I got The Incredibles for Easter, and so we watched it after dinner. It is a fantastic movie, so if you haven't watched it, you must.

If you have seen it, I want to know: what did you think about the CGI, particularly the hair? I've watched the movie with quite a few people at different times, and talked about it with even more, and a majority of them have commented on the hair. What's strange is that there are two very different reactions: some people are extremely impressed with the hair - especially the wet hair - and others remark that animators still haven't figured out how to do hair - especially wet hair.

I can't figure out what causes the divide. I think the people who were not impressed tended to be gamers, so maybe they're more familiar with animation and thus have higher standards, but on the other hand, game animation is certainly not extremely realistic yet, so you'd think gamers would be even more impressed with realism. Maybe it's that the impressed people have seen mostly Disney and similar cartoons, where the hair doesn't even attempt to be realistic, so the added detail we see in The Incredibles makes them take notice.

My own view is that the hair was definitely better than any animated hair I've seen before. It wasn't quite realistic, but then nothing in the movie was. The skin, in particular around the mouths, looked plasticky, like what you might see on a really expensive doll. And the characters were supposed to be stylized and cartoonish. In fact, I might say the hair was too realistic in comparison with the rest of the features.

What do you think? Realistic or not? What determines people's impressions?

# : 8:42 PM : :

• It's lovely outside, and I will open the windows when I get home.
• Last night, I saw ducks. They were at 21st and E, right where the exit from the Whitehurst freeway comes up. They were a cute mallard couple, a green-headed boy and a brown girl. They waddled around the corner and tried to cross the street on the crosswalk. Then cars came, and they turned around and waddled back. I wanted to stop and watch them, but instead I went and ate a yummy dinner.
• I just submitted all the financial aid paperwork with deadlines in April.
• Grapefruit. It's a pretty color inside, it is fun to try and cut open with a plastic knife, and it makes rude noises when I scoop out the fruit with my plastic spoon. An excellent afternoon snack.

# : 4:01 PM : :

I think I'm with Julian on the Grokster case, Tim's very good Brainwash article notwithstanding. Tim argues

When applying that standard to Grokster, then, the courts must look not at the program as a whole, but at the specific features that distinguish it from other file-distribution systems. If Grokster’s "no server" architecture makes it more efficient or offers more features than Napster’s server-based approach, then Grokster can cite the Betamax precedent in its defense. However, if the clear purpose of its architecture is to evade liability for the copyright infringement that it expects to occur on its networks, it’s hard to claim with a straight face that its architecture has "substantial non-infringing uses."

Now, I can't claim to be very familiar with the legal precedents here, but that's never stopped me before.

I don't see why we have to look at the specific distinguishing features. So what if the p2p architecture is a gimmick? Julian puts it much better than I can when he says,

The question of whether a particular technology maker is liable for contributory infringement can't depend on the existence of some other technology that would accomplish the same end with less piracy.

It doesn't make sense to have the legality of a particular system depend on what else is out there - was Grokster legal until BitTorrent came around? [I don't actually know the chronology there, but that doesn't really matter.] Tim points out that Grokster offers essentially the same functionality as BitTorrent, except that BitTorrent has administrators who decide what's available. So if, as Tim grants, BitTorrent has substantial non-infringing use, Grokster must as well - it's the same technology. ANY file transfer system, in fact, has non-infringing uses.

Tim discusses this in a follow-up blog post, and remarks

The Supreme Court could rule that producing and selling a piece of software, by itself, can never lead to copyright liability.

I think they should. Tools don't do anything by themselves; they have to be operated by someone. And the user should be responsible for using them in accordance with the law. Tim says this decision wouldn't be in accordance with the spirit of the Betamax decision, since Grokster isn't a "staple article of commerce" given the existence of other file-transfer mechanisms. But following this logic, we can ban all sorts of things, as long as there are replacements available, and that just doesn't make sense to me. For one thing, I can imagine reasons someone would rather use Grokster (it has prettier colors, you don't want to let the BitTorrent administrator see your files, it doesn't crash your computer while a competing tool does...) and I think choice should be left up to consumers as much as possible. For another, it seems that Grokster should be legal or illegal on its own merits, not based on what else other companies decide to offer; otherwise it might be legal one year, when a few companies go under, and illegal again the next when someone else starts up a new service.

The real difference I see between Grokster and BitTorrent is that Grokster places the responsibility for compliance with the law on the consumers, obviating the need to have a centralized someone in charge. I don't think that's particularly nefarious. Personally, I'd never want to run a file-sharing service such as BitTorrent, because by taking on the responsibility to vet the files that are transferred, I would leave myself open to lawsuits if I made a bad decision or missed a particular file. Better to decentralize the decision-making, letting each user decide which files to transfer. I don't think that, if I provide people with file-transfer software and leave them to use it as they wish, I should be held liable if they decide to break the law with it. (I have the impression that, in fact, legal precedent goes the other way, and people can be held liable for crimes committed with their property, but I don't think that's right.)

Tim's argument seems to come down to the fact that Grokster was evidently designed to make copyright infringement earlier, so it's not as if they were surprised at the uses to which the software was put. The question is, can we outlaw tools based on the intent of their makers? I'm not sure, but I don't think so. If someone designs a knife to be very effective at killing people, but I find that it makes an excellent chicken deboner, shouldn't I be allowed to use it for that purpose? Shouldn't it be my responsibility to refrain from using the knives I buy to kill people? And shouldn't I be allowed to use Grokster to transfer pictures I take and essays I write, regardless of why Grokster was designed or what laws other people break with it?

# : 11:54 AM : :

My blogroll finally got long enough that I felt categorization was required. You can see the results. I'm not sure how I feel about this, but it's definitely eaiser to read. The boundaries weren't always clear (if you happen to be the author of a blog and you think it's miscategorized, I'd be glad to move it). But in the interests of readability, I did not do what I was tempted to do, and try to arrange the blogs in a linear continuum of topic.

I should take a picture of my nonfiction bookshelves, so you can see what I'm talking about. I have it so that religion segues into philosophy into political theory into health care politics into medicine into biology into hard science into math. Although I thought this would be fun for blogs, the problem is that so many of them are politicized; I'd need a second dimension for that, I think. And then where would I be with the blogs that are pretty much just political?

# : 3:51 PM : :

My weekend was very tasty. I think I need more practice baking, though.

One sister flew in Friday afternoon, and I introduced her to pho for lunch. She was very amused by the Vietnamese soap opera the restaurant had on, and I think she liked the soup. I did feel a little bad for making her eat soup with chopsticks when she was so hungry, though.

I had planned to make a bunny cake with half chocolate, half yellow cake, and chocolate frosting. We felt like having something sweet on Friday, so I went ahead and baked the chocolate one - I did one 9" round (for the bunny cake) and a dozen cupcakes (to eat right away). The cupcakes got chocolate sour cream frosting, and they were delicious (if a bit crumbly and less chocolatey than I hoped). The round cake wasn't so lucky, since I forgot to grease and flour the pan. It didn't come out of the pan in one piece at all, so I put it in the fridge and decided to use a mix next time.

Friday night, in addition to the cupcakes, we had beef stew, which I hadn't made before. It was really, really good. They made fun of me for not having a butter dish, and for just plopping a bag of rolls and a wrapped stick of butter on the table. We also colored eggs. I made my traditional rainbow-colored egg and then a couple of boring ones.

Saturday I had to work (and was observed teaching, which was nerve-wracking), so the family went downtown to be tourists. I made lasagna for dinner, and accompanied it with salad. Since they like to laugh at me for my salads (my idea of a good salad = leaves and dressing, maybe cheese and croutons) I went to the grocery store salad bar and got a lot of salad toppings, so they were happy. Dessert that night was the failed cake, crumbled and layered with chocolate pudding and whipped cream. I think it was better than the cake would have been in one piece.

I woke up very early Sunday morning to play bells. I did a pretty good job - my practice paid off, and I got my fancy run just right. The church service was nice, with all the required Easter songs, though I still think a brass band is called for. We had honey-baked ham, creamed potatoes, corn, rolls, and salad for dinner. Those all went well, if the bunny cake didn't so much.

I decided to use just yellow cake (from a mix), since I was too tired Saturday night to cook two cakes and two dozen cupcakes. Then I looked up the chocolate butter frosting recipe in the Better Homes & Gardens cookbook and got started. As I don't like frostings that are mostly powdered sugar, I'd never made this before, and I was halfway through before I realized that the cookbook had to be misprinted; it called for maybe half as much butter as you really need for that much powdered sugar. So we added another stick of butter, and the frosting turned out OK, according to everyone who ate it. I was not one of them - I'm a bit of a cake snob. In addition to not liking powdered-sugar-based frosting (I pretty much only like frosting that's mostly made of chocolate), I'm not a fan of box cakes in general and yellow box cakes in particular. Personally I thought the bunny cake was kind of gross, but everyone liked it, and it was very cute.

Now I have lots of leftovers. I'm going to have to make soup with the ham bone, but I have no idea what I'm going to do with 17 hard-boiled eggs.

# : 9:00 AM : :

Via Yglesias, I've finally discovered a travel-history site with a decent interface. Countries I've been to:



(create your own visited country map)

It's sad-looking! I very much want to see more of Europe and Asia.

And states I've been to (though I'm not a world traveler, I've been to far more of the US than Matt has):



(create your own personalized map of the USA)

I'm not entirely sure whether I've been to Nebraska or not. Sisters, do you remember? I'd like to see the Pacific Northwest, Colorado, Alaska, and Hawaii, but I'm OK with leaving most of that hole in the south/southwest.

# : 12:05 PM : :

St. Louis is looking pretty likely as my location for the next four years. (No final decision yet, of course.) I'm thrilled about the possibility of attending the school, with the requirement of living in Missouri being much less exciting. However, housing is cheap there - a pretty nice two-bedroom apartment goes for what I pay for my share of my current 2BR place. The neighborhood around the med school is attractive. And there are good restaurants and culture to be found. It sounds like a pretty decent place to live. The best part is that I just found out that they have Trader Joe's. Anyplace with a TJ's can't be bad, and even if it is, the food will make up for it. Awesome.

# : 11:33 AM : :

Last Easter, I was sad because I was all by myself. It's a very major holiday in my family, with a lot of traditions, and missing out on that made me homesick. This year looks much better, because my dad and two sisters are coming to spend Easter with me! (My mom and the other sister are going to Europe, the lucky ducks.)

So I have all sorts of good plans. Tomorrow night we'll color Easter eggs, Saturday I'll let them go sightseeing while I teach an MCAT class, then maybe we'll go out for a hike or something. And Sunday we'll all go to church, where they can hear me perform on handbells, and after that we'll have a pretty good traditional dinner: ham, creamed potatoes, and bunny cake. Well, the bunny cake isn't traditional, but I want to make one.

Note to DC friends: if you're a celebrating-Easter type and don't have anywhere to go this year, shoot me an email. We have plenty of room. Seriously. Another of my family's traditions is to bring friends home for the holidays!

# : 10:18 AM : :

Thanks to Culinary Abominations, I learned that you can use low-fat yogurt in place of most of the mayonnaise for chicken or tuna salad. This is great, because I don't really like mayo, so I tend to use just enough to stick the chicken pieces together, but I don't like the resultant dryness. Lately I've been using about 3/4 yogurt, 1/4 mayo. It's a little tangier, but with the addition of spices it doesn't really taste like yogurt.

First I did a curried chicken salad. Starting with the basic chopped cooked chicken breast and yogurt/mayo, I added curry spices (garam masala, turmeric, and cumin, I think, because I didn't have curry powder), chopped cashews, and chopped golden raisins. It's spicy and sweet, and the yogurt makes it more Indian-tasting.

Then I ended up with a whole bunch of fresh dill, so I did a light and springy one. I put in a ton of snipped dill, plus some garlic powder, celery salt, and turmeric. The turmeric adds some flavor but also makes it a very pretty yellow color against the green of the dill. This one doesn't have any add-ins, but I think chopped celery would go well, or you could add cucumber slices to the sandwich.

I was going to post about my ongoing search for the perfect M&M cookie recipe, but my last attempt sucked, so I might wait awhile yet.

# : 11:19 AM : :

Since Blogger is sucking it up lately, I'm feeling motivated to switch to different software. Key for me: speed and ability to avoid comment/trackback spam with minimal effort. I'm willing to exert some effort setting things up, and to pay if necessary. The only fancy thing I think I might use is the ability to categorize posts. Recommendations, anyone?

I'd also appreciate suggestions on how to do the transition. I guess the easiest thing would be to just leave the old archives and start using new software; I definitely don't want to break any old links.

# : 12:15 PM : :

When I was stuck in the airport the day before Thanksgiving, I ran out of reading material and had to buy a book at the airport gift shop. They had the usual selection of bestsellers, and I selected Seizure, by Robin Cook, having enjoyed his medical thrillers years ago. I'm not sure whether my tastes changed or it's just that he evidently decided a successful writer no longer needs an editor, but this book sucked.

Disappointed at having wasted $7.99 on a book that was so bad it was less enticing than watching the same 50 other people at the gate who hadn't moved in hours or trying to nap in an airport chair despite not being sleepy, I realized that I could salvage the experience by reading the book for humor value and fodder for a scathing review. So I turned down the corners of every page that had something particularly awful. The top right corner of the book is now noticeably fatter than the rest.

The book begins thus:

Monday, February 22, 2001, was one of those surprisingly warm midwinter days that falsely prophesied the arrival of spring to the inhabitants of the Atlantic seaboard. The sun was bright all the way from Maine to the tip of the Florida Keys, providing a temperature variation astonishingly less than twenty degrees Fahrenheit. It was to be a normal, happy day for the vast majority of people living within this lengthy littoral, although for two exceptional individuals, it was to be the start of a series of events that would ultimately cause their lives to tragically intersect.

It doesn't get any better. The book is full of middling attempts at establishing setting, distractingly odd word choices ("astonishingly less than twenty degrees"? does that even parse?), and heavy-handed portentous wording. Thankfully, he does not continue in the habit of searching the thesaurus to allow for alliteration ("lengthy littoral"? please).

The story is partially set in DC, and it would appear that Robin Cook once had a bad experience with a non-native taxi driver. In the first chapter,

Daniel had never liked riding in taxis. It seemed the height of ridiculousness to trust one's life to a total stranger who more often than not hailed from a distant Third World country and frequently was more interested in talking on his cell phone than paying attention to driving. Sitting in the middle of M Street in the darkness with rush-hour traffic whizzing by on both sides and the driver carrying on emotionally in an unknown language was a case in point.

Two chapters later, the protagonists enter a cab and notice that

[The cabdriver] was wearing a turban and was as tan as if he'd just spent a week in the Sahara Desert.

And in Chapter 6,

Following an even more hair-raising taxi experience than those in Washington, as far as Daniel was concerned, with a driver from Pakistan in a rattletrap vehicle, they were dumped off at Daniel's condominium.... [ed: "rattletrap vehicle"? why not "rattletrap Ford Tempo"? Cook's habit of excessive description makes his occasional and inexplicable use of overly-generic words almost jarring.

Evidently Cook's energy for description-writing is limited, given the profusion of what appear to be copy-pasted descriptions.

Thanks to power steering, Tony only needed the index finger of his right hand to turn the steering wheel of his black Cadillac DeVille. ... The distinctive crunching sound of the car tires on gravel drowned out his radio as he entered the parking area in front of the Castigliano Brothers Plumbing Supply building. ...

Tony came to a stop next to three vehicles similar to his own: All of them were Cadillacs, and all of them were black. He flicked his cigarette into a pile of rusting sinks and killed the engine. As he got out of the car, he was assaulted by the odor of the salt marsh. It wasn't pleasant. With night rapidly approaching, the wind had shifted to the east.

Sixty pages later,

The big Cadillac crunched over the gravel and came to a half in front of the Castigliano Brothers Plumbing Supply store. ... Tony opened the door and was assaulted by the putrid smell of the salt marsh. He couldn't understand how anyone could hang around a place where every time the wind changed direction, it smelled like rotten eggs. It was a moonless night, and Tony walked carefully. He didn't want to trip over a discarded sink or any other debris.

And after another seventy pages,

In truth, Tony was mostly pissed that he had to forsake a nice lunch, which was one of the high points of his day, while he made yet another visit to the freaking Castigliano brothers' crummy plumbing supply store. The rotten-egg smell of the salt marsh didn't help matters either... At least it was easier visiting the stinkhole in the middle of the day rather than at night, since he didn't have to worry about tripping over any of the crap littered around the front of the place.

Referring back to previous descriptions could be a tactic to give the story a cohesive feel (and it works all right with the third quote). However, the deja vu effect here makes me think Cook wrote two versions of this description and couldn't decide which one to use, so he put them both in. (Also, yes, this book has mobsters.)

Cook follows the typical thriller convention of giving each chapter a dateline. But he doesn't seem to understand that the action should generally start at the specified time. Chapter 6 is labeled "2:35 PM, Friday, February 22, 2002." But he takes two pages of clunky past-perfect tense to bring the protagonists to that point. Verb emphasis is mine.

By the time Stephanie had awakened early that morning, she was caught up in the details of the Butler project. ... Even before she had showered, she used her laptop to fire off a series of emails....

Daniel too was ebullient from the moment he'd thrown back the covers. He too was at his laptop, emailing before doing anything else. Dressed only in a hotel terry-cloth robe, he typed out a message to the West Coast venture capital group that had expressed interest.... Daniel had not expected a message back from the prospective investors for several hours, since it was only four in the morning on the West Coast when his message went out on the World Wide Web. [ed: Note that most people would write "Daniel had not expected X" when planning to follow it up with something along the lines of "But X happened anyway." Not so here! We indeed don't hear from the investors until afternoon. He apparently means "Daniel did not expect X" but thinks he needs to use "had" to be consistent with the past perfect tense. Why consistency is suddenly important here is unclear.]

As a splurge, they had ordered breakfast in the room. ... At nine-fifteen, both had been surprised by a call from the concierge's desk.... They were asked if they wanted it sent directly to the room, and they had responded in the affirmative.

...[T]hey had managed to catch a ten-thirty shuttle flight to Boston, getting them into Logan Airport just after noon. Following an even more hair-raising taxi experience than those in Washington, as far as Daniel was concerned, with a driver from Pakistan in a rattletrap vehicle, they were dumped off at Daniel's condominium. A change of clothes and a quick lunch followed by a ride in Daniel's Ford Focus [ed: NOW he specifies the car!] brought them to CURE's current digs. They entered through the front door...

When Daniel had first founded CURE... [historical description here] [ed: note that this is past perfect again, but deployed appropriately to describe things that happened before our story began.]

"It's only two-thirty-five," Stephanie announced, after closing the door behind them.

And that brings us up to the dateline at the start of the chapter. Wouldn't it have been much easier to just dateline the chapter at 6:30 AM, when the action actually began, and avoid two pages of verb-tense struggle?

The word choices are pretty distracting.

What about the New England Journal of Medicine?" Paul suggested. "That would be a coup for the clinic! I'd love to get something into that highfalutin publication."

I don't think I've ever met anyone who could use "coup" and "highfalutin" in successive sentences.

"It's hard to believe we'll be in Nassau by late this afternoon," Daniel said....

"What I find difficult to comprehend is that we'll be going from winter to summer in a single day. It seems like ages since I've been in a pair of shorts and a summer top. I'm psyched."

In three sentences, we go from stuffy to normal to slangy. I don't think I'd use "difficult to comprehend" and "psyched" in the same conversation. Clearly, he didn't want to write "hard to believe" again, so consulted the trusty thesaurus for an alternative.

Then there's the ridiculously overwrought wording:

"It's been one thing after another from that fateful, rainy night in Washington until now. I keep asking myself what else can go wrong."

"fateful"??

And just plain wrong words:

"With his procedure behind him, Ashley was ostensibly euphoric, carrying on an animated conversation with Carol..."

I do not think that word means what Cook thinks it means.

Cook apparently doesn't understand "show, don't tell." Sometimes it's "show AND tell":

"Can you imagine?" Paul blurted. "We're going to have a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine!" He threw himself into a chair facing Spencer's desk and punched the air with upraised fists like he'd just won a stage of the Tour de France. "And what a paper.... It's going to be fantastic! People will be beating a path to our door!"

... Paul was a hard worker with vision, but he could be overly enthusiastic. [ed: overly enthusiastic? You don't say!]

And sometimes it's "show by having the characters tell":

"Neither of us seems particularly hungry, and we're both stressed. Why don't we take a moonlit stroll through the hotel's formal garden and visit that medieval cloister we saw from a distance on our walk our first morning here. We were both curious about it, and it would be awfully appropriate. In the middle ages, cloisters were shelters from the turmoil of the real world." [ed: as this hotel is located in the Caribbean, I'm not sure how the cloister is "medieval."]

or:

Paul stood up. "I'll get Kurt Hermann, our security chief, right on it. He loves this kind of assignment."

"Tell the dishonorably discharged Green Beret, or whatever the hell he was, to kill as few people as possible."

See, that's a situation where telling would have been more appropriate and contributed to the flow of the story.

It's possible to make good use of contrast to facilitate a description, but I don't think this is the way to do it:

Michael sat down. In contrast to the monsignors, he was dressed in his usual simple black suit with a white clerical collar. Also in contrast to the others, who were both considerably corpulent [ed: It's unusual to use "considerably" to modify an adjective in this way. Normally you see it preceding a comparison, as in "considerably more corpulent than he."], Michael was rail-thin, and with his hooked nose, his features were more stereotypically Italian than his hosts. His red hair also set him apart, since the others were both gray.

Possibly the most distracting part of this book was the use of foreshadowing that goes nowhere.

"Paul Saunders is unique. I've never seen anyone with two different-colored irises."

"He has an eponymous genetic syndrome," Daniel explained. It's fairly rare, if I recall correctly, but I don't recall its name. It was one of those arcane diseases that would occasionally get tossed out during internal medicine rounds."

"A hereditary disease!" Stephanie remarked... "Does this syndrome have any serious health consequences?"

"I can't remember," Daniel admitted.

Saunders is one of the people running a sketchy fertility clinic whose source of human embryos is unclear. On reading this, I was sure that either Saunders was going to become ill from his genetic disease, or the babies would come out with different-colored eyes, showing that he was the male source of genetic material.

Wrong! Neither the syndrome nor any of its possible results is ever mentioned again. (It does, however, turn out that Saunders is providing sperm. Perhaps Cook planned to use my prediction, but had to take it out, and forgot to remove the foreshadowing?)

Incidentally, "eponymous" means "named after a person." I'm not sure why this is relevant, given that said person is neither Saunders nor anyone else in the story. It might have made sense to say "it's one of those arcane diseases named after some scientist" but not "eponymous genetic syndrome" by itself.

This book should be given to every aspiring writer of best-sellers to show them what happens when you fire the editor. It was so badly written that I couldn't concentrate on the story, and a decent editor could have made a huge difference. It wouldn't have improved the plot, of course (it has cloning, the Shroud of Turin and attendant Catholic intrigue, and mobsters), but I can only ask for so much.

# : 10:09 AM : :

Is it just me, or does Blogger suck lately? They're giving me a free service that works most of the time, so I can't really complain, but the quality is no longer what I'd come to expect.

I've been trying to update my template to reflect blogroll additions, but I keep getting logged out, the preview function doesn't work, it occasionally claims it can't find the requested blog, and it's slow. The other day I had a post entirely eaten. (It was about cookies, so you should be sad.)

In the past, I've blogged about how everything Google touches turns to gold, but Blogger is a sad exception.

# : 2:03 PM : :

Because it's Friday, because it's not shaping up as well as a Friday should, and because my blog has been overly heavy on serious stuff lately, we have a kitten update today.

Max and Tess are almost a year old - their birthday is sometime in early April, we think. Their growth has slowed down quite a bit, and I'm hoping it will stop soon! Max looks full-sized, but Tess still looks kittenish. She has a little face and long legs for her body. I want her to stay that way.

They have both added some very cute tricks to their bags. Tess likes to sleep on my head. I don't mean on my pillow, though she's a fan of that too - she actually drapes herself over my head or neck. As far as I can tell, she purrs all night. It definitely encourages me to go to sleep earlier, but then it's hard to get up in the morning.

Max loves to sit on my lap, and requests it often. When I'm standing up to do something like cook or get ready to work, he stretches up and paws my thighs. (Sometimes this is very dangerous to my pants, since he has claws.) Then I crouch down and he jumps up into my lap, flops down, and turns on the purr. It's absolutely adorable, but it's kind of hard to cook when there's a kitten trying to climb into my lap.

Max is also a catnip addict. Check it out:



And they love each other as much as ever:



Look how little they used to be!

# : 12:11 PM : :

Auditors Find IRS Workers Prone to Hackers

More than one-third of Internal Revenue Service employees and managers who were contacted by Treasury Department inspectors posing as computer technicians provided their computer login and changed their password [to one suggested by the inspector], a government report said Wednesday.

I'm not sure who I'd be more concerned about - the ones who never considered that it might be a scam, or these people, who checked it out and then complied anyway.

Other employees could not find the caller's name on a global IRS employee directory but gave their information anyway. Some hesitated but got approval from their managers to cooperate.

Do we really still need to be telling people not to give out their usernames and passwords to any random person who calls them up on the phone?

# : 5:09 PM : :

Over at Agoraphilia, Glen posts that the equal-protection argument for gay marriage fails because the current law doesn't discriminate any more against one sex than the other.

The rule supported by gay marriage opponents is:
1. Person A can legally marry any willing member of the set {adult persons not of A’s sex}
whereas the rule supported by gay marriage advocates is:
2. Person A can legally marry any willing member of the set {adult persons of either sex}.
These two rules are both formally equal. [...] It’s not men and women who are affected differentially, but straights and gays.

He's right about that, of course. But I don't think the fact that men and women have equal restrictions imposed on their right to marry means that equal protection doesn't apply.

The fact that, in Glen's Rule 1, the set of rights given to each sex is contingent on sex (that is, the set of allowed marriage partners differs for men and women) means, by definition, that sex discrimination is taking place. And I think that's wrong. Allowing the state to make laws that take gender into account goes against liberal concepts of equality - not only should men and women be treated equally by the law, but the law, as much as possible, shouldn't even pay attention to the distinction. I don't think that a gender-blind society is either possible or desirable, but a gender-blind government is worth striving for.

And Tim responds to my post on unisex bathrooms. Obviously, he disagrees with me, thinking that discrimination, when not aimed at keeping one group inferior, is fine. I'm sure the vast majority of people agree with him. Clearly, most people do want separate bathrooms. My feeling is that putting up Men and Women signs doesn't violate equal protection; it gives people the information they need to self-segregate. What I would be opposed to is laws preventing people from entering the opposite restroom. If I need to use the men's room (because the women's line is too long, the restroom is being cleaned, or I need to take my elderly relative to the bathroom) I shouldn't be prevented from doing so based on my gender.

Tim lists some situations in which sex segregation might be justified. I'm frankly shocked that he thinks separate (public) schools would be a good idea, and I don't think segregation is necessary for sex ed either. School sports teams are the only situation I don't have a good answer to. Obviously, teams based purely on athletic ability would be overrun with boys. The simple response would be that government schools should concentrate on education, not sports, or to take that further, that we shouldn't have government schools at all. I rather sympathize with those positions (particularly the first), but in the real world, I don't know how we could let both boys and girls participate in sports at the appropriate level without segregation.

# : 10:12 AM : :

In an interesting post yesterday, Volokh discusses the California court decision holding that the state same-sex marriage ban violates the CA constitution. One of the arguments was that the law violates the ban on sex discrimination, since the only reason I can't marry a woman is that I am a woman; if I were a man it would be fine. I've been a fan of this argument for quite some time, as a believer in gender-blind government.

He then points out that the criticisms lobbed at the Equal Rights Amendment have proved rather prescient.

"Discussion of [the ERA] bogged down in hysterical claims that the amendment would eliminate privacy in bathrooms, encourage homosexual marriage, put women in the trenches and deprive housewives of their husbands' support." N.Y. Times, July 5, 1981 (excerpt of a book by Betty Friedan).

Great! I doubt anyone would be surprised to learn that I'm in favor of gay marriage, drafting women (if we draft at all, which I don't actually support), and denying housewives the automatic right to support (couples can make whatever agreements they want, but women certainly have no more right than men to stay home). I wasn't sure about unisex bathrooms, but once I thought about it, I couldn't think of any cogent arguments against them.

But first, I want to know: is it actually illegal to enter the opposite-sex bathroom? Because if so, I break the law pretty much every time I go on a road trip with my family. The five women tend to make our own line, so we usually spill over into the men's room if it's a oner. Or is it just that currently, policies preventing this are legal, while in the ERA world imagined above they would no longer be?

Anyway, here are the arguments I came up with:

Modesty. When's the last time you saw someone in a state of undress in a public restroom? If you're female, possibly never. We don't disrobe until we enter the stall, and we rearrange our clothes before emerging. I'm no more exposed in the restroom than I am in the office. Granted, men use urinals that aren't in stalls. Modest men could pee in a stall instead, or they could put up stalls around the urinals; I see no reason why men have less expectation of privacy than women do.

Safety. I understand that some women would fear assault in a unisex bathroom. But this is silly; a rapist isn't going to be stopped by the "Women" sign on the door, and a non-rapist isn't going to become one due to the oh-so-titillating sight of women washing their hands. (Anecdotally, I know a girl who was assaulted by a group of boys in a girls' restroom.) In fact, potential assaulters might be deterred by the possibility of a man coming in.

It's Gross. I hear a lot about the disgustingness of men's bathroom habits, but the public men's rooms I've been in have been no yuckier than the women's. (Guys may clean their own bathrooms less frequently, but that's irrelevant.) Men may spray, but women hover. And at least men generally raise the seat before spraying urine everywhere.

No, It's Just Gross. It seems like a lot of people just have an aversion to this concept. For one thing, it's obviously not that deep-seated, as plenty of liberal colleges have instituted unisex bathrooms with minimal trouble, and people share with the opposite sex all the time in private homes and very small businesses. But in general, I just reject arguments from disgust. Come up with reasons, and we'll talk.

Gender Solidarity: women need a place to go in herds to talk about men and periods; men need a place to talk about - what, poops and football? I have no idea what guys talk about in the restroom, if they even do. Regardless, this is not particularly desirable (junior high much?), and not a sufficient reason anyway.

That's all the reasons I can think of, and I don't think any of them are very good. Here are some reasons unisex bathrooms might be desirable:

• transgendered individuals don't have to worry about which restroom to use
• people can easily help opposite-sex children or handicapped loved ones
• no more need for men to find a woman to check on their drunk/sick/possibly skipping out girlfriend, and vice versa
• (if current bathrooms are converted) when the bathroom is being cleaned, no need to hike to the other end of the airport terminal; you can use the one next door
• everyone's line is the same length

Overall, I'm not about to join the unisex bathrooms lobby or anything, but I don't see any reason why they'd be so terrible.

# : 7:06 PM : :

In case of terrorist attack: bad cartoons from ready.gov with reimagined captions.

I remember laughing until I cried at that in college, and then I forgot about it until now. Thanks to Ace for reminding me.

# : 5:35 PM : :

Last night I made a frozen pizza (DiGiorno's, the best kind). I ate a quarter of it, my boyfriend ate another quarter, and I wrapped up the other two quarters in tinfoil as handy dinners-on-the-run. I do this pretty often; getting four meals out of a $6 pizza (I only buy them on sale) isn't bad.

That reminded me of a post I'd been meaning to make about portion sizes. The food police like to squawk about how ever-larger portion sizes are making America fat, and I wish they'd shut up.

I love large portion sizes. Do I eat all the food at the restaurant? Hardly ever. But when I'm spending the money to go out, I like to get my money's worth. Some restaurants (Cheesecake Factory) serve so much food that I can eat until I'm full, box up the rest, and have two or three pretty tasty lunches waiting for me. Some others (like my favorite Thai place) serve only about twice as much as I want to eat, in which case I often get soup or an appetizer as well, taking up room and making it possible to take home a lunch and a snack.

Granted, I'm not always able or willing to drag a doggie bag around with me, and so I also like frequenting restaurants with Amanda-sized portions. Bardeo, in Cleveland Park, is great for this. Not only do they serve bar-sized food, meaning exactly as much as I want to eat for dinner, they also pour wine by the half-glass. I can go there, finish my dinner AND get dessert, and try three different kinds of wine! It's awesome. But Bardeo doesn't do that because they care about their customers' waistlines; they do it because they're a bar. (If a pretty upscale one.)

This brings me to the Center for "Science" in the Public Interest. I found this CSPI article about Chipotle, which I meant to mock, but they did it for me. The subtitle is "'Food Police' Bust Chipotle for Calorie Coverup"! They call themselves the food police! That's pretty awesome. And I was going to point out that there's nothing making you eat the whole ridiculously huge burrito. I cut mine in half and wrap the other half up for the next day (since it comes wrapped in tinfoil, this is easy to do). Half a burrito is a perfectly good size for a lunch. But after CSPI squawks about the thousand calories contained in the whole thing, they point out that the simple (and, I must point out, frugal) thing to do is only eat half. Magic: 500-calorie Chipotle.

I'll have to find something else to make fun of CSPI for. It shouldn't be hard.

# : 9:15 AM : :

I just wasted half an hour or so taking this brain sex test (HT: Dr. Charles). I was not surprised to learn that my personal brain score was exactly halfway between the male and female extremes.

I scored very high on the spatial tasks, like matching lines with similar angles and mental object rotation, putting me above the average male score into the engineer/mathematical training region. No surprise there.

For the spot-the-difference task my score was higher than the female average but in that range (women do better than men here). According to the site, this may help me find my way around. It also helps me tell my boyfriend what he did with his gadgets or chocolates. (Shelf and eaten, respectively, usually.)

The left (verbal, analytical) side of my brain is dominant.

For empathizing, I scored at the very bottom of the typical female range and right in the middle of the male range, while for systemizing I was above the female range, toward the top of the male range. That's the engineering again.

Surprisingly to me, I did only a little worse than average at judging people's emotions from pictures of their eyes.

My ring fingers are longer than my index fingers, closer to the typical male ratio than to the typical female one. (This is not apparent to a quick look, and I want to re-measure with an actual ruler rather than the one attached to the office paper cutter.)

Apparently I prefer more masculine faces. That task was hard because I didn't think many of the faces were attractive at all.

I was more verbally fluent than average (like a woman) which again is not a surprise.

And in the game theory experiment where you get $50 to divide between yourself and another person, except that if they reject your division neither of you gets any, I would offer $25 to each of us. This is apparently more than either men (slightly greedier) or women would offer, which surprises me a little.

So apparently I'm androgynous, although there were no questions about loving shoes, crying at commercials, or cooing over small cute things.

# : 1:19 PM : :

If you were turning 4, what would you want for your birthday?

A certain very special little boy is going to be 4 soon. I can't make it to his birthday party, but I want to send a good present. He's a budding engineer, and likes anything that he can take apart and put together. He also loves music. I do have some ideas that I got from his mom, but asking guy friends has given me great results in the past, so I'll appreciate any suggestions.

# : 8:58 AM : :

Handbell practice was a lot of fun tonight. You may recall that two weeks ago I came home with bruised, swollen hands from trying to ring heavy bells four-in-hand. Tonight I decided that I would rather be able to drive and hold hands with my boyfriend comfortably, so I tried weaving instead. This is where you leave the bells on the table and pick them up as needed. Kind of like playing Whack-A-Mole. But my showoff run is too fast for me to do that; I kept tripping over my own arms.

Next I tried ringing the bells with mallets - fun, and easy for a pianist. But my bells, while being heavy enough to make four-in-hand ringing challenging, are really too small to ring with a mallet and have the melody stand out. Maybe if I could hit them harder, but that sounds like a recipe for disaster.

Finally I realized that I could combine tactics and weave for the majority of the piece, then ring four-in-hand for the dozen or so difficult measures. This worked quite well, and I actually managed to play most of my notes. The director also suggested that I double-glove, and the extra padding made a huge difference. My index fingers are sore but only a little puffy, certainly not deformed-looking like last week.

I also volunteered to play in a second piece; it's pretty simple and we just accompany the choir. Coincidentally, I ended up with a showoff part in this one too - everyone else plays chords, and I play counterpoint on the off beats. It's a lot of fun without being difficult at all. I'm looking forward to performing.

# : 9:35 PM : :

The results are in. I sent in, I think, 17 AMCAS applications and returned 13 secondaries. Of those:

4 acceptances
2 waitlists
2 post-interview rejections
4 pre-interview rejections
1 interview invitation I didn't take

I would like to say "I told you so" to everyone who told me I would get in "most places." I am really quite happy with my results, though I do wish I'd gotten in someplace near DC.

Not that the waiting game is all over, though; financial aid awards are yet to come.

# : 9:51 AM : :

My coworker is listening to a strange internet radio station. First there was some song I didn't catch that was apparently horribly offensive (judging from the reactions of the guys in the office), the MC Hammer, then Smashing Pumpkins, then Bush. I'm trying to figure out what genre that could be.

Last night I ordered a cast-iron skillet from Amazon, and since shipping was going to cost as much as the skillet, I rounded out my order with two items from my sadly neglected wish list - a Smashing Pumpkins CD and a book about Bletchley Park - to get free shipping. So I spent $20 to save $10; that's like only spending $10 (I NEEDED the skillet) and thus I was frugal.

I visited the Spy Museum this weekend - it was surprisingly large and really full. And tourist season hasn't even really started. I don't think the Spy Museum is worth the money. Also, sauntering around a museum for hours is killer on my joints. I need movement.

I updated my links a bit; a few rarely-updated blogs are gone, as are some I'd quit reading much, and a few I regularly read are up. I thought about categorizing them but I still don't know how to go about doing that. The Dewey Decimal System kind of fails for blogs that are about both politics and food, for example. Alphabetic ordering will have to stay.

# : 3:24 PM : :

Sorry, guys - I think you're going to be in for a lot of agonizing about med school until May 15. (That's the deadline by which I have to have chosen one school.)

I think the med school application process may be designed to scare away people like me who have no patience for administrivia. There are so many deadlines, it's unbelievable.

I filled out my FAFSA last night and felt very accomplished. This morning, I sorted through my emails and the school web sites to figure out what my timeline should be for filling out school financial aid forms. I learned that one school has a March 1 FAFSA deadline to be considered for school grants. Another has a March 1 deadline if you want an estimated financial aid letter before May 15. A third has a firm March 15 deadline for anyone admitted before February 15. The fourth doesn't seem to have a particular deadline and only sent out financial aid instructions on Friday. The one I'm still waiting on a decision from hasn't sent out any packets and appears to have no information on their web site. I'm waitlisted at two more schools and haven't gotten up the courage to sort through their sites yet.

In addition, I've applied for scholarships at two schools. One "hopes to make a decision" by April; the other leaves it down to the wire in the second week of May.

The big question I have - and it never occurred to me to ask it at interviews - is when I get my financial aid awards. Do I find out in time to make my decision by May 15? Probably not, since the only school that mentioned making estimated awards was #2 above, whose deadline I missed. So if I can't decide based on money, how CAN I decide? I might have to make a major decision based on unquantifiable factors! Eek!

On the plus side, today's research reminded me that my favorite school promises to fund a large portion (a few thousand under half) of documented need with grants. Maybe I can afford to go there.

# : 10:20 AM : :

When I was in eighth grade I wanted to be an economist when I grew up. Don't ask why - I was a weird kid. (Actually, it's because as part of a Junior Achievement curriculum, we had some guy come in and teach us economics. It was far more challenging and interesting than anything else we learned that year.)

That aspiration faded fairly quickly. In high school, I took an economics course (one semester of a block that had sociology as the other half). I'm pretty sure it was less challenging and interesting than anything else I learned that year, and that's saying quite a bit. At some point, too, I had noticed that economics was slotted into "social sciences" with psychology and sociology. I wanted to do real, hard science, so it quietly dropped off my list of career considerations.

Years later, I moved to DC and became friends with a bunch of policy wonks, many of whom studied economics either formally or on their own. At some point I was reminded of my eighth-grade career goal, which I'd forgotten all about - funny how that works. And I realized that it's actually an extremely rigorous field. (I probably should have noticed this earlier, given Nobel prizes awarded in the field and so forth, but I was pretty focused on hard sciences during late high school and college.)

So then I read this article by Arnold Kling, disparaging the fact that econ grad programs are run by math bigots.

The raising of the mathematical bar in graduate schools over the past several decades has driven many intelligent men and women (perhaps women especially) to pursue other fields. The graduate training process filters out students who might contribute from a perspective of anthropology, biology, psychology, history, or even intense curiosity about economic issues.

I'm sure he's right, but it's funny to think that if I'd known about the math bigotry I might have continued to consider it as a career choice, skeptical as I was of all the other fields he lists.

(Actually, the same excess of practicality that led me to engineering over math or physics would certainly have done the same with respect to economics, but I'd have thought about it harder.)

# : 10:52 AM : :

I'm sitting here drinking Swiss Miss hot chocolate, the kind with calcium but no sugar added - it's sweetened with Splenda. Surprisingly, it isn't bad. This is going to be the first time in my life that I'll finish an artificially-sweetened beverage.

It's sweeter than I'd prefer, and I think there's an aftertaste, but then again that's pretty standard for powdered hot cocoa. (Even the best is a poor substitute for the real kind made on the stove with milk and actual chocolate.) So this stuff is pretty decent, and I'll drink it again. I can feel less guilty about not taking my calcium supplements, too.

What I really wish for is a beverage that's made low-calorie by simply adding half as much sugar. There's no need for this teeth-jarring sweetness. Just leave out some sugar and don't replace it with nasty artificial sugar. I would totally buy soda like that. Also hot chocolate and possibly ice cream. And yogurt (a few weeks ago I had a kind of gross yogurt parfait from the evil bagel store; I'm pretty sure I made a childish face when I tasted how sweet it was). Apparently no one else agrees with me, since most diet beverages are even more disgustingly sweet than the originals.

On the other hand, I'm a fan of Olestra. It isn't a perfect imitation - on our road trip, my boyfriend bought a can of normal Pringles right after I'd finished a can of fat-free Olestrafied ones, and oh man they were good and greasy - but I don't think I can really tell the difference with Lay's, for example. (I'm tempted to do a taste test, but I have to get my cholesterol checked soon.) And fake fat is definitely better than no fat: baked potato chips are much nastier than they have any right to be, given that baked potatoes are good and baked French fries are fine. (I did finish a bag of Baked Lay's once, but only because I was too sick to cook or leave the apartment to buy actual food.) I think for potato chips, the saltiness and greasy crunch are enough; the grease doesn't have to be quite authentic.

I still call all of these food substitutes, though. Food is supposed to have calories. That's why we eat it.

# : 2:33 PM : :

I don't think I've posted a med school application update in awhile. I'm sitting on three acceptances and one hinted acceptance, waiting to hear from two more schools in the next couple weeks.

I have no idea how I'm going to decide where to go. There's the super-high-ranked school that I loved, but it's expensive and halfway across the country. There's the football-crazed school that's closer to my family, decently priced and well-ranked. And the school in an area I don't particularly love, that has great clinical experiences but not a huge name. My doctor went there, and he's awesome and recommends it highly. I was iffy on whether I'd fit in with the students, but I had a great time on the interview. I think I'm going to go to a second-look weekend there and see if I can get a better handle on what my classmates would be like. And the hinted-acceptance school is in a pretty good location, well-ranked, kind of expensive. My interview day wasn't awesome, but that's mostly because I had a hard time getting there so I was stressed out. A second look might be required there as well.

And I have no idea if I'll be accepted to the last two schools yet. Also somewhat unfortunately, I'm all sucked in to my exciting yuppie life, so med school seems kind of far away. That makes the decisions harder, I think.

I applied for a few scholarships, and will be filling out financial aid forms soon. I'm hoping that something magic happens to tell me where I should go!

# : 1:43 PM : :