hublog

2003-06-27T12:10:00.000-07:00

Selling Young -- An amusing, interesting, and highly unscientific Autoweek piece on Honda and Toyota's efforts to market cars -- the Element and the Scion siblings, respectively -- to young hipsters. Slate's Gearbox had an entry on the Element that explores the demographic issue. (Go here and search for IKEA.)

Hublog, decidedly not part of Honda's target demo, confesses having a crush on the Element.

2003-06-26T18:51:00.000-07:00

Imagine ... -- What if Porsche, instead of building the ugly-ass, fabulously overweight, albeit spectacularly engineered Cayenne built a perfomance saloon along the lines of the coming Maserati Quattroporte? None of the extra weight and complexity of the off-road systems that will get used by -- maybe -- 10% of the Caynne buyers, even those very occasionally. Imagine the Cayenne engine in the A8 platform, overhauled to deliver Porsche-type ride and handling.

The choice is almost certainly dictated by market opportunity. (Note that Maserati is also building or likely to build the Kublang cross-over.) The real shame is that that market opportunity is actually a market distortion. The regulatory treatment of light-trucks compared to real cars (CAFE among others), drives a manufacturer like Porsche to build the dream car for the citizens of Moronica rather than a true heir to its performance legacy.

Maybe one day. Maybe ...

2002-10-04T14:41:00.000-07:00

Ballots and Bullets -- Re: the New Jersey ballot doings, what does it say about Republican confidence in our military and its logistical operations if the GOP thinks it unconstitutionally impossible to print paper ballots, deliver them to servicemen, and bring 'em home (the ballots) in time to be counted on Election Day?

2002-10-02T19:10:00.000-07:00

Learn with me, folks -- With all that's going on, you'd think hublog would have something more important to 'blog about (and maybe it will), but for now there's a big bee in a little bonnet. On today's episode of Instapundit, the revered Professor Reynolds discusses the latest Flash effort by the House Democratic Caucus and, damning by faint praise, basically says it's pretty good considering the steep learning curve for Flash.

Hold on there, Buster! A steep learning curve reflects an easy topic or a quick study. Hublog will grant you that it's counterintuitive, as steep seems to imply difficult. But, the x-axis of the curve is time and the y-axis is knowledge/skill acquisition. A steep learning curve means that it is easy to get up-to-speed quickly. A shallow learning curve indicates that it takes time to become a master.

Update: Professor Reynolds corresponds, "No, no, no. The guy at Gephardt's office was *displaying* a steep learning curve, i.e, learning quickly." Okay, fair enough. We'll leave the post up anyway because enough people misuse the term and misunderstand the concept.

2002-09-18T13:36:00.000-07:00

Boblog -- With all the blogging about Bob Greene -- Mickey Kaus has a nice roundup with links, his take, and why the blogosphere has the truest analysis -- nobody's posted anything about why it really matters that Greene's flame out coincides with the era of the 'blog: there's nothing stopping him from starting his career resurrection tomorrow. All you need is a blogger account and a dream.

Note to Bob: For your first posts, you might tackle the is-it-mortality-or-just-a-good-case-of-randiness question.

By the way, count hublog among those who can't believe Greene was fired for having sex with a consenting adult.

2002-09-11T07:16:00.000-07:00

Listing -- It's some statement on the world we live in when the Herald runs an article listing the names of the people reading the names of the people killed on 9/11. Has it gotten that meta?

I don't know where the article appeared in the print version, but it was prominently linked on the Herald home page at 10:00 this morning.

2002-09-08T20:31:00.000-07:00

Mitt's inspiration -- Mitt Romney's big, bold idea du jour is not only trivial -- he proposes an overhaul of the budget-busting clean elections fund -- it's stolen ... and stolen from one of the least-credible management teams ever assembled.

Under Mitt's proposal, ten percent of the money regularly-financing Candidate X raises would be put in a fund available to clean-election-restriction-abiding Candidate Y. Sound familiar? It should. It's a ripoff of baseball's laughable mechanism to cure what ails the major leagues: the luxury tax.

2002-07-19T13:00:00.000-07:00

Segways and byways -- Two interesting columns in the Herald about alternative transportation, and they both missed the same point. Cosmo Macero takes on low-speed "glorified golf-carts", which the Registry is going to have to license and allow on public roads with speed limits less than 35 mph. (The category is actually referred to as Neighborhood Electric Vehicles.) Thomas Keane argues that the Segway electric scooter should be allowed on a a sidewalk near you.

Both columns address essentially the same issue: Whether our roads/sidewalks are suited to NEVs/Segways. Macero says that the underweight and under-powered NVs are incompatible with our Ford Excursion-clogged roads. Keane seems to concede that the Segway is a bit much for the sidewalk, but says its potential for revolutionizing urban transportation depends on keeping them off the road -- where the'll get croaked by many times faster and larger cars and trucks -- leaving the sidewalk the only option.

The debate is too focused on how new vehicles fit into the existing infrastructure and its use and not enough on what the infrastructure ought to support. Despite Macero's very droll image of grandpa buzzing down to the early-bird special, isn't a cheap, lightweight, less-polluting vehicle better suited for a huge portion of the driving people do? Hublog's stop-and-sometimes-go trip to Bread & Circus would be not noticeably longer in a car with a 30 mph top end. Let's figure out how to make room for NVs (if they deserve it), where they don't have to compete with cars. Macero's biggest issue -- the problem of radically dissimilar mass and speed (a GEM two-seater weighs a third of a Toyota Camry) -- goes away if regular cars don't share the same roadway with NVs.

Ultimately, that's the Segway's problem, too. It could be a great option for trips to long to walk and too short to justify getting in the car. But, it's too heavy and fast for sidewalks. It's too slow and light for roads. It needs its own pathways.

What the debate over NVs and Segways demonstrates is the need to radically rethink transportation infrastructure to acknowledge the drawbacks of the automobile and accommodate alternative transportation. It shouldn't be sufficient to argue that bicycles, NVs, Segways, etc. aren't compatible with cars or pedestrians. We've got to find ways to make them viable.

2002-07-15T08:17:00.000-07:00

The Right Thing -- Like Cosmo Macero, hublog is cheered by Coca-Cola's decision to report options as expenses in future financial statements. But, could the decision be the victim of the law of unintended consequences?

Will opponents of regulations mandating that options be expensed point to Coca-Cola's voluntary decision as proof that no regulation is necessary and that the marketplace should determine how options are accounted? It's easy to imagine W. earnestly citing Coca-Cola as an example of how markets can function best without regulation.

The regulation opponents have what seems to be a good argument: let companies like Coca-Cola earn a premium for transparency. Unfortunately, there's no evidence that the markets are routinely capable of punishing companies that lack transparency.

2002-07-12T19:01:00.000-07:00

Not so fast -- Hublog yields to no one in his enthusiasm for the Segway HT, except maybe the nuts who paid over $100,000 at auction for each of the first three consumer units. He can't wait to try one. If the price ever drops to within shouting distance of reasonable, he'll propose buying one at the next meeting of the Family Council Ways & Means committee.

But, this campaign to give Segways and their operators complete right-of-way to the Commonwealth's sidewalks is just plain nuts. Before a single unit is in civilian hands, the Public Safety Committee is considering legislation that would grant, according to this Globe article, "access to every Bay State sidewalk, trail, and low-speed road, and would bar cities and towns from imposing any restrictions on the Segway."

It may be that we are at the dawn of a new transportation era, like the debut of the automobile at the last turn-of-the-century. If so, we're going to have to make some changes to accommodate Segways on existing infrastructure or build new routes. (Hublog loves the idea of dedicated bike/Segway lanes.) But, let's slow down and see how things shake out a little before we decide that the sidewalk is the appropriate place for a scooter that can go up to 12.5 miles per hour, according to Segway. (The Globe says an eye-popping 20 mph.)

Hublog is an avid bike commuter and knows what it's like to travel 13 mph in the city. It's way too fast for the sidewalk. Before the legislators get too starry-eyed from their demo rides inside the statehouse, they should try a different test. The committee members ought to walk up and down the sidewalk in front of the State House with Segway riders zipping by at top speeds. I'm betting that'll dampen their enthusiasm.

Critics of the legislation are inevitably going to be labelled anti-progress Luddites. Not fair. Bring on the Segways, just not on the sidewalk, please.

2002-07-11T08:31:00.000-07:00

Shanley the Opportunist -- Hublog correspondent Larry Fay draws attention to a troubling Globe feature on the "search for the real Paul Shanley" in the Living Arts section. The piece suggests that there is a struggle to make sense of Shanley as crusading hero and Shanley as molester, as though the good that Shanley did might mitigate against his crimes or that there is a separate body of good that lives independent of his crimes. The ambivalence is summed up by a quote from former nun and current Boston City Clerk Rosaria Salerno. "He may have done horrific evil, but he also did a lot of good."

The ridiculousness of searching for the "heroic" Shanley is revealed in a paragraph buried more than two-thirds of the way through the article. Carmen Durso, an attorney for some Shanley victims explains that Shanley's created "a pool of kids he could go after." Shanley's "crusading" work gave him opportunity for and cover to his unforgiveable offenses. To commit the kind of child sexual abuse Shanley committed, the perpetrator has to gain the trust of children -- to lure victims -- and respect in the community -- to discourage victims from reporting and to encourage authorities to ignore or discredit reports. All the better if the children are already outcast or marginalized, have no one else to trust, and are unlikely to be credited by authorities. Shanley's "good" was a necessary platform for his "evil." Anyone who tries to separate them is kidding themselves.

The real Paul Shanley is a predator. Paul Shanley is not a hero and never was.

2002-07-10T06:20:00.000-07:00

Endorse this -- Mitt Romney's sicced the lawyers on Jim Rappaport for distributing Romney/Rappaport bumper stickers, though Rappaport is the officially endorsed Republican lieutenant governor candidate. Yet, he won't debate Robert Reich because Reich is not the officially endorsed Democratic gubernatorial candidate.

Mitt, hublog's confused. When does official endorsement matter?

2002-06-27T13:45:00.000-07:00

Kaffiyeh Land -- There's an Atlantic Monthly story on Yassir Arafat that comes close to verifying the my-kaffiyeh-is-Palestine legend peddled by Jeff Jacoby with which we took issue.

Hublog remains skeptical, but Mr. Jacoby's off the hook.

2002-06-26T21:09:00.000-07:00

On Track -- The Amtrak collapse story has a huge local angle. The Boston to NYC to DC run is among the few profitable or near-profitable lines Amtrak has. And, much of the MBTA's commuter rail service is sub-contracted to Amtrak and/or runs on Amtrak lines. Good columns by Cosmo Macero and Jon Keller. Unfortunately for hublog's loyal following, the Keller column ran in the Metro, so is not available on-line. (Hublog has e-mailed Keller to see if it's okay to quote extensively.) Also, interesting pieces in Slate here and here.

Mr. Macero's take is that

2002-06-26T20:58:00.000-07:00

Nit-picking -- Hublogger Robert Paci asks if his favorite blog shouldn't have a feature much like the "New York, Lack of Familiarity With" feature of hublog inspiration smartertimes.com. Why not?

To launch the new feature, Mr. Paci's submission of a minor, but telling error in the Globe's report of the recent South End fire. The article describes the fire scene as a "triple-decker," of which there are exactly none in the architecturally distinctive neighborhood. Lots of sub-divided three-story townhouses (some with fourth-floor additions), but no three-unit, three-story wood-framed homes.

Of course, the story was about something much larger: yet another example of how firefighters regularly put their lives on the line for the safety of others.

2002-06-24T18:08:00.000-07:00

Blame the readers -- Hublog's first rule of user interface design: if the user/reader doesn't understand what he's seeing, the failure is the designer's, not the user/reader's. Apparently, the Globe does not subscribe to the rule.

In response to reader confusion about what's news and what's opinion in the Globe, ombudsperson Christine Chinlund writes a tutorial. No lie, a tutorial. Set aside the fact that the tutorial will not be available as ongoing help for those who are confused in the future but not prescient enough to read and clip Ms. Chinlund's very helpful guide. "Using" a newspaper shouldn't require a tutorial. (The preceding seems so ridiculously obvious, hublog feels a little silly having typed it.) If the opinion/reporting distinction it's confusing enough to enough readers that an ombudsman piece is required, than change is in order ... a change to the paper, not its readers.

Ms. Chinlund's suggestion -- adding "[Writer's name here] is a Globe columnist" at the bottom of opinion pieces -- seems to hublog solving the problem on the wrong end. The solution should make the column/reporting distinction before the reader begins. Ms. Chinlund's suggestion is especially ill-suited to the sports pages where columnists also report (noting that Bob Ryan is a columnist, itself doesn't address whether a particular bit of writing is a column) and columns frequently don't end on the page they begin.

Of course, there's the inevitable fun to be had with the confusion between reporting and opinion as a matter of substance. Instapundit has such fun here.

But, really, a tutorial? She must be kidding.

2002-06-21T13:57:00.000-07:00

Not a war zone, actually -- Beverly Beckham compares the current threat of terrorism in metro Boston to present-day Jerasulem, and Europe as Hitler built death camps.

It trivializes the Holocaust, the Israelis who live in justifiable day-to-day fear, those across the world who live under brutal and violent regimes, indeed even the memory of those who died on 9/11, to suggest that putting a daughter on a train in Boston triggers comparable anxiety.

Life in this country is still good enough that Beckham's daughter is far likelier to be killed by a drunk driver or an angry boyfriend than by terrorist attack. Sure, we need to be more mindful, and today's unusually specific FBI warning about tankers in Jewish neighborhoods is sobering (and a welcome relief from the Bush administration's politically-tinged, vague, and color-coded hysteria). But, has 9/11 really changed "everything"?

2002-06-21T12:43:00.000-07:00

They're doing so nicely -- This picture is on the front page of boston.com.

The caption reads:

Using a formula that combines money and fame, Forbes magazine says Britney Spears (upper left) tops its latest Celebrity 100 list. Clockwise from upper right, Tiger Woods, Oprah and Michael Jordan also made the list.The caption might as well have said:

Britney's number one, and, look, there are some nice black people on the list, too.Appalling.

2002-06-20T07:42:00.000-07:00

Advantage Romney -- Has no one else noticed the striking difference between Romney's Belmont-is-my-home ad and the Democrat's Romney's-a-liar ad? Romney himself names and criticizes Shannon O'Brien and Tom Birmingham, while actors have fun listing Romney's "mitt-statements." Watch or listen to Romney's ad here. Links are in the bottom, right-hand corner.

On the residency issue, Hublog agrees with Barney Frank that the Democratic Party has pushed the legal case too far, possibly undermining the political argument that Romney's an opportunistic weasel. But, let's focus on form for a second.

Hublog decries the knee-jerk tendency to label all critical ads as "negative" or "attack" ads. As a voter, I want politicians to distinguish themselves from each other. Sharply, if necessary. But, when candidates and campaigns do draw those distinctions, they ought not hide behind surrogates. Kudos then to Romney and raspberries to O'Brien and Birmingham. (To be fair, I think Birmingham narrated his own anti-Mitt radio ads earlier this year.)

It would be great if the six gubernatorial candidates pledged to issue all criticism of their opponents themselves. If an ad on a candidate's behalf mentions or alludes to an opponent, the voice on the soundtrack ought to be the candidate's.

Wouldn't that change the tenor of the debate?

UPDATE: Hublog just caught a professionally-voiced Romney radio ad that criticizes "Shannon O'Brien and Tom Birmingham's allies." Halve the kudos.

2002-06-20T07:16:00.000-07:00

Maybe it was the beard -- Hublog whipping boy Jeff Jacoby gets it just about right on profiling. About the politically correct race-, gender-, nationality-, and age-blind system used to select airline passengers for special screening, Jacoby says:

But the only ones who should be happy about this system are terrorists. Every minute spent patting down Al Gore or an elderly man in a wheelchair is a minute not spent focusing attention on a passenger who has a higher likelihood of actually being a hijacker. A passenger named Abdullah, say, who is 24 years old and a citizen of Saudi Arabia.
Jacoby's best point:

Certainly, we're going to have to balance our security interests against civil liberties, but it's time to recognize that civil liberties can't be a trump card on every issue.

2002-06-19T19:04:00.000-07:00

Scandalous -- Turns out, the continued public furor over Cardinal Law and the rest of the church hierarchy is a function of greedy trial lawyers and longtime church malcontents, not anything the church authorities did or could have done. At least that's the angle Joe Fitzgerald's pitching. Cardinal Law is a "lightning rod" and victim of a "witch hunt." And, to Fitzgerald and the others who can look past the scapegoating, Law's "never looked stronger."

This on the same day we learn that the AG has a grand jury considering charges against Cardinal Law for shifting pedophiliac priests from parish to parish.

No, Joe, the church has a long way to go to ridding itself of the cancer that's been revealed over the last several months. A long way.

2002-06-19T06:07:00.000-07:00

Trapped? -- A headline in today's World section says "57 tourists trapped by ex-paramilitaries" in Guatemala. A sharp-eyed reader notes that it's probably more accurate to say that tourists surrounded by armed men are being held hostage.

2002-06-18T11:28:00.000-07:00

Inherit this -- Daleynews praises and disses Ellen Goodman's Sunday column on the Estate Tax, calling it "well written but poorly reasoned."

Hublog agrees with the former and not the latter. Goodman takes on the strawmen built by repeal advocates (the destruction of the mythical family farm), justifies the tax (concern about wealth concentration and consistency with other, taxed transfers), and spells out the consequence of repeal (impacts on Social Security and charitable giving).

Goodman even provides an explanation for why the estate tax repeal resonates so broadly: while less than 2% of us are affected by the estate tax, more than 30% think that they will be.

They don't call it the American Dream for nothing.

2002-06-18T06:36:00.000-07:00

Roots -- Joan Vennochi's got an interesting take on the residency requirement that's currently tying Mitt Romney into knots. (The second link is to Peter Gelzinis's very funny account of Romney's testimony before the Ballot Law Commission.) Vennochi locates the requirement in the Commonwealth's colonial frustration with carpetbagger governors appointed by the King. (Hold those e-mails; hublog knows that carpetbagger is a Reconstruction era coinage.)

The historical roots of the requirement are as much an argument against its enforcement as for it. Today's Massachusetts citizen, especially if she's college-educated, has far more mobility than her colonial counterpart. For instance, the thirty-seven-year-old hublog was born in New York; grew up in Pennsylvania, D.C., and Connecticut; went to college in Connecticut; worked in Massachusetts; went to law school in upstate New York; and practiced in New York City before moving to metro Boston. It seems counterproductively parochial to deny the corner office to people with the broad range of experience that such mobility affords. Really, would the Commonwealth have been better off if Romney had declined the Olympic gig to maintain his residency?

As for the rule of law argument, is there any meaningful injury Massachusetts suffered because Romney tried to keep his options open and save a few bucks? Does his form-filing and voting behavior for three years undo his prior years of service to and in Massachusetts? Whatever residency concerns our predecessors had in the 18th century, the political process today is more than adequate to test a candidate's commitment to the Commonwealth.

The archaic residency requirement diminishes hublog's partisan delight in watching Romney squirm as he's confronted with his half-truths, evasions, and misdirections. Romney's substantial roots in Massachusetts and his patently genuine desire to serve the Commonwealth ought to be enough. (Who cares if he would have been as genuinely committed to the people of Utah if he'd chosen to run there?)

Now, if you want to talk about a residency requirement for Republican governors once their elected ...

2002-06-14T05:06:00.000-07:00

deTwowheel -- Scott Lehigh's mad about motorcycle noise and wonders why police don't enforce noise emission regulations. It's a political problem predicted by the under-read and over-cited deTocqueville back in the 18th century: the influence that a committed minority can have over a relatively complacent majority.

There's a lesson in this.

2002-06-13T17:47:00.000-07:00

Two birds, one stone -- Hard to imagine Shannon O'Brien's not chuckling over the news that the residency vortex is sucking in another big headache, the underfunded but potentially dangerous Robert Reich campaign. The GOP wants Reich to prove he was a resident in August 1995, the latest he could have "moved" to the Commonwealth and still be eligible for the gubernatorial primary.

Mickey Kaus is right. The residency requirement is ridiculously long. But, it has exposed Reich and Romney as shameless and something-less-than-truthful opportunists.

2002-06-13T09:11:00.000-07:00

Failure of imagination -- Don't mean to return to Jeff Jacoby so soon, but do we really need to see the video of Daniel Pearl's decapitation to, in Jacoby's words, "make[] him real"?

Hublog's going to skip the video. The fact and description of his death, the tragedy for his wife and recently born child, that's enough for the reasonably compassionate person to consider Daniel Pearl a real person.

2002-06-13T08:33:00.000-07:00

It's Oprah's fault -- Just in time for Father's Day, Don Feder explains why men avoid their duty as fathers. It's Oprah's, Rosie's, and Homer's fault.

Don, you seem to be exempting all the deadbeat dads from the lesson you say your father taught you: a man's failings are his own.

2002-06-13T08:10:00.000-07:00

Important update below

Jeff Jacoby's recent two-parter on the death penalty (here and here) is full of holes and hysteria, but ultimately raises provocative questions about enacted and proposed moratoriums on the death penalty. First the problems (by no means an exhaustive list):

Innocence and the Constitution -- In defense of the allegedly "broken" death penalty system, Jacoby asserts that "there is not a single proven case in modern times of an innocent person being executed in the United States." Uh, Jeff, assuming that's true, aren't you swapping the burden of proof set forth in the Constitution? The issue isn't whether death-penalty critics can prove that an innocent person has been put to death, but whether death penalty advocates can prove that every person put to death was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in trials and appeals untainted by procedural and substantive error. Hublog grants that it would be virtually impossible to prove the absence of taint, but that doesn't make it any less the appropriate measure. Just as defendants don't have to prove they are innocent to avoid conviction, death penalty critics shouldn't have to prove innocence to demonstrate a constitutionally unjust execution.

Innocence and Jacoby -- Jacoby takes a risk with his no-execution-of-an-innocent-man defense of the death penalty. Criminal investigation, arrest, and prosecution are supremely human endeavors, subject to the error that is inevitable in human endeavors. (Hublog knows whereof he speaks. He was a big city prosecutor after law school.) One of these days, we're going to find out some state killed an innocent person. Will such a discovery cause Jacoby to reverse his position? Doubtful. Seems to hublog like the no-innocent-person-executed argument is the death-penalty advocate's version of the the don't-kill-children argument. It hides the advocate's true position: even an occasional error is okay. (Actually, Jacoby has already addressed this point. See the update below.)

Super due process -- One of Jacoby's arguments is that the "super-due process" the US criminal justice system provides capital defendants makes the risk of error essentially zero. Funny, hublog reviewed Jacoby's considerable death-penalty oeuvre (it's one of his favorite topics) and could find not a single column expressing concern that the Rehnquist Court and congressional Republicans have been making every effort to streamline the capital appeals process and give capital defendants somewhat less super due process.

Distinguishing incarceration and death -- It seems Jacoby has become such a death penalty fan, he's lost sight of its unique, um, outcome. He asserts that the concern about error that's behind a moratorium on the death penalty apply "a fortiori" to all criminal sanctions. Hublog ventures that most people understand that there's a difference between a deprivation of liberty and death and are willing to put up with a higher risk of error when the outcome can be reversed.

Numbers -- Jacoby's has an interesting relationship to statistics. In the first of the two columns, he summarily dismisses as "highly tortured" statistics that the death-penalty system is broken. The point of the second column is to conclude that homicide and execution trends prove a causal link between the death penalty and murder rates. In neither column does Jacoby give his readers the opportunity to come to their own conclusions; he doesn't cite the source of his numbers. Hublog would really like to check Jacoby's assertion that murder rates "fell the most in states that use capital punishment."

Moratorium value -- Jacoby breathlessly warns his readers of the cost of the last "moratorium," without discussing its underlying cause, a 1967 Supreme Court decision that articulated constitutional requirements that were not met by a single contemporary death penalty statute. Ironically, most of the "super-due process" safeguards that Jacoby relies on to argue against the need for new moratoriums arose from that decision and the subsequent hiatus in executions while states fixed their laws.

Ultimately, Jacoby's got at least one point. A moratorium is a red herring for most people. Sure, we can take a break from state-sponsored murder (whoops, bias slip) and fix some of the problems that remain with death penalty administration. With DNA analysis and other mechanisms of the modern criminal investigation, error will undoubtedly go down. And, maybe states will even figure out a way to make color and income non-factors in deciding who gets life and who gets death.

But, those of us in the anti- camp have to acknowledge that no moratorium can overcome our fundamental objection: killing people is wrong. Those in the pro- camp have to acknowledge that there will never be an error- or bias-free administration of the death penalty, but there's an acceptable level of risk because the argument in favor is so compelling. Hublog's done the former. Mr. Jacoby, the ball's in your court.

Update: Seems Jacoby whacked the ball out of the court two years ago. Hublog missed a key column in the Jacoby oeuvre. On June 8, 2000, Jacoby made precisely the point that hublog challenged him to make: a few mistakes are an acceptable cost for the benefits of the death penalty.

Since Jacoby's accepted the risk of mistake, hublog wonders why he bangs the no-innocent-people-have-been-executed drum so loudly in his recent columns. Charitably, hublog assumes that Jacoby means to question what it is that moratorium proponents seek to fix.

2002-06-10T20:32:00.000-07:00

Not quite -- A very amusing (intentionally, I think) take on the name-that-bridge question. Mr. X wants to call it the "Taxpayer's Bridge." Okay, but if it's appropriate for one bridge, wouldn't it be appropriate for all bridges? Then, how would we distinguish one bridge from the next?

Hublog is firmly in the Zakim Bridge camp, though he could stand for the Lenny Bridge.

2002-06-06T08:44:00.000-07:00

Some outrage -- Hublog is not the only one bent out of shape about David Childs' recklessly insensitive comments about the Twin Towers.

Check out this post on rave/rant/whimsy.

We disagree about the beauty of the towers, but we are in complete accord that Childs' "linking of the construction of the towers to brutal terrorism is unforgivable." rave/rant/whimsy even started a campaign to call Childs and express disgust, listing his phone numbers.

UPDATE: I've linked to my original post.

2002-06-05T19:59:00.000-07:00

Watch your words -- Did Mary Leonard's article on Title IX in the Globe on May 30 display the Globe's ideological disposition? Hublog contributor Steve Skwara thinks so. (The article's not available online without paying for it.)

Skwara wonders what reporting Leonard did to support her assertion that "most women's rights groups [view Title IX] as the most important piece of civil rights legislation in a generation." He also wonders why Leonard used the ideological "conservative" to describe a Title IX foe -- "Conservative groups like the Independent Women's Forum say federal regulators have zealously overinterpreted Title IX ..." -- but doesn't tag any other cited groups as "liberal."

Actually, Skwara doesn't wonder. He's sure that both excerpts reflect the Globe's genetically coded lefty bent. Says Skwara, "Leonard has effectively 'reported' that the women's mainstream supports Title IX in its perversely discriminatory glory while only an isolated, marginal, conservative group is asserting that the lawsuit against the U.S. might have some merit."

Hublog ultimately disagrees with Skwara's take on the value of Title IX, but can't argue with his college classmate's finely-tuned bias detector.

2002-05-31T17:49:00.000-07:00

Off-key -- Nothing Derrick Jackson has to say about racial profiling is exactly wrong, but it's still a little off pitch. As Nicholas Kristof explains in the Times today, it's time for liberals and libertarians to recognize that security must now be a meaningful component of the civil liberties calculation. Not the only component as the Bush Administration would have it, but a significant one nonetheless.

Yes, there are young, white men like Lucas Helder (the recent pipe-bomber) and the country has to be more vigilant generally. But, Helder didn't kill anyone, much less the thousands killed on 9/11. And, Helder is, relatively speaking, an aberration. The terrorists who turned commercial jets into deadly bombs represent many -- yes, not all -- Muslims and other Middle Easterners who have been socialized to hate the U.S. and actively wish its destruction. It's time for liberals like Jackson -- and hublog -- to struggle with how to recognize this new reality and still treat Muslims with dignity.

As for Zayed Yasin, the Harvard senior planning to deliver a commencement speech entitled "The American Jihad," it's either a case of pathological naivete or cynical media manipulation. If it's the latter, Jackson's getting played. It sounds like an interesting and important topic: explaining that "in the Muslim tradition, jihad represents a struggle to do the right thing" and encouraging classmates to embark on their own jihads. But, in this climate, was it necessary to invite the firestorm the title creates? Only if Yasin wanted to be the subject of columns like Jackson's.

It seems unlikely that neither Jackson or Harvard-educated Yasin is aware that some people are understandably sensitive to the word "jihad."

2002-05-30T06:44:00.000-07:00

The lovable Dr. Golub -- Fresh off his selection as one of Boston Magazine's 40 Bostonians We Love, Todd Golub gets some more richly deserved ink for his work as a research oncologist and clinician.

Good work by the Globe's Anne Bernard!

Full disclosure: Hublog's thirteen-month-old son is a charter member of the Dr. Golub fan club.

2002-05-28T18:13:00.000-07:00

Damned by association -- Robert Paci of Cambridge takes Thomas Oliphant to task for trying too hard to connect Accenture to Enron. Oliphant bemoans the growing trend of companies to incorporate off-shore to avoid paying their fair share of U.S. taxes. Connecticut's Stanley Works is the recent poster child. The company will avoid something like $30 million in taxes every year with its recent decision to incorporate in Bermuda.

Oliphant justifiably focuses on the irony of Accenture, incorporated in Bermuda to avoid taxes, building the IRS web site. Hublog has nothing against foreign companies competing for U.S. government contracts, but a company ought to be a legitimate tax-payer someplace substantially connected to its operations. That should especially be the case for IRS contracts. Accenture ought to lose the IRS gig.

Oliphant's problem is that he tries to tie Accenture's distasteful but legal practice, with auditor Arthur Andersen's unethical and probably illegal activity in connection with Enron. Accenture is the renamed Andersen Consulting which was formerly part of Arthur Andersen's parent Andersen Worldwide. Not only is Accenture no longer "the consulting arm of the morally challenged Arthur Andersen accounting firm," as Oliphant puts it, the two split in a messy and contentious divorce consummated in August 2000. Consultants Accenture and accountants Arthur Andersen are as far from connected as any two bitter divorcees.

As Mr. Paci puts it: In his cheap attempt to throw some red Enron meat into his piece, Oliphant misled his readers.

2002-05-24T17:42:00.000-07:00

Where's the uproar? -- "What they [presumably the towers themselves] did to lower Manhattan was an act of vandalism just as complete as 9/11."

Such a statement would be a breathtaking display of insensitivity and emotional detachment if it came from a commentator, but it issued from the architect who may have as large a role as any person in shaping what arises from the ashes of Ground Zero.

Architect David Childs, of Skidmore Owings, & Merrill, Childs is the choice of Larry Silverstein, he of the 99-year lease to the towers, to design a plan for rebuilding the site. Both the Time article in which the quote appears and a recent New Yorker piece by Paul Goldberger note his likely significant role in the redevelopment as Silverstein's guy and as a major architectural figure.

Now, hublog was no fan of the towers, but equating an urban planning disaster, an architectural banality, and a gross misuse of quasi-governmental authority to an act of war against this country that cost thousands their lives ought to immediately disqualify Childs from even seeing blueprints of the towers' replacements, much less designing them.

I presume any Child's designed building would carry an inscription by Arundhati Roy.

2002-05-24T12:03:00.000-07:00

Too many or not enough? -- Hublog's first contribution, from S (no period, like Harry Truman's middle name), notes that today's Globe cover story on the "serious shortage" of certain medical specialists seems the logical consequence of an effort to create more primary care physicians lauded by the Globe in 1997.

This paragraph ran in a Globe story March 10, 1997:

America's teaching hospitals finally are fulfilling a promise to produce more primary care doctors and fewer specialists, an unheralded turnaround that they hope will restore the personal doctor-patient relationships of generations past.
A few year's earlier, the Globe had this to say:

Driven by the need to curb US health costs, policy experts are targeting America's reliance on specialists and the expensive brand of medicine they practice...analysts document the cost of this nation's dependence on medical specialists and warn that strong action is needed to reorient US health care toward a less expensive style of medical practice.
Is it fair to cite years-old articles? Hublog thinks so. When would you expect to see the results of programs to produce fewer specialists? The following month?

We'll leave the last word to the contributing letter, S. "I guess you can file this under, 'Ooops, the Globe is
wrong on public policy again.'"

Update: Talk about closing your circles. I came across this page from the Harry S. Truman Library site that discusses the use of the period after Truman's S. What's on the banner for the page? "Meet the president who proposed America's first national health care plan." Cool coincidence.

2002-05-23T18:33:00.000-07:00

The shape of things to come -- Fascinating column by Jeff Jacoby forwarding the insight that Palestinian depictions of the hoped-for state of Palestine show a country that looks a lot like Israel. Jacoby refers readers to IRIS -- Information Regarding Israel's Security-- for some examples of Palestinian organization emblems with Israel-shaped Palestines.

It can't be trivial that the symbols of a Palestinian state seem to rule out co-existence with Isreal.

Two quibbles. 1) Will the Globe and boston.com ever figure out how to make links out of URL's included in articles? 2) The bit about Arafat's Palestine-shaped kaffiyeh smacks of myth. I found a few articles that repeat the notion uncritically, but could find no source for the claim. Jacoby wouldn't be making the myth-repeating mistake again, would he?

2002-05-22T17:20:00.000-07:00

Macero, architectural historian? -- Buried in an interesting piece about the value of the Hancock Tower to John Hancock Financial Services, Cosmo Macero makes what appears to be a gross attribution error. Macero credits Henry Cobb for the design of the still controversial building. (Hublog's opinion: It's an interesting shape on the skyline, not as bad a Copley Square neighbor as its mass would suggest, a soulless disaster at the ground floor.) Everybody and his brother knows that Cobb's far better known partner I.M. Pei designed the Hancock Tower. See Hancock's own site (the tower gets a mention as a 1971 entry on the timeline), here (Cobb gets a mention), and here.

But wait, maybe Cosmo's onto something. The Pei Cobb Freed & Partners site (formerly I.M. Pei & Partners, the firm credited for the Hancock Tower), alone among any other site I found, lists Henry Cobb as lead designer (with Harold Fredenburgh). Interestingly, the pages honoring Pei for his 1988 Pritzker Prize, do not list the Hancock Tower among his projects.

It's good of Cosmo to give Cobb his due. Cobb deserves some fame/noteriety in Boston. He's the lead designer of the absolutely abysmal Moakley Courthouse.

Macero, bring you the inside scoop on Boston business and correcting the architectural historical record.

2002-05-16T08:48:00.000-07:00

Short sighted -- Wayne Woodlief in today's Herald justifiably praises Robert Reich's self-deprecation. (Oddly, Herald columnists must have been short on material; Marjery Eagan does the same). However, Woodlief mistakenly contrasts Reich's good humor about his height to the apocryphal bile of Randy Newman, the writer and performer of Short People.

Read the lyrics, Wayne. Randy's not making fun of short people, rather people who would discriminate against short people. It's called satire. Check out this verse, in particular:

Short People are just the same
As you and I
(A Fool Such As I)
All men are brothers
Until the day they die
(It's A Wonderful World)

2002-05-15T13:42:00.000-07:00

Who are we? First, "we" is only me ... for now. I was inspired by smartertimes.com to create a place for daily critique of the Globe, Herald, and other Boston media. Until its recent -- likely permanent -- hiatus, smartertimes.com ruthlessly identified "errors of fact and of logic" in the New York Times. (Ira Stoll, apparently the sole Times critic on smartertimes.com, is now busy as editor of the recently launched New York Sun.) Ira's analysis was in length and attitude not what you'd find on the letters-to-the-editors page. (Nor would you get letters published on a daily basis, on multiple topics, by the same person.) I aspire to the same sort of careful analysis and foot-waming.

As for the we/me thing. Unlike Ira, I am not well-read or -educated enough to supply meaningful content on a daily basis. I am hoping to inspire other careful consumers of Boston media to send me little pieces that I'll assemble on this page. For now, I'll do the posting, though I can imagine self-posting by regular critics down the road.

Two ground rules.

Nothing that's mere disagreement. There's got to be something demonstrably flawed in the reporting or analysis.

Home-grown stuff only. The local papers are largely wire-fed. Only affiliated reporters and columnists are fair game. Not wire stories or syndicated columns.

Otherwise, send me an e-mail when you see something ridiculous.

2002-05-15T13:07:00.000-07:00

Slippery slope -- Another installment of the Globe's ongoing spotlight investigation of Cardinal Law and the Catholic Church draws an unfortunate comparison between Cardinal Law's handling of Father Shanley and a Father Berthold, fired from St. John's Seminary for kissing a nineteen year-old seminarian. Certainly, Law's failure to make note of the dismissal in his recommendation of Berthold to a Catholic College in South Carolina further illustrates his penchant for keeping the diocese's dirty secrets close to the vestments. But the suggestion that Berthold's offenses are in the same league as Shanley's borders on hysteria and threatens the credibility of the Globe's outstanding work disclosing the church's sins.

The point about Law's willingness to move problem priests around, indeed even if it meant lying, could have been made by noting that Law dismissed Berthold for inappropriate conduct then subsequently recommended him for another teaching position, describing Berthold's record as, according to the Globe, "unblemished." Unfortunately, writer Steven Kurkjian, goes into intimate detail about Berthold's offense and draws a series of parallels to the child sexual abuse cases. The clincher, this paragraph:
Law's willingness to help Berthold obtain another position that would put him in contact with young men is another reminder that the archdiocese has only recently taken an unforgiving stance on issues of sexual misbehavior.

There are significant differences between Christopher Sellars, Berthold's "victim," and the victims of Shanley, Geoghan, Paquin and the rest of the accused child-abusers. Sellars was a nineteen-year-old adult, fully capable, as he demonstrated by reporting Berthold, of recognizing the behavior as wrong and doing something to stop it. If Berthold's behavior was technically criminal -- I was a sex crimes prosecutor and would never have pursued such a case -- it's worth remembering that all he did in this case was kiss an unconsenting adult. Suggesting that Berthold's actions merit a Spotlight report (as opposed to just Law's cover-up), minimizes the horror of what some priests have done to children.

In fact, the Globe, and other media, are guilty of an ongoing failure to make an analytical distinction between true pedophilia -- sexual attraction to prepubescent children, typically boys, that is clinically separate from homo- or hetero-sexuality -- and opportunistic homosexual advances on underaged boys by men who cannot express their sexuality with adults. Now, the Globe is lumping in unwanted, and rebuffed, contact between adults. The three types of offenses have different etiologies, require different responses, and merit significantly different levels of outrage.

In the end, what are we supposed to be outraged about with the Berthold case? Because Berthold, a dean, kissed a student? Because he violated his vow of chastity? Because he kissed someone on the lips without consent? Or, because he kissed another man?

It's too trivial an example of faculty-student contact or an unwanted advance. Whether a priest remained celibate is remarkably un-newsworthy. My sense is that the Berthold/Sellars example, intentionally or not, feeds on the public sentiment that homosexual behavior is what makes the church cases so deeply offensive and that homosexuals are to blame.

2002-05-13T14:07:00.000-07:00

Tax this! -- Hublog comes to bury, not to praise, and we aim for fresh kill. But, sometimes exceptions have to be made, even on our first day. Alex Beam's column on the cigarette tax last week was vintage stuff. Funny, incisive, and relevant. Beam at his best.

As for his obituary for the mini-van on Friday, he only got it part right. The modern mini-van, possibly among the top three innovations of the automobile's first century (after the Model T and the original Mini), is exactly what the SUV is not. The mini-van is exquisitely engineered to accomplish its appointed task: ferrying children and objects in bulk. (Okay, the ride and handling part has been a work in progress, but have you driven a Honda Odyssey?) The SUV is exquisitely engineered to perform where more than ninety percent of its drivers never go -- off-road -- and remarkably ill-suited for driving on pavement, carrying lots of stuff or people efficiently, handling, consuming one's fair share of petroleum, etc. The modern mini-van, by the way, does not share the same chassis as its truck-based SUV cousins, though some more modern SUVs are built on mini-van chassis (pace the Acura MDX and Honda Pilot, which rest on an Odyssey platform, or the Lexus RX300 and Toyota Highlander, which share their chassis with the Camry-based Toyota Sienna).

What accounts for the hostility towards the mini-van is probably, as Beam alludes, hostility towards our lot in life. The mini-van is what we are, the SUV is what we wish we were.

2002-05-13T13:19:00.000-07:00

It's the Zakim Bridge, damnit -- You'd think that the Globe would be at the very forefront of any campaign to rationalize the unwieldy moniker of the destined-for-landmark-status Leonard P. Zakim-Bunker Hill Bridge. Not only is calling it the Zakim Bridge the right thing to do, so long as you don't live in Charlestown or toady to those who do, it has the virtue of consistency with the Globe's legendary liberal bent.

But, no. In today's account of the Mother's Day walk and in Friday's preview of the same, Globe writers fell all over themselves to avoid a nickname and even cast doubt on the legitimacy of calling it the Zakim Bridge. Note to Douglas Belkin: the point of honoring Lenny Zakim was not to reflect a high Q rating, but to honor the man and his deeds and raise the visibility of both. That three out of four people have no idea who he was is argument for, not against, calling it the Zakim Bridge.

The Herald had no such compunction. It's the "Zakim Bridge" in the lede and thereafter, except for one mention of its official name in the second paragraph.

2002-05-13T06:28:00.000-07:00

Jacoby's Broad Brush -- In yesterday's column, Jeff Jacoby manages to smear all of the Commonwealth's state judges solely on the basis of the spectacularly goofy behavior of Judge Maria Lopez in the Horton case. Judges, Jacoby concludes without wasting precious space on evidence, consider themselves "gods on high." "[T]oo many judges seem to forget ... that their power comes from the people and is not theirs by divine right."

There may be an argument that judges need to be more accountable, but Jacoby hasn't made it. It would require too much heavy lifting.