by Kieran Healy on April 25, 2004
In a bold commercial move, you “Patrick”:http://nielsenhayden.com/electrolite/ and “Teresa”:http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight Nielsen Hayden now have a “Cafe Press Store”:http://www.cafeshops.com/nielsenhayden where you can buy various Nielsen Hayden wit and wisdom on mugs, shirts and aprons. Weirdly, though, I remembered one of the reified sentiments — a superb phrase I will doubtless be using at a later date — backwards from the version for sale. The mugs and shirts say “Just because you’re on their side, doesn’t mean they’re on your side.” But my brain had transposed it to “Just because they’re on your side, doesn’t mean you’re on their side.” The first warns against the danger of _giving_ support to people who will betray you in the end or turn out to be driven by interests very different from those you imagine. The second warns against the danger of _accepting_ support from people you don’t know, whose views happen to overlap with yours one area but in fact are part of some bizarro ideology you want nothing to do with. Not so different, I suppose, but I clearly thought the second version was more compelling somehow.
Three points on this. First, it’s actually quite common for great quotations to be edited and rearranged in the process of becoming part of the culture. But I think we can safely say that this is a case of my wonky[1] memory rather than some general push from the _conscience collective_. Second, I think I’m going to buy the “Nutbar Conspiracy Theorist” jersey once I get back to the U.S. And third, I think we need some CT merchandise. Perhaps a version of the “full lineout”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/001598.html. Or just our banner. Or some of the pearls of wit that flow like, um, honey from our, uh, wellsprings of, erm, knowledge. (Any nominations for favorite CT quotes?)
fn1. In the English rather than the American sense.
by Henry Farrell on April 23, 2004
We’ve been having some server problems which have disrupted the publication of both posts and comments. They should now be resolved – you should be able to comment again without receiving weird error messages. There will probably be further short term disruption in a few days, when we move to a new hosting provider – watch this space for further details.
by Kieran Healy on April 23, 2004
We seem to be having some technical difficulties, possibly related to our SQL server. Rebuilds aren’t working properly and Movable Type is complaining it can’t find template modules that it should know perfectly well are there (because they are now and always have been).
by Eszter Hargittai on April 20, 2004
I really enjoy seeing friends take up blogging because I find it helps us keep connected and it usually means more interesting reading. (I guess one could see that as a bad thing, but I’m working on honing my time-management skills.) The latest arrival is Liliputian Lilith who is a friend from graduate school. She, like me, grew up in Hungary interspersed with years in the U.S. thanks to our academic parents who rarely stayed put for more than a few years. Related to other Timberites’ experience (and I suspect many readers’) are her thoughts about the choice some of us make to live in a country other than the one in which we grew up. She has only been blogging for a few days but already has interesting posts about “mother-books” and air travel, cities, Barbie and beauty queens, and the origin of the Hungarians (related to this post on CT earlier). Today she took on John Holbo’s recent comments about Academic blogging and literary studies. Welcome to blog writing, LL! (I know you’ve been a reader for a while.;)
by John Q on April 20, 2004
Following up the links on Eszter’s last post, I discovered that she shares with me an Erdos number of 3 (Eszter via Aronov and O’Rourke, mine via Fishburn and Wakker). This is pretty good for social science academics.
We thought this was worth a CT post, and came up with another issue. Although Movable Type and other systems encourage group blogging, they don’t, as far as I’m aware, allow for jointly authored posts. This is of particular interest since it’s at least arguable that a joint post would count as co-authorship for Erdos number purposes (this comes back to the question, frequently discussed on this blog, of whether and how blog contributions should be listed on vitas). But more generally, it would seem as if joint posts would be worthwhile for at least some purposes.
The Erdos number site asserts that numbers as high as 15 have been found, but that nearly everyone with a finite Erdos number is below 8. This seems about right, though mean, median and modal numbers must grow over time.
by John Holbo on April 18, 2004
For the longest time I’ve been meaning to post something grand and insightful on the timely meta-theme of academic blogging. Since Brian and John got the ball rolling below, this will have to do.
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by Brian on April 17, 2004
As if there’s any other kind.
There’s been a ton of “blog commentary”:http://www.technorati.com/cosmos/search.html?rank=&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bu.edu%2Farion%2FPaglia_11.3%2FPaglia_Magic%2520of%2520Images.htm&sub=Go%21 on this “piece by Camille Paglia”:http://www.bu.edu/arion/Paglia_11.3/Paglia_Magic%20of%20Images.htm, which seems somewhat overrated to me, for much the reasons “Mark Liberman”:http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000772.html gives. But, as “Nicole Wyatt”:http://scribo.blogs.com/scribo/2004/04/blogs_and_argum.html notes, it raises an interesting question about what we’re doing when we’re blogging.
Many more such questions are raised by Geoff Nunberg’s nice FreshAir piece on Blogging – “The Global Lunchroom”:http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~nunberg/lunchroom.html. Geoff notes how cliquey the language bloggers use can be.
bq. The high, formal style of the newspaper op-ed page may be nobody’s native language, but at least it’s a neutral voice that doesn’t privilege the speech of any particular group or class. Whereas blogspeak is basically an adaptation of the table talk of the urban middle class — it isn’t a language that everybody in the cafeteria is equally adept at speaking.
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by Brian on April 16, 2004
A lot of people use fake, or altered, email addresses on comments threads, presumably because they want to avoid being flooded with spam. But it turns out that these are actually not that vulnerable to spammers harvesting.
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by Daniel on April 15, 2004
Big news for people who are interested in that sort of thing: the Hayek-L mailing list, the main online forum for discussion of Hayek, has gone over to weblog format. One health warning I’d make is that the new blog is run by the same guy who runs the PrestoPundit blog, which is in my mind an example of exactly the sort of kneejerk Republicanism-dressed-up libertarianism that I for one take Hayek much too seriously to have any patience with. But the new Hayek blog seems to have kicked off with a couple of good book reviews and Hayek-L was a good mailing list, so I wouldn’t be prejudiced agaisnt them on that ground alone. Good luck to them.
by Brian on April 9, 2004
This is turning into a trend. In the past few weeks we’ve seen new group blogs started by philosophy graduate students at Syracuse (“Orange Philosophy”:http://www.orangephilosophy.blogspot.com/), Rochester (“What is the Name of This Blog?”:http://urphilosophy.blogspot.com/) and now Brown (“Fake Barn Country”:http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Philosophy/Blog/).
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by Henry Farrell on April 8, 2004
“Julian Sanchez”:http://www.reason.com/links/links040504.shtml notes that some of the outrage at Kos is a bit rich, considering it comes from the likes of the LGF crowd. Charles Johnson and friends seem never to have met an Arab they didn’t want to string up. Now Johnson seems to be on a rampage, egging his commenters on to spew filth at “Kathryn Cramer’s”:http://www.kathryncramer.com/wblog/archives/000492.html and “Nathan Newman’s”:http://www.nathannewman.org/log/archives/001636.shtml#001636 blogs. Their tactics include posting Kathryn’s address and telephone number, making death threats, and threatening her children. This isn’t just trollishness – it’s an attempt to intimidate and to silence. Not a proud moment for the blogosphere. Via “Rivka”:http://respectfulofotters.blogspot.com/2004_04_01_respectfulofotters_archive.html#108127482205377604.
fn1. Title borrowed from one of Nathan’s commentators.
by John Holbo on April 2, 2004
When a man writes a perfectly good Derrida parody about blogging – and when that man has but two comments to reward his clownish labors a week on – that is not justice. By the powers of Crooked Timber, I call on you to tell Adam he is a very funny fellow.
by John Q on March 31, 2004
Following up Belle’s post, In Australia, as Easter approaches, the big question is: Bunny or Bilby? To give as fair and balanced a presentation as possible of the main issues, the rabbit is a voracious alien pest[1] marketed in chocolate form by greedy multinationals, while the bilby is an appealing, and endangered, native marsupial made available for Easter celebration by public spirited Australians, helping to raise both awareness and much-needed funds. We report, you decide.
fn1. Matched only by the fox
by Kieran Healy on March 30, 2004
Having John and Belle join us brings the CT roster to 15, which means we are now available for rugby matches against “similarly-sized”:http://www.volokh.com “group”:http://www.crescatsententia.org/ “blogs”:http://www.fistfulofeuros.net. Bring ’em on, I say. As you can see to the right, our front row is easily amongst the best in the world. Hooker “John Quiggin”:http://www.johnquiggin.com/ is complemented by English hard-man “Bertram”:http://eis.bris.ac.uk/~plcdib/ and Welsh terror “Davies”:http://d-squareddigest.blogspot.com/. Flankers “Weatherson”:http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Philosophy/homepages/weatherson/ and new acquisition “Holbo”:http://examinedlife.typepad.com/johnbelle/ combine to ensure mobility amongst the forwards, while second-rows “Farrell”:http://www.henryfarrell.net/ (H) and “Barlow”:http://tedbarlow.blogspot.com/ are big enough to catch anything thrown at them in the lineout. Number 8 “Man-Mountain Micah” “Schwartzman”:http://www.politicaltheory.blogspot.com/ anchors the forward line. Scrum-half “Farrell”:http://users.rcn.com/erbnico/main_html.html (M) provides the crucial link between the heavy-hitting forwards and the nimbler back line. At out-half, “Runnacles”:http://trunnacl.org/blog is equally well-able to run with the ball or kick for possession deep in opposition territory. Centers “Hargittai”:http://www.eszter.com/ and “Waring”:http://examinedlife.typepad.com/johnbelle/ are quick on the break while wingers “Brighouse”:http://philosophy.wisc.edu/people/#brighouse and “Mandle”:http://www.albany.edu/philosophy/Faculty.html#mandle create havoc with the slower defences of other blogs. Finally “Healy”:http://www.kieranhealy.org/blog at full back is perhaps the only question mark in an otherwise impeccable line-up.
And in case anyone’s wondering, rugby-team size seems to be optimal. Despite appearances to the contrary, and unlike the State or the Market (depending on your temperament), CT has no inbuilt tendency to expand indefinitely until it takes over every aspect of life.
by John Q on March 30, 2004
I’m pleased to announce that John Holbo and Belle Waring have joined our group and will be posting regularly on Crooked Timber from now on. John and Belle are famous for the catchphrase “and a pony!”, but apart from that I’m not going to attempt to summarise them.
Like me, and some other members of the group, they’ll be maintaining their own excellent blog as well.