Blogging

Three discussions worth taking note of.

* Our own Eszter Hargittai will be talking about blogging with Dan Drezner and Sean Carroll on “Milt Rosenberg’s show”:http://www.wgnradio.com/weblog/archives/miltsfile/2005/12/06/index.html#a000939 on Chicago radio station WGN this evening. Should be fun.

* The Chronicle is running a “discussion”:http://chronicle.com/colloquy/2005/12/procrastination/chat.php3 tomorrow on “how to beat academic procrastination”:http://chronicle.com/free/v52/i16/16a03001.htm with professor of psychology, William Ferrari. Leave yer questions or comments “here”:http://chronicle.com/colloquy/2005/12/procrastination/question.php3. Left untouched is the topic of whether some “forms of procrastination”:http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~john/procrastination.html may actually make you productive.

* Our libertarian comrades at the Cato Institute have created a new institution, “Cato Unbound”:http://www.cato-unbound.org/about-cato-unbound/. Each month, they’ll have an essay by some luminary, responses to that essay, and trackbacks to blogs that take up the discussion. Not entirely unlike our Crooked Timber seminars, albeit somewhat more ambitious in scope. It looks to be a very interesting experiment – blog/online discussions of this kind seem to me to have a lot of potential to shake up the academy.

The current issue of Nature has several articles about “Science in the web age” including a focus on scholarly searching online, the digitization of books, and the sharing of research ideas through the use of blogs, which discusses the use of blogs by academics to communicate about their research.

The latter is of particular interest here and something we have written about before. (If I had more time I’d link to even more relevant posts, it’s been a popular topic around here, not surprisingly.) This being the last week of the quarter I am running around like crazy and have little time to comment. The short summary of some current thoughts I have on this are as follows. Traditional academic outlets rarely offer the opportunity to publish short think-pieces. But many thoughts, while valuable, do not require or necessarily merit a 25-40 page paper. Where to publish them then? Blogs seem like an obvious and helpful outlet in such a case. And yes, blogs can have a peer review component if comments are allowed and knowledgable people are reading the material.

With the general resurgence in Internet-related commercial activity and speculation, it’s not surprising that a fair bit of attention has turned to the commercial and advertising possibilities of blogs. Blogging as a large-scale phenomenon came too late to cash in on the dotcom mania last time around, but plenty of people are keen on a bite at the cherry this time. The multi-million dollar purchase of Weblogs Inc got lots of people thinking about how much their site might be worth. High-profile launches like that of Pajamas Media (endorsed by Judy Miller!) have added to the buzz.

But just like last time around, there are plenty of reasons for scepticism. Looking at the prices being charged by leading bloggers on Blogads, it doesn’t seem as if many people are making a lot of money. Nic Duquette did the sums and concluded[1] that a site with 10 000 page views a day ought to be able to gross around $US4500 a year. Putting in 10 hours a week for this kind of return amounts to a wage of $US9 an hour, and that’s before you allow for any costs.

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Never put off blogging something, or Matthew Turner will “beat you to it”:http://www.matthewturner.co.uk/Blog/2005/11/on-edgware-road.html ! Last year Carol Gould wrote a “piece about an alleged epidemic”:https://crookedtimber.org/2004/10/15/a-tsunami-of-anti-americanism-and-anti-semitism of anti-Americanism in Britain and the some of the “decent”:http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/archives/2004/10/15/does_she_exaggerate.php “left”:http://www.pootergeek.com/index.php?p=456 linked to it enthusiastically (one describing the piece “as a breath of fresh air”:http://jonathanderbyshire.typepad.com/blog/2004/10/a_terrible_and_.html ). When I dared to suggest that it was a load of old tosh, the “decents cried foul”:http://marxist-org-uk.blogspot.com/2004_10_01_marxist-org-uk_archive.html#109789785031862374 . Will they, I wonder, continue to accord heroine status to Ms. Gould when they read “her latest hilarious effort”:http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=20295 . Some choice excerpts:

bq. Last week was the culmination of that poignant fortnight in which people all over the world wear a poppy in the lead-up to Remembrance Day. Nothing is more dramatic than seeing the sea of red flowers in the lapels of British men and women as they make their way to the office in the early-morning rush hour. … On British television, every presenter and anchor wears a poppy. In keeping with the motto of the British Legion—“Wear your poppy with pride”—every shopkeeper, publican, hotel manager and cabbie wears a poppy…. It was therefore all the more astonishing last week when I took a long walk along Edgware Road, the most densely Muslim section of London, and discovered that not one person was wearing a poppy.

…

bq. It is worth noting … that London Mayor Ken Livingstone is trying to institute an initiative to bring ethnic minorities into the taxi fleet, to tackle its almost exclusively white domain. Keeping in mind that Washington D.C. has one of the worst taxi systems in the world, in part because most drivers can barely speak English and do not know the meaning of the words “cordial” or “polite”, especially where female passengers are concerned, one prays the Livingstone initiative will be approached with caution.

…

bq. I walked and walked that evening, stopping in to every hookah café, every electrical shop and every hijab boutique. Not one person was wearing a poppy.

[One worries a little that since Gould’s piece is destined primarily for an American audience there will be readers who take her factual claims about British society at face value. Needless to say, lots of people do not wear poppies, there are many sights more dramatic than lots of people wearing poppies, and breaking the strangehold of white males over taxis is a good thing.]

One of my students asked whether it would be possible to receive a hard copy of students’ blogs for the quarter. This is a nice idea. I don’t know how long the course blog will stay online (and some of it will probably start anew next time I teach the class) so such a solution could be nice for archiving the material. (The Web Archive hasn’t picked up their blogs yet.) I had created archives of the blogs from last year using HTTrack, which is a handy tool, but an additional hard copy would be nice.

I have been looking around and although I have found some options, I am interested in finding some more. I know that Qoop has a Blog Printing service in beta, but it doesn’t seem to be open to just anyone (plus it is not clear whether they are supporting all blogging software at this point). In any case, given my experiences with Qoop’s Flickr photobook printing, I would rather explore some alternatives first. (The result was okay. The cover was very nice, but the rest seemed more like a notebook than a book per se. For that, the price seemed a bit too high.)

It looks like LiveJournal users have a ready-made solution. But I need something for WordPress. This person seems to have done a nice job printing a book (or “blook”), but the process seems extremely tedious. Does anyone have experiences with BlogBinders? (I don’t like the idea that they strip out the images from the blog.)

Has anyone done this? Any recommendations? Any thoughts on what to avoid or what not to forget?

My preference would be for paying a bit more if it meant having to do less work on it.

Over at Volokh, “Todd Zywicki says”:http://www.volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_11_20-2005_11_26.shtml#1132593329,

bq. Scott Adams now has a blog, known apprpriately enough as “Dilbert Blog”:http://www.volokh.com/posts/1132593329.shtml … I also see that Mr. Adams has also already had the misfortune to “cross paths”:http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2005/11/intelligent_des_1.html with the blogosphere’s most infamous Lysenkoist. Welcome to the blogosphere, Mr. Adams.

The link goes to Adams’ version of a spat he (Adams) has been having with “PZ Myers”:http://pharyngula.org/, of _Pharyngula_. Here is “Myers’ version”:http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/open_thread_adams_edition/. But what I really want to know is, under what description of reality does PZ Myers (a biology professor at the University of Minnesota at Morris, and tireless rebutter of creationist and Intelligent Design arguments) qualify as a “Lysenkoist”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism, let alone the “blogosphere’s most infamous Lysenkoist”? Does Todd have evidence that Myers fakes his scientific research? That he believes that species can be changed through hybridization and grafting? That he thinks genetics is a bourgeois pseudoscience? Or maybe Todd is suggesting that any scientist with left-leaning political views is, _ipso facto_ some kind of fraud, and Myers is our most prominent example? I honestly have no idea what Zywicki is trying to say here.

*Update*: Todd has suddenly and silently updated his post. It now reads, in part, “I also see that Mr. Adams has also already had the misfortune to cross paths with one unpleasant corner of the blogosphere.” In addition, he has silently deleted three or four comments (including one from me) that called him on the smear he was making. I guess anyone could mistakenly type “Lysenkoist” when they meant “unpleasant.” Your self-correcting blogosphere at work. At least he saw that the charge was indefensible, I suppose.

*Second Update*: Todd “explains his actions a bit further”:http://www.volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_11_20-2005_11_26.shtml#1132593329 in an update. From a post PZ Myers links to, it seems Zywicki’s animus toward Myers all goes back to an “earlier”:http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/the_conservative_counterattack_ho_hum/ “argument”:http://www.volokh.com/posts/1120775700.shtml they had about evolutionary psychology.

Support Bloggers’ Rights!

The EFF is running a campaign to support bloggers’ rights and to encourage new members. Over the next few years, bloggers are likely to be hit with both lawsuits and regulations, as blogging becomes normalized as a form of speech and political activity. The EFF is as close to a trade union supporting bloggers’ interests as we’re likely to get. It’s worth supporting, by clicking on the button.

When I read a while ago that “Judith Miller”:http://www.buzzmachine.com/index.php/2005/10/31/i-dont-wear-pjs/ was set to give the keynote speech at the launch party of “Pajamas Media”:http://pajamasmedia.com/, I honestly thought it was a joke. (Pajamas Media is soon to be renamed, is set to launch tomorrow, and is kind of holding company for a “large and somewhat varied collection”:http://pajamasmedia.com/pj-profiles.php of mostly conservative bloggers.) But now one of their recruits, Dan Drezner, “confirms that it’s true”:http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/002417.html. He seems a little queasy about it, and I don’t blame him. I’m not sure what Pajamas Media is supposed to be all about (and I’m “not the”:http://rogerailes.blogspot.com/2005_11_13_rogerailes_archive.html#113206774093987333 “only one”:http://www.thepoorman.net/2005/11/14/bunched-pjs/). It might be meant as a conservative “Huffington Post”:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/, binding its generally conservative contributors into a common online outlet. Or it might be a looser association of independent sites — some sort of syndication network meant to generate advertising revenue. In either case, I don’t quite see where the money is going to be raked in from an initiative like this, but what do I know? I have to say, though, that if I were in Dan’s shoes I think I’d have said no to the invitation, and certainly have hit the eject button by now. They have some smart people on board (like Dan himself), but seeing as Charles Johnson (of Little Green Footballs) is running the show and the likes of “Michelle Malkin”:http://pajamasmedia.com/pj-profiles.php?p=2005/11/michellemalkincom_michelle_mal.php have joined the “Editorial Board,” the whole thing reminds me of an apparently lavish buffet at a dodgy restaurant: there’s plenty on offer, and maybe some of it looks good, but there’s also a rancid smell in the air that won’t go away.

Over at Volokh, the “puppy blood”:https://crookedtimber.org/2005/08/13/taking-a-stand/ is flying again. This time, “it’s Juan Non-Volokh”:http://www.volokh.com/posts/1131321731.shtml who defends “America’s network of secret, overseas torture centers”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/01/AR2005110101644_pf.html against the vicious charge that they resemble Soviet gulags:

bq. I would like to underline my ultimate position: Not every mass murder is comparable to the Holocaust. By the same token, not every secret detention is comparable to the Gulag. In my view, the overuse of such comparisons undermines our ability to recognize the varying magnitudes of various evils. Such hyperbole deadens the sensitivity to moral distinctions in public discourse. Again, I am not excusing the conduct of our government. Some of the allegations are quite serious and, if true, merit condemnation, but that does not make Gitmo and other U.S. facilities equivalent to the Soviet Gulag.

Nice to see a fine legal mind at work on such a hard problem. How difficult is it to enumerate the differences between what the U.S. is doing at the moment and what the Soviets did? Let’s see. Millions of people are not being spirited away to labor camps in Siberia. Whole segments of society are not being brutally annihilated. Dick Cheney doesn’t even speak Russian! QED, they are not gulags.

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Eugene Volokh strikes a blow against the “judicial activism=judgifying I don’t like” equation. The 9th Circuit determined that “there is no fundamental right of parents to be the exclusive provider of information regarding sexual matters to their children.” (The case involves a questionnaire administered to 7-11 year-old public school students in California whose parents had signed a permission slip. Among the questions were a number of a sexual nature. I agree with the plaintiffs that the permission slip was misleading, and many would regard the questions as inappropriate, and someone should get a slap from the human subjects board at their university. However, this isn’t a reason to divine new rights in the Constitution…)

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I see that the left sidebar now has a permanent link to Eszter’s “Frappr Map of Crooked Timber”:http://www.frappr.com/crookedtimber readers (scroll down: under Frenzy of Renown). Add yourselves (if you want to and you haven’t already – especially if you come from Africa, South America, Eastern Europe or Antarctica).

Go nominate some deserving soul, or souls, for best history blogging in various categories.

Feeding www.crookedtimber.org into this calculation applet, it’s estimated to be worth $928,668.30, using the same link-to-dollar ratio as the AOL purchase of Weblogs Inc deal for a rumoured $25 million. Toss us a few more links and we’ll all be millionaires[1]

fn1. Or rather we’ll be worth one virtual million between us based on the imputed value of hypothetical ads.

Locke’s subtitle to his Two Treatises of Government explains the purpose of each of the two essays: “In the Former, the False Principles and Foundation of Sir Robert Filmer, and His Followers, are Detected and Overthrown. The Latter is an Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent, and End of Civil-Government.” The Second Treatise is by far the more widely read these days. I only recently read the First, and it was not nearly as painful as I feared. In fact, much of it was downright amusing. Locke sets his sights squarely on Filmer’s divine right theory, according to which God gave Adam “Royal authority” which was passed down from father to son until … well, that part’s a little unclear. Anyway, Locke is pretty merciless.

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