OnePeople

Lord Dacre Dies

As a teenager, I saw Hugh Trevor Roper speak at Oxford. Beforehand, we were admonished: "Don't mention the war."

Kikkoman

Soy sauce and ridiculous Japanese advertising parodies. Perfect together.

http://yoga.tripod.co.jp/flash/kikkomaso_e.swf

Peggy Noonan On the State of the Union

In spite of my politics, I really like Peggy Noonan. I'm willing to overlook her Republican apologism and recommend her recommendations to Bush for his State of the Union tomorrow. She's whipsmart, plainly admits to the weaknesses of the Administration, and can turn a phrase to boot.

Poor Beneficiaries Got Crap

Apparently, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation ate through an $8 billion surplus, and is now tapped out. The PBGC was created in 1974 to make sure that people could get their pensions even if a company goes el-busto. That's 44 million retirees who are now praying that their pension fund doesn't crack open. Basically, the PBGC got trapped between low interest rates and the crappy stock market. Here's the interest part: how to fix it. Companies pay premiums to insure their pensions through the PBGC. The solvent companies don't want to have to pay out for the invsolvent ones, so it'll be a hard sell to get the premiums raised. The insolvent companies can't fix it, obviously. The Erisa Industry Committee, who lobbies for the biggest participants, thinks that this will pass and that the $800M is premiums each year is a good "buffer." I don't know how the premiums became a buffer -- that's like putting groceries on your credit card. One solution is to raise premiums based on the riskiness of the contributing company's pension fund. This makes me ask: why weren't we doing that in the first place?

SQL Slammer

Am I the only one wondering why Microsoft isn't being taken to task for the SQL Slammer mess? When is the FBI going to haul MS to court? If this was a car company, they'd have their charter revoked by now.

Gov't Opinion Portal

When the executive branch creates a regulation, they're obligated to defend those regulations against public opinion. That opinion is solicited through public comments. Until now, you only knew to comment on something when a wild-eyed activist sent you an alarmist email alert. Now, you can saunter over to http://www.regulations.gov/ and rant to your heart's content.

The New Fingerprint Scanners Are Here! The New Fingerprint Scanners Are Here!

Never remember a password again, courtesy of Puppy Suite.

Jesus is 14 years old

I know, because I read His blog.

TIA Funding Blocked

Congress cut off funding for TIA, amid concerns over civil liberties and the fact that it's led by an unscrupulous technocrat. So it's not such a bad day after all.

SEC Makes Mutual Funds Fess Up

Mutual funds now have to report once a year on their proxy votes. The SEC is making them do this so that mutual fund customers can judge whether a fund is working in their interests. I think this is a great idea. The mutual funds, shamefully, fought the SEC on this. The funds said it would subject them to pressure from activist groups and increase their paperwork... but shouldn't the funds be accountable for their proxy votes? Isn't pressure from activist groups exactly the point? How can they invest my money without telling me how they voted on my behalf? And suddenly the financial houses are opposed to paperwork? That argument is so disingenuous as to be insulting. Really obnoxious. Good for the SEC.

EPA Reports On Your Neighborhood

You wouldn't believe what the EPA knows about your neighborhood.

Mobile Phone News and Reviews

I'm glad I found PhoneScoop before I dropped big money on a Motorola T68i.

Thacker, We Hardly Knew Thee

I was so hoping this would become a big deal. Thacker walked away, saying that the controversy was manufactured from quotations taken out of context: "the term 'gay plague' was in vogue in the mid 80's as this disease first took its toll on that population. Obviously, this disease is now found in people of all races, colors, creeds, and sexual orientations, so I do not use the term except in describing the historical context." Likewise, I have to assume, "deathstyle" and "sin of homosexuality" have perfect valid historical contexts.

Democratic About-Face on Iraq

In the past few days, Daschle, Feinstein, Kerry, et al have come down hard on Bush's saber-rattling on Iraq. Good for them. Where was all this rhetoric when they voted for the Congressional authorization? None of these born-again peaceniks demanded that Bush's war powers be contingent on a UN resolution, so I don't know where the get the chutzpah to demand it now. They want it both ways, and it's disgusting.

More Jerry Thacker Wackiness...

WaPo now weighs in on Mr. "Gay Plague." The highlights: the bios on his website have been cleansed of the more radical language we discussed yesterday. I can't say I blame him, they were embarrassing. The piece brings up an interesting objection to Thacker's appointment, via Carl Schmid who is gay, Republican, and worked for Bush 2000:

"We need to have a scientific-based approach to the problems of HIV-AIDS and not this radical agenda he's pushing," Schmid said. Aside from the harshly anti-gay tone of Thacker's rhetoric, Schmid said, his major objection to Thacker is his aggressive lobbying for abstinence-until-marriage education."Abstinence-until-marriage does not help anyone in the gay community, because we can't get married," he said. "If you are a gay youth, who is addressing your concerns?"

The punchline: Carl Schmid graduated from Bob Jones University. Compassionate! Conservative!

US Hates Jews?

I'm doing research today. Ha'aretz runs a piece about how a bunch of Americans hate Jews, consider them in control of Wall Street, think a Jewish President would have split loyalties with regard to Israel, etc. What's remarkable, though, is not the numbers. It's the fact that the article doesn't say who ran the poll, margins of error -- nothing analytically useful is given. It's just the message that the US hates Jews. So now I'm pissed off because I have to find out where this study came from. The Ha'aretz article defers to the SF Chronicle, which attributes the "academic" survey to the San Francisco Institute for Jewish and Community Research. Halfway through the Chronicle piece, we find it was conducted in May of 2002 -- that's a little annoying. It took nine months to read a little more than 1000 responses? At the very end of the article:

The survey, which has a margin of error of 3.1 percent, was analyzed by the San Francisco institute, but administered by International Communications Research in Media, Pa.

OK, now I'm annoyed that I have to find out how credible this survey is. Read on...

OK, I don't think we're talking about an academic survey. Gary Tobin and his wife run the Institute. I'm getting the impression that it's just Gary in his garage. According to Jewish Press, Mr. Tobin has taken Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg to task for a poll underwritten by the American Jewish Committee, which stated that opinions of Israel on college campuses is not divergent from the general population. Tobin called it a "whitewash." I'm not sure why. From everything I know, though, I'm going to trust Stan Greenberg over Gary Tobin. That doesn't mean this May 2002 poll was no good, it just means that I'm getting suspicious.

Ah, here's another wierd divergence of opinion. He didn't like a survey from the United Jewish Committees that said the American Jewish population is getting older and having children later. He said the UJC study was "nonsense." He also said there were 2.5 million more Jews in the US than the UJC survey.

Ah, this JTA piece makes things a little more clear. Gary Tobin's got a bone to pick.

For all I know, his survey is right... but I'm going to wait for someone to publish another study on this before I take it for face value.

HIV+ Fundamentalist Appointed to PACHA

NAM is taking issue with a Bush appointment to the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS. Jerry Thacker is a fundamentalist Christian, which is fine, and HIV+ from a 1986 blood transfusion, also fine. Calling homosexuality a "deathstyle" seems counter-productive, though. So do references to the "Gay Plague." There were other, more common-sense appointments to the Council, so it's not the end of the world. But still. It's hard to interpret it as anything other than a big "fuck you" to AIDS activists. Kinda like appointing David Duke to the Civil Rights Commission, for the sake of "balance."

I Told You So

The FBI is collaborating with the DoD on Total Information Awareness. In a free society, the military doesn't get to spy on its own citizens. It's just not done. Thanks to Sen. Grassley (R-Iowa) for making this public.

Hatch Behaves Like A Gentleman

Senate Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) is going to put the Pickering nomination on the back burner. Even if he's just saving Pickering for later, it's nice to see someone behave like a normal human being and not a slack-jawed ideologue who thinks an up or down on Pickering has some momentous significance for the future of the country. It's just a judicial nomination, for god's sake.

Krugman's Lazy Stalker

Apparently, NYT columnist Paul Krugman has a journalist digging up his dirt on Google Answers. Mr. drstrangelove-ga volunteered US$100 to anyone who could furnish personal information about the Princeton economist. Mr. Krugman did the obvious -- he furnished the information himself, and asked that Mr. drstrangelove send him the money.

I Need A Hummer

Bush is now considering closing a "loophole" in the tax code which forbids me from taking a meaningful deduction on large SUVs like Hummers, Lincoln Navigators, etc. For the Prius, I get $2k. For the Hummer, I could get $33,000. That's right. With the super-generous 7% fuel efficiency target mandated by 2005, Bush feels comfortable asking you to buy Hummers for doctors, lawyers and accountants.

It's cold, but not that cold.

I'll admit to putting a coat on my dog, but I have to draw the line somewhere.

http://www.k9topcoat.com/info.asp?what=lycra

What Kind of Day Are You Having?

My girlfriend says you can tell what kind of day you're having by which Wilson brother you think is the cutest. For me, it's a Luke Wilson kind of day.

311: Not the Band, the Agency

So New York City Mayor Bloomberg is well on his way to launching the 311 service for non-emergency city functions. I build stuff like this for a living, and I'm wondering how on earth it's going to work. Citizens can call in 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and get whatever service or referral they need. It's supposed to improve the signal-noise ratio on 911, and there are vague promises of "making government efficient". The price tag is $25M, but they admit that there are a lot of variables, including the number of users and the resulting staff requirements.

My gut says that a system like this is going to be a hardened crust over the spaghetti mess of city services. I expect the 311 service to be slow to respond to changes in the bureaucracies it represents, and become just another useless appendage to the Mayor's office.

On the other hand, designing and training for this system could bring to light redundancies and inadequacies in the various agencies, which would be a good thing. It requires, though, that the Mayor pay attention to the implementation and be willing to make the reforms it demands.

Instant Response to Bush's Punitive Damage Caps

As if on cue, a woman was mistakenly given a double mastectomy and sues her hospital just days after Bush says such a screwup is worth $250k in punitive damages. I'll get to my rant on this idiotic reform later. The woman had her pathology work mixed up with another woman's, which means there are two victims. The mastectomy patient suffers a final insult: the hospital only reformed their procedures 7 months later, once she sued. Who designed the new pathology procedures? The pathologist who made the mistake in the first place.

Dingo Fence

The Dingo Fence is the world's longest, at 5500km. Twice as long as the Great Wall of China. Barbed wire is amazing.

Mearsheimer vs. Bush

Foreign Policy is running an outstanding point-by-point dismantling of the Administration's Iraq policy. It's problematic on a few points (everyone, not just Kuwait, flouts with OPEC output targets) but is an excellent summation of the most compelling arguments.