Marginal Utility

by Ken Houghton

YouNotSneaky! returns with a long post on utilities and, worse, a foray into the Buffyverse that should not go unpunished. Or unembellished.

Labels: blogging, mass media, Meme-A-Riffic, Meta

by Ken Houghton

Tom's defense of Obama got me thinking about Brad DeLong and Hillary Clinton. The result is not pretty.

June 2003:

My two cents' worth--and I think it is the two cents' worth of everybody who worked for the Clinton Administration health care reform effort of 1993-1994--is that Hillary Rodham Clinton needs to be kept very far away from the White House for the rest of her life. Heading up health-care reform was the only major administrative job she has ever tried to do. And she was a complete flop at it. She had neither the grasp of policy substance, the managerial skills, nor the political smarts to do the job she was then given. And she wasn't smart enough to realize that she was in over her head and had to get out of the Health Care Czar role quickly.

June, 2007, quoting without comment or update from a Harvard Crimson article on himself and Andrei Shleifer:

[DeLong] also played a role in the unsuccessful effort at creating universal health care, laying much of the blame for the legislation’s demise at the feet of then-First Lady Hillary Clinton, who had led the effort. In one of the most famous posts on his blog, DeLong wrote that, based on his experience working with Clinton, “there is no reason to think that she would be anything but an abysmal president.” He adds that she “had neither the grasp of policy substance, the managerial skills, nor the political smarts” to lead the effort.

In October of 2007, a new paragraph is miraculously inserted into what was previously this piece:

It is hard to tell how much power Hillary Rodham Clinton had. Certainly she did not effectively manage the process. But I did see Ira Magaziner in action. And it seems to me that the process was impossible to manage as long as Ira Magaziner was involved, and perhaps she did not have the power to fire him.

February, 2008 (edited to be Hillary-specific; nice comments about Barack Obama go without saying):

The arguments against Hilary Rodham Clinton are:

1. Her performance running Clinton-era health care reform in 1993 and 1994 gives no confidence in her ability to run the large organization that is the U.S. government.

The response...is by this point very convincing: [she has] demonstrated an ability to run an excellent political campaign. Running a successful presidential political campaign is not the same thing as governing a country, but [she has] demonstrated substantial administrative competence over the past two years...the Hilary Rodham Clinton who made such an administrative mess of health reform in 1993-1994 could not have run the campaign she has run over the past two years. Thus I am now confident that [she] has a reasonable shot of being in the top 20% of American presidents.

Anyone wonder why that first bullet is still prominent?

The thing is, it's not as if DeLong doesn't speak with the Patricks and Tboggs and others who know that Hillary Rodham Clinton has been a United States Senator from New York for seven years, not just one, and was both elected in 2000 (when she ran an intense campaign, learned the issues that affect people in New York state, and planned accordingly) and then re-elected by a wider margin after serving her constituents's needs from 2001-2006.

Apparently, until this week, though, he forgot that it's not 1994 any more.

Labels: 2008, Brad DeLong, Hillary Clinton, Meme-A-Riffic, Politics

by Ken Houghton

UPDATE: Let's do this the easy way. Please feel free to Tag YOURSELF, and note it in comments.

Cactus at AngryBear tries to get into the holiday season by continuing a meme. The problem is that he does it so well that my usual answers would seem pale imitations. So I'll try to play this straight.

1. Wrapping or gift bags? Gift bags are even more suboptimal use of resources than wrapping paper, plus they cost significantly more.

2. Real or artificial tree? Artificial trees are a far superior use of resources, plus they are reused and therefore economically efficient, even including the nominal storage cost. My personal preference for the Silver trees with the light from below with the tri-color (none of them green) filter shining up from below has been vetoed for the past several years.

3. When do you put up the tree? I don't; it goes up whenever Shira finds it in the attic (q.v. storage costs, above) and decides it needs to be on display. The relationship of this timing and the persistent requests of small children is left as an exercise to the reader.

4. When do you take the tree down? As soon as possible. I presume it will be down before Pesach this year.

5. Do you like egg nog? No, I'm human. And rather lactose-intolerant anyway.

6. Favorite gift received as a child? Probably a bicycle, certainly not for Xmas.

7. Do you have a nativity scene? Uh, no. What does that have to do with celebrating the Solstice anyway?

8. Worst Christmas gift you ever received? The day off, since consultants don't get paid.

9. Mail or email Christmas cards? Mail, of course. Have to keep Tom's consulting business going.

10. Favorite Christmas Movie? Anything other than Sophie Marceau is not Enough.

11. When do you start shopping for Christmas? I don't, though I did have a few years of sending holiday cards out annually on December 28th.

12. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? This is a family blog, so let's just leave the answer at "Food, Glorious Food!" Or, in honor of a Season One Torchwood episode, bananas.

(FYI to cactus: Pomegranates were still available at Costco in NJ a few weeks ago.)

13. Clear lights or colored on the tree? Whatever. Probably colored, since the tree is small.

14. Favorite Christmas song(s)? Robert Earl Keen's "Merry Xmas from the Family," which appears to now be available as a book and CD set.

If it has to be a "traditional" carol, then "I Saw Three Ships," since the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria arriving at landlocked Bethlehem must have been quite a sight.

15. Travel at Christmas or stay home? I married into what is now a 20-year tradition of a party for "Jews and Orphans" on 25 December. So while I might prefer to travel, I cannot and stay married.

16. Can you name all of Santa’s reindeer? No, and not just because the bit players and taxi squad are never named. By the way, now-F&SF editor Gordon van Gelder's first professional story sale was "Santa's Tenth Reindeer." Gordon was a teenager at the time.

17. Angel on the tree top or a star? I am told that Shira put a Star of David on top. The Eldest put an angel on top of that, so I suppose the answer is both. (The angel, in the TMI category, is as large as the tree itself.)

18. Open the presents Christmas Eve or Christmas Morning? Shira's birthday is December 27th. I really need to go shopping.

19. Most annoying thing about this time of year? End of Year donation solicitations to those of us not independently wealthy enough to have an equivalent of the Samwick Family Fund.

20. Do you decorate your tree in any specific theme or color? See above answers, especially to questions 3, 13, and 17.

21. What do you leave for Santa? Nothing; I tried to file a restraining order, but couldn't get Shira to co-sign it.

22. Least favorite holiday song? If I can only pick one, I would follow the crowd and select "Last Christmas." But in trying to find the appropriate blog link, this one made it clear that, as with greasy, tasteless, potato chip, no one should pick just one. (Though I like The Kink's "Father Christmas," which at least captures the spirit of the season appropriately.)

23. Favorite ornament? Ornaments impede gas mileage, so I really don't have one. The discussion of the BMW ornament in Sean Connery's last great movie indicates some incidental value to them.

24. Family tradition? Good song, but I prefer the work of the Hanks on either side of Bocephus.

25. Ever been to Midnight Mass or late-night Christmas Eve services? Usually during a pub-crawl.

Tom will tag people when he gets back.

Labels: Angry Bear, blogging, Family, just life, Meme-A-Riffic

by Ken Houghton

Via Professor mochi_tsuki (and Tina –ed), a great website that also serves a great cause.

Learn definitions (well, when you guess correctly, at least) and Feed the World. Send the rugrats, after they're done with their costumes, explicit or exotic.

Labels: blogging, education, Meme-A-Riffic

by Ken Houghton

This was even after selecting "Go see it with mixed feelings, knowing it can't possibly measure up but looking forward to seeing some of the best moments on a big screen" on the optimistic idea that Lempriere's Dictionary will be filmed.

What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm You're probably in the final stages of a Ph.D. or otherwise finding a way to make your living out of reading. You are one of the literati. Other people's grammatical mistakes make you insane.
Dedicated Reader
Book Snob
Literate Good Citizen
Non-Reader
Fad Reader
What Kind of Reader Are You? Create Your Own Quiz

(via The Little Professor)

Labels: just life, Meme-A-Riffic

by Ken Houghton

via Mochi-tsuki:

You're The Sound and the Fury!

by William Faulkner

Strong-willed but deeply confused, you are trying to come to grips with a major crisis in your life. You can see many different perspectives on the issue, but you're mostly overwhelmed with despair at what you've lost. People often have a hard time understanding you, but they have some vague sense that you must be brilliant anyway. Ultimately, you signify nothing.


Take the Book Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.

Labels: just life, Meme-A-Riffic, Meta

by Ken Houghton

UPDATE: Erin comes through with flying colors.

Continuing Tom's post below, mainly because I need to finish the tagging:

1. I made my "television debut" (one of those kid shows, as a birthdayer/audience member) in 1967. Except for a brief appearance on The David Susskind Show ca. 1980 (non-speaking), I have managed never to do it again.
   
2. When Shira and I visited Israel in 1999, we stayed at the Park Hotel in Netanya. That hotel is the one that was attacked at Passover, 2002. What the American press appears not to have mentioned is that it was primarily a French hotel (French staff, French visitors, etc.). Why they would leave that out in early 2002, I don't know.
   
3. A high school teacher who lived down the road asked why I wasn't going to one of the military academies on graduation. At the time, I weighed about 107 pounds.
   
4. I first left North America in, I believe, 1988.
   
5. I first went below the Mason-Dixon line (not counting Washington D.C. as a tourist, or for weddings) when I started my MBA at UGA in 2000.
   
6. Except for diving trips and a Thanksgiving in Montreal, I have never traveled anywhere outside of the U.S. except to the United Kingdom and the above-referenced trip to Israel.
   
7. I am from a long line of ancestral Republicans, and wish the party still existed.
   
8. I know several really brilliant women, but very few of them blog. (There may be a connection there.)

Tags: Ms. Mochi-tsuki (who is as brilliant as her father), al zorra (who is as brilliant as her husband), and Susan (who is brilliant).

And President-to-be Erin, of whose brilliance I shouldn't have to convince anyone who reads here regularly.

Labels: Erin O'Brien, Meme-A-Riffic

by Tom Bozzo

Janelle hit me with the eight-random-things-about-yourself meme (and Ken, too, but he'll need to list his own random things should he choose to do so).


1. I've biked to work 51 days so far this year, beginning on March 21 (at which time the last of the ice on our street was gone). My fuel savings have just about paid for this year's tune-up and repair of yesterday's flat tire.

2. I'm still interested in car news, but intend to get out of the car market's positional arms race as soon as possible. Whether I'll totally divorce my car or just the luxury car market remains to be seen — there's a draft post pledging the former that I don't have the stones to publish.

3. I once was a registered Republican, for reasons that I won't go into. My dreams of being able to tell someone that I was a Dukakis Republican were, sadly, dashed.

4. At the end of high school, I was dumped for giving my then-girlfriend a copy of The Crying of Lot 49 in an exchange of literary birthday presents.

5. I have owned as many Wintel PCs as there are Republican candidates I've voted for (i.e., 1*).

6. I bought the PC, a Toshiba Satellite laptop with a 20 MHz '386sx, 1 MB RAM, and a 20 MB hard drive, mainly to play Civilization before a Mac version was available. Yes, it ran just fine on that hardware.

7. I don't own a pair of jeans.

8. I do own more LEGO now than I did in my LEGO-besotted youth. A lot more. And sharing with the kids doesn't hurt.

I'm supposed to do a lot of tagging for this one. I'll do half and let Ken pick more (again, should he so choose). So tags to: Ben, Practicing Idealist, Stephen, and Tina.



(*) For, as I recall, a New Castle County, Delaware, row office; the Democrat was a creep or something.

Labels: Meme-A-Riffic

by Tom Bozzo

I don't know exactly why Ken is resurrecting ancient memes from the Just Thoughts archives, but he's come up with a possibly somewhat more amusing answer than my original version (here).

Here's the context for Ken's choice for 5th sentence, 23rd post. The lede, September 21, 2004:

UW law prof and blogger Ann Althouse [link omitted] polls her readership as to whether the presidential choice should be made on the basis of the connections (or lack thereof) Bush and Kerry draw between Afghanistan and Iraq, and who comes out on top. The result: overwhelmingly (75%) for Bush! Oh no!

Ann described the result as "striking," which was dumb. Though the election outcome still stings a bit.

For the benefit of my mom, my grandmother, Suzanne, and my friend Cathy (a.k.a. the entire Marginal Utility readership of the time), I described the Althouse phenomenon:

Prof. Althouse's claim to fame is as a sort of Rovian fantasy of the "security mom." She's a self-professed Democrat for Bush (via some sort of lingering post-9/11/01 bond, though she claims to have voted Edwards in the Democratic presidential primary), an academic at a famously liberal institution, and moreover one who takes frequent digs at John Kerry via her blog, and has been linked by prominent conservative bloggers [i.e., the Ole Perfesser] for doing so. This has apparently given her a spike in readership, of the sort that doesn't care about the views from the 100 Wisconsin Avenue condos [link added]. So if you poll a bunch of righty blog readers, and perhaps a few Madison academics who may need to stage an intervention, what do you expect?

Labels: Meme-A-Riffic, Wingnuttia

by Ken Houghton

Tom gets to do the tagging, though:

The job:

1. Go into your archives.
2. Find your 23rd post.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.
5. Tag five other people to do the same thing.

So here it is:

"Assume for the sake of argument that Bush and Kerry supporters are equally likely to self-select into the poll and to stuff the ballot box."

Labels: blogging, Meme-A-Riffic

by Tom Bozzo

Drek honored us with a "Thinking Blogger" tag. Thanks, Drek! There's nothing we like more than blog homework, as the "award" is a thing-called-meme. Since Drek contributes here from time to time, and I sometimes add my two cents over there, this could pretty quickly degenerate into a circle jerk. [*] I'll try to avoid a visit to One Infinite Loop in naming some thinking bloggers who don't blog here.

Also, if you're a blog pal and your blog doesn't appear in the list below, there's surely a good explanation. Maybe you put your blog on double secret probation and we never got the password for some reason. [**]

Anyway, here goes, in alphabetical order:

Blue Monster. Dan Myers does the "Wisconsin Ideas" blog style [***] all the way from South Bend! Hey, anyone can embed a mostly funny YouTube video on urinal selection conventions — how many can follow it up with Actual Research Blogging? I don't know that I needed to be reminded of a certain class of power ballad, though. (As a sign of increasing age, or maybe an index of the suckitude of what little contemporary pop music I hear, stuff like Guns N' Roses that I despised back in the day now are occasional guilty pleasures. But I draw the line with Journey.) Dan should be a shoo-in for the defunct-and-deleted (RIP) Pub Sociology's slot in the "Learning is Fun" section of the Fafblog! blogroll, such time as the Faf-gang returns to the four puny dimensions of our limited perception.

Orgtheory.net. A bit heavier on the learning than Dan's or Jeremy's, not that there's anything wrong with that. From a blogeontological perspective, Orgtheory strikes me as the sociosphere's closest thing to the major econoblogs — a la DeLong or Marginal Revulsion Revolution.

WaxingAmerica. The blog of former Madison mayor Paul Soglin and UW telecommunications professor Barry Orton works several valuable angles: the Wisconsin Wingnut Watch, analysis of City of Madison policy issues, and the most in-depth coverage of telecom regulation issues affecting the state. You may not see eye-to-eye with Paul on the city policy stuff all of the time, but you shouldn't disagree with him without figuring out why.

Whiskey Fire. Thers is too big to meme, but he makes fun of Ann Althouse so some of us don't have to, except when he doesn't, and thus should earn Suzanne's gratitude. [****] Usually. And, Altmouse fans (you know who you are), see here. Elsewhere, Thers provides useful perspective on the Duke Lacrosse Scandal scandal, and observes the dangers of letting Republicans fiddle with higher education accreditation rules.

Xtinpore. Prior my extended busy period at work/blog funk, I'd gone so far as to try to recruit proprietor Xtin to round out the hypothetical Marginal Utility basketball team, to serve as the Marginal Utility European Correspondent, and to be the all around Philosopher Queen of our Whole Sick Crew. Hope springs eternal, but meanwhile check out her blog! While there has been a flurry of updates lately, the life of a proto-academic makes for some lengthy gaps at times. But that's why there's RSS. Check out the Best South Park Avatar Ever, consider that the northern hemisphere Moon is all wrong from some frames of reference, and wonder what it's like to have a thesis adviser you'd call Professor Agent Smith — as a term of endearment.

---------------------------

[*] Just as soon as I typed the linked term into the Google search box, I figured I should add "band" to the search string or I was going to get unpredictable results.

[**] Ahem, Tonya. [*****]

[***] Loosely put, a blog where the content, for the most part, is not overtly scholarly, but the perspective is observably warped by one's academic background. Jeremy Freese's Weblog is the archetype.

[****] Decorum may prevent me from asking "how 'bout that Jessica Valenti business" at the housewarming of Condo di Nina.

[*****] Or, tailor a story to your particular circumstances. [******]

[******] Don't forget that this is a blog "meme" and should be taken with the appropriate level of seriousness.

Labels: Meme-A-Riffic