BUILD YOUR OWN TIVO.

INTERVIEWS WITH LAW FIRM PERSONNEL who have been caught publicly criticizing their employer tend to have the feel of well-meaning attempts by journalists to get the word on the Pyongyang street. This story on Clifford Chance is no different: "We're six of the happiest people here; we really love the firm."

OVER THE LAST THREE years, Jim Thome hit .256 on the road, 63 points lower than in Jacobs Field. And Veterans Stadium is no Jacobs Field for hitters. And how a fellow hits at age 32-37 tends to be somewhat worse than how he hits at age 29-31. I'm a big Thome fan, and the Braves are due for a fall, but the Phillies need more than Thome and David Bell to make up the 20+ games between them and the Braves, as sweet as an Abreu/Burrell/Thome lineup looks. (When did David Bell become a savior? He's a competent third baseman, but hardly a dramatic upgrade.)

I'D HAVE TO CHECK, but I imagine that the New York Times was among the leaders in pooh-poohing Jack Welch's perks at General Electric--certainly Paul Krugman did. (Corporations often give perks instead of salary to high executives because the perks are tax-deductible and the salary isn't -- thus, the corporation can provide the executive with a higher standard of living at a lower cost to shareholders than they could by just raising his salary. Whether corporations where the executives live like kings or where the cost of such perks are hidden from shareholders are well-run is another question for another time.)

I mention this because I was amused by a recent article in the travel section of the Times. The writer, who was a Times editor, spent three nights with his wife in different New York City luxury hotel suites and justified it with a story about the experience, presumably for all those Times subscribers who are trying to choose between the various $1000+tax hotel rooms available when they visit the home city of the New York Times. A $322 dinner at Lespinasse merited a whole sentence, a $102 afternoon tea half a sentence, but the $150 worth of massages at the St. Regis got edited out. I'm curious if New York Times shareholders footed the entire $5,000 bill, or if the rank-and-file writers at the Times get the same opportunities for expense accounts.

[CORRECTION: I am now informed that the perks are subject to stricter tax rules than straight income, so my sentence in the first paragraph about the reasoning behind corporate perks is incorrect. I still have to wonder whether corporations try to get deductions for some of the perks we have read about in the press. Certainly a number of the "perks" at my job are quite appropriately treated as business expenses by my employer even if they also have the incidental effect of improving my quality of life.]

KREMLIN-WATCHERS TAKE NOTE: The State Department is refurbishing the Iraqi embassy in Washington, D.C., which had been abandoned since diplomatic relations were cut off in 1991. $40,000 in frozen Iraqi bank accounts are being used to repair the roof and add a new gutter and downspout system. The State Department refused to deny that the restoration was in preparation for regime change.

A SPECTACULAR OPTICAL ILLUSION. (via Volokh)

CAPTAIN SPAULDING'S discussion of spin-offs and cross-overs got me surfing, and caused me to discover a bit of trivia I never knew: Lois from Hi & Lois is the sister of Beetle Bailey.

WHO KNEW THAT there was a 1931 version of Hammett's The Maltese Falcon? The lead, Ricardo Cortez in the Bogart role of Sam Spade, later went on to play Perry Mason in a 1936 movie; starlet and Marx Brothers heroine Thelma Todd played Iva Archer, and horror-movie character actor Dwight Frye was Wilmer. Reviews indicate that the pre-Code version was more explicit than the more-famous 1941 edition, but John Huston did a better job in capturing Hammett's style. (via Sjostrom)

THE WEB HAS EVERYTHING, part 1153: Gallery of Macaroni & Cheese Boxes.

NEXT TIME YOU see a Canadian getting all huffy, remind him or her that the top Google search in Canada is for "Britney Spears."

Why Are Black Students Lagging? asks the New York Times.

NEW YORK TIMES article on Charlie Kaufman, author of "Being John Malkovich" and the forthcoming Pirandellian "Adaptation."

AS I'VE SAID BEFORE, I'd be a lot more sympathetic about the plight of the convicted rapists of the Central Park jogger if their defense wasn't, as the New York Times put it, that they were busy mugging someone else in the park when the rapes occurred. The criminals spent a handful of years in prison, which was too little punishment for the other violent acts they committed, even if it does turn out to be too much punishment for a rape they confessed to but didn't commit.

"That was the issue," said Peter Rivera, Mr. Santana's lawyer in 1990. "But we didn't say, `No, when the jogger was raped, my client was on 96th Street, mugging someone else.' That would have been self-defeating."

So, instead, the lawyers attacked the victim.

Let's be clear: it was an injustice if these criminals were convicted of a rape they didn't commit. But given the crimes they did commit, and the punishment they received, I find it hard to say that the overall result was unjust. They got a fair trial: the criminals chose not to use the best evidence that they had of their "innocence" because it would have implicated them in other crimes. The jury, not aware of that evidence, convicted them of a larger set of crimes than the set of crimes they actually committed. In the land of cliches, this is sleeping in the bed you made for yourself.

Of all the injustices that take place in the legal system every day, one where a group of teenagers who committed eight muggings (including one of a schoolteacher who was severaly beaten and kicked) was also mistakenly convicted of a rape that took place contemporaneously in the same vicinity probably doesn't make the top ten thousand. I'm more appalled that the criminals aren't still in jail than I am at the mistaken verdict. The Daily News is more vivid in describing what happened:

The roving gang moved south, stopping at 101st St., where they formed a gantlet and surrounded tandem cyclists Gerald Malone and Patricia Dean.

"I was terrified," Dean testified. "They were grabbing at my legs and pushing at my shoulder. They were making animal noises, grunting. I thought for sure we were going over."

Malone and Dean got away. Others were not as fortunate.

British jogger Robert Garner, 30, was pushed down an embankment and pummeled. He thought he "was going to die."

Teacher John Loughlin, 41, was thrown face down in the grass and whacked in the head with a pipe until he was bloody.

Would Patricia Dean have been raped had the muggers succeeded in overturning her tandem bicycle? We'll never know, but we can make an educated guess.

YOU ALREADY KNEW that Ann Coulter was an idiot, but she confirms it by putting the pseudo-scientific "Darwin on Trial" on her Christmas book list.

VERY IMPRESSIVE DC Ethnic Dining Guide from Tyler Cowen. (via Mooney, who writes about Cowen's theories that globalization diversifies culture, as opposed to reducing it to a melange of McDonald's)

LIBERTARIAN SELF-PARODY: In Defense of Scrooge.