Indeed

Paul Krugman on the problem with proceduralism versus personnel:

The point is that what we need are the right ideas, not the right sort of people. Madmen in authority come in all forms, and the dignified men in suits are often no better than the rabble-rousers.

In my dissertation, I found that August Hermann Francke was consistent in insisting that anything good resulted from selecting the right man, and he meant man, for the job.  The problem was, or became, who selected the right man? Clearly, Krugman is on to the key issue. Unfortunately, there is no standard for right man picking. Francke relied on a combination of evidence of spiritual rebirth and personal knowledge. What standards are we going to come up with today?

I had a conversation the other day with a relative about why the various proponents of not starting WWI were ignored and how we could identify them. Right now, I think, the answer is to never pick someone who has the answer instead of a series of answers to a variety of questions that need immediate solution.

Is It Ironic?

This publisher found a lost James M. Cain novel. They use covers like this:

And this:

Is it ironic or just tacky?

Bike Bags Updated

I was at the Ace Truvalue today and they had this bag on sale for 5 bucks:

I thought that it would make a nice pannier, so I bought it. I made some modifications and 2 hrs later Bob's your uncle a front bag for no more than 7.50 plus labor.

The tools and other stuff:



I used some of an old truck mudflap to stiffen one side, wrapped the edges with some kind of fiberglass tape to limit damage from rubbing and bolted it on.

After cutting it's a bit rough




So I shaved the edges and trimmed the corners:


Then taped the edges:



Then drilled:

 

I didn't take a picture but I use a hole punch driven through the drilled hole to make a hole in the nylon bag; I figured drilling it would ruin the nylon. Then attached the whole mess with button top Allen bolts and nylon nuts, water resistant -- I think -- and they don't back off.

I also attached some old pannier hooks and a re-purposed bungee cord using some scraps of nylon webbing and an s-hook to attach to the rack. I use the hole punch to make the hole for the hooks and then take the backing off and drill the bolt holes.  I always drill both directions as t his seems to get rid of the burrs.

I figure it's about the perfect size for trousers, shirt, socks, unmentionables, files, and lunch. Plus, the external pockets can hold, I don't know, snacks.  I may go get another bag this weekend.

Now there's two:





 At some point, I am going to have to figure out some kind of a rain  cover. Plus, Craftsman makes a  much larger version so when the rear bags die, as die they must, I think I'll just use the bigger one.


The things I carried to work:

In the bag:



On the bike:


Home again.



There was no real difference in the bike handling and with the bag for this stuff, I have room for shopping on the way home.

It's Not The Case That Conservatives Are Heartless Morons; Wait, Yes It Is.

It's wrong to glory in or mock the death of another human being; regardless of who he or she was. Ann Coulter's twitter:

@AnnCoulter Ann Coulter

ONE TROY DAVIS FLAME-BROILED, PLEASE - bit.ly/qPQnV7

Warren Report

If you go here you can watch Elizabeth Warren make monkeys out of the Morning Joe crew. Picking the dumbest questions is difficult; however, I nominate Halpren. China is not now nor will it be any time soon a "military threat" to the USA. If we stopped spending money on new systems and just maintained what we have everyone else in the world would have to combine to come close to what we can do blowing things upwise. The press is filled with idiots who cannot think their way out of water sodden sacks made of paper.

What a Wonderful World it Could Be: Danish Edition

Via, Danish cops doing the kind of non-man-with-the-stick things that offer some dim hope for the future.

David Brooks Failed to Pay Attention

For most of his Presidency, Obama has bent over backwards trying to make deals with the Republicans. In so doing, he has alienated many of his left-wing supporters. This isn't news. Today, however, David Brooks looks at Obama's wholly centrist scheme to raise taxes, cut spending, and fiddle with benefits and decides that Obama has become an ideologue. Brooks is, to be blunt, the silliest man on the planet.

It's not that Obama has become or will govern as a leftist but rather that the Republicans have steadfastly refused to engage in reasoned compromise because they are a bunch of idiots who, as it turns out, hate America's working class.

Oh For Dumb

The New Yorker has an extensive profile (sub req) of Daphne Guinness. She is, to be blunt, a waste of time and wealth. Why, exactly, they made the decision to profile a minor noble whose blather includes fond memories of Oswald Mosley and blather about fashion icons and her obvious inability to think past wasted money on shopping, 6k for crap she can't possible need, and zero sense of  social justice. Louts like her are poster children for 100 percent death duties and 90 percent tax rates after 100k. I swear.

Inverting Our Values

Since, at least, Blackstone a bedrock conviction of the Anglo-American legal tradition concerned the number of guilty men, and presumable women, it was better to let go if it meant convicting one innocent man. It's already clear that Rick Perry thinks that it's better that any number of innocent men and women are executed least one guilty man or women goes unpunished. And now the state of Georgie agrees.

I've asked before and I'll ask again: what in the world is happening to us?

Money and How it Got That Way

I urge all interested in the history of money, debt, and nonsense of economics as a scientific discipline to read this, this, and this. While we're at it, I strongly urge reading this ignorant and hostile response and the comments in which hostility and ignorance vie against and lose to reason and evidence.

Kids Today

Reasons to think that the future may not be a bleak as it may seem:



and



or



gotta love the Dutch

Beer Summit

There are, of course, all manner of reasons, actions, and facts to find Obama less than perfect. On the other hand, there is this:

The man is comfortable in his skin and, given it's color and America's problems with that color, he is kind of amazing.

Nostalgia

In the comments, John  Rove, friend of the blog, makes the point that mediocrity and success go hand in hand. This seems to be true politically, given the rarity of Lincolns and the swarms of George Bushes, who can disagree.  I was reminded that Bryan MaGee made the same point in his memoir. For a variety of reasons, I read this several times. In it he mentions, more than once, his various BBC series in which he discussed philosophy with philosophers on the BBC for all, as it were, to see. Guess what? You can watch some of them.

I may be wrong, as I often am, but it strikes me as unlikely that any Western tv station is going allow some old Marxist egghead like Marcuse burble on in this day and age.

Round One:

With Friends Like This

According to the NRO, former Sen. Malcolm Wallop and friend of liberty is dead.  According to the webpage of the "think tank" he founded and chaired, his love of liberty led him to

[r]ather than simply promising to retaliate if we were attacked with nuclear missiles, Malcolm Wallop argued we should defend ourselves and render missiles powerless to threaten future generations. Malcolm Wallop is the father of missile defense and was the first elected official to propose a space based missile defense system, a program that later became part of President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative. There are people all across the globe that are safer and freer because of Malcolm Wallop. Malcolm Wallop changed the world for the better.

 According to this, Bush alone spent 10 billion a year on a failed attempts to build missile defense; this suggests that by 2013 over 100 billion in total expenditures for a failed system.

Waste, fraud and abuse, thunder the Conservatives; Government can't do anything right, they insist. And yet a paranoid maniac sets the state on a course to waste billions and billions on a fraud dies a friend of liberty.

God bless America indeed.

Oh For Dumb

A couple of days ago, Matthew Yglesias lamented the winner take all refusal to compromise politics of the contemporary Republican party. He also insisted that

[t]his is the fundamental reality of American politics today, but far too few people put it at the center of their accounts of what’s happening.

Some time ago he praised Mitch McConnell as being "very good at his job" precisely because of his obstructionism and etc.

It's almost like he types the first thing that  comes into his head without thinking.

9/11

Where I was and what I remember are of less importance than zero. Ditto everyone else memorializing the day. On the other hand, what Vonnegut had to say way back in the day, seems relevant.

A Fact That Depresses Me

Not one of my students knew Yertle the Turtle.

Odd Songs

The lead singer plays the sax and they all smile manically.

A related mashup





Having nothing to do with anything

Was It Ever Thus?

The other day, I mentioned Taft and the treaties of arbitration. Today marks the 100th anniversary of a TR op-ed dealio denouncing Taft. In it, he argues that the Spanish American war was one of many incidents in which the US put "righteousness" ahead of "peace." Plus, he argues that the US would never push around smaller countries, like Cuba or Columbia, just to get what it wants. Furthermore, what if those danged foreigners told us we couldn't discriminate via immigration policies and laws? Outrageous idea he fumes.

Clearly, TR was a loon, whose ability to ignore reality was quite stunning and whose bizarre notions of masculinity meant more and better killing of things in the service of peace, prosperity, and environmental protection. Still, it's worth asking if today's morons any worse?

Or is it the case the cumulative errors, fibs, self-deception, lies, and the terrible policies that result have created a situation in which more of the same means we're doomed?

Presidential

Tonigh, Obama will give a speech. Lots of Republicans won't be there. Below is a list. DeMint (professional crackpot) gives the best or, in any event, most revealing, explanation. He told the Obama just exactly what to and Obama didn't do therefore, DeMint won't be there. Why, it's almost as if Obama thinks he is a co-equal who won a national election the temerity he shows by failing to take a Southern white gentleman's advice.

These folks aren't showing up:

Sen. Jim DeMint (R., S.C.): The Hill says he wanted the president to present the plan in writing before giving the speech and that he wants to draw attention to people who make jobs instead of talking about them. He’ll meet with Boeing officials and employees.

● Rep. Joe Walsh (R., Ill.): The Tea Party–allied representative will host a forum on small businesses. He said he doesn’t want to be a “prop,” reports the Chicago Tribune.

● Sen. David Vitter (R., La): He’s having a Saints–Packers watch party at home with friends, and he’s emphasized that his decision is based on his football fanaticism rather than his political views. But he told Fox that he expects the speech to be “more political than substantive.”

● Rep. Paul Broun (R., Ga.): He plans to watch from his office so he can tweet about it –– representatives aren’t supposed to use their Blackberries in the chamber. He did the same thing during the State of the Union address.

● Rep. Ron Paul (R., Texas): Spokesman Gary Howard said yesterday that he doesn’t plan to attend the speech. Paul has made a habit of skipping primetime presidential speeches, including State of the Union addresses, dismissing them as “a bunch of fluff.”

● Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.): He probably won’t be there, but not for political reasons –– Yahoo reports that his mother is ill.

Here In Wisconsin: Paul Ryan is a Horrid Little Man

Via we learn that unhappy that regular folks crashed his 15 dollar a head town hall meeting, Paul Ryan had  them arrested:



Meanwhile in Missouri, the GOP wants to

pay for a business tax cut by eliminating a tax credit that benefits more than 100,000 senior citizens and disabled people.

What in the world is happening to us?

UPDATE:
Via everyone in the know universe.  Over 41 death row prisoners in Texas have been exonerated, which is the most in the nation. Last night professional vampyre and general threat to western civilization Rick Perry had this to say about that, while the crowd, like howler monkeys, roared their approval:



See also:



There you go.

Forgotten Mistakes

On July 28, 1945, a B-25 crashed into the side of the Empire State Building. Until reading this, I'd never heard of the event. How many other tragedies like this have we forgotten? And, as 9/11 memorialization draws ever nearer, how does our decisions about what to remember and what to forget determine how we move forward?

Good God

For some longish time, say thirty years, our representatives have agreed to deregulate industry and capital and, on the basis of the world outside my window and in my professional life, the results have been the opposite of the promises. Rick Perry, the Republican front runner, promises that should he become President:

The EPA officials we have an opportunity to put in place, they’re going to be pro-business, and there’s not going to be any apologies to anybody about it,” he said. “Those agencies won’t know what hit ‘em.”

Great, having destroyed any countless number of jobs and basically succeeding in recreating the 19th century, the neoliberals promise to destroy the environment so that not only will there be no decently paying jobs there will be no liveable world on which the poor can, like fish thrown on the river's bank, gasp for breath while they await their for their miserable lives to end.

Let's all raise a glass to St. Ronnie the Great Communicator and the triumph of the market.

Pick 'Em

If you're interested grating tomatoes actually does make a great sauce. Now then, who, as it were, are you? This


Or that:



How 'bout this?


This:



Or this:

Not Really a Contradiction

In today's NYT book review:

Gabrielle Chanel — better known as Coco — was a wretched human being. Anti-Semitic, homophobic, social climbing, opportunistic, ridiculously snobbish and given to sins of phrase-making like “If blonde, use blue perfume,” she was addicted to morphine and actively collaborated with the Germans during the Nazi occupation of Paris. And yet, her clean, modern, kinetic designs, which brought a high-society look to low-regarded fabrics, revolutionized women’s fashion, and to this day have kept her name synonymous with the most glorious notions of French taste and élan.

This is the kind of silliness that drives me nuts. To give a headline: Evil Wretches Still Capable of Artistry. The idea seems to be that if an individual can create something of lasting aesthetic value the fact that he or she was a horrific person ought surprise us despite the fact that the history of the world is filled with precisely those kinds of people.

In a similar fashion, and no doubt equally as surprising, louts with mongoose's aesthetic appreciation of fashion struggled against the evils with which Chanel collaborated. They might, of course, have appreciated something else and yet left nothing of "lasting" value behind but a well bred pig or neatly written ledger, or whathaveyou. Why, it's almost like the objects aesthetic appreciation and ethical actions have nothing whatsoever  to do with one another.