Coyote Blog

I see my past pumpkin-carving posts are getting high Google traffic this week.  If you are looking for a pumpkin idea, this was my favorite past effort:

I traced a world map on the pumpkin, and then thinned the pumpkin skin in the land masses without cutting all the way through.  Since there are no holes, you will need an electric light to illuminate it.

What guy wouldn't want one of these?

Hat tip Tyler Cowen

A while back I wrote about racism vs. tattoos, in the context of a story that claimed black players had more fouls called against them than white players in the NBA

My sense is that we make snap decisions about other people based on a
wide range of physical attributes, including height, attractiveness,
clothing, tattoos, piercings as well as visible racial characteristics
(e.g. skin color) and race-related appearance choices (e.g. cornrows).
It would be interesting to see where skin color falls against these
other visible differentiators as a driver of third party decisions
(e.g. whether to call a foul).   My sense is that 60 years ago, skin
color would be factor #1 and all these others would be orders of
magnitude behind.  Today?  I don't know.  While skin color hasn't gone
away as an influencer, it may be falling into what we might call the
"background level", less than or equal to some of these other effects.
It would be interesting, for example, to make the same study on level
of visible tattooing and the effect on foul calls.  My sense is that
this might be of the same order of magnitude today as skin color in
affecting such snap decisions.

In a follow-up I posited that tattoos may be the new black.

Now, Via Overlawyered:

"Some San Antonio apartment complexes are refusing to rent to people with tattoos and body piercings."

My daughter was selected to perform as part of the opening number of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. 

From the comments to my iPod post:

Apple Computer announced today that it has developed a computer chip
that can store and play music in women's breasts as implants.

The IBoob will cost $499 or $599 depending on size.

This is considered to be a major breakthrough because women are
always complaining about men staring at their breasts and not listening
to them.

And who doesn't enjoy unclear pronoun reference humor?  Of course the greatest grammar joke of all time has to be this classic:

New Harvard Student:  Can you tell me where the library is at?

Other Harvard Student, with snobby accent:  At Haaahvaaard, we do not end our sentences in prepositions.

New Harvard Student:  OK.  Can you tell me where the library is at, Asshole?

Update:  Yes, I know, before the commenters come after me, I am not one to throw stones about grammatical mistakes.  But I can get it right when I try, I just make mistakes in the heat of battle.

Today, I made a pretty rookie mistake in seat selection on Southwest.

I was in the "A" group so was almost certain to be able to get an aisle seat.   From the look of the crowd behind me, it was clear that some, but not all the middle seats would eventually be taken.

I am pretty good at taking up a lot of space even without trying (I am 6-4) but when inspired I can really spread out in my aisle seat to make the middle seat uninviting to the average middle seat shopper.  And an empty middle seat looked like a layup on this flight, since only about 7 or 8 would be filled, and several of the rows around me had really tiny people on the aisle.

But then I glanced at the occupant of the window seat.  AARRGGGHHH!  Sitting there was an extraordinarily attractive young female, dressed quite fetchingly with a bare midriff and a short skirt.  At that moment, I knew I was doomed.  No matter how small I made the middle seat look, some twenty-something guy with minimal self-awareness was going to take that seat to try to hit on the girl at the window.  And sure enough, despite the fact he was as big as me and our shoulders were ordained to fight for space for the two-hour flight, he homed in on the middle seat next to me like a cruise missile.  Worse, I had to listen to him trying to pick the girl up for 2 hours.  I will say it was hilarious for about a third of that time as he tried valiantly to feign interest in the hard-core collectivist-socialist drivel she was selling.  I worried towards the end that he might actually be bonding with her as they both came to quick agreement that all their job prospects seemed to much like "work," but fortunately for my piece of mind she shot him down in flames as we were exiting.

One of the great things about modern English is that it is bottom-up and open-source.  Years ago, the Oxford English Dictionary took the approach of documenting what English is, rather than the French approach of dictating what the language should be.  As a result, the language evolves based on how ordinary people are using it.  Which is perhaps why the word in many languages for new trends and technologies is often the English word (much to the consternation of the French). 

I tend to agree with Eugene Volokh's definition of "what is a word."  Then think how different this might be in statist cultures, where a word is only a word when the government says it is.

PS-  I acknowledge that this makes English harder to learn for people whose first language is less idiomatic.

Update: Much more here

Growing up in Houston, one of the odder parts of the city, even for a local, is the underground tunnel system downtown.  The system was built, I presume, because you can't even cross the street in the summer time in 100 degree / 100% humidity weather without sweating through your suit coat.  The tunnel system has become quite extensive, such that you can navigate for miles without ever seeing the light of day.  Casual observers often comment on the lack of pedestrian traffic in downtown Houston, but that is perhaps because they never looked under ground.  Over time, underground shopping malls and restaurants and food courts appeared along the tunnels, bringing even more people under ground.

The tunnels are especially difficult to navigate, because there are no visual clues (e.g. we are heading to that building over there) and no signs.  We used to joke people had been lost down there for decades.

Well, the secret is apparently out, as the NY Times has discovered the Houston tunnels.

Seared by triple-digit heat and drenched by tropical storms, midday
downtown Houston appears eerily deserted, the nation's fourth-largest
city passing for a ghost town.

On the street, that is.

But
below, there are tunnels at the end of the light "” nearly seven
color-coded miles of them connecting 77 buildings "” aswarm with
Houstonians lunching, shopping and power-walking in dry, air-chilled
comfort....

"Nothing says north, south, east or west. You have to memorize the
buildings," said David Gerst, a lawyer who opened a lucrative sandwich
shop "” BeWitched "” off the East McKinney (green) tunnel network under
Commerce Towers, the former Chamber of Commerce building converted to
condominiums. For access to the 3,000 people who stream by his shop
each lunchtime in what tunnel merchants call the holy hours, Mr. Gerst
pays $2,500 a month rent for 800 square feet, more than what surface
lunch space may command.

This is the best part:

It was not centrally planned; it just grew, inspired by Rockefeller
Center in New York. But it is not connected to a transit network. And,
befitting Texans' distrust of government, most of it is private; each
segment is controlled by the individual building owner who deigns to
allow the public access during business hours "” and then locks the
doors on nights and weekends. Some parts, like those belonging to the
former Enron buildings now leased by Chevron, are closed to outsiders
altogether.

Stephen Dubner's roundtable on the Economics of Street Charity got me thinking about a recent experience visiting Boulder, Colorado, an odd but lovely town in which I used to live.

Here in Phoenix, most of our panhandlers show little or no innovation.  They are still using the "will work for food" or "Vietnam vet" cardboard signs that were an innovation years ago, but now are tired and hard to believe.  All the signs were generic.  None of them seemed tailored to the local audience. 

So where is the innovation in begging occurring?  Someone must have first thought of the "will work for food" come-on which I presume was so initially successful, since everyone copied it, just as they copy any successful innovation in the marketplace?

My vote for the Silicon Valley of Begging is Boulder, Colorado, and specifically on the Pearl Street Mall.  I have recently visited homeless capital Santa Monica, and San Francisco, as well as New York and Boston, and none of their beggers hold a candle to those in Boulder.  Here is why:

• Their come-ons were unique -- I never saw the same one twice
• Their come-ons were well tailored to the local audience.  "Need Money for Pot" is not going to get one anywhere in Oklahoma, but it is very likely to elicit a chuckle and a buck from a UC college student or sixties-survivor Boulder resident.  Given that President Bush has about a 0.01% approval rating in Boulder, many of the come-ons led one to believe that giving the beggar a buck would show one's disdain for GWB.

My daughter's white Maltese, embarrassingly named "Snuggles," just turned one.  Sorry we didn't really clean her up for her birthday pictures  (click to enlarge)

Update, in which I am chastised by my daughter:  I quote from my email this morning,

Why do you always have to talk about snuggles name??????? You say how
embarrassing it is and people laugh. Good for you, you make people laugh all
the time. It is funny to everyone but me. How do you think I feel,
with people laughing at me for naming snuggs that name ??? bad

OK, sorry hon.  Snuggles is actually a perfect name for this dog, who loves nothing more than to just sit in your lap.   Yes, Darwin, cuteness is a survival trait.  And Snuggles is the only other mammal in my household who will go running 3 miles with me, even when it is over 100 degrees out, and despite the fact she has a fur coat and the shortest legs by several orders of magnitude.  And, of course, beware to all intruders who run into this formidable home defense unit.

I have never been satisfied with my pictures of the rock formations on my parents ranch.  They have always lacked the depth and detail I saw in nature.  I played around this week with HDR photography, which uses multiple exposures of the same image to bring out more contrast and detail.  Here is a closeup of the rocks.  I also got a nice effect with the clouds, combining multiple exposures with small cloud movement.  (click for higher resolution image)

Interstate bridge collapses during rush hour near Minneapolis.  Though the death toll so far of 6 is tragic, it is pretty amazing when you think of 50-100 cars on a collapsing bridge.

Update:  The guy in the van must have a story to tell.

Apparently Chelsea Clinton will start work soon as a McKinsey associate.  However, she doesn't seem to have had to solve eight or ten business case studies in real-time during interviews as I had to, nor am I guessing that she will spend her first year working 80-hour weeks buried in spreadsheets and charts.  As a aside, the first partner I worked with at McKinsey was Jeff Skilling, of Enron fame, one of the brightest people I ever worked with.

Somehow, it never is mentioned in the Phoenix promotional literature that it occasionally rains mud here.  Below is my car, which I parked outside at night in a very clean condition.  Behold it in the morning:

No, it did not get stolen and taken out four-wheeling  (for some reason, teenage kids don't seem to steal Volvo's to go hot-rodding around -- go figure).  This is a result of the rainstorm last night.  What happens is we get big winds that whip up a lot of dirt in the air, so we get this really nice dust cloud.  Then it rains, with the water pulling the dirt out of the air and depositing it on the car.  Because the rain does not last long, the dirt stays on the car.  Instant mess.

One of my favorite blog finds of late is Strange Maps.  From that source, comes this map guaranteed to bring fear to the heart of every thirty-something Manhattan single woman:

My guess is that a subtitle to the graph in southwestern cities is "single men immigrate more than single women."  Note the scale really under-estimates the situation in NY, since the scale is capped at 40,000.  If they had extended the scale, NY would be probably be a 2-inch diameter circle.

Update: Don't miss the shorter version of my climate paper, which I call the 60-second climate skeptic.

Conservatives were all over Keith Ellison for his comments about 9/11.  While I think that many of the arguments by 9/11 "truthers" are scientifically bankrupt, I kind of respect the general lack of trust and respect for the government that their skepticism stems from.  And as to Ellison's comments about impeaching the vice-president, I can't imagine anything I would enjoy more than watching Congress tie itself up for months impeaching a largely irrelevant office holder.

However, I thought this was pretty fanciful:

You'll always find this Muslim standing up for your right to be atheists
all you want," Ellison, the first Muslim to serve in Congress, said in a speech to more than 100 atheists at the Southdale Library in Edina. . . .

Does anyone really think that if they showed up at the Tehran airport tomorrow proclaiming that "I'm an atheist - let's be pals" that they would be treated with respect?  If I made up a list of countries not to visit as an atheist, 15th Century Spain would be first, but my guess is that several modern Islamic countries would crack the top 10.

John Scalzi has a great clip of Spinal Tap playing "Big Bottom" at Live Earth with a stage full of every bassist they could find.  Awesome.  Scalzi asks whether the band that first turned it up to eleven should be in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Damn you Scalzi, I have to get some work done today.

This is so wildly out of character for me that I have a hard time believing I am posting on it, but I have come to like many of the more casual shirts made by Robert Talbott.  He also seems to have a lot of nice dress shirts and ties, but since I don't wear suits and ties any more, I do not pay them much attention.

Anyway, when we were on the Monterrey peninsula last week, my wife and I found the Robert Talbott outlet in Carmel Valley Village (inland of Carmel).  Most all the $250 shirts were $49 and the ties seemed similarly discounted.  Cool.  Also, they have a large selection of fabrics in the back that you can get shirts custom made.   I don't care for wine much, but my wife is also a fan of his Chardonnay, which he makes a few blocks away.

By the way, here are a couple of Monterrey pix:

A while back, writing about charges of discrimination by white referees against blacks in NBA foul calls, I said:

My sense is that we make snap decisions about other people based on a
wide range of physical attributes, including height, attractiveness,
clothing, tattoos, piercings as well as visible racial characteristics
(e.g. skin color) and race-related appearance choices (e.g. cornrows).
It would be interesting to see where skin color falls against these
other visible differentiators as a driver of third party decisions
(e.g. whether to call a foul).   My sense is that 60 years ago, skin
color would be factor #1 and all these others would be orders of
magnitude behind.  Today?  I don't know.  While skin color hasn't gone
away as an influencer, it may be falling into what we might call the
"background level", less than or equal to some of these other effects.
It would be interesting, for example, to make the same study on level
of visible tattooing and the effect on foul calls.  My sense is that
this might be of the same order of magnitude today as skin color in
affecting such snap decisions.

I may have been on to something:

Russell says in the last two months he's applied for over 100 jobs. In
almost half of them, he says he was denied because of his tattoos. He
says that's discrimination.

Unfortunately, it was long distance and dark, so conditions were not very good for photography.  Still waiting for that perfect photo-op, but it's surprisingly hard when most family visits we get are at sunset and sunrise.

Update:  By the way, for any of you dog photographers out there - is there a good way to get rid of the bright eye / green eye in dog (or coyote!) photos that is the equivalent of human red eye?

It seems like there is a taxpayer analogy in here somewhere.

H/T:  Maggies Farm

By the way, if you have not seen it, the BBC Series Planet Earth is just amazing.  I am watching it in High Def via my LG Blu-ray/HD-DVD combo player and it is awesome.

Forget Scott Norwood, or Bill Buckner, or even Susan Lucci.  I nominate Paris Hilton's parents.

Paraphrasing a famous saying, if you are not busy improving your home, it is busy falling apart.  So my wife and I, though our usual consensus building process** have decided to redo my daughter's room.  My wife offers me this bargain:  Honey, if you get all the furniture out of the way, and put down plastic, and do all the taping, I will paint the room.  Does anyone else sense that this is similar to saying "honey, if you marinate everything and chop everything in advance and do all the cleanup, I will cook dinner?"

Anyway, I took the deal, knowing that in fact my only real alternative to the offered bargain was the implied "or you could just do it all yourself."

** Marital consensus process:

Wife:  What is you first priority for our next home project
me:  I'd like to finally build that hobby room and studio
w:  I think we need to fix up our daughter's bedroom
me:  Or maybe we could fix up the patio
w:  I think we need to fix up our daughter's bedroom
me:  uh, okay, let's do the bedroom

TJIC finished putting in his own cabinetry, and it looks awesome.  Clearly, this is the guy my wife thought she was marrying.

I won't even add a comment to this:

Real, or fake? Never mind the busty woman walking her dog in the park - it may just be her pooch who's sporting implants.

Some pet owners who neuter their male dogs are opting for a surgical
procedure meant to make Fido feel like he's back in the good ol' days
B.C. - Before Castration.

Neuticles - testicular implants for dogs that look and feel like the
real thing - are said to boost a pet's self-esteem by replacing what
was lost. It's a procedure that's becoming increasingly popular in New
York.

"We did it so Truman could still walk proudly down the street," says
Penny Glazier, a Manhattan restaurateur, of her 8-year-old bull mastiff.

"We felt it would be good for him psychologically," she adds. "He
actually still marks trees, though I'm told neutered dogs aren't
supposed to do that anymore."

Extra points to the poor slob who worked overtime to get the "feel" right. Edgar River has the best comment:

For dog owner Edgar Rivera of the Bronx, whose Jack Russell terrier and
Chihuahua were both neutered, Neuticles were never an option. "That's
just nuts," Rivera says.