From the monthly archives:

June 2004

CT is Moving

by Kieran Healy on June 18, 2004

Steadfastly ignoring “our own good advice”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/001967.html, Crooked Timber is moving to a new host provider, with all the potential headaches that entails. I’m doing the transfer now, so comments posted here from now on will not be imported to the new server. Please hold yer thoughts for a few hours.

Once the move is done, we’ll transfer the Doman Name registration to our new hosts, and https://www.crookedtimber.org will point to the new servers. The process of “DNS propagation”, where the big internet servers tell the little ones about the new location, may take a little while. Thanks for bearing with us.

George R.R. Martin update

by Maria on June 17, 2004

Nelly, who checks George R.R. Martin’s website pretty much every day, tells me that after almost 6 months’ silence, George is getting impatient with his impatient readers.

“I will say, just to set some rumors straight, that I am not dead, I am not dying, I am not in ill health, I have not forgotten about my readers, and I am not lounging in my hot tub drinking chilled wine with hot babes in bikinis (though I’d like to be). I have been working on this bloody book almost every bloody day (okay, except for Sundays during football season and the two days of the NFL draft) for more years than I care to contemplate, writing, rewriting, revising, and writing again, trying to make FEAST a feast in truth.”

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European Commission Presidency

by Henry Farrell on June 17, 2004

The heads of government of the various EU member states are meeting together this evening to discuss, among other things, who should replace Romano Prodi as President of the European Commission. It’s an important decision – but there isn’t a clear front-runner. For what it’s worth, my estimate of the various candidates’ chances of getting the nod.

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Shorter Dick Cheney

by Ted on June 17, 2004

Howl, howl, howl, howl.

UPDATE: Mark Kleiman might point out that this is a pretty good summary of Rumsfeld’s behavior as well. Who am I to argue? What kind of an outfit illegally orders that a prisoner be held off the books for over a year, and then forgets to interrogate him?

ANOTHER, NON-SNARKY UPDATE: Interesting point from Michael Froomkin:

People like me, who have been highly dubious about the US acceding to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court due to the real and troubling encroachment on our traditional conception of national sovereignty are really going to have to think long and hard about changing sides on this one, or at least accepting jurisdiction with regards to some of our treaty obligations. The last few months argue strongly that the US cannot always be relied on to observe its international law obligations as much as I would have thought and hoped.

I doubt that too many people will join Professor Froomkin in thinking long and hard, but these revelations will have the unfortunate effect of changing the terms of the debate. As Anne Applebaum* points out, it’s hard to see how those in power have sufficient incentives to follow stories as thoroughly as they deserve.

* corrected; thanks to Russell Arben Fox

Philosophical movies

by Chris Bertram on June 17, 2004

Thanks to “Tyler Cowen, over at Volokh”:http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2004_06_14.shtml#1087407794 , I came across “Jason Brennan’s list of movies with philosophical themes”:http://www.u.arizona.edu/~brennan/movies.htm . It’s a good list , though a bit lacking in non-American content. Possible additions? There’s already been “some blogospheric discussion”:http://users.ox.ac.uk/~magd1368/weblog/2003_09_01_archive.html#106244549368342414 of “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056217/ and Christine Korsgaard’s “claim that it illustrates Kant on revolutions”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/000433.html (scroll down comments). “Strictly Ballroom”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105488/ arguably deals with freedom, existentialism, and revolution. “Rashomon”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042876/ is about the epistemology of testimony. “Dr Strangelove”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057012/ covers the ethics of war and peace and some issues in game theory (remember the doomsday machine?). Suggestions?

UPDATE: I see “Matthew Yglesias”:http://www.matthewyglesias.com/archives/week_2004_06_13.html#003568 is also discussing this.

More Fed Fellow Fun

by John Q on June 16, 2004

I’ve been enjoying a visit from my friend and co-author Simon Grant for the last couple of days. We’ve been working on fairly abstruse aspects of the economics of uncertainty, though with an eye to practical applications to issues like an analysis of the precautionary principle.

However, we downed tools this afternoon when it was announced that Simon has been awarded a Federation Fellowship. This is only the second such Fellowship in Economics, mine being the first.

Obviously, I’m very happy about this, and particularly about the fact that it will bring Simon back to Australia (he’s currently at Rice university in the US).

Federation Fellowships

by Brian on June 16, 2004

As “Brian Leiter”:http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/001463.html reported, it’s a wonderful day for philosophy in Australia. David Chalmers, Paul Griffiths and Philip Pettit have been awarded Federation Fellowships, which are among the biggest and most prestigious awards in Australian academia. The awards are for five years, and having the three of them around (even more than they are now) should be great for Australian philosophy.

The Communion Question

by John Holbo on June 16, 2004

I’ll assume you are an educated person who’s already read Josh Marshall’s post about … what to call it? Bush’s Al-Sadrist gambit: locked in a death-struggle with the forces of democratic reconstruction in your country? See if you can get zealous souls to lay down suppressing fire from the holy places. If you succeed, fine. If the holy places end up getting shelled when the targets lose patience, you cry religious persecution (even if it was pure self-defense) and make hay out of that. It’s win-win.

Let’s consider this issue of Bush’s attempt to “nudge the American bishops toward greater ‘activism’.” To wit: denying communion to Catholic political candidates who take church-disapproved stances on gay marriage, abortion and stem cell research.

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Happy Bloomsday

by Henry Farrell on June 16, 2004

Today is the 100th anniversary of the day on which stately, plump Buck Mulligan came down the stairs of the Martello tower, razor, mirror and washbowl in hand. Like many other Dubliners, I’ve a distant relative who’s a character in _Ulysses_. “Professor MacHugh” is based on my great-uncle Hugh MacNeill. He appears in the “Aeolus section”:http://www.web-books.com/Classics/Fiction/Other/Joyce_Ulysses/Ulysses_07_3.htm, which is appropriate enough; he’s a bit of a windbag (and according to family hearsay, the original was an alcoholic and a chronic gambler to boot). This isn’t as unusual as it might seem: everyone in Ireland is related to everyone else, and ‘placing’ someone (i.e. finding what relatives or friends you have in common) is a source for hours of entertainment whenever two Irish people meet. Not only that – but _Ulysses_ is a long novel, with many minor characters – Dubliners who don’t have some tenuous connection to the novel are perhaps even rarer than Dubliners of a certain age who don’t claim to have been regular drinking companions of Paddy Kavanagh, Brendan Behan, and Myles na gCopaleen (aka Brian O’Nolain). Which is to say, very thin on the ground indeed.

Update: Google too are celebrating Bloomsday.

!http://www.google.com/logos/james_joyce.gif!

UKIP

by John Q on June 16, 2004

The success of Eurosceptic parties like the UK Independence Party, has contributed to generally negative coverage of the recent EU Parliamentary elections. Although I disagree with UKIP, I think its success is a good thing.

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Gene Wolfe steals my fudgsicle

by Henry Farrell on June 15, 2004

In comments at John and Belle’s “other blog”:http://examinedlife.typepad.com/johnbelle/2004/06/pull_the_the_fi.html, Fafnir from Fafblog speaks to the perplexity caused by reading Gene Wolfe.

bq. Gene Wolfe is a punk. He also greedily ate my fudgcicle once while signin my copy of “The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories.” I said “hey gene wolfe that is my fudgcicle” an he said “maybe you only THINK it is your fudgcicle because you are plaaaaauged by the ghooosts of meeeeemory. wooooooo!” all the while makin wiggly fingers. And I went home thinkin that maybe I really was plagued by the ghosts of memory and maybe I wasn’t who I thought I was, was I Fafnir or was I Gene Wolfe, or was I a butterfly dreaming I was Gene Wolfe dreaming I was Fafnir? And the next day I woke up an realized that punk had just eaten my fudgcicle.

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School Uniforms

by Harry on June 15, 2004

I don’t know enough about this case to feel comfortable commenting on the all-things-considered rights and wrongs of it. But I was taken aback by the comments of the girl’s MP on Radio 4’s PM programme. Margaret Moran, who backs the school and the court, said, in their defence, that the girl had the option of going to a Muslim school, and her family also had the option of withdrawing her from school and home-schooling. She went on to accuse them of having ‘political motivations’ for their suit.

I can imagine good reasons for having uniform regulations, and for upholding them even in the face of religious objections, hence my relctance to comment on the all-things-considered merits. But the fact that the regulations might drive a girl into an educational situation in which her religious beliefs will not be challenged or tested seems to me a reason for bending, or revising the rules, not a consideration in their favour. The parents’ enthusiasm that their child should attend a state comprehensive school is to their credit. Telling them that they should school her religiously or at home doesn’t seem very helpful to me.

Inside the Beltway

by Henry Farrell on June 15, 2004

I’m spending some time in Washington DC, where I’ll be starting a new job this September in George Washington University’s Dept. of Political Science and Elliott School of International Affairs. There was a Kerry fundraiser yesterday where Bill Clinton was speaking – I went along with my wife because I thought it would give some interesting insights into how Clinton was going to sell Kerry’s candidacy on his upcoming “book tour”:http://nytimes.blogspace.com/genlink?q=http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/14/politics/campaign/14CLIN.html?pagewanted=print&position=. As it did.

Clinton spoke for about 15 minutes. There were three main points to his speech. First was a slightly defensive apologia for Kerry’s lack of public profile – Clinton spoke about how difficult it was to get media space for a challenger at this stage of the Presidential campaign. Second was a thinly-veiled attack on Bush. Clinton spoke at length about how John Kerry would be a President who was comfortable with people who were smarter than him, and who were prepared to contradict him when he was wrong. This seemed to me to be a smart use of Clinton’s experience in running the Oval Office. It didn’t come across as raw partisanship (the criticism was implicit), but pointed up by contrast the plain, simple badness and incoherence of the executive policy-making process under GWB. Third, Clinton tried to sell Kerry as a caring Democrat, by talking about Kerry’s commitment to helping deprived youth during Clinton’s Presidency. This wasn’t very convincing – there wasn’t any specific information, or even anecdotes, about what exactly Kerry had done. All in all, it served to confirm my overall impression that the Democrats are still having difficulty in selling Kerry as a positive quantity, rather than as an alternative to the (undoubtedly execrable) incumbent. Some of this could be my bias as a non-US lefty who has no emotional commitment to the Democrats, but it seemed to me that Kerry still has a lot of work to do if he’s going to maintain his narrow lead, let alone extend it.

Biblical Literalism

by Kieran Healy on June 15, 2004

Eugene Volokh “posts a table”:http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2004_06_14.shtml#1087270691 from a “poll”:http://pollingreport.com/religion.htm showing that about 60 percent of Americans say they believe Biblical stories like the 7-day creation, Noah’s flood and Moses’ parting of the Red Sea to be literally true. This is rather higher than other estimates I’ve seen of Biblical Literalism. Based on “GSS data”:http://webapp.icpsr.umich.edu/GSS/ (the GSS is the best available public opinion survey in the U.S. with a long time-series), we know that in 1998 about 30 percent of Americans agreed with the statement “The Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word”. This was down from about 40 percent in 1988. (Most of the decline seems to have happened in the late 1980s, however.) About half of Americans agree that “The Bible is the inspired word of God but not everything in it should be taken literally, word for word.” And a steady 15 to 17 percent agree that it’s “an ancient book of fables, legends, history, and moral precepts recorded by men.” “Here’s a graph”:http://www.kieranhealy.org/files/misc/BT-plot.pdf, I put together of these trends, in pdf format.

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Germany–Netherlands

by Chris Bertram on June 15, 2004

bq. Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.

That’s always been pretty much my least favourite Orwell quote, but I couldn’t help thinking about it when contemplating “tonight’s Netherlands-Germany match”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/euro_2004/3787535.stm at Euro 2004. The Scotsman has “a useful guide to the history of footballing enmity”:http://sport.scotsman.com/football.cfm?id=670242004 between the two countries and one of the protagonists of the “last really nasty episode”:http://observer.guardian.co.uk/osm/story/0,6903,1009645,00.html (scroll down to #6) — Rudi Voeller — is now the German coach. The football should be pretty good too … at least from the Dutch.