Dépigeonnage

The Wichita Bureau learned a new word today--dépigeonnage, which you can probably figure out for yourself but if you are stumped, don't count on Google Translate: they say the English for dépigeonnage is dépigeonnage.  Really never thought of our feathered friends as being high on the list of French nuisances but evidently somebody does--here's a French "environmental" (sic?) website with news on " La Lutte Contre les Pigeons." Here's another site, this one cautioning that "Les pigeons causent des nuisances directement sur la santé," and warning that "Le dépigeonnage nécessite l’expertise d’un professional."  Or, as Wichita suggests, does it have something to do with St. Francis and feeding (or not feeding) the birds?  It does, I admit, remind me of one of my favorite Biblical chestnuts--workable in any language but somehow more convincing in French.  It's the one where Mary explains the baby to the elderly Joseph: c'est le pigeon, Joseph.

Mrs. Buce pronounces herself only mildly amused by the pigeon concept, but would consider démoleage or désquirrelage, if either is on offer.

Here's the authoritative American approach to the topic.  Not sure how well it would translate:

Ukraine: Population, Water

The Wichita bureau points me to a couple of Ukraine facts I haven't seen elsewhere. One, population is on the skids--down from about 52 million in the early 90s to under 46 million today. General mortality statistics look similar to Russia's with, notably, that absurd gap between males and females over 65--M/F ratio in Russia, 46 percent, Ukraine, 51 percent.  Just eyeballing the chart, it looks to me like the Russian population may be falling faster than the rest--or at any rate, the areas of smallest decline (or absolute increase) are all in the far west.

Sources: here and here.

Item #2, it is suggested that the Crimea might be in water deficit. This sounds plausible but a desultory Google search doesn't turn up anything particularly helpful: this is really the best I could do, and I  note that it is a few years old.  I gather that Crimea gets its electricity from the mainland--any risk that somebody just pulls the plug?

The Affirmative Action Baby: A Different Take

I've been chatting with my friend the Wichita bureau over the puzzle of why Barak Obama has turned out to be such a mediocre President.  This blog post is the result although I should make clear that I haven't shown it to my colleague, and the opinions expressed herein are my own.

Be clear this is not a post about "born in Kenya" or "hates America" or "coming for your guns."  I'll certify that I think Obama is a decent man, even a smart man.  I hear that he masters his brief and that is comfortable making decisions (an underappreciated skill, I think, ironically rare in executive ranks).  I voted for him twice and  I'm pretty sure (particularly giving the indescribably awful competition) do the same thing over if I had to do it again.   It isn't even disappointment at Obama's centrism.    I know that everybody is a secondary source to himself after a while but I like to think that I knew he wasn't nearly the liberal that his enthusiasts took him to be.  I guess I am a bit surprised at his authoritarianism on the matter of spying and the phenomenon of demonizing journalists but for the moment, I think that's neither here nor there.

No: the question now is the matter of competence and in particular, how come Obama is so awful at the task of "leadership," understood here to mean the task of defining the issues and cajoling the troops to follow him--the characteristic, in other words, that made both Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan so remarkable.  

Again, I like to think I saw this coming, though I can't honestly say I foresaw anything like its current dimensions.   Still, I had heard in particular about his career as president of the Harvard Law Review--the most important post, as his critics acidly recall--that he had ever held before.  I wasn't there but the story has been told.  Way I understand it, the board was riven between conservative and liberal factions who distrusted--all right, cordially hated--one another.  Obama presented himself as--well, no as the "compromise" candidate, but as a good presentable face forward, who could maintain an image of solidarity at the review while perhaps holding the contending factions somewhat at bay.

That can be an important role and if I am reading the scene right, then I'd have to say he played it well. But for his future career, it's a role that doesn't require him actually to do much of anything, except to stay cool and work to keep the temperature down.

All this may be old stuff. But now I'd like to expand the horizon.   Looking at Obama's pre-Harvard life here, isn't it possible to speculate that there might be a pattern here?  Don't we have a guy who is, first, pretty bright; second, likable (at least on the surface); and third, cool to the point of remote?  The kind of guy who, in short, is likely to get helped on his way up the ladder, even though he isn't really required to do anything?

I admit, in an effort to preempt criticism, that what I'm talking about here is a kind of affirmative action. But not what you might think.  I'm not thinking "stupid kid gets a break that should have gone to a smart white guy." I guess  I am thinking "smart, likable kid gets a helping hand without ever having to do very much."   And note that  don't mean to complain about any "unfairness" in the process--except possibly the unfairness to him insofar as it brings him up the escalator without ever realizing that hasn't really been seasoned.

One way to see this process at work is to consider the way Obama has presented himself persistently in times of crisis.  He certainly doesn't put your package in the top drawer, like Lyndon Johnson.  He doesn't try to mock or deride even to undercut his adversaries.   What he does do is to remind us that he's serious about good government, that he's thought hard about the issue, that he isn't influenced by base or unworthy pressures, and he more or less assumes (ha!) that his adversaries are doing the same thing.

I think you'd have to concede by now that this posture hasn't proven very effective.  More remarkable, in a world where appearances count for so much, it doesn't even seem very effective: think of how often Obama has taken a position which when you stop to think about it is perfectly reasonable but which, as presented, comes across as earnest, ineffectual, just naive.

Only one other point: I guess I'm also surprised that he doesn't seem to have learned from the experience. Some people grow into the job; some shrink.  Obama seems to have stayed pretty much the same. They say the Presidency is, or becomes, a prison. I certainly don't envy him the next three years (I didn't envy him the past five either, but let that be).   He's going to be miserable a lot and certainly won't all be his fault.  I do wish he could develop a bit of the grit and guile I suggest here, and which has been so lacking in his performance up to now.

Why Didn't the Japanese Make Better Use of its Conquests?

The Wichita bureau has been thinking again:

I think it is pretty well established (or at least commonly believed) that Japan lost WWII because of logistics and the US’s industrial base was much bigger (and better mobilized). That got me to wondering: Japan had over run much of N. China from the 30s on and had been in much of Korea since 1905. It had a huge army still in Manchuria after the war ended.

It had lost a major battle with the Russians (led by Zhukov) in a Cannae like envelopment - a technique he used against the Germans. So it hadn’t pushed into Siberia or tried to take Vladivostok. They also controlled SE Asia (rubber, tin and some oil) and the Dutch East Indies (oil).

But it had a huge part of the most industrialized part of China. Why didn’t it wring more military equipment and stuff out of the Chinese? Were they so poorly organized? Were the Chinese keeping them so busy that they couldn’t build an industrial base? Didn’t they have the capital base to do it?

They fought the war with the equipment that they started with - and developed little new in the way of guns or planes. The army that Zhukov captured was largely equipped with old stuff - WWI era guns and little heavy stuff. And poorly clothed. (the victory on the eve of the German invasion made Zhukov's reputation with Stalin).

To which I respond:

Most interesting and I never gave it any thought before but I suspect has something to do with the fact that they were such bloody awful conquerors. They did everything they could to demean and alienate the new subject peoples. Lots of yellow faces were glad to see Japanese coming because they were not white faces. What they got was torture and humiliation. Like the Germans in Russia but entirely unlike the British (and before them, the French) in India--who built everything on co-opting the locals and collaborating with local elites. ... 

Possible second thought: Japanese war/social machine is steady and stable but moves extremely slowly. Slow to get in gear. And slow to get out: Japanese have been in trouble since 1990 but the machine keeps grinding as if there was nothing wrong

So, what are we missing?

Little Propane Tank in the Big Woods

The Wichita Bureau transmits an update from the local stringer up in Eau Claire, Wisconsin:

Well, the Governor declared a state of emergency in WI on Saturday night:  All of the counties and townships are setting up warming places for those who are running out of Propane and/or money.  In September the cost was $1.40/unit, by last Thursday it had risen to $3.50/ unit in EC, on Friday it went to $4.50/unit, and today it went up over five dollars.  We have a real bad week coming and it is going to be interesting.

Wichita grumbles in response: "My suggestion was to burn Republicans – they’re in oversupply"  But to be fair, he has to spend his days in the free state of Sam Brownback.

 

Update:  Wichita adds:

Trans-Canada pipeline blew up last night near Winnipeg. Going to be mighty cold. Gas company calling people in EC to turn down temps in house one at a time. 

Nostalgia Note:  Mrs. Buce began her professional career in Eau Claire.  She likes to tell stories about driving to work on tires that had frozen to the pavement. Ka THUMP ka THUMP.

 

 

Roundabouts Again

Groupies will know that the staff and management here at Underbelly central are big fans of highway roundabouts.  They do take a bit of getting used to, but after a few hours days weeks  (whatever) of being chased around Southern England.  I came away a true believer, an acolyte, even a proselyte. We now even have a few roundabouts here in Palookaville--mostly in somewhat out of the way places, which suggests that the proponents were settling for what they could get--but the fact may have the unintended virtue of letting newbies practice their rounding skills in a low-stress environment. There is a new one near the center of town which seems to be trouble waiting to happen: there's a one-way street in just where you would most want to go out. But I grant that the deeper issue here may be a whole new traffic pattern, as if calculated to leave the whole town screeching and hollering on their way into the season of love and joy. We'll get used to it, and emerge better for the ordeal.

The Wichita Bureau, reporting from exile in nearby Lawrence, offers a more complicated account:

The city government ... is proposing to put in a ‘roundabout’ in a major street near here. Although they have been building them here for years, the locals (esp. the elderly) don’t adapt easily and entirely too many take the shortcut straight across. The intersection in question is in need of a light due to traffic levels but supposedly the roundabout would save money. At that point the local arts commission which has no money pipes up with a proposal to put a piece of art in the center.

I’m going to propose that they weld two Mercury Grand Marquis (or Lincoln Towncars) into a sculpture and put it in the roundabout. Here in the midwest, the aspiring elderly all drive Grand Marquis (or to show they made it) - and since they quit making the brand, they are getting a bit battered. They are a huge car – a throw back to the days of cheap gas – and welding two into a sculpture would be appropriate and also block the short cut.

Nov. 22, 1963

Where was I?   I was trying to stay awake at a meeting of the Kentucky League of Cities on the second floor (mezzanine?) of the hotel at Fifth and Walnut in Louisville, the one that is now the Kentucky Towers.  I suppose I was trying to think of something, anything  to take back to my editor at The Louisville Times to justify my presence at so anodyne an event.  Anyway, my problem was shortly solved:  some guy came in and said something on the order of "Gentlemen, I have important news..."

I'm hazy on the next few hours.  I was in front of a TV set somehwere--maybe the same hotel--when I heard Walter Cronkite bring us all the final pronouncement.*  I do remember running into Marlowe Cook, the County Judge/Executive (and mentor of Mitch McConnell) at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, where Marlowe fulminated for a bit about the times and the people.  It was clear from the way he talked that he took it for granted that the killer was some right-wing nut and I for my part never troubled to doubt him; neither he nor I ever mentioned the encounter again.

Life was going well for me that fall.  We had lost our first baby but the next one was alive and well and a another was on the way.  I had finally, somewhat belatedly--I was 27--finished my BA and had started my first semester of night law school, and was loving every minute of it: after some false starts, the gears were beginning to mesh.  That night, perhaps in a daze, I drifted off to my property class where I found a good many of my classmates, probably in the same impaired state.  Our professor--heaven knows what was in his mind--conducted business as usual.  After a break, we reassembled for torts; Jim Merritt came in and announced "I don't know why we are all here tonight, but I'm going home."  Then it dawned on us--or at least, me--that there were probably better things to do than to recite torts.

Afterthought: I shouldn't be too hard on our benumbed property teacher.  Years later, on 9/11, I faced the same kind of choice.  I was due to meet my corp fin students at 9am, 2-2.5 hours after the crashes.  Most student showed up.  I said: look, I can do this either way, we can stay or go.  What is your preference?  Nobody went to the door, so we went about our business usual.

*The Wichita bureau adds an curious footnote: the gazillion replays of the Cronkite announcement--they all look clearer on modern TV sets than they did at the time.  Is there some way they could have tweaked the original picture (uh oh, that sounds lie conspiracy talk)?

The Bechdel Test

Don't ask me why but the Wichita bureau thinks I need to know about the Bechdel test.  I quote Wiki

The Bechdel test (/ˈbɛkdəl/ bek-dəl) asks whether a work of fiction features at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man. Many contemporary works fail this test of gender bias. 

The test is named after the American cartoonist Alison Bechdel. In 1985, she had a character in her comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For voice the idea, which she attributed to a friend, Liz Wallace. The test was originally conceived for evaluating films, but has since been applied to other media. It is also known as theBechdel/Wallace test,^[1] the Bechdel rule,^[2] Bechdel's law,^[3] or the Mo Movie Measure.^[4]

Well he's right, and it's new to me, but I want to plug it into a larger matrix about women-talking-about-men-talking-about women and suchlike.  Example: so far as I recall, in Jane Austen, we never see a man outside the company of women.  For all the evidence, they may not even exist except when they show up to cause trouble or solve life's problems among the ladies.   Side note: FWIW, I like Sex and the City, too, even though on the Bechdel standard, that show seems to be a crashing failure.

But re Jane Austen--this is not a complaint.  I'm a huge Jane Austen fan and I suspect one reason she is so good is that she is careful not to write about what she doesn't know.  But it does move you on to the larger question: can men tell the truth about women? Can women tell the truth about men?  Or can they at best (as in Bechdel/Wallace) do no better than to tell the truth about what women think they know about men.

Can any male author tell the truth about women?  Well now I wouldn't know, would I? I'm tempted to say "Henry James," but the nearest I can come to evaluating him is to consider what women think of Henry James--and I suppose his rep in that quarter is pretty high.  I was about to say "James Joyce, channeling Molly Bloom"--but is Molly's voice that of a woman, or just a man trying to ventriloquize a woman?

Of course it cuts both ways.  Virginia Woolf doesn't have much to say about men but most of what she does say is laughable.   So also the Brontes (does anybody see either Heathcliff or Rochester as anything other than a girlish fantasy?).  Among serious novelists, perhaps the most interesting would be George Eliot: she does write a lot about men and a lot of it strikes me as shrewd and/or savagely funny. But here too, you have to wonder: are you getting a man's story, or merely the work of an (uncommonly insightful) woman on the outside looking in?

Update:  Oh, now I get it.  Sweden. Sure, should have seen that coming. Will they also movies on whether or not anything the ladies say about the men is true?

More on Claiming-race Taxation

A couple of followup points re my post on claiming-race taxation.  One, my friend Scott tells me that he has heard--though he admits he has no confirming source--that Castro offered such a deal to the multinationals operating in Cuba in 1961,  If true, I suppose it is documented in the literature, though neither Scott nor I has troubled to track it down.
 
Two, Underbelly's Wichita Bureau points out that it's just a species of the standard buy-sell agreement, familiar to anyone who ever drafted the paperwork for a partnership business: either party can name the price at which the other can buy or sell.
 
And three,  now that I think of it, they are all variants of "one cuts, the other chooses," for splitting, say, a pastrami sandwich.  I think you can even generalize it to a situation where there are seven or eight people around, say, a pizza.  One guy cuts.  Everybody else (in turn) gets to take or pass; if nobody takes, then the cutter is stuck with it.

There must be more. Hey, I smell dissertation topic!  But it's probably already been written.

More on the Lottery and Taxes [Hint: Dying is Not a Good Strategy]

The Wichita Bureau reminds us of what we overlooked in the lottery/tax inquiry:

The real reason an 84 year old takes the lump sum payment is that if she took the ‘annuity’, on her pending demise (what’s her life expectancy, 90?), her estate will have to pay federal estate tax on the present value of the annuity – which can be huge and more than she’s collected in annuity. As it is, she can give away as much as possible (although no where near the whole amount) and what’s left will be available to pay the fed estate tax. 

...[A]s it is, the fed taxes the lump sum at about 35% (Florida has a wealth tax but no income tax) - and then lies in wait for the real hit: the estate tax ... .*  So the lottery is a real tax break for the feds – who end up in this case with more than the family. 

 And an undocumented extra:

Have you ever wondered what you would do with the net? Say $300 million? At my age, my imagination runs the gamut from A to C ... [A] wheelchair van isn’t terribly sexy or speedy. Hmm, maybe the gamut runs from A to B.

---
*Which is not what it used to be.  See link, and HT Joel.

A Real Porker Corker

The Wichita bureau makes the headline catch of the day:

Spam Doubles as Bull Market Returns

Oh, tee hee, oink oink. 

[Brings to mind my Army buddy who looked art the pink slime on the stainless steel tray and prounced: Government inspected they say, didn't say whether it passed or not.]

Red Counties: More on How the Poor Live

Dining with my old pal Ignoto the other night (salmon carpaccio, gnocchi, scallops, a nice pinot), I listened to Ignoto remark that most of our friends don't have a clue how many poor there are, and how they live.

Leaden (preemptive) irony intended.  One may well ask how Ignoto knows, if he knows.  But if you talked with him for half an hour you'd recognize that he harbors a highly original and independent turn of mind, coupled with almost limitless curiosity.  So you'd be inclined to bet that he probably is onto something. And who knows, he may have seen the map that Ezra Klein finds "terrifying."  And he may have heard followup comments like these below.  First, the Wichita Bureau updates on life in the trackless void that is Western Kansas:

KS counties in red are mostly what you’d expect – the odd part is NW Ks – where the main industry is I 70 (hotels, fleecing hunters and the only Starbucks in that corner of KS; we stayed in a motel out there on the way back from a trip to Denver – and each room has a sign warning against cleaning pheasants in the bathroom sink – they point out that there is a special area behind the motel for THAT). There are three little towns out there that are holding their own – but apparently not in healthcare. The two red counties in SE KS are quite familiar: Greenwood where we had a second home for years and Elk, the poorest county in the state, supposedly. Both are dominated by big land owners – ranchers and oil guys. the Koch family owns at least 5000 acres of prime grass land. I suspect they own the commission. Greenwood has a small county hospital (that mainly packages people up for the helicopter ride to Wichita) with a decent number of doctors – mostly DO’s and foreigners. There is absolutely no industry – and damn few restaurants. About the only significant employers are the county, school system and a cluster of nursing homes supported by Medaire/Kancare.  . ...

Kansas continues to lose population in a majority of counties. In some cases, if the current exodus continues, they will be down to negative population by 2020 (link).

From the stats (link), the influx of Hispanics is done. But a couple of counties (in blue) are now majority minority – More Hispanics and Somalis than Swedes.

He might have added that Western Kansas has a long history of standing at or near the top of the league tables for farm subsidies, though last time I looked, an awful lot of the checks went to post boxes in San Francisco.  Meanwhile, here's an update on Wisconsin from UB's newly appointed stringer in Eau Claire:

That strip of red counties up through the center of Wisconsin is entierly predictable: these counties all lie between, what  I call, the highways. There are three major, north/south highways in WI - 41 on the east runs up through the Fox River Valley, Appleton, Green Bay, etc.; highway 51 (I-39) runs up through the middle of the state, Stevens Point, Wausau, Minocqua, etc.; and highway 53 on the west, LaCrosse to Eau Claire to Rice Lake to Superior. The most conservative and no-growing part of the state (the actual most conservative part of the state is the Fox Valley to Lake Michigan on the east side--Joe McCarthy country--lies between Eau Claire and Wausau (Highways 51 and 53)). Lots of Bubbas and gun nuts, and yes, Amish - not the greatest farm land either. There is just lots of swamp, scrub timber, brush and such. ...These people just won't change, so their kids grow up and leave; they go to LaCrosse, Madison, Eau Claire, and the Fox Valley. By the way, Green Bay is a mess - lots of poverty (lots of Hispanics, Hmongs, etc.), but it is growing-- the "two-class" society.

Followup: I guess what intrigues me most in the red map is that strip of blue counties across Central California and the Rio Grande Vallley.  Just guessing but it seems to me that it must be evidence that Chicanas, i.e., women, punch above their grade when it comes to health care--that they are healthier, better taken care of (take better care of themselves?) than you might guess from income data alone.

Look! Up in the Sky!

Well here's an aww moment: Italy's Chief Bad Boy Silvio Berlusconi has been convicted of somethingorother.  The staff and management at Underbelly Central expresses warm approval, along with doubts that he will ever see the inside of the il solitario di pietra.   UB's Wichita bureau hopes for house arrest, tarted up as a reality show.

The conviction certainly does come at an inconvenient time for Old (sic) Silvio: his party just sorta kinda won Italian the election. He must be wondering whether he will wind up as il presidente or--wait a minute, there's another choice: he might wind up like his distinguished predecessor, Bettino Craxi who fled with his tail between his legs to live out his life as a cosseted exile in Tunisia. 

It happens I've been to Tunisia, along with countless European tourists.  Not a bad place, Tunisia, at least in time of peace.  And now that I think of it, Tunisia, aka Carthage, was the home turf of another celebrated public nuisance, Hannibal Barca, who won and then lost his great roll of the dice against Rome--and then went off and spent his exile cowering behind the thrones of Rome's eastern enemies (like Cleopatra, he ended his life with poison to avoid falling into the hands of his great adversaries).

And--but I am wandering.  Closer to home, it's diverting to think that Berlusconi tonight shares some of the perplexity facing his distinguished neighbor, Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI who must be considering whether he dare leave the Vatican for Italian soil, lest  he be (say) Pinohcheted off to a slammer at The Hague for arraignment before the International Court of Justice. (for one of the less  nutty accounts, go here).  I wonder, is Castle  Gandolfo Vatican sovereign territory?  And would the Carabinieri shoot down a Papal helicopter?  And is Pinochet a verb?

Or "Maculate Deception"?

The Pope's Twitter handle is Pontifex. UB's Wichita Bureau claims that he has copped PontifexUS.  Evidently somebody else nicked off Pontifex Maximus, but what about Pontifex Minimus or Papa_Ratzi or EpopofEmor?  Anyway, Good Yontiff, Pontiff, and welcome to the new world.

Ah, We Each Have Our Own, Don't You Think?

The Wichita Bureau, who doubles on the theology beat, speculates:

If Liz Taylor is in Hell, I suspect that the movie every night is the one staring Lindsay Lohan as Liz.

Pearson's Rule

We all know about Cleopatra, queen of denial.  UB's Wichita bureau identifies the point at which you are so far up the creek that you are just feeding on a heap of crocodile poop.  The crockshit corollary.

Banker's Togs

One more on clothes that don't fit: Joel thinks it's the fabric. He says:

Color me wrong but I see a decent quality summer suit made of part or all cotton so it always looked rumpled plus a bad pose for portrait purposes

Custom tailors often refuse to make cotton suits.

And he links to a master tailor disclosing secrets of his craft at the website Ivy Style:

Also, I find I’m uncomfortable when someone asks me to make something for them where I feel they have to pay me more than they should. Case in point, when people ask me to make poplin trousers. I say, “These are your clothing Miranda Rights: You shouldn’t be buying poplin trousers from me, because the cloth we’re using is a better make than the cloth deserves, but it still costs me the same to make trousers out of poplin as the world’s finest flannel.” As a result, while my price on the flannels is better than everyone else’s, my price on the poplin is more than you should be paying for poplin. I say that, and many tell me, “But I can’t find the colors I want, and I want a higher or shorter rise, and I can afford it.” So I do it and sleep well because I told them they shouldn’t be paying me for poplin or seersucker.

UB's Wichita bureau chimes in:

Well, it could be linen – which is making a comeback. I think Huey Long in a white linen suit with a white panama hat hit all of your buttons about ill-fitting (he must have had them tailored that way), wrinkled and perhaps with the fly open.

Wichita adds:

I suspect that the bit about politicians wearing cheap suits so as not to overshadow their constituents is just that – a myth. Yeah, I’ve heard all the stories about the southerners who glue a bit of toilet paper to a shoe or let their shirt hang out thru their fly – but don’t believe them. Maybe 60 years ago. As far as I can tell, they buy and wear the best suits they can afford – as long as the French label doesn’t hang ou.

All of which brings to mind Joan Rivers saying how embarrassing it is when you come out of the ladies' room with that little piece of toilet paper in your teeth. She did not add, especially if you are a guy.

In Which I Remind My Readers that I'm a Vulgarian

Am I the only guy in America who does not think Joe Biden speaks in "gaffes?"  Grant that he is a chatterbox; still he strikes me as well-briefed and in full command of the vernacular.  If he seems to indulge himself in a cheerful partisanship, isn't that part of his job?  And isn't it to his credit that he evinces that rarest of all qualities among politicians of our  own time, a degree of comfort in his own skin?

And speaking of "skin," I'm equally baffled at why Rep.Kevin Yoder (R-Not in Kansas Any More)  felt he had apologize for going skinny-dipping in the Sea of Galilee-- or more precisely, why the fussbudget in chief, Eric Cantor, felt he had to scold Yoder for it.  Seems to me that the correct response for a grown man against an imputation that he took a moonlight plunge in the altogether ought to be "Yeah? So?"  Or in the words of the immortal Joe Biden, I do not see it as a big effing deal.

Underbelly's Wichita bureau  does offer one possible clarification: maybe the problem with Yoder and the water is that he didn't walk on it.

He Could Have Just Sent a Condolence Card

Add one more to the catalog of non-apology apologies:

I wanted to say I am sorry for the loss of your son

Trayvon Martin's killer, buttering up the court at his bail hearing. Foir a fuller discussion, go here.  H/T, UB's Wichita Bureau.

More on Where the Doctors Are

The Wichita Bureau offers some intriguing comments on that chart of where the doctors are:

I think the stats are somewhat misleading in the map: “Office” may mean more than one doctor – and a lot of the big city specialists fly out to rural areas for monthly consults with specialized need patients. Lawrence is probably over doctored – it is one of the few places in Ks with pretty easy access and a good ER (which ends up providing a lot of medical care for the students – free).  ...  There are great swatches of the western part of the state that are practically unpopulated. Not only are there no doctors or dentists (there is no dental school here in KS) but there are NO LAWYERS. Of course much of the population in western KS is either elderly or Hispanic. And most of the health care is falling on the local hospital – if there is one. One thing the GOP hasn’t figured out here is that by paying low wages and no benefits, most of the big farm operations are pushing the health care for their often illegal employees off on their neighbors.

 Also:

I wonder how they count the Mayo Clinic? It’s “one office” in Rochester – but there are something like 800 doctors (and fellows?) who see patients there. Rochester probably has more doctors per population (and more hotel beds) than any similar sized city (100K) – but there are a lot of clinics modeled on the Mayo method of seeing patients (Hint: it’s like the carwash). ...

One interesting note: when Greensburg KS got hit by the F5 tornado five years ago, it pretty well leveled the place: HS, hospital, courthouse (jail) and most of the businesses. The population dropped by 50%: the elderly residents who were living out their golden years in the tiny town took their insurance money and moved near their families. The county seat functions, the school and the hospital were rebuilt (in green tech) – and they cleared out the only tourist attraction in town, the world’s largest hand dug well. But there ain’t much left. I suspect the doctors are still there – but specialized care requires a trek to Wichita.

 World,s largest hand-dug well, bleah.  He's got a point re multiple offices.  Shasta County CA gets an A on the "doctors" chart; nearby Butte gets only a B plus. But Butte has a big medical center while Shasta is a recreation spot.  Big offices in Butte, solos in Shasta?