I Hate to Say I Told You So…..

Actually, I don’t hate it at all. In fact, it makes me feel vindicated and smugly satisfied: I told you so.

Stewart! Kristol! It’s Health Care Debate 2009 on Comedy Central!

This video has been makings its way around the old internets recently, like so many of Jon Stewart’s interviews do these days. It features William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, discussing his issues with Obama’s health care plan in a responsible, reasoned manner…and I mean that in most sarcastic way possible.

Kristol is, of course, spewing conservative talking points and Stewart, as he often does, get him to stumble a little over them. The real knock-out line that liberals have seized on is Kristol’s admission that the military deserves better health care than average American citizens do. Since military health care is public, Stewart twists this into an admission that government-run health care is better than private health care.

I don’t like Bill Kristol and I don’t think he handles himself well here, but I think he is kind of right. First of all, of course the government insures soldiers. That goes along with America’s (ridiculous) employer-provided health care system, since soldiers, like elected officials (who also have a government-run plan), are government employees. Rather than paying for a private insurer the Defense Department runs the Military Health Service itself.

Is Billy Beane a Good GM?

Up until recently, the answer to this question would be quick: “Well, obviously.” The more relevant question had always been, “Is Billy Beane baseball’s best GM?”

Billy Beane runs the Oakland Athletics, a team in a small market with a low payroll (26^th out of 30 in 2009), yet he managed to assemble a consistent contender, as the A’s made the playoffs four years running (2000-2003) and the ALCS in 2006. In that time, Beane became a mini-celebrity, thanks to being the subject of Michael Lewis’ 2003 best-seller Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. The book was so successful that a movie adaptation was slated to be made by Steven Soderbergh, with Brad Pitt playing Beane.

Recently, however, Beane’s reputation has started to suffer. The A’s have had two consecutive losing seasons since being swept in the ’06 ALCS, and in 2009 are on pace to have their worst season since Beane took over in 1998.

Now, it should be stated right away that this is not a polemical, anti-Moneyball tirade. The book, which detailed Beane’s use of so-called “sabermetrics” to identify undervalued players, garnered a lot of knee-jerk reaction and criticism, since Beane was seen as bucking tradition (which he was).

Ranking The Bill of Rights, Number 8: The Eighth Amendment

I am not a supporter of cruel and unusual punishment. In fact, I prefer my punishments humane and usual. While I had negative views on the Second Amendment and neutral views (well, assuming you interpret pointlessness as a neutral description) on the Tenth, at this point, my views on the 8th amendment are generally positive. Nonetheless, it has some negative characteristics that cause its eighth place finish.

The Eighth Amendment reads: “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”

Give the Tutorial System a Chance

The Lecture and Its Drawbacks:
The lecture is a systemic feature of the American university system. Let me be clear: I have a fairly broad definition of the lecture. It could consist of anywhere from 15 to over 1,000 students. The primary feature of the lecture is that the professor controls all of the talking, and each individual student only participates when called upon or when he needs to clarify points made in the lecture. Sure, there are seminars and independent studies available, but the basis of the American university system is the lecture.

The lecture has two obvious advantages. First, it’s efficient: A single professor can teach many students at once. Second, it reinforces what you learn: Some students are not as good at learning information from textbooks, so having them learn a solid chunk of the material from a live lecturer may be beneficial.

Meet (and Rank) the Beatles’ Albums, Part 2: The Top Five

5) Rubber Soul, 1965

John S (3): Rubber Soul is the band’s first truly great album; it features the beginning of the band’s more sophisticated songwriting (“You Won’t See Me,” for example, was the longest song the band had recorded to that point, coming it at a whopping 3:22), both in terms of lyrical depth and musical arrangements, and them finally finding the right equilibrium of their wide-ranging sensibilities. The first four songs (“Drive My Car,” “Norwegian Wood,” “You Won’t See Me,” and “Nowhere Man”) may constitute the best balance of Lennon and McCartney’s different styles in The Beatles’ entire oeuvre—at least until the “Penny Lane”/“Strawberry Fields Forever” double A-side. Both of Harrison’s songs, “Think For Yourself” and “If I Needed Someone” are great, and even the token Ringo song (“What Goes On”) is an exciting stylistic change of pace (though Josh disagrees). The album’s finale, “Run For Your Life,” is maybe the most underrated song in the Beatles’ canon. Also, the vocals at the end of “In My Life” are beautiful.

Josh (7): This is my most controversial rank and—frankly—I feel a bit badly about it. I have a bias towards later albums largely because I love the Beatles’ more psychedelic work: that’s why I ranked Magical Mystery Tour higher in my own rankings. There is no doubt that this was a huge leap for the Beatles, shifting from a more lighthearted pop style in Help! to a more sophisticated style in Rubber Soul. But I think Side Two is a bit weak. With the exceptions of “In My Life” and “I’m Looking Through You,” all of the side two songs are mediocre (once again, by Beatles’ standards) at best, bad at worst (“What Goes On” comes to mind). Side One is very good though: “Think For Yourself” is the most underrated George Harrison song and the harmonies in “Nowhere Man” are beautiful. But, the fact that it’s fairly brief and contains a number of subpar songs gives Rubber Soul its relatively low rank.

Meet (and Rank) the Beatles’ Albums, Part 1

We here at NPI aren’t exactly breaking new ground or going out on a limb when we say that The Beatles are the greatest band of all-time, but we’re saying it anyway. Not only is each one of their twelve studio albums (we don’t really count Yellow Submarine) excellent, but they more or less invented the concept of an “album.” When The Beatles started, albums were little more than collections of singles, but The Beatles made at least five albums that are not only enjoyable to listen to but also riveting works in and of themselves. For a band to have one album like that is an accomplishment, but five is simply legendary. But which of their many classic albums are the best? Without further ado, here is the first half (the Top 5 are coming later today) of Josh and John’s rankings (Tim is abstaining due to the time needed to internally rank every Barenaked Ladies’ song):

Monday Medley

What we read while Rickey disappointed everyone by saying “I” all the time:

(Can you believe it’s already been 10 years since that song came out? Always puts us in a summer mood. We also like to think 24 is stylistically indebted to the video.)

• Finally, someone has figured out how to optimize Facebook (and make Shakespeare understandable).

• We’ve already mentioned The Wire a few times. Here’s David Simon’s “Wire Bible”–the pitch he made to HBO regarding the series, along with a site that links to several academic essays written about the show (we didn’t read it yet, but we can’t get to the one about the subversions of heteronormative assumptions). And then there’s The New York Times’ Freakonomics blog’s series, “What Do Real Thugs Think of The Wire?” Fifth-season spoiler warnings on that last one.

• We’ve spoken about the advantages of being tall: Here is even more evidence that height advantages contribute to happiness.

• North Korea’s Twitter. Enjoy.

• Thanks to the intervention of John S, the dust has more or less settled on the Henry Louis Gates thing, but in case you didn’t get your fill of racial turmoil and police scandals, here’s the NYT’s story on how cops handle abuse, and here is Gates’ own reaction to the OJ Simpson verdict, titled Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man.

Stylish

Who died and put Strunk and White in charge of the English language?

If you talk to anyone who takes the rules of grammar and usage seriously, the names Strunk and White are bound to come up. The Elements of Style, the “little book” that was originally self-published by Professor William Strunk, Jr. at Cornell University and then, fifty years ago, was edited and mass produced by his former student, E.B. White, has become the definitive authority for amateur grammarians.

Wondering what constitutes a split infinitive? Check Strunk and White. Need to know when to use a semicolon? Check Strunk and White. What’s the difference between “shall” and “will”? Check Strunk and White.

But where exactly does their authority come from?

On the one hand, it comes from the fact that the snobs who always correct you when you misuse the subjunctive mood and wince when you use “good” as an adverb generally worship at the alter of Strunk and White. Its brevity and sardonic tone (“Prestigious: Often an adjective of last resort. It’s in the dictionary, but that doesn’t mean you have to use it.”) help to make it handy for every show-off on the go.

Ranking The Bill of Rights, Number 9: The Tenth Amendment

I like the Bill of Rights. So, while the Second Amendment is pretty terrible, I don’t have a particularly strong distaste for any other of the first ten amendments.

With that said, the Tenth Amendment has no point. It reads: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

It is a truth reflected already by the rest of the Constitution. The Constitution gives each of the three branches of the national government expressly delegated powers: Why the need to repeatedly emphasize that this is the case? The Supreme Court even claimed in United States v. Sprague that the Tenth Amendment has added “nothing to the [Constitution] as originally ratified.” What is the Tenth Amendment amending? Imagine an amendment to a marriage license that states that the husband and wife are married.  Sure, I’m sympathetic to the idea that the national government’s powers need to be limited, but the reality is that the Tenth Amendment does little to assure that this is a reality. It recognizes that federalism exists without giving any teeth to it.