Umm... what?

Now Megan is posting about how she thinks legal terms had been parsed in the past. Upcoming, Megan's presentation of her theory of dark matter as the real source of dust.
But first, what the fuck? Rather than quote Megan, I'm going to quote the commenter Francis, because he did my job for me.

"living constitution" proponents seem to be retreating to the notion that constitutional interpretations ought to have a least a tenuous relationship to the underlying text

and ANOTHER strawman gets set ablaze. Please point me to your extensive series of sources that living constitution proponents (like my old lawprof Erwin Chemerinsky -- he's been in the news lately) previously believes that Constitutional interpretations need not bear even a tenuous relationship to the underlying text. Oh wait -- the detachment between text and meaning is done these days by the so-called conservative justices. Look into 11th Amendment jurisprudence.

what utter BS this post is. This is the kind of thing I see in comments at the Volokh Conspiracy, that end up being supported only by a few out-of-context comments made by various Sup.Ct. justices regarding the death penalty.

All I can add to that is the question of whether Megan had the barest idea what she was actually talking about. The post itself is so vague and incoherent one has to wonder.

Condi's Loss Is Our Curse

We're* not pacifists, you know. Indeed, some of us are quite feisty. I could have joined the military with a clean conscience in 2002--except for the part where I'm a 4F asthmatic with lousy eyesight who was medically unfit for the State Department. But that had nothing to do with my tofu-loving ways.

* Technically, I'm not a vegetarian: I eat humanely raised and killed meat. However, given the difficulty of locating such meat, and the expense of buying it, this is generally a distinction without a difference. Moreover, I was a vegetarian at the time of the Iraq War's inception.
[Emphasis added]

Condensed McArdle: "I'm vegetarian and pro-military, but I'm not vegetarian."

Does this mean that McArdle actually applied for work with the State Department? Good Lord. Imagine McArdle gladhanding a Miss Arab pageant winner: "It seems to me that you are festively plump. Can I pinch?"

Now, about the "difficulty of locating" meat produced in an humane, Temple Grandin-approved manner: um, hello, Whole Foods? A cynic might conclude that McArdle is kinda vegetarian because she's too lazy and cheap to support humane, sustainable producers. Oh, wait, I'm a cynic.

brad adds:
Wal*Mart workers don't deserve humane existences, but the cows, pigs, and chickens Megan eats do.
And yeah, there's only 3 Whole Foods stores in DC. How is Megan possibly going to afford Whole Foods, which admittedly is expensive, with the general lack of hidden costs to their goods, and her $25 Red Bulltinis?
I once was a veggie who worked for animal rights. But a combo of several factors ended that phase of my life. For one, I love meat. Sorry cows, but you're tasty. For another, PETA is a goddamned cult, run by asshole opportunists who have no sense of decency.* Finally, human rights kinda matter more to me.
Megan's position here is a dilemma I encountered often. How does a selfish rich... unpleasant woman pretend she's moral? Make a big deal about what she does, and doesn't, eat. She can look at a sea otter and say "ohyouresocute, I'd never eat you" and feel like a good person. U go girl.

*- I mean Ingrid Newkirk and the leadership. The rank and file are a mix of good people with good intentions.... and folk like Megan, trying to make a show of their altruism.

Clem redirects:

Quick critical note

I'm putting together the next poll, and I was going to have Dane Cook as an option, but it just didn't work, even by my own lax standards. I moved him around, put him after Madonna, before Muslim Jebus, neither of whom made the final cut, but nothing even mildly amusing.
Then I remembered; Dane Cook isn't funny.
Fire Dane Cook.

Late-nite trite

The World's Tallest Female Econoblogger bravely takes on a topic that has vexed the great economic minds of the 21st century: Why are Arab girls who win beauty contests so fat?

Andrew notices that the winner of Miss Arab World is veiled. What strikes me is that the runners-up, and possibly the winner under all those layers, are at least twenty pounds heavier than the average American beauty contestant. There's real, live, actual body fat under those dresses--and the judges, presumably male, still thought these women were attractive! What's more, the girls are revelling in it, wearing mermaid-style dresses that emphasize their lush curves. Looking at more photographs from the pageant, there seems to be a decent inverse correlation between how westernized a country is, and how thin its representative is . . . although even the thinnest girls would be on the heavy side for Miss America.

Megan's deep insight from this seems to be that our concept of beauty is driven by malleable cultural factors.

It's almost as if she's actively trying to prove brad's points about her vapidity.

A question for our reader(s)

Should I put up a new poll when this one expires?

DDD, Example #2

Example #2;

Every time I read one of these things, I wonder at what motivates someone to make up an entire career, a whole set of credentials. Part of it is almost admiring, since I'd never have the chutzpah. But more of it is just curious. Why do it? Is it the middle-class equivalent of a fourteen year old kid stealing a minibike--unable to conceive of getting the credentials through legitimate means, they simply help themselves to the unearned when no one's looking? Or is it something more sinister, some positive enjoyment of the fraud?

Setting aside the fact that folk like Jayson Blair have been interviewed, and might be useful in answering some of these questions, I have a major gripe. Maybe even two. To begin with, Megan, people like you are why people like Alexis Debat conceive of and get away with what they do. You are a fraud in your own right, you simply are too lazy to fabricate or plagiarize material. Instead, you find it sufficient to merely ask the questions that you should instead be answering as part of your damn job. You don't do a good job, but have a career because you know, and kiss up to, the right people. Your only qualification is your ability to network. If you can get away with your shit, why can't a talented fraud do so, too? Hell, at least they have to be informed about their topics to get away with it, so they've still got one up on you.
My second, more significant, gripe is with this quintessential glibertarian, and conservative, belief that opportunity is equal. Megan did not work hard to get where she is, unless you count networking. Most journalists have to dedicate their lives to their craft simply to stay employed within it, and the pressures involved are tremendous. I don't mean to justify any of the bad practices this leads to, but they don't come out of a vacuum. Megan did not earn her position, it was given to her. This shows both that opportunity is not equal, and that those without connections have to bust their asses even harder to get one of those few gigs not reserved for people who know people. I could unquestionably find.. what, 15, 20 econobloggers, at least, who could do a better job than Megan with a couple minutes on Google. Opporunity is not equal, and Megan's employment is powerful, if anecdotal, proof of this.
So, those couple dozen of you reading this may wonder, how is this dumb? It's dumb because Megan seems to think she earned her gig the old fashioned way; by showing she deserved it. It'd be one thing if she knew she was lucky as sin to be where she is and pushed herself to make full use of the opportunity to develop her "skills" whereby she might one day be deserving of her position. That'd involve putting in lots of hard work, and displays of humility where, instead of ignoring or banning commenters that demonstrate her lack of effort to inform herself before attempting to inform others, she admits to her mistakes, accepts that she needs to do better, and actively tries to do so. Instead, she moves on to the next post, and a fresh chance to be shallow and glib. This post by Megan is dumb because it demonstrates an utter lack of self awareness, which I think is at the heart of so many of the qualities we rag on her for at this blog. People have done good jobs in positions they didn't deserve, and who knows, Megan might be capable of it. We certainly haven't seen her try.

Daily Dose of Dumb, Example #1

When I started this, I thought Megan was simply unqualified. But I'm starting to think she's genuinely unintelligent.
Example #1; a post titled More Cops Less Crime.

There are a lot of explanations one could offer for this, but one of the best ones is the prevalence in New York of beat cops. DC actually has more cops per citizen--one for every 153 citizens, versus one for every 210 in New York. But after almost a year in DC, I've still never seen a cop walking on the street. I see them frequently-ish in their patrol cars, but almost never walking around among the population.

Clearly, Meg did a tiny bit of research to find those numbers. However, the questions she leave unasked and unanswered are the ones that might actually help answer her question about the murder rates in NYC vs DC. Instead, she relies on her own anecdotal experience of not seeing beat cops around her in DC. Now, I could mention that she likely lives in a well off part of DC, where the crime rate is naturally lower, meaning that in the comstat era's efficient deployment of resources Megan is naturally going to see fewer police in the less violent areas she spends her time in. But there's a more important question; what are the actual reasons for the difference in murder rates? This is a question that has an answer, or perhaps several. Maybe beat cops are a factor, but Megan doesn't even establish that there are more beat cops in NYC. She just remembers there being more. (Her cited study on the efficacy of beat cops was run in DC's bleedin National Mall, ffs.) And she doesn't even glancingly consider other possible factors. How is DC's economy compared to NYC's? Seems a natural question for an "econoblogger" to ask. Are the murders related to gang violence and the drug trade (or what percent of them are)? Where in the cities are the murders taking place, and what can that tell us? A good econoblogger would, presumably, be good with numbers, both in the sense of finding them and making them understandable and relevant. Megan, in contrast, decides that, because she feels safer when she sees a cop, beat cops are the main answer. This kind of thinking is unimaginative, unreflective, and plain unintelligent.

Why, Exactly?

Here's a big question: Why does The Atlantic want or need an "econoblogger?" And why Megan McArdle? The guy who writes the "The Financial Page" for The New Yorker, James Surowiecki, cranks out a page every other week or so, & it's always a solid 26 column inches of, if not raw economics, useful & clearly written financial information, backed by The New Yorker's famed fact-checking, rather than, as w/ Megan's blog, the inane recitation of statistics copied & pasted from another "econoblog," followed by questioning of & bickering over statistical methods & other truly compelling input from the commentariat.

Not that it's all econ, all the time, @ Asymmetrical Information:

Music Sunday
30 Sep 2007 11:36 am
I have, as of yesterday's eMusic download fest, 2,406 songs in iTunes. And as I finished downloading, it occurred to me, with a small wow, that I really like almost all of the music I have right now. [...] Also, because the collection is relatively small, there's nothing of which I could say "I really like that, but I haven't listened to it in a while."
As the collection grows, obviously that will change. And it will, for I'm now a backup obsessive. I will never again lose more than a few days worth of music.
So discussion question of the day, for this fine, lazy Sunday: how many songs do you have in your iTunes*? And is it too many, too few, or just right? [The Goldilocks equation.]
* Or other MP3 player--or CD collection, if you're still living in the paleolithic. [Or, if you like to listen to music w/ those subtle overtones & harmonics, & no digital ear fatigue, how many LPs do you have, if you're still pre-Cambrian?]

The worst part? Commenters actually responded to it!
Next week: "How many pieces in your silver service?"

Megan writes about Radiohead

My head explodes.
Film at 11.

To begin,
Fire Tyler Cowan.
Radiohead are not indie. Whatever the hell you want to call indie, RH are not it. You are clearly 38, Ms. McArdle, and aging rapidly, if you can quote this approvingly. I'm going to start calling you a spinster when you hit 40. (Also, RH are notably not on iTunes, because they are anti-DRM. Tyler really doesn't know what he's talking about. No wonder Megan cites him.)
The thing is, neither Megan nor Tyler seem to have any idea of the actual context this arose out of. I am, as noted, an obsessive RH fan, going back to the tender age of 15 when Creep broke. I don't know their personal lives, because I retain a hint of sanity, but I know their professional careers very well. So, let's begin with what Megan and Tyler are leaving out. First, there's a mass commercial release of a physical disc planned in some form for early 08. But, more importantly, this move was driven by what amount to artistic concerns just as much, if not more, than economic. RH don't need money, they could do it all for free from here on out and be fine. Despite Tyler's implicit claim they need to grow their brand, Radiohead are arguably the biggest band in the world, aside from dinosaurs like the Rolling Stones and U2. Everyone knows them, they don't need exposure, and they're not greedy. There's a reason you don't hear Radiohead tunes in car ads.
And, tho Megan and Tyler don't know it, RH has had a problem with their albums leaking to the public before the band considers them ready. Demo versions of all the tracks on their last album leaked several months before the album came out, and their albums going back to Kid A have been online before they were available commercially. Thom's solo album last summer leaked a month early, in a version that was missing the first few seconds of each track. I would wager that the main impetus behind this move is quality control over their product. Instead of a leak based on a studio employee sneaking out demos, or a journalist putting bad mp3s of their promo copy on limewire, the band is essentially leaking the album themselves, in a format they control. This isn't, despite Megan's claims, unprecedented. After Kid A leaked the band put the whole album online in a streaming format, and the album was still a massive seller. Basically, the band is making sure that everyone hears a quality copy of their work, instead of a third-hand mp3 rip of an unmastered demo.
As for Megan thinking us obsessives are buying the expensive discbox version to try and prove our dedication.... oy. That's just a bizarre idea. You think the band is going over the list of the names of the tens to hundreds of thousands of fans worldwide to see whether folk they know are showing their dedication? Or that fans are going to carry around a big box to show off their dedication?
We're ordering the discbox because we're Radiohead obsessives. It contains a bonus second disc with 8 songs that won't be available for download or on the later commercial release, along with heavy duty vinyl versions of both discs, and artwork and other goodies. Also, this money actually goes to RH, instead of a label. For some of us, that's a big plus. But it boils down to something quite simple; we're buying the discbox because we want it. It's so simple even Megan can understand, and she still fucks it up.
Anyway Stereogum has a nice, brief, accurate write up of the actual facts here, which are interesting in ways Megan totally misses. It's almost as if her lack of research into things is having a negative impact on her work. She's wrong about a lot of things, but the economics of going publicity-free and making the labels come to them are genuinely fascinating, and could have a real impact on the business models the music industry functions under. But Megan is worried about our indie credentials, bless her heart.

N yeah, I know this is petty even for me, but too bad.

Update:
I forgot to mention that she can't even get the most basic of details right. If you choose to pay nothing for the download, there are no transaction fees.

It's been a while since Megan lived in NYC

it seems.

A number of years ago, I was discussing rent control with someone who had managed to snag a government-subsidized co-op. "But you have to understand," he said earnestly, in response to my eminently reasonable economic arguments, "If it weren't for rent control, someone like me couldn't afford to live in Manhattan."

... what? Rent control and government-subsidized co-ops are very different things. One is a way to prevent landlords from price-gouging, the other is a system whereby the state or city obtained ownership or control of decent buildings in order to provide some employees with affordable housing near where they work. Whether the gov't sectors that have this option deserve it or make fair use of it are fair questions in response, but not Megan's.

My response, though I never said it out loud, was a puzzled "So what?" Living in Manhattan is not a civil right. It's ludicrous to think that we should construct an elaborate regulatory system that degrades the housing stock and helps push the vacancy rate down to 2%, all so that averagely paid government workers can afford a two bedroom apartment near Lincoln Center. If you want to live in Manhattan, you should prepare yourself for a job that will pay you enough to do so. Or you can do what I did, and cram yourself into 400 square feet of cave-like space on the first floor of a building where the hot water supply ranges from temperamental to nonexistent. But the idea that the government has a duty to reallocate the very limited supply of attractively located Manhattan apartments to . . . well, to the kind of people who know the guy who allocates the supply of attractively located Manhattan apartments . . . seems so transparently awful that I was struck dumb.

I, too, am struck dumb. First question is, what does Megan consider affordable? My last place in Manhattan was a 400 sq feet cave, and it was 1800 a month. People told me I was getting a good deal, and they were tragically correct. (I now live in Brooklyn, and pay less for about 3 times the space.) And this was almost 2 years ago. There are no affordable places in Manhattan anymore, unless you mean section 8 housing that a whitey like Megan has never heard of.
Second, while a person like Megan might not notice the difference, the lack of housing non-corporate or rich family types can afford in Manhattan is changing the borough. My last place was on the LES, and when I got there it was a DFH friendly area, the home of Tonic, and generally one of the few areas of the city you could wander around high as a kite and not feel like anyone cared. Now it's a Sex and the City set. Tonic was closed to keep the owners of the new glass monstrosity next door happy, and ABC no rio is almost a museum piece. Lots of yuppies and bridge and tunnel crowds trying to feel hip. And, no, Williamsburg and its hipsters aren't really much better, but their bars and music are. Megan may be glad for the change, but Manhattan isn't the place it once was.
Getting back on topic, you gotta love Megan saying "If you want to live in Manhattan, you should prepare yourself for a job that will pay you enough to do so." Cause, y'know, if everyone just picked themselves up by their bootstraps and..... how the hell does she convince herself of this crap? Does she really think everyone can just buckle down and train themselves at night instead of sleeping and suddenly have the connections and skills required for the near six figure income you need for Manhattan these days?
I could go on, and, hellishly, this is all just a set-up for Megan to argue against taking economic consequences into consideration when discussing how to set up a carbon tax, but I can't do it. The fall of Manhattan and Megan's employment at The Atlantic are bad enough individually. I can't deal with both at once.