The return of inverse schadenfreude

I'm glad that I'm not the only person who does this:

My bloglines subscriptions are chock full of people whose writing I can't stand. I have a little ritual where I read all the sites of people whose popularity baffles me because they couldn't write their way out of their own ass but inexplicably their readers don't seem to notice. I get really mad at the injustice of people (I won't name names but you can fill in your own blank here _______) who get articles written about them and book deals thrown at their feet, yet they suck the sucky suck so suckin' much there is no logical explanation for why they are rewarded for their suck. I get all heated and swear a lot and then I feel very alive and passionate and I go about my day.

To be accurate, the sites that really get under my skin aren't even in my Bloglines, but I keep checking them anyway, like a kid picking at a scab.

This should be better than LA Law.

A pilot episode has been ordered for In the Shadow of the Law, based on Kermit Roosevelt's book of the same name. The maker of CSI is on board. Let's hope it becomes a series and CSI-wannabe Dexter dies a rapid death.

Katie Holmes carrying cyclops baby?

A doctor on Metafilter offers an interesting genetic explanation for Tom Cruise's difficulty in fathering children and a scary hypothesis about TomKat spawn. Run, Katie, run!

UPDATE: If you are searching for the original post linked above, try here.

Strike a pose

Via Lindsayism, an amusing music video by Fiona Apple. (The video is Not About Love, and AOL Music is not compatible with the latest version of Firefox, so bust out your IE browsers.)

Coming out as a blogger?

Via Concurring Opinions, this bizarre quote from the New York Times's recent profile of David Lat:

Ms. Golin, an avid blog reader, said she is intrigued to see where Wonkette goes from here: "David was on this one side a hard-core Federalist Society type, who clerked for an extremely hard-right judge, and was way to the right of most of his associates. And he had this whole other side of flamboyant, theater-watching, Oscar-watching, shoe-loving, litigatrix. How do these two sides get reconciled?"

Has Ms. Golin spent a lot of time around Federalists? How is watching the Oscars (hardly a countercultural event), liking shoes, or going to the theater incompatible with believing in judicial restraint and the separation of powers? Or is Ms. Golin really trying to say, "He's right-wing, but gay. Does not compute!"

UPDATE: Upon scanning the NY Times profile in its entirety, I think it's safe to say that the latter interpretation is wrong (the language seemed coded to me), although the bit about Lat's intolerant Crimson editorials makes reading the Volokh Conspiracy comments after A3G's unmasking simply delicious.

My advice to pre-laws

I don't want to come off as attacking Fresh, but posts like this sum up one of the things I found frustrating about law school:

This is a historic day. Today I am halfway through my student loans.

After 4 years and 5 months of practicing law, I have exactly $55,234.89 worth of student loans left. . . .

In celebration, I spent all day at work yesterday researching culinary schools. Can anyone cut me a check for 55 grand?

Maybe it's futile to say so, since so many people who go to law school are risk averse and thus likely to opt for the dubious security of J.D.-as-credential despite their lack of desire to practice law, but isn't the more logical impulse to go to culinary school, not law school, if you want to be a chef? To go be a comedy writer if you want to write comedy? What is the point of racking up $100K in debt so you can be trained to do something you find minimally rewarding at best and repellent at worst for eighty hours per week for several years to repay your loans, only to put yourself in the same situation as you were in before law school, but a decade older?

If you don't want to practice law, don't go to law school. Please. I'm begging you. Don't let your parents push you into something. Don't be afraid to pursue your real dream. Just because that dream won't give you a nice, safe, respectable, upper-middle-class white collar professional identity doesn't mean you shouldn't follow it. Be a pastry chef. Write. Join the police department. Hell, renounce your wealth and ramble around the countryside, as long as you do it safely. But don't spend the price of a small house on a professional degree that you don't need and then indenture yourself to student loans for years to pay it off for no good reason.

UPDATE: Nate Oman tends to agree.

UPDATE II: I previously posted about why not to go to law school here.

Sitting down and shutting up nothing new

Interesting comments on the alleged gender gap in education at Majikthise. Yesterday I read the thread on Althouse about this issue and found it unsatisfying, as usual. Beyerstein puts her finger on precisely what was niggling at me through this entire discussion:

It's crazy to think that it's unfair to boys for the school system to reward sitting down, shutting up, and doing your work.

Schools have stressed these dispositions for longer than than women have been allowed an education.

When I read this post by a teacher, I couldn't articulate why I disagreed so strongly with him, despite his wealth of experience with young boys and my relative lack. But as Beyerstein points out, wrestling on the floor of a classroom was hardly countenanced in earlier days. In fact, until the past few decades such conduct might have earned the wrestlers corporal punishment. If standards for behavior were higher in the past and boys achieved then, what's holding them back now?

Acceptable modes of service

This post at The Happy Feminist, which addresses the difficulties of police work, reminds me of the protests we used to have in law school about gays in the military. The protests focused on the idea that it was wrong for the military to expect access. Almost no one talked about what access would mean for recruiting; the handful of interested students were going to make their appointments, on campus or off, but the vast majority seemed to think of the military as an occupation for other (lesser?) people. Police work, like the military, would be viewed as beneath most Ivy Leaguers. Service is something you do in Teach for America, or the Peace Corps, or (best yet) prestigious federal government work. But in both cases, the educated classes decry the ideological composition of the forces, even as they acknowledge their power. Why not break in and force change from the inside? Is it because police and military work is more blue collar?

More on this later, maybe.

I should have named him Lenny

I always used to laugh at the story of my aunt and uncle, who bought a Great Dane puppy and let it sit in their laps on the sofa. When the pup grew up, awkwardness ensued; a Dane is hardly a lapdog. Now the shoe is on the other foot; when Snape was small, his climbing on my shoulder and twining around my neck was endearing. Now that he's bigger than Lily, I'm having some trouble convincing him that lying across my carotid while I'm sleeping is bad.

Celebrity gossip sites abound

If you liked The Superficial or I Don't Like You In That Way, you'll enjoy What Would Tyler Durden Do? These are all methadone to the heroin of the old Fametracker message boards, of course.

PTN Book Club Reminder

I've received a couple of links to posts about Blindness, the January selection for the blog book club. If you've already read the book and written your post, feel free to send it in before the due date; I will post all links on January 31. If you haven't read it yet, you still have 12 days. It's only 350 pages and is a fairly quick read.

Fey Accompli

Despite living in the same house as Will Wilkinson last summer (well, technically, anyway), before today I never knew that his lovely girlfriend has a blog. This can probably be explained with two words: bar exam. Anyway, it's a good read, and prettily designed to boot.

What the internet is for

Apropos of my recent post, a World of Warcraft animated version of one of the songs from Avenue Q. Other animated versions are linked in the comment thread.

Poor little rich girl

I'd write on the Opinionista unmasking, but I haven't been able to procure any gossip from one of her UVA classmates, so in lieu of original content I offer a link to Ted Frank's analysis.

One thing: the New York Observer article notes that Lafsky took down a couple of "ticking time bomb" posts containing thinly veiled profiles of law firm partners. A quick Google produces both of these posts: Ogre, Queen Bee. Since Lafsky only worked as a paralegal, summer associate, or associate at four firms, it should be easy to identify these people.

UPDATE: After reading Lafsky's new bio post, my negative impressions were confirmed. It's a giant pity party for a child of privilege: drug abuse! eating disorders! having to go to Dartmouth as a legacy admit because nobody else would have her! If I'm going to read about a poor little rich girl, I want something more like this. At least Harvey wasn't an incorrigible whiner.

Fours

E. Spat tagged me with the Fours meme, so here goes.

Four Jobs You've Had
Hostess/waitress at diner/honky-tonk
Telephone solicitor for CMC's alumni giving program
BIGLAW summer associate
Law clerk

Four Movies You Could Watch Over and Over
Rushmore
The Princess Bride
Office Space
Clerks

Four Places You've Lived
San Antonio, Texas
Claremont, California
Washington, D.C.
Cambridge, Massachusetts

Four TV Shows You Like to Watch
Oz
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Deadwood
Arrested Development

Four Places You've Been on Vacation
Delphi, Greece
Reykjavik, Iceland
Belgrade, Serbia
Istanbul, Turkey

Four Websites You Visit Daily
Metafilter
Bloglines
I Don't Like You In That Way
Slate

Four of My Favorite Foods
Pork fajitas
Chunky Monkey ice cream
Stale Cracklin' Oat Bran
Diet Coke

Four Places I'd Rather Be
Washington, D.C.
Switzerland
Los Angeles
Peru

Four Albums I Can't Live Without
The Immaculate Collection
Picaresque
Kill Bill Vol. 1
Exile in Guyville

Four People to Tag With the Lists
I'm declaring open season; anyone who wants can pick this up.

Law Clinics

I was very interested in getting some clinical credits during law school, but the prosecution clinic did not open until my 3L year, when I was consumed with journal work. None of the other clinical programs really interested me; HLS does not have an entrepreneur-oriented clinic like UChicago's. Additionally, many of the clinical programs were located off campus and would have required a substantial commute (some were only accessible by car).

What I did instead of blogging

In the past three days, I did not blog at all. I did, however:

• See Avenue Q (two thumbs up)
• Lose $100 playing poker
• Eat Kobe beef
• See half of a Cirque du Soleil performance (two thumbs down)
• Try on Manolo Blahniks; realize they are ugly
  

. . . and myriad other things. Unfortunately for you, while I am willing to seriously consider spending hundreds of dollars on leather goods, I refuse to pay exorbitant hotel rates for internet access. I'm sure you all had a nice MLK weekend anyway.

Cell phones? Not scary.

After the disappointment of the final Dark Tower books, I had mixed feelings over Stephen King's supposed retirement. Now that he's emphatically not retired, I have mixed feelings over the prospect of more craptastic King books.

Workin' at the court house

"Car Wash" needs surprisingly little modification to be altered into a song about my life:

Woo
You might not ever get rich
But let me tell ya it's better that diggin' a ditch.
There ain't no tellin' who ya might meet.
A movie star or maybe even an Indian Chief.

(Workin' at the) court house.
Workin' at the court house yeah!
Come on and sing it with me court house.
Get with the feelin' y'all court house yeah.

Come summer the work gets kind a hard
This ain't no place to be if ya planned on being a star.
Let me tell you it's always cool
And the boss don't mind sometimes if ya act a fool.

At the court house
Talkin' about the court house yeah!
Come on and sing it for me court house.
court house yeah!

(Work and work) Well those cases never seem to stop comin'.
(Work and work) Keep those stenographers hummin'
(Work and work) my fingers to the bone
(Work) at five I can't wait 'til it's time to go home
Hey
get your case argued today.
Be indigent and you don't have to pay.
Come on and give us a play.
Hear your case right away.

court house talkin' about the court house yeah!
Woo court house

Those cases never seems to stop comin'
Well
I say
Keep those stenographers hummin'

Honest curiosity

In the context of Andrew Sullivan's series of posts on zygotes and embryos, this brief mention of a related topic on Volokh was interesting. I don't have a problem with cloning, mostly because clones are just twins on steroids. But for my religious readers (if there are any): how do you think the whole ensoulment thing works for twins or chimeras?

Ring Dog

I like dogs, but my first thought upon seeing this post was: SADAKO!

What Women Want

On the basis of briefly observing one unpleasant woman on a reality show, Steve Dillard has deduced the innate nature of woman:

She wants: babies. Women were meant to be mothers. (Presumably those of us who don't want to breed are rebelling against our essential natures. Perhaps we are defective.)

She doesn't want: sex. Only men derive pleasure from sex. We only permit ourselves to be objectified and made into a vehicle for men's pleasure because we want the aforementioned babies or because we have been brainwashed by feminists into thinking we like sex. (Under the former arrangement, don't women objectify men by making them into vehicles for sperm?)

Instead of drawing the simple conclusion that a guy is likely to be put off by someone who sees him as merely means to the actualization of her dream of a full womb, Dillard blames contraception for the contestant's failure to secure a legally linked sperm donor on demand. Right; this obnoxious chick would be quite a catch if only other women weren't sleeping around!

I was not meant to be a mother. I don't agree with one commenter that "men were made to protect and work for the women and children" (i.e. be a walking wallet). Such reductionism insults the humanity of men and women alike. We are more than our reproductive systems; the meaning of life is not encompassed by reliable passage of genetic materials from one generation to the next.

When I get sterilized, I'm sending Dillard an announcement: "It's a boy girl barren uterine wasteland!"

Break The Rules

Women and men need to play games? Bollocks. Anything is overdoing it.

Dirty books without pictures

Phoebe has a close encounter with the kind of literature Debra Dickerson decries. It always amuses me that certain grocery and discount stores will proudly huff that they refuse to carry Maxim or put Cosmo in a paper sleeve but see nothing wrong with checkout line racks full of literate smut for women. (The stuff written by and for white women is hardly less dirty than the aforementioned books. I think most of my early sex ed consisted of romance novels and a video of Sea of Love. Yay Texas public schools.)

So which is it?

Relationships: rational or irrational?

Of queynte and quaggas

This tidbit came to mind this morning:

[G]etting trapped in an academic feedback loop of writing is pretty damn useless. All you do is hang out with other would-be writers, writing writerly little stories to impress them. You're not actually learning much about anything or anyone else. My own guess is that this has led to the really fabulously boring world of modern literary fiction, where all the writing is terribly clever but doesn't actually say anything of consequence to anyone who's not already a writer or wishing they were. In other words, modern literary fiction is just like sitting in a room full of people who are delighted to smell their own farts. Good for them, but I'd like to go outside, if it's all the same.

Elvis had nothing on me

I am firmly of the (irrational) belief that any smoothie constitutes healthy eating. But fruit is just sugar and fiber, you say. Juice is even worse, being fruit minus fiber. I don't want to hear it. Strawberries plus orange-pineapple-banana juice is good, and good for me. After all, everything in is fruit, and we need fruits and veggies, right? Likewise, my peanut butter, banana, and honey smoothie made with 2% crack milk is completely virtuous. I added flax seed meal and everything.

Elevator Graffiti Mystery

I park my car during the day in a large multi-story garage that is next to the building with the judge's chambers. There are two options for ascending and descending the various levels of the garage: a claustrophobic concrete stairwell that screams, "assault women here!" or two rattly elevators with chipped floor tiles. Being lazy and paranoid, I take the elevator.

Some time back, I noticed that someone had scratched a swastika into the soft metal of the no smoking sign in one of the elevators. Disturbing, no? After a short time, someone else obliterated the mark with a key.

A week or so after the swastika's destruction, it reappeared. At first, I thought I had been mistaken that the original had been scratched out, but then I realized that it had simply been recarved on the sign in the second elevator. This time I took out my keys and sawed at it to mask the symbol. The next day, I noted that someone else had also chipped in to scratch it out.

I'm waiting for the mystery bigot to carve again. The garage is used almost exclusively by the employees in my building, none of whom seem like the type who would adorn elevators with graffiti, much less such nastiness. Apparently someone around is, though.

Funny Stuff

- "Date the hot farrier!" is probably good advice. From the comments, the priceless sentences, "It took me a long assed time to get over the ex. One of the things that helped me though was when I got run over by a pickup."

- E. Spat entertains us with tales of her ex. Money quote: "There is nothing like marrying someone and then waking up about a year later and realizing you married a guy whose idea of a great time is getting drunk and juggling knives."

- Super Soaker restores man's hearing.

- Not actually funny ha-ha, but: Ross Douthat seems to think that our intuitions point toward personhood for embryos and fetuses because people grieve after miscarriages. We grieve at the end of a marriage or the death of our dogs, but those aren't legal persons.

Dog eat dog?

Usually Phoebe handles dachshund blogging, but I felt like passing on the story of Bo, who is not a brave cone dog.

Still more on looks

Ask Metafilter, by a strange coincidence, has been rife with questions about looks and love for the past few days. A few interesting ones:

- How much has your own attractiveness or sense thereof determined with whom you are or have been romantically involved?

- Do people who might typically be considered physically unattractive think that they are indeed physically unattractive?

- I have Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. To summarise its effects, I look like a normal girl on the outside, but [I have XY chromosomes. Should I tell men I am intimate with about this, and if so how]?

Aesthetics II

I've changed to a new template. Let me know your thoughts.

A thing to always keep in mind

If nothing on a list of goods or services has a listed price, I probably can't afford any of it.

Another restroom post

Why don't toilets in public restrooms have foot-operated flushing mechanisms? This would be so much more sanitary.

Internet beauty standards, part II

Phoebe weighs in on the beauty standards issue and says she doesn't have a problem with women being held to an exacting standard for weight. My only response is that while it's true that many components go into attraction, having a beauty ideal that not even people who get paid to be attractive can live up to consistently and healthily leads to a lot of personal misery, both for anorexic or bulimic women and for lonely men who have been conditioned to find something attractive that occurs relatively rarely in nature. The naturally thin are the new blonde WASPs.

On a related note, people don't like my pink coat and blue scarf. However, my face and build are apparently acceptable to anonymous law students on the internet.

Quibbling about quaggas

From an otherwise interesting Slate slideshow on attempts to breed back zebras to reproduce the extinct quagga, a near-non sequitur that's almost offensively stupid:

There is another objection to reviving the quagga. A popular 19th-century theory held that men and animals inherit traits not just from their parents but also from their mother's first partner. This supposed phenomenon was called "the taint of the quagga" because it was said to have been discovered in the animal. The taint was alluded to by journalists of the era and in the writings of Goethe, Strindberg, Ibsen, and Zola. It reinforced the taboo of miscegenation and encouraged men to keep their women under lock and key. Perhaps, then, as a symbol of racist and sexist fear-mongering, the quagga is best forgotten.

Because of course a now-obscure and patently false biological theory with a mistaken connection to the animal is evidence in favor of allowing it to die forever. I'm sure the author had found this juicy historical tidbit and couldn't think of any other way to work it into his narrative about the quagga's rebirth, but that doesn't excuse the paralyzing idiocy of the proferred argument. Are any feminists or anti-racists actually protesting Reinhold Rau's breeding program? Poppycock.

Modern Love and Loss

With all the other criticisms to be made of the New York Times's Modern Love column, it seems a bit nitpicky to point out that they apparently provide so little editing that the most recent column went to press with a repeated misspelling of the name of Miss Havisham from Great Expectations. I like nitpicking, though.

Contentwise, the article is a welcome antidote to some of the NY Times's fawning over the alleged opt-out revolution.

Cherished neighborhood institution closing; I don't care.

Every time I turn around, it seems like people are lamenting the closure of some unprofitable media vendor in Cambridge. The shuttering of Wordsworth Books, for example, merited a huge amount of attention. I went into Wordsworth a couple of times, and might have even bought a book there once. However, in an area saturated with stores selling new and used books, branches of the second largest library in the nation, and students who shop online as second nature, it's hardly improbable that a small retail outlet with a limited selection of full-price books might get pushed out. But for the entire period leading up to the store's closure, people bellyached about how tragic it was for this long-lived enterprise to be shutting down.

Similarly, the Brattle Theater is apparently about to close and people are all atwitter. In three years at Harvard, I never once set foot in the Brattle Theater. Since I never went in, I can't say whether the venue was particularly posh, but in my general experience, small, old theaters have tiny screens and uncomfortable seats. There are probably rooms on the Harvard campus equipped with screens, projectors, and speakers comparable to this theater. (And those are available free for students; so much for serving the community!)

Old movies I could rent and watch at home. If I was willing to go only a little further than my couch or want a new movie, I could go to the Loews on Church Street. If it's an indie I wanted to see, Kendall Square is near MIT and has a nice new physical plant. And if I was willing to go into Boston, I could be awed by the sound and fury of the giant multiplex on Boston Common. I don't care how long a business has been around. If it's in a relatively concealed location, shows one film at a time, is tiny, and charges just as much as the big chains, patronizing it is a bad deal. Just because something's old doesn't mean it's good. It's usually conservatives that need to hear that, but preservationists in these situations are more often liberal. Of course, they are often liberals who also go to multiplexes and order books from Amazon, but that's secondary.

Internet beauty standards

The posters on XOXOHTH, the "most prestigious law school admissions discussion board in the world," have (puzzlingly) decided to bash Jill at Feministe as fat and ugly. A few disjointed observations:

- At least some of the posters on the board are actual admitted and current students at elite law schools. I posted on XOXOHTH and its predecessor board as an admit and (very occasionally) as an HLS student. So did several other HLSers and YLSers of my acquaintance. It's actually a very useful resource during periods where time-sensitive announcements are being made, like law firm recruiting, admissions, and law review decisions.

- The board participants commonly praise as attractive women who are useful members of the community and run down outsiders/political opponents as unattractive with almost no correlation to actual appearances.

- Internet people are insane about women and weight. While guest posting at Crescat, I observed that classical works of art in museums contain many healthy alternatives to the currently popular, exaggeratedly skinny depictions of women and that children might benefit from greater exposure to these more realistic images. As a result, the man I was seeing received multiple emails asking him why he would date "a fattie," since only overweight women could possibly object to anorexia as a fashion ideal or urge appreciation for a wider range of body types. This by readers of a website with a relatively intelligent fanbase. That XOXOHTH is less enlightened is no surprise.

Hugo has more on the concept of the embodied blogger.

Elite Lawyers Should Donate Money, Not Time

In the Washington Post today, a Stanford Law student points out that it would be much more efficient for elite lawyers with high billing rates to donate money instead of working on pro bono projects. (h/t Agoraphilia) This reminds me of a post I made while working at a firm on a similarly inefficient charitable project.

Why the internet is cool, part CXXVII

You, a private citizen, can review a book, and within days, the author has read your review.

A rare substantive post

Pressure from Ralph Nader's Public Citizen group apparently succeeded in getting Cylert (generically known as pemoline) banned. While this drug does pose some risk of liver toxicity, it can be the only effective treatment for some sufferers of ADHD and narcolepsy. One of the people adversely affected by the drug's withdrawal from the market is Tor book editor and blogger Teresa Nielsen Hayden:

Xopher [A commenter with ADHD] and I and god knows how many other people with narcolepsy, ADHD, and other tricksy neurochemical impairments are looking at THE END OF OUR FUNCTIONAL WORKING LIVES.

When I worked in DC several years ago, I had to sneak into Public Citizen events because my boss, a critic, was banned. The group may have done some good work at one time, but all too often they hurt more than they help.

I like cake, and no mistake

Via JMPP, a cookbook my coworkers wish I would buy (if only so I would stop bringing in massive amounts of baked goods to the office).

May the force be with you, bar takers!

My friend cd has just started a new blog, Phubar, to track her preparation for the February 2006 California bar exam. Such a blog can be a useful source of information, so keep an eye on it!

Netflix: Dirty Scum Liars

You know, it takes a lot of abuse from a video provider before I start considering switching to Blockbuster. That company doesn't carry Buffy, censors its movies with little notice to the customer (making films like Y Tu Mama Tambien unwatchably nonsensical) , and caught a lot of flack for its deceptive and now dying "no late fees" program. But Netflix is pushing me to the breaking point.

First, they started sending me discs from far down my queue despite the fact that the preceding discs were labeled "available now." Then they started throttling my usage by claiming that they had not received returned discs for days or by shipping my next available disc the day after they admitted receiving a return. I've gotten a half a dozen broken discs in the last few months. Today I was looking forward to getting into season two of Six Feet Under, which features one of my unofficial celebrity inspirations, Rachel Griffiths. Unfortunately, they sent me another copy of disc one instead of the second disc for the season. To cap this off, mislabeled discs are not automatically resent and thus I won't get the correct disc until at least Thursday (if the disc had been scratched or broken, a new disc would have been sent Tuesday, even though they wouldn't have received the unusable one yet).

The judge makes fun of me for not watching TV, but until Netflix decided to give bad service, that didn't really affect me at all. Now I am good and irked.

Aesthetics

It has come to my attention that my blog looks like ass. Any suggestions for improving its general appearance, especially the fonts? I want to stick with this template if possible, but would be willing to pay for a professional redesign if necessary.

UPDATE: I've played around with some stuff. Let me know if I should revert back to the previous template.

Wilderness Outings

This morning I went for a brief hike. It was brief because I'm a lazy, lazy woman and am in deplorable shape. I would enjoy hiking more if I remembered to take some allergy medication before going. Darn pine trees.

This afternoon, I finished reading Into the Wild, another journalistic book by Jon Krakauer. The author kept trying to keep his readers from simply viewing the book's subject, a dead vagabond who called himself "Alexander Supertramp," as a dreamy man-child with a fatal lack of common sense, but in my case this ultimately failed. First of all, a reasonably intelligent person would not go into the bush in Alaska without sufficient supplies and a good map. Second, a college graduate of twenty-three should be beyond the sort of self-indulgent romanticization of ignorance that would lead you to do so intentionally. (And what kind of person obsesses over The Call of the Wild well into his twenties? Didn't we all read that in grade school? )

If the young man in question had survived his Alaskan experience, it seems possible that he might have reverted to the plan he considered during his college years at Emory: going to Harvard Law School. With a halfway decent LSAT, he probably would have been admitted; admissions committees love weird stories. I can only imagine what an insufferable experience 1L classes with Alexander Supertramp would have been. We had several similar personalities while I was there, and while I never wished any of them had disappeared into the wild, at times it was a close thing.

Addendum: one thing that struck me while reading Into the Wild was how unavailable "Alex's" experience would be to a young woman. The only bad things that ever happened to Alex were environmental: hunger, extremes of temperature, turbulent seas. Could a female version of Alex have successfully hitchhiked cross-country, rode the rails and confronted railroad bulls, crossed the border illicitly, and obtained manual labor jobs as an itinerant without ever coming to harm at the hands of strangers? For those who end the book with respect for Alex's values and experiences, what does it mean for this path to enlightment to be unavailable to women due to the high chance of violence?

CMC (not) in the news

How could the NY Times write an article about small liberal arts colleges offering merit aid without mentioning Claremont McKenna? Not only is CMC routinely marked as a best value in general, its McKenna Scholars merit award program provides generous grant monies and (as I recall) gives preference to Scholars in obtaining grants over loans in the rest of the financial aid package. This allows some Scholars to graduate from college debt-free.

A3G is Back

Underneath Their Robes is back online.

50 Book Challenge #75: In the Heart of the Sea

For my last 50 Book Challenge selection, I picked In the Heart of the Sea, a dramatic tale of nautical woe. It tells the true story that inspired Moby-Dick: that of the Essex, a Nantucket whaling vessel attacked and sunk by an implacable cetacean. Thanks to their unwarranted fear of cannibals, the survivors of the Essex chose to sail against the prevailing winds and currents toward South America, instead of the one week voyage to Tahiti. After three months at sea, the remaining whalers were rescued from their tiny boats, but not before they resorted to cannibalism.

Philbrick does a good job of illustrating both the rigors of the whaler's life and the horror of the survivors' long trip home. If you liked Regina v. Dudley & Stephens, you will like this book.

Who's Your Celebrity Inspiration?

When I worked in New York, the female interns spent what was probably far too much time discussing who our celebrity fashion inspiration should be. The idea was to find the celebrity who looked the most like you and embrace that person's hair, makeup, and clothing choices, presumably because they had consultants who were paid thousands of dollars who could reveal what the best colors were for a given complexion or the best haircut for a certain face shape. I was never good at this because I don't really look like or strongly identify with any celebrity. The closest I could come was Phoebe Cates, who my dad used to claim I bore some resemblance to (I hope he meant Gremlins Phoebe and not Fast Times Phoebe, because: ew!), but she has largely dropped out of the public eye since marrying Kevin Kline and devoting herself to making babies.

Fortunately, technology can now solve this dilemma. Via E. McPan, I found this neat toy that analyzes your face and tells you what celebrity you most resemble. I used this picture because it fit their requirements of being forward-facing and high resolution. To my partial dismay, my top matches were Neve Campbell (65%), Kirsten Dunst (64%), and Audrey Tautou (64%). Neve's not known for being a fashion plate, and while Audrey is lovely, Kirsten is a walking fashion don't much of the time and thus kills my budding inspiration to dress better.

In which I link approvingly to Ann Althouse

Ann Althouse on the limbo debate:

Is religion about consolation? Is it about consolation because it's really about expansion and consolation works? Is it about consolation because it's really about expansion and the greatest potential for expansion is among the poorest people who really need consolation? I don't see how any of that has anything to do with whether limbo in fact exists.

Echo Chamber Watch

I enjoy reading feminist blogs, even though my libertarian beliefs probably preclude most of the authors of those blogs from considering me a real feminist. Because I'm aware that my kind is not exactly welcome there, I rarely comment, but it's nice to know that I could. Unfortunately, there's a movement afoot on one of the more prominent feminist blogs to restrict comments in certain discussions to radical feminists only. Read the discussion that appends this post for a vaguely creepy description of how the poster sniffs out men and other undesireables.

A previous post on a related topic is here.

50 Book Challenge #74: Hammered

After seeing her name bandied about for some months, I decided to pick up Elizabeth Bear's first novel at the Clerksville library. (Fortunately for Ms. Bear, that humble institution has not fallen victim to the classic library blunder of stocking only book two or only books one and three of a trilogy, which has kept me from reading many a series).

Hammered is not as gritty as most vaguely post-apocalyptic SF, but that's because we don't see the chaos that the U.S. and other more equatorial nations have become; instead, Canada takes center stage and becomes just as manipulative and competitive as its neighbor to the south ever was. The actual story is a character-driven mystery involving tainted drugs, dead cops, and an old half-cyborg soldier who the government wants to bring out of retirement for upgrades. I'm curious to see where Bear goes from here. Good thing both subsequent volumes are waiting for me.

J.Crew can bite me.

I don't know why I keep returning, like a dog to its own vomit, to J.Crew. I had perhaps the most traumatic shopping experience of my life when I tried to order some dresses from them in 2003 (I'll post the story this weekend). They almost never have anything in my size at a reasonable price. But I still ordered this jacket in black, because hope springs eternal.

After some uncertainty, I placed the order. A large box arrived. The package slip asserted that a size 0P Hayden tweed jacket was within. This was false, but I did like the rather dissimilar black jacket they sent instead. I reordered the Hayden tweed jacket on 15 December. A confirmation number was provided and my order claimed to be "pending."

I checked on the status and was informed by their customer service that the order had been cancelled (they claim to have called, which is odd, considering communications on orders are usually by email) and now the jacket is completely unavailable as petite sizes are not carried in stores and there are no more in the warehouse. They then put out an APB on a size 0 Hayden tweed jacket in the retail stores and called yesterday to say they couldn't find one.

All this is really irking me, since I would have purchased a size 0 in one of their retail stores weeks ago when I was traveling, had I but known that they were so flaky. Grr.

Sunday Bake: Lemon Bars

First of all, these are more like lemon squares. Second, they require a nine inch square baking pan, which my mother always had and which I thought was a standard size, but apparently all nine inch pans have dropped off the face of the planet, or at least have in Clerksville. I used an eight inch pan and discarded some of the crust. Third, I made these yesterday, so it's really a Saturday bake.

Lemon Bars
Crust:
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 stick unsalted butter, cut into small chunks

Line pan in foil and lightly grease it. Put dry ingredients in food processor, briefly mix, then add butter and process briefly until it has a coarsely mealy consistency. Press into bottom of pan to depth of 1/4 inch. Refrigerate for 30 minutes, then bake at 350 for 20 minutes. Warning: make the crust first!

Filling:
7 large egg yolks and 2 large eggs
1 cup + 2 tbsp sugar
2/3 cup lemon juice and 1/4 cup lemon zest
Pinch salt (which I forgot)
4 tbsp unsalted butter
3 tbsp cream

Whisk eggs and yolks briefly, then whisk in sugar to just blend. Add lemon juice and zest and whisk for 5 seconds. Cook mixture in medium saucepan until the mixture thickens slightly and reaches 170 degrees (5-6 minutes). Pour mixture through strainer (which removes all the zest) and stir in the cream. Pour filling into the warm crust and bake 10 to 15 minutes at 350, until filling is opaque and only jiggles in the middle. Cool on a wire rack for 45 minutes. Cut into squares, cleaning the knife after each cut. Dust tops with additional powdered sugar.

I would have a picture, but I took all the pretty ones to the judge for his Christmas dinner.

50 Book Challenge #71, 72, & 73: Monstrous Regiment, Going Postal, & Thud!

Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels are usually good for a bit of light amusement, so I picked up some of his most recent ones at the Clerksville library. Monstrous Regiment had an interesting conceit, but took it one step too far. Maybe the wry lesson toward the end is more biting if you're in a country enlightened enough to elect a female head of state. Going Postal has the virtues of being set in Ankh-Morpork and of being about the post office (bringing one aspect of the 50 Book Challenge full circle), although I found the golems to be more interesting than most of the human characters. Thud! was just boring: too much spiritual mumbo-jumbo and weird racial warfare, not enough Vetinari, and altogether too much reading of Where's My Cow?

And the winners are . . .

Using a holistic method of preference assessment based on these votes and a generous dose of Fowler-induced authoritarianism, I hereby declare these to be the first four selections for the 2006 Blog Book Club, to be hosted at Prettier Than Napoleon until further notice:

January: Blindness
February: On Beauty
March: Saturday
April: Anansi Boys

You have until the last day of each month to read the book in question and write a brief piece on your thoughts and views. If you have a blog, send me a link to your post and I will post all links in one omnibus posting on the last day of the month. Please enable comments if you have them so other readers can discuss your reaction to the book. If you do not have a blog but wish to write a post, email the text to me by the deadline and I will put it up as a guest post on PTN.

I hope that we can all have a little fun reading and discussing these books.

HLS and the California Bar Exam

The California Bar just released the July 2005 exam results, broken down by school. HLS fared relatively poorly:

First-Time Takers
Took: 87
Passed: 73
Pass Rate: 84%

Repeaters
Took: 3
Passed: 0
Pass Rate: 0%

It would appear that one of the fourteen first-time-takers to fail was Kathleen Sullivan. Others were my classmates. Among the schools with better pass rates for first-timers were Yale, Stanford, Columbia, BYU, Duke, the Franklin Pierce Law Center (a Tier 3), and UCLA.

UPDATE: A former classmate points out that the above stats do not include takers of the attorneys' exam like Sullivan. I stand corrected.

Blog Book Poll Ends Today

If you're interested in joining the 2006 Blog Book Club, cast your vote for what book(s) we should read. Votes will be tallied this evening.

Curb Your Hairdo

I just started watching Curb Your Enthusiasm, and so far my strongest reaction has been to Larry David's head. I was totally convinced that he was wearing a rubber pate because, really, what wealthy person would walk around with that appalling matted fringe? The man looks like a hobo. Then I checked IMDB and that is, astonishingly, his real head.

The show is funny, but I'm withholding any further judgment until I've recovered from the shock of that being someone's actual scalp.

Celebrity Perjury: Contrast and Compare

Perjurer #1: Lil' Kim. Lied to a grand jury, got 366 days in jail.

Perjurer #2: Renee "The Squint" Zellweger. Lied in her annulment filing and admitted to having done so. Result: no punishment, annulment granted.

Something stinks here.

How to have a headache

1. Open new packages of contact lenses.
2. Put 4.0 in right eye and 3.0 in left eye.
3. Realize after hours of pain that this was backwards.

Addictive White Substances

Full-fat dairy products will be my undoing.

My local grocery store sells milk from a dairy in a rural part of the state. It comes in glass bottles with charmingly bad punctuation and is the most addictive natural substance to ever pass my lips. Seriously, this milk is like crack. I have become a milk pusher. I recommend it to everyone, even strangers at the checkout counter. In college, I virtuously trained myself to drink 2% instead of whole, but the whole milk version of the crack milk is so. good. that I end up buying it about half the time (although the 2% crack milk is better than regular whole milk from the plastic jug).

I had noticed that they also carried a "creamline" version of the crack milk, but only today did I get around to looking up what that means. It's not homogenized. This rocks my entire world. Between this and the tiny cups of whole milk yogurt I love to eat for breakfast, though, I may need to start hitting the gym.

I got your War on Christmas right here.

All this bellyaching about there being a war on Christmas makes me sick. Okay, that's a lie. Christmas makes me sick. I'm allergic to evergreens. All of them. Scotch Pine? Douglas Fir? Those stupid little juniper plants in a pot? Horribly freaking allergic. And thanks to Christian co-opting of pagan religious tradition, everyone and their brother thinks that chopping down perfectly happy evergreen trees and dragging them into climate controlled buildings is a dandy idea. Thanks so much for adding pine pollen to the constantly recirculating air of my office tower. I enjoy spending much of the holiday season with itching, swollen eyes and a constantly dripping nose thanks to your obsession with stinky greenery. If it were not an egregious violation of the property rights I hold in high regard, I would pile all of your Christmas trees, wreaths, and other miscellaneous evergreen detritus into a massive A&M-style bonfire and torch it.

I don't need herbal enhancers to feel good about myself.

On the one hand, I am pleased to see a fellow member of the Wonky Nose Club embraced as attractive by mass media. On the other hand, Hilary Duff's sister? Not hot. Even with massive amounts of retouching.

"For people with noses"

So claim the instructions on the neti pot I bought. My nose did appreciate it, although my ear did not. It dislikes being filled with water.

50 Book Challenge #70: Girl in Landscape

Girl in Landscape has more of a standard SF plotline than my previous Lethem outing, but despite loving tales of interplanetary travel and ambiguously sexual relationships with new life forms, I liked this book a little less than I expected. It's most perceptive as a character study of a thirteen year old girl in the liminal zone between childhood and adulthood, and the setting is almost superfluous, save as a mechanism for allowing the characters access to secret knowledge of others (Pella, the young girl, picks up an ability to travel outside her body from viruses on the new planet). Interesting, but understated.

Craving, Raving

For the entire day, I've been craving egg nog. I've no family tradition of consuming this beverage, and it is objectively disgusting. What I wouldn't give for a Madrigal mug full of nog, though.

UPDATE: A libertarian-approved egg nog recipe.

Blog Book Club Poll

After testing the waters on the blog book club idea, I thought it might be a doable proposition for the new year. (I've very much enjoyed the 50 Book Challenge, but it's time for something fresh.) A blog book club would involve reading one book per month and then writing up a brief post with your thoughts that the rest of the participants could comment on. For those of you who don't have blogs but would like to write something, I'd be happy to host guest posts. Posts would be due at the end of the month and I (or another host) would post links to all the book club members' posts. You wouldn't have to read every book, of course.

If you're interested in being part of this little endeavor, please vote for January's book by leaving a comment to this post. Write-ins are encouraged; votes will be tallied on Friday morning. A list of candidates:

Zadie Smith, On Beauty
Ian McEwan, Saturday
Mary Gaitskill, Veronica
E.L. Doctorow, The March
Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
Orhan Pamuk, Snow
Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys
Sebastian Barry, A Long, Long Way
Jose Saramago, Blindness

Sunday Bake: Scones

While my officemates groan when I bring baked goods to work, somehow they manage to make them disappear nonetheless. Today's attempt at yumminess: cranberry orange scones from The Best Recipe.



2 cups all purpose flour
1 tbsp baking powder
3 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
5 tbsp cold butter, cut into 1 cm cubes
1 tsp orange zest
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1 cup heavy cream

Whisk the first four ingredients together and then add the butter. Crumble butter into the dry ingredients until it achieves a coarsely mealy consistency with a few larger lumps. You may now add the zest and berries. You can sub in lemon zest and blueberries if you like.

Then stir in the cream and knead the resulting dough until the floury bits have all disappeared into a large, slightly sticky ball. Press the dough into a round cake pan, turn it out, and cut the circle into eighths. Bake on a ungreased cookie sheet at 425 for 12-15 minutes. Cool for 10 minutes on a rack. Eat.

King Kong

Some people might think I'm lame for choosing to support Peter Jackson's latest endeavor instead of going to see other movies which look equally interesting, but I've liked his work since The Frighteners, so I went to King Kong this afternoon with a merry heart, sure that I would be entertained for three solid hours by New Zealand's greatest export. The film does not disappoint, and there's something for everyone: thrills, chills, a soaking wet Naomi Watts, a shirtless Adrien Brody, dinosaurs that put those in Jurassic Park to shame, disturbingly suggestive killer worms, the best native sacrifice since Nate & Hayes, and a Koko reference.

This may be nerd heresy, but I found this a better three hours of entertainment than the LOTR movies, which had some pacing problems and taunted informed viewers with their cherry-picked content from the books. Go and see King Kong. It's one of the few big-budget effects extravaganzas that's worth the money.

50 Book Challenge #69: Under the Banner of Heaven

The trouble with a book using material ripped from the headlines is that for those of us who read the headlines, the stories have less punch. So with Under the Banner of Heaven. I always read up on polygamous fundamentalist Mormon communities when they are in the news, and so the rough outlines of much of Krakauer's stories were familiar: teenage girls married off to old men, widespread sexual abuse, arbitrary reassignment of wives and children by patriarchal prophet figures . . . it's sad and awful, but I'd seen it all before. The double murder of a wife and daughter, information on which is interspersed with historical coverage and examination of polygamous communities, doesn't have as much to set it apart from other murders as Krakauer seems to think it does. Then again, maybe I just have seen too many headlines about mothers killing children or husbands killing wives because of some personal or culturally pervasive religious message. What was this but a glorified honor killing?

Krakauer's coverage of Mormon history was more informative, although lacking in detail, and he gave short shrift to doctrine, which I would have found useful in interpreting the behavior of the personages and groups he discussed. As an informative work, this is inadequate; as an attempt to shock, it fails. I was underwhelmed.

UPDATE: Timothy Sandefur, who was more impressed with the book than I was, has the latest news and some useful links re: the Colorado City fundamentalists. I can't help but think that stopping these people is a little more worthy than cracking down on obscenity.

Men, Women, and Movies

Mickey Kaus thinks Brokeback Mountain will be a bust because no het men will want to see a movie without a hot leading lady. Setting aside the obvious rejoinder re: the massive popularity among men of movies featuring few romantic female characters, shouldn't women be flocking to this in droves? After all, they think everything's hot, and the female-dominated slash genre shows if there's anything ladies like more than one vulnerable man in a romantic scenario, it's two such men, with no woman around to simultaneously identify and compete with. Bear in mind that it's googly-eyed females who made the all-time box office champ so successful.

Let's all go to the movies! Or not.

Am I the only one who, in this new era of obsessing over opening weekend grosses, makes her weekly entertainment decisions based on what culture-war-flogging headline she doesn't want to appear on Monday? Okay then.

Cat Pix Blog

Snape can play fetch.

Lily is a mountaineer.

The new camera is pretty good with details.

The Shipping News

In the course of clicking around, I discovered the following discussion.

A customer complained that certain online businesses had shipping charges that far exceeded what he knew to be the cost of shipping an item of that size and weight via common carrier. The customer indicated that he sometimes chose not to make certain purchases on the basis of the shipping charges alone. The proprietor of the business in question then stepped in to confirm that her shop, like most online vendors of its type, based shipping charges on the cost of the items purchased. This leads to absurd results like $10-25 shipping fees for items no larger than a paperback book.

My question: why would a vendor in an industry selling mostly fungible merchandise choose this absurd method of charging for shipping? Granted, shipping charges often do not appear until an order is one click away from being transmitted, but isn't the way clear for someone to take an Amazon-style Super Saver/flat rate approach and leech customers?

Love on the big and small screens

Lance Mannion discusses his aversion to Hollywood romance. He finds it difficult to cheer on many of the couples in recent movies. Who are your favorite screen couples? I cheered hard for Dawn and Tim in The Office (they get together in the Christmas special, which played out like a fanfic turned into a script but was fun to watch anyway). I also root for Max and Margaret at the end of Rushmore, but that's a given. Thoughts?

Random Roundup XIII

- How to buy a bra. More here.

- An ethical "dilemma."

- Matt Yglesias likes "My Humps." It reminds me of cancer, oatmeal, and better songs about golddiggers.

- Race riots in Australia. An Aussie perspective is here. (That MeFi thread also contains an exhaustive analysis of Australian racial slurs.)

Unrelatedly: now that Article III Groupie is no more, how am I supposed to find out the names of the rest of the new Supreme Court clerks?

Of interest to Firefly fans

Mal's browncoat went for $12,372 on Ebay last week.

A Sickly Amber is a Bad Blogger

I haven't been doing much blogging of late, but I hope you can excuse that, since I spent the greater part of yesterday being very, very sick.

Ding Dong

Reading these posts at Magic Cookie reminded me of our college tradition of posting rejection letters upside down on the doors of our dorm rooms. Did other people do this? I suppose it only really works as a community building/self-deprecation tool if you live in a dormitory.

In my 1L year, none of the jobs I applied for sent actual paper evidence of rejection so I didn't get to share the embarassment with my neighbors. I think the rejection e-mail is gaining acceptance among employers. This seems fair to me if the firm accepts resumes via e-mail. I hate shelling out money for nice paper for nothing.

C is for cookie

True or false: shortbread cookies are grandma cookies.

Date Line

What is dating?

I remember talking about boys with my mother when I was in high school and her asking why I didn't just date more than one person at the same time if I wanted. In context, that would have resulted in my being dubbed a complete whore, and I was flabbergasted that she would even suggest such a thing. Things change, I suppose.

50 Book Challenge #68: As She Climbed Across The Table

This book reminded me a bit of some other books from this year. It has the same decidedly modern sensibility as the Jeanette Winterson books I've read, but is far more structured. Where Winterson is impressionistic, Lethem is neat and linear. It also put me in mind of On Love, since Lethem spends a fair amount of time documenting the precise sensations generated by the desertion of a loved one. As She Climbed Across The Table is more than just a love story, although one lies at its core.

The stable romance between Philip, an interdisciplinary studies guru, and Alice, a physicist, derails after an experiment in creating new universes goes awry and produces the entity the faculty dubs "Lack." Lack, an invisible void hovering above a table in the physics department, accepts offerings of certain objects but not others. His inscrutable preferences intrigue Alice, and she is drawn into an obsession. Will Philip coax Alice into rejoining the world or will Lack suck Alice into a mysterious new plane, leaving Philip alone?

This book is very cleverly written, and Philip, while a caricature of an academic, is sincere and believable as a man bereft. Recommended.

More Snape! (not the cat)

I finally got to watch Harry Potter 3 this weekend, and I was underwhelmed. The sound seemed very fuzzy and we didn't get a lot of background on Moony, Padfoot, and Prongs. When, if ever, will the movies reveal Snape's motivations? How will they convincingly depict the later books if these are not made plain? More Alan Rickman, please.

Save me from food poisoning

If, hypothetically, someone shipped me a pecan pie, but my apartment office forgot to put out a package slip and it sat in an unrefrigerated closet for a week, would I get sick from eating it? They sell mini pecan pies in convenience stores. This pie is endorsed by Oprah and I don't want to throw it out unless I have to.

UPDATE: The packaging claims it is good for three weeks if unrefrigerated. Woot! Pie for dinner.

Reducing Abortions

Megan McArdle has an interesting post on the efficacy of certain proposals aimed at reducing the abortion rate. Everyone knows that there are European countries with strong sex ed programs, easy access to contraceptives and lower abortion rates than America. Latin America's illegalization strategy doesn't seem to work. Where do McArdle's points fit into this problem?

Blog Book Club?

Jared asks:

Hey, what about a blog book club? . . . you could blog about the books, with blog/book readers commenting on them.

Would any of the readers or commenters be interested in participating in something like this?

Shopping Question

I recently bought this skirt from J. Crew in ecru. It is lovely and feminine and delightful. However, I did not buy the matching jacket at that time. Now I have found the jacket on another website in my size (P0), but only in the black. I have actually been wanting a black blazer-type jacket for some time to wear with other stand-alone wool slacks and skirts. Should I splurge on the black jacket? Can I wear the black jacket with the ecru skirt, or will that look stupid?

The look of love

Up until this point, my enjoyment of Bogart movies was always dimmed by an inability to suspend my disbelief that someone who looked like, say, Bergman, would ever fall for someone who looked like Bogie, personality notwithstanding. Last night, though, I finally got around to watching To Have and Have Not and realized that falling in love works two ways; it makes the person you're falling in love with beautiful to you, but it makes you handsome, too. Bacall and Bogart both glow. It's very striking.

Serenity Puppet Theatre

Via Karl, Serenity reenacted with hand puppets.

Ouch!

Any Columbia Law School readers know who sent this in to PostSecret?



Ouch squared: Kathleen Sullivan, former dean of Stanford Law School and author of the leading casebook on constitutional law, failed California's July exam.

50 Book Challenge #66 & 67: A Canticle for Leibowitz & The Wise Woman

Black magic and nuclear weapons both inexorably lead to tragedy.

The Wise Woman walks the line between historical fiction and romance novel territory better than Outlander did, if only because every attempt by the protagonist, Alys, to achieve traditional romance novel goals brings her closer to destruction. It's a little cheesy, and a little unsettling, and more realistic about women's roles in Tudor society than you (and Alys) expect.

Miller's novel has a slow start (I started to read it years ago and abandoned it for that reason) but eventually winds through the rebirth and inevitable descent of human civilization after a 1950s nuclear apocalypse. It's mostly set in a monastery, which partially explains the lack of female characters, but by the end this absence began to grate.

How the mighty have fallen

I used to be much more of a reader than I am now. Now that reading has been firmly associated with work, I mostly stick to escapist fare. I noticed when I was home for Thanksgiving that my grandmother had this book on her to-buy list. For comparison, this book's on mine. At least there's one intellectually curious person left in the family.

Passing the sell-by date

John Derbyshire, resident contrarian and cranky Tory on the Corner, likes his ladies barely legal. In his latest NRO column, he declared:

Did I buy, or browse, a copy of the November 17 GQ, in order to get a look at Jennifer Aniston's bristols?** No, I didn't. While I have no doubt that Ms. Aniston is a paragon of charm, wit, and intelligence, she is also 36 years old. Even with the strenuous body-hardening exercise routines now compulsory for movie stars, at age 36 the forces of nature have won out over the view-worthiness of the unsupported female bust.

It is, in fact, a sad truth about human life that beyond our salad days, very few of us are interesting to look at in the buff. Added to that sadness is the very unfair truth that a woman's salad days are shorter than a man's -- really, in this precise context, only from about 15 to 20. The Nautilus and the treadmill can add a half decade or so, but by 36 the bloom is definitely off the rose.

After some women took issue with this statement, he posted this to the Corner:

Conservatives, as I recall, are the ones who believe that "human nature has no history." It follows that we are at ease with the fact that the human female is visually attractive to the human male at, or shortly after, puberty, and for only a few brief years thereafter.

***Civilized*** male conservatives, among whose number I very much hope to be counted, regard the visual attractiveness of women as a welcome lagniappe in the grand scheme of things, other attributes being far more important practically all the time, and those other attributes being the grounds for our respect.

Other bloggers are already on the scene and have made the obvious point that it's insulting to women of drinking age, including Derbyshire's wife, to imply that they are not worth looking at and that only the attraction of their sparkling personalities allows their lovers to touch them without shuddering.

Despite the fact that I was probably more physically attractive ten years ago than today (I was in better shape then, and had better skin, strangely enough), Derbyshire's statement still skeeved me out. Here's a randomly chosen sample of women he apparently thinks would not be interesting to look at in the buff (all pictures SFW, if SFW includes bikinis):

- Angelina Jolie (30)
- Halle Berry (39)
- Monica Bellucci (41)
- Charlize Theron (30)
- Eva Longoria (30)
- Jennifer Connelly (35)
- Mena Suvari (26)

And, for comparison, famous actresses in Derb's sexual attractiveness range:

- Emma Watson (15) (yes, Hermione)
- Hillary Duff (18)
- Mary Kate Olsen (19)

Male readers are invited to comment on whether they would rather look at someone from column A or column B. Of course, naked photos of Ms. Watson are illegal.

Done With Buffy

I just watched the last episodes of Season 7 of Buffy. It was definitely not the best of the seasons, but it could have been worse. One question, though: shouldn't there be another Slayer? Buffy died and Kendra was called; Kendra died and Faith was called. But shouldn't another Slayer have been called when Buffy died at the end of Season 5?

Foxy!

FYI: Firefox 1.5 has been released. If you're still using Internet Explorer, now is the time to switch.

Discrimination in the skies

I had planned on taking a vacation to Australia and New Zealand sometime, but I'm not sure if I want to spend 14 hours or so next to an unaccompanied child just because the airlines down under are convinced that men are all pedophiles.

Problem Solving

When I have a personal problem, I find it very helpful to write a letter to an advice columnist in my head. Almost always, you know what you should do to solve a problem but don't want to recognize it. Thinking through how you'd frame the issue to an uninformed third party usually lets you know what the answer must be: what are you going to special trouble to avoid? what course of action are you attempting to justify to yourself, and what are you trying to play down?

Of course, the one time I actually asked for advice from strangers, they gave me a completely new and previously unconsidered take on the situation which ended up being correct, so maybe this not as effective as it might be.