January 2005

Dan Hunter recently posted a paper called “Walled Gardens”:http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=635141 on SSRN. Although the paper has received some attention from legal bloggers (“here”:http://lsolum.blogspot.com/archives/2005_01_01_lsolum_archive.html#110494748452395983 and “here”:http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_01_00.shtml#1105044769), it’s been all praise so far. Hunter argues that law reviews should allow open access to the papers they publish. And what legal academic could disagree with that? As Hunter says, academics are interested in the widest possible dissemination of their ideas.[1] And free or open access certainly promotes the value of spreading information and ideas.

Hunter’s basic position is that law reviews should permit and indeed encourage authors to self-publish. Journals should also make articles available on-line for free consumption. I’m generally sympathetic to this position. I’ve only published one “paper”:http://ppe.sagepub.com/cgi/content/short/3/2/191 (forgive the shameless plug), but it’s not easy to get access to it. It’d certainly be nice if everyone could read it for free. But I’ve also spent most of the last year working for a law review, and, from the perspective of a student editor, I think Hunter’s criticisms are somewhat harsh. I also think he underestimates the long-term costs of doing business—even on-line. What follows is a first pass at Hunter’s argument. I put these thoughts forward tentatively, and I hope they’ll be received that way. I think Hunter’s paper is important and provocative. It raises lots of interesting questions about what (legal) academic publishing should be like, especially in a paper-free world. But those questions appear to me far more open than Hunter sometimes suggests.

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Regarding this Instapost:

CHUCK SIMMINS NOTES that George Soros appears to be missing in action on tsunami relief. So are some others you’d expect to be giving. (Via Bill Hobbs). On the other hand, it’s worth pointing out that Soros’ foundation did a lot of good work regarding the Ukrainian elections.

Hack. There must be some set of values under which it’s entirely appropriate to criticize the mainstream media for bias in the morning, for sloppiness in the afternoon, and then pump out this bilge in the evening. Somewhere, deep in The Way Things Ought to Be, Google is the only tool you need to make this sort of accusation. It’s clearly inconceivable that a multi-billion dollar philanthropist would donate to a horrible tragedy without advertising it on a blimp, at an absolute minimum.

A real journalist who wanted to follow this angle wouldn’t do so without contacting Soros. A journalist who published a piece sneering at a private citizen’s lack of charity, based entirely on his lack of self-promoting press releases, would face some harsh words. For the world’s foremost political blogger, it’s just another day at the keyboard. We’re not going to be overtaking the MSM any day soon.

“But he said ‘appears’!” I’m sorry, that’s no kind of standard. I could spend all friggin’ day commenting on the apparent grevious failures of people that I don’t especially like. (Did you know that Sammy Hagar appears to have never denounced NAMBLA? Makes you think, dunnit?)

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A marvellously generous blogger named Michele Agnew will donate $1 to Oxfam’s tsunami relief for every comment to this post (until she closes it; I think that she’s already gone well above and beyond her original plan of keeping it open for 24 hours.) I’m getting to this very late in the day, but don’t hesitate to try.

UPDATE: Her comment thread is now closed after 500 comments. Many thanks to Michele, and many thanks to everyone who had a chance to participate.

A rather interesting paper by Richard Tuck at the OPT conference on Hobbes and Rousseau contained a longish quote from “De Cive”:http://www.constitution.org/th/decive10.htm (10.9) about the inconveniences of democracy. At the time it seemed to me to contain wise advice about the downsides of blogging, and on chasing it up, that view is reinforced:

bq. But perhaps for this very reason some will say, That a Popular State is much to be preferr’d before a Monarchicall; because that, where all men have a hand in publique businesses, there all have an opportunity to shew their wisedome, knowledge, and eloquence, in deliberating matters of the greatest difficulty and moment; which by reason of that desire of praise which is bred in humane nature, is to them who excell in such like faculties, and seeme to themselves to exceed others, the most delightfull of all things. But in a Monarchy, this same way to obtain praise, and honour, is shut up to the greatest part of Subjects; and what is a grievance, if this be none? Ile tell you: To see his opinion whom we scorne, preferr’d before ours; to have our wisedome undervalued before our own faces; by an uncertain tryall of a little vaine glory, to undergoe most certaine enmities (for this cannot be avoided, whether we have the better, or the worse); to hate, and to be hated, by reason of the disagreement of opinions; to lay open our secret Counsells, and advises to all, to no purpose, and without any benefit; to neglect the affaires of our own Family: These, I say, are grievances. But to be absent from a triall of wits, although those trialls are pleasant to the Eloquent, is not therefore a grievance to them, unlesse we will say, that it is a grievance to valiant men to be restrained from fighting, because they delight in it.

Hey, I’m nominated for a Koufax for Best Writing! Since I’m competing against, among others, Crooked Timber, this is a little awkward. But keep in mind that when people say Size Matters, what they mostly mean is that Grotesque Length matters. (How much post you’ve got tucked under the fold. I hope I don’t have to draw you a map.) Vote Holbo.

I’m too much like that Chris Klein character to vote for myself, however. I think I’m voting for Yglesias. I think I learn more from him on a regular basis than from any other blogger. Of course, his posts are drafty and full of typos, so it depends what you mean by ‘best writing’. I figure James Wolcott is going to trounce us all anyway.

I’m just back from the Oxford Political Thought Conference, which was great fun. On my trip I managed to run into Chris Brooke of “The Virtual Stoa”:http://users.ox.ac.uk/~magd1368/weblog/blogger.html , Marc Mulholland of “Daily Moiders”:http://marcmulholland.tripod.com/histor/ and Sarah of “Just Another False Alarm”:http://rubberring.blogspot.com/ . I’ve met Chris before, but it was good to see the others as well and to compare blogospheric notes with Marc. Chris told me about “the fuss about the BBC’s broadcast”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/4154071.stm of “Jerry Springer: The Opera”:http://www.jerryspringertheopera.com/jerry_opera.html . So of course I tuned in to this spendid ^TM production last night and greatly enjoyed such numbers as “Chick with a Dick” and “Mama Gimmee Smack on the A**hole”, before wowing to the Jerry in Hell special program complete with Jesus, God and the Virgin Mary. The microslice of the blogosphere that both hates the BBC _and_ was in a great lather of indignation over the British government’s incitement to religious hatred legislation (Melanie Phillips and co) is going to have a problem over this one. Here’s how I expect them to handle it: (a) they’ll argue that it exemplfies the double standards of a decadent culture (everyone is careful not to offend Muslims and Sikhs but Christians can be trashed with impunity) and (b) they’ll say that whilst _of course_ there should be no legal interference with speech, the BBC _is an exception_ , since, funded by licence-payers, it had an obligation not to transmit JSTO. Just my prediction, now let’s wait and see…

Just before Christmas, a new cafe opened up outside the main gates of the “University of Arizona”:http://www.arizona.edu/. The coffee is good and it’s a shorter walk than the alternatives. The people are friendly, too. One of my colleagues was chatting with the owner, Danny, last week — he’s often behind the bar serving customers. Danny asked whether my friend taught at the university, and then in what department. “Sociology,” my friend said, which is usually enough to move the conversation to some other topic. But instead Danny said “Oh, my uncle was a sociologist — he was pretty well known in Europe years ago, but you’ve probably never heard of him. “What was his name?” asked my friend. “Oh, Mannheim,” says the owner. “Karl Mannheim?!” says my friend. “Wow, you know his first name!” says Danny. Small world. Sociologists know that already, but the point of that insight is precisely that you don’t know about every case. There are probably other connections of this sort in my acquaintance network that I’m completely unaware of. Yours, too.

“Sam Heldman”:http://sheldman.blogspot.com/ seems to have returned to blogging, after more than a year away. I think that’s great. If you remember his old blog, you’ll probably think it’s great, too.

Voting is underway for the 2004 “Koufax Awards”:http://wampum.wabanaki.net/archives/001581.html. If you have a mind to, vote for CT in the “Best Group Blog”:http://wampum.wabanaki.net/archives/001591.html and “Best Overall Blog”:http://wampum.wabanaki.net/archives/001590.html categories.

*Update*: Also “Best Writing”:http://wampum.wabanaki.net/archives/001594.html.

This Jane Galt thread on poverty and obesity has many special moments. The basic lessons are as follows, helpfully summarized by SomeCallMeTim:

In the space of a week, Jane, Mindles, and the commenters have fleshed out the Republican policy towards the poor. To wit:
1. Those tricksy bastards (Dems) are wildly overstating the problems [this post];
2 A lot of the problems associated with the lower end of the income scale are a result of the stupidity of the poor (and really, what can you do with the stupid?) [this post];
3. Almost all Republicans have suffered through much more trying times than any of the poor have faced – and they’ve kept the aspidistra flying, dammit; the poor need to stop whining [this post];
4. Mercy is twice blessed because it is given; it cannot be commanded by the government. If someone has screwed up and doesn’t get another chance – well, they made their own bed. That someone else, with a different background, has had a second chance (or however many chances one gets in getting from 20 to 40 as a drunk) is of no import whatsoever, and people who are envious of the latter group should have had the forethought to have better parents. Indeed, even asking that we temper our scorn for them is too much – might be a disincentive to change [drug post];
5. Of course, the poor don’t need to have forethought because we keep cosseting them. If we let a few old people starve to death on the streets, they’d smarten up, work harder, and start investing; doing anything at all to help the poor merely robs them of the incentive to improve their lot [SS post];
6. Occasionally, you run across the very rare situation where it’s hard to entirely blame the poor for their situation, like natural disasters. In those cases, we may give them some help. But, before doing so, it’s important to note
– that they’ve done very little for us;
– that they are insufficiently grateful at the moment of the crisis;
– that if we’re going to put aside our principles and help them, we must get credit! [stingy post]

Still, these two comments are the best:

it seems that leftists and liberals are really, really innumerate… anyone interested in the real world and good in math seems to be very libertarian or conservative…(Link)

and:

A pound of ham will make the equivalent of 20 quarter pounders, by my math. (This somewhat misses the point, as I wouldn’t put a quarter pound of ham on my sandwich, and probably neither would you.) Link

Ah, science. (And I grant that the comments are not strictly contradictory). On a more serious note, I was thinking today of how much better off the residents of American inner cities would be if the Singapore model of hawker centres prevailed. Sure, there’s fattening char kway teow, but every hawker centre has a fruit juice and sliced fruit stand with cheap papaya, watermelon, and kiwi fruit, not to mention carrot juice. I understand that crime is a deterrent, but why exactly is it that US inner-city markets have such awful, expensive, fly-blown produce, even the ones in Oakland CA? Is this true in poor neighborhoods in Great Britain? I understand that there are supply chain/perishability problems, but is it only this that makes it cheaper to sell St. Ides and a Big Grab Doritoes than mustard greens?

One of the striking things about the tsunami coverage here in Melbourne has been how much of it has focussed on religion. The recent “op-eds in _The Age_”:http://theage.com.au/news/opinion/index.html have been full of people arguing about how, or whether, religious views can accommodate tragedies such as we’ve seen in south Asia. Since I’ll be teaching the Problem of Evil as part of philosophy 101 this spring (using “God, Freedom and Evil”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0802817319/ref=nosim/caoineorg-20 as the primary text), I’ve been following these discussions with some interest. I was surprised to find one of the responses I always dismissed as absurd actually has a little more bite to it when I actually tried thinking about it.

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“Jacob Heilbrunn”:http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-heilbrunn2jan02,1,3879756,print.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions has a conversation with Daniel Bell in the LA Times, about the problems that both parties have with imposing any sorts of cultural limits on the free markets.

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On Michael Crichton’s new novel, State of Fear, in which environmentalists use weather control to fake environmental disasters (hurricanes, tsunamis, a massive iceberg released from the Antarctic ice shelf) in order to convince the public that global warming is a genuine threat:

In “State of Fear,” it is money-hungry environmentalists whose illicit schemes are always being caught on tape. (As one environmentalist says to another, explaining the need for faked lightning and tidal waves, “Species extinction from global warming—nobody gives a shit.”) Meanwhile, the scientists who could reveal the truth are all co-conspirators; they suppress results that don’t support alarmist conclusions because they, too, are part of the “politico-legal-media complex,” or “P.L.M.” The P.L.M. wants to control free-thinking Americans by keeping them in a perpetual “state of fear.”

Hank Scorpio + Ralph Nader + every climate scientist in the world = PROFIT!!!1!

I sure hope that that’s bad reporting, but the “P.L.M.” thing is not; Crichton really talks like that. Like many intelligent people, Crichton seems to have a blind spot when it comes to conspiracy theories. There are fair criticisms to be made of the environmentalist movement, but international terrorism? Weather control? A shadowy conspiracy of hundreds of thousands of environmentalists, Hollywood, climatologists, the media, and trial lawyers… who’s prepared to swallow this? And have they ever tried to organize a friggin’ surprise party?

Answer here. Crichton is sticking it to the left, and that’s what’s really important in a work of art. We haven’t heard the last of this.

(Pretty good take on the novel from a weather site.)

UPDATE: Another, more detailed look at the novel via Chris Mooney. (I realize that I’m being a little one-sided, and will link to a serious-minded defense if it’s recommended in comments.)

“CNN cancels Crossfire”:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/06/business/media/06crossfire.html?ex=1262754000&en=0f719be53ea0367c&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland.

bq. Mr. Klein said the decisions to part company with Mr. Carlson and to end “Crossfire” were not specifically related, because he had decided to drop “Crossfire” regardless of whether Mr. Carlson wanted to stay on.

…

bq. Mr. Klein said he wanted to move CNN away from what he called “head-butting debate shows,” which have become the staple of much of all-news television in the prime-time hours, especially at the top-rated Fox News Channel.

….

bq. Mr. Klein specifically cited the criticism that the comedian Jon Stewart leveled at “Crossfire” when he was a guest on the program during the presidential campaign. Mr. Stewart said that ranting partisan political shows on cable were “hurting America.”

bq. Mr. Klein said last night, “I agree wholeheartedly with Jon Stewart’s overall premise.” He said he believed that especially after the terror attacks on 9/11, viewers are interested in information, not opinion.

Update: “Giblets”:http://fafblog.blogspot.com/2005_01_02_fafblog_archive.html#110505535614467682 laments our great loss.

bq. So Giblets is sitting down in front of the library TV with a box of commandeered Cheezoids to enjoy the intellectual repaste that is CNN’s Crossfire when he sees a news item telling him that soon there will BE no Crossfire! Outrage, perfidy, treason! What will replace it? Coverage of actual news? Can you even CALL it “news” without whack-a-mole sound effects, cartoonish repetition of talking points and a prompted studio audience? Delirium, lunacy, madness!