Category: 2004 US Election

Four of these queries in my referer log:

"http://www.google.com/search?q=+married+OR+divorced+%22Bill+Joy+%22&hl=en&lr=&as_qdr=all&start=80&sa=N"

Brad DeLong thinks about how employment numbers are spun:

The unemployment rate right now is 5.4%–up relatively little from the 4.1% or so that it was at the start of 2001. In a normal business cycle we would expect such a small increase in the unemployment rate over four years to go with an increase in payroll employment of about 3.9 million: the rising adult population would add 6 million to the trend labor force, and most of them would find jobs even over a period in which unemployment rises.

But we haven’t added 3.9 million jobs: we’ve lost about 0.6 million. The trend labor force has grown by only about 1.5 million over the past four years.

Where are the other 4.5 million? Republicans, anxious to see Rosy Scenario, believe that they have found better things to do than go into the labor force — that they have decided it is a better use of their time to go to school, or raise kids, or windsurf. Democrats, equally anxious to see Dismal Scenario, believe that the missing 4.5 million have given up hope of finding a good job.

I see myself in both the Rosy and Dismal scenarios: I gave up my last job, ugly as it was, to stay home (though I am not home all that much) with my kids and backfill the stuff that makes family life livable. Prior to that and currently, I would count my self as a discouraged worker.

So how does that work figure into the economy? Working with kids in school, managing the dropoff and pickup times at school, running PTA functions, etc., — how does that get counted? There are lots of people doing this kind of work, if you call it that, though not as many as there back in the day when families could live on one income: if society, ie the policy makers and the politicians they direct, don’t value these efforts, what does that say about us? Are we better people than our parents and grandparents?

National Novel Writing Month – NaNoWriMo:

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over talent and craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that’s a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

As you spend November writing, you can draw comfort from the fact that, all around the world, other National Novel Writing Month participants are going through the same joys and sorrows of producing the Great Frantic Novel. Wrimos meet throughout the month to offer encouragement, commiseration, and — when the thing is done — the kind of raucous celebrations that tend to frighten animals and small children.

I may try this. Want to join me?

The MemoryHole has saved a copy of the membership of the much-touted Coalition of the Willing:

(Text Only):

Forty-eight countries are publicly committed to the Coalition, including:

Afghanistan
Albania
Angola
Australia
Azerbaijan
Bulgaria
Colombia
Czech Republic
Denmark
Dominican Republic
El Salvador
Eritrea
Estonia
Ethiopia
Georgia
Honduras
Hungary
Iceland
Italy
Japan
Kuwait
Latvia
Lithuania
Macedonia
Marshall Islands
Micronesia
Mongolia
Netherlands
Nicaragua
Palau
Panama
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Rwanda
Singapore
Slovakia
Solomon Islands
South Korea
Spain
Tonga
Turkey
Uganda
Ukraine
United Kingdom
United States
Uzbekistan

This number is still growing, and it is no accident that many member nations of the Coalition recently escaped from the boot of a tyrant or have felt the scourge of terrorism. All Coalition member nations understand the threat Saddam Hussein’s weapons pose to the world and the devastation his regime has wreaked on the Iraqi people.

* The population of Coalition countries is approximately 1.23 billion people.
* Coalition countries have a combined GDP of approximately $22 trillion.
* Every major race, religion, ethnicity in the world is represented.
* The Coalition includes nations from every continent on the globe.

Continue reading “Coalition of the Wannabes”

Yahoo! News – Anti-Kerry Film Producer Accused of Libel:

Kenneth J. Campbell, now a professor at the University of Delaware, said in the suit that “Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal” combines footage of him appearing at a 1971 war protest with narration that claims that many of the supposed veterans who took part in the event were later “discovered as frauds” who “never set foot on the battlefield, or left the comfort of the States, or even served in uniform.”[. . .]

Campbell attached copies of his military records to the lawsuit, showing that he received a Purple Heart and eight other medals, ribbons and decorations for his service in Vietnam.

Facts: who needs ’em?

Parliamo Scots? Weather:

Scots, like the rest of the UK, talk a lot about the weather. This hardly surprising – as the hoary old joke so accurately says “If you don’t like the weather in Scotland, wait half an hour and it will change”. On a “dreich” (wet, dismal) day there may not be a blink of sun and on others it may be “mochie” (warm and damp) and on still others a “simmer cowt” (a heat haze). Of course rain is often a feature ranging from a thunder “plump” (down-pour of rain) making everyone “drookit” (drenched) and producing lots of “dubs” (puddles) and will go into a “burn” (small stream or brook). There may be a more gentle “smirr” (light rain) or there may be an East Coast “haar” (mist from the sea). In winter time, when there are “wreaths” (drifts of snow) and the “snell” (bitingly cold) wind makes everone “fair jeelit” (cold as ice) at least the children can enjoy “skiting” (sliding) on the ice in a “hunker-slide” (sliding in a crouched position).

This obsession with weather could be attributed to us here on the 47th parallel, as well, especially once summer leaves us.

from Lanark, A Life in Four Books, by Alasdair Gray

Eschaton:

I have to admit that when I look over my CD collection I get a bit depressed. Frankly, there just aren’t all that many CDs that I come back to again and again. Some of that’s age — I just don’t get “into” music the same way I did as a teen. But, still, there has to be some more good music out there.

So, post your top 5 “still listen to frequently even though I’ve had them for years” CDs. Two categories: a broadly defined “rock” category and a “not entirely obvious” classical music category.

I find myself looking through mine and thinking there aren’t many I really have to have. Part of this is the re-evaluation that comes with the iPod: how much of this do I really want to carry around with me? If I shuffle through my collection, am I likely to be bored? Embarrassed? As someone else learned recently about the privacy of email, what if your iPod was able to broadcast what you were listening to for a radius of a few feet? Would you really listen to KC and Sunshine Band if people knew you were?

Continue reading “what are your top 5 rock and classical CDs?”

We had a class picnic the other night and I made chili: it was a huge hit, more based on the fact it was warm(ing) on a cool fall evening. It was very good, all the same: an empty pot is a good sign. It has the added benefit of being easy to make and as it’s meatless, pretty good for you.
Continue reading “it’s chili season”

By (the president’s) faith are we to be saved . . . .

The New York Times > Magazine > Without a Doubt:
“When I was first with Bush in Austin, what I saw was a self-help Methodist, very open, seeking,” Wallis says now. “What I started to see at this point was the man that would emerge over the next year — a messianic American Calvinist. He doesn’t want to hear from anyone who doubts him.”

An interesting overview of the making of the president, how he turned his back on the weakness of introspection and deliberation and embraced certainty.

No great deed, private or public, had ever been undertaken in a bliss of certainty.
Leon Wieseltier, in The New Republic

Now playing:Hallelujah by k.d. lang from the album “Hymns of the 49th Parallel” | Buy it

From The Economist print edition

Eschew ornate verbiage . . .

“Short words are best”, said Winston Churchill, “and old words when short are the best of all”

AND, not for the first time, he was right: short words are best. Plain they may be, but that is their strength. They are clear, sharp and to the point. You can get your tongue round them. You can spell them. Eye, brain and mouth work as one to greet them as friends, not foes. For that is what they are. They do all that you want of them, and they do it well. On a good day, when all is right with the world, they are one more cause for cheer. On a bad day, when the head aches, you can get to grips with them, grasp their drift and take hold of what they mean. And thus they make you want to read on, not turn the page.

Yes, yes, you may say, that all sounds fine. But from time to time good prose needs a change of pace—a burst of speed, a touch of the brake, a slow swoop, a spring, a bound, a stop. Some might say a shaft of light and then a dim glow, some warp as well as weft, both fire and ice, a roll on the drum as much as a toot on the flute. Call it what you will. The point is that to get a range of step, stride and gait means you have to use some long words, some short and some, well, just run of the mill, those whose place is in the mid range. What’s more, though you may find you can write with just short words for a while, in the end don’t you have to give in and reach for one of those terms which, like it or not, is made up of bits, more bits and yet more bits, and that adds up to a word which is long?

Then there is the ban on new words, or at least a puff for the old. Why? Time has moved on. The tongues of yore need help if they are to serve the way we live now. And, come to that, are you sure that the Greeks and Gauls and scribes of Rome were as great as they are cracked up to be? Singe my white head, they could make long words as well as any Hun or Yank or French homme de lettres who plies his trade these days.

Well, yes, some of those old folks’ words were on the long side, but long ones were by no means the rule. And though the tongue in which you read this stole words from here and there, and still does, at the start, if there was one, its words were short. Huh, you may say, those first “words” were no more than grunts. Yet soon they grew to be grunts with a gist, and time has shown that, add to the length of your words as you may, it is hard to beat a good grunt with a good gist.

That is why the short words, when old, are still the tops. Tough as boots or soft as silk, sharp as steel or blunt as toast, there are old, short words to fit each need. You want to make love, have a chat, ask the way, thank your stars, curse your luck or swear, scold and rail? Just pluck an old, short word at will. If you doubt that you will find the one you seek, look at what can be done with not much: “To be or not to be?” “And God said, Let there be light; and there was light,” “We are such stuff as dreams are made on,” “The year’s at the spring/And day’s at the morn…/The lark’s on the wing;/The snail’s on the thorn.”

It can be done, you see. If you but try, you can write well, and say what you want to say, with short words. And you may not need a lot of them: some words add just length to your prose. That piece of string, the one whose length you all the time have to guess, is no less fine if it is short than if it is long; on its own, its length is not good, not bad, just the sum of its two halves. So it is with words. The worth of each lies in the ends to which it is put. Tie your string well, or ill, and its length counts for naught. Make your point well with short words, and you will have no use for long ones. Make it not so well, and you will be glad that you kept them crisp. So, by God, will those who have to read you.