Pun Salad

Turn Up the Eagles

… the neighbors are listening:

• I was sure I was mishearing those lyrics, and we'd all have a good laugh when I found out what they really were. But as it turns out…

  I never really thought of the Eagles and Steely Dan as inhabiting the same universe.

• Ace Associated Press reporter Emily Fredrix reports on the Super Bowl ads. Only problem is, notes John Hinderaker, Emily was kind of making stuff up.

• Ann Althouse has a lot of funny stuff about the Super Bowl ads, but here she echoed something I've thought about quite a bit too, sparked in this instance by the Who at halftime:

  This is a music act from 40+ years ago. Imagine if in the first Super Bowl, in 1967, the half-time show featured musicians who peaked in 1927. No. It's not imaginable. The strange dominance of My Generation is unfathomable.

  "How do you think he does it?" "I don't know."

• A word I will try to work into the next buzzword-laden management meeting I'm roped into attending: mistakeholders.

• On a related note, scientists are verifying something I've always believed: you really can be bored to death.

Posted 2010-02-08 10:30 AM EST

Digital Barbarism: A Writer's Manifesto

I'm a bit ashamed to admit this is the first book I've read by Mark Helprin; his name haunts most of the "Books All Good Conservatives Should Read" lists, including this recent one at National Review. But—hey!—I'd heard of him, and I'd noted some reviews of Digital Barbarism; so when I spied it in the New Book stacks at the library of the University Near Here, I grabbed it.

The tone is set immediately, in the book's preface, page xi, sentence one:

Even were this book to begin in medias res, which, as an essay-memoir, it does not, a reader might benefit from a brief guide to the terrain it covers.

But (in a sense) the book really does begin in medias res. (Hey, look it up; I did.) It's at least round three in an ongoing debate between Helprin and (generally) the enemies of intellectual property and (specifically) Lawrence Lessig and the Creative Commons bunch. It was sparked back in 2007, when Helprin wrote an op-ed for the New York Times, where he argued for an extension of copyright terms beyond the current 70 years past the death of the author. This unleashed a firestorm against Helprin.

Part of the problem was the NYT's headline: "A Great Idea Lives Forever. Shouldn’t Its Copyright?". Helprin notes that, as a Constitutionalist, he agrees with the notion of a finite copyright period; he just was advocating its extension beyond 70 years. But that wasn't all:

It would perhaps have been comforting that the Times's inaccurate choice was the face that launched three-quarters of a million protests, but it wasn't. Certainly, a large number of people read just the title and then proceeded happily to vent their rage, but, in Lewis Carollian twilight, even those "analysts" who purported to have read the text, and those who actually did read it, read into it what was not there, and based their arguments, rebuttals, and abuse on something that did not exist, as if the didn't really need a text to set them off, which they didn't, although they said they did, because that, anyway, used to be the custom.

Only problem, as Helprin points out: despite the similarity in title, his novel didn't have anything to do with the play. But that didn't stop the bloggers…

So I'm inclined to side with Helprin, but the book is not really the defense of copyright, let alone intellectual property generally, that the topic deserves. You can see part of the problem from the quoted paragraph above. As accurate and well-written as it is, it's not much of an argument to point out that a lot of your opponents make stupid arguments.

Helprin bills this book as an "essay-memoir". The memoir parts are interesting, and (unsurprisingly) well-written. But they can distract from the fact that the essay bits are unfocused and incomplete. I can recommend the book as a good read (but not light reading).

Over at the Technology Liberation Front, Adam Thierer reprints his review of Digital Barbarism (which I find on-target), and also provides a feast of links for the interested.

Posted 2010-02-08 10:00 AM EST

Zombieland

[IMDB Rating: 7.9] [Tomatometer: 89%]

Mrs. Salad's six-word review of Zombieland: "Shoot, shoot, shoot. Gnaw, gnaw, gnaw." That's pretty accurate; I liked it a lot better than she did, but your mileage may vary; you probably have to have a high threshhold for gore, violence, and bad language.

The film's protagonist is "Columbus", a likeable nerd who has somehow survived the zombie apocalypse by meticulously discovering and following a long list of rules. (The role is played by Jesse Eisenberg, who I found whiny in Adventureland; he's much better here.) Columbus forms an unlikely partnership with "Tallahassee", played by Woody Harrelson. Tallahassee's goals differ slightly: he's out to kill as many zombies as possible, and also to satisfy a craving he's developed for Twinkies.

Soon Columbus and Tallahassee encounter two young unzombified ladies, "Wichita" and "Little Rock" (Emma Stone, and Little Miss Sunshine herself, Abigail Breslin.) They form an unstable partnership as well.

Everything is pretty much played for laughs here, and much of the dialog is clever and funny. (A considerable amount is not clever, but still funny.) A number of commenters/reviewers note that it's like an Americanized Shaun of the Dead, and that's about right.

There's a wonderful cameo performance midway through the movie that I will not spoil. But the actor involved cements my opinion of him as a massive good sport.

Posted 2010-02-08 9:30 AM EST

I Grow Old … I Grow Old …

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled:

• Well, here's some encouraging news. Blogging is for old people, Pew report finds.

  Teenagers and young adults spent less time blogging during the past three years as social networks like Facebook became more popular, according to a Pew Research Center study released Wednesday.

  I'd love to delve into that in more detail, but I'm spending a lot of time composing an upcoming blog post comparing Lawrence Welk with Guy Lombardo. (Via Granite Geek.)

• … which makes this article all the more poignant:

  PALO ALTO, CA—Alzheimer's researchers at Stanford University published a study this week showing that the degenerative brain disease is beginning to affect the baby boomer generation, causing many to remember the 1960s even less accurately than they normally would.

• Dave Barry pens a helpful guide for people visiting Miami for the Super Bowl:

  Dear Super Bowl Visitor:

  Welcome to Miami! Get ready for a fun Super Bowl week, because you're going to see some serious partying ``Miami Style'' -- people eating, drinking, singing, shouting, fighting, discharging firearms, sacrificing animals, sinking motor yachts and dancing naked around burning buses. And those are our police officers.

  Go Saints! Or Colts! I don't care! I'm just hoping Pete Townshend makes it through halftime without breaking a hip.

• But not everyone is happy to see Pete:

  Florida-based "Protect Our Children" wants the NFL to reconsider letting "The Who" perform, and even sent 1,500 "sex offender advisory" postcards to homes and schools, warning residents to watch out for Townshend.

  … and also Cousin Kevin.

• A funny-yet-serious post from Steve Landsburg, who remembers…

  Congressman Donald Schwerbitz, who represented South Dakota back in the 1960s and 70s, was a visionary environmentalist who sponsored the first legislation designed to reduce our national carbon footprint. It was Congressman Schwerbitz who recognized that carbon emissions are caused primarily by breathing, and he proposed to cut those emissions in half by requiring every American to wear a device that plugs up one nostril.

  Steve notes that the Schwerbitz spirit is still alive and well today, and writing op-eds in the Washington Post.

Posted 2010-02-04 6:00 PM EST

Granite State Barackrobatics

President Obama came up to Nashua, NH yesterday. You may have heard about his slam at Las Vegas.

During the president's town hall meeting in Nashua, New Hampshire, he discussed the need to curb spending during tough economic times. "When times are tough, you tighten your belts," the president said. "You don't go buying a boat when you can barely pay your mortgage. You don't blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you're trying to save for college."

But this remark irked me:

Now, if you hear some of the critics, they'll say, well, the Recovery Act, I don't know if that's really worked, because we still have high unemployment. But what they fail to understand is that every economist, from the left and the right, have said because of the Recovery Act, what we've started to see is at least a couple of million jobs that have either been created or would have been lost.

As Mark Steyn wrote a few days back: "Presumably, the president isn't stupid enough actually to believe what he said. But it's dispiriting to discover he's stupid enough to think we're stupid enough to believe it."

• Barely over a week ago, three different White House advisers gave three different estimates of jobs "created or saved" by the Recovery Act. These were people working for Obama who couldn't even present a consistent story. Is it likely that independent economists would do a better job?

• As I type, even Obama's own Recovery.gov website is only reporting 599,108 jobs "funded" by the Recovery Act. And (as Jake Tapper of ABC News pointed out) they are using a more generous estimate than the "created or saved" criteria.

  [I]f the project is being funded with stimulus dollars – even if the person worked at that company or organization before and will work the same place afterwards – that’s a stimulus job.

  (Tapper's piece, by the way, was meant to note the passing of the widely ridiculed "jobs created or saved" formulation, based on the recommendation of OMB Director Peter Orszag. But, as noted, Obama is still using it.)

• It's pretty easy to find economists who haven't swilled from this particular jug of Kool-Aid:

  “Government job creation is an oxymoron,” said Bill Dunkelberg, chief economist at the National Federation of Independent Business. It is only by depriving the private sector of funds that government can hire or subsidize hiring.

  That’s why “jobs created or saved” is such pure fiction. It ignores what’s unseen, as our old friend Frederic Bastiat explained so eloquently 160 years ago in an essay.

• Also see Jacob Sullum:

  [S]chool districts (the main source of the jobs that were formerly described as "created or saved") can simply divide their federal money by the quarterly compensation for teachers and report the result as jobs "funded" by the Recovery Act, even if no teachers would have been laid off in the abence of the money. If a public housing authority uses stimulus money to replace windows in one of its apartment complexes, and the project involves three guys from Ace Windows and Doors working full-time for a month, that counts as a job for that quarter, even if all of the guys would have been employed without this particular contract—and even if the housing authority would have replaced the windows without the federal grant. It also sounds like it is now officially OK to count raises for existing employees as jobs, as a number of recipents erroneously did last time around.

Posted 2010-02-03 7:00 PM EST

Monkey Business

[IMDB Rating: 7.1] [Tomatometer: 86%]

As you'll notice, the DVD publishers consider Marilyn Monroe the selling point here, putting her, um, profile on the box. (I guess that's two selling points. Ha!) But there are three bigger reasons that will snag classic movie lovers: it has (1) Cary Grant and (2) Ginger Rogers. And it's directed by (3) Howard Hawks. Marilyn is pretty good here, but hers is a minor role.

Cary and Ginger play Barnaby and Edwina Fulton, a staid and respectable middle-aged couple. Barnaby, a scientist, is preoccupied to the point of absent-mindedness over his current research: a drug he hopes will reverse the vicissitudes of aging. Oxley, his boss, is eager to market it as a fountain-of-youth potion. Marilyn plays Miss Laurel, Oxley's scatterbrained secretary, not hired for her typing skills. (When Barnaby remarks that she's come to work early, she replies: "Mr. Oxley's been complaining about my punctuation, so I'm careful to get here before nine.")

They're testing on chimps; in a very amusing scene, one of the monkeys gets loose and, undetected, mixes together a random collection of ingredients and dumps it in the water cooler; this actually happens to work. Soon Barnaby is acting much younger than his age, carrying on with Miss Laurel. It's a hoot. In fact, it gets to be a trifle too silly for me, which means that it will peg the meter for many.

I hear you asking: does Ginger Rogers have a dancing scene? Yes, she does, dragging Cary Grant around the floor. He's no Astaire.

Also: this may be the single best acting performance by a chimpanzee I've ever seen.

Posted 2010-02-03 5:00 PM EST

Before You Accuse Me

… take a look at yourself:

• Reason gives us Obama's Doublethink Doubletalk. Or as Pun Salad likes to call it, Barackrobatics:

• I've never been a fan of "It's the X, stupid" construction. So I'll instead summarize Steve Landsburg's illuminating blog post this way: It's the spending, you attractive, intelligent, and amusing person, you.

  This is why it's so frustrating to hear talk of blue ribbon commissions assigned to the task of "debt reduction". "Debt reduction" can mean less spending, or more taxes, or some combination thereof. But to raise taxes solely for the purpose of debt reduction is to mask the problem, not to solve it. Debt is not the problem; spending is. Hysteria about the debt is misdirection.

• Read the above link before you go to Keith Hennessey's analysis of President Obama's proposed budget. Keith has produced excellent graphs (both more revealing and prettier than mine), but the point is the same: Obama proposes a massive and permanent increase in Federal spending as a share of the total economy. No shock, unless you were actually taking his rhetoric seriously.

• Also with great graphics is the New York Times: a historical look at how projections compared with reality when it comes to the deficit, and a sobering look at where the money goes.

Posted 2010-02-02 6:00 PM EST

Designing Woman

[IMDB Rating: 6.8] Tomatometer: 71%]

Here's the problem: for me, Gregory Peck is Horatio Hornblower; Atticus Finch; Captain Ahab; Marlowe in The Guns of Navarone; and so on. So I have a hard time believing him in this role: New York City sportswriter Mike Hagen. He's not bad, mind you. But…

While in California, Mike meets Marilla (Lauren Bacall). They are mutually smitten and tie the knot. But the joke is that they really don't know that much about each other. Mike is a regular joe, immersed in the sports world, while Marilla is a fashion designer, with plenty of high society friends. That might be enough conflict for a plot right there, but (a) Mike, for some reason, finds it necessary to lie incessantly to Marilla about his previous girlfriend; (b) Mike's also writing about a local mobster's influence in the boxing scene, and the mobster's none too pleased. All these things work themselves out eventually, but it takes awhile.

It's not dreadful, but a lot of the jokes fall flat. Goodies: Jesse White, the lonely Maytag repairman, as a snitch! Edward Platt, the Chief himself, as the gangster irked with Mike! And Chuck Connors as one of his henchmen!

Posted 2010-02-02 5:00 PM EST
Last Modified 2010-02-02 11:16 PM EST

Pretty Pictures of the Federal Budget (FY 2011 Version)

The Federal Budget for Fiscal Year 2011 came out today. We continue the tradition (because we've done it before, in 2005, 2007, 2008, and 2009) of producing some simple graphs from the tables provided.

Here's a graph of Federal receipts and outlays since 1977, expressed as percent of GDP; post-2009 numbers are estimates:

Here's what that works out to in terms of deficit spending:

Click on the graphs for their fullsize versions. Data is here (snipped from Table 1.2 on this page) and my Gnuplot script is here. If you'd like to see the data extended back to 1930: here's the receipt/outlays graph and here's the deficit graph.

Standard disclaimer: if you're thinking this is simple-minded, you're right. In my defense, the percent-of-GDP seems appropriate for historical comparison; it seems to be (arguably) a good measure of what we can "afford"; and, if you believe deficits "damage the economy", then it's a pretty good proxy for the level of damage.

Observations:

• Good news: FY2010 outlays are predicted to be "only" 25.4% of GDP; last year's estimate for FY2010 outlays was 27.7% of GDP.

• That's only good news if you're an idiot. 25.4% of GDP is still the highest outlay level since 1945. (As recently as FY2007 it was only 20.7% of GDP.)

• FY2011 spending is projected to only shrink slightly below FY2010: 25.1%.

• FY2009 and (predicted) FY2010 receipts are 14.8% of GDP, the lowest level since 1950;

• The deficit is estimated to peak at 10.6% of GDP in FY2010, also the highest it's been since 1945. (As recently as FY2007 it was 1.2% of GDP.)

Some other random comments and URLs:

• Daniel J. Mitchell at Cato:

  The bad news is that federal government outlays only consumed 18.2 percent of economic output when Bush took office. In other words, […] the size and scope of government has increased dramatically since 2001. The worse news is that the long-run spending forecasts show a cataclysmic expansion in the burden of government. The "optimistic" estimate is that the federal government will consume more than 30 percent of GDP by 2050 and 40 percent of GDP by 2080.

  And the even worse news is: anyone who has been paying attention will not find this surprising at all.

• Also at Cato, Tad DeHaven piles on:

  Just like Bush, the president proposes minuscule savings through a small number of program terminations and reductions. But overall spending continues to rise, and in a $3.8 trillion budget the president's disingenuous attempt to "cut" anything amounts to little more than a rounding error. The president also proposes to freeze non-security discretionary spending for three years, which he falsely claims will "help put our country on fiscally sustainable path." In reality, last year's stimulus and appropriations spending binge will mean actual outlays for this tiny portion of the overall budget will still be higher than what Obama inherited.

  Quibble: Cato folks don't like Dubya's fiscal policy much, but the deficit in FY2007 really was 1.2% of GDP. I'd be pretty happy to trade that number for today's.

Posted 2010-02-01 6:00 PM EST

Barackrobatics 101: You Can Keep It

President Obama, State of the Union Address, January 27, 2010:

Our [health care] approach would preserve the right of Americans who have insurance to keep their doctor and their plan.

For example, we said from the start that it was going to be important for us to be consistent in saying to people if you can have your -- if you want to keep the health insurance you got, you can keep it, that you're not going to have anybody getting in between you and your doctor in your decision making. And I think that some of the provisions that got snuck in might have violated that pledge. [emphasis added]

1. President Obama has finally admitted what every other skeptical observer of Obamacare has known since the proposal firmed up; the "you can keep it" pledge was a lie.

2. Although he's (apparently) trying to pretend that the "pledge" was only violated by "provisions that got snuck in" in last-minute wheeling and dealing, that's simply untrue. (The AP debunked Obama post-SOTU, but ABC News did the same thing this summer, as did CBS. Bob Herbert got around to noticing it in December. Both FactCheck and the Obama-tilted Politifact found the claim to be truth-impaired long ago. And this just scratches the surface.)

3. But—still—admitting the lie less than 48 hours after uttering it (hopefully, one last time) on national TV… well, that takes chutzpah.

… we said from the start that it was going to be important our legislation guaranteed that if you want to keep the health insurance you got, you can keep it, …

… we said from the start that it was going to be important for us to be consistent in saying to people if you can have your -- if you want to keep the health insurance you got, you can keep it, …

And, indeed, through whatever propaganda mechanisms consistent talking points are promulgated, that was an entirely successful effort.

• There's still a White House page devoted to propping up the "you can keep it" lie, featuring the insufferably smarmy Linda Douglas, "communications director" for the Administration. (You might want to check that link as soon as possible, before their wizards notice that President Obama has admitted it was, er, inoperative.)

• My own state's (Democratic) senator, Jeanne Shaheen, claimed (falsely) that "if you have health coverage that you like you should be able to keep that" was a "requirement" for supporting the bill.

• My own (Democratic) Congressperson, Carol Shea-Porter, has a page that still (falsely) claims that the House-passed legislation implemented the "you can keep it" pledge.

• You can read the same lie in a USA Op-ed by Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, ironically under the subheadline "Let the facts Be heard".

• Senator Max Baucus, same lie.

• It wasn't just politicians; both the AARP and Consumer Reports were only too happy to be sock puppets in spreading this bit of reassuring fiction.

• And, trust me: again: we're just scratching the surface. "You can keep it" was repeated by multiple sources, over and over; you can Google it.

That's good to remember, because the same bunch will certainly use this same tactic again. Maybe not on health care, but definitely on some other pressing issue. After all, it almost worked this time.

Posted 2010-01-31 2:00 PM EST