{ 2009 05 26 }
Remember to Go to Work
- Epicurean - File it under “old news,” but last week the Times ran a story profiling the glory of Huy Fong Sriracha sauce. The revelation that it’s not actually imported makes one question the authenticity of his many pleasant pho experiences.
Those of you apt to add enough chili paste to require a bit of alimentary cooling may be interested to read this piece from the current issue of the Atlantic, which argues for the necessity of upscale ice. Not even in our boozing can we cease striving to optimize thermodynamic relations.
- Nomination - Fresh on the wires is news that President Obama has chosen a nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court seat to be vacated by retiring Justice David Souter. It comes as little surprise that his choice is Sonia Sotomayor, a judge on the Second Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals. The Times already has a narrative prepared, as well as a rundown of her pertinent legal rulings.
One point on which Sotomayor will likely be taken to task in the course of her Senate hearings is also pertinent to a discussion that occurred in this forum last week. In a 2002 lecture, she reportedly said, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” There’s no way to interpret that remark that would fail to diminish the value of myself and my demographic, and it’s highly doubtful that a white man could escape an analogous comment unscathed. At the same time, our current place in history raises less cause to fear counter-Fascists than to fear the potential of a quasi-Fascist conservative majority on this country’s highest court. I’ll take the lesser evil, please.
Update: In his introduction of Sotomayor, Obama said “The members of our highest court are granted life tenure, often serving long after the presidents who appointed them, and they are charged with the vital task of applying principles put to paper more than 20 centuries ago to some of the most difficult questions of our time.” [emphasis added] Unless the U.S. Constitution has traveled through some kind of temporal worm-hole, this statement is categorically incorrect. All humans within 20 feet of my laptop are highly disconcerted. One hopes the statement to be the product of teleprompter-editor error.
- Quotations - Speaking to an individual posed before a RedCounty backdrop, longtime CNBC personality Mark Haines dismissively remarked “Republicans — I suppose some of you are still around.”
A 2007 Wired article about the WikiScanner project, which tracks anonymous Wikipedia edits to their physical IP locations, included the following observation: “One CIA entry deals with the details of lyrics sung in a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode.”
Gail Collins isn’t one of the New York Times‘ most heralded editorial contributors, but her off-day columns have recently included more levity than can be distilled to a single one-liner. Read her latest work here and here.
David Brooks also provided an hilariously snide column today. This from his online conversation with Collins: “Gail, I don’t know about you, but I try to spread my contempt around.“
- Finance - Not all that long ago, I used this forum to ask why banking and its regulation wasn’t considered more analogous to a utility than it currently is. James Kwak doesn’t go quite that far in this post to a blog we shall not name until it provides a contemporary baseline scenario, but he does make a cogent argument that sustained increases in financial sector profits should be interpreted as a sign that the “innovations” being implemented therein may be creating less efficiency rather than more. Too few people consider that the primary concern of the financial services sector is the market’s maintenance and efficiency. Taken to the extreme, that view would support an argument for utility-modeled regulation; even when minimized, it raises familiar questions about trusting one’s securities advisement to people paid by commission on volume. The problem isn’t that capitalism or free markets are intrinsically unethical, but that certain stages in the system make one pause to ask “What the f*ck? Isn’t this designed to shaft me?”
Also from that content source comes a lethargic view of recovery, based on data from previous recessions and their contributing factors. Needless to say, you might want to buy some calls on gruel.
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