Michael Franz, 1979-2007
Michael Franz, 1979-2007
I played only one year of ultimate at Brown—there aren't enough hours in the day to play on a competitive ultimate team and take one's Computer Science classwork seriously and hold down the fort as a head TA—but that was long enough to make it clear to me that "Franz", as he was nicknamed, genuinely loved the life he was living and always tried to push everyone around him to do their best.
Mike died of complications due to a ruptured cerebral aneurysm while working in South Africa. In lieu of flowers, his parents and girlfriend instead ask that those wishing to honor Mike's life do so by contributing to the Michael Franz Memorial Fund.
Troy enjoys his dust bath, and later he & Erica try to topple the raisin box:
A highly embarassing shuffle, but not maximally so:
Wow. The Wrens. It's been a while since they were high up the playlist.
A pair of articles in yesterday's New York Times shows "good news" and bad news in Iraq:
The first article is the bad news. The Iraqi army, not surprisingly, isn't willing to work particularly hard to fight against militia groups (perhaps because some soldiers are in militia groups, or because they perceive it as an American-against-Iraqi conflict). And the Army is engaged in yet another attempt to take back Haifa street, in a sort of repeat of World War I- or Vietnam-era conflicts where armies took and re-took the same strip of land several times.
The second article is the "good news". It appears that the U.S. is finally negotiating with Al-Sadr. Because the U.S. cannot control the street violence without using massive force, which would further put the populace against the Americans, the only way to end the violence in Iraq is to figure out what it will take to get the major actors to lay down their weapons, and, maybe, cooperate in peacekeeping and nation re-building duties. It's not a pleasant thought—we're negotiating with warlords, more or less—but it's the only way to end this mess.
As with all things related to Bush and Iraq, it's important to be skeptical. But, this is the first piece of good news I've heard out of the region in a long time.
January 22nd is the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, establishing a woman's right to choose to end a pregnancy without government interference. Roe, and its less famous companion case Doe v. Bolton, dramatically reduced the ability of state legislatures to force young women to jump through hoops to prove their abortion was "necessary". Since that time, the pro-choice position has largely maintained majority public support in America. More importantly, whenever Roe is directly threatened, such as in 1992 when Clarence Thomas was appointed to the Supreme Court, or 2006 when South Dakota passed an outright ban on all abortions, even those to protect the life of the mother, the anti-choice position tends to lose the debate, even in nominally pro-life states.
Over the past 20 years, the political state of play has remained largely constant. Choice has not been threatened directly, and the two parties argue at the margins about funding and regulations. This is not surprising, considering the fact that public opinion on abortion has remained largely constant over that time period, with a lukewarm pro-choice policy reflecting the opinion of the median voter.
Check out this Technorati link for all your Blog for Choice needs.
The Seattle Sonics came up with a new public-private financing plan to move out of Key Arena and build a new $500+ million venue in either Renton or Bellevue. Details are in the P-I.
While there are other issues relating to traffic and how to direct regional growth, the main question there is the money. Fully subsidized stadiums are almost never a good deal for taxpayers, except for those taxpayers who enjoy sports. Lately, the trend is to get around this by raising taxes on those who benefit from the stadium parking lots, hotels, rental cars, restaurants, and event tickets. As for economic development, the available evidence suggests that pro sports simply moves entertainment spending from one category to another; without the stadium, people would go to the movies more often, or go bowling more often, or go to state fairs, or visit the zoo, and generally find other ways to have fun. The jobs creation argument is weak; the team & stadium 20-50 jobs in the front office, plus a number of mostly low-wage jobs for food service workers, janitors, ticket-takers, and the like. Indirectly, the stadium will help spur a modest amount of employment and business growth in shopping & restaurants around the stadium, but again, these are mostly low-paying industries. On the plus side, construction firms and their workers do very well, as will of course the ownership group.
Thankfully, recent stadium deals have limited taxpayer exposure to exorbitant construction costs. The city of Arlington agreed to pay only half the costs of the Dallas Cowboys' under construction stadium, and will pay none of the cost overruns (so in practice they'll pay just under 33% of costs). New York will pay only 25% of the costs of the soon-to-be-built New Yankee Stadium. The Sonics' current proposal is for $300 million from taxpayers to build a $530 million stadium, leaving us on the hook for 56% of costs. What's more, the government has tremendous leverage. The most obvious location for a new team would be Oklahoma City. But, that city's media market is 67% smaller than Seattle's (Arbitron data), and per-household income is 33% lower (census data: Oklahoma County; King County), so the team would risk losing substantial revenue from TV, radio, and gate receipts if they moved.
The ownerhip's estimated construction costs are also way out of line with that of. The Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, built in 1997, cost $216 million, after adjusting for inflation. Boston's TD Banknorth Garden (nee Fleet Center) cost $200 million in 1995, again adjusting for inflation. The AT&T Center (San Antonio), $199 million in 2002. The Toyota Center (Houston), $183 million in 2003. FedEx forum (Memphis), $250 million in 2004. The Sprint Center (Kansas City), $276 million, due to open in 2007. The New Jersey Devils new arena in Newark, $210 million (project cancelled in 2006). Bobcats Arena (Charlotte), $260 million in 2005. It's unclear why a new basketball stadium in Seattle would have a $530 million price tag, given the cost of recent stadiums. I find it unlikely costs have doubled in two years, when compared to Memphis, or almost tripled in 10 years, when compared to Boston (perhaps a more accurate comparison because Boston has union density and real estate costs closer to those in Seattle).
In short, there is little reason to accept the Sonics first offer. The State and the ownership need to figure out how to build an arena at much lower costs, and there must be a hard cap on the amount taxpayers will pay in the event of cost overruns. A total cost of $275 million, with ownership footing 60% of the bill (total taxpayer cost: $110 million), strikes me as a reasonable deal.
A pretty good shuffle today:
Erica tries to hide behind a lamp:
Here she stays in the house while Troy forages for hay:
More discussion of this topic on The Washington Monthly and Matthew Yglesias's home blog.
I don't have much to add at this point. I just think it's a certain amount of monkeying around with no clear gain. But Yglesias points out that more veto points means less legislation. I think it's pretty clear that between 2000 and 2006, less legislation would, on the whole, have been good for the country
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updated by Nicholas Beaudrot on 01:46 15 January 2007
