Author: Muttrox

Jeff Jacoby is one of the better conservative columnists out there. He’s reality-based, not particularly dogmatic. He also wasn’t afraid to call Yasir Arafat out for what he was, a man of evil and the father of modern terrorism, while others were feting him after his death. (“Arafat the Monster”)

Sadly, his last editorial was so incredibly offensive and wrong, I don’t even know to write about. it. I’ll just quote extensively and see if anything comes to mind.

WHAT DOES IT mean to support the troops but oppose the cause they fight for?

No loyal Colts fan rooted for Indianapolis to lose the Super Bowl. No investor buys 100 shares of Google in the hope that Google’s stock will tank. No one who applauds firefighters for their courage and education wants a four-alarm blaze to burn out of control.

Yet there is no end of Americans who insist they “support” US troops in Iraq but want the war those troops are fighting to end in defeat. The two positions are irreconcilable. You cannot logically or honorably curse the war as an immoral neocon disaster or a Halliburton oil grab or “a fraud . . . cooked up in Texas,” yet bless the troops who are waging it.

Supporting the troops means that you support the individual soldiers, and the job they have to do. It means that you respect the choice they made to fight for their country, and want that choice to be respected by others. It means you respect the sacrifice they have made so that others don’t need to. It means you want them to be well-trained, well-equipped, well-managed. It means you want veterans to receive care, that soliders shouldn’t be preyed on payday lenders, etc.

Mostly, it means that if they must sacrifice their lives, it must be for something worth sacrficing it for.

But logic and honor haven’t stopped members of Congress from trying to square that circle. The nonbinding resolution they debated last week was a flagrant attempt to have it both ways. One of its two clauses professed to “support and protect” the forces serving “bravely and honorably” in Iraq. The other declared that Congress “disapproves” the surge in troops now underway — a surge that General David Petraeus , the new military commander in Iraq, considers essential.

America is a free country, but it is not the Michael Moores or the ROTC-banners or the senatorial loudmouths who keep it free. They merely enjoy the freedom that others are prepared to defend with their lives. It is the men and women who volunteer to wear the uniform to whom we owe our liberty. Surely they deserve better than pious claims of “support” from those who are working for their defeat.

In Jacoby’s world, there are two options.

1) Support the troops, and every military mission there is to the hilt. As long as the mission has been defined somewhere (ferinstance, “Victory in Iraq”, that’s a good one), you can never turn back.

2) Don’t support the mission, and start spitting on the troops.*

Didn’t we do this already in Vietnam? Isn’t that why the whole Support the Troops thing started, to distinguish the times from the Vietnam era? Do we really even need to hash this out again?

* It turns out that spitting on soliders essentially never happened in the Vietnam era, or ever. It was one giant urban myth. For more on this, see here and here. In a different context that seems to apply to this very post, the author “…believes that the “myth” is involved in helping to promote the yellow ribbon campaign; it has led some to think that for one to support troops, one must therefore also support the war, because it ties together the ideas of anti-war sentiment and anti-troop sentiment.” Touche, Mr. Jacoby!

Two of my favorite episodes of Friends are ones about money, who has it and how it’s going to be used.

“The One With Five Steaks and an Eggplant”:
(Full transcript)

Chandler plans a birthday party for Ross at an expensive restaurant. Phoebe, Joey, and Rachel don’t have very much money, but

they grudgingly go along with the plans. Once there, they order the cheapest things they can find. When the bills comes, and

Ross wants to split it equally, they rebel.

ROSS: So five of us is, $33.50 apiece.

PHOEBE: No, huh uh, no way, I’m sorry, not gonna happen.

CHANDLER: Whoa, whoa, prom night flashback.

PHOEBE: I’m sorry, Monica, I’m really happy you got promoted, but cold cucumber mush for thirty-something bucks? No! Rachel just

had that, that, that salad, and, and Joey with his like teeny pizza! It’s just…

ROSS: Ok, Pheebs! How ’bout we’ll each just pay for what we had. It’s no big deal.

PHOEBE: Not for you.

MONICA: All right, what’s goin’ on?

RACHEL: Ok, look you guys, I really don’t want to get into this right now. I think it’ll just make everyone uncomfortable.

PHOEBE: Fine. All right, fine.

JOEY: Yeah.

CHANDLER: You can tell us.

ROSS: Hello, it’s us, all right? It’ll be fine.

JOEY: Ok, um, uh, we three feel like, that uh, sometimes you guys don’t get that uh, we don’t have as much money as you.

MONICA: Ok.

ROSS: I hear ya.

CHANDLER: We can talk about that.

PHOEBE: Well, then…Let’s.

ROSS: I, I just never think of money as an issue.

RACHEL: That’s ’cause you have it.

ROSS: That’s a good point.

So for the next event, they make sure to include everyone…
Continue reading “Money on Friends”

“Economics for the Citizen” – A quick simple primer on economics, written in clear layman’s language. I agreed with over 90% of it!

The best way to fold a T-shirt. I’ve tried it, it works.

Lines From Alanis Morissette’s “Ironic,” Modified to Actually Make them Ironic

Web 2.0, “The web is us.” A great presentation on how the web works and will work. About 5 minutes, a fantastic presentation (with catchy music even!)

Funny political comic

This one was sent in by Mike, a faithful reader. Yes, I have at least one faithful reader!

MAPLEWOOD, Minn. (AP) – An airline pilot from Maplewood won a $25,000 lottery jackpot – two days in a row.

Raymond Snouffer Jr. matched the winning numbers 11-14-23-26-31 to win Saturday’s Northstar Cash drawing with odds of about 170,000 to 1, Minnesota Lottery officials said.

On Sunday, Snouffer stuck with 11 and switched to 3-7-19-28 – and won again.

Lottery officials said such a sequence was so farfetched that the odds against it were “virtually incalculable.”

Virtually incalculable? “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Just square the probabilities!!! The “virtually incalculable” odds are about 1 in 28.9 billion.

(Working backwards, it appears that the structure is 31 numbers, of which you choose 5, which gives odds of 169,911 to 1. Assuming that’s true, the precise odds of winning twice in a row are 28,869,747,921 to 1.

Those are the odds of a particular person winning any two particular drawings in a row. Their odds of ever winning twice in a row ever are greater, since you has many chances to win twice in a row. Another way to look at it is that there is always a winner from last drawing. Assuming they play again, their odds are 170,000 to 1. That is the odds that there will be a repeat winner for a particular drawing.)

Welcome any Wikipedia readers. Note the parenthetical above, the probability of “this” happening depends on what you think “this” is.

The other night, in a rare burst of doing something smart, I attended a lecture about health literacy. In it, they gave an example of what being semi-literate feels like. The whole audience was asked to read a passage out loud for one minute. The passage was shown on the screen. It looked a lot like the below examples (it was actually more technical):

ElgooG sah a tnereffid alumrof hcihw oohaY si gniyrt ot etalume tI sknar sda no a xim fo dib secirp dna ycnaveler ot eht resu. Dna ecnis sresitrevda yap ylno nehw a resu skcilc no rieht da elgooG no egareva sekam erom yenom no yreve hcraes naht oohaY seod.

or:

Taht ni eht dne si woh namrebeiL saw elba ot teg eht etov of a raelc ytirojam fo eht tucitcennoC etarotcele. “Ew nar a ngiapmac rof lla sretov dna tuoba lla sretov. Yeht degaw a attednev no flaheb fo eht tseirgna wef.”

By the time I had read through sixth or seventh word aloud, everyone around had stopped and was looking at me. As I continued, I realized I was reading twice as fast as everyone else around me. It turns out I have a freakish ability to read reversed text quickly. This is what Scott Adams call “a mild superpower”. Is there a way I can put this on my resume?

Today I saw a maintenance man cleaning out an outdoor ashtray, the 80-pound cylinders with a few handfuls of sand-like substance on top. This man had a “grabber”, and was slowly aiming for each cigarette individually, getting it firmly in the claw, transferring it to his bag, then starting over. I estimate this one ashtray would take 15 minutes to clean out with this method.

That guy understood the phrase, “paid by the hour”.

Animal Art using the subway map of the London Underground. Very clever.

Myths about the developing world (Amazing graphics) This sounds boring, but is actually a very absorbing 20 minute lecture about how various countries and regions have been evolving economically for the last 40 odds years. The graphic interface is amazing, something they developed themselves, it tells the story better than any text can.

A funny IKEA ad

Here are three sites about discovering music. All share a common theme of telling them what you like or want to hear, and they figure out what else you might enjoy.
Music-Map: Give it an artist. It looks at what other artists people who like the one you chose like. (So if you enter The Who, it might suggest the White Stripes and MC5.)
Pandora: Similar to Music-Map, but will actually build (and play) and entire playlist based on your initial entry.
Musicovery: My new favorite. You suggest a genre, and a flavor of it on a matrix, and it shows (and plays) a bunch of songs in that area. I picked dark blues, and have become a big fan of JB Lenoir’s Alabama Blues, despite never having heard of the guy.

Steve Jobs, on the future of music and copyright

And finally a random joke that’s too good not to share:
Dear Abby:
My husband is a liar and a cheat. He has cheated on me from the beginning, and, when I confront him, he denies everything. What’s worse, everyone knows that he cheats on me. It is so humiliating. Also, since he lost his job six years ago, he hasn’t even looked for a new one. All he does all day is smoke cigars, cruise around and bullshit with his buddies while I have to work to pay the bills. Since our daughter went away to college he doesn’t even pretend to like me and hints that I may be a lesbian. What should I do?
Signed: Clueless

Dear Clueless:
Grow up and dump him. Good grief, woman. You don’t need him anymore. You’re a United States Senator from New York. Act like one.

Lately, I’ve been trying to hard to write here every couple of days, even if it’s not very good. I’ve been writing here nearly two years, amd a lot of content is here (175 posts and 257 comments as of this writing). I’m continually annoyed by one aspect of writing here.

At least one of the parental units never reads this. Two of my three brothers and at least some of the parental units also never stop by either. All the more irritating since there are some posts that I know they would like. And my brothers are the tiebreakers in any pizza-related issues (some of my most popular posts are pizza-related).

But the kicker is Mrs. Muttrox never reads Muttroxia. My own wife won’t read my blog! Maybe it’s stupid, maybe it’s not, but I spend a good chunk of time on it, how about showing a little interest? So on Thursday I told her she might want to read it, there was something about her on it. Really? Look for Mrs. Muttrox, I sez.

In the middle of the Superbowl (three days later) she yelled over, “There’s nothing about me in here at all!”

“Yeah, I know, I just wanted you to read it for once!”

So now she’s read the last week of Muttroxia, but she’s kind of annoyed with me. As she says, “I already know all this stuff, you tell me everything already”. Which is true, every dumb idea and fleeting observation I have she has to hear about. But still.

So I’m writing this to see if she will ever see it. It’s a little test. Sshh.. don’t tell her!

I’ll try and summarize, but you really have to read the article.

Two pieces:
1) Every voter gets $50 to distribute to candidates. $10 for The House, $15 for The Senate, $25 for The President. This includes the primaries. Invidual limits are also raised dramatically. This produces a pool of a few billion dollars to be used in the election.

2) Contributions are made through the FEC. They collect and distribute the money. The kicker is that the candidate does not know who gave them the money, they have no way of knowing who any individual donor gave their money to.

It is an oddly compelling idea. And the more you read (read the article!) the better it seems. But I had one thought, which a commenter posted before I could.

Won’t work
Donors would require some sort of receipt from the FEC to demonstrate where their money has gone, or else the FEC itself would be open to charges of fraud in their allocation of money. Then all you’d have to do is show your candidate the receipt and voila, influence obtained (and without the inconvenience of public disclosure).

— Noman

I agree. Anyone know more about this, or see a way out?

Doesn’t all paper have multiple uses? Kind of a step back if you feel that’s a selling point of your paper.

Today, on the front page of the New York Times, the headline was Biden Unwraps His Bid for ’08 With an Oops!

“In an era of meticulous political choreography, the staging of the kickoff for this presidential candidacy could hardly have gone worse.

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, who announced his candidacy on Wednesday with the hope that he could ride his foreign policy expertise into contention for the Democratic nomination, instead spent the day struggling to explain his description of Senator Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat running for president, as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.” “

It was also prominently mentioned on several liberal blogs.

Oh come on. Is this really what presidential politics has come to? Biden is a serious politician, and a serious candidate. Like him or not, his candidacy should not be a joke, he’s a responsible senator with lots of experience to bring to the race, and to the office.

He deserves better than this. He deserves better than to announce his candidacy, and instantly be grilled about another candidate. He deserves better than to have a pretty innocuous remark thrown all out of proportion. He deserves better than to spend the rest of the day having to talk about Obama and his remark about Obama instead of making a case for himself as president. He deserves better than for this to be front-page news. He deserves better than to have the entire article focused solely on the horserace, with not one single word about Biden’s own qualifications or his own reasons for seeking the Presidency.

And we deserve better. We deserve better than to have truly racist politicians ignored, while those who don’t speak the right codeword are excoriated. We deserve better then to have Democrats with policy experience mocked, and those without to be cheered on as “outsiders”. We deserve better than to have candidates eliminated from the race for trivial reasons. And mostly, we don’t deserve to have yet another electoral campaign reported as a horserace. This is why the media is broken, they simply are unable to report substance.

Update: To cap it off, Biden may not have even said exactly that. The punctuation makes a huge difference. It looks like he said, “the first mainstream African-American, who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.” or “the first mainstream African-American. Who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.” More details are at TPM, these two posts sum it up.

If you’re read Muttroxia for any length of time, you know I’m a fierce opponent of the modern GOP. I have found it hard to find representatives of “the other” side to have rational discussions with. I know there are plenty of smart Bush supporters out there, who have supported him for reasons that make perfect sense, but I haven’t found many.

I also belong to a Yale alumni book group. It’s fantastic, filled to the brim with smart people who seem to know everything about everything. It’s a surprisingly diverse group, except politically. One of my first meetings, I watched as the whole group ganged up on one guy who was a unabashed Bush supporter. He held his own just fine. Since then, I’ve been more and more impressed by him. His outlook on the political world is wildly different than mine. But whenever I have talked with him, he has truly listened to my point, and given it the respect of “trying it out” before replying. He is always quick to acknowledge when you have made a good point, and never distorts his own position to strengthen his debating position.

This makes it very rewarding to talk to him, because you feel like you have a chance to actually change someone’s mind, or at least influence their thinking. The amazing thing is that I find myself getting into the same mindset. When he has a criticism about “my team”, or simply a different way of seeing the world, I find myself much more agreeable, and willing to accept his view as valid.

I am positive that this man would just laugh if someone tried to say he was using Passive, Attentive, Active, or Effective Listening. Nevertheless, there’s no doubt that his communication style plays a kind of verbal jujitsu. He changes an opponent into a partner, and by allowing the other person to influence him, is able to influence the other person. He’s a living demonstration of how a communication style can have surprsising results.