Wisdom in the aggregate   {Comments: 2}

1. Joshua Bell went mostly unnoticed posing as a street performer in the DC metro. I'm not sure whether this says more about the current state of classical music, how we conceive public space today, or the people who live in Washington, but the article is an interesting read.

2. Tyler Cowen points out that Fred Thompson is favored over John McCain for the GOP nomination at Intrade. Maybe Sam Waterson can be his veep.

The impunity coefficient   {Comments: 2}

"One corollary of all the detective novels to which a goodly share of mankind repairs for refreshment specifies that a crime present its investigators with a picture, the material and, so to speak, stylistic elements of which, if meticulously assembled and analyzed, permit a sure solution. In actuality, however, the situation is different. The coefficients of impunity and error are high not because, or not only or not always because, the investigators are men of small intelligence but because the clues a crime offers are usually utterly inadequate. A crime, that is to say, which is planned or committed by people who have every interest in working to keep the impunity coefficient high."

--from Leonardo Sciascia's To Each His Own (trans. Adrienne Foulke)

Chicago bite by bite   {Comments: 3}

I've just added a link to Gapers Block Drive-Thru, which is a food blog that I'm going to be working on. My first post, a mini-review of The Nile, was last week, and I have a new one today on Caputo's Cheese Market. Eventually I may find that I have something interesting to say about food beyond the basic "look at this!" food porn impulse, but for now I'll mostly be taking the opportunity to post a lot of food photography there.

Bombarded by repeated fundraising requests   {Comments: 0}

Dayna is right on the money (!) with this post/letter about Obama's fundraising strategy, particularly when you consider the various storylines about him running a different kind of campaign and being an outsider candidate. I've seen at least two articles comparing his online strategy with Howard Dean's, but from what I've seen -- fundraising spam galore ever since he announced -- Dayna's comparison with the Kerry campaign is way more apt. I should say also that I've sent more than one unanswered email inquiring about how to get involved in the campaign.

It's interesting that the much-lauded Dean model of eschewing traditional hierarchical campaign structures seems to be dead. Or maybe we're too far out from the election to see a lot of grassroots agitating?