"It would be weird to keep a man around to fetch things!"

Something I said in the comments to an October 2008 post titled "So, I've been thinking of getting a dog...." Note that I met Meade in January 2009 and married him later that year. Here's the context of the highlighted quote. I'd said I was thinking of getting a poodle and somebody said "Ann, women with poodles are like men in shorts." My response was:

Eh, if I was just trying to get men to like me, I would have kept my mouth shut about not liking them in shorts. But it's an interesting issue: What dog should a woman get if what she wants is to make herself as attractive as possible to men?

Somebody else, recommending boxers, said "they sleep a lot, and especially love to sleep with you," and I said:

Is that considered a plus? There is no way on earth I want to sleep with a dog (unless it's some sort of emergency freezing survival situation).

Meade spoke up, responding to "What dog should a woman get if what she wants is to make herself as attractive as possible to men?"

That would be no dog. Men are not attracted to women with dogs. We want to BE your dog, not be WITH your dog.

And to "There is no way on earth I want to sleep with a dog":

At least you don't want to share your bed with a dog. So there is hope.

And then:

Here's what you'll have if you get a Lab:

A shadow. He will follow you from room to room. It will drive you out of your beautiful mind. When you get up, he stands up. When you sit down, he will lie at your feet. Probably ON your feet. When you go to the kitchen for something to nibble on, he is right there with hangdog eyes saying, "Come ta thinkuvit, I'm hungry again too. May I have what you're having."

He will bring you anything and everything to pathetically try to please you - your slippers, your bra, your panties, your laptop. Sure, you say, wouldn't that be convenient? And it would be. IF you are the sort of ill-natured bad sport drag to have around mean and unfriendly person who likes her slippers, bra, panties, and laptop soaked in drool.

Believe me - a man can do all the things a Lab can do without bankrupting you with vet bills.

Which made me say:

It would be weird to keep a man around to fetch things!

And Meade said:

Exactly. That's my point. A fetch-crazy Lab, you will be stuck with for a good ten or twelve years. An obsessed-to-please will-do-anything-just-to-hear-the-music-of-your-laughter man, you just show to the door when you can't take any more.

And that's exactly what happened (except the part about not letting the "dog" sleep with me).

At the Aconite Café...

... it's still winter, and yet...

Ah, but I see winter aconite is poison:

In Greek and Roman mythology, Medea tried to kill Theseus by poisoning him by putting aconite in his wine, in that culture thought to be the saliva of Cerberus, the three-headed dog who guarded the Underworld. Hercules dragged Cerberus up from the Underworld, while the dog turned his face away from the light, barking and depositing saliva along the path. The saliva hardened in the soil and produced its lethal poison in the plants that grew from the soil. Because it was formed and grew on hard stones, farmers called it 'aconite' (from the Greek akone, meaning 'whetstone').

Medea is an anagram for Meade. Meade, who knows all about plants and who, upon seeing this photograph, said "winter aconite." Checking anagrams... Ann, I erect it, ow!... Well, well. The subject Meadhouse fan fiction has already come up on the blog today.

Mud.

"Life is made up of marble and mud." — Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud... And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud. " — Shakespeare

"I made all my generals out of mud." — Napoleon Bonaparte

"We sit in the mud... and reach for the stars." — Ivan Turgenev

"I have tried to lift France out of the mud. But she will return to her errors and vomitings. I cannot prevent the French from being French." — Charles de Gaulle

"Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance..." — Thoreau

"My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery - always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring, diving, and then buried in mud. And why? What's this passion for?" — Virginia Woolf

"They teach anything in universities today. You can major in mud pies." — Orson Welles

"POLITICIAN, n. An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared. When he wriggles he mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice. As compared with the statesman, he suffers the disadvantage of being alive." — Ambrose Bierce (from "The Devil's Dictionary")

"'As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.' Having said these things, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva.' Then he anointed the man’s eyes with the mud and said to him, 'Go, wash in the pool of Siloam" (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing." — John 9:5-7

"The broad-backed hippopotamus/Rests on his belly in the mud..." — T.S. Eliot

Although he seems so firm to us
He is merely flesh and blood.

Flesh and blood is weak and frail,
Susceptible to nervous shock;
While the True Church can never fail
For it is based upon a rock.

The hippo’s feeble steps may err
In compassing material ends,
While the True Church need never stir
To gather in its dividends.

The ’potamus can never reach
The mango on the mango-tree;
But fruits of pomegranate and peach
Refresh the Church from over sea.

At mating time the hippo’s voice
Betrays inflexions hoarse and odd,
But every week we hear rejoice
The Church, at being one with God.

The hippopotamus’s day
Is passed in sleep; at night he hunts;
God works in a mysterious way—
The Church can sleep and feed at once.

I saw the ’potamus take wing
Ascending from the damp savannas,
And quiring angels round him sing
The praise of God, in loud hosannas.

Blood of the Lamb shall wash him clean
And him shall heavenly arms enfold,
Among the saints he shall be seen
Performing on a harp of gold.

He shall be washed as white as snow,
By all the martyr’d virgins kist,
While the True Church remains below
Wrapt in the old miasmal mist.

"Wound licking is an instinctive response in humans and many other animals to an injury."

"Dogs, cats, rodents and primates all lick wounds. The enzyme, lysozyme which is found in many tissues is what is the aid for the wounds.... Wound licking can clean wounds and accelerate healing, so it can be thought of as a form of animal self-medication (zoopharmacognosy)."

Wow! What a great Wikipedia entry. I can't excerpt all the cool stuff, but here's a taste (if you know what I mean)(links within the passage omitted):

In an unusual case, an Oregon teacher was reprimanded after licking blood from wounds on a track team member's knee, a football player's arm, and a high school student's hand. An Oregon public health officer commented that "We do know that animals lick their own wounds, and it may be that saliva has some healing properties. But my very strong recommendation is that you confine yourself to licking your own wounds."...

The Saint Magdalena de Pazzi is said to have cured a nun of sores and scabs in 1589 by licking her limbs.... Pliny the Elder in his Natural History reported that a fasting woman's saliva is an effective cure for bloodshot eyes....

There are potential health hazards in wound licking due to infection risk... The practice of metzitzah during circumcision is controversial as it can transmit the herpes virus to the infant....

Dog saliva has been said by many cultures to have curative powers in people. "Langue de chien, langue de médecin" is a French saying meaning "A dog's tongue is a doctor's tongue"... appears in a 13th century manuscript....

To "lick your wounds" means to "to withdraw temporarily while recovering from a defeat."

The phrase was spoken by Antony in John Dryden's 17th century play All for Love:

“They look on us at distance, and, like curs
Scaped from the lion's paws, they bay far off
And lick their wounds, and faintly threaten war.”

Licked any wounds lately?

"South Park" takes on Occupy Wall Street.

Here, watch the whole episode, "The 1% Solution." Or just check out the part with Michael Moore:

1%
Get More: SOUTH
PARKEric Cartman,Wendy Testaburger,more...

ADDED: Hey, Michael Moore reminds me of the anti-Scott Walker guy with a bullhorn who bullhorned straight into Meade's face last March. And also the guy who blew a vuvuzela right at my face. In case you're wondering which is worse, it's the vuvuzela. A bullhorn amplifies your voice but it does not channel and project saliva.

"Here's the latest evidence that nothing has changed in post-Tucson America..."

Writes Justin Elliott in Salon:

A person at a Tuesday town hall with Rep. Paul Broun, R-Ga., got up and asked, "Who is going to shoot President Obama?"

The exact wording of the question is not clear because, the Athens Banner-Herald reports, there was a lot of noise at the event. 

If you don't know the "exact wording," why do you have some words in quotes? This non-quote has gone viral in the leftosphere, the leftosphere where no one seems to mind all the violent and over-the-top language and imagery at the week-long Wisconsin protests. If you don't have that quote, why are you spewing it out there? Maybe what hasn't changed post-Tucson is you?

Seriously. Why put out a quote that you don't have? You're trying to stir people up and create discord! You are the problem you are talking about? Do you have any self-awareness at all?

The question prompted a "big laugh" from the crowd, in Oglethorpe County, Ga., according to the Banner-Herald. Broun, for his part, did not object to the question. He said in response:

"The thing is, I know there’s a lot of frustration with this president..."

And now, you want to attribute incivility to Broun, but you don't know what he heard. He mentions the president, so presumably, he caught that it was something anti-Obama, but beyond that you are making stuff up.

If the crowd was so big, and it was a planned event, where's the digital video? Don't tell me the crowd was too noisy for anyone to record it AND that the crowd heard it.

Now, as is widely known, it's a serious federal crime to threaten the life of the president, which makes it less likely that the words are as reported in the pseudo-quote. It also makes it less likely that a person of the left was trying to make trouble for Broun (a theory I see some righties are propounding). If it was said, it was said by someone who was both malevolent and stupid. Why would a whole crowd of people give a big laugh when they found themselves in the presence of someone malevolent and stupid?

Flashback to spitgate. I say, as I said then: Produce the video.

ADDED: Media Matters links to this post and says:

Althouse later announced that she'd only believe the "shoot Obama" story if she saw a video of the encounter.

Care to quote me? This is about quotes and you can't quote me saying that, because I didn't. Pathetic. I'm announcing that Media Matters is pathetic. And you can quote me.

That's fine, except Broun's staff confirmed the "shoot Obama" question was asked. The Congressman has since sort-of apologized for his non-reaction to the "shoot Obama" question, and the Secret Service was alarmed enough by the question to interview the person who asked it. (The elderly man apologized for the what he said was a joke.)

Still waiting for the video Ann? 

Yes, I am. For video or some other good-enough evidence. And you should too. As I've said — nay, announced! — you shouldn't spread viral stories unless and until you at least have your facts straight. When I wrote this post, I'd already seen that Broun’s press secretary, Jessica Morris, reportedly said "Obviously, the question was inappropriate, so Congressman Broun moved on," and I chose not to lengthen my post with the obvious question: What did the person who spoke to her say before she said that?

The quote from Morris doesn't establish that she knew what was said independently from what was just said to her. Whoever elicited that quote from her might have just told her what was purportedly said at the town hall. Imagine a reporter saying, "At the town hall, someone yelled out 'Who is going to shoot President Obama?' Why didn't Congressman Broun denounce that person on the spot?" Her remark would fit that context, and therefore doesn't work as a confirmation of the pseudoquote.

MORE: Now, I'm clicking through to the Washington Post story, which came out after I made this post. And I'm just now paying attention to the business about the Secret Service in the Media Matters piece that links to it. The "ADDED" part above relates only to my reaction to what the spokeswoman said.

A law enforcement source confirmed that the Secret Service interviewed the constituent and determined that he or she was an "elderly person" who now regrets making a bad joke.

"In this case this was poor taste," the source says. "The person realized that."

That WaPo item is updated at 11:50 a.m. to say that "Rep Paul Broun appears to admit he should have condemned his constituent." Broun now repeats the quote, which suggests he heard it that way, and says "I was stunned by the question and chose not to dignify it with a response; therefore, at that moment I moved on to the next person with a question. After the event, my office took action with the appropriate authorities."

So, I'll accept now that the quote was made.

And, Media Matters, what do you say about all the violent images and statements that have been in this last week here in Wisconsin? What do you say about the death threat that was made to me? Where are your condemnations of that? I'm waiting!

Tiger Woods, expelling bodily fluids in the wrong place again.

This time, it's spit.

"Where are the liberal civil rights leaders in response to the openly racist comments and calls for violence against America's black Supreme Court Justice?"

"These same men -- all men, I believe, as per usual with the black civil rights groups -- got all in a multi-week, if not many month, tizzy with their allegation that what obviously was a 'say it don't spray it' situation at a Tea Party rally was a spit attack on a black Member of Congress, but they evidently do not care when persons at an event affiliated with one of the nation's most established liberal groups, Common Cause, publicly say they want Clarence Thomas physically attacked and put into slavery."

Says Amy Ridenour, via Instapundit, who uses the word "hypocrisy." It's something beyond hypocrisy, though, I think.

These kids today are so afraid of looking stupid that they won't get serious, collectivize, and change the world — declaims Mark Ames, spittle flying.

Stephen Green (via Instapundit) calls attention to this Mark Ames article (from October) "The Rally to Restore Vanity: Generation X Celebrates Its Homeric Struggle Against Lameness." Green cherrypicks a remark that appears at the very end:

Anytime anyone says anything libertarian, spit on them. Libertarians are by definition enemies of the state: they are against promoting American citizens’ general welfare and against policies that create a perfect union. Like Communists before them, they are actively subverting the Constitution and the American Dream, and replacing it with a Kleptocratic Nightmare.

Green — without noting that the Ames's whole article is about lameness — snarks that spitting is "lame." Instapundit grimly labels it "The Descent of the Left."

But let's look at Ames's whole article — and not be distracted by the terrible practice of spitting on libertarians. (I will not be side-tracked into blogging about what the lefties would say if the spit were flying in the opposite direction.)

Ames was reacting to the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert rally, which to him was the manifestation of the younger generation's need to keep an ironic distance from politics — an effort to avoid lameness. Ames wants young people to rediscover liberalism, which was "once devoted to impossible causes like ending racism and inequality, empowering the powerless, fighting against militarism, and all that silly hippie shit." (Ames himself is 45, by the way, too young to have been a real hippie, but older than the people he criticizes.)

Ames found the Rally to Restore Sanity "depressing and grotesque" — like "some kind of sick funeral party  for Liberalism, in which Liberals are led, at last, by a clown." (Aw, come on, Ames. The liberals have been led by a clown before. Just not a very funny clown.) Ames is disgusted by the way the rally-goers take pride in how smart they are because they "don’t take themselves too seriously":

That’s why they’re following a clown like Stewart, whose entire political program comes down to this: not being stupid, the way the other guys are stupid–or when being stupid, only stupid in a self-consciously stupid way, which is to say, not stupid. That’s it, that’s all this is about: Not to protest wars or oligarchical theft or declining health care or crushing debt or a corrupt political system or imperial decay—nope, the only thing that motivates Liberals to gather in the their thousands is the chance to celebrate their own lack of stupidity! Woo-hoo!

It's a liberal trope that I've been following over the past week, after Isthmus reporter Bill Lueders wrote a piece called "The Triumph of Stupidity," in which he triumphed over getting UW polisci professor to say the voters are "pretty damn stupid." It's that "What's the Matter with Kansas?" notion that liberals have — that people who don't vote for liberal candidates are too dumb to know where their own interests lie. Ames is looking at the other side of that phenomenon: Liberals themselves are caught up in their self-image of not being the stupid ones, and, Ames is saying, this obsession of theirs undercuts the old-time, serious liberal project of remaking the world in pursuit of big, broad ideals like equality.

Ames has a great insight into "why so many Gen-X/Yers turned against Obama": "he made them look stupid."  They took Obama seriously. They believed. And that set them up to look.... lame!

Ames writes many paragraphs trashing E. A. Hanks's "Dear The Left: A Breakup Letter." (She's Tom Hanks's daughter!) Hanks seems to want to separate herself from political movements and embrace something like libertarianism. Ames declaims:

If the ruling class has enormous amounts of money and power and collectivizes in a variety of billionaires’ unions and special interests unions, and your answer is, “I’ll go it alone, at least I won’t look stupid” then you’re just fucking stupid.

So it is all about not looking stupid? Anyway, after much verbiage, which I'm skipping, including the part about Bob Dylan — marvel at my restraint! — he gets to his point, which is that liberals need to cast individualism aside and get collectivized, even though that's not distanced and ironic and unserious:

Collective action is the only possible way to change shit. Large numbers of collectivized nobodies rallying to demand what they want–a better cut of the pie...

Pie! Michelle said we could have pie!

... and a better world to live in. It’s the only thing that power-elites fear and the only way to get them to negotiate.... You’ll have to stomach being around people who are lame, and who say lame things, and you’ll feel lame—so you’ll have to decide which is lamer: the fear of being lame, or forming an alliance with people lamer than you in order to struggle against people far meaner, far more greedy and destructive than the lame people you hate—people who have no qualms about being lame when they collectivize, so long as they destroy you and grab everything they want. 

In other words, don't mock the Tea Party. Get out there. Be like them. Be mockable. That's the first of 3 prescriptions Ames ends with. The third is the one Green quoted: Anathematize libertarians. (The metaphor is to spit.) And the reason for anathematizing libertarians is Ames's second prescription:  liberalism needs a big, serious goal to collectivize about and that goal is the redistribution of wealth:

[P]eople need money. Then if they have money, they need Life. Then they might be interested in “ideals” set out in the contract that this country is founded on. Ever read the preamble to the Constitution? There’s nothing about private property there and self-interest. Nothing at all about that. It’s a contract whose purpose is ...  a “more Perfect Union”—that’s “union,” as in the pairing of the words “perfect” and “union”—not sovereign, not states, not local, not selfish, but “union.” And that other purpose at the end of the Constitution’s contractual obligations: promote the “General Welfare.” That means “welfare.” Not “everyone for himself” but “General Welfare.” That’s what it is to be American: to strive to form the most perfect union with each other, and to promote everyone’s general betterment. That’s it. The definition of an American patriot is anyone promoting the General Welfare of every single American, and anyone helping to form the most perfect Union—that’s “union”, repeat, “Union” you dumb fucks. 

Ames is still playing on his audience's fear of being the stupid ones — even as he spews some crazy shit he wants us to hear as brilliant. Don't be a dumb fuck, believe me when I tell you: This individualism is a trick the billionaires are playing on you. Come together, live as One.

Ames boldly palms this off as constitutional interpretation. The "more perfect union" in the Preamble isn't the reallocation of powers between the federal government and the state governments to deal with the problems that arose under the Articles of Confederation. No, Ames's big, serious lie — and you should worry that you're a dumb fuck if you don't believe it — is that the Constitution compels us to set aside our individual pursuit of happiness and dedicate ourselves to the collective.

"Mythic Giant Earthworm Not Extinct, Spitting, or Sweet Smelling."

If only it were extinct, we could imagine that it spit and smelled sweet. Is it better to know it's still around, but not that interesting, or would you prefer it gone and looming large in our heads?

"On the eve of the health care vote, a group of black Democrat Congressmen (eschewing the private tunnels they usually use to cross from their offices to the Capitol) chose to walk en masse through a crowd of protesters..."

"... confident that the knuckledragging Tea Party goons they and their media pals have reviled for a year now would respond with racial epithets. And then, when the crowd didn't, the black Congressmen made it up anyway."

That's Mark Steyn, who notes that mainstream media, which spread the phony story (when it was most useful to spread), are showing no interest in correcting it.

By the way, I called bullshit on the story as soon as it was reported, in this blog post and here on Bloggingheads:

Spitgate.

Cleaver retracts.

"I thought the 'vomit' tag was a joke, but you actually have dozens of posts tagged 'vomit." Was 'bodily fluids' too generic?"

Asked Michiel, in the comments to this post. And indeed, the answer is yes. There's a limit to how many posts Blogger will show on the front page when you click a tag, so I've been working on subdividing some of the bigger tags, and "bodily fluids" was one of the oversized categories. The first subcategory I broke out was vomit, because I knew there was some good stuff in there, including the time when I went out of my way to vomit-blog.

And actually, there are too many in the "vomit" category now, so one of the best ones wasn't appearing: the vomit miracle. I need to subdivide "vomit"! That's disturbing.

Now, with Michiel's prodding I did 3 more subcategories.

1. Saliva... because I got my original mainstream-media recognition when I debate-blogged back in 2004 and noticed a little something.

2. Blood... because blood is the greatest bodily fluid. It's #1. I mean, if you were on "Family Feud" and the question was "Name a bodily fluid," you'd say "blood." Blood has murder, menstruation, art, rage, law ... everything. Go ahead, click.

3. Urine... because ... well, I knew it would amuse Trooper York. (And that's another thing about tags. I'm gradually making tags for my favorite commenters.)

IN THE EMAIL:

In case you'd like to see a 60-second clip titled "Vomit Tag!", here's a comedy video me and my friends made. It's the outdoor fun time activity that's taking America by storm.

I'm afraid to look! You look.

AND: Please, don't be making video clips for urine tag and sending them to me.

Mouth-corner spittle, in HDTV.

Amanda Hess (via Instapundit) was watching Obama looking nice and "crispy" on HDTV and then, suddenly, there was "a small collection of saliva in the left crease of the candidate’s mouth."

The development nearly incapacitated my housemate; he spent the remainder of the speech in a nervous fit, wishing aloud that one polite delegate would flag down the candidate and discretely wipe his own mouth, the telltale indication that Obama “has got something … right over … no … a little to the left … there, you’ve got it.”...

Near the speech’s end, Obama did move to wipe the corner of his mouth, causing a grand celebration among the party. However, the move only displaced the spittle, helping it to migrate lower down the lip.

Ha ha. This brings back fond memories of blogging for me. From October 13, 2004, live-blogging the last Bush-Kerry debate:

Bush is smiling a lot, and the left side of his mouth nevertheless turns down oddly. A glob of foam forms on the right side of his mouth! Yikes! That's really going to lose the women's vote. [UPDATE: the NYT and the WaPo take note of this, and only this, observation and I react to that attention here....]

And that was without HDTV. That was the first time this blog got quoted in the NYT, so I'm pretty nostalgic about Bush's spittle. But I'm looking back on the vague, fuzzy past. We've got a new crisp guy now and a wrinkly old geezer and, with HDTV, we'll be able to inspect the individual bubbles of any mouth foam.

Think too of the skin blemishes. Everyone's skin will look bad in closeup on HDTV, which brings more clarity than seeing the person in person. It's hyperrealism. And unlike in person, you can get right up close and stare at it and talk to other people in the room about it. And blog about it.

Now, it's going to be important for politicians to wear makeup, strong makeup. Not just a little powder. And then how are they going to look to the people who are around to see them in person? In fact, how are they going to look on HDTV when we can see that they've got on makeup. Garish! Crazy!

Unless....



... they are female.

Ah, finally! A real advantage for women.

Thanks for the technology, guys. We will now use it to rule the world.

ADDED: But Chip Ahoy got out his magnifying glass:

I return to the old question of laptops in the classroom. Or: Why do law professors hate freedom?

In the comments here, XWL wondered why I hadn't blogged about this Ian Ayres' Freakonomics post about laptops, then quickly added, "Oops, see you've already posted about the 'phony laptops-in-the-classroom' issue a few years ago."

Yes, I was already sick of this issue in 2006. But what the hell? If Ian Ayres is talking about it on Freakonomics, I'll have another go at it.

Ayres's piece is called "Surfing the Class," and you may have noticed that my post from 2 years ago has a little aside saying nobody says "surfing" about the internet anymore. Oh, the things that you think have gone away that keep coming back!

Anyway. Ayres:

I wanted schools to announce that laptops, by default, should be used during class only for class-related activities unless the professor says otherwise.

What kind of attitude is that? Why do you need a rule that a prof has to override? Just have no rule and let the prof impose a rule if he wants! Are you such a candyass that you can't impose the rule on your own, that you need your preference to be the default because you don't want to take responsibility for it? Ha!

Let the default be freedom. Let the students take responsibility for their own behavior, and let the prof take responsibility for withdrawing freedom if that's what he wants to do.

I’m happy to report that Saul Levmore, the dean at the University of Chicago Law School has recently announced an end to classroom surfing...

In praising Levmore, I should be clear that there is no good a priori argument against multitasking....

Let's check to see if there is any reason not to limit what other people are allowed to do. What an attitude! Talk about default rules!

Law students are adults who generally can decide for themselves what is in their best interest — but...

But... let's control them anyway.

Ayres does at least notice at this point that he's being illiberal, so he shifts into blather about "negative externalities."

The laptop screen is a billboard that is very visible to other students sitting behind the gamer. Surfing and game playing in particular can be very distracting — both visually and in the signal they send to others that you don’t care about class.

You know, when I was a law student, birds tweeting outside the window would distract me. Students leaning their heads from one side to the other distracted me. The spittle in the corner of the teacher's lips distracted me. The prospect of lunch distracted me. But the world failed to adopt rules to clear away all these distractions. I figured out solutions on my own, like sitting in the first or second row and drawing elaborate doodles to stare at so I could listen better. I suppose my doodles were imposing negative externalities, very visible billboards that they were.

Back to Ayres:

Multitasking also makes students less present as participants in class discussion. Surfing doesn’t stop students from taking notes, but it degrades the quality of their attention.

Is that supposed to be a negative externality too? Good lord. Just ask some good questions, teacher. Be interesting. Say: "And that's exactly the sort of question I intend to put on the exam. In fact, I might put that very question on the exam."

In recent years, I’ve tried to balance student liberty with my negative externality concern by allowing surfing, but only in the back row of class. In the back row, at least, it isn’t a visual distraction.

In other words, there is a complete solution to the only real negative externality you've identified, the very visible billboard problem.

Ayres nevertheless continues:

I am tempted to ask students to collect data on how much surfing is actually going on (even when it is banned). I bet some readers will be upset with the idea of such monitoring. There is a growing sense of entitlement not just to surf but to keep your professor in the dark about whether you are surfing or not.

Yeah. And these readers are right. Mind your own business, lawprof. You don't come by at night to see if they are doing their homework. Do your own job, professors, and make it so that paying attention in class matters by making it affect the exam and the grades.

If the admission application simply asked students to check a box if they were willing to forgo classroom surfing, I imagine virtually all applicants would forgo their God-given right to play solitaire.

Ayres is a lawprof at Yale. If the application simply asked students to check a box if they were willing to allow their professor stop by their house and flog them for no good reason, I imagine virtually all Yale applicants would forgo their God-given right to be free of floggings.

The end of "Air America" in Madison.

I'd say: if they can't make it here, they can't make it anywhere.

Mike Malloy reading long passages from Orwell's "1984" was not mentioned by anyone as something they'll miss should Air America programming be dropped from WXXM/FM 92.1 "The Mic."

The station is set to switch to sports programming on Jan. 1. We asked readers what they will miss about The Mic if the switch is a done deal, and quite a few responded. Some responses were edited for space and clarity:

• Karl Marx observed, accurately, I believe, that in every age the ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling classes. It follows that any other ideas will be dismissed by, for example, the owners of the broadcast media as "unpopular," whether or not they are shared by two persons or by 200 million.

For all its flaws, a progressive radio format such as the one that WXXM/FM will abandon on New Year's Day demonstrates the powerfully subversive fact that ideas about getting out of Iraq now, creating a single-payer health care system, adopting instant runoff voting, etc., are not at all unpopular. I will miss Madison's part in creating that progressive national sensibility and that the soon-to-be absent voices do it so entertainingly. (Alan Bickley, Madison)....

So... sort of like... it's unpopular because it's popular? Or is it the other way around? Maybe if I read more Marx (and less Orwell) that would make more sense to me.

Moving on:

• With the loss of 92.1, the progressive voice in Madison will again be silenced (well, except for WHA, WERN, WORT, WTDY, the Progressive, Isthmus, the editorial page of The Capital Times and most of the editorial page of the Wisconsin State Journal, but you know what I mean).

I listen because nowhere else can you find such raw, spittle-flecked emotionalism combined with such robust disinterest in facts. (Dale Aldridge, Madison)

Okay. I'm going to stop while I'm amused. More opinion from the locals at the link.

Guns don't kill people. Guns make people want to kill people.

Psychologists did an experiment that is said to indicate that handling a gun brings out the aggressive instinct in males:

Psychologists at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., enrolled 30 male students in what they described as a taste study. The researchers took saliva samples from the students and measured testosterone levels.

They then seated the young men, one at a time, at a table in a bare room; on the table were pieces of paper and either the board game Mouse Trap or a large handgun.

Their instructions: take apart the game or the gun and write directions for assembly and disassembly.

Fifteen minutes later, the psychologists measured saliva testosterone again and found that the levels had spiked in men who had handled the gun but had stayed steady in those working with the board game.

The "taste sensitivity" phase of the experiment was in fact intended to measure aggressive impulses. After the writing assignment, the young men were asked to rate the taste of a drink, a cup of water with a drop of hot sauce in it. They were then told to prepare a drink for the next person in the experiment, adding as much hot sauce as they liked.

"Those who had handled the gun put in about three times as much as the others — 13 grams on average, which is a lot," said Tim Kasser, one of the authors.

So the subjects were given a choice whether to take apart a kid's game or a big, real gun? Wouldn't that sort the guys into two very distinct groups right there? I'd like to see a separate test in which the Mouse Trap choosing types are given a gun to assemble and disassemble, and the gun choosing types have to fiddle with Mouse Trap.

UPDATE: I think the answer to my question whether they were given a choice is no. One or the other object was on the table. So I guess there's no way around it: Guns don't kill people. Guns make people want to kill people.

IN THE COMMENTS: The best argument around the conclusion is that the gun stimulated feelings of fear not aggression. I note that Mouse Trap makes a flawed comparison because it is a familiar, cheerfully colored, flimsy plastic child's game. A fairer comparison would have been something made of gray metal and not associated with children -- maybe a motor.

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds links and says "I think this gives you a First Amendment right to own a gun." Hmmm. If holding a gun causes ideas to form in your head, a gun is like a book? He also links to this Jonah Goldberg post that discusses the same psych experiment. Jonah links to Andrew Sullivan, who's fretting about "what actually owning or handling a gun does to male psychology." Jonah points out how unsurprising it is that things affect our minds. And Glenn reminds us that Andrew Sullivan once promoted testosterone. Here's the old Sullivan article, which he provides on his own "Greatest Hits" page. A sample:

Because the testosterone is injected every two weeks, and it quickly leaves the bloodstream, I can actually feel its power on almost a daily basis. Within hours, and at most a day, I feel a deep surge of energy. It is less edgy than a double espresso, but just as powerful. My attention span shortens. In the two or three days after my shot, I find it harder to concentrate on writing and feel the need to exercise more. My wit is quicker, my mind faster, but my judgment is more impulsive. It is not unlike the kind of rush I get before talking in front of a large audience, or going on a first date, or getting on an airplane, but it suffuses me in a less abrupt and more consistent way. In a word, I feel braced. For what? It scarcely seems to matter.

For what? Perhaps for some practical jokes involving lots and lots of Tabasco sauce.

The echo-y comfort zone of rage.

Armando over at Daily Kos, links to me and awkwardly calls me one of the "theoretically not stupid folks [who are] wondering what hit them in the Left Blogosophere." That's his typo, "Blogosophere," but you know it made me stop and think about whether it was some kind of portmanteau word comprising "blogosphere" and "philosopher." Well, don't you know, I want to be a blogosopher when I grow up. I could ponder Armando's theory of not being stupid, but I'm just going to assume it means not agreeing with him yet and move on.

Armando's link is to my recent post about the revival of interest in a year-old post called "Right and left: my sad experience." The older of the two posts observes that "bloggers on the right link to [me] when they agree and ignore the disagreements, and the bloggers on the left link only for the things they disagree with, to denounce [me] with short posts saying [I'm] evil/stupid/crazy, and don't even seem to notice all the times [I've] written posts that take their side."

Interest in that post was revived, as I explained in the post Armando linked to, when Crank at RedState wrote about how he thought a lot about what I'd said and wanted Republicans to remember that they need to engage and include the centrists and liberal hawks who are the source of their majority power.

[F]rom one issue controversy to the next, we may find ourselves on the opposite side from some of these folks. And therein lies the temptation to go the Kos path, and dissolve into spittle-spraying rage when people who are "supposed" to be on "our side" cross over and side against us. That's the situation where we need to think carefully about how harshly we go after people's motives, their intellectual integrity, etc. A ritual bridge-burning may be fun, but that's how you end up stranded on your own island.

Quoting that passage, I add: "Hardcore Democrats ought to do the same, and not just because I like people to be nice to me."

You'd think that if Armando was going to bother to link to this, he'd respond to the point that matters so much: it's dysfunctional to alienate the people you need to win over in order to gain majority power. But, though he goes on for 725 words, it's all just about how angry he is at the Bush Administration and don't I ever think about why he's so angry?

Yeah, well, but you linked to me. Don't you ever think about why your side can't seem to win elections, despite all these deficiencies in the people you are so angry at? Can't you distinguish between them and people like me, who represent the votes you need to win? I agree with you on many issues. I've been a registered Democrat since I first started to vote, in 1972. I can count on one hand the Republicans I've voted for in my life, for any office. And that's giving a separate finger to Cheney. And go ahead and make a giving-the-finger-to-Cheney joke. I would laugh at it. I watch every episode "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report." You think I'm not worth engaging, because you're angry at Bush? Are elections not worth winning because you're angry at Bush? Just exactly who is theoretically not stupid?

Oh, but, wow, a Kos link -- that must bring a lot of traffic, right? No, my friends. It does not. Less than 2% of my traffic is coming from that Kos link right now, and I've got no active -lanches at the moment. I'm getting more traffic from Google and from Glenn Reynolds' blogroll. Meanwhile, there are more than 300 comments on Armando's post. Wouldn't want to leave the echo-y comfort zone. The echo-y comfort zone of rage.

And then there's this guy, who seems to think that when I said "Hardcore Democrats ought to do the same, and not just because I like people to be nice to me" I was really only talking about how I wanted people to be nice to me. And so it goes.

Blog post gets new life.

In the last day or so, I've gotten more traffic to this old post than to the front page of the blog. It started when RedState wrote this, calling attention to what I'd written over a year ago about how lefty and righty bloggers have treated me. RedState, who seems to have kept the old post in mind all this time as something to reflect upon periodically, writes an elaborate post. Excerpt:

With a Republican majority in both Houses of Congress, a majority of the electorate having voted for a Republican president, and a lot of libertarians and a fair number of centrists and even liberals supporting the war effort, we are working in a very big tent right now; the "RINO" population is booming. Of course, having people in our coalition who don't always support all of our goals - or who, in some cases, support only a few of our goals - can be intensely frustrating. Any one of us can tick off the names of elected officials who drive us up the wall - John McCain, Chuck Hagel, Lincoln Chaffee, Arlen Specter, etc. (And that's just the Senate). There are also plenty of pundits and bloggers who are on our side on the war, or the economy, or the culture, or the law, but not all of the above. In the blogosphere, there are centrists like Althouse and libertarians like Glenn Reynolds, Megan McArdle and Stephen Green. The pundit world even includes people like Christopher Hitchens and Nat Hentoff, arch-liberals on many issues who are nonetheless steadfast allies on some questions.

Anyway, from one issue controversy to the next, we may find ourselves on the opposite side from some of these folks. And therein lies the temptation to go the Kos path, and dissolve into spittle-spraying rage when people who are "supposed" to be on "our side" cross over and side against us. That's the situation where we need to think carefully about how harshly we go after people's motives, their intellectual integrity, etc. A ritual bridge-burning may be fun, but that's how you end up stranded on your own island.

Good point! Hardcore Democrats ought to do the same, and not just because I like people to be nice to me.

Anyway, yesterday, Best of the Web had a link to the old post (with no reference to Redstate), just a quote from me and some brief agreement. Then Instapundit linked to it.

Meanwhile, Sissy Willis and Steven Taylor were noticing all the action they are getting from the time I linked to them over a year ago, and both of them wrote to ask me what's going on. Here's Sissy's old post -- replete with photo of busted up Li'l Greenie. Here's Steven's. Now Sissy's got a new post about the revival of the "Right and left: my sad experience" conversation.

It's funny about blogging. You get so intent on putting the next post at the top, pushing all the old posts down. Blogging is a process of piling on and accepting the endless sinking of whatever isn't newest. But, watching the Site Meter page, you see where new visitors are arriving. Regular readers keep coming to the main page for that newest post. Extra readers tap in at individual new posts when other bloggers link to the posts you've put up recently: you see traffic at one of today's posts, maybe yesterday's. There are always a lot of visitors that come via search engines. Some of these arrive at posts that have had a steady, if low level popularity. (My classic post of this type is "The 'therefore' symbol.'" On any given day, somebody somewhere feels like reading about the therefore symbol and finds that post.) Others come to an old post that talked about a specific subject that has reappeared in the news. But it's quite unusual to experience a flood of interest to an old post like this one. This is just a case of one blogger remembering something we were talking about quite a while back and having something more to add to that old conversation. And then it seemed new again... and bloggable. That turns around the whole feeling of blogging, that sense that it is always the new that matters.

UPDATE: Vodkapundit joins the conversation ("Ann and I arrived at the same conclusion, even though we chew on different slices of the political pie.").

Me and those precious bodily fluids.

My reference to bodily fluids in this post has gotten a lot of attention, but do you know this isn't the first time I've gotten a strange amount of attention for talking about bodily fluids?

Let me reminisce about last year's bout with the fluid. It was the day after one of those presidential debates that we paid such close attention to back then:

I noticed from my Sitemeter that I'm getting referrals from the Washington Post, so I check over there and see:

Jim Rutenberg in the New York Times watched television commentators and "livebloggers" last night. ...

"Just after 10 p.m., the Democratic Web blogger Ann Althouse wrote . . . : 'A glob of foam forms on the right side of his mouth! Yikes! That's really going to lose the women's vote.' "

Oh, I'm blogging as a Democrat? Well, I read it in the New York Times, so it's probably true. Did Rutenberg read enough of my blog to see that I'm voting for Bush, or is he just concluding from the fact that I don't mind saying that I observed spittle in the corner of Bush's mouth that I must be opposed to him? Maybe Rutenberg is assuming that these bloggers are all so partisan that if they say one thing against a candidate, they must say everything against that candidate.

Why no referrals from the New York Times on Sitemeter? WaPo made my name into a link, but the Times doesn't do links. In fact, where WaPo has the ellipsis above, the Times has "on Althouse.com," which is neither the name of this blog nor the URL. And why two b's in "Web blogger"?

For all the thousands of things I've written about the election, the big recognition I get is for seeing spit in the corner of Bush's mouth? Ah, I suppose I deserve to get picked on for something small since I was picking on Bush for something small, which of course, for MSM, symbolizes what small, small, pajama-wearing, ankle-biters these bloggers--b-bloggers!--are.

Then:

[T]he Washington Post and the NYT are paying attention to my paying attention to a glob of foam that formed in the corner of President Bush's mouth last night.

Me and presidential bodily fluids, talked about in the big newspapers! I feel like the new Monica Lewinsky!

Fascinating though this high-level MSM attention is, it's the Belmont Club that is linking to my spittle-spotting and saying something interesting about it. Is it "vacuous," as one of the commenters on that post says, to judge people from their faces or are we tapping into some deep, subconscious skill that evolution has built into our eyes and our brains?

Maybe I'll put in a Google Alert for the various bodily fluids and pursue this line of blogging in earnest, since it's worked so well in the past. Any other bodily-fluids blogging? -- you may wonder. Well, there's this, from back when this blog was young:

I was annoyed when the mango juice sold in the Law School snack bar changed its name from Fantasia (no connection to American Idol) to Naked. When I'm consuming liquid, I don't want to contemplate nakedness. That's just wrong: why are you making me think of bodily fluids?

Why? Just to get to you!