Exploding Heads Deathmatch: There Can Be Only One

#5 definitely wins. The others seem like it might be possible that an actual reality-connected point existed somewhere.

Definitely #2. #5 has more crazy, but #2 wins because the author once managed to finish a PhD, is willing to attach his real name to his rant, and managed to get said rant into a dead-tree publication.

Shorter version: Less asplodin’, bigger head.

Oh, never mind – I guess the Swedish Academy does pick the Economics prize winner, even though the Bank of Sweden endowed it.

I still don’t think he won, but clicking on #5’s “Biography” link reveals a thing of rare wingnut beauty: “Being a practicing advocate of individualism is like living the life of a paladin…” It only gets weirder from there.

I’m the first person to vote for Luskin? “…never before has a scientist operating in the capacity of a public intellectual so abused and debased the science he purports to represent…” is by itself sufficient. If Luskin understood economics…

Just to be annoyingly contrarian (I can haz job riting fur Slaite nao?), I’m going to say #1. I loves me that old-time off-the-cuff, evidence-free psychologizing.

I must admit that I was very tempted by “ryck” – London is knee-deep in Islamo-Fascists? Eek! I must buy a pair of thigh-boots before I have to pass through there next week. However, I’m going to vote for Professor Anderson. That’s partially because of the bizzaro mix of erudition and wing-nuttiness, but also because his comparisons with great military disasters seem to invest Kurgman’s Nobel with far more prestige and influence than it is probably worth.

While ryck puts up tough competition with his eye catching visual design and effective use of hyperbole, I have to put in a vote to Dan Klein. I have long admired his Econ Journal Watch, where Klein & Co. have managed to leverage their inability to interpret economic papers into a publication widely read by scholars arguing that they have been misinterpreted. This strategy allows them to attract articles and readers in a single stroke – truly a stroke of genius worthy of a Harvard case study.

The Krugman piece is noteworthy in another respect: it is a proud continuation of the Austrian economic tradition of accusing your opponents of being sore losers who hate the poor. Surely one can see shadows of Mises’ “The Psychological Basis of the Opposition to Economic Theory” in it? Ah, the flames of defunct economists burn bright…

So yeah, while ryck may be nuttier, at the end of the day I think it’s Econ Journal Watch which deserves wider recognition.

Definitely #5. However, I voted for #4 before I voted for #5. Do I git sum sort of librul prise now?

Like others above, it is a split decision between #1 (he had me at “penchant in play”) and #5. Regarding the latter, to whom should I apply to get my five minutes back?

Klein might win for epic tendentiousness, but the category is exploding heads, people. He’s a damp squib. *Way* too may qualifiers.

2-4 are morosely phoning it in.

Ryck has two merits. One is his reversal, in the third sentence, of the usual criticism that the awarding of the prize disgraces the prize-givers. No, in Ryck’s view the prize further disgraces Krugman. This is great. Then there is the way, as Henry notes, that the piece gathers force as it moves, logical connections between breaking as the words themselves start flying apart, like John Belushi’s _Weekend Update_ commentaries.

If #1 wins, I think Mankiw should get a bonus mini-oh-noe for linking to it favorably.

But as for my vote, is it really too late to give some kind of award to David Bernstein and W. Kiernan?

#2.

Like many, I suspect #5 of being pre-asploded. (If Cosma is now summonable, perhaps he can give his expert psychoceramicist opinion.)

another voter for 2. Being a professor and writing on a “serious” site gives extra credit – and Krugman the Bolshevik is just too good .

There is one clear winner. Ryck, #5, can’t be it; it’s unfair to pick out some random wingnut who no one has ever heard of. Luskin has already won the valuable Stupidest Man Alive prize, and you wouldn’t want him to take on airs. Klein is too boring. Crittendon disqualifies himself with his “I’m afraid I have zip to offer” passive-aggressive start; that’s not a head explosion.

It had to be #2, Professor Anderson. Come on, this is in Forbes. Dr. Anderson didn’t just run out into the virtual street, head popping like a crazy person. No, he carefully combed his hair, arranged for television coverage, and sold tickets for people to see his head explode.

#2

#4 I’d say, underappreciated so far. As for screaming nuttiness, #5 certainly wins the day, and I’m just plain fascinated by how #2 managed to squeeze and squish its bulky moronic madness into a crumpled tuxedo and dupe the bouncer, crash the party, and slobber all over the Focus’s buffet. But still—by suggesting that the Nobel Prize committee supports terrorism and hates America while certainly not suggesting that Krugman excuses terrorism and hates America, #4 has all the wonderful qualities to win over even the most liberalest, bleedingest heart.

Forbes’s buffet, of course. Just recovered from a migraine attack, sorry.

Krugman’s Nobel Prize is NOT a catastrophe on the level of the Burning of the Library of Alexandria. RATHER IT IS akin to the ERECTION of an anti-library, a NEW LIBRARY of Alexandria, the sad waste of so much manpower to erect an edifice of LIES which so many cannot tell from the truth. I would rather see the library BURNED HONESTLY than a new liebrary erected and we all to stand prostrate kneeling before it and the ivory tower from whose head it sprang.

I just wish he had managed to work in a Holocaust comparison, for the full Liberal Fascism treatment. That would have made it perfect.

For that we must wait until Obama wins the election. Sweet mother of Abraham lincoln, this is going to be good!

And I add a vote for #2. From the sacking of Constantinople to the Bolshevik Revolution, with a half backstep away from the brink of a Godwin violation, and all in the context of criticizing an award for economics. That’s the sort of thing you can only get from native talent finely honed.

No, he carefully combed his hair, arranged for television coverage, and sold tickets for people to see his head explode.

!!!!!

I was going to go with #5, but the Roger Ebert argument in #31 stopped me in my tracks. #3 it is.

This is a toughie.

I have to vote for (1) – Daniel Klein for a couple of reasons. First, I do love me some insane sociological generalizing. Second, Klein’s pseudoknowledge is just so much more earnest (and unaware) than the run-of-the-mill politics politics politics of the other commentators.

This contest is like trying to hold the World Series without the National League. Am I the only person who sees, there, on the far horizon, the giant shadow of David Horowitz looming? Horowitz will make these crazies seem like the small fry they are when he gets his mighty mind around this object. Will Krugman figure in the network of academo-terrorists? Will he be evidence that Princeton is the capital of holocaust deniers, on the brink of awarding President Ahmedwhosit of Iran an honorary degree? I don’t know. I am a modest observer. But I do know that Horowitz’s giant strides will strike awe into our heart, once he puts his mind to it!

#2, definitely. Come on, #5 is shooting fish in a barrel.

For shame. Someone corrected Luskin’s spelling. It’s so much less poor and stupid without the reference to “astromers”. Reinstate the seminal text.

It’s all fish in a barrel.

(3) is mere snottiness, (1) and (4) aren’t actual examples of “wingnuts’ heads exploding as a result of Paul Krugman’s Nobel prize” [(1) is old stuff and (4) is just a guy who doesn’t like the Nobel prizes and Krugman’s foreign policy views] and (5)’s head apparently exploded many years ago.

The clear winner is (2). I can’t imagine what that first paragraph was supposed to mean. Shorter second paragraph:”I would try and make an argument against Krugman winning the prize fit for forbes.com to print but right now my head is exploding.” The hash of Krugman’s bailout arguments at the end is appalling. But the key paragraph is this one:

“In Krugman’s world, ideological right-wingers took a meat axe to the carefully planned, stable New Deal economic structures of finance, telecommunications, transportation and manufacturing and created an unstable mess in which greed overruled good sense. Going even farther, Krugman has called for a reinstatement of the New Deal or at least another set of legislative initiatives like the New Deal.”

I think this accidental burst of lucidity (or fairness) is the strongest evidence that a head-exploding like event did occur.

#1 deserves a special mention with the tossed-off line, “It’s good to be the alpha male or one of his close companions”. Evidently Klein still lives in a world where Homburg hats are worn and cars have running boards.

#5 is simply stunning. One of the others must win because they display a simulation of actual erudition, but for self-contradictory awesomeness you cannot beat #5.

I mean, just in the first few paragraphs, we have the ordinary complaint that Nobel prizes are awarded on the basis of political leanings rather than accomplishments… followed by a leap into asplodery terrirtory with denunciations of large numbers of winners, by name, because of their political leanings, without consideration of the accomplishments for which they won the prize. You can’t self-contradict that effectively in a two-paragraph span without great native talent.

Damning Gorbachev for being a professed Communist while ignoring little matters like ending the Soviet Union, and damning the prize on the basis of people who didn’t win it except on the inside of his head, just takes the cake. (Adolf Hitler didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize, but he could have won the Literature prize if he had switched from painting to writing rather than to evil monsterdom, and anyone who’d award a prize to someone like that is beneath contempt!)

Further bad bits that nobody’s pointed out so far:

His footnote links are nicely broken: a little present from MS Word.

His grasp of economics is such that he doesn’t understand that cutting taxes constitutes a cost to the government. His understanding of regulation is such that if regulators ever pronounce on a subject, he considers that he can castigate others for proposing more regulation in that area, because they are ‘already regulated’. (It’s a binary state, you see: any regulation at all, which is communism and thus bad, and no regulation, which is Somalia and thus good.)

He can’t tell the Swedes and Swiss apart, and, well, did you know that Iran was governed by a ‘Shaw’? (George Bernard Shaw, probably, that damn Communist. I mean he shares initials with Gordon Brown, who lost us the Second World War by breaking the banks in 1917. Or something.)

As for the comparison of London to a socialist swamp, my eye was caught by his description of the French not just as ‘cowardly’ (any wingnut can do that) but as ‘grovel[ling] in fear of a revolution’. And here I thought Bastille Day was a celebration of revolution…

#2, definitely. #5 is clearly the maddest, but #2 just has that extra-special self-important I-think-it’s-wrong-therefore-it’s-the-worst-thing-in the-world delusion.

I vote Klein, but only because I’m concerned with being among what I regard to be the top of the pyramid of culture and power.

Plus, the Luskin choice would be hackneyed.

it’s ryck

ryck is the best (worst) poster

“Being a practicing advocate of individualism is like living the life of a paladin.”

dude if you don’t like the class, reroll

#5, with compassion.

Dept. of Jungian Word Association Studies:

and hangs from iridescent strings
5 million aliens
to splash the recipients with this phony glory

[Mr. Ryck’s full biography, source for the following, should tip the scales in one direction or another, and can be found
here.]

scorned for having
inherited it from his crooked ancestors
An account of this follows
where thousands of Dustbowl Okies
settled comfortably into the welfare system
They are still there
in my household we had plenty of kindness, love and food
I was orphaned at 15
abandoned by my step father
an unusual dose of fortuitous political training
The teachings of Hoffer would act as a beacon
and alarm system
I started working in the cotton fields in 1954 (11 years old)
watching Caesar Chavez and his loyal followers bash the heads
of reluctant field laborers
intimidating peasants with threats and beatings,
and by night ferried hookers though the Mexican towns,
like Cutler, in the same vehicles
They covered the interior lights
with blue cellophane and kept
their head lights turned off for effect.

Nobody in my extended family, or members of the town,
ever lied to me
stole my meager belongings, or tried to sleaze me
strangely mirrored by the antics of the (then future)
characters in the movie American Graffiti

After an exchange of nastygrams with my draft board
My car had died of old age. The Bay Area was jumping.
tried to thread my way through the dope, incense,
massage parlors, hookers,
and gays cruising for errant sailors
I was addicted to bridge
I even accepted invitations to various parties
calculated to disguise the designs
intellectuals who were frequently dedicated cadres
deftly steered by grad students at UC Berkeley

Leary and Ginsburg had nothing to offer but sorrow

numerous opportunities to join failed causes
headed for the Viet Nam war theatre. I was flown to Saigon
we interdicted junks and shelled caravans
Any centurion in Caesar’s Tenth Legion could have shown us the way
dedicated, but ignorant, peasants died
in a hopeless war at the hands of the guns on my boat
I worked day and night
which included the absence of a car
and the salient fact that I had no civilian shoes
two tours in some steamy fantasy land
a nasty welcome from howling hippies,
drug-crazed loonies and flower children
a gift of a big gob of spit deftly
directed to my sleeve

by a deranged female hippie

The world I knew had changed – and not for the better
I ignored as much of this as possible
skillfully earned in the seedy card parlors of San Diego
I was now an expert in most phases of radar technology
The anti-war fever was high
The mental pathologies of these frustrated activists
Kent State had set a precedent.
Living very close to the financial abyss in New Haven
I adapted to the university culture,
thoroughly enjoyed its elitist social life
My sympathy for the leftist causes dwindled
and my taxes started to rise
have begun to cope with ever higher taxes
I only partially escaped
the noisy banter of the radical left mentality
I now rely on eternal literary works
with strong predictive qualities
The mortgage is paid
offered many politically inspired opportunities
to be an accomplished (and celebrated) loser

Just what did Tom Hayden, Jerry Garcia, Bob Dylan , Susan Sontag and Allen Ginsberg really offer? Sloth, sodomy and sedition?

Chronologically, I live on the leading edge of the giant boomer movement
now muddled in debates over global warming
the social leprosy that is intended for us
Prosperity, despite the scorn and disgust of the liberals,
is certainly within my grasp,
baring some cataclysmic tax event. I am confident

obtained in spite of the perceived horrors of individualism,
aided by a general contempt
reported with relish

66>”should tip the scales in one direction or another, …”

I’ll pull for #5 if I see a box of chocolate and a shrimp boat, otherwise 2 & 4 should be invited to write-off.

Can anyone tell me what Millard Tydings is doing on #5’s list of People Who Should Have Won The Nobel Prize?

I vote for #2 for reasons well articulated by others.

Please ignore all the italics in my previous comment — unintentional.

An inspiring reframing by Roy Belmont.

I guess at this point I have to giggle at Professor Anderson duking it out with Mr. Koo Koo Nutty Nut for the coveted “Oh Noes! My Head Asploded” award. What an insult it would be to come in first or second.

TEH BEST INTERNET POST EVAR!!! EAT HENRY FARRELL’S HOT PHOTONS, BELLE WARING, JOHN HOLBO, AND MICHAEL BERUBE!!!!

But I am somewhat disappointed: Have we no Kauses? Have we no Sullivans? Have we no Okrents????

Surely someone can write the exploding-head posts they would have written were they all still in their prime…

It’s such an embarrassment of riches…

OK. I vote for Daniel Klein…

Henry, do I haunt your dreams or something? Please seek help.

https://crookedtimber.org/2008/07/13/what-would-it-take-to-get-a-_washington-post_-op-ed-columnist-fired/#comment-246021

Ryck’s bio, linked in 68, actually has some good writing in it. This is a nice, funky passage with a good beat. Shows the 60s writing influence, I prefer it to e.g. Richard Brautigan:

My life’s financial progress was calculated after this transaction and my net worth turned out to be about -50 dollars, which included the absence of a car and the salient fact that I had no civilian shoes. I was not getting ahead by participating in this war exercise, my education was behind schedule, and folks were trying to kill me.

His talents are wasted being a wingnut. But “sloth, sodomy, and sedition” is an excellent propaganda line too, a little too high-flown to be as good as “acid, amnesty, and abortion”, but still pretty zingy.

I renew my vote for 2, I think Ryck is a unique eccentric whose head is constantly asunder, sort of an outsider art type, while the others are supposed members of the establishment who reveal themselves as idiots in this time of stress and challenge.

Roy @68 – dude! Read that way, it almost brings a tear to the eye. But then so many monsters have a tragic past…

A vote? I’ll add to the small minority for #4, on the basis that such dedication to making everything about how invading Iraq was right deserves acknowledgment…

I prefer “Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash”, myself.

#2 should be dropped from competition because “This is not as tragic a moment in western civilization as the sacking of Constantinople in 1453 or the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, but it suffices as one of those sad moments we will regret over time” is so obviously a joke. And quite a funny one, if not exactly side clutching.

Definitely #4.

Just as a question, though – and this despite my affection for most things American – do we really think that if the particular Yanks cited above discovered the joys of socialism they’d settle for having it in one country?

It has to be number (2) for sheer insane hyperbole, but I do love this line from Luskin:

The only question now is whether Krugman will pay taxes on the prize at the low rates enabled by the Bush tax cuts he has done so much to discredit, or if he will volunteer to pay taxes at higher rates he considers more fair.

Or, you know, he could just vote for a president who would raise taxes on the rich like any principalled liberalish person would.

Such a difficult choice, but I think ryck (love the spelling by the way). Did he call the Nobel a socialist tool with Milton Friedman and Gary Becker won it?

By law #2 must win…mere mention of the word commissar adds precious bonus points to an intellectually bone-chillin’ close race. And seriously, when did Forbes start publishing satire ?

Zut alors. Holy materiel fecal ! It appears that this “Ryck” actually exists. I clicked the link assuming I was going to see a banner “Ha. You’ve been Ryck Rolled !”.

Just want to say that this is the best election since Berube (please excuse absence of accents) won David Horowitz’s contest for world’s most dangerous academic. By the way, what is Berube’s vote?

I vote for ‘ryck’ at Clownhall: sheer, unadultered, tinfoil-hat, batshit, asinine craziness strung onto a Mobius loop of repetitive insults.

Number five clearly gets top points for sheer insanity, but two deserves a special award for just getting the phrase “Krugman believes the problem is that the Bush administration is not socialist enough” published in a national publication.

Donald Luskin has displayed his outstanding comprehension of economics and general, and tax policy in his statement: “The only question now is whether Krugman will pay taxes on the prize at the low rates enabled by the Bush tax cuts he has done so much to discredit, or if he will volunteer to pay taxes at higher rates he considers more fair.”

Nobel Prizes are TAX EXEMPT!
http://www.irs.gov/publications/p525/ar02.html#d0e8872

ryck wins in my estimation

Can we skip ahead and nominate ryck for the ‘Prize in Literature?

#1 deserves high praise.

Consider, a PhD in Economics became so unhinged by regular strength Krugman that he decided to actually publish a paper that relied upon psychoanalysis (“a mentality particularly of people of high strata who are chiefly concerned with being among what they regard to be the top of the pyramid of culture and power”) and evolutionary psychology (“That such a penchant would be selected for in the environment of evolutionary adaptation is certainly plausible”) in order to support its thesis, without ever consulting or co-authoring with a specialist in such matters, is quite impressive.

Even more SuperAwsum is the “journal” that published it has as its mandate: “EJW watches the journals for inappropriate assumptions, weak chains of argument, phony claims of relevance, and omissions of pertinent truths.”

When confronted by Nobel Krugman (#1 Economist), splosions are absolutely inevitable (or at least plausibly certain).

So the gist of all this is that you people all think Krugman SHOULD have won a Nobel prize for economics? wow. This is a republicrat issue. Good luck.

Luskin will always be the sentimental favorite around here.

#121-
Can you possibly forward to this email address any pertinent information as to this profession of Henry’s, heretofore unknown to me, which from your tone I assume you must have had a more than passing familiarity with in order to be able to have redefined so emphatically Henry’s occupation thus, which I myself had thought was merely academic and having to do only with schoolwork.
I would be most appreciative as I am currently unemployed and can readily see myself, having brushed up on the basics, toiling happily in a field where I was once a seriously dedicated amateur.

#2. As others have observed, Anderson is one small step from an invocation of Godwin. I humbly submit that he’s most worthy of the award: clearly he would have thought to include the Holocaust reference along with the other two had his head not finished exploding while writing that very sentence.

Ryck is clearly the most raving lunatic of the lot, but the true brilliance of insanity is in subtlety and clarity. Anderson is The Joker, diabolically scheming his brilliant master comparisons; Ryck is just that henchman who empties his machine gun into the darkness at the first hint that Batman is on the scene.

#5 is truly incredible

The stylesheet alone is worthy of an award, demonstrating that different colors and the [em] tag do for the modern crank what ALL CAPS and different font sizes did for his predecessor in the age of the handcranked mimeograph.

You’re much too kind – that HTML is straight out of Microsoft Word with all it’s inline style goodness. You didn’t think that a frother like rycK actually knew how to author HTML did you?

W3 Validator says 252 errors