In a series of posts (“here”:http://www.curmudgeonlyclerk.com/weblog/archives/2003_10.html#000563 and “here”:http://www.curmudgeonlyclerk.com/weblog/archives/2003_11.html#000570) and comments, the “Curmudgeonly Clerk”:http://www.curmudgeonlyclerk.com/weblog/ has attacked Dahlia Lithwick, who writes Supreme Court commentary at “Slate”:http://slate.msn.com/. In particular, the Clerk doesn’t like this “column”:http://slate.msn.com/id/2090532/, in which Lithwick tries to explain why Justice Scalia, unlike many other judges and justices, frequently speaks out about the most controversial issues of the day. Suffice it to say, the Clerk doesn’t like Lithwick’s diagnosis. In fact, he disagrees with it so much that he’s decided Lithwick no longer deserves to be treated civilly.
From the monthly archives:
November 2003
Kevin Drum updates the score in the ongoing debate between Mann, Bradley and Hughes (climate scientists) and McIntyre and McKitrick (a couple of economists). The latter claim to have re-analyzed data from a famous paper of the former’s on global warming and found numerous errors that, when corrected, make the results go away. The climatologists have responded vigorously, saying that their critics have botched the job. Both sides are preparing further responses at the moment, so the issue is on hold.
That, however, hasn’t stopped Iain Murray from writing a quite inflammatory article in the NRO about all of this. The article tries to stamp the whole issue with his preferred spin:
bq. The whole affair bears strong resemblance to the recent Bellesiles controversy. Emory University historian Michael Bellesiles won a Bancroft Prize for his argument that gun ownership in early America was not widespread. It took an amateur historian, Clayton Cramer, to point out that this claim could not be substantiated on the basis of actual gun-ownership records. Eventually, an Emory University investigation strongly criticized Bellesiles, and the Bancroft Prize was withdrawn.
Given what we know about the present case, this is an indefensible comparison.
Given that Paul Krugman is reminding us all of Stein’s Law (“Things that can’t go on forever, don’t”), I thought I’d remind everyone of Davies’ Corolloraries:
1. Things that can’t go on forever, go on much longer than you think they will.
2. Corollorary 1 applies even after taking into account Corollorary 1.
Many years ago I had to supplement my income teaching evening classes in public administration. At the time — and maybe now for all I know — something called the “Baumol effect” was being widely blamed for higher inflation in the public sector than in the private sector. I was reminded of this recently when reading the “France Profonde column in the latest Prospect”:http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/LoginPage.asp?P_Article=12327 (subcribers only – free to web in about 3 weeks). The latest article bemoans the decline in French traditional cooking both at home and in restaurants. The basic problem seems to be the same in both establishments: traditional French dishes are often very time consuming and labour intensive. The result: people don’t bother much at home (except on special occasions) and restaurants buy in inferior pre-prepared vacuum-packed versions of favourite dishes.
Apparently it’s easier on your hands to type like a pirate. (Hat tip: Mark Liberman.)
From Martin Schönfeld’s entry in the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy on Kant’s philosophical development:
Modern thought begins with Kant. The appearance of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781 marks the start of modern philosophy, and Kant’s ideas have helped to shape global civilization. Today his texts are read on all continents. Although Kant is in the same league as Confucius or Aristotle…
I’ve got some relatives who have spent time in Antarctica, but I’ve never heard them talk about the Kant scholars down there. More seriously, there’s more than a few Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, Hume, Berkeley, Reid and Rousseau scholars who might dispute that modern philosophy begins with CPR, and a few million Americans who would probably dispute that there was no modern thought before Kant.
The return of America’s Greatest Living Writer has inspired me to collect just a few one-line snarks that still make me laugh.
If you watch television or read newspapers and magazines, you might get the wrong idea that we’re losing… But take it from my highly-reliable correspondents who file from anonymous email addresses.
Ann Coulter, Jr. will likely be making the rounds over the next couple of weeks for her new book, Pieholes Are For Pie. Or whatever it’s called.
Blogwatch – Foreigners Are Mean! is dedicated to noting every cross word uttered about the United States by foreign leaders or journalists, plus a smattering of other topics.
And a lifetime achievement award to Roy Edroso. I can’t pick just one.
Dwight Merideth has a swell post on Democratic opposition to confirming minority conservatives to the bench. Democrats have confirmed twelve of Bush’s Hispanic court nominees and denied one (12/1). They have confirmed seven African-American nominees and have not yet confirmed Brown. (7/1). Read the whole thing for many more details. When will this reign of terror end, I think we can all hear the American people asking.
Dwight is responding to Jane Galt, who says that Democrats are trying to keep conservative minorities off the appellate bench. Others have gone much further. The most vile example of the “Democrats are racist” meme that I found without really looking came from William Sjostrom’s smear of Illinois senator Dick Durbin (via Jack O’Toole). Sjostrom notes that Durbin opposes Brown, and says:
Durbin is a long-standing stooge of the Chicago Democratic machine, which always believed blacks could be around as long as they were the shoe-shine boys or the maids, unless they were as crooked as the white Democrats. Then they could be precinct captains, and do nothing at the DMV.
When Dick Durbin sees Brown, all he can see is an uppity black woman who doesn’t know she is supposed to be either cleaning his oven or helping the local boys steal votes.
If you think that I’m leaving out any relevant evidence, context, or links, click through. That’s his whole argument.
While reading Eric Muller’s defence of David Bernstein, I came across another of his posts:
bq. Is it just me, or does this speech by Janice R. Brown seem a little, well, unhinged?
(Allen Brill has a chronology if you want to know who Janice Brown is.) Several of Muller’s commenters assure him that it’s just him and the speech is “entertaining and thought-provoking.” Clayton Cramer comments that it’s “splendid and thoughtful.” Well, that clinches it for me.
Actually, “unhinged” is a strong word, and I don’t think Janice R. Brown is insane. Also, I’m not in an position to parse her views on the Lochner decision. But as to her more general social theory… Well, the speech is a heady and unstable mix of libertarian obiter dicta, Randian bromides, culture-war cliches and, um, Procol Harum lyrics. No, really.
Chris’s post generated such an interesting comments thread that I feel I have to hop on the bandwagon. The following is a theologically revised version of a puzzle that’s been doing the rounds the past decade or so.
If anyone knows of a position for an experienced, highly qualified technical writer, you could do no better than contact Ginger Stampley at immlass@yahoo.com.
If anyone knows of a position for a QA or CM position, and is looking for a bright, hardworking guy who had previously managed a project staff of fifteen (I believe), you will probably want to contact Michael Croft* at michael@whiterose.org. They would relocate for a good offer.
* Croft, not Stampley. I plead utter idiocy.
The Blogosphere: Miss two days, and you miss a lot!
I’ve got three really basic points on defecting liberals like Michael Totten, Armed Liberal, and Roger L. Simon (commentary from Jack O’Toole, Greg Greene, Kevin Drum and Kevin Drum II, Matthew Yglesias, Armed Liberal and Armed Liberal II, Roger L. Simon and Roger L. Simon II, Michael Totten… it goes on and on. Big roundup here).
Simon Waldman’s tale of “how he discovered a special Homes and Gardens feature”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1076455,00.html on Hitler’s taste in decor is blogpspheric old news. But I’m linking just to note the reaction of IPC when he put up scans from a pre-war magazine on his blog:
bq. “This piece, text and photographs is still in copyright and any unauthorised reproduction is an infringement of copyright. In the circumstances I must request you to remove this article from your website.”
It turned out that they didn’t have copyright but asserted that they did anyway.
News in from Reuters that despite the French being Old Europeans, obstructionists, allies of Saddam Hussein and French, the American wine consumer has a touch more common sense than the American weblogger. According to the CIVB, the Conseil Interprofessionel du Vin de Bordeaux, there was a 77% increase in the value of Bordeaux wines sold to the USA in 2002-03. This is most likely because a) the dollar has fallen and CIVB measures in euros and b) the 2000 vintage has been released, and is by all accounts pretty sensational (christ knows it’s unlikely to be because of this cheesy marketing site), but even so, the Americans overtook the Germans this year as the biggest export market for the Bordelais.
Onivins, the state agency for the wine trade as a whole, confirms that this trend is being seen across the French wine industry. Although the volume of exports to the USA fell by 3%, the value increased by a healthy 35% in the first half of ’03, better than anywhere in the world except Australia. I suppose that you could rescue hysterical predictions made earlier in the year by claiming that the traitorous upper-class liberal transnational progressivists had upped their purchases of Lafite and Petrus because they hate America, while Joe SixPack had boycotted the unearhtly EU-subsidised hellbroth that pours out of Languedoc. But it seems pretty straw-clutching.
(Big up to Sadly, no! for sterling work on this story, by the way.)
[EDIT]: Oh god you’ve just got to check out the CIVD marketing website. It’s hysterical.
Language Hat objects to the sentence “Stephenson, who is sixty, is tall and deprecating.” by Field Malony appearing in the New Yorker. He says it should have been “self-deprecating”. But this seems excessive, since it’s clear from the context that the thing Stephenson deprecates is himself. If an author had written that Stephenson is “tall and charming” we wouldn’t be calling them out because the things Stephenson habitually charms are other people, rather than his pot plants, or his own temporal parts. I don’t see why deprecating should be any different.
(Bonus question for philosophers and linguists. If context is as clear as clear as I say it is, but Stephenson is a pot-plant-deprecator rather than a self-deprecator, is the proposition expressed by Maloney’s utterance true or false?)