hot child, summer in the country

From the Dartmouth undergrad blogs:

Due to the prolonged heat and humidity, the college has identified the air conditioned Novak Cafe as a student "heat relief" and "cooling station."

The cafe has been equipped with 50 cots for sleeping (20 have been set up in Novak room 60). Additional cots can be set up in the main area of Novak as needed. Novak is open and available to students 24 hours a day and will be staffed from 11PM to 8AM each night this weekend by Safety and Security personnel. Students who are in need of a cool place to sleep or who are looking for a comfortable space to study or just cool off should use this space during this heat wave.

Am trying to decide whether I'd have appreciated this back in the day. On the one hand, it would have been a welcome airconditioned spot to sleep in during the hotter days of the required sophomore summer session. On the other, sleeping on a cot in a room with 20 strangers would have been creepy. The real losers: the people who lived in non-College-owned houses that had room air conditioners and flaunted them in front of potential dates.

Also, I don't get how hedonistic spendthrifts are different from superlatively decadent brand name status whores.

Conor Friedersdorf comments on the dilemma of an incoming summer associate who wonders whether bringing a $10,000 Hermes Birkin to her firm will look bad. I tend to doubt anyone would much notice or care. At the risk of stereotyping, certainly the straight guys wouldn't. I'd peg myself as at right around median levels of fashion consciousness for a female attorney -- I'm neither superlatively attuned to this stuff, nor extremely not -- and even I wouldn't know, just from glancing at a Birkin, how much one cost.

I had a cousin who worked for a year or two as a buyer at Bergdorf Goodman. She's worked in management at a number of large department stores and then landed at IBM doing software for retail stores. But before doing that, she was fairly good at securing scandalously expensive things for us at deeply discounted prices. If the young summer associate is asked, mumbling something about a relative in luxury retail could help.

Finally, Conor needs to lighten up re: his claim "[W]ere I ever confronted with a lawyer or an agent or some other professional carrying a small leather bag that cost $10,000, I’d immediately conclude that his or her value system is astonishingly perverted, and that he or she lacks the judgment, perspective and ordering of priorities necessary to do business of any sort with me." I doubt I'd spend that sort of money on a handbag even in the counterfactual world in which I had it. At the same time, expensive handbags can be lovely, lovely things, and who am I to impugn someone else who likes them even more than I do?

This may also be another data point supporting the "lawyers are too obsessive about reputation preserving" hypothesis.

"Until Cryonics Do Us Part"

Great piece by Kerry Howley in the NYT magazine on Robin Hanson and the cryonics movement. My own perspective on this stuff is closer to Hanson's than to his wife.

Miscellany -- conservatism and higher ed edition

1. Dartmouth offers a good return on one's investment. But perhaps leading a life of consequence is priceless, or at least some members of my household might so claim.

2. Interesting post about intellectuals and the conservative movement.

3. Sigh. I suppose it is interesting and possibly worthy of discussion that Elena Kagan wrote about the work of Werner Sombart, German Marxist turned Nazi. Yes, of course it would be bad and embarrassing if she sympathized with his ideas. But agreeing with Sombart that it's interesting that socialism never took hold in the United States does not seem especially strange or embarrassing. Indeed, I can see why libertarians and conservatives might wonder about the same thing, so that we can prevent socialism from taking root here. It's possible that there are other quotes in the thesis that are more damning -- but then why publish this one? See also.

Don't turn economic policy disputes into a cultural crusade, please.

I haven't read the Arthur Brooks book being reviewed, but I really liked Brink Lindsey of Cato's review essay of same.

Yay for the small footed

For everyone's "shortness overanalyzed" files: evidence that women with small feet are more attractive to men than those who are not. Inasmuch as shortness and small feet are highly correlated, yay.

I confess I have always been insecure about how small my feet are, largely because two of the socialite girls with whom I went to high school had exceptionally large feet and often claimed loudly and publicly that this was because doing lots of athletic activities makes one's feet larger. My lack of athleticism made for enough painful moments. Did it have to doom me to a life of not being able to find appropriate sub-size-six shoe options as well? If having small feet is correlated with other pleasant things, though, well, that's some measure of comfort.

On that note, now to look for wedding shoes that in an appropriate size on the Internet. Suggestions warmly welcomed.

Miscellany

1)So I have finally read Matthew Continetti's much blogged-about "Two Faces of the Tea Party." No, people should not scream at him just because he dares say something bad about the Tea Party. On the other hand, the section where he criticizes Beck's "canon of competing authorities" is kind of odd. Much of Beck's "canon of competing authorities" -- the critique of early 20th century progressivism, his interest in Hayek, and perhaps to a lesser extent Shlaes's and Folsom's work on the Depression -- overlaps with the reading lists and the types of ideas that have been discussed in more highbrow circles for decades. Beck might not be the most sophisticated critic of the New Deal, but it doesn't sound as though his ideas are that far out of the intellectual right mainstream. The conspiracy theory (and no, I don't mean as in Volokh Conspiracy) type stuff, however, is. It's a little strange that Continetti doesn't focus on this distinction instead.

Continetti also seems to conflate "having moderate policy ideas" with "temperamental moderation," i.e. smiling and not seeming too frothing at the mouth when one presents one's policy ideas. It reminds me of point 2 of the critique of Eggers and O'Leary that I wrote a few months ago.

2)Pittsburgh may or may not be hipster, but they are apparently really interested in law and economics there. It's all the more startling because the other cities on the list all have major universities packed with intellectual types who might be interested in law and econ (Berkeley, Stanford, New Haven, Cambridge, Ann Arbor) or have lots of policy wonks (D.C. and Fairfax.) What could be more hipster than a law and econ scholar?

3)Tall libertarian bloggers apparently dislike being tall and would prefer to give their daughters the option of being shorter if it were easy and safe. Out here on the left tail of the libertarian height bell curve, I'd probably do the same to give my daughters (and sons especially) a little bit of extra height. Of course, a lot turns on how easy and safe such interventions really might be in real life.