Life is keeping me very busy lately, so I don’t have time today to start another conversation about my embarrassing ignorance with respect to basic economic theory, or even to recap the most recent West Wing (summary–it was good, and you should have seen it). But I do have time for this.
Here’s a picture of me when I was small enough to fit in luggage:
You can see a couple more hilarious pictures of me here.
I’m so happy that people stopped watching West Wing so they could stop trying to get people to watch the show and get back to writing compelling interesting shows!
It’s pretty sad watching John Spencer, though.
In no particular order:
Asterisk signifies a band that I’ve already seen live and they were so awesome that I would like to see them again.
From last night’s NFC broadcast:
“I think my wife’s more excited about it than what I am”
“They really haven’t gotten Thomas Jones involved in the game plan as much as what I thought that they would”
What are you talking about, Troy Aikman? Why have you started throwing the word “what” into otherwise-sensible sentences? It’s extremely annoying to me! And, speaking of which, why do you and your colleagues keep saying things are “flat [adjective]” (i.e. “Brian Urlacher is flat powerful,” or “Johnny Damon is flat stupid for giving up a lifetime of adulation in New England for an extra few million bucks”)? Is this some kind of bizarre bastardization of the phrase “flat-out”? I think it pretty clearly is, but unfortunately it doesn’t make a lick of sense without the “out” part. And, finally, has anyone noticed how weird Paul Maguire‘s cadence is? I guess he’s not announcing games anymore now that ESPN’s done televising them, but anybody who watched their Sunday night broadcasts can probably remember the strange way Maguire speaks–sort of continually out of breath and somehow throwing hard Hs into random vowel sounds.
I’m basically amazed by how out of it and incoherent most announcers are. I’m sure it’s a lot more difficult than it seems to the viewer, but as far as I can tell almost all these guys do is miss obvious things (“I can’t figure out why he threw that flag!” immediately after a clear late hit, for example) and say obvious things (“the team that wins the points battle has the best chance in this game”) and say suspiciously-nice things (“we sat down together yesterday after practice, and talk about a good guy–Rae Carruth has got to be the gentlest soul in the league”).
And their weird verbal tics are mimetic, spreading throughout the world of sports broadcasting to the point where SteveChris Berman’s highlights end up sounding like this: “Redskins. Dallas. Talk about a rivalry. You think these guys don’t like each other? They flat hate each other. Gibbs, the best tactician in the history not just of the NFL but of organized sports entirely. Parcells, the best motivator since Cleopatra. Last time these football gods went head to head, Mark “Witch’s” Brunell threw an arcing spiral over the secondary and–WHOOP!–that’s a touchdown for Santana “Bana Bo Bana Banana Fana Fo Fanna Rolling Stone Gathers No” Moss!” And Berman’s hardly the only ESPN guy to become an absolute caricature of himself–I’m looking at you here, Stu Scott, Steven A. Smith, and of course Barry “the Mullet” Melrose. Don’t even get me started on Tony Siragusa.
But I guess in the end it doesn’t really matter. We watch sports to see incredible athletes screw up in public, not to nitpick the oratory skill of old men in bad suits. And, for the record, Troy Aikman is probably one of the better football announcers out there, his truly strange abuse of the word “what” notwithstanding.
In other football news, every one of my picks lost this week. I mean, seriously. Never listen to me. Oh well.
We’ll get ‘em next time, Redskins. (Maybe if you change the team name they will win another Super Bowl.)
Lawrence Lessig, while talking about how internet access in America today is slow and expensive, said “[i]f you rely upon “markets” alone to provide infrastructure, you’ll get less of it, and at a higher price.” His point in the item is to suggest that, contrary to the arguments of free-market proponents, things like roads and powerlines and fiber-optic cables work better when the government acts to encourage them. Leaving aside the question of whether internet access is really analagous to interstate highways, I’m curious about Lessig’s assumption that government regulation and investment in infrastructure work better than a pure market served by civilians (public and private corporations, presumably). While I suppose it could be true, I don’t really see why. Is it because there’s limited physical space for infrastructure, or that it’s inefficient to have companies competing for utilities traffic, or that there’s a high risk of collusion in any market for such vital services? Or, more likely, is it something else entirely?
Hopefully some of you smart people can help me out with this.
Also, go Redskins.
Everyone’s picking Seattle to beat Washington in the big game tomorrow. Well, not me. I’m picking DC to win a squeaker. And yes, I’m picking them entirely because I’m a Skins fan. Realistically, Seattle’s offense is too strong for the Skins’ defense to stop, and the Redskins’ offense is a complete disaster. My head says Seattle 27, Washington 10.
But my heart says Washington 20, Seattle 17. Final answer.
You heard it here first (and possibly last).
The year in cities:
Boston, MA*
Washington, DC*
Los Angeles, CA
San Francisco, CA
Oakland, CA
Denver, CO*
Chicago, IL
Madison, WI
Sarasota, FL
New York, NY*
Prague, Czech Republic
Budapest, Hungary
Vienna, Austria
One or more nights spent in each place. Those cities marked with an * were visited multiple times on non-consecutive days.
Anyway, that list is a pretty accurate depiction of the fact that I try to travel often but almost always go to the same places–with the exception of a really great trip to eastern Europe I didn’t go anywhere that I hadn’t already been before. So I think this year I will try to head up north to some of the more mysterious provinces of our domestic partner, Canada! Look out, New Brunswick!
A guy in my class has a myspace blog. It’s filled with homophobic, racist, ethnocentric, chauvinistic, and generally puerile verbiage. It’s vile, hateful, aggressive, and embarrassingly stupid. He uses words like “retard” and “gay” in their playground senses, unselfconsciously and without concern for the fact that his writing is available to everyone on the internet to see (and that it’s linked to his myspace profile, which helpfully lists his location and has a picture of him and generally allows anyone with 15 minutes available to figure out who he is).*
Well, today I did something dumb but pretty excellent. I accidentally sent a link to this guy’s blog to my entire class’s listserv, noting that they should “check it out!”
I feel stupid for accidentally doing this (I replied to an email sent through the listserv, intending it to just go to the original sender, but instead sending it to everyone), but I certainly don’t feel bad about it. I mean, this incident is a perfect example of why bigoted jerks (especially the ones who hold out hope of getting a job someday) should probably keep their prejudiced screeds in private places. As additional evidence of this theory, I’ll just note that at least half of my class had probably already seen or heard about this guy’s blog, even before I accidentally outed him. If you write something sensitive, somebody’s going to read it. I promise.
I know, you’re all waiting for the link, but I’m not going to post it. I may not feel bad about my mistake, but that’s not the same as intentionally repeating it. At any rate, I’d like to believe that this guy’s gotten all the punishment he deserves and will think better of airing such garbage.
Is it hilarious and probably hubristic to post about this entire affair in my own blog? Yeah, I guess so. But, on the other hand, I think I’m a pretty open-minded guy and I’d be hardpressed to find too many examples of this kind of crap in my own writing. And I firmly believe in taking responsibility for your own behavior, certainly including the things you choose to say in public fora.
So let this be a lesson to you: if you write stupid stuff on your blog and think it won’t get out, well, you’re probably wrong.
* Incidentally and unsurprisingly, he also has only a tenuous grasp of the meaning of “blog.” He says things like “I got a lot of comments on yesterday’s blog” when he really means “I got a lot of comments on yesterday’s post” (a lot of comments is never more than 5, FYI) or “I really regret yesterday’s blog, in which I compared a certain minority to a certain pastry” (not an actual quote, but really very plausible).
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