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Dude.
I think the last time I geeked out this hard was when I was standing in front of Steven Spielberg at Sam Goody…while buying Close Encounters…
Jamie posted this at 6:46 PM EST on Monday, March 8th, 2010 as Ourselves, There Is Only One God And Jonah Goldberg Is His Prophet
For five years I lived in greater Los Angeles. I regarded driving on the freeways as something between a chore and hell on earth, depending on the time of day. Not so coincidentally, I’ve recently realized, I drove cars that were not particularly fun.
This week I’m visiting my in-laws in one of the L.A. burbs, and I brought with me a rather fun car. Frankly, I’m blown away by how fantastic it is to drive here. So long as there’s no traffic, every time you get on the freeway the left two lanes are like entering a race. The speed limit in the carpool lane is “as fast as the guy in front of you,” and if there’s speed enforcement in the other lanes, it’s pretty sporadic. The drivers, reputation aside, are at least as skilled and attentive as anywhere I’ve driven. And no matter how fast you go, someone will pass you. I originally thought that there was a de facto speed limit, imposed by the dilapidated state of the roads, of 85, but a rather exhilarating drive to the airport tonight suggests that that’s wrong. The faster you drive, the more bumps you skim over.
I’m not sure that driving this way on a daily basis would be good for my health, my fuel mileage, or my insurance premium, and it might get old after a while (though probably not). Objectively, there’s enough traffic to more than compensate for the occasional bursts of speed (on the way back from the airport, twice I was going so slow that my Garmin asked if I wanted to enter “Pedestrian Mode”).
But as a once-a-year visitor who can pick the hours he drives – wowee this is fun!
Apollo posted this at 3:33 AM EST on Friday, January 1st, 2010 as Amer-I-Can!, Ourselves
I am not what you would call an audiophile. I don’t obsess over my meticulously cataloged music files in .FLAC format, I don’t own $500 headphones, and I don’t buy all my albums in vinyl because “the music just has more soul, man.” That said, I was recently lent a copy of The Beatles Mono Box Set from a friend of mine.
Holy Crap.
To say that this was an entirely different experience is putting it mildly, it was like hearing many of these songs for the first time. Over the course of the day, and evening, it became quite clear that most of these songs were never meant to be heard in any other format. They were written, arranged and mixed for mono sound and to hear them the way they were intended is to hear the true genius of the greatest band of all time.
I highly reccomend this box set for any true fan of The Beatles (stereo…blech) I know I will need to buy it as my friend is expecting his copy back today.
And rightly so!
Jamie posted this at 10:28 AM EST on Tuesday, December 15th, 2009 as Nerdom, Ourselves
It seems that TSA’s Standard Operating Procedures manual (or, at least a version of the SOP dated May 2008) got released online. Some years ago when I was a member of the national security apparatus (either as a James Bond-like secret agent whose job was to win poker games and bang models in Monaco, or as a schlub in northern Virginia who wrote training manuals for airport baggage screeners; my memory’s hazy on some of the details) I had access to that document and probably read most of it. I’m anxiously waiting to find out which contractor posted it – it may well be someone I know. How exciting!
Anyhow, reading the now-released details that are supposedly the most revealing, I have the exact same reaction that I had back when I worked on such matters: 1. It’s hard to think of a concrete way how someone could use specific details of screening techniques to defeat the screening process; but 2. the most important information in the book is how un thorough the screening actually is.
One of our great advantages in battling terrorists is that terrorists aren’t very bright and don’t seem capable of solid analytical reasoning. Anyone who flies a half dozen times a year knows exactly how spotty the screening can be. Immediately after I quit my job working on airport security issues, the wife and I went to France for a month. When we got to Paris I got to looking for something in the backpack I’d used as a carryon, and I found but a box cutter we’d used while packing. Ask anyone who flies regularly, and they’ll have a half dozen of those stories. I was disappointed that I’d made it onto an international flight with a box cutter, but I wasn’t surprised (well, I was surprised that it was in my backpack, but I wasn’t surprised I made it through security).
I’m not saying the screening process is a completely wasted effort. Nor am I saying that we need a significantly more complete screening process – a nation of frequent fliers like America would not tolerate El Al levels of scrutiny on every Des Moines to Chicago flight. But I am saying that a big part of why we’ve spent eight years without an act of air terrorism is because the baddies aren’t very good at calculating their odds of success. To the degree that releasing the SOP allows them to precisely calculate those odds, we’re less safe today than we were last week. However, I just don’t think many terrorists are smart enough to figure that out. Three cheers for ignorance and irrationality in the Muslim world!
Apollo posted this at 9:45 PM EST on Thursday, December 10th, 2009 as Global War on Terror, Liberty and/or Security, Ourselves
This review of a Ford Fusion Hybrid provides the best description I’ve yet to read about what it’s like to drive a hybrid. This could just as easily apply to my Civic:
Like other hybrids, the Fusion has a profound effect on the driver that can only be properly compared to a personalized regimen of mood stabilizers, anti-anxiety pills and attention-deficit medication. Leaving town through Friday rush hour congestion would normally be a cut-and-thrust exercise for me, an id-tickling campaign of maximum effort leading only to minor advantages in speed and lane placement. That’s just how I roll. But despite believing deeply that traffic is a battle to be fought, I found the Fusion guiding me towards a center lane. There, the Fusion settled into a sedate, nay, a mature pace. I found myself focusing on the battery levels, indicated mpg, and accelerator level. Sure, the point of a hybrid is to be driven efficiently, but there’s more to it than that. Like any good psychotropic cocktail, the Fusion Hybrid leaves you wondering what happened to your old personality, and why the new one can’t stop fixating on something as relentlessly prosaic as fuel efficiency.
As an experienced hybrid driver, I can also fixate on feeling morally superior.
Apollo posted this at 5:56 PM EST on Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 as Ourselves
Thought of the day: I’m studying under Tom Pangle, who once roomed with Alan Keyes, who ran for Senate in 2004 when Jack Ryan dropped out due to a sex scandal involving his wife, Jeri Ryan.
Dorothy posted this at 12:32 AM EDT on Friday, September 18th, 2009 as Nerdom, Ourselves
Please refrain from using the hand-dryer to dry your junk.
Sincerely,
Jamie
P.S. They never get things completely dry anyway.
Jamie posted this at 9:25 AM EDT on Friday, September 4th, 2009 as Ourselves, Uncategorized
So the wife and I are at a point in our lives where we can consider some of life’s major purchases: a first home, if prices dipped low enough, or, barring that, a new car.
And what a deal for us, right, being in the buying market at just the time that the government is throwing piles of stimulus money at anyone willing to open up their wallet? As first time homebuyers, we would get $8,000 of stimulus money; and, of course, everyone is going nuts trading in their “clunkers.” But if my hunch is correct, this may actually be a terrible time for us to make a major purchase.
Houses
1. Government interference screws with pricing in direct ways. It’s not like home sellers are unaware that first time home buyers get $8,000 for buying a house. Virtually every ad I’ve seen has mentioned this incentive. While not every home buyer is a first time home buyer, enough of them are that this has to artificially increase the price (I’d guess $3,000 – $4,000). This increase in price would probably wipe out a significant portion of our benefit from the government money.
2. Government interferences screws with prices in indirect ways. By giving a subset of people $8,000 to buy a house, the government is getting people into the home buying market who otherwise would not be. This artificially increases demand, driving up the price above what it should be.
3. There will be a let down. A big reason we would consider buying a house is as a medium-term investment. If we bought a home now, it’s hard to imagine its value not going down in the short term, once the government subsidy stops increasing the value of the home, and all of the first-time buyers brought into the market by the $8,000 incentive leave the market. Whether it’s profitable for me to buy a house then becomes a function of how much that short term decline is, how long we intend to keep the house, and how fast we think housing prices will recover. All these things might still make this a profitable venture for a five-year investment, except . . .
4. There will be another foreclosure boom,. It’ll be smaller than this one, and it will be in different places than this one. But it seems impossible that the factors I just listed (lots of first-time home buyers being coaxed into a market they wouldn’t otherwise venture into, buying houses the values of which have been artificially inflated by government subsidy, with a short term decline in value) would not lead to another boomlet of foreclosures in a few years. Which would again drive down the value of homes on the market (absent another government subsidy), and make it difficult to sell a home.
5. Because of this massive interference, market prices are hard to determine. Whether the above speculation is right or wrong, the fact is that we simply cannot get an accurate gauge of the housing market. Perhaps the bottom has really fallen out and the stimulus money is keeping it afloat for a few months before it sinks some more. Perhaps the stimulus really has saved the market and it will go up from here. Either way, it’s impossible for amateurs like myself to make informed decisions. It would be unwise to make such a large purchase in an environment where we cannot accurately determine the value of what we’d be getting, so we’ll sit this one out.
Cars
1. The government is driving up the future value of used cars. By destroying lots of “clunkers” that would otherwise be for sale in a year or so, the government will create an artificial shortage of cheap used cars, which should drive up the value of some (but not all) used cars. Cars that fall on the lower side of $10,000 (like mine!) should benefit the most from this.
2. The goverment is creating an artificial bubble of new car demand. I’ve seen convincing analysis that the Cash for Clunkers new car selling boom isn’t creating all that many additional car sales, but mostly just compacting into a period of weeks car sales that would otherwise have occurred over a period of months. This means there’s almost certainly going to be a let down in sales after the period is over, increasing the bargaining power of those who wait (particularly if, as I’ve heard at least one Congressman foolishly predict, auto makers ramp up production in response to this sales boom – normally I’d say that’s too stupid to happen, but we’re talking about auto makers here).
3. The government is creating positive market incentives for people who aren’t me. My car definately does not qualify as a “clunker”; I get better mileage than virtually all of the new cars out there. I could sit around pointing out the moral issues of the government rewarding those who have been using inefficient cars while providing no reward to those of us who have driven clean, efficient vehicles and might like newer ones; but the reality is that the government is providing incentives for some, but not all of us to enter the new car market. All told, it’s actually providing incentives for some of us to stay out of the new car market. So we will.
Apollo posted this at 10:08 PM EDT on Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 as Bailoutistan, It's Economics - Stupid!, Ourselves
Hubbard posted this at 10:39 AM EDT on Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 as Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, Nerdom, Ourselves, Random Bloggish Things
Last night I eschewed fireworks and took an Australian friend of mine to a screening of Red Dawn at the New Beverly with Lea Thompson.
Is there a more appropriate way to spend the 4th?
No. Wolverines!
Jamie posted this at 2:13 PM EDT on Sunday, July 5th, 2009 as Nerdom, Ourselves
So it’s getting to the end of a long semester. I’ve got finals looming, a term paper that needs revision, clerkship applications winding up, and an internship winding down. In short, I’m fairly busy and a little stressed out.
But, lo, as though the gods of law knew I needed a pick me up, what do I find in my mail box today but the two most delightful words to any law student: Class Action!
That’s right, I had no clue that these people had wronged me, I have no records of my employment to scour through, and, until today, I barely remembered working there. But thanks to the magical workings of the class action, I should be getting money from them in a couple of months. Wowee!
And this isn’t one of those “You were overcharged for long distance service, here’s your $1.35″ class actions. No, my calculations tell me I should get real money from this one — $10, maybe $15! There’s going to be an all-day Double Stack and Frosty feast when that check comes in.
Apollo posted this at 7:53 PM EDT on Thursday, April 30th, 2009 as Ourselves, The Law Is An Ass--An Idiot
I’ve been seeing Kathryn Lopez link to this list of books that some people think “all” high schoolers should read before graduating. I’m definately with John Derbyshire on this. Back in high school I somehow got it into my head that I needed to read a bunch of Great Books in order to be smart. I read most of the stuff on that list (though I didn’t know of the list’s existence until a couple of days ago), as well as a few dozen books not on the list. I read a lot, honestly.
Then about half way through Anna Karenina, it dawned on me that virtually everything I was reading was a crashing bore. In the ten years since that reading spree, the only fiction I’ve read that wasn’t assigned to me in a class was Tolkien. Turning reading into something I had to do completely killed my desire to read. I think forcing any 16 year-old to read Virgil would have a similar effect; it’s simply more fun to watch television.
The negative consequences of forcing teenagers to read aside, I looked at the list, and I would actually advise against high schoolers reading most of what’s on there. Read the rest of this entry »
Apollo posted this at 8:47 PM EDT on Friday, April 24th, 2009 as Edjamacation, Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, Ourselves, Pop Culture Is Filth
A few of our dear readers have asked why their comments don’t appear after typing them in. The answer is that all comments—even of the actual Federalist Paupers!—go straight to the spam filter, which some Pauper must then clear out. It was a cumbersome process, so we’re experimenting with a different spam sorter-outer. So comment away, and we’ll see how this goes.
Hubbard posted this at 12:21 PM EDT on Monday, April 6th, 2009 as Ourselves
Fellow Pauper Tom will be crashing at chez Hubbard this weekend. It’s somewhat like this, only without the singing.
Hubbard posted this at 9:06 AM EDT on Saturday, March 14th, 2009 as Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, Ourselves