Maybe another book I want to read. You know, once I finish Gibbon.
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02:45:41 PM,
Friday 24 July 2009
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How the logic of conspicuous consumption leads to extinction. This is mostly a reminder to myself that I want to read Tuna: A Love Story.
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02:32:39 PM,
Friday 24 July 2009
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The whole Gates/Crowley spat is fascinating, because it's sort of trivial. Serious cases of police abuse never get this sort of traction. Stories that divide people are what grab our national attention. It's a wedge story. There's two emotional reactions to it, both correct: I would hate to go through what Prof. Gates went through, and you couldn't pay me enough to investigate a reported break-in and put up with people like Prof. Gates. The policeman had both a) done nothing wrong when Prof. Gates started shouting at him and b) shouldn't have arrested him. It's a perfect situation for people to talk past each other.
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(3)
01:43:13 PM,
Friday 24 July 2009
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What he said. Prof. Gates should not have insulted a policeman who was doing his job. Sgt. Crowley should not have arrested a man in his own home for insulting a policemen. These are two completely different sorts of should, so far removed from each other that they don't belong in the same paragraph. Shouting at a policeman is bad manners. Arresting someone who insults you is an abuse of authority. I have no particular expectations of good manners from Harvard professors. But we should demand that policeman to be able to handle abusive Harvard professors (or even less exalted people) without arresting them. I think it's extremely telling that the policeman did an interview with WEEI, the local sports-shout station. This is very much a Townie/College class thing.
Sidenote: This topic completely broke the Arlington list. My favorite local resident, who may even be a hero of mine, posted a charming story about how he tried to picket the Cambridge police department, and the conversation went straight to nasty. We're now at the point of the meta-debate where people whine about being put on moderation and Howie Carr makes fun of us on air.
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(3)
12:49:36 PM,
Friday 24 July 2009
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Watched the pilot of Twin Peaks. It was good, insofar it is possible to be good and still leave me with no actual desire to watch any more, interest in what happened, or emotional involvement with the characters. Mostly it just had comically pretentious camera angles going for it. Like the Coen Brothers directing a George Lucas script.
Huh. When I sat down, it was to write something positive about the movie. Apparently my genius doesn't lie in that direction.
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06:50:42 PM,
Monday 20 July 2009
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Andrew Sullivan is the only blogger whose vacation schedule affects me. It's like a NPR pledge drive. I mean, his underbloggers and guestbloggers are there, but they irritate me. Sullivan is often wrong, obsessed with bizarre things, and what have you, but he's never petulent. My current theory is that petulance is the primary trap for web opinion people. I think the petulance is a normal, human reaction to the unhinged, vitriolic hatred that's just sort of the background noise in the political blogosphere, but Mickey Kaus, Ezra Klein, Glenn Greenwald, Matt Yglasias, the Corner and the Sullivan guestbloggers all come across as petulant. Sullivan has a bizarre lack of defensiveness. I think this is the same thing as his famous excitability. He thinks publicly, and somehow manages to read his email without getting offended and letting that taint his writing. This theory may be bumpkus, but there is some sort of apperance to be saved here: but the fact remains, there is something different about his writing from that of the average blogger, and I don't think it's simply that he has minions or a tabloid sensibility.
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(6)
12:18:10 PM,
Monday 20 July 2009
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Giving up on Chrome. Too many websites I use regularly almost but don't quite work.
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(9)
11:42:05 AM,
Saturday 18 July 2009
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I'm thinking of going ahead and doing something radical: buying a new computer before my current one dies completely.
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(4)
03:07:23 PM,
Tuesday 14 July 2009
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I just found 2 claims for chiropractic manipulation performed over the telephone. Happily, they were denied.
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(2)
02:24:29 PM,
Tuesday 14 July 2009
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So a proposed gas tax hike went nowhere, raising highway tolls failed, so now the MBTA is deciding between raising fares and cutting bus routes, including all the ones we can use to get to work.
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(6)
12:47:02 PM,
Tuesday 14 July 2009
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Pickled peppers aren't actually the best thing, but I'm pretty sure they're an ingredient of it.
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(1)
08:58:16 PM,
Monday 13 July 2009
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Raise my taxes! Please! I fully subscribe to the theory that this particular loophole is the original sin of the US healthcare system, from which the various distortions and absurdities of our system stem.
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(5)
03:45:02 PM,
Monday 13 July 2009
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site & script courtesy of Moss
