I kinda expected most of the outcome of “Who Killed Lilly Kane?” after last week—at least, the killer didn’t particularly surprise me—but the whole thing with Logan and Weevil seemed like it was supposed to be resolved by the end of the episode, and it wasn’t—though, I suppose, resolving that might have given away who showed up at the end.

My other critique: not enough Wallace; even his mom got more screen time. Gotta love Wallace.

Tyler Cowen links a quiz that seeks to determine your position on three dimensions of morality. Here’s how I scored:

Your Moralising Quotient is: 0.27.
Your Interference Factor is: 0.00.
Your Universalising Factor is: 0.50.

Mildly amusing and not particularly surprising. You can play here. Jacqueline Mackie Massey Passey had similar scores to me, while Stephen Bainbridge’s scores reminded me why I often find his politics annoyingly meddlesome.

Funny and probably true relationship advice for women:

1. It is important that a man helps you around the house and has a job.
2. It is important that a man makes you laugh.
3. It is important to find a man you can count on and doesn’t lie to you.
4. It is important that a man loves you (and tells you so!) and spoils you.
5. It is important that these four men don’t know each other.

I think I might pull off 3½ of these on a good day… I’m afraid I’m useless at housework, although the last person I had over was under the delusion that my apartment was clean.

When is a vote of no confidence not a vote of no confidence? When it takes place in Canada, apparently. As Mustafa Hirji of Points of Information explains, Westminster parliamentary rules don’t obligate the executive to resign when they lose a confidence vote, but nonetheless the traditional response of resignation is key to parliamentary sovereignty:

[R]esponsible government’s preservation requires that the Executive honour votes of no confidence. Otherwise, the Executive ceases to be responsible to the legislature and is, instead, responsible only to the unelected monarch or representative thereof.

Responsibility to Parliament is absolutely key in our system of government. Unlike the United States, we lack checks and blances to constrain the power of the Executive. Parliament is the only meaningful constraint on the Executive and their widespread powers. When this constraint ceases to exist, the Governor-General, effectively chosen by the Prime Minister and likely therefore beholden to him/her, becomes the only check on the Prime Minister. That check is neither realistic nor desireable, let alone democratic or accountable.

Of course, if the role of the governor-general (or, in the case of Britain, the monarch) was taken by an official responsible to the electorate or parliament—most other parliamentary regimes use the largely ceremonial president in this role—the conflict of interest would be greatly diminished. Either way, it seems to me that if parliament does vote in favor of a no confidence motion, and the executive refuses to resign, the governor-general has an obligation to dismiss the executive.

Update: More via InstaPundit: perspectives from Ed Morrissey and “ferret” of Conservative Life, as well as liveblogging from Stephen Taylor (not the PoliBlog guy). Kate also has a post at Outside the Beltway, with a link to another news story on today’s events.

Somehow I missed Orgasm Day yesterday (þ: Glenn Reynolds). Amber Taylor claims that this event would be the “polar opposite” of International Kissing Day; I tend to think these events are rather orthogonal, myself.

However, it’s still Masturbation Month, so everyone’s got that to, er, celebrate at least.

If you run Mozilla Firefox, you probably want to upgrade to a 1.0.4 candidate build to fix the arbitrary code execution vulnerability discussed at OTB and elsewhere.

There are a few things around the web of interest on the “Real ID” Act today:

Orin Kerr thinks Bruce Schneier is overstating his case against the Real ID provisions,although Kerr is unconvinced of the merits of the proposal (þ: Glenn Reynolds).

Lamar! is among the senators opposed to the Real ID provisions… but they’re going to be law anyway, thanks to a 100–0 Senate vote on the supplemental appropriations bill they were contained in.

“Hannibal” of Ars Technica says there’s more to be concerned about in the bill, although I have to say I’m somewhat less upset than he that Congress suspended part of NEPA for the purpose of improving border security.

John “Don’t Call Me Juan” Cole notes that the ACLU is challenging a 1805 North Carolina statute forbidding cohabitation by unmarried couples in court. For those considering living in sin elsewhere, the Tar Heel State is not alone in its opprobrium toward cohabitors:

North Carolina is one of seven states that still have laws on the books prohibiting cohabitation of unmarried couples. The others are Virginia, West Virginia, Florida, Michigan, Mississippi and North Dakota.

As a longtime opponent of such “uncommonly silly” laws, I offer the ACLU my unqualified support in this matter.

Well, the real evaluations—rather than the fake ones here—are in, and they’re much better than those from last semester, by well over a standard deviation. (I’d sit down and do the independent samples t test, but I’m not that bored. t test below the fold…)

I’m just chalking this one up as yet another in a series of little ironies that have been running around for the past couple of months.

Another day, another compromise over filibusters allegedly in the works. Yawn. (þ: PoliBlog)

Well, the state’s budget crisis was fun while it lasted… but apparently it’s now over after a $100 million settlement with the corpse of MCI over back taxes owed to the state. As always when large sums of money are being tossed around and lawyers are involved, Mike Moore manages to work his way into the plot:

Negotiations were stalled until two months ago, when MCI contacted former Attorney General Mike Moore. His law firm has represented MCI.

“They just called me up when they decided they wanted to get serious about negotiations,” Moore said.

Yeah, whatever. More on the fallout here.

Drudge says ABC has greenlit a series called Commander-in-Chief starring Geena Davis as the nation’s first female president.

Somehow I don’t expect her performance in the role to hold a candle to that of Mary McDonnell in more-or-less the same role in Battlestar Galactica, but I’ll give Davis the chance to surprise me.

From a recent email exchange at an ungodly hour (slightly paraphrased from memory):

Me: I’m listening to Avril now.
Student: I like Avril’s stuff. Her music isn’t bad either.
Me: Avril has stuff?

Never did get an answer to that one…

I think I’ve given up on Empires of Light for now… maybe I will become sufficiently bored in the coming weeks to resume reading, but given that I have a few other books to read around the apartment, I probably won’t.

It may prove my geekiness that the first book I picked up was The Design and Evolution of C++, which I rediscovered while searching my shelves for books to sell on Amazon.com.

Every time I have some little complaint about my job, I should remind myself of today—or at least days like today, for today was commencement at Millsaps, and my first commencement as a faculty member (here or elsewhere). While I didn’t know these seniors as well as I might have liked, I hope I touched at least some of their lives in the way that professors past have touched mine.

Of course, it was a bittersweet day for me and a few other colleagues, including the oft-mentioned Kelly, as it also marks the official end of our employment by the college.* To all the friends, colleagues, and students (not mutually-exclusive!) I have encountered, it’s been a blast, and I’d do it all again… well, as long as I got a tenure-track contract next time!

In preparation for moving, I’ve decided to get rid of most of my collection of computer books, including a large chunk of O’Reilly’s catalog. If I could figure out how to make a link to the list at Amazon.com, I would… in the meantime, here’s my lameass storefront where you can at least search my listings…

Update: Here's the full list of what's for sale.

One of the more disturbing results of Thursday’s general election in Britain was the heavy support for hardline Nationalist and Unionist parties in Northern Ireland, where hardliners captured 14 of the 18 parliamentary seats up for grabs. Among those losing his position in Parliament was David Trimble, the Ulster Unionist party leader who negotiated the Good Friday peace agreement with retiring SDLP leader John Hume.

Then again, perhaps the hardliners can have an “only Nixon can go to China” moment… but I’m not holding my breath.

From a recent 7th Circuit opinion:

The trial transcript quotes Ms. Hayden as saying Murphy called her a snitch bitch “hoe.” A “hoe,” of course, is a tool used for weeding and gardening. We think the court reporter, unfamiliar with rap music (perhaps thankfully so), misunderstood Hayden’s response. We have taken the liberty of changing “hoe” to “ho,” a staple of rap music vernacular as, for example, when Ludacris raps “You doin’ ho activities with ho tendencies.”

Sounds a lot like my paper grading over the past week. (þ: BTD Greg)

Apropos of the U.K. election, Stephen Bainbridge plays ‘predict the election’ and notes Labour’s massive (predicted) lead in seats isn’t matched by its lead in vote share:

It’s an interesting example, by the way, of just how skewed the British electoral system is against the Tories. If I’m right, a 3 point difference in the national polls leaves them almost 200 seats behind Labour.

The British electoral system isn’t skewed against the Tories—at least, not any more, as Scotland’s overrepresentation in Parliament has finally been done away with; it’s skewed in favor of whoever wins the plurality of the national vote. It’s almost (but not exactly) the exact same effect as we see in the U.S. electoral college: “landslides” in the electoral college are easily manufactured by relatively small differences in the popular vote.

The effect is also a partial consequence of Britain’s nonpartisan redistricting system; gerrymandering in the U.S. depresses the number of districts that are likely to “swing” from one party to the other, while the British process tends to produce a larger number of districts close to parity. (However, unlike post-Wesberry America, there is no requirement of strict population equality for constituencies in Britain.)

Shugart and Taagepera’s Seats and Votes explains things far better than I can, if you can find a copy.

There was a time when I was enough of a politics junkie to watch election returns live. These days I’ll settle for reading the BBC results on the laptop while I watch the NBA playoffs on TV.

At the moment, it looks like Labour is running slightly behind its 2001 seat total (a net loss of 21 seats), with the Tories benefitting the most (+14), but there’s real no risk of Labour losing its majority unless the polls are really wrong—the current 3.2% swing to the Conservatives would have to become a 6.5% swing for Labour to lose its majority, according to the awesome Swingometer. (þ: Raffi Melkonian for the Swingometer link.)

Jacqueline is seeing Serenity tomorrow. I’m stuck at home watching Enterprise.* Life isn’t fair.

My students are apparently laboring under the delusion that I am “hot.” Oy vey. I could buy that rating for Ms. Mueller or Dr. Galicki, to say nothing of the legendary Dr. Tegtmeier-Oertel, but not for me.

Elsewhere: Dr. Huffmon’s students love him (except the student who fails to properly recognize that he is the Messiah), but inexplicably fail to award the coveted chili pepper. Mass delusion, I tell you. (þ sorta-kinda: Mungowitz End)

Yesterday, a few of the first-year faculty (Suzanne, Kamilla, and Peter) and I went to see The Interpreter with Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn; most thought it was a very good film. Although I don’t specialize in African politics, it seemed to be fairly faithful to the themes of sub-Saharan Africa—the semi-obvious inspiration for the film’s fake country of Mobutu is Zimbabwe, where Robert Mugabe was once viewed as the savior of his people but has spent much of the past three decades terrorizing his own population, but aspects of other central and southern African countries are present as well.

The broader point raised by some in the war party of the blogosphere (e.g. ☣ Little Green Footballs), that the choice to set the story in Africa instead of the Middle East somehow is a denial of the existence of Islamic-inspired terrorism, strikes me as rather stupid. For one, the terrorist attack in the story is a political assassination—not the preferred tactic of most Middle Eastern terror groups. More importantly, I think it’s easier to think seriously about the issues raised in the film if they’re not tied up in the 9/11 framework, especially since the film doesn’t want to make it as easy as “people with guns and bombs bad.”

Good news for Debian fans: the archive freeze in preparation for release has taken place. If all goes according to plan, Debian 3.1 will be out by the end of the month.

The sales of David Bernstein’s oft-plugged tome You Can’t Say That! are apparently flagging. It certainly doesn’t reflect a lack of marketing effort by the author…