Some Random Thoughts About Current Events

  1. If it was a USAF jet that was shot down over international waters instead of a Turkish jet, there would be calls to reduce every airstrip in Syria into pools of still-quivering molten glass. But it was a Turkish jet and there are calls for an appropriate restraint and diplomatic condemnation. NATO membership counts for something, except when it doesn’t.
  2. With that said, going to war in Syria would be a bad idea. It wasn’t such a swift idea in Libya, a nation now well on its way to becoming Somalia – North. Syria is better-armed and has closer ties to Russia.
  3. Has it really been a whole month since LeagueFest? I felt so relaxed back then.
  4. Skyrim has to be among the best values I’ve ever spent for entertainment. In terms of dollars-spent-per-hour-of-play, sixty bucks of game in exchange for over three hundred hours of gameplay totally demolishes going to the movies. And I can’t even be halfway through doing all the adventures written into the game yet.
  5. Everyone is talking and writing as though the ruling in Arizona v. U.S. is a victory for Arizona because the “show me your papers” provision didn’t get struck down. Three out of four challenges on pre-emption resulted in a finding of pre-emption. As for the headline provision that survived a pre-emption challenge, well, that looks to me almost like the Court was inviting an Equal Protections suit once implementation data begins to accumulate. If I were Jan Brewer, I might put on a brave face in public, but in private I’d be baffled as to how to implement what’s left of that law without resorting to racial profiling — it’s not like there’s a flood of undocumented Hungarians hanging around in front of the Tuscon Home Depot offering to dig up flowerbeds for ten dollars an hour.
  6. This turns out to be a top result when you conduct a Google Image Search for “flood of undocumented Hungarians.” A foolish and risky maneuver on my part — it could have turned out much, much worse than that.
  7. It seems to me that much of the opposition to Obamacare is opposition to Obama. If, as expected, major surgery is done to PPACA by SCOTUS the day after tomorrow, it will be a poltical black eye for the Administration that might rebound in either direction. But something like it will be back, one way or the other.
  8. If the primary constitutional problem with PPACA is federalism — Congress can’t make you buy insurance, but a state can — then could Congress make the states adopt mini-PPACA’s (like, say, the program currently in place in Massachusetts) by threatening to withhold highway funds? Or defunding a Medicare grant?
  9. I think my job is stressful — well, you couldn’t pay me enough to be Governor of California right now, even with a purportedly friendly Legislature and an emasculated political opposition. No amount of fame, fortune, love, sex, nor longevity, would be worth it. Not that my hat’s off to Jerry Brown for the way he’s handling the job — just some recognition that this may well be among the most thankless tasks facing anyone anywhere.
  10. Coming up with Monday Trivia questions is hard, y’all. Kudos to my co-blogger for doing it so well for so long.
  11. Twitter is full of noise. It’s like everyone is Instapundit. Only not quite as verbose, and faster. It all but forecloses the possibility of real thought about anything that is read there. I dislike it but can’t quite tear myself away, and always find myself going back for just one more and hating myself for it. In that sense, Twitter is also like salt and vinegar potato chips.
  12. I’ve noticed that I’m self-medicating OTJ stress with more frequent alcohol consumption at home. Just one drink a night, but I’ve gone from having a few drinks on the weekends with friends to having a drink every night before bed. Is this a bad sign? I, I, I am exercising more, too, and that isn’t bullshit I’m just saying in mitigation.
  13. When writing a list, there is an impulse to stop at ten, in emulation of the Decalogue, or at least some sort of round number or an easy multiple. I, however, shall gleefully persist until I reach a prime number of random thoughts.
  14. If an atheist blogger decides to convert to Roman Catholicism, no one ought to expect a rational explanation from her. Religion and faith are not rational behaviors. Nor is this remark intended as a slight to religion and faith — I behave irrationally all the time. I love my wife; I like pizza; I see beauty in the sky at night. These things are not motivated by reason or logic. Neither is religious belief. If she’d fallen in love, we’d all be happy for her. She found faith and thinks participation in a religious institution will enrich her life. I hope it does.
  15. Trying to define torture or cruelty, or poverty, or education, is a moving target as our cultural norms and expectations change. We never used to think solitary confinement was inherently cruel or unusual, but if you set the Wayback Machine for 250 years ago, few if any of our forebearers saw  any reason to question the morality of public hangings.
  16. Lawyers take it as conventional wisdom that we’re safer now than ever before. Crumple zones built in to cars, seat belts, air bags, and so on — product safety is at a high mark and rising. But the New England Journal of Medicine makes me question that — accidents seem to take roughly the same number of lives as ever. The graphic, by the way, shows one utterly terrifying spike representing the outbreak of Spanish Flu after the Great War. One disease catches us off guard and that could happen again.
  17. Has there ever been a time you’ve had Kentucky Fried Chicken and not immediately regretted it? I mean, sure, it’s really salty, so I’ll concede that KFC has got something going for it. But be honest. Every time you’ve eaten something from KFC, haven’t you immediately thought to yourself, “Self, you had choices, and KFC was only one of them.” Me, either. The fundamental premise of microeconomics — that individual consumers will be able to, given a large enough sample size and sufficient time, ascertain the optimal balance of price, quality, speed, and other desirable factors in a product or service — is thus disproven by the inexplicably-continuing vitality of this business.

Burt Likko

Pseudonymous Portlander. Homebrewer. Atheist. Recovering litigator. Recovering Republican. Recovering Catholic. Recovering divorcé. Recovering Former Editor-in-Chief of Ordinary Times. House Likko's Words: Scite Verum. Colite Iusticia. Vivere Con Gaudium.

30 Comments

  1. KFC’s cole slaw is better than pretty much anybody’s but Gran’s.

    (A couple of months back, I went in to buy 4 large ones for a Family Gathering and the lady behind the counter asked me “to go?”… so I managed to end up regretting that quick stop, yes.)

    • You say this because you haven’t had my coleslaw:

      Shredded white and red cabbage
      Apple cider vinegar and sesame oil, one tablespoon for every three ounces of vinegar (ratio approx. 10:1)
      Halved roasted peanuts
      Roasted salted cashew pieces
      Raw ramen noodles, crushed into small pieces
      One shredded (or julilenned) carrot
      Handful of dried cranberries
      A clove or two of crushed garlic
      Salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, chipotle chili powder, powdered savory
      Toasted sesame seeds

      Combine. Toss. Chill. Devour. You’ll never miss the milky mayonnaise.

      • mmmm I’m going to have to try that thanks! been trying to get a no mayo recipe from my cousin for years no dice

    • That’s a great story. It’s even funnier when I pictured it happening to Louie CK.

      • Disagree about Popeye’s sides. I actually prefer their biscuits over KFC’s. Potatoes are way better. KFC does have better mac’n’cheese, though.

      • I may or may not have on occasion bought chicken from Popeye’s then gone across the street for the sides from KFC.

        That said, I will travel over miles of burning sand for a rumor of a KFC that still sells fried gizzards.

        • How disgusting are the sides from Popeye’s that KFC’s sides are preferable?

          Their coleslaw is too finely-shredded, and served in a soup of sickly-sweet is-that-even-mayonnaise-anymore sauce. Harlan Sanders himself pronounced the mashed potatoes to be “sludge” and compared them unfavorably to wallpaper paste. The mac and cheese is less interesting than Kraft blue box stuff. The deep fried potato wedges lack flavor. The thinner fries are too thick to be pleasantly crispy yet lack enough potato substance to be anything more than hollow starch tubules. The corn on the half-cob is mushy and flavorless from sitting in hot water inside the double boiler for what must be days on end before serving.

          Okay, I’ll concede that KFC’s biscuits are pretty good. But KFC still manages to screw up said biscuits by way of miserly stinginess in dispensing the oily, supersweet ersatz condiments (viz., low-grade margarine and HFCS in a difficult-to-open squeeze packet under the bordering-on-deceptively-false label of “honey sauce”; you can’t even get their functionally fruitless but pleasingly purple HFCS under the also-deceptive name of “grape-flavored jelly” anymore) purportedly intended for said biscuits. Damnit, give me a pat of real butter and one of those little plastic tubs of actual fruit preserves that Denny’s somehow magically seems able to stock on tables without having to file Chapter 11. Really, KFC, using the real ingredients should only cost you a fraction of a fishing penny more per serving than the crap you’re putting out there and brazenly calling “food.” And tell your people to just serve up the biscuit condiments in the meal already — I’ve been across this great nation of ours and every time I’ve made the mistake of eating at one of your restaurants, KFC, I’ve had to damn near beg the teenager behind the counter for these substandard condiments. It’s not like those same kids aren’t dropping armfuls of ketchup packets on the tray already when someone orders fries or potato wedges, so it clearly can’t be economy.

          • There’s more HFCS in the “ketchup” packets than there is in the “honey sauce.”

      • Yes, but I did not think it applicable to the KFC/Popeye’s situation. Applebee’s/Chili’s perhaps, but not KFC/Popeye’s.

    • “In a world where Popeye’s exists, I do not understand why KFC does.”

      Co-sign 1000%.

      For the very same reason, I wonder how Dominos/Pizza Hut/Papa Johns/etc. exist in NYC. I can only imagine that has to do with price.

  2. Twitter is insanely hard to keep up with. There’s so much interesting stuff out there that I want to keep trying, but I only follow 70-something people and it takes alot of work to follow just the links that look interesting.

  3. “If it was a USAF jet that was shot down over international waters instead of a Turkish jet, there would be calls to reduce every airstrip in Syria into pools of still-quivering molten glass.”

    Except that the USAF did have a jet crash in Iran, and somehow we did not nuke Tehran in response.

    “[I]n private I’d be baffled as to how to implement what’s left of that law without resorting to racial profiling”

    Thus encouraging racial minorities to refuse to spend any time around white people, or to welcome white people into their neighborhoods and cultural centers. Because if everyone in town is Mexican, then only Mexicans will be arrested in that town, and therefore it’ll be Obvious Evidence Of Racism.

    Ghettoization: It used to be evidence of racism, now it’s a defense against it!

    • Except that the USAF did have a jet crash in Iran, and somehow we did not nuke Tehran in response.

      Was that the drone Tehran claimed to have shot down in December of last year? It seems a bit different without a pilot involved, don’t you think?

  4. “Lawyers take it as conventional wisdom that we’re safer now than ever before. Crumple zones built in to cars, seat belts, air bags, and so on — product safety is at a high mark and rising. But the New England Journal of Medicine makes me question that — accidents seem to take roughly the same number of lives as ever. ”

    It seems to me that there is a certain level of per-capita death by misadventure that society just accepts as normal. The effect of safety devices is not to reduce that number, but to allow riskier behavior overall while keeping the number the same. There are about as many road fatalities per driver as in the early years of the automobile; but there are many more automobiles, and they travel farther, faster, and more efficiently. It used to be that traveling at eighty miles an hour was something that specialists did using customised vehicles. Now grandmothers do it every morning, and right on your bumper.

    • And granny is quite welcome to back off ever so slightly on the fishing gas pedal when she’s driving behind me. I won’t think the less of her if she does.

      • Things I learned back in high school driver training (I am not making this up):

        “If someone’s tailgating you on the freeway, just flip on your lights. He’ll think it’s your brake lights, slam on his brakes, and get rear-ended by the car behind him.. They’ll get out and start screaming at each other, and you drive away with a little halo over your head.”

        • See, I just get out of the way if there’s room (and, when in the carpool lane, if I’ll be able to get back in afterwards.) I figure that nobody’s situation is improved by me intentionally pissing off other drivers.

          • Who are you, and what have you done with DD?

  5. About no. 8, I suppose it would depend on how closely the funds are related to the purpose and how drastic the denial of funds would be for the state. I’m thinking of a case–was it South Dakota v. Dole?–that spoke to this issue. It involved the feds’ threat to withhold highway funds from states that didn’t enact minimum drinking ages for 21 year olds.

    If I understand correctly, withholding highway funds from states that don’t offer mini-PPACA’s probably wouldn’t cut the mustard. But withholding medicaid payments might, as long as the states would have the power to opt out of its higher medicaid requirements.

    • A related question: has the Massachusetts-style mandate been litigated in federal court or to the US Supreme Court, say, as a violation of 14th amendment prohibition of states’ denying liberty without due process of law (I know “liberty of contract” is supposedly a bad thing, but might it be revived)?

  6. I agree with no. 14, but will submit that faith and religion–as with love for one’s spouse or for pizza–is, or can be, informed by reason.

    I love and respect my girlfriend: what am I actually going to do on a day-to-day basis to show that I love and respect her? That requires, or at least is not antithetical to, a reasoned response.

    I love pizza (and KFC, too). But how much is too much, and when am I going to eat it, and if I eat it too much will I love it less or more or be too poor to afford any more because it’s relatively more expensive than many non-pizza foods? The answers to these questions are, or can be, informed by reason.

  7. 13. When writing a list, there is an impulse to stop at ten, in emulation of the Decalogue, or at least some sort of round number or an easy multiple. I, however, shall gleefully persist until I reach a prime number of random thoughts.

    And yet you continued. 😉

  8. “Has there ever been a time you’ve had Kentucky Fried Chicken and not immediately regretted it?”

    I’ll do ya one better… there is a Taco Bell/KFC combo restaurant just up the road from us. Every now and then, when my wife and I are feeling like being a very particular type of degenerate, we toss that idea back and forth. We don’t even decide whether we are actually going to head over there or not and we immediately feel regret for even considering it.

    I should also say that, the year after I graduated from college, a buddy and I lived a few miles from another of the same franchises. It was right next to our local super market. On Sundays, we’d hit the market, load up on TB/KFC, and lay on the couch downing the shit watching football. We never regretted the decision. That was a mere 7 years ago. It is amazing how quickly your ability to ingest massive amounts of shit changes. Kevin James has a great bit on this.

  9. While Juan Cole might be a bit too optimistic about the Libya situation, I think his take on the subject is a generally useful tonic to the hyperbole of it being some sort of new Somalia. (For that matter, Somalia is only as bad as it is, because Ethiopia decided to intervene and unseat a consolidating force in favor of the toothless TFG)

    As for the Turkey-Syria situation, given that Erdogan’s government doesn’t actually want an open ended intervention (or at least not yet) I don’t think they’re keen on invoking Article 5 quite yet. They want support for more crackdowns economically against Assad from NATO members, which they’re probably going to get. But unless Syria gets stupid enough to encroach into Turkish territory again, the NATO workaround to the UNSC probably won’t come into play.

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