Technology has finally invented a cure for loneliness.

Subcultures are very amusing... It doesn't quite beat the Christian Counter, but i think Raves for Jesus is pretty close...

According to Ben's who does China block project we're inaccessable in China, as is Instapundit and the Volokh Conspiracy. On the other hand it doesn't block Free Tibet and China Sucks. Weird.

(I'd link to Matt Yglesias for this, but i'm protesting his decision to not link to my Social Security screed, and you all read him daily anyway, right?)

The bad proposed Pennsylvania Homeschool law was defeated in comittee this week!! This is an excellent development. Here's a report on what happened.

Since this blog is the closest thing we have to dinner table conversation and since a dinner table conversation which lasts long enough always reaches the "meta-conversation" level, i bring you this article from the NYTimes magazine.

According to spark i am a woman. Why am i not surprised?

How on earth do you play a full football game and go 20/25 and 255 yards passing and 4 touchdowns on a broken ankle?? (and no it wasn't Brett Favre, it was the next Brett Favre.)

Inspired by Lileks' thursday bleat i'm counting my blessings and thinking of turning "5 things that make me happy" lists into a regular feature.

5 more things that make me happy:
1. tea kettles whistling
2. the familiarity of shared language in conversations with old friends
3. the outer automorphism of S_6
4. the phrase "despite recent evidence, i'm not totally evil."
5. hot soup

I don't understand why people give me grief about my multiple majors:

"I usually tell people I'm doing three [majors], because if I say I'm doing four majors, they call me a psycho and think I'm this big overachiever trying to make myself look better," says UW-Madison student Dustin Harber.

And I thought I was just confused...

Since Matt Yglesias is talking about the payroll tax a lot, I think its time to talk about my government pet peave: The Social Security Tax.

Facts about the Social Security Tax:
It is 12.5% of your income (half of which is hidden unless you're self-employed)
But only on the first $85,000 of your income!

So let's do a few little calculations... Suppose the amount you're a median family making (not including deductable, but including the amount your employer pays for social security) about $48,000. Then the social security tax is (12.5 is nicely 1/8) $6,000. This is of course %12.5 of your income.

Now suppose you're slightly more rich (or as we say at harvard "middle class") and making $200,000. Now 1/8th of $85,000 is about $11,000 so you're paying just over %5 of your income.

Now suppose you're a CEO making $2 million a year. Then you're still paying $11,000, which is roughly .5% of your income.

This is what is known as a regressive tax. A very very regressive tax. And, according to this goverment pie graph 34% of our federal government's income comes from this extremely regressive tax!

Why is no one talking about this? Why isn't this the new democratic rallying cry? Stop the regressive tax! Raise money for social security the same way you raise money for everything else, with a progressive tax, or at least a flat one.

Googlism of the day:

allen is hot and stop laughing.

I can't believe I almost forgot to mention this: This past week, Enimem became only the fourth musical artist in history (after Elvis, the Beatles, and Prince) to have a movie, an album, and a single simultaneously at #1 in America. (I love factoids like this.)

How do people say things like this?

I love suddenly learning things that should have been obvious. here's a great example.

''I know one of these years [Alex Rodriguez] is going to win three, four MVPs in a row,'' Tejada said.

Last I checked you could only win one MVP in a season...

Forget stopping terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, I want some politicians willing to face the even bigger threat of antibiotic resistant bacteria before we're forced to look back on the latter half of the 20th century as the one golden era where we had deseases beaten. We feed this stuff to our chickens so they'll get bigger, and no one has the guts to do anything about it, and in 50 years if we're dying from pneumonia again, don't say Palumbi didn't tell you so.

Top 5 things that make me happy:

1. David Bowie's "Survive" on my headphones in Times Square.
2. Singin' In the Rain.
3. Cate Blanchett as Galadriel.
4. Art school dropouts.
5. The following Googlism: "Alec is back in her life."

So last night after our party i seem to have written on the whiteboard:
a) the diagram for S_3 acting on a curve of genus 0.
b) the quote "and learn to pretend there's more than love that matters"

When i woke up I found that lionel had written on the board:

"So there's love, and there's S_3. But nothing else matters."

Lilek's has an amusing bit on homeschooling today:

and she mentioned “Home schoolers, the religious right. They drive me nuts.”
The home-schooling part I didn’t quite get. There seems to be some who believe that this is a typical day in a home-schooling classroom:
“Alright, Ezekial, Rebecca, Simon, Mary, put away your snakes and come over here for natcheral science. Ezekial, how old is the earth?”
“It’s six thousand years old!”
“That’s right. Rebecca, did the dinosaurs come afore man, or at the same time?”
“Uhh . . . at the same time?”
“No, Rebecca, there were no dinosaurs. You’re going to have to get a paddlin’ for that, and remember: God wants it to hurt.”

Silly Lileks, of course there were dinosaurs! Didn't you ever read Job? What do you think the Behemoth was? Liberal revisionist...

Speaking of homeschooling, this week the proposed new homeschool law in Pennsylvania is coming up for a vote in comittee... Here's the text of the bill (the first 10 pages are the old law and the rest are the proposed new law). Here's a pro-new law website and an anti-new law website. For those of you who haven't heard me talk about this yet, i'm strongly against the new law, for reasons which i hope to write up in a letter today, if i do get the time to finish it i'll post it here. The short version is that the new law gets rid of all the safety nets and although almost all homeschoolers are very responsible, i don't think we want to have a law with no checks and balances because it will abused by non-homeschoolers hiding behind this law. There are a bunch of other problems i have with the law, but that's the biggy.

I was under the impression that there was more than one Indigo Girl.

Top 5 things that make me happy:

1. The Indigo Girl's "Love Will Come to You" on repeat.
2. Emily Watson.
3. A friend showing up at my door with a bottle of wine.
4. The Riemann-Hurwitz formula.
5. Large Russian novels.

It's now official: for the first time since 1997, nothing interesting happened with a girl on November 10th.

Holy Grail of the Day:

Find a finite group which is:
a) generated by 3 elements of very small order
b) generated by 2 elements of very large order
c) NOT generated by any 2 elements of very small order

[Who cares? --Ed.]

I haven't posted my review of Punch-Drunk Love yet, by the way, because I'm not sure how I feel about it, even though I saw it almost a month ago. I spent a few frantic days trying to find a friend to see it with, and finally ended up going alone, which was probably a good thing: I can't imagine a movie I'd less want to discuss afterwards. It's the Mulholland Drive of romantic comedies, I suppose. It doesn't seem to have much to do with P.T. Anderson's previous work, and I missed what I love about his earlier movies: the emotional generosity, I guess, and the willingness to be messy and flawed for the sake of characters he loved. Maybe I should check out Adam Sandler's previous work to get some perspective. I do love Shelly Duvall's rendition of "He Needs Me," though, as well as that wonderful line: "You're so beautiful, I want to smash your face with a sledgehammer."

I was just about to post a link to that BBC movie list, too. I'm satisfied, needless to say, that my two favorite movies (Blue Velvet and Chungking Express) made the top ten.

I actually haven't seen many movies recently, although I have a long list in mind. 8 Mile is a wonderful movie, by the way: loose, likeable, fairly mainstream and conventional in broad outline but comfortably aimless and inventive in the details. Curtis Hanson is probably the best wholly impersonal director in the world these days, meaning that he makes beautiful studio films that reveal next to nothing about the director himself: he can make one of the most tightly structured movies of all time (L.A. Confidential) and follow it up with Wonder Boys, which was wonderful simply because seemed like a relaxed trip to nowhere in particular. 8 Mile falls somewhere in between; it's one of the most satisfying studio pictures I've seen all year.

By the way, the best Googlism of all is "Haiwen is my umbilical cord, or maybe my placenta." Because, of course, this is actually about Haiwen...and guess who wrote it?

I saw Emily Watson as Viola in Twelfth Night in London a couple weeks ago, and she made me extremely happy.

Top 100 pop singles:

Just saw P.T. Anderson's "Punch Drunk Love" and although i can't say it was a great movie, i can say i came out of it very very happy, and that a romantic comedy could do that for me right now is really quite amazing. I definitely recommend it despite its weirdness. Emily Watson simply makes me happy.

Listening to Tori Amos's "Pretty Good Year" which was the song i remember really liking from my first year at Ross when Meghana and Jared listened to her all the time. Anyway a line really struck me as a great example of the way language changes over time, even over brief periods of time:

"and Greggy writes letters and burns his cds"

Does not mean that he's sending his friends letters with mix cds.

Well you all know about Alec and my list fetish and Alec's movie obsession, so its our duty to post any top n movies lists that come around. So here's today's.

Speaking of Alec and movies, now that you have a large cash flow are you seeing lots of movies? You're supposed to pass along your recommendations! I never see movies because you're not around. (I think i'm seeing "8 Mile" this weekend.)

I'm sorry I haven't been communicating on the Nov. 5th disaster -- I had an inside view, and it was amazing how surgical they were and how complacent we were, but I haven't had time to talk about all that stuff because I have been packing up at a breakneck pace to get to Washington for my Participation 2000 retreat.

Unfortunately my hiatus from Deadly Mantis will most likely continue for the next two weeks, because I'm going to Greece. It's going to be a nice opportunity to step back and re-evaluate everything. I have no idea what I'm going to be doing from now on. I want to turn around and work on a campaign again, and do it right this time, but I guess I'll have to wait awhile to do that, and I need to find something to do in the meantime. I might also look for work on Capitol Hill, though it won't be the nicest environment for the next two years.

Sorry for getting trounced. You guys will have to pay for our blunders, I guess.

I don't think the joy at the sight of rain is so universal in England. Especially when you go running on a nice sunny day and 20 minutes later find yourself in a downpour with at least a 20 mph headwind, you can't look forward because the rain stings too much, and your arms and legs are going numb from the cold.

Oh, and 20 minutes after that it's sunny again.

Lead article in today's Times:

"Republicans began setting plans yesterday to push forward a domestic agenda of tax cuts, a national energy policy, creation of a vast homeland security department and the confirmation of conservative judges..."

I feel so helpless.

The rains have finally begun. I never would have imagined how much i missed rain and how happy i'd be when my roomate came bursting in with a huge smile on his face saying "it's raining!"

The bizarre thing is this sudden joy at the appearance of rain is probably one of the most universally shared human experiences accross all of time, and only now in rich modernized countries have we lost this ancient joy and the rain dance rituals.

I was going to post about my first time voting, but i found the whole thing far too depressing. There were too many things i really didn't have good opinions on and i made several votes for really bad reasons (i voted for a guy for Lt. Governor just because his job is "ferret legalization activist" and i couldn't pass up that once in a life time opportunity). Several things i had good reasons for and strong opinions... I strongly opposed the limit on heights of new buildings in berkeley for example. Also i finally figured out how and why to vote in the representative race, Barbara Lee is the incumbent and I don't really agree with her strong opinions on Iraq, however I decided that we have a republican president and I didn't want more republicans in congress so I bit the bullet. However despite these few things, the whole thing really felt like a game, especially with the touch screen voting machines, and i just had this sudden realization that millions of people are making these random decisions that i was making for often not good reasons and that the bizarre amalgamation of all these accidental decisions will result in lives and deaths of people all over the world and the direction of our country. It was really kind of depressing.

I saw "Bowling for Columbine" afterwards. I recommend it, it was quite good. I definitely don't buy most of his points, but for those of you who enjoy documentaries about nutty guys on crusades (which i think most of us do), this is a very good example of the genre. I figured that since the filmmaker was also the nut he was following that the movie would lose some sense of touch, but it was surprisingly well done and hysterical. Although i disagree with many of his answers he raises great questions, and the movie is guaranteed to make you laugh a lot and i don't mind being preached at when i'm laughing.

Ack.

Good luck with the big election day Nat! We're rooting for you!

Speaking of election day, the UC system is forcing me to vote in order to get residency (they're really pushy about voting here, people all over campus registering you, a dean emailing the whole school telling them to vote, etc.), so i'll be sure to give you all a report on the great noah voting adventure. I suppose it's too late to auction of my votes to the highest bidder. I'll get to vote on the great Coffee initiative (forcing all coffee shops and resteraunts in Berkeley to exclusively sell organic shade grown fair trade coffee. I think i'll vote against that one. If it were just fair trade i'd consider it maybe, but as it is that's just rediculous.

For those of you who don't know me, my previous rationale for not voting was the stance that the very minor difference my vote made wasn't worth the hour or two it'd take to think about who to vote for, go to the voting place, fill things out, wait in line, etc. all for one tiny vote which is statistically insignificant. My stance being that if i cared enough about some political issue i'd do something real, like give money, or campaign, or something that made a difference. However, since i need to submit a ballot and that'll take a while anyway, the time commitment has been lowered enough taht it is no longer irrational to vote.

Today it finally happened... I played a game of solataire in which there were no legal plays for the whole game... Immediately over. I've been waiting for this for years. My first estimate suggests this happens once in about every 1000 games.

first name googlisms are fun:

dave is offended by an inadvertent "t"
alec is still rambling about the woman and max says shut up and push the button
alec is the eponymous narrator
nat is most often used to convert rfc 1918 private addresses into routable public addresses
meg is sure to make you laugh
laura is like playing with fire
bessie is still an inspiration to many
ezra is extremely quick on the draw with his wit as well his guns
heather is the bestest
tamara is also trying to avoid a team of federal agents following her
dory is totally unique
ben is a rock band
blake is a primary focus of the investigation now
jeremy is the best known male porn star of all time

and this one makes you wonder:
alec is on daves tummy

History is doomed to repeat itself over and over again.

Why am i such a sucker for scenes in confessionals? I'm not even catholic...

Quote of the night for last night:

"I can't imagine keeping a story going for that long. What would [Tolstoi] be like at family gatherings?"
--Sarah Hatter

Last night i hung out over coffee with Sarah and went to this huge party, which is supposedly annually on Playboy's top 10 parties of the year, I think it may make it again this year, if only for the extremely passionate lesbian couple in the room with the band. There are few things more amusing than watching a room full of guys pretending not to be staring at two girls virtually having sex on the dance floor. Anyway the party was somewhat amusing, more like things one sees in movies than things i actually go to, and meeting new people is always fun (especially when you already know that they like "say anything", REM, "High Fidelity", etc. and can make clever refrences).

Speaking of Sarah Hatter, I've been meaning for a while to link to her post on overhauling the greating card industry (you may need to scroll down, the permalink seems to be slightly broken). She says:

What I'm looking for is an I Feel Abandoned card, but I guess I'll Miss You will just have to do. I'd like to buy a I Can't Believe This Is Happening, This Changes Everything card, but I guess I can settle for Belated Birthday or Romantic Birthday or Birthday Seven and Under. All I need is a This Sucks And I Hate It card, not Apology or Retirement or Sympathy.

Some of the comments suggest cards like:

"if you don't dump the bitch, how can we ever work this out?"
"it's okay that you freaked out, you're going into combat and i know you're scared (but can't admit it), and i want to be here for you, but it's hard to do that when you and i aren't speaking, and i'd just kind of like to know if you think it's over or not, because i'd really like to know either way so that i can get on with my life, but if it is over, i don't know how in the hell i'm supposed to go about getting over you"
"I'm sorry I broke your heart, my heart is broken too, this hurts like hell and I just wish everything could feel ok again"

So for the past few days i've been thinking up cards that are overly honest like the above and still snappy and cardlike. Some are cards I want to send, some cards I want to receive and some which just happened to cross my mind:

Cards Expressing Nostalgia or Regret:
[outside] We both know that 6 years ago we should have been each other's first kiss, and i'm terribly sorry that I was screwed up and was so dishonest with you and myself.

[outside completely blank]
[inside] If I could send this card backwards in time I would send you a million words, instead I send you this.

[outside] Maybe someday I can change my name and we can meet again without recognizing each other and pretend that none of this ever happened.

Thanks
[outside] Thanks for being there.
[inside] I could put this card in a time capsule for 30 years and know that it'd still be true, and how can I thank you for that?

Bitter Cards:
[outside] There's no such thing as a bad person, only people who choose to do bad things.
[inside] Like you.

[outside] One last question...
[inside] How do you say, "I hope you burn in hell for this" in athiest?

Quotes (bonus points if you recognize them)
[outside] Is there a line which I could write, sad enough to make you cry?

[outside] I just came to say...
[inside] Goodbye love. Goodbye.

So do any of you have good card ideas?

Today in Lie Algebras I sat behind the French girl who's in all my classes. She is extremely hot. Too bad I don't know her name.

Speaking of British ignorance of US geography, everyone here thinks the US has 52 states. Probably ten to twelve people I've asked have given that number, and no one has given any other. They even make jokes about how the Americans don't even know how many states their country has.

I saw a BBC news report on the Wellstone service last night. They didn't bother showing where Minnesota is, which is rather a shame, since no one here knows. But the thing that struck me was that when they showed Clinton, I thought to myself, "That's our president."

This is the first Googlism return for good old bubba, i kid you not:

bill clinton is no anna nicole smith

And for the current occupant of the oval office:

george w bush is the antichrist

Heh heh, we've warped Noah. After spending some time in Florida, I have a question to ask about liberalism and the pursuit of happiness. What might this Dan Savage fellow say about someone who collects welfare checks so they can spend all day hunting? (Actually I don't think this is possible anymore because of welfare reform, but the redneck stereotype of people who don't care about working and just spend their time fishing, hunting, and drinking beer persists.) Just the first thing that popped into my head when I read the words "liberal" and "pursuit of happiness."

Good Googlisms:

Ben Webster is no longer our breeding male.
Dennis Clark is 7 pages long and availiable on request.
Bessie Dewar is a ball of positive energy

So someone pointed out to me Googlism, which magically extracts from the web one sentence about any person you'd like. For "Noah Snyder" there are 4 returns about 4 different people, the one that refers to me:

"Noah Snyder is still right about this."

Thank you Matt Yglesias.

Oh, and saturday we drafted for a fantasy basketball league that my brother jesse is running. I had the first pick, which meant that i had to pick last in one round and first in the next and you only have 1.5 minutes per pick, and when someone takes the person you want right before you, sometimes you screw up. So i picked okay, but not very well, until halfway through the 9th round (you can only have 8 players active at a time) I suddenly realized that no one had taken Grant Hill because he very far towards the bottom of their player rankings and every one had forgotten him. I had to wait all the way till the end of the 10th round for my next pick, and it was rather nervous, but i ended up with Grant Hill as my 10th team and a pretty darn good lineup:

C Juwan Howard
PF Tim Duncan
SF Glenn Robinson
F Karl Malone
SG Michael Finley
PG Gary Payton
G Bobby Jackson/Chris Whitney/Emmanuel Genobili (I'll start Jackson until Bibby returns and then switch to Whitney and then when Genobili breaks into the starting lineup and is on his way to rookie of the year I'll switch to him)
U(tility) Grant Hill

I also have on the bench:
Richard Jefferson
Derek Fisher
Corliss Williamson

I'm thinking of trying to make a trade to upgrade my third guard.

Pet Shop Boys/Blogosphere news for Alec.

I went to a book reading tonite for Dan Savage's new book: Skipping Towards Gomorrah: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Pursuit of Happiness in America. He was really amazingly funny and a great speaker and question answerer, i think he's actually much better in person than he is in writing. Furthermore he managed to restore my faith in liberalism.

I suppose that comment takes a bit of explaining. Basically, although my politics nowadays are more liberal than conservative I am still more often annoyed by liberals than i am by conservatives. Things like wearing little ribons on ones lapel for some cause, or camping out in tents for a living wage, just rub me the wrong way. I often find liberalism so childish, and so obsessed with symbolism over outcomes. I think being un-PC is a good thing, and i often find liberals sadly lacking in humor when it comes to politics. Dan Savage on the other hand makes jokes to a liberal audience in berkeley about how his book not being nominated for Lambda book award is like going to the special olympics and not getting a medal. More importantly he made it very clear why his politics were worth fighting for and actually made a difference other than just making one feel good that you're trying to do good for other people. (I guess that's what annoys me about liberalism the whole "well we're trying to do our best and if it doesn't actually accomplish anything you can't blame us" thing.) But Dan Savage very eloquently and humorously showed that the pursuit of happiness is a pretty damn important thing, and that its worth fighting for, and that we're winning that war. And he didn't pull punches. His anger towards Bill Bennet was also directed towards those in the Gay community who tried to stop him from being able to adopt because he strayed too far from the "rainbow reservation", when someone asked about decriminalizing marijuana he pointed out with genuine outrage the hypocrasy of decriminalizing possesion but not dealing: "[loosely quoted] these people are risking their necks for your happiness and when they get caught we run the other way. If smoking pot isn't so bad, than why is it bad to sell it? There should be an organization out there of people who smoke pot who pay the legal fees of their dealers if they get caught, we shouldn't just leave them out to dry."

If there were more people out there like him then I could proudly say I was a liberal.

Great Salon article on manhood, fatherhood, and a way in which Barry Bonds is a role model.

Real headline: Nations Urge North Korea to Drop Nukes.

Bessie complains that we haven't been posting enough, so i'll try to do a little more in the near future... Why haven't I been posting:

1. two words: "war" and "peace" (i'm nearly done, and i now know that if i'm ever depressed i can just find a very large book and give my life direction)

2. a very long frisbee game yesterday (harvard beat waterloo (this canadian university) 13-2, and then the algebraists beat the geometers 15-13, i was on the winning side both times)

3. a haloween party where I went as james bond, with a tux and a small gun i made from a whiteboard marker, cardboard, a safety pin, and a lot of black duct tape. (there's a picture floating around somewhere of the hostess who stole a russian hat from someone so she could pose as my bond girl)

4. Sarah Hatter is moving to south carolina which means i won't be able to take meg's advice and marry Sarah Hatter, and blogging reminds me of this intense disapointment.

5. None of you guys give me anything to respond to.

How dare my fine state by calumnied?! At least one professional observer has questioned these rankings. I've got to say that I don't think we can possibly be worse than the deep south; How we beat Florida escapes me. In one of the counties in our district, the starting salary for teachers is $18,000 a year. I don't think our teachers are in as dire straits as that. I'll also plead testing bias against hispanics for our low test scores. (That sounds convincing, doesn't it?) Alright, I'm going back to work. Florida is either going to get stupider or smarter after the next election, and we have to work to make sure that it gets smarter.

How come everything written in German looks like it's expressing a great deal of angst?

So we're finally learning the past tense in German, and its oddly similar to french in that there's a compound past tense used for speaking and a simple one for writing, and that the compound uses to be or to have according to the same weird rules... However, in German there is no wonderful little poem which every class uses to teach this tense... So, I got to translating...

--Früstück vom Morgen

Er hat Kaffee
In die Schale gesetzt
Er hat die Milch
In die Schale Kaffee gesetzt
Er hat der Zucker
In die Kaffee mit Milch gesetzt
Mit der Kleine Löffel
Er hat ihr gerührt
Er hat die Kaffee mit milch getrunken
Und er hat die Schale aufgezeichnet
Ohne mit mir zu sprechen

Er hat
Eine Zigarette beleuchtet
Er hat Kreise
Mit geraucht gebildet
Er hat die Asche
In Aschenbecher gesetzt
Ohne mit mir zu sprechen
Ohne mich zu betracten

Er ist gestanden
Er hat sein Hut
Auf seinem Kopft gesetzt
Er hat sein Regenmantel angesetzt
Weil es regnete
Und er ist gelassen
Unter dem Regen
Ohne ein Wort
Ohne mich zu betrachten

Und mich habe ich
Mein Kopf in meiner Hand gesetzt
Und ich habe geweint
-----

Corrections of my german are more than welcome.

"Ich brauche ein Regenmantel..."
"J'ai besoin d'un manteau de pluie..."
"I need a raincoat..."

This weekend an epic milestone was reached, for the first time in 622 games, the New York Times predicted a correct score of a football game: Detroit 23, Chicago 20. (See TMQ for more)

Further proof that every field has its own nerdy inside jokes:

Yesterday a colleague at the investment firm where I work was telling me about how she'd set up one our co-workers with a friend of hers, and how they were going to have their first date that night. We then had the following exchange:

She: I'd say I did a pretty good job of brokering that trade.
Me: Yeah, well, these days I'm still trading as a principal for my own account.

We both found this quite amusing.

So mathematics is (are?) not exactly a glamorous trade, but I bet a decent number of educated people (though not a majority) have heard of Andrew Wiles, and I bet most can name at least one great mathematician of the past. But can any of you name a single musicologist, living or dead? (Current Harvard faculty don't count. Nor do Google searches.)

I didn't vote for him. And though he persists in making a fool of himself in the press, he's been a competent governor. But today I get to vote for his replacement. I hope they don't throw out my ballot -- the package they sent me got wet and now the "secrecy envelope" is stuck shut, so it's going to look kind of suspicious.

Twelfth is not bad, but being behind Iowa is inexcusable.

I don't know about books, but my kids are going to start violin at age two. And piano. Then they'll spend their whole adult lives in therapy.

Great commercial idea from Salon.

Ouch, dave, what do you have to say in defense of your state?

Ouch, nat what do you have to say in defense of your state?

So i guess the reason i asked the question was because of the following two observations:

1. I wish i'd known "Into the Woods" as a child. I think every child should have the opportunity to watch that with their parents many times, and i hope my kids will. It just says so much about being parents and kids and growing up and moving on into the world and all these sorts of things... Anyway i can't really describe what i mean because i'm not very eloquent, but somehow the point of having kids listen to these things is that you can't say it as well yourself.

2. Its very weird to me that not everyone knows "Treasures of the Snow" from their childhood. Its this novel by Patricia St. John about three children living in the swiss alps. To me its like Cinderella or the Hobbit or something that everyone just grows up knowing. Its the best treatment of forgiveness ever written. I sometimes wonder how one raises moral kids without christianity (not because i abstractly think its difficult, but just because i have no experience with it) and the more i think about it the more reading this book might just have everything i'd want to take from christianity.

Also i've been realizing how important it is to me that if i have kids that i read them "the Lord of the Rings" before they get a chance to see the movie (despite the movie being good).

Hard to disagree with Roald Dahl and Deep thoughts... I'd have music suggestions but i'm not sure to what extent i'd want to curse my children with my music ("do i listen to pop music because i'm unhappy, or am i unhappy because i listen to pop music").

I'll also throw "Toy Story 2" and "Shrek" into the mix.

This may sound strange coming from someone who took the Western canon so seriously for so long, but at this point, I don't really believe that works of literature can teach any virtues beyond a love of ideas and language, and a certain amount of compassion for human life outside one's own experience. Which is more than enough, of course. But any other attempt to teach morals or virtues through stories is bound to fail, I think, because a moral or philosophical concept, no matter how beautifully presented, is a dead thing until you relearn it through your own life experience. The only thing art or literature can do in the meantime is prepare you for that moment of recognition. Which, again, is more than enough.

In other words, the books I'll choose for my kids are the ones that charged my imagination the most when I was young, which usually means books where a moral compass is notably absent. I guess my five-foot shelf of children's books would include: D'Aulaires' Greek Myths; The Annotated Sherlock Holmes; Through the Looking-Glass; The Chronicles of Narnia; a representative selection of Peanuts comic strips; World Tales; the complete works of Roald Dahl and Lloyd Alexander; the Mahabharata; and the Bible, more for its literary qualities than anything else. But if I had to choose one work of art to provide something of a moral compass for my kids, it would be Antigone, or maybe "Hey Jude."

The stories I'd raise my kids with... I would say that Uncle Shelby's A to Z book and Jack Handey's Deep Thoughts are books that every impressionable child should read. Seriously, I like The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein (and everything else by him, though that book is arguably the most valuable). The Little Engine That Could is of course a necessity. And children's biographies of Jackie Robinson, Martin Luther King are on my list too. When my kid got a little older, I'd give him Wooden by John Wooden (not to be confused with Cash by Johnnie Cash). I'd also like a good story about gender discrimination, but I can't think of one.

In response to Noah's point about the split on the left between those who think american liberalism is superior and those who are moral relativists, I think that split will continue to exist 25 years from now. There are a lot of people out there on the left who just don't like what they see in America today and I don't see that changing. Incidentally, I think that our society is better than Islamic fundamentalism, but I'd like to think that we don't need a war in Iraq to destroy fundamentalism.

Apparently the new Katie Holmes movie is based on the book Adam's Fall, which if i remember correctly is set in our harvard dorm (this according to a cnn review).

The nice thing about everything closing early here is that you have time to sleep and not much of a hangover during your 9 am Saturday lecture.

So i had this weird moment a couple minutes ago, where, as is often the case, i was having an imaginary conversation with someone in my head. I was trying to form some sentence about how you don't regret this yet, but i know soon you will, and i remembered there's a quote i always use to express that and thought to myself "you'll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tommorow, but soon, and for the rest of your life." A moment later it hit me that that actually is the line. I had completely forgotten that regret was what that quote was refering to.

I guess my question of the day can be rephrased a little bit. I dunno if any of you are at all familiar with Bennet's infamous book of virtues or whatever its called. The idea is that these are a hundred or so short stories which will teach children to be virtuous. Well i don't want my kids growing up like Bennet's, and i don't want 100 stories, and i don't want them all to be necessarily short stories, however the question is what say 10 stories or similar things would you want your kids to know to learn the virtues you want them to know.

And Alec, even if you plan on teaching your kids Greek, everything on the list must have be available in english translation.

Dan Savage argues for war in Iraq... Thinking about Pym Fotrune has made me really start to wonder whather there is a split coming in the left between those who believe modern liberal culture to be superior and those who stick to the claim that we shouldn't impose our ideas on anyone else. Dan Savage in this article makes it very clear that he thinks that Islamo-Fascism (his phrasing) is something that needs to be stamped out, and why shouldn't he think that? he's very clear that he thinks the freedom to have fun and do whatever you want in private between concenting adults is crucially important, the radical islamics don't. Pym Fortune didn't want more muslim immigrants because he didn't want to lose the modern tolerance for homosexuality, the dutch liberal drug laws, and a zillion other progressive changes in culture. So what do you guys think? 25 years from now will liberals have generally decided that modern liberalism is superior? Will they stick to "anti-imperialism"? Or will there be a split?

Question of the Day:

What stories/books/films/etc. do you think kids most need to know growing up. You know, the stories that are just completely engrained into you. This can either be things you grew up knowing, or things you wish you had, or things you're making your kids know about, etc.

So Sports Illustrated has an article on whether NBA teams should take problem players or not... The person arguing that they shouldn't is guilty of about as rediculous a blindspot ever:

Teams that win NBA championships -- the Lakers of today and the 1980s, the Bulls of the '90s, the Celtics of the '60s and the '80s -- are almost invariably peopled with players who act like professionals. Yet no sport keeps its bad boys, head cases and out-and-out reprobates in play as persistently as pro hoops.

HELLO, Dennis Rodman anyone?? The nuttiest nut of them all? I mean, one can certainly argue that Dennis Rodman was a goofball off the court but played hard on it and that's what matters, but that isn't the argument this guy makes. Furthermore, he never mentions Rodman anywhere. Arguing by conveniently ignoring obvious things is not generally a convincing strategy.

With Jerry Rice as a raider, Hakeen retiring in toronto and Ewing in Orlando, you being to wonder when this stuff is going to stop... All i have to say is Green Bay better make darn sure Brett Favre retires as a Packer. I trust they will...

Those of you who took Mark Kishlansky's class on the English Revolution may recall that according to baptismal records from the 17th and 18th century, people in British countries stopped naming their sons "Oliver" after the Restoration...until around the time of the American Revolution, anyway, when "Oliver" became one of the most popular names in the American colonies. Trends in naming newborns can serve as an interesting index of popular sentiment, it seems.

Why do I bring this up? Well, according to Nicholas D. Kristof's latest column in the New York Times, guess what's the most popular name for newborns in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province?

I was trying to figure out how to get a transcript mailed out, when i found that the harvard site has changed...

Ten Years ago this week, Peter Gabriel's album Us debuted at number 2 on the charts. I was blissfully unaware of it at the time, but over the years it has become an album i need. Especially "Secret World." Its fun to check the ten years ago charts, because you really never know when something like this suddenly pops up. It can't be too much longer before "Automatic for the People" hits the charts.

Poor Dave...

Forbes Fictional Fifteen (link via Fark).

Going back to the very early days of the blog, you may remember Alec's dating advice for non-autistics, where he said that when you break up with someone make a list of why because in a few months you will have broken up. (See the original post for Alec's much better prose.) Anyway I thought i'd chip in on my similar relationship advice which also involves making a list.

When you're beginning a relationship, make a list of deal breakers, things which would mean the relationship would have to end. Make sure a few of them aren't too painful. Write it down. Accidentally leave it out. Stick to it.

Paul Pollack's away message tonite is "if its worth doing, its worth doing badly." I think that's the quote that has the most different variants. I've heard just about every way of putting "not"s and "badly"s and "well"s into that sentence. I think if i were making a personality test it would include a question like:

Which of the following do you most agree with:
a) if its worth doing, its worth doing badly
b) if its not worth doing well, its not worth doing
c) if its worth doing, its worth doing well
d) there is no well, only do or not do

I love living in a country where we write 80-page decisions on the consitutionality of sex toys, discussing for dozens of pages the social and legal history of sex toys. Its wonderful. Here's the decision. I think the best part i've found is:
"In effect, doctors inherited the task of producing orgasms in women because it was a job nobody else wanted."
--p. 43

Matt Yglesias' expresses bafflement on how "that depends what the definition of is is" came to be a definitive moment of Clinton slipperiness. Although he makes a very good point, if my memory serves me right there's another point he missed. The statement "there is no sexual relation" wasn't even said by Clinton, it was said by one of his lawyers. The reason i remember this is that Clinton's next sentence after "that depends what the definition of is is" was the much more brilliant "usually lawyers are asked to explain their clients statements and not vice-versa" (roughly, i haven't tracked down the original quotes). So the slipperiness of the original claim wasn't directly Clinton's fault.

Some more weird google hits:

6th hit for fun sex snowball missionary
9th hit (yahoo) for buy an appartment in new york
11th hit (yahoo) for aaron carter armpit hair
184th(!!??!!) hit for Kansas City Call Girls Prostitutes photo

184th means looking through 19 full pages of links...

More importantly, someone from alltel.net googled me. This site is now the first hit, beating out the surfer guy. Anyway, to any young women in berkeley who's secretly in love with me and e-stalking me, i'm single and my email address is on the left of the page.

Classes started today. 9 am six days a week through Dec. 8. Ugh.

I've only been here a week, and already I'm sneaking over to a girl's room late at night. Granted, it was Bessie's room, and I went there to watch the Twins game on her computer Tuesday night (she has ethernet and I don't). I think they lost last night because I wasn't watching. (My dad called me at 5 am to tell me the score.)

Despite giving a purported advantage, the Metrodome is still a terrible place to watch baseball. I think baseball would be a good deal more popular in Minnesota if we had a real stadium to go to, so on a gorgeous July night you could say to the kids, "Let's go to the ballgame" and it would feel like real baseball. And I think the Twins would give up a win or two to have more fans in the stands on a regular basis. The advantage in the playoffs comes from having 56,000 screaming hanky-waving fans in that enclosed space. If they got to the playoffs in a new stadium, there would be just as many fans waving hankies. And for a game in Minnesota in October, the roof would certainly be closed, so the noise would probably be just as bad. The white roof and the lights and the turf would be gone, but the Twins would give up these October advantages to gain more revenue so they could make it to more Octobers.

That said, I don't think the public should have to pay more than a small amount for a new stadium. The one we have now, though out of date, is perfectly serviceable, and there are much better things to do with public money. What they really need is a new owner who was willing to spend more money (easier under the new agreement) to make the franchise a perennial winner, which would increase both popular and corporate interest in a new stadium.

Since when did Browns fans start acting like Philly fans? In Cleveland we throw batteries at the opposing team, threaten to kill a coach for cutting Kosar, and litterally kill Modell if we got the chance, we do NOT chear when our starting quarterback whose having a bad day gets injured. That's just rediculous. I'm embarassed to be a Browns fan.

TMQ is brilliant as usual this week. Nat, I highly recomend the first half of the article which he spends poking fun at psychologists. But what really caught my eye is the following remarkable factoid:

Stats of the week No. 5: It has been 12 years since the Bengals won a road game against a team with a winning record.

Although this trailer leaves me with absolutely no wish to see the movie it advertises, it has completely convinced me that i need to buy the new peter gabriel album.

Dave, congrats on yet another Twins victory, but i have a question for you Twins fans... If the Metrodome is such an amazing homefield advantage and one of the best playoff venues ever, why do you want to get rid of it so badly?

Matt Yglesias (have i mentioned, we're the 15th google hit for "Matt Yglesias"?) thinks that people usually do bad things believing them to be right. Although he may have a point for his dictator examples, i completely disagree with this claim when it comes to ordinary people. I think that most people do bad things knowing deep down that they're bad, but refusing to think about it enough to realize this. This includes simple rationalizations, complete denial, and a million other dodges.

So here's my first "We're not in Kansas anymore" observation: this morning I met the woman who cleans our house (she even vacuums our rooms...what am I going to with all the extra time?). I had a perfectly ordinary conversation with her, but something seemed amiss. And then I realized: in the US, it seems that almost everyone in low-wage jobs (janitors, security guards, cab drivers, etc.) speaks English as a second language. I didn't even realize I'd formed this sterotype, but every time one of those people over here opens his or her mouth and starts speaking the Queen's English, I find myself a little bit surprised. I guess we really are a nation of immigrants.

On the other hand, people here seem to hate Blair as much as people at Harvard hate Bush. So we can bond over that.

Speaking of trying to describe the indescribable:If you haven't seen Spirited Away, the new movie by Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki, you must. I tried to explain it to a friend recently. There are movies that I saw when I was very young, that I haven't seen since and barely remember, but the few images and scenes that I still recall are charged with an almost terrible beauty and power, because they're my earliest memories of art. Spirited Away is filled with moments like that, except they're even more mysterious because you're seeing them for the first time. (Only one other film has ever stirred those earliest memories of movies in me like that, and that's Charles Laughton's Night of the Hunter. Even there, it's only one scene, and it lasts for less than a minute.) Spirited Away is like a movie glimpsed in a dream that you wish you could return to. The amazing thing is, you can.

I'd call it recognition. But that isn't quite the right word. Maybe the movie affects us the way it does because there isn't a word for that moment, for one man's realization of his own folly and loss.

For me, the ultimate cinematic example of an emotional moment beyond words is still the last shot of The Third Man.

So i've decided i disagree with the old saying "history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce", but i can't manage to come up with a good replacement saying. So, my question for all of you is, how would you describe in one word the mood of the end of vertigo? In that movie history repeats itself, the first time is tragedy, what is the second?

Things you shouldn't say to a crowd of Brits:

1. "I was planning on not eating beef over here."
2. "I have a friend studying at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, or as I like to call it, the London School of Cleansing the Dirty Peoples of the World."

I don't think I'm helping people's image of Americans.

Who needs U.S. News's college ranking when you could just ask google.

Twins win!!! Twins win!!! Twins win!!!

A.J. Pierzynski is my hero!!!!!

I watched via espn.com and cnnsi.com from the third inning on. It was a real nailbiter. I'm going to try to find a TV for the next series; if that fails I'll at least be able to listen on internet in my room, which should be working by then. I just hope that none of the games start at 7:30 Pacific Time...