| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | |||||
| 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
| 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 |
| 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 |
| 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 |
| 31 |
« September 2007 | Main | November 2007 »
The Knicks seriously suck. Luckily for Eric, he's a Celtics fan. Not that last season was any good, but this one is looking much better. Luckily for me, I have every plan to abandon the hapless Knickerbockers the second the Nets put "Brooklyn" on their new jerseys.
Over email, Eric pointed out an error in my reasoning in the last post. Here's our interchange:
Long-time HDTD commenter and old friend Bad Mama gave birth to Pistachio! Both are still tired from the move. Reports from Bad Mama's Mama and Big Daddy here. No pictures yet.
Also, future brother-in-law Booster Gold has asked me to be his groomsman.
These things make me happier than I can really say.
Anyway, to bring this blog back into karmic balance, I will have to post Psychotically Angry Grumpy Tuesday Links tomorrow.
Update: Packers 19, Broncos 13 in OT, overtime in this case lasting about three seconds. Perhaps the Grumpy Links will have to wait.
Eric Werker, an assistant professor here at HBS, co-authored a rather provocative piece in the New York Times a week ago. In it, he argued that the U.S. should replace its foreign aid program with a 39-percent tax credit for foreign investment in targeted countries.
Now, let me start by saying that Eric is a brilliant colleague. His work is clever, interesting, and iconoclastic. He hasn’t written a paper that I didn’t wish I’d thought of first. He’s also got a ton of real world experience in development work in the hairier places on the planet. I think I’ve probably seen more dead bodies than he has, but I’m not sure. Other than that, Eric’s got me beat cold on the travel-to-serious-places and do-serious-things tip. In fact, to be brutally frank, he’s got me beat cold in pretty much everything. Eric is smarter than me, taller than me, better-looking than me, younger than me, and he dresses hella better than I do.
Nevertheless, this proposal seems, well, wrong.
So the Mattavilasa is a one-act Sanskrit comedy...
The Pure Product of America: BO-RING!
... but as Manson and the Suicide Girl head off to the liquor store, they discover their skull (which they use as a drinking cup as well as a begging bowl) is missing.
The Pure Product of America: Wait, what? Did I miss something?
Did you? Anyway, here's a link to a bullet I've dodged on this whole Internet dating thing.
The Pure Product of America: Dude. Pennsic or WorldCon?
The somatotype is rather striking, isn't it. Even creepier stuff below the fold.
And I do mean random.
Let's start with an article about the Jose Medellin case, which just went up to the US Supreme Court.
This one is a bit lawyer-geeky, so here's the short version: Jose Medellin is a guy who committed two horrible, evil murders. Since this happened in Texas, he was promptly sentenced to death. Simple enough so far.
Bu-ut... Medellin is a Mexican citizen. The United States has signed something called the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. The Convention says that, when you arrest a foreign citizen, you have to either notify that nation's consul, or (at a minumum) tell the foreign citizen he can contact his consul and give him a chance to do so.
Texas didn't do that. And it might have made a difference. (For one thing, Medellin was given a not-so-great court-appointed lawyer, and the Mexican government says it would have tried to get him a better one.) So Medellin appealed his conviction.
With me so far? Okay, so after ten years or so, this ended up at the International Court of Justice. And the ICJ said, hey, US, you screwed up. Then, to everyone's amazement, the Bush administration agreed with them. President Bush said, yeah, our bad -- and sent out a memo to that effect.
To which Texas responds: international court of justice? Memo? The hell you say -- this guy raped, tortured and killed two teenage girls, and we are going to kill him.
So now it's before the Supreme Court.
This is one of those head-clutching cases where there's no good answer. Medellin's crime was revolting, and he's pretty clearly guilty. But Texas justice is a joke around the world, and doubly so when the accused is Mexican. And the US shouldn't be able to sign treaties, then ignore them when it's inconvenient. On the other hand, the US has a federal system; how does the President tell a Texas state court what to do? Especially this President -- since, if he wins, this will be another expansion of Presidential power.
Well, that's what we have a Supreme Court for. High salaries, nice offices, cool black robes, but sometimes they have to sweat. More info here, if you're really interested.
More random links below the jump.
Isn't that a nice word? Stymied. It sounds so greek mythology, it could be the name of a lesser god, or or one of Zeus' involuntary girlfriends. I also found out that I mispronounced the word all my life, thought it meant something totally different than it really means, and that it comes from golfing language. Another linguistic favorite smothered. (Also a nice word.)
All this pointless babbling because I needed to express my feelings about my youngest son's language development. So I'll use an easy word - I'm baffled.
See, children are supposed to pick up language gradually, going from unintelligible babbling to clearly pronounced single words like "Mommy", "Daddy", "car" and "milk". They usually have hickups with pronunciation, like they can't pronounce "s" or "th" but on the whole, you can work out what they mean. They go from one syllable to two syllables, from one word sentences during the second year of life to two word sentences at age two and three word sentences at age three. Those are very fuzzy milestones, of course. Some kids are faster, some are slower. But the majority of kids does stick with the general sequence of easy-more challenging-really mind-boggling (big words from little kids' mouths are such fun!).
Alan and David were both late talkers. They grew up with three languages and while studies deny that multilingual children are speech-delayed, it seemed to be true for us. Alan didn't really talk until he was two and then he took off with a vengeance. He's very good at switching from English to German and vice versa, and both he and David have a very good grasp of grammar. They do build nice sentences, and complicated ones. They reflect the way Doug and I talk with each other and with them and we don't do baby talk much and we like big words.
Jacob, though, decided to do it all differently.
Long time readers of this blog may remember that I used to post a lot of stuff about Romanian and Serbian history. But I haven't posted nearly as much about Armenia. Why?
Well, there are three limiting factors. One, there's noticeably less material in English. (My French is now so rusty that it can probably be ignored at this point.) I've seen some really interesting-looking books, but they all seem to be in Armenian or in Russian.
Two, Armenian historiography is even more screwed up than Romanian or Serbian historiography. (Which is saying something.) Armenian historians tend to be pretty nationalistic, outsiders often have axes to grind, and the fact that Armenia wasn't a country until 1991 means that a lot of their history pops up as chapters in someone else's book.
A third factor that limits posting about Armenia: the biggest event in modern Armenian history is pretty depressing. Claudia and I have been here a year and a half, and we still haven't visited the Genocide Museum. Even though it's just a few kilometers away. (We joke that we're waiting until some day when we're feeling too cheerful and positive about life.)
That said, I have done a couple of posts about Armenian history, and I vaguely feel I ought to do more. Does anyone have a particular interest?
In honor of the recent Caribbean theme, I spent way too much time on YouTube looking for a clip of Jane Seymour reading the Tarot over a funkified 007 theme.* Dear sweet merciful heaven, Live and Let Die is such an appalling movie (which I loved when I was eight), and Ian Fleming? a racist putz. On the other hand, Geoffrey Holder rules:
You know the Wachowski brothers rewound this scene over and over and over until the munchies hit.
How did he become so big? When did this happen? Last night?
Because you asked for it, true believers: the realistically rivetin' return of MONTENEGRO!
(You know, it was either this, or blog about the Mattavilasa. Otherwise, I got nothin'.)
Both Doug and long-time commenter LL (Lana Lang? Lori Lemaris? Letitia Lerner?) will know I cracked up at this recent panel:
But for two entirely separate reasons.
#4. 422. 4-0? 4-0!!! 38. That last number made me up my daily workout 20%. Screw it, I was plateauing anyway.
Frankie, that new guy Morten Andersen, he looks pretty good there.
Most of you have probably seen these already, but here are two recent posts of mine over at the Fistful: one and two. As time allows, I'll add some more.
Meanwhile, Burma. Here's my $0.02: not much will change. That's a really ugly government, it has pretty much all the guns, and it has shown no shyness about using them. I'd be happy to be wrong. On the other hand, any plausible successor government is unlikely to be much better, and could be worse.
(Why, yes, I do live in the former Soviet Union. Funny you should ask.)
Recent Comments