by Kieran Healy on June 11, 2004
Seeing as “Brian”:http://tar.weatherson.net/ is off gallivanting somewhere, let me point you towards “Desert Landscapes”:http://www.arizonaphilosophy.com/, a new blog brought to you by some of the faculty and graduate students of the “Philosophy Department”:http://info-center.ccit.arizona.edu/~phil/ at the “University of Arizona”:http://www.arizona.edu. You can see them all there, inside the Social Sciences building in the right foreground of “this live view of the campus”:http://www.cs.arizona.edu/camera/.[1] They live on the ground floor philosophically underlaboring for the “Political Science people”:http://info-center.ccit.arizona.edu/~polisci/ department in the middle and the “Sociology department”:http://fp.arizona.edu/soc/, appropriately located on the top floor.
fn1. Unless it’s the night time, obviously, in which case you can “look here instead”:http://www.cs.arizona.edu/camera/week.html.
Left-of-center bloggers, could I have a quick word with you, before this becomes a problem?
(huddle)
Barbara and Jenna Bush are going to join their father’s campaign. There’s going to be a fair number of stories about them. They’re out of college, and many are going to consider attacks on them to be fair game. We shouldn’t.
When Rush Limbaugh referred to Chelsea Clinton as the “White House dog”… when John Derbyshire wrote his famous “I hate Chelsea Clinton” column… when Mickey Kaus attacked Kerry’s daughter for the dress she wore… those arguments were heavily quoted and promoted, not by conservatives, but by liberals. They make right wingers* look like cruel, petty people who attack the loved ones of their political opponents. I don’t want us to be like that. These attacks barely work in terms of preaching to the choir, and alienate and insult everyone else.
So it will be with the Bush daughters. There will never be a post or story about Bush’s daughters that loses votes for George W. Bush. The Bush daughters are good-looking young women who are doing nothing wrong by supporting their father, whom they love. They could hardly be more sympathetic if they fell down a well. We should leave them alone.
* “But Kaus is a Democrat!” Yes, he’s a Democrat who wrote a mean, inaccurate hit piece on the Democratic nominee’s daughter. Duly noted.
by Chris Bertram on May 27, 2004
Congratulations to Chris Brooke, whose funny, informative, enlightening (and splendid) “Virtual Stoa”:http://users.ox.ac.uk/~magd1368/weblog/blogger.html is now three years old. In my experience the third birthday party is the one where hordes of children turn up, are abandoned by their parents for several hours, grind jelly and crisps into the carpet and play at sticking their heads through the cat-flap. So I’m imagining the Stoical attitude Chris is displaying to such mayhem at Magdalen Towers even now.
by Belle Waring on May 21, 2004
Some really inspiring poetry from the National Review Online. Sample:
We face scheming murderers with calm defiance.
They have soulless evil, we have self-reliance.
They butcher civilians, their cruelty shows.
Our steel, true steel, is tempered by blows.
Let them come and dare face us, or run, if they choose.
In battle or treachery, the wicked shall lose.
For the acts of their madness are in truth their death throes.
They’ll die on our steel that they’ve tempered, with blows.
Isn’t rhyme great? I think it’s clear that only soulless lefties could be moved by the blank free verse (thanks Rachel) so popular with all the modernist kids these last 80 years or so. Give me good, old-fashioned rhyme any day! And moral clarity! The author, one Rob S. Rice, is a classicist, and on behalf of classicists everywhere I’d like to offer a remorseful apology. Sorry about the whole Victor Davis Hanson thing, too. In fact, I’m going to step up to the plate and take full responsibility for both men (N.B. no actual consequences follow from this.)
[click to continue…]
I heard a rumor that if you’re the 1000th donor, he’ll tell you his name.*
*Rumor is not true.
Does law professor Glenn Reynolds need me to explain why this is a bad idea?
UPDATE: He’s responded to my email in a responsible way. Good show.
by Eszter Hargittai on May 10, 2004
I started blogging two years ago as an extension of/complement to my mailing list, which had been running since December, 2001. It’s funny that in that first post I describe blogging as “an online forum usually with one main author/contributor” and now here I am on a group blog. I did not see the benefits of the latter until I joined CT, which has been a delight, so thanks!
I wish I knew who were the first few dozen readers of “Eszter’s Blog” so I could express my appreciation to them. (Perhaps they are still with me in which case saying thank you here should work.:-) Those visits encouraged me to keep going and make this exciting and interesting – albeit at times quite frustrating – activity part of my daily routine. Writing blog entries has definitely pushed me to think about certain issues and ideas in the sort of detail that an occasional random thought would not require of me. It has also helped me meet some wonderful people. Thank you!
It’s Dylan-goes-electric time over at AndrewSullivan.com:
The question I have asked myself in the wake of Abu Ghraib is simply the following: if I knew before the war what I know now, would I still have supported it? I cannot deny that the terrible mismanagement of the post-war – something that no reasonable person can now ignore – has, perhaps fatally, wrecked the mission. But does it make the case for war in retrospect invalid? My tentative answer – and this is a blog, written day by day and hour by hour, not a carefully collected summary of my views – is yes, I still would have supported the war. But only just. And whether the “just” turns into a “no” depends on how we deal with the huge challenge now in front of us….
The one anti-war argument that, in retrospect, I did not take seriously enough was a simple one. It was that this war was noble and defensible but that this administration was simply too incompetent and arrogant to carry it out effectively. I dismissed this as facile Bush-bashing at the time. I was wrong.….
By refusing to hold anyone accountable, the president has also shown he is not really in control. We are at war; and our war leaders have given the enemy their biggest propaganda coup imaginable, while refusing to acknowledge their own palpable errors and misjudgments. They have, alas, scant credibility left and must be called to account. Shock has now led – and should lead – to anger. And those of us who support the war should, in many ways, be angrier than those who opposed it.
(emphasis added) He ends with a call to win, I should point out. Nonetheless, when this Administration has lost Sully, they’ve done very badly indeed. More to come.
by Kieran Healy on May 5, 2004
So Bristol was great up to the point where the hotel phoned me at 7:30 this morning saying that my car had been broken into. Back window knocked out and crap everywhere. They didn’t steal the “Ligeti CD”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/001804.html.
by Chris Bertram on May 4, 2004
Just back from a very pleasant evening drinking and chatting with Kieran in the “Seven Stars”:http://www.englandpast.net/education/campaigns5.html , a Bristol pub where Thomas Clarkson stayed whilst investigating the slave trade in 1787. Meeting Kieran brings my person-to-person encounters with other CTers up to three. No doubt I’ll collect the full set eventually! In testimony to the power of the blogosphere I can reveal that when he picked me up this evening Kieran’s car CD player seemed to me to be defective, but he soon put me right: reading “Michael Brooke”:http://www.michaelbrooke.com/archive/2004_03_28_index.html#108050871652994237 had inspired him to buy a disc of music by Ligeti.