Saturday, 13 March 2004

USM Day 6: Go read Cliopatria

Ralph Luker has the latest, saving me the effort of having to sum it up myself.

However, there are some bits Luker overlooked: Thames is now going after the Mississippi chapter of ACLU for its decision to provide counsel to aid the appeals of Glamser and Stringer, and the USM faculty senate will consider a resolution calling on Thames to resign at its next meeting.

Block 37

Stephen Karlson notes plans by the Chicago Transit Authority to create a new station in downtown Chicago that will finally link the State and Dearborn subways, and provide express service to both O’Hare and Midway airports. Speaking as someone who once made the mistake of trying to use the “L” to get from O’Hare to a hotel on the Magnificent Mile, which required changing from the Blue (Dearborn) to Red (State) lines, such a project can come none-too-soon.

These days, with the colossal pain in the ass that flying has become, I just drive to Chicago. It’s cheaper, even after paying to park downtown, and the extra time involved is only a couple of hours, if you compare flying direct on Northwest or American—going via another airline, such as Delta, will certainly kill any time savings of flying. (Amtrak usually costs more than flying.) The downside is that you have to drive both the most boring 250 miles of interstate highway in the eastern United States (roughly, I-57 from I-64 to I-80) and the second-most-boring stretch (I-55 and I-57 through Arkansas and Missouri)—really the only interesting parts are in the hills in southern Illinois and when you get to metropolitian Chicago.

Matt finally gets it

Wow, finally a Democrat has figured out why most libertarian-leaning Republicans won’t defect to the Democrats:

The fact that this bullshit upping the fines for “indecent” radio broadcasts passed 391–22 shows a good deal of what’s wrong with today’s Democrats. The Democrats are never going to convince anyone that they’re really the better anti-“fuck”, anti-fag party. At the same time, by refusing to ever stand up for liberal principles whenever doing so might be mildly unpopular, they manage not to gain any votes from folks disenchanted with conservative frumpery.

It’s amazing how the Democrats only seem to act like an opposition party when it comes to either abortion or taxes… highfalutin’ rhetoric to the contrary.

Update: Matt Yglesias has more here, in response to Jim Henley; Will Baude also wistfully hopes for Democrats who are serious about their professed liberalism.

What a heel

This week’s PoliBlog Toast-O-Meter has arrived, for those who want to remember this completely forgettable week of primaries and campaigning.

Very cool stuff for your inner TeX geek

Most “cheapo” font collections are pretty much dime-a-dozen; however, I’ve been pretty impressed with the FontSite 500 collection, which I’ve had for several years, and which (in the grand scheme of things—fonts tend to be not cheap) is a steal. Yesterday, I discovered that Christopher League put together all the stuff you need to use the FontSite fonts in TeX and LaTeX under Linux.

If you’re someone like me, who gets annoyed at the limited font selection in TeX,* but can’t live without it—after all, I typeset all my papers and my entire dissertation in LaTeX, not to mention my vita and cover letters—this is a really neat add-on.