Henry

Unless something changes, I’ll be on the Al Franken show on Air America tomorrow, sometime around 1.30 ET, talking about blogs and politics.

I meant to respond a few weeks ago to Matthew Yglesias’s complaints about Pitchfork Media and never got around to it thanks to work obligations and the nine month old. But since it’s not a time sensitive topic, here goes. [click to continue…]

By my reckoning, Denny Hastert’s Galbraith Score is now two . Any bets on whether he’ll stick it out for the grand slam?

Update: We’re now at three

The FT writes about a ‘meltdown’ in the online gambling sector, thanks to new US legislation.

The online gambling sector was in meltdown in the UK on Monday morning, as the fallout from last week’s moves in the US to tighten anti-gambling laws sent shockwaves through the sector. Legislation passed in Washington on Friday would outlaw the processing of bets taken on-line by banks and credit card companies. The act now only requires the signature of the US president to bring it into effect, a move which is expected in the next two weeks. The bill prohibits US gamblers from using credit cards, cheques and electronic fund transfers to make online wagers, and throws the high-risk industry – already damaged by the impact of arrests of executives on US soil – into turmoil. One person in the industry said the bill was an attempt to “strangle the industry through the banks”. Companies based in the UK, Gibraltar and elsewhere are losing billions of dollars in their stock market valuations, because of their exposure to the US market.

People like Christopher Caldwell take these kinds of measures as evidence that governments can indeed regulate the Internet, protect their citizens from nasty content etc etc. I used to more or less agree with them, but after thinking it through and doing some further research, I’m nowhere near as sure as I was. States are indeed able to use third party private actors as proxy regulators as they’re doing here, by pressing credit card companies and companies like Paypal into service as enforcers. They’ve been doing this for years on the state level (Eliot Spitzer pioneered this). But this kind of regulation-by-proxy really seems only to work well when the proxy regulators have real incentives to do what states want them to do, or when the ultimate targets of the regulation are big multinational companies tht don’t want to get caught breaking the law. But according to this GAO report (PDF) it isn’t that difficult for offshore gambling companies to mask their transactions as ‘legitimate’ credit card transactions if they want to. Credit card companies don’t have either the means or the incentives to prevent this, as long as they _look_ as though they are trying to comply. So if I was to lay a bet,I’d lay substantial amounts of money that the new government legislation won’t put much of a dent in the willingness of US citizens to gamble on the Internet, or in the eagerness of offshore companies to make easy money by catering to this willingness. What _will_ happen is that the currently dominant multibillion dollar companies will lose control of the market to a congeries of small, shadier companies that are much more willing to cut legal corners than large, publicly quoted companies, because they have much less to fear from prosecution (few fixed assets, no corporate reputation to maintain etc).

As I mentioned a couple of months ago, it’s been increasingly difficult for one person to keep up with changes in the academic blogosphere. Over the last few months I’ve spent a lot of time updating the blogroll, removing defunct blogs and what inaccuracies I could detect, and putting in new ones, to lay the foundations for a new, wikified version of the blogroll. The idea is that academics who want to add their own blogs or other academic blogs that they know of don’t need to hassle me; they can instead go and update the list themselves. The new site lives at http://www.academicblogs.net and http://www.academicblogs.org. I’m also encouraging people to add other kinds of content – descriptions of blogs, lists of blogs at a given university, and other such material that they or others might find useful (stuff which is obviously inappropriate or self-serving is a different matter, obviously). The site is on my own server space (which I hope won’t be overwhelmed by users); the frequently asked questions list provides a more comprehensive description of what the site is, how it works etc.

I mentioned a couple of times last year that Norman Podhoretz had demonstrably lied when he smeared critics of the Iraq war as rooting for America’s defeat. But I hadn’t realized how deep his hypocrisy went. Ezra Klein quotes Spencer Ackerman at Tapped.

In 1971, as editor of Commentary, Podhoretz wrote despondently about the war, “I now find myself … unhappily moving to the side of those who would prefer … an American defeat to a ‘Vietnamization’ of the war which calls for the indefinite and unlimited bombardment by American pilots in American planes of every country in that already devastated region.” By 1982, however, Podhoretz had relocated the true fault for the Vietnam debacle–not among the war’s architects, but among its critics. In Why We Were in Vietnam, he accused the antiwar movement of bearing “a certain measure of responsibility for the horrors that have overtaken the people of Vietnam.” Over the intervening decade, Podhoretz had somehow grown illusioned with the war and disillusioned only with its opponents.

Perhaps it’s not just hypocrisy. Some bizarre kind of displacement ???

David Corn posts the pictures which I’ve copied below of a waterboarding apparatus, and a painting of the process by a former prisoner, taken from a Cambodian “museum that documents Khymer Rouge atrocities.” Yes, that’s right. The current administration is out there on torture together with the fucking Khmer Rouge. Who, according to Corn’s correspondent, “like so many brutal regimes–made waterboarding one of their primary tools for a simple reason: it is one of the most viciously effective forms of torture ever devised.” I’d like to think that torture apologists (a couple of whom occasionally infest our comments sections) would be deeply ashamed – but I suspect that they’ve lost the capacity for shame long ago, if they ever had it to begin with.

Sandy Levinson quotes from Thucydides.

“To fit in with the change of events, words, too, had to change their usual meanings. What used to be described as a thoughtless act of aggression was now regarded as the courage one would expect to find in a party member; to think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward; any idea of moderation was just an attempt to disguise one’s unmanly character; ability to understand a question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action. Fanatical enthusiasm was the mark of a real man, and to plot against an enemy behind his back was perfectly legitimate self-defence . . . and indeed most people are more ready to call villainy cleverness than simple-mindedness honesty. They are proud of the first quality and ashamed of the second.” Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War III, 82, trans. Rex Warner, The Penguin Classics, pp. 209-210.

One of the most deeply weird features of modern political discourse is how some conservative supporters of the Iraq war and associated numbskulls such as Dan Simmons cite Thucydides in support of their claims that we’re engaged in an epochal clash of civilizations where moderation amounts to appeasement of an enemy that will enslave us all if we don’t decimate em. I imagine that the appalling Victor Davis Hanson is to blame for most of this. I simply don’t see how one can read Thucydides without coming away with some quite emphatic lessons about the long term costs of imperial arrogance towards one’s political allies, how unnecessary military adventures turn into disasters, und so weiter. Not to mention Thucydides’ depiction of the dangers of cheap jingoism and pro-war demagoguery at home (it would be unfair to describe Glenn Reynolds and company as tinpot Kleons, if only because Kleon actually went out to fight the war that he had touted for).

Making Light tells us that John M. Ford has died. I didn’t know him at all personally, but I loved his work. “The Dragon Waiting” is perhaps his best novel, but some of his short stories are even better. This extract from “Scrabble with God” (stolen from Brad DeLong ) gives some idea of his sense of humour.

I don’t recommend playing with God. It isn’t that he cheats, exactly. But the other night we were in the middle of a game, I was about thirty points up, and He emptied out his rack. ZWEEGHB. Double word score and the fifty-point bonus.

“Zweeghb?” I said.

“Is that a challenge?”

“Well…” If you challenge God and you’re wrong, you lose the points and get turned into a pillar of salt.

“Look outside,” He said. So I did. Sure enough, there was a zweeghb out there, eating the rosebushes, like Thurber’s unicorn.

“I thought you rested from creating stuff.”

“Eighth day, I did. Now I’m fresh as a daisy. You going to pass or play?”

He was also a fine, intelligent poet. Read 110 Stories or the poem quoted in Teresa’s memorial post at Making Light to see how good he could be when he was being serious. But he also had an extraordinary gift for ex tempore verse that was somehow light, complicated, funny and erudite, all at the same time. One of Kieran’s posts on Thomas Friedman helped indirectly inspire this quickie on mixed metaphor and misprision.

Much have I travell’d on the feet of gold,
And many tumbled walls and maidens seen,
Round many horny Africs have I been
Which bards like bosoms in their welkins hold,
Oft of a spare expanse had I been told
That fence-swung Homer looked on as demesne;
Yet never did I breathe its mountains clean
Till I heard Friedman speak out uncontrolled,
Then felt I like some Cousteau of the skies
When a new bubble undermines his ken,
Or sack-like Falstaff, when with precast eyes
He stared at echoes — and his fellow men
Harked back in multitudes like single spies
Silent, past their peak in Darien.

I don’t think that he’ll ever get the recognition that he deserved; his gifts didn’t fit well with his times. But the world feels poorer and sadder today for his absence.

My piece on the netroots and the Democratic party has just come out in the _Boston Review_ (free webby version here, but I heartily encourage people to subscribe to the real magazine; it’s smart and filled with wonderful things). People who want to comment on or respond to the piece (it’s a broadly positive take on the netroots, but argues that they need to become more self-consciously ideological) can do so here.

Tyler Cowen – _Good & Plenty: The Creative Successes of American Arts Funding_

Available from Powells, from Amazon.

There are two, quite different libertarian styles of writing about culture that I enjoy. One is the pop-culture variety, which uses libertarian precepts as the framework for a certain kind of flip, contrarian analysis. This can be quite entertaining, but it usually doesn’t bear up well to close examination. Libertarian nostrums all too frequently substitute for actual thought (granted, much leftist opinionating on culture has similar problems). The second style is that of Tyler Cowen. Cowen writes in an entertaining and straightforward manner. He’s enthusiastic and knowledgeable about both high and low culture. But the fun of his arguments is that they’re serious, interesting, and properly thought through. If they’re hard to fit into conventional frameworks of debate, they aren’t self-consciously contrarian either. Instead, they lead in their own directions, and Cowen isn’t afraid to follow them, even if they lead to unexpected destinations.
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Via Public Knowledge, this press release from the Senate Commerce Committee touting a survey which reveals that an overwhelming majority of the American public oppose net neutrality. Or perhaps not. The exact question asked was:

Which of the following two items do you think is the most important to you:

Delivering the benefits of new TV and video choice so consumers will see increased competition and lower prices for cable TV

OR

Enhancing Internet neutrality by barring high speed internet providers from offering specialized services like faster speed and increased security for a fee

Given how egregiously the question was loaded, the surprise is that one third of the respondents went for the second option. It’s probably superfluous to mention that the survey was funded by Verizon, and carried out by a ‘bipartisan’ group of bought-and-paid-for hacks from Public Opinion Strategies and Joe Lockhart’s Glover Park Group.

Via PZ Myers, What’s Liberal About the Liberal Arts? The Graphic Novel.

Joseph Lindsley on the Weekly Standard's website .

AS THE NEW ACADEMIC YEAR BEGINS, parents will give, as they always do, lectures about studying hard and attending class. But nonetheless many collegians will devote time to chugging pints, throwing darts, and doing just about anything that doesn’t involve cracking the books. This seems a gross waste of resources, but, considering the often ridiculous content of those neglected textbooks and ignored lectures, some of these prodigal students just might be better off.

…[various denunciations of various courses] …

Swarthmoreans have to wait until next year to feast on “The Whole Enchilada: Debates in World History,” but right now they can take “Engendering Culture” where they’re supposed to learn how “culture is constructed and reconstructed to replicate gender roles,” by studying “New York night life and John Wayne movies and the masculine West.”

Timothy Burke gives us the rather demanding syllabus (for it is he) for his course at Swarthmore, “The Whole Enchilada: Debates in World History” (copied below the break).

This displays in its primeval majesty the boneheaded stupidity of a common genre of opinion article (and occasional rigorously researched report) on the Evils of Left Wing Indocrination and Pandering to Lazy Students in the Modern University. Sloppy Google searches and sweeping assertions don’t provide evidence of anything other than the author’s laziness and desire to find backup for his prejudices with the least amount of exertion possible. The kind of guff that deserves an F, in other words.

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