Apparently, there's a movement afoot to designate the first car of each subway train the "singles" car. This means that if you exchange apparently meaningful glances with a handsome (or winsome) stranger in the first car of the train, you should feel confident that you can approach that person to initiate a conversation, without fear of rejection. [Read the article here]

I can only speak for myself, the father of a nine-month old baby and happily married to his mother for seven years: I ride in the front car of the train because that's where the seats are. Statistically speaking, subway trains are like bell curves -- thinly populated at either end and bulging in the middle. I am travelling with an infant in a stroller, I get tired, and I want to sit down, dammit. Not to metion, have you ever tried to give a bottle to a baby seated in a stroller while standing up in a lurching subway train and trying to hold on to the overhead bar, your briefcase and the stroller? It ain't easy.

Most likely, if I'm giving you a meaningful glance, it's because I am gazing longingly at your seat, hoping against hope that you're getting off at the next stop so I can sit down.

I have been on vacation for the past two weeks, and away from my regular net-connections. I have now returned, dug out at the office, and will resume my sporadic schedule of posting. In case anyone worried.

I don't get the public angst that corporate officers are going through over certifying their financial results. What's the big deal? That they're being asked to certify the accuracy of work and judgments made by others? Pheh. Lawyers have been required to do that for years.

Here's what I'm talking about: any lawyer who practices in any federal court in a civil case is subject to the provisions of Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Under this rule, any legal document submitted to the Court must be signed by the attorney preparing the document; by signing, the attorney is certifying to the Court that

to the best of the [signer's] knowledge, information, and belief, formed after an inquiry reasonable under the circumstances,--

(1) it [the document] is not being presented for any improper purpose, such as to harass or to cause unnecessary delay or needless increase in the cost of litigation;

(2) the claims, defenses, and other legal contentions therein are warranted by existing law or by a nonfrivolous argument for the extension, modification, or reversal of existing law or the establishment of new law;

(3) the allegations and other factual contentions have evidentiary support or, if specifically so identified, are likely to have evidentiary support after a reasonable opportunity for further investigation or discovery; and

(4) the denials of factual contentions are warranted on the evidence or, if specifically so identified, are reasonably based on a lack of information or belief.

To quote the rule, "the sanction [for violating the rule] may consist of, or include, directives of a nonmonetary nature, an order to pay a penalty into court, or, if imposed on motion and warranted for effective deterrence, an order directing payment to the movant of some or all of the reasonable attorneys' fees and other expenses incurred as a direct result of the violation."

Now, granted, Rule 11 has had its critics, and a somewhat bumpy history. [article] But on the whole, most people in the profession believe that it has been a good thing. [article] If anything, the certification rules enforce what ought to be understood in any functioning society: we are each responsible for upholding the integrity of the process, and we are each accountable if our actions interfere with the integrity of the process in any way. What's the problem with that?

At the end of my last post, I suggested that perhaps there was a need for a "smartersun.com". Later, I discovered that there was such site (called smarternysun.com). Curiously, the site ceased updating at the end of May, apparently having decided that keeping the Sun honest wasn't worth the trouble, since the problems (according to smarternysun.com, anyway) were too many to comment on.

The producers at smarternysun.com's believe, as do I, that the Sun has a place in the New York media. In their words,

The sad thing is, the Sun has a lot of potential. There are some good writers on staff (Rachel Kovner, for all "Like Father, Like Sun"'s griping, isn't a half-bad reporter). And the city could use a dedicated, local broadsheet that appeals to a less visceral, populist readership than the Daily News or the Post.

After reading the farewell message at the site, which catalogs some of the problems the Sun faces, I'm not so sure that it will survive. It will be interesting to see if it does.

The New York Sun has pronounced that quality of life is declining in New York. In two front-page articles on Tuesday, the Sun lamented that first, rats have been observed on certain streets and second, that graffiti is on the rise. From these two data points, the Sun's banner headline screams: "Graffiti, Rats Make Comeback as Quality of Life Starts Sliding"

If you actually take the time to read the articles, however, you'll be hard pressed to find the facts to support such a strong conclusion. For example, to support its conclusion that graffiti is making a comeback [link to the article], the Sun relies on exactly two verifiable facts; the rest of the argument is based on anecdotal or speculative assertions, or worse, simple conclusory sentences without any support whatsoever.

These are the two facts: for the past month, there has been a vaguely poetic graffitum (what is the singular of graffiti, anyway?) on the side of a building near City Hall -- and down the street from the Sun's office, by the way -- that reads “The knowledge is innate feel inside to see you can not look with your eyes for the only thing you need". And, during the past nine months, graffiti-related arrests have declined 34%.

The Sun suggests that under Mayor Guiliani, the graffitum would have been painted over sooner than a month, but as discussed below, the speed with which a scrawl is covered over depends in part on the building owner and the community. It's not clear from the article that either have lifted a finger to help out. Interestingly, the Sun finds sinister portents in the apparently incoherent wording of the quote, although any intelligent reader will see that it is far to legible and literary to be a gang-style "tag" or invitation to further crime. More likely, its meaning is political in some way, which might account for its being written in the shadows of City Hall.

The decline in arrests, on the other hand, is indeed curious, and may bear more analysis, but the Sun doesn't deign to explore that question. Has the number of arrests declined because fewer people were writing graffiti? Was it a temporary decline while police focused on national security issues? Even if arrests declined overall during the last nine months, what has been the trend in the last three months (that is, have we rounded the corner)? These questions are unanswered. Worse, the so-called investigative reporter doesn't appear to have asked them. Nevertheless, the Sun is confident in implying a link between the decline in arrests and an increase in graffiti.

Not that the Sun documents the increase in graffiti in any verifiable way, mind you. Indeed, the Sun makes this stunning concession: "there is no reliable index of New York's graffiti levels." It would seem to me that this begs the question: if there is no reliable measure, how is it that the Sun can proclaim that graffiti is on the rise?

About the only objective measure of the city's response to graffiti incidents, moreover, shows that the city is still on the job: according to the city, records show that the city's anti-graffiti task force has cleaned about the same number of sites this year as it has in each other year that the program has been in existence -- years during which the number of defacements declined. At worst, this fact is neutral -- even if the city isn't making headway, at least it's not falling behind previous years' results. That's heartening news in an era of tough budgets.

Most of the article is content to "report" anecdotal "facts" such as this: the executive director of the Columbus Avenue Business Improvement District is quoted as saying (with no data to back up her statement) that "The graffiti on newsstands and street lamps and mailboxes never really went away,” and that she "cringes" "every time she walks down the avenue." Well, wait. If she is saying that the graffiti never went away, then her statement doesn't support the conclusion that there has been a sudden increase in graffiti incidents, does it? And of what relevance is her "cringing," other than pessimistic Bloomberg-bashing? Perhaps she has a lower tolerance for graffiti than normal New Yorkers. Maybe she just cringes alot.

And this: John Logue, the president of the 86th Street BID in Bay Ridge "confirms" (again without any data) that graffiti is on the increase "since last fall." Says Logue, “We’re playing catch-up now to get the cops interested in making sure we get these quality of life crimes addressed before we have a bigger problem." A little more detail would be helpful -- whom did he talk to, when, and what was the response, for starters. And how about interviewing someone in the Bay Ridge precinct to hear the Police Department's response? As for "confirming" an increase since last fall, this goes back to the "reliable index" problem -- how can you "confirm" a trend without first establishing what the baseline was? Did the BID catalog the number or rate of distinct new defacements over any period of time? Have they logged an increase of some kind? Where is the evidence?

Now, about the question of who's to blame for the supposed "increase" in defacements -- the Sun lays the blame squarely on Bloomberg's administration and takes a few veiled jabs at him (my favorite is a statement that damns the Mayor with faint praise: in it, the Sun notes that Bloomberg "has been careful to maintain the impression that he is holding the line on Mr. Giuliani’s 'quality of life' approach to government". Note the Sun's hedge -- Bloomberg isn't actually holding the line, but only "maintaining the impression" of holding the line.) Actually, the evidence indicates that the city's doing what it can, but the fact is that the city's anti-graffiti squad can't just clean up graffiti as it sees fit, as the Sun would apparently prefer it. In fact, before it can do anything, the city must first secure the cooperation of the owner of the building on whose walls the graffiti is written. As regards the anecdotal graffitum quoted by the Sun, therefore, City Hall can't simply order it to be cleaned-up, but must get the owner of that building to permit it. If the Sun wants to rail at something, how about the fact that the building owner has left the message on the building all this time. After all, aren't the owners themselves the first line of defense in this quality of life issue? Why is it that when the graffiti remains, it's the city's failing?

In the end, the Sun might be on to something or it might not, but it's hard to tell based on the evidence presented, and certainly, the histrionic headline was unwarranted; to my mind, the Sun's headline is more damaging to public confidence than any particular scrawl on a wall near City Hall.

The Sun, an upstart in the New York paper wars, had its origins in smartertimes.com, a critique of inaccurate and biased reporting the New York Times. Perhaps it's time for smartersun.com?

In the news today: the nine Pennsylvania coal miners have sold the book and movie rights to their story to Disney for $150,000 each. [article]

Now, on the one hand, I applaud their decision to take the money -- each of these men routinely risked their lives to dig coal out of the ground, and they did it for, relatively speaking, not so much money. They faced the very real possibility that they would die, in a cold and horrible way. And they had a glimpse of their own mortality, something that, as we age, weighs more and more heavily on us. Therefore, it does not surprise me to hear that these men are not particularly interested in going back into the mines. Seems sensible enough to me. And so, on that level, I applaud the decision to take what -- two? three? -- years wages in a lump sum and retire. I can't say I'd do it differently.

But, the circumstances of these particular people aside, is there something wrong with Disney's purchasing the rights to these types of stories? I'm hardly an anti-commercialist, and believe fundamentally that the marketplace of ideas is about both ideas and the marketplace. I confess, however, to being somewhat sick of this form of cinema verite. What ever happened to good old-fashioned unsung heroism, emphasis on the "unsung"? It is true, of course, that some real-life stories bear retelling in movies, but it is equally true that not every human drama makes a good movie. The trick is knowing the difference.

An example of this is another Disney reality-based project, the film The Rookie. That movie, which starred Dennis Quaid, told the story of Tampa Bay Devil Rays pitcher Jim Morris. For the record, Morris was a middling minor league pitcher who washed out of professional baseball because of repeated injuries. He moved back to his hometown and taught high school, although coaching the baseball team was his real passion. One season, annoyed because his players seemed to have given up on themselves, Coach Morris challenged them to win the state championship. They, in turn, challenged him right back -- Coach Morris had a reputation for throwing hard during practice; if they won the championship, he had to try out to play professional baseball. They won the championship, he tried out for pro ball when he was in his early thirties, and against the odds, was eventually brought up to the big leagues to pitch for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Disney bought the rights to the story and turned the story into a movie.

The problem with The Rookie is that it violated one of the fundamental tenets of storytelling: we already know how the story is going to end. Consider the tag-line of the movie's synopsis on Hollywood.com: "When he [tries out for the Devil Rays], his big-league dreams are revived, and there's no telling where he could go." Wrong. We know exactly where he could go, because he actually did try out for the Devil Rays, and actually did get brought up through the D-Ray's farm system, and actually did pitch for one and a half seasons in the Major Leagues. We knew this before the movie started, so where was the suspense? Did anyone in the movie theater really wonder, gee, will Morris flame out during his tryouts and go home a dejected and broken man? Of course not. And, as a result, there was no drama below the surface -- once you got past the feel-good part of the story (the part of the story that was covered in vivid, sometimes excrutiating, detail in the news media when Morris actually came up in the big leagues), there was nothing else to say. Prior to his lucky break, Jim Morris was hardly atypical: alot of middling pitcher who got sidelined by injuries early in their careers never made it to the Big Show. His "comeback", if you can call it that, was interesting, but did not reveal greater "truths" about the human condition -- it was mostly because of happenstance that he made the cut (the D-Rays were still in their expansion mode, so they didn't have a deep farm system). Ironically, his story was interesting because it seemed just like the kind of too-good-to-be-real story that Hollywood pumps out year in and year out. It was a true case of life imitating art.

Contrast The Rookie with Boys Don't Cry, which told the story of Tina Brandon, a woman living in Oklahoma who, by some accounts, was a lesbian, and by other accounts was transgendered (born a woman, but feeling she was a man). The story is full of moral ambiguities, and although the basic outlines of the story had been previously recounted in the news, the movie asked difficult questions about willful blindness, tolerance and what it means to be different. Ultimately, both were "true stories", but one revealed more truth than the other.

And so it is likely to be with the story of nine miners who, in the face of certain death, fought to stay alive. We will learn a little more about them, and we will understand a little bit more about their ordeal (think A Perfect Storm underground), but what will we learn about ourselves? I don't have high hopes that we'll learn much that we didn't already know.

Three interesting articles for consideration:

The first is an article from Atlantic Monthly by Stuart Taylor, proposing a legal framework for "preventive detention." The point of the article is that preventive detention may not be strictly constitutional, but nevertheless necessary in situations where a sleeper agent has not committed any crime (yet), but is part of a terrorist organization or engaged in a conspiracy to commit terrorist acts. Taylor suggests that if we have to have preventive detention (and there is an argument to be made that we do), we should couple it with at least some amount of due process. [Read the article]

The second is an article from Foreign Affairs by Grenville Byford. There is an adage that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Byford turns this into a question, and asks, how do you define "terrorism"? Ultimately, he concludes that it is a balancing act that looks at the justness of the combatants' causes, the morality of the tactics, and the availability of other means to achieve the same ends. To paraphrase Potter Stewart, Byford doesn't define terrorism, but gives us a framework that lets us know it when we see it. [Read the article]

The third is an article on Reason.com by Jonathan Rauch. In it, Rauch examines Bin Laden's ideological vision (a form of Muslim fundamentalism) and finds many similarities to Marxism. Ultimately, Rauch concludes that the battle of ideologies between Muslim fundamentalists and Western secularists will be a war of attrition similar to the intellectual (and later, cold) war between capitalism and Marxism. [Read the article]