Just For Kicks, Baby

This is interesting, how it's done is any one's guess, & it may not mean a damn thing, but visit The Blog Readability Test (What Level of Education Is Required to Understand Your Blog?) & throw in the name of your favorite (other than this one, of course) blog. "althouse.blogspot.com" is Junior High School. "meganmcardle.theatlantic.com" is High School, as is this very blog here that you are perusing at this moment.My personal blog (modesty forbids my typing the URL) is College (Postgrad) which is pretty damned funny considering I dropped out of three separate institutions of higher learning. Could be the long chunks of copied & pasted whatnot, from greater sources than my keyboard, that I leave all over the place. Or the pretentious latinate, chosen over Anglo-Saxon vulgate any chance I get.

But you'd think that McMegan's blog, w/ all it's statistical references & the like, or even Althouse, w/ the legalities strewn about, would come in a bit higher. Like to see the algorithms behind the whole thing. Especially now that I just ran "matthewyglesias.the atlantic.com" & it came up Genius. Who's kidding whom? The fix must be in.

Now I'm sure there's something suspicious: "instapundit.com" is Junior High, as is "ace.mu.nu." No surprises there. But can you tell me in what universe "atlasshrugs2000.com" is Genius? Not that I look at the Shrieking Harpy's site that often, but she must have quoted something literate at great length to get that. I suppose they don't take little things like correct punctuation or actual literacy into account; it must be number of "big" words or length or some such criteria.

brad adds:

I could always post a philosophy paper or two to screw up the grading curve.
I suspect Pam Atlas does well because the meth helps her write 5000 word posts with frightening regularity. Also, she (mis)uses lots of Hebrew and Arabic terms, which probably helps.

Bouffant re-adds:

5,000 word posts? No shit. That's more frightening than any mucus video or "vlog."

Dep't. of "WTF, Really?"

Second most recent item from Asymmetrical Information:

From Scott Adams:

I know I’ve been typecast because a hundred people sent me a story about a man in India who married a dog to atone for his past mistakes.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071113/ap_on_fe_st/india_man_weds_dog

A number of things struck me about this wedding. I shall start with the most obvious jokes first.

The report was quick to mention that the dog is female. That was a relief because allowing a man to marry a gay dog would be a slippery slope.

Ms. McA. titled it "No comment." In the 34 hours it's been there no one has commented. I really have no comment either, other than the usual "¿Que?"
And perhaps: "Can't Mr. Adams make a fucking link?" And: "Maybe Mr. Adams should stick to dialogue balloons."

Maybe Scott Adams is an acquaintance (a friend, of course, would get the "Ezra/Matt/etc. links to/posts" treatment) The Dilbert Blog is in the A. I. blogroll, although Dilbert hardly seems an advertisement for the invisible hand of the free market. Maybe Megan doesn't get it, & thinks it's a good for people to be treated like crap by the corporate entities that own employ them.

Or maybe I'm rambling. Felt obligated to post something.

(Not My) Thought For the Day

From the Cranky Professor, the wank McArdle mistook for a thought:

This architecture of the mind, conceptual art we're forced to live in, is that it ages especially poorly [sic]. Imagine these 'ugly junctions' after the funicular has been running for a few years, jostling, shaking, and generally loosening up fitted panels - and the expense of replacing those unique glass panels when they have problems!

Following is the commentary I left (but isn't yet approved for publication) at the Cranky Professor's site. Perhaps McArdle will see it here, if she's bored and still hiding from Vietnam.

Oooookay, hang on. "This architecture of the mind, conceptual art we're forced to live in?"

Who the hell is being "forced" to live in avant garde architecture?

I studied architectural history, and the single most memorable fact a professor imparted to me was that only 5% of the world's habitable structures were designed by architects. Within that tiny wedge, a small minority could be considered avant garde modernists, and their works (when they get built) are paid for by institutions and individuals desirous of buildings that function as shelters and as art. They know what they're getting, and know that bleeding-edge architecture involves materials and engineering that may be unproven. Yes, tales of leaky Wrights, stained Gehrys and stifling Breuers are a dime a dozen; "traditional" buildings also leak, stain, shift, flood, overheat and otherwise fail, but hardly anyone ever talks about that.

Most architects, be they modernists, classicists or practitioners of regional vernaculars, do indeed give thought to how their buildings will age, but they're also realists. The average lifespan of a building is 50 years. Buildings are razed and new ones put on the old footprint all the time, and as populations grow (and buildable lands dwindle), the demands and strain placed on private and public buildings will ensure that very few structures achieve anything like permanence.

Hadid's practice has quite a few large projects to speak of, and the Cincinatti building was the firm's first American commission to be built. I hope that she'll have an opportunity, someday, to build in her native Iraq.

Epigram of the day: "Architects cannot design for the future for the same reason that McArdle can't pull her head out of her bum."

Deep Thoughts, by Jack Handey

The government can't fix society for the same reason that you can't remove your own appendix.

This doesn't even rhyme. Gyp.
At least, however, it can be parsed. That's not always the case.
As for the sentiment, this clearly means Megan wants the UN to temporarily take control of the US and its government and fix our society. Cuz, while I can't remove my appendix, a doctor can, meaning in this little epigram what's needed is an authority that's outside and above the gov't. Unless Megan has found Jebus, that sounds like the UN. I always figured Megan would be against a New World Order. Guess I was wrong.
Oh, and hands up, everyone who'd like to rely on the free market to get an inflamed appendix out of you before it bursts.

2+2=5

Megan is back on about vouchers and public schools, and has an issue with those pesky pilot programs trying to find ways to fix the system.

Since we've been talking a lot recently about vouchers, education is one area where this is fairly easy to see. You get a pilot program: a curriculum, a teaching method, a high-intensity preschool program (such as the Perry program) for disadvantaged kids. You do a rigorous study of that pilot. It produces terrific results. Naturally, we should roll it out everywhere!

Not so fast. That pilot program has a huge administrative staff whose sole incentive is to ensure that it is meticulously carried out. In the real world, that curriculum will be put into place by an administrator whose priority list is crowded with everything from mollifying the latest lunatic on the school board, to ensuring that she gets out of town for a three day weekend with her new boyfriend who she really thinks may be The One.

That pilot program is staffed with a narrow band of extremely highly qualified teachers, sifted from the best the environment has to offer. In the real world, whoever happens to be standing in front of the classroom come September 5th has to do it, even if they flunked Remedial Math four times and only got this job because the school board needed a body.

Megan thinks she's arguing against the public school system, still, here, but does even she think privatization will fix these problems, that charter schools will be run by altruists concerned solely with the kids' best interests? Replace "pilot programs" with "vouchers tests" and you might have a decent post.
Further, Megan is presuming the folk designing and running and evaluating pilot programs have no awareness of the reality their ideas will be introduced into, which is, of course, utter bullshit. This post amounts to Megan sticking her fingers in her ears and yelling "I can't heaaaaaaar you" when folk suggest ways to reform the system without demolishing it. You can't fix it, teachers' unions are satan, etcetcetc. Don't try, just let McDonald's take over the schooling of our nation's children.

Rules of pontificating

Actually, there's only one rule; don't know what you're talking about. If you make arguments based on facts and logic, your argument can be proven wrong. If you make it based on personal anecdote and a muddled understanding of the issue, you'll be too incoherent to be directly responded to. Plus, you leave yourself wiggle room to claim you meant the exact opposite if someone manages to parse something semi-coherent out of your work and demonstrate its wrongness.
For example, Megan put a post up today about how Dems feel about their candidates based on the idea that Hillary's main attraction is how much she antagonizes the conservative base, and that this is poor strategy. Megan has followed a similar path in the past, and she seems not to comprehend that the primary process is not guided by some overarching hive mind which makes its decisions based on random whims.

I had an interesting discussion recently about the 2008 election. Reliable Democrats seem so certain that it's a lock that it doesn't matter who they nominate. Nomination thus becomes a form of self-expression; and the self they seemingly most want to express is "Screw you, Republican jerks". Since Hillary Clinton best fills that bill, then she should be the nominee. The belief that she, alone, can best put the screws to Republicans, and therefore she, alone, must be the nominee, seems surprisingly common.

Surprisingly common. Now, I could ad hominem Megan's friends and acquaintances, based on them being Megan's friends and acquaintances, but the bigger question is who she's trying to kid. Has anyone, anywhere, ever met someone who's actually excited for Hillary's likely nomination? I know it's a big country and it must've happened, but, at best, I think Megan has things backwards. Hillary's machine seems to have taken control, that much is true, so despite the fact no one really wants her, we're stuck with her. Viewing the antagonism she inspires among the conservative base as a positive seems, to me, to be trying to make lemonade when given lemons.
But Megan takes it as "self-expression" in "political discourse", and thinks it's tactically unwise. Because, and hold onto your seats, folks, because this might shock you, the political landscape frequently changes. That's right, elections have cycles, and these cycles can involve tremendous changes in fortune. I know this blows your mind, but it's true.

I am put in mind of an aphorism I inherited from wise ancestors: the wheel goes 'round and 'round, and sooner or later, the fly on top is going to be the fly on the bottom. In political cycles, these days, that wheel seems to be spinning with peculiar alacrity.

Are we really so sure that America, in a year, will hate Republicans quite as much as it does now? Might it not be that if Iraq settles down--as it seems to be doing, whatever the reason (and forcible ethnic sorting strikes me as the most likely one)--and the economy mysteriously fails to go into recession, that the Democrats might have a bit more of a struggle than they are currently anticipating? It seems to me much more likely than not that America will have either a recession, or a bloody ongoing battle in Iraq, or both. Nonetheless: always have Plan B, said another wise ancestor. What's Plan B, if the economy and Iraq are both all right in time for Clinton v. Giuliani 2008?

So.... umm. Nominating Hillary to tweak the conservative base means that Dems want a recession here and continued massive bloodshed in Iraq cuz otherwise they'll lose? Hillary, the wife and equal partner of, no matter your views of his policies, one of the most talented political actors in American history, has no strategy beyond hoping for the worst? The Dems are the reactionary party, choosing a candidate based on how much she tweaks the opposing base?
Megan was paid to write this, and thousands of people will/have read it. Sports journalism is better informed and more carefully constructed than Megan's work. At least their bs narrative tropes have some vague relation to reality.

Day of Rest

And now that you've read two fine items from my compatriots, there's no need to sully this space w/ anything from me. I'm saving it for tomorrow.

No, wait, one comment. What's w/ bothering to link to & comment on this bit of semi-inanity when she's on the other side of the world? I'd think there would be more to do (esp. of an interesting nature) than to keep up w/ all your first-name basis friends. I'd think.

Giant elf adventures in Vietnam

Goin with the semi-shorter form to cover a few of the doozies Megan laid today. Minus the post already covered quite well by *Clem* (my bad) just below.

They might be giants: I loved They Might Be Giants when I was 14 or so. Megan sucks extra today for using their name, twice. Anyway,

I am starting to feel as if I should just shout "Fee! Fi! Fo! Fum!" before I enter a room here. People back home stare occasionally, but here a near-majority point and chatter. Their eyes, meltingly, ask a question they have neither the courage, nor the English, to speak out loud. I cannot bear to deny them.

"188 centimeters," I say. It took me ten minutes to work out the first time, but now I'm practiced. Their eyes widen, as if I had suddenly gotten even taller. Smiles. Giggles.

"My God, you very tall girl."

"Yes," I agree. "Very tall."

Perhaps it was unwise to pack so many high heels. And what could I have been thinking when I tossed in the turquoise suede platforms?

Gotta love that they all leave out "are a" when speaking to Megan. I'm sure it's actually happened and yes each language has its own individual structures which show up as characteristic mistakes in other languages, but still.

Next door neighbors: [Megan voice] Vietnam and China share a border. This means one of two things; Vietnam will be able to improve their economic situation, or they won't be able to. I don't know.

The beginning of the end of history: [Megan voice] Oh yeah, Vietnam is communist! [/Megan voice]

There's a natural tendency to blame Vietnamese poverty on the legacy of communism, and of course, some of that is fair. Vietnam suffers in many ways from the legacy of state-owned enterprises; things like financial markets, and financial accounting, are still novelties that budding capitalists are struggling to get the hang of. And corruption, which is such a big problem that it is actually mentioned as something that needs fixing by government officials we interview, is undoubtedly at least partly attributable to the insanities of a non-market system.

But in fact, Vietnam is mostly just poor because it's poor, just as it's always been poor--and just as the overwhelming majority of the human race has always been poor.

Or cuz it was ravaged by imperial and civil war for decades, and pretty much every square inch of the country done got blowed up 3 or 4 times, at least? N cause the economic engine of the West wouldn't have anything to do with them until the 90s?
After some badness I'll be kind and spare you, Megan ends this post with

Communism stalled progress, but unlike in many parts of Eastern Europe, it didn't actually reverse it. And judging by the enthusiasm for education and human capital acquisition (one entrepreneur simultaneously advocated more spending on socialized medicine . . . and raising school fees so that there would be more money in the educational system) it seems likely to be a fairly temporary delay at that.

Socialized medicine and higher school fees are good. Megan said this. I am stunned and stumped, and can go no further.

Dam Dirty Statistics

But making their lives more energy intensive means burning more fossil fuels. Particularly in the early stages of development, it means burning nasty, polluting, carbon-emitting anthracite coal, which Vietnam not only uses for its own electricity, but increasingly exports to China. Vietnam has just about as many people in it as Germany, emitting a fraction of the carbon. Even if Germany cut its emissions in half, or more, it would not make up for Vietnam's industrialization.

Well, shut mah mouth, but Vietnam's energy picture is greatly more diverse and sophisticated than McArdle would have us believe. According to our own Department of Energy, Vietnam currently derives 12% of its electricity from coal-fired generating plants, and in 2004 consumed 8.1 MMst (million short tons) of anthracite coal while exporting 10.1 MMst, primarily to China and Japan. As industrialization progresses, it's forecast that up to 25% of Vietnam's electric capacity will come from the burning of coal. In 2004, 52% of the 40.1 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity generated came from the burning of fossil fuels: coal, petroleum and natural gas, the latter currently accounting for 29% of generating capacity. In 2004, fully 48% of consumed electricity was generated by hydroelectic plants, and ongoing construction of new dams and upgrades to existing plants will likely maintain that high figure. In fact, by 2020, Vietnam plans to have completed 74 new power plants, 48 of which will be hydroelectric. Of the total energy consumption by Vietnamese, 50% is oil, hyrdoelectric 20%, Coal 18% and natural gas 12%. In 2004, energy-related carbon emissions weighed in at 57.5 million metric tons, of which oil acounted for 59%, with coal, natural gas and renewables making up the rest.

Vietnam's carbon emissions will go up as it consumes more energy, but not as much as McArdle imagines they will, because the Vietnamese - hold on to your pointy straw hats - clearly know how to do more than burn coal, and are taking advantage of the panoply of options available to them. In fact, being signatories to the Kyoto Accord protocols, they seem to be planning for future needs with an eye towards keeping carbon emissions low, McArdle's visions of dark satanic mills notwithstanding.

To view the US DOE's figures on Vietnam's energy outlook, click here.

To send complaints about patronizing American twits to the U.S. Consulate in Ho Chi Minh City, email uscongenhcmc@state.gov.

Simply bizarre (and wrong)

This strikes me as one of Megan's odder posts, which is, obviously, quite an achievement. I'll get to the wrongness of the post in a moment, but first, I have to ask, does anyone else find it odd that when traveling Megan thinks about old arguments? Not, wow, that Buddhist temple was amazing or what's next or all the things to be done when you get home, but old arguments that you were, like, totally right about? I can be as petty as anyone, hence this blog, but geezuz.

As to the wrongness, first, I've little doubt she's mangling her friend's argument, as claiming "that excessive protestations against homosexuality are often a way to bolster one's masculinity" borders on nonsensical. This bit is, it seems, a continuation of Megan's desire for the left to stop calling (end of the post) the most vitriolic homophobes on the right probable closet cases. She thinks that doing so is in itself homophobic, because it somehow partakes of the notion that being gay is bad. Except that's only part of what she's arguing now.

In general, you don't imply that someone's gay because you think it might lead to a change of heart; you imply that they're gay because it's fun to tweak people with whom you disagree so vehemently. Indulging in this form of name calling feels good, but it's ultimately counterproductive--firstly, because in this case, it does help sustain the notion that calling someone "gay" is some kind of insult; and second, because it just makes everyone angrier. And anger is something that we're currently a bit oversupplied with.

This is the media elite DC village mindset in a nutshell, once again. When, one might ask, do folk on the left respond to folk on the right with charges of being a closet case? Why, I might answer, when those on the right are displaying homophobia that resembles pathology, meaning the issue is far more personal than merely, ewww, icky like most right wingers apparently feel. You see, the proper response to displays of incomprehensible hatred is to calmly argue against the irrational prejudices of your opponent, of course. And, if, for example, you yourself are gay and become angry yourself at displays of hatred of your nature and respond provocatively, you have lost the argument. You see, it in no way suggests gays are the party at fault to fret over the sensibilities of bigots and imply gays need to learn to suck it up and turn the other cheek. The left has to mildly respond to be being called deviants, or traitors, and if we don't we've only proven our detractors' case.
When we call Larry Craig a closet case we're not denigrating him, but noting that his nature and his politics are in such stark opposition that something has to be wrong with him. Being gay is ok, being a self-hating gay isn't, in no small part because it can lead to wanting to deny other gays rights, or even to harm them. I don't think Megan knew enough frat guys in college to understand what homophobia really is.