So as not to disappoint Robert Prather, I’ll provide a very brief review of Measuring America by Andro Linklater (which I finally got around to finishing a few days ago, and which is June’s Signifying Nothing Book of the Month).

Overall, I found it an engaging read. Linklater frames the story, as I suppose is the current trend in popular history narratives, around historical figures of interest, mostly surveyors but a few political figures (Thomas Jefferson chief among them) as well. It is as much a history of the standardization of weights and measures as it is of geography. I think perhaps the most interesting thing I learned from the book was that Jefferson’s francophilia did not extend to adopting the metric system; instead, he favored a decimalized system based on the “traditional” (but as-yet unstandardized) units.

There were a couple of minor disappointments for me. First and foremost, the book didn’t quite explain how surveying actually works, which I suppose might be a bit technical but seems to underlie a lot of the discussion. As a result, I still know more about how GPS works than the simple geometry that underlies traditional surveying. The other disappointment is the sloppily-assembled measures appendix, which contains quite a few typographical errors and appears to be a transcribed copy of a NIST web page.

Of course, the political scientist in me might have more strongly emphasized that one of the enumerated powers of Congress was:

To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures[.]

That alone is a powerful statement of how seriously the Constitution’s Framers considered the issue of standardization, even though it took several decades for the American customary system to be adopted (ultimately, under the direction of a staunch advocate of metrification).

Anyway, I found it a quite enjoyable read, and it’s rekindled my interest in digging through the stack of books I’ve been meaning to read to find my copy of Longitude; my vague recollection is that the ability to determine longitude depended on producing an accurate chronometer (time-keeping piece), but I’m sure there’s more to it than that.

Matt Yglesias broadens his perspective with a trip to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, with the following observation:

I’ve been surprised to discover that southerners really do say “y’all” all the time.

Meanwhile, Kevin Drum discovers that people in different parts of the country refer to carbonated soft drinks by different names. There may be hope for John Kerry in flyover country yet…

Well, not exactly. While ego-surfing last night, I came across this obituary for “Uncle Brock Sides,” a Confederate veteran who died in Texas in 1914.

On this page, there’s also mention of a Brock Sides, who may or may not be the Confedarate veteran mentioned above. This Brock Sides would be my third cousin twice removed, if I'm counting generations correctly. His great-great uncle, Benjamin Franklin Sides (a popular name for children born in 1786, I suppose), was my great-great-great grandfather.

And another Brock Sides was a Gilchrist Studios National Poetry Month Contest winner in 2000, at the age of 13, for this anti-abortion poem.

Josh Chafetz isn’t entirely thrilled about his appearance being compared by Jonah Goldberg to that of a college sophomore.

You think that’s bad? My mom thinks my dissertation chair (who’s quite a bit older than me) looks younger than I do, at 28-and-change.

Now, this is an interesting (if somewhat scary) hack:

nstx allows you to pass IP packets via DNS queries. This allows you to use standard network protocols when otherwise only DNS would be available.

Color me impressed.

Here’s a statement to ponder (no fair reading the source first):

The Madrid railway bombings were perceived by Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to have advanced their cause. Al Qaeda may perceive that a large-scale attack in the United States this summer or fall would lead to similar consequences.

That, to me, reads pretty much like a statement of fact: al-Qaeda may believe (correctly or incorrectly) that a large-scale attack on the United States will advance their cause. I think they’d be incredibly wrong on that point, but, nonetheless, I think it’s a fair statement for a politician to make.

Laura of Apartment 11D notes the downside of receiving an honorary doctorate:

What Jon Stewart didn’t know was that after receiving his honorary PhD, the Comedy Channel cut his salary to $45,000 a year, transferred him out of New York City to a small rural town in Pennsylvania, and forced him to grade 150 essays on “how a bill becomes a law.”

The wag might contribute:

• $45,000 a year? Where can I get that deal? (Though I did interview for the “small rural town in Pennsylvania” bit, and I certainly cannot complain about the salary I am getting in the fall, particularly for a non-tenure-track position.)
• His own bloody fault for assigning 150 students the same essay question. Mix it up a little!

Also of note: if you look at the photo, it looks like Dr. Stewart is wearing an olive green crew-neck T-shirt underneath his hood and gown. Classy.

Mark A.R. Kleiman thinks Airbus is a pretty honest name for the company’s aircraft. Considering that economy-class air travel is essentially equivalent to riding Greyhound these days (with the exception that the hassle at the airport replaces getting drooled on by hobos), Boeing might be due for a name change as well.

That said, I was pleasantly surprised by both the Boeing 717 and the service provided by AirTran on my recent trip to Pennsylvania. The aircraft (a semi-decent regional jet service to and from DFW from Memphis, and a 1930s-tech prop plane in and out of Lawton that made me feel like I was living a World War II-era propaganda film) and service provided by American Eagle on my less-recent trip to Oklahoma, however, left much to be desired. These combined experiences have done little to entice me back to employing economy class air travel for any voluntary trip of less than 1000 miles.

For the second time in two days, I have been waited on at a restaurant on the Oxford Square (last night, Proud Larry’s; tonight, Old Venice Pizza Company) by a waitress with a stud nosering. I guess they must be “in” now.

I think there’s a reasonable argument to be made supporting media outlets’ decisions to not name alleged rape victims, including that of Kobe Bryant’s accuser. That argument would seem to extend to also not naming her alleged past and present sexual partners, but apparently it doesn’t, which strikes me as a very odd double standard to be upholding in this day and age.

Robert Garcia Tagorda documents nicely Al Gore’s minor Ahmed Chalabi problem—namely, that he also treated Chalabi as a credible figure in the Iraqi exile community, at least until it came time for him to follow Howard Dean down the road of ex-DLCer dementia.

For the record, I found Chalabi less than credible, and was hardly a fan of Judith Miller’s Iraq WMD reporting, largely based on information provided by Chalabi’s pals, at the time either.

The cause of our 48-hour outage earlier this week: a borderline failing DSLAM card at the telephone exchange about a half-mile down the street. Just in case you were curious…

Here’s a brief article on Quantian (a “live Linux” CD with lots of scientific and mathematical goodies on it) I’m working on with a fellow Debianista for submission to The Political Methodologist, our humble little organized section newsletter. Any comments or feedback would be appreciated.

Ted Barlow has an eminently sensible post on how relatives of political candidates should be treated (and, as is par for the course, attracts a bevy of moonbats in the comments who disagree).

However, being a single male, I reserve the right to make light of how Jenna and/or Barbara Bush dress if they get Alexandra Kerry’d. That’s just the American way.

Both Nick Troester and Brian J. Noggle note Michelle Malkin’s Wednesday TownHall.com column on the literati set’s embrace of Jessica Cutler (“Washingtonienne”) and Ana Marie Cox (“Wonkette”). I’m not sure I agree with everything Malkin says, but I too find something slightly unseemly about this glorification of skanking one’s way to the top.

Apropos of the same topic, Sara Butler wonders if Culter’s actions are another strike against female interns in Washington who want to be taken seriously.

Update: Joy Larkin agrees with Malkin as well.

Insults Unpunished turns two today. Congrats to Robert Prather on achieving this milestone!

Congratulations to Scipio of The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy on winning his defendant’s case at his first trial. I won’t swear to it, but it sounds like he had fun or something.

Geitner Simmons finds David Broder finally figuring out that those of us who somehow figured out that McCain-Feingold was a disaster waiting to happen were right.

Of course, many of the parties involved—President Bush included—thought the Supreme Court would bail them out of having made such a terrible piece of legislation. They were wrong, and now we’re all stuck with the consequences—the establishment of sham media organizations (NRA News, Air America Radio) to circumvent advertising restrictions, the undisclosed funnelling of cash to 527 organizations, the granting of even more institutional advantages to incumbent politicians, and the further emasculation of the American political party system. Coupled with the Court’s unwillingness to curtail the increasingly fraudulent redistricting practices of state legislatures, one might realistically despair of the prospects for legitimate republican government.

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Micha Ghertner, who is far from a knee-jerk right-winger, and who is in my opinion one of the smartest bloggers out there, argues that prisoners should pay for their “room and board” while in prison:

Whatever your thoughts may be on charging wrongfully convicted prisoners for room and board, it makes even more sense to charge the guilty for their prison expenses. Why should taxpayers be forced to pay for other people’s crimes? Ideally, prisoners should be forced to work while in prison to pay off the costs of their confinement, rather than impose an additional burden upon them when they are released.

I’m of the opinion, based on my reading of David Friedman (whom I know Ghertner is familiar with), that inefficient punishments like imprisonment and execution should be expensive for the government. Otherwise, there’s too much incentive to just “lock ‘em up and throw away the key.” Ideally, the cost to the government of locking someone up should be exactly the same as the cost to the person being locked up. That way, the government will lock someone up only if the marginal benefit to society is greater than the cost to the person imprisoned.

This is especially true when a large portion of those imprisoned are being held for things that shouldn’t be crimes in the first place, such as drug crimes.

UPDATE: TChris at TalkLeft writes:

Every few months, it's worth remembering that your tax dollars are being spent to incarcerate Tommy Chong so that the Justice Department could send a message about pot pipes and bhongs.

It's a good thing imprisonment is so expensive to the taxpayers. Otherwise, there would be a lot more Tommy Chongs. (Link via Crooked Timber.)

Brock mentions below the hypothesis that a significant portion of the value of real property in the suburbs is related to school quality, and that improving inner-city schools would reduce this value.

It seems to me that parents, for the most part, want good schools rather than better schools. While the Memphis city school system does exhibit this relationship—property values in the White Station High enrollment zone are higher than those in, say, the Ridgeway or Egypt Central zones—I’m not sure this applies once a certain baseline is crossed; I don’t believe there is this contrast among property values between Germantown, Houston, and Collierville high schools in the (separate) Shelby County district, even though I’m fairly certain there is an academic pecking order among these schools.

The only areas we might expect this effect is where jurisdictional transfers take place: for example, where new annexations by Memphis shunt students in southeast Shelby County from the county system (e.g. Germantown High) to the city system (e.g. Kirby High, which has never had a very good reputation). In these cases, we’d expect a precipitous drop in property values, particularly for “middle-class” homes; my anecdotal impression is that this, in fact, did take place. But I’m not sure the same effect would have been there if students had been sent to known “good” city schools like Ridgeway or Cordova.

Well, the big election north of the border is finally on, after months of buildup. Matt Yglesias has an ongoing discussion in his comments; I generally agree that it’s the Liberals’ election to lose, and the structural features of Canadian politics favor the Liberals emerging as the largest party—even if they don’t receive an absolute majority of the 308 seats up for grabs. There is widespread disaffection with the Liberals—in part due to several financial fiascos, in part because neither current prime minister Paul Martin nor ex-premier Jean Chrétien had a large fan club to begin with, but that’s unlikely to translate into a plurality win for the new Conservative Party of Canada, and the largest party is almost certain to be the one invited by the governor-general to form a government.

Realistically, there are about five possible governments that could emerge:

• A majority Liberal government. If you’ve got money to wager, this is the odds-on favorite, even with the horrible approval ratings the Liberals have. Requires an outright majority (155+ seats).
• A Liberal-New Democratic Party coalition. The problem with this arrangement is that Martin is trying to move the Liberals to the right and repair relations with the United States; the NDP is populated by hardcore leftists and harbors strongly anti-American sentiments, which would radically complicate Martin’s attempts at rapproachment. Realistically only likely if the Liberals win below 150 seats, but still have a plurality.
• A minority Liberal government, depending on floating support on individual pieces of legislation. Probably unstable over the long term, but more politically palatable than a Liberal-NDP coalition, and increasingly likely if the Liberals are very close to a majority (say 150–154 seats).
• A (probably short-term) Conservative-Bloc Québecois government. Both parties favor devolution of power from the federal government to the provinces, and a short-term agenda focusing on these issues—increased provincial autonomy, reform of the Senate to make it an elected body—might be palatable. In the long term, though, the contrast between the Canadian nationalist Conservatives and the Québecois nationalist Bloc along with the contrast between Conservative laissez-faire economics and BQ social democracy, would force new elections—but ones where both parties would be institutionally advantaged due to an elected upper chamber acting as a check on the (presumably Liberal) new government.

Anyway, this one will be fascinating to watch, and—thankfully—it’ll all be over in about a month, unlike the slow-motion trainwreck on this side of the border.

Matthew Yglesias notes today that, at least in theory, affluent families in good school districts have little incentive to push for improving educations in bad school districts. If we could wave a magic wand and improve the quality of underperforming rural and urban school districts, "suburban property owners are screwed, since a significant proportion of their home equity is tied up in the proposition that owning property in District X entitles your children to a superior education."

Here's a bit of anecdata to support this, from an article in today's Commercial Appeal (obnoxious registration required) about White Station High School, a Memphis public school with a very high reputation:

It's that mystique that ratchets up home prices in the neighborhoods around White Station High, and causes homes to sell 10 days faster than most Zip Codes in the metro Memphis area. Prudential Realtor Laura Zarecor sold her clients' home at 4792 Cole in two weeks. One open house is all it took.

The Iraq “Wedding Party” Attack story is getting attention at Belmont Club, and it seems more complex than it first appeared; U.S. Central Command* indicates that the attack was actually directed at a meeting of insurgent forces and that the location of the attack was a way-station for foreign fighters entering the country from Syria.

Well, this award will definitely make Michael Moore even more insufferable than he is already. And, here’s your “laugh test” moment:

“I did not set out to make a political film,” Mr. Moore said at a news conference after the ceremony. “I want people to leave thinking that was a good way to spend two hours. The art of this, the cinema, comes before the politics.”

I’m sure that’s what Leni Riefenstahl said too.