Why It Matters - In the comments sections on some conservative sites where the proprietors have denounced Luskin's attempt to intimidate Atrios, some of the man's fellow travelers have airily avowed that this story is of no interest "beyond the few thousand people who read blogs." Well okay, sure. To that I would say, if you're reading this, or commenting on someone else's site, you're one of those few thousand people, so why pretend it doesn't interest you? Second, people who aren't interested (non-blog readers) probably should be. Anytime one American tries to shut another American up under color of law, it matters, especially when the "coloring" is so obviously outside the lines.

Until Wednesday, Atrios and Luskin were two citizens participating in the American tradition of over-the-top political expression. I never read enough Luskin to know or care if he was the creep his critics painted him as or the sentinel of truth his partisans celebrated. I read enough Atrios to respect his energy and intelligence but find his unwavering devotion to, my god, the Democratic Party of all things almost incomprehensibly foreign to my sensibilities. But as of Wednesday, one of them is a bully and a coward and the other is not; and one of them is at least an ideological if not personal hypocrite. (Conservatives hate promiscuous litigation, remember?) And personal hypocrite doesn't look like such a bad call.

It matters because character studies matter - new lessons in human weakness and strength merit attention. It matters because free expression matters. It is not just Atrios' rights we're dealing with here. Were Luskin's legal claim to prevail it would establish radically burden sole-proprietor internet opinion sites - blogs, bulletin boards, any site with a discussion forum. It would fence off an exhilaratingly free range.

I Was Right About You - So the other night, when the news of the Donald Luskin legal threat against Atrios hit the news, I declared that Luskin was "a pussy." And then I wondered if I was being not just foul-mouthed but over the top.

Turns out, not. The Atrios letter hit Wednesday night. As I mentioned at the time, there was at least the possibility that the letter was a fake or a huge misunderstanding. (I essentially called Luskin a subjunctive pussy.) Luskin has updated his weblog each day since then. Not one word about the letter to Atrios from a man purporting to be his attorney. Not only has the story been widely reported on the sorts of sites that a conservative blogger/columnist is overwhelmingly likely to read, we know that Glenn Reynolds e-mailed Luskin for confirmation two days ago.

So. The story has been out there for two days. One of Luskin's biggest promoters asked for clarification two days ago. Luskin has had access to the internet. Luskin has not publicly denied the story or clarified it. Nor has Luskin so much as owned up to his action on his website - not even a bwa-ha-ha.

So, like I said, pussy.

Blogarama V.5, Venues Clarification Exercise - RGB Greg Pearson reminds me that Marriott, they went and built two hotels in Crystal City, about two blocks apart. I have confirmed with Chad Orzel that he's in the Crystal City Marriott, not the "Crystal Gateway" Marriott, so the Crystal City Marriott is where you go. 7PM. The bar is on the second floor, looks like the restaurant and is called "Bistro," or at least has a sign that says Bistro. If you don't find people, ask at the front desk where the "blogfest" is.

Map. Driving directions.

Speaking of Eerily Prescient Terrorism in Marvel Comics of the 1970s - I could swear that somewhere between Daredevils 110-114, the Mandrill collapsed the top floors of the World Trade Center, killing many people. (Captions inform us that Daredevil's super senses can perceive all the deaths.) Am I imagining this? Was it a different skyscraper?

Terrors of the Imagination - The Fiore post below reminds me of Avengers 113, titled Your Young Men Shall Slay Visions. It was Steve Englehart at his most earnest, and since I was an earnest lad myself, it made a big impression on me. Vision and Scarlet Witch kiss in public. She's a mutant, sure, but he's an android, so the kiss inspires outrage and bigotry. Anti-synthezoid bigots attack the Avengers, hoping to kill the Vision, willing to take down any Avengers who get in their way. They believe they are making a last stand on behalf of the human race. Here's the thing: the attackers are suicide bombers. They call themselves "the Living Bombs." A synopsis of the issue appears about a third of the way down the Avengers page from Forgotten Comic Book Character HQ.

I remember finding the idea of suicide bombers pretty unnerving. It's oddly more unsettling in retrospect - suicide bombings were not common features of real life back in 1972. Terrorists tried to get away. There had been the kamikaze in the 1940s; there would be the surge of murderous martyrdom in Lebanon beginning with the next decade. (The Wikipedia link quotes the London Times using "suicide-bomb" contemporaneously to describe kamikaze planes.)

But in 1972, suicide bombing as we know it existed purely in the imagination of a comic book writer. There is a qualititative difference between flying a plane into a warship during a battle and walking up to someone on the street and blowing you both up. Englehart was ahead of the goddam curve on that one.

Someone stupid enough might try to find some link between Avengers 113 and young Lebanese radicals - some kid who read a comic and later became a revolutionary. But the answer is probably simpler. Englehart wanted human villains to take on much more powerful foes. He must have wracked his brain to come up with something regular shmoes could do to superheroes. And at some point it hit him that, were they fanatical enough, sure enough that they were in the right and the situation was desperate, more committed to victory than self-preservation, there was a way. One of the bombers even declares that he is willing to "martyr" himself.

What we're actually observing between American newsstands in 1972 and Levantine war in 1980 is simple parallelism - different people, similar problem (taking out superior targets for millenialist reasons), same "solution." One imaginary, the other all too enduringly real.

Happy Halloween - The most perfect night for trick-or-treating in years, warm (c. 60F), dry, a bright quarter-moon. Not a lot of trick-or-treaters, alas, but a nice outing with Offering Boy (as Eddie from "Ed, Edd and Eddy") and the Littlest Offering (fairy princess).

Hot Liberty has a great Halloween treat suggestion, and Dave Fiore reminisces about two great lost Halloween traditions - the Rutland, VT Halloween parade, and the numerous early Bronze Age comic book stories set there. Dave points to a website devoted to Rutland Parade comics issues maintained by Rutland native Ian P. Berger.

When I was a kid, I dearly wanted one day to get to the Rutland Halloween Parade. Now I am left with nothing but questions, like: Why was the annual parade discontinued? and Come to think of it, wouldn't a Halloween Parade in Vermont be cold as hell? and It's all Howard Dean's fault somehow, right?

Ah, no matter.

Unqualified Offerings Gets Results - Chrissy Rockwell is a buddy of mine from the Elvis Costello list who has recently begun actively blogging at A Fine Idea at the Time. She's now appeased me by changing her template color so that the Unqualified Eyes can actually read the thing. Thanks, Chrissy! The blog is not just all politics all the time - not even mostly politics most of the time.

Meanwhile Dave at the new semicomics blog, The Intermittent, kindly avows that UO "is in many ways the inspiration for this here blog. To the extent we suck, however, blame us, not him." But can I blame him to the extent that I suck, is my question.

I should note that UO in no way inspired his fondness for the band Rush. Anyway, it looks like The Intermittent will be a great blog for comics and other stuff.

Blogarama V.5 - Our unassuming little party will begin, for the sake of simplicity, at the bar in the Crystal City Marriott at 7PM tomorrow night, Saturday November 1. Eventually it will probably move over to Restaurant Row. If in doubt, ask at the registration desk "where the blogfest is." We will keep them informed. Guest of Honor Chad Orzel has to attend a panel at his physics convention at 8pm, so what happens at that point will be a matter for group consensus, determined at that time.

UPDATE: Added day info. Party is Saturday, not tonight.

UPDATE UPDATE: See above for venue clarification.

Aside to Atrios - Ya know, tort reform really isn't such a bad idea.

Stupid Flies II - From this morning's Washington Post:

SINJAR, Iraq -- Commanders of U.S. military forces responsible for monitoring the border between Iraq and Syria say there is no evidence from human intelligence sources or radar surveillance aircraft indicating that significant numbers of foreign fighters are crossing into Iraq illegally.

1) That's because they're all in Mali!

2) Um, commanders? What about significant numbers of foreign fighters crossing into Iraq legally?

3) Sinjar. That's a cool name for a town.

Stupid Flies! - Via Glenn Reynolds comes this story of Al Qaeda camps in the wilds of Mali. Bu-but - shouldn't the builders all be in Iraq now?

Weenie - Apparently Donald Luskin of National Review Online has threatened legal action against Atrios. From his lawyer's letter:

You recently linked to Mr. Luskin’s October 7, 2003, posting on his website entitled “Face To Face With Evil,” in which he chronicles his attendance at a lecture and book signing presented by Paul Krugman. You chose the unfortunate caption “Diary of a Stalker” for your link. More importantly, your readers, in responding to your invitation to comment, have posted numerous libelous statements regarding Mr. Luskin. Picking up on the theme you introduced, several have made false assertions that Mr. Luskin has committed the crime of stalking.

If the letter is a fake, it will be discovered to be such in short order, and Atrios will have ruined his reputation. It will be the greatest blog flameout of all time.

Gee, what are the odds?

So I'm assuming the letter is genuine until demonstrated otherwise. If it is ever so demonstrated, I'll apologize for expressing the following personal opinion: Donald Luskin is a pussy. I hasten to point out that being a pussy is not a crime.

The other day, Matthew Yglesias had a funny little item about Conservatives Against Metaphor. This fits right in, except for the funny part.

UPDATE: Arthur Silber has a much longer response that boils down to "pussy."

UPDATE UPDATE: Don't mess this Atrios follow-up. And links to other comments can be followed from here.

UPDATE³: Don't miss the Poor Man. Short but sweet.

You Had Me For Awhile There - Henry Farrell has a good defense of good academic prose, worth reading despite Henry's unaccountable assertion along the way that "One may not agree with Edward Said on the facts - but his prose is compelling precisely because of its vigor and clarity." I've really only read Said's journalism, but it was gaseous nonsense, with all the vigor and clarity of a steam room. This is quite apart from the question of whether Said was the Devil.

Tell Me About It - Brendan is rapidly turning Human Liberty into an advice column. See his reader mail ("The thing is, I never wanted to load Linux anyway, I just took the CD to humor him. Now I've lost a friend. What can I do?--Sad in Austin" and "I am so fascinated by radical subsidiaritanism, but I noticed that most of the people who share these ideas are men. What can be done to make these ideas more appealing to women?")

Maybe he can help the people in this Agitator comment thread.

They Say It's Your Birthday - Not blog birthday; Happy Human Birthday to Nate of Polytropos, his last as a pre-parent. Nate is as nice and bright a guy as his blog suggests, by the way. Tonight's offering, an even-handed appreciation of 24, complete with first-season spoiler.

Took a Minute but then I realized - the connection between the previous two items is pretty freaking obvious, isn't it?

Can the Schools Get Any Stupider? - Do you mean before or after this?

NEW YORK — A 14-year-old New Jersey schoolboy — whose dad and stepdad are in the military — was suspended for five days because he drew a "patriotic" stick figure of a U.S Marine blowing away a Taliban fighter, officials said yesterday.

"He's been punished for the drawing," said Tinton Falls school superintendent Leonard Kelpsh. "We felt it was highly inappropriate, and we took it very seriously."

Criminy.

When I was 14, most every classmate's dad had served in the Big One, and all the boys spent their class time drawing not just guns but tanks and planes. Oh yes! German ones! Not because we were little Nazis - that was only a few of us. Because we thought guns and tanks and planes were cool, and the Germans had some of the coolest. And I so rarely hear of Bund activity involving my former classmates.

Now, get the Administration at this joint a copy of Killing Monsters, quick, and drop it in the Clue Courier pickup box.

(Columbine! What if this guy comes to school and blows away all the teacher's that belong to the Taliban??? Silly person - "taliban" means student.)

I Come to You and See All This Ruin - Liberty&Power reports that the Alabama Scholars Association is protesting more shenanigans:

Drawings and photographs by Trobaugh depict scenes that could be construed as homosexual in orientation or theme.

The exhibit had been approved by the chair of the Art Department for display in the entrance to the Bean Brown Theater at Shelton State. The day after the exhibit went on display, President Rogers personally contacted the department chair and told him that the art would have to be removed. He had received "complaints," he said. A day later, and under orders from the president, the art was taken down.

The ASA is deeply concerned by the decision of President Rogers to censor an already-approved display of drawings and photos simply because it might be controversial.

Through the wonders of the internet, you can view the works from Professor John Trobaugh's installation. The digital manipulation photography of human nudes is not to my taste. There's a series of "queer Ken doll" photographs to which I can muster a "cute!" and not much more. ("Meeting Mr. Wright" is my favorite. "Sycamore," a girl doll photo serving as a changeup pitch, is pretty good too.) The digital prints of ink wash drawings I rather like, especially "Burning Brick or the Downtown High Rise Burns Today" and "Fly Protection or Radio undercover." One of the gay-themed prints, "Sleeping Target," is pretty good.

But it's not about me. I've always been jazz and photography-impaired. It's about the fact that the gallery found Trobaugh's work worthy. I can see that even for the things that don't float my boat there is an active esthetic intelligence at work. Nor is this narrow "statement" work - less We're here, we're queer, get used to it than We're here, we're queer - oh look at how the light falls on that surface! The exhibit doesn't qualify as obscenity. Total illustrated dicks: 2, both in the same drawing. Total photographed dicks: one or two. (Hey, it's digital manipulation! I can't quite tell in one case.) Dicks, photographed or drawn, in physical contact with another man's flesh: 0.

More from David Beito's Liberty & Power report:

We cannot help noting that Rogers justified his censorship by saying that theater-going families might be offended by Trobaugh's works. The play currently in production is "Arsenic and Old Lace," a play about serial homicide and poisoning.

Finally Arriving at the Party - Mrs. Offering and I are surely the last couple in America to pick up on 24, but we both watched the season opener tonight, me fortified with spoilers from the Tony Kornheiser Show. I mean, I liked it, but who would want to work in that office? (The CTU office.) All those reflective surfaces, the oddly-angled and plain too dim lighting - I couldn't imagine actually concentrating on a project in that place.

Idle Rich Smackdown - Daniel Drezner vs. Max Sawicky. So far it's an entirely indirect smackdown, as the two items seem to have been written independently, but they make an interesting contest. Naturally, I think Drezner has the better of it, though I hasten to point out that I haven't seen the TV special in question.

The Clues Return to Neolibertariana - Megan McArdle in TechCentralStation can't quite bring herself to accept the implications of a basic libertarian insight: whatever else war is, it's a massive government program.

That we are even thinking about beggaring Iraqis over so trivial a sum boggles the mind. And I'm beginning to wonder if my support for the war didn't rely on a Miracle Mile in which our government, in defiance of my basically libertarian instincts, had the desire and the will to do whatever it takes to help the Iraqis become prosperous and free.

Make the Magic Happen

But I haven't given up hope yet. I don't think that the American citizenry begrudges the Iraqis a little financial help, if it will help bring peace and prosperity to a dangerously -- and expensively -- unstable region. After all, we're talking about $35 apiece, which is a bargain for what we'd be getting.

No liberal plumping for a municipal surcharge "for the children" ever put it in a more heartfelt fashion. I'm not saying that we should, in Megan's words, start "charging the Iraqis for the privilege of being invaded." I'm saying you should have thought of that before you left home. It was always going to be the real United States that conquered Iraq, not some textbook actor from a think tank monograph. And it was always going to be led by real politicians and real bureaucrats, not philosopher kings.

Glenn Reynolds, linking to Megan's article, has a McArdlian moment of weakness (read: insight) himself before pulling it back together.

Technical Bulletin - I'm in possession of a mySQL update query from Michael Croft that should solve my categories problem. Thanks, Michael!

Thirty seven people in 2203 will listen to Kylie Minogue and love it - Will Wilkinson channels his inner Walter Benjamin. Bonus for this site's liberal readers - Charles Murray abuse!

Speaking of good art since 1950, Will's item inescapably reminds me that the following verse from the Barenaked Ladies' "It's All Been Done"

Alone
and bored
on a thirtieth century night
will I
see you
on The Price Is Right?
Will I cry
will I smile
as you run
down the aisle?

is just a damn fine piece of writing.

My Blog Wants to Party All the Time - Blogarama V.5, in honor of Chad Orzel's visit to DC for a physics conference, will take place early Saturday evening in Crystal City. Details to follow tomorrow. We already have several commitments, but anyone is welcome.

After-action reports on Blogarama V continue to appear. Glen Engel-Cox, Jeremy Lott (now web editor of the American Spectator), tequila mockingbird ("the first rule of blogorama is…that you must post about blogorama"), Wolfgang Norton (who lacketh item permalinks), Brooke Oberwetter, Missy Schwartz, maybe someone I missed.

A Modest Proposal: Comics Blogging - Steven Grant interviewed writer Ed Brubaker last week - in some ways it was more of a mutual interview about the conditions of the marketplace and everyone's favorite topic, the shift from a floppy-based to softcover-based economy. During the transitional phase this presents the clear problem of how to write for two different formats simultaneously. Among the problems:

I think that's been a flaw in Marvel and Crossgen collections specifically, that there's a strong emphasis every month with reacquainting the reader with the concept that works against trade paperback collection, there's that "make everything insanely clear for the reader" emphasis monthly comics are prone to (and, perhaps not coincidentally, mostly fail at) that simply becomes painful and often embarrassing redundant in collections, particularly when the same descriptive phrases are used over and over, from chapter to chapter.

Hm. Might I suggest that comic book publishers consider editing? For the trade, you have the option of cutting balloons, captions, panels and even entire pages if they prove redundant. In some cases, you might need to commission the equivalent of a page or two of work from the artist or writer to plug any gaps in flow. But it could be done.

Poetry Corner - Polytropos and God of the Machine are on about poetry workshops. I can say from experience that not one in a hundred works the way Aaron Haspel (and I, largely) would want them to work. The sacred texts of the poetry workshop as actually taught in America are Richard Hugo's The Triggering Town, Peter Elbow's Writing Without Teachers and William Stafford's Writing the Australian Crawl. The best you can say about any of these books is that they are dangerous in the wrong hands. Elbow's and Hugo's books have a certain amount of value, like Radium, and should be treated accordingly. (Nate describes getting some genuine use from Peter Elbow.) In my darkest moments I suspect Stafford's Australian Crawl of deliberate sabotage - attempting to make it as unlikely as possible that potential competitors would ever be able to produce work as good as Stafford's own best poems.

All three books are very seventies, deeply concerned with silencing your inner editor during composition, less concerned with making sure you understand that you have to turn the thing back on at some point, preferably before subjecting other human beings to what you've written. (The better workshops choose Donald Hall's Poetry and Ambition. This is a book to love. Favorite passage? Where Hall allows that perhaps silent reading of poems is not an unalloyed evil.)

Outside grad school, workshop culture performs a vulgarly religious function. It exists to bring comfort and meaning to middle class lives. The plain rooms in which workshops take place recall the austerity of the Quaker Meeting Hall, and it construes the vocation of poetry so as to provide maximum solace. Find your inner voice. (You have one. You're special.) Focus on the details of your life. (Your life is meaningful!) As a member, by the skin of my teeth, of the middle class, I don't disdain its comfort or meaning. But I could not love them half so much loved I not poetry more.

I completely agree that poetry can be taught. But as Gandhi said of Western Civilization, that would be a change.

There and Back Again - Just follow the directions. (Via Amygdala.)

Cutoff Man - Andrew Chamberlain's intellectual scalping odyssey continues:

So contrary to my initial thinking, it looks like we can make a strong case for repeal of anti-scalping laws after all. Somehow, I knew the argument would lead here, given enough time...

It is, no lie, cool that Andrew is this intellectually supple. He is a blogger to keep your eye on. (The question was always less Do venues have good reasons to oppose scalping than Why should this particular contractual issue be a matter for the criminal rather than the civil law?)

Now is surely the time to explain why he's better than Paul Krugman, as I promised to do days ago. Both of them tried to explain the reasons venues have not themselves "scalped," though a few are now moving in that direction. But Krugman's construction reveals a surprisingly deep error for an eminent economist. Krugman:

Ticket scalping is nothing new, though it continues to pose something of an economic puzzle. The fact is that there are a number of public events--most notably sports, but also concerts, plays, museum shows, etc.--for which tickets are consistently sold below the price that would limit demand to the available supply. Exactly why the owners of stadiums and theaters do this is a matter of some dispute. One theory (due to Chicago economist Gary Becker) is that tickets are underpriced because those who sell them believe that it is crucial to their image to have sold-out houses. Beyond this, many stadium and theater owners seem to believe that as an overall marketing strategy it is important that access to their most popular events be available to enthusiasts at moderate prices. For example, why doesn't George Lucas allow theaters to offer special preview showings of The Phantom Menace at astronomical (galactic?) prices, when surely they could find tens or even hundreds of thousands of people able and willing to pay? Presumably because so blatant a statement that wealth hath its privileges would alienate the tens of millions of nonwealthy moviegoers he counts on to turn the film into a megahit. Whatever the precise reasoning, what is clear is that when it comes to big games and big shows, private sector entrepreneurs themselves often feel that it is a bad idea to let market forces rule.

Chamberlain:

The question is, "why don't box offices just raise ticket prices, still sell out events, and increase profits"?

Well, there are good economic reasons firms systematically underprice tickets, and then try to prevent resale. Here are three:

1) Underpricing tickets generates "excess demand" for events. This leads to queues for tickets, vigorous word of mouth discussion, and a mentality of scarcity. This is a form of cheap advertising. And by cutting marketing costs, it may be consistent with profit maximization.

2) This explanation comes from economist Steven Landsburg. He argues lower ticket prices get fans in the door, and then leave them with more cash to spend on things like hot dogs, beer and t-shirts once inside. Instead of maximizing ticket revenue, teams jointly maximize profits from tickets plus food and memorabilia. And since these things are complimentary goods, that makes the most money.

3) The value to consumers of events like concerts and baseball games depends partly on how many other people are there. Economists call this the "bandwagon effect". Full games and shows are more fun than empty ones. So teams want to fill the seats, and they price below equilibrium levels to do that. If they allowed ticket reselling, it's possible not all seats would be sold, reducing the value of the event overall, possibly reducing demand for future events, and resulting in lost food and memorabilia sales (see "appendix" below).

What's the big difference between the two passages, other than the fact that Andrew comes up with more plausible reasons than the paid columnist? Unaccountably, Krugman imagines that "market forces" and an aversion to "so blatant a statement that wealth hath its privileges [as to] alienate the tens of millions of nonwealthy moviegoers he counts on to turn the film into a megahit" are somehow different things - that a venue's aversion to alienating its audience is not also a market force.

To be sure, Krugman later elaborates on his distinction - "Well, the people who run the box office are attempting to pursue social goals--albeit in the ultimate name of profit--which require that tickets go not only to those who can afford to pay a lot but also to those who really care and are willing to book early and/or stand in line." and "And so there is a running conflict between the long-run thinking represented by the box offices and the short-run market forces represented by scalpers--a conflict that seems increasingly to be running in the scalpers' favor." But the overall impression is that, in Krugman's mind, "short-run market forces" is practically a redundancy, and that longer-term thinking is somehow not economic. Odd. Or maybe, given Krugman's politics, not.

PC and Neo-PC, Again - Atrios responds to my connection of him, Taranto and Easterbrook from Friday. Worth reading. I agree with him that identity politics is, among other things, a response to constructions dominant groups place on marginalized ones. But I don't think that's all identity politics is, and I think it tends to be a self-destructive strategy. Crucially, identity politics is a way for a sub-group elite to attain and maintain status and power within the sub-group. Getting to make the rules on just who is an Uncle Tom or self-hating Jew is power, and not always, or even, I would argue, usually, constructive power. There's a huge difference between "We're here, we're queer, get used to it" and "Real gays don't [X]."

Identity politics can also be a response to constructions dominant groups remove from marginalized ones, and in that mode is reactionary. I'm not for a moment going to argue that racism, antisemitism, the hatred of gays and other familiar prejudices are "things of the past." But the country has experienced genuine liberalization on all these fronts over the last half century. That leads to assimilation anxiety which leads to identity politics. Again, this is only one of the drivers of the phenomenon, but it is such a driver.

A final, unironic note: I admire Atrios's consistency. I think he's too free with the charge of antisemitism in Easterbrook's case (he does use the term), but I think he's often too free with the charge of racism too. But he stands in stark contrast to both the Sharptonite left, which sees no evil when it comes to Jew-hatred, and has even fostered such, and the "neo-PC" of the uberhawks, those neoconservatives, neolibertarians and neoliberals, Jewish and Gentile, who were in the forefront of the reaction against "political correctness" but replicate its tropes freely for the sake of smearing opponents of their desired wars.

Tonight's Debate - Firing General Boykin for his religiously-based statements would be to apply an unconstitutional religious test for public office. Discuss.

"Progress"ive Thinking - By the logic of Flypaper Theory, the lesson of the weekend's hallmarks of progress is clear: we must keep Paul Wolfowitz in Iraq. He sure does seem to draw flies. I can't imagine what moral case the hawks would make against the direction. If it's okay to troll public servants whose names you don't know before the Islamofascist hordes, there can be no reason not to do the same with public servants whose names you do know. The utilitarian case is surely greater - your Al Qaeda operative, Ba'athist holdout or rejectionist deadender fly of your choice has to get a lot more excited about the possibility of taking out an Undersecretary of Defense than some Spec IV Guardsman who never appeared on any panel at an AEI Symposium. I didn't want to put any of our troops in the way of this particular harm, so I have no reason to put the Undersecretary there either, nor to suggest that, should he be called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice in the War Against Terror, we should go to our bench, starting with Dick Cheney, nor to speculate on the "stickiness quotient" of moving General Boykin's headquarters to the Al Rasheed. But that's why you can't have us peaceniks setting policy: we lack the ruthlessness to wage these Savage Wars of Peace like they need waging.

Weekly Fitness Blog Item - 161 pounds, 32.5" waist. The weight is a new low, but I no longer have a weight goal as such. At this point it's all about the buns of steel and the six-pack abs. Getting there means losing some remaining fat, but I'd be hard-pressed to put a pounds figure on that. The other goals are health-related - resting pulse, blood pressure and cholesterol and the only one of those I can get my own metrics on is pulse rate.

This was a week of much cake (latebreaking birthday celebrations), and a lavish and tasty spread at the inaugural party for my brother-in-law's new jewelry store in Sterling. (He does wonderful custom work and now is the time to get your Holiday orders in. And yes, if you mention Unqualified Offerings, I will get a small cut.) It was also blogarama week, so there's something of an "after picture" available from Julian Sanchez. It's not full-figure, but faces don't lie. (I'm the one who is not Eve Tushnet, in the grey polo shirt.)

Michael Fumento has a column in the Washington Times from last week attacking the South Beach Diet, which he nevertheless allows is

superior to Atkins in two ways. First, it encourages consumption of healthier unsaturated fats, while saturated fats like lard and those in bacon are emblematic of Atkins.

Second, while the "South Beach" allows carbohydrates, it promotes higher-fiber ones. Fiber is good for overall health. Further, by adding noncaloric bulk to food, it can aid weight control. But "South Beach" still can't be called a high-fiber diet since it discourages carbohydrate consumption.

This is just ridiculous, given how little fiber there actually is in the processed starches and sugars that Atkins and South Beach prohibit. I should note that your Talking Dog has not had much success with South Beach. Mrs. Offering is just starting it, and I'll provide progress reports.

Speaking of progress reports, Bruce Baugh continues to lose and explains how it's done:

I've made a good start on breaking a habit I know is trouble: of indulging in junk food when I'm particularly upset or depressed, the old "comfort food" trap. I'm building up a little shelf of things that satisfy the craving for something sweet and yummy without busting the diet too badly and that I don't normally eat, so that they retain their specialness. I realize this isn't rocket science, but there's a difference between knowing it needs doing and actually doing it [ . . . ]

Jeremy Scharlack is not dead, nor has he fallen off the fitness wagon. Jeremy, we salute you.

Avram Grumer is 11 weeks into Body-for-Life. I think I officially count as a BFL dropout now, and I'm still transitioning to whatever workout routine I'll settle on next. Probably Heavyhands again for awhile. I finally dragged my lazy butt out to the park this morning for a half-hour session with the five-pound weights, but it was a ragged one, and after three weeks of minimal weight training and only a few miles of walking per week, my resting pulse is back up near 60.

MT Guru Wanted - I'm implementing a very simple category system for UO in Movable Type. Still to do is, ideally, assign 2500+ messages to the "Main" category. I really, really, really do not want to do this one at a time. If anyone knows a way to automate this, I'd greatly appreciate learning it.

Shorter Matthew Yglesias (Sorry, Matt. I just can't resist.)

The most successful liberal programs give government money to people who don't need it. Liberals need to keep that up.

Better Living Through Libertarianism - Shit! Julian got mugged last night. Bad enough that: a) anyone should get mugged; b) someone I like so much should get mugged; but, a buddy should get mugged like the day after I saw him.

But what's interesting is, believe it or not, what the whole thing says about rational calculation and utility maximizing. At least, that's Julian's story. Your must-read blog post of the weekend.

There and Back Again - Leon Sparx backpacked into and through Baghdad and back to Brooklyn over the summer. His journals and photos are worth a look.

Look Over There! - Dan Scheltema's Dislogue has moved.

Faith, Hope and Above All Charity - The fine Canadian blogger Kevin Michael Grace of the Ambler is in serious financial straits. He has a Paypal button and would be grateful for any help readers choose to provide. Jeremy Lott has more.

Funny Money - Boy, if people read more than the headlines, they'd find considerable amusement value.

Headline: Donors Promise Iraq $33 Billion, Smashing Expectations

Paragraph six:

The highest estimate for pledges from non-U.S. donors came from the Iraqis themselves. Planning Minister Mahdi Hafez told reporters they had matched Washington's promise of $20 billion.

So, in a heartwarming outburst of internationalism, Iraq - donates $20 billion to . . . Iraq.

1) I'm really glad my own CFO isn't in charge of this project, because I'd have a damned hard time convincing him to book Iraq's contribution to . . . Iraq to the Donation account.

2) For some reason I'm flashing back to the one time I helped man the phone bank for the local PBS station pledge drive. During our brief training session, the producers warned us that sometimes we would pick up the phone to find there was no one there. We were supposed to chatter into the dead air as if we had a live caller. These dummy calls were pump primers, made on the theory that real callers would feel more comfortable calling in if they felt others were doing it too.

Strange the things that go through one's mind.

(Link via the Politburo Diktat, who expresses a certain confusion at the fact that one AP headline reports "33 billion" while another AP story reports 13 billion. I respectfully suggest that subtracting 20 from 33 will clear up much mystery.)

Oh by the way, from the first story linked: "EU External Affairs Commissioner Chris Patten cautioned that past experience had shown there was often a huge lag between promises and delivery of aid." But on the bright side:

Pledges piled up from poorer nations too, with Vietnam offering $500,000 worth of rice and Sri Lanka 100 tons of tea.

Will Wonders Never Cease - I actually agree with James Taranto. Mostly:

Well, allow us to explain. Easterbrook's essay was an expression not of anti-Semitism but of a lesser, though still insidious, form of prejudice. Call it liberal condescension. This sentence from his apology reveals all: "How, I wondered, could anyone Jewish--members of a group who suffered the worst act of violence in all history, and who suffer today, in Israel, intolerable violence--seek profit from a movie that glamorizes violence as cool fun?"

"Members of a group": This is the language of liberal identity politics. And note that this is a philo-Semitic prejudice, not an anti-Semitic one. Easterbrook's premise is that the suffering of the Jewish people ennobles Jewish individuals--or should--even if those individuals have not themselves suffered. Thus he presumes to hold Jews to a higher moral standard by virtue of their Jewishness--though in fact all he's doing is asking them to agree with his highly debatable opinion (does it really make any sense to liken stylized Hollywood violence to the Holocaust?).

Ideologically, Easterbrook's earnest criticism of Jewish studio executives is of a piece with Maureen Dowd's racist rant against Clarence Thomas. Because Thomas is black, Dowd, like other liberals, expects him to conform to liberal orthodoxy and thus treats his conservatism as a far greater offense than that of, say, Antonin Scalia.

"Racist rant" is inflammatory, but the Clarence Thomas comparison seems apposite. (I should note that eventheliberal Atrios rebuked Easterbrook for placing group duties on individuals. That means Taranto is too hard on liberals as a class, and that Atrios and Taranto are secret soul mates.)

What the hell was Easterbrook trying to say? In outline: Movie violence causes terrorism. Jews disproportionately suffer from terrorism. Two Jewish executive responsible for a particular violent movie are acting against their (group) self-interest by releasing a violent movie for the sake of profit. I don't want you to think I think they worship money because they are Jews - they are no worse than other Hollywood executives in that regard. BUT THEY SHOULD BE BETTER.

This is a really dumb argument, but it's not written out of loathing for the Jews, and it does not ascribe loathsome qualities to Jews qua Jews. (It's pretty hard on Muslim filmgoers, though.) It's not hate speech, but it's patronizing as hell, and as sloppily written as it has been sloppily read.

Better Experienced Over the Internet - I was vaguely aware that Jewsweek was out there, but it turns out to be quite the lively site. But um, guys, spellcheck is not enough:

The show, which is currently being taped, will air in six half-hour installments early next year. We're waiting with baited breath.

(My emphasis.)

From the same roundup, a possible blogger triumphalism occasion:

The House of Representatives voted to mark the 350th anniversary of the arrival of Jews in North America, establishing a "Jewish History Month" next year to mark Jewish contributions to US cultural, economic and civic life.

No word yet whether Jonathan "HeadHeeb" Edelstein will be invited to the White House for the signing ceremony. BUT HE SHOULD BE.

It Pays to Increase Your Word Power - Enthymeme is the word of the day, courtesy of the permalinkless Zizka, who suggests

Recent claims that Bush never actually said that Iraq had WMD, or that Saddam was allied to al Qaeda, or that the Iraqi threat was imminent, actually make Bush look worse. His careful avoidance of the clincher sentences makes it very likely that he knew that they weren't true. An enormous swarm of administration statements convinced the American public of several untrue propositions, while at the same time carefully avoiding legal liability.

Even the Liberal Matthew Yglesias came to the Blogarama on Kalorama last night, braving a CATO-heavy crowd and really livening up the evening. (Julian has pictures) In addition to the usual suspects, I got to meet Agitator Man Group member Brooke Oberwetter and Brendan Huhn of the newish Human Liberty. Andrew Chamberlain of Ideashop was there, and I wish I had properly recalled that he was the author of an excellent consideration of scalping that I still intend to get around to comparing favorably to a similar article by Paul Krugman.

The atmosphere was convivial, but the attendees did not shy from controversy.

Glen Engel-Cox: Thor, of course. Thor is a god! That's easy.

Eve Tushnet: The Hulk. I hope the Hulk would win. I don't like Thor and I do like the Hulk. I identify with him.

(Let the record show that this was a serial argument. Eve didn't arrive until Glen had left. Which reminds me, Radley Balko and Gene Healy averred that they often skip the comics posts. I'm sure Dirk Deppey often checks in only to see that, Damn, just more bitching about politics again. And poor Sean Collins!)

It got so late, particularly for a middle-aged man with a day job, that I stupidly confused "an individual rights argument" with "an equal protection argument" while Eve and I were having a full and frank exchange of views on - what else? - gay marriage. But it was a ton of fun. I got some leads on paid writing jobs, we all sang a rousing chorus of the Dean Campaign official song (kidding!) and, eventually, most everyone but Matt, Missy, Andrew and a few die-hards left. But we'll be back! Oh yes! We WILL be back!

Stop Me Before I Blitz Again! - Football Outsiders is having a Tuesday Morning Quarterback homage contest. (Link via Instapundit.)

In a Shocking Lapse of Narcissism I forgot to wish myself a Happy Blogiversary last night while writing about other stuff. Unqualified Offerings is now two years old. I am pleased to see that in a mere two years, our leaders have begun pretty much running the world the way I want. (Uh, Jim? You're confusing yourself with Steven Den Beste. Oops! I hate it when that happens!)

Two Years Ago in Unqualified Offerings: Even this war, begun for the least assailable of reasons (the bastards killed thousands of us in our own country), has led to an awful "antiterrorism" bill, a stupid new government agency, budgetary profligacy and at least a temporary increase in the prestige of the very folks who failed to protect 6,000 people from deadly force.

One Year Ago in Unqualified Offerings: There are two arguments against [releasing the Muhammad/Malvo extortion letter]. First, that the information might panic people. Folks, you have no idea what panic is until you convince an entire metropolitan area that you're keeping stuff that might save lives secret from them. Second, that doing so might make the sniper mad, that his demands include keeping his communications confidential.

Well what is he going to do, shoot somebody?

EventualPundit - By the time I get around to writing about the Gregg Easterbrook situation people will have forgotten that it ever happened, but I'm tired now, and I've got gaming prep to do. Will I get to it before Thursday's Blogarama on Kalorama? I don't know. Will I have written responses to Eve's most recent same-sex marriage arguments before I see her at said Blogarama? I sincerely doubt it. Do I think that My Stupid Dog's critiques of SSM opposition that he wrote in series for Marriage Protection Week last week are well worth reading if occasionally a little glib? Yes. Will Hostmatters continue to suffer DOS attacks like it has every day this week, to the point where it hardly matters if I post anything or not? Maybe.

Mail Call: Sympathy for the Devil - Reader Chris Borthwick writes

I know it’s now taken as a given that Stalin paused at the Vistula only to let the Germans wipe out the Polish resistance, but there is a purely military case that could be and has been made for it on the groiunds that his forces were overextended and needed to let supplies catch up – a case that I was more skeptical about before I learned that Eisenhower didn’t want to take Paris, would have let the Nazis burn it down if De Gaulle hadn’t forestalled him by a sudden dash, and felt afterwards that it had delayed the end of the war (and thereby caused the deaths of a large number of people, including Jews and Poles, though I’m not saying Eisenhower himself saw this as primary) by forcing on him the responsibility of supplying a large number of people who weren’t his army with food and fuel.

Interesting.

The Pure Thing - The signal feature of antisemitism as a bigotry is how eerily it mixes admiration with loathing. People who hate blacks or the Irish don't also profess wonderment at Black and Irish achievement. Bostonians wanted to keep dogs and Irish out of their offices and schools, but not because they feared dogs and Irish would "take over." No Klansman ever despised blacks because he thought them too "cunning." The despisers of Hispanics don't imagine that the mestizo constitute a master race. The wrinkle of admiring people you despise, and despising them substantially because of what you take to be their greatness, is known primarily among the haters of Jews (and also anti-Asians).

For this reason, I was actually a little nervous about participating in Jonathan Edelstein's Arrival Day blogburst last month. I was honored to be invited, and figure that, as an American, I have profited from Jewish-American culture in countless ways. But participating meant writing as a Gentile about American Jews as a group. I chose a subject dear to my heart, the comic book industry, and the outsized contribution of American Jews to its flourishing. This was extremely well-trod ground, covered many times by both Jewish and non-Jewish historians. It's a story well worth telling. But in the back of my mind I couldn't help wondering where the line lay between saying "American Jews made an outsized contribution to the comic book industry" and "Comic books were a Jewish plot." Substitute "Hollywood" for comic books in the foregoing if the problem isn't clear.

I decided that it came down to the intent of the speaker. Which brings us to the already famous speech to the Organization of the Islamic Conference by Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad last week. His defenders, quoted prominently (of course) in the Malaysia Straits-Times, insist that his remarks about how, oh, Jews control the world by proxy, were taken out of context. This seemed unlikely, but since I came within half a blog item of taking Gregg Easterbrook's remarks out of context Sunday night (a matter for another post), I figured I would read the full speech just to be on the safe side.

Eeuww!

The absolute kindest construction you could put on Mahathir's speech is this: whoever leads the OIC is going to be someone who believes Jews control the world by proxy; better an antisemite who insists that terrorism is self-defeating than one who waves the pom-poms for martyrdom. But I don't think that view survives contact with the speech itself.

Mahathir's speech follows this trajectory: First he says that the Muslim peoples and nations are oppressed. Next he explains the internal reasons for the parlous state of the Ummah - essentially, they are bad Muslims. The peoples, sects and leaders squabble among themselves, and since the late Middle Ages reinterpretation of the Quranic injunction to "Read" as meaning to study religious texts to the exclusion of other fields, Muslim science, arts and liberal arts have undergone a long decline. Mahathir makes clear that the biggest problem with the collapse of learning and research is that the nations of the Ummah cannot produce their own weapons. There are also Muslims who counsel that oppression in this world is simply the will of Allah, that the rewards come in the next one.

There is a feeling of hopelessness among the Muslim countries and their people. They feel that they can do nothing right. They believe that things can only get worse. The Muslims will forever be oppressed and dominated by the Europeans and the Jews. They will forever be poor, backward and weak. Some believe, as I have said, this is the Will of Allah, that the proper state of the Muslims is to be poor and oppressed in this world.

So far, "the Jews" are twinned with the equally collective "Europeans" as oppressors of the Ummah, part of an amorphous West that trods on the Muslim face. The Jews may be miserable, but they have company. That changes within a paragraph:

But is it true that we should do and can do nothing for ourselves? Is it true that 1.3 billion people can exert no power to save themselves from the humiliation and oppression inflicted upon them by a much smaller enemy? Can they only lash back blindly in anger? Is there no other way than to ask our young people to blow themselves up and kill people and invite the massacre of more of our own people? It cannot be that there is no other way. 1.3 billion Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews. There must be a way. And we can only find a way if we stop to think, to assess our weaknesses and our strength, to plan, to strategise and then to counter attack.

If you add up all the Europeans, Jews and Americans, you surely don't come up with a "much smaller enemy" than 1.3 billion people. Mahathir's defenders insist that we look at the context of his remarks on the Jews. The context is clear: Mahathir's entire speech is about what "1.3 billion Muslims" need to do to triumph over "a few million Jews."

Okay, which Jews? Almost all of them:

We are actually very strong. 1.3 billion people cannot be simply wiped out. The Europeans killed six million Jews out of 12 million. But today the Jews rule this world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them.

In context, this is no better than out of context. The notion that "the Jews rule the world by proxy" is ridiculous, of course. What's classically antisemitic about Mahathir's speech is that familiar combination of admiration and loathing. In context Mahathir is saying, "We must be clever, like the Jews." Not just so they don't get all the Nobel Prizes and violin chairs in the Israeli Philharmonic, but so we can beat them.

We also know that not all non-Muslims are against us. Some are welldisposed towards us. Some even see our enemies as their enemies. Even among the Jews there are many who do not approve of what the Israelis are doing.

We must not antagonise everyone. We must win their hearts and minds. We must win them to our side not by begging for help from them but by the honourable way that we struggle to help ourselves.

Dude, even among the Israeli Jews there are many who do not approve of what the Israelis are doing. I don't approve of what the Israelis are doing. But if you want to "not antagonize" me, you might try not peddling essentialist paranoid fantasias about cunning Jews bestriding the world like a Colossus.

The enemy will probably welcome these proposals and we will conclude that the promoters are working for the enemy. But think. We are up against a people who think. They survived 2,000 years of pogroms not by hitting back, but by thinking.

They invented and successfully promoted Socialism, Communism, human rights and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong, so they may enjoy equal rights with others. With these they have now gained control of the most powerful countries and they, this tiny community, have become a world power. We cannot fight them through brawn alone. We must use our brains also.

Here's some more context. Israelis weren't around to invent all those dubious things. There's something drolly subjunctive, in a certain frame of mind, about "so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong." (I realize I am dealing with a translated text. I'm going with the Straits-Times version on the theory that it counts as the most authoritative English translation.) Again, more admiration mixed with loathing.

Speaking of context, democracy is not something Mahathir is big on. Earlier in the speech, he identifies it as a source of the Ummah's schisms:

Apart from the new nation-states we also accepted the Western democratic system. This also divided us because of the political parties and groups that we form, some of which claim Islam for themselves, reject the Islam of other parties and refuse to accept the results of the practice of democracy if they fail to gain power for themselves. They resort to violence, thus destabilising and weakening Muslim countries.

So what do we have here? A powerful man, leader of one of the world's richer nations, before an audience of other powerful men - rulers of countries - insisting on the need for "unity," which, oh coincidence! would increase the power of the organization before which he is speaking, in the name of the struggle of "1.3 billion people" against "a few million" other people. A collectivist call to a collectivist struggle against a collectivist enemy. That, loyal readers, is your context. Here is not your context:

o A distinction between the State of Israel and the Jewish people;
o A suggestion that the very obsession of "1.3 billion people" with "a few million" other people is self-defeating and absurd;
o Any awareness that American policy is driven not by powerful Jews but by powerful Christians (as Justin Raimondo and other American critics of Israel have noted time and again);
o Any call to liberalism as such; Mahathir is actually calling for a program of corporatist modernization of the Ummah - that is, his program is fascist in the truest sense;
o code words!

The Islamic world can do a lot better than Mahathir and the self-interested leaders who praised his speech, and I hope it does.

Political Tourists - A couple of weeks back I wrote about my bemusement at being characterized as a "lefty blogger" by William Sjostrom. One of his commenters wrote

My reading elsewhere of Henley and 'Hesiod' (previous posts) is that they are completely untrustworthy. They take a 'soviet' view of the USA and world events.

For my part this is true, in the sense of having a view that the US is becoming ever more 'soviet.' Oh, not in a Stalin way or even a Leninesque one. I expect us rather to skip straight on to the Brezhnev Era, or maybe the glorious days of Gorbyism. Which brings us back to this site's typical preoccupations, or at least it will in a minute.

One of the classic works of conservative thought was Paul Hollander's Political Pilgrims, a history of idiot-left enthusiasm for Communist regimes running from John Reed and Paul Robeson through the Sandalistas of the 1980s. I believe it was in that book (I don't own a copy), in which Hollander noted just how easily satisfied the "pilgrims" were. Western enthusiasts went to Soviet Russia, or Mao's China, or Castro's Cuba, and reported back rapturously of the wonders they had seen: factories! schools! hospitals! What a bold future these progressives were building in their countries!

Gosh, the pilgrim's critics pointed out. Factories. Schools. Hospitals. We have those here. Even during the Depression we had factories, schools and hospitals. Imagine swooning over instances of what are, come down to it, mere base-level "achievements" of all but the most pathetic of countries. And the critics were right. That their heirs on the right now breathlessly report the US-given miracle that under the Iraqi Occupation Authority, Iraqi children are going to school, doctors are making rounds in Iraqi hospitals and Iraqi shopkeepers are transacting business, tells us a great deal about the collapse of American conservatism. Time was they knew better than to consider this kind of thing bragging material. Do they want a cookie?

(Via Gospodin Hesiod, Newsweek notes that the schools and hospitals were open last May. As for the shops, they've been open for five-thousand years now in that area.)

(P.S. Yes, I know that Hollander is alive, supported the Iraq War and considered war skepticism "anti-American." I never said the collapse of contemporary conservatism wasn't total.)

Happy Birthday to Kevin Drum, who shares October 19 with me. The coincidence inspired an amusing aside on astrology by Patrick Nielsen Hayden, which reminded me of my own standard response when people want to know my "sign":

You tell me.

You know, if astrology were real, "What's your sign?" would count as an extremely nosy question to ask a stranger. Since the people who ask it tend to be the ones who think it's real, it's a nosy question anyway.

Four More Years - The head of Third Corps says US troops may stay in Iraq until 2006. The usual multipliers apply.

But That's What I Was Afraid Of Dept. - Oh joy:

In an eight-hour visit, Mr. Bush for the first time drew explicit comparisons between the transition he is seeking in Iraq and the rough road to democracy that the Philippines traveled from the time the United States seized it from Spain in 1898 to the present day.

"Some say the culture of the Middle East will not sustain the institutions of democracy," Mr. Bush said, taking on the critics of his oft-stated goal to use Iraq as a laboratory for spreading democratic institutions in the Middle East. "The same doubts were once expressed about the culture of Asia. Those doubts were proven wrong nearly six decades ago."

While the administration often speaks of the occupations of Japan and Germany after World War II as rough models for the effort to rebuild Iraq, Mr. Bush used the visit here to make a less explicit analogy to the American administration of the Philippines, which also led to the formation of a democracy. But the comparison has less power to reassure, given that the Philippine government did not gain full autonomy for five decades.

And before that there were the concentration camps, the 200,000 civilian dead in the 1899-1902 insurrection - all the stuff Max Boot actually likes.

Curiously, Bush's speech amounts to a claim that the Philippines became a democracy "nearly six decades ago." This is true as far as it goes, which is from the mid-forties through the late 1960s, when the Philippines was merely an ordinarily corrupt client state. Then almost two decades of Ferdinand and Imelda. But we eventually let Marcos fall to the People Power rebellion, which was wise of us, though many hawks at the time considered it feckless and likely to embolden our enemies.

We Get Letters - Steve Cook e-mails

I wouldn't have pegged you for an "Ilsa, She-Wolf of the S.S." fan.

Hey, I'm not! I haven't even seen the movie. I just like Chris Puzak's description. Steve also tips me to a 1999 Paul Krugman article for Slate on ticket scalping that we'll come back to soon.

Loyal Reader Matt reminds me that I should link to a surprisingly conservative (in the true sense of the word) article by Meline Toumani on Alternet, The Truth About Our Good Intentions. This is a top-notch piece of work:

What can we, in America, know of how it feels to be a citizen of any other country in the world?

We do not have brigades of well-meaning volunteers from, say, the Netherlands arriving in our neighborhoods with bold promises of teaching us how to run our schools. We do not have representatives from Singapore engaging in optimistic efforts to reform our legislature, or teams from France trying to develop our media. Scruffy Swedish twenty-somethings, fresh from college, do not take up residence in our midst and teach us about the importance of government-sponsored healthcare.

Though we pride ourselves on traveling the world to help solve its problems – charity or bust – we do not know how it feels to be always on the worse end of the expression, "It is better to give than to receive."

The article includes a side trip into recent Iraqi polling data, but to its larger point, Iraq is simply the latest particular: "the U.S. – and especially our current administration – has a terribly difficult time putting itself in the other man's shoes."

Let's be clear what Toumani is not saying, and what I'm not saying. That "the other man" is better, nobler, wiser, even necessarily correct on the merits in any particular case where he disagrees with us. No, what I'm saying, and what I think Toumani is saying, is simply that the other man exists and is not us. Toumani continues:

. . . we just keep on shaking our heads at the ungrateful beggar who doesn't appreciate all we've done for him, never seeing him as the angry man whose Hobson's choice is between starving and humiliation.

Toumani implicitly places almost all the blame for this on the United States. I think s/he would do well to recognize the double-bind that the "international community" has often placed on us, though. The hawks are not incorrect when they note that the United States gets criticised for not intervening where it doesn't intervene (there are a few such places), and intervening where it does. Pick a crisis point and there is at least one faction clamoring for American assistance and some combination of goodhearted and venal elites back here determined to give it to them.

Jonathan Pearse wrote in about last week's item on orchard-flattening and the partial restoration of the Shatt-al-Arab marshes in southeastern Iraq:

Jim, while you make a fair point about the marshes and efforts to restore them, it seems to me that it is precisely because George Bush snr and his then colleagues encouraged the Shiites to rebel without offering backup, and hence leaving them to twist in the wind, that we owed them and their brethren an obligation to put that aright. It strikes me that Bush snr's abandonment of the Shiites and Kurds was a shocking policy, a shameful one, and that the original coalition powers of Gulf War I had a moral responsibility to try and fix the problem. Whether that problem has been fixed is, of course, another matter. Time no doubt will tell.

And by the way, that has nothing to do with 9/11, pre-emption and the rest. It is, if you like, almost a Nozickian policy of "rectifying an injustice," in this case, to a group of people we (I'll include Britain in that) encouraged to act and then abandoned.

Let's state right out that this is the best of hawkish arguments, and the most compelling. There is no question that, whether they are properly grateful to the US and Britain or not, the Marsh Arabs are better off with Saddam out of power. I think your better class of hawks brought up the marsh arabs not out of opportunism but sincere shame at the events of 1991. Still.

Accept for the sake of argument that there was any humanitarian motive behind the conquest of Iraq, and any desire to do right be people the US had used and abandoned. Accept for the sake of plain truth that Saddam Hussein was a bad actor who richly deserved to lose his loathsome authority. Accept all that, and the actual humanitarian principle the US has established is simply: We decide. We decide whose depredations against "his own people" matter, and when. We decide who gets to engage in collective punishment and who doesn't, who has to contemplate "power sharing" with their rebels, and who gets to bomb their rebels into gravy.

The Bush I regime's policy toward the Marsh Arabs was as feckless as the hawks say it was. If you were going to back off supporting a Shi'ite revolt if the Saudis start worrying about how it will help Iran, then maybe you should have asked the Saudis before encouraging people to rise up and be slaughtered. If you're going to let Saudi Arabia dictate policy for you, don't dilly-dally about it. (Essay topic: The US incitement and abandonment of the Marsh Arabs in 1991 is not morally equivalent to the Soviets pause across the Vistula while Germany liquidated the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising because . . . ? Show your work.) You may think the Clinton Administration's Iraq policy feckless too. I'd call it, with its 14,000 sorties a year over "no fly zones" we pulled out of our fictive ass deeply cynical, but stick with feckless if you prefer.

Do you really think that people you consider "feckless" will not one day be running American policy again, Britain and the US being democracies? Have you noticed all the places (*koffkoff* Khazakhstan *koffkoff*) where current policy toward your non-humanitarian rulers looks pretty feckless too, even though US policy is supposedly being run by the morally-serious, spiny regime of your dreams?

We decide is our real message and the one the world perversely declines to rally 'round.

Weekly Fitness Blog Item - 163 pounds (again); waist 32 and a quarter inches (roughly). Today's measurements double as 43rd Birthday figures. I'll take 'em. Down 53 pounds since Thanksgiving Day last year and probably about 60 pounds since my 42nd birthday, though I was too afraid to weigh myself at that time. My waist is easily 10 inches less than last year.

This was a good week for fitness mail and fitness links. Last week's report on a small, controlled study comparing low-carbohydrate and high-carbohydrate diets sparked considerable interest.

Reader Mike Wells notes

Regarding yesterday's fitness blog topic, I just had to point this out:

"The low-carb meals were 5 percent carbohydrate, 15 percent protein and 65 percent fat."

Did you notice that that adds up to 85%? What do you suppose the rest was?

That puzzled me too. I wondered if the rest was dietary fiber, which doesn't count as a "net carb" in Atkins-like diets. (Fiber is esteemed.) But that would be as much as 300 calories in fiber a day, which would be upwards of 80 grams of the stuff per day. At that rate, your body would actually start pooping out meals you hadn't even eaten yet. Mike's follow-up theory: "I figure they must have been eating the place settings."

One reader wrote that

What convinced me to take my first Atkins plunge was my disastrous experience w/a rice diet.

Why a rice diet? Because it's easy. You measure the rice out in the morning (one cup=784 calories), cook it, and eat that cup of rice throughout the day. No muss no fuss. Maybe I did a heaper, getting me up to 1000 cals p/d, still not a lot.

I did it for a week.

I didn't lose one pound. Not one pound. Zippo.

That sounds a starvation ration, so the body would tend to shut down. What surprises me is that there wasn't even the water-weight loss that accompanies the beginning of many diets. People deprecate that initial flush, but it provides immediate positive feedback from the scale, and in my case at least, I felt less bloated (thinner) right away.

That problem of the body ratcheting the metabolism down if your caloric intake drops too low is key, and related to our first In Other Fitness Blogs Item . . .

Even the liberal Atrios was moved to comment on one of the quotes in the report on what we'll call the "Restaurant Study" (discussed last week). Atrios zeroes in on a curious quote from a skeptical nutritionist:

"It doesn't make sense, does it?" said Barbara Rolls of Pennsylvania State University. "It violates the laws of thermodynamics. No one has ever found any miraculous metabolic effects."

and responds

Look, this doesn't violate any laws of thermodynamics. The issue is not whether a measure of energy, a calorie, is the same regardless of the form it's stored in, the question is whether or not the form it is stored in has any impact on the way your body processes it.

Right. Think about the rice diet example above. On paper, a woman whose weight is stable at 1800 calories per day and eats only 800 calories per day ought to lose two pounds of fat in a week. (1000 calories/day x 7 days / 3500 calories per pound of fat = 2 pounds.) Bodies are not on paper, though. Most of the ones facing such a deficit will find a way to reduce operating expenses, as it were, to keep as much fat as possible. As far as your body is concerned, the crops have failed and you're in danger of starving.

This is a clear instance of the supply of calories changing the use of calories. That's a metabolic effect for sure. Whether you consider it miraculous or not is between you and your pastor. We may not yet have discovered "any miraculous metabolic effects" in the other direction (where the right intake of foods convinces your body to increase operating expenses) but that doesn't mean they don't exist, for some agreed-upon value of miraculous. (They may not exist. But if the results of this study are replicable, it'll definitely be time to start looking for them.)

Alan Sullivan announces a 15-pound weight loss on Fresh Bilge. The blog, I mean. Announces on his blog a 15-pound weight loss. Not, Loses 15 pounds consuming bilge, but only bilge that hasn't sat around for awhile. Via the same item I discover Marn's Big Adventure, whose proprietess describes her weight room interactions thusly:

Fortunately, all the weightlifting guys know me fairly well now and they tend to see me as this looney tunes charmingly eccentric older woman. I am allowed a wide range of social gaffes because of my gender and advanced years. Of course, I would never take advantage of this situation for my own amusement, just to see how far I can go.

No. Not me. Not ever.

A very entertaining item. Marn says she's begun taking Creatine, which freaks her husband out. She also says that, through week one at least, Creatine doesn't seem to have produced any noteworthy difference in results.

Bruce Baugh is down another pound. This is perfectly fine progress still. Some weeks you lose more, some less, even when still very heavy.

Via All the World's a Stage, yet another quickie basal metabolism calculator from Time Magazine: Multiply your weight by 13 (15 if you are active), and if you want to lose weight subtract 250, and that should be your caloric intake. Worth noting: an extra handful of nuts or two extra servings of potato chips a day will use that 250 calories right up.

At Catallarchy.net, Jonathan Wilde designs an experiment to test whether the low-carb diets lead to greater weight loss than high-carb ones. It's a thought-experiment, and Jonathan declares that

My two posts on the Atkins Diet were made not as a search for the efficacy of the Atikins Diet, but rather to bring about discussion on the scientific method itself. I'm not primarily interested in whether or not the Atkins Diet 'works', but rather how one would go about finding out if it works.

It's a useful illumination of the deficiencies of actual diet studies.

Finally, MSNBC reports that, for the first time in years, America stopped getting fatter. The reason? Actually, the article doubts that it knows, but a drop in restaurant meals may be a factor.

Metablogging - Around and about:

From your lips to God's ears. Gary Farber wants to make me rich. I appreciate the thought nearly as much as I would appreciate the fame and fortune. Gary's item prompts a something I should mention - I would not argue that Captain America should be depicted, in comic or film, as a libertarian. Indeed, I'd like to see Steve Rogers more clearly written as a New Deal liberal, with those instincts and biases. Steve Rogers would by nature be an uber-interventionist abroad and at home, and it would be fun to write him that way.

Now, give me a crack at the Question and I'll give you the libertarian comic book of my dreams - like Ditko, only fun. None other than Franklin Harris approved my Question pitch when I shared it with him.

Cheeky, cheeky - Over at MatthewBarganier.com they're trolling for links. They're hinting broadly at some kind of quid pro quo where you link to them and at some point they favor you with an addition to their so-far non-existent blogroll. Fellas: this is what we call a faux pas.

Oh the sad state of libertarian institutional blogs. How come TAPped can run a blog with all kinds of links to liberal bloggers, and Town Hall can run a blog with all kinds of links to conservative bloggers, but Reason doesn't bother putting up a libertarian blogroll on Hit & Run and Antiwar.com, late as it is to the blogging party, wants antiwar bloggers to ask it to dance first? Has this got something to do with that Ayn Rand book on the virtue of selfishness that I never bothered to read?

Back from the big Hostmatters outage yesterday. Normal blogging resumes now.

Last Word (?) on Scalping goes to Chris Puzak. Don't miss his . . . appreciation of the sexploitation movie Ilse, She-Wolf of the SS either:

Gory scenes of torture are interspersed with gratuitous nudity and campy acting. In other words, it’s like Hogan's Heroes combined with Bob Crane’s home movies.

A Little Off the Top - All Scalping, All the Time! Kurt Hemr writes

FYI: Massachusetts law provides, "No person shall engage in the business of
reselling any ticket or tickets." Mass. Gen. Laws c. 140, sec. 185A. For a long time, the Boston police arrested anyone who tried to resell a ticket at Fenway and charged them with violating this statute, even though a 1924 court decision had held that selling a ticket for face value or less cannot be a "business of reselling." In 1999, a fan who had been arrested when he tried to sell a spare ticket at cost outside Fenway obtained an injunction from the federal court in Boston barring the police from arresting people who sell at cost or less. The upshot is that in Massachusetts, scalping -- selling at a premium over face value -- is illegal, but resale for face value is not.

Anyone want to hazard a guess where a lot of those Red Sox tickets used to end up?

Dooley writes

One more wrinkle to consider in your thoughts on ticket scalping, generally, it’s only illegal near the site of the event. Ticket brokers are quite happily marking up face value and are free and clear. The ‘loveable, loser cubs’ decided to cut out the middle man this year and open their own ticket scalping service a block from the park (see the Chicago Sun-Times).

Interestingly enough, this seems to be a fraud not on the customers (who after all are only paying what they are willing), but on the other 29 MLB clubs who get a piece of ticket sales.

I can not consider myself for or against scalping laws. I have used ticket brokers several times to attend Giant’s games, and quite willingly paid over face value for a ticket in the sun (SF in the summer don’tcha know). I would urge you to think just a bit more about the counterfeit ticket angle. You seem to assume that a policeman can tell the difference between a counterfeiter and a legitimate ticket scalper. I don’t think that’s necessarily true. The ticket brokers here just use specialized printers to print the ducats on card stock. This is easy enough to duplicate. A ticket broker moving counterfeits has an address to track back to and seek redress. A scalper is effectively anonymous leaving situations (e.g. multiple ticket holders for a single seat) that the event organizer has to make good to continue in business. I don’t know that this justifies scalping laws, but seems a lot closer to the truth than mere resentment. To paraphrase Heinlein “Never attribute to malice what mere stupidity can explain”.

It's an interesting point about ticket brokers (which are legal in Massachusetts - here's a list of them) and the problem of counterfeiting. I grant that it would be harder to catch a counterfeiter selling off the street rather than out of an office. But it's not Mission Impossible:

1. Caveat emptor certainly applies. When you decide to buy from a scalper, you are accepting a certain risk.

2. That risk can be reduced. Counterfeiters don't make money producing a couple of tickets for one event. They need to produce lots of tickets for lots of events. Unloading those tickets means being on the street, in the flow of traffic to a venue, on multiple occasions for sustained periods. Let people who buy tickets on the street trouble to remember what the person who sells them their tickets looks and sounds like. Let the police redirect the a fraction of the manpower currently going to hassling honest resellers toward investigating, arresting and prosecuting dishonest ones. You can't eliminate counterfeiting, but you can adjust the marginal risk so that selling fake tickets approaches reselling real ones in profitability terms.

What prodigies of domestic tranquility we could accomplish if our laws and enforcement of laws concentrated on the dishonest rather than the honest generally.

Fitfully Amusing but Cheap - the Wiggum or Bush Quiz from EjectBush.com. First off, I got 94% right, and I'm not a regular Simpsons watcher, so I'm not down with the Wigs. Second off, I'm not exactly easy on the President, but collections of malapropisms don't impress me. I've always suspected you could put such a list together for almost anyone who does a lot of public speaking, including extemporaneous speaking. Stick to the somewhat larger matters of fiscal incontinence, military vainglory and the metastasizing domestic "security" regime.

(Link via Using Bees to Effect Vengeance.)

People Unclear on the Concept - Today's e-mail brings the following:

I just searched in Google for pennsylvania auto insurance coverage and found www.highclearing.com ranked 32. I have a related website about Insurance - Auto that's purely informational (so I'm NOT a competitor of yours) and I'd like to link to your site.

I consider my site to be one of the best resources for this type of information. I get a decent amount of visitors to it so if I link to you, your site should get some decent traffic from it.

I only link to good quality sites... I think you'll find my site to be high quality as well. In exchange, I would ask that you also link to my site. I've already linked to you and will keep it there for a few days until I hear from you. Please let me know asap if you're interested and i'll send you my information.

Thanks!

And thanks to you, Angela Palmer! I hope your informational website is at least as useful to auto insurance purchasers as mine is. And I hope that, as you continue to develop and improve your site, you start reading the material that comes up in those Google searches you do. It provides that extra level of quality that can make your page stand out.

Of Imagination All Compact - Recently hawks and Bush Administration supporters have been playing up this Washington Post story:

'A Gift From God' Renews a Village
Iraqi Engineers Revitalize Marshes That Hussein Had Drained

While doves and administration critics have highlighted one from the Independent:

US soldiers bulldoze farmers' crops
Americans accused of brutal 'punishment' tactics against villagers, while British are condemned as too soft

In one case, we ameliorate someone else's war crime, in the other we commit our own.

Well, the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. And that's the problem: we've gone into the God business. And we expect to be loved for the giving and - not even given a pass on the taking away - no, we want the Iraqis to love us for destroying their orchards too. Nor are they supposed to remember the actual sequence of events in 1991 that culminated in Saddam's ecological pogrom - the Shi'ite revolt the US encouraged and then allowed Saddam to put down. If they note that, according to the Post article, Iraqi irrigation officials and the occupation authority have only managed to restore about 10% of the original extent of the wetlands so far, they must not connect the 90% that is still parched with US decisions a dozen years ago. They are certainly not to draw parallels between Saddam draining marshes to deprive rebels of cover and punish the locals for rebellion and the US destroying orchards to deprive rebels of cover and punish the locals for rebellion. (The orchard is a lot smaller than the marshes. We're either much nicer or just getting started.) That would be anti-American. And that's what we can't have - Iraqis looking at things like Iraqis, rather than like us.

If they can only start looking at things from our perspective, perhaps they will be gods too.

It is an unalloyed good thing that we have enabled partial restoration of the marshes. That good is embedded in many unalloyed bad things. The real problem is that we have arrogated to ourselves more power than we can possibly use wisely. It's a problem for the rest of the world, but it's a bigger one for us.

(See Electrolite too.)

Happy Birthdays are in order for the Illuminated Donkey, who turned two in blog years last week, and Journalista, a year old as of a few days ago. The Donk and I commenced blogging at almost the same time (the UO anniversary is the 21st of this month, so mark your calendars!) and he'll always have an honored spot on the O.G. list to the left. Dirk Deppey's Journalista is simply the indispensible comics blog.

A note to this site's political readers: you should make Journalista a regular stop - Dirk regularly covers newspaper cartoonists here and abroad who have exceeded local freedom of expression limits.

Don't You Know There's a War On? - Hot Liberty joins the Draft Boy Columnist Ben Shapiro movement.

All Governments Are Gangs. PATRONIZING Gangs. - From YourDictionary.com, Presidential Debates Rank at Grade School Level:

"The results of our analysis indicate that the grade level of the language of political debates, from the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 to current series of presidential debates, has declined from a 12th grade level to a high 7th-grade reading level," said Paul JJ Payack, President and CEO of the Danville, California-based language portal.

Amiable Dunce Watch:

In the Reagan-Mondale debates of 1984, Reagan's arguments averaged a grade level of 9.75, down a grade from his debate with Carter. Mondale's sunk even farther to 8.7.

You have to wonder what the score was on that closing speech about driving along the California coast thinking about the time capsule though. We never will find out where Reagan was going with that one.

The article, alas, has not been updated for the most recent Democratic Presidential debates, nor the ones from the California recall. Enterprising readers are invited to import transcripts into word, clean them up, run the Flesch-Kincaid scores and e-mail me the results, earning fame as a UO e-mailer.

Well, not fame.

Link via Using Bees to Effect Vengeance.

A Brief Reminder That You're Reading This Blog - War is bad.

Weekly Fitness Blog Item - Yeah, a day late. Sorry. (To the people who avoid the blog on Sundays, I mean.) 164 pounds, one pound up from last week's new low. I forgot to take a waist measurement.

MSN has an amusing article comparing good weight loss compliments with bad weight loss compliments. Yeah, let's cut straight to examples of the latter:

"Once I reached goal, my grandmother said several things that were supposedly compliments: She pointed to her back end and said 'You used to be out to here...' Another: 'You have such a better personality now.'"

Bruce Baugh has some excellent diet news. He's down 11 pounds in his first two weeks, which is a solid start. On a related note, Diana e-mails me a link to an AP report of a study that seems to indicate that you really can take in more calories on a low-carbohydrate diet than on a high-carbohydrate diet and still lose as much or more weight.

Critics will note that the Atkins Foundation funded the study. The article asserts that "it had no input into the study's design, conduct or analysis."

The usual caveats apply: newspaper accounts of scientific studies are often simplistic; I haven't seen the study itself; and what matters is neither the funding source or this particular report, but whether the results can be replicated. On that score I make no predictions, but a couple of things jumped out at me:

Two groups were randomly assigned to either lowfat or low-carb diets with 1,500 calories for women and 1,800 for men; a third group was also low-carb but got an extra 300 calories a day. [ . . . ]

Everyone's food looked similar but was cooked to different recipes. The low-carb meals were 5 percent carbohydrate, 15 percent protein and 65 percent fat. The rest got 55 percent carbohydrate, 15 percent protein and 30 percent fat.

Let's crunch some numbers here. 1800 calories, 15% "protien." The article is maddeningly unclear if that's 15% of the mass of the food or 15% of the caloric intake. If the latter, that's about 67 grams of protien a day. Good thing there was no weight training component to this protocol!

The Maybe You're Missing the Whole Point Award goes to Dr. Samuel Klein of Washington University, who "said perhaps the people eating more calories also got more exercise or they were less apt to cheat because they were less hungry."

If it's the latter, Dr. Klein, this is what Atkins and his advocates always advanced as a virtue of the diet - superior satiety. Since other Atkins critics like Fumento dispute that high-fat diets provide superior satiety, Klein's take is itself surprising. As for the possibility that the low-carb proponents got more exercise, it's worth investigating - maybe secret Atkins operatives got their people on the treadmills every day. But let's look at what would have to be true for Klein to be right about that.

Over the twelve-week span of the study, the high-cal, low-carb group lost an average of three pounds more than the low-cal, high-carb group. A pound of fat is about 3500 calories, so that's 10,500 calories over 12 weeks, which is 875 more calories lost per week. In the meantime, the high-cal, low-carb group ate an extra 300 calories per day, which is an extra 2100 per week. (Ignoring Klein's flier about cheating for a moment.) Add the extra intake and the extra outflow together, and the high-cal, low-carb group processed 3,000 more calories per week than the low-cal, low-carb group.

Longtime fitness blog readers know that if you run or walk one mile you burn off - ding! that's right, Mary LaCroix! 100 calories. So for Doctor Klein to be right, the average hi-cal, low-carb participant would have to be doing 30 miles per week more than the low-cal, low-carb dieter.

For twelve weeks.

I'll just bet.

Now, all that said, what do I think this study is really telling us? Here are the key facts: there were 21 participants. It lasted twelve weeks. Everyone picked up their meals at "an upscale Italian restaurant," which cooked them to the specifications of the experimenters. All groups not only lost weight, but lost impressive amounts - even the low-cal, low-carb laggards dropped 17 pounds.

Conclusion: you can lose weight by submitting to small-scale intensive intervention. A diet that skimps on simple starches and processed sugards and is high in fats and oils may be marginally more effective in these short term conditions. But as we've seen in longer and looser studies, the real problem is that people go off the wagon and gain their weight back in the long term. (Needless to say, it's too soon to say I'm not one of those people.) We don't have any studies yet that suggest that low-carb diets solve this larger problem.

Now the pointless personal details: still working my way back into the exercise swing: last week I had one weight session, one intense cardio session, 10 miles of lunchtime walking and two hours splitting wood on Saturday. Sunday, officially the next week, I did a double-length Heavyhands session, toward the end of which I got a bad twinge in my ankle.

Captain America versus the Scalpers of Doom - Columbus Day or no, it was a big day for mail. Philip J. Birmingham writes

Long time listener, first time caller, Jim!

which has to be the coolest possible way to begin a blog e-mail. He continues

You make some good points, but I think you've missed a huge source of resentment concerning scalpers -- they are seen by most people as exacerbating ticket scarcity, and benefitting from it.

I don't know if it's a valid perception, but it's behind a lot of the grumbling about scalpers and ticket brokers.

Matt H. writes

One time John Stossel did a segment or part of it on scalpers, and when he argued with the crowd about how both sides were happy, one participant piped up, to broad assent that "I just dont want him making all that money".

So it is resentment as you are saying.

And Matthew Crane writes

These laws really do screw the average fan.

I do have to make note of the types of people that pursue scalping for a living here in Boston, though. The scalping that occurs around Fenway Park has evolved into a monopolistic syndicate of scalpers who will not allow a ticket to be bought or sold between Kenmore Station and Fenway Park unless THEY are the middleman. It's truly fascinating to see how the system has evolved around Fenway. They are ruthless scumbags whose only "virtue" is that they are willing to risk the occasional arrest and subsequent misdemeanor fine. It's a small price to pay in exchange for the outsized returns they get from rigging a market distorted by a dearth of information created by the anti-scalping laws.

The Fenway situation is a textbook case of how organized-crime syndicates arise when legislators try to repeal supply and demand. Any average fan that tries to sell a ticket in Kenmore Square will be forced to sell to a scalper at the lowball price the professional scalping syndicate sets. Anyone outside the syndicate caught trying to sell to the public will be told in no uncertain terms that this is the scalper's territory and that he'll be pummelled by the scalper and his buddies if he remains. Therefore, Joe Yuppie from Suburb, Massachusetts has one of two choices: try and sell his extra tickets closer to the park where the syndicate doesn't control the turf but where the cops are more vigilant to arrest scalpers, or accept the syndicate's lowball offer.
I wouldn't be surprised if the scalpers and the cops have basically come to an arrangement where there won't be arrests for anyone scalping tickets from Kenmore Square up Brookline Avenue to the Mass Pike bridge.

Repeal the scalping laws, allow fans to sell their tickets in an open, information-rich market, and watch the low-grade organized-crime element to scalping whither away. It will most certainly be a better situation for the fans.

As an aside, I think the day is fast approaching where non-season, individual-game tickets will be sold by ballclubs with dynamic pricing based upon the demand for the game. While that may lock the "average" fan out of a game when the Yankees come to Fenway Park, it probably means that a ticket will be very reasonable when the D-Rays are in town. In any other setup, scalpers WILL get money that could just as easily be in the ballclub's pocket.

This last seems likely. I think I saw something on the net just within the month about various venues moving to a bid system. Ticket pricing will probably evolve in the direction of airline pricing - a welter of different price points etc. People complain about airline pricing but two things are worth remembering:

o Air travel is much cheaper than when I was a callow youth. There really was a time in living memory when only rich people flew.

o Like air travel, live entertainment is a futures market. In the futures markets we're used to thinking about, like agriculture, there is a long lead time to a certain event (a harvest) with an uncertain supply. In the live entertainment business (sports, concerts, theater etc.), you have a long lead time to a certain event with an uncertain demand. In each case, dynamic pricing can cushion the shocks of swings in the uncertain factor. In each case, the supplier - of pork bellies, passage or pastimes - faces substantial fixed costs.

Captain Amerimail came from a number of people. Jesse Walker writes:

What you're really saying, I gather, is that Marvel should catch you now -- you're falling.

Exactly. Did I not bail them out when they were down on their knees? Or am I confusing myself with Ike Perlmutter?

RGB Bill Dowling suggests ending the first Cap movie with the version of Cap's revival seen in the Ultimates series. Everything prior takes place during WWII:

So you can still get the Man Out of Time aspect going at the very end without actually devoting much movie time to it (and you know how those hollywood types love to set up a sequel at the end).

I think the problem here is this: If the first movie is good, if viewers enjoy it, it gets good reviews and it makes money, it's a good movie about a superhero in World War II - a patriotic icon in his element. The ending then commits the second movie to being Something Else Entirely. So even if the second movie is good on some Parnassian scale unrelated to Hollywood's twin gods of popularity and profit, it is good in a different way than the first movie. The studio sets itself up for a serious problem - it can't be sure the audience for the first movie will enjoy the second, because the second won't be providing the same kind of pleasures the first movie did. And it can't be sure the audience that spurned the first movie will give the second one a fair shake - to them it's another damned Captain America film.

Bill makes me think, though, that my prescription was sort of backwards. So let's toss out an alternative:

Start with some variant of the WWII teaser scene I sketched out - Cap helping actual GIs in the field - then cut to the discovery of Cap's frozen body in 2003. Do all necessary WWII stuff as flashbacks. Some temporal jumps, with a lot of looks backward, in the storytelling could actually contribute to the theme. Worst case scenario - the only thing people like about the movie is the WWII scenes. All the reviews say the character only works "in that more innocent time."

So you set the sequel entirely during WWII.

Still to come: Can This Comic Be Saved, thoughts on Captain America as a comics character and solo title.

Yet More Comics Blogging - Dirk Deppey had some fascinating stuff to say about superhero comics and continuity on Friday. I'm just going to pick out one small part to agree with, and leave the rest as an exercise for the reader:

In this regard, working in a shared universe with a long history can only further hobble the aims of the artist. Going back to Morrison's New X-Men, it's interesting that in the current Magneto storyline, no reference is made to the other superheroes based in Manhattan when Magneto tears the city apart. This isn't co