Week in Review: Stab self, have repaired (to the tune of mega-bucks) transmission fail while driving co-blogger and his girlfriend from Elm City to former Idlewild Airport (my potential death, amusing, their potential death, infuriating), arrive home again with friend of Crescat only to walk in between a raging anti-Semite ("you should have died in the ovens") confronting a group of young women outside my apartment, resulting in my nearly getting into a fight on the street, until said friend of Crescat restrained me. Um. Magical realism -- stop invading my life. Please. Thank you.

Retracted. Then published. Again, an editorial failure. 24 days till new Riff-Raff. Haters can sit with the people who didn't like 3 6 Mafia.

Update: Post taken down. Email me if you care. Ironically, just like the Voice itself. Nick Sylvester is an incredibly talented, honest music writer, and a good friend. End of story.

Some time ago, Raffi and I blogged about what made an ideal subway system. Now Quaker asks what it is that I find so confounding about Manhattan's.

1: Some train is always being re-routed or replaced for the day. I'm sure that for those who have the whole train system memorized, when the J replaces the E or the A or the F it's simple enough to figure what that means, but for those of us who just memorized the two trains we needed to get home from the airport, this sudden wrench threatens to derail our ability to get home.

2: Too many stations go only uptown or only downtown, forcing those of us who are accustomed to the more open-minded stations of Chicago or D.C. to keep trotting up and down into the cold trying to find a door that won't take us to only to Brooklyn.

3: Express trains? Local trains? They're never where they're supposed to be and it's never obvious where they're going to stop. I expect this sort of hasty chaos from buses, but trains are supposed to be reliable and fixed. This is what makes up for the lack of the ability to ogle street-life as you travel.

Eternal Crescat critic PG is live-blogging the Federalist Society Symposium, so I am spared the duty. Instead, a few observations and thoughts.

1: Jeremy Waldron appears to be slightly confused. He argued that it is a fallacy to think that sovereign states should enjoy a presumption of liberty from international law the same way that people enjoy a presumption of liberty from domestic law, since states aren't people. Well, sure. But nobody argues that international relations ought to be entirely free of law, the only question is whether it is domestic or foreign law that ought to govern. [Nobody disputes that the Constitution controls who may properly deploy the U.S. armed forces rather than allowing them to be deployed willy-nily at the discretion of their commanders.]

2: Unless I am mistaken, Jeremy Rabkin just accused both Jeremy Waldron and Kant of of being nazi sympathizers.

3: Why do women keep dragging me towards the bar?

4: I have finally met Anthony Rickey. I hadn't realized he had a British accent.

5: The New York subways still baffle me.

The 2006 Federalist Society Symposium will be in New York (the last weekend in February), at Columbia Law School. While my fellow students appear disappointed not to get free trips to sunny California, I am pleased, because I always need new excuses to visit the city, and also will be able to adhere to my rule of not going south of 110th street. The website is here.

This morning going through the 110th St. station, for the first time I saw two policemen checking bags. They were pretty lackadaisical about it; people who volunteered could go through the gate for free instead of sliding their card to go through the turnstile for $2.

Tonight coming back from Brooklyn, I got onto the uptown 1 train at 96th St. There were two policemen in my car, and they looked much less cheerful than the guys at 110th twelve hours earlier. I discovered why when I got home and opened a browser.

New York Named in Terror Threat Against Subways
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM 10:46 PM ET
Officials said they were notified of a terrorist threat that for the first time specifically named New York City's transit system.

In other news, as I was looking for information on obtaining a temporary liquor license, I noticed that many forms pertaining to interstate wine shipments have been made available. Does anyone know at what point putting up extra bureaucracy would become an actionable impediment to interstate commerce?

Somehow the last ten hours have recurrently raised the idea of fears peculiar to New York City in my mind. While waiting in the sub-basement, to which only one of the elevators in the building can travel, I heard a persistent rustle in a recycling bins and thought it might be a rodent* of some kind. Being alone with a possibly disease-carrying, biting-inclined animal made me a little nervous, and once I got on the elevator I mentioned to the other occupants that there might be an infestation problem of mice or something. The deliveryman scoffed, "Mice are more scared of you than you are of them."

"What about rats?"

"Oh, rats are different. If it's a rat I'll be running just as fast as you are."

I couldn't help imagining a little too vividly how horrible it would be to have a rat chew through the recycling bag, get on the floor and come toward me with its teeth bared. Perhaps one shouldn't re-read the end of 1984 when living here.

My friend Jen who's looking for a place to live was in town today to scout housing, and at dinner she and I discussed the real estate options of the city. Though she'd been hunting mainly in Brooklyn, she was thinking about her northern Manhattan options as well, but concerned about the safety of the areas above Central Park (the unaffordable Morningside Heights neighborhood excepted). It's a concern that circumscribes many people's options just as much as their budgets do; a classmate of no mean physical fitness who moved to 125th St. is only half-jokingly afraid of his new surroundings.

After Jen went home to Baltimore on the bus, I met another friend for dessert, and as we walked out of the restaurant she began to remind me of the nearest subway stop. I said that it was such a nice night that I was going to walk home, which idea she approved except for "that sketchy area between 96th and 110th." Striding down Amsterdam Avenue, I encountered nothing worse than a few inept come-ons. Paradoxically I find that particularly annoying when I'm conscious that I don't look very attractive, perhaps because it points up just how routine and unseeing the whistles and "Hey mamas" are.

Still, I understand why street harassment is deemed a serious problem by many people, though for once I agree with someone from the Independent Women's Forum: "It's not a legal or employer problem. It's a social problem and that tattletale approach will only exacerbate the problem." As to whether the problem actually is more severe in Washington, D.C. than NYC -- well, I was street harassed when I was in Dupont Circle Wednesday night.

Street harassment is more an issue of discomfort than fear for me, but I ignore it as I ignore many of the other obnoxious aspects of walking down the street in New York: piled garbage, urine odor, exhaust fumes. Yet it's nonetheless a psychological stress. Having a stranger approach you sexually, even if it's something you know he does routinely and with no malicious intent beyond exercising one of his few "privileges," does make one feel fractionally less safe; it highlights the degree to which one is exposed and vulnerable.

* Rabbits, incidentally, are not rodents; they belong to the order Lagomorpha.

Probably it's not quite good guest-blogging etiquette to use one's first post as a substitute for a Craigslist advertisement, but it's what's on my mind at the moment:

Jen, a friend of mine from the University of Virginia bioethics program, has just taken a job in New York City and is looking for a roommate. If you or someone you know has a spare room and would like to live with an extraordinarily cool person, send me an e-mail and I'll pass it along to her. Jen has been moving around a lot since graduation, including a stint last winter helping victims of the tsunami-related flooding in India.

Speaking of which, I got an interesting though unverified list of "facts" comparing the July flood in Mumbai (Bombay) with what occurred a month later in New Orleans:

I couldn't stop making this comparison..

inches of rain in New Orleans due to Hurricane Katrina... 18
inches of rain in Mumbai (July 27th).... 37.1

population of New Orleans... 484,674
population of Mumbai.... 12,622,500

deaths in New Orleans within 48 hours of Katrina...100
deaths in Mumbai within 48 hours of rain... 37

number of people to be evacuated in New Orleans... entire city
number of people evacuated in Mumbai... 10,000

Cases of shooting and violence in New Orleans... Countless
Cases of shooting and violence in Mumbai.. NONE

Time taken for US army to reach New Orleans... 48 hours
Time taken for Indian army and navy to reach Mumbai... 12 hours

status 48 hours later... New Orleans waiting for relief, army and electricity
status 48 hours later... Mumbai is back on its feet and its business is as usual

USA...world's most developed nation
India...JUST A DEVELOPING NATION

At lunch today, the question arose: What peculiarities are absolute deal-breakers within a relationship? I suggested that I could not date a fellow who honestly thought that ESP was an effective means for the CIA to gain intelligence about goings-on in foreign lands. A co-blogger (whom I'd met the previous week at the Brickskeller shortly before he departed for his circuitous trip back to New Haven) had thought that my standard was not particularly defensible, since I am willing to date fellows who believe in other occurrences that defy standard scientific explanations: transubstantiation and consubstantiation are to me both acceptable beliefs, despite their actually differences (I don't know, though, that I could date someone for whom those words drew a blank stare.)

Like Raffi, I'm sympathetic to Brent Bellmore's suggestion that history obscures the ability to absolutely confirm or refute the miracle at the heart of many fundamental religious tenets. Science can explain why bread darkens as it toasts, but not why, if one squints properly, the browning pattern might resemble the Virgin Mary (cf: Hamlet@Home); the scientific proof that no God exists is, as far I'm aware, impossible. The hearsay "I met someone whose daughter has ESP" does not counter-weigh my deeply held believe that such a claim is bunk, though I'm not sure how one would prove that it could never occur. ESP-believers, though, are still out, as are people who sincerely believe that sitting on concrete, rocks, and other cold surfaces is an effective form of natural family planning.

I've drawn up other entries on the list of absolute deal-breakers: For instance, discovering my address by asking around among my co-workers, then showing up at my house as I am doing my laundry and demanding that I clamber into your friend's ice cream truck and accompany the two of you on a trip to a city two hours away. I had met that fellow only once before; our meeting ended with him storming off in anger, and me uninterested in ever seeing such an unreasonable person again.

Comments are open for readers who wish to explain why my standards are indeed illogicla, or to share their own deal-breakers.

I have been encouraging co-blogger Amy to start a web page (a subsection of this site) devoted to cataloging and reviewing eating locations in or around Morningside Heights. It seems a shame to have both a blog and such a store of local knowledge and opinions without merging them together. (I have a similar site in the works about eating in and around New Haven, but I haven't made it live yet-- both because my opinions on some matters have changed wildly in the past year and because enough New Haven readers read this blog that I want to make sure my opinions are defensible before risking my credibility.)

Plus, it is simply unfair that there are so many good restaurants in the world that nonetheless seem to fare no better, or not much better, than the bad ones. E.g., Ana's. In a town as shamefully packed with delicious places to eat as NYC, it's not the sort of place you'd travel across town to get to, and it's too expensive to frequently too regularly, but what they do they really do very well-- better than I can do in my kitchen even with quite a bit of practice. The service and the wine list both devote themselves mostly to staying out of your way and letting you enjoy the food, the menu is mostly devoted not to bizarre foams or emulsions but to simple things like grilled scallops, frisee salad with lardons, and so on. It is a mark of confidence for your only steak to be the (always-delicious hanger steak, with no dubious filet mignon as a backstop (and it is a good steak, although maybe not better than the paella loaded with slightly frightening quantities of saffron).

The desserts suffer from a little bit of an identity crisis, though. The delicious, delicious, substance calling itself "Peach Cobbler" does not appear to have any crust, or even a bit of crumb; it is rather a pile of peaches covered in brown sugar and broiled. Similarly, the substance called Creme Brulee (which I ordered in a fit of cruelty-- why ruin a good meal by proving to the restaurant that they, like almost all others, can't make fantastic Creme Brulee?)-- that substance turned out to be so far from Creme Brulee that it was almost okay that it didn't have a hard crust on top at all. It was really sort of a confused and misguided flan (and a tasty one) that had gotten a little bit crispy at the edges. Given the presence of a paella on the otherwise french menu, and the hispanic accent spoken by the head chef, I take it this sort of blurring of cultures was not entirely unintentional.

Anyway, there are plenty of times when one has a craving for a restaurant exactly like this, especially if one doesn't go out to eat all that often, but doesn't like to waste one's time when one does, and it needs to be easier to find them when one wants them.

I am in New York, where I will see, on Sunday, all of the Manhattan-based Crescatters. Co-blogger Amy was kind enough to concoct a roast duck salad for my arrival, which was extraordinary, but now we have over half a cup of duck fat. What to do with it? Despite her usually good taste, she doesn't like cassoulet. I have pondered duck-flavored yorkshire pudding, and I remember that Ruth Reichl likes poultry fat in her baked goods...

Comments are open for the weekend.

No more posts from me today; I will be here, and then here. [There's an interview with Turandot here, full of fascinating prurient tidbits-- she started smoking marijuana at 11 and courted her current boyfriend via email.]