Technology, learning with me

Isabel to Siri: What's the phone number for [store] in Georgetown?

Siri (after some pondering):  Sorry.  I can't look up telephone numbers for Guyana.

Isabel (after suppressing laugh?): Siri, what's the phone number for [store] in  Georgetown, Washington, D.C.?

Siri then finds phone number.

On defunding Obama's medical marijuana raids

Some of you may have seen news stories to the effect that a bipartisan coalition tried to defund Obama's medical marijuana raids yesterday and failed. Because I had to hunt around on the internet for a while to find the list of House members voting aye and nay, I'm posting it here for everyone's easy reference. Occasionally libertarians wonder if there are any good fiscal conservatives out there worth financially supporting who are also good on more classically libertarian issues like the War on Drugs; well, here's one place to start. I note that Jeff Flake and Ron Paul are both on the list voting aye. Paul Ryan unfortunately is not. 

Willow update

In addition to her Wednesday training at Intermediate Obedience, she's also started a Beginning Agility class on Mondays. Last week was mostly orientation, but this week, she finally got started on the equipment. Already she's tackled two of the tunnels, the A Frame, and a wobbly board that will help her get ready to go up on the teeter totter in time. She is also working on a game we call "Zen and the Art of Golden Retriever Maintenance" and a drill that teaches her how to run to a mat on command.

But she chose to tackle the first tunnel in spectacularly golden retriever fashion. The first time around, her teacher took the leash, and I stood at the opposite end of the tunnel with a treat in my hand. There was another treat in the tunnel to help entice her to go inside and make it through. The dogs ahead of her in line to try the tunnel were all shy, nervous types who very gingerly tiptoed into the tunnel and were reluctantly persuaded by the treat to venture all the way through and into their humans' arms.

Not Willow. She wasn't scared of the tunnel, and she was very excited by the treat. But she was really excited about the possibility of getting to socialize with the teacher. So she charged into the tunnel and grabbed the treat that was in the middle. But she figured, "Eh, well, I see Isabel every day. Not so exciting getting to socialize with her. But, well, here's a NEW PERSON! MY TEACHER! Much more fun to hang out with her!" So she... ran back out through the start end of the tunnel to socialize with the teacher. After more treats came out, she could be persuaded to run back through the tunnel and into my arms when she saw that I had a treat and that her teacher didn't. After that first time, it seems like finally my little social butterfly is getting the point of tunnels.

If rain on your wedding day is lucky, then friends' travel misadventures en route to your wedding have to be doubly lucky.

So Pnin and I were in San Francisco this weekend to attend a fellow blogger's wedding. Because I would need to leave for IAD from work downtown, I thought I'd order a taxi rather than lug my suitcase the usual fifteen to twenty minutes toward the metro. I ordered the taxi online the night before for 8:00 a.m., figuring that would give me plenty of time to get downtown for a meeting I needed to attend at 8:30. After three increasingly frantic calls, I concluded despairingly at 8:25 that there was no way that I could get to the meeting on time even if the taxi could fly and sent a deeply apolegetic e-mail to my boss. At 8:45, Pnin wandered downstairs and volunteered to drive me. Because of rush hour traffic, we concluded that I might have a better chance of getting downtown quickly if he just drove me to the metro station rather than all the way downtown. Indeed, the Orange line train came quickly. The train traveled exactly one stop, and then... a voice over the loudspeaker ordered everyone off the train due to some unspecified emergency. I glumly and clumsily hauled the bag off the train and waited around while the off-loaded crowds made their way onto several subsequent trains. I happened to make it downtown by about 9:40.

So, fast forward to time to leave for IAD -- about 2:30. I was able to hail a taxi relatively quickly, but when I did, I noticed that the elephant charm had become detached from my bracelet. I think I have mostly confined my musings about the joys of elephant jewelry to Facebook, rather than this blog. Still, suffice it to say that I am very attached to the  elephant bracelet. It is not a very valuable item -- I paid approximately half the price listed at the link on Gilt -- but it nonetheless holds great sentimental value.  I searched carefully through the cab seat, but to no avail. The elephant must have popped off at some earlier point. Grrr.

I'm not sure exactly what time I arrived at IAD, but I think it was comfortably more than an hour before my flight. The line to check bags was long, though, longer than many I've been in before. Once I got to the front of it, I found that I couldn't seem to scan my credit card or driver license to check in. After I finally got the attention of someone who could help me, she informed me, "You're too late to check in bags. Your flight leaves in less than an hour. Do you have any  liquids over three ounces?"

"Yes."

"Well, then you can't board your flight."

So I could neither check my bag nor not check my bag. Relatedly, Jesus is neither divine nor human. This must also be one of those ineffable mysteries of life comprehensible only to Anthony Kennedy. Well... maybe the more rational explanation was that I could switch to a later flight. But that would probably have to be the red eye, and I didn't want to show up half-exhausted to the wedding, especially since I should not realistically have that much trouble making the flight that I was actually supposed to be on. "I'll make something work," I mumbled. I'd seen plenty of accounts of TSA people missing liquids over the limit. My brother-in-law once accidentally got a Swiss army knife past them that he'd forgotten was in his backpack, after all. If they confiscate my things, they confiscate them. Better to take the risk than to delay my travel plans by a few hours.

I played the TSA lottery. And I lost. Unfortunately, they managed to confiscate a bottle of scandously expensive Kerastase shampoo and conditioner; I know I should not spend that much money on hair products, but really, my hair feels so much lovelier when I use them than when I've used anything else. Also a cheap bottle of hair spray and a modestly expensive bottle of papaya enzyme toner.  They let a bottle of contact lens solution slip through because there was clearly less than three ounces left because it was see-through. There was part of me that wanted to cry on the spot, but I resisted the urge. The screeners are not the right targets for my rage. It is not their fault that their political bosses have screwy notions regarding cost-benefit analysis.

Things got better from there. I made it safely to San Francisco, although I note that the plane was an hour late in taking off because they had issues calibrating the relevant weights.  It was altogether rather ironic given the desk agent's stubborn insistence that I was too late to check luggage. Pnin and I had fun renting a car and driving downtown to see the Golden Gate bridge and the cool buffaloes in the Golden Gate National Refuge Area. And the wedding itself was great! 1930s details! Meeting another reader of this blog -- especially since I estimate I have about three and a half readers, the half being a miniature poodle! Also, libertarian law nerds! And, finally, Pnin and I had a much less eventful journey back and were happily reunited with our Willow.

In which I reaffirm caring about the sanctity of contract rights for poor people

A reader of Andrew Sullivan's blog writes him re: a new Obama campaign ad about Mitt Romney's time at Bain:

A  note on the recent Obama campaign ad. As I see it, the real problem is not that Bain ultimately shut down GST. Absent those lucky duckies on the wingnut welfare circuit, no one’s guaranteed permanent employment.  The problem is that, in doing so, they reneged on a series of financial promises made to GST’s then-employees and retirees: their pensions and health care benefits.  These pensions and benefits were part of the employees’ compensation - earned over many years on the job.  Romney, in order to maximize Bain’s short-term profit on the deal, broke those promises.  That is a fundamental breach of the social contract between employer and worker.  Moreover, it is simply a loathsome way to do business.   

You know, it’s interesting, as an attorney, I spend a lot of time reading the libertarians over at the Volokh Conspiracy.  To a man, they purport to believe in the sanctity of contract rights.  During the auto bailout, they raged and gnashed their teeth when various bondholders were forced to take losses by the big unions and their lackeys in the administration.  Remarkably, they never have anything to say when a worker gets screwed out of earned pension benefits or health care coverage.  It’s as if the contract rights of labor are somehow illegitimate or second-class compared to the inviolate rights of the One Percent.

I can't purport to speak for all libertarians everywhere on this, or even all Volokh bloggers (I still have never actually met Dale Carpenter or Ken Anderson, even though the latter frequently likes the puppy pictures I post to Facebook.) But I, for one, do care about affirming the contract rights of blue-collar workers, and I suspect that at least some of the Volokh bloggers do as well. And I most emphatically don't think that the contract rights of labor are in any way illegitimate or second-class compared to the rights of the one percent. If anything, like many libertarians, I support small government in large part because it is altogether too easy for large corporations to use big government to trample on the contract rights of employees.

I don't know all of the facts about what happened when Romney shut down GST. I'm therefore not comfortable stating that anyone's contractual rights were violated or not. I imagine other libertarian bloggers are in the same boat simply because this particular story hasn't gotten much press, and that that may be why they have said less about this story than about the much more widely publicized auto bailouts.  But, if Bain breached contracts betweeen GST and its former employees, then I am all in favor of GST workers vindicating those legal rights in court. Period.

On asymmetrical hemlines

Are we doomed to live with them being in style? I really wanted to like this dress, but couldn't grok the hem in back being so much longer than the hem in front.  I've actually started to wonder if it is at least easily altered to look like a normal hemline.

Excuse for a gratuituous photograph of Willow

Good first night of Agility tonight. For our homework for this week, Willow will need to learn how to run toward a target (a towel, to make things easy for her.) Also, she'll need to keep practicing focusing her attention on me and not getting distracted. No exciting leaps over poles, running through tunnels, or running through complicated weaves just yet. That'll come later.

Elsewhere, it was our fourth annual Friedrich Hayek party on Saturday night! Exhausted members of the Archer-Pnin household are still finishing up the leftover Sachertorte. We've decided that we want to host a party in honor of Milton Friedman's 100th birthday this year in early August. The menu options are endless: there are Jewish-American dishes, anything Chicago-themed, possibly something Chilean like traditional empanadas in honor of his influence on their pension system.... Exciting details to follow!