This morning I woke up to a bird call that I didn't recognize.  Sort of a zeeting noise followed with like a quarter chicken crow.  It turned out to be three wood ducks sitting in the tree behind our neighbors house.   _
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08:20:45 AM, Sunday 2 May 2010

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Just went to see the Harvard production of Pirates of Penzance.  It's good!  Two more performances this weekend, and that's it.  The Pirate King was a bit too Johnny Depp, and the Police Sergent, while good at funny walks, didn't quite have the voice for it.  But Mabel and Frederic were both wonderful.  Gilbert's plots are like elaborate slip-knots.  By not having any characters who acknowledge the daftness of the proceedings, it makes it all sort of disconcerting.  You work into a state where you sort of tentatively accept the precepts, and accept that the sad songs must be about sad things, because the music is sad, and then he just changes the rules again, declares it all sorted out, not by having them all come to their senses, mind you, and then drops the curtain.  I'd call it subversive, but I have no idea what it would be subverting.

  _
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12:12:09 PM, Friday 30 April 2010

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McArdle on Arizona:

"I'd be a lot more sympathetic to this law, in fact, if it required the police to check the immigration status of every single person they pulled over, without any gauzy "reason to believe" fig leaf to cover up what's really going on. Raise your hand if you think that law could have passed in Arizona."

From her follow-up post:

"If the immigration problems in Arizona are really so serious that they merit deep intrusions upon the liberty of citizens who happen to resemble illegal immigrants, than they are serious enough to intrude on the liberty of everyone. Don't make the cops check the status of anyone who they "reasonably suspect" is illegal; make them check the status of everyone, no matter how blond-haired, blue-eyes, and fluent in standard American english they may be (...) No police discretion. No profiling."

From the comments: "Police state, n. A place where white people receive the same due process as brown people." _
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11:49:28 AM, Friday 30 April 2010

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I can now reliably break the 100 barrier while juggling. My goal is to get to 1000 by summer. _
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11:49:11 AM, Friday 30 April 2010

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Metaphorical train wreck of the week:  

I mean, yes, from many angles Palin's political star continues to shine white-hot, but that's largely because Fox is hard at work keeping its cash cow in the sunlight... and out of the shadows cast by the cold, hard poll numbers. But from another angle, Palin looks quite a lot like someone whose power rests entirely on hiding in the shadows. A run for president would yank her out from beneath her covers faster than you can say "overrated." It's not a matter of there being better candidates for the job, though there will be. It's a simple matter of how the campaign meat grinder works.

(from here)

So I think she's some sort of vampire cow that can only sunbathe by the light of her own star at certain angles, while hidden under a blanket.  However, in order for a cow to run for president, you have to grind it up into a sort of presidential hamburger, and to do that, you have to yank them from beneath their covers, it's simply how it works, at which point, she'll lose her powers, not from the grinding, mind, but from the light, and her star will cease to glow.   And that's leaving out the mysterious towering poll numbers, which sound like something out of 2001. 

Not a blog I'll be going back to. _
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04:52:38 PM, Wednesday 28 April 2010

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Can anyone point to an explanation of the similarities and differences between the Greek and Californian financial crises? _
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03:16:14 PM, Wednesday 28 April 2010

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 Also, last time I went to Trader Joes, there was this oldies song on, and I saw 4 other people singing it, and it was wonderful, and I knew it by heart, and I don't remember what it was, and it's really bugging me.  All I remember is that it involved a question, which isn't much to work with.   _
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04:56:50 PM, Tuesday 27 April 2010

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 Van Morrison <> Jim Morrison.  You have no idea how much more sense things make now. _
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04:46:16 PM, Tuesday 27 April 2010

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Brazenly stolen from a random blog commenter in an otherwise worthless thread:

Coldplay is the answer to the question, "What does beige sound like?" _
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01:43:29 PM, Tuesday 27 April 2010

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Generally speaking, doing something that makes someone else want to kill you is impolite, even if you can't see the harm in it.  On the other hand, wanting to kill people is also indicates a personality flaw, and suggesting that other people kill people is downright antisocial. _
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04:21:44 PM, Monday 26 April 2010

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 This Arizona bill got me wondering about cross-border standard of living differentials.  I couldn't find anything, so I put it together myself, based off this data.  Each country is only listed once in each column, so while Zimbabwe and Israel both have have several extremely high-differential borders, only the highest is listed.   Also, this is all estimates, and the measure is extremely handwavy: different sources vary wildly.  It was surprisingly entertaining to put together.  Finally, I started at the top and worked down, picking up a few obvious ones from the bottom, so a complete look would include more like Angola / DR of Congo.  But it gives the general idea. The next step would be to try to find out about immigration policy and border security on these borders.

_
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03:27:03 PM, Monday 26 April 2010

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 Bizarre etymology of the day: Purdah.  Having a political grace period during an election is an excellent idea.  I wish our elections were short enough to allow it.  As it is, you'd have to just abolish government entirely. _
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02:36:02 PM, Monday 26 April 2010

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