A Little Invective Adds Savor to the Day

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries has a long excerpt of a review of a book by a sociologist.  The last paragraph she quotes goes:

In a blurb, Michael Burawoy, a previous president of the American Sociological Association and a prominent leftist sociologist, calls the book “encyclopedic” in its breadth and “daunting” in its ambition. He states, “Only a thinker of Wright’s genius could sustain such a badly needed political imagination without losing analytical clarity and precision.” With the correction that Wright is no genius and that the book is suffocatingly narrow in scope, impossibly cramped in imagination, and irreparably muddy in execution, the blurb is accurate.

Faceless Bureaucrat Goes to the Birds, and Global Warming

Reston has a custom of bird counting, and the results are just in.   The birds which are most common here, in mid-January, are birds which don't belong here: specifically Canadian geese and American robins.  They both should be south of here, or at least that's my understanding.

A little Googling reveals I'm mistaken, as is much too often the case.  Robins (the males stick around to fight for territory in the spring, the females being wiser head south).

Samuelson on Sex: Funny

“If Casanova is not the definitive authority on sex, neither is a eunuch.”

From a piece on Paul Samuelson, the late MIT economist.

A Test of Open Government

The following language has been included in most recent USDA appropriations acts.  (Do a search in Thomas.loc.gov.)  It's a gag order imposed by the appropriations sub-committee.  It's also a test of whether the Republicans will adhere to their call for open government. Note the language prohibits telling the President or OMB of information provided to appropriations.

Sec 710 of 2010 Ag Appropriations Act

Sec. 710. None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available to the Department of Agriculture or the Food and Drug Administration shall be used to transmit or otherwise make available to any non-Department of Agriculture or non-Department of Health and Human Services employee questions or responses to questions that are a result of information requested for the appropriations hearing process.

AOL and DOD

Matt Yglesias posts on a recent New Yorker article on the  (hoped for) revitalization of AOL, specifically the idea that many people are still paying AOL even though it's not their ISP and it's perfectly possible to use the AOL mail system and the AOL interface without paying. He calls it a "scam".

Why do people do such things? The answer is, of course, there's a tremendous inertia in human affairs.  Many of us don't like change.  Many are lazy.  Many procrastinate. Many value time over money. So the bottom line is we don't do the things we ought to, like changing from AOL, or backing up our hard drives, or changing our passwords every six months, or...

That's true of the government as well.  Just look at the Marines.  They haven't land on a beach since Inchon in 1950, but they were still buying amphibious tanks. 

And it's true of private enterprise as well.  Just look at GM in the 70's, the 80's, the 90's. Then it went bankrupt.

Boeing Can't Do Big Projects Either

The government has problems doing big projects on time and under budget, but so does Boeing.  They just delayed their new plane again: it's now 3 years late. See article.

One Forgets

"Noting that he has survived two craniotomies, Biden said that one's attitude and determination are "an incredible, incredible weapon in dealing with what you're facing."

Not Your Father's GOP--Authority from the UN Charter!!

Some Republicans are turning over in their grave at the first two sentences of this Politico post:

"If Congress had rejected his request for authorization to liberate Kuwait, George H.W. Bush probably would have sent combat troops in anyway.
The most senior members of the former president’s national security team, here for a Thursday night event to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the first Gulf War, said Bush was already intent on moving ahead after August 1990 because he believed the United Nations charter gave him the authority he needed."

The occasion was a reunion of George H.W.Bush's cabinet to talk about the Gulf War. All those people who think the UN is taking over and that politicians believe the UN Charter and foreign treaties supersede American rights now have something to point to.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0111/47928.html#ixzz1BgX1vkQR

Did Obama Benefit from "Tiger Parenting"?

That's a question triggered by an Ian Ayres post at Freakonomics, comparing his parenting style with Dr. Chua's.  (His daughter had to get an article published in a peer-reviewed article at age 8 in order to get a dog.)  Remember Obama's mother waking him at 4:30 to go over his studies?

Republicans To Cut Farm Programs

According to this post, a group of Republicans wants to take the meat cleaver to programs, including farm programs.  What's on their hit list?

The Mohair Program, for a savings of $1 million.
The Sugar Program, for a savings of $14 million.

Yes, that's it.