Canada Post, watch out.

On the way back from Buffalo today, I found myself stuck on the Peace Bridge for 20-30 minutes, despite the fact that the traffic hotline said the delay should be no more than 10. The delay was so far back that I couldn't even use my NEXUS privileges to dart past the queue. In the lane next to me was a tractor-trailer operated by Trojan Horse Ltd. As I approached it, I saw that it was also marked with its cargo: US Mail.

Cheers for google

For providing free wifi at the airport! I am way early for my flight,
but unfettered access to my email means I don't care! Ah, the simple
pleasures.

Sent from my iPod

From the HLS Exam Instructions

Reviewing prior years' exams while starting up my own law school study regimen, I came across this in one exam's boilerplate instructions:

"You may not use text-messaging-style or other abbreviations, or otherwise shorten sentences artificially to make the page limit."

ROFL.

lost in translation?

I can only hope. because I ate a couple and let's face it, I have no practical skills.

For the BSG fans (aka Me, Xiaodi, Dan)

I was at Duane Reade, the omnipresent New York pharmacy, today and noticed this Maxim cover on the shelves. I thought it was hilarious (set phasers to sexy? they didn't even have phasers in the series, and who needs one anyway if you can regenerate whenever you die)

I wonder what percentage of the Maxim reading male population actually watches BSG. I guess they're in for a treat this week :-P

But won't you be bored...?

That was the question that I was asked a lot when I told friends and family of my decision to take a year off before medical school. While the main motivation was of course to allow for time for my jaw surgery and subsequent recovery (tentatively scheduled for February/March), I also planned on... well... taking a year off. No job, no coursework.

Some people fretted that I would be bored, or that I would return to med school unprepared for the academic routine. Some hypothesized that I would eventually find something for myself to do.

Lo and behold, the doubters were (partially) correct. I stayed up until 3:30 AM yesterday reading this 26-part saga of a medical malpractice trial. Before going to bed, I counted the number of new feeds on my Google Reader that I had added just yesterday (about 5), and went over the next few books on my reading list.

I do more reading (of a serious, somewhat academic nature [or at least of sort intended for self-improvement or self-teaching]) in a week at home these days than I ever did in a week at college. Most of it is finance/economics/health/policy related stuff on Google Reader that often sends me following footnotes and PDFed articles all over the intertubes. Even when you take out the LOLCats and quick-skim CBC News articles from my feedlist, there's still a good couple of hours a day of legit stuff to get through. Plus the books and the New York Times.

So no, I'm not bored. But yes, it seems that I'm incapable of truly doing "nothing" for too long.

I am really bored at work right now.

There's a bucket of halloween candy sitting on the counter. It' s been there a few days, so all of the good things (kit-kats, twix, m&ms) are gone. All that's left are the plain hershey's bars and whoppers. I had never had whoppers before, because "malted milk balls" do not sound particularly appealing.

And unsurprisingly, they don't taste great. But they have a texture that is kind of like astronaut ice cream, and that was unexpected.

postkort from norway

I finally put (some) of my pictures from Scandinavia up on facebook! Here's a few samples:

Maybe I'll get the photos from graduation up sometime before our tenth reunion.

Hugh Grant, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters

Gatwick Airport + North Terminal + EasyJet line + Missed flight = Hugh Grant sighting.

Yep, I saw Hugh Grant at Gatwick Airport going to Emirates. He was even pushing his own trolley. This gives me hope that he's not as much a jerk as he is in some of his movies. It also made up for the near 40 Euro charge I incurred for the missed flight.

In other news, I went to a Dutch bookstore and saw a cool looking book. Remember Pride and Prejudice and Zombies? Well, there's apparently also Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. Yeah...

Tiffany & Co: Terrorism?

As a small, albeit rather innocent looking Asian girl, I never thought I would be the target of a thorough search traveling through Europe. After paying a rather hefty sum for my checked baggage, I was left with my messenger bag and my rolling carry-on. Going through security at the Pittsburgh airport wasn't too bad. No one stopped me and no one seemed to care as I stopped to try and shove all my stuff back into my bags. No one even noticed I had two bags for liquids rather than the allowed one...

Then came CDG, otherwise known as Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. I took out the usual laptop and liquids and put my stuff through the X-ray scanner. They didn't even want me to take my shoes off! Then came the craziness...

I had about three French TSA agents come and tell me to open my bag and take out "that electronic thing that the machine is picking up." After a rather confusing conversation in French and me removing all wires, cords, and anything else electronic in my bag, I put my bag back through. As I stooped to again put all my things away, another TSA agent came over and told me she needed to search my bag. After searching through all of my things, she finally came to this small light blue felt Tiffany bag. "Qu'est-ce que c'est?" she asked, as she opened it. Well, she opened it to find my gift from the Advising Programs Office. A round solid pewter Tiffany box engraved on top with the Harvard crest. As she opened it, she showed it to her TSA compatriots saying "C'est ca. Il n'y a rien." She then smiled a rather apologetic smile and put my things back, calling for another person to help out.

So, for all the things that they could have thought was a bomb in my bag...Tiffany? Really? Seriously, the French need to read up on their high-end pewter boxes...

Wildlife of Harvard Yard

1. Some of you have probably heard about the recent cow-grazing in Harvard Yard. The occasion was the retirement party for Harvey Cox, the Hollis Professor of Divinity. The Hollis Professorship of Divinity dates back to 1722 (apparently it's the oldest endowed chair in the country), and one of the official perks is the right to graze your cows in Harvard Yard. No one has done this since Edward Wigglesworth in the 1700s, but Prof. Cox thought his retirement party would be a good time to bring back the tradition.


(Sadly, I missed this because I had class that afternoon.)

2. There is a hawk living in Harvard Yard this fall. This actually doesn't seem as far-fetched to me as it does to some other people: I saw a red-tailed hawk swooping around in Tercentenary Theater once sophomore year. But it's new to actually have the hawk living in the Yard. Its favorite spot is a tree next to the Phillips Brooks House, but it likes to go all over the place, even up to the Law School, close to my dorm. On the campus tour they gave us, we walked past the hawk sitting in a tree and marking its territory by screaming. It wasn't identical to the clichéd sound effect from Westerns, but it was pretty close.

A few days ago I was walking past Matthews when I saw a bunch of little white feathers floating down from the sky. I was very confused until I looked up into the nearest tree. These feathers had once belonged to a seagull or something. But this particular seagull had wound up as dinner.

The Harvard Hawk strikes again.

Buskers: a Transit Survey

London, Westminster: elderly gentleman playing "My Heart Will Go On." On a harp. That's right, a harp.

London, Piccadilly Circus: older guy playing country-ish music on a guitar. Plus a tourist, posing for photos with him.

London, King's Cross St Pancras (on train): young guy with steel guitar, bemoaning "gangster capitalism" and explaining that if we had full employment, no one would be priced out of the economy.

Paris, Strasbourg-St. Denis: 20-something with a marionette and a stereo. The marionette was "playing" a guitar.

Paris, Passy (on train): 40-something with a violin, playing "Yesterday."

Sadly lacking a European counterpart: Recorder guy from the Harvard T station. Alas.

As seen in...

So, I realized that it would have been smarter for me to put my email on the blog...so here goes (I apparently also very much fail at this whole blogging thing. You all know how I "don't usually do this blogging thing..."). For all posterity and for the intertubes...

NCIS: Tony and Ziva (two of the main characters) get caught in the crossfire and end up locked inside a metal shipping container. Among the many wooden crates, they find billions of dollars. BUT, that's not all...even more exciting, they find hundreds of copies of a top Bollywood film! Kuch Kuch Hota Hai! :) It involves Shahruhk, Kajol, Rani Mukerji and a love triangle (could you have guessed?). And yes, all of them have appearances in Om Shanti Om during Deewangi Deewangi.

Hitch (the movie with Will Smith): Michael Westen from Burn Notice...well his real name is Jeffrey Donovan. No hot shot spy business going on here though, just a plain old businessman that's a d-bag.

X-Men: The Last Stand: Anna Paquin as Rogue...yes, the same girl that's in True Blood, but now, instead of just having a gap between her front teeth and a southern accent, she also has a bright white streak in her hair.

Danny Boy

I moved into my Law School dorm on Wednesday, and I've been doing orientation activities to introduce me to the Harvard campus I've lived on for four years. (I don't have to sign up for the Coop or get a new ID photo taken, and I already know my way around. It's a snap!) But our walking tours of Boston tomorrow are postponed because Tropical Storm Danny is headed for the Boston area, bringing three inches of rain tonight and tomorrow.

I mentioned this to Rezwan this evening after getting dinner with him and was surprised by his reaction. "Danny? I really think that discourages people from taking precautions against hurricanes - giving them cute, friendly names, like 'Hurricane Danny' or 'Hurricane Bill.' No one's afraid of 'Danny.'"

"Well," I said, "what would you suggest?"

"Something threatening and unfamiliar. Katrina, Gustav, these are names you don't hear every day, names people can really be scared of. So how about... Hurricane Bartolomeo, or Hurricane Boris?"

I caught on pretty quick. "You could have Hurricane Dragoslav, or Hurricane Dmitri, or Hurricane Dietrich!"

"Exactly," said Rezwan. "Bartolomeo, that sounds like somebody who could kill you. People would be scared of Bartolomeo. Bill? What's Bill gonna do? Cook you a hamburger."

I'm on a plane

and since I am the roaming gnome, I have to blog from this unusual internet-enabled location. :)

Good to note: Delta and AirTran both now offer wifi!
Bad to note: they are bastards, so they charge for it.
Important to note: I am not actually a hypocrite; I am not paying for this wifi. I got a free promo code thingy because this service is new.

Fun times: I got bumped to a later flight twice today, and I am now in possession of two free round trip flights to anywhere AirTran flies. So if you want me to come grace you with my presence, now's the time to make your case. :)

We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto.

I'm currently on the gulf coast of the Florida panhandle with the family for a beach vacation. We stopped at cvs to pick up some things, and it turns out that cvs in Florida is not quite like the cvs in the square...


Save 10% when you buy six!

Sent from my iPod

Intriguing Harvard Sports Trivia

Harvard Stadium was once an Olympic venue - hosting prelims in the soccer tournament at the Los Angeles-based 1984 Summer Olympics.

Early LOLcat Discovered

Via LanguageLog, an ancestor of modern LOLcats on a postcard from 1905:



Photographer Harry Whittier Frees took that photo and plenty of others, but his pioneering efforts went unnoticed for decades until the development of Impact font revolutionized the genre.

Dasher's final words

I just got back from visiting Dan on Martha's Vineyard. (I am so sunburned. Sunscreen LIES.) Monday night, he and Sameer and I made hamburgers using a charcoal grill, something none of us had used before. 

As Dan went to light the newspaper/charcoal contraption on fire, he said: "Well, if I die, tell Asian girls I love them."

federal poetry

magnetic wordplay from my office refrigerator:

can't talk am poor

make ed work

when and how did mom eat the children ?

no money !!!

i'm all compelled

big dad

Interesting article about Harvard's endowment

This article was just published in Vanity Fair in August (I read it during risk management training! Now I don't know how to manage risk and will lose all your money should you invest it with me)

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/08/harvard200908

Anyway, I don't think it really says anything we haven't heard before, but it does provide some interesting insight on the politics of the Harvard Management Corporation as well as the closed-lipness of Harvard towards the public regarding our endowment. In any case, it's an interesting read.

Dillinger 2.0

I saw Public Enemies today with my dad, at a 3:50 matinee with exactly two other people in the audience. It’s a good movie, with a solid performance by Johnny Depp, playing ‘30s bank robber John Dillinger without even a hint of Captain Jack Sparrow showing through. In contrast, Christian Bale, as the FBI agent pursuing Dillinger, does reprise the brooding mood we more often associate with Bruce Wayne: watching him brandish a machine gun while hanging onto the side of a speeding black police car, you have to wonder if he realizes it isn’t the Batmobile.

The film is exciting and generally well-paced, though it’s woefully inaccurate in some historical details, as Slate points out. (Though it’s apparently correct in its omission of the famous “woman in red,” instead showing her wearing white and orange.) One obvious inaccuracy comes from the casting: Dillinger’s girlfriend Billie Frechette didn’t have Marion Cotillard’s French accent, yet somehow this actually works.

Most striking for me, however, was the cinematography. From the early scenes of the film you can see the “shaky camera” technique that sparked so much comment about the Bourne trilogy. In many scenes the viewpoint wobbles slightly, unpredictably, as if we’re a character in the scene watching the action or – not quite the same thing – recording it ourselves on our own personal camera. (To be clear, I think Public Enemies does this more, and more noticeably, than its predecessors. It doesn’t look like it was shot on a camcorder; The Bourne Ultimatum looks like it was shot on a camcorder. Public Enemies often looks like it was shot on a cell phone.)

There’s much to say about whether this “you are there” immediacy helps or hurts thrillers like the Bournes. But the shaky cameras in Public Enemies give it a jarring modern feel. Perhaps it was also the odd lighting (several scenes seemed suffused with a bright yellow light, as if shot inside on my old camera) and/or the digital projection (the theater was a snazzy new outfit called Rave – the Loews in the Square and Boston Common don’t have digital projection, do they?) that made me sometimes feel as though I were watching a home movie on YouTube. That’s not a sense I got from, say, Chicago or O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and for good reason: we don’t expect movies about the 1930s to resemble YouTube clips.

Towards the end of the movie Dillinger watches Manhattan Melodrama, a 1934 action flick which presents its thrilling scenes, even a murder at a New York Rangers game, in matter-of-fact, steady, one (camera) shot packages. The contrast with the rest of Public Enemies is strong. The costumes and cars are period pieces, but the filmmaking is not.

The Little Bugger

Hi, my name is Addie, and I want to be your friend. I will bark like crazy to let you know that I'm excited to have you home. My normal state of being is asleep on the floor or the couch, as you can see from the photos above. I also like to lick people's feet and ankles. (It's all I can really reach when you're standing...I'm only 5 lbs.) I'm a 12-year old Maltese, but I currently have really short hair because it's summer and it's quite warm and humid here in DC. I like to eat bread and will try to make you give me your food, but alas, my attempts at mind control have not been very successful. Must try another course of action, like staring and looking very cute. I am afraid of thunder, but even when it doesn't rain, I will happily always be that little lump that takes up over half the bed because I can't sleep unless I'm next to you. Yes, I'm a bed-hog and I snore, but I'm cute, so get over it. I also go crazy and start bouncing around if you open the fridge or say "walk."

Since I mentioned how I am taking care of a dog this summer in DC, I figured I'd follow through on my promise and post photos of said dog. She apparently doesn't really like the camera...she always gives that wary look when I come near her with it (see first photo). The past three weeks have been me taking care of her and figuring out her strange quirks. I thought the best way to represent her oddities was to have her "introduce" herself. She tries really hard to communicate things by just looking at you for a long time and then barking, but I don't really know what she's trying to tell me...sometimes I wonder if she's like the guinea pigs on G-Force and will communicate some hyper-sensitive information to the government. I don't think she's intelligent enough to do that, though...she eats, sleeps, walks, and bounces...'nuff said.

Good Vibrations

I just got back from a free Beach Boys concert at the Hatch Shell. Uncle Jesse from Full House was the drummer. It was AWESOME. 

They sang "Forever," also from Full House. It was kind of completely amazing. 

Whatever. Stop judging. :P

 

The Green Counter Revolution

Today we had an impromptu lesson in welding with electricty.

We are in deep EV shit.

Electric Vehicles are the Future [of Pain]

Our electric vehicles are held together by stuff you can buy at a Safeway at 2:30am on a Sunday night.

A must-read health policy editorial

In "Why We Must Ration Health Care", Peter Singer hits the nail on the head, making the case that rationing of health care resources a) currently exists in the United States, and b) needs to occur in a more rational form. I would go one step further and say that any attempt at reforming the US health care system that does not -- implicitly or explicitly -- address the question "how will we ration medical care" in a coherent, logical fashion is doomed to failure.

Health care is a scarce resource, and all scarce resources are rationed in one way or another. In the United States, most health care is privately financed, and so most rationing is by price: you get what you, or your employer, can afford to insure you for. [....]In the public sector, primarily Medicare, Medicaid and hospital emergency rooms, health care is rationed by long waits, high patient copayment requirements, low payments to doctors that discourage some from serving public patients and limits on payments to hospitals.

Tim the Tease

Today as Aaron and I were walking through Times Square, we spotted a
Tim Horton's. Aaron loves Tim Horton's as much as a Canadian and
insisted that we stop. There was a grand opening sign and everything.
It was quite exciting. Momentarily. Because as we approached we
realized that the windows were all papered over and it wasn't actually
open yet. Aaron said he that his grief "shattered" him. So New
Yorkers, you'll have to wait a few more days for your timbits and
crack coffee.

Sent from my iPod

Tim Hortons to open in Manhattan

From the interwebs via a friend:

The Riese Organization, a longtime multi-concept franchisee in New York City, is converting all 13 of its Dunkin’ Donuts stores to the Tim Hortons brand, president and chief executive Dennis Riese said Wednesday.Riese said he plans to close the Dunkin’ locations on Friday and reopen the stores July 13 under the Tim Hortons banner. Riese and Dunkin’ had come to an agreement about five years ago that required the termination of a franchise partnership by July 31.

***

Tim Hortons, based in Canada, has been making a push to open more stores in the New York metro area. Most recently, the chain opened three co-branded restaurants in midtown Manhattan in partnership with premium ice-cream chain Coldstone Creamery.

I just got that much more excited to start med school next year... (note the one location right next to where I'll be).

Also, for those of you in the city right now, note that on Monday morning they'll be giving away free coffee at one of their locations.

Revenge

The situation: you're an country/folk singer. Not a country star, mind you, just an average country singer. One day you fly United Airlines to get to a gig and the baggage handlers break your guitar. The guitar costs $1,200 to replace. United is not responsive to your complaints. What do you do?

Answer: You write a song about the incident, title it "United Breaks Guitars," and post a music video on YouTube. The video gets 1.3 million hits in four days, the story gets major news coverage, and you get unexpected publicity - and maybe even that $1,200 back from United. And the song's a little catchy, even for non-country fans like me.

a book recommendation

While on vacation, I read (among other things) City of Thieves by David Benioff. Set in Russia during the siege of Leningrad, the story follows two young men who are arrested by the Soviet police but given a chance to earn their freedom if they can track down a dozen eggs for the Colonel's daughter's wedding cake and deliver them before the week is up. It was an excellent read, though I would have ended it slightly differently. (If any of you have read it already or read it in the future let me know because I like discussing books but don't like spoiling them for people.)

It even has something special towards the end for Alex and Matt, but I won't tell you what it is because I think you two especially would like this book. :P

To sum up: short, well-written, and with war and soviets to boot - two of this group's favorite things! 

Fun with cameras

Recently, I have been getting into photography. Partially due to my job and the resources available here, but also due to all of the interesting things to photograph out in this part of California.

My manager, Theseus, and I have recently become very interested in a type of photography called tilt-shift photography, where the plane of the image that is in focus is rotated around 2 axes to artificially shallow the depth of field. If you didn't understand that, no matter: the main reason to do something like this is to make a faux macro image. For example. Of course, one of these tilt shift lenses costs upwards of 1000USD, a not-insignificant sum.

Needless to say, with a dearth of work and nearly infinite camera resources, we decided to try and make our own tilt-shift lens for far cheaper.

Combine 1 part high-end SLR, 1 part custom-made lens of unspeakable value, 2 parts espresso, and about 30 parts duct tape, and we managed to make an unabashedly haphazard yet effective tilt shift lens. Of course, all sorts of regulations relating to NDA's and good taste prevent me from showing a picture of the final delightfully horrific Frankensteinian creation. But fortunately, I can show you the intial promising results.

Inflation: An Offer You Can't Refuse

I saw The Godfather the other day, for the first time ever – justly considered a classic movie, though The Departed will always have a special place in my heart among gangster movies. I had seen bits and pieces before, though, including the famous scene where Jack Woltz gets a dose of Mafia persuasion when he wakes up to find the severed head of his prize racehorse Khartoum in his bed. (That’s a real horse’s head, by the way. PETA was indignant but apparently didn’t carry enough weight in Hollywood in 1972.)

What caught my ear this time around was Woltz’s proud comment to Don Corleone’s consigliere Tom Hagan, introducing Khartoum on a tour of his estate: “Six hundred thousand dollars on four hooves!” That got me thinking: how much would that be today once you corrected for inflation? It’s often tough to think about monetary amounts in old movies like that because they’re difficult to quantify in today’s money. (Although it’s easy to compare Woltz’s $600,000 in relative terms, for example to the millions the Corleones talk about later… or, more pointedly, to the missing $8,000 that nearly ruins George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life, also set in 1945.)

So, like any good economics concentrator, I found some CPI tables and rigged up a chart that shows some inflation “multipliers” - rules of thumb to convert old prices into today’s dollars:

• $1 in 1985 would equal $2 in 2009
• $1 in 1979 would equal $3 in 2009
• $1 in 1975 would equal $4 in 2009
• $1 in 1969 would equal $6 in 2009
• $1 in 1955 would equal $8 in 2009
• $1 in 1945 would equal $12 in 2009
• $1 in 1934 would equal $16 in 2009
  

So Khartoum would be worth about $7.2 million in 2009 dollars – pretty good money for a racehorse. At least until Luca Brasi got ahold of him.

Engineering Fail

In 1628, Sweden and Poland were at war. They were fighting because King Gustav Adolf of Sweden and King Sigismund of Poland were cousins. Sigismund had been king of Sweden, but he was catholic and Sweden became Protestant so they kicked him out because he wouldn't convert. But he wanted to be king of Sweden and king of Poland because Sweden is pretty. So he and cousin Gustav went to war.

Sigi was doing a little too well in this war so Gus decided Sweden was going to build the biggest boat it had ever made to help win the war. The swedes spent almost two years (I think. This was a couple days ago.) building their huge ship. Finally it was ready. They loaded it up with the sailors and the cannons and the sailors' families for the celebratory maiden voyage. The ship, called the Vasa, sailed out into the port of Stockholm.

Then a breeze came.

Then the ship sank.

The Vasa was top heavy. It had too many cannons and decorations and not enough ballast. It was too tall and too skinny. Engineering fail.



Apparently Stockholm water is weirdly preservative, though, because after sitting on the ocean floor for three hundred years, they pulled the wooden ship out of the water and rebuilt it inside a museum. It's pretty cool. Check it out if you go to Stockholm.

I am in Helsinki now waiting for my traveling companions to get themselves packed up so that we can head out for the day. They should hurry up.

An engineering marvel

Over the weekend, we were out in Santa Cruz doing all of the things one does in such a place [beach, heavy drinking, pu-erh, and so on]. During one of the many meals that weekend, I had to retrieve something from Rebecca's dilapidated 1997 Honda Civic. Strangely, the driver's side door refused to lock from the inside, requiring locking it using the key from the outside. This is not strange as a phenomena of broken door locks per se, but strange as an isolated incident because the 1988 Honda CRX EV we have at work exhibits the same problem. I asked Rebecca how to lock it, and she told me to hold up the door handle and lock it from the inside.

This morning, I tried that solution on our own CRX and it worked, to my complete amazement.

I find it astounding that these two cars, with 10 years of engineering development and design separating them, manage to manifest the same problem and also the same exact work-around to that problem.

1993 All Over Again

My dad and I went to a Phillies game Wednesday night, for the first time in a few years: we hadn't been in the new stadium before. Citizens Bank Park is really nice, with more personality than the old cookie-cutter Veterans Stadium (although it's tough to top Fenway on personality) and a great view of the Philadelphia skyline from behind home plate. Unfortunately the game itself could have been better: it rained off and on, and the Toronto Blue Jays trounced us, 7-1, on their way to a three-game sweep. It felt like 1993 all over again.
In other Canadian sports news, Blackberry billionaire Jim Balsillie's plan to take over hockey's bankrupt Phoenix Coyotes and move them to Hamilton, Ontario, has stalled for the moment. (No word on whether the scheme's backers also include Sameer.)

Cass Sunstein, Extremism, and Judicial Panels

My ex-thesis advisor Cass Sunstein (ex because he got hired away by Obama in January) has a new book out – Going to Extremes: How Like Minds Unite and Divide – and there’s a pretty good review in Slate. I haven’t read the book, but it looks like the gist of it is similar to a paper he published this winter with Ed Glaeser: when groups of like-minded people discuss an issue together, they tend to come to a more extreme conclusion than they would have reached individually. Glaeser and Sunstein call this “Credulous Bayesianism,” reasoning that people in such groups draw support from their peers’ views, but don’t account for the fact that their peers may all be biased in the same direction.
I was interested to see that Sunstein seems to be extending his reasoning to heterogenous groups too: “If you bring the two clashing sides together, they don't find middle ground any more than like-minded people do,” Christoper Caldwell writes in the review. “Each side digs in.” That would seem to go against the grain of Sunstein’s work on three-judge federal appeals panels, which I wrote my thesis on. The very fact that Democratic or Republican appointees “cast more ‘extreme’ votes when they are in the majority than when they are not” means that judges who hold a minority view on a heterogenous panel are more likely to join the majority opinion anyway than to write a dissent. That doesn’t mean they actually change their minds, but it does mean that they go along with the majority rather than “digging in.”
Judicial panels aren’t an archetypal “deliberative group,” of course: the norm of judicial collegiality discourages dissents (as does the sheer number of cases appellate judges decide). Furthermore, dissenting judges can usually support their position with prior precedents, so the skewed dynamic of Credulous Bayesianism can’t really operate. The book seems to tie together a bunch of different studies beyond judicial panels (by Sunstein and others), and I’ll be interested to see how he connects the dots to make his overall points.

Khameini and Moussavi Go Way Back

Interesting tidbit in an NYT piece about Ayatollah Khamenei. It turns out the two were political opponents when Moussavi was Prime Minister and Khamenei was President in 1981. This is one of the first pieces of information that helps to explain why Khamenei has been willing to climb so far out on a limb for Ahmedinejad. The smart play seemed to be to let Moussavi win and allow Ahmedinejad absorb popular anger over his misrule. But this suggests that Khamenei might see Moussavi as a personal rival.

In the same article, it also turns out that Moussavi is challenging Khamenei's religious authority within the Shiite establishment. That move can only raise the stakes of the confrontation.

Kicked Out

I left Facebook's Harvard network for about twenty seconds last night, and when I got back on half of my groups had vanished.
It was a little bit frustrating, but there wasn't really any way around it. When you take your FAS email off your profile, your network membership goes with it - and as far as I can tell you can't be a member of the Harvard network twice at one time. I rejoined the Harvard network as a "grad student" right away, but it was too late. I'd already been kicked out of those exclusive Harvad-network groups like "FOP 41 - FOP Hardcore!" and "Canaday '09... You Know You Want It." Tragic.

The Conspiracy Begins...

Welcome to The Wolbach Conspiracy - a group blog where the Usual Suspects can trade anecdotes, travel stories, musings on current events, and other aspects of their journeys out into the post-graduation world. The title is an homage to Pfoho's Wolbach Hall, and to the name of the Volokh Conspiracy law blog (though only if you mispronounce it, as it depressingly turns out).
Glad to have you aboard!