Icthyoterror Watch - The Snakeheads in the Crofton pond have been breeding. This report says the man who started the whole ruckus by reporting his catch of a 26" snakehead last month netted seven fry (that's baby fish, for the icthyoclueless) in the same pond. This Washington Post article says that Maryland authorities have determined the identity of the man who released the original snakeheads into the pond - Steven J. Hatfill. Kidding! The culprit is described as a Hong Kong native. Steven J. Hatfill is from Rhodesia. This article reports that when Maryland Natural Resources Police (Motto: "Drop the Lobster and No One Gets Hurt!") electroshocked the pond they caught another half-dozen babies and estimate that the pond may hold "hundreds." Beyond Maryland, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission reports that snakeheads are reproducing in that state's freshwater systems. Since it looked to Unqualified Offerings on its Florida trips that every single body of water in Florida connects to every other body of water somehow, that could be very bad.
There are two things readers are likely to want to know at this point. First, when will Maryland's snakehead problem start being used as a political metaphor by pundits or politicians? Unqualified Offerings eagerly awaits this phenomenon, and predicts the first appearance within a week or so. UO believes it would have happened already if not for the "Crofton? Who gives a shit about Crofton?" factor.
And: So what's the libertarian line on snakeheads anyway? If you don't believe in government, who's to stop someone from dropping unsociable critters anywhere? Hm, he hmm'd. Actually, the government's role so far has been discovering the problem after the fact and identifying the culprit. The culprit will suffer exactly nothing at the State's hands, as the law provides for a mere $40 fine and the statute of limitations is only two years. In a regime of real property rights, destroying the sporting value of a body of water by killing all the other fish would be a leadpipe lock for a tort - if the state had advanced to the point of having real property rights in water flows and fish, that is. Maryland has even rejected tradable catch permits for oystermen.
But a tort only gets you so far too: How much money does this guy have, really? In our current, expansive legal climate, you could probably put a case together against the importers or distributors, who would have deeper pockets. But libertarians tend to think our current litigation climate is ridiculous, so would that option exist After the Revolution?
So both the libertarian and statist regimes have trouble here, and both have resources. The statist regime (and if there was ever a statist regime it's the Maryland government) can use tax money and public resources in the cleanup - up to the limit of interest group and politician commitment. It's the kind of "neutral" (unless you're a snakefish), transparent, minimalist intervention that even most Hayekian libs can accept. (UO certainly can.) Sort of the "Night Watchman" state that watches not just for bad people but for bad fish. Under the expanded regime of property rights that libertarians favor, not only would there be the threat of tortionate liability to deter this kind of action, the "owners" who valued existing sportfishing opportunities would have as much incentive to seal the beachhead as the State agencies do now, and they would be able to call on institutions that evolved to serve the needs of that climate.
Now if you ask what is objectively bad about an invader species like the snakehead, and who gets to decide, and whether snakehead proliferation is "dynamism" and snakehead defense "stasist," well, that's a whole other can of worms.
As it were.
Change of Fortune - Bruce Baugh has moved Writer of Fortune to a new domain. Adjust your bookmarks accordingly. He has an interesting amplification and response to a Junius item about the relationship of liberalism and libertarianism. (Junius: There ain't one. Baugh: That's only sort of true.) Baugh:
Libertarianism - essentially, the non-coercion principle and the principle of neutrality - is not a complete political philosophy, not in the sense that liberalism, conservatism, Marxism, fascism, and the like are. It's a doctrine about the role of the state in society. It is not a doctrine about the nature of the good society.
Strange Bedfellows - The World Socialist Web Site comes out against the boycott of Israeli academics.
WSWS.org is, unlike Unqualified Offerings, opposed to Zionism itself. But the authors writeBaker took care to make clear that her decision was “political, not personal”. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the two were thrown out of their positions solely for being Israeli citizens. Dr. Schlesinger previously held the post of chairperson of Amnesty International in Israel, and has regularly been involved with the activities of the Peace Now group, defying Israeli army blockades to deliver supplies to Palestinian towns in the West Bank. But even if they did not hold progressive political views, no one should ever fear persecution as a result of their nationality, their ethnicity or their religion.
There is quite a lot about how "the Israeli state...functions as an armed garrison of US imperialism in the Middle East." These are socialists. But they're head and shoulders above the "infantile leftism" they criticise. Would that Richard Dawkins could say the same.We would ask those who would lend support to such actions: consider very carefully the signals that are being sent out, however inadvertently, given that in Europe we are already witnessing physical attacks on Jewish people, as well as synagogues and cemeteries, by Arab youth who view this as a legitimate expression of solidarity with the Palestinians. Nothing must be done that lends the slightest legitimacy to such backward sentiments.
The action against the two academics in any case treats Zionism as if it was simply a question of personal morality and shows no understanding of the complex struggle against a political tendency whose ascendancy was rooted in a retrograde response to the tragic experience of European Jewry.
(Link via Antiwar.com.)
Anthraxblog Redux - Nicholas Kristof continues to seem somehow offended that the FBI doesn't follow up obvious leads in the Anthrax matter, in this case two fake terror mailings from the 1990s - one to B'nai B'rith HQ in 1997 and a round of, why yes! hoax mailings to media and government in 1999. Kristof says
Kristof doesn't consider the possibility that the FBI hasn't pursued these leads because it has already cleared "Mr. Z" (Steven J. Hatfill) or has established that the attacks are definitely the work of someone else. But then, what are the odds?Two outside consultants used by the F.B.I. to examine documents in the anthrax case, Don Foster and Mark Smith, both say they have not been shown the 1997 or 1999 hoax letters. The 1999 envelopes carried stamps, which may have been licked.
It would be fascinating to know whose DNA that is. Perhaps when the F.B.I. is finished defending itself from charges of lethargy, it will check
Shanksville - When you get out of your car at the Temporary Flight 93 Memorial, you notice that the two port-o-johns have graffiti on them. You are, if you are like my wife and I, momentarily disconcerted.
Then you get close enough to read the graffiti. It is thank-you notes and blessings. There are maybe a hundred feet of shiny, recently-installed guard rail enclosing three sides of the memorial area. Every square foot of guard rail also bears graffiti: thank-you notes and blessings. Not just the front of the guard rail.The struts. The back too, inside the concave part where you have to squat to write, and likely fight the universal tendency of pen points to dry out when pointed upward.
It's that important to visitors to find some place to express their gratitude, sorrow and admiration.
Do not think that guard rails and port-o-johns are all the writing surfaces available. There are two large message boards on maybe twenty feet of chain link fence. We brought hand flags from Ligonier for each of us - my wife, my six-year-old and my toddler. We were able to add ours to the other flags, ribbons, plastic-sealed notes and flowers on the fence, but only at the cost of covering someone else's flags and ribbons, as ours will surely be covered in turn. A Las Vegas pipefitters' local t-shirt hangs near the top right. There is one bronze plaque with the names of the passengers and crew, with thanks and blessings, a couple of more portable but durable plaques have been placed around the memorial area - one from Guatemala. There are around four-dozen little wooden angels in a small plot to the left - few will find "tackiness" a meaningful category while they are there.
Every inch of the message boards is covered with thanks and blessings. You think you see an open spot, but it turns out that writing there has simply almost faded from view.
The site is beautiful and this morning a perfect morning to be there. The memorial area is toward the top of a long hill northeast - if I kept my bearings - of Shanksville proper. ("Is it just me," my wife asked, "or are there more flags out here than there were in Ligonier?" It was not just her.) A series of highly-visible but tasteful placards lead you to the site. As you come over the hill above the memorial you see what appears to be a junk yard to the right with some heavy machinery. After a minute, you realize that the volume of material is many times what a plane wreck could account for: unrelated. At the base of the hill to the left is a farm pond. At the base of the slope downhill from the memorial, another hill rises away from you, this one wooded. Not ten yards from the back rail of the memorial, the signs: POSTED: PRIVATE PROPERTY, but also RESTRICTED AREA. There were about 50 people there this morning, some arriving and some departing every few minutes.
There is essentially nothing in the way of official guidance or background on site, no brochures or docents or crash maps. Just as I was wondering how close we were to the site of the crash, I noticed that one woman speaking authoritatively to a small group of people. It became clear from her account that she had done volunteer salvage work last fall and knew the ground. If you get the chance to go yourself, she may not be there. So know that, toward the bottom of the hill, you see a large area fenced with chain link that roughly parallels the woods. In front of the chain link fence is a large flag, much bigger than any in the memorial area, flapping about ten feet from the ground. You might be surprised that the pole is so low for a flag that size. That spot, maybe 300 yards from you, marks the impact crater.
The crater itself is gone - filled in, planted over, healed. I found myself glad. And glad of something else. The men who fought for control of that plane didn't just give us back our self-respect on the very morning we looked to lose it, nor simply write their own names onto the log of heroes. (And if you can find a less grandiloquent way to speak that truth, by all means do so.) They also expunged their tormentors and captors from the rolls. There is no list of the hijackers among the dead. No memorials for them, no small wooden angels, no blessings. Here they have been made minions. But not only here.
Mohammed Atta. You've heard of him. Marwan al-Sheffi likewise. Hanji Hanjour. But who other than an obsessive can name a single hijacker on Flight 93? They were thrust into the shade when they believed they were achieving glory. The thought is as cheering as any I know.
What I wrote, when I found a spot, was bad latin but sincere enough: E PLURIBUS UAL93 UNUM. What I thought has to do with that, but wouldn't fit in two square inches of space. It's bound up in uncertainties and doubts about life after death and just rewards. What would be fitting for the men who fought for us? One thinks, oddly, of Valhalla, of the brave fighting joyfully in a good cause, then rising to feast between bouts. But the Valhalla concept presupposes worthy opponents, and that the men of Flight 93 lacked.
If I had one wish for them, it would be that for at least a moment of calm beyond their deaths, they could see themselves as we see them. I very much doubt that they had time or even the inclination, while coming to their decision, hashing out their plan of attack and then working fury on their murderers, to think "We are good men to be doing this, brave men to be doing this," or "We must do this because we are good, we must do this because we are brave. We are strong to do this / We must do this because we are strong." But good and brave and strong they were. We wish we could tell them. On boards and rails and bathroom walls, we settle for telling each other.
Kasswatch - The cloning beat is usually Virginia Postrel's territory, but Unqualified Offerings hopes to advance the debate with relevant facts. La Familia Offering spent a day at the Idlewild and Soak Zone amusement park complex, and passed several hours at the Soak Zone pool. Here is the thing: Any number of critics want to ban human cloning. But Unqualified Offerings observed numerous, viable Venus of Willendorf clones with its own eyes.
Apparently, the Anna Kournikova Cloning Program is not so well advanced. Having come so far, don't we owe it to science to see the endeavor through?
Returned, Fishing - La Familia Offering returns! There was at least a brief time when the matter was in doubt. We booked a room at a thoroughly non-descript motel on US30 just east of Ligonier, the ABC Motel. Not so posh as a Super 8, but clean and bug-free, with an incredibly kind and helpful proprietress.
Out the back window of our room was a stream.
"How's the fishing in the stream out back?" Unqualified Offerings asked the proprietress.
"Good for trout, good for bass," she said, or perhaps sung. It turned out that the stream was the Loyalhanna, one of the best trout waters in Western Pennsylvania. UO soon discovered a little shack just west of town, the Loyalhanna Fishing Outpost, run by another very helpful person, who outfitted this site with some locally-made lures and said by all means, just fish the stretch behind his shop if UO felt like it.
Since this was a family vacation and the rest of the family has a viable fishing antibody count, UO satisfied its fishing needs by rising at around 5:30 and hitting the water from 6 to 8:30, returning just as the slugabeds it travels with were managing to rouse themselves. Caught three bass one morning, got skunked the other. Learned again, the reason people flyfish - all those stretches of streams that you otherwise can't fish without hanging your lure up on the bottom. (UO was not flyfishing.)
Other matters will be the matter of other items. UO just wanted to let Chad Orzcel of Uncertain Principles unburden himself of the chore of being unofficial, volunteer Unqualified Offerings for the week.
Gone, But Not Fishing (Much) - And now it is time for this site to take a brief hiatus. La Familia Offering will be out of town for a couple of days. IF there is public internet access in the vicinity of Ligonier PA, there might be a new offering here or there. Otherwise, to coin a phrase, TTFN.
No information on who might take on the role of unofficial, substitute Unqualified Offerings at this time.
Department of Seductive Explanations - Andrew Sullivan notes that British Academic Mona Baker is Egyptian by birth. Something about the way he points this out feels...icky.
Sugar and Spice and Chemical X - Reader/adjunct fellow Kevin Maroney writes to commend another PPG Movie easter egg, a "Lions - Tigers - Bears" sign during the Zoo scene. He aso recommends the following episodes:
Sat 13 12:00 AM Powerpuff Girls: Meet the Beat Alls; Moral Decay 32 TOON
Sat 13 3:30 AM Powerpuff Girls: Meet the Beat Alls; Moral Decay TOON Sat
Unqualified Offerings happened to catch "The PowerPuff Girls' Best Rainy Day Adventure Ever!" yesterday, and was delighted. Trapped inside by the weather with no crooks to fight, the girls decide to play what amounts to a PowerPuff Girls roleplaying game.
It's worth mentioning that Offering Boy was initially shy about admitting his interest in the Girls. He was visibly relieved when Mommy and Daddy made clear that it was OK to like them. So, naturally, Unqualified Offerings decided to embarrass its son before the movie, asking, "Offering Boy, do you think the PowerPuff Girls are cute?"
"Well," he said, "not Blossom and Buttercup. But Bubbles is cute."
Bubbles is the one who cries a lot, which makes UO wonder what OB's dating years are going to be like.
Maybe Settlements Aren't the Only Issue. The Israeli cabinet has approved a bill to build houses on state-owned land that its Arab citizens will be forbidden to buy. Labor and Meretz promise to oppose the bill in parliament, but only one of the Labor ministers in the coalition government voted against the measure in the cabinet. The rest abstained or walked out.
Cue ironic "Israel: Libertarian Paradise" promotional video.
Metacontext Alert - On EUobserver.com, Britain's Peter Hain is quoted as saying, "Europe cannot be run any longer by the old model."
The metaconext here, of course, is that "Europe" needs to be "run."
(Link via More Than Zero.)
Istanblog to the Rescue - Cyberspace's top Turkish analyst responds to the urgent signal this site sent up yesterday - or, if you're to believe him, got back from his vacation. He has not one but two items analyzing the current Turkish political crisis. The first one discusses the crisis itself, the second its likely impact on America's War on or with various ideas or parties.
Sugar and Spice and Twenty Bucks with Snacks - UO took Offering Boy to see The PowerPuff Girls Movie this weekend and can report that there are far worse ways to spend one's time, even as an adult. UO is vaguely aware that the PPGs are considered a dire phenomenon by some flavor of scold or other, but isn't sure why. What's not to like about fiesty kindergarteners using their superpowers to save the world from evil genius monkeys?
Unqualified Offerings was under the vague impression that maybe someone considered the Girls somehow antifeminist, which is weird, because of that fiestiness already mentioned. There may also be an irony-deficiency problem with some of their detractors.
Here's the thing about the PowerPuff Girls: It's secretly South Park for tots. Give the aging process a few years and they won't look out of place in line to get their lunches from Chef. Buttercup already gives every impression of having to keep an incipient potty mouth under control.
The movie is a full-on "origin of" as you might expect. Cityscapes do come out the worse for wear, so if your child is a simp especially sensitive about the unpleasantness of last fall, you might want to give it a miss.
Best Easter Egg for adults: a sweet, clueless talking dog falls into the robot mitts of a giant gorilla, and Buttercup - or was it Blossom? - oh hell, whichever, shouts, "Get your paws off him, you darn dirty ape!" You have to remember Charlton Heston in a certain simian-heavy movie to get that one, but if you have kids of the age to be PowerPuff Girls fans, you probably do.
I also liked the animation, and the moral, which is that sometimes violence self-defense is the only practical and ethical response to a threat.
Why Andy Warhol Leaves - Eve Tushnet has a fascinating meditation on Seattle, Pittsburgh and the "creative class" that starts with academic research and ends, as usual for Eve, with original, surprising thought.
Suggested soundrack for Eve's post: Lou Reed and John Cale's Songs for Drella, especially the first number, "Small Town," in which Andy Warhol answers the musical question...
As always there's a political angle here, though politics is not Eve's concern in her own post. Unqualified Offerings long since became convinced that among the things "liberalism" has become is revenge. A lot of the bicoastal policy class actually come from flyover country, but they leave mad. They're gay or brainy or ugly or bad athletes, or all at once. They have rough childhoods and come to the government or the media with a grudge. UO attended many parties with such people in its youth, so it knows what it's talking about here. (UO also fits snugly in two or three of the adduced categories.) They shouldn't oughtn't to be like that. But the heartland could help itself out by treating these folks better while they have the chance.When you're growing up in a small town
You know you'll grow down in a small town
There is only one good use for a small town
You hate it and you'll know you have to leave
An Open Letter to Mona Baker - John Braue provides the e-mail address of University of Manchester academic Mona Baker, who fired two Israeli scholars from her journals for being - Israeli. John suggests that others may wish to use Dr. Baker's address to express their views. Here is the letter I sent this evening. There is no salutation here because all the possibilities seemed either unduly respectful or gauche on my part.
As an American supporter of a two-state solution for the Levant and an end to US aid to Israel, and an opponent of widening the "war on terror," I found your decision to fire two Israeli academics for reasons unconnected to their work to be repugnant. You are the very model of the modern petty tyrant and I am deeply shamed to find myself sharing opinions with you in any way.
I realize that you must feel a deep connection to the middle east, given that you share the region's enthusiasm for collective guilt and taking out one's frustrations on only the most tangentially-relevant targets. How sad, though, to find you launching your little academic pogrom from the birthplace of liberalism itself, a liberalism antithetical to the animating impulses of your behavior. But then, even the Yin hemisphere, in Chinese iconography, has its small dot of Yang.
Or perhaps it is a stain.
Sincerely,
Jim HenleyJim Henley, 09:49 PM
USA-PATRIOTism - Jim at Objectionable Content finds a link to the full text of the USA-PATRIOT Act and "decide[s] to realize the ideal of participatory government and read the legislation that my duly elected representatives have enacted." That puts him one step ahead of his (and your and my) duly elected representatives, who enacted said legislation before reading it.
Jim does not much like what he finds himself reading. And it's not just that what he does understand says about our liberty, though he finds enough of that. Worse is what he doesn't or can't understand:
The opacity of our laws has become at least as big a threat to liberty and official accountability as any of their contents. He also provides a link to an online petition calling for the Act's repeal. UO is skeptical of online petitions. But if Mohamad Hedayet is the best our enemies can do, it's long past time to sunset this monstrosity. Unqualified Offerings is signature 1483.I gave up well before the end of the document. As you can see, it's nearly impossible for a lay citizen to read a piece of legislation today and understand its impact. Like other legislation, many of the PATRIOT Act's provisions are worded and implemented as changes to existing law. Trying to determine what rights you are gaining or losing under the act is a serious project...
Hey Ref! What're You, Blind? - Uncertain Principles has a long, interesting insider's perspective on what peer review entails, its pitfalls and its strengths.
None Dare Call It Quagmire Dept. - Here we go. "President Bush vowed yesterday to bring stability to Afghanistan after the assassination of the country's vice president, Abdul Qadir." Liberal capitalism has brought forth wonders unseen. (Not that liberal capitalism has much to do with the Bush Administration, or vice verse.) But stability in Afghanistan! That's pushing it, wonder-wise.
Your medium-term forecast: foggy with an increasing chance of truck bombs toward fall.
Unqualified Offerings was afraid of this.
Activate the Istanblog Signal! - Mass resignations in the Turkish government! Cyberspace wonders, What does it all mean? The one man who can tell us hasn't posted since June 27...
(Link via Airstrip One.)
Just Like Odysseus Only - Not - Ken Goldstein of the Illuminated Donkey went looking for America at - South of the Border? Pedro says, "What's up with that?"
Ken actually has several items about his holiday trip, including a chance for you, yes, you to win valuable prizes.
Tragic waste of an opportunity department: He made it to Georgia, but apparently not to Jack's Wood-Cooked Barbecue. You wouldn't catch Unqualified Offerings making that mistake.
Do the Math - Airstrip One learns that "Britain is preparing to devote 30 000 troops to toppling Saddam" and doesn't like it one bit.
Old School Watch - Miss the old UO template? (The sudden influx of Instapundit-generated traffic scratches its head. "What old UO template?" it asks. "Isn't this site new?") The Pure Green Cause has been taken up by CognoCentric, a new conservablogger who appears to have gotten the inspiration to blog from Moira Breen.
The proprietor, Carey Gage, has a long post about Hedayat and hate crimes, among other things.
UO Colonialism Watch -Kathy Kinsley weighs in on the recent Reynolds-Henley discussions of "war on terror" versus "war with..." well, but that's the question, as Kathy realizes. Unlike Unqualified Offerings, her site has comment functionality, and I've added a comment to her post that provides a summary of my thinking on the matter. Think of it as UO's settlement in Kathy's territory.
(Unqualified Offerings will never have comments. Send me an e-mail instead.)
DON'T Bet on the Races! Dept. - Old Flintstones fans (and no one else) will guess that this item is about tipping. There's a semi-interesting article from the Munster, Indiana Times available through Microsoft's bCentral today about this vexed and vexing question. Unqualified Offerings did not know, and was dismayed to find out
AndThe downturn in the economy caused people to tip less, too, Wisowaty said.
She's seen lots of people leaving only 10 percent, and that's not changing.
If there's one thing Unqualified Offerings can't stand, it's bad tippers. Years ago, a friend of UO said something this site has tried to live by ever since: "The difference between a decent tip and a really good tip is usually small enough that the karmic gain is more than worth it." UO never goes above 33%, but tends to start around 25% and work up or down from there depending on the qualitiy of the experience. If UO tips less than 20%, it means it did not have a good time. (This site's non-negotiable demand? It should never have to ask to have its drink refilled. That should happen like magic.)She said the going rate of tipping at Phil Smidt's is 15 to 18 percent during dinner, but waitresses on the lunch hour aren't always so lucky.
"They might leave the person a dollar or two when the bill would be like $30, so not even 10 percent there," she said.
That said, UO abominates the proliferation of tip cups at counter service establishments. This baleful meme must be crushed. If you go to a sit-down restaurant, even a cheap one, you're getting a theoretically hassle-free experience - they set the table, they fill your drinks, they bring your food, they clear the crap away when you're done. In return for that, your culturally well-understood role is to pay most of the waitperson's salary. At a counter, you set your own table (or carry out), may well fill your own cup, carry the food yourself and are most likely responsible for busing your own table. And the counter-person is making two to three times the base wage a waiter makes.
Now then, why is the article only semi-interesting? For one thing, while the lede promises a comprehensive look at tipping across all sectors of the economy
the body of the article concentrates exclusively on restaurant service, surely the most widely understood arena of tipping. Is the one-dollar-per-pie rule of thumb for pizza delivery widely accepted on both sides of the transaction? What should you tip a mover? Your barber? The Munster Times ain't going to tell you.Some days it seems like everyone's expecting a tip.
Hands get held out at the car wash, at the local diner and even by the clown at a child's birthday party. Then we put money in them.
The elephant in the article's room is sex. Instead we get some vague talk of "social rapport." The closest it comes to the subject is to note that genderless waitpersons who touch the customer, "for example on the shoulder," get larger tips. Unqualified Offerings believes it's folly to try to seriously consider any sales-related question apart from eros.
One of the most intriguing passages in The Constitution of Liberty is the section I think of as "Hayek's Shopgirl." In discussing the ways the market economy allows self-sortation rather than relying on the kind of centralized requirements that inevitably distort individual cases, Hayek offers the hypothetical example of a young woman who wants to be a salesgirl in a department store "even though she is not pretty." Hayek argued that the woman may have the motivation and the countervailing qualities that would make her a success, even if she didn't get all the checks on the list he could imagine a Central Employment Bureau drawing up for that job.
UO always figured that feminist critics would have a field day with that particular passage. Not only is the language the language of the mid-century patriarchy, not only does he acknowledge that the woman's looks would be considered a criterion for getting such a job, but his imagined woman's ambition is so...collaborationist. But what Hayek is actually doing is acknowledging not just the reality of the time, but the continuing relevance of sex appeal to sales. This is true for men and women. He's taking the young woman's ambitions seriously on her own terms. (We can't all be Adrienne Rich.) And he's pointing out that her looks will be a factor in performance, but not a dispositive one.
Back to the article. On the "well, duh" front, the author writes
Given that restaurant tips are calculated from the amount of the bill, and that the variance range for service quality is much smaller than the base calculation, I'm not sure who is supposed to be surprised by this.But forget the old myth that the size of the tip depends on customer service, Lynn said.
"Customers' ratings of service are as strongly related to tipping as to how it's sunny outside or not," he said. "It's what people say is the biggest factor, but people don't always know why they do the things they do."
According to Lynn, 70 percent of a tip left in a restaurant can be explained by the size of the bill.
"That means bill size is twice as powerful as everything else combined," he said.
But Unqualified Offerings has a theory of its own - that most of the variance in service quality is also structural. UO hypothesizes that diners get their best service from moderately busy wait-individuals. If even the best waitron gets swamped, you're doomed. If even a good waiter has hardly anyone to pay attention to, he'll tend to hang around the counter shooting the breeze with other staffers, and lose track of his patrons.
How Shall We Tell the Iron from the Irony Dept. - Reader Fred Boness writes that Wednesday's item on the etymology of iron and irony "reminded me of the Spider Robinson short story 'God is an Iron.' The title comes from the analogy that an iron is one who commits irony in the same sense that a felon is one who commits felony."
The official Spider Robinson website is here. Note that Robinson once gave Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly a wrongheadedly bad review, so he should be considered fallible.
Congratulatory Note - Blogging, book-writing, game-designing and editing Bruce Baugh has won - co-won, actually - an Origins award for the best new roleplaying game of 2001, the pulp-oriented Adventure. UO's roleplaying group - motto: Protecting the Homeland Since Mid-2002 - has more than one Adventure fan in it.
From the Department of Late Hits: Soccer - For those easily annoyed by bicoastal leftism (that would be Unqualified Offerings) and the the clubbiness of what can fairly be called the New York Literary Establishment, it can be hard to appreciate just what a good journal the New York Review of Books frequently is. The current issue has a good piece about soccer (aka "association football" in a few scattered corners of the world) by Tim Parks. Parks lives in Italy, and his article discusses the relationship of club-level competition to the World Cup, hooliganism, nationalism and the Coubertin-inspired quest for international athletic brotherhood. His central thesis, and he means it in the nicest possible way (sort of) is that soccer's animating emotion is hate:
He suggests that the placid scene at the Korea-Japan Cup was partly achieved by displacing the actual hooliganism to places like Moscow, where riots followed Russia's lost to longtime rival (in soccer et al) Japan. Then he considers whether the integrity of the game can stand apart from the passions that feed it:Always a favorite to win the World Cup, Italy thus often seems lukewarm and ambivalent toward its national team. At a recent local game, more than one fan told me they would be rooting against the national side during the World Cup. "The national team is made up of players from the big clubs, Juventus and Roma and Inter Milan. We can't hate them all year round and then support them in summer just because they're playing for Italy."
The word "hate" turns up in private conversation in relation to soccer in a way it never seems to do in the quotable media, which froth with noble sentiments as the big "festival of football" approaches. Immediately after interviewing me for national radio about a book I have written on Italy and fandom, the journalist removes his headphones and remarks: "You know, the wonderful thing about soccer is that it's the only situation left where you really feel you have an enemy, someone you can hate unreservedly, someone you don't have to make compromises with. Even with the terrorists you have to worry about whether you're indirectly responsible for their extremism." "Why didn't you say that on air?" I asked. He laughed. Clearly mine was a rhetorical question.
There's also a good review (by John K. Leonard) of Stanley Fish's latest book on Milton. If you like that sort of thing. And Unqualified Offerings does.With the ugly crowds tamed, at least in and around the stadium, the TV cameras free to concentrate entirely on the game, what do we see on the field of play? I know of no other sport where cheating is so endemic, condoned, and ritualized as soccer, where lying and bad faith are more ordinarily the rule. Every single decision is contested, even when what has happened is clear as day. A player insists he didn't kick the ball off the pitch when everybody has seen that he has. Another protests that the ball has gone over the line when everybody has seen that it hasn't. Passed by an attacker in full flight, a defender grabs the man's shirt, stops him, then immediately denies that he has done so. Unable to pass his defender, the striker runs into him and promptly falls over, claiming that he has been pushed.
Only a few minutes into the Denmark– Senegal match the players were exchanging blows. During the Turkey– Brazil game, with play temporarily stopped, an angry Turkish player kicked the ball at the Brazilian Rivaldo, voted best player in the world in 1999. Hit on the knee (by the ball!), Rivaldo collapsed on the ground pretending he had been violently struck in the face. The referee sent off the Turkish player, eliminating him from the game. In an interview afterward Rivaldo claimed this was a normal part of football. The organizers, who had said they would be tough on such dishonest behavior, fined Rivaldo $7,000, perhaps a day's pay for a soccer star, but they wouldn't suspend him for even one game. It is crucial for TV revenues that Brazil make progress in the competition.
As always, if you want to read the articles online, read them fast - all NYRB items rotate into the pay archives after a few weeks.
News That Stays News - It was around a quarter-century ago that Warren Zevon wrote, in "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner"
Note that the CIA decides to have Roland offed not because he's mercenary scum, but because he's good at it. Zevon's thesis that our intelligence bureaucracy has a horror of competence seems to have been borne out since.His comrades fought beside him - Van Owen and the rest
But of all the Thompson gunners Roland was the best
So the CIA decided they wanted Roland dead
That son-of-a-bitch Van Owen blew off Roland's head
Rorschach Events I - Gary Farber coined or revived this term the other day. It's a good term. Let's use it to consider the LAX shooting.
o The Israeli government says the incident must be an act of organized terrorism, likely connected to al Qaeda.
o The Egyptian government says it must be a dispute over money; they say El Al hired Hedayet's limo service and were slow to pay.
o Neighbors who knew Hedayet make the murders sound like a hate crime.
The Israelis are pretty clearly talking throught their hats. Unless they were spying on Hedayet in the US, they simply have no clue. Their pose that things are otherwise is annoying.
The Egyptians are making a claim of fact that should be easy enough to verify: El Al either did or did not hire Hedayet and did or did not pay. But they're also pretty obtuse:
But there might be any number of dark psychological reasons why a bigot would take temporary service with those he hates. And in this economy, every businessman is dealing with multiple slow-payers. It takes a little something extra to decide to blow the representatives of one particular delinquent away."We are sure that he had no connection with extremist organizations. He is a pious Muslim, but he is not at all extremist. The proof of this is that he agreed to work with the Israeli company El Al," Omda said.
In the first official Egyptian reaction to the shooting, Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher said Saturday that he believed Hadayet carried a personal grudge.
The superficial case for hate-crime status is strong - middle-aged man suffering financial reversals striking out at the ethnic other. The glove fits. It's the logical first suspicion. I suspect it's true. But even that could be wrong.
What's interesting is to see the different actors - Israel, Egypt, hate-crime skeptic but anti-Jihadist conservatives - trimming Hedayet's crime to fit their agendas.