The myth of the big-tent Federalist Society

In law school, I was in the Federalist Society. At that time the HLS chapter was in a phase of incredible growth (some of which was probably growth for growth's sake, in compensation for a preceding period of shrunken, fallow membership). On of the things stressed during this boom period was that the Fed Society was a "big tent": the members had a wide variety of political opinions, internal disagreement was frequent, etc. And to a certain extent this was true, although it didn't take long for me to be put off by some of the more common points of internal agreement, e.g. big-government conservatism with a generous helping of theocracy.*

The Fed Soc did put on a range of informative and interesting events, including many panel discussions reflecting the wide range of its members' positions. This was assisted by the refusal of many liberal faculty members to take part in Fed Soc panels; sometimes it's easier to invite a criminal-justice-skeptic libertarian to speak than to coax a left-wing professor thirty feet out of his office to defend a position he normally embraces. I assume they didn't want to validate the other panelists by participating in the discussion. Or something.

But the real problem with the Fed Soc is that even if the members go around telling themselves (and potential recruits) that it's ideologically diverse, nobody on the outside knows that---or buys it. So you get stuff like this, where a single line on a resume results in the hiring partner projecting heaven knows what onto a candidate. Might it be inconsistent, as one commenter noted, to hire someone at Legal Services who believes funding for Legal Services should be eliminated? Of course! However, it's not like joining a club in law school requires a blood oath to support everything that the organization supports, or what its prominent members support. (Maybe the applicant is a Ninth Amendment fan, or a gun rights maven, or pro-life---none of which are incompatible with the idea that poor people deserve legal representation or with BIGLAW litigation practice, and all of which are perfectly common reasons to be drawn to the Fed Soc.) Most people, though, don't think about that, or don't care. So whether the Fed Soc actually is a big tent is irrelevant; it's not perceived as one by outsiders, and so you can't count on that as a defense to any untrue suppositions people might make. You'll never get a chance to present that defense. The reviewers are just looking for a reason to toss your resume.

But what do I know, I'm just someone who quit disclosing** my Fed Soc membership*** after the first dozen times someone was flabbergasted to hear that I didn't support prayer in schools, sodomy laws, flat taxes, or hard time for drug users.

* By no means was this a universal position, but it was common enough to be troubling.

** This was not even the worst resume one-liner for me. The Harvard Law School Target Shooting Club was far more alienating. That got struck after EVERY single callback in NYC featured lengthy and fascinated/horrified discussion thereof. In the callbacks I got, that is.

*** Actually, I think my membership has lapsed.

Recipe: Mushroom Barley Soup

Nice for a snowy winter day.

10 oz. baby bella mushrooms, stemmed and sliced thinly
1 oz. dried porcini mushrooms, soaked in 1 c. water until softened
1 medium onion, diced
1 handful baby carrots, sliced
1/2 cup canned diced tomatoes
1 cup pearl barley
1/2 tsp dried thyme
salt & pepper
5 cups vegetable or beef stock, or water

Saute onion and carrot in oil 4-5 minutes, then add sliced mushrooms. Cook until mushroom liquid is almost gone, then add barley. Cook until barley is almost brown, then add tomatoes and thyme. Reserving porcini soaking liquid, chop porcinis roughly and then add both to pot, with salt and pepper. Add stock. Bring to boil, then simmer until barley is tender, 20-30 minutes.

In which I complain about bars

I am not a big drinker. In fact, I'm an incredible lightweight and cheapskate. This means, though, that when I do go to a bar and order a drink, it's important to me that it be good, since I will probably only have two chances to order. Since I don't drink a lot, I often ask friends who are more versed in the cocktail scene what I should get.

So why is it that I can never get a good drink? It always plays out predictably:

Cocktail buff friend: You should really try a [something more obscure than rum & coke]. They're very good.

A, at a bar, later: Could I please have an [Interesting Cocktail]?

Server: What's in that? (giving me the stink-eye)

A: (Er. Thinks, if I knew everything that was in it, I'd probably just make it myself.) Uh, maybe [liquor]? And [liqueur]? And some muddled [not particularly unusual fruit]? I'm not 100 percent sure.

Server: Well, I'll check. (Ten minutes later, comes back with something that bears only a passing resemblance to the drink in question, or the news that the bar doesn't have any of [that fruit]* and what can I order instead? This usually ends up being something incredibly basic, like a gin & tonic, which they also somehow screw up, probably out of spite.)

How hard would it be to 1) ask the bartender what's in something and if they can make it (hint: you can cheat and look it up, guy), 2) come back to me if they are missing an ingredient and ask for a reorder? If it's something that doesn't have a standard recipe, just come back and say, "We make our [Interesting Cocktail] with X, Y, and Z. Is that okay?"

I would go to bars much more often if I could easily order drinks and discover really enjoyable cocktails. But the constant grilling and eye-rolling and whatnot are driving down my booze expenditures. Is it unreasonable to expect to be able to order something for which you have not memorized the recipe? Isn't that why bartenders have guidebooks?

*Happens most often with Old-Fashioneds, which, hello, oranges are not that weird, also by definition it's not a cutting-edge obscurity.

The further Jezebelization of the feminist blogosphere

Sabrina, Jennifer, and Dave left the party and headed into the rain. The party had been unremarkable, only this time Sabrina had allowed the open bar to get the better of her. She knew she was completely wasted. What she didn’t know was that a predator was watching her every move.

“I can barely stand,” Sabrina said, swaying innocently on the soggy sidewalk. ... She was 24 at the time, a magazine writer.

Jennifer said, “O.K., I think she needs to go home.”

Dave, who was 29, said, “Let’s go get another drink!”

“I wanna go home,” Sabrina warbled.

“O.K., I’ll take her home,” Dave said.

Jennifer gave Sabrina a “WTF?” look and said, “I’ll take her home.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Dave said, hailing a cab and then bundling Sabrina inside.

“I woke up with a condom still in my vagina,” she told me.

So what just happened here? Sounds like a man took advantage of a woman who was too drunk to stand or remain conscious, much less consent. Pretty much your classic date rape.

But if you're the NY Observer and the parties' genders are switched, it's fodder for snickering coinage of nicknames like "cheetah." And if you're a D.C. feminist or male ally, that's ripe for criticism on the ground that one mustn't "scold women for daring to have sex."

Funny, I think we should scold ANYONE who calculatedly lies in wait until their friend gets too drunk to fight off an assault and then has sex with them while they are passed out.

Six Fantasy Books That Suck

Via.

Gormenghast: "impenetrable dated prose," "phallocentric" (I have no time for this), and one-third posthumous mess.

Little, Big: You have to be high to like this book. Turgid, indulgent, meandering, full of fey females viewed through smeary vaseline.

Winter's Tale: Misogynist magical realist wish-fulfillment wankage by a Luddite jerk.

The Sword of Shannara: Widely hailed as beginning of the multi-volume-epic-fantasy extruded-Tolkien-product phase of fantasy publication. I've never even tried to read this book, but I did get partway through Magic Kingdom For Sale--SOLD!, also by Brooks, and had to stop because if it was in earnest it made me want to vomit and if it was parody it was poorly executed. Worse than most fanfic by native English speakers.

Chronicles of Thomas Covenant: Maybe the first really successful dark fantasy series, but reads like something written by a zitty, embittered teenage boy studying for the PSAT. There was a blog a few years back where two girls read Lord Foul's Bane a page at a time and discussed it. Can't find it, but it was hilarious.

The Lion, the Witch, & the Wardrobe: Transparently didactic crap. Made it easier for fantasy to be dismissed as kids' stuff.

ETA: The problem with lists like this is that people make rookie mistakes, like mistaking "greatest of all time" for "thing I enjoyed the most when I was 13" or "greatest novel" for "greatest collection of short stories." Magic for Beginners is very good, but it is not a novel, and has not been out long enough for the perspective sufficient to determine whether it is one of the greatest of all time.

Consider the raisin

Interesting article on female sexual dysfunction in the NYT Mag. Main focus is on a researcher who combines CBT techniques with Buddhist "mindfulness" to encourage focus on the body. She's guided by the theories of a colleague, who argues that for many women, "desire follows arousal":

So a typical successful experience might proceed something like this: first a decision, rather than a drive, to have sex; next, as Basson puts it, a “willingness to be receptive”; then, say, the sensations of a partner’s touch; next, the awareness of being aroused; then the “responsive desire” along with increasingly intense arousal; and at last the range of physical and emotional payoffs that sex can provide and that offer positive reinforcement

Other scientists believe that being turned on from the start is more normal and Basson's theory is "distorting the truth of most women’s erotic lives and diminishing the relevance of basic randiness."

There's some strange inconsistencies in the piece---perhaps chiefly the simultaneous premises that there is a dearth of research on female desire and a BigPharma-driven juggernaut cranking out studies to legitimize pathologization of low female desire levels. Although I can't help but wonder if any drug that makes you want to have more sex or makes sex more enjoyable could get FDA approval or widespread availability. We already have drugs that make life more fun. They're illegal.

Also of note is the coda at the end on testosterone, which is known to stimulate female desire, albeit at the cost of nasty side effects. Women given T often experience a "spike [in] sexual interest"---but so do women given a placebo. And the control group also experienced the masculinizing side effects. Are we so convinced that randiness is the province of men that we can be tricked into feeling and looking more like a Randy?

No Popeye's Chicken is a Serious Failing, Though

When someone asks you if you want fried food, you ... say ... YES!

The Shakers disappeared for a reason.

Total pie fail. Filling didn't gel, a pain to cut, crust lacked integrity. Luckily this was just for me and there was no holiday pie shaming.

Back again

With pecans, Meyer lemons, and a satisfied taco-consumption quota.

I'm so contrarian I should write for Slate.

Challah is just bad brioche.

ETA: Is there any good reason for the convention of putting the currency symbol before the number it relates to, e.g. "$20"? We don't say "dollars twenty." We say "twenty dollars." So why not "20$"?

"We love the money in Jesus Christ’s name! Jesus loved money too!”

I don't even know how you could deal with people like this. God wants you to have a house you can't afford? God wants you to buy a flashy car? The parishioners have NO ATTACHMENT TO REALITY. How do you get by in a largely secular society when this is your starting point?

"Hi, I'd like to get the limit on my credit raised."

"We'll, you're already in massive debt and have no job. We're going to deny your request."

"But ... God told me you would give me an extension on my credit line."

Weekend Bake: No-Knead Bread

So I tried making this. What a disaster! Too much water = giant sticky mess. And the yeast was old. Still turned out edible, though.