Posts from — December 2008

Following kottke’s post by the same name, here’s my list (not in any order):

• San Francisco, CA
• Mountain View, CA
• Berkeley, CA
• Seattle, WA
• Bethlehem, PA
• Washington, DC
• Manassas, VA (or somewhere around there)
• Denver, CO
• Cambridge, MA
• Yarmouth, MA
• Avon, CT
• Newark, NJ
• Anaheim, CA
• New York, NY

Criteria is that I had to either spend the night or a significant portion of a day there.

Some possibilities for next year:

• Pittsburgh, PA
• San Diego, CA
• Portland, OR
• Chile?

Plus repeat trips to Cambridge, NYC, Avon, and Bethlehem. There’s a chance of making it to Santa Monica or LA at some point, too. I have vague ambitions to visit New Orleans or Chicago at some point, too, but neither are really on the horizon at the moment.

Today I’ve chosen “New York I Love You” by LCD Soundsystem from Sound of Silver. I’m working from NYC for the next couple of days, so I figured it’d be appropriate. “New York State of Mind” seemed too easy.

This video has nothing to do with Gossip Girl, this was just the only version on youtube without distracting video:

For those keeping score, Monday Morning Music #2 also featured a song from Sound of Silver (“All My Friends”).

Administration officials had described detainee abuse as “a few bad apples” in the past (especially at Abu Ghraib). It was a reasonable question: were these loose cannon military operatives crossing the line, or was this a systematic betrayal of American ideals? After the events of the last week, this question has been definitively answered. The problem came from the top.

Two recent events have addressed this question. The first is the report from the Senate Armed Services Committee detailing the causes of detainee abuse. From the press release about the report:

The Committee concluded that the authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques by senior officials was both a direct cause of detainee abuse and conveyed the message that it was okay to mistreat and degrade detainees in U.S. custody.

The report was approved unanimously by 13 Democrats and 12 Republicans (including John McCain) on the committee. This isn’t anything we didn’t already know, but it’s a bipartisan confirmation of it.

The second event was when Cheney said that he approved of the methods (including waterboarding) used against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (interview transcript). Again, this isn’t something we didn’t already know, but it’s a confirmation.

The more I think and read about this issue, the harder I find it to come up with reasons as to why there shouldn’t be serious investigation into war crimes at the highest levels of government. An investigation would be bad, but inaction seems worse.

This is all I intend to write about torture for a little while, I’d like to start looking at some other topics unless something new happens.

I think this exchange did a pretty good job at summing up the debate about torture:

(13 minute video)

Recall that Hitchens has been a steady supporter of the Iraq war, too.

“Amazing Grace”, as performed by Sufjan Stevens from CD 1 of his Christmas album:

(there’s a bunch of dead space at the end of the video for some reason)

Stevens’ Christmas collection is a 5-disc tome of original, classic and obscure Christmas music. He made one each year, originally intended just for friends and family, but eventually released them. Each year, the music becomes increasingly complex and polished. As you might guess from its bare style and simple harmonies, “Amazing Grace” is from the first year, but I think that’s for the best.

A reader on Andrew Sullivan’s blog eloquently supports my stance on the ticking time bomb scenario.

… Area Woman Becomes Republican Vice Presidential Candidate

It’s a pretty good interpretation of the caricature.

I was doing some reading on economics and stumbled upon this term that I hadn’t seen before: Pigovian Tax. A Pigovian tax is one that is applied to things with negative externalities, such as pollution.

Some context:
Taxes necessarily make certain activities less desirable. If the expected value of an investment is $N, but a heavy tax is applied to a successful investment, the expected value will become lower and prudent investors will not be willing to put as much money into it. Taxing things like pollution makes polluting a less attractive proposition than it is now, and encourages pragmatic development of clean technologies.

A variety of well-known economists and politicians support this idea.

I’ve been reading about and watching more of Rick Warren lately, following the news that he’d been selected to lead the prayer at the Inauguration. I don’t care too much about the pick itself. The controversy is largely about Warren’s campaigning for Prop 8. In watching some of his arguments, I was shocked by how bad they were.

The key qute:

“Every culture for 5000 years and every religion for 5000 years has said that the definition of marriage is between one man and one woman”

Anyone who believes this should not be consulted on matters religious or historical. Actually, they shouldn’t pass high school history. Accounts of societies and religions are covered pretty well in this wikipedia article. There are examples in Christian, Jewish and Islamic traditions and scriptures. Utah had to ban polygamy in order to be admitted into the union… it’s not like this was occurring on Mars.

A second clip:

First, on divorce, I’ll forgive Warren’s clear abuse of math and agree with him that divorce is a far greater threat to marriage than gay marriage. He has a good point that “we always like to talk about others’ sins than our’s”. I agree, we all do that.

On Prop 8, he makes the same argument as above (whoops, I guess I could have just used this one video). He goes on, though, to bring the issue of the first amendment and “hate speech” into it. This point is as patently absurd. First, gay marriage was legal during the Prop 8 campaign, so wouldn’t that make the Prop 8 campaign all hate speech by Warren’s definition? Second, hate speech is not illegal, it’s protected by the first amendment (as long as it doesn’t include threats and stuff). If you want to preach antisemitism, for example, you’re allowed to in America. Finally, preaching against things that are allowed by law does not come close to constituting hate speech. Divorce and abortion are legal, but I don’t think that prevents (or should prevent) anyone from preaching against them.

Arguing against these points is a bit too easy, but it’s a bit sad that it has to be done. I’ve seen people make much more balanced cases for Prop 8, it’s disappointing that Warren doesn’t really seem to be trying.

Also, John Hodgman’s view on the issue is worth reading

If you’re interested in urban crime (the topic, not the crime itself) or like Louis Theroux’s BBC documentaries, you’ll like his new Law and Disorder series. I’ve seen the first two episodes (Philadelphia and Johannesburg), and they were pretty enjoyable. He doesn’t really find any answers to his big questions, but it’s still interesting to watch. A lot of the Philadelphia episode reminded me of The Wire, not surprisingly.

A Telegraph article on the series has some criticism that I think is fair:

[...] You might say Theroux’s style is sometimes dangerous, because it could easily backfire. In an innocent-seeming, almost boyish way he asks the blunt questions that other journalists might want to ask but don’t have the nerve. Critics have accused him of faking naïvety, in order to lull his subjects into a false sense of security. But he says there’s nothing cynical in his approach.

I still think it’s worth a look (language and perhaps some scenes are NSFW). Here’s the Philadelphia episode:
(1 hr)