telegraph29

On the Ivies

An accomplished professional in New York, reflecting on his tenure at Harvard decades before, once told me that the most valuable thing about going to an Ivy League school is showing up, soaking up the atmosphere and figuring out that a great many of your classmates really aren't any smarter than lots of intelligent people you've known from all walks of life.

I'm reminded of his words by Ta-Nehisi Coates, who muses on his poor performance in school:

I've since gone out into the world, and worked in a profession where an Ivy League degree is damn near a prerequisite. No disrespect, and certainly no nod to the populist anti-intellectualism, but I'm not impressed.

Although I am impressed by some friends who've gone to the Ivies, I think he is generally right. The fact that alumni keep giving money to institutions whose endowments are grotesquely swollen only reaffirms my opinion.

Electric Kool-Aid Conservatism

I've got a piece up at Doublethink on the future of right-of-center journalism. Check it out.

Ping pong rally needed

As D.C. libertarians rally around the Jefferson 1 -- you can donate here -- consider another local put upon by the small tyrants of the D.C. establishment. His story comes via The Dupont Current, an off-line only freebie.

Jessica Gould reports:

In the end it came down to a debate about right and pong.

On Monday, James Alefantis, co-owner of Comet Ping Pong, presented a public-space application to the North Cleveland Park, Forest Hills and Tenleytown advisory neighborhood commission.

Why has this good citizen petitioned his representatives?

After a year and a half in business, he said, the restaurant at 5037 Connecticut Ave. is ready to expand outside. he requested the commission's support for an application to build a sidewalk cafe complete with tables, chairs, planters and a patio. New fencing on freestanding posts would surround the cafe, he said.

A lovely American story, isn't it? Who doesn't like to see a small businessman succeed? Who could object to such a man creating a nicer setting for customers, stimulating the economy and contributing more to local coffers?

But some commissioners said they were concerned about Alefantis' past sidewalk use. "Up until yesterday, you had a ping pong table in public space. Do you have a permit for that?" asked commissioner Frank Winstead.

Yes, it is absurd that one needs a permit for a ping pong table. I'd be on Mr. Alefantis' side even if he never sought one. But here is what actually happened:

He said he had contacted the district Department of Transportation's public space office and was informed that, since the table could serve as a kind of advertisement for the restaurant, it did not necessarily need a permit.

Okay, so this poor guy did due diligence, consulting some obscure municipal office about a simple ping pong table. You're all set, his government told him.

Some commissioners, however, remained unconvinced.  "They told you it was  like a sign or a plaque? A ping pong table is not an advertisement," said commissioner Karen Perry.

As it happens, I have seen the ping pong table. I have also considered securing duel citizenship in some small third world nation whose national ping pong team is poor enough that I might sneak my way into the Olympics. In less ambitious moments, I've told my friend Chris Beam that we should play ping pong sometime. So for me the table most certainly served as an advertisement.

How foolish, I now realize -- Chris, let me apologize for my recklessness. Why?

...commissioners said they worry about the perils posed by the ping pong table. "I think this ping pong table in public space is a safety hazard and I want to see it gone," said Winstead.

Commissioner Daniel Klibanhoff said ping pong players might be tempted to follow errant balls into the street.

There was one commissioner who ignored these grave pragmatic concerns.

Perry said it was the principle of the ping pong table that bothered her. "I guess my problem is I can't approve an application for someone who has knowingly violated the law for 18 months," she said.

Furthermore, she said, she objected to the fence with the freestanding posts and would prefer to see planters mark the bounds of the sidewalk cafe.

Before I note what happened, consider that all this nonsense is a pretty major disincentive for a business owner thinking about modest expansion. Going before the city basically gets you a bunch of scrutiny as to whether you've ever violated a bunch of petty rules. So what did happen?

Perry proposed that the commission not object to the cafe, but include a series of caveats in its letter to the Department of Transportation. The commission would alert officials to the presence of the outdoor ping pong table, she said...The commissioners would also note that they did not approve of a rope and stanchions, had concerns about whether an existing ramp to the restaurant complied with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and questioned the accuracy of the drawings, she said.

Alefantis, apparently broken and resigned to the necessary groveling expected by small tyrants:

"I think they are all good suggestions... also I want to apologize to anyone who was offended by the outdoor ping pong table."

And after all that, a couple of commissioners still voted against allowing this businessman to improve his business!!

The commission passed the motion 3-2 with Klibanoff and Winstead voting against it. Alefantis promised to move the ping pong table inside the restaurant.

I'm sure these commissioners are perfectly nice people, but their attitudes toward the proper role of government -- petty, bullying, imposing lots of unnecessary rules, substituting their personal preferences for the carefully thought out aesthetic preferences of a businessman expanding his livelihood -- are gravely flawed. If you agree why not contact them -- politely and using reasoned arguments -- and tell them so.

Meanwhile, so much for outdoor ping pong on these lovely spring days.

Pie

Students at Brown threw a pie at Thomas Friedman, the over-rated NY Times columnist, during a speaking engagement, an act that Matthew Yglesias dubs "funny" and that Yale student Dara Lind defends thusly:

I find the consensus in this country that the only acceptable public action is speech to be incredibly disturbing. Pieing someone in the face doesn’t meaningfully “prevent” him from speaking, and registers your disapproval (and more specifically, in this case, eagerness to show up a self-styled Man of the World for the buffoon he is) much more effectively than an op-ed in your student paper can.... to exclude bodily action from acceptable public expression is to resort to a dualism that I hope we’ve moved past by now.

But there is no consensus that "the only acceptable public action is speech" -- there is clapping, booing, turning one's back to a speaker, holding aloft a Zippo (or, sadly, a cell phone) to signal approval, shaking your fist, giving a standing ovation... all of which, by the way, are more acceptable than certain kinds of speech (e.g. racist harangues, shouting at the top of one's lungs, etc.).

Throwing pies rankles, among other reasons, because it is destructive of public discourse. It contains less content than spoken dissent and imposes a far greater cost: prominent speakers aren't going to address college audiences if there is a likelihood that they'll get a pie in the face.

"Action - and especially performance — is a legitimate contribution to public discourse," Ms. Lind writes, as if any sort of action or performance is justified merely due to its physical medium! Should I ever find myself debating her in person I suppose she won't mind if I perform an experimental ballet I've developed called "Steal her microphone so the audience can only hear me," which ought to succeed even if I'm hit by a pie during the raid on her podium.

Ahistorical argument of the day

Ouch.

On flag lapel pins

James Poulos at Postmodern Conservative: 

Flag lapel pins should not be mandatory for US politicians. They should not be mandatory for anyone. They should not be the product of social pressure. They should not be understood to reflect on anyone's resolution to care more, or call upon the public to acknowledge how much more they appear to care. There is nothing wrong with a flag lapel pin, although I would not wear one regularly unless I were in the flag lapel pin manufacturing business. But we have got to make ourselves admit that the lapel pin is a tacky little thing that is only ennobled by the flag put on it, and that the more patriotic work you want the flag to do, the more the flag is actually diminished by its puny size and the cheapness of the tin it's pressed upon.

On the plus side, as refreshing as it would be to see politicians actually drape themselves in jewel-bestudded sashes of red, white, and blue, in only a few moments everyone would have one, patriotism would fuse with fashion, and instead of mandatory tacky little things we would swim in a creped-up sea of tacky enormous things. The best the lapel pin can say for itself is that so far it has shown no signs of slyly getting any larger. The worst it can say for itself, however, is what it so quickly has threatened to say for the wearer: "Rest assured, I'm just as American as I was before this fad made me have to metaphorically (but only metaphorically) prove it."

I'd personally prefer that our leaders wear shimmering coats of hummingbird feathers like the Aztecs.

Reductio ad abcsurdum

Since Jim Fallows sums up my feelings on the Democratic debate I thought I'd make a couple narrow rebuttals. On this blog Phillip Klein defends ABC, writing, "If this were the first debate between the two candidates, I can understand the frustration, but given that this is the 21st debate, it's a different story. What kind of policy discussion is left to have among two candidates who agree on virtually everything?"

It is quite right that health care and Iraq have been fleshed out. But the president does all sorts of things that Senators Obama and Clinton are seldom if ever asked about. Tough questions I'd like to see include whether the candidates believe that the constitution in fact assigns only enumerated powers to the federal government, and if so what specific powers belong only to the states or the people; whether the candidates believe that the War on Drugs is winnable and how they would wage it or end it; and the candidates' views on the balance of power between the executive, the legislative and the judiciary branches during war time.

Another citizen might prefer that questions be asked on animal rights, maintaining the interstate highway system, the prudence of a regulated market for kidneys and the reasoning for our reliance on corn based rather than sugar based ethanol. There is no shortage of topics; moderators just confine themselves unnecessarily.

Enter David Brooks, defending the ABC debate moderators on different grounds. He says, echoing others, that "the journalist's job is to make politicians uncomfortable," and that it's legitimate to see how they'll respond to symbolic issues. If that is so, however, the moderators seemed to have failed for a different reason -- I can imagine the candidates being far less comfortable and being asked far more symbolic questions than what ABC mustered.

Perhaps a future debate should feature Brooks as moderator posing the following questions:

-- A black child, a white child and a Cuban refugee child are all drowning and you can only save two. Which two children do you save?

-- A terrorist makes a credible threat that he will detonate a nuclear device in Manhattan unless you engage in intercourse with the spouse of your opponent. Would you do so if your CIA chief estimated it would afford a 10 percent chance of averting the attack?

-- Were you widowed, terminally ill and raising a young child would you rather arrange for its adoption by a loving gay couple or a heterosexual spinster? Would you rather the child grow up to be gay or mildly homophobic but happily married with kids?

-- As president will you be more concerned with protecting American lives than the lives of foreigners? If so how many Israeli lives is an American life worth? What about Kenyan lives? Palestinian lives? Iraqi lives? And how does that last affect your Iraq policy?

-- If God spoke to you, as he spoke to some in biblical accounts, and told you to convert to Catholicism, would you? What about Islam? Mormonism? Scientology? What if he asked you to get a sex change operation?

--  Were a cure for AIDS developed that required the slaughter of 15,000 live puppies per year for a key ingredient would you approve their murder?

These questions may seem, and in fact are, utterly absurd, but I am serious in suggesting that if our measure of a good question is one that makes a candidate uncomfortable, tests their performance in a pressure filled situation and forces them to think on their feet, my questions are superior to ABC's, which is another way of saying that this metric for questions is fatally flawed.

(Cross post at the American Spectator)

Depraved "art"

This is by far the most disgusting project hoax I've ever heard of.

Up and down

Everything you ever wanted to know about elevators is now collected in one magazine article, which includes one of the best arguments against high rise public housing projects I've ever read:

Loading up an empty elevator car with discarded Christmas trees, pressing the button for the top floor, then throwing in a match, so that by the time the car reaches the top it is ablaze with heat so intense that the alloy (called “babbitt”) connecting the cables to the car melts, and the car, a fireball now, plunges into the pit: this practice, apparently popular in New York City housing projects, is inadvisable.

Terrifying if true, though I can't help but suspect that the word "apparently" was inserted by an exasperated member of the fact-checking staff.

Photo by Flickr user Annia 316 under a Creative Commons license.

If you think your boss is nuts...

... check this out.