Sick Transit

Obvious Question

by dang @ 9:54 pm. Filed under Law & Politics

Can we treat the financial industry more like the way we treat the auto industry?

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Why I love Yglesias

by dang @ 9:57 pm. Filed under Law & Politics

It takes a keen mind to make the leap from topless coffee shops to regulatory capture.

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Crime and Punishment

by dang @ 9:18 am. Filed under A & E

Intiman is reviving CHAC’s superb 2007 production of Crime and Punishment. If you live in Seattle and missed it the first time around, I highly recommend catching it this time.

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The Death–or at least Dearth–of Rhetoric

by dang @ 2:48 pm. Filed under Law & Politics

Obama is one of the best rhetoricians in modern-day politics, so it’s rather sad to see how poorly this snippet–admittedly not one of his more soaring moments–stands up to the FDR quote that Yglesias compares it to. I love the moral intensity of FDR’s parallels:

Nine mocking years with the golden calf and three long years of the scourge! Nine crazy years at the ticker and three long years in the breadlines! Nine mad years of mirage and three long years of despair!

It seems churlish to complain about anything after the last election, but I would love to see some equally eloquent denunciations of the last eight years of Republican rule.

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Solo

by dang @ 2:08 pm. Filed under A & E

Solo has a completely new menu. It’s always a little nerve-racking to see a good place undergo a major change, but we had cocktails there last night, and the Lamb Egg Rolls with Tamarind Date Chutney are to die for. If you’re in the vicinity of the Seattle Center and craving a nosh, I highly recommend trying it.

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What Obama ought to say to all the companies asking for bailouts

by dang @ 11:45 pm. Filed under Humor

In his own words. (audio file)

(Via Slog.)

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My Temples

by dang @ 10:45 pm. Filed under General

A brief personal essay is below the fold. I apologize for the lapses into purple prose, but it’s difficult to write well about transcendence. It requires the soul of a poet. If I have a little bit of a poet’s soul, it’s definitely not the part where the talent lies. Which is kind of what this piece is about.

(more…)

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Quote of the Day

by dang @ 10:41 pm. Filed under Law & Politics

From Mark Kleiman:

“Private jet” has become the new “welfare queen.”

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The Meditation Room (Memories of a Friendship)

by dang @ 4:22 pm. Filed under General

I was a loner in college. Partly this was due to my religion—I couldn’t develop close friendships with classmates, since non-Jehovah’s Witnesses were considered “bad association”—and partly to my lack of social skills, which made me a bit of a misfit even with my co-religionists. Through the lonely years in my teens when I was home-schooled, the Internet had been my primary social outlet. I participated in a couple of Usenet groups, geeky and somewhat twisted places whose members have probably moved on to 4chan, or wherever the interesting people at 4chan went when it was overrun by idiots.*

When I discovered the world of online Witness boards during my first year of college, it was a revelation. I could use the Internet—the medium that allowed me to hide my awkwardness and insecurity—to meet people whom I wasn’t religiously barred from close contact with. I left the first board I joined, because of excessive doctrinal laxity (they allowed a thread questioning the prohibition on blood transfusions); but over a year later, I found a more orthodox site; and in a few months, friends that I made there invited me to co-found our own board: The JW Zone. (Or sometimes, Z0ne.)

The Zone was many things to me. It was an experiment in incremental freedom—an attempt to loosen some of the religion’s more arbitrary restrictions on speech, thought, and behavior, without challenging the fundamental orthodoxies of the faith. It was also a chance to exercise a little bit of the power that, as a successful student of rule and doctrine, and the son of a prominent local elder, felt almost like a birthright. But above all, it was a welcoming social circle, the end of a long search for a place where I fit in.

Since we were spread all over the country, most of our interactions were online; but every few months we would gather in the hometown of one of our group, for a few days of surprisingly non-boozy college-kid (even though most were above college age) fun. As people’s flights were spread throughout the day, our parting-day ritual was going back and forth to the airport, the entire group sticking together, making a party out of whatever we did.

At one airport, I think it may have been Sacramento, we had time to kill between one trip and the next, so we wandered around the airport aimlessly. Finally, we ended up at the Meditation Room—a bland little chapel of padded chairs, blank walls, and not much else.

Luckily, no one was meditating, so the Meditation Room became our rec room. We talked and joked; we paid mock homage to each other; and someone was baptized with a Sprite bottle. Perhaps some traveler came by who wanted to use the room, and was chased away by our noise; I certainly hope not.

But although I am a quiet person, with that group I was not afraid to be loud. Probably we were obnoxious, but I didn’t worry about that. Certainly we were juvenile, but it felt okay.

Our little group changed over time, as people grew, romances happened, couples married, and hearts were broken. When I left the faith, the rules on former believers mandated a clean break. My friends also felt deceived that I had hid my apostasy for months. So the friendships ended with feelings of betrayal all around. A few folks were kind enough to at least say goodbye.

I’ve made good friends since then, and will hopefully make many more in my life. One of those friends said to me the other day that laughter and play are what make life truly beautiful. I wouldn’t quite phrase it that way—I don’t think they are sufficient conditions. But they are necessary. And so when I think of friendships past, I miss the Meditation Room.

*Or so I’ve gathered. I don’t really follow boards now, so no offense intended to any 4chan-ers out there, except for the dumbasses who hacked my wife’s DeviantArt account.

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Quote of the Day

by dang @ 5:06 pm. Filed under Law & Politics

From Yglesias:

The joke part of it is that the “capitalist” way involves huge government subsidies to rich people, whereas the “socialist” way involves people who made bad business decisions suffering losses.

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Breaking the Taboo

by dang @ 2:51 pm. Filed under Sci & Tech

So my employer (Microsoft) announced layoffs this week. Not really shocking in this economy, but the first-ever company-wide layoffs in the 33-year history of MSFT.

One of the things that really struck me when I joined Microsoft three years ago was the large number of long-term employees, and the sense that one could really make a career there. Most people move between groups every few years, so it’s possible to have a very long career without stagnating.

Coming of age in the 90’s and graduating just after the end of the tech boom, I’m of a generation that sees loyalty in employment as a quaint idea: job-hopping is expected, layoffs are a part of life, and you should always be aware of your market value. Coming to Microsoft was a refreshing change–the prevailing idea was that you could commit to the company for the long term, and it would give you the opportunity for long-term growth. I knew the layoff taboo would be broken someday, I just had no idea it would be this soon. I thought it would be presaged by losses, not just a modest decrease in profits.

I still enjoy my job, and I still have the same great benefits I had on Wednesday. The possibility of not getting a raise doesn’t bother me much, given the current deflationary state of the economy. My real question is whether these lay-offs were a one-time occurrence, or signal a change in Microsoft culture. Will there be less focus on individual career growth? Will the loss of a few thousand jobs be a routine occurrence on every economic downturn? If so, it wouldn’t be a tragedy; it would just be another sign that Microsoft is growing up, and in growing up, losing the qualities that make it stand out from most other employers out there.

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Annals of Nerddom

by dang @ 11:24 pm. Filed under General

This has bugged me throughout the inauguration coverage. I’m glad to have an answer, even if the answer is basically “stop being such a goddamn nerd.”

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I worry when I agree with Bush

by dang @ 2:15 pm. Filed under Law & Politics

I’ve been a fan for a while of the idea that, instead of bailing out the car companies, we should provide federally backed debtor-in-posession financing so that they can go through Chapter 11.

Except now that means I’m agreeing with George Bush. Which worries me.

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What Bored Bankers Do

by dang @ 11:19 pm. Filed under Humor

I never followed Calculated Risk. So while Tanta has my deep respect for her prescience in predicting the current financial crisis, and my condolences go to her family on her tragically young death from cancer, the most remarkable aspect to me of this moving obituary is finding out what bankers do when they’re bored. I give you… The Mortgage Pig.

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Irony: yer doin it too well

by dang @ 10:01 am. Filed under Law & Politics, Humor

Is the Drug Czar’s office really happy that their ads are this popular with stoners?

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The End of Conscious Racism

by dang @ 3:25 pm. Filed under Law & Politics

Via Mark Kleiman, John Tierney asks:

If, as some social scientists have been telling us, 88 percent of whites have an “implicit bias” against blacks and in favor of whites, and if, according to exit polls, whites made up 74 percent of the voters on Tuesday, why is Barack Obama going to be the next president?

Kleiman points out that Obama won because he was the superior candidate, ran a better campaign, and had a favorable political envronment. That doesn’t mean that racism didn’t potentially cut into his margin.

It’s also worth noting that, according to the exit polls, voters who listed race as an important factor voted for Obama at the same rate as those who weren’t as concerned with the topic. But given that some voters were probably influenced to vote for Obama by the desire to see an African-American in the White House, the balance of the numbers implies that an equal quantity of voters were influenced against Obama by his race.

That said, the key issue Tierney glosses over is that the best way to counter implicit bias is to make it explicit. Implicit prejudice affects our actions when we’re not thinking about it; but no one following this campaign could have failed to be conscious–not just visually aware, but consciously mindful–of Obama’s race. That’s the great power of the speech that Obama gave after the Jeremiah Wright fiasco: he didn’t make his campaign about race, but he didn’t run from the topic, either.

So Obama’s election doesn’t show that we’ve eliminated implicit prejudice in this country. Rather, it shows that we’ve nearly eliminated explicit prejudice–that whatever our socialized biases, few of us will act on them when the issues are clear. That is definitely cause for celebration; it also shows that we will conquer the remaining racial inequalities in our society, not by pretending that the battle is won, but by fully facing up to the barriers, and consciously working to overcome them.

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At risk of becoming nothing but a quote of the day blog…

by dang @ 3:40 pm. Filed under General

Another one that is too good to pass up:

We don’t call it “consciousness raising” when we explain why you ought to be able to shoot up while selling your kidney to a sex worker, but that’s what it is.

Froma Kerry Howley, via Julian Sanchez.

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Quote of the Day

by dang @ 9:29 pm. Filed under Humor

The man was carried away by emergency services, with the toilet still attached to his arm.

From http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7693386.stm

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Chickens and Money

by dang @ 10:24 pm. Filed under Religion & Philosophy

A Yom Kippur tradition I was not familiar with:

The ritual of Kaparot, in its traditional form, involves swinging a live chicken around one’s head, symbolically transferring one’s sins to it. Afterwards the chicken is slaughtered and donated as food to the poor.
…
Many Jews, as an alternative, place money in a handkerchief, swing it over their head, and then donate it to the poor.

My first thought was: “But that doesn’t make sense! How can you transfer your sins to money?”

But then I quickly recovered and realized that it makes as much sense as transferring your sins to a chicken.

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Poppy’s Seattle

by dang @ 12:14 am. Filed under A & E

I don’t think Jerry Traunfeld’s new restaurant needs any additional buzz (only 3 weeks open, and it was full tonight) but the waitress specifically asked us to spread the word, and they definitely deserve a plug, so here’s my take:

The structure of Poppy’s is similar to the Herbfarm in that the meal is a 10-part tasting menu. However, instead of being served in multiple courses, the entire tasting menu is brought out on a single plate, based on the Indian idea of thali. This adds an extra dimension to the meal by allowing you to taste the various combinations between the dishes, but it does also have the downside that the meal gets cold before it is finished.

Like the Herbfarm, the menu is Northwest cuisine, made up of local ingredients, and heavy on interesting herb and spice mixes and original flavor combinations. The ingredients are somewhat simpler and cheaper than at the Herbfarm, and the wines are not as good. I’m not sure if the portions are larger than at the Herbfarm, or it’s just a function of the meal being served at once, but I actually felt satiated at Poppy’s, unlike at the Herbfarm.

I’m not crazy about the large, noisy, and mostly unornamented open space at Poppy’s, and the service was dicey. (Despite having a reservation, we had to wait half an hour for a table, standing since there was no room at the bar. After twenty minutes, they offered to comp our first round of drinks, but then they forgot and we had to remind our waitress at the end. Even after we were seated, drinks and order-taking were very slow.) But I don’t like Herbfarm’s Victorian chintz and pretentiously formal service either, so that’s a wash.

Of course, the biggest difference is that at Poppy’s we paid $75 a head (including wine, dessert, tax and tip) whereas at Herbfarm we paid well over $200.

The bottom line is that Traunfeld’s reputation is completely deserved: Poppy’s is some of the best food you can get in Seattle. And at $32 for a thali, it’s a steal. If you live anywhere near Seattle, I recommend heading there ASAP.

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