Ramblings

Via Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber comes this awesome piece of research from 1958 investigating what would happen if you locked young children in refrigerators. Closing young children into refrigerators and watching them react - it's science!

My favorite line is "Some refrigerators unfortunately turned out to be impossible to escape." Also an interesting observation was that children of uneducated parents had better success at escaping than children of educated parents.

It all reminds me of this time I was playing hide and seek sometime before I turned 5 years old and locked myself into a large wooden chest. When my sister did not find me, I tried to leave only to find that the latch had closed on the outside - and started emitting a primal scream while thrashing about inside this wooden box. And that is my very first memory of being terrified.

I wonder how many of the kids from this experiment remember it - the numbers say that 11% required a considerable amount of help to become calm afterwards. And their followup months later noticed that "A number of children still talked about the tests, some with pleasure, a few with resentment."

 

Why do we still listen to political pundits who have a clear interest in one side winning? They have absolutely no principle. Jon Stewart elaborates:



Wow. Really, just wow.

 

This is a pretty cool list. I've bolded the ones I've eaten. The quoted blog post also says to cross out things you wouldn't consider eating, but...I don't know what that means?

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile (? - I've eaten alligator and I think it counts)
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O (Heh. Jello shots.)
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat's milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV (probably once a month, at least)
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S'mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

There it is. I've done 67 out of 100. I think Indian food is way overrepresented and Chinese, Korean, South American, French, and Italian food is underrepresented, but that's probably just from my point of view. I'd take out the stupid stuff like Jello shots and Big Macs to make room for live octopus. I'm also wondering about the shortage of various barbeque (to be defined loosely as any slow-cooked meat) styles from around the world.

Other than that, I think it did a lot of other stuff really well - a good mix of expensive and cheap, exotic and ordinary. I still intend to knock out that whole tasting menu at a 3 star place, and probably will be able to check black truffles off the list, too. The list also reminds me that I haven't had a lot of European food outside of French and Italian. But then I've also never been to Europe, which should no longer be true within a year from now.

 

I've been hearing a conservative defense of Palin that goes something like this - "If Democrats think she's such a bad choice, why do they keep insisting that she be taken off the ticket?"

Althouse:

The Palin candidacy has virtually nothing in common with the Eagleton scenario, and the people who are saying it does are displaying their desperation. Obviously -- I'm not the first to say this -- if you want McCain to lose and you think she's so terrible, you should be happy to see Palin as the VP nominee. It will help defeat McCain.

palinfacts.com (Chuck Norris style site I discovered through Blackfive):

Sarah Palin as VP increases Depends sales among scatalogically frightened Democrats

Browse through conservative comments on blogs; most of these types of statements are by commenters, not actual posters on the main blogs.

I really don't know what to say about this, because most of the Democrats I know are giddy about the potential for disaster here. We will say publicly that we think it's a bad choice, but we are by no means saying that because we want her off the ticket. It's just that she's so much fun to talk about. And prominent Republicans think that it's a bad idea, too, calling it "political bullshit," "cynical," and "gimmicky."

 

Ok, so I live in Alaska, and was just in Wasilla yesterday eating Subway, but I didn't know anything about Sarah Palin before Friday. Except that her picture was once on my boss's desktop as a half-joke. And that my coworkers would occasionally make crude jokes about, you know, banging her.

But I find this VP pick to be so amusing, I hope she sticks around. Let's see - she's embroiled in a scandal, currently being investigated, over whether she grossly abused the power of her office in a bitter personal dispute (and used her office to try to cover it up). She's got personal family issues, too, but I'd rather stay out of that completely - I think it's important we respect the privacy of candidates' children, especially those who are under 18. Her husband was a registered member of a separatist party that says "I'm an Alaskan, not an American. I've got no use for America or her damned institutions." She really, really loves pork barrel spending (see her supporting the Bridge to Nowhere until she realized the Feds weren't paying for it).

And it's only been like 5 days! This is so fun to watch, and I'm pretty eager to see what happens next.

 

I know not everyone who reads this blog follows politics as closely as I do, but this video will fill in some of my friends who might be hearing about Joe Biden for the first time now:



Ignore that trade protectionism about the whole banning toys from China bit. The rest is really good though.

 

Today I went out to buy a big 1.5 gallon container of spray pesticide for the house, because there is very clearly a pest problem in my mom's house. On my way out, my sister asked me to buy organic fruit. Organic, of course, because it's important for fruit to be grown without herbicide or, you know, pesticide.

 

I just watched the forum at Rick Warren's Saddleback Church where he interviewed both candidates mostly on questions of relevance to America's religious (for the most part evangelical Christians, but a lot of it is relevant to members of other faiths as well).

I really, really hate McCain's simple-mindedness. That being said, black-and-white oversimplifications look a lot better on that television stage than nuance, and McCain performed far better than Obama did. Granted, he did have a bit of home court advantage, but still - it didn't look good from my point of view.

Obama was clearly uncomfortable with the implications and connotations underlying several of the questions, and tried to address them in his answers, which just makes him sound evasive and uncommitted. I think it's really difficult to state a nuanced position for a television audience, and that it's really difficult for Obama to dumb down his positions for public consumption. He is great at offering details on paper, but nobody will listen to a 10 minute response to a 10 word question, so he just ends up putting up some weak version with poorly articulated caveats. It's infuriating - like watching Mario Batali being forced to cook with Rachael Ray when you know he's capable of so much better than that.

Of course, it's easy to sound sure of oneself when you don't have to reconcile all of your statements with one another. Abortion isn't at all a big issue for me, but I don't see how you can say "full considerations for individual rights begins at conception" like 30 seconds before saying "I reluctantly support federal funding for embryonic stem cell research." Simply stating that "I will defeat evil" without offering details or even guiding principles probably sounds great to those who really believe that our military can successfully fight full-fledged wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Georgia, Russia, China, and North Korea simultaneously (without raising taxes, no less). I mean, seriously, nobody doubts that Al Qaeda is evil or that you lack enthusiasm for the job of commander-in-chief, but mere enthusiasm isn't enough to make up for lack of strategy or blundering incompetence.

Finally, some of it was just sheer luck. The questions were formulated so that McCain wouldn't have to answer any followup questions about his first marriage but that Obama would have to spell out a pretty detailed position on abortion and gay rights. I don't think it was Rick Warren's fault per se; it's just that McCain's weaknesses weren't really in play given the format and the venue of tonight's event.

I wouldn't be so worried if I didn't think most voters weren't too lazy to read policy pdf's off the candidates' websites, but I don't think more than 5% of us do.

 

I don't have much of anything original to say about Russia, Georgia, and South Ossetia that The War Nerd hasn't already said. Well, at least regarding tactics.

But I did want to add something I found to be very disturbing. Neocons, who I thought were already pretty much discredited on their theories of foreign policy and projection of power, have possibly lost their minds.

A lot of liberals have already observed that our elective adventure in Iraq, and Georgia's decision to send troops to Iraq to support us, have really left us with no real power to push Russia to respect the cease-fire. Neocons want us to support Georgia because our policies have directly weakened their military's ability to protect their own territory, and their helplessness is an indictment of the poor strategic decisions behind the Iraq War. Except they don't really give good examples of how to seriously help Georgia. After seeing that we've been called on our bluff, they don't regret the bluff, they get angry that we didn't go all-in on that bluff.

The biggest thing about Neocons' current handwringing over Russian hegemony is that I can't believe how quickly they forget the greater strategic framework of the War on Terror. Like most conservatives' positions on the War on Drugs, neocon posturing on Russia is counterproductive to our strategic goal of making this world a safer place from the threat of Islamic terrorism. Or Iranian nukes.

For what it's worth, I think McCain and Obama are both caught in a bad place on this issue, because there is simply no good solution that isn't damaging to our strategic interests at this point in time. It does confuse me that some conservative hawks seem to think that the liberal position is one of support for Russia's actions, but I stopped really thinking that they were intellectually serious long ago. Call us wishy-washy on this issue, but I haven't seen any concrete proposals from the conservatives either that wouldn't be heavily damaging to our interests.

EDIT: I just read the comments at that Blackfive post and I am really, really glad that those guys aren't actually in charge of our military policy. A taste of their strategic brilliance:

 

So I'm reading about Spain's basketball team and decided this commentary was pretty much dead-on:

On no they didn't: Racist Spanish basketball ad

Just a quick summary - Spanish sports fans have quite a well-deserved reputation for racism and bigotry. Like most events where someone does something offensive, doesn't regret it, but feels intense public pressure to apologize, this event led to a fairly typical "it's not my fault but I sincerely regret that you're a sensitive pansy" non-apology.

Pau Gasol just gave me yet another reason to hate the Lakers.

 

My buddy Evan and I were having a back-and-forth discussion about the role of government regulation. If he weren't driving all over the country as we speak, I'd imagine he'd have more time to actually get into a deeper discussion about it.

Before I became a liberal Democrat sometime in the last few years, I was a pretty staunch libertarian (in my worldview, not necessarily party affiliation) who read and quoted the likes of Gary Becker, Glenn Reynolds, Eugene Volokh, Stephen Green, Megan McArdle, and Tyler Cowen in discussions and debates. These guys were the first to convince me that in many cases, market forces are more efficient and desireable than government regulation in achieving certain social goals. I'm embarassed to admit that I haven't actually read much of Milton Friedman or Friedrich Hayek's works, but I still intend to do so soon - it's not quite the same to read bits and pieces quoted on some libertarian's blogs.

When it comes to government regulation, I believe in the principle of first doing no harm. Corn subsidies have led to cheap high fructose corn syrup flooding the market in recent decades and ruining public health. Also, corn-fed beef is unhealthy when compared to grass-fed beef, but the grass-fed stuff can't compete on the market because of corn subsidies. I mean, imagine trying to justify to a 19th century rancher the absurd idea of feeding ruminants corn instead of allowing them to graze. Subsidizing highways has led to less day-to-day exercise in the American lifestyle (Americans often lose weight when visiting Europe or even Manhattan), leaving no wonder why Americans are getting so damn fat. Imagine the uproar if the government subsidized the cost of manufacturing cigarettes. The nation's farm and highway policy is just as damaging to the national health. So I'd just like to slowly roll back these policies as we consider other ways to improve public health. Banning fast-food in South L.A. is not really the answer, especially when fast-food is so poorly defined in the first place and old fast-food restaurants are grandfathered in. Of course, that brings us to a greater problem in public health - that the poor have fewer resources to opt out of the destructive system of industrial food and lack of exercise - just think of how much it costs to buy wild salmon over farmed, organic pasture-raised beef over ordinary McDonald's quality beef.

Government has an obligation to at least regulate behaviors with negative externalities (and while they're at it, subsidizing behavior with positive externalities). Alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs impose costs on people who choose not to use them, and the government should discourage (through taxes or whatever) such behaviors, especially in contexts with greater externalities (e.g. smoking indoors vs smoking outdoors or at home). Some libertarians hate seat belt laws, but as long as the government pays for paramedics and road maintenance I think it's perfectly within their rights to reduce the likelihood of death on public roads.

Also, government has an interest in encouraging or requiring transparency. A man buying a car should have the right to know whatever he'd like to know about the car - from the materials, manufacture location, number of previous owners, number of miles (whether the odometer is accurate), etc. In Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, he writes of a farm that he presents as the prototype for sustainable farming, and raves about its operations and its owner. The only problem is that the USDA is always hassling the farmer about his slaughter operations because they don't technically obey the letter of the law - but by all accounts he exceeds the cleanliness of any factory slaughterhouse, and does a better job of treating the animals humanely. I bring up Polyface farms because it's an example of transparency being a more powerful regulating agent than the government - he allows his customers to watch the slaughter or investigate any stage of his farming so that they can decide for themselves. Anyone who's seen a shit lagoon would probably appreciate that openness as being pretty impressive.

Finally, anytime there's a tragedy of the commons situation, or a collective action problem, the government should regulate for the greater good, simply because these are precisely the areas where the market tends not to achieve optimum conditions.

Basically all I want the government to do is stop regulating stupid details and start requiring greater transparency - that alone would improve society at very little cost to the government itself (by simplifying the rules the enforcement guys would have an easier time than they do now). The most important thing is that the regulators not lose sight of the goals of regulation. Rulemakers often fail to consider all the possibilities, and by taking away the power of discretion from the rule-enforcers, we get comically absurd scenarios like a 35-year-old getting her license suspended for underage drinking. Or just take a look at the TSA guys at the airport trying to enforce rules that don't make sense.

My friend Evan recommends Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg, but I haven't heard good things about it in my circles. Besides, the religious right is who's keeping gambling, gay marriage, and prostitution illegal, and are largely responsible for the complexity of our alcohol laws. I've been to dry counties, and they are rarely blue on the electoral map. And then don't get me started on which party is more likely to take away civil liberties in the name of being tough on crime or terrorism. Either way, it's not really a liberal/conservative or Democrat/Republican issue, but rather one of authoritarianism versus libertarianism. Other than the handful of scenarios listed above, I'm all for government non-interference, except to break down information asymmetries.

EDIT (8/15): Here is more on the absolutely ridiculous "only licensed interior designers may choose paint or move furniture" laws.

 

So Max Blumenthal, left wing blogger over at the Huffington Post, apparently hates Toby Keith and everything he stands for, calling his "Beer for my Horses" song a "pro-lynching anthem." He elaborates:

Keith's schlock rock is the soundtrack of the culturally deprived australopithicenes who populate the cyber-caves of freeperland and comprise the movement's most fervent activists. As a bellicose chickenhawk who has risen from the ranks of the rural working class to become "White Trash With Money," Keith has carefully calibrated his image to fit the sensibility of his fans.

The evidence is only slightly convincing. You can read his take here and here. When I clicked through to the music video because Blumenthal said that the video showed a " swaggering black man sporting short dreads and baggy clothes" over the lyrics "too many gangsters doin' dirty deeds." I expected to see something pretty bad, but I just saw an older homeless dude pissing on the wall.

Maybe it's because I'm biased, since this song kinda won me over to country a few years back (it's remarkably catchy and a lot of random military videos use it as a soundtrack), but I just don't see it.

But that brings me to the point of this post. The above-linked posts generated a Semi-Defense of Toby Keith by Jason Zengerle at The New Republic, which brought me some new information that I was completely shocked to see - Toby Keith opposed the Iraq War from the beginning.

I don't know what to believe anymore.

 

Someone tell Rihanna to let her hair grow out, because she looks a bit too much like Prince in this music video.


Rihanna photo captured from music video linked above, Prince photo copied from nymag.com.

 

Pretty funny comic from xkcd:


Ezra Klein says it's pretty good life advice. I'm inclined to agree, except that the moment I saw this, I thought of the most recent "shouldn't have" case, rather than any of the "should have" examples from my life.

I've thrown up exactly twice since my appendectomy. Both times, despite being about a year apart, were less than an hour after I kissed a specific girl I'd had a mild crush on. Sure, sure, correlation isn't causation, and there definitely were some pretty good alternative explanations for it - like eating 2-day-old banh mi when it happened a year ago and way too much whiskey this time around, but it has reminded me of this South Park clip:



So in my case, yeah, I guess I fall under the smaller column.

 

Actually, I'll let Keith Olbermann handle this one:



I also just found out today that Rachel Maddow is a lesbian. I mean, it's not surprising, but I didn't know.

 

I just wanted to promote this political movement that I noticed today, dedicated to changing election day to a weekend so that voting becomes more convenient for the vast majority of American voters who, you know, work on weekdays:

http://whytuesday.org/

There's plenty of real good reasons to do this, but it probably won't happen because the powerful are probably scared of increased voter turnout.

 

This is a pretty awesome video of James Duane explaining why you should never agree to talk to the police, whether you are guilty of a crime or completely innocent:

 

I'm gonna be out of the loop for the next 5, 6 weeks or so, since I'm going to the California desert early tomorrow morning. There's gonna be no internet, and I doubt there will be cell phone reception. Also, the temperatures are hitting triple digits every day. I hear it sucks. But I will be visiting Texas in early August for about 3 weeks, so for that small handful of my Texas friends who actually read my blog, I look forward to seeing y'all. Expect a call when I get to Texas.

I once laughed at the idea of free wifi internet at Safeway (grocery store) of all places, but it came in handy today because there are no traditional coffee shops in this backwards-ass town I live in, and even the Kinko's doesn't have T-mobile wifi. Also, my internet in my room went out the same day that the other 2 public places with free wifi lost their connections.

 

Photo by Flickr user CoffeeGeek and used under a Creative Commons license.

I once bought a fancy schmancy espresso machine for a previous girlfriend because I knew that she enjoyed espresso-based drinks pretty much every day, and it seemed like a good way to save her $3/day while having far more control over each step of the espresso creation process than compromising for convenience at the local coffee shop. I look back and shake my head - buying unexpected gifts that require an investment of effort is a bad idea (see: puppies). But also, espresso freaking sucks. Why do I want to work so hard for something that has less caffeine than ordinarily brewed coffee? I think most of America is just using their coffee as a socially acceptable delivery mechanism for fat and sugar.

Today, I find that I can't stand the idea of coffee makers with microchips, or even pumps and complex arrays of pipes and nozzles and settings. I highly doubt one of these contraptions was ever on the mind of the Ethiopians who first domesticated coffee beens. Hell, there's even a $2000 coffeemaker with a security exploit that not only allows a remote attacker to break the machine, but even opens up a security vulnerability in your windows computer, giving outsiders access to your computer as well.

Now, when I brew my own coffee, I use a french press. It's easy, low tech, and a technique that transfers well to situations like camping. The scene where they're brewing coffee in a french press during a lull in the gunfighting in Black Hawk Down still makes me smile. And here's the thing - french press coffee tastes much better than drip coffee, and the "device" is ridiculously cheap.

A few months ago, Michael Ruhlman, a food author/blogger I greatly respect, raved about the virtues of percolator-brewed coffee. I've never had percolator coffee, but I share his distaste for drip coffee. There is nothing redeeming about the idea of dripping relatively tepid water over coffee grinds and a piece of paper into a glass pot. For what? The ability to have it brew on timer automatically in the morning as you're waking up? I'd rather wake up 10 minutes earlier, grind the beans, and brew it in a press.

On that note, if anyone reading has ever had coffee made from a percolator, let me know in the comments.

 

People who know me know that I've shifted my political beliefs dramatically over the last 4 years. I voted for Bush in 2004, which actually baffles me today. I used to believe in small government and non-interference in markets (for the most part), but I'm pretty much a typical liberal Democrat now, who believes that government should be spending money on health care, education, and infrastructure. So just keep that in mind while I explain why I think John McCain would be one of the worst presidents in recent decades. Not quite as bad as Bush, but I don't think I'll ever see one of those in my lifetime.

McCain has had more lobbyists working on his staff than any other candidate from either party. This is probably why he has such a problem maintaining a consistent position on any issues other than opposing abortion and always wanting more war.

McCain is probably most famous for campaign finance reform. Less well known is his exploiting loopholes in campaign finance law (yes, including the one known as McCain-Feingold) to guarantee a loan with the promise to stay in and seek public financing to pay it back, and then backing out of the commitment once he got the nomination to avoid spending limits. I really don't like that Obama isn't accepting federal matching funds (and the spending limits that come with), but he isn't doing anything borderline illegal and certainly against the spirit of a law he drafted himself.

As most people know, McCain spent time in a POW camp in Vietnam. He served honorably and complied with the Code of Conduct governing captured servicemembers. I have nothing but respect for his service in the Navy. Of course, he came back and treated his wife like shit. When he returned she wasn't nearly as hot was she was before, so he cheated on her. Once he met a younger, prettier millionaire heiress, he divorced his first wife and married the new one. What a classy dude. Actually, no, the classiest thing was probably calling his current wife a cunt (audio NSFW).

Also, I'm convinced that McCain hates servicemembers. He has a history of opposing increased benefits for veterans, and he's always trying to send more of us to foreign wars. The latest example of his veteran-hating is his opposition to this awesome new GI Bill, saying it's TOO awesome and it will hurt military retention. Because as we know, the military is most effective when it's filled with people who just don't have other options. Sorry, I'm not a fan of indentured servitude. Of course, now that it's reached a veto-proof majority, he's trying to claim credit for it. On veteran's benefits, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America gives McCain a D. I mean, he might have been able to marry a millionaire when he got out, but I don't have much confidence that I'll be able to do the same after I come home from Iraq.

Finally, McCain is quite possibly a complete moron. Here's a guy who doesn't understand what the cap in cap-and-trade means. He doesn't know enough about economics to even evaluate who should be his economic advisors, so he hires people from all over the ideological spectrum to give him conflicting advice to sift through. For a ton of other examples, google "mccain confused."

I think there are a lot of legitimate criticisms against Obama, too, but he's still the far superior candidate on nearly every issue. I mean, I'm currently pretty disappointed in Obama for the moral cowardice of supporting the FISA bill this week. I didn't really mention McCain's Al Qaeda/Iran gaffe because Obama made a similar one about Arabic linguists in Afghanistan. I don't like that Obama dismissed the hard work and sacrifice of Iraqi politicians who really are trying to bring stability to their own country. I would've preferred that he remained a member of Trinity United, because it just seems that he does the politically expedient thing with his spiritual life - which sucks because he's the only Democratic candidate in many years who sounds comfortable using religious language in his speech. Also, I didn't think that his church was racist at all. The history of this nation has been racist, and pretending it wasn't won't make it so.

Anyway, there's no way I'm voting McCain in November, and it seems like voting for Obama will be the most cost-effective thing I can do to keep McCain from winning.

EDIT: I think this article in Fortune magazine is telling - when asked what the greatest threat to the US economy is, he struggles to answer, and finally comes up with "Islamic extremism" after about 11 seconds of squirming. Presidents have a lot of responsibilities besides commander-in-chief, and it's unfortunate that it's the only role he is the slightest bit interested in.