Archive for May, 2008

A while back I posted on the passing of Pehr Bolling, a Swedish immigrant and local resident who (among many remarkable things) after retiring built a functional replica of a viking ship. The obit is unfortunately deep in the Trib archives now, but the family was kind enough to send me a video of the ship's launch. It's particularly moving to me since my own grandfather has been building and restoring boats as a serious hobby/part-time job for most of his adult life*, mostly gorgeous mid-century power boats but also James River bateau, an old, distinctively Virginia shallow-water boat that was used for shipping on the James River.

*Couldn't find any boat pictures (they look like this), but here's some furniture made by either him or his father (scroll down to where it says Moser; not to be confused with Thos. Moser furniture). It was weird growing up in a totally standard middle class house with normal middle class furniture mixed in with incredibly beautiful handcrafted Southern furniture. This is why I'm amazed by craftsmen like Bolling, although I didn't inherit any craft skills of my own, which are in abundance on both sides of my family (my other grandfather was a diesel mechanic and newspaper press operator/mechanic/jack-of-all-trades), or at least I was dissuaded by family-dinner stories of epic power tool injuries. So I learned Photoshop and Quark, which are way less engaging but won't take off any fingers.

PS: The Craftsman, a new book by Richard Sennett, looks awfully interesting. Haven't read it yet but it's on my list. Here's a good rundown, and a review. Sennett, FYI, is a Chicago native and U. of C. grad.

Flexing Your Buying Power - Dress for Less and Less - NYTimes.com

"Clothing is one of the few categories in the federal Consumer Price Index in which overall prices have declined — about 10 percent — since 1998 (the cost of communication is another)."

May 26, 1908: Mideast Oil Discovered -- There Will Be Blood

The site was so remote that it took five days before D'Arcy got word by telegram in England. "If this is true," he replied, "all our troubles are over."

BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | Does this picture make you angry?

"There has been a conspicuous trend in the last five years towards the production of negatively-valued women in the public sphere."

BLDGBLOG: The Other Night Sky

"We are now partially building ourselves a new night sky – and this surrogate astronomy is being put there so we can make international phone calls."

Contractors Are Kept Busy Maintaining Abandoned Homes - NYTimes.com

"Ms. Lang of Integrated Mortgage Solutions has started a nonprofit group, No Paws Left Behind, to find homes for abandoned pets and to offer help with pets to homeowners in foreclosure."

"Selling one pair of PowerRiser advanced jumping stilts . . . . They are a lot of fun just don't have the time to use them."

I had no idea such a thing existed. But they're obviously way more entertaining than rollerblades, especially for the rest of us.

It's not like there's a particular rivalry between Northwestern and the U. of C., but I still thought this was funny in a malicious sort of way. Kudos to the Trib reporters (Jodi Cohen and Brian Cox) for giving the NU class of 2008 just enough rope to hang themselves.

"If your goal in the speaker selection process was to make graduating seniors happy about leaving this university, then mission accomplished," Matthew Braslow of Vernon Hills wrote on Tuesday to Northwestern President Henry Bienen. Braslow also said he will not attend.

"Matthew, grow up," Bienen wrote back Wednesday morning. Bienen's e-mail added: "You also sound like a very unhappy person. I am sorry for that. Hopefully things will improve for you over the years."

But other seniors also seem to be taking the choice as a personal slight, calling the decision to honor Daley everything from "lame" to "a letdown" in interviews with the Tribune and in some of nearly 200 messages posted on The Daily Northwestern student newspaper's Web site.

[snip]

"I thought we'd have someone with a much higher profile, especially after President Bienen hyped it so much," said senior Simon Lu. "I thought it would be someone with a national or international profile . . . I was hoping someone more famous would show up." 

If I were Henry Bienen I'd make them listen to Todd Stroger too, just to be a dick about it. I dunno about you but I'm learning a lot about Chicago this week. Posting will be light/non-existent today and/or tomorrow, so just let it sink in a bit.

Update: I should probably make the subtext clear. In an increasingly urbanized country, big-city mayors matter. If you live in Chicago or plan to after graduation, Mayor Daley is as or more important to your day-to-day life--the taxes you pay, the businesses you might work for, the neighborhood you live in--than Barack Obama, not to mention Tony F***ing Blair. There are legitimate reasons to question the choice, in particular the decision to give Daley yet another soapbox, but the idea that Daley isn't important or famous enough to grace NU's graduation isn't just hopelessly pretentious, it's actually a real conceptual problem.

Drop whatever you're doing and read this essay on how Chicago's civic government is a model for 21st century politics. It does for unmitigated gall what Barry Bonds did for home-run hitting, with about as much class and honesty, but it actually makes a lot of sense if you think about it.

And that's when it hit me--of course Daley's Chicago is a model for America in the 21st century. It's expensive, it doesn't work very well, it's been designed so it's virtually impossible to fix without costly technical help, and yet it's really popular.**

Chicago is the perfect product.

---

* Commenter petronius: "Chicago (and Illinois) is not 'post-partisan', it is omnicriminal."

**I was going to say it's like an iPod, which is pretty and seemingly very simple until it breaks, and then you take it to the Genius Bar and they ask you for an ungodly sum of money, only unlike an iPod it isn't secretly easy to fix, by which I mean you can't open it with a small flathead screwdriver and reseat the loose hard drive connector, metaphorically speaking.

Coudal writes: "The old graphic identity of the Chicago superstation was totally forgettable but now that even seems pretty good. I can't help thinking that this rebranding must be a joke. Wow." I dunno--I see either Patrick Nagel or The Crying Game, see for yourself. Goth Glam* bedroom eyes don't scream "Reno 911 and Matlock reruns" to me (more like "O'Hare strip club"), but generally I like it--TV is so focused-grouped to death that I'm impressed no one at WGN America was, you know, trying.

Huh.

"The retailer said LL Cool J clothing will be offered in the juniors', kids', and young men's departments, with future plans to also offer accessories."

If the accessories don't include a stuffed panther toy with a ginormous gold chain, I'm not interested. 

* "Over the years his attention to the world he lives in has made him a one-man cross-reference."

* "If you can truly 'retire,' you had a job, but not an occupation."¹

* "Studs has an interviewing technique I admire: He combines astonishment with curiosity. He can't believe his ears. He repeats with enthusiasm what his subject just said, and the subject invariably continues and expands and wants to make his own story better."

A great essay by Ebert on Studs Terkel. Read it.

1. This is a bit of a narrow view; there are obviously some truly wonderful occupations that age will eventually prevent you from doing. Nonetheless, it's a good argument for sedentary occupations like writing, or for seeking ways to keep your hand in the game generally.

"The highest corn prices since at least the Civil War, based on Chicago Board of Trade data, mean U.S. feedlots are losing money on every animal they sell, discouraging production as rising global incomes increase meat consumption and a declining dollar spurs exports."

You can try skipping the intermediary--i.e. the cow--and make seitan. I recommend lots of barbecue sauce. Also: jerk tofu.

There's something slightly charming about the idea of just passing down the Olympic Stadium from one city to another:

"The organisers of the London Olympics are planning to pass on more than just the Olympic flag to the next host city when the games end in September 2012. Senior officials have opened talks with Chicago, one of the early favourites to host the 2016 games, which could result in the bulk of London's main stadium being dismantled, boxed-up and shipped across the Atlantic to be rebuilt."

The Field » The Nightmare Ticket Is Dead

"You shall know the politically inept among us by those that continue to advocate for The Disaster Ticket"

Poor ticket sales, expected protests scuttle Bush-McCain fundraiser at Phoenix Convention Center - Phoenix Business Journal:

"Bush's Arizona fundraising effort for McCain is being moved to private residences in the Phoenix area."

Inside the Scandal That Rocked the Formula One Racing World

"He proceeded to spill the strange tale of the woman with the stack of what appeared to be top-secret Ferrari documents."

Bad Astronomy Blog » Birth cry of a supernova

"for the first time in history, astronomers have unambiguously observed the exact moment when a star explodes."

Amongst Friends x Force Of Nature Fall '08 T-Shirts

mediabistro.com: TVNewser

First, two things, just so you know where I'm coming from.

A) I don't mean to brag, but I do think I have an above-average grasp of the English language, particularly in regards to journalism, media generally, and politics, and am attuned to nuance.

B) I do support Obama over Clinton, personally. And I think the latter has said some things in defense of her continued candidacy that are, at best, an insult to our intelligence. It doesn't really bother me that she seems to want to go all the way to the convention, but I wish she'd stop making dumb arguments in her own defense. Hell, I don't even mind wrong arguments, I just hate the dumb ones. And the dumb and morally offensive ones I would hope would have already convinced everyone to pack up the tents.

Having said that, the total and complete freakout over her RFK reference is a total mystery to me. Five out of the eight diaries at DailyKos right now are about it; Keith Olbermann has a Special Comment; this post rounds up comments from the leading lights in the liberal blogosphere about this being the final straw; the MSM is latching on with headlines like Hillary Clinton Raises the Specter of the Unspeakable; etc. I realize that the Clinton campaign has recently turned into a bullshit factory and after the Zimbabwe comparison I lost all sympathy, but I think the coalescing conventional wisdom on this latest statement is wrong.

Here's what she said: "My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California."

She was talking about how primary campaigns used to be longer. People remember significant things more than insignificant ones, and presumably the two most handy examples floating around in her head were her husband in '92 (significant for obvious reasons) and Kennedy in '68 (ditto).

Now, it so happens that--again--her reasoning is flawed (also). I'm not sure what else is wrong with it, though. But I'd be glad to hear arguments:

"The tongue slips, of course, but is she really arguing that she shouldn't drop out because Obama might get shot?"

No.

"New HRC campaign rationale -- Obama might get shot and killed before formally securing the nomination, so she may as well stay in the race!"

Ibid.

"You only have to spend a few minutes talking with African-Americans about this campaign to discover that the fear that Obama could be assassinated is very much on their minds. It is in everyone's subconscious, especially Michelle Obama's. To refer to the June assassination of Bobby Kennedy in the context of reasons to stay in this interminable race against Barack Obama is therefore catastrophically inappropriate."

Wait, but Bobby Kennedy was white. What if Hillary was coming down to the wire with John Edwards and she'd said that? Edwards kind of looks like Bobby Kennedy--so would it be worse?

"The fear of a president or a presidential candidate being shot or assassinated is horrifying precisely because recent history teaches us that it can happen [just read that whole sentence; no one cares about prose anymore; please turn out the lights when you leave--Mgmt]. We don't need anybody to remind us, and we certainly don't need anybody to remind whatever suggestible wackos might be lurking in the shadows."

So we should definitely write lots and lots about one comment to the Argus Bugle-Whatever editorial board so we can keep talking how no one should talk about it.  But aren't you... isn't... your powers are too strong for me....

I've said it before and I'll say it again--language is going the way of keywords and tag clouds. What used to look like

"Robert Kennedy was still campaigning in California in 1968 when he was assassinated"

now becomes something like

"Robert Kennedy Assassination 1968 California was still when he campaigning."

That's not a world I want to live in, even though I'm a Web editor and would have a clear evolutionary advantage.

PS: Have a nice Memorial Day weekend. Like I said last year, read this. Also, Robert Lowell. (h/t ptb)

Gas, although way cheaper than NyQuil*, is still considered expensive by some, and it's having an effect:

"Though February 2008 showed a modest 1 billion mile increase over February 2007, cumulative VMT has fallen by 17.3 billion miles since November 2006. Total VMT in the United States for 2006, the most recent year for which such data are available, topped 3 trillion miles.

"Additionally, the U.S. Department of Transportation estimated that greenhouse gas emissions fell by an estimated 9 million metric tons for the first quarter of 2008.

The estimated data show that VMT on all U.S. public roads have dropped since 2006." (via)

*Synthesis. Related, Denis Leary has the definitive word on NyQuil.

"He also installed a gravity flow system that would allow a firetruck—his or the fire department's—to tap into his in-ground swimming pool.

"'Personally, if my house caught on fire, I wouldn't want this guy on my property,'" said neighbor Audrey Mitchell, who is no relation, ticking off a list of at least four local fire departments that could come to their aid. 'Why would I want his dirty pool water?'"

Here's the thing--in this story, I wouldn't want you on my property even if my house was on fire isn't rhetorical, or a kiss-off. That's actually what the debate is about.

"For much of her youth, Sitatian Kaelo lived in a mud hut in Kenya with no windows, no electricity and baby goats underfoot."

[snip]

"Kaelo might have suffered the fate of so many young Kenyan girls -- becoming a preteen bride and then being given away in exchange for a few cows, goats and sheep.

"Instead, she graduated with honors Thursday, delivered the commencement address to the Class of 2008 and is set to study medicine at Rush University Medical Center this fall."

It's the American dream: next, she'll have a kid, and that kid will grow up to be accused of being a privileged yuppie elitist foreign Muslim/Muslim apostate.

Of course, it wasn't always so: "I for one connected with what they were saying. Then again, I myself am from humble origins. My father was a poor Virginia turd miner." The best Daily Show clip ever. That or any Even Stevphen or Produce Pete.

More information than you could possibly ever want on McDonald's attempt to dethrone Starbucks, a subject which I find perversely interesting. Isn't their coffee competition more like 7-11? Anyway, buy local, the coffee at Intelligentsia is much better. Plus you support the nobility of competition.

Those who are interested in knocking off Starbucks are encouraged to burn the hell out of the beans, if the company's brand tag cloud is any indication. I suspect this has something to do with the American desire for technological intervention in food--there's not a heck of a lot you can do with coffee to ensure customers know that someone has mucked around with the natural flavor, so burning the beans has to suffice.

PS: Here's the tag cloud for that august body we're so passionate about bringing to Chicago, the International Olympic Committee. They should fit right in.

jkski

"All this, then, is to ask the following question: what should we make of the fact that Barrack Obama, the now presumptive democratic nominee for president, who both explicitly identifies with Kennedy and faces the same type of problem as Kennedy did (the problem of being identified as “merely” a minority and elitist candidate), said that Omar was his favorite character on The Wire? What kind of latent ideological power is he tapping?

"I ask this question, of course, not to try to answer it (as these folks have) but because I have a thesis that sets it up: Omar is a cowboy."

If you underthink it, the obvious answer is that Omar is funny, daring, and charismatic and, so, he's an obvious favorite character (mine is Lester Freamon, it's an aspirational thing). If you perhaps overthink it, it's pretty interesting nonetheless. (h/t Moacir)

I remarked to a friend that I thought the R. Kelly trial might actually stretch Chicago media to the breaking point--copies of the Sun-Times spontaneously combusting, Starbucks locations instituting 24-hour shifts, ambulances ferrying queasy reporters to local ERs, marches on City Hall for WiMax, and so forth. For a moment, when I was seeing headlines like "Fourth R. Kelly jury member selected" (IIRC) I thought it just might happen, but even with the showing of the infamous tape, coverage--not to mention the teasing of the coverage--has been muted. I've been having to constantly check back on expat Bill Wyman's Hitsville blog for critical, moxified writing on the trial.

We're not even close to an R. KELLY: DEFIANT headline yet. Has there been a sudden attack of taste, or is the city just pacing itself? Perhaps we need to call in some reserves from the New York Daily News.

ABC News: Report: U.S. Soldiers Did 'Dirty Work' for Chinese Interrogators

"a 2002 arrangement between the United States and China, which allowed Chinese intelligence to visit Guantanamo and interrogate Chinese Uighurs held there"

Walruses - Animals - Natalie Angier - Science - New York Times

“A walrus really likes to be blown in the face.”

Footnoted: Is Jodie Foster Responsible for Reaganomics? - Chronicle.com

"Taxi Driver is the most important movie ever made from the standpoint of creating GDP," Mundell said. "It's the movie that made the Reagan revolution possible."

YuppiePunk » A (Not So) Complete History of Literary Tattoos

"That’s Henry David Thoreau on the left, William Faulkner on the right."

Who's the greatest film composer of all time? - By Jan Swafford - Slate Magazine

Takemitsu was an amazing figure: a first-rate straight composer, detective novelist, and fanatic of film and pop music. ("My teachers," he said, "are Duke Ellington and nature.")

Just because the Red Menace is now just a sometimes catchy ("July July"), sometimes grating ("Song for Myla Goldberg") band from Portland doesn't mean we have to stop being afraid of it:

"Hugh also notes that The Decemberists typically open their shows with what I'm sure is a stirring rendition of the Soviet national anthem. No word on whether they opened the Obama rally with such a performance, but I'm certain our trusted media would have reported it if they did."

Thers at Whiskey Fire notes: "Quick, someone e-mail Michael Goldfarb a detailed explanation of how Obama only connects with African-American voters because he won the endorsement of Death Cab for Cutie. Bet you a nickel he'd go for it." I am excited about the integration of establishment indie culture into mainstream political narratives just because of the silliness that will result. Somehow we skipped politicians having to answer for Husker Du or something. Wasn't that what Rock the Vote was for?

PS: I go back and forth on Death Cab, but "Company Calls" is pretty undeniable. Maybe because it's the closest they get to sounding like Heatmiser? Anyway, here's Ben Gibbard covering the Mountain Goats' magisterial "Palmcorder Yajna" (real version here). It's weird.

Worth noting: Songza, from (or a side project of?) the local software company Humanized, is awesome.

An outdoor NHL hockey game--I can't help it, that would rule. Outdoor winter sports in incongruous stadiums is just a good idea. Plus it's one step closer to my brilliant idea to unify Chicago and make it a world city.

Inspired by Josh Stein's Netflix-based investigation into Williamsburg, here's what Chicagoans are apparently watching:

Impressively self-obsessed. I'm sad that Chain Reaction didn't make the list.

Hyde Park Progress has a nice update on Jeanne Gang's new luxury condo in Hyde Park, the Solstice. The mockup looks good, though it's expensive as hell. And that's ok with me, save for the fact that unless housing prices reach apocalyptic levels I'll never be able to like, live there. Hyde Park already has plenty of luxury housing in condo form, but it's aging and in my minimal experience is boring and/or inconvenient to the rest of the neighborhood. Also, Elizabeth Fama makes an important point--something like this really, truly wouldn't be possible if the Hyde Park Co-Op was still the only grocery store around. Seriously, you don't understand how bad it was.

With this, the Co-Op's demise, the planned demolition of Harper Court, the arrival of Park 52, and such, there will be some natural skepticism towards a real, honest-to-goodness gentrification of Hyde Park. I'm not sure--Hyde Park (particularly the commercial areas) has been in a state of half-assed gentrification that never really took after the neighborhood was urban renewed into its present state. Which was destructive and a stain on the university's history that won't go away, but what's done is, unfortunately, done. What was left is a nice place to live if you like reasonably priced stuff that's convenient but not nice enough to be a destination for people who don't live in the neighborhood. Which is not a bad balance most of the time.

"But the impact of high-cost loans extends beyond individuals. The higher mortgage payments increase the risk of foreclosure and limit homeowners’ ability to fix up their properties, according to Smith. As a result, boarded-up and dilapidated properties diminish property values and attract gangs."

The Chicago Reporter looks at the effect of mortgage rates in Roseland, which (based on a small, recent sample) run twice the federal prime rate.

"Mell said he first realized he was in violation of the re-registration requirement about a year ago. When he tried to re-register his guns belatedly, the Chicago Police Department's Gun Registration Section refused to bend the rules. Mell appealed that ruling to the city's Department of Administrative Hearings but decided to re-write the law instead." Via The Agitator.

PS I think Ben Joravsky and Mick Dumke's thumbnail sketch of Ald. Mell is relevant here. 

Hullabaloo

"Immigrants of the past quarter-century have been assimilating in the United States at a notably faster rate than did previous generations, according to a study released today."

Send in the Latrines - New York Times

"In our sanitary, plumbed lives, the toilet — an engineering marvel — removes waste out of sight and out of mind. As Steven Pinker recently wrote in “The Stuff of Thought,” the vocabulary of excretion has sneaked in and taken the taboo place previously held by religious words, and this switch parallels the rise of sewers and the sanitizing of excrement."

The surprising popularity of Bach's complex, esoteric The Art of Fugue. - By Jan Swafford - Slate Magazine

"Just about everything that's possible to do in music, Bach could do as well as, or better than, anybody else. But he loved leaping self-imposed technical hurdles, the more fiendish the better. Thus The Art of Fugue."

Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Conversation » Portishead Videos by Nick Uff

"This article from the Bournemouth Echo says that the 44-year-old Uff makes his living as a gardener, which helps to explain why I’ve never heard of him or seen his beautiful hand-drawn animation before."

United Airlines News | Chicago Business News, Analysis & Articles | United, US Airways tank in customer survey | Crain's

"Unless someone calls for a quorum, the assumption is that the quorum is present."

--Ald. Toni Preckwinkle 

Where can you find cheap gas? You don't need a map, or the SPR--it's everywhere around you!

Worth noting, from the article: "In 1975, gasoline made up 33.4 percent of the total cost of owning and operating a car. By 2006, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, gasoline costs had declined to just 17.1 percent of the total cost of car ownership. Of course, fuel costs have risen by about $1 per gallon since 2006, but even with those increases, fuel continues to be a relatively small part of the cost of car ownership. By contrast, the fixed costs of ownership—insurance, licensing, taxes, and financing—have increased nearly fivefold since 1975. Maintenance costs have also quintupled over the same time period."

Holy s**t:

"Full-bloodedness is an old coin that's gaining currency in the new American realm. Meaning: Politics may no longer be so much about race and gender as about heritage, core values, and made-in-America. Just as we once and still have a cultural divide in this country, we now have a patriot divide."

[snip]

"We love to boast that we are a nation of immigrants. But there's a different sense of America among those who trace their bloodlines back through generations of sacrifice."

[snip]

"What they know is that their forefathers fought and died for an America that has worked pretty well for more than 200 years. What they sense is that their heritage is being swept under the carpet while multiculturalism becomes the new national narrative. And they fear what else might get lost in the remodeling of America."

As an approximately tenth-generation American, I think I can say for sure that the America I live in that's worked pretty well has worked pretty well through about as many generations of immigration, almost all of which have been accompanied by similar xenophobic pearl-clutching--including that time we thought Japanese-Americans were going to undermine the government, that time that we thought the Germans were going to undermine the government (more), etc.

Chicago: The best city in the U.S., at least this year, according to the breathless biz mag Fast Company. Why Chicago? I dunno, I couldn't find the article that explained it. The piece by Alex Kotlowitz talks about about the Hideout and green roofs and other stuff, which mentions that our economy is growing faster than NYC's or LA's. Also, Barack lives here!

I'm sure that all the wonderful trappings will follow, as they did for Des Moines, the hippest city in the U.S., 2003: "in Des Moines, companies have only increased their family-friendly perks, making life in Iowa's capital city today feel as hip -- and as privileged -- as in Silicon Valley circa 1999."

I wonder if the people who called out Obama for having connections to incompetent ex-terrorist Bill Ayers and angry Jeremiah Wright--I'm looking at John Kass and Neil "Dissent is Treason"* Steinberg in particular--will be all over the news that John McCain's chief political strategist, Charlie Black, has a long history of lobbying for terrorists and dictators? Sure, Obama's main man David Axelrod works for Daley, but Daley is an awfully mild tyrant compared to Ferdinand Marcos, Mobutu Sese Seko, and others on Black's bloody client list. I'd much rather Daley stick a museum in Grant Park than, like, 80,000 land mines.

This seems like it would interfere with Steinberg's appraisal of McCain as "a genuine war hero with the courage of his convictions. . . . the one man on the Republican bench who stands a chance of becoming a president we could all be proud of." Now, most of the people I am proud of would run screaming from a person who openly defended Angolan terrorist Jonas Savimbi, mostly because he was paid handsomely to. McCain is throwing lobbyists under the Straight Talk Express left and right--including the one he chose to run the Republican convention this fall, after it came out that he'd lobbied for the Burmese dictatorship that's been denying aid to victims of the cyclone--but Black is still safe.

Now, if I was the kind of person to worry about who a politician associates with, I'd be extra-special concerned about a politician who hired, as his most important employee, a hack who took blood money to say nice things about dictators and terrorists so that our elected officials would give our money to them.

Perhaps Kass and Steinberg will read about Charlie Black and be terribly, terribly horrified at McCain's lack of judgment or morals or sense and sit silently at their desks fretting about what his association with--I mean, well-compensated and ongoing employment of--Charlie Black says about McCain.

Or, you know, they'll dismiss it as wimpy liberal liberaling or something. Stranger things have happened. I long ago locked my optimism about anything political away in a tiny box so it wouldn't spoil, and I only bring it out for family and close friends. More on Black here, here, here, and here.

Also worth noting that, more recently, Black's outfit lobbied for Ahmed Chalabi and ran an Iraq war good-news propaganda mill for the Pentagon, assigned to plant stories in the Iraqi press about how swell things were going in the three-way civil war circa 2005. Need "straight talk"? Buy it from Charlie Black.

* For the record, I'm still stunned that the Sun-Times let Steinberg basically call Jeremiah Wright a traitor ("near-treasonous" is a sorry cop-out). Treason is an actual crime defined by actual laws and punishable by actual death, and it's one of the worst charges you can possibly level at a person. And to do so because someone made a public, and not unusually radical, foreign policy critique is just bizarre. If everyone who said overwrought shit about our country and how it sucks was a traitor, most of us would be in jail.

Treason was defined more narrowly in America than in England because we wanted people to be able to say stuff like that without feeling obliged to behead them. Why does Neil Steinberg hate America?

"Anybody who we hire, [critics] seem to have a problem with."

--Larry Mullins, spokesman for Todd Stroger

On one hand, I usually admire people who employ ex-cons, because the rehabilitation of former prisoners is a pretty serious societal issue. On the other, I dunno if Todd Stroger is the man to do it. 

Instant messaging 'a linguistic renaissance' for teens - tech - 15 May 2008 - New Scientist Tech

"teenagers risk the disapproval of their elders if they use slang, and the scorn of their friends if they sound too buttoned-up. But instant messaging allows them to deploy a "robust mix" of colloquial and formal language"

Reason Magazine - Hit & Run > Reforming Forensics

"Controlled studies have shown that the bias forensic experts absorb even by such seemingly innocuous interactions as speaking with police and prosecutors before running tests can have a disturbingly significant impact on their results."

How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power | World news | The Guardian

"The evidence has also prompted one former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor to argue that the late senator's action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to the enemy."

Jason's Journal: Grief Bacon

"the Germans have a word, Kummerspeck, for the excess weight one gains from emotion-related overeating. It translates literally as “grief bacon.”"

Eschaton

"And that made me realize that it's all about the endowment. Everything. They want genders about even so most of the kids can have fond memories of college sex. They have sports teams to create lifelong bonds. Campuses create a sense of permanent community"

The Cost of Smarts - New York Times