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)

We're dead, we're over, we're roadkill, we're AltaVista.

Look, I would never admit this to anyone in public, but the truth is that our deal with Google marks the end of the first great battle of the Internet era -- call it Internet 1.0 -- and we've lost. That's what it means. We've capitulated. We've surrendered. We're dead. We're over. We're roadkill. We're AltaVista. We're Lycos. We've admitted we can't survive on our own and have turned to our biggest enemy to save us. When they write the history of the Internet, Yahoo! might be more than a footnote, but not much more.

Sure, we'll try to spin it otherwise, but we won't have much luck because we're about as good at spinning as we are at running our company, which is to say, not very. Have you ever seen our PR people in action? Me either. Do we even have any PR people? I have no idea. Whatever we're paying them, it's 100% too much. Who else could go into a PR battle against Microsoft and come out looking like the low-IQ side of the equation? Honestly, I've never ever in my entire life seen an organization that handles marketing and public relations as badly as we do, except maybe Facebook, but that's only because they don't do anything at all. They don't even try.

The Secret Diary of [Steve Jobs] Jerry Yang: The first great battle of the Internet is over...

You never see them in the same place at the same time, do you?

This never occurred to me before, but in retrospect it's quite clear:

Mario Batali and Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons... separated at birth?

Ah, Google Ads

I have not been wildly successful in my attempt to monetize enrevanche, but the Amazon and Google Ads do bring in a few bucks on a pretty steady basis.

Saw a Google Ad at the top of the page this morning when I loaded up the browser.

"Dead? How Come?"

It was for a malpractice and personal injury attorney, apparently.

Life is a condition with a 100% mortality rate, as far as we know.

Feed the cat first

This is a feline intervention, staged by Mister Gato.

"You're not going to check your work e-mail yet. You've made coffee... but didn't you forget something?"

"My dish won't fill itself with nuggets."

(See The Modulator and The Carnival of the Cats for more bloggers' cats from around the world.)

A raw box in the Brutalist style: my doctor's office building

Via Kottke:

In the July 2008 Vanity Fair, Christopher Hitchens ponders (among other things) a bit of a dispute about urban planning in New York City's West Village:

Since 1984, when St. Vincent’s Hospital knocked down the Elizabeth Bayley Seton Building, dating from 1898, to put up a raw box in the Brutalist style, the intersection of Greenwich and Seventh and 11th to 13th Streets has been slightly scarred by an inconsiderately ugly, if unobtrusive, division of St. Vincent’s Hospital. Now, under the pretext of expanding health-care facilities, St. Vincent’s has gone into partnership with the ever ambitious Rudin Management Company, a family real-estate concern. Together, the two investors propose a huge demolition on either side of Seventh Avenue. The inaugural plans featured on one flank a vast new medical building of half a million square feet, standing 329 feet tall and 288 feet wide, and on the other flank a Rudin condo tower of luxury apartments, also consisting of half a million square feet, while standing 265 feet tall and 208 feet wide. (If you have the desire to keep abreast of this battle for human scale in the living and working streets and squares of Greenwich Village, I invite you to visit www.protectthevillage.org.) Like two huge toads, these ugly and tedious and uninspired structures would impede the view and block the light of one of New York’s historic neighborhoods: a district that in a previous generation survived even Robert Moses and his plan to slam a neo-Brutalist urban highway through Bohemia. (The story of that battle is told by Jane Jacobs in her classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities.)

[...]

I could easily have guessed what the advocates of the big, expensive, tall buildings would say. They would claim that those who opposed them were “elitists.” And so it proved.

The friends of St. Vincent’s and the promoters of the Rudin super-condo claim that their Village opponents are of the sort who prefer buildings to people. And this is true if the buildings are on a human scale like the O’Toole and if the people are the ones who have already annexed most of the modern cityscape and fashioned it to suit themselves. Can they really not rest until every street and every block reflects their own ambition back to them, and until one size fits all? All of the hospital’s designs—which, along with the application for demolition of the O’Toole Building, were returned to sender by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, but have been resubmitted under the self-pitying rubric of “hardship”—look like a plan made by Donald Trump’s people on an especially uninspired day.

Last Call, Bohemia (Christopher Hitchens, Vanity Fair, July 2008)

This proposed development is right around the corner from where I live; there's a picture of the building (and surroundings) in the VF article.

I understand the theoretical importance of things like historic landmarking, but I've *been* inside the building they're proposing to tear down. A medical specialist I saw once or twice has an office in there. The building (inside) is a poorly designed space. Look, it's a toilet of a space, okay? And it ain't so beautiful on the outside, either.

If Rudin and St. Vincent's tear down that building and build this new space, it's going to disrupt my life, personally, for the duration of the demolition and construction periods and beyond. As I said, we're right around the corner from this spot.

But being against change in New York City is like resenting the tide for coming in.

To check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death?

[Anthony Lewis, the former New York Times columnist] wrote that there was “genuinely dangerous” speech that did not meet the imminence requirement [of what was considered outside the realm of First Amendment protection.]

“I think we should be able to punish speech that urges terrorist violence to an audience, some of whose members are ready to act on the urging,” Mr. Lewis wrote. “That is imminence enough.”

Harvey A. Silverglate, a civil liberties lawyer in Cambridge, Mass., disagreed. “When times are tough,” he said, “there seems to be a tendency to say there is too much freedom.”

“Free speech matters because it works,” Mr. Silverglate continued. Scrutiny and debate are more effective ways of combating hate speech than censorship, he said, and all the more so in the post-Sept. 11 era.

“The world didn’t suffer because too many people read ‘Mein Kampf,’ ” Mr. Silverglate said. “Sending Hitler on a speaking tour of the United States would have been quite a good idea.”

Mr. Silverglate seemed to be echoing the words of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., whose 1919 dissent in Abrams v. United States eventually formed the basis for modern First Amendment law.

“The best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market,” Justice Holmes wrote.

“I think that we should be eternally vigilant,” he added, “against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death.”

American Exception: Unlike Others, U.S. Defends Freedom to Offend in Speech (New York Times, 12 June 2008)

The Net, rewiring our nervous systems

For me, as for others, the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind. The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many, and they’ve been widely described and duly applauded. “The perfect recall of silicon memory,” Wired’s Clive Thompson has written, “can be an enormous boon to thinking.” But that boon comes at a price. As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

"Is Google Making Us Stupid?" - Nicholas Carr, The Atlantic, July 2008

Management theory, OSS style

The Office of Strategic Services, WW II-era precursor agency to the CIA, had these helpful management tips to offer back in the day:

(1) Insist on doing everything through “channels.” Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.

(2) Make “speeches.” Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your “points” by long anecdotes and accounts of per­sonal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate “patriotic” comments.

(3) When possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and considera­tion.” Attempt to make the committees as large as possible — never less than five.

(4) Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.

(5) Haggle over precise wordings of com­munications, minutes, resolutions.

(6) Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.

(7) Advocate “caution.” Be “reasonable” and urge your fellow-conferees to be “reason­able” and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.

(8) Be worried about the propriety of any decision — raise the question of whether such action as is contemplated lies within the juris­diction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon.

Of course, they were describing how to sabotage an organization from within. (Follow the link to download the PDF of the original document.)

Hat tip: Joho the Blog, via BoingBoing

Psychedelikitty

birfday-kard
Originally uploaded by mira d'oubliette.

Mira's cat Freya has a new look, after sleeping on a drawing done in (thankfully, non-toxic) chalk pastels.

Hey, careful where you point that thing...

The proprietress of Magick Sandwich just got some bad news--she's not moral enough to participate in BlogRush:

This message is to inform you that
we have carefully reviewed your blog:
Magick Sandwich
And your blog did not meet the
strict BlogRush quality criteria.

Reason Your Blog Wasn't Approved:
Inappropriate Content Or Advertising: Obscene or Disgusting

Naturally, she was delighted:

Oh my God, this is so exciting- my content is obscene or disgusting! Not to quibble, but obscenity and disgust aren't mutually exclusive are they?

But this is not a wholesale rejection- oh, no. If I can "improve the quality" of my blog, I can reapply after thirty days. Does this mean I just need to be more tastefully obscene? What does this word mean, anyway?

It's a new blog, but it shows a lot of promise, and a certain twisted sensibility that I think enrevanche readers (both of you!) will enjoy.

(I can't imagine what the bluenoses at BlogRush were objecting to. Oh, wait...)

Blogrolled: Magick Sandwich.

Long bets: index funds vs. hedge funds

Will a collection of hedge funds, carefully selected by experts, return more to investors over the next 10 years than the S&P 500?

That question is now the subject of a bet between Warren Buffett, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, and Protégé Partners LLC, a New York City money management firm that runs funds of hedge funds - in other words, a firm whose existence rests on its ability to put its clients' money into the best hedge funds and keep it out of the underperformers.

You can guess which party is taking which side.

Protégé has placed its bet on five funds of hedge funds - specifically, the averaged returns that those vehicles deliver net of all fees, costs, and expenses.

On the other side, Buffett, who has long argued that the fees that such "helpers" as hedge funds and funds of funds command are onerous and to be avoided has bet that the returns from a low-cost S&P 500 index fund sold by Vanguard will beat the results delivered by the five funds that Protégé has selected.

Buffett's Big Bet (Fortune)

Related:

Long Bets: “Over a ten-year period commencing on January 1, 2008, and ending on December 31, 2017, the S & P 500 will outperform a portfolio of funds of hedge funds, when performance is measured on a basis net of fees, costs and expenses.”

Herding cats

I don't know who said it first, but it's a truism: managing IT projects is like herding cats.

EDS turned the concept into a very funny television ad:

Big Apple Barbecue Block Party 2008

The weather in NYC today: 95 degrees, humidity 48%, heat index 99+...

Red, white, and blue. There's more barbecue down 26th St, citizen.

And yes, we were foolish enough to go out in this weather to eat some barbecue.

This blog's proprietor, eating City Grocery's (Oxford, MS) crawfish-and-okra hushpuppies.

More pictures at Flickr, from me and others.

Gato atop bookcase

Gato atop bookcase
Originally uploaded by enrevanche.

From a high vantage point. Lord and master of all he surveys.

Pull the string, and the story unravels

At Reason magazine's Hit and Run blog, David Weigel runs those crazy Larry Johnson-fueled net.rumors about Michelle Obama to earth:

Until he comes out with a video tape that shows at least one of the many rumored "Michelle speeches," I think that's the last we need to hear from Larry Johnson.

Ouch

You think *you're* having a bad day...

Au revoir, Chez Brigitte

The West Village loses another institution: Chez Brigitte, the tiny bistro/diner on Greenwich Avenue that's catercorner from St. Vincent's Hospital, closed last night.

My boxes. Let me show you them.

My boxes. Let me show you them.
Originally uploaded by enrevanche.

Been a while since we've had any catblogging around here.

Mister Gato, lover of boxes and heights, combines two great experiences by lounging atop document storage boxes, which in turn rest on top of our living room bookshelves.

In LOLspeak:

My boxes. Let me show you them.

Rest in peace

“I was out to destroy the audience. I wanted to destroy 'em, just make the toughest dude in the crowd pat his foot. I'd find a groove to get 'em by watching feet, and once I got one guy moving, I'd start working on the dude sitting next to him.” - Bo Diddley

Tough crowd

Significant arrests for joke-telling probably began in 1933, when “anekdot-telling” is first described as an anti-Soviet activity in the proceedings of the Communist Party at the Central Committee Plenum of January 1933. Matvei Shkiriatov, a Stalinist zealot and future member of the Central Committee, gave a speech which presaged the purges of the Great Terror, warning of “those within our ranks who ... go about clandestinely organising operations against the party”. Among the activities of these unwelcome communists he declared: “I would like to speak of one other anti-Party method of operation, namely, the so-called jokes [anekdoty]. What are these jokes? Who among us Bolsheviks does not know how we fought against Tsarism in the old days, how we told jokes in order to undermine the authority of the existing system? ... [Now] this has also been employed as a keen weapon against the Central Committee of the party.”

As the arrests began, the joke-tellers imagined the following scenario:

A clerk hears laughing behind the door of a courtroom. He opens the door. At the other end of the room the judge is sitting on the podium convulsed in laughter.

“What’s so funny?” asks the clerk.

“I’ve just heard the funniest joke of my life,” says the judge.

“Tell it to me.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I just sentenced someone to five years’ hard labour for doing that.”

Comedy of terrors (Financial Times, 30 May 2008)

House proud

On a recent KLM Royal Dutch Airlines flight, a business-class passenger stood up and addressed the cabin: "If anyone doesn't want their house, I'll take it," recalls another traveler, Mieke de Boer.

For 56 years, KLM has handed out a coveted souvenir: small ceramic replicas of historically significant houses filled with Dutch gin and topped with a cork. Many people can't get enough of them. The rarest houses -- given only to honeymooners -- can trade for upwards of $1,000.

The Ultimate Dutch Status Symbol: House-Shaped Booze Bottles (Wall Street Journal, 31 May 2008)

Everything's relative

The US “war on terror” has restricted the freedom of individual Americans – but to a lesser degree than in previous conflicts, a study said on Monday.

Freedom House, a US group best known for its work overseas, expresses “grave concern” at measures such as extraordinary rendition, “mistreatment of those in US custody” and warrantless wiretaps.

But it says: “The war on terrorism has resulted in ­significantly fewer violations of individual freedom than previous conflicts.”

The other incidents it cites include the mass detention of Japanese-Americans during the second world war, and Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency investigations of thousands of US ­citizens opposed to the Vietnam war.

Report warns of threats to freedom in US (Financial Times, 5 May 2008)

Related:

• Freedom House
  
• "Today's American: How Free?" at Freedom House
  

Three kinds of Republicans

It seems to me there are three main factions within the Republican Party, and while we can see strengths and weaknesses in each of them, the future of the Right is far from clear.

1. Progressive Republicans (aka: Teddy Roosevelt Republicans) - These are the Republicans who may be solid allies on many issues, but who also seem to want a Great Leader who can do Big Things. They are Crusader Conservatives - generally reliable on limited government, but willing to go off on Big Government crusades.

   Illustrative Quote: "The object of government is the welfare of the people," (Teddy Roosevelt)

2. Goldwater Republicans - These Republicans vote for limited government, individual liberty and strong defense; they may have various opinions on social issues, but they subsume those views to the goal at hand: limiting government

   Illustrative Quote: "I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom." (Goldwater

3. Bush Republicans - these voters may or may not care about limited government, but they're willing to accept Big Government, so long as the government does socially conservative things. (See: Mike Huckabee, Christian Democracy)

   Illustrative Quote: "Prayers can help, and so can the government." - President Bush, February 6, 2008

The Next Right: The Future of The Right (31 May 2008)

Big Apple Barbecue Block Party

The one weekend a year when you can get competition-quality barbecue in New York City is almost here:

The Big Apple Barbecue Block Party runs in Madison Square Park next Saturday and Sunday, June 7-8.

Here are some Flickr photopools from years past...

...and from 2005, enrevanche does the BABBP (and Greenwich Village Idiot podcasts.)

US power blackouts: a hacker connection?

Computer hackers in China, including those working on behalf of the Chinese government and military, have penetrated deeply into the information systems of U.S. companies and government agencies, stolen proprietary information from American executives in advance of their business meetings in China, and, in a few cases, gained access to electric power plants in the United States, possibly triggering two recent and widespread blackouts in Florida and the Northeast, according to U.S. government officials and computer-security experts.

One prominent expert told National Journal he believes that China’s People’s Liberation Army played a role in the power outages. Tim Bennett, the former president of the Cyber Security Industry Alliance, a leading trade group, said that U.S. intelligence officials have told him that the PLA in 2003 gained access to a network that controlled electric power systems serving the northeastern United States. The intelligence officials said that forensic analysis had confirmed the source, Bennett said. “They said that, with confidence, it had been traced back to the PLA.” These officials believe that the intrusion may have precipitated the largest blackout in North American history, which occurred in August of that year. A 9,300-square-mile area, touching Michigan, Ohio, New York, and parts of Canada, lost power; an estimated 50 million people were affected.

Officially, the blackout was attributed to a variety of factors, none of which involved foreign intervention. Investigators blamed “overgrown trees” that came into contact with strained high-voltage lines near facilities in Ohio owned by FirstEnergy Corp. More than 100 power plants were shut down during the cascading failure. A computer virus, then in wide circulation, disrupted the communications lines that utility companies use to manage the power grid, and this exacerbated the problem. The blackout prompted President Bush to address the nation the day it happened. Power was mostly restored within 24 hours.

China's Cyber-Militia (National Journal, 31 May 2008)

Photo gallery: Uncontacted Amazonian tribe photographed

Reuters, via Yahoo News: Uncontacted Amazonian tribe photographed:

Members of an unknown Amazon Basin tribe and their dwellings are seen during a flight over the Brazilian state of Acre along the border with Peru in this May, 2008 photo distributed by FUNAI, the government agency for the protection of indigenous peoples. Survival International estimates that there are over 100 uncontacted tribes worldwide, and says that uncontacted tribes in the region are under increasing threat from illegal logging over the border in Peru.

The last days of Bear Stearns

I’ve been a Wall Street Journal subscriber since college days, and was a charter subscriber at their web site, too.

With Rupert Murdoch’s ownership, I’m not sure WSJ is going in a direction that I want to follow. So I’ve recently subscribed (as an experiment) to the Financial Times, to assure myself of a steady stream of actionable news about business. Still too early to tell, but so far so good.

The links below are a reminder that the WSJ still does some things better than anybody else: it’s a three-part series, by Kate Kelly, that ran late this month on the final days of Bear Stearns as a business.

• Lost Opportunities Haunt Final Days of Bear Stearns (WSJ, 27 May 2008)
• Fear, Rumors Touched Off Fatal Run on Bear Stearns (WSJ, 28 May 2008)
• Bear Stearns Neared Collapse Twice in Frenzied Last Days (WSJ, 29 May 2008)

Excerpt from Day One:

Twelve hours after agreeing to sell Bear Stearns Cos. for $2 a share, Alan Schwartz wearily made his way to the company gym for a much-needed workout.

It was 6:45 a.m., March 17, and Bear Stearns's chief executive had slept little since hammering out the ugly details of his fire-sale deal with J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.

When Mr. Schwartz, already dressed in his business suit, trudged into the locker room, Alan Mintz, still in his sweaty gym clothes, made a beeline for the boss.

"How could this happen to 14,000 employees?" demanded the 46-year-old senior trader, thrusting his face uncomfortably close to Mr. Schwartz's. "Look in my eyes, and tell me how this happened!"

Two and a half months later, Mr. Schwartz still isn't quite sure. To Mr. Mintz and others, he has blamed a market tsunami he didn't see coming. He told a Senate committee last month: "I just simply have not been able to come up with anything, even with the benefit of hindsight, that would have made a difference."

Retour du fils du grand saut

A misfired fuse about the size of a pen thwarted a French daredevil's third attempt to skydive from space, his team says.

When Michel Fournier's massive helium balloon launched without him early Tuesday morning, the launch team said a "freak accident" caused some equipment to strike the ground.

That triggered a small explosion and separated the balloon from the capsule and its parachutes, spokeswoman Francine Gittins told a room packed with reporters and Fournier's supporters late Tuesday afternoon.

Balloon takes off without daredevil, Calgary Herald, 28 May 2008

The sentimental mainstay of a million down-market karaoke bars

Jerome White Jr., born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA, is an unlikely enka star in Japan:

...[t]hanks to the records, videos and cassette tapes played by his Japanese-born grandmother... he got hooked on a melodramatic genre of Japanese folk balladry called enka. With no idea what the lyrics meant, he started singing it in fractured Japanese when he was 5.

As far as anybody in the music industry knows, Jero is the first African American to sing this shamelessly maudlin music for a living. Enka wallows in heartache. Accompanied by over-the-top orchestration, it is usually sung by an aging Japanese performer (male or female) in a kimono. Suicide is nearly always a viable option in its ballads of unrequited love, hopeless love, cheating love and relentless rain.

Enka became popular as a bathetic balm for the hard years that followed World War II. The Japanese sponged it up as they rebuilt their country into an industrial colossus. Enka was the sentimental mainstay of a million down-market karaoke bars. Until Jero burst upon the popular music scene here in February, it was also a musical genre that had lost much of its buzz. It had the unhip odor of Elvis ballads in his years of white jumpsuits and belly fat. Most of the people who sang enka were double or triple Jero's age, as were most of the people who listened to it.

A Far Cry From Home (Washington Post, 28 May 2008)

A good question

With oil near $130 a barrel, why does Southwest Airlines stand alone in the airline industry in its aggressive use of hedging to keep fuel costs under control?

Southwest has locked in more than 70% of its jet-fuel requirements this year at a price equivalent to $51 a barrel for crude oil. By contrast, other big carriers have hedged 30% or less of their fuel needs this year. Those carriers generally expect to pay the equivalent of $85 to $100 per barrel of oil under their hedging programs.

Why Rivals Don't Copy Southwest's Hedging (Wall Street Journal, 28 May 2008)

There are some good attempts at an answer in the linked article.

In The Air

How useful is it to have a group of really smart people brainstorm for a day? When Myhrvold started out, his expectations were modest. Although he wanted insights like Alexander Graham Bell’s, Bell was clearly one in a million, a genius who went on to have ideas in an extraordinary number of areas—sound recording, flight, lasers, tetrahedral construction, and hydrofoil boats, to name a few. The telephone was his obsession. He approached it from a unique perspective, that of a speech therapist. He had put in years of preparation before that moment by the Grand River, and it was impossible to know what unconscious associations triggered his great insight. Invention has its own algorithm: genius, obsession, serendipity, and epiphany in some unknowable combination. How can you put that in a bottle?

But then, in August of 2003, I.V. held its first invention session, and it was a revelation. “Afterward, Nathan kept saying, ‘There are so many inventions,’ ” Wood recalled. “He thought if we came up with a half-dozen good ideas it would be great, and we came up with somewhere between fifty and a hundred. I said to him, ‘But you had eight people in that room who are seasoned inventors. Weren’t you expecting a multiplier effect?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, but it was more than multiplicity.’ Not even Nathan had any idea of what it was going to be like.”

The original expectation was that I.V. would file a hundred patents a year. Currently, it’s filing five hundred a year. It has a backlog of three thousand ideas. Wood said that he once attended a two-day invention session presided over by Jung, and after the first day the group went out to dinner. “So Edward took his people out, plus me,” Wood said. “And the eight of us sat down at a table and the attorney said, ‘Do you mind if I record the evening?’ And we all said no, of course not. We sat there. It was a long dinner. I thought we were lightly chewing the rag. But the next day the attorney comes up with eight single-spaced pages flagging thirty-six different inventions from dinner. Dinner.”

Annals of Innovation: In The Air (The New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell, 12 May 2008)

The pot-holed highway to Hell

If anyone doubts the problems of US infrastructure, I suggest he or she take a flight to John F. Kennedy airport (braving the landing delay), ride a taxi on the pot-holed and congested Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and try to make a mobile phone call en route.

That should settle it, particularly for those who have experienced smooth flights, train rides and road travel, and speedy communications networks in, say, Beijing, Paris or Abu Dhabi recently. The gulf in public and private infrastructure is, to put it mildly, alarming for US competitiveness.

You might have expected that investing in US infrastructure would be a hot political topic this year. Well, no. Hillary Clinton spent the final week of her Indiana campaign standing on the back of a pick-up truck arguing for a temporary suspension of the “gas tax”, the fuel duty that pays for highways.

You read correctly. Faced with the emptying of the Highway Trust Fund, established in 1956 as the US entered a period of growth and prosperity, Mrs Clinton suggested cutting its source of funds (which she claimed could be made up by a tax on oil companies). It was more important to give Americans a summer break from $4-per-gallon petrol.

At times I wonder whether the world’s biggest economy has the will to solve its challenges or will end up wandering self-indulgently into the minor economic leagues. I expect it will get serious when the crisis is too blatant to ignore, but it has not done so yet.

On the pot-holed highway to Hell (Financial Times, May 7, 2o08)

Cap and trade: the way to go

“The US is very promising. All three [presidential] candidates are interested in climate change, all three want international engagement, all three favour a cap-and-trade approach [on emissions], which augurs well for the continuation of the carbon market,” said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the parent treaty to the Kyoto protocol, in an interview with the Financial Times.

The market in carbon was worth $64bn (€40bn, £32bn) last year and is forecast to be worth $3,000bn by 2020 if the US joins it. It was set up under the Kyoto protocol, never ratified by the US, which requires rich countries to reduce their emissions but allows them to do so by buying carbon credits from emission-cutting projects in poor countries, a process known as cap-and-trade.

The main provisions of the protocol expire in 2012, so carbon traders are watching closely the tense international negotiations on a successor, which Mr de Boer is charged with overseeing. They are scheduled to finish by the end of next year.

That all three US presidential candidates are willing to negotiate a new treaty and support the setting up of an emissions market in the US – a policy vehemently opposed by Mr Bush – has come as a relief to carbon market investors.

“There is now, I believe, a global consensus that cap-and-trade is the way to go,” said Mr de Boer.

"U.S. emissions trading waits for Bush to go" (Financial Times, 26 May 2008)

Memorial Day 2008

In what is becoming a Memorial Day tradition at enrevanche, for the third year running, we're republishing guest blogger C. Scott Smith's Memorial Day 2006 post.

This blog (and its author) are taking the rest of the long Memorial Day weekend off; see you next Tuesday. - bc

---

The date on the grave is shown as March 18, 1945 and the site at the Henri-Chapelle military cemetery is, if my memory serves, on a long rolling hilltop in the middle of farmland in Belgium about an hour from Brussels.

I visited it once with my mother in 1967 after a harrowing taxi ride along single-lane farm roads from Brussels. The grave belongs to my grandfather, Crayton Mack Heinlein, who was killed fighting the Germans in World War II.

Family lore, or at least that lore passed along by our often unreliable grandmother, tells us that Mack, as he was known to his friends and fellow soldiers in the 9th Infantry Division, was killed in action in the battle just before the Battle of the Bulge. This information would seem at odds with the date of death listed on his grave, since the Battle of the Bulge took place from December 16, 1944 to January 25, 1945 and Granddad was listed as having been killed in March.

I for one never really thought that knowing the correct date that he died was all that important. He was dead long before I was born and whether the date we were all told by Grandmom was the right one never really seemed to matter.

We do know, thanks to surviving letters from him, that Mack landed with his division at Normandy on D-Day plus 3 and fought across France, through the killing hedgerows of Normandy, and from there into Luxembourg and Belgium where, if Grandmother was to be believed, he died sometime before the Ardennes offensive which was launched by the Germans in their last gasp to fight their way to Antwerp and force a negotiated peace with the Allies. If the Army’s date is correct, he fought in the Battle of the Bulge before being killed.

He was almost too old to serve in the Army, having been called up at the age of 39, but he went without complaint. During the winter of 1944-45, one of the coldest on record in Europe, he lost part of both feet to frostbite (his first Purple Heart) but refused medical evacuation; once he had recovered, he rejoined his unit--where. during a short sharp firefight, he was credited with saving the life of his best friend. He was killed shortly thereafter (his second Purple Heart), the details of his death never really being made clear since no one from his original infantry platoon survived the war and the Army was confused as to the actual date and cause of his death.

I had not thought about his grave in years. and yet recently something caused me to recall that trip my mother and I took by taxi from Brussels all those years ago. We used to have a photograph that I took as an eight year-old of my mother kneeling next to her father’s grave, a young woman of 28 with tears rolling down her face and seeing her father’s grave for the very first time in her life. There was another photo that my mother took of me at that time and in it I’m standing at attention next to the grave attempting to look solemn.

Neither picture exists any longer and Mom died in 1987.

I don’t know why I started thinking about Granddad’s grave, but I did, and the thinking about it drew me to Google, that divinely inspired fount of all knowledge both useful and less than, and within about a minute I had located the web site for the American Battle Monuments Commission, and from them I was able to locate my grandfather in Belgium 61 years after his death and almost 40 years since my visit to his grave.

The Battle Monuments Commission does an incredible job of maintaining the graves of our fallen soldiers. There are over 5,000 of them at Henri-Chapelle alone. If you have the name of the fallen you can easily find his or her grave, and if you request it, they will take photographs of the grave for you and return them via email or regular international mail within days of your request.

In order to make the inscription on the cross or Star of David stand out better in a photograph, the lettering is filled in with contrasting beach sand for the photo. The sand used can only come from Omaha Beach at Normandy (the site where over 2,000 American GIs fought and died on D-Day) because, as I was told by the superintendent of the cemetery, only sand from hallowed ground can be used to touch a grave marker that marks a hallowed site.

I was going to try to write something to finish this that might serve as a final statement and fitting tribute to the man my grandfather must have been. Upon reflection, I think that there can be no better statement about who he was, what he did and what the men and women with whom he served and died with accomplished for us all than this photograph.

Crayton Scott Smith
Seattle, Washington
Memorial Day 2006

Dog-whistle politics

What the King's exact words were are in doubt, and several versions have been reported:

• "Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?"
• "Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?"
• "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?"
• "Will no one revenge me of the injuries I have sustained from one turbulent priest?"
• "Will none of the knaves eating my bread rid me of this turbulent priest?"
• "What a band of loathsome vipers I have nursed in my bosom who will let their lord be insulted by this low-born cleric!"
• "What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and brought up in my household, who let their Lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric?" ^[3]

Whatever the King said, it was interpreted as a royal command, and four knights, Reginald Fitzurse, Hugh de Moreville, William de Tracy, Richard Brito, set out to consult the Archbishop of Canterbury. On December 29, 1170 they arrived at Canterbury. According to accounts left by the monk Gervase of Canterbury and eyewitness Edward Grim, they placed their weapons under a sycamore tree outside the cathedral and hid their mail armour under cloaks before entering to challenge Becket.^[4] The knights informed Becket he was to go to Winchester to give an account of his actions, but Becket refused. It was not until Becket refused their demands to submit to the king's will that they retrieved their weapons and rushed back inside for the killing.^[4] Becket, meanwhile, proceeded to the main hall for vespers. The four knights, carrying naked swords, caught up with him in a spot near a door to the monastic cloister, the stairs into the crypt, and the stairs leading up into the quire of the cathedral, where the monks were chanting vespers.

Wikipedia: Thomas Becket

Related: "Clinton Sorry For Remark About RFK Assassination" (Washington Post, 24 May 2008)

Things you never hear my wife say

"God help me, I agree with Peggy Noonan."

- Carrie, 11:00 AM Saturday

Libertarians in 2008

...The anti-government wing of the party that was launched to its forefront by Barry Goldwater in 1964, championed by Ronald Reagan, and then dispirited by eight years of George Bush is worried by Mr McCain. Could some of these voters defect to the Libertarian Party this year?

The question is less fanciful than usual. The Libertarians, now deciding who should be their presidential nominee, are usually a sideshow. Their last candidate, Michael Badnarik, took a third of a percentage point in 2004. The hopefuls this year include one who wants to move the United Nations headquarters to Somalia, one known mostly for a book about the spirituality of John Denver, a country singer, and a near-obsessive marijuana-legalisation advocate.

But this year the Libertarian nomination may be a bigger prize. Ron Paul ran a lower-case libertarian campaign for the Republican nomination, generating surprising levels of enthusiasm, votes and money. Paulites continue showing up and voting for him in primaries, despite the fact that Mr McCain has locked up the nomination. The word “libertarian” has, in the wake of that run, gained more currency and respectability.

And now Bob Barr, a prominent former Republican Congressman, is campaigning for the nomination. Mr Barr, a former anti-drug warrior and leader of the impeachment against Bill Clinton, has converted to a rightish branch of Libertarianism. His biggest worry is the expansion of federal powers since September 11th, 2001. He wants to abolish the Justice Department. He would defer to states on gay marriage and drug legalisation.

Could this be bad news for Mr McCain? Mr Barr may not get the nomination—many Libertarians may prefer someone with more years in the party—but if he does, Mr McCain should be wary. Even worse would be if Mr Paul endorsed Mr Barr (Mr Paul himself sought the Libertarian nomination in the past). As in previous elections, 2008 will be decided by close votes in a few swing states. Orthodox Republicans are dispirited by Mr McCain’s heterodoxies on immigration, global warming, taxes and other issues. They are reluctantly coalescing around him, on the basis that he is more appealing than Barack Obama.

But just enough demoralised Republicans might pull the lever for Mr Barr in states with an ornery, independent streak to give Mr McCain some heartburn.

The Right Flank (Economist, 24 May 2008)

Le grand saut

Followup to a (much) earlier post:

He has spent two decades and nearly $20 million in a quest to fly to the upper reaches of the atmosphere with a helium balloon, just so he can jump back to earth again. Now, Michel Fournier says, he is ready at last.

Depending on the weather, Fournier, a 64-year-old retired French army officer, will attempt what he is calling Le Grand Saut (The Great Leap) on Sunday from the plains of northern Saskatchewan.

He intends to climb into the pressurized gondola of the 650-foot balloon, which resembles a giant jellyfish, and make a two-hour journey to 130,000 feet. At that altitude, almost 25 miles up, Fournier will see both the blackness of space and the curvature of the earth. He will experience weightlessness.

Then he plans to step out of the capsule, wearing only a special space suit and a parachute, and plunge down in a mere 15 minutes.

If successful, Fournier will fall longer, farther and faster than anyone in history. Along the way, he can accomplish other firsts, by breaking the sound barrier and records that have stood for nearly 50 years.

20-Year Journey for 15-Minute Fall (New York Times, 24 May 2008)

MeMe

Fun meme over at Buck's place:

[T]he idea is to answer these questions with only a photo or other graphic, NO words allowed.

1. What is your current relationship status?


high on love
Originally uploaded by jaki good.

2. What is your current mood?



3. What is your favorite band/singer?


Louis Armstrong | Giants of Jazz Series
Originally uploaded by discoverblackheritage.

and

4. What is your favorite movie?



5. What kind of pets do you have?



6. Where do you live?



7. Where do you work?


DSC_0225
Originally uploaded by joaue.

8. Who do you look like?



9. What do you drive?


dollar rent a car
Originally uploaded by Atlantisa7.

10. What did you do on Saturday?



11. What did you do on Sunday?


traffic jam
Originally uploaded by K2D2vaca.

12. What is your favorite network TV Show?


Forgotten television
Originally uploaded by autowitch.

13. Describe Yourself.



14. What is your favorite candy?


Goo Goo Clusters
Originally uploaded by kamico.

The best advice I ever got

Leonard Lauder:

...[I]f you had something good to say, you should put it in writing. But if you had something bad to say, you should tell the person to his or her face.

I learned this lesson the hard way. I'm chairman of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and several years ago, I was angry with one of my trustees. I wrote a letter and signed it. But then I decided not to send the letter, and left it on my desk over the weekend. The following Monday I was out of the office, when a temp saw the letter and mailed it. The trustee got very angry and resigned from the board. To this day, writing that letter is something that I regret.

The best advice I ever got (Fortune.com)

Unhappy X'ers

Workers in their 30s and early 40s, otherwise known as Generation X, are growing unhappy with corporate life and planning a retreat, says Tammy Erickson, an expert on generational work force issues.

That’s bad news for their employers, who are looking to this cohort as next generation leaders.

Why are the Xers so cross? In her blog, Erickson provides 10 possible answers.

The View From Harvard Business: Gen X Is Unhappy At Work

See Tammy Erickson's original post here: 10 Reasons Gen X'ers Are Unhappy At Work

NPR's China Coverage

The news coverage of the China earthquake has been heartbreaking. The scenes on television are just unreal, almost unbelievable; disaster on this scale is hard to comprehend.

But some things are still best conveyed by radio. It can be a tremendous medium for storytelling.

National Public Radio ran a story on the quake's aftermath this afternoon that, well, completely tore me up. It took me quite a while to recover from it.

Melissa Block, on the ground in China, accompanied survivors as they frantically clawed through the rubble of their collapsed apartment building, looking for their loved ones.

The story is about 12 minutes long, and is so evocative of the horror on the ground that it is, candidly, really hard to take... but it's also one of the best pieces of radio journalism I think I've ever heard.

The ordinarily stalwart Ms. Block was not keeping it together all that well at points, and I have to say I was right there with her... the hell with journalistic (or personal) detachment in a situation like this.

The Scots-Irish, and how they vote

Josh Marshall nails it in a brief but cogent analysis of the Appalachian region. Excerpt:

It's widely accepted that Hillary Clinton does better with older voters, less educated voters and white voters. These demographics perfectly match West Virginia -- and, more loosely, the entire Appalachian region. A few key points from tonight's exit polls demonstrate the point: 4 out of 10 voters were over 60 years of age. 7 out of 10 lacked a college degree -- the highest proportion of any electorate in the country. And 95% of the electorate was white.

Basically you have a state that is made up almost exclusively of Clinton's voters. But there's a deeper historical explanation that we have to apply as well -- one nicely illustrated by the origins of West Virginia itself.

Snark of the day

John Scalzi, on the occasion of a rave New York Times review of James Frey's new book:

Wait until they find out that this novel is actually a memoir.

The only man Carter could beat

The usual formula employed to describe Barack Obama is that he's our generation's John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

A worried conservative at American Thinker spells out his concerns in unusually plain language... in terms of personal charisma and likability, he might be FDR, JFK and RWR rolled into one:

Sensible McCain supporters need to begin this struggle with the following painful acknowledgement: on a personal level Barack Obama is one of the most ingratiating, likeable, least threatening, and intelligent-seeming men to run for the Presidency in the last hundred years.

There. Though I would no more vote for him than for Robespierre, I said it. It is a fact of consequence that needs to be faced.

In personal gifts relevant to political success, only three Americans during the twentieth century merit mention with Obama: Roosevelt, Kennedy and Reagan. This trio, as the historically well-schooled will recall, shared not only great political talent, but a common destiny: they all won.

So let's have no more talk of how much obviously weaker an opponent Obama is than what's-her-name. He is formidable enough, particularly for the execrable circumstances we confront.

[...]

A bit of history that seems relevant to the present situation: In 1980, back when communication was effected through messages chipped into stone tablets carried by horses, Ronald Reagan ran for the presidency against an incumbent named Carter. Carter enthusiasts breathed a collective sigh of relief when the Republican nomination was settled. They all knew their man was in trouble, but what luck! The Republicans had nominated an out-of-the-mainstream right wing extremist! The only man Carter could beat! Reagan's overall world view in fact was probably somewhat to the right of most Americans'. But in the event, Reagan won in a landslide, tremendously assisted by his ingratiating manner. There's more, of course, to why he won, but no one would dispute the importance of his manner.

A good restaurant

You Guys Are Like the Gay Abbott and Costello

[Heading towards the restaurant "Good".]
Gay guy #1: Where are we going again?
Gay guy #2: It's "Good".
Gay guy #1: What's good?
Gay guy #2: The name of the restaurant we're going to.
Gay guy #1: I asked you what it was.
Gay guy #3: Oh, we are so not doing this...

--The Village

via Overheard in New York, May 10, 2008

(Good is a neighborhood place around the corner from us... and it really is. Good, I mean.)