Kieran Healy

While looking up something else, I came across one of the Top 10 Best Things in a Preface ever written by an academic. It’s from Garry Runicman’s “A Treatise on Social Theory, Vol II”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521369835/kieranhealysw-20/ref=nosim/:

bq. I have also been faced with a dilemma about the use and transliteration of sociological terms from languages other than English … I have compromised as best I can, and where the language in question is Greek, Latin, French, German, Italian or Spanish I am reasonably confident of my judgement about the nuances carried by vernacular terms for institutions, practices and roles. But in all other languages, I have had to rely entirely on the authorities on whose writings I have drawn …

It’s tough having such a narrow range.

“Gallimaufry tells you how”:http://marykay.typepad.com/gallimaufry/2004/10/protect_the_vot.html.

Somehow I missed this, but “Jason Kottke”:http://www.kottke.org made an “interesting observation”:http://www.kottke.org/04/10/weblog-advertising about popular blogs a few days ago:

Out of Technorati’s top 100 most-linked weblogs**, only 16 don’t feature advertising or are otherwise noncommercial:

Scripting News / Doc Searls / kottke.org / Jeffrey Zeldman / The Volokh Conspiracy / Scobleizer / Lileks / Joel on Software / Rather Good / Joi Ito’s Web / RonOnline / USS Clueless / BuzzMachine / Vodkapundit / Baghdad Burning / Crooked Timber

Lots of interesting observations to be made about the commercialization of weblogs…the quick uptake of advertising on blogs, the increasingly false perception of blogs as inherently unbiased by commercial interests (and therefore preferable to “big media”), the continuing shift from blogging as a hobby to blogging for a variety of reasons, the number of weblogs launching lately that have ads from day one, the demographic difference between the typical circa-2002 blogger and the blogger of today, etc.

There’s more discussion about this “at his site”:http://www.kottke.org/04/10/weblog-advertising. I’d also note that of the Top 100, and particularly those in the Top 50, there’s a lot of heterogeneity. Some are run by single individuals (like “Kottke.org”:http://www.kottke.org), some are group blogs (“Volokh”:http://www.volokh.com, “Crooked Timber”:https://www.crookedtimber.org), some large communities (“Metafilter”:http://www.metafilter.com/) or social movements (“Common Dreams”:http://www.commondreams.org/), while others are commercial enterprises (“Wonkette”:http://wonkette.com/ and the other Nick Denton Mini-Empire[1] sites), and so on. Beyond that, the mix of technology, culture and politics would be worth a closer look, too. I also wonder whether Technorati have changed their criteria a bit: I remember the last time I looked closely at the Top 100 list (a few months ago) the top sites were all from the Suicide Girls porn outfit, but they seem to have largely disappeared from the listing. The presence of sites written in languages other than English, like “this one”:http://nikki-k.jp/n.k/cyber_nyo and “this one”:http://www.interney.net/, seems like a new development as well.

To forestall pointless arguments, I should say that I don’t think taking advertising means your content automatically suffers or your character is corrupted by money or whatnot.[2] But there’s a story here about viable organizational models for blogging. I sometimes think CT is just under a daily-visitor threshold that would change the character of the site. It’s not so much bandwidth costs as our relationship to commenters and so on. The software runs at a just-about-acceptable pace, and the comments threads are generally very good. But more visitors would put extra pressure on all of that. We’re still growing, so maybe we’ll see these changes whether we want to or not. Look out for our crossover deal with Burger King. I’m thinking Whoppers flame-grilled on crooked timbers, with Kids’ Meals containing small plastic effigies of Isaiah Berlin and copies of ‘What is Enlightenment?’

fn1. World’s smallest empire?

fn2. Though I do think your _layout_ does: most of the drop-in advertising methods I’ve seen look like crap.

In the “continuing”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/002725.html “discussion”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/002672.html around Jerry Fodor’s “LRB piece”:http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n20/fodo01_.html about Analytic Philosophy, “Jason Stanley”:http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~jasoncs/ makes the following observation in a “discussion thread”:http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/bleiter/archives/002261.html#002261 on Brian Leiter’s blog:

bq. There is a certain kind of very influential academic who has a difficult time recognizing that they are no longer a rebellious figure courageously struggling against the tide of contemporary opinion, but rather have already successfully directed the tide along the path of their choice. Chomsky is one such academic, and Fodor is another.

This reminds me of a comment my advisor, “Paul DiMaggio”:http://www.princeton.edu/~artspol/pd_prof.html, made to me a few years ago. He’d just turned 50, and when asked how he felt about it, he said that, seeing as he couldn’t really be an _enfant terrible_ any more, he would have to content himself with merely being _terrible_.

A guy went by me the other day wearing a T-Shirt that read, “I bet you’ll vote _this_ time, Hippy.”

David Post “complains”:http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2004_10_21.shtml#1098372619 that John Kerry was not at the game to see the Red Sox beat the Yankees:

bq. AND WHERE WAS JOHN? … I’m surprised that there hasn’t been much talk about why we didn’t see Kerry at any of the games. He’s the junior senator from Massachusetts; he’s got a bona fide reason to snap his fingers, get the front row seats, put on his sox cap and jacket, and root like an ordinary human being. What, he doesn’t want the national TV exposure?? Was he worried about alienating Yankee fans? I guess one shouldn’t make too much of what is “just a ballgame,” but really: to his constituents, this is the most important thing going on at the moment; he’s lived and worked in Massachusetts all his life; is he the only person in that category who wouldn’t take free tickets to see these games? I honestly don’t get it, and it does make me wonder about the guy.

Note the pincer movement here. On the one hand, Kerry should have been at the game because that’s what “an ordinary human being” would do. On the other hand, Kerry is not a regular guy, because he’s a senator, is running for President, and he could have snapped his fingers to get front row seats. So, either he snaps his fingers or he doesn’t. He chose not to, for whatever reason, and so leaves himself open on the flank David attacks: “who wouldn’t take free tickets… does make me wonder about the guy” and so on. But say Kerry _had_ snapped his fingers and gotten front row seats, his face on the Jumbotron and the inevitable TV News coverage. What then? It’s obvious. He’d have opened himself up to whinging on just the _opposite_ grounds, viz, “Isn’t it typical of an elitist Senator who hasn’t been to a game all season to just snap his fingers, get front row seats, and try to use the Red Sox’s historic victory as a campaign rally? A classier guy — any ordinary human being, really — would have stayed away and let the fact that the Sox beat the curse have the limelight.” Heads I win, Tails you lose.

Reading about a case described in the “National Review”:http://www.nationalreview.com/smithw/smith200410200849.asp by Wesley J. Smith,[1] Kevin Drum “wonders”:http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_10/004963.php “if there really are serious moves afoot to redefine “death” in order to expedite organ harvesting.” The case in question concerns a “Colorado man”:http://rockymountainnews.com/drmn/state/article/0,1299,DRMN_21_3230615,00.html, William Thaddeus Rardin, who shot himself in the head. His organs were procured for transplantation. In his report on the death, however, the local Coroner, Mark Young, ruled that proper procedure hadn’t been followed, that Rardin’s brain death hadn’t been properly established and so the cause of death was the organ procurement itself. The local Organ Procurement Organization (OPO), “Donor Alliance”:http://www.donoralliance.org/, has “strongly rejected”:http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20041005006056&newsLang=en this charge.

An answer to Kevin’s question, and some commentary, below the fold.

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For the sake of reducing the general level of snarkiness in the world, the pursuit of truth to its innermost thingys, and of course the children, I’ve looked a bit further at the question of “May-December marriages”:http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2004_10_14.shtml#1098045981 and what that tells us about “revealed preferences”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/002694.html. As is often the case, the data tell us both more and less than you might think. The amateur demography continues below the fold, at “Holbovian”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/001441.html length.

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David Bernstein “in lofty principle”:http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2004_10_14.shtml#1098045981:

bq. Maybe I’m a little old-fashioned, but aren’t universities supposed to stand for the pursuit of truth, “even unto its innermost parts” (Brandeis’s motto). Will a faculty member who pursues such truth get hired to teach Women’s Studies? Will a student who pursues such truth get a good grade?

David Bernstein “in empirical practice”:http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2004_10_14.shtml#1098045981, one paragraph earlier:

bq. EVER HEAR OF “REVEALED PREFERENCES”? An article in my alma mater’s (Brandeis University) newspaper, _The Justice_ explains that two Brandeis Women’s Studies professors argue that (surprise!) what most of us think of as gender (or, some would say, “sex”) differences are actually mere stereotypes. Maybe it’s unfair for me to comment without reading the professors’ entire book, not to mention the numerous studies on which they claim to rely.

Maybe I’m a little old-fashioned, but would it really be too much effort to do a bit of reading beyond the alumni magazine before blandly dismissing something as lefty claptrap just because it contradicts “revealed preferences that seem blatantly obvious” to you? Especially when one believes in, you know, pursuing the truth unto its innermost wotsits? The preferences revealed in this case suggest the answer is “Yes.”

Brad DeLong “notices a relationship”:http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2004-2_archives/000394.html between the PSAT tests and the magazines lying around his home:

Dubbed… declaimed… reflexive… inquisitive… sustenance… enumerated… demeaned…harangue… munificent… straitened… divestment… sinecure… corollary… culmination… manifestation… constellation… amalgam… embodies… sanguine… impudent… reiterating… carapace… antennae…

[I]t’s hard to avoid noticing something about the vocabulary that they are testing. It’s not, by and large, science or engineering vocabulary. It’s not financial or commercial vocabulary. It’s not political or quantitative vocabulary. What they are testing is the high humanistic vocabulary of the Sunday New York Times Arts and Leisure section, of the New Yorker, of the New York Review of Books.

Now we get all three of these publications. And my children thus get an extra edge through this testing process. But is this really what we want to allocate resources based on–whether people’s parents have the NYRoB lying around and whether their children pick it up and read it?

“Cultural capital”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_capital is indeed a vital factor governing resource allocation in contemporary societies. For more information on what might happen to his fourteen-year-old in the near future, Brad should consider reading an oldie-but-goodie article from “Paul DiMaggio”:http://www.princeton.edu/~dimaggio, 1982, “Cultural Capital and School Success: The Impact of Status Culture Participation on the Grades of U.S. High School Students” (American Sociological Review, 47: 189-201). And for longer-term prospects, there’s Paul DiMaggio and “John Mohr”:http://www.soc.ucsb.edu/mohr.htm, 1985, “Cultural Capital, Educational Attainment, and Marital Selection” (American Journal of Sociology 90: 1231-61).

“Ted”:http://instapundit.com/archives/018438.php beat me to this, mostly. But I wanted to say this: I’m sure if we trawl through our 1990s archives we’ll find that the “high-minded”:http://instapundit.com/archives/018438.php and their lofty correspondents

bq. Reader Keith Rempel gets at the heart of what’s wrong here, and articulates what I couldn’t: “Kerry was using Cheney’s daughter to harm her father. … ANOTHER UPDATE: “More thoughts “here”:http://thoughtsonline.blogspot.com/2004/10/james-taranto-and-others-may-be-right.html: ‘thou shall NOT speak of another’s kid in any way that could POSSIBLY be construed as negative’ … MORE: … James Somers emails: “Kerry crassly exploited Cheney’s daughter for use against Bush and thus, by extension, Cheney. Perhaps you have to be a parent to understand what that means.”

were _right out there on the front lines_ defending Chelsea Clinton from anything that might have been “construed”:http://blog.radioleft.com/blog/_archives/2004/9/4/135257.html as “insulting”:http://www.nationalreview.com/derbyshire/derbyshire021501.shtml at the time. (We can leave aside — as perhaps too complex to grasp — the point that it is not actually an insult to mention that someone who has worked in various professional and political contexts doing outreach work with the gay community is, in fact, gay.) I’m waiting to see if the parallel to Chelsea strikes any of the “people”:http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/04_10_10_corner-archive.asp#042735 over at “The Corner”:http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner who are “waving”:http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/04_10_10_corner-archive.asp#042700 the “flag”:http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/04_10_10_corner-archive.asp#042692 of “‘common decency'”:http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/04_10_10_corner-archive.asp#042748 in defence of Mary Cheney at the moment. But, of course, I forget: when _they’re_ insulted it’s an offense to common decency and “civility”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/001227.html, but when _we’re_ insulted it’s just more political correctness and evidence that the left is “too sensitive”:http://www.kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/000214.html and has no sense of humor.

“Read and learn”:http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2004/10/index.html#004459. The old “pig-fucker strategy”:http://www.methree.net/archives/December/grueterthompson1.html emerges for the last month of the campaign, with the added twist of getting the party operatives to plant fake evidence.

Maria’s “post about required statistics courses”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/002676.html reminds me of a possibly apocryphal story. I _think_ it concerns one of the very early British social surveys of urban poverty by Charles Booth, or Mackintosh or one of those guys. The results were resisted by many for political reasons, and one strategy was to discredit the new-fangled methods they relied on. Thus, one critic in (I believe) the House of Commons asserted that he could not find the results credible because the report “only relied on a sample of the population — and a mere _random_ sample, at that.”

If anyone knows the source of this (doubtless mangled) story, let me know in the comments.

Over at Volokh, recent addition “Jim Lindgren”:http://www.law.nwu.edu/faculty/fulltime/Lindgren/Lindgren.html is making me regret once more their loss of Jacob Levy. “Here he is”:http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2004_10_14.shtml#1097728719 complaining about the supposedly appalling moderator bias that caused Bush to lose last night’s debate (again):

bq. Given Theresa (“no blood for oil”) Heinz Kerry, the only hard question John Kerry got all night was “I’d like to ask each of you, what is the most important thing you’ve learned from these strong women?”–and Kerry got to listen to Bush’s answer first. UPDATE: — OK, so Kerry should have answered the question about what he learned from his strong wife in this way (I’m recylcing a joke I heard last spring): [What KERRY might have said]: I developed my economic plan for the country from interacting with both my wives. Now I just need to find a rich country for the US to marry.

Clearly, Jim feels that whereas marrying into money is unseemly, being born into it is evidence of one’s good judgment. Is the parallel lesson that the US can spend the next 40 years drinking, partying and wasting Dad’s money on incompetent schemes, but still have things work out great?