They Have Normal Families In Rochester

And particularly cool families... here are some pictures from visiting my friend Duane's family yesterday. We all played Bop It around the dinner table (after Catchphrase and Blurt). Our fellow guests were Andrew and his daughters Marleana and Avalina. And they've got a trippin' basement, complete with drum kit and stage. Yi and Annie took about 15 pictures with the dog, Emma, before finally getting some they were satisfied with. Yi says that I look Chinese wearing this tai-tai-tsi (?) or "watermelon hat". I dunno about that. My friends are normal... I swear!

After the Macro Exam

I think I failed.

Introducing: Zak

Check out my classmate Casey Zak's Mighty Blog - it's mighty entertaining anyway. Or at least close to home: his latest post is about Problem Set #5 in "Math for Economists", and last week I had a post of my own, the highlights of which were me being called "Lesbianese" and Casey's mom asking who I am. Casey will grace the blogroll as long as he continues to write such mighty text. Oh, and Thaddeus at Worthless and Weak is back from his long summer holiday of stealing government secrets, so y'all can start reading his wittitude again.

All The Views That Are Fit to Print

NYTimes should be ashamed that it stooped to the level of publishing this. Not only is it a childish, titillating story (about a proposed street name change from "Hooker Lane" to something else), but the level of bias and generalization is disgusting. Do the Times editors think that only "people of the L. L. Bean-wearing, exercise-the-dog sort" want to live on a street with a normal name? If this was in a working-class neighborhood, would it make any difference? I don't think so, but the Times goes out of its way to paint the neighborhood with a broad brush, as if only those for whom "Lacoste shirts and country club memberships are a virtual birthright" would make effort to rename their street. What malarky. In Quincy, Mass, there's a street called Lunt St. After repeated vandalism (changing 'L' to 'C'), the city issued a special street sign with a cursive "L". Lunt St. is just as working-middle-class as any street in Quincy. This may seem a small thing to complain about, but just imagine if the Times described a working-class neighborhood as a place where second-hand polo shirts and bowling-league membership were a "virtual birthright". It may be true, but unless it is backed up by real investigative reporting and has bearing on the story, it's just a way to impress a stereotype on readers. Just another reason why the Times is the world's worst good paper.

Aborting Whom?

WaPo has a fantastic column this morning by a mother and former Post bureau chief, Patricia Bauer. Bauer has a disabled daughter, and writes about their experience living in a land where abortion is considered a better option than birth.

To [most women of child-bearing age], Margaret falls into the category of avoidable human suffering. At best, a tragic mistake. At worst, a living embodiment of the pro-life movement. Less than human. A drain on society. That someone I love is regarded this way is unspeakably painful to me. This view is probably particularly pronounced here in blue-state California, but I keep finding it everywhere, from academia on down. At a dinner party not long ago, I was seated next to the director of an Ivy League ethics program. In answer to another guest's question, he said he believes that prospective parents have a moral obligation to undergo prenatal testing and to terminate their pregnancy to avoid bringing forth a child with a disability, because it was immoral to subject a child to the kind of suffering he or she would have to endure... Margaret does not view her life as unremitting human suffering (although she is angry that I haven't bought her an iPod). She's consumed with more important things, like the performance of the Boston Red Sox in the playoffs* and the dance she's going to this weekend. Oh sure, she wishes she could learn faster and had better math skills. So do I. But it doesn't ruin our day, much less our lives. It's the negative social attitudes that cause us to suffer... In ancient Greece, babies with disabilities were left out in the elements to die. We in America rely on prenatal genetic testing to make our selections in private, but the effect on society is the same. Margaret's old pediatrician tells me that years ago he used to have a steady stream of patients with Down syndrome. Not anymore. Where did they go, I wonder. On the west side of L.A., they aren't being born anymore, he says... And here's one more piece of un-discussable baggage: This question is a small but nonetheless significant part of what's driving the abortion discussion in this country. I have to think that there are many pro-choicers who, while paying obeisance to the rights of people with disabilities, want at the same time to preserve their right to ensure that no one with disabilities will be born into their own families. The abortion debate is not just about a woman's right to choose whether to have a baby; it's also about a woman's right to choose which baby she wants to have.

Sorry for the length of the quote - she says it better than I can. In an objective world, it would be considered obvious that when one group of people (or potential people, if you will) is systematically killed, that group is considered to have little or no value to society. While "backwards reasoning" is a logical fallacy, we as a society need to be honest about the tacit implications of our norms. * This raises the question of whether it was moral before October, 2004, to bring Red Sox fans into the world. But with the hindsight of today, I'm glad I was born a Sox fan.

Page A1

The front page of today's Post reports:

Beginning this week, the House GOP lawmakers will take steps to cut as much as $50 billion from the fiscal 2006 budget for health care for the poor, food stamps and farm supports, as well as considering across-the-board cuts in other programs. Only last month, then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (Tex.) and other GOP leaders quashed demands within their party for budget cuts to pay for the soaring cost of hurricane relief... A revolt has been stirring within the House GOP ranks for months. Fiscal conservatives had accepted an expanded federal role in education enshrined in President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, had lost a fight to block the Medicare prescription drug benefit -- the largest entitlement expansion since Lyndon Johnson was president -- and had even embraced the mammoth transportation law that passed this summer with a record-shattering number of pork-barrel projects... Since Bush came to office, federal spending had grown by a third, from $1.86 trillion to $2.47 trillion, while record budget surpluses turned to record deficits. Conservative activists, led by talk show hosts and opinion columnists, had begun pressing Republicans hard on what they saw as Big Government Conservatism... After several meetings, Hastert emerged from a closed Republican session the night of Oct. 6 to announce that he had gotten the message. Cuts to entitlement programs such as Medicaid, food stamps and farm supports would be raised from $35 billion to $50 billion in the massive budget bill that will be compiled in November. Republicans would push an additional across-the-board spending cut for 2006 and would try to trim programs already funded.

Keep 'em coming - this is music to my ears. More analytically, this is probably the best time to execute painful budget cuts. When polls are already down, the cost of a political loss becomes significantly less. When you're on top, the potential of an unpopular spending cut can bring a party's momentum to a screeching halt. Now, the GOP has no momentum - but has all the voting power. So bring on the cuts!

Nazis 1, Toledo 0

The National Socialist Movement planned a march today in Toledo allegedly to protest harassment of white citizens by black gangs. The march did not occur, but the Nazis made their point loud and clear. In a fit of utter stupidity, the very gangs whom the Nazis were using as an excuse to rile the public square took the opportunity to riot in downtown Toledo, breaking into stores and looting as the Nazis stood by and watched their victory from the safety of police protection in a city park. Today's Toledo Blade foresaw the problem:

Young black people, let me be blunt: The march by hate groups in North Toledo today is aimed at you. Don't give them the time of day. Please. If the hate groups can upset you enough to cause you to react and get arrested, or cause you to show an outburst of violence, then they will have accomplished their goal. Don't give them that satisfaction, no matter how upset they might make you, and believe me, their words can make a minority pretty upset. You are not what they say you are, so stay home, do something else, or go to some worthwhile community function instead.

The AP Story is colorblind to the point of silliness, refusing to give the obviously vital information of what the racial makeup of the various actors - the rioters, the store owners, the police, the mayor (who is in fact black). While I hope to live in a race-oblivious America someday, this kind of reporting just lets people draw their own conclusions. This entire episode underscores how little white America can do to address the internal problems of black society. Now, whites will once again repudiate white supremacy and we should shun and shame those who have such viewpoints. But ultimately, there's no whites at fault here. The Nazis have assumptions about blacks - and in this case, some black youths went out of their way to prove the Nazis right. This is truly a tragedy for truth, justice, and the American way.

Need A USB Drive?

Then enter the Worthless and Weak Essay Contest. He's promising a USB drive filled with secret government documents. The topic of the essay must be: "What I Would Do With A USB Drive Filled With Government Secrets." And he's not kidding. Disclaimer: I won the Garret Logan Person of the Year Award for 2003, and he actually followed through on half the prize (taking me out for lunch). The other half (an honorary doctorate from the Logan Institute of Elevator Logic) I'm still waiting on.

2005 Baseball Review

Per tradition, InstantReplay will revisit our preseason baseball predictions, posted March 29th. On the standings: AL West - 2 for 4, including division leader AL Central - 2 for 5 AL East - 0 for 5, but we correctly predicted the two playoff teams NL West - 3 for 5 NL Central - 1 for 6, only St. Louis NL East - 3 for 5, including division leader And none of my four predicted teams has made it to the championship series. On the eight Red Sox stats predictions, Parker, Thaddeus and I each posted predictions. Here's the score: 1. Number of games started by Jason Varitek: 131; tie between Parker and I. 2. Total home runs by "Manny Ortez": 92; Parker was closest with just 81. 3. Staff complete games: 6; Parker nailed it. 4. Bellhorn's walk-to-strikeout ratio: 1 to 2.22; Thaddeus with 1 to 2. 5. Record in one-run games: 26-14; Thaddeus with 24-14. 6. Date that Kevin Youkilis is traded: None; Thaddeus got it most right. 7. Damon's pitches per plate appearance: 3.72; Parker gets it with 3.8. 8. Number of players on post-season roster who are not on Opening Day roster or DL: 5; tie between Parker and I. So Parker wins it - congrats! And for the Red Sox... how about next year? (Is that a good substitute for the old, discarded "wait till next year"?)

Testing...1...2...3...4

Tomorrow is the first of our midterms, which will follow each other weekly until after Halloween. Microeconomics, courtesy of the inimitable (and quite well-known) Larry, is on tap for tomorrow, and I've already put in more hours of study than I put in during any one semester at Northeastern, and possibly more than I did during my entire tenure there. (Pure studying, that is, not homework or reading). The test covers just five weeks of material, and consists of three multi-part questions, on abstract choice theory, consumer theory, and choice under risk, respectively. If you think the one-liner "There exists no separating hyperplane between us and the set of God's love" is hysterical, then your mind is working the same way mine is. I've already put in six and a half hours of studying since class today, and I hope to add three more before I quit, though that would still sum to an hour and a half less than my daily study-maximizing argument. Then it's a good connected night's sleep (if my body can remember how to have one of those) and two classes before the Big Date with Larry at 1:00. I think today has to qualify as my lowest-net-utility birthday ever: not only am I spending the day studying unboundedly, but I'm also losing my driver's license to expiration. I could get a new one here in Rochester, but I'd feel like a traitor having a New York I.D. Of course, it's not like I have anything to drive, but I'm losing a degree of freedom nonetheless.

Three Brazilian Soldiers

Donald Rumsfeld is giving the president his daily briefing. He concludes by saying: "Yesterday, three Brazilian soldiers were killed." OH NO!" the President exclaims. "That's terrible!" Tears appear in his eyes. His staff sits stunned at this display of emotion, nervously watching as the President sits, head in hands. Finally, the President looks up and asks, "How many is a brazillion?" Hat tip to Deron.