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Metadata
| Ben A. |
Ben H. |
Gombrecht the Irrefrugnable |
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Weathered Pine With Antiqued Taupe Finish
What I can't figure out is, where are all these people who are willing to shell out thousands to make their homes look like Miss Havisham's room? There must be a lot of them, to subsidize mass delivery of this tome, but who are they? Do you know any of them?
[Gombrecht the Irrefrugnable: 5/22/13 21:30] |
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So Far Beyond My Expectations
The four-pound Restoration Hardware "Interiors" catalog came to our mailbox today, as I'm sure it did to yours, in light of your zip codes' income statistics. At first I was sad. What's the point of opening this if there's no lunatic "carpe diem" page from my favorite CEO, since he was cashiered last year for shagging his employee(s?)? I did find a use for it though -- it was effective at pressing the water out of tofu when put on top of a plate on top of the tofu. Also I put it next to the stove on the kitchen counter to protect it from splashing oil when I fried the tofu. And then ... curious to see what meager replacement they found for Gary Friedman's inside cover piece, I opened it, and there was the man himself, now billed as the "chairman emeritus, creator and curator," with his hands on his hips and a leather jacket, seeming to say, "Yeah, I screw my employees, what are you going to do about it" -- and en face, an absolute classic foreword. Its all-caps epigraph:
"When we are open and giving of our light, we create an endless reflection that outlives our human existence."
[For "light", read "semen."]
And it gets better: "We decided to eliminate the marketing department in favor of having a Truth Group, as marketing can at times be manipulative." When Friedman becomes Global Overlord, and the knock comes at my door at 2 a.m., I will know it's the Truth Group coming for me ...
[Gombrecht the Irrefrugnable: 5/22/13 20:21] |
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Google Glass
For many years during the last decade I worked for a NYC management consulting company, alternately full-time and part-time, depending on whether I was living in NYC or Paris. I remember dreading during the latter periods my trips back to NYC, when I had to go to the office and be greeted by colleagues whose names I'd completely forgotten. Come to think of it, I routinely forgot people's names there when I was full time, too. Huzzah to Google for coming up with technology to help those of us -- and we must number in the millions -- who suffer this disability. With facial recognition that pops up everyone's name onto our retinas, we need never fear bumping into colleagues from the other side of the office, nor even into sociopaths like Ben H who abuse their photographic memories by coming up to people they've met once at a party many years ago and greeting them by name. (Hopefully family life has mellowed you out, Ben, and you no longer do this.)
[Gombrecht the Irrefrugnable: 5/19/13 23:16] |
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Leave the Driving to Us
Say what you will about Fung Wah, but none of their crashes took out the whole of I95!
[Ben H.: 5/19/13 20:59] |
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Congrats to David! I'm looking forward to reading it, but I will take care to buy my copy with cash. If I have an item on my credit card record involving "the Founders", "Revolution", and "Conservative", the NTEU zombies at the IRS will surely mark me for a painful audit.
[Ben H.: 5/19/13 10:53] |
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Summer Reading List
The Founding Conservatives, hitting the shelves next month, by our Winthrop homeboy David Lefer. I expect it will be great -- I haven't read any drafts or anything, but I know he's put years of very hard work into it, and David differs from PhD-holding scholars by not being undead; this must add a certain sparkle to his prose. Seriously, I do expect it to be a great read, and it wouldn't surprise me if it were welcomed into a very select canon of works on the American Revolution. Sales-wise, I think he realizes that its success has nothing to do with its merits, and everything to do with the viral propagation among marginally literate Republicans of the idea that its creaseless spine will radiate, from its perch on their bookshelf or coffee table, totemic-historical proof of the Rightness of Our Side and the falsity of Obama's nefarious crew.
[Gombrecht the Irrefrugnable: 5/18/13 21:25] |
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CHE was the easy part! I was thinking the summer camp was CTY. But couldn't really make a go of it from there.
[Ben H.: 5/10/13 10:22] |
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E-Pillory
The answer to our criminal-justice quandary is the internet. When you're convicted of something it should announced on your Facebook page and your Twitter account, with reminders posted at a frequency commensurate with the seriousness of the crime.
[Gombrecht the Irrefrugnable: 5/9/13 12:32] |
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Speaking of Guerillas
Summer school for kids of the cognitive elite ... as well as infamous guerilla's mischievous kid (5,4)
[I modified this slightly ... the infamous guerilla is Che, if that helps ...]
[Gombrecht the Irrefrugnable: 5/9/13 08:15] |
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Up With Flogging
I endorse the Ben H pillory/flogging agenda. Especially for property crimes. And littering! The people who pee in the MBTA elevators, however, may require more severe correction.
[Ben A.: 5/8/13 21:32] |
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Pillory vs Dungeon
A friend introduced me to the work of a Texas oilman he knows who, while a big donor to conservative causes, has taken an interest (initially, it seems, religiously motivated) in the rehabilitation of criminals. The main thrust of his advocacy is against incarceration, both on practical and ideological grounds. He sees the world through a libertarian lense and considers the taking of one's liberty just about the most draconian punishment available. If someone is susceptible to rehabilitation, make a real effort rehabilitate him. If not, execute him (it takes the recidivist out of circulation a lot more effectively than 50 years of incarceration). Prison tries to split the difference with the result that it takes the maximum resources to get minimal results on the dimensions we claim to care about. Deterrence, he believes, would and should rely on a very different system. Wouldn't it be better for both society and the impulsive criminal that he just get 20 lashes in the public square rather than a year in the pokey with other, worse criminals? A year absence that costs him whatever job he might have, marks him as unemployable, breaks up his family, loses him his apartment, etc, and from which he emerges with deeper and more persistent injuries than a lash could inflict.
[Ben H.: 5/7/13 09:39] |
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Old Detroit has a cancer. That cancer is crime
Good article.
If you’re looking for a single “root cause” of crime, look no further: The cause is bad decision-making by offenders. And the solution must lie in some combination of improving that decision-making process and devising deterrent threats that actually deter reckless, impulsive, short-term-oriented people, which the current regime of randomized draconian responses so dramatically fails to do.
[Ben A.: 5/6/13 23:48] |
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We need to commission that book. Just as the majority of the animals have some little toys in their cages (the elephant has Babar, as I recall), so too must the guerrillas. A copy of the First Critique for Abimael?
[Ben A.: 5/6/13 23:46] |
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We like to buy books for David in both their English and Spanish versions. He has lately taken a liking to the classic Goodnight, Gorilla. We tried to order the Spanish translation, but we realized it was not entirely literal, when Buenas Noches, Guerilla showed up on our doorstep.
The set-up is similar, but the cages in the Spanish version are not at a Zoo, but rather a prison camp, and inside the cages live not a giraffe, a lion, etc, but rather Abimael Guzman, Subcommandante Marcos, and friends.
[Ben H.: 5/6/13 07:39] |
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Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto
I must now confess myself a fan of both The Dead Milkmen and They Might Be Giants. Catholicism of taste or infirmity of character?
[Ben A.: 5/2/13 13:36] |
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I'm impressed that the Dead Milkmen are still around, if reduced to playing casual venues in Harvard Square. Doug, you've mentioned that 80s geek-band fandom tends to divide between partisans of the Dead Milkmen and followers of They Might Be Giants. That we ended up on opposites sides of this divide might be a Philadelphia vs New York thing. I hope it isn't taste, because I hate to doubt yours! Both bands remain active, though I should point out that my side's guys have remained continuously active since the 80s, while yours only re-formed after a long hiatus; maybe after Joe Talcum washed out as a subprime trader? I have to say that if people are willing to drop $600 bucks to watch 70-year-old Rolling Stones totter around stage, the Dead Milkmen deserve better than a restaurant in Harvard Square!
Speaking of superannuated acts, let's have a moment of silence for Kris of Kriss Kross. He shall warm it up no more.
[Ben H.: 5/2/13 09:26] |
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What I want to know is did they also play "We're In the Money" instead of "Stormy Weather" under Kai's reading of the Dow numbers? (Do they still do that, by the way? I haven't heard Marketplace since the David Branchaccio years).
[Ben H.: 5/2/13 08:53] |
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Tonight Kai Ryssdal said in his sign-off that the Dow was up 138 points, when of course (I say "of course" because I assume you too can be counted on to know this -- if not, mazel tov) it was down 138. Did he just screw up, or are there some kind of meta-media hijinks in play that I'm not yet aware of? Among NPR listeners, there are some who are obsessed with Terry Gross, and some who are obsessed with Ira Glass; I confess that I find their voices so immediately annoying that I hate them with a hatred that could not be overcome by any amount of conversational genius. I am in the minority, perhaps of one, that is obsessed with Kai Ryssdal. To my mind, he is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside a douchebag. His Californian cadence and diction immediately mark him as that kind of glib glad-hander you find in any high-prestige business or institution, and yet when you hear him interview someone, he seems remarkably well-informed and able to steer the conversation to the heart of the matter. I can't figure out if he's a perfectly trained monkey, or an honest Searcher for Truth who impersonates a douchebag because he knows it's the only way to reach it.
[Gombrecht the Irrefrugnable: 5/1/13 19:12] |
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Choke on this you dance-a-teria types
The Dead Milkmen just played a venue in Harvard Square -- Deb and I had gone to the attached restaurant for a rare night out away from the boys. Some of my friends were in line for the show...
[Ben A.: 4/29/13 21:22] |
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"You wear black clothes so you're poetic / The sad truth is you're just pathetic" ... and also a frigging liar!!!
I don't like contemporary art or its accompanying scene, or more accurately I don't like the West Chelsea scene or its accompanying art -- and anything that I might express by way of elucidating this not-liking has been expressed better by The Dead Milkmen -- but today I have an entirely new reason to dislike these people: they're frigging liars! I got a letter today from the Whitney Museum with "Free Pass Enclosed" written on the envelope; inside, a donation/membership form, and neither mention nor trace of free passes!
[Gombrecht the Irrefrugnable: 4/29/13 19:49] |
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Simpsons Revisited
I got some old Simpsons DVDs off the internet (Season 3) ... it definitely still has its moments, like when the school psychologist is telling Martin the results of his career aptitude test.
Martin [crossing fingers and closing eyes]: Systems analyst, systems analyst, systems analyst ...
School Psychologist: Systems analyst.
Martin: ALL RIGHT!!!
Of course this is on YouTube.
[Gombrecht the Irrefrugnable: 4/26/13 19:37] |
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As an avid listener of "Marketplace" with Kai Ryssdal, I am aware that headline unemployment numbers are imperfect vehicles for information, but still, 25%? Or rather, as of today, 27%? How much worse must Europe get before we see social unrest at the level of, say, 1968? I have no first-hand and little second-hand knowledge of Spain, but I occasionally think about what's been happening in France since we left (four and a half years ago already!). There was always a majority of people who felt sullen about having, due to the manifest unfairness of the global System, so little money and income. Of course, nobody's actually going to starve in France -- as you say in the case of Spain, there's unemployment benefits and other forms of social security, so it's an open question whether theirs is a steady-state sullenness, or one that might actually lead them to the barricades. Apparently Flanby has been as abject a failure as everyone (except the majority of French voters) knew he would be, and French unemployment is up, and everyone there now understands what absolute scum their classe dirigeante is, if they didn't before. But what are they going to do about it? Buy Le canard enchaîné more regularly? That'll learn 'em!
[Gombrecht the Irrefrugnable: 4/25/13 23:33] |
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Take the Spain numbers will a grain of salt. The unemployment benefits and social charges there are such that a lot of reported "unemployed" people actual do have work of some kind or another. The official U has always run suprrisingly high for that reason. That said, the rate has gone up a lot. The Greek number, being more accurate, is more shocking, and it comes at a time when the political correlation of forces is in serious flux. If the current government falls, it is not beyond imagining that the winning party in a new election would be a mix of communists and anarchists and the number two or three an avowed fascist party.
[Ben H.: 4/25/13 08:54] |
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Our Monstrous Tax Code
Ben A, I second your motion to force congresspeople to do their own taxes. Maybe we can line up Dao, as Director of Growth at Buzzfeed, to have that idea go viral in early April of next year. But there is really no hope. To mix two management-consultant metaphors, we slowly increased our tax code's complexity until we boiled the frog to the point where we would have to boil the ocean to undo the damage.
Speaking of the paralysis of democracy, for how may more years can Spain and Greece endure 25% unemployment? This is another frog-boiling scenario where no single day brings acute, news-worthy drama, but when you stop to reflect on it, it's staggering. I have to wonder if it's like the pre-Arab Spring situtation, where it seemed like these creaky authoritarian regimes would go on forever, until some fruit vendor knocks over his fruit cart and they all go spilling into the sea.
[Gombrecht the Irrefrugnable: 4/24/13 23:45] |
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Fun tax factoid. My tax preparation fees this year exceeded the average amount of federal tax paid per capita.
[Ben H.: 4/23/13 08:38] |
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Policy Entrepreneur
My proposal: every member of congress has to do his own taxes. No accountants, no turbotax. Pencil and paper, you monsters.
Lockdown Diary
Given twelve hours with the boys, we were able to coax Danny into taking his first steps. Now he's careening around the house with his brother cackling after him.
[Ben A.: 4/21/13 22:53] |
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Having written a check that made me wish I could have paid merely the AMT rate, I second the sentiment. Luckily, federal anti-terrorism statutes allow for the death penalty. One hopes that Massachusetts, which dropped the death penalty in the 80s, will not contend for jurisdiction. However, if it does, it is the citizenry of the Commonwealth that will cover the cost of feeding and caring for the Chechen maniac (thanks, Ben A.!), at least until some patriotic burglar or rapist shivs his sorry ass. Gun control has recently been a hot topic. Djokhar's escape through a firing line of cops raises the question of whether we ought to broaden the "national conversation" to include the T-shirt version of gun control (for police at least), I.e. knowing how to hit your target.
[Ben H.: 4/21/13 12:14] |
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Having just written a hefty check for the Alternative Minimum Tax, I'm somewhat miffed that they didn't just blow that fucker's head off and that his room and board will be billed to taxpayers for the next sixty years. One thing I think we can agree on is that when applicant for immigration is named after a historical figure who has slaughtered more than, say, five million people, an extra level of psychological evaluation is warranted.
[Gombrecht the Irrefrugnable: 4/19/13 23:08] |
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Jerry Seinfeld once had a bit about if you name your kid "Jeeves", you're really cutting down on his career options. I'm thinking the same is true for "Tamerlane". Give his parents the chair, I say.
[Gombrecht the Irrefrugnable: 4/19/13 10:36] |
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Dagestani terrorists in the Bay State? I mean, I know Cambridge is often called "Moscow on the Charles" but that is not meant to be taken literally.
[Ben H.: 4/19/13 08:22] |
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This explosion occured in West, Texas. Doug, we stopped in this town to get some of its famous kolaches. Kolaches clearly make for safer industry than fertilizer.
[Ben H.: 4/18/13 09:42] |
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Flynn on the Flynn Effect
Very, very interesting. The brief summary on the Flynn effect: average IQ scores have been rising at +1 standard deviation per generation, generating the perplexing (and in my view, obviously wrong) implication that the average guy in 1850 was a moron.
The gains in scores have not been uniform across test components: arithmetic scores remain more or less constant, scores on abstract relationship tests and spatial coordination have soared. It's not clear that being better at Raven's matrices correlates with real world problem solving smartness. And one wonders if there aren't some other cognitive skills that have atrophied over the same time frame. We have poor instruments for many skills, and what you can't measure tends to disappear with notice...
The fact that we wear scientific spectacles doesn’t mean that we actually know a lot about science. What I mean is, in 1900 in America, if you asked a child, what do dogs and rabbits have in common, they would say, “Well, you use dogs to hunt rabbits.” This is not the answer that the IQ tests want. They want you to classify. Today, a child would be likely to say, “They are both animals.”
[Ben A.: 4/12/13 16:55] |
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Now Batting, #31, Winfield. David Winfield
Shameful joy is, by definition, shameful. But I will confess some amusement in contemplating the Yankees opening day roster. Vernon Wells!
[Ben A.: 3/27/13 16:16] |
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The mute button in the Ben A. household will be getting less use next baseball season, I am guessing, based on this news.
On a related note, do you think the Yankee's "Every Day is Old Timer's Day" strategy might extend to the broadcast booth? Are Messer and White still alive? Any chance of re-animating Phil Rizutto or Bobby Mercer for a one-year deal? If Chien-Ming Wang can pitch again, I submit there is no such thing as dead.
[Ben H.: 3/27/13 14:02] |
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U.S. Health Policy Update
We received a letter in the mail that has data about a health insurance claim on top and then begins:
Dear [my wife's full name],
We received the above claim for you. Before we can process this claim, we need more information about the patient's prior health benefit coverage. Please send us a Certificate of Creditable Coverage (COCC) or Coverage Letter from the employer.
Now we do have the document requested, but rather than mail it in, I am drafting the following response, which maybe you guys can help me fine-tune.
Dear Sirs,
In reference to your request to examine my COCC, let me assure you that I do have an entirely creditable COCC, but I am unable to provide you a facsimile thereof at this moment. Unfortunately, due to its great length, my COCC cannot be reproduced on a standard 8 1/2" by 12" sheet, or even on legal stock. If your company could send a representative to my office, I would be happy to take my COCC from my drawers so that you can examine it in detail.
[Gombrecht the Irrefrugnable: 3/22/13 22:17] |
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Chinua Achebe
You two have probably read his entire oeuvre and can quote select bits from memory, but let me say, as a representative of the dullard class, that I happened to read two of his books (Things Fall Apart, Anthills of the Savannah) and thought them first-rate. How did he succeed in dodging the Nobel prize?
[Gombrecht the Irrefrugnable: 3/22/13 19:37] |
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Funny, I think I wrote something similar here a few years ago. It does seem odd for the very secular-Jewish New York Times to write editorials advising the Catholic Church on intramural matters.
Now, arguably violating my own rule, I'll tell you I think the appointment of Cardinal Bergoglio is highly suitable. There are two things I am pretty sure don't exist. God and an honest Argentine*. An Argentine pope seems therefore highly appropriate.
*kidding aside, I think it will be interesting to see how the Argentine authorities react. Bergoglio, to his credit, always stood up to the bullying of the Kirchners and as a result spent much of his last decade in BA on the official shit list. Early indication is: crankily.
[Ben H.: 3/14/13 09:48] |
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Memory of Venezuela/Long Live General Tapioca!
The type of piece at the which the Telegraph excels.
And a bonus "Tintin and the Picaros" reference!
[Ben A.: 3/6/13 17:25] |
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The prostitution claim may be a set-up, but if so it comes from enemies of Melgen in the DR, most likely. Melgen's angle is something one sees from time to time in EM, namely a person with a wildly inapposite background manages to wangle a very lucrative government contract. Often that person is himself the victim of a scam, but from time to time he is the perpetrator. Menendez went to great lengths to get the US government to bring pressure on the Fernandez administration to honor Melgen's bogus port security contract with the DR ports authority. This for sure gored a lot of powerful people's oxes in the DR, and I would not find it in the least surprising if one of them thought a ginned up sex scandal implicating Melgen's political protector might blow Melgen out. We ought not forget that, John or not, Senator Menendez was riding around in Melgen's private jet and using his Senatorial powers to push another country to honor his benefactor's corrupt monopoly contract.
[Ben H.: 3/5/13 10:13] |
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I think Shmarko is just the diminutive of JaMarcus (a name that is clearly attested in NFL history).
[Ben H.: 3/4/13 10:43] |
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Barkevious vs. Shmarko
Carl C. sent me a story about an NFL scouting event that included two fantastic NFL names, Barkevious Mingo and Shmarko Thomas. We agreed that the former dethroned D'Brickashaw Ferguson as the best ever. Maybe I've been overthinking this it but I'm beginning to wonder. The core of our arch delectation of NFL names is that they just confound white people like us. Does Barkevious Mingo really pass this test? Or does his name share in the archness? Is it too consciously gesturing to the upperbrow culture hero Thelonious Monk (with an overtone of Charles Mingus)? Could he pass as the sideman of McClintic Sphere in Pynchon's V? What I'm getting it is that Shmarko Thomas may be the true title-taker here. I mean I really just, Shmarko? One has no purchase on that name; one has no point of entry into any thought process that outputs "Shmarko." (If you named your child "Shmayden", as the logical endpoint of Aiden, Cayden, Jayden, and Brayden, that would be brilliant, but not confounding.)
[Gombrecht the Irrefrugnable: 3/2/13 13:42] |
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Ben A. |
Ben H. |
Gombrecht the Irrefrugnable |
Earlier |