students to attend the premiere of ''Harry Potter'' in Fargo. They feel the portrayal of witchcraft would be in violation of the separation of church and state. I am very disappointed about the action being taken and I really feel for the kids.A. Since this was to be an official class trip, I can understand the principle involved, and hope the school district applies the same standards to public prayers at football games, etc.
Maybe I'm just from another time and another place, but I recall going to see a Truffaut film with my French class while in middle school. The movie was called L'argent du Poche, which means "Small Change". I remember exactly two things about this movie:
New Buffy and 24 tonight. Life is good.
Will Vehrs makes a good point about what could have been done about Charles Bishop, the Tampa teenager who flew a small plane into a building.
The Internet Hall of Fame votes are in. If the netheads had their way, Ozzie Smith and Gary Carter would be in, while the likes of Steve Garvey and Dave Concepcion would be dropped from further consideration. In case you're curious, I voted for Smith, Carter, Rich Gossage (a travesty that he's not been enshrined), Bert Blyleven, Tommy John, and Alan Trammell.
In real life, only Ozzie Smith got in this year. Gary Carter missed by 11 votes. Here's how Rob Neyer would have voted, and here's The Sports Guy's view.
Looks like the Yankees and Mets won't get started on building new stadia this year. New mayor Michael Bloomberg says there isn't enough money this year, which isn't too surprising. What is surprising (to me, anyway) is that Rudy Giuliani thought this was doable without new taxes. $800 million is a lotta money to conjure up, Rudy, even if you're not rebuilding large parts of the city. Giuliani's optimism and never-say-die attitude after 9/11 will be a lasting part of his legacy, but I think he overreached here. Good on new Mayor Bloomberg for putting on the brakes.
I like retractable-roof stadia as much as the next guy - the Stadium Soon To Be Formerly Known As Enron Field is a fine place to catch a game - but it goes without saying that replacing Yankee Stadium is wrong. And if the long-term plan is to
Mark Evanier asks why there isn't a handy one- or two-word term that means "Moralizing based not on morals but on political advantage." His suggestion is "bennetting", in honor of public scold Bill Bennett and former Clinton lawyer Bob Bennett. I'll second that.
He Hate Me, also known as Rod Smart, made his NFL debut last night in what was basically a scrimmage between Philadelphia and Tampa Bay. Somehow, it's fitting that his first NFL carry was nullified by a penalty. Fortunately, he got another chance and wound up with two attempts for six yards. Smart has been on the active roster since November after a stint in the Candian Football League. The Eagles and the Bucs go at it again this Saturday, this time for real and in Philadelphia. Don't expect to see Smart unless things go horribly wrong for one team or the other.
The Supreme Court declined to hear a case in which a Minnesota teacher was reassigned by his school for attempting to bring creationism into his classroom. With all of the talk about how our science eduation is lacking, it's nice to see a school take a stand for actually teaching science in the classroom. If you need futher convincing about evolution, go visit the Talk.Origins archive.
Don't click on this link if you are of delicate constitution or recently grieving a deceased pet. I'm warning you. And skip to another entry if you don't want to know anything more.
UPDATE: I've put the rest under the More tag. It is kinda gross.
For the rest of you, this was an article about a televised news report in St. Louis that claimed that euthanized dogs and cats from the local animal shelter were being sent to rendering plants where they wound up in a variety of places, including possibly pet food. This sparked a huge outcry, which in turn caused the shelters to stop sending remains to the rendering plants.
Before you chalk that up as a win for decency and humanity, read this:
In the short term, with freezer space limited, the county has been forced to send its dead dogs and cats to a landfill. The city of St. Louis has taken the same route, arranging for a refrigerated trash truck for pickups.This makeshift solution has prompted still more concerns. If the landfills are not properly lined, the decaying corpses could leach into ground water. If they're not promptly covered, scavengers can pick off the dead dogs and cats.
Rendering has long been considered one of the most environmentally friendly ways to dispose of animal carcasses, because it recycles them into useful fat and protein. By far the bulk of rendered material comes from slaughterhouses. But some plants also mix in road kill, the trimmings from supermarket delis, dead farm animals and euthanized pets from shelters.
It's been said many times, but one of the best things about the Web is the proliferation of viewpoints. I stumble across well-written opinion pieces all the time, from people I've never heard of, most of whom are doing it for the sheer joy and ego of seeing their words in print. Contrast this to the Op-Ed pages of your local paper. The Houston Chronicle has its good points and bad points, with a bland editorial page being one of its demerits. It's not uncommon for me to find nothing of value there.
While it's nice that there's such a cornucopia out there, I worry that I'm just reading stuff that I already agree with, or at least mostly agree with. I'm moderate left, I like but don't worship free markets, and I tend to civil libertarianism. Take a look at the links on the left side of this page, and you'll find more of the same. I don't agree with all of these folks on everything, but for the most part none of them have ever made me snort in disgust and question their critical thinking skills.
All that does wonders for validating my worldview, but then there's that nagging little voice that asks where the dissent is. How can I really feel good about my worldview if I don't challenge it?
That brings me to my problem: I'm having a hard time finding writers who don't share my worldview that I can stand to read on a regular basis. The folks at Libertarian Samizdata have convinced me that zealous libertarians are a bunch of loons. I used to read InstaPundit, but frankly I can't see why so many bloggers revere him. Personally, I think he's read too many of his press clippings. I want to like Andrew Sullivan, but I still can't forgive him for implying that since I was born in New York and voted for Gore that I'm likely to side with the Taliban in the war on terror. Ginger Stampley tells me I should give him another try. We'll see.
If anyone reading this has any useful suggestions, please drop me a line.
It helps when going out of town to actually take the bag you've packed with clothes and toiletries with you instead of leaving it in the kitchen. Sigh. At least it was just an overnight visit to an old friend. We bought some emergency underwear and two toothbrushes and should make it through with only minor damage to my dignity.
We came up to Austin to visit my old roommate Matt. My wife Tiffany wanted to spend some time outdoors, and Austin is one of the best places in Texas for that. She's a member of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center so we put that membership to use and paid a visit. It's winter (or what passes for it here in Texas), so there wasn't much blooming, but the Center is still a fine place to visit. The displays on native plants were worth the trip by themselves. We plan on coming back when it's warmer.
From there we headed farther out of town to the Hamilton Pool Preserve. It's a fabulous swimming hole in a canyon/grotto south of Austin. You hike down a short trail to get there, and it's just amazing. I can't do it justice, so go here and look at some pictures.
Later we visited our friends David and Valerie, who made seafood pasta and Caesar salad. Add in wine, a variety of cheese, and some chocolate for dessert, and we were well rewarded for the day's activity. I expect to sleep well tonight. We head back to Houston tomorrow.
I'm a longtime member of the Rice University Marching Owl Band, also known as The MOB. The MOB is a scatter band, which is to say that despite the name, we don't march. We do humorous shows with a script, action, and props, and we run screaming from one formation to another. There are a number of scatter bands in the US, mostly Ivy League schools plus Virginia and Stanford, which was the birthplace of scatter bands.
The MOB has on occasion ruffled some feathers with its mostly satirical humor, but for the most part we are appreciated and left alone by the athletic department. Sad to say, this is no longer the case at UVa. Good luck in your fight with the powers that be, Pep Band. We who do not march salute you.
It's a statewide election year, which means more surrealism than the Salvador Dali Museum. Democratic candidate John WorldPeace is calling everyone in the state with a blistering attack on Tony Sanchez. As Dogbert once said, sometimes no sarcastic remark seems adequate. Did I mention how happy I am that Dan Morales has entered the race?
You know that Bud Selig has real credibility problems when he starts getting lampooned by indie cartoonists like Ruben Bolling. I'm happy to dogpile on Bud, but I've got a bone to pick with this cartoon.
Bolling snipes at Texas Rangers' owner Tom Hicks for his signing of Alex Rodriguez: "Let's see, expenses exceed revenues...I'll spend a quarter-billion dollars on a shortstop!" This statement is disingenuous and shows a lack of understanding of economics.
First off, as Rob Neyer says in his December 31 column, saying "a quarter of a billion dollars" is a rhetorical device, designed to inflame the senses. "[A] quarter of a billion isn't anything like a billion, any more than a quarter is like a dollar," says Neyer. Jason Giambi got an eighth of a billion dollars from the Yankees, and Kevin Brown got a ninth of a billion from the Dodgers, but no one ever says that. Heck, Brian L. Hunter just got one five-hundredth of a billion from the Astros. Sure, it's a lot of money, but it ain't a billion.
Second, Alex Rodriguez is a 24-year-old shortstop who just hit 52 home runs in a season. He's entering the peak of his career as the best shortstop since Honus Wagner, and when he's done (barring injury) he could well be considered one of the best players ever. History shows that players like A-Rod are worth whatever you pay them because there's no one else who can do what they do. Giving him top dollar was a good business decision.
Where Tom Hicks and other baseball owners fail as businessmen is paying too much for replaceable talent. Hicks paid good money to surround A-Rod with players like Andres Galarraga, Ken Caminiti, and Randy Velarde. None of them was worth what they were paid. There are plenty of other players who can do what they do better and/or cheaper. Paying a premium for something that is readily available makes no sense.
A good analogy for this is in show business. Remember when "The Cosby Show" was a megahit? It made sense for the producers of that show to pay Bill Cosby whatever he wanted. He was the irreplaceable ingredient on that show. You couldn't get anyone to step in and keep the show as successful as it was. On the other hand, it would have made no sense to pay a premium for any of the other actors on that show. You wouldn't want it to be Cosby and six dinner-theater performers, but there were and are plenty of people who could have replaced Tempestt Bledsoe or Malcolm-Jamal Warner at any time.
Similarly, it would have made no sense in the early days of "NYPD Blue" for the producers to offer David Caruso a big raise as an enticement to stay on instead of leaving to pursue a movie career. Caruso was talented, but as Jimmy Smits showed, he was replaceable. I'm not saying that Caruso or any of the Cosby Show kids had no value, just as I'm not saying that Caminiti and Velarde had no value. You couldn't put me in their place, for example. They certainly have more talent for what they do than the vast majority of us, and the salary structure of their professions reflects that. What they are not is stars. That's what Cosby and A-Rod were and are. Paying them star money is smart, not profligate.
Jonathan Chait has an interesting piece in The New Republic about the rise and recent fall of governors' reputations. Worth reading.
Congrats to the Miami Hurricanes for settling one debate. The debate of who they should have played isn't likely to go away. Look at it this way, Oregon fans: Had you played against Miami instead, you probably wouldn't be ranked as high as you are now.
I'm a dog person. Didn't get my first dog till I was 30, but I've been a dog person ever since. There's a smallish brown dog in my neighborhood who constantly escapes from her yard. I've caught her and walked or carried her back home more times than I can count, and I know that several of my other neighbors have done the same.
This is a friendly little dog, and I'm worried that one day while trotting around the neighborhood she's gonna get hit by a car. I've had thoughts about bringing her home - I doubt her owners would ever figure it out - but that's a practical impossibility. She doesn't appear to be abused or overtly neglected, she just has owners who are clueless or indifferent about gaps in their fence. (Yes, I've told them a couple of times about it.) I wish I could do something more, but I can't. I just hope she stays off the street when she slips out.
So tonight they finally play the Rose Bowl for the mythical national championship of college football. Nebraska wants to prove that their 62-point pasting by Colorado was a fluke, while Miami knows that if they win they are the Undisputed Champeens. Meanwhile, Oregon looks on and roots for Nebraska so they can perhaps claim a share of the title in a split vote (the coaches are bound to vote the winner of the BCS title game #1, but the writers can pick who they want), while schools like Texas, Tennessee, and Florida can only mutter under their breath about missed chances.
Lots of people have bloviated about a playoff system to replace the unwieldy and seemingly arbitrary BCS. There are many reasons why a playoff system is unlikely to come any time soon. For my money, as a fan of a small school in a lower tier conference, I see no benefit in a playoff, just another way for the big fat cats to squeeze out the little guy. There's a reason I don't watch most of the big bowls; I just wish I were a Nielsen family so I could hit them where it hurts.
From page one of today's Chronicle business section:
GALVESTON -- American National Insurance Co. and its subsidiaries lost about $20 million in the Enron Corp. stock crash because Enron executives and independent accountants lied about the energy giant's worth, an American National attorney said Wednesday.Trying to recoup losses on Enron stock, Galveston-based American National has filed a lawsuit against the accounting firm Andersen, which audited Enron's books, and against 29 present and former Enron directors and officers. The firm and Enron officials deliberately defrauded investors, American National maintains.
"They lied," said Galveston attorney Andrew Mytelka, who filed the lawsuit Dec. 27 in Galveston state District Judge Norma Venso's court. "I can't tell you all the ways in which they lied, but I believe they've lied to the public about what the true debt at the company was.
"It was a long-term strategy. If you read through our petition, you'll see how all these directors and officers walked away with hundreds of millions, and they left shareholders and employees with nothing."
More good political news in the Chron today with Dan Morales' surprise last-minute filing for the Democratic nomination in the governor's race. I was set to hold my nose and vote for Tony Sanchez against Rick "Dubya Lite" Perry, but I'm thrilled to have another choice. I liked Morales as AG and hope he can knock out Sanchez without too much blood or rancor.
I can forgive Tony Sanchez his flings with Dubya in the past. Our former governor did do a fairly good job of being bipartisan (unlike his presidency, where "bipartisan" means "save time and see things my way") while in Austin, so I can't complain too much about people crossing party lines to support him. I can forgive Tony Sanchez his verbal gaffes and Clayton Williams tendencies. But after Rick Perry shamefully dismissed Constitutional concerns over school prayer, what did Tony Sanchez say and do? Nothing. Sanchez "supports" school prayer. Well, now my prayers have been answered. Don't let me down, Dan.
UPDATE: Morales didn't just let me down, he dropped me on the ground and stepped on my face on his way out. Bastard.
Well, Houston Mayor Lee Brown was sworn in for his third and final term yesterday. I voted for him, as I did in the previous two elections, though I can't say I was all that enthusiastic about it. I'm not quite as down on Brown as some - I think he's done more good than his critics give him credit for - but I also can't honestly say that I voted for him any more than I voted against his opponents (in '97 and again this year; he had only token opposition in '99). Had it been Brown versus Chris Bell instead of Orlando Sanchez, I'd have given serious thought to supporting Bell.
In his inaugural address, Brown talked about working to change Houston's moronic term-limits law. If he can do this, I'll consider his administration a net gain even if I'm still bitter about his lack of leadership on rail (a topic I'll address another time). This law was the biggest blight on Houston's charter until that anti-gay Proposition 2 passed in November. Unfortunately, Brown is merely pushing for a watering-down of the term limits law; instead of three two year terms, Houston city officials could serve two four year terms, then run again after sitting out a term. I'd rather have no term limits, but this is better than what we've got now.
Every time term limits gets mentioned in the Chronicle, you can count on local activist/crank Clymer Wright to break out his crayons and dash off a letter to the editor defending the odious law he helped pass. Let me explain to you in small words why term limits suck, Clymer: I don't want you telling me who I can and cannot vote for.
I'll stipulate that the deck is stacked towards incumbents. Campaign financing and gerrymandered districts make it tough to vote the bums out. But not impossible. Anyone who thinks that we need an artificial way of ensuring turnover in elected office believes that the voters are stupid and can't be trusted.
I'm a fan of the Rice Owls. Before you start snickering, you should know that the Rice football team finished this season 8-4, their best record since 1953 when Tommy Lewis came off the bench in the Cotton Bowl to tackle Dicky Moegle on his way to the end zone. Anyway, we fans on the Rice fan forum speculated endlessly about bowl possibilities, since the Western Athletic Conference only had two guaranteed bowl slots this year. Since Rice didn't win the conference, it was gonna take a miracle for the pieces to fall into place. The bowl we focused on was the hometown Galleryfurniture.com bowl. Had a Big 12 or C-USA team failed to qualify, we figured we had a good shot at it.
It didn't happen, and so Texas A&M took on and defeated former SWC conference mate TCU. We've all moped and done the coulda-shoulda-woulda thing. Then today I came across Bill Simmons', aka The Sports Guy's report on the game. And y'know, all of a sudden it doesn't feel quite as bad.
The sensible and oft-cited Virginia Postrel touches on the debate between Large Soulless Chain Bookstores and Small Touchy-Feely Mom and Pop Bookstores. A recent article in The Atlantic came out firmly in favor of the large chains. Postrel cites a Glenn Reynolds piece that goes into this some more.
I sent Postrel an email about this, in which I point out that it all depends on what kind of bookstore you're talking about. I'm fortunate that Houston has an excellent mystery/thriller/crime bookstore called Murder By The Book. It has everything you could want from a small bookstore - a staff that knows you and your tastes, used books and book searches, author signings, a book club, etc etc etc. Of course, being a small independent, it can't give you what the bigs can, namely discount prices. I consider this to be a fine tradeoff for the service, and I frequent them often.
Postrel was kind enough to reply, and agreed that small bookstores do serve a valuable place in the market as niche and specialty providers. It's just that most of them haven't admitted this, and so they try futilely to compete on the same terms as the majors.
This got me to thinking about the big versus small debate in general. It's easy to trash the Starbuckses of the world (and as a non-coffee drinker, it's a freebie for me), but let's face it: If the experience of going to them were so gloomy and impersonal, they'd have failed long ago. I grew up on Staten Island, New York, which 20-30 years ago was very much a small town, despite being part of New York City. My family and I did most of our personal consuming at small shops since there were no chains (outside of the occasional fast food joint) to speak of. Do I, a defender of the little guys, still do my business this way nowadays? Let's see. By the way, most of the businesses from my youth were within walking distance, even for a kid:
So I went to see Lord of the Rings over the Christmas holiday. It's a good movie and I enjoyed it, though I thought it dragged at a few points, much to the consternation of some of my Tolkien-loving friends. If you haven't read the books (as I haven't), some of the character names and places will zip past you, so pay attention.
Seeing LotR meant I got to see a trailer for Star Wars: Send In The Clones, or whatever they're calling it. This particular trailer featured an awful lot of Anakin and Amidala mooning over each other in a forbidden-teen-love kind of way. My initial reaction was "My God, they're making Anakin's Creek!" Fortunately, the latter half of the trailer was of the whizzy spaceships and robot headbooting that we've come to expect from this genre. I expect to see this movie, and I figure I'll probably like it. I liked "The Phantom Menace", but I should note that I was not one of those types who queued up several hours in advance to see the 12:01 AM showing. Those of my friends who did do that were rather disappointed with ST:TPM, but they had a lot invested in it.
I'm about to discuss this trailer a little. In doing so, I'm going to mention a plot point from "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi". I believe this item is fairly common knowledge - it's been parodied in many formats, including the excellent short film George Lucas In Love - but to be fully compliant with the US Anti-Spoiler Act of 1997, I'm obliged to encourage anyone who might not know what I'm about to say to skip to the next entry or another blog. You have been warned.
If I recall my Star Wars prehistory correctly, this should be the movie where Anakin and Amidala make with the Jedi horizontal-body tricks, thus setting the stage for the arrivals of Luke and Leia. We know that Anakin doesn't stick around to help raise the kids. I figure that after he knocks up Amidala, he abandons her, thus forcing her to give birth at a Wal-Mart and eventually find happiness and a purpose in life in a small Southern town filled with lovable eccentrics. Guess the Oprah demographic will approve the test-screening.
On another note, the trailer for the Spider-Man movie looked kickass. I might be slightly biased by the gratuitous wet-T-shirt scene of Kirsten Dunst as Mary Jane, but then I've let lesser things than that affect my judgment. Chuck-Bob says check it out.
My friend Ginger Stampley takes on Michelle Malkin's latest so-called column today. Says she before she commences with the butt-kicking:
You'd think by now I'd have learned to stop reading Michelle Malkin editorials, given that they have zero information content and consist of the lame-brainedest sort of sloganeering. I must be a masochist, though, because I keep making the same mistake over and over again.
BTW, I have a secret theory about Malkin. I figure she's got to be Pat Buchanan's love child with Ezola Foster. Explains a lot, doesn't it?
I spent a few years in college and again in grad school writing a sports column called "Off the Kuff", so I expect this thing to have a fair bit of sports-related content. If that makes you gag, there's plenty of warblogs out there.
I'll have a few words to say about the BCS later this week, when they finally finish all the games (as my wife said "You mean the Rose Bowl isn't on tonight? But the Rose Bowl Parade was today!"), but for now I'll just say that I've had a hard time bringing myself to give a rat's ass about a lot of the so-called "major" bowls. I'm sorry I missed South Carolina's from-the-jaws-of-defeat win over Ohio State and everyone's favorite drunk-driving quarterback, but with the exception of the Fresno State-Michigan State game, the rest of what I've seen so far has been a snoozefest.
There was one amusing moment at the end of Oregon's 38-16 blowout of Colorado in the Fiesta Bowl. With 18 seconds left, Colorado tight end Daniel Graham caught a touchdown pass, then spiked the ball over the goal post. This drew a 15-yard flag for "excessive celebration", and the Buffalo kicker promptly flubbed the extra point. Dude, you're getting your butts whipped on national TV. What in the name of Howard Schnellenberger are you celebrating?
Awfully nice of Rex Grossman to give Steve Spurrier a built-in excuse if Florida loses, no?
Well. I recall making a New Year's Resolution a coupla years ago to write on a regular basis. Good thing I never specified what year I was going to start. Let's see how long I can keep this up.