Fables of the reconstruction

Local Programming: Philly Restaurant Week(s) Tops List of Things Not to Do

Center City Philly Restaurant Week (really, 2 weeks) is September 12-17 and 19-24. Make plans to visit any of the 100+ restuarants participating this year if you enjoy the idea of a fine dining/McDonalds hybrid or if you find it amusing to watch servers dying inside as they struggle to please a screaming horde of diners who are all there because it's cheap.

Like Philly Beer Week(s), this event is a marketing vehicle that has ballooned into something worse than useless. What started as a good idea - serve a prix fixe menu of slightly smaller portions so that a wider audience can try a restaurant - has become something that people do because it's what a lot of other people do. Customers who appreciate good food can't enjoy it and don't get their money's worth, even at lower prices. Workers get screwed because every shift is like a double without commensurate tips. Maybe the restaurant owners see a bump in profits, or maybe these events persist because Philly has become "known" for them, and once we're known for a plausibly positive event (as opposed to, say, our murder rate or flash mobs) then we're stuck with it forever.

Anyway, my advice: Avoid.

PAYPAL IS THE WORST COMPANY IN THE WORLD

I repeat:

PAYPAL IS THE WORST COMPANY IN THE WORLD.

Let Them Eat Used Cake: Trashpicking Advice From Business Channel

On the local business fascist radio station yesterday, a commenter from CNBC gave tips on how to trashpick items that you might be able to use or sell: Know when bulk trash is picked up, take a vehicle with enough capacity to carry large things (and a friend to lift them), and go to rich neighborhoods. "Rich people have nicer stuff," she chirped.

I guess this is advice for white people, because can you imagine the reaction if black people were driving around a rich neighborhood digging through trash?

Gitmo Continues to be Moral Travesty

The Obama administration would love to avoid going to trial in the first military commission trial in Gitmo, but may be legally (not to mention politically) barred from doing so.

They'd like to reach a plea deal with the "defendant" (I use scare quotes because it offends my sensibilities as a lawyer to apply it to anyone held captive without the protections of the Constitution), Omar Khadr, because his case makes the whole process look as bad as it is. Khadr was a child soldier, just 15 when he was captured. He was heavily wounded when they found him, but somehow they determined it was him who threw a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier. A U.S. interrogator suggested that, if he didn't cooperate, he could be raped to death in prison. Nevertheless, the military judge let the resulting confession come into evidence. Then the Pentagon tried to ban journalists from Khadr trial because they had written about publicly-available information that the military nevertheless deemed secret. And an officer was excluded from the jury because he agreed with the President that Gitmo went against America's values and had hurt the country's international image.

The military is apparently surprised to learn that civilians consider it unsporting to coerce confessions from children by threatening them with rape and death, and then trying them in secret with a jury which excludes anyone who acknowledges reality. The Obama administration, being a little more enlightened, would like this case to go away. However, the Military Commissions Act forbids "unlawful command influence" on the process, which could be interpreted to mean that Obama can't order a more attractive plea deal be offered, much less dropping the charges.

For his part, Khadr, now 23, has rejected fairly sweet plea deals so far, saying "he was offended by what he saw as an attempt to 'legitimize the sham process' by dangling 'the least sentence possible' to coerce a confession. Good for him. I believe that the initial investigation was rigged anyway.

Can't Give It No Credit

I Just Don't Care That Much

I've stopped reading political news and blogs.  It's depressing, unenlightening, infuriating, and boring in turns. I'm volunteering to do GOTV for the Pennsylvania U.S. Senate and governor races, but I don't give a shit about national politics or any discussion thereof. The older I get, the more I believe all I can do is affect what happens in a smaller and smaller circumscribed space.

Kampfkatze

(Via.)

Anniversary

This blog was started on August 7, 2003. Now here we are, and here it is ... later.

Very impressive, I know.