The Age of Reagan

Brad DeLong:

The true history of the U.S. since 1980, IMHO at least, is not Sean Wilentz's "Age of Reagan" but is instead composed of a half dozen or so deeper and broader tides, like:

1. The end of the Cold War
2. Other winner-take-all factors that have, in combination with education, pushed American income polarization back to Gilded Age levels.
3. The failure of American taxpayers to support their state and local governments in expanding funding for public education--and the impact of reduced public education effort in sharpening the distinction between rich and poor.
4. The computer revolution in productivity growth.
5. The rise of China (and soon, we hope, India) as industrial powers.
6. The extraordinary social liberalization of America--if you had told any Republican in 1980 that 2008 would see (a) a Negro with an Arabic-Swahili name beating a veteran figher pilot in the presidential polls and (b) gay marriage as the big cultural issue of the day, said Republican would have blown several gaskets. And if you had said that this would have been the result of an "Age of Reagan" said Republican would have melted down completely.

(via)

Freedom is a term of art with the specific contextual meaning of "nothing left to lose"

Over at Pencil Roving, Carrie has found a very amusing scholarly article about judges citing popular music lyrics in their opinions.

Don't cheat on me with cornbread

Last night, New York City's Beacon Theater played host to alt.country royalty: Lyle Lovett and his Large Band were in town, and for over two hours they rocked the house with a potent mixture of Texas swing, gospel, and "newgrass."

Carrie and I had third-row seats, and though they weren't cheap, we got full value for money out of the performance last night, which left us exhausted and happy in the way that only an up-close-and-personal encounter with real art can do.

The Large Band lives up to its name. Lovett was touring with 11 instruments (two guitarists besides himself; a mandolin player; a cellist; a fiddler; a bassist; two percussionists; a pedal steel player; and a piano player), plus a power trio of backup singers.

A local gospel choir, God's Generation, from Danbury, CT, is touring with Lovett in the Northeast and provided enthusiastic support at the beginning and end of the show.

Lyle is a delightful eccentric, and though many of the songs he played last night were very familiar (I've been a fan for over 20 years), a few of them were new to me. Here's a song he played last night about being unfaithful on the road... with food.

"Keep it in your pantry." :-)

Sales Guy v Web Dude

This is good. (Video.)

Elmer Fudd, Fwench suwwealist?

As an early devotee of Looney Tunes cartoons, I was fascinated by the strange freedoms of these characters, especially their ability to shape-shift -- like Ovid on speed. Clearly, Bugs Bunny knows as much about leaping, not to mention whirling, zooming and, of course, hopping, as any of the great Spanish poets whom Bly credits with the knack of slipping through walls from one room of the psyche into another. Bugs can be in two places at once, which he is whenever Elmer Fudd points his shotgun down one of the two holes of the rabbit's underground residence. And just as Pirandello and other modern dramatists sought to break down the actor/audience barrier, so Looney Tunes allowed an animated character to talk directly to the movie house audience or to criticize the very hand of its animators, thereby betraying the text itself. In one cartoon which mixes animation with a live action sequence, Porky Pig barges into producer Leon Schlesinger's office demanding to be let out of his contract. Another cartoon opens quietly with the figure of Elmer Fudd in full hunting regalia tip-toeing left to right through the woods. Then, as if noticing a noisy late-comer to the theater or the sound of a shaken box of candy, Fudd stops, turns to face the audience, puts one of his four fingers to his lips and says in a seething whisper: "Shhhh! It's wabbit season." Ah, Elmer, you unlikely modernist! What were your creators reading? Was animator Chuck Jones curling up at night with a volume of French surrealist poetry?

Former U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins, writing in the Wall Street Journal, on inspiration derived from classic cartoons: "Inspired By A Bunny Wabbit."

The right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed

In a landmark civil rights decision, the Supreme Court ruled today that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution does, in fact, create an individual right of firearms ownership for American citizens, striking down the District of Columbia's strict gun control laws:

[The Court] said that the government may impose some restrictions on gun ownership, but that the District's strictest-in-the-nation ban went too far under any interpretation.

Scalia wrote that the Constitution leaves the District a number of options for combating the problem of handgun violence, "including some measures regulating handguns."

"But the enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table," he continued. "These include the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home."

The court also held unconstitutional the requirement that shotguns and rifles be kept disassembled or unloaded or outfitted with a trigger lock. The court called it a "prohibition against rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense."

Supreme Court Strikes Down D.C. Gun Ban (Washington Post, 26 June 2008)

This is the first time in U.S. history that the Supremes have deigned to comprehensively interpret the Second Amendment, and the decision, which establishes that the Second Amendment protects individual rights (just like the other nine amendments comprising the Bill of Rights) is historic and highly significant.

Related: Full text of the Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia et al v. Heller (PDF)

Excerpt from decision syllabus:

Held:

1. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.Pp. 2–53.

(a) The Amendment’s prefatory clause announces a purpose, but does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative clause. The operative clause’s text and history demonstrate that it connotes an individual right to keep and bear arms. Pp. 2–22.

(b) The prefatory clause comports with the Court’s interpretation of the operative clause. The “militia” comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense. The Antifederalists feared that the Federal Government would disarm the people in order to disable this citizens’ militia, enabling a politicized standing army or a select militia to rule. The response was to deny Congress power to abridge the ancient right of individuals to keep and bear arms, so that the ideal of a citizens’ militia would be preserved. Pp. 22–28.

(c) The Court’s interpretation is confirmed by analogous arms-bearing rights in state constitutions that preceded and immediately followed the Second Amendment. Pp. 28–30.

(d) The Second Amendment’s drafting history, while of dubious interpretive worth, reveals three state Second Amendment proposals that unequivocally referred to an individual right to bear arms.

Don't let me catch you again with a Marlboro, son. Now, pass the hash pipe.

The Dutch, bless them, are about to implement the reductio ad absurdum of anti-smoking laws. As Reason's Hit and Run blog reports:

A Dutch ban on smoking in businesses open to the public takes effect on July 1, and owners of marijuana-selling "coffee shops" are worried. They're not worried because the ban will prevent their customers from smoking pot. Although the combustion products of any dried weed include toxins and carcinogens, cannabis is exempt from the law, which is ostensibly aimed at protecting employees. It's hard to see what purpose this disparate treatment serves, aside from horrifying American conservatives with the prospect of a topsy-turvy world in which you can smoke pot but not tobacco. But since European pot smokers often mix tobacco into their joints, The Independent reports, coffee shop operators are afraid the smoking ban will cut into their business...

"I Swear, Officer, It's Only Marijuana!" (Hit and Run)

Whose quality of life is it, anyway?

In the spring of 2001, Bill Thomas, dressed in his usual sweat shirt and Birkenstock sandals, entered the buttoned-down halls of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. His message: Nursing homes need to be taken out of business. "It's time to turn out the lights," he declared.

Cautious but intrigued, foundation executives handed Dr. Thomas a modest $300,000 grant several months later. Now the country's fourth-largest philanthropy is throwing its considerable weight behind the 48-year-old physician's vision of "Green Houses," an eight-year-old movement to replace large nursing homes with small, homelike facilities for 10 to 12 residents. The foundation is hoping that through its support, Green Houses will soon be erected in all 50 states, up from the 41 Green Houses now in 10 states.

"We want to transform a broken system of care," says Jane Isaacs Lowe, who oversees the foundation's "Vulnerable Populations portfolio." "I don't want to be in a wheelchair in a hallway when I am 85."

[...]

The $122 billion nursing-home industry arose from the 1965 birth of Medicare and Medicaid, the government health-insurance programs for the elderly and poor that provide billions in government reimbursements. Made up of both not-for-profit and for-profit companies, the industry still generates most of its revenue from Medicaid and Medicare.

Now, many nursing homes are aging, and the industry has suffered through so many scandals involving patient care that many elderly shun the thought of entering such institutions. A 2003 survey by the AARP, an advocacy group for older Americans, found that just 1% of Americans over 50 with a disability wanted to move to a nursing home.

WSJ: Rising Challenger Takes On Elder-Care System

New to the blogroll

New to the blogroll: Fugitive Ink.

Fugitive Ink addresses issues of politics, art and literature from an unapologetically idiosyncratic, vaguely High Tory perspective.

Public art and architecture has rarely been so exciting

Here's the best photo caption I've seen in a while:

People drink wine at the unveiling ceremony of an enema syringe in a sanatorium in the southern Russian spa town of Inozemtsevo June 18, 2008. A health spa in Russia has unveiled a bronze monument of three cherubs carrying an enema, a design inspired by the 15th century Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli.

Russian monument to enemas inspired by Botticelli (Reuters)

Good companions

Chows Bella and Fun, left to right, 1997:



Chows Bella and Fun, left to right, 2008:

The loyalty and devotion that dogs demonstrate as part of their natural instincts as pack animals closely mimics the human idea of love and friendship, leading many dog owners to view their pets as full-fledged family members. Conversely, dogs seem to view their human companions as members of their pack, and make few, if any, distinctions between their owners and fellow dogs. Dogs fill a variety of roles in human society and are often trained as working dogs. For dogs that do not have traditional jobs, a wide range of dog sports provide the opportunity to exhibit their natural skills. In many countries, the most common and perhaps most important role of dogs is as companions.

"Dog." Wikipedia.

Happy Caturday!

Gato Looks Out The Bedroom Window
Originally uploaded by enrevanche.

You never know, a bird might be perching on the fire escape.

It has happened before.

Say it isn't so

Uh-oh:

Know someone who loves gadgets and can't wait to buy the newest model? Chances are you would describe them as assertive and a strong leader -- and possibly arrogant, according a U.S. research.

An online study evaluating the characteristics of 25,000 American adults found avid technology consumers tended to score highly in personality traits such as leadership, dynamism and assertiveness -- but low in modesty.

Reuters: Gadget buyers seen as assertive, even arrogant

Thank you, John Scalzi...

...for writing these eminently sane observations on the same-sex marriage issue:

First and foremost, the idea that marriage in general needs to be “protected” by denying it to same-sex couples is ridiculous, just as it was when people believed that marriage needed to be “protected” by denying it to interracial couples. Second and more specifically, the idea that my marriage needs to be protected by a bunch of hyperventilating ninnies in the midst of a queer panic makes me want to retch. Please do keep your clammy, quivering, homophobic fingers off my state of matrimony, if you please. My marriage has not once been threatened by same-sex marriage; heck, I’ve been to Massachusetts at least four times since same-sex marriage was made legal in that commonwealth. Roving bands of same-sex married couples did not trample my marriage rights while I was there. But even more specifically, claiming to “protect” marriage when in fact you are intent of destroying potentially thousands of loving, legal marriages is an abomination.

As a blissfully happy, married, heterosexual male, all I have to add is: Amen, brother.

The notion that my marriage is going to somehow be diminished by allowing gay couples to get married is egregiously, noxiously offensive.

Consider the lilies of the flour aisle

Yet another hallowed Southern tradition is now officially endangered: White Lily flour will no longer be produced in the South.

For generations of Southern bakers, the secret to weightless biscuits has been one simple ingredient passed from grandmother to mother to child: White Lily all-purpose flour.

Biscuit dives and high-end Southern restaurants like Watershed in Atlanta and Blackberry Farm outside Knoxville use it. Blue-ribbon winners at state fair baking contests depend on it. On food lovers’ Web sites, transplanted Southerners share tips on where to find it, and some of them returning from trips back home have been known to attract attention when airport security officers detect a suspicious white dust on their luggage.

White Lily is distinctly Southern: it has been milled here in downtown Knoxville since 1883 and its white bags (extra tall because the flour weighs less per cup than other brands) are distributed almost solely in Southern supermarkets, although specialty stores like Williams-Sonoma and Dean & DeLuca have carried it at premium prices.

But at the end of June, the mill, with its shiny wood floors, turquoise and red grinders and jiggling armoire-size sifters, will shut its doors. The J. M. Smucker Company, which bought the brand a year ago, has already begun producing White Lily at two plants in the Midwest, causing ripples of anxiety that Southern biscuits will never be the same.

Southern Bakers Worry as a Treasured Flour Mill Moves North (New York Times, 18 June 2008)

I grew up making biscuits with Martha White flour (produced on the same principles as White Lily) - it produces light biscuits of uniform density, and there really is no substitute for a proper biscuit flour. (For extra cracker credibility points, Martha White is the longest running sponsor of the Grand Ole Opry.)

Damned if Smucker's didn't buy Martha White, too.

Oh, lord. I hope the Jelly Barons at least leave me my locally-produced stone-ground cornmeal.

Weezie, call your office

"I mean, 'whitey?' That's something that George Jefferson would say."

- Michelle Obama, commenting on a Clinton-supporting blogger's unsubstantiated claim that she made an incendiary speech about white folks using tired 1970s terminology.

It's a valid point in general terms--does anybody really say "whitey" anymore?--but I think that, technically, George probably would have used the word "honky."

Related: "The Jeffersons" (Museum of Broadcast Communications)

Critter Creator

Spore Critter In Progress
Originally uploaded by enrevanche.

Maxis, the mad geniuses behind the SimCity (and later, SimEverything) series of games, have an almost guaranteed to be blockbuster game called Spore coming out later this summer. From the Wikipedia article:

It allows a player to control the evolution of a species from its beginnings as a unicellular organism, through development as an intelligent and social land-walking creature, to levels of interstellar exploration as a spacefaring culture. It has drawn wide attention for its massive scope, and its use of open-ended gameplay and procedural generation.

Whoo... ambitious. Can't wait.

Yesterday, Maxis (and Electronic Arts, their distributor) released the first elements of Spore into the wilds - the Spore Creature Creator, which allows you to play Intelligent Designer and stack the evolutionary deck with your fantastic creations. Said creations can be uploaded to Spore's servers, and will be used to populate the Spore universe when the game goes live in a few weeks.

I didn't get to play with it much last night - long day at the office - but above, a quick snapshot of my critter, before I stuck the legs on. From the looks of it, the Creature Creator tool, whatever else it might be, is a $9.95 machinima studio.

Carrie is a huge fan of Maxis games, too... I think we'll be buying a couple copies of this.

P.S. Keep your eye on the "spore" tag on photo-sharing sites like Flickr... people are already uploading snapshots of their creations.

Stories from The Show

An exquisite, sentimental masterpiece by Dave Sheinin in today's Washington Post:

To get an audience with the oldest living ex-major leaguer and the last remaining ex-teammate of Babe Ruth's, you agree to show up at the retirement community where he lives, at a precise time that falls between his morning and afternoon naps, and that also happens to be lunchtime. In the clubhouse dining room, you take a seat to his left, because that's his good ear. And of course, you'll have what he's having -- a hot dog with onions and a little bit of ketchup, and an iced tea -- because, hey, he's nearly 100 years old and ought to know by now what's good.

Meet Bill Werber, who played eleven seasons in the majors alongside players like Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig: Ex Big-Leaguer Werber Has Many Stories To Choose From (Washington Post, 17 June 2008)

Kids, dogs and cats

James Fallows has a bone to pick with Al Gore regarding his endorsement speech for Obama:

Gore's well-crafted rhetorical sequence of reasons why "elections matter," after the jump, had one off-key element. Supreme Court appointments -- fine. War and peace? Of course. Wounded veterans, yes -- and Katrina, and impending recession, and the mortgage crisis. The environment? We were waiting for Gore to say it. But lead-tainted toys from China, and pet food?? Those items built toward the nice line about even dogs and cats knowing that elections matter. But they're out of scale with the rest of the list. And willing as I am to blame George Bush for just about anything, it's much more of a stretch to connect a mis-managed Mattel factory in Guangdong Province with White House policies than it is with the other, graver problems Gore mentioned. So, the dog-and-cat line is nice, but the logic behind it can use some work. Peace, prosperity, accountable government, saving the planet -- those should be enough.

Gore endorses Obama (James Fallows, 16 June 2008)

Democrats wishing to rally their base must pander to protectionists and unions, especially in an election year. The highly publicized scandals with tainted food and medicine from China are a free trade opponent's wet dream; I expect to hear a lot of indignant, economically illiterate faux-populism surrounding these issues in the coming weeks and months.

(Personally, I'd be hitting the fake heparin story hardest of all, but issues affecting children and pets apparently pack more emotional punch.)

Most livable cities - World edition

1. Copenhagen: out in front by virtue of its scale, a good airport, all those bike paths and handsome locals.

2. Munich: almost a winner, but it should have committed to building the Transrapid airport rail link.

3. Tokyo: the world’s best big city by far. Unfortunately, last week’s stabbing spree hasn’t done much for its public safety record.

4. Zurich: more relaxed neighbours would put it in first place.

5. Helsinki: a European capital with a foot firmly in Asia.

6. Vienna: one of Europe’s greenest cities.

7. Stockholm: the city wants to go vertical ­– a tricky mission.

8. Vancouver: the best of North America in a beautiful frame.

9. Melbourne: the best neighbourhoods in the southern hemisphere.

10. Paris: its visionary mayor has made the old dame internationally relevant again.

Financial Times: A league table of livable cities (13 June 2008)