From the monthly archives:
The third line of the latest Powderfinger album is:
You’re swollen like a lexicon.
If that’s the best they can come up with it seems to imply not swollen at all.
By the way, the album isn’t particularly good. If you were going to buy it because you’re still hoping they can recapture the quality of their early work, save your dollars and be spared some disappointment.
If you’ve been hit in the last couple of the days by pornspam in your comments, you’re not alone; Crooked Timber has been hit too, as have many other sites. If you’re a MT person, the IP address to block for this latest wave is 209.210.176. *and make sure to include the period at the end.* Thanks to “Teresa Nielsen Hayden”:http://www.nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/ for the heads-up – and check her site for further updates and breaking news. “MT Blacklist”:http://www.jayallen.org/journey/2003/10/mtblacklist_monday_hell_or_high_water should be out tomorrow; if it works as advertised, it should help mitigate the problem.
The FT’s economist-as-agony-aunt column takes a look at the “costs and benefits of suicide”:http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1059480520343&p=1012571727126 .
“Tom”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/000630.html posted a few days ago on fifteen great jazz albums; I’m ashamed to state that I know next to nothing about jazz – or classical music. My tastes tend to be more lowbrow – rock, pop, some country, and lots of experimental electronic music. In that spirit, I’ll offer a list of five of my favourite quasi-obscure albums. Only quasi-obscure, mind you; you should be able to find all of this stuff in yer local Tower if the spirit moves you.
Via Randy Barnett, I see that John Lott isn’t the only disgraced gun researcher who likes playing dress-up on the internet. It looks like Michael Bellesiles has a sock puppet too. “Benny Smith” knows a lot of things that only Bellesiles would know. Bellesiles hasn’t admitted it, but having read the story, I can’t think of another explanation.
That’s really embarassing for Bellesiles. What’s more embarassing, though, is the way that Lott’s fiercest critics have continued to stick up for Bellesiles. Even after his work was debunked, Bellesiles is being promoted on a speaking tour by People for the American Way. Just this week, the editors of the American Prospect published a piece by him as if he was a trustworthy source. And of course, any respectable think tank would have fired him a long time ago, but he keeps hanging on at Brookings.
Sad, really.
UPDATE: (Irony hat off) Now that I think of it, what in the world is Bellesiles doing nowadays? I just realized that I have no idea, and googling didn’t help.
(Also, now that my hat is off, I should reiterate without irony that the story about Bellesiles does seem true, and it really is embarassing for him. Don’t want to be misinterpreted.)
Though it can never replace the old one, in what way is a new one needed?
Sorely.
When it is published online what must we read?
The whole thing.
What value do such posts hold for reading?
Much worth.
What sort of insightful are they?
Characteristically.
Brian Leiter suggests that philosophers will start fleeing California now that Arnie! has become governor.
Already the “buzz” among philosophers is that the election of the absurd Schwarzenegger, in a state already facing enormous problems, is going to lead philosophers in California, especially at UC system campuses, to start thinking about leaving. We’ll see whether Schwarzenegger can pull a “Thatcher.”
That’s not the buzz I’ve been hearing, but I’m a long way from California. Do any readers who are closer to the action want to leave any impressions?
I just stumbled across the webpage for The Monads. When they were compresent with us as such, the Monads were constituted by three WWU undergraduates, two of whom are now UMass graduate students, Kris McDaniel and Justin Klocksiem. I was just complimenting Kris’s philosophical abilities the other day and I forgot entirely to mention his musical accomplishments. Bad omission! If you like philosophical musical humour, you should download some of the songs they have posted. I particularly liked Meinongian Babe, which is the kind of song you might have heard on the Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs had Stephin Merrit been a philosophy major. (Note that’s an 8MB download, so if everyone downloads it we’ll probably crash the UMass server.)
I just learned (rather late) that this week’s Times Educational Supplement is carrying this Platform piece by me. Since I don’t have a subscription I can’t read it, but assume it is a nicely edited version of the following.
Richard Rorty has an article in today’s Boston Globe arguing that Davidson showed that “reality can’t be an illusion.” (Note: that quote is from the subhead not from Rorty.) Since it’s Rorty it’s little surprise that I don’t believe a word of it (sadly I don’t have time to write a long enough post to convincingly say why) but it’s a much better philosophical article than you’ll normally see in an American newspaper. (Thanks to the APA News service for the link.)
Melanie Phillips has been at the Tory party conference and has some interesting things to say about it. Basically she distinguishes two conferences — a public conference with great ideas delivered in a voter-appealing way; and a lunatic asylum of Tory MPs conspiring semi-publicly against their leader. She says that
Duncan Smith, fights for his political life against malevolent libertines, intellectual snobs, resentful has-beens, insanely ambitious opportunists and other malcontents. The parliamentary Conservative party needs to be put in a straitjacket.
I can’t share her enthusiasm for the Tories newfound localism; but am all for straitjacketing the parliamentary party. But that leads me to wonder what would be left of the Tory party if we locked up the lunatics. A handful of shadow cabinet members (well, two, Letwin and Willetts) and some old age pensioners? Is Phillips a closet LibDem?
Instapundit links to Mark Steyn on the Valerie Plame outing and says “Read the whole thing.” So, I read the whole thing, and I found one of the most intellectually dishonest pieces I’ve read since… since Monday or so.
It’s another “Isn’t the real issue…” piece. In this case, the “real issue” is why Wilson was sent to Niger.
“Arnold Kling”:http://www.techcentralstation.com/100703B.html posts an essay on Tech Central Station, criticizing Paul Krugman’s punditry for deviating from sound economic theory. Kling suggests that Paul Krugman should stick to “Type C” arguments, about the consequences of policies, and that he should avoid “Type M” arguments about the motives underlying these policies. According to Kling, type M arguments are difficult to prove, and are anyway unimportant compared to policy outcomes, which are what we should care about.
Kling’s tone is reasonable and moderate, as compared, say, to the mendacious and economically illiterate ravings of Donald Luskin and his ilk. He’s still wrong.
Via “Larry Solum”:http://www.lsolum.blogspot.com/2003_10_01_lsolum_archive.html#106566263824779405 , I see Ronald Dworkin’s “Rights and Terror”:http://www.law.nyu.edu/clppt/program2003/readings/dworkin.pdf (pdf). Dworkin provides both a useful catalogue of the Bush administration’s restrictions on the rights of both citizens and non-citizens of the US since September 11th. He concedes that many of those detained fail to fit into the models provided either by the traditional laws of war or the criminal law. It is incumbent on us, therefore, to think through what justice requires in this new situation. The Bush administration, though, has not done so.
bq. The Bush administration and their supporters say that a new structure, which they call a new balance, is necessary. But they propose not a new structure but none at all: they assume the privileges of both models and the constraints of neither.
Some sort of mad puritanism seems to be afflicting parts of the blogosphere. Oliver Kamm (in “comments to Harry Hatchet”:http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/archives/2003/10/08/life_liberty_and_the_pursuit_of_.php , then “Natalie Solent”:http://nataliesolent.blogspot.com/2003_10_05_nataliesolent_archive.html#106560737553616022 and “Stephen Pollard”:http://www.stephenpollard.net/001203.html have been dogmatically asserting that government should limit itself to the provision of public goods, the assurance of basic rights and to treating citizens justly (though they disagree on what that means). Compassion, according to them, is a virtue (if it is a virtue) that should be exercised by individuals in a private capacity and not by government. But that just looks far too austere.