Copyright © 2009 Frank Lynch.
Copyright © 2009 Frank Lynch.
Me: Frank Lynch Home These are my mundane daily ramblings.
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Tonight on "Who Cares?"... Politico's Ben Smith cites a poll showing "only" 50% prefer Obama as president over Bush (44%). This is one of those data points which barely rises to the level of information, and certainly not yet to wisdom. For one thing, no trend information is provided. Secondly, no context is provided (50-44 is ample to win an election, and the election was closer than 50-44). Thirdly, Bush didn't run in 2008, as McCain's apologists are fond of pointing out. And Republicans are going to prefer any Republican over Obama. 
Thousands when there aren't thousands. It's natural to suggest that the causes you align yourself with are hugely popular. Andrew McCarthy did this with respect to a gathering of people protesting trying KSM in Manhattan, rather than in some Fourth Dimension or Fairy World where nothing could impact on anything:
Now, I live in NYC, and I was surprised that a gathering of "thousands of Americans" had happened without my knowing about it. I honestly wondered if I had been limited by merely reading the NYT and not venturing into other outlets. So out of honest curiosity, I looked. Fox News reported hundreds, not thousands. A factor of ten or so, giving allowance for simple summaries. Yet still not the "thousands" which McCarthy claims were there. So what is Andrew McCarthy talking about when he says "thousands" turned out? Does he always puff up his figures? Here's the deal. McCarthy is a former prosecutor. And prosecutors make their big bucks by promising evidence they don't, and cannot, deliver. I politely emailed McCarthy and asked him where he got his "thousands" characterization. So far,crickets. This is not the first time where I've emailed McCarthy on one of his NRO Corner posts. Really, it's looking like he doesn't want to defend what he writes there...
I actually have a story about this one. In 1990, the company I worked for in NYC sent me to London for training on a proprietary marketing research service. In those days, the international distribution of music wasn't as fluid as it is today (remember, pre-World Wide Web). I knew that I was going to have access to all sorts of CD's that were in the "Import" section in the US at premium prices, and I asked my dad if there was anything he wanted me to pick up for him. Yes! he immediately said, buy whatever you can find by "Peters and Lee." I knew nothing about them, but I was determined to fulfill this request, and within a week of my arrival in London I was at the Tower Records at Picadilly Circus. Being the sort that doesn't ask for directions, I scoured the place high and low; I must have spent two hours, and came up empty handed. (Although I did find a nice recording of David Oistraikh playing the Hindemith Violin Concerto.) The next day I discussed this with Neil, a Welshman, who said, "Oh. Peters and Lee. They're... that.. naff group." He said nothing else and walked away. So, not knowing the definition of "naff," I happily went back to Tower, feeling as if "naff" was the Key to the Kingdom! And with my obvious American accent, I asked the first sales person I saw, "Can you direct me to your Naff section?" He chuckled, of course; I don't know if there's a Brit version of Candid Camera, but if there is, he might have thought he was on it. This all occurred to me because the Kinks' "Wonder Boy" came up on the shuffle, and that was what they were playing in Tower on my first visit to make the purchase. Connections are funny that way, and James Joyce would have made a mint if he hadn't died in that plane crash with Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, and Richie Valens. It's Joe Lieberman's world, we just live in it. And to think he was almost Vice President. Sometimes I actually wonder how much of his prominence is due to Gore having opted for him as his running mate.
And so you rationalize... Early on -- in the 1960's -- the engineers knew that cell phones represented a risk to drivers:
So there was this commercial conspiracy of silence. Maybe they just kept wishing some fairy would make the laws of probability irrelevant while they made money. Just as shocking as this immorality in their decision to continue with it is the way they sold it to drivers, to focus on them as a beachhead. Ads are in the article.
Holy Moley! I'm reading Eating Animals, by Jonathan Safran Foer. He's not overly evangelical about vegetarianism, although early on he does take the reader through a jarring thought exercise about why we don't eat dogs... Here and there, though, I've thought the book could use some trimming, maybe fewer words. And then I read this passage, discussing "downer" cows:
So as it turns out, if he had written a shorter book, there might have been as many as three — or four, maybe more — downed cows for every word in his book. But by writing a book of this length, Foer has performed the estimable service of keeping the ratio of downed cows to the words in his book limited to roughly two to one. Relief all around, I tell you. I work with numbers and communicate numeric relationships for a living, but this struck me as hilarious: another writer might have expressed the number of downed cows as a percentage of the annual cow slaughter. Or, if the absolute number was supposed to be the wake up call, as twice the population of the City of West Palm Beach (another handy count of about 100,000, according to Wikipedia). But to express it in terms unimaginable and not on anyone's radar screen? It shrieks of an egotistical call out that he wrote about 100,000 words in the book. Beyond it being bad writing (though Mr. Foer should be congratulated for getting published, no easy feat, especially in the wake of Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma), it reminded me of a deliberately comedic paragraph in The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature, from My Week At Sea, which opened...
Of all the things for the NYC City Council to worry about... They've banned roll-down storefront gates with solid slats, to take effect in 2026. The main stated purpose is that they are often covered with graffiti tags, and (further down the list) that they make it difficult for patrolling police to see if anything wrong is going on. I don't dispute either argument, but I do dispute the importance of the issue, and why the council has bothered. I'm not speaking just as a photographer who takes pictures of urban decay; I'm also talking about someone who appreciates essential elemnents of NYC's look and feel. The Council has decided to go for a different appearance, and has passed this law out as a matter of taste. If graffiti is the issue, instead of passing a law banning the signs, pass a law requiring owners to clean up the graffiti. Let the owners make their own choice: some will paint purals on them (these are usually not touched); some will paint them a solid color and paint over graffiti which occurs; some will switch. And some will bear the fines. But to flat out decide that the gates have to go away? This smacks of over-regulation. It smells.
What is John McCain talking about? Just saw a clip where he agreed with most of what Obama spoke about, but objected to a concrete end date because it "dispirits our allies." As if he didn't notice all the countries defecting from the "Coalition of the Willing" in Iraq when it seemed there was no end in sight. McCain seriously thinks that allies will be more willing to commit troops when it's open-ended? And that others in the region will think the better of us if we have a war stategy that without an end date we're confident of reaching? What give, McCain? Shilling to get on the Sunday talk shows again? Chris Matthews sure knows about the MOVIES! In commenting about the cycle of emotions and war, Chris Matthews just cited the movie "Gone With the Wind," and how enthusiastic the South was about taking on the North, an opponent it really couldn't vanquish. This was Matthews's example of how, typically, people are always enthusiastic about war. A movie. Never mind the fact that when people aren't enthusiastic they usually don't go to war; wars aren't launched until that fever pitch is reached. So for this to be Matthews's standard eight years into our war in Afghanistan is ridiculous. And Matthews cited a movie, not a history book: a movie. UPDATE: I didn't mention this last night, but Matthews made his GWTW comment in contrast to the stoic expressions of the cadets at West Point, and how it was as if Obama had gone to "the enemy camp" for his speech. Matthews has apologized for that reference. Deep thought. Sleeping cadets make for bad theater. Maybe a green backdrop next time? And the Matt Yglesias Award. Goes. To. Matt Yglesias... Senator Ben Nelson tried to parry a tax increase to pay for our Afghanistan effort by suggesting we should do what we did during World War II, sell "war bonds," when, according to Nelson, they didn't need to increase taxes as a result. Yglesias points out that not only did taxes increase to pay for World War II, but that calling plain old bonds "War Bonds" is just marketing. Later tonight, President Obama is expected to pitch that the new strategy is a plan to BOTH escalate and withdraw!
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