Thursday, May 29, 2003
funnies from McSweeneys
(Warning: long, and, in fact, so long I haven't even really read them)
Unused Audio Commentary, by Dinesh D'Souza and Ann Coulter, Recorded Spring 2003, for Aliens Special Red-State Edition DVD, parts one and two.
Unused Audio Commentary, by Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, Recorded Spring 2002, for the Fellowship of the Ring (Platinum Series Extended Edition) DVD, parts one and two.
news
From the wires, Delays sought in endangered species cases. There's more here, in the New York Times, and here, in the Washington Post.
Also in the Washington Post, Bush Fills Key Slots With Young Loyalists.
On Writ, Edward Lazarus (no relation to my favorite favorite professor, Richie Lazarus) writes Have Law Firm Careers Changed for the Worse? The Way It Used to Be, and the Way It Is Now.
Wednesday, May 28, 2003
also
In the Washington Post, there's an article entitled In Old Graveyards, the Dead Protect the Living
Cemeteries Provide Refuge for Endangered Plants and Animals.
In the New York Times, there's an article entitled Exxon Backs Groups That Question Global Warming.
And from the Onion, Terrifying Bill Passed During NBA Playoffs.
oh, hey
Frank has a blog: "What Really Matters," focusing on global inequality, biotechnology, and artificial intelligence.
sigh
A stupid music zine (alas, the stupid music zine I read) rants about how a "[s]tupid bird puts fate of New York's Field Day Festival in jeopardy".
Tuesday, May 27, 2003
man
Links saved for future reference:
Also:. . . but there are certain things I get in D.C. Takoma Park, for example, has great consignment shops. There are a lot of arty people out there with great taste. My favorite is Polly Sue's Vintage Shop [6915 Laurel Ave., Takoma Park]. And whoever the buyer is for Meeps [1520 U St. NW] has a great sense of style. Alex Designer/Consigner [1919 Pennsylvania Ave.] is very high end; they have conservative things, but some edgy fashion too.
I keep meaning to go to Takoma Park. My fear, though, is that the consignment shops are too high-end for me---I like cheap! And there's not as much thriftiness here! Maybe it's all in Takoma. I should find out.
news
The New York Times has an article entitled "'The Empty Ocean": Invisible Extinction, describing a new book (The Empty Ocean, by Richard Ellis) that covers marine biodiversity.
Also in the New York Times are Color-Coded Choices for New E.P.A. Nominee and U.S. Report Faults Efforts to Track Water Pollution.
Friday, May 23, 2003
news and some cases
The New York Times has an article entitled U.S.-Utah Land Accord Incites Unlikely Critics.
Also, William Reilly has an essay in the New York Times entitled "The Green Old Party?"
Thursday, May 22, 2003
oh!
And how much do I adore Richie Lazarus? Lots!
news
From the wires, Bomb Damages Yale Law School Classroom.
The Washington Post has an article on Whitman's resignation. So does the New York Times. The NYT Editorial page also discusses her resignation in "Christie Whitman's Troubled Tenure." The Times also has House Approves Increasing Defense Dept. Waivers of Environmental Rules.
Salon also has an article entitled Bush's EPA chief seeks greener pastures.
And less related to current events, there's also an excerpt on Salon from Caroline Knapp's book, Appetites: Why Women Want, which is also reviewed by Salon as "the smartest anorexia memoir ever written and a fascinating journey along the tortuous pathways of female desire." The excerpt is beautiful, and all the more poignant to me by the fact that Knapp---whose column I used to follow in the Boston Phoenix---died recently, at 42. But it also highlights the gulf I feel with many women, sometimes. I sometimes feel fat, sure. But not tremendously often (though perhaps I should), and it rarely ever stops me from eating, despite my mother's regular statements to me that I'm "too fat." And yeah, I have an appetite. But I don't feel the same cravings, not for chocolate and sweets, which so often get mentioned in these tension-between-appearance-and-eating books. My indulgences are mostly salty things, sometimes fried, but mostly salty. And new things, because I'm a neophile. So I feel only an imperfect empathy with these books, which is always a little weird, like they're saying to me somehow that I'm not a woman because I don't suffer the same things. But anyway. Goodbye, Caroline Knapp. I'll miss your writing.
Wednesday, May 21, 2003
whoa
Christine Todd Whitman just resigned. More here, on the EPA web page. And even more, at the Washington Post webpage and at the New York Times webpage.
news
From Reuters, World Health Body Adopts Historic Anti-Smoking Pact. More here, at the New York Times page. My friend Sarah, who's at the WHO, worked on this.
From AP Newswire, House Approves Plan to Speed Up Logging. The New York Times has more here, under the headline House Vote Supports Thinning of Trees on Federal Land.
Also in the New York Times is Censorship and Politics? Views Differ Over Exhibit, and FedEx Delivery Trucks Go Green.
Oh, and the New York Times has an editorial called Fear of SARS, Fear of Strangers, discussing the relationship between anti-Asian sentiment and fear of SARS. A funny line: "An editorial in The Santa Cruz Sentinel in 1879, for example, described the Chinese as 'half-human, half-devil, rat-eating, rag-wearing, law-ignoring, Christian-civilization-hating, opium-smoking, labor-degrading, entrail-sucking Celestials.'" Mmmm, entrails. Too bad I stopped eating meat.
Tuesday, May 20, 2003
oh how I love Justice Breyer
Justice Breyer gave this commencement speech before the University of Pennsylvania Law School today. There's this excerpt: And why not spend part of your career working directly for the government? You will not begin at the top - but you can keep in mind as models some of those who have divided their professional lives between private practice and government - the Dean Acheson's, Wild Bill Donovan's, Lloyd Cutler's, and the many other lawyers who have made such a difference.
And there's this excerpt: More broadly, if the democratic process is to work, lawyers must participate. American law is not decreed from the top, but rather "bubbles up." The Constitution provides for a rule of law; protects basic liberty; guarantees certain forms of equality; divides power to prevent too much power falling into the hands of too few individuals; and, above all, creates a framework for democratic government. As you, but not all Americans understand, the Constitution does not tell people what to do; it provides a method for them to make community decisions democratically. And it foresees the public's participation in that decision-making process. The Founders' ideas in this respect were not so very different from those of ancient Athens - where Pericles at his famous funeral oration, asked "what do we [Athenians] say of the man who does not participate in politics [i.e., public service]? We do not say he is a man who minds his own business. We say he is a man who has no business here."
And also this: These are the reasons why, speaking from my own professional experience, I believe your professional lives must include some form of "public service. Do not take my word for it. Look to Jefferson: "There is a debt of service," he said, "due from every man to his country proportioned to the bounties which nature & fortune have measured to him." Those are the words that I hope you will remember.
Oh, how I love Justice Breyer!
darn darn darn
All of Cremaster will be showing at the American Film Institute theater in town on exactly the same weekend my friends and I will be out of town (in New York, even! oh the irony) for Field Day Fest. Argh.
Monday, May 19, 2003
oh, and
There's a New York Times article in the Fashion and Style section called Dating a Blogger, Reading All About It. I am much more discreet nowadays, though I really did have a more personal-styled public blog, once upon a time.
some news
In the New York Times' "Week in Review" is a piece called Life: The Cost-Benefit Analysis. Also in the "Week in Review" is Precaution Is for Europeans. At the end of it is a quote from Cass Sunstein (oh Cass!), who to me seems to have one of the more balanced approach to this issue(*): Cass Sunstein, a law professor at the University of Chicago who is writing a book on the precautionary principle, believes that strict adherence to the principle can be counterproductive — like curbs on biotechnology, which, he says, could help feed the developing world.
At the same time, he argues that it is unreasonable for governments to demand absolute certainty before they act. "It's nutty to require conclusive evidence when the risk, if it comes to fruition, is extremely serious," Mr. Sunstein said.
This was the logic, Mr. Sunstein notes, of President Bush's pre-emptive strike on Iraq. President Bush argued that the risk of weapons of mass destruction was great enough to warrant an attack, without absolute proof that Iraq was hiding such weapons.
That's the precautionary principle, American-style.
(*) Though I do have a beef with him about how little he considers the dilatory effect that a requirement of cost-benefit analyses could have.
Wednesday, May 14, 2003
in the news
Commercial Fishing Is Cited in Decline of Oceans' Big Fish. Also, Few projects to reduce wildfire threats were long delayed because of environmental challenges, congressional auditors say.
Tuesday, May 13, 2003
friendster
I'm totally fascinated by friendster. This is probably because I love examining how friends connect up, how people know each other through different contexts. Friendster brings a lot of this to light. (For those of you who were around then, yes, this is much like the now-defunct sixdegrees.com.)
Just thought you'd like to know.
in response to the Washington Post series
The Nature Conservancy has suspended its land sales until its board meeting later this summer. The organization also presents its side fo the story here.
yay
The American Constitution Society has a blog.
Monday, May 12, 2003
aww
Stop bashing on Bob Graham and his ultra-diaristic habits. Lots of people are obsessive diarists. Many of us are called bloggers.
newsey newsey news
Michelle Cottle, in the New Republic, defends EPA's (former) discounting of older people's lives. (Cass Sunstein, btw, does the same, somewhat, in his book Risk and Reason, which I just finished this weekend.)
whoops
My archives have been down. They're back up again. Weird.
Wednesday, May 07, 2003
by the way
Don't expect any commentary on the judicial nominations from me. It's not that I think I can't do so in my capacity as a government lawyer. It's that I don't think it'd be particularly wise to do so as an appellate lawyer who argues before (a) varied circuits and for (b) various positions, "liberal" or "conservative," depending on the case. Anyway, that's all I have to say.
mmm
Went to a lunch talk sponsored by the American Constitution Society. Eric Holder, former U.S. Deputy Attorney General, was speaking about the Michigan affirmative action case, mostly about the underlying societal contexts that he hopes the Court (as well as the American public) will consider. He got really riled up towards the end, which was actually rather refreshing to see.
Also, I saw J from work, Sam from Ignatz, Gary from Statutory Construction Zone, and Marty from SCOTUSblog. I should've talked to people more, but spent a little too much time gossiping with J about work. I'm pretty psyched about some of the events that ACS has coming up, though!
Oh! And they finally had more veggie food! So I'm happily stuffed now.
Tuesday, May 06, 2003
also
Here's that quiz that's been going around (as spotted on Half the Sins as well as a bunch of livejournal pages). It's this quiz and accompanying article that supposedly addresses the differences between "male" and "female" brains (with the note that its use is not intended to be connected to biological sex).
I hafta to say---I worry sometimes about the uses to which these studies are put. But I am irresistably drawn to these quizzes.
My own results:
Empathizing quotient ("female"-brainness) = 46
Systematizing quotient ("male"-brainness) = 53
According to the quiz, this means my brain type is male. Also according to the article, a biological female with a "male" brain could come about from a number of factors, including exposure to testosterone as an embryo. Whatever! I figure that for me it just comes from being raised by two scientists. And besides, my empathy's high enough not to leave me with Asperger's.
The testosterone part of the article, however, gives me a lead-in to another supposedly "male"/"female" thing: finger length and sexuality. Check out this study. "What the study showed was that lesbian women also tended to have the more 'masculine' arrangement - that is, they had shorter index fingers." I'm not a lesbian (I identify as bisexual, despite the often squicky connotations which, let me tell you, I could rant over and over about), but yeah, I've got a shorter index finger as well.
Any more quizzes?
and
Here's the next part in the Post's series on the Nature Conservancy. And there's more on the Chevron Texaco fight in Ecuador. And the New York Times has more on the Washington State water fights.
Also, there's an article in the New York Times entitled Proposal Would Ease Rules of Livestock Farm Pollution.
series on salon.com
"To Breed Or Not To Breed." The first is by Michelle Goldberg, one of the regular salon.com columnists. She's only 27? Now I feel old.
But hey! An excerpt: When I started writing this story, I would have described myself as ambivalent about childbearing. Yet when experts told me I was unlikely to suffer debilitating psychological fallout if I spared myself motherhood, I felt enormous relief, as if I'd been let off the hook. It turns out that people who choose not to have children (as opposed to those who desperately want to have children, but can't) tend to have better marriages, better finances, less stress, and are no more likely to be unhappy in old age than parents. Most people, and especially most women, have a physiological yearning to reproduce, whatever the costs, and are glad they did. Yet being born free of that desire can be a gift.
Why do I bring this up? My parents are visiting, and my mother will, as she's done for many years, bring this up again. And I really feel no desire at all to have a biological child. Adopt, maybe (and that's a maybe), but not actually birth a child. I don't feel that visceral need, not like I feel the visceral need for other things (books, you know, and new music, and the perfect crease of a lopsided smile). And hey!
"Statistics show childless couples are happier," Cain says. "Their lives are self-directed, they have a better chance of intimacy, and they do not have the stresses, financial and emotional, of parenthood."
I'm not going to bring this article up first. But should motherhood get mentioned this weekend, well well.
Hopefully it won't happen. Hopefully I can distract them with spies and things instead.
Monday, May 05, 2003
corps reform
Slate has an article on the Bush administration's reformation of the Army Corps of Engineers, describing how many pork-barrel projects are being cut.
news
On Sunday, the Washington Post had an article (the beginning of a series) about the Nature Conservancy, titled Nonprofit Land Bank Amasses Billions: Charity Builds Assets on Corporate Partnerships. There's also a small insert entitled Image Is a Sensitive Issue. Also, there's another Washington Post article called Utilities Grasp at Power: Proposed Rule on River Dams Angers Environmentalists.
Today in the wires, there's Judge questions new Everglades bill. Also, in the Washington Post, there's Eight [Whistleblowers] Settle Case with U.S. Forest Service. And there's more on the Nature Conservancy series: How a Bid to Save a Species Came to Grief.
Friday, May 02, 2003
other stuff
Ten-year-old ChevronTexaco case gets heard in court, in Ecuador.
Wendell and Cass, gay penguins at the New York Aquarium. Awww!
neal pollack
Has a spoofy thing on his blog about the judicial nominations.
Thursday, May 01, 2003
more
EPA chief denies allegations about security detail.
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