Bandarlog


	Life Without Nomar This deal is about free agency. Garciaparra for Mientkiewicz and Cabrera is not a fair exchange of value: you don’t trade an All-Star for two decent players. But an All-Star you can’t resign is another matter, and Nomar’s contract was up after this season. Short term, I don’t see this trade helping the club much. Both the new Sox are outstanding defensive players, and certainly upgrading the infield defense helps. The loss on offense will sting. Getting premium production from the shortstop position is a tremendous luxury, and no matter how Cabrera fields, he will be a big step down. Mientkiewitcz of 2001 and 2003 swung a valuable bat, but this year his name in the line-up card has brought little more than an exceptional scrabble score. If Mientkiewitcz doesn’t hit, the trade is a huge minus. If he does, perhaps it doesn't hurt overmuch for the next two months. And he’s under contract through 2005, so if they felt they couldn’t sign Nomar, this is a defensible transaction. Of course, you won’t be surprised to learn, Ben H, that I hate, hate the trade on personal grounds. I like rooting for homegrown players, I like when teams have iconic stars with long tenure, and I dislike change on principle. And despite all the attacks on Nomar’s moodiness this season, since returning from the DL he’s crushed the ball. I see no reason to think Garciaparra will not continue to perform at an All-Star level for many years. Best of luck to him in Chicago. UPDATE: I now see the sox included a legitimate prospect (single A outfielder Matt Murton)in the deal. Puzzling. This stacks the deal even more against the Sox. What does management know that we don't? UPDATE 2: The natives are restless. Representative (non-obscene) comment: Maybe if we can get Doug Mxyptlk to say his name backwards this trade will go back to the 5th dimension where it belongs [Ben A.: 7/31/04 21:45]


	Adios, Nomaaaaaaah Ben, your thoughts, please, on Nomar trade! If one could be assured that Nomar would actually give a honest effort, it would seem a poor deal for the Red Sox. Unfortunately, a moody Nomar has not proven worth much. [Ben H.: 7/31/04 18:36]


	Licorice Speaks Shocking truths about Kerry revealed! [Ben A.: 7/31/04 12:28]


	*Oh, That* Fifth Column...** Head of prominent Muslim charity pleads guilty to terrorist links. Yeah, but I heard about a bunch of angry Amish who did the same thing... Full complaint here [Ben H.: 7/31/04 01:44]


	Yes, you must view the robot link now. [Doug: 7/30/04 13:37]


	Kerry: It's Not About The Waffling! I would rather everone focus on the robot insurance link, but since you responded, Doug, let me elaborate. First off, I agree entirely that consistancy is an overrated political virtue, just as hypocrisy is an overratted moral vice. So my concern is not with "flip-flopping" but (like Ben H,) with the evidence I see of Kerry's basically unthethered approach to the war in Iraq. But unlike Ben H, I think I can infer enough about Kerry's Iraq Plan to creep me out. Kerry's policies will arise from minds marinated in the soupy center-left of the Democratic party. And Kerry's judgment will manifest the instincts behind his opposition to the invasion of Grenada, his support of the nuclear freeze, and his vote against the first gulf war. In short: a litany of wrong calls all sharing a presumptive distrust of American power and skepticism of American righteousness.* That mindset must not determine American foreign policy over the next ten years. So while the video showcased flip-flopping, I saw it instead as a evidence of mismanagement to come. Nonethless, you may grant this and argue that the current administration has already demonstrated themselves to be such complete blunderers that any change will be improvement. Here I think we simply disagree on the facts. I see no evidence that the invasion of Afghanistan was mismanaged, and while the occupation of Iraq has been harder than expected, the rush to label it a fiasco is premature. In two years, I could easily imagine Iraq becoming more stable, and a better bulwark aginst islamist terror, than Saudi Arabia. So how do I view regime change in Iraq in July, 2004? As a hard objective, one made harder than necessary by poor decisions, but one worth pursuing and still achievable. And while I don't know if the iron can be pulled out fo the fire, I believe the current adminsitration will at least try. The domestic policy. I'm no fan of the tax cuts, or the drug benefit and education bills.oOn the latter two, at least, I suspect Kerry would have been worse. So the Kerry proposition, as I see it, is adopting a potentially disastrous foreign policy group in order to gain a) an immediate PR bump from Europeans who hate Bush, and b) a better tax policy. That doesn't seem like a winning exchange to me. I do, however, trust John Edwards to protect us from the robots * Just to be crystal clear: of course, America is not always righteous. And distrust of our power is, by-and-large, a good thing. But it is good as a moderating tendency, not as a governing ideology. As Marty Peretz very nastily said about Sandy Berger, he never saw a problem that couldn't be solved by the US walking away from it. [sure, that's unfair and hyperbolic, but he's on to something, you know?] He appears to be largely innocent, by the way. At least the WSJ reports today that no original documents are missing. [Ben A.: 7/30/04 12:01]


	Domino Effect From the Times: In northern India, villagers detained 37 foreign tourists, most of them from Britain, to protest the kidnappings of the three Indian workers in Iraq, police said Friday. That's it -- I'm going down the street to Curry in a Hurry with some rope and duct tape and retaliate. [Doug: 7/30/04 10:15]


	Steel Is A Bad Example I agree that people do tend to exaggerate the importance of flip-flops. Sometimes a politician honestly changes his mind. Sometimes overwhelming public opinion or inexorable political forces compel a retreat from a long-held position. However, what bothers me about Kerry's flip-flops is not that they represent transparent pandering, but rather that I really cannot figure out what policies he intends to carry out if elected. Doug, can you figure out how he will change American policy, if at all, in Iraq? I can't. His other flip-flops, of the more common kind, strike me as rather minor. As for Bush, the steel tariffs provide a wonderful illustration of the difference between a flip-flop of the Kerry-Iraq style and one born of political calculus. Bush has hardly abandoned the cause of free trade, nor did he present himself suddenly as an ardent protectionist. He imposed the tariffs and pretty much immediately thereafter started handing out exemptions that vitiated the initial measure. And as of December 2003, he quietly lifted the tariffs entirely. [Ben H.: 7/30/04 09:38]


	Flip-Flopping: a response to Ben A's anti-Kerry link While political flip-flopping is intrinsically a bad thing, I submit that we eggheads tend to overstate its badness. For one thing, we value intellectual coherence as a good in itself. We tend, for instance, to dislike poems, novels, and movies that lack it, even when they succeed in achieving their non-rational goals -- a mood, a feeling, an atmosphere. How important is intellectual coherence to politics? Is politics more like math, where intellectual coherence is everything, or more like sculpture, where it can be irrelevant? Somewhere in between, of course. Surely nobody disagrees. Where Ben A. seems to differ from me is in thinking that intellectual coherence in office-holders ("staying on-message") is more important than actual good governance. I disagree. I would prefer a president who flip-flops in speeches but makes good decisions in practice, to one who stays "on message" while starting reckless wars and tilting the country towards oligarchy. I suspect part of the reason why Ben A. and others prefer the latter is vanity: "If candidate X waffles or flip-flops, it's because he thinks that he can tell me what I want to hear and that I'll be too stupid to see the inconsistencies in his speeches, so if I support candidate X, I admit my own stupidity, and I don't want anybody to think I'm stupid." I think this was the subconscious idea behind much of my own opposition to Clinton in 1992. (Although I think I'd still have supported Bush Sr. after factoring out this vanity.) What's kind of strange (or rather, what's easily explained by the fact that you, Ben A., just don't like John Kerry) is why you think his flip-flopping is a roughly equivalent fault to Bush Jr.'s misgovernance, when in fact they both spout inconsistencies and display contempt for the electorate. Bush talks about free trade and slaps tariffs on foreign steel. He forswears nation-building and becomes its champion. He wears the GOP mantle of fiscal responsibility while spending the country deep into debt. But what bothers me about Bush isn't the inconsistencies, it's the bad policies. Speaking inconsistently is a precondition for election in a country with a dumb and uninterested electorate. I've come to accept that; you should, too. I can see why you pick on Kerry in particular, though. I just saw his big speech and he is kind of a tool. They should have left out the sonorous banalities and focused more on his killing Vietnamese. With his bare hands. That's what's gonna win him the Nascar swing states. [Doug: 7/29/04 23:50]


	Little Crimes Punished, Big Crimes Celebrated The Whitney Museum seems to have been the target of a sophisticated fraud. The sticky-fingered ticket-takers will surely find their next cashiering job at the commissary of the state penitentiary. Of course, the museum is the victim of a much larger fraud, almost by virtue of its mission. So-called "artists" throw together half-baked agitprop and sell it to the gulls of the curatorial staff for millions. These latter grifters, though, will be celebrated, not prosecuted, by the very institution they've swindled. [Ben H.: 7/29/04 13:31]


	Everyone Loves a Disaster You're right, Ben H. Everything has been smooth in Boston because 60% of the city has evacuated. Hence the analogy to Y2K. Absent $5bb of spending on IT consulting, surely something would have gone wrong. My theory is that we have a new disaster environment. The populace explicitly enjoys preparing for the worst, and the press loves overhyping looming catastrophe. Result: overpreparation. Witness the frenzy of sterno-buying and food hoarding that now preceeds every winter's "Storm of the Century" in the Northeast. Everyone loves a disaster! Addendum: a common justification of central planning rests on the alledged short term horizons of individual human action. I recall E.O. Wilson writing in a pro-environmentalist piece in Scientific American that humans are hardwire by evolution to look at the short term. (aside: not to start another Ev. Bio rant, but don't you love how frequently "hardwired" and "selected for" stand in for "believe my arguments about an unrelated field, I'm a trained scientist). But here's the point: could it not be that humans are just as likely to systematically overprepare for the future as underprepare? The time value of money isn't inutitive, nor is the proper pricing of an insurance scheme. Absent concepts like these, responding to future threats reduces to vaguery and gusswork (a stich in time saves nine, or the precautionary principle beloved by Greens). Certainly there are some people who don't have an appreciation of the long term: the "present minded" identified by Ed Banfield as the core of all historical underclasses. But the error of overestimating the importance of the long term can be equally severe. [Ben A.: 7/29/04 08:08]


	Convention Fever Do you think your good fortune may result from practically everyone else staying home? Or has the disruption from security measures been exaggerated (impossible!) by the media? Whatever your answer, I still plan to get out of New York during the Republican convention. Bush-haters will surely mobilize much larger protests, which should make the whole thing a bigger mess... [Ben H.: 7/29/04 06:11]


	Y2K Bug Sweeps Boston Or, at least, another pseudo-disaster of a similar magnitude. My company went "virtual" for the week of the convention, but I've been driving into the office without trouble. As with Y2K, predictions of doom have yielded to business as usual. If anything, my commute has been faster during the convention. [Ben A.: 7/28/04 21:01]


	Devastating I don't much care for the Bush tax cuts, nor do I care for much Republican social policy. I think a Republican controlled Cogress would spend far less money on horrendous budget-busting bills with a Democratic White House. I suppose I prefer judges to interpret the law without reference to rights guaranteed by Norway, or concepts inserted into UN documents by NGOs. But I don't stay up fretting about it. So why then will I without question support Bush? Why indeed? [Ben A.: 7/28/04 19:02]


	Alan Garcia in Manhattan I spent yesterday afternoon at a meeting with Alan Garcia, the once and, as far as most observers reckon, future president of Peru. For those who have better ways to spend their time than to study South America's lost decade, Garcia, then a dashing young leftist, was elected in the mid-80s and promptly led to country into depression, insurgency (Sendero luminoso) default, and hyperinflation. Though plunging his country into chaos surely kept him busy, it did not prevent him from finding the time to acquire a posh hotel in Paris. He kicked off the '90s on the lam, just ahead of a Peruvian indictment. Well, being a Latin American political failure means never having to say you're sorry. A decade and a half later, Garcia again heads up the APRA party and finds himself leading the polls. Let's not chalk it up to mere leftism: Fujimori sits in his sushi-scented exile not that far behind Garcia in popularity. It's just, you see, that Peru doesn't have the deepest bench... Anyway, I suspect that bookstores south of the border must sell a Cliff Notes(tm) edition for Latin political leaders who need to woo foreign investors. Garcia had read and studied these Cliff Notes. He now understands that the path to prosperity requires attracting foreign investment with low taxes, judicial security, and political stability. And what of his past? "Times have changed." He quotes Unamuno, "only god and fools don't change." So very philosophical. His charisma and suaveness are evident and he may well have convinced several of the investors present of his bona fides. But has he convinced enough Peruvians, such that if he wins back his office he will not thereby set off a round of desperate capital flight? Only time, I thought, will tell. Time gave me a hint in short order. As a few of us exited the building just behind the candidate's entourage, a young, hispanic-looking fellow in the lobby caught sight of Garcia and did a double-take. He realized it was indeed Alan Garcia. A look of utter disgust crossed his face. "Miserable ladron!" he spat. We chatted with the guy after Garcia got in his car. He was, as we figured, a young Peruvian. He had just started this month in the analyst program at the bank where the meeting took place. "If that man becomes President again, I swear I'll give up my Peruvian citizenship. He's a crook, a liar, and an incompetent. He is the worst possible President!" "What about Toledo?" "EXCEPT for Toledo! He's all those things AND a drunk!" Like I said: Peru, a deep bench... Alejandro "El Cholo" Toledo, current president of Peru, elected in 2000. **The kid was not just engaging in idle slander. I saw Toledo in a small group during his 2000 campaign. He got up and gave a rambling and incomprehensible speech, during the duration of which he was glassy-eyed and visibly swaying. [Ben H.: 7/27/04 20:31]


	Googling a friend (not myself), I find that we both appear in a "List of Assets" on a sample contract. [Doug: 7/27/04 16:25]


	Telegraph's Columnists Undaunted by Lord Black's Departure Will Cummins speaks some difficult truths. [Ben H.: 7/26/04 10:20]


	Random Scary Bit of News A political consultant we subscribe to mentioned in his weekly update that the front-runner for post of National Security Advisor in a Kerry cabinet is Jamie Rubin. Jamie Rubin? The guy served in the State Department, it's true. As spokesman! But that's not the worst of it. Recall that Jamie Rubin is otherwise known as Mr. Christiane Amanpour. An NSA married to a foreign correspondent? I know that Democrats' idea of security involves only minimal regulations, such as making sure people wear short socks when handling classified documents, but that's crazy talk! [Ben H.: 7/26/04 09:20]


	Speaking of Walmart... ...Target opened its first New York store last week, at the also just-launched and much ballyhood "Atlantic Terminal Mall" in Brooklyn. As this retail mecca lies not far from my house, I decided to pay a visit on opening day. After all, I have very fond memories of Target from my days in California. Here on the desk we were talking about K-Mart in relation to some accounting issues (not important), which led to a comparison of K-Mart and Target, the consensus being that while K-Mart is a dingy, unpleasant place to shop, Target is everying a discount store should be. I wondered, though, if Target's superiority had something to do with its absence from markets like New York. Had we suffered poor service at K-Mart because no chain store can find competent help in New York; and because every chain store's aisles fill with the worst of New York's lumpenproleteriat? [Interlude: a correspondent of Gawker's, writing in on the Target grand opening, had similar thoughts: That's not going to work out in the end. And then what I was more ashamed of myself was how sad I was that in two weeks, once this joint is open to masses of brooklyn trash who make Pathmark unusable, I will never again be able to admire the rows and rows of blue greeting cards and purchase them with matching envelopes or peruse the aisles of Gatorade without witnessing parents beat their children in the middle and the dirty sick part of me just wants Target to stay exactly like it was last night.] In point of fact, the Atlantic Terminal Target proved, to me at least, far superior to, say, K-Mart Astor Place. While not quite up to the standards of brisk, smiling efficiency of Target Irvine, the store was bright, well-organized, and clean. The staff struck me as relatively clueful and eager to help. In the 45 minutes I spent there, I did not witness any child-abuse nor, conversely, juvenile amok-running representative of the worst side-effects of bastardy (I did get a bit of that outside Atlantic Terminal, nearly getting soaked on the sidewalk by some kids attacking other kids with water bottles). A few days prior to my jaunt to Atlantic Terminal, I had paid a visit to another, higher profile, brand-new urban mall, Time-Warner Center. Quite a contrast between the Upper West Side's version of a mall and Prospect Height's: when it comes to neighborhoods, by their malls shall ye know them. Time Warner Center offers Whole Foods Market, Williams-Sonoma, Cole-Haan, Godiva and the "food court" is a "court" in the royal sense: Masa, Per Se, and Jean-George V.'s steakhouse. Brooklynites can head to Atlantic Terminal to hit Pathmark, Target, DSW Discount Shoes, Mrs. Fields and the food court features Chuck E. Cheese. I hardly need tell you guys: I love Brooklyn! [Ben H.: 7/26/04 07:24]


	Famous economist accepts overtime for major speeches (8) (answer) Hint -- starts with 'K' [Doug: 7/25/04 17:04]


	Frig. I apologize for my absence at the Bandarlog. I've been in some kind of biorhythmic trough. I think I found one thing that's been keeping me there, though: total lack of physical exercise. I went swimming in Florida and loved it (it's one of the only forms of exercise that doesn't make my back hurt) and am looking into options for swimming in NYC. Today I went to a free outdoor city pool (Asser Levy rec center @ 23rd and FDR Drive) and that too was great: a giant pool with no swimmers except three or four Chinese families. I feel much better now. This could be the solution, although it's too early to say what infections I may have picked up. Hypothesis on the Ehrenreich slip-ups: the editors assume that anything sharing a page with a Maureen Dowd column will automatically be seen by readers as a paragon of substantive rhetoric. Ehrenreich and Dowd on the same day? Talk about troughs. I doubt even Jayson Blair was as big a drag on the Times' respectability as Dowd. [Doug: 7/25/04 16:57]


	You are kind enough to pass over, Ben H., Ehrenreich confuting the number of abortions with the number of women who had abortions Hey, nice to see basic innumeracy featured prominently in the NYT! As you've sometimes said regarding Krugman, it's pointless to debate someone occupying his own fact-universe. Ehrenreich wnats to find a chilling trend of hypocrisy, and nothing will stand in her way. I was just discussing with my friend TS today how unfortunate it is that many "economic justice" proposals get advanced by groups with such a retarded understanding of markets and the methodology of social science. I am (at least by Bandarlog standards) a bleeding heart, and would happily shoulder a higher tax burden to enrich the lives of the poor either here or worldwide. Yet what kind of confidence do I have that Barbara Ehrenreich, and her lot, could distinguish good policy from bad. She's busy beating up on Walmart, for heaven's sake. But back to the always delightful topic of abortion, are we perhaps seeing a coordinated NYT offensive here? Last week the magazine ran a chilling interview with a woman who aborted two of three triplets. Her basic position: having three kids was going to mess up the life she planned for herself. One, however, she could deal with. Not much introspection was evinced. If this is an attempt to deny the "moral highground" to abortions undertaken because of Tay-Sachs or the mother's health, it doesn't seem to me like the strongest starting point. [Ben A.: 7/25/04 15:43]


	NYT Op-Ed Page: Arithmetic-Free Zone Way back when we debated the Caitlin Flanagan "How Serfdom Saved the Women's Movement" article, I dismissed Barbara Ehrenreich as "sub-rational." Needless to say, that the New York Times decided to select her as a regular contributor to the Op-Ed page galled me but did not surprise me. Sub-rationality fits right in. In a recent column* she writes: It would be unfair, though, to pick on the women who are in denial about aborting "defective" fetuses. At least 30 million American women have had abortions since the procedure was legalized, mostly for the kind of reasons that anti-abortion people dismiss as "convenience" - a number that amounts to about 40 percent of American women. Yet in a 2003 survey conducted by a pro-choice group, only 30 percent of women were unambivalently pro-choice, suggesting that there may be an appalling number of women who are willing to deny others the right that they once freely exercised themselves. Hey, I suppose I should be grateful that she actually attempts to use statistics rather than, as usual, rely exclusively on her own intuition. 30 million women... since 1973... US population hovering between 250-300mio during that period. And 30mio is 40% of the female population? No wonder I had such a hard time getting dates when I was single! OK, maybe she means women of reproductive age? But we aren't talking about a one-day snapshot, we are talking about 30 years! I know the Times has basically abdicated its responsibility for formal fact checking, but does anyone in the building even read this stuff before it goes to print? I mean, this error isn't exactly like mistating the percentage of Niger's exports represented by uranium or something obscure like that... *Hat tip: Ann Althouse. It is worth noting that the main thrust of the editorial distills the way Times Op-Eds are often a conversation among coastal liberals. It argues that women who have abortions because of fetal defects affect a pose of moral superiority to those who have abortions because they just don't want to bear a child at all; and that this represents some kind of class-ism. Abortion: means to an end or good in itself? Yeah, The New York Times, leading the broad national conversation! [Ben H.: 7/25/04 11:04]


	Sockgate III "18.5 minute gap" has become a locus classicus of American political folklore. "Oh, suuuuure Nixon's secretary just happened to accidentally step on the record pedal!" Somehow I doubt that the NYT and WP will grant similar immortality to the disappearance of original documents due to Sandy Berger's convenient sloppiness [Ben H.: 7/22/04 17:56]


	Sockgate II Skeptics may note the incongruity of a lawyer, 20 year partner in a major firm, and former National Security Advisor toting highly classified documents home with him and then losing them. But don’t those standard apply more to competent, stodgy, former CEO-type characters? People of good will realize that as a Clinton appointee, Berger is no doubt anal-expulsive in the extreme: marathon debating sessions about North Korea over pizza rolls and sprite, wrote his senior thesis the night before it was due, etc. You should see his desk! I suggest instead a simple anatomical/sartorial standard for assessing Berger’s guilt. To wit, were the papers "accidentally" concealed: In a jacket pocket? Verdict: A simple mistake any National Security Advisor could have made. That none ever has seems a petty point, except for partisan haters. Punishment: NY times buries the story on A56, giving front page coverage instead to Richard Clarke’s starring role in “Urinetown.” Hundreds injured by flying cranium shards when Ann Coulter’s head explodes. In his pants pocket? Verdict: GOP squares assume no one could overlook pages of notes stuffed in the pocket of dress pants. They fail to realize that the snow-boarding Kerry mandates all advisors wear low-rise cargo pants. Punishment: Youth vote already sewn up by dreamy John Edwards pick, enabling JFK to unceremoniously kick Berger to the curb. Stuffed down his pants? Verdict: He wanted to impress a date, is that a crime? Punishment: Flogging. In his socks? Verdict: Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! And like known sock-stuffer Mark Fuhrman, no doubt a racist to boot. Punishment: Public beheading by Pets.com mascot [Ben A.: 7/21/04 18:30]


	Sock-Gate You have to love Terry McAuliffe trying to somehow turn it into a scandal about Berger's criminal activity being "leaked." Nice try, buddy. Since Fahrenheit 9/11 has won all these prizes, it's standard of proof must now be considered sufficient for making accusations. So here goes: Sandy Berger works for Hogan & Hartson. H&H has represented the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Now Sandy Berger has been caught stealing documents related to the U.S. response to terrorist plots hatched hatched by a largely Saudi organization, one which has links to powerful figures within the Kingdom. Sandy Berger is a Saudi spy! Shoot him! Hearing Berger's attempts at self-exculpation reminds me of the very succesful dodge which Clinton himself mastered and which his cabinet members made their own. "I'm guilty," they say,"guilty of a honest, inadvertent bureaucratic snafu." And the press seems to swallow that explanation for a national security advisor committing an act that flies in the face of the most basic concepts in classified document handling. So while the presence of secret documents in the pants-pockets of a former NSC chief somehow counts as an "inadvertent, bureaucratic snafu", the inability of the intelligence apparatus under the Bush administration to tease out the deepest secrets of a Stalinist dictatorship counts as a "lie." That makes sense! [Ben H.: 7/21/04 15:25]


	As One Marine to Another... I am loving Sandy Berger sockgate. Call F. Lee Bailey! [Ben A.: 7/21/04 14:54]


	Also excellent. [Ben A.: 7/20/04 20:33]


	Won't the Real Dick Cheney Please Stand Up? Please Stand Up? Please Stand Up? When Senators and Vice Presidents spar we all win. [Ben A.: 7/20/04 13:31]


	Two Points As we Continue to Bore Doug to Tears 1. Some work on the volatility/value connection has been done, albeit crudely, through the concept of "quality starts." A quality start is defined as 6 innings or more, three runs or fewer. The basic notion is that for the purpose of winning the game, going 7 and allowing 1 vs. going 9 and allowing 3 are basically equivalent. So if you look at the percentage of starts that are 'qality" you can get a sense of how frequently a pitcher has avoided volatility that substantially decreases the team's chances of winning (like the Jose Contreras 5 innings, 6 run special). Of course, you could probabaly refine this rule-of-thumb substantially. A good project, surely, for some analyst in the Sox front office. 2. Looking at these brief exchanges between us, Ben H., has brought home the repulsiveness of your new red posting color. I liked the old "excrement orange" (or perhaps harvest)better. Perhaps we can globally move the palette to pastel. [Ben A.: 7/20/04 12:07]


	Return to the Stochastic Dimension I think i mean something a little different. Assume that when we talk about batting average or ERA, we mean that quantity localized over some period longer than a game or shorter than a season. Two players with the same, say, batting average over a whole season might exhibit very different volatilities of localized batting average. It would be interesting to take that into account in one's simulations and to see how, for a given season-long quantity, volatility affects value. [Ben H.: 7/19/04 21:50]


	The Stochastic Dimension I think Dr. Strange visted there. Although ruled, as we know, by the Dread Dorramu, James has Monte Carloed his ay to some nifty results. He ran a paired thousand season simulation to see if always walking Babe Ruth pays off. Answer: no. [Ben A.: 7/19/04 20:06]


	Sabermetric's Next Frontier Doug, you jest, but I think the next step for Bill James is to take all his stuff into the stochastic dimension. [Ben H.: 7/19/04 11:34]


	I'd recommend buying some call options on the Yankees, especially given their beta and vega numbers this year. [Doug: 7/19/04 11:27]


	In Measurement Began Our Might (I) You are fortunate, Ben H, to work in a field where personal profitability can be easily ascertained. Allan Bloom attributed the prestige and confidence of the academic hard science to the possession of “strong operational measures of competence.” In the absence of these measures bogus values talk and loathsome business practices proliferate. How I despise the whole dance of “positioning”: the kabuki play wherein business-people project a false self -- “executive”, “whiz kid”, “decision-maker”, “seasoned manager” – hoping to use this internal brand to justify the expansion of power and increases in salary. How wonderful it must be to simply point at a number, and thereby skip all the bullshit. In Measurement Began Our Might (II) The Red Sox certainly haven’t looked like a team in the same league with the Yankees over the past two months, but they are much closer than one would imagine. Baseball games, as we all know, are won by the team who scores the most runs; unsurprisingly, over the course of a season, the success of a team usually tracks quite closely the difference between runs scored and runs allowed. There’s even a highly validated calculation for “predicted wining percentage” based on runs scored and runs allowed (thank you Bill James). While the Yankees are up 7 games on the Sox in the standings, the two teams are evenly matched in their ability to score and prevent runs. Team Runs Scored Runs Allowed Difference 1-Run Record Yankees 495 437 +58 15-9 Sox 496 422 +74 6-10 Actual Record Predicted Record (equal number of games) Yankees: 57-33 50-39 Sox: 50-40 51-38 The Yankees are over-performing (particularly in one-run games), and one would predict a tightening of the race in the second half. What would make this not happen? Well, the Yankees picking up Randy Johnson (or getting a fully functional Kevin Brown back) would do the trick. Also, I think it quite likely that the Red Sox have a higher “pitching volatility” than the Yankees. Schilling and Martinez so outstrip the rest of the Boston rotation that it is likely that a disproportionate percentage of the Boston “run differential” is concentrated in games started by the Big Two. Meanwhile the Yankees, with 150 Walter-Johnson-caliber innings coming from the bullpen trio of Rivera, Gordon, and Quantrill, have the ability to smooth out the difference between a Vasquez and a Leiber. Or at least, that’s my speculation. [Ben A.: 7/19/04 02:25]


	If You Want to See The Frogs In Manhattan ... The Natural History Museum's live exhibit is the place to go. We saw it last weekend. The poison dart frogs are like living jewels. Get there early to avoid hordes of kids, though. [Doug: 7/18/04 23:51]


	The Frogs No, I'm not talking (for once) about the French. Saturday, I went to see the Lincoln Center festival production of a musical version of The Frogs. Rather than prejudice our readers with a description of my own, I give you the producers': Lincoln Center Theater plays a part in this year’s Lincoln Center Festival with The Frogs, a funny and touching collaboration by composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim and director/choreographer Susan Stroman, and, in his debut as a librettist, Nathan Lane. First freely adapted from Aristophanes’ ancient comedy by Burt Shevelove in 1974, The Frogs has been even more freely adapted by Lane, who also heads a cast of 30 multitalented actors, singers, and dancers. This provocative musical theater work features several new songs penned by Sondheim and marks the first professional reunion between Stroman and Lane since their Tony Award–winning adventure on The Producers. The Frogs recounts the classic tale of the Greek god of drama and wine, Dionysus (Nathan Lane). Tormented by the world’s corrosive ills, Dionysus embarks on a perilous and frog-challenged journey to Hades with his slave, Xanthias (Chris Kattan), to bring back an extraordinary writer, who, by his wit and wisdom, might help save mankind from imminent self-destruction. The point of this point, which I promise I'll get to, goes beyond mere yay-booism, but in order to give you the proper context, I need to veer briefly in that direction. The Frogs sucked. Bigtime. I actually left after intermission, taking advantage of the fact that Bernie, who insisted that I buy tickets to this, decided at the last minute to go away for the weekend. I actually scrapped a junket to a conference in Barcelona for this amphibious turkey, so you will perhaps understand my violent reaction. Nathan Lane has succumbed to the success of his shtick, his smirk an artistic deathmask, as he mugs and capers about like an organ-grinder's monkey. The supposed "humor" of the production relies in equal parts on Lane's mincing camp antics and banal easy-switcheroo wisecracks (i.e. mixing contemporary references and ancient greek setting). Boo! But what I really want to talk about was how this performance, like several performances I have been to recently, felt the need to insert a bunch of banal, blunt anti-Bush jokes. The writers really had to stretch to fit them into the Frogs, so much so that it would take up too much space to set them up here. Trust me, though, they came from the completely over-mined vein of Bush-is-stupid humor and exhibited all the lameness you would therefore expect. Of course, that didn't stop the audience full of New Yorker-reading, Upper-West-Side middlebrow, bien-pensants, for whom the New York Times Arts and Leisure section represents the final word in all things aesthetic, from clapping and honking like trained seals. As you can tell, the jokes did not delight me. So, as I strode out into the muggy night after intermission, I asked myself why I should find these anti-Bush cracks so galling. Is it just because I plan to vote for the guy? Maybe I flatter myself here, but I don't think I have become such a zealous partisan that I find jokes about the president some kind of unforgiveable lese-majeste. Rather, I think they annoy because they fail to fulfil the function humor ought to. Good jokes surprise and challenge their audience. These anti-Bush jokes instead serve to help the performers ingratiate themselves with the audience. They announce to the audience that the performers have taken note of the audience's prejudices, that they share them. They are not so much jokes as secret handshakes. And as such, they are an admission of the weakness of the production, which fears that if it tries to rely only on its inherent aesthetic strengths, it will not win the favor of the audience. In the case of The Frogs, that fear was, I fear, well-founded. [Ben H.: 7/18/04 21:45]


	Values Hey, my company has values, too. Well, a value, anyway. We even publish it monthly! [Ben H.: 7/18/04 15:53]


	Cryptics 1. "Powerbook" 2. "Milkiness" [Ben H.: 7/18/04 15:51]


	Values My company has core values, which are deployed primarily when cudgeling employees for poor performance. E.g., “this memo does not demonstrate commitment to the customer, you incompetent!” The silver lining: one of the values is “Excellence in Execution,” also the motto of 90s pro-wrestling great Bret “the Hitman” Hart. [Ben A.: 7/18/04 14:15]


	This place is in Chelsea, if I remember correctly. Sorry to everyone about dearth of posts. Things will pick up. I was just at a company off-site in Key Biscayne. May write about that and about our quest to define our values. It's a subject that goes beyond our company, too. During some of our values meetings, I was reduced to making cryptic clues. This starts with P: Kind of apple turnover Koop eating, first of October, with beer (9) This starts with M: Quality of dairy maid who keeps large cows (9) [Doug: 7/18/04 13:07]


	How do you say "Tawana Brawley" in French? Without a local version of Al Sharpton to stir things up, this fraud could not extend to the point of destroying reputations or provoking suicides. Maybe the woman should assert that while her story is not literally true, it captures the essential truth of present conditions in her country. Hey, it worked for Rigoberta Menchu... [Ben H.: 7/14/04 07:28]


	A Marvelous Summer How lucky are we that the next several summers will alternate Spiderman and X-Men installments? These are movies which, to quote Zonker Harris, get you high on life and America. Go see it, and ask yourself where you have seen Doc Oc before. Hint: do not trust this man with your whip. [Ben A.: 7/11/04 02:14]


	Tolstoy's Romanticism Bingo, Ben H! Tolstoy's romanticism won't admit of bourgeois, rational virtue. His women reflect this most obviously: to be sympathetic they must either exhibit intense piety or be susceptible to the charms of a rake (Anna, Katya, and Natasha from War and Peace). Poor Sonya, the only one of the bunch with any brains (and really, a paragon of selflessness) gets written off as a "sterile flower." She's also the instrument by which Tolstoy provides his commentary on middle-class propriety: she evacuates the family's possessions, while passionate Natahsa cares for the soldiers. I suppose Sonya should count her blessings that she wasn't snuffed hanging a curtain rod... [Note: Don't think I'm bashing Tolstoy. I adore Tolstoy. That an author can frustrate us is a sign that we care.] Tramping the Dirt Down After all the fake bonhomie generated by Reagan's death, one can forget how deeply hated he was. Your citation of the Costello song, Ben H, brought me back to the Cambridge of my youth, where Reagan and Thatcher were uniformly loathed. And by loathed, I don't mean "represented policies that many opposed vehemently," I mean "incited spitting hatred." Want to teach you kid about the Falklands War? Well, here's a picture book (which, at the age of 11, I flipped through in the old Reading International in Harvard Square) that asserts a parallel between the Prime Minister of England and the leader of a right-wing junta! Heck, even lazy googling of the Costello title "tramping the dirt down" turns up folks caked in dried 80s bile: "The only thing sad about Reagan's death for me is that it wasn't Thatcher. A gang of cruel, callous, phony people who cared nothing for the people they were supposed to represent." Surely this is a point no longer worth repeating. But it's a bit rich, isn't it, when we hear about the tone of hatred, polarization, and partisanship coming from Bush or Ken Starr. The feting of Michael Moore -- some of which I had the pleasure of hearing from some of my college friends who should know better -- should similarly put the point to rest: Everyone hates everyone, and those out of power hate the most, and so on to the horizon. [Ben A.: 7/11/04 02:04]


	Anna Karenina and the Clintons Doug, your comparison of Oblonsky and Clinton brought to mind another way in which the novel pre-figures the former President. In your post, you take a highly disapprobatory view of Karenin, as I think Tolstoy intends his reader to do. Yet I think Tolstoy here anticipates a distasteful ethical twist of which the Clintons were masters. Because everything they did aimed, in their minds, at the laudable goal of advancing their political ascent, that is to say, to increase their political power in the service of "the common good", they felt entitled to commit acts that they found inexcusable when committed by their political enemies; for these enemies did not transgress for pure motives but rather out of objectionable ones. Likewise, their political enemies found themselves on a sort of ethical proscription list, stripped of the entitlement to be treated fairly. Only the right sort of people, to the Clintons, had valid ethical claims. It seems to me, Tolstoy takes a similar approach to Karenin. Sure, the guy is a cold fish and a prig. I would not want to spend time with Karenin. However, Anna has married him and made all the promises that act explicitly entails. She ought not be released from all obligations to him merely because he is the wrong sort of person, one who acts out of a sense of conventional duty rather than grand passions and ineluctible demands of the soul. Karenin's forgiveness of Anna's transgressions, his willingness to let her carry on her affair within fairly wide bounds Tolstoy suggests is without value because his motivation may be amour propre, a kind of absurd pride in his own magnaminity. But, you know what, who cares? He commits a generous act. Why get caught up in hazy motives-talk, if not to excuse the inexcusable (which is exactly what Anna does, and I get the sense that on this point Tolstoy is with his ambiguous heroine). Here's the cherry on the anti-Kantian sundae, courtesy of Anna: "...if, without loving me, he [Vronsky] is kind and tender to me from a sense of duty, but what I desire is lacking-that would be a thousand times worse than anger! It would be hell!" [Ben H.: 7/10/04 16:58]


	Deciphering Inscriptions As you yourself pointed out, the more obvious explanation of the two-tone "Sexism still exists" graffito is that their can of blue paint ran out. Either way, If I lived near you and had more time, I would probably rent a sandblaster and make it read "Xism still exists". The only question is whether to make a more radical change to something like "Knockwurst still exists". The Accidental Muslim You guys recall that, late in my college career, I became affectless and disthymic, to the point that I called myself the accidental Buddhist (I was freed of desires without even trying). Now with my chronic back pain, I find that one of the only useful exercises involves getting on my knees and stretching my arms forward and back again. In the spirit of Pascal's wager, I've been trying to do this five times daily while facing East. Recycled Content Speaking of ranging over the reals, About 4 or 5 years ago I tried to make an accessible but accurate presentation of the Banach-Tarski paradox, one of the coolest results in modern mathematics. Basically, if spacetime has real-valued coordinates, as all physicists assume, it follows (with the help of only one slightly controversial axiom) that you can decompose a sphere into four pieces, and then rearrange them rigidly (no stretching or anything) into two spheres congruent to the original one, thereby doubling its volume. [Doug: 7/9/04 15:48]


	Various My apologies for the spotty blog performance. Vacation, and the period of mourning following the Sox fiasco in the Bronx will serve as my excuses. As usual, you two have been fertile in my absence. There's a lot I want to write and respond to: on Luttwak, and the corporate values phenomenon. First perhaps, I should respond to your kind comparison, Doug, of me to Tolstoy's Levin. I'd like to believe I share some of Levin's joy in the physical world and the practical virtues, but I see myself more as a dreaming Boris. The Oblonsky = Clinton parallel, however, is flawless. Let me offer the following as evidence: The liberal party said that marriage is an institution quite out of date, and that it needs reconstruction; and family life certainly afforded Stepan Arkadyevitch little gratification, and forced him into lying and hypocrisy, which was so repulsive to his nature. The liberal party said, or rather allowed it to be understood, that religion is only a curb to keep in check the barbarous classes of the people; and Stepan Arkadyevitch could not get through even a short service without his legs aching from standing up, and could never make out what was the object of all the terrible and high-flown language about another world when life might be so very amusing in this world. X ranges over the reals Graffiti on the sidewalk outside my apartment reads "Xism still exists." Alas, this more perfect statement of the Cambridge mindset has been defaced by the addition of an "S" and "E" in a different color. [Ben A.: 7/8/04 23:59]


	Thus Spoke Dale Carnegie The following e-mail suggests that my company may be having a Nietzsche-themed offsite this year. 9:00 am: Revaluation of all values. 10:00 am: Smashing the slave morality in client engagements. 10:30 am: Coffee and danishes. 11:00 am: How to incentivize with a hammer. As you are no doubt aware, we will be spending the Friday of the offsite focused on the topic of Values. To help inform the day’s discussion and to jumpstart your thinking about Values, we ask you to take 5 minutes to answer one of the following questions. Your responses will be kept anonymous and we will share the summarized results at the offsite. Please send your answer to ________ before Friday, July 9 at noon. Please choose one question to answer: 1. Briefly describe a ____ situation where values came into conflict with each other or where you experienced a “values violation”. Your answer need be no more than a paragraph. 2. What values originally attracted you to _____? [Doug: 7/8/04 10:09]


	Kerry Picks Edwards That he passed over Gephardt is a shameful example of the institutional discrimination that has made having eyebrows all but a prerequisite for high office in the United States! [Ben H.: 7/6/04 07:52]


	Best line in Anna Karenina Hard as Stepan Arkadyich tried to be a solicitous father and husband, he could never remember that he had a wife and children. Stepan Oblonsky is my favorite character in Anna Karenina. Which is to say -- since, as I've already said, I'm unable to distinguish between Anna Karenina and life -- he's the kind of person I most like to be around. He's always full of unfeigned good spirits. He's smart enough to be engaging in conversation, but not so much as to steer him into deep and difficult thoughts that might lessen his sunniness. As for the adultery -- well, I didn't say I'd marry the guy. You know who he is, actually? Bill Clinton. (Which makes Anna Karenina a trebly relevant read: you get what's really important out of Slick Willie's autobiography in 100 fewer pages, you understand human life in general, and you fulfill your duties to Oprah.) Then again, all I should really say is that Oblonsky is my favorite character while I'm reading about him. When Levin's around, he's my favorite. All readers -- especially male readers -- must identify with Levin to some extent. I certainly do. But he always reminded me more of Ben A. I think Ben has more of Levin's enthusiasm for family life and for practical affairs. I'm a little more solitary and a little more abstract (not to say abstracted). But this hardly makes the novel less immediately relevant to me, since it contains avatars of my other personality traits too -- Levin's brother, the dry intellectual bachelor, and even his half-brother, the ironic cynical wash-out. It pains me to admit that in high school the character I most resembled was Karenin, but I think I've washed all traces of him out. I guess, looking at the options, that the moral for me is to become more like Levin. (Given that becoming Oblonsky is out of the question.) (Incidentally, "Become Oblonsky" would be a decent name for a band.) With all the vivid male characters in the book, it's kind of surprising that Anna herself is a little bit out of focus, especially in the beginning. And even after Tolstoy gets more into her thoughts, I wonder how many female readers today will identify with her. It would take a robust imagination for an American women of 2004 to see herself in a social situation where she couldn't just pick up and leave with her kid and live with whomever she chose. Final comment for the day. One of the wonderful feats of Anna Karenina, and of all literature that merits the name, is to show how the cumulative effect of everything we do and say, and not just discrete decisions at a few critical points, determines the course of our lives. To believe otherwise is to be -- like Karenin -- a miserable twat. Karenin understands his situation this way: he had a normal functional marriage; his wife was tempted; she chose to succumb to temptation. What about the years he spent acting coolly or coldly to Anna, not even trying to be a solicitous father and husband? To him, that's not a real tangible action -- "acting coolly" is not something he can make into a bullet-point in one of his itemized reports. Contemporary moral philosophers make the same mistake, and hence also tend to come across as miserable twats. They hardly ever mention warmth, generosity, or thoughtfulness, since these things can't be cashed out into quantities of humans tied to parallel spurs of a railroad track. Luckily, the moral philosophers who matter (like Aristotle and the Buddha) realize that virtue is a habit. I would very much like to rehabilitate this word. It seems to me that up until the 1970s it was a player, competing with other synonyms for the female pudenda. It's since almost totally gone out of favor. But I like the sound of it. It has a lovely, what's the word, twang. [Doug: 7/4/04 17:38]


	Abroad In Brooklyn Don't chintz out and hire one of those undignified funeral directors, what with their juggling acts, pratfalls with the coffin, and "take my life, please" one-liners. Somehow I think we all know what the owners of Cobble Hill Chapels were getting at, and it probably wasn't "Re-animator, my ass! They're just dignified funeral directors!" In the hands of the sign-painters of Cobble Hill, the English language is a blunt instrument. I understand what a present antique is (basically, an antique), but what is a "past antique"? Is this an antique which has fallen into such a state of decrepitude that it ceases to be an antique and descends to the status of mere junk? I think they must really mean antiques, present and future, the latter being stuff which is now merely old crap and which the passage of a few decades and a great deal of hope may one day elevate to the status of antique. In either case, careful reading reveals that a high fraction of this store's wares is junk. Mailboxes Etc tests out a dramatic expansion of its franchise. "I'd like to send this box of clothes to my cousin in Brazil." "Certainly, sir. You don't have anyone to bury today, by chance, do you? Because you get 10% off all mortuary services with overnight shipping overseas!" One letter away from a truly disastrous street name, particularly next to that suggestive "one-way" icon. Surprisingly, all along the length of this street, I did not see one single tag making the requisite modification. A friend of mine saw this sign from a distance and initially misread it as "Monster Muff." I went with the error: "yes, it's a bikini waxing parlor for the hirsute." On closer inspection, we can see that the semi-literate sign-painters of Cobble Hill have struck again, presenting us with a pleonastic "& etc". And strictly for the EM Corporates junkies... I took my Masher bonds here to try to make attachments and recover my principal in the form of sausages and London broil, but to no avail. Apparently, this store dates back to when the Mastellone family, in a draconian interpretation of the kosher laws, forced their youngest brother, who desired to be a butcher, not merely to sell his share of the Argentine dairy business, but to the leave the South American continent. While Mastellone's House of Meat is not nearly as big or high profile as Mastellone Hermanos, the modest little House of Meat has not gone bankrupt even once. Note that the proper architectural form for a house of meat is a post-war split-level, animal sinews not being strong enough to support more elaborate structures. [Ben H.: 7/4/04 16:26]


	A Beautiful Series I was lucky enough to be at Yankee Stadium last night. Whatever you may think about Jeter's pretty-boy image and accompanying adulation, he made a truly spectacular play last night, one that saved the game. This is my 25th season of attending Yankee games; last night's quite possibly was the best I've ever watched from the stands. [Ben H.: 7/2/04 21:29]


	A Series to Forget News of the Red Sox catastrophe reached us even in the mountain fastness of Yosemite. And now I have to hear about Jeter's martyrdom. Ugh. [Ben A.: 7/2/04 18:37]


	Page 3 of the FT re-interpreted The FT carried above its article on the Saddam arraignment a pictorial that looked to me strangely like a comic strip. What I needed to do was clear. The results below: It also seems to be that in case he is acquitted, Saddam has a natural choice for a career to pursue: [Ben H.: 7/2/04 11:52]


	How To Handle Young Idealists At Your Doorstep Read the bottom of Lileks' Bleat from Monday. [Doug: 7/1/04 14:55]


	On The Run From Greenpeace Summer in the NYC area means, among other things, packs of post-adolescents canvassing neighborhoods for contributions to Greenpeace. I have no trouble dodging them on the street, but I find it difficult to banish them when they come to my door. I suppose it is some combination of my natural aversion to conflict with strangers and the effectiveness of the canvassers' high-pressure tactics. Yesterday, as I approached my house, I saw directly ahead of me a shaggy pair clomping up my stoop. Quickly recognizing their affiliation, I ducked into my side lot and pretended to be marvelling at cats gazing anxiously from behind the locked gate. (I knew those cats would come in handy). Thus I stood for about 15 minutes while the canvassers hit up each of my neighbors. I only dared approach my door after the Greenpeacers were well down the block. What is it about a door-to-door pitch that makes one feel so bad about refusing it? I don't think I am the only person who can reject the importunate with efficient brusqueness in most situations, but finds himself reduced to embarrassed hemming and hawing when the scene is transposed to his doorstep. Has some classical notion of "hospitality" persisted as a cultural undercurrent down to the present day? Or is it just fear that the person one has just refused by construction "knows where you live"? After all, Greenpeace's main form of action (outside, of course, of raising money) is vandalism. That's not true of other door-to-door canvassing operations. I'll lean toward the former explanation. On that view, door-to-door selling represents a kind of theft of social capital. In California, I was beset by guys selling magazines door-to-door, all using a similar spiel about how their effort was part of some program teaching "entrepreneurship" to one or another "underprivileged" group. And I suppose anyone who can get people to subscribe to magazines above the cover price has a bright future in one or another branch of the huckeristical professions. I considered what the best defense mechanism against these guys might be. The selfish thing to do would be to cower inside and hope the seller would concluce I was not home. But since I objected to them on the basis that their activities eroded social capital, I needed to come up with a public spirited response. As luck would have it, I noted on the back of a subscription receipt that by law one could rescind one's order by sending a letter to the head office of the company that sends these kids out. From then on, I happily bought half-a-dozen subscriptions from each comer and immediately after closing the door, spent 30 seconds printing out and mailing a form letter asking to cancel my order, thereby imposing an annoying and costly administrative burden on the perpetrator of the scheme without having to bicker with or slam the door on the solliciter. [Ben H.: 7/1/04 11:07]


	The Curse Ben A., you went on record early in the season that this could be the year for the Red Sox, and to be fair, I agreed. But after last night's loss against the Yankees, even you have to be wondering. Bases loaded, facing Felix "Fat Pitch" Heredia, the Sox couldn't score even an single run? And their fielding? Atrocious! Is fielding a Bill Jamesian blind-spot? [Ben H.: 7/1/04 06:14]


	Argh A politician just thanked me for my contribution with exactly the piece of nonsense I derided last year: "While I am certain you are asked to give to many causes, your commitment to my campaign and to the larger political process is humbling and much appreciated." I quickly logged off, before I could start regretting having sullied myself in this process ... [Doug: 6/28/04 10:34]


	Scenes from Cambridge The biggest oddity on display during our just-finished Cambridge wedding jaunt was probably myself, what with my well-known aversion to the place, and the fact that we'd just been there for the reunion. I would have been an even odder sight had I been wearing a tuxedo with green* khakis, as I was resigned to doing as late as 20 minutes before the ceremony yesterday. You see, what I had assumed were tuxedo pants on the hanger beneath my jacket turned out to be a black wool skirt of Dao's. I probably could have mustered enough aplomb to make the khaki combo work as "creative black-tie", especially since the wedding was at one o'clock in the afternoon. (Someone also suggested wearing the skirt as an avant-garde affirmation of my Scots heritage.) Luckily, the guy at that little information kiosk in the Square pointed me to a formalwear store on Bow Street, whose clerk dropped the young couple he was helping and rented me some black pants. I freely acknowledge this as a big score for Cambridge. Overall, in fact, these two weekends have somewhat rehabilitated Cambridge in my eyes. The weather was great. The food was fine. The hospitality is unparalleled (thanks, Ben A). I still don't have the knack for interpreting the general shabbiness outside the academic nodes as "quaintness", but I can always stick to those nodes. The other gratifying thing about coming to Cambridge is verifying how fully it lives up to its stereotype. Grandmothers with "No Iraq War" banners? Check. People ordering "baked tofu" off an otherwise yummy menu? Check. Line down the block for Michael Moore film? Check. Folk singers on every corner? Check. Check, check, check ... it's all there, and it's good to know that societal entropy has not yet made all American cities alike. Five years ago this seemed like a danger; since then, the Square seems not to have changed much. The irony is that interesting regional differences are precisely what Harvard's deans have wiped out among their undergraduates. When we were students there, the slide toward random housing assignments had just started; it is now complete. Like so many bad ideas, social engineering lives on only in academia. Speaking of Harvard housing, the Yard is still a great place to hang out. The buildings are beautiful and unpretentious. It struck me yesterday that the only real problem (excluding a few monstrosities on the fringes like Boylston and Canaday) is University Hall. It cuts the yard in half, interrupting what would be a beautiful (but still not grandoise) sweep from the west-side entrance to Widener. And it does not earn its centrality with architectural magnificence. It draws attention to itself by being white amid all the brick red, but your eye, once drawn to it, is disappointed -- University Hall is plain. I would like to join the roster of people calling for its removal. The only difference is that I would demolish the building with the deans still in it. Other news of the weekend -- the wedding itself was tasteful and enjoyable and it conjoined two people who are swell both individually and as a pair. Very high quality attendees, even if you don't count Dao and me. This may be explained by the high turnout of Koreans and Norwegians; Americans, as our train ride up to Boston showed, are barbarians. We thought we'd try the "Acela" after the reunion traffic nightmare. No dice. Not only is it an hour late; the Texan family we end up sitting near decides to watch the movie "Coyote Ugly" on a laptop, without earphones. One more topic: other people's bookshelves. I don't like books or any other infrequently used schtuff in my house, but when I'm staying with somebody with a big library, I'm like a kid in a candy store. Ben A, you were right about Coup D'Etat: A Practical Handbook, by Edward Luttwak. Brilliant. A modern classic. It is exactly what its title says and is witty and concise. Its only drawback is that, like a lot of modern classics, it's preeningly amoral, and this gets depressing after a while. I skimmed the last two-thirds, stopping only on really intriguing things like the best way to storm a palace and the major styles of usurpation communiques. (The example of the "messianic" style was topped only by the "unprepared" style.) I don't have the book with me to quote. (However, Ben, I did borrow that Huw Price book after all. Also, Ben H, I am instructed to pass the Lovecraft/Wodehouse parody to you, but I'm afraid I agree with Ben A's judgment: it's the literary equivalent of a missed lay-up.) *or "basil", as Eddie Bauer has it. But this shows how downmarket Eddie is: I actually know what basil is. Everywhere else it's "loden". [Doug: 6/27/04 23:19]


	Scene From Brooklyn I've had tremendous difficulty finding 2-liter bottles of caffeine-free Diet Coke since moving to Brooklyn, possibly due to the proliferation of Coke subvariants that Doug alluded to in an earlier post. In any case, having a bit of free time today, I walked over to a beer distributor located a few blocks from my house, figuring (correctly, as it turns out) they might also sell softdrinks. I brought several bottles of caffeine-free Diet Coke to the cashier, feeling a little sheepish about making such a small purchase at a place where the more typical transaction size runs to several cases or kegs of beer. Yet, I had no need to be embarrassed. Directly in front of me on line stood a bearded, Asian man of perhaps 50 years old, dressed in a linen suit, bow-tie and a fedora, clutching a knobbed, wooden walking stick in his left hand and a single can of Old Milwaukee beer in his right. To pay for this purchase, he extracted a leather change purse and began to withdraw from it nickels and dimes sufficient to pay for his purchase. I have a hard time imagining the backstory to this encounter, though I suspect -- in spite of his elegant dress -- the story does run through hard times, considering the contrast of dress on the one hand and beer selection and payment method on the other. I was momentarily tempted to talk to the guy, years of after-school specials have implanted in my head the suggestion that odd men such as this are the likeliest vessels for magical powers that can bestow benefits on those who take a kindly interest. [Ben H.: 6/27/04 14:57]