Lincoln/Coverdale

I think this piece by Peggy Noonan nails it:

This week there was the woman on Madison Avenue holding that dread thing, the clipboard. They want you to sign something in favor of a cause, or sign up for something. She was a big girl, 6 feet tall, with 10 arms. She saw me coming 15 feet away and placed herself in the middle of the sidewalk so I’d have to speak or go around her. “How are you today?” she barked, demanded. It was embarrassing not to reply and made me feel vaguely guilty, which is the way they want you to feel so you’ll give up and engage. As I passed I smiled and wordlessly shook my head. She did a mock eye rolling. “Oh. Sorry!”

She was not, I think, unaware of her aggression. She just wasn’t embarrassed by it.

. . . .

To an unusual degree people now feel they have to protect themselves from each other. You have to put forward the rules of behavior, every day. When the person from the bank on the phone says, “Margaret, I’d like to talk to you about your account,” you have to say, “I’m sorry but I didn’t invite you to call me by my first name.” Or perhaps it’s, “I didn’t really want a freelance mammogram, and I’m not sure it’s right that you give me one,” or, “I have to tell you that it’s not polite to block my path and attempt to force a conversation.”

Unfortunately, the article is behind a subscription wall. I was able to view the whole thing through Google News.

Michigan’s finally done it:

Granholm signed the new law, which takes effect May 1, at a smoke-free bar in downtown Lansing.

There’s something funny about that. The state needs to pass legislation to regulate smoking in restaurants and bars because these establishments won’t become smoke-free on their own. Probably a true statement for many establishments. Not a true statement for the smoke-free bar in which the law was signed. It would have made a stronger statement to sign it in a place that will be affected by the new legislation.

Actually, this bar might be affected—negatively. If part of the special appeal of this place is its smoke-free atmosphere, it is about to become un-special.

It’s nice to know that when push comes to shove, Switzerland can ditch the neutrality.

The University of Michigan has an online product called CTools. Using this website, courses and groups can create websites to distribute files, maintain contact with members, and so on. Personally, I hate it. It feels like it was made in 1999. I’d rather that professors just email files to the class—thankfully, some of the profs still do.

In any case, one of the aspects of CTools that I find particularly annoying is the difficulty in customizing the view. For a while this semester, I was still a member of my classes from last semester. These classes were set to be some sort of priority, so I had to go through some gymnastics to view information for my current classes. See me (emphasis added). Today, when I sign in, I see this:

Discover the “Hidden” Features of CTools!

Ever wonder how to reorder your Resources? View announcements from all of your sites at once? Download multiple files at the same time?

Learn how and more! Read our new “Did you know…” document in the CTools Help Guide by clicking here now!

Hey, I have an idea: How about you don’t hide features in the first place? How about you set reasonable default configurations so that people don’t need to waste time with “features” like hiding current classes in a drop-down list while last semester’s classes are still displayed?

A justice of the peace in Louisiana refused to grant a interracial couple a marriage license. Fail Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967) (holding that race-based restrictions on marriage violate the fourteenth amendment’s guarantee of equal protection). At least this guy’s racism is explicit enough that we don’t need a national conversation about it. Cf. Professor Gates’s arrest.

Apparently this JP doesn’t have anything against interracial marriage, but he fears for the welfare of children born into such unions. Fail Palmore v. Sidoti, 466 U.S. 429 (1984). In Palmore, the Florida courts refused to grant custody of a child to the white mother because she was living with a black man, and that may create social stigma that would make life hard for the child. The Supreme Court declared equal protection fail. “Private biases may be outside the reach of the law, but the law cannot, directly or indirectly, give them effect.” Id. at 433.

Regarding interracial marriage in general, this paragraph in the CNN story caught my attention:

The number of interracial marriages have skyrocketed, nearly quadrupling between 1970 and 2005, the most recent year for which there is census data. As of 2005, nearly 8.5 million Americans are living in so-called mixed marriages.

My wife and I make up about 0.000024% of that statistic, and for what it’s worth, I’ve never so-called our marriage “mixed.” It makes us sound confused. Marriage may be confusing, but not in any interracial aspect.

EDIT: I forgot to include this comment from my wife regarding the JP’s desire to protect the children: “[S]ince when does a couple have to be married before having kids?”

Quicksilver is at least 17 kinds of badass. One of Quicksilver’s awesomest features is web searching. Basically, you search for “***” (three asterisks) and save the result as a bookmark. Below are the law-related searches I use on a regular basis. The URLs are pretty ugly, so I’ve hidden them as the hrefs to the links—just right-click on a link, copy, and paste the URL into your bookmarks.

• LexisNexis (search for case by reporter, e.g., 198 U.S. 45)
• Westlaw (search for case by reporter, e.g., 198 U.S. 45)
• USPTO (search by their advanced search, e.g., pn/<patent_number>)
• Legal Information Institute (general search)
• LII U.S. Code (<title>/<section>, e.g., 28/1441 for 28 U.S.C. § 1441)

My elderly neighbors are not having a good 2009. Their new red Ford sedan was stolen a couple months ago. Eventually, they got a replacement. This morning, there are no rims on their car, and it is being supported by a few bricks.

To whoever stole the rims: I hope you die in a fire.

To Ford: If you are going to bother putting nice factory rims on a car, include some wheel locks. If the car had wheel locks, well, then, stop selling the keys to thieves.

I have a hotel pet peeve that has developed over the past year: bright bathroom lights. Although I generally appreciate the fact that hotel room curtains permit the entry of very little ambient light, when it comes time to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, I find myself under an incandescent assault. (Okay, it might be a florescent assault, but that doesn’t sound as cool.)

It is possible that I am in a narrow demographic with respect to this annoyance: like a mogwai with an enlarged prostate, my eyes are unusually light-sensitive, and I often use the bathroom in the middle of the night. Still, would it hurt to have low candela nightlights in hotel bathrooms?

Prof. Becker disagrees with Judge Posner’s belief that obesity is partially a problem of consumer ignorance of the decreasing quality of food over the past thirty years. This ignorance leads to a discount rate on future health that is higher than it “should” be. Prof. Becker supposes instead that the rise of medical treatments for conditions such as high cholesterol have given people less incentive to lead healthy lives. I think it is clear that either of these are consistent with recent trends toward higher levels obesity, but it seems that Prof. Becker’s explanation does not agree with the higher rates of obesity among those with lower incomes and less education. Posner’s belief, however, does accord with these higher rates.

Still, I wonder if it isn’t something more rooted in psychology. Maybe those with the fewest resources have high discount rates not because they lack information, but because the uncertainty of the future makes it foolish to say no to cheap calories today. I don’t think this has to be conscious; it could be a behavior that leads to better chances of survival in an environment where famine could start at any time.