Maybe it is just because I am basically unable to receive UPS packages at my apartment in New Haven or my summer digs in D.C., but I liked this, from the oral arguments in Jones v. Flowers (decision available here, audio here):

Maybe this day -- in today's world, a registered letter is worse than ordinary mail. ... We don't live in a -- my wife isn't home. My wife works. And -- and most wives no longer stay home to get the mail, and we don't all have butlers at the door. And you call up the post office. They say, oh -- if you get through to a human being, which takes 15 minutes, after you go through the menu, they say, phone the post office branch. And they say go get in the car, find a parking place, get in the line, and there's half a morning gone.

Now, why is that a reasonable way? Why can't they do what FedEx does? This is a world -- husband works, wife works, two children are screaming. We've got to get them to the doctor. We have to have them at school. They have appointments all morning, and there's nobody home.

So whatever they did with Mullane and said registered mail is fine, why isn't it unreasonable to use that system rather than use FedEx's system?

When a reporter from the a Chicago suburban newspaper offered me the chance to go see Borat with him and two local Kazakhstani graduate students, I didn't think twice before accepting the offer. I realize such opportunities don't come without a cost--namely, the post-screening interview; those who know will me will understand I don't hold back my tongue, my words, with glee. Regrefully, I didn't feel it would be proper for me to hijack the interview and turn it into a freewheeling discussion.

"Borat" really is a movie about Americans. It's about how we behave when our social norms are violated. Confusion. Politeness. Willing not hearing. It's about how one man's social norm is another man's social taboo. Homosexuality. The Confederacy. It's about what Americans do when patriotism becomes absurd. (The "support the troops" scene). It's also a movie of some very painful and powerful humor.

And maybe there's a silver lining in the refusal of the Russian censors to release "Borat" to cinemas there: if Kazakhstan fears that unknowing Americans will mistake Borat's portray of Kazakhstan for a partially accurate picture of the country, then so perhaps should Americans fear what audiences abroad learn from this film. You couldn't mistake Borat's country for Kazakhstan when the even houses don't look like they're from Kazakhstan, said one of the natives. True, I agreed, based on my lesser experience and the odd shingles they were roofed with. Similarly, if you don't see the American follies being mocked in Borat, you read the movie differently.

Discussing the scene in which Borat drives from a corner on MLK Blvd. to an upscale luxury hotel, one of the Kazakhstanis said that he took from it the point that in America, the social classes don't mix. This is where I sat on my tongue, thinking No, no, please don't believe that, even if it's true please don't believe it. As I sat, in silence, he brought up another point, one about how Americans react when he tells them he that he walks, day and night, in areas bordering but outside of Hyde Park: Why are Americans appalled, and why are all the people I see in these areas with bad apartments black, especially if all Americans have the same opportunity?

It was an interview. It wasn't a discussion of U.S. history and race and urban policy and inequities. The journalist finally replied that it was a good question and changed the topic of conversation. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't the right time and place to talk about the factors that influence what he hears and sees. But oh: I felt my silence showed how little Americans thought about the question rather than how we sometimes respond when we're embarrased and unsure how to conduct the hard conversations and what to say.

Thank God they're first-year grad students and not short-term visitors. Maybe there's time for discussions in the years ahead. And maybe, if I respond to a question about where to walk, with a quick summary of relative police patrols and crime statistics, he won't think I'm a racist.

"I'd bet you a million dollars that I'm right. And I do have a million dollars."

So said the man standing behind where I was sitting at the bar of Babbo, Mario Batali's flagship restaurant in New York City. He was trying to impress the woman he was with, I guess. And he was hulking over me, trying to get me to finish more quickly, so he and his apparently impervious to smarm date could take my place and the open one next to me in the crowded lobby of the Greenwich village townhouse where the famed italian chef does his best work. I should say, as I pass, that crowding me isn't a good way to get my seat. I'm fairly sure I ordered that last expresso, and sipped langorously at my free prosecco (more on that later) purely out of spite.

Having said that, I mostly understand why the man with a million was so eager to sit down. Batali does some startlingly original food, and the menu at Babbo is a testament to the flexibility of the human digestive system. Liver, brain, tripe, foot, and tongue all make appearances, and that was just in the generously sized primi. The menu is so odd, actually, that it's hard to choose anything. Is duck tongue or calf brain pasta likely to be better? The average person simply has no frame of reference.

But my own first course required no such decision. It's white truffle season, and I was on someone else's generously extended dime. Batali, wisely, doesn't mess around with magnificence. For $50, he provides a three minute duck's egg on toast, with half a generous piece of truffle shaved atop at tableside. The rough earthiness of the mushroom makes it worth the considerable expense, if, indeed, any food can be worth such a price. Though, as I ate a few slivers of truffle that weren't overwhelming, one couldn't help but think what the same dish would taste like in Italy. Aside from even better, that is.

There's no such doubt with my second course, a plate of tripe in tomato sauce. Although I like tripe, and I like tomato, of course, there was something oddly dissonant about the combination. and, when noted aside the fact that the plate came overfull, I suspect that the tripe is one of the weaker dishes on the menu, there largely to satisfy Batali's long standing obsession withh the honeycombed ingredient. It was a puzzling dish - hearty, unexpected, but not perfect, and I can't imagine it staying on the menu in this form for long.

My main course, however, has already stood the test of time. It's mentioned in the New York Times' 3 star review of Babbo, and should be mentioned again when Bruni reviews the restaurant again in the future. Perfect ravioli, stuffed with beef cheek, and topped with a sauce of squab liver, Batali has created a pasta worth a detour for itself alone, a sort of perfect version of the spaetzle with goose liver that I enjoyed so much in Alsace three years ago. The dish is both unctuous and yet not overwhelming, perfectly portioned, and topped with table-side pecorino romano. Perhaps, somewhere, I've had better pasta. I couldn't, now, tell you where or when.

And surprisingly, Babbo's desserts are worth sticking around for. Aside from the shell I found in my pistachio semi-freddo (a sort of double edged reassurance, I suppose, that Babbo makes the italian frozen egg custard itself, and for which I was given, without asking, a free glass of italian sparkling wine), the chocolate topped sweet was extraordinary. I've been sitting on a semi-freddo recipe from the now over-exposed Jamie Oliver's first cookbook, back in my second year of college. Batali's rendition makes me want to start cracking eggs right now, as full as i am with my meal at Babbo.

Incidentally, I've told everyone how not to get a seat at the notoriously hard to book destination. I can say with equal confidence that calling these people isn't likely to work either. After trying for two weeks straight, just to ask whether they had a bar or not, I gave up and went to the restaurant itself to avoid further busy signals. The real answer, aside from my luck in securing a seat at the last moment, after a partner told me to leave for the day after a truly awful week, in terms of work, was provided by the gay couple who arrived about twenty minutes after I did. Just slip the bartender some cash.

For best results, make sure it involves three digits rather than two. With food this good inside, it just might be worth it.

Just below, I commented on the strange anger in American politics. The discussion in the comments is worth reading. While there are a lot of good explanations set forth therein, the closest to what I believe is Stuart Buck's. As he puts it:

The answer is simple: Americans, of all political stripes, don't have as much *real* tolerance for other people. (Remember: "tolerance" is only meaningful insofar as you tolerate people who differ from yourself. Anyone can tolerate their friends.)

It's hard to generalize, obviously, but I think there's a lot to that observation. I've always seen it not as a lack of tolerance, however, but as a passion for conformity. To the extent that passion exists, and isn't a figment of my imagination, I also think it extends beyond politics. Read this New York Times article on disturbed children, for example. While kids, for me, are something other people deal with, I simply couldn't help squirming while reading this description of the various regimens people are putting their children through. Certainly, some of the kids described in the article really are ill. But some are just strange, or energetic, or different. But the solution always seems to be the discovery of some disease.

I'll tell a story which I guess might be a little offensive, but is completely illustrative of what I mean. I certainly don't mean to belittle or minimize serious mental illnesses and the damage they cause. But I have a little cousin-ish kind of person. He's seven years old, and struggling at school. He has trouble paying attention, isn't doing whatever it is that seven year olds do academically, and has trouble listening in class. Some doctor diagnosed "mild autism", and now the poor family is travelling the entire tortuous path of autism counsellors, and whatever else is involved with that diagnosis. Of course, even the diagnosing doctor himself says that the diagnosis is marginal. There's no physical evidence of anything wrong, and the kid is almost asymptomatic. But his parents' lives are now a milk round of appointments.

I was talking to the child's uncle a month or so ago, and he finally got frustrated, and said, "I know what's wrong with X. He's not autistic. He's dumb." And, of course, to me that's exactly the answer. The kid is what we used to call dumb. He's not going to be a good student, and rationally, he isn't enjoying school. And yet, his eyes light up around cars. He asked for wrenches for christmas. His mom can't keep him away from engines. God, nature, someone, is signalling brightly, unavoidably, that our family has a mechanic on its hands, or at least some sort of craftsman. Nor is he detrimentally detached from society or anything else. He has friends, talks passionately about all sorts of things, and seems pretty happy. He's just not academically talented. But he does appear to be extremely talented at something else.

Instead of recognizing that, and guiding this child towards the life his skills appear to have designed him for, our medical profession, and everyone else, is trying to medicate him, heavily, into community college. How is that a decent, humane, result? In what sense is pounding this kid into the squarest of holes with powerful drugs the correct answer to anything?

Of course, he ought to get basic academic schooling, and if he later "blooms," as people used to say, the sky's the limit. But for now, he ought to be allowed to do what he looks like he wants to do. And if that means he does poorly in elementary school, well, who cares? As the standard law firm joke goes, plumbers and electricians make more than us per hour anyway.

The other point that disturbed me about the story is that I rather suspect that Crescat's readers are kind of an eccentric bunch. Certainly, speaking for myself, I paid almost no attention elementary school, and got into occasional trouble because I just read novels in class. So how many of us would have been medicated these days? And where would we have ended up?