Me: Frank Lynch

Home
(Current commentary)

These are my mundane daily ramblings.
For something less spontaneous, I maintain The Samuel Johnson Sound Bite Page (over 1,800 Johnson quotes).

Email:
frank
dot
lynch2
at
verizon
dot
net

Obama's bows. Last weekend we noted that Powerline was upset that Obama bowed to the Emperor of Japan, and that they preferred Douglas MacArthur's lackadaisical stance with Hirohito, failing to note that MacArthur was a jerk and Japan was just beaten in a war.

How does America feel about it? Well, one should never look to popular opinion for guidance, but most Americans think the bow was appropriate, even a majority of Republicans.

Link | | | 8:16 AM | Home
 

Returning the meaning of 9/11. So Rudy Giuliani may not be running for Governor. Which would mean that 9/11 can return to just being the date of the most horrendous terrorist attack on American soil, instead of a date taken in vain and uttered when a coherent foreign policy fails to come to the speaker's tongue.

Unless he runs for Senator.

The astonishing thing about the Republican party in New York State is that Giuliani... or Rick Lazio... this is the best they can do.

Link | | | 7:40 PM | Home

e-books and hefty dead tree editions. Last night, T. J. Stiles was given the National Book Award in nonfiction, deservedly, for his biography of Cornelius Vanderbilt. In his accepting the award, he made a comment resisting threats which he sees from ebooks and ereaders:

Mr. Stiles, whom the judges praised for his "deep and imaginative research," took a swipe at the recent move toward electronic books as he thanked a wide range of supporters, including editorial assistants, copy editors and marketing staffers, at his publishing house, Alfred A. Knopf.

"The advent of the e-book is fooling people into thinking that none of these people are necessary anymore," Mr. Stiles said. "If they cease to exist, the books will only be worth the paper they are not printed on."

I don't doubt that's a concern, as I'm sure there are people whose perception of books have been devalued by their existence in the form of data rather than atoms. There is something to be said for the texture of paper, and selection of fonts, as well as all the underappreciated efforts which accumulate in the publication of a book.

At the same time, there's another segment of ereaders like me — and I won't speculate as to the size. I started the dead tree edition of his book on Vanderbilt, and got about 40% into it. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. But it's a hefty bit of atoms, too heavy to carry on the subway, and momentum gets lost. The more so when I choose a physically lighter book one day. I bought Jean Edward Smith's "FDR" at O'Hare when it came out about two and a half years, and it was delightful. Seriously. But it fell by the wayside simply because of its heft. When I bought my Kindle, FDR was the first book I downloaded, and finishing it was a breeze, as it no longer weighed a thing.

Although the prices of ebooks is usually lower than the dead tree editions, that's not where my economic value is: I'm actually finishing the books I buy, thus getting more out of them. On a hefty book I would be willing to pay the same price as the going rate for the dead tree edition. (True, there is a sting for the publishers, as I'll be making fewer purchases.)

As an aside, I also like the way footnotes are linked in ebooks. Move the cursor to the supersript and click; no more needing two bookmarks.

I expect to download the Kindle edition of T.J. Stiles's Vanderbilt bio very shortly, so he and his publisher will get a double dip from me... and I will finish the book.

(Regrettably selection can be an issue: only one of Robert Caro's four books are available, for instance.)

UPDATE: Stiles's acceptance speech is here. His comment about e-books came at the end of a long list of publishing house positions which don't get noticed or enough thought from book buyers. In that context, his brief comment on ebooks seems like a mere concluding point to all that he appreciates.

Link | | | 8:06 AM | Home
 

Question: Why can't Fox News find competent video editors? Answer: because they don't want to.

Seriously, in a normal organization, after Jon Stewart catches one of your big stars mixing the videos and painting a too-rosy picture, you'd think a memorandum would go out reinforcing the need for quality, focus, and so on.

Apparently not at Fox News.

Link | | | 9:02 PM | Home

Should we do away with the filibuster and just increase the required majority on bills? Senator Evan Bayh, a Democrat, thinks there should be no difference between the way you vote for a bill's passage and the way you vote to allow voting to proceed: i.e., if you're against a bill, vote with those who want to filibuster. Ezra Klein (linked) thinks this suggests there should be a new threshold for a bill's Senate passage, requiring 60 votes, not a mere majority. I don't think this is something he seriously wants, he wants an open discussion about it and en end to the theater. There's value to keeping the filibuster, but the implication of a 60-vote majority on bills is daunting: nothing would get done. It's unfortunate that when Klein is calling Bayh's bluff, and asking him to see the implications, that Bayh isn't in the room.

Link | | | 7:58 AM | Home
 

Standing up for the people of Alaska, by golly! It's amazing how Sarah Palin takes a question from an interviewer and acts like it targets more than just her:

As for the disastrous campaign interview with CBS anchor, Katie Couric, Palin told Winfrey she thought the CBS anchor's questions were an affront to her as an Alaskan. Yet she acknowledged that in her response to the well-known question about what informed her world view, it was "very unprofessional of me to wear that annoyance on my sleeve."

"It was more like, 'Are you kidding me? Are you really asking me?'" Palin said. "To me, it was in the context of, 'Do you read? How do you stay informed? You're way up there.'" It seemed like she was discovering this nomadic tribe, a member of a tribe from some Neanderthal cave in Alaska, asking me, 'How do you stay in touch with the real world?' That's how I took the question, so I kind of -- well, didn't kind of. I did."

I'd like to see the tape or the transcript, because I can't tell if this is how Palin still feels, or if that was just how she felt a week later in justifying herself to Fox News. But asking what newspapers you read is a relatively cushy question, not much tougher than "who's your favorite Beatle," and a reasonable way for an interviewer to get to know the subject. But to take this as an affront to Alaskans is a bit striking, as if she's got some sort of cross she feels she has to carry around and mount at a moment's notice. She shouldn't feel like she's a martyr for Alaska, Alaska does fine.

But this isn't the only time Palin has tried to magnify a one-to-one moment into something of far greater significance: you may remember that when Letterman made his dumb joke about the wrong Palin daughter, Palin claimed that Letterman owed all young American women an apology, not just her daughter. (As if McCain ever apologized to all women after making his trifecta joke about Chelsea Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and Janet Reno.)

And let's not forget, this news reading question was not Palin's only embarrassing moment with Couric. Let's remember that beyond Roe v. Wade, she couldn't name another Supreme Court verdict she disagreed with.

Sometimes the problem is Sarah Palin, is all I'm sayin'.

Link | | | 7:42 AM | Home
 

Praise the Lord, God, I saw the Light! Representative Ed Whitfield (R-KY) had an epiphany, some serious kind of revelation, I guess... and reversed himself on opposing sanctions and against Cuba and being against travel bans. Hallelujah, angels came to him and made him see. the ERROR! of his ways. Some angels.

The Lord works in mysterious ways. OK, maybe it wasn't a divine insight, but how else to explain this conversion?

Link | | | 8:27 PM | Home
 

No sense of history. The geniuses at Powerline are upset that Obama bowed to the Japanese emperor rather than taking the same lackadaisical pose Macarthur struck with Hirohito.

I think these guys are deliberately obtuse, as in, you can't make this kind of stupidity up. In the MacArthur-Hirohito shot, the US had just beaten Japan in WWII. And on top of that MacArthur was a well-established jerk, for his treatment of the Bonus Army. Check out Jean Edward Smith's telling in his FDR, page 285. Following a telephone conversation with Huey Long...

"You know, that's the second most dangerous man in this country. Huey's a whiz on the radio. He screams at people and they love it. He makes them think they belong to some kind of church. He knows there is a promised land and he'll lead 'em to it."

Tugwell could not resist. "You said Huey was the second most dangerous person."

"You heard right," smiled Roosevelt. "Huey is only second. The first is Douglas MacArthur. You saw how he strutted down Pennsylvania Avenue. You saw that picture of him in the Times after the troops chased all those vets out with tear gas and burned their shelters. Did you ever see anyone so self-satisfied? There's a potential Mussolini for you. Right here at home."

This is the Douglas MacArthur who got sacked after publicly disagreeing with his Commander In Chief's Korean War Policy, one of a series of insubordinate acts.

This is the guy who Powerline wants Obama to take lessons from. And yet, they were so upset over what they saw as Obama's slights against the UK, what with sending back the Churchill bust and giving the Queen an iPod. I fail to see how a MacArthur-like pose would be an improvement.

POST-SCRIPT: Something in me wants to speculate that Powerline is looking for a similar insuboridination from the generals who report up to Obama. You don't have to go very deep into their search results to see that they think that McChrystal should be the Commander in Chief, not Obama. Would they explicitly say they don't want Obama to be the Commander in Chief? Of course they would, they'd prefer anyone, even the dunderhead Sarah Palin over Obama. Oddly, it doesn't matter that SOD Gates knows who leads the country. They're all wrong, if they're not following the Powerline agenda.

Link | | | 2:51 PM | Home

A scenario tool would be nice. In the marketing research industry, it's not unusual to expose respondents to choice exercises (would your rather this or that, with each varying in its features), and after all the data has been collected estimates are made even for packages which people never saw. There are also planning tools where the impact of different marketing plans are incorporated into estimates of a product's likely success: coupons will promote trial, lack of distribution will limit purchases, etc. And managers can play with the results by changing the inputs.

The ever-astute Ezra Klein points to the limitations in the presumptions underlying CBO models, noted by the CBO itself: they presume laws as they are (e.g., Bush tax cuts will expire) instead of best guesses at reality. On that front, Bush himself was talking about removing their sunset provision.

Wouldn't it be great if they could release a scenario tool? This wish occurs to me every time I hear a govenment model released, such as for the Social Security reserves and their future. Let everyone have at it, but make it a law that users divulge their scenatio inputs and how much higher or lower they are vs. the official scenario.

Link | | | 9:43 AM | Home

Sea turtles are threatened by development and rising temperatures. Read here. Eggs tend to become females with subtle rises in temperatures -- obvious problems if there aren't enough males; rising ocean levels mean less beach, and they won't nest too close to lit areas. Not good - - they've been around for 150 million years. There were 90,000 leatherbacks in the Pacific 20 years ago, now they figure it's about 3% of that.

Link | | | 8:34 AM | Home
 

I feel like I'm one of them. If you lived in the UK, you'd not only have National Health, but you could also buy the Trashcan Sinatras' latest.

According to guitarist John Douglas, the 'free hugs' people weren't hired for the video, they were already there in Buchanan Street before the cameras.

Link | | | 8:28 PM | Home

Send us postcards from prison. Not. Former Representative William Jefferson (D-Corrupt), a man who knew the value of cold hard cash, gets 13 years (significantly less than prosecutors wanted, unfortunately). Can we now move on to the Charlie Rangel problem?

Link | | | 7:56 PM | Home

The Jon Stewart-Sean Hannity story continues.

I actually thought Sean Hannity's forthright apology might have put an end to it. But in retrospect, Hannity also owed an apology to his viewers, not just Stewart and his staff. Maybe this cow can be milked for more.

Link | | | 6:02 PM | Home
 

You don't send me flowers... Isn't it amazing how a shift in economic fortunes will change the complexion of a deal? The famous "Kelo" case is now left as a theoretical exercise: Pfizer, the company for whom Bridgeport wanted to move people's homes under eminent domain, is decamping. How many sweetheart deals have gone awry recently? There was Dell in North Carolina, of course, and here in Brooklyn there was the sudden halt to the Atlantic Yards project after large buildings had been torn down. (That project may still continue, but on a far less glamorous scale than what whetted the local appetites.)

Entrepreneurs should be allowed to take risks. And governments should be llowed to take part. But that doesn't mean they have to take all suitors.

Link | | | 11:08 PM | Home
 

Lorum ipsum dolor... Some time ago, Vincent Flanders (of webpagesthatsuck.com) highlighted the failure of small businesses who, when launching their sites, failed to replace the "lorum ipsum dolor" text. Kevin Drum also showed an example another blogger found in the print edition of the Los Angeles Times. Well, I was looking for a Spencer Davis Group CD, and...

Put some information here that will highlight the store and all the great things that an be purchased in the store. Put some information here that will highlight the store and all the great things that an be purchased in the store. Put some information here that will highlight the store and all the great things that an be purchased in the store. Put some information here that will highlight the store and all the great things that an be purchased in the store.

Note that the filler came complete with typos: "an be."

Link | | | 8:58 PM | Home

I actually thought this was a new low for Fox. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and attribute it to utter inompetence, but Jon Stewart (and co., I'm sure) caught Sean Hannity splicing film from two different events to make an anti-Democrat rally look far larger than it was.

Of course, it's called "the benefit of the doubt" because it's quite possible that they don't deserve it.

Isn't it fascinating how they went into such high dudgeon to defend their talk show hosts as not meaning the newscasts were biased? Even though there's plenty of evidence indicating that the "news" shows are biased, wouldn't their spokespeople sound more like they had a point if they said something like, "you know, Sean Hannity's an idiot and I don't know why anyone would watch him, but our news people..."

Ah but I dream: they will never throw him under the truck, as much as he might deserve it.

UPDATE: Sean Hannity's mea culpa here.

Link | | | 6:34 PM | Home
 

Back to top.