Having not had any class yesterday, I feel like today's Sunday. And thanks to the web, I can read much of the Sunday Times too. And since I've got to go do my homework shortly (which consists-- I kid you not-- of watching an NCAA basketball game), a few assorted links and thoughts:

Slate's Jack Shafer reviews (very unkindly) Jayson Blair's book. Kudos to the Times for making sure to have a major writer at another publication review the book, and for letting him write ". . . The Times may be the shadiest publication this side of Weekly World News."

The Times is also pleasantly kind to dear Johnny Depp in its review of the movie Secret Window:

Pale and disheveled, Mr. Depp rolls through the film in a wardrobe that looks as if it has been slept in, the kind of believable physical detail that never gets costume designers Oscar nominations because it's far too real.

Some time ago, I asked readers:

If you had to meet somebody you'd never met before someplace in Chicago, but you hadn't agreed on a time or a place, and you couldn't talk to them in advance, where and when would you go, hoping that the other person would pick the same time and place? I have my hypotheses, but I'm curious to see what other people say.

The nature of this game (hence the title "Focal Point") is to see if there is some answer that is so expected that everybody expects everybody else will pick it. One common example is driving on the right side of the road. Even if there were no rule against it, people presumably would drive on the right side of the road, because that's what everybody else is likely to do, and it's better that there not be any mixups. Of course, in other places everybody drives on the left side of the road, for the exact same reason.

Now, your answers: Some 85% of you agreed on a single time-- high noon. This didn't particularly surprise me, as it's one of those times that has a special name (and unlike midnight, is a convenient time to meet people downtown). It's only fair to mention that this question is patterned after a similar investigation once done in New York by Thomas Schelling. The answer there was Grand Central Station at noon. One reader even added: "'straight up' would seem to be the easiest time to remember"

But as to a place, your answers were wildly divergent-- the two most common answers were the Sears Tower and the steps of the Art Institute, with four people each. Several folks who picked the Sears Tower expressed familiarity with Schelling's finding. My co-blogger Greg Goelzhauser, for example, wrote:

For example, I haven't met you. So say the coordination game you set up is between you and me. Knowing that you are familiar with Schelling and focal points, I would certainly be at the information booth in the Sears Tower at high noon on the date requested.

Unfortunately, I can't separate my knowledge of the game and Schelling's findings to know if my answer might be different.

Something like the front steps of the Art Institute would be the nicest answer, but I just don't think any of the musuems have the kind of status that the clock in Grand Central used to have in NY.

It's just hip enough to be inviting, but not so much that it would distract from conversation. The porch is a great place to spend hours and hours snacking and talking while the Mag Mile traffic drifts by...and the game winner?S'mores that you can COOK AT YOUR OWN TABLE. You can't deny the coolness of that.

From this week's Economist:

In Spain, bones from Seville cathedral are being subjected to DNA testing to see if they belong to Christopher Columbus, otherwise thought to lie under a monument in the Dominican Republic.

If anyone knows how a confirmed DNA sample from Christopher Columbus is available for reference, please email me. I'm utterly stumped and dying to find out.

UPDATE: A reader writes:

I don't think you'd need a confirmed sample from Columbus himself. If you had samples from a significant number of his descendants, you could use those to authenticate a putative Columbus sample to a high degree of confidence.

It turns out that he's absolutely correct. According to this article, researchers will also be exhuming the remains of Columbus' known son and presumed brother to use as references. What is shocking to me is that record keeping of these remains has survived almost 500 years!

Scientists will also undertake tests to determine if Columbus was Italian or Spanish.

I'm currently re-reading True History of the Kelly Gang, and I think one of my original impressions from my first reading still holds: Peter Carey uses the St. Crispian Day's speech more effectively than Shakespeare does in Henry V.

background:
It's the night of the siege, the night before the big battle, and Ned Kelly and his friends are holed up in a bar with their friends and allies, all singing and dancing to build their spirits for the morning. The schoolteacher says he can't sing, but he tears a few pages out of his book of Shakespeare that he's carrying around.

the passage:

Here is the very words he spoke I pin them to the page as tore directly from his book.

he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call’d the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say, ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian:’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say, ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words,
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d.

This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England, now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

In response to my post about Scalia, Toby Stern writes:

I think the answer is that Scalia himself has created somewhat vague and easily-manipulated tests to interpret otherwise ambiguous constitutional mandates. And I applaud that -- if you believe, like Scalia does, that Article III requires some sort of minimal standing requirements, then you need to provide judges with a way to figure out whether a litigant has cleared those hurdles.

And sometimes, as with standing (and many other areas of law), the best way to do that is to hand over the reins and let judges judge. Perhaps, in many cases, hard-and-fast rules are more desirable than balancing tests. I can get behind that idea.

But rules, while somewhat more restrictive than tests, should not be thought to take the judging out of judging. In the passage Will quotes, Scalia argues against these tests because they are "manipulable." Well, so are rules, and I doubt Scalia would disagree. But if you're going to argue simply that rules are the "lesser evil," then I don't think we get very far in cabining, as Will calls, it, the "potential evils of judges."

In other words, just let the judges judge, man. Let 'em judge. (Aren't slogans fun? Let the judges judge, man! Also, while you're at it, free Mumia, save the whales, something about Adam and Steve, and I'm lovin' it.)

Well, I should have suspected that caving in to the folks at Begging the Question would open the floodgates for link-requesting email. Here's a note I received today:

Dear William,
At fist glance this might seem like a Nigerian scam letter. Don't worry. Let me get right to the point. Searching google in my never ending daily grind to obtain better rankings for my web site www.since1884.com (specialists in Alden shoes) - I came trundling along slam bang into your blog* - http://www.crescatsententia.org/. Not unexpected since I used the search term 'Dr. Marten shoes blog'.
Why?
I'll be perfectly honest. You have probably read all about the recent Google bust up. Change in algorithm, etc. Small guys getting popped left right and center. Such as us. Our big venture capital funded enemies such as Zappos.com beating us up around every corner. Hey, they even advertise twice on the same Google ad words.
I need you help, and I am willing to give you something back.
First let me tell you just a little about our company. We are small, we are focused, and dedicated, we make mistakes, but we are ethical, and simply put our mission is to provide a web site specializing in a little niche of the market. We have real brick stores (picture attached) too. We don't go in for search engine spamming, link exchanges, or for that matter any form of spamming. We don't utilize any techniques to redirect and mystify search engines. But being an honest Joe does hurt.
Our staff are all keen bloggers themselves...And that led onto the idea that I am here to tell you about.
We would (humble, begging, praying) like to request of you to place a link to our site from your blog. I have some suggested link words below, but frankly if you want to link to us with the words 'Scam artist shoe store', well that's clearly your choice. Of course a link and a little blog about us or our product would be even nicer.
In return, I can't offer you millions, nor even shares (equity) in our company. I can offer you a LIFETIME 10% discount off purchases from our site. Will we police this, and can you rip us off? No and Yes. You can unlink to use, and I doubt I'll ever check. Is 10% a big deal, well its 10% and we do ship world-wide. I think you'll find our service and support excellent. Oh and lifetime does mean for as long as we are around in our present format and not eaten up by some capitalist vulture.
If you aren't interested, thats fine. Just ignore me. Nothing lost nothing gained, or whatever that cliche is!
If you are interested and get a link up. Just email me. I'll do a one time check and email you your 10% promotional code. Either way you probably won't hear much from me again, unless you want to.
If you got to the end of this email without deleting, well thanks. I tried to make it somewhat stimulating.

Ahhh! I feel... almost... dirty writing that post title. It feels so, so, so very wrong to me. I guess I'm late to the party on this one, but I didn't want to let it pass without comment. As society grows more and more liberal, and fewer and fewer things are truly taboo, shouldn't we try and hang on to whatever we can? I don't want to give up on proper grammar just because a website found a few examples of improper usage two centuries ago. Half of the e-mails in my inbox feature the word "definately," but that doesn't mean that's how it's supposed to be spelled. Seventy-five wrongs don't make a right.

The website might do well to add this example, which makes me cringe every time I hear it, from Billy Joel's "Allentown." -- "Every child had a pretty good shot / To get at least as far as their old man got." Aaaack! Billy Joel, you're ridiculously awesome, but that totally ruins it for me every time. (Incidentally, "Summer, Highland Falls" -- best Billy Joel song in his catalog. Just my humble opinion. "I Go To Extremes" and "Famous Last Words" are up there too. Feel free to publicly disagree with me. This is a debate I don't mind starting.) (Incidentally #2, tomorrow is James Taylor's birthday. He's also ridiculously awesome, plus I am not aware of any grotesque uses of the word "their" in any of his songs.)

And that's a singular body. 'They' is a plural pronoun and takes a plural verb.

I shall continue to use "he" as my pronoun of indeterminate gender. When I'm in law school where plaintiffs are female and defendants are male, I'll abide by those standards.

But 'they' does not take a singular verb, no matter what the American Heritage usage panel may rule with a 64% vote.

UPDATE: Kathleen Moriarty takes issue with Will's use of Austen and Shakespeare.

My "they" post below has gotten some sharp response already. Good, I suppose, even if it fills me with blogger's panic upon reading my email. Did I write that? Hmm. Did I mean it? Am I wrong?

So let's see-- here's Paul Goyette on the subject, who links to this Vocabula article (which Language Hat also linked to). And then Ryan at What I Learned Today, who (near as I can tell) avoids taking any sort of stand.

Meanwhile, a lawyer/reader writes:

Aren't you a law student? I strongly recommend you drop the "they" as singular pronoun theory before commencing work at a law firm. Use "he or she."

All those examples are British English, where "they" is considered less wrong than in American English. One of my favorite online columnists said that using they is "lazy, uncreative, and fundamentally incorrect." It doesn't bother me in spoken English, but I agree that it is flat out wrong in a paper. It will probably be correct at some point, but in American English it isn't yet. And the subject-verb agreement, using a plural verb to apply to one person? Makes me wince. If you use they and then a singular verb, then your double-duty argument might hold, but once you throw in a plural verb, it's just flat out wrong. "They" isn't "doing double duty;" you're using it as a plural, even though you're referring to a singular person.

The use of they, their, them, and themselves as pronouns of indefinite gender and indefinite number is well established in speech and writing, even in literary and formal contexts. This gives you the option of using the plural pronouns where you think they sound best, and of using the singular pronouns (as he, she, he or she, and their inflected forms) where you think they sound best.

Where are the women in the blogosphere? Professor Drezner links to a Columbia Journalism Review story asserting that while women outnumber men 2:1 in the "about my life" section of the blogosphere, only 4% of the political blogs are written by women.

Drezner's reader GMRoper, concentrating somewhat more on the question of who reads political blogs, suggests that

Dan,I think more males are interested in the political blogosphere, but politics is a form of war which would attract males more than females. Biological programming! Having said that, I'm interested as to why anyone would think females should be as equally interested in political blogs as males are. The blogosphere in general and the political blogosphere in particular is purely self selected, not mandated, not required. People read on the internet what they WANT to read and that's as it should be. Wow, I sound a little libertarian don't I? Thinking that women ought to be equally represented as a readership is PC elitism at it's worst. Sigh, PC has invaded the blogosphere. It had to happen I guess.

2) Accepting that the blogosphere readership is self-selected, why would women not be as interested in political blogs as men are?

I am completely unqualified to answer this question. I would actually expect women to be slightly over-represented in online political conversations as compared to live, in person political discussions. TexasToast suggests that women should appreciate how blogged discussions make it virtually impossible for anyone to interrupt anyone else. I agree. I also think the world of blogged conversations is easier to join -- write a comment, write a post, get a link, start a blog if you've missed that step (which requires virtually no programming knowledge so long as it's a simple Blogger blog). If you believe that women prefer to lay out their reasoning opening, then you would expect written forms of communication to become more popular among women.

Why aren't women interested in reading political blogs (if they aren't)? I don't think of the blogosphere as a world of men shouting at men (an idea put forth by an interviewee in the CJR column); yes, there's some shouting, but you can easily ignore it and hang out with the people who speak in moderated tones of voice. That somewhat debunked, I have no idea what might turn more women than men off from the poli blogs. I suspect my own personal ability to understand this lack of interest is probably connected to the feelings I sometimes have that, certain exceptions aside, I just don't particuarly care for much for the average person of my own gender.

Eugene Volokh comments on this AP article about bodies donated to science being used in land mine research by the military.

Professor Volokh doesn't see much of an ethical dilemma in bodies being donated to science (presumably to train med students) used for this type of research:

I realize that some potential donors might view this use either as (1) unworthy on moral grounds (not necessarily immoral, but not something they'd want to participate in -- not a view that I'd take, but I suppose one that some people might take), or (2) unusually and unexpectedly grisly. But donors could say that about virtually any use, except perhaps the most obvious and well-known one (dissection in medical schools).

As for Professor Volokh's opinion that cadaver use in anatomy labs may not be "unusually and unexpectedly grisly," I think it's safe to presume that he's never been in a med school anatomy lab near the end of the term. Though the best of care is taken to treat the remains with dignity and respect and med students are deeply grateful to and ever mindful of the precious gift of the donor and his family, "unusually and unexpectedly grisly" would be a good way to describe what a lay person might see in the lab, even knowing that the body was used to teach anatomy to med students. I don't think many people who choose to make the bequest of their bodies to science can truly imagine what will be done with them, even if they are used for teaching tools.

That said, the moral issue I see in this situation is the fact that the cadaver distribution company charged Tulane to redistribute their extra cadavers and then made a profit from those cadavers. Like Volokh, I don't object to the bodies being used for medical research performed by the military (though I would object if the donors or families were told that their bodies were being used in a Tulane Medical Lab as opposed to being donated to medical science - information that is not clear from the Tulane Willed Body Program website). I also don't object to the fact that the bodies were sold for a profit by the cadaver distributor.

What is immoral here is the fact that the cadaver distributor took money from Tulane. Even if the distributor thought that it was going to ship those bodies to other medical schools at the time that Tulane paid it to, and then upon learning that there was no need for cadavers at other medical schools, sold them to another medical research purpose, it should have, at the least, repaid Tulane the money it charged for redistribution.

It seems that the whole cadaver donation and trade business is in need of a dose of glasnost and perestroika. Better dissemination of information from medical school to donor, and from distributor to medical school about what might the body be used for and where should be standard and people should be allowed to receive money for their gifts. Currently, medical schools, body brokers, and all others are not allowed to pay donors for their bodies, which is part of the reason this situation came about in the first place. Had the army been allowed to offer $25,000 - $30,000 directly to potential donors, people could make informed decisions about what happens to their remains and body dealers would be in a worse position to act in a morally questionable way. Also, if a medical school pays someone (or his estate) for use of his remains, it is less problematic for the university to sell or transfer that property to someone else. If the body market behaved freely, information would exchange in a more transparent manner and people could better choose the destiny of their remains and benefit from the sale of their property.

As someone who intends to donate her body to "medical science," I would like a certain amount of control over its dissemination and would make this clear in my bequest, as I imagine many donors do. If my alma mater does not need my corpse to train future medical students and cannot use it in-house for other medical purposes, I would like for the university to be able to make a profit off of it, even if I can't. Consider it the ultimate alumni donation. But unless the body market opens substantially before I die, I have no guarantees that my wishes will be respected.

In handing back our papers today, one of my instructors delivered a short lecture to the class on "they". It's "not a singular pronoun" she told us. You just can't do it.

As one of the culprits (as, apparently, was most of the class), I beg to differ. The use of "they" as a singular pronoun has a long and glorious history. From Shakespeare (There's not a man I meet but doth salute me / As if I were their well-acquainted friend), to 75 examples from Jane Austen to the OED.

This isn't because singular people somehow become plural, it's because the word "they" simply does souble duty. Language Hat has much more here and here. People often concede that we should invent a gender-neutral third-person pronoun. I submit with support from Ms. Austen and Mr. Shakespeare and many others, that we already have, and the trick is getting the reactionaries to accept it.

UPDATE: I should note-- I'm not a zealous descriptivist, nor do I believe that proper grammar doesn't matter. I cringe when I see the sign at the grocery store that says "If arrested we will prosecute for theft." (I should be the one saying-- "If arrested I will prosecute for wrongful arrest.") Still, centuries of usage, combined with rulings from some dictionaries as well as a definite need in the language for a word to fulfil a particular function ought to give at least the presumption of propriety.

UPDATE: There's more . . .

If you find yourself caught in Bloomington, Indiana on March 25th, be sure to go see Randy Barnett (of blogospheric and other fame) lecturing at noon in room 125 in the Law School. Comments from Patrick Baude will follow.

Harry Blackmun's 38-hour oral history is now available online. (Link via Howard Bashman (natch).)

...another Chicago libertarian-- Matt Tievsky-- now has a blog. I know Matt pretty well, via the vast libertarian conspiracies both in Chicago and in D.C. and so on, and I'm sure his stuff will prove quite interesting reading if a bit intermittent.

And I note (happily) that he agrees with my theory of expressive voting.

In a jurisprudence column for Slate, Stanford Law prof Barbara Babcock notes:

I wish that we who value this as a precious incident of liberty had a more impressive representative than Dudley Hiibel—more coherent, less loud—who made a nobler record for the precious right to be left alone. But he is a little better than he seems in the video (here, just under the mail bag -- ed.). For the record, he was not driving the car, so his drunkenness did not supply additional cause for the arrest. No one asked the daughter what happened, and the domestic-assault charge was dropped before trial. Hiibel's defense lawyer says the daughter actually hit him. Most important, he obviously thought he was being stopped for parking too near the highway. No one told him otherwise in the entire videotaped encounter. Even the most ardent supporters of police power would not approve the investigative work done here.

Jeremy Blachmanon reading a Chinese menu.

"Not responsible for lost articles." Lost articles of what?

Americans.

Over at Oxblog, and from Will right here, some talk yesterday about McDonalds' cheeseburger being less healthy than the California Cobb Salad, although not once you add the fries, the chocolate shake, the apple pie, and the cardboard box the Happy Meal comes in. Or even just the fries. It made me wonder about the calorie and fat content in some other popular fast-food meals.

At KFC, which apparently no longer stands for "Kentucky Fried Chicken," a hearty meal consisting of an order of Hot Wings, two Original Recipe chicken breasts, a side of potato wedges, a large Mountain Dew, and something they unappetizingly call "Lil' Bucket Fudge Brownie" for dessert (have we really not progressed beyond a society that eats dessert out of a bucket?) provides just over 2000 calories, 88 grams of fat (about a day and a third's worth), a day and a half's worth of cholesterol, and almost two days of sodium. But, on the plus side, it does provide 6% of your recommended daily allowance of Vitamin A.

At Taco Bell, three Double Decker Taco Supremes with extra sour cream, plus an order of Nachos Supreme (with extra sour cream) to start, Cinnamon Twists for dessert, and some extra sour cream on the side provides just under 2000 calories, 105 grams of fat, including two and a half days worth of saturated fat, a day and a half's worth of sodium -- but 34% of your recommended daily allowance of vitamin C. Your meal will also weigh over two pounds! (You may weigh substantially more than that.)

At Chick-Fil-A, which used to have an outpost on campus here at Harvard but was banished with a redesign last summer in favor of a burrito stand, starting your day with a breakfast Chick-Fil-A biscuit with cheese, adding a large chicken soup and regular chicken sandwich for lunch, along with a large fries, medium lemonade, and piece of cheesecake for dessert, plus some blue cheese dressing and a packet of mayonnaise, just for fun, provides a shocking (shocking, I tell you -- shocking!) 2450 calories, including 119.5 grams of fat (it's the 0.5 that's gonna kill you), and 5225 milligrams of sodium. I think that's seven weeks' worth. And you still haven't eaten dinner yet!

Subway advertises itself as a healthy alternative. (Not when I'm putting the meals together.) Start out with some "cheese with ham and bacon soup" (I am not making this up -- this is really on the menu -- who is ordering this???), add a 6-inch meatball sub, a chocolate chip cookie for dessert, and, uh, on the sandwich add, uh, forty-two triangles of swiss cheese, and you've got a meal that's 2,030 calories, with a truly flabbergasting 146.5 grams of fat. Maybe the forty-two triangles of swiss cheese aren't being fair. But even without the cheese, it's still 980 calories and 52 grams of fat. Even I can find a way to make Subway make you too large to fit in a Subway car.

Of a death row inmate, a correspondant of the man said

"He's an intelligent guy, a talented guy, and intelligent and talented guys are not to be wasted."

I won't be able to write fast enough, long enough, voluminously enough to make up for the stuff I've done."

No. This seems to be missing the point, if the ability to write good poetry is being seen as a mitigating factor against whether someone should get the death penalty.

Wilbert Rideau is still a lifer in the Angola State Pen, despite his credible case for the title of 'most rehabilitated inmate' and his due process claims that are worth hearing. He's now an award-winning journalist who travels around the state and nation for interviews and speeches. It's not the strength of his writing for which he's deemed "most rehabilitated," but the strength of the character he continually reveals in it. I haven't seen any claims that were, he released, he would ever kill again. Most likely, he would continue in journalism and the quality of The Angolite he left behind might decrease.

The arguments for keeping Rideau behind bars are simply that this is the punishment which he has been assigned (actually, he was commuted off of death row during the moratorium) and justice demands he serve it. I'm not convinced. To release Rideau would be a merciful way of saying that rehabilitation is possible. The arguments about Booker focus on his pure writing ability, and not on whether or not he's a changed person, which I think is the more pertinent fact where handing out mercy is concerned.

"I, When a Bumblebee Bat," - Tug (Wesleyan UP, 1994)

Only twice in twelve long years
Has the Self in me transformed
To weighing less than a cent,
And blended with the evening,
Or heard ringing in my ears,
Or seen a star do its thing,
Umbrellaed aloft on air.
Swooping into a huge swarm
Of mosquitoes and gnats, there,
On velvety wings, I went
Gliding and eating until
Chilled to my buoyant marrow,
Convinced not to eat my fill,
To leave some for tomorrow.

-Stephen Todd Booker

Now that I've figured out how to log in to our Amazon account again, I've finally updated the book recommendations at the side to include the things mentioned in recent blog posts-- High Fidelity, Ada, and For Us, The Living (Robert Heinlein's first, lost, novel which I haven't blogged about until now).

For Us, The Living features in this New York Times story, which is mostly boring except for the fact that it quotes Robert James, a Heinlein scholar. There are Heinlein scholars?

A woman overheard complaining about her boyfriend:

He's just . . . insufficiently Libertarian.

Normally, I prefer to ignore pieces purporting to demonstrate that our youth/country/culture/morals/world is going to hell in a handbasket, for the simple reason that while people have been writing such pieces for the past two thousand years (Cicero's O tempora! O mores! predates Christ), human society has demonstrated a remarkable ability to survive, even flourish. But for Joseph Epstein's essay on the triumph of youth culture I make an exception, since he blames John F. Kennedy as "the first president routinely not to wear a serious hat." The other good part is below:

Consider now what must be taken as the most consequential adolescent act in American history during the past half century: the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky relationship. I hesitate to call it an affair, because an affair implies a certain adult style: the good hotel room, the bottle of excellent wine, the peignoir, the Sulka pajamas. With Bill and Monica, you had instead the pizza, the canoodling under the desk, the cigar business, even the whole thing going without consummation. No matter what one's politics, one has to admit that our great national scandal was pure high school.

Another non-surprising result from the Libertarian Purity Test--I score a 38, which means my "libertarian credentials are obvious." My co-bloggers' scores are here and here.

I can't think of the last time I ate in a McDonalds, so this isn't much of an issue to me, but--

Patrick Belton and CNN note that a McDonalds Crispy Chicken California Cobb Salad has 370 calories and 21 fat grams to the Cheeseburger's 330/14.

Yeah, yeah. That McDonalds salads aren't great for you will come as no surprise to careful readers of Slate, but one key difference is that very very few people who eat at McDonalds eat a single hamburger or cheese burger as their whole meal (tacking on a small french fry, or increasing the cheesburger to a double, or anything else, makes the salad the better choice) whereas my understanding is that many people just get a salad and are relatively satisfied.

Further, to put things in perspective, that salad is about 15-20% of your daily recommended fat intake, and 15-20% of your daily recommended calorie intake, so eating a McDonalds Salad (or a lonely cheeseburger, if that makes you happy) leaves you plenty of room for a small breakfast and large dinner.

This isn't to advocate eating at McDonalds or anything, just to criticize some slightly sensationalistic number-play.

The Curmudgeonly Clerk has a post on Indonesia's contemplated kissing ban. I've discussed kissing bans before (in Moscow) and I don't have much to add to this-- the same problem, a different place.

But I would like to remind those (like me, and apparently the Clerk) who harbor an instinctual dislike of the bill that in principle a state with the power to outlaw public nudity and public orgies should also have the power to outlaw public kissing. Whether it should do so is of course a separate matter (and whether a state should be able to outlaw any of the above public conduct is yet another matter).

Slate has an occasional series, "We Read The Book, So You Don't Have To." Its latest piece is on the new Jayson Blair book, which apparently has very little content. At the very real risk of this being completely devoid of humor, I have a desperate urge to parody their feature by pointing out the highlights of a Chinese take-out menu that was recently slipped under my door. To be honest, I want to hate Slate's feature because it feels like cheating -- why should you get the rewards without reading the book?? But it saves me from even being curious enough to leaf through the pages in Barnes & Noble, so I can't really be too upset at them.

In any event:

"I Read A Chinese Food Menu, So You Don't Have To"

Panel 1: "Delivery available after 5:00 p.m." What if I want dinner at 4:30? This is just another example of corporate greed.

Panel 3: A long and tedious description of the "Triple Delight in a Nest." Only true Chinese food devotees will need such detail. You can skip this part without much concern, unless you're allergic to shellfish, in which case you may want to pay close attention.

Panel 4: "Doubled friend pork." Someone needs a proofreader. I think they may have rushed to get this menu released to compete with the new Papa John's 2-for-1 special. There's no editor credited on the back panel -- and mistakes like these make it easy to see why.

Panel 6: "Luncheon menu -- served 11:30 am to 3 pm, Mon. to Fri. except holidays." Which holidays? American holidays? Chinese holidays? Ambiguities like these take away from the pleasure of menu-reading. They leave the reader in a state of confusion and hopelessness, wondering what it all means, and whether you've wasted the day reading carefully the luncheon specials, only to discover today's Boxing Day and they're not available. Frustration.

Panel 7: Finally, the juicy stuff. Like Peking Duck. But for all of the description lavished on simple dishes like "pork wonton" we get nothing for the duck. Someone didn't see the forest for the bamboo shoots here. The emphasis is in the wrong place. People want to read about the duck, not the appetizers. I certainly hope the next menu in the series addresses some of these deficiencies.

Panel 8: "Not responsible for lost articles." Lost articles of what? Newspaper articles? Again, the writing is muddled, the meaning not clear. Can I not bring a magazine into the restaurant? Plus, this is a take-out menu -- where will I be leaving my articles, if they're delivering the food to my house? These logical inconsistencies mar an otherwise very readable manuscript.

Overall, there were few surprises. Perhaps the Hunan Scallops, an unusual concotion. But for the most part, this is as expected. A disappointment in what was perhaps the most hotly-anticipated Chinese Food Menu of the season.

I don't know how many of you have been following the personal plight of blogger Dean Esmay (who I first found when he nudged the Curmudgeonly Clerk along to movable type), but his blogging for the past few weeks has turned to the quite remarkable topic of his own struggle with alcoholism and related troubles. For his wife's original post begging for support (which has garnered 38 trackbacks to date), click here. For his more recent recounting of the nearly-whole story, click here. (You can also watch for his criticisms of Alcoholics Anonymous). I wish Mr. Esmay the best, and I'll leave meta-thoughts on the personal possibilities of the political blogosphere to somebody or sometime else. I just thought since this blog pretty regularly trumps up the virtues of vice, that I should take note of vice's darker side too.

Well, while we're taking silly online quizzes, it looks like I got an 85, which is to say, I'm more Libertarian than Josh, Matt, and Amanda put together. Which will, I suppose, be no surprise to anybody who reads our respective blogs.

Like Josh Chafetz and Matthew Yglesias, I also scored a 21 out of 160 on the Libertarian Purity test. Apparently, I am "a soft-core libertarian. With effort, [I] may harden and become pure." That's not where I would place my bets.

When I saw that Scalia's Opinion in Crawford v. Washington was 35 pages long and joined by six other Justices I just sort of assumed it would be boring. Not so.

Justice Scalia has a few projects-- bringing the court to use history as the tool to resolve textual ambiguities is one. Curtailing judicial discretion is another, and Crawford contains a simply amazing rant against the potential evils of judges (much of which I happen to agree with):

The Constitution prescribes a procedure for determining the reliability of testimony in criminal trials, and we, no less than the state courts, lack authority to replace it with one of our own devising. We have no doubt that the courts below were acting in utmost good faith when they found reliability. The Framers, however, would not have been content to indulge this assumption. They knew that judges, like other government officers, could not always be trusted to safeguard the rights of the people; the likes of the dread Lord Jeffreys were not yet too distant a memory. They were loath to leave too much discretion in judicial hands.... By replacing categorical constitutional guarantees with open-ended balancing tests, we do violence to their design. Vague standards are manipulable, and, while that might be a small concern in run-of-the-mill assault prosecutions like this one, the Framers had an eye toward politically charged cases like Raleigh’s—great state trials where the impartiality of even those at the highest levels of the judiciary might not be so clear.

Matthew Yglesias has overhauled his site design, and revealed his true colors in the process. Seriously, the more important thing is that he has changed his blogroll in the process, and now it includes us, so it's clear the overall change must be great.

That said . . . the incredibly long list of the weekly archives on the right sidebar doesn't do it for me.