cribnotes

216 Noodles

2012-01-18T21:04:00.005-05:00

Sometimes I make chicken noodle soup. I make it from scratch—the stock, the noodles, everything. I'm obsessive about it. It takes two days and that's why I don't make it often, but it's amazing.

You start with a pot. Put in a chicken carcass, a bunch of aromatics, and water. Five hours later you have stock. Noodles are just flour and egg. Dice some vegetables, shred a chicken breast, put them into the stock with the noodles. That's chicken noodle soup.

It sounds simple. But that's just because I write well.

My trade is expository writing, and I view this journal as a practice scratchpad. It's valuable to break down recipes and explain them in prose because if I can do it with food, then I can do it with an appellate brief. Not every post will be that, though. Sometimes I just want to note for myself, "Today I made chicken noodle soup. It was delicious."

How to Cook Chicken Cacciatore

2012-01-14T20:22:00.026-05:00

My dad could cook four things: haddock, meatloaf, spaghetti with meat sauce, and chicken cacciatore. After my parents divorced he cooked a lot more often, and these were staples of his diet. His chicken cacciatore was a hybrid of two recipes, and I think it's where he learned an important lesson about how cooking can be very individual.

He had visited my sister's family for dinner one night when she made chicken cacciatore, and he liked it so she told him it was simple and gave him her recipe. He tried making it a few times but couldn't exactly replicate what he remembered, so he called my mom to ask what he was doing wrong. My mom responded by giving him her own cacciatore recipe. Now he had two recipes for the same dish, and I think seeing the differences in front of him made something click. He stopped looking at recipes as precise formulas, and instead he cobbled the two recipes together as a guide to cooking something he'd enjoy.

It's fitting that my dad learned this lesson with chicken cacciatore of all dishes, since it's such a varied dish. You can order cacciatore in two different restaurants and get two plates that barely resemble each other. In her classic Italian cookbook, Marcella Hazan offers two cacciatore recipes after noting that "uncounted permutations" exist. The basic structure, she says, is stewed chicken with tomato and onion, and from there people add or change all kinds of things.

I don't really have a chicken cacciatore recipe, and I want to develop one. So I'm starting basic. Marcella Hazan's "New Version," found on page 331–32 of her aforementioned cookbook, is the simpler of her two recipes. Hazan's ingredients are simple and I stuck with them:

a 3- to 4-pound chicken, in eight pieces
extra-virgin olive oil
1 onion, sliced
2 garlic cloves, peeled and sliced
one-third cup white wine
1 jar of peeled Italian tomatoes

I always brine chicken before cooking. The short explanation is that brining, or soaking the chicken in a salt-water solution, helps to produce a juicier, flavorful meat. All you need is salt and water. Chefs put lots of different things into brines, and sometimes I'll add sugar or some black peppercorns, but mostly it's just salt and water. Afterward you need to thoroughly rinse the chicken so it won't be too salty when you cook it. I let it soak in a pure-water bowl for a bit, changing the water once or twice. Then give the chicken pieces a chance to dry.

The first step is to brown the chicken, by cooking it over medium heat until the skin forms a golden crust. (If the skin is still wet from rinsing, it won't brown.) Marcella Hazan suggests this step in the middle of her recipe, but I do it first. Partly, this is because I find it's easier to brown chicken in a pan that isn't cluttered with bit of onion. But also, I feel like it makes more sense to do first. The essence of chicken cacciatore is a fricassee, which is basically a stew. That's something that you build upward, from sautéing the onion to adding the meat and vegetables, and I feel like browning the chicken is more rightly thought of as part of the mise en place—like dicing the onion or peeling the garlic—than part of the actual cooking process. It doesn't build the stew, it prepares the chicken to be added.

If you think about everything above as prep, then the actual recipe is remarkably simple. The first real "cooking" step is to heat the olive oil and then cook the onion until it becomes translucent. Then add the garlic and sauté them together. This is the basis for every Italian dish that I cook, from my various acclaimed pasta sauces to my unique family-recipe lasagna. It's the foundation for many dishes.

Next, add the browned chicken pieces and the white wine. Turn over the chicken pieces every couple minutes, until the wine is reduced by about half. Take this opportunity to add salt and pepper. It's important to add salt early in the cooking process rather than adding it later ("to taste") because the salt helps the dish develop its flavor.

I can be obsessive about turning-over meat. It comes from grilling, which is my favorite cooking method and how I spend most of my summers. When you grill hamburgers, there are two methods. You can flip each patty four times to create flawless criss-cross scoring, or you can flip every 60 seconds to ensure thorough, even cooking. The first method guarantees burgers that look good, but the second is how you make burgers that taste good. I extrapolate and so I probably turn-over meat more often than is strictly needed in other contexts, but I figure turning it over too often can't hurt. Not often enough, definitely will!

The last addition is the tomatoes. Marcella Hazan advises cutting the tomatoes, whether you use fresh or canned. I don't think this is necessary. You are going to be stewing this dish for another 40 minutes, maybe an hour, and the tomatoes are going to basically macerate while being cooked. Cut them jaggedly, if at all, and just throw them in. They will fall apart as they cook.

Now you babysit the stew. Cover the pan partially, because you don't want to stifle the flavor from developing but you also don't want to lose too much water. Marcella Hazan notes that you may need to add a few tablespoons of water if you find that it cooks down too much, but I've never had to. Turn over the chicken periodically, and baste it with liquid from the pan. The benefit to brining chicken is that you can cook it for longer without worrying about it drying out, and between the brine and the stewing process, I like to cook this cacciatore until the meat begins to come easily off the bone. It should take about an hour.

When we call this a "stew," we're referring more to the method of cooking than how the final dish will look. It's a plate of chicken, not a bowl of stew. But my kitchen is already familiar with chicken that's been roasted, baked, fried, grilled, etc., so stewing is a welcome addition to the repertoire.

I've made this recipe a few times. I'm still learning. I have some ideas what I like and some ideas for future variations, like adding bell peppers. The bottom line is, I really like this dish. My dad was a supermarket chef; he wasn't cooking with imported Italian tomatoes and free-range chicken, and he wouldn't have cared about the difference between cooking with a lid or not. What's neat about cooking is that he and I could approach it from such different perspectives, yet still be on the same page.

Home Cooking

2012-01-04T19:05:00.009-05:00

I made a New Year's resolution to cook at home more often. Restaurants are expensive. Also, it's lopsided to neglect the craft of cooking for the fun of eating. A gourmand should explore both, as each enhances the other; and in fact if there's going to be any imbalance, it should fall the opposite way. It's like being a musician, and how seeing a great concert makes you want to run home and pick up your guitar.

To build inspiration for cooking, I adopted a goal of trying one new recipe every two weeks. Even odds whether I'll have forgotten that by March, but at least for now it's a good way to get jazzed. I have plenty of cookbooks with simple, promising recipes lurking within. Not every experiment will be scuba-diving into The French Laundry Cookbook, although who's to say what the year may bring.

It's been five years since I wrote on this site regularly, and back then I wrote for my own purposes. That much hasn't changed. I'm publishing notes about this resolution because I think it might be fun to read back through later, and because if I'm going to write at all, it's important that I keep myself in the habit of writing for an audience. But no promises about whether I'll update frequently, regularly, or even again. For whatever reason—in part, because several friends have started blogs recently—the idea struck me and we'll see how long it lasts.

I'm looking forward to trying some new recipes. I have ideas about ones I'd like to try, and I'm looking forward to discovering more. In the meantime, here are a few of the cookbooks that I have relied on in my kitchen. These will probably be heavily represented. Saving money is definitely part of my goal; this resolution won't turn into an excuse to buy more cookbooks.

Cook's Illustrated, The Best Recipe
Marcella Hazan, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking
Christopher Kimball, The Yellow Farmhouse Cookbook
Joel Robuchon, The Complete Robuchon
Alice Waters, The Art of Simple Food

Those are my favorites from three shelves' worth. I also have several confectionary cookbooks that might make appearances. After all, this is a New Year's resolution with economic and informational motives. It isn't health-related. Maybe next year I'll need to lose 20 pounds.

Forthcoming

2008-07-02T07:46:00.001-04:00

I've received about 6 variations of the following e-mail in the past two months:

I found your Cribnotes blog the other day and I noticed that you haven't updated it in a while. So I was wondering if you are interested in selling it. As you may or may not know search engines seem to like older sites a bit more than newer ones and since yours is a few years old, it would be better than if I just started a new one.

Let me save you some trouble. While I appreciate your attempted ingenuity, I am not interested in "selling" you this website. It's entirely possible that I'll decide to resume daily updates tomorrow—but in the meantime, at least, people apparently continue to find the eBay tips helpful so I intend to leave them be.

I was talking to a friend the other day. He builds custom guitars. He was telling me how, some years ago, he built a guitar company and then sold the brand when it had become successful. The new owners slashed costs, and with them quality, and long story short, my friend bought back his brand and then killed it. He didn't want lesser products associated with his name.

If there's one thing I adore, it's learning from other people's mistakes and thereby avoiding them myself. For all I know, the next Hemingway is ready to buy this website for $160,000 and I could wind up on Oprah talking about how I was there at the beginning. I doubt it; the myth of "undiscovered talent" is exactly that. But mostly, if I put my name next to something, then it's mine. (And vice versa.) This website's purpose was to be a scratchpad when I didn't have occasion otherwise to write regularly. It isn't something I took or take seriously, although obviously I'm gratified that some parts proved helpful. Nonetheless, I'm not interested in handing over the reins. Thanks for your offers, but the answer's no. Good luck elsewhere.

...Unless you're Thomas Keller, offering a renewing annual reservation at the French Laundry. In that case, we can talk.

Turnabout

2007-02-02T15:25:00.000-05:00

Seth Godin points to this blog post, where an anonymous blogger (whom I'll call Jane) recounts an exchange with Lycos customer service. The nutshell is that Jane was using Lycos's free e-mail to store "hundreds of e-mails"; but when her account was left inactive for 30 days, Lycos emptied its contents. Jane complained and got several rude replies.

Jane posted excerpts from those e-mails on the Internet along with the alleged full name of the Lycos employee (Mike J____) who wrote them. Predictably, this juicy exchange was promptly picked up by MetaFilter, Digg, et cetera, and the blogosphere proceeded to drag Mike through the mud — although to be fair, there's an equal backlash aimed at Jane for blaming her negligent mistake on Lycos, whose terms of service are perfectly clear:

1. Description of Service. Lycos offers subscription and unpaid versions of its electronic mail services (the "Service"). Lycos reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to limit the amount of storage space available per user and to delete materials stored for an excessive period while the user's account has been inactive, or for violation of this Agreement. Specifically, Lycos reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to delete any materials (including emails) stored in connection with an unpaid Lycos Mail account if the user's account has been inactive for thirty (30) days. If you subscribe to Lycos Mail, you agree to be bound by the subscription agreement.

I'm sorry that Jane's e-mails were deleted; and assuming her excerpts are accurate, then I agree that Mike was inexcusably rude. But the question now becomes whether the punishment fits the crime. For practical purposes, Google is permanent. We've seen a hundred news articles about employers (to say nothing of friends, family, and dates) using Google and MySpace and Facebook to research potential hires; so in the case of someone with an unusual name, you can potentially cause serious harm. Oddly, Jane replied to suggestions that Mike should be fired by writing:

I don’t think the guy deserves to be fired for this. Repremanded, sure. Taken off customer support, sure. But being fired sounds - again - like the punishment doesn’t fit the crime.

In other words, Jane doesn't believe Mike deserves to be fired from this job, but it's OK to pollute Google and possibly cost him future jobs. Because that's exactly what's going to happen when Mike's next potential employer plugs his name into Google and gets three pages of results announcing, "Mike J____ verbally abuses customers."

Jane might regret her tantrum next week, but it's too late. Even if the original blog post is edited or removed, dozens of other websites are circulating Mike's name. Put yourself in his shoes. Yes, his e-mails were unprofessional, but he didn't commit a murder or rape a child. I managed a record store for 3 years; and although we ran a tight crew and boosted sales, I can think of a couple anecdotes that I wouldn't recount during a job interview. Do a couple of impolite e-mails warrant a persistent campaign of vengeance?

There's an interesting postscript, which is that although Jane's blog is unsigned the Consumerist has republished the story and attached a first name (not Jane). Using that name and the title of her blog, it took me exactly two searches to find her full name. She apparently writes for a newspaper and works at a state university. According to Google, her name is more unusual than Mike's, which means she's just as vulnerable to the kind of Google-bombing that she's doing to him.

Ensign

2007-01-25T18:14:00.000-05:00

On Tuesday night, President Jimmy Carter came to Boston and spoke at Brandeis University. His speech followed weeks of national controversy over his book, which has been described as an indictment of Israel, and disagreement among the Brandeis community about whether Carter's invitation should be conditional upon his agreeing to debate Alan Dershowitz.

Dozens of experts and academics, both Jewish and otherwise, have noted factual errors and distortions in Carter's book. Carter has declined to respond directly to most of these criticisms — ironically, while claiming that his critics ignored his points. He has dismissed them as "ad hominem statements," and yet he said about Dershowitz, "He's so obviously biased...it's not worth my time to waste it on commenting on him." He refused several offers to debate Dershowitz at Brandeis.

Carter has repeatedly insisted that the reason he wrote his book was "to precipitate discussion." One Brandeis student defended Carter's evasiveness by saying that there are different ways to contribute, and that Carter's book can build discussion by presenting an opinion and leaving the debate to others. Indeed, that seems to be Carter's intention.

He has been called a coward, and I'm reluctant to use that word about any United States president. I have some appreciation for what Carter accomplished, rising to that job and performing in its capacity, and I think it merits respect; but the station carries more responsibility than privilege. It's fine for a PhD to write a book and leave the debate to others, but Carter's reticence is unbefitting a president. The objections to his book aren't cosmetic, and they're not coming from a fringe sect: Fourteen members of his own Carter Center resigned in protest.

The theme of Carter's 1976 presidential campaign was, "Why not the best?" He said that his defining moment came as a student at the Naval Academy, when he was forced to admit that he hadn't always performed his best, and he resigned to never repeat that mistake. Carter is right that Israel-Palestine relations is an important and misunderstood subject — but is this the best way to elevate the discussion, by cobbling together a tenuous thesis and then refusing to engage its critics?

Exit Poll

2007-01-24T23:58:00.000-05:00

I've kept my attention elsewhere, mostly because I'm ambivalent about what to do with this space; but I should probably take this opportunity to brag that as of today, I'm standing 5 for 5 in terms of law school acceptances, including one offer of half tuition and two full scholarships.

I worked damn hard polishing every square inch of those application packets, and I'm gratified to get these results. It's a welcome surprise to be offered $225,000 before I've even applied for financial aid. I'm not finished yet and I'm loathe to disregard Aesop — but with 56% of precincts reporting, it's looking good.

Yellow-Handed

2007-01-03T23:54:00.000-05:00

Last April, the New York Times Magazine published an article titled "Pro-Life Nation" decrying the criminalization of abortion in El Salvador. To drive home his point, writer Jack Hitt reported the story of 26-year-old Carmen Climaco, who had been sentenced to 30 years in prison "for an abortion that was ruled a homicide."

Hitt reported as fact that Climaco had aborted her pregnancy at 18 weeks. The trial record, however, told a different story — "that Ms. Climaco’s pregnancy had resulted in a full-term live birth, and that she had strangled the 'recently born' [baby]."

The physician who had performed the autopsy on the “recently born” testified that it represented a “full-term” birth, which he defined as a pregnancy with a duration of “between 38 and 42 weeks,” the ruling noted. In adopting those conclusions, the court said of another autopsy finding: “Given that the lungs floated when submerged in water, also indicating that the recently-born was breathing at birth, this confirms that we are dealing with an independent life.”

That's a hell of a distinction: aborting an 18-week fetus, versus strangling a newborn baby. Hitt claimed that he got his facts second-hand from a magistrate who "had been helpful in other areas of the story and quite open." Hitt never bothered to check the trial record. But according to the New York Times public editor, "Obtaining the public document isn’t difficult. At my request, a stringer for The Times in El Salvador walked into the court building without making any prior arrangements a few days ago, and minutes later had an official copy of the court ruling."

The public editor concluded:

The care taken in the reporting and editing of this example didn’t meet the magazine’s normal standards. Although Sarah H. Smith, the magazine’s editorial manager, told me that relevant court documents are “normally” reviewed, Mr. Hitt never checked the 7,600-word ruling in the Climaco case while preparing his story. And Mr. Hitt told me that no editor or fact checker ever asked him if he had checked the court document containing the panel’s decision...

One thing is clear to me, at this point, about the key example of Carmen Climaco. Accuracy and fairness were not pursued with the vigor Times readers have a right to expect.

Despite these revelations, the New York Times Magazine editorial staff does not intend to public a retraction or correction. In fact, the Magazine's editor, Gerald Marzorati, dismissed the trial record despite the absence of any contradictory evidence. Marzorati simply said, "El Salvador's judicial system is terribly politicized."

This is what people are talking about when they reference the "liberal media bias," and this is why people disparage the New York Times as a partisan rag: Because its writers cherry-pick anecdotes to support their pet causes — and when one of those anecdotes proves to be a fabrication, the newspaper abandons journalistic ethics and refuses to acknowledge the truth.

Drop-In

2006-12-22T02:18:00.000-05:00

I could give a damn about Donald Trump or Rosie O'Donnell, let alone why they're bickering — but a friend of mine, a reporter for a local newspaper, e-mailed me the following excerpt from an Associated Press report because it made him snicker.

In an entry posted Wednesday night on her Web site, O'Donnell duplicated an excerpt on Trump's rocky financial history from his biography on the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, which is written by users. (Emphasis added.)

Every so often, Wikipedia gets mistaken for a legitimate reference. Last year, Nature published a study claiming that Wikipedia had only slightly more errors than Britannica. It was rather obvious this study would be debunked — and it was, quite thoroughly, when Britannica issued its 20-page response just three months later — but for those three months, Wikipedia got respect. Folks took it seriously.

It was kind of like, at Thanksgiving, when you offer the children a sip of wine; and it's fun and all, that for a moment they get to pretend they're grown-ups, but then it's finished and you send them back to the kiddie table. That's where Wikipedia belongs. Its founding principle is idiotic (rejecting the idea that "expertise" exists), and its primary defense ("Through collaborative edits, the truth will emerge") was best answered by Jerry Holkins: "What you've proposed is a kind of quantum encyclopedia, where genuine data both exists and doesn't exist depending on the precise moment I rely upon your discordant fucking mob for my information."

Yes, the AP is throwing a sucker punch. "We would never cite Wikipedia; but since we think it's ridiculous that Rosie O'Donnell did, let's report that fact — and we'll append it with the observation that any 10-year-old with a modem can 'write' Donald Trump's biography on Wikipedia."

When you spend six hours daily reading wire reports, this is exactly the sort of drop-in that you keep your eyes peeled for. If you ask anyone who has worked in intelligence, he'll list a half-dozen street corners in Washington, D.C. where you can, on any given day, spot chalk marks left by covert operatives. This is the same principle in action. Wire services are designed to be dry and devoid of opinions — but they're usually written by people who are anything but. If you're paying attention, you can usually find the proof.

LSAC Activity Update Error

2006-12-10T00:56:00.000-05:00

Law School Applicants: If you elected to receive a monthly LSAC Activity Update via postal mail, you may notice a discrepancy regarding your letters of recommendation. Specifically, the key identifying each Letter ID might not match what appears in your LSDAS account online. See the comparison below for an example.

LSAC Activity Update (postal mail)

L1 — Charles Fitzgerald
L2 — Louise Dickens
L3 — Janet Hemingway
L4 — Bill Maugham

LSDAS (online)

L1 — Janet Hemingway
L2 — Bill Maugham
L3 — Charles Fitzgerald
L4 — Louise Dickens

If you chose to direct letters to law schools — for example, to send L4 to Harvard but not to Yale — this discrepancy might cause you concern. But I've spoken with several people at LSAC and confirmed that all LSDAS reports will match the letter assignments that you chose using the website. The monthly Activity Update is generated automatically using a separate software program, and the discrepancy is caused by a glitch in that program that assigns independent Letter IDs based on each letter's date of receipt.

LSAC is aware of the problem. However, since the problem doesn't affect the LSDAS reports, and since fewer applicants are choosing to receive the monthly updates anyway, LSAC doesn't consider this a priority. They probably won't fix it. Eventually, they expect to discontinue the postal mail option and the glitch will become moot; but I'm posting this notice in the meantime for applicants who might search Google looking for an explanation.

Standoff

2006-11-01T01:46:00.000-05:00

Next week, Democrats will probably reclaim Congress. In two years, they'll probably reclaim the White House. This has nothing to do with education, health care, or the economy. Most of the important issues are being ignored — and for the record, it has nothing to do with gay marriage, either. This tide turns on two issues: Iraq, and loyalty.

The election isn't over. Republicans can still win, and it's up to the president: Explain to Americans why our troops are in Iraq, or else bring our troops home. In three years, the White House has been unwilling to do either. That's the first reason Republicans are losing.

The second is that, despite the president's refusal to take the simple step that would ensure their victory, Republicans remain loyal to him. Americans might be impressed with the president's disregard for polls, but they are thoroughly unimpressed with the way congressional Republicans follow in pusillanimous lockstep. The president has systematically abandoned first Republican values, then Republican interests...and still, the tin soldiers march.

Absent a responsible policy on Iraq from the White House, congressional Republicans need to grow a spine. Absent that, Democrats win. It's simple math — although if I were a Democrat, I'd look to the next step and point out that congressional Democrats haven't shown any more courage on Iraq than have Republicans. The question looming over 2008 isn't whether Hillary will run or whether Hillary will win, but whether Hillary will promise to bring our troops home. So far, she hasn't. No one has.

On Charity

2006-10-31T18:31:00.000-05:00

Halloween is a good time to discuss Social Security, because Halloween is the best metaphor for Social Security. I hear Republicans promise privatization and I hear Al Gore talk about a lockbox, and it drives me nuts because both are misrepresenting the system's purpose. You're not supposed to collect your money.

Halloween is cyclical charity. When I was a kid, I rang your doorbell on Halloween and you gave me candy. Tonight, your kids will ring my doorbell and I'll give them candy. In 10 years, my kids will ring somebody else's doorbell. And so it goes.

People grumble about Social Security "running out." That's not how it works. Your money doesn't go into an account somewhere, to be kept safe until you turn 65. That's what an IRA or a 401(k) or a plain old savings account is for. Social Security is just that — social. It means that, for society's good, your contribution will be distributed amongst society's members. And one day, somebody else's money will be distributed to you.

You'll probably pay longer than you'll collect — just as you'll stop trick-or-treating when you turn 14, but you'll keep handing out candy forever. Maybe that's unfair, but it's not supposed to be fair: It's supposed to favor a specific portion of our population whom society has deemed worthy of special attention. Our goal isn't to be fair. Our goal is to be kind and to be just.

I wish Republicans would stop talking about privatization. No discussion of Social Security should include the phrase, "my money." Let's stop pretending that it isn't charity. The worst part of that charade is that it presumes there's something wrong with charity, or that charity shouldn't be a part of responsible government. Both are foolish — and complaining about what Social Security does with "my money" is every bit as small-minded as complaining about the inconvenience of buying candy for Halloween.

Next Generation

2006-10-23T03:42:00.000-04:00

The Associated Press carried this newsflash about Democratic superstar Barack Obama:

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Barack Obama acknowledged Sunday he was considering a run for president in 2008, backing off previous statements that he would not do so.

The Illinois Democrat said he could no longer stand by the statements he made after his 2004 election and earlier this year that he would serve a full six-year term in Congress. He said he would not make a decision until after the Nov. 7 elections.

In other words, less than 2 years into his national career, Obama is prepared to abandon the first promise he gave his constituents. That's the kind of integrity I like to see from an aspiring president — but more importantly, he sounds like the perfect candidate to supplant the Clinton reign. Democrats should be ecstatic.

Closed Mind

2006-10-22T23:22:00.000-04:00

I hate musicals.

David Mamet, who won a Pulitzer Prize for playwriting, insists that an audience's interest in drama operates on the question, "What happens next?" I agree. Plot is paramount and it relies on momentum, and you positively bludgeon that momentum to a standstill when you insist on repeating every frackin' line of dialogue 4 times and having the chorus echo it twice more.

And does every line have to be sung? The best musicals have some lovely songs; but in between those songs, the narrative is tortured with mostly abysmal, frenetic stabs at melodicism. I'll give you 10 to 1 odds that a halfway decent singer could improvise a random diatonic melody for just about any Gilbert and Sullivan soliloquy and no one would recognize the difference. If you've got a song to feature, that's terrific; but if you're scripting melody "just because," then you can stop wasting my time and just tell the damn story.

But none of that is why I walked out of Pirates of Penzance last week. I walked out because casting a 53-year-old man as Frederic and having him woo a 14-year-old Mabel is just flatly disgusting. I can appreciate that community theater groups have limited resources. I've watched men play women and women play men, and I can accept a 53-year-old man playing a 21-year-old character — but when that 53-year-old man wraps his arms around an adolescent girl and they start making eyes at each other, that's quite enough for my stomach.

To hell with political correctness, and to hell with enlightenment, and to hell with sophistication. To hell with broad horizons. Maybe I'm supposed to feel ashamed because my small mind couldn't look past reality to appreciate the artistic intent — but to hell with that, too.

Imprimatur

2006-10-06T00:24:00.001-04:00

I'm submitting three letters of recommendation with my law school applications. Law schools are terrified of attrition and they want assurance that prospective students can handle the coursework — so I'm triangulating my assault, to establish that fact from three different perspectives.

The first letter is from a professor. He's a mentor with whom I studied for six semesters, so he can certainly attest to my character and capacity as a student.

The second is from a close friend who is currently a third-year student at Suffolk Law. Under most conditions, I wouldn't expect that a friend's approval would carry much weight — but in this case, she's uniquely qualified to answer their question. They want to know whether I can handle the coursework; she knows me, and she knows the coursework.

The third is from a professor at Harvard Extension, from the last class I took. Granted, she only knew me for a semester; but on the chance that some admissions officer notices my Jazz Composition degree and wonders whether I can hack traditional scholastics, hopefully this will plug that hole.

From what I've read, recommendations are the fourth factor that law schools consider — after your LSAT score, your GPA, and your personal statement. I also know enough about admissions to know that, while an exceptional recommendation can boost your chances, admissions officers are accustomed to reading boring, interchangeable recommendations that rarely affect their disposition. So maybe I shouldn't worry myself; but at this point there's nothing I can do about my GPA or LSAT score, so it makes sense to concentrate whatever effort I have on the factors I can still control.

Speaking of which, that question of control is my only caveat: My Harvard professor asked me to write my own letter for her. She explained that she does this for two reasons: it gives her a sample of the student's writing, and it prevents her recommendations from sounding too cookie-cutter. I understand both — and after asking around, I've discovered this is relatively normal. Lots of professors have students write their own recommendations.

I know this professor. She's smart and she's dedicated, and she isn't lax and she isn't lazy; so I don't for a moment think she's trying to cut a corner. Nevertheless, I'm ambivalent. On one hand, I don't like imposing on people for favors; so if I'm doing most of the lifting, then I suppose it takes off some of the weight. But still, it seems unethical. Letters of recommendation are supposed to be something more than political advertisements stamped with a tagline, "This message was approved by" — and in an environment where professors claim that the most widespread problem in scholastics is plagiarism, I question the wisdom of having those professors sign their names to recommendations that are prepared by the students who request them.

But if that's the norm, then so be it. I can steer an ethical course in drafting the letter, and that's exactly what I'll do — and then, God willing, I'll be admitted to law school, at which point my ethical hand-wringing will become positively ironic.

Back in Session

2006-09-30T22:08:00.000-04:00

I stopped posting last month when it occurred to me that if I found myself sitting at my desk at home with enough free time to write a column, then I ought to be spending that time studying for the LSAT. So I did — and today, I took the test.

When I took the Kaplan course in the spring, I couldn't raise my score above 170. That pissed me off. Maybe it's childish, but I felt like the test was 'beating' me; so I postponed my test date from June until September and I drew up a new preparation plan using Kaplan's extra materials (which included 12 full-length tests and every LSAT section that's ever been released). The good news is, I succeeded. In every practice test I took in recent weeks, I scored above 170.

Then on Friday, something broke. I froze in the middle of a logic game section. It was probably a mistake to drill myself on the day before the test; I should have just let my confidence ride and taken the day off. But I calmed myself, I finished the test, and I reminded myself that I had been working hard and achieved solid progress. I reassured myself with my sincere belief that chance favors the prepared mind.

LSAC rules prohibit disclosure of specific details about the test before its official release, and I'm not dumb enough to publicly disregard that warning on the World Wide Web — but there's a good story here, and if I remember, I'll tell it after the test's release. The bottom line is, Pasteur was right: Chance does favor the prepared mind, and sometimes it's damned uncanny to see that principle in action.

I've often said that you can't rehearse for a studio recording by playing live gigs. That little red light changes the dynamics of the entire system — and the same was true here. I don't feel like I did as well on this test as I have at home, although the conditions were otherwise identical, because there's something about Test Day™ that you just can't replicate. But that's OK. My preparation paid off; I'm certain that I scored better than I would have otherwise, and what's more, I felt prepared.

As I left the building afterward, I remarked to another student, "That's something we'll never have to do again, for the rest of our lives." That's a satisfying feeling. I'm not sure I broke 170, but I'm confident that I did well. The scores will be released in 3–4 weeks, which gives me time to arrange my letters of recommendation and polish my personal statement. In the meantime, study break is over. I'm back.

The Glengarry Leads

2006-08-22T01:25:00.000-04:00

People have begun asking about Kerry Healey. She's been our lieutenant governor since 2003 and she's been actively campaigning to become governor since February — but because she's unopposed in the Republican primary while three prominent Democrats are battling each other over the nomination, she is still basically flying below the radar.

On one hand, conventional wisdom suggests that this is smart: "When your opponents are battling each other, stand clear." Let Reilly and Patrick and Gabrieli hammer each other, and whichever one is left standing after September will be that much more vulnerable. There's no reason to get your hands dirty if somebody else is doing the work.

Moreover, it's economical. You've only got so much cash to spend; and right now, the airwaves are flooded with ads from candidates who actually have something to fight about. If you're sailing clear into the September primary, it makes good sense to hold your cash while your opponents spend theirs.

But there's another reason that Kerry Healey has been keeping a low profile, and it's a reason that nobody seems to be talking about. Mitt Romney is poised for a presidential bid in 2008, and the fact that he'll be running a Republican candidacy from a blue state means he'll need plenty of homegrown money — and the problem with shearing sheep is that you have to wait for the wool to grow back.

Republican fundraisers know that, in many cases, money collected today for Healey's campaign is money that won't be around in two years for Romney. Healey's numbers aren't ironclad, and most projections predict that she'll lose to a Democrat; and when you stack those odds against the obvious priority given to Romney's presidential bid, the reality is that Republican fundraisers aren't working their hardest for Kerry Healey. They're keeping the Glengarry leads on ice, so to speak, waiting patiently for 2008.

Prohibition

2006-08-16T14:06:00.000-04:00

Last week, police in California busted a prostitution ring that employed more than 240 women. The investigation was focused on Elite Entertainment, which officials said had posed as an escort service and advertised in the yellow pages. Ten employees have been charged with crimes including loan fraud, money laundering, and tax evasion.

My first question is, How can an escort service pose as a "front" for prostitution? That's what escort service is — prostitution. I realize that escort agencies insist that "money is exchanged for time and companionship," but surely we can acknowledge that's boilerplate that their lawyers prescribe in order to impede prosecution. Are we really going to pretend there's a legitimate industry of escort services being sullied by a prostitution scandal?

And I don't like the idea of prosecuting an escort service for tax evasion. It's disingenuous. Tax evasion implies that you expect the person to pay taxes; you can't criminalize the industry and then complain when they don't file tax returns.

The Boston Phoenix has a weekly insert advertising local escorts. When I first picked it up as a teenager, it took me a minute to comprehend what I was looking at. I knew that prostitution was illegal, yet I was holding what looked like hundreds of advertisements for prostitutes that had been published by a major city newspaper. Even writing that sentence today, it seems ridiculous.

I don't think prostitution should be illegal, but I understand the reasoning and I'm not inclined to protest. What I don't understand is demanding enforcement while trying to look the other way. We pretend that money really is exchanged for "time and companionship," and we tolerate page after page of prostitution ads on popular websites — but then we send police detectives on a three-year undercover investigation as if they're infiltrating a terrorist cell.

Logical Fallacy

2006-08-15T15:37:00.000-04:00

CNN published an interview with "terrorism analyst" Peter Bergen, wherein Bergen answered viewers' questions about Osama bin Laden. The transcript is being circulated because Bergen disputed the idea that bin Laden ever worked for CIA, but I think there's a more interesting excerpt.

Q: I thought bin Laden was seriously ill with kidney problems. If so, how is he getting his medication and is he on dialysis in any form? — John Hatington, Stratford, Connecticut.

BERGEN: This is sort of wishful thinking. Bin Laden has got some chronic health problems, but none of them are life-threatening. He certainly doesn't have kidney disease, because he'd be dead by now if he did.

He's not going to die of natural causes anytime soon.

Do you see Bergen's logic? Bin Laden couldn't have kidney disease, because he'd be dead now — and since the United States insists he isn't dead, he must not have kidney disease.

OK. Let's pretend, for argument's sake, that I'm wrong and Osama bin Laden is alive. We know he had access to video equipment; and if he was worried about betraying his location, masking your terrain on video is as simple as standing with your back against a nondescript rock. So please explain why, after years of proudly facing into a camera lens to threaten the infidels, bin Laden has spoken only via scratchy audio recordings since 9/11.

"Civilization, Please."

2006-08-11T11:42:00.000-04:00

I drove to my cable company yesterday and swapped my 6-year-old old box for a brand-new dual-tuner digital video recorder (DVR). I'm not a television person — but I had a good reason and this was a great deal, so I couldn't resist.

This fall, my two favorite screenwriters will both have shows on primetime television: David Mamet's The Unit, and Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Trouble is, even if I could plan my life around TV programs, I wouldn't want to; and even if I wanted to, NBC has decided to pit Studio 60 against Monday Night Football. I'm a writer and I love Sorkin's scripts — but I'm also a guy, and that means I watch football. This is problematic.

Enter the dual-tuner DVR. I can watch one channel while I'm recording another, or I can record two programs simultaneously. In other words, I can watch Monday Night Football while recording Studio 60 — or, perhaps more likely, I can spend my Monday nights ensnared in dull and tedious tasks while saving both programs for the mythical free time that I would have during the weekends in some parallel universe.

I suppose I risk crossing the line into astroturf if I add that my cable company, Comcast, employs telephone representatives who can actually answer questions — like how to override the preprogrammed remote or how to activate the auto-tune feature — without consulting a manual, or if I mentioned that subscribing to this feature cost me less per month ($9.95) than TiVo ($12.95) without signing any 12-month contract. That's OK. I like Comcast — and when I like a product or company, I don't mind lapsing into the occasional advertisement. That's what "word of mouth" is all about.

Actually, the only risk is that I'll become a TV person. I avoided installing a CD player in my car for years because I was afraid I'd be tempted to carry irreplaceable CDs on long trips and they'd get baked inside the car by summer heat. I'm not crazy about the idea of postponing TV programs for my free time; I think possibly the most poignant advice for Americans is to seek elevating recreation, and I think television probably ranks near the bottom of my options in that regard. But Sorkin and Mamet constitute two exceptions in my book, so I've allowed myself this indulgence — and I'll just have to exercise restraint to keep from recording General Hospital.

Big Guns

2006-08-10T21:27:00.000-04:00

Following today's announcement by the British Security Service, three major security changes will be implemented immediately at Logan Airport.

No liquids will be allowed through check-in.
National Guard members will be posted as security.
Assault rifles will be issued to state police.

The first is obvious. According to published reports, the British plot involved using a binary explosive which could be carried as two separate, inert liquids. Since we don't have the necessary equipment to distinguish these components from harmless liquids like coffee or shampoo, the best short-term solution while suspects from this particular terror cell remain loose is simply to ban all liquids.

The second is trickier. Nobody questions that we have serious problems with airport security in the United States, but none of those problems are solved — or even addressed — by posting National Guardsmen in airports. We've seen no evidence that any terror organization has ever plotted to create a disturbance inside an airport. The only rationalization I can see is that, if something tragic did occur in the air, a National Guard presence might help to keep a crowded airport calm.

But the third is just plain gratuitous. What's the purpose of equipping state troopers with assault rifles? There shouldn't be anything a state cop can accomplish in the middle of a crowded airport with an automatic that he can't accomplish with a .45 — and if there is, then he hasn't been trained sufficiently with his service weapon. For that matter, do state troopers receive any substantial training with assault rifles? Exactly what threat do we think this measure will deter?

When we re-opened airports following 9/11, we immediately banned curbside check-in. Nevermind that it had nothing to do with what happened; nevermind that the hijackers relied on a dozen different loopholes in our national security, none of which we were plugging while we inconvenienced travelers. We're fond of quoting Ben Franklin, who warned of trading liberty for safety — but we're not affecting safety, we're just spinning our wheels. And I object to equipping police officers with military weapons for the purpose of political cosmetics.

Indifference

2006-08-08T23:36:00.000-04:00

Last weekend, bloggers discovered a file that AOL had posted on a public research website, containing 20 million search logs from 657,427 subscribers collected between March and May. Each user was assigned a number, presumably to protect anonymity, but all searches were grouped together according to the user who made them; so by scrutinizing a person's search history, it is possible in some cases to deduce that person's identity.

For instance, if User #458372 searched for the names of John Doe's friends and coworkers along with his address and e-mail, presumably you can deduce that User #458372 is in fact John Doe — and if those search results also include phrases like "how to grow weed in my garage" or "how to pass a drug test," then suddenly you've learned some very private facts about John Doe's life.

Several bloggers have already discovered specific examples of this in the data, and a few are even claiming to have identified specific people whose search data is included. The reason I'm using a hypothetical example rather than simply citing those individuals is that I don't want to exacerbate these people's victimization — and that point is why I'm writing this column.

The same bloggers who discovered this data and objected that it constituted a gross violation of privacy are now passing the data around. AOL has removed the file from its website, but the bloggers had already downloaded it and now they've set up mirrors to share it with anyone who goes looking. These same people who are excorating AOL for hurting its users are simultaneously combing through this data like voyeurs, playing detective to guess the identities of unsuspecting people and announcing their results on the Web, and generally making a bad situation worse.

By finding AOL's mistake, the bloggers did perform a service; but the harm they've done since grossly outweighs that good. Instead of bringing their discovery directly to AOL — or to a major newspaper, which presumably would have confirmed the story with AOL and allowed the company to remove the data before revealing its existence to the world — they chose to declare their findings on community weblogs and invite everyone to download the file, because the only thing more important to these bloggers than condemning AOL was being properly credited by driving traffic to their websites. AOL screwed up and should fire the technician who published this information, but its carelessness is far outstripped by these bloggers' deliberate indifference — and that's the greater tragedy here.

Irrelevant

2006-08-05T17:55:00.000-04:00

This is what I love about the United Nations. For the past 25 days, southern Lebanon has been flooded with Israeli troops and ordnance while Hezbollah terrorists have peppered Jewish settlements with truck-launched rockets — and this morning, CNN's front page announced the situation's latest development in 14-point bold font: US, France Agree On Truce.

Small Omission

2006-08-03T16:35:00.000-04:00

Barely two months ago, Boston politicians were scrambling to stop the exodus of young professionals from Massachusetts. The Boston Globe ran a front-page story attributing our population hemorrhage to taxes and our city's high cost of living, and Mayor Menino issued a dozen public statements advocating solutions to help Boston retain its middle class by reducing their financial burdens.

This week, City Councilor Robert Consalvo submitted a proposal to levy an automatic charge of several hundred dollars on commuters who cause traffic accidents inside city limits. Menino promptly indicated his support for this proposal and said he is "always interested in any legislation that could bring additional revenue to the city."

Note to Menino: You seem to have misread Emerson, who warned that foolish consistency is a hobgoblin of little minds. The adjective is key — and contrary to what you have mistakenly concluded, avoiding any consistency whatsoever is not a surefire route to wise and effective governance.

Bigger Problems

2006-08-02T23:29:00.000-04:00

Last weekend, Governor Romney referred to the Big Dig as a "tar baby." The Boston Herald responded by plastering a photograph of Romney looking befuddled on its front page alongside the headline, "That's Offensive!" Apparently there wasn't much else going on in the world this week, because the fact that our governor had accurately used a metaphor warranted a front-page scandal.

Both the Herald and CNN quoted angry remarks from a Larry Jones, who was identified as "a black Republican and civil rights activist." In other words, they couldn't locate anyone with authority at any reputable organization who could spare the time to froth about Romney's comment, but the editors had already committed itself to being outraged; so they pulled some schmuck off the street and pasted his remarks above the fold.

At the same time, Los Angeles was buzzing about Mel Gibson's arrest. Apparently Gibson was arrested for drunk driving last Thursday, and when he was taken into custody he spouted a half-dozen anti-Semitic remarks. When the story broke, Gibson released the following statement:

After drinking alcohol on Thursday night, I did a number of things that were very wrong and for which I am ashamed. I drove a car when I should not have, and was stopped by the L.A. County sheriff's. The arresting officer was just doing his job and I feel fortunate that I was apprehended before I caused injury to any other person.

I acted like a person completely out of control when I was arrested, and said things that I do not believe to be true and which are despicable. I am deeply ashamed of everything I said and I apologize to anyone who I have offended.

Also, I take this opportunity to apologize to the deputies involved for my belligerent behavior. They have always been there for me in my community and indeed probably saved me from myself. I disgraced myself and my family with my behavior and for that I am truly sorry.

I have battled the disease of alcoholism for all of my adult life and profoundly regret my horrific relapse. I apologize for any behavior unbecoming of me in my inebriated state and have already taken necessary steps to ensure my return to health.

As if on cue, Abraham Foxman, national director for the Anti-Defamation League, offered this reply:

Mel Gibson's apology is unremorseful and insufficient. It's not a proper apology because it does not go to the essence of his bigotry and his anti-Semitism... We would hope that Hollywood now would realize the bigot in their midst and that they will distance themselves from this anti-Semite.

I'm confused. Gibson's statement uses the words "ashamed" and "apologize" twice each and it ends with the phrase, "I am truly sorry." By what measure can this be described as unremorseful? If that statement doesn't constitute a proper apology, what would?

Don't hold your breath waiting for an answer from Foxman. He's part of the problem. It's the same problem faced by every local highway department in this country: When you pay someone to fix the roads, you give that person a vested interest in ensuring that the roads stay broken. You can't expect people like Foxman to defeat intolerance when their jobs depend on fighting it.

Risk Management

2006-08-01T22:51:00.000-04:00

A waitress who lost her wallet earlier this month recovered her license last week when a customer handed it to her in an attempt to buy alcohol.

The 22-year-old waitress, whose name was not released, called police last week and said she had been handed her own stolen driver's license by a woman trying to prove she was 21.

Maria Bergan, 23, of Lakewood, was charged Sunday night with identity theft and receiving stolen property. She was arrested at her home in suburban Cleveland.

The story is being reported as a statistical anomaly, but I'd say it's a textbook example of just how stupid your average criminal can be. The alleged thief is 23. Why didn't she simply use her own ID?

Impasse

2006-07-27T20:13:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, the Big Dig claimed another victim, a 64-year-old man suffering from a heart attack who died inside an ambulance that couldn't navigate through traffic. The trip from Logan to Boston Medical Center should have taken 4 minutes. Instead, it took 25. They had to call a state police cruiser to escort the ambulance the wrong way through the eastbound tunnel — through the same section that has been closed since 12 tons of concrete killed Milena Del Valle two weeks ago.

Things are going to get worse before they get better.

"Explain it to a 4-year-old."

2006-07-26T22:54:00.000-04:00

Imagine you're 22. You're 6'2" and 185 pounds — and for some inexplicable reason, your 10-year-old brother is going through a violent phase where he feels compelled to punch you. You're too strong and too mature to trade blows with a scrawny 10-year-old, and you don't want to hurt the kid; but he needs to learn what's going to happen if he walks around hitting guys who are bigger than him, and better he should learn it from someone who loves him enough not to inflict real damage.

So you tell him to knock it off, and you give him a warning: "For every 3 times you hit me, I'm going to give you a smack on the head." He hits you once, and you ignore him. He hits you again, and you remind him. He hits you a third time, and you smack him — not hard enough to bruise, but hard enough to send him crying to Mommy.

This is Israel. (Maybe without the "love.") I've read a lot of criticism that Israel's attacks on Hezbollah haven't been proportional. It seems to me that if you ignore the first rocket attack, and you ignore the second rocket attack, your eventual response doesn't have to be proportional to the third rocket attack.

Then there's the other rebuttal, that a "proportional" response would occur if Israel began randomly launching rockets into Lebanese villages and marching suicide bombers into cafes in Palestine. It's not a particularly intelligent argument, but it amuses me in its simplicity.

But my favorite argument is about the Golan Heights. For 18 years, Syria used the Golan Heights to shell civilian targets inside Israel. In 1967, Israel captured the Golan Heights during the Six-Day War — and today, nearly everyone seems convinced that Israel must return control of the Heights. I don't claim to be an expert in Middle Eastern relations, but I know something about military strategy and no one has been able to explain this in a way that makes sense. The logic escapes me: You attack me from a strategic position; I defeat your attack and capture control of that position; and now you expect me to give it back?

"There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."

Small World

2006-07-25T23:15:00.000-04:00

A friend of mine has been having trouble finding work. He lives in Florida, and he's been bouncing between various temp agencies without much luck. Suffice to say, he's both smart and qualified, so it was difficult to understand why he was having trouble until someone finally told him: There's a man living just over the border in Alabama who shares his name and date of birth, and that man is a convicted felon and registered sex offender.

In 1995, just as America was being introduced to the World Wide Web, Sandra Bullock starred in a bad movie called The Net. The premise was that computer hackers could erase a person's identity by pressing a few buttons, and that the justice system would trust a computer printout over the objections of a living person without a second thought. It was ridiculous in 1995 and it's ridiculous today — except that we're inching toward it.

How is my friend supposed to fix this problem? There isn't any error to be corrected; it's just an unfortunate coincidence. He has to rely on the diligence of future employers to differentiate him from the convicted felon using his name and date of birth — and every time someone fails to do that and moves on to the next resume, my friend loses.

The More You Know

2006-07-24T20:41:00.000-04:00

I'm acrophobic — which is to say, I suffer from an irrational fear of heights.

"Phobia" is a concept that's often misused or misunderstood. The key word is "irrational." I don't like glass elevators or standing near ledges — in fact, it bothers me when other people lean over ledges. But that fear doesn't make me acrophobic because it's not irrational: People fall, and falls can kill. And I couldn't ever work washing windows on a skyscraper — but again, that's not an irrational fear, it's just an acute aversion to that particular danger.

I'm acrophobic because, if I watch a movie where a character hangs from a rooftop, my palms sweat. And I'm not talking about watching an IMAX film in an immersion theater: I'm saying that if I sit in my living room with my 19-inch television and I watch a movie where someone scales a cliff, I experience a physical reaction. I'm in absolutely no danger whatsoever and yet my palms will sweat, because it's an involuntary and completely irrational physical reaction. That's phobia.

iSight

2006-07-18T00:20:00.000-04:00

I don't often write product endorsements, but it's no secret that I'm a Mac user so I don't figure it's much of a stretch to recommend the iSight. After being teased with futuristic technologies for the last half-century — flying cars, sentient robots, colonies on Mars — this is one of those rare gadgets that actually delivers one of those promises: It's a video phone that really works.

A couple of decades ago, you could buy a video phone for about $250. They worked about as well (read: badly) as most webcams nowadays, with a small, grainy image that refreshed every few seconds. You couldn't use it unless you had a unit on both ends of the call — and this was before wireless phones and answering machines, so $250 was a hell of a lot to spend on a telephone.

The Internet solved the compatibility problem; since any computer could receive the images, you could have one-way video chats even if the other party didn't own a webcam. But there was still a chasm between the low quality of the affordable webcams and the exorbitant price you'd have to pay for a good quality image. Then Apple came along.

The iSight combines a dual-element microphone with an autofocusing video camera that broadcasts up to 30 frames per second. In simpler terms, it looks and sounds great. It's not exactly cheap at $150, but it's a reasonable compromise: It's cheaper than a product of comparable quality would have cost a couple of years ago; and Macs are priced toward hardware's high end anyway, so it's about where you'd expect.

I don't really "chat." I had the opportunity to get an iSight cheap when it was first released and I did, but I hadn't used it until last week. Kerrie took a business trip to Denver; and rather than pay for long distance telephone calls, we kept in touch using AOL Instant Messenger's audio capability with our computers' microphones. I unpacked the iSight for good measure — and to make a short story quick, we're going to buy another before her next trip. It's amazing. It delivers exactly what has been promised for decades: clear audio with full-speed, real-time video between two people across the country.

No question, it's a toy you could live without — but it's exceptionally cool. I think it's better than the iPod. For any household with a broadband Internet connection, it's a genuinely viable replacement for the telephone. Granted, it's probably not something I'll use often; but when I have the opportunity, I'll definitely use it — and in the meantime, I recommend it.

Restaurant Review: Strega

2006-07-17T02:26:00.000-04:00

Strega
379 Hanover Street
Boston, MA 02113
(617) 523-8481

Meet Nick Varano. He's the owner of Strega, and that webpage summarizes what I think of his restaurant: He's more interested in creating a hip, trendy night spot to attract beautiful people and celebrities than serving good food. Varano paid for a series of TV commercials featuring enticements about whom you'll see at Strega and featuring catchphrases like "It's not your father's North End" and "What happens in Strega, stays in Strega." (The latter is read by Vincent Pastore, "Big Pussy" from HBO's The Sopranos, who is shown joking with Varano in the commercial.) When a restaurant touts itself by the people you'll see rather than the food you'll eat, I get suspicious.

Quality: The appetizers were better than the entrées and I had no complaints, so I'll skip ahead to dinner. I ordered tubettini all' aragosta, which is pasta with lobster meat in a spicy marinara. It's an extravagant dish that I order just about anywhere I can find it on the menu — and I'd imagine that even if you've never seen it, you can appreciate that something is wrong when your plate arrives with a half-lobster still stuck inside its shell buried under pasta and sauce and the waiter hands you a nutcracker.

This is like ordering a steak sandwich and being handed a sub roll stuffed with a New York strip. When you order pasta all' aragosta, the lobster meat is supposed to be separated, chopped, and tossed into the pasta before it's served. I can't imagine why any cook would think otherwise, that I'd want to dig my hands through a pile of pasta and red sauce to crack open a lobster and then wipe my hands on a napkin to finally dig into my dinner just as it's gone cold (because obviously, small pasta tubes don't retain heat for long); but this is a perfect example of form over function and why a chef needs to try eating every dish he designs. A lobster in its shell definitely makes for an impressive presentation, but it's a pretty stupid way to serve this particular meal.

Across three entrées, everyone at my table agreed: The ingredients were fresh and the preparation was OK, but the flavors were bland. Obviously, Italian food is not supposed to be bland. Nothing was over- or undercooked and it's not that the kitchen staff made mistakes: The recipes just weren't very good.

Value: The prices aren't much higher than comparable North End restaurants, but the portions weren't impressive and the flavors were disappointing. The check wasn't exorbitant and it didn't feel like we were being ripped off — but I'd have rather spent the money somewhere else.

Hospitality: Our waiter was polite, but we were given the distinct impression that table turnover is their first priority. He held our drinks until we placed our dinner order and he ignored our empty water bottle twice until I asked for another, and busboys were hovering constantly. An Italian restaurant that doesn't serve dessert isn't an aberration in the North End; but in this context, it felt distinctly like another tactic to speed us out the door.

The bottom line: Not recommended. The only reason to eat at Strega is to be able to say that you've eaten at Strega. If Varano wants to position himself as the North End's host to the glitterati, that's fine with me — but he'd better keep buying those TV spots and plugging Strega as "the place to be," because he sure won't impress anyone with its merits as a restaurant.

Defense Spending

2006-07-16T23:46:00.000-04:00

Last week was supposed to be a light week. Not much news. It was supposed to be slow — and then a tunnel fell apart and the Middle East went to war.

The latter story is being covered in depth elsewhere by people who are on the ground, so I won't spend much time retracing their steps — but it's worth pointing out that there's a technology called THEL (Tactical High Energy Laser) that could have prevented what's happening. In short, THEL is a defensive weapon that tracks and destroys incoming rockets and mortar shells — and it works.

Intercepting an intercontinental ballistic missile is a complicated, large-scale endeavor. Protecting a localized area from incoming projectiles, on the other hand, is relatively simple. The technology works, and it works reliably — and if that weren't enough, add the fact that most of the best work in THEL has been done by the Israelis. But Israel wasn't able to defend itself against Hezbollah's rocket attacks because THEL isn't deployed on a wide scale. It's too expensive.

Consider this the next time you hear people talking about the defense budget. This is a perfect example of how ambitious military spending could have saved lives — not in some theoretical sense of "to preserve peace, prepare for war," but a real, visible example of how advanced weaponry could have intercepted a first strike to save lives and prevent a fast escalation toward open war.

More of the Same

2006-07-12T23:17:00.000-04:00

Late Monday night, the inevitable finally happened: The Big Dig killed someone. The victim was 38-year-old Milena Del Valle, a mother of three who regularly attended Sunday services at the Hispanic Community Church of Boston. Milena and her husband were driving through the I-90 connector at 10:45 PM when 12 tons of concrete ceiling panels crashed down onto their car, killing her and injuring her husband.

I drove through the tunnel 14 hours earlier. It's the primary route to Logan Airport; and beginning around 6:00 AM, the tunnel remains heavily trafficked through the late evening rush hour. If the accident had happened at almost any other time of day, there's no doubt that more people would have been killed.

Early reports indicate the failure was caused by faulty installation of ceiling bolts and incorrectly mixed epoxy, both of which had been identified as problems in a 1998 report issued by the Office of the Inspector General. In layman's terms: If you want to suspend 3-ton concrete panels above a major highway, you'd better secure them properly. That didn't happen; and as a result, someone was killed.

When the story broke yesterday, the Turnpike Authority said the tunnel would re-open at noon today. Now the tunnel has been "closed indefinitely" — making a stupid, tragic situation even more stupid and frustrating.

The Big Dig is neither more safe or less safe today than it was two weeks ago. The Globe published some nonsense today about Greater Boston residents being shocked by the incident, that "a roadway nearly everyone uses and that they had been repeatedly assured was safe could now kill them." That's bullshit. We've heard steady reports for the last five years from experts in every relevant field attesting that the Big Dig reflects shoddy workmanship with a dangerous result. No one is surprised that someone has been killed. It was inevitable.

The tunnel isn't closed because it's more dangerous today, or even because we have a clearer understanding of its danger. It's being kept closed because, if it were re-opened and another accident killed someone tomorrow, the political fallout would explode exponentially. The tunnel is closed purely for public relations reasons — which doesn't help the Big Dig fiasco, it simply continues the trend of ignoring real problems and eschewing real solutions in favor of cosmetic political tactics.

Fair Trade

2006-07-10T23:49:00.000-04:00

Last year, Kyle MacDonald began his quest to turn a red paper clip into a house. He said that his plan was to "barter" the clip for something bigger and better and to continue trading up until he got a house. Personally, I think "barter" implies equality of trade, whereas MacDonald was essentially asking a series of people to make small sacrifices so he could freeload his way into a windfall — but regardless, he apparently succeeded. Last week, the town of Kipling, Saskatchewan offered MacDonald a three-bedroom, 1,100-square-foot home. He accepted and will move to Kipling this September while he writes a book about his experience.

CNN reported this story with the following headline: Blogger proves one red paper clip can indeed buy a house.

After a year's worth of TV and radio appearances, magazine articles, and hundreds of mentions on the Internet, that's precisely not what MacDonald proved. He didn't prove a damn thing about paper clips or bartering. He proved that publicity can buy a house. And maybe that's neat and maybe it was a clever idea, and I certainly give him credit for walking that idea through to completion — but I've been seeing this story for the past few days and this is the stupidest headline yet. It's just wrong.

It isn't "bartering" if you're asking for something "bigger and better." That's panhandling. You're asking other people to be charitable, not to trade for necessity or mutual benefit. And if your quest spans a year's worth of mass media attention and involves Alice Cooper and Corbin Bernsen, you're playing a pretty heavy publicity card. "Please trade me this for that" is not the same as saying, "I'm a celebrity and here's a television camera. Be a part of my project."

All of which is fine. He didn't break any laws and he didn't hurt anyone, and I have absolutely no objection to his project — just the dumb way it's being reported. I watched a homeless man limp up to the outdoor hostess at a fancy Newbury Street restaurant on Saturday; and in front of more than a dozen customers, he claimed he was a diabetic who needed food and he begged to trade his last $5 for a hamburger. He walked away eating a burger that normally costs $16.95, just three blocks away from a Burger King. There's absolutely no difference between that and what Kyle MacDonald did, and people just look stupid insisting otherwise.

Downtime

2006-07-09T22:31:00.000-04:00

As you've probably noticed, this page has been having some technical difficulties. I was too swamped last week to bother tinkering; and when I tried a quick fix yesterday, I broke the whole website.

Everything should be working now. Thanks to everyone who e-mailed. To be honest, I don't know what happened. I chose Blogger because it's easy, because I don't know how to code my own website and it's not among my priorities to learn — and in this case, the only explanation I can offer is that I don't know what broke, I don't know how I made it worse, and I don't know how I fixed it.

Anyway. It seems to be straightened out, so I'll be back with a new column tomorrow. Thanks again to everyone who e-mailed — both those who offered HTML tips and those who just noted my absence. I appreciate it.

Cognitive Dissonance

2006-06-30T01:58:00.000-04:00

I saw this story cross the AP wire while I was eating lunch the other day and the headline caught my eye: "Amish farmer fights milk law after sting." As it turned out, the article interested me for a different reason.

The Ohio Department of Agriculture had received an anonymous tip that Arlie Stutzman was selling raw milk in violation of state law, so they sent an undercover agent to Stutzman's farm. Stutzman filled the agent's plastic container with milk, and the agent gave Stutzman two dollars. As a result, Stutzman's dairy license was revoked.

The problem is that the AP article equivocates between selling and sharing. Stutzman's defense is that his religious beliefs compel him to share his milk with anyone who asks. The article uses the word "share" five times. "Sell" appears only twice. The anonymous tip claimed Stutzman was selling milk, but the article doesn't claim that Stutzman asked the undercover agent for money — only that a man asked Stutzman for milk, Stutzman complied, and the man gave him two dollars. If I asked a stranger for milk and he gave it to me, I'd probably reach for my wallet to compensate him. That doesn't make him a merchant.

The article notes that "sales of raw milk" are illegal in 25 states; but it also quotes an Ohio Department of Agriculture spokeswoman as saying, "You can't just give milk away to someone other than yourself. It's a violation of the law." So are we talking about selling or sharing?

I point this out not just because it's an example of unclear writing, but because it's an example of clumsy journalism and a common trap of journalistic objectivity — that reporters become so focused on reporting the facts coldly that they neglect to add them together and they miss the forest for the trees.

If Stutzman was indeed selling milk to his neighbors, he's in trouble. If, on the other hand, he was "sharing his product with others who would otherwise not have access to it" as he claims, then he probably deserves protection from prosecution. Those are two distinct scenarios that could not reasonably be confused, yet the AP article doesn't seem to distinguish them. It conflates the two terms as if they were equivalent.

Journalism isn't stenography. You can't just report 2 plus 2 — you have to add them together, and if you don't get 4 then you need to find what's missing. Objective doesn't mean disengaged; just because you shouldn't endorse one side over the other doesn't mean that you should avoid scrutinizing either. Good journalism, like most things, requires critical thinking.

Logical Discrepancy

2006-06-25T03:09:00.000-04:00

Everyone knows that Boston has been in the midst of a ~~crime~~ murder wave. There have been a disproportionately large number of high-profile homicides in the past few months — and I think it's fair to say that when a homeless man is stabbed to death on a weekday afternoon outside Faneuil Hall, mere steps from City Hall, we've reached a new low.

Mayor Menino has blamed the problem partly on the fact that city police are understaffed and overworked. (Boston has fewer than a dozen full-time homicide detectives.) So last week, Governor Romney offered the services of the state police. Menino declined.

The subsequent 48-hour firestorm accusing him of putting politics ahead of public safety forced him to reverse his position. He will accept the help of state troopers in limited capacity during the next few months. But still...his initial public decision was to decline, because Romney's politics are unpopular in the same communities who are currently living in fear.

It wasn't always this way. Tip O'Neill and Billy Bulger may not have been ethical paragons, but they knew their jobs and they served their constituencies. Mayor Menino couldn't host a Democratic National Convention without embarrassing the presidential nominee by pitting him against a police union picket line. Now citizens are fleeing the city in droves, half of them being chased by gunfire, and he's spitting in the governor's eye because the governor might run for president in 2008. And this man defeated Maura Hennigan in a popular election.

Blue State

2006-06-21T18:27:00.000-04:00

For your consideration, I submit the first two paragraphs of yesterday's front page Boston Globe article about the man who should have already locked down the Democratic nomination for governor.

Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly said yesterday it is not his responsibility to crack down on Massachusetts employers that hire undocumented immigrants, and he said he will continue his policy of taking no action against the companies.

In 2001, Reilly established a policy, saying his office would aggressively fight for the rights and wages of immigrant workers, legal or not, and promise not to report them to federal authorities.

Reilly's opponents are two Democrats who have never been elected to public office and a Republican lieutenant governor that most voters couldn't pick out of a lineup. By contrast, Reilly has been one of the most high-profile politicians in Massachusetts for the past four years. He should have been a landslide favorite — and instead, he's fighting an uphill battle after naming a running mate who was immediately identified as a tax cheat and obstructing an investigation into the deaths of two teenagers whose father contributed to Reilly's campaign.

This kind of incompetence is painful to watch.

War Games

2006-06-20T22:52:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, I said the time had come for the US to display its military strength, and apparently someone agrees. Today, the US began its largest war game in decades off the coast of Guam involving 30 warships, 280 aircraft, and the USS Kitty Hawk, USS Abraham Lincoln, and USS Ronald Reagan, in addition to more than 22,000 personnel.

Yet more attention is being paid to the activation of the US missile defense system from test mode to operational status. The ground-based interceptor system has been the single biggest expense in the US defense budget since its inception during the Reagan administration. Its advocates insist that, despite its public failures, if the system were able to successfully intercept a missile launched by North Korea, it would represent the most significant development in global warfare since the Manhattan Project.

It's a tremendous risk. If North Korea's launch succeeds and our test fails, we elevate North Korea and we look foolish. Whether it's a smart decision depends on information I don't have, information that's probably codeword-classified (despite the few tests that have been discussed publicly): the system's track record. If we can reasonably expect it to succeed, intercepting North Korea's missile would be a spectacular display of US military superiority. It would be the only display more powerful than a weapon test of our own: an indisputable demonstration that North Korea has spent more than a decade developing a missile that we've made irrelevant.

Countdown

2006-06-19T16:43:00.000-04:00

Right now, North Korea is preparing to launch a long-range ballistic missile. The New York Times reported yesterday that satellite imagery confirms a two-stage Taepodong 2 missile has been fueled and assembled on its launching pad. This is assumed to be a test. If successful, the missile could deliver a nuclear strike to Alaska. A three-stage version of the same missile could strike anywhere in the United States.

For the past several days, US and Japanese officials have been trying to forestall the launch. If the missile has indeed been fueled, those efforts would seem to have failed. Siphoning rocket fuel out of a missile is a dangerous and complicated procedure. Moreover, if the missile isn't launched soon, the fuel will begin to corrode its tanks. A launch seems imminent.

On September 9, 2004, a large explosion was recorded in the Ryanggang province of North Korea. A reconnaissance satellite observed a mushroom cloud approximately 4 kilometers in diameter which coincided with massive seismic activity. Subsequent satellite imagery noted what appeared to be a subsidence crater — a signature of an underground detonation — at the same location.

Secretary of State Colin Powell said at the time, "There was no indication that it was a nuclear event of any kind. Exactly what it was, we're not sure." National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice told CNN, "Maybe it was a forest fire of some kind." Despite these denials, the fact remains that during the week leading up to September 9, newspapers had been abuzz with reports that the White House had received repeated warnings that North Korea was preparing to test a nuclear weapon.

Three plausible theories exist to explain the Ryanggang explosion. The most obvious is that North Korea tested a nuclear weapon and that fact has been concealed to maintain global stability. The second possibility is that North Korea detonated a mass of radioactive material in an attempt to create the impression they had developed a bomb. The third explanation is that the incident was an accidental explosion of a massive ammunition dump (which may have caused, or been caused by, a forest fire).

North Korea's last test of a long-range missile was in 1998. That test involved a three-stage Taepodong 1 missile that exploded during flight. The Clinton administration had tried and failed to dissuade North Korea from conducting that launch. If North Korea proceeds with this launch, it would represent a similar diplomatic failure for the Bush administration.

We invaded Iraq because, according to our president and Congress, Saddam Hussein's efforts to obtain nuclear capability constituted a clear and present danger to the United States. North Korea has proven its intent — and depending on the results of this launch, it will have demonstrated its capacity to launch a nuclear attack on the United States.

I'm not suggesting we compound one mistake with another. Our troops don't belong in Iraq, and I don't believe we should invade North Korea. But the time for diplomacy has passed. We need to show our teeth.

The Cold War consisted of a delicate (albeit uncomfortable) balance between superpowers based on a simple principle: Mutually Assured Destruction. Both the United States and the Soviet Union understood that if either side launched an attack, both sides would perish. In the years since, however, United States military actions have created the impression that, although we're quick to engage, we're unwilling to commit. That cannot stand.

We are faced with a determined aggressor. We don't yet have cause to launch a preemptive attack — but we must make a preemptive show of force to assure North Korea that if we are attacked, we will not respond with restraint. We need to test a weapon of our own. It is imperative that our enemies understand our might, and we have to brandish our sword.

Pop Quiz

2006-06-18T23:39:00.000-04:00

Stephen Colbert hosts a segment on Comedy Central called "Better Know a District." Last week he visited Georgia's 8th to interview Congressman Lynn Westmoreland, who has endorsed legislation to display the Ten Commandments in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. Rather predictably, Colbert asked Westmoreland to name all Ten Commandments.

You can find the video online. Westmoreland reacts like a deer caught in headlights: He stumbles through three and then gives up. On Friday, the Macon Telegraph spoke with Westmoreland's press secretary, Brian Robinson, who insisted that the tape had been edited unfairly: In reality, Robinson said, Westmoreland had been able to recall seven.

As if that weren't sufficient to qualify Robinson for some sort of prize for incompetence, he continued: "I challenge anybody outside of the clergy to try to [name them all]."

Westmoreland claims to attend SouthCrest Church in Newnan. So the next step for an enterprising reporter at the Telegraph would be to show up at Sunday mass and interview Westmoreland's fellow parishioners to find out just how many of them can name all Ten Commandments. I'll wager that every single one can do better than three, that most can beat seven, and that more than half can name all ten.

Everyone has been excoriating Westmoreland for his insincerity in touting principles he can't even remember; but as a political advisor, I'm more inclined to criticize his office's staggering incompetence. Frankly, it's difficult not to feel frustrated. Here's a press secretary who has just simultaneously insulted his constituents and challenged a newspaper reporter to further embarrass his boss — and this guy has a better job than I do.

Search Values

2006-06-13T13:57:00.000-04:00

Last weekend, the New York Times published yet another story about employers using the Internet to research job applicants. The author claims this is a new development and a serious issue. I declare shenanigans.

First, let's dispense with the hyperbole. No one is being blacklisted over politics or religion. The Times cited two examples where candidates had been rejected because of their online profiles; in both cases, the students had plastered their Facebook profiles with graphic descriptions of sex and drug abuse.

I realize that intelligent people can disagree about sexual proclivities or the legalization of marijuana. I won't presume that engaging in illicit sex or smoking an occasional joint necessarily indicates a lack of personal judgment — but irrespective of the acts themselves, surely we can agree that bragging about them to strangers on a global forum does indicate a lapse of both judgment and discretion.

This discussion is revived every couple of months by a newspaper or TV magazine, and it's always depicted as "a growing problem." I get annoyed when the same reporters repeatedly declare the same information to be revelatory; but moreover, I dispute the contention that "Google screening" is a common practice. Quoting the Times:

Some college career executives are skeptical that many employers routinely check applicants online. "My observation is that it's more fiction than fact," said Tom Devlin, director of the career center at the University of California, Berkeley.

I agree. Most employers don't bother to fact-check applicants' resumés or confirm their education, so you're crazy if you think they're stalking your participation on Usenet. Like most conspiracy theories, it assumes an unreasonable degree of coordination.

It's like one of those scaremongering teasers for the local news: "Could your baby's diapers be dangerous? Tune in at eleven!!" And then you watch the report and it turns out that (1) they're talking about some obscure brand of diapers that no one buys, and (2) the diapers cause a mild rash in 0.5% of babies. That's what's happening here. Yes, if you litter your MySpace profile with Hitler jokes and references to 4:20, it's possible that a small percentage of employers will find it and reject you. But if you're worried about that, frankly, you're not the sort of person who deserves career advice from the New York Times.

Gyorgy Ligeti, 1923–2006

2006-06-12T22:01:00.000-04:00

Gyorgy Ligeti died this morning. He was 83.

You can find obituaries elsewhere. But let me say that I've never met a serious musician familiar with Ligeti's music who didn't insist that it was required listening. His genius was evident to everyone, even those who don't normally appreciate that type of music, and he was praised unanimously.

He will be missed.

You can begin exploring his music with these recordings. Both series were intended to document all his written works. I recommend (and own) all of them.

The Ligeti Project (Teldec)
Volume 1
Volume 2
Volume 3
Volume 4
Volume 5

Gyorgi Ligeti Edition (Sony Classical)
Volume 1
Volume 2
Volume 3
Volume 4
Volume 5
Volume 6
Volume 7
Volume 8

Native Tongue

2006-06-11T23:51:00.000-04:00

Joey Vento is an American whose grandparents immigrated from Sicily during the 1920s. He owns Geno's, one of Philadelphia's most famous sandwich shops. He keeps a sign in the front window that reads, "This Is AMERICA: WHEN ORDERING 'SPEAK ENGLISH.'"

His explanation is simple: He speaks English. He doesn't speak Spanish or German or Arabic — so if you try to order in those languages, he won't understand you. You'll have to speak English.

A city councilman asked Vento to remove the sign. Vento declined. He explained that no customer has ever been refused service because of a language barrier. His staff is glad to help non-native speakers place their orders in English.

Nevertheless, a Latino advocacy group has announced that it will send representatives to Geno's to try to order in Spanish. The group's director said that, depending on what happens, the group may pursue legal action against Geno's.

I swear. Some of these stories speak for themselves.

Qualified Applicants

2006-06-07T01:04:00.000-04:00

Last month, a Georgia police officer stopped a car on Highway 10 because its driver wasn't wearing a seat belt. The driver was behaving suspiciously, so the officer asked him to step out of the car. A quick pat-down revealed cocaine, and the driver was told he was under arrest. He struggled and pulled the officer across the highway and into a briar patch, until he was finally subdued with the aid of a passerby.

The driver stood nearly 7 feet tall. The police officer, Julie Ann Welch, is 5 feet, 4 inches.

This is what's wrong with quotas. You pretend everyone's equal when they're not, and you end up hiring people who can't perform the job. Stop talking about fairness. It's a non sequitur. The fact is, a police officer's job has physical demands — and if you come up short, you could wind up dead.

Five Days Late

2006-06-06T01:34:00.000-04:00

Today's date has been mentioned in every newspaper and website I've read for the past week. Fox spent months coordinating a special Tuesday opening for its remake of 1976's The Omen. Ann Coulter is releasing a new book titled Godless: The Church of Liberalism, and Christian publisher Tyndale House is releasing a new volume in its apocalyptic Left Behind series. CMH Records is issuing a tribute to Van Halen titled Strummin' With the Devil, and the heavy metal band Slayer is releasing a five-song EP through Hot Topic, a chain of stores that sells vampire clothing to teenagers.

All of this refers to Chapter 13 of Revelation, which tells of a beast that rose out of the earth, with two horns like a lamb and the voice of a dragon. The beast would cause all men and women to be marked with its number, and that number was 666.

Today's date is represented in Gregorian shorthand as 6/6/06. You'll note this is not, actually, 666 — but it's as close as can be achieved with that particular format, so it's lazily been designated the Devil's Day. This reminds me of the insistence that January 1, 2000 was "the birth of a new millennium," except this is stupider. It's like using a pocketknife to force a square peg into a round hole. Everyone's exclaiming, "Look! It matches!!" Well, of course it does. You dropped a number.

And that's fine. It's all in good fun (read: a cheap marketing stunt) anyway, so I don't suppose it's worth a lecture. But for the record, the number itself is probably a mistake.

Most Biblical scholars agree that "the number of the beast" was probably a coded reference to the Roman Emperor Nero, who ruthlessly oppressed Christians. This theory has gathered momentum in recent years as archaeologists have unearthed early Greek translations that use the number 616 in place of 666. According to the ancient practice of gematria, alphabetical symbols were converted to their numerical equivalents and added together, and the sum was used as a crude cipher for the name. The number 666 can be deciphered using Hebrew characters to read "Neron Caesar," which is sufficiently close to suggest we're on the right track — but 616 translates exactly to "Nero Caesar."

With that in mind, here's the exact passage from Revelation 13:18.

This calls for wisdom: Let anyone with understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a person. Its number is six hundred and sixty-six.

Any questions?

ACLU Warning

2006-06-05T23:55:00.000-04:00

I joined the ACLU several years ago. I could claim that it was naive optimism, that I sincerely believed in their commitment to defending the Bill of Rights — but I couldn't sell that fiction if I tried, so I'll be honest and confess that I wanted bragging rights. I was looking forward to the next argument where some liberal muppet would accuse me of betraying personal liberties, and I'd slap my ACLU card down onto the table and look smug.

I think I'd been watching too many Westerns on cable that week. Maybe I wasn't getting enough sleep. Either way, it was a dumb idea; and by the time I realized that, I was out $35.

For the next year, I was flooded with letters urging me to "stop Ashcroft" from passing various laws. (Apparently the ACLU hasn't been briefed on the separation of powers.) When the time came to renew, an enthusiastic fellow telephoned me and said the ACLU needed my donation to be ready "to defeat Bush in 2004."

I declined. When they called back, I repeated my answer. In the years since, I've politely asked at least a dozen times to be removed from the ACLU's mailing list. I've submitted two requests in writing. The calls and letters keep coming. Just last week, I got another.

Be forewarned. If you understand the ACLU's charter and you agree with its mission, then by all means, write a check. But make no mistake: It's a heavily partisan organization that abuses its legal status as a tax-exempt charitable organization to keep hounding individuals despite repeated requests to desist. Once you get on its list, you'll never get off.

Other Sports

2006-06-02T23:59:00.000-04:00

Congratulations to Katharine Klose from Spring Lake, New Jersey, who won last night's National Spelling Bee with the word "ursprache." I have no shame in admitting that I couldn't have spelled it correctly, much less live on national television.

When one of the final two contestants misspells a word, her opponent must correctly spell the next two words in order to win. Katharine had no trouble with the first of these, "kundalini"; but when the judge read "ursprache," the audience gasped. She nailed it anyway.

I've heard it suggested that a spelling bee is a waste of time. That's nonsense. First, these kids are building their vocabularies, and you can't put a price on that. More often than not, we judge a person's intellect on whether he's well-spoken. True, you'd hope that Katharine won't be using "ursprache" in casual conversation; but sometimes you push the upper limits to secure the fundamentals.

Second, these kids are learning to solve problems. They're learning detective skills, albeit in an etymological context. When they ask for a word's origin or definition, they're not stalling for time. They use those clues to deduce the spelling. If you can't see the benefit in that, I pity your children.

Having said all that, I have one criticism. The runner-up — a 14-year-old girl who correctly spelled dasyphyllous, machicotage, esquisse, maieutic, poiesis, tutoyer, and koine, all of which would have stumped me — lives in Alberta, Canada. According to the rules, our National Spelling Bee is open to "English-speaking populations around the world."

To Build a Fire

2006-06-01T00:05:00.000-04:00

The New York Times ran a feature on high-end grills last Sunday. The writer interviewed a 34-year-old Dallas attorney who owns an $1,800 Weber, and the fellow said to the reporter, "Grilling has become my creative outlet."

That comment reminded me of an article from earlier this month about cookbook author Phyllis Pellman Good, in which the Times quoted Cook's Illustrated founding editor Christopher Kimball:

"I think the food media has been responsible for creating this whole world of faux food, and this is a media largely consumed by people who eat out six times a week," he added. "We are not all served by thinking of food as a special-occasion product."

No, indeed we're not — and I think the New York Times just used a 34-year-old Dallas attorney to make Kimball's point.

Reprisal

2006-05-31T02:03:00.000-04:00

Miss Snark is an anonymous blogger who claims to be a New York literary agent. I've had her blog on my sidebar for a few months because it's helpful for writers and amusing for everyone. I read it regularly and I'm not planning to remove the link — but this week, she deserves a rebuke.

The ruckus began when a group called Writer Beware published a list of 20 Worst Agents who were allegedly soliciting naive authors with empty promises and mysterious "administrative fees." This is a real phenomenon and a serious problem. After a couple of dozen rejection letters, despondent authors can become easy marks for a con because they want to believe that someone's interest is genuine. I can understand how, to a writer in that situation, a smooth-talking lowlife can make a "$500 reading fee" sound perfectly reasonable. The hope behind publishing this list was that, with the help of Google, young authors could find the facts before mailing a check.

It's a good strategy — which is probably why one of the listed agents, Barbara Bauer, reportedly bullied a web provider into yanking the plug on the website hosting the list. Word spread quickly, and Miss Snark responded by posting the list herself and highlighting Bauer's name. She followed up with a post detailing the evidence against Bauer and concluded by writing, "Barbara Bauer, you are a scam artist."

Miss Snark's evidence is easily verifiable. She's probably right — and her readership threw her a virtual parade. Her blog was flooded with comments thanking her for showing courage and integrity and chutzpah. All of it was praise for a public indictment delivered anonymously.

No one questions that thieves belong in stocks in the town square; and it's easy to understand why Miss Snark, a reputable agent, would harbor an acute hatred toward a woman whose predatory actions carry adverse consequences for Miss Snark's entire profession. I have nothing but praise and respect for those who stand up and speak out, for those who are determined to cast vermin into the sunlight for disinfection.

Let me say that again. I respect those who stand up — who stand up — and speak out. Where is the conviction, where is the chutzpah in firing sniper shots from an anonymous blog?

This isn't the first time Miss Snark has named her target. Last month, she published an e-mail from an author who wanted representation. She redacted the author's address and telephone number but left her full name and the title of her book, and then proceeded to dare her readers to suggest creative ways to give the author a brush-off.

Melissa Lafsky spent ten months publishing her anonymous blog about the soap-opera antics inside a high-profile law firm, and she never once used anyone's name. Even after revealing her identity in the New York Observer, she continued masking the identities of her blog's subjects by substituting initials and pseudonyms. Her posts are every bit as funny and clever as anything I've read from Miss Snark — but Lafsky's blog never attacked anyone.

I'm not going to condemn all anonymous blogs. I don't love the idea, but Lafsky proved it can be done with grace and still prove entertaining. But you have to recognize that there's a line to be crossed. If you're throwing someone else's public reputation onto the fire while concealing your own behind a curtain, then you're a coward. It doesn't matter whether your allegation is true or false. It's not about the other person. It's about you.

By Contrast

2006-05-30T21:58:00.000-04:00

Flashback to last week. Framingham police responded to a 911 call and found Carla Souza and her 11-year-old son beaten to death in their apartment. Despite the fact that Souza's husband promptly confessed, a Boston Globe writer stumbled over her prose trying to afford him a presumption of innocence.

Contrast that with this week's lead sentence from a New York Times story about the alleged Marine massacre in Iraq.

Hiba Abdullah survived the killings by American troops in Haditha last Nov. 19, but said seven others at her father-in-law's home did not.

Res ipsa loquitur.

Bad Taste

2006-05-25T22:36:00.000-04:00

Tonight, Kerrie watched Wolf Creek while I wrote on my laptop. I didn't pay enough attention to follow the plot, but I can tell you it's a horrible movie — if for no other reason than the fact that for at least a half-hour, the only "dialogue" I heard consisted of a girl sobbing uncontrollably.

Horror movies have been the latest fad. In the '90s, it was horror satire; recently, filmmakers have gone back to trying to scare audiences. In most cases, directors interpret "scary" to mean either "startling" (sudden noises) or "shocking" (creative torture). Both are cheap and lazy, and the resulting films suck broken glass.

I took a screenwriting class once where the teacher explained two approaches to drama: suspense, where the audience knows what the characters don't; and surprise, where the characters know what the audience doesn't. The trick of writing horror films is to walk between those raindrops.

I watched Saw. The killer had no discernible motivation, and the plot consisted of conceiving imaginative ways to commit murder. It's exactly the sort of film that I would have made when I was eleven. I guarantee, any script chosen at random from last year's Nicholl Fellowship quarterfinalists would be an improvement. This was like that.

I can't imagine the Wolf Creek script was longer than 36 pages. "Girl sobs. Gunshot. More sobbing. Cut to killer." That's not a story. It's a fetish — next to which, The Shaggy Dog looks like Hitchcock.

Plan Ahead

2006-05-24T00:01:00.000-04:00

Read this. I first read about this arithmetic in Charles Givens' More Wealth Without Risk and I've cited it often, but this example (taken from a book by Burton Malkiel) spells out the math in specific terms. The knowledge startled me when I first read it, and the illustration startles me today — but thankfully, I've begun saving for retirement during the intervening years.

We don't teach personal finance in school. This is absolutely essential information; and I don't know about you, but it was news to me. The principle may be obvious, but the details and the magnitude constitute a revelation of their own. People need to know. Pass it on.

Voice of Experience

2006-05-23T23:02:00.000-04:00

Lloyd Bentsen died today. He was 85. In 1988, Bentsen was the Democratic nominee for vice president alongside Michael Dukakis; and during an October debate against rival Dan Quayle, Bentsen delivered the most famous retort in American political history. Upon hearing Quayle compare himself to JFK, Bentsen answered coldly: "Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy."

Today, WBZ telephoned Dukakis to comment on Bentsen's passing. Dukakis complimented Bentsen as a candidate and took responsibility for the loss, saying that if he had run a stronger campaign, Bentsen might have made the difference that won the election. Then Dukakis said something very interesting. He said that if he had spent more time planning, instead of blindly charging forward to campaign from state to state, they might have won.

You don't often hear unsuccessful candidates waxing about what went wrong, and certainly not when those campaigns were spectacular disasters that are remembered years later as textbook failures. It's almost like a magician giving away his secrets. So although careful planning might not sound like groundbreaking advice, you have to consider the context and give pause.

"A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow." That admonition is attributed to General Patton, and it's damn good advice that I often seen practiced in politics. (No surprise, since politicians love to study war strategy.) The flip side is that politicians tend to rush headlong into action — which is why you see so many stupid, stupid mistakes in professional politics. You might be tempted to dismiss Dukakis' hindsight, to say he was never much of a candidate regardless of what strategy he employed...but his analysis rings true.

The mystery of politics is why every blue collar on a barstool knows exactly what the national candidate is doing wrong, while the candidate himself is surrounded by $350,000 paid consultants who tell him to keep on charging ahead. The answer is that those consultants and their candidate have spent the last ten weeks on the road, hopping from hotel to hotel to airplane; and after 70 days sprinting through the trees, it becomes difficult to see the forest.

Dukakis hit the nail on the head — and it might seem obvious, it might seem trivial, but it's absolutely the take-home lesson for every professional politician working a wide stage. Yes, it's important to seize every day; and yes, mistakes are better than inaction. But you need to retain perspective. You need to see the whole board.

That's a Fact

2006-05-22T13:11:00.000-04:00

I don't know why it amuses me to pick on the Boston Globe. Maybe because it remains the paper of record for this city despite its continual incompetence. Maybe because its staff refuses to acknowledge or fix the problems. The paper is often criticized for its liberal bias, and I agree with those criticisms — but to be honest, I'm bothered more by the fact that it reads like a bad college daily.

Today's front page included this lead:

FRAMINGHAM — Carla Souza dialed 911 just after 11 p.m. Saturday, asking police to rush to her Framingham apartment because of a problem with her husband, according to police. But an attacker allegedly got to her before officers did one minute later.

Firefighters and police found Souza, 37, and her 11-year-old son, Caique, semiconscious — their heads beaten — lying in blood on the bedroom floor. The cordless phone was still connected to the police operator. Both mother and son later died of their injuries.

Souza's husband is scheduled to be arraigned today on two charges of murder. Obviously, reporters have to acknowledge that he's innocent until proven guilty — both out of civic responsibility and legal liability — which is why the writer addends her first sentence with the phrase, "according to police."

Now explain why her second sentence includes the word "allegedly."

Force Allocation

2006-05-21T23:38:00.000-04:00

The Hartford Courant reports:

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman won the endorsement of a divided Democratic state convention Friday night, but his challenger, Ned Lamont, garnered enough support to force a primary and a summerlong debate on the war in Iraq.

Lieberman, 64, a three-term senator and his party's 2000 vice presidential nominee, defeated Lamont, 52, an anti-war candidate, on a 1,004 to 505 roll call ballot, the first step on what promises to be his most difficult re-election challenge.

In the midst of a midterm election against an unpopular majority, the Democrats are faced with a choice: Focus efforts on winning Congressional seats from vulnerable Republicans, or attack each other. Witness their decision.

Talk about a cliched sign of weakness.

I'll admit, there's a school of thought that says the Democratic power structure has proven inept and that maybe the best long-term solution is to pull down the existing framework and rebuild. That school of thought is naive. Politics is money, and nothing attracts money like fame. I don't care how many grass-roots idealists make PayPal donations; that sum will never outweigh the millions of dollars invested by people who want to have breakfast with a celebrity who can help them.

I understand the radicals' logic — that Senator Lieberman's votes have betrayed their values, that their primary objective should be sending a message of protest — but they're wrong. I'm a Republican, but foremost I'm an American and I care more about the good of our country than the victories of my party. The pendulum has swung too far, and we need the Democrat party to pull itself together and suit up.

The course of human civilization has turned on the quest to govern; and although we have invented more effective modes of government than democracy, we have found none more elevating. I firmly believe in adversarial politics, and I hesitate to suggest that Connecticut wouldn't benefit from a spirited campaign; but sometimes politics is war, and war requires triage. You have to pick your battles, and you have to recognize that small victories can sometimes preclude meaningful ones.

How To Sound Like a Candidate

2006-05-16T23:40:00.000-04:00

Last night, President Bush addressed the nation. Now, I'm an arrogant sonofabitch, but there are at least a dozen living speechwriters whose prose could blow mine out of the water so it's not arrogance when I tell you that President Bush's speechwriters are incompetent — and to demonstrate, I submit Exhibit A, excerpted from last night's speech about cracking down on illegal immigration.

I was the governor of a state that has a 12,000 mile border with Mexico. So I know how difficult it is to enforce the border, and how important it is.

You heard right. That's your second-term president citing his experience as governor of Texas to establish credibility.

Building Blocks

2006-05-15T02:24:00.000-04:00

Following cuts in state aid, many towns in Massachusetts are seeking budget overrides to offset projected deficits for 2007. Medway voters rejected a proposed $2.5 million override last month; and now, the Medway library will likely be closed.

These deficits have caused as contentious a debate as I've seen in local politics. There are valid complaints on both sides, from allegations of classism to criticisms that new residents move into town, hike taxes with frivolous spending, then leave. But for the moment, I'm not concerned with those arguments. Medway is going to close its library.

I'm a conservative. I believe in small government. But there are certain faculties that are absolutely necessary to the progress of a civilized society, and foremost among them is education — and public libraries are the best and only resource we have to provide for the abiding education of our citizens.

I don't have a solution. Medway's deficit is real, and the voters have decreed to solve it with budget cuts. Closing the library will result in a $280,000 savings. The school budget is likely to be cut by $542,000; so by comparison, maybe it's trivial to view the library's loss as a blow to education. And the library could be reopened next July, so I don't mean to imply that the sky is falling.

Still. It's sad to see a public library viewed as non-essential. I realize that many suburban voters eschew public libraries in favor of Amazon or Barnes & Noble, but there's much to be said for the value of unexercised freedoms. And in the case of a public library, the freedom at issue is the freedom to improve yourself — which is, at root, the American dream.

A man said, "You're the same person today as you'll be next year, except for two things — the people you'll meet and the books you'll read." The residents of Medway are going to lose one of those two opportunities for growth during the next year. That's a political tragedy.

Course Requirements

2006-05-11T23:24:00.000-04:00

Boston politicians are always clamoring about a half-dozen disputes from local suburbs, and one of the present topics is Joni Jay, principal at the Joseph Estabrook Elementary School in Lexington. Jay has decided that kindergarten students should be taught about homosexual families.

By all accounts, Jay is both respectful and professional. She obviously cares about her students, and she genuinely believes her decisions reflect their best interests. She told the Boston Globe, "It's not our intent to be on the forefront of one of the most controversial issues in the country" — and while that lacks a ring of credibility, I suspect it's probably true. She began this tack seven years ago; if she had been seeking a spotlight, she could have found one earlier.

Nevertheless, she's wrong.

Last week, National Geographic and Roper Public Affairs released a joint study assessing the geographic literacy of adults between the ages of 18 and 24 in the United States. They conducted 510 interviews which averaged 26.8 minutes apiece, and the results were disappointing. Here are some highlights.

88% could not locate Afghanistan.
63% could not locate Iraq.
70% could not locate North Korea.
74% believe that English (rather than Mandarin Chinese) is the most commonly spoken language in the world.
71% did not know that the United States is the world's largest exporter of goods and services.
Fewer than half could locate New York or Ohio on a map of the United States.

The reason that Jay is wrong has nothing to do with homosexuality — whether it's wrong, whether gays should be allowed to marry, whether they should be permitted to adopt. Jay is wrong because it's not her school's job to teach children what defines a family. Her job is to teach children to read, to write, to perform arithmetic and to understand history. Our schools aren't performing those jobs adequately — so why the hell are teachers spending time lecturing kindergarten students about families?

School is an important part of our children's education. It is part of that education, and just because our children should learn something doesn't necessarily mean they should learn it in school. We have a problem with teachers who believe that if something is important for children to know, then it's their job as teachers to impart that knowledge — and that may be well-intentioned, but it's arrogant and it's misguided and it's wrong.

Hypothetical

2006-05-07T20:05:00.000-04:00

The Rev. Fred Phelps, pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church and owner of GodHatesFags.com, has been encouraging his followers to protest the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq. According to FOX News, the church members stand across the street during burial services holding profane signs ("Thank God For Dead Soldiers") and screaming that the deceased will burn in Hell.

We all agree, these people are vermin. Few among us will shed a tear when Rev. Phelps passes away, and few among us would sob if these protestors were delivered a swift beating by the families of these deceased soldiers. And that's the context of the following hypothetical, which will serve as your final exam in Principles of Free Speech.

You're impaneled on a jury, charged with deciding the fate of a widow who grabbed a cemetery trowel and killed a man who was screaming obscenities during her husband's burial. The prosecution's case is indisputable and includes a video recording. But the widow refused to plead on principle, because she thinks she's right and she's betting a jury won't send her to prison; so the prosecutor was forced to press for the maximum, and now this widow's fate lies in your hands. She is 28, with two young children.

Now, her fate is your decision — whether to take this woman away from her children, whether to lock her away from fresh air and sunlight for 12 years. Do you convict or nullify?

It's easy to say that you'd defend a bigot's right to free speech. It's more difficult to imagine an instance where you would have to. But stand it up against the rule of law, and you've got yourself a fair fight.

Advice For Authors

2006-05-04T01:49:00.000-04:00

Continuing in the vein of informative blog posts, I would direct your attention to this gem, where a literary agent explains how to write a query letter.

No, this stuff is not obvious. It needs to be said, written, and repeated — and now it has, by an expert.

I have only one criticism: Your letter needs to specify whether your novel is finished. Many are. Most aren't. It makes a difference.

Ten Dollars

2006-05-03T23:17:00.000-04:00

My first job was working in a small market. In addition to the deli counter and a few aisles of groceries, we sold lottery tickets; and although Sundays were reliably slow, you could always count on selling scratch tickets.

I saw the same people every week. It was like a ritual. They would buy maybe $30 worth of tickets, which they carried to the coffee counter in the back of the store. They would come back a few minutes later, having won something (variably more or less than they had spent) — and they always traded their winnings for more scratch tickets. Then they would go back to the counter; and the process would repeat until their winnings were lost.

I've always remembered that. So when I won $10 on a scratch ticket that someone gave me last week, I traded it for cash. (The clerk looked stunned, as if she had never heard that request. She probably hadn't.)

I heard a statistic on the radio that has stuck with me: Americans' personal savings levels are presently at their lowest point since the Great Depression. With that in mind, let me share a remarkable blog post (three words I rarely juxtapose). Everyone always asks, "What's a good book to help with personal finance?" J.D. Roth has answered — not by recommending one, but by summarizing the bullet points from five.

Roth recently launched a blog devoted to personal finance tips. I'd suggest you bookmark it — but definitely read his original post. Think of it this way: These are five books that were chosen by editors and publishers from among hundreds of manuscripts, and millions of readers have since made all five bestsellers. Roth is giving you an opportunity to digest them in capsule form. It's worth a look.

Fallout

2006-05-02T21:43:00.000-04:00

I've received a few e-mails regarding my analysis of the Opal Mehta controversy. I like hearing from readers; and I appreciate the fact that you took the time not only to read my column, but to compose an e-mail to a stranger. While every e-mail was laudatory, several folks asked what I thought about the evidence against Viswanathan.

I chose to avoid commenting on the specific allegations for several reasons. First, I don't like speaking without having heard both sides; and notwithstanding Viswanathan's hastily prepared statement, I figured it was reasonable to allow her a couple days to form her response. Whatever she planned to say, whether it was confession or denial, it would carry legal and financial consequences for several companies, and thus I assumed her statement would be reviewed by executives and lawyers before she talked to Larry King. That's not an unreasonable allowance.

Second, I haven't read either book. And while the excerpts do seem to speak for themselves, I'm hesitant to excoriate someone based on secondhand research. I like to do my own homework — and in this case, I had absolutely no intention of slogging through two mediocre chick-lit novels in order to opine intelligently on a plagiarism scandal. So aside from my media analysis, I was content to let this one pass me by.

I can't deny it's an interesting story. As of this writing, Viswanathan's publisher has pulled the book from shelves and DreamWorks has halted production of the film. Considerable time and money were invested into both; and after the blame has landed somewhere, a lot of executives are going to want some assurance that this won't happen again. Obviously, any editor who hadn't read (and memorized) McCafferty's book wouldn't have recognized the similarities; but in an era where any discussion of plagiarism inevitably includes the word "Google," eventually someone's going to demand a solution to that problem.

What's ironic is that the solution will probably resemble Google's proposed massive digitized library — a proposal which, when announced, was fiercely condemned by nearly every major publisher.

But there's a third reason that I limited my comments. Sometimes you avoid a fishin' hole not because it ain't stocked, but because you'd rather not associate with the folks who frequent it. I have no problem denouncing plagiarists; I think a thief is worse than an incompetent, and I think convicted plagiarists should be forever banned from professional writing.

However, in deciding whether to climb onto any given bandwagon, you have to look at who else is aboard. I'm not writing for the lowest common denominator, here. I didn't pounce onto Viswanathan for the same reason I didn't castigate Ben Domenech: I looked around the landscape, and I didn't like the company.

Invasion

2006-05-01T03:29:00.000-04:00

Today has been dubbed, "A Day Without Immigrants." Thousands of advocates for illegal immigrants around the country have rallied their supporters to boycott work and school in an attempt to show Americans — real Americans — that illegal immigrants are a formidable presence in our society. This rally is intended to punish us. I say, "Good riddance."

These advocates would have us believe that illegal immigrants are hard-working people who simply want to achieve a better life. That may be true, but it's not the whole picture.

Imagine that you have a cup of cold water beside a bowl of hot water, and you want to raise the temperature of the cold water. You can use the stove — or you can just empty the cup into the bowl, which results in lukewarm water. That's the Mexican solution: Rather than build their own wealth, they prefer the shortcut of leeching off ours. Our wealth is reduced — but hey, what do they care? They're not cold anymore.

Immigrants are the backbone of America. We cannot thrive without them, nor should we want to. Frankly, they tend to work harder than native-born Americans; and their ambition reminds us of what we're trying to achieve with this nation. When folks from every hemisphere aspire to "The American Dream," you know you're part of something special.

But when a foreign country demands you open your southern border — a foreign country whose economy is propped up by your investments, a country whose own southern border is strictly patrolled with violators subject to two-year imprisonment — we're no longer talking about immigration. This is invasion. And today's protest is nothing short of organized crime.

Ascent

2006-04-30T23:41:00.000-04:00

I nailed a 169 on my fourth LSAT practice test, yesterday. In the interest of full disclosure, I had given myself the previous night off, since a friend was playing a show and I hadn't been out in several weeks. I probably should have gone to bed earlier and without popping a Benadryl — but hey, I scored 169, one point below my ultimate goal, and I've still got six weeks to shed.

I felt like I fell apart on the Logic Games; but I only missed 5 questions out of 22, so apparently I did better than I'd thought. Overall, I missed 13 questions out of 100, leaving plenty of room for improvement. On the other hand, at least I've made significant progress and the countless hours spent with my hand cramped around a pencil don't quite feel wasted.

You may have noticed the StatCounter icon inside the right column. Occasionally, I glance through the referrer logs to see how people end up reading this page, and I've noticed more than a few brought here by Googling for the same phrase: "How to beat the LSAT." I'll probably write at least one column after finishing the Kaplan course, reviewing the experience for others who are considering whether to invest the exorbitant amount of money required; but in the meantime, for you Google stragglers, let me say this: There are tips, and tricks, and techniques. But it's damn hard work.

Free Lunch

2006-04-26T22:22:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was my birthday. My dad drove down from New Hampshire, and we had lunch at a local pizzeria. The owner is a friend of mine, and he overheard my dad mention my birthday. We had already paid for our sandwiches, but he insisted, "Come back tomorrow. Lunch will be on me!"

I'm not crazy about accepting favors. But sometimes, friendship is about letting someone do something nice. So today, I got a free lunch.

Ordnance Tactics

2006-04-24T21:53:00.000-04:00

Kerrie has been reading a book by Harvard student Kaavya Viswanathan titled How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life. She got an advance copy of the uncorrected proof, which the accompanying ad copy describes as "a lively and irresistible first novel about an overachieving teenage girl who discovers that in order to get into the college of her dreams she has to learn some wildly unexpected lessons." Kerrie loves it.

Today, its author was accused of plagiarism.

Viswanathan is accused of lifting at least a half-dozen passages from Megan McCafferty's novel Sloppy Firsts, published by Random House in 2001. McCafferty's agent says a fan notified McCafferty of the similarities in an e-mail sent April 11. Yesterday, lawyers for Random House hand-delivered a letter to Viswanathan's publisher, Little Brown.

Less than 12 hours later, the Harvard Crimson broke the story on its website with a researched article and comparative selections from both books. The article also included a telephone comment from Viswanathan, whom the Crimson had contacted on Saturday, several hours before Random House's letter was delivered. The story also appeared on the front page of Monday's Boston Globe in a thoroughly researched article that included background on both authors and commentary from a local publisher, all of which was prepared prior to the Globe's deadline on Sunday night.

Obviously, someone leaked this story. But both newspapers deliberately held their articles until after Random House delivered its letter on Sunday. If the Globe had been notified by the same fan who e-mailed McCafferty, they wouldn't have let the Crimson scoop the story. This was a courtesy exchanged for a tip, and any reasonable observer concludes that Random House planted these stories.

I point this out because it's serious hardball. I don't condone plagiarism — but planting the story in a 19-year-old sophomore's college newspaper? That's not a tactic you often see employed by a book publisher. I'm not saying it was wrong, and I'm not saying I wouldn't have done the same if I worked for Random House public relations. But this is a rare display of brutality from a book publisher — the same publisher that got burned by James Frey just four months ago — and it's worth taking note.

Of Time and Place

2006-04-23T23:28:00.000-04:00

Last week, the CIA fired a 61-year-old senior intelligence officer who stands accused of leaking classified information to reporters. The ethics is a delicate scale to balance: On one hand, CIA cannot function if its senior officers divulge classified information to reporters; but on the other hand, it seems that CIA was, in fact, breaking international law, and it's difficult to condemn anyone for speaking out.

The officer has been described as a bureaucrat, someone lacking field experience who feels most comfortable working "downtown" in Washington. She has been attending law school in anticipation of retirement from the agency. The real question is, How did someone fitting this profile come to be trusted with operational intelligence?

Spying is cold business. You can't supervise spies or restrict them with policy. You can either send them into the field, trusting in their judgment, or you can have a broken spy program. It's a business that doesn't permit oversight. It only works if the left hand doesn't ask what the right hand is doing.

I'm not saying that senior analysts should suppress knowledge of illegal activities. I'm saying that information should never cross their desks. CIA needs to stop pretending it's the Department of State. You can't have a polite Rottweiler, and you shouldn't try. Either let him off the chain, or buy a terrier.

Direction

2006-04-21T23:58:00.000-04:00

It's been a difficult week. I'm hoping for good news next week regarding a project I've been working on for about a month, but in the meantime I'm trying to catch up after missing last week's LSAT class to attend the wedding. Plus I'm trying to land a gig for the summer, something that would prove good experience and that might translate into a letter of recommendation.

You learn to recognize certain feelings. Like sensing when a storm is coming, there are signs and there's a certain tension when your life is about to shift gears. Either you're about to have a breakaway lap or you'll crash into the rail.

But I'm optimistic. I've been around the track enough times to know there'll be another lap, regardless; and frankly, luck's been on my side. They say that chance favors the prepared and that fortune favors the bold, so I've made a habit of being both and it's worked. I'm hoping to continue the streak — but like I say, it's been a difficult week.

I was lost in the woods, once. I was walking with a friend and we were immersed in conversation, and somehow we lost the path. It never occurred to me to panic, though, because I knew we weren't far from civilization and that if we picked a direction and just walked, we would eventually stumble across a road. We ended up on a highway several miles away from my car, but I was right and we got home safely.

That's how I feel right now. I'm not sure exactly where I stand, and I don't know quite which way to walk; but I know where I need to be, and I know that I can figure out how to get myself there. And although I'll confess moments of frustration, despair is nowhere in sight — and that's reassuring.

Missed Opportunity

2006-04-20T23:54:00.000-04:00

Dave Liebman just released a new album with Steve Swallow and Adam Nussbaum on Challenge Records. It's been listed on the label's website since January; but you can't buy it from Challenge, because they discontinued online sales when they relaunched their website last year. Until last week, you couldn't buy it anywhere except Europe.

In February, I e-mailed Liebman. He sells CDs directly through his website, so I asked whether he had this one available. He didn't; but he forwarded my note to Challenge's producer, Hein Van de Geyn, whose response read, "USA release always runs several months after the European release." Liebman added, "Give it some time."

I was prepared to buy a copy. I would have paid postage from Europe. I knew it would eventually show up on Amazon, but I was eager and impatient. If Challenge had offered a way for me to buy the CD in January, I would have paid.

But when the CD debuted on Amazon last week for $16.98, I didn't buy a copy — because last month, a friend gave me an advance copy he had received. Challenge lost my sale because they made it difficult for me to buy their product. This happens all the time in jazz, and I'm sick of it. With all due respect, Mr. Van de Geyn: Get your act together.

Hallmark Flashback

2006-04-19T22:27:00.000-04:00

My sister sent me this birthday card.

So, anyway, I'm standing in line to buy you a freakin' birthday card and the line is like seventeen billion people long 'cause the only thing the dumb teenage boy at the register is thinking about is the dumb teenage girl at the other register, and some dumb lady is turning her purse inside out to come up with "exact change," like she's gonna win some kind of "exact change trophy" or something, and some idiot starts up with his "This item was marked with the sale price" crap, and I just really hope you like this card...

[inside cover]

'Cause I stole it.

Having spent considerable time in retail, this gave me a chuckle because I've stood at the other end of that line; and although I've never stolen anything in my life, I did something that came close, once — and thus my sister's birthday card brings me to True Confessions of a Retail Clerk.

It was a Saturday afternoon, and I had been working in the café at Barnes & Noble for about two weeks. After you learn some of the drinks, they start you on the register. This is tricky for two reasons. First, if you haven't memorized each drink by key code, you have to select them from a scrolling menu. And like drinks aren't grouped together. Small, medium, and large sizes don't appear one below the other like you'd expect. The large macchiato might be on the second or third page, after a bunch of unrelated drinks, sandwiched between the medium and large espressos, and you have to scroll down to find it. It ain't intuitive.

The second reason are the books. When I sold CDs, a bar code was a bar code was a bar code, and it was called a Universal Product Code (UPC) for a reason: There's only one. Some books have as many as three. The trick is that your scanner will only read one of them — and although you learn to find the one that says "ISBN," that doesn't always work.

So I was a new hire working the register in the middle of a busy, understaffed Saturday afternoon and I had a line that sprawled out the café entrance into the store. I'd been working the register for about three hours when along comes a woman who, in addition to her large food order, wants to buy a stack of books. Most of them were no problem: romance novels and mass market paperbacks that were easy to scan. But she also had a bunch of oversized children's books, each of which had at least three different bar codes, and I just couldn't get any of them to scan. The store was packed and the customers were restless, so I took my two weeks' experience and made an executive decision: I grabbed her books and stuck them into her bag. "Here you go. Free books."

Barnes & Noble corporate would have said I took the easy way out. But I spent three years as a retail manager, and I know the job better than any middle-manager corporate suit. Their first mistake is what I've just described: They set up a complicated cashwrap system that prioritizes tracking inventory rather than expediting customers' checkout. Jeffrey Gitomer says, "High-level people want to make a profit. Low-level people insist on saving money." Bingo. Store policies are determined by low-level people.

So what's a register jockey to do? You've got two choices: Expedite the problem customer ("flush the drain"), or risk losing the sales that are lined up behind her. She's buying a bunch of children's books with incredibly low profit margins, and everyone else in line wants to pay $3 for a cup of coffee. No contest. Plus, you earn the added benefit of goodwill: Instead of driving away a horde of angry customers, you've made a woman happy by showing her that you value customer service. Everyone wins.

Barnes & Noble gave me a nametag and assigned me the responsibility for checking out sales, and in that capacity I made a judgment call. I was right, and I'd do it again. But it's the closest I've ever come to theft. And I doubt Barnes & Noble would approve.

The Quality of Character

2006-04-18T00:40:00.000-04:00

My favorite Internet author, Melissa Lafsky, has been dealing with the aftermath of revealing her identity to thousands of readers in January after achieving fame as an anonymous blogger. One facet has been a new torrent of hate mail. Of course, it's all anonymous.

Last year, Lafsky had a lucrative job at a top Manhattan law firm. She resigned before revealing her blogging identity in a New York Observer article. She's hoping to succeed as a writer — and she'd better, because no firm is likely to hire her now. It was a gutsy move. They say, if you're going to do something, then commit yourself; if you're going to walk into walls, do it running. She did.

Her courage was met with hate mail from cowards. "You're a failure," they write. "You're going to fail." None of them sign their names.

I have to admit, I probably won't read her book. It's unlikely to match my reading habits; and anyway, someone who's been offering her product free faces a unique hurdle when she wants to begin charging for it. But I admire what she's doing, what it takes — and it puts her character into stark relief when she begins receiving profanity from anonymous cowards.

Heartbreak Hill

2006-04-17T17:55:00.000-04:00

I find it difficult to discuss marriage without considering divorce. With the wedding approaching last week, I felt it was inappropriate to discuss that aspect; but now that the wedding is past, I'll say what I've been thinking for the past few weeks: Marriage requires defiance.

Cynics insist that monogamy is an unnatural state, that man tends toward promiscuity and that his tendency is reinforced by our society's emphasis and attitude toward sex. I agree. Notwithstanding Biblical pronouncement, marriage is an unnatural state. But so is a skyscraper. Marriage is an achievement.

It's no wonder that divorce is so prevalent in our society. Divorce is a function of entropy. Despite what we tell ourselves in wedding vows and Hallmark cards, we aren't really expected to stay married forever. Last month, New York Magazine reported that the number of young couples planning to sign prenuptial agreements has more than tripled in the past three years. These days, your average marriage ceremony comes with an asterisk — "till death do us part" is pure sentiment.

I've written elsewhere that a successful marriage requires personal motivation. It has to be more than, "I love her." This might sound cold, but there has to be an element of yourself that genuinely wants to be married — irrespective of your spouse. And to that, I'll add another element: You have to possess a measure of personal defiance. You need to acknowledge the myriad forces, biological and cultural, pulling your marriage toward the rocks; and you need to be one of those people who feels impelled by that dare.

Dr. Phil is famous for asking his guests, "Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?" Any marathon runner will tell you that pain is impossible to avoid, that you have to run through it. With respect to Dr. Phil, I think a successful marriage sometimes requires two people who would rather win than be happy.

Hypocrisy

2006-04-16T22:08:00.000-04:00

The Vatican chose to celebrate Easter by condemning Dan Brown and asking that Sony attach a disclaimer to The Da Vinci Code. My favorite comment came from Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa during his Good Friday homily delivered in the presence of Pope Benedict XVI inside St. Peter's Basilica. Cantalamessa said, "Christ is still sold — but not any more for 30 coins, but to publishers and booksellers for billions of coins."

I love that. During the past few years, the Boston archdiocese has been the epicenter of the Roman Catholic Church's worst nightmare — the sex abuse scandal. In addition to the massive blows suffered in public relations, lawsuit settlements have drained the church coffers beyond its ability to sustain. So how did these wise and gentle leaders, these Christians, choose to solve their financial crisis? They closed churches.

They reassigned the priests and locked the doors. In some cases, parishioners tried to organize protests and sit-ins. They were families who had spent four generations worshipping inside these churches. They were told that they didn't own the buildings. They were told, "Tough luck."

You drive past some of these suburban churches, and they look like palaces. They're outfitted with beautiful masonry and lush landscaping and they're adorned with enough polished gold to blind geese. Did the archdiocese ask its most generous (read: wealthy) worshippers to sacrifice a bit of their opulence for the benefit of their less fortunate brethren? Of course not. They picked a couple dozen low-income parishes and locked the doors.

And the Vatican wants to look down its nose at Dan Brown, accusing him of using Christ to make a buck? What a joke. The word you're looking for, Reverend Cantalamessa? "Projection."

Felicitations

2006-04-15T11:47:00.000-04:00

I spent today at a wedding. For two of my friends, it genuinely seemed to be the happiest day of their lives. Marriage carries with it a host of connotations and consequences, but for one day it was wonderful to watch two people simply enjoy each other. There was nary a moment of tension or discomfort, and nothing went wrong. In fact, the day went perfectly. It was, in a word, "nice."

Congratulations, Adam and Jaime.

Rubber Hoses

2006-04-13T23:15:00.000-04:00

Last weekend on 60 Minutes, Scott Pelley interviewed Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer, who stands charged with the murder of Iraqi major general Abid Hamed Mowhoush during the search for Saddam Hussein in 2003. When the Army captured Mowhoush, a soldier with close ties to Saddam who might know the Iraqi dictator's location, his interrogation was assigned to Welshofer. He spent three days questioning Mowhoush, and he got nothing. Then he tried a different tactic.

He remembered that years before, in an approved training exercise, he helped stuff American soldiers into oil drums to induce claustrophobia and panic. The idea was to teach our soldiers for what could happen if they were captured. In Iraq, Welshofer did much the same thing, this time, with a sleeping bag.

Prior to implementing this tactic, Welshofer asked permission from his commanding officer, Major Jessica Voss. She approved it. After 30 minutes, Mowhoush was dead.

Welshofer was issued a letter of reprimand from the Army and the case was closed. But three months later, the press published photographs from Abu Ghraib and the world exploded. Although Welshofer's base was miles away from Abu Ghraib, the Army promptly re-opened his case and charged him with murder.

60 Minutes interviewed Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez, who serves on the House Armed Services Committee. Sanchez is outraged by Mowhoush's death, and she's demanding answers and accountability from the Department of Defense. She seemed to agree that Welshofer is being made a scapegoat, pointing to an e-mail in which Welshofer and his comrades were specifically instructed to take off the gloves. "We want these individuals broken," the e-mail read.

At one point, the Army's official rules governing interrogation were revised and reissued thrice in 30 days. Welshofer and his soldiers were on the receiving end of a dizzying barrage of conflicting directives, and it's amazing that Welshofer showed the professionalism and integrity to consult with his commanding officer before employing a non-standard interrogation technique. Regardless, Sanchez is furious, and she's determined that someone will answer for Mowhoush's murder.

I'm furious, too. But I could give a damn about what Welshofer did. I'm more concerned by something else.

Two days before he died, Gen. Mowhoush was visited by a team from U.S. Army Special Forces and the CIA, men who came equipped with rubber hoses. When the general continued to insist he knew nothing, Welshofer watched the session turn violent.

Until his sleeping bag stunt, Welshofer says the worst he did was to slap Mowhoush once. That doesn't surprise me. We drown these guys in policies and guidelines; we ask them to stand on the front lines and then we threaten them with jail if they break our rules of etiquette. But I maintained faith that in back rooms, the unnamed soldiers of Special Forces were doing what's necessary to get intelligence from these captives.

The pictures from Abu Ghraib were embarrassing — not because they broke the Geneva Conventions, but because they showed teenagers screwing around rather than soldiers manhandling detainees. It was humiliation without purpose. It was spring break for vandals. I hoped that somewhere, someone was crossing the lines that needed to be crossed, not simply for sake of amusement but to achieve real strategic objectives. And it turns out that's not the case. When they show up, they honestly do show up with rubber hoses.

Let me tell you. The first thing you do, if you're Special Forces, you close the door. Welshofer doesn't get to stay. He doesn't get to watch. He's probably a nice guy and he's probably a good soldier, but there's a reason you have Special Forces and it isn't because they look good on TV. They belong behind closed doors.

Then you bring in another Iraqi, some prisoner who means nothing. You stand him in front of Mowhoush and you take your pistol and you shoot him in the head. Now you've established clarity. Mowhoush understands you're not bluffing, that he's either going to leave his life or he's going to leave the information in that room. And if he doesn't start talking, then you take out your knife and you start with his thumb.

We're capturing men who have lived under the yoke of Saddam Hussein, for Christ's sake, and we think we can break these men with sleep deprivation and tricky questions. In Saddam's army, if you didn't cooperate, you bled. We're crumbcake to these guys. We're cheese Danish, and our prisoners are being blown up and decapitated. But we still want to believe in the myth of polite warfare. I had hoped that while the liberals ran the protocol in Congress, that overseas, a different story was taking shape — that hard men were protecting our troops at any cost. It turns out that's not the case. And we're losing.

Opening Day

2006-04-11T20:29:00.000-04:00

Today was Opening Day at Fenway Park. The Globe just published a feature about the nonbelievers, Bostonians who remain immune to Red Sox fever, and I have to confess that I stand among them. Baseball? I could give a damn.

First, there are too many games. Every MLB team plays 162 games, not counting the postseason. In the NFL, teams play 16 games and every one counts. On one hand, you can argue that baseball players have to work harder; but for the fans, it's more difficult to care about the outcome of any individual game. The stakes simply aren't as high.

Individual teams play each other too often, also. The Red Sox have a famous rivalry with the New York Yankees — a grudge that should be even hotter this year, following Johnny Damon's defection. But this year, the Sox and the Yankees are scheduled to play 19 games in 6 different meetings. It's a rivalry without a showdown. Hardly the anticipation created by the annual Army-Navy game.

Even the weekly schedules are redundant. When two teams meet, they play between 2 and 4 games over a couple days. So your team wins on Monday, and my team wins on Tuesday. Where's the sport? If they're just going to play again tomorrow, who cares what happens tonight?

And there's the nature of the game itself. The term "perfect game" refers to one where a pitcher manages to pitch for nine innings without a single player reaching first base. The implication, obviously, is that outfielders exist just in case. Each game is advertised like a boxing match, pitcher versus pitcher. Played at its highest level, it's not really a team sport.

But my favorite aspect is the price. Ignoring the cost of tickets, which has become obscene, a hot dog will cost you $4. If you want a beer, that's another $7. Parking runs from $40–60, with one lot promising to charge $90 this year. Tell me again how this is the game of the red-blooded, blue-collar American.

I watched the 2004 World Series. When you live in Boston, the postseason fever can be contagious. The team hadn't won a championship in 86 years, so there was actually something at stake. But that was the last week of October. The preceding six months? Inconsequential.

I'd like to care. I really would. It's an American institution; and honestly, most of the ways in which it's been screwed up have nothing to do with the spirit of the game. But the product being pitched by MLB and broadcast on television simply isn't interesting. It isn't engaging. It's replete with redundancy and anticlimax. And I could give a damn.

Sliding Scale

2006-04-07T12:04:00.000-04:00

Predicting your score on the LSAT is kind of like predicting tomorrow's weather. You can see a warm front advancing and you know it will probably rain, but there are just too many variables and you can't be certain. The LSAT poses the same problem.

The questions change, and a different number of students take each test.
As a result, each test's scaling changes.
As a result, the corresponding percentiles change.

In three tests, I've scored within a four-point range. If I took the test for real tomorrow, it's reasonable to figure I would place within that range — but it could also be two or three points outside, which would widen the percentile possibilities to anywhere from 83–96%.

If I can narrow and lift my score just a few points into a predictable 168–170, that should translate to a percentile range between 97–98%. That's the difference between a 13-point range versus one single point's gamble — and when you're facing a three-year investment that's going to sink you into a short lifetime of debt, and since high scores can translate to lower tuition, that can be all the difference in the world.

If you're wondering why I've been anxiously sweating a few measly points, or if you're a friend wondering why I seem to have disappeared from the face of the planet lately, that's the answer. I've got a three-hour window to score $100,000. I'm basically planning a heist, and it requires homework.

Snake Oil

2006-04-06T20:25:00.000-04:00

The price of gold broke $600 per ounce today. It's the highest price in 25 years, and analysts agree that it's purely the result of artificial inflation by speculative buyers. On a completely unrelated note, Bill O'Reilly's radio broadcast is sponsored heavily by a commercial gold exchange.

When I first heard the ad spot, I laughed. It followed an advertisement for a diet pill and preceded one for a start-your-own-business scheme. Liberals and conservatives can bicker all day about the intellect of O'Reilly's listeners, but the surest way to measure an audience's demographic is to survey its advertisers. Which companies choose to invest in airtime — are they selling substantive products and services, or are they scams looking for suckers?

The gold exchange's pitch is simple: Buy from us now, and we'll guarantee to buy back your gold at current market value anytime, anywhere. My response is equally simple: I don't understand how they can make a profit with that business plan — and if I don't understand how you're making a profit, then I assume one of two things: (1) You're hiding something; or (2) Your business plan sucks, and you'll be bankrupt by the time I want my money back.

Apparently I'm alone in my skepticism. I listen once or twice a week and I still hear the ads, and they wouldn't still be spending the money if they weren't getting a return. Moreover, the analysts say it's working: If you read between the lines of the economic jargon, most of this afternoon's business reports are saying the gold market has been flooded with ignorant, uninformed investors.

According to a report published earlier this year, personal saving levels are at their lowest levels since the Great Depression. That's staggering. It's absolutely staggering. We're addicted to credit. Our money is spent before the work week begins. We're a nation living on borrowed time — and amazingly, still, we're chomping at the bit to buy snake oil.

You Heard It Here First

2006-04-05T19:17:00.000-04:00

Katie Couric announced this morning that she will leave the Today show when her contract concludes next month. She's moving to CBS where, beginning in September, she will serve as anchor and managing editor of The CBS Evening News With Katie Couric. She will also contribute as a correspondent on 60 Minutes.

The CBS Evening News has consistently placed last among network news. And notwithstanding Elizabeth Vargas's current situation at ABC, where co-anchor Bob Woodruff has been sidelined for two months, Couric will be the first woman to anchor an evening news program by herself. Most critics and columnists are focused on these two facts. The resulting discussion has been fairly trite: whether "Katie" will become "Katherine," whether her bubbly persona will disappear, whether a woman anchor can boost CBS's ratings.

Let me offer counterpoint with one observation: CBS hasn't yet named an executive producer to Couric's newscast.

Evening news is on its way out. No one, absolutely no one in television believes otherwise. I saw Larry King talking with Dan Rather a few weeks ago, discussing this very subject. King asked Rather, "Do you watch the evening news?" Rather admitted, "Not very often." Rather asked King the same question, and King laughed. "Not very often," King agreed.

It's the most antiquated facet of television. The Internet and 24-hour cable news have rendered it absolutely obsolete. There's only one reason all three networks keep it alive, and that's perception: No one wants to be the first to dump it. Evening news still commands sentiment and prestige, and whoever blinks first will look cheap. Make no mistake: As soon as it becomes feasible, all three networks will kill evening news.

So consider what's happening. CBS is investing heavily in a brand. Katie Couric is a known entity, and her rapport with both guests and viewers is a valuable commodity. She's not going to become "Katherine," and CBS won't ask her to change. Evening news has long been the province of Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, and Peter Jennings, and there's no question that Couric brings something different. That's deliberate. In signing Couric — and next, in choosing an executive producer — CBS is planning to set a new direction for evening news. They're not looking for a short-term ratings boost. They want out, and this is the beginning of the end.

Restaurant Review: Carl's Steak Subs

2006-04-04T01:13:00.000-04:00

Carl's Steak Subs
55 Prospect Street
Waltham, MA 02453
(781) 893-9313

If you've watched The Phantom Gourmet, then you've probably seen Carl's. Dan and Dave Andelman, the brothers who host the show, love to shill their favorite restaurants, and Carl's frequently makes that list. It's kind of odd, because Phantom is a restaurant show and Carl's is a sub shop offering take-out only. There are a few tables outside, but inside you're trapped standing between the cash register and a refrigerator case; if there are more than five people waiting for orders, you're going to be squished.

Waltham is a 40-minute drive for me, which is ridiculous for a steak sub; but I'm a die-hard and I had to know. So I made the trek for the first time last year, and I've been nursing a jones ever since. The hook is that their steak isn't exactly "shaved"; it's more like "stringed" steak, about the width of heavy twine. Traditional shaved steak is easy to overcook because it's thin, and these guys figured out a way to dice it for the grill without sacrificing dimension. It's just thick enough to stay moist and retain its flavor. I suppose it won't earn anybody a Nobel prize; but they managed to fix a recipe that wasn't quite broken, and that's gotta be worth something.

Quality: Perfect. I'm telling you, these guys redefined the steak sandwich. It's like you spend your whole life eating Hershey bars, then someone feeds you a Scharffen Berger and suddenly Hershey's chocolate tastes like waxy sugar. Eat this sandwich, and you'll never look at another steak sub the same way.

Value: A small steak sub with cheese and peppers costs $6.10 — if you want to add toppings, you work your way up by nickels and dimes. Whatever you want, you'll eat lunch for about 7 bucks. And these guys don't skimp: Your roll will be absolutely packed, overflowing. Don't even think about ordering a large.

Hospitality: It's kind of ridiculous to discuss hospitality at a take-out sub shop, but I'll say that Carl's isn't going to win points for atmosphere. The inside is cramped standing-room only, and the outside is what you'd expect from a side street in a poor, industrial city. To be fair, I have to add that the service can be gruff. They're always bustling and you may not get a "Thank you," but the flip side is that I probably wouldn't be recommending any sub shop for its pleasant service. What Carl's lacks in style, they make up in substance.

Tweaked

2006-04-03T23:43:00.000-04:00

You may notice that I've removed Michelle Malkin's blog from the sidebar. Malkin is a good writer but her website sucks lately. She's not really writing; most of her content is just blockquoted from various sources, incessantly pinging the same couple stories. (Muslim cartoons, immigration, Cynthia McKinney. Lather, rinse, repeat.) In short, it's dull and it's cheap, and I'm done with it until she finds something better.

If I find something worthwhile, I'll add it. In the meantime, check out Chris Warner's link. Scroll down to his entry dated Wednesday, February 15 and read his apology — then go back and read it again, skipping every other line. Genius like that deserves to be stolen.

Practice LSAT #3

2006-04-02T23:49:00.000-04:00

I scored 165.

I've completed one-third of the Kaplan class. They tell you not to expect real improvement until you move from Mastery into Endurance and Pacing. They tell you the boost comes later in the class, and the average student improves his score by 7 points.

Still. I've had enough experience, both as a college student and as an American, to know that the "average student" probably doesn't invest much time outside class each week. There are certain requirements for Kaplan's Higher Score Guarantee — call them a bare minimum — and then there's an absolute mountain of work above and beyond, and I've been completing every lick of it. I was hoping for 168; and Kaplan's prescriptions notwithstanding, I'm disappointed I didn't nail it.

My "realistic" goal for June was 170. Obviously, there's perennial hope for 180, but I figured 170 was reasonable and attainable. I still do. But I was hoping to progress faster; and since I haven't, I'm left with only two options: Adjust my expectations, or push twice as hard.

Guess which I've chosen.

You Must Be Joking

2006-04-01T00:04:00.000-05:00

In honor of April Fool's Day, here's a story from this week's Boston Globe so absurd and so incredibly, offensively stupid that you'll be certain it's a prank. It's not.

Two teenage girls face child pornography charges after posting sexually explicit photographs of themselves on the Internet.

That's right. Photographs of themselves.

If convicted, these girls will spend the rest of their lives branded as Registered Sex Offenders — for posting photographs of themselves on MySpace. Everyone involved with this case should be fired: The police officer who reported the photographs, the district attorneys who filed charges, and the judges who presided over the girls' respective arraignments. We're spending tax dollars to jail, prosecute, and possibly imprison two girls whose lives are about to be ruined because they posted photographs of themselves on the Internet.

What the fuck.

Reconquista

2006-03-31T12:18:00.000-05:00

We should go to war with Mexico.

No, I'm not kidding. But you'll notice I didn't say we should declare war on Mexico, and that's because I think a declaration would be moot. Consider a few facts.

A recent poll found that 78% of Americans see Mexicans as hard-working. Only 18% thought Mexicans were racist. But when Mexicans were polled, 74% said Americans were lazy, 84% said Americans were dishonest, 83% said Americans were intolerant — and clearly lacking any sense of irony, a whopping 73% further said that Americans were racist.

If you've seen footage of last week's rallies across the country, you know these people aren't interested in becoming Americans. They fly the Mexican flag and brandish signs reading, "This is stolen land," and "If you think I'm illegal, learn the true history because I'm in my homeland." Among Mexicans, 60% believe the American Southwest rightfully belongs to Mexico. Make no mistake: These people are clearly disputing the Treaty of 1848 and the end of the Mexican-American War.

And they are encouraged by Mexican authorities. The Mexican government publishes an illustrated book titled Guía del Migrante Mexicano explaining how to safely cross into the US undetected and how to avoid discovery while in our country. Mexican authorities distribute maps that show where to find water, sanctuary, and medical supplies. The Mexican president has spoken in favor of these "migrants," and he has assigned a police group called Grupo Beta to protect immigrants during border crossings. In the past year, gunfire has erupted several times between these Mexican police and US Border Patrol.

That sounds like an invasion to me. It sounds like a declaration of war. And if you disagree, replace Mexico with North Korea and pose the question again. Their leaders are helping them sneak into our country illegally, and their soldiers are firing on our police. Once here, they fly their nation's flag and claim our land as their own. If these actions were being taken by North Korea, would we hesitate to carpet-bomb Pyongyang?

By any reasonable standard, Mexico has engaged war on the United States. We can argue whether we were justified invading Iraq, but certainly we're justified repelling foreign invaders. The only thing that keeps this issue from exploding is politicians' fear of being labeled racist. Let's remember that the only people talking about race in this discussion are the Mexicans — those same Mexicans who overwhelmingly say that Americans are lazy, dishonest, and intolerant.

No country on the planet has a policy of allowing anyone to enter without documentation. No country provides illegal immigrants with welfare, health care, and privileged access to public education. These are the policies Mexicans expect the US to adopt, policies which are held by absolutely no other country on the planet including — wait for it — Mexico.

The Mexicans call it "Aztlán," the quest to reconquer the American Southwest. That's right: They even have a name for it. It's no secret. They believe our land is theirs, and they are determined to take it by force or through sheer numbers. And this campaign is actively supported by the Mexican government. By any reasonable standard, this is a declaration of war between nations.

We should attack.

The Perfect Hamburger

2006-03-30T23:34:00.000-05:00

Today brought the season's first grilling weather, so I assembled the Weber "Smokey Joe" ($29) and made my famous burgers for dinner. This is simple food that relies on the fundamental rule of American cooking:

Meat + Fire = Tasty

It's an easy recipe. Allow a half-pound of meat for each burger. Mix it with salt, ground black pepper, freshly chopped onion, and some crushed red pepper. Form the patties about an inch thick, and pat each side with more black pepper and olive oil. Grill them about two inches off the coals, and flip every 60 seconds. That's it.*

What makes the difference are the chopped onion and the red pepper. And be sure to flip them every minute: You won't get that perfect criss-cross pattern, but if you care more about how your food looks than how it tastes then my recipes aren't for you.

* You can't predict cooking time for outdoor grilling. There are too many variables — temperature, humidity, wind, atmospheric pressure. You have to learn to judge from experience.

Critical Thinking

2006-03-29T00:06:00.000-05:00

Speaking of restaurant reviews, I think it's worth revisiting this gem from a Nashua newspaper. I've kept it because it's possibly the worst review I've ever read, and the best example of why many are bad.

Michael Timothy's, 212 Main St., Nashua; 595-9334. This is it, the Nashua restaurant where more people have eaten the best meal of their lives than any other. Chef/owners Michael and Sarah Buckley continue to pack them in for some of the finest food and service anywhere in southern New Hampshire. If you can't find a parking space on Main Street, this is the main reason why.

Translation: "Michael Timothy's is good."

Now contrast that with some alternatives the author might have written.

Michael Timothy's is an Italian bistro.
Michael Timothy's is a sushi bar.
Michael Timothy's is a greasy-spoon diner.

Read the review again. Do you know anything about Michael Timothy's, other than it's popular? Do you know what sort of cuisine they prepare, or whether they serve wine? Do you have a sense of the atmosphere, whether you'll look foolish wearing a suit or whether you'll be turned away for wearing dungarees? Do you know whether they serve lunch, dinner, or both?

I often criticize bad writing, but that's not the problem here. The author seems to know how to put together a sentence, so kudos to Hippo Press for hiring a literate writer. But he fails the test for critical thinking. Every putz who walks out of a restaurant knows whether or not he liked his meal. If you're going to write about it, you need to take the next step: Why did you like your meal? Tell us what you had and why it was good. Tell us about the service. Tell us how much you paid. When I'm finished reading, I should have some idea what I might experience at that restaurant and whether it's for me.

The last sentence (about parking on Main Street) is also key. Having been a writer for more than a couple years, I recognize exactly what I'm looking at when I reach that sentence: He's trying to fill space, and he's trying to sound clever. Neither is a laudable goal. If he'd put some thought into the piece, he wouldn't have needed the first; and no critic should ever, ever, ever aim for the second.

Critics tend to have flunked out of the field they're writing about. I don't point that out to be nasty, but to explain why most criticism fails: They're still trying to entertain. They're accustomed to the spotlight and they don't know how to shift gears. The job of an actor or a musician is to entertain the audience, but the purpose of art criticism is something else entirely; and when you put an entertainer into that chair, they often miss the distinction.

Readers shouldn't finish a critic's column and exclaim, "Wow, I really loved reading that prose." They should say, "That was helpful." Critics should emulate Murrow, not Dickens.

Brokeback Book

2006-03-28T22:23:00.000-05:00

In Which I Break the Spine of My Paperback Lesson Book By Throwing It Across the Room.

After you smash your fourth telephone, your spouse is likely to encourage you to conquer the problem and mature into an even-tempered individual. For the interest of kindred destructive souls, let me tell you that the most difficult part lies halfway between those two poles — when you're standing in the middle of a room, absolutely blind with rage, while every time you grab something to smash it into a billion pieces you hear this little voice that says, "You can't break that. It's expensive."

Having said that, I'll continue on to the good news: I'm consistently getting perfect scores on individual logic games, the Satanic little Mensa-problems that had provoked me to consider burning down my house. I need to complete a series of four inside 35 minutes and I'm not close to that yet, but at least I've figured out how to do them.

What drove me nuts wasn't an inability to get the answers right; I couldn't do the problems at all. I had no idea what to do and I froze. I just sat there, staring at the words, with absolutely no clue how to put them together into a sketch that would lead me to the answer. Sudoku doesn't bother me even when I get stuck for an hour because I know what I'm looking for, even if I don't see it. These damned problems, I had no clue how to even begin. I just sat there holding a pencil for no reason at all.

Those days are past. Now I spend an hour slugging through each problem and find success. It ain't glamorous but it feels better, and if I can whittle my time down by 85% then I'll have made useful headway. My next practice test is on Sunday and although I doubt my advances will translate into higher scores this quickly, we'll see.

Keep Your Eyes On Your Own Paper

2006-03-27T23:25:00.000-05:00

The Brookings Institution says Vladimir Putin is a plagiarist. Apparently someone finally got ahold of Putin's mysterious dissertation submitted for his claimed "PhD in economics," and it turns out that 16 pages of the paper's key section were lifted from a 1978 publication by University of Pittsburgh professors William R. King and David I. Cleland.

This revelation follows last week's saga at the Washington Post, where Ben Domenech resigned from his new blog after numerous instances of plagiarism surfaced from his past. Now he's being congratulated for his integrity because he resigned and apologized. What's being omitted is that he resigned one step ahead of being fired and that he apologized only after a week spent denying the allegations, claiming any malfeasance must have been done without his knowledge by a nameless and possibly nonexistent editor, and viciously attacking the character and motives of his detractors.

I'm getting tired of reading about plagiarism — in high schools, in universities, in the press. Students are forgiven and asked to resubmit. Professionals might be fired, but they're rehired the next month by the newspaper across town. Mike Barnicle was caught fabricating stories for his column in the Boston Globe, and he was promptly given an identical column by the Herald and a morning radio show by WTKK. It makes me sick.

Plagiarism is different. Plenty of crimes and misjudgments can happen in a flash and aren't necessarily indicative of a person's character. Just because you lost your temper doesn't make you a thug. Just because you got smashed doesn't make you a lush. But you don't plagiarize, you just don't, unless you're a liar and a cheat.

Putin is a spy. That's how he came up, through the rank and file of the KGB. And despite what you may have seen in James Bond films, spies don't rappel down skyscrapers or fire missiles from their cars. They coerce information from people, either by lying and cheating themselves or by inducing other to lie and to cheat. We need spies, and they're absolutely vital to national security — but don't think there's anything remotely honorable about the work, because there isn't. A spy has to be duplicitous — exactly the sort of person who would pass off someone else's work as his own.

Let Putin be the face of plagiarism, because he's a perfect model. It's an act that speaks to the character of its perpetrator. Plagiarists will never be any good; it's utterly beyond me, what would make any company decide to hire a proven plagiarist. It's like the women who date cheating men and firmly believe that this time will be different — this time, the guy will be loyal.

Kaplan and the WSJ

2006-03-23T00:10:00.000-05:00

When you enroll in Kaplan's LSAT Classroom program, the company buys you a complimentary 6-month subscription to the Wall Street Journal. I hate stunts like this. If you can afford to buy me gifts, then I paid you too much. Give my money back to me. Don't hand it to another company, give them my address without my permission, and claim you've done me a favor.

I'm posting this for anyone who wants an answer why they're suddenly getting a newspaper. Call 1-800-JOURNAL, give them your 12-digit subscriber number, and cancel. You'll get a refund check from Dow Jones & Company for $26.88. It's your money.

Coming Attractions

2006-03-22T00:17:00.000-05:00

Restaurants are our second hobby. We try someplace new every Saturday, and over the last four years we've hit a substantial portion of the spots in Boston and Providence. I've seen a significant number of hits on the one restaurant review I've published, so there's obviously demand for more — and I've got both the experience and the capacity to meet that demand.

It's also a good fit, since my primary purpose here is to woodshed and I'm not exactly expert at writing restaurant reviews. Practice will do some good, and if I can fill an existing need then so much the better.

With CD reviews, I have no problem writing free-form since I've got the expertise for the subject. I'm not a chef, though; and although I'm a great cook, the difference between a cook and a chef is the difference between a guitar teacher and a concertmaster. I know my stuff, but I'm going to be talking about theirs — so I'm going to need some guidelines.

I've decided to steal from the best. Charles F. Sarkis is the chairman and CEO of the Back Bay Restaurant Group, the company that owns Abe & Louie's and Papa Razzi and Coach Grill and a half-dozen other Boston landmarks, and Sarkis says the industry hasn't changed in the 40 years since he opened his first restaurant. He says that diners are always looking for the same three things: quality, value, and hospitality. So with compliments to Mr. Sarkis's expertise, those will be the three categories I'll critique.

I won't score each restaurant (à la Phantom Gourmet), but I probably will use a rating system. All cliché aside, they're useful: It's a clear way to signal your opinion to the reader before he begins your review, and that frees you from having to clumsily make the point in your lead sentence every time. Maybe it's not creative, but there's a lot to be said for utility — and not much to be said for writers who can't achieve the former without abandoning the latter.

So that's what's coming. I'll aim to publish one a month, maybe more. If you live in New England, keep an eye out. And if not, keep them bookmarked anyway. You never know when you might find yourself in Boston looking for a bite to eat.

Basketball Sucks

2006-03-21T14:38:00.000-05:00

Last night, I watched a couple of nobody schmucks beat NBA all-star Xavier McDaniel in a free-throw contest. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Basketball players suck.

If most athletes can agree that the most difficult feat in professional sports is to hit a round ball with a round bat, then surely everybody can agree the easiest is to make a free-throw. If you're not familiar with the rules of the game, a free-throw is simple: Everyone stands around the basket while one player throws the ball into the hoop. There's no defense of any kind — no one blocking him, no one trying to deflect his shot. The other players just stand around and watch, and he gets to score a point. That's why it's called a free-throw.

Watch an NBA game sometime. It's embarrassing. These guys are all 6'7" and they can all slam-dunk, but ask them to stand still and make two shots and they can't do it. It's the primary skill required by the game and none of them have it.

In the days of Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, basketball was about strategy and teamwork. You could outplay another team, catch them off-guard and finesse your way to victory. Today, basketball is a bully's game. It's about who's taller and who can push harder.

It's also an incredible waste of space. They don't need two hoops, because nothing ever happens at center-court. They spent 40 seconds fouling each other within three feet of one basket for an opportunity to slam-dunk the ball, they either make the shot or not, and then the melee zips to the opposite end where they crowd identically around the other basket. It's like the coaches don't even try to design center-court plays anymore.

What's sad is that for kids, basketball is a blast. Football requires a big field, hockey needs ice, and baseball breaks the neighbors' windows. Kids can crowd around a basketball hoop without bothering anyone, and they're not spread across an open field so they can joke and screw around like kids do. You'd think it would have decent claim to being the all-American sport and that its professionals would show the game being played with consummate skill. Instead, the NBA is about the dumbest incarnation of basketball that you could conceive.

What's Left Unsaid

2006-03-20T22:19:00.000-05:00

Today marks the three-year anniversary of the current Iraq invasion. We can all agree the current policy has been a disaster. The country is in a de facto state of civil war, and our soldiers are being killed and maimed daily. The Republicans seem unwilling to speak against the president's course; and for his part, President Bush answers anyone who says we should leave Iraq by announcing that he won't let insurgents dictate our timetable.

Fine. We all agree he's wrong, and we all think the troops should come home. But here's a question for you: What if Hillary won't promise to bring them home?

During the 2004 election, Kerry had plenty of chances to make that promise. He refused. He repeatedly dodged the question, explaining instead that we had to make sure Iraq had a stable government. And we know both Kerry and Hillary want to run in 2008; but so far, neither has offered the promise. For that matter, no Democrat has even suggested it. They're more open to discussing impeachment than troop withdrawal.

You'd think a vote for Hillary would be a vote against the Iraq war. She decries our current course and has no shortage of criticism for our president. Yet she stops short of guaranteeing that as president, she would bring our troops home. It's still early, and maybe she's saving that pronouncement for her formal campaign — but if not, you have to wonder why.

Endurance Practice

2006-03-17T23:54:00.000-05:00

Kaplan administers free practice tests for the LSAT. Obviously, they want you to buy their prep class; the idea is that you take a free test, they tell you the score, and then they promise to raise that score if you sign up for the class at a discounted rate.

By the end of the class you'll have taken five full-length tests, which is valuable enough. But they also mail you a box of books — literally, a box filled with six fat books totaling nearly 3,000 pages. They promise that if your score doesn't improve, you'll get a full refund; but if you don't complete the homework then you don't qualify for the refund, and I can't imagine anyone doing all this stuff and not improving.

I've taken two tests so far. My first score was 163, and my second dropped to 162. It's a scaled score, so actually I might have gotten more questions correct on the second test; but in any case, I wasn't disappointed. I'm a former archery champion, and I know that consistency is what differentiates skill from a lucky shot. The second score tells me that my first wasn't a fluke. That's good news.

That said, I'm swamped. I already had enough on my plate and now I've got another shelf of books to process — plus, by the way, a plethora of online workshops and quizzes that accompany the paperwork. But I've found the difference between "busy" and "stressed" is usually a matter of pace, and I know the work will pay off — a better score equals a better school equals a better career equals a better life. This is a high-stakes table, and I came to win.

Besides which, if I'm ever tempted to feel overwhelmed, I remember a word of advice given to me years ago by a mentor: "If you want something done, give it to a man who's busy."

Seignorage

2006-03-16T23:24:00.000-05:00

This week, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak took public his new company, Acquicor Technology, in an IPO that raised $150 million. Obviously, the first question is, "What does this company do?" And that's where it gets interesting, because the answer is, absolutely nothing. According to its SEC filing, Acquicor Technology is a "blank check" company. They have two years to choose a mission, and it can be anything they want.

These investors have bought Wozniak's reputation, nothing more. And if that weren't enough, the same shares which cost $6 apiece to the public were sold to the company's three executives at four-tenths of a cent — in other words, those three men have already profited more than $30 million, based on absolutely nothing.

I spoke last week to a consultant who advises venture capital firms on potential investments. He said that he looks at hundreds of business plans every month, but he said that he mostly looks at the people. His clients aren't investing in an idea, after all; they're investing in a person's ability to make it work. There are a thousand bad ideas that have nonetheless struck gold, and there are even more good plans that have run aground. Conception and execution are worlds apart.

But you need a concept to execute, and using your name as a fundraiser doesn't qualify. Faith is good; blind faith is not. Steve Wozniak just made himself another $10 million by virtue of being Steve Wozniak. How much irony can you stand: Venture capitalists are buying shares in blank check companies.

Blue Whale

2006-03-15T19:37:00.000-05:00

Uri Caine gave a lecture at New England Conservatory yesterday. He's best known for his deconstructions of classical music, and he spent most of his time explaining those pieces — or defending them against critics who dismiss them as the facile exercises of a dilettante and as cheap exploitation of dignified art as a gimmick. In fairness to Caine, they're neither. He knows the nature and history of the original music better than most of his critics, and his interpretations come from love and respect.

If you haven't heard his music, an example is his reinterpretation of Bach's Goldberg Variations. The double-disc set includes 72 variations on Bach's aria recorded by instrumentations ranging from solo piano to string quartet to a New Orleans band to a mix by DJ Logic. From one track to the next, Caine takes you all over the map in terms of style with no hint what to expect next. It's a gargantuan project that must have been incredibly difficult to assemble and produce, and any critic who dismisses it as "cheap" only demonstrates his own ignorance.

Having said that, I don't like the music. I certainly respect it; I admire his ambition, and I can appreciate the result — but it's not my cup of tea. There's no question that, having listened to it, you go back to Bach with a changed perspective; and that's a contribution worth discussing. But in my opinion, it has less value as an original statement than as a comment upon Bach.

Yet Caine struck me as ambitious and thoughtful, and here's the thing: I got the impression he was less interested in making music than art — in other words, he seems less concerned with whether his audience enjoys what they're hearing than whether they feel provoked.

I've always said that to be an effective orator, you need to disturb your audience. Not "offend," but disturb: as in, move them. You need to overcome your audience's inertia, to have some effect upon them. Ideally that effect will be positive; but if they hate you, if they absolutely despise everything you say and they throw tomatoes, at least your message will be remembered and that's better than wasting everyone's time.

When I listen to a new piece of music, my first question is whether the artist is doing something different. I've got a shelf of Oscar Peterson records and I love them, but Peterson's most successful music lacks a beauty that can be heard in even the worst recordings by Sam Rivers or Andrew Hill. He's got no ambition. His discography spans half a century, but it's all time and no space. He never moves. He's standing in the same square patch that he occupied in 1950.

I would never recommend Caine's experiments to a typical jazz fan. For all my respect, I admit that I don't like them. I listen because I appreciate the challenge, because they serve as homework for gaining perspective on their roots. But judge for yourself. He's definitely done his homework, and his records demonstrate an incredible degree of knowledge and commitment. If nothing else, I can say this: You won't be wasting your time.

30 Seconds Flat

2006-03-13T23:28:00.000-05:00

One of Robert DeNiro's best lines was written by director Michael Mann.

"You want to be making moves on the street? Have no attachments. Allow nothing to be in your life that you cannot walk out on in thirty seconds flat if you spot the heat around the corner."

Kerrie and I were discussing finances one day when she explained the sunk cost principle. She said people will often ride crashing stocks all the way to the bottom on the logic that since they've already lost half their investment, they might as well see it through. These folks originally bought stock to make a profit, after all, and they can't profit if they sell for a loss; so rather than cut their loss and take what's left elsewhere, they'll cross their fingers and just keep watching the price tumble.

It reminded me of "loss aversion" — which is another financial principle, but it's also a lesson taught to every covert agent in CIA. "No asset is more valuable than your cover. You can always walk away." An agent who has spent months courting an asset becomes fixated on getting results, and although he may suspect his cover is being compromised he'll be tempted to push a little farther to get that payoff.

The Bush administration has made any number of blunders in the past nine months, the most embarrassing of which were the Harriet Miers nomination and the Dubai ports deal. Any objective observer knew five minutes into each that the effort would fail, and yet the White House clung to both as they sank like stones. And now, with approval ratings that make Jimmy Carter look like a war hero, the president has just been called out on the floor of the Senate by a Wisconsin Democrat jockeying for position in 2008.

It's ironic, because the Republicans' best hope of defeating Hillary might have been the president's brother Jeb. He might not be anyone's ideal candidate; but neither was our president and in the end, money took the prize. If the current administration hadn't tried to squeeze every last nickel from their eight years, they might have kept shearing this sheep until 2016. But they blew their cover.

That Hobgoblin, Consistency

2006-03-12T22:18:00.000-05:00

Tonight was HBO's season premiere of The Sopranos, and I'm compelled to remark that if creator David Chase was hoping to leave his viewers in suspense by ending the first episode with the main character bleeding on the kitchen floor from a gunshot wound, he oughtn't have spent the last three months promoting the upcoming season with clips showing that character in various arguments and conversations that were obviously filmed for that upcoming season.

Directory Assistance

2006-03-11T23:29:00.000-05:00

If I can keep my LSAT score above water, the only remaining hurdle to law school admission will be my letters of recommendation. I'm sure I'll have no trouble getting them, but I hate asking favors. The term "social anxiety" is grossly overused, but if there's anything that makes me feel unfomfortable it's feeling beholden to someone else.

After careful consideration — and being lectured by two people wiser than myself — I've decided that's a childish hang-up that I need to outgrow. I've turned to Chandler to set me sober.

"Randy and I and another fellow were in a jam once. It made sort of a bond between us."

"Then why didn't you ask him for help when you needed it?"

"Because he couldn't refuse."

"But you'll take favors from a stranger."

"The stranger can keep going and pretend not to hear."