by Henry Farrell on June 8, 2010
Laura McKenna has an interesting claim and “data point”:http://11d.typepad.com/files/blog-evolution—mckenna.pdf (PDF).
bq. However, the move from independent bloggers to paid staff members of important newspapers and interest groups had an impact on the old system of blogging. Perhaps because these newly professional bloggers felt pressured to distance themselves from their amateur roots, they stopped linking to independent bloggers. They were more likely to link to academic studies, foundation reports, newspaper articles, or live-blogged events.
bq. Matthew Yglesias is one of the superstar bloggers who went pro. … His new professional status has had an impact on his linkage patterns. In the last week of September of 2004, Yglesias wrote 30 posts with 31 hyperlinks on his independent blog. Fifteen of those links were to independent blogs, and the remaining sixteen links were to newspapers, websites, journals, or think tank studies. In the last week of September of 2009, he wrote 66 posts with 131 hyperlinks for his blog at the Center for American Progress. Only seven of 131 hyperlinks were to independent bloggers. The remaining 122 links primarily pointed readers to everything else, but primarily traditional newspapers and journals. Yglesias is writing a lot more, but referring to independent bloggers a lot less.
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by Eszter Hargittai on April 28, 2010
It’s exciting to see a paper about blogs across the political spectrum that goes beyond the by-now rather common practice of looking at who talks to whom among bloggers (e.g., whether there are any cross-ideological conversations going on). Yochai Benkler, Aaron Shaw and Victoria Stodden of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society have just released “A Tale of Two Blogospheres: Discursive Practices on the Left and Right” showing some significant differences in types of blog platforms used (with different affordances), co-authorships and levels of participation among blogs of different political persuasions. Here is one example of specific findings (based on analyses of 155 top political blogs):
Over 40% of blogs on the left adopt platforms with enhanced user participation features. Only about 13% of blogs on the right do so. While there is substantial overlap, and comments of some level of visibility are used in the vast majority of blogs on both sides of the political divide, the left adopts enabling technologies that make user-generated diaries and blogs more central to the site to a significantly greater degree than does the right. (p. 22.)
There are lots of other interesting results in the paper so I highly recommend reading it [pdf].
It’s very clearly written and summarizes related literature well so in case this is not an area you’ve been following, this is a good piece with which to start to familiarize yourself with related debates. If it is an area that you’ve been following then this is a must-read to see some truly original contributions to the literature.
For more on this elsewhere, Ari Melber has an interview with Yochai Benkler on this research in The Nation.
by Henry Farrell on April 1, 2010
Something that I should have said “the first time we went around this particular merry-go-round”:http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2008/11/09/kerr, but didn’t (because I didn’t see it until some days after it had happened), and want to say “now that we seem to be going around it again”:http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/04/01/nsa/index.html. Glenn Greenwald’s animus towards Orin Kerr is perhaps unsurprising (Kerr’s politics are very different from Greenwald’s, and his personal style is as dissimilar from Greenwald’s as can be) but is not especially well justified by the facts. Greenwald has repeatedly depicted Kerr as an “apologist” for Bush administration policies (disclosing that Kerr has not been an apologist “all” such policies, but notably failing to mention that Kerr was on many occasions an explicit critic of the Bush administration, and of various conservative arguments made on its behalf) in a manner which is both offensive and untrue. It’s quite clear that Kerr is (moderately) conservative – it is also clear from even the most superficial reading of his blogging and writing that he is neither doctrinaire, nor prepared to defend legal doctrines or arguments that he doesn’t himself believe in. Perhaps Greenwald means by “apologist” something like “someone who advocates for policies which I strongly disagree with.” If so, he should use more neutral language. If he intends to convey something more like the everyday meaning of “apologist,” which carries insinuations of dishonesty and hackery, he can do so of course – but it would be nice to see some evidence supporting this claim.
If Greenwald responds to this, it’s not impossible that he’ll respond in the same way as he has done to Kerr – through a fairly direct personalized attack on my motives in writing this defence. To anticipate one possible line of attack – Kerr is nominally a colleague of mine (he is employed by the same university). That doesn’t mean that I know him well – I have seen him perhaps once in the last five years, and have not (as best as I can recollect) had any other exchange with him during that period. He did come once to talk to a class I was teaching shortly after I arrived at GWU. However, my relations with him could best be described as friendly, but not close, and most importantly mediated through shared membership of a collective community (the blogosphere). Which is to say that they are more or less similar to my past relations with Glenn Greenwald (with whom I have very occasionally exchanged amicable emails). In short – the reason I want to defend Orin Kerr is because I find his online writing thoughtful and interesting (I have rather different feelings about some of his colleagues on the Volokh Conspiracy). While I’ve _absolutely no problem_ with strong partisanship, it’s necessary, in the end of the day, to recognize that we live in a plural society with competition over values, in which the other guys are going to win, at least some of the time. I would frankly far prefer to live in a world where at least some of the other guys thought like Orin Kerr than one where they thought like, say, Marc Thiessen. Claiming that _everyone_ on the other side of the intellectual divide is a dishonest hack seems to me to be an exercise in self-flattery and wishful thinking. It also means that one doesn’t have to learn from people whom one strongly disagrees with (this kind of learning is often unpleasant for exactly the same reason that it is valuable). I don’t know if Glenn Greenwald thinks that the people on the other side are all hacks (I’m mostly bringing it up because a couple of our commenters have made suggestions along these lines in the past). But I suspect that the reason that Kerr so gets on his nerves is precisely because he argues for a greater deference towards the state than Greenwald would like, but is not, obviously, a Thiessenesque hack. For me that’s a feature, not a bug.
[nb that this is a personal blogpost, does not by any means necessarily represent the views of other CTers, some of whom undoubtedly take a more vigorous line on this, etc]
by Kieran Healy on March 25, 2010
Congratulations Matt McIrvin, you are the author of Crooked Timber’s Two Hundred and Fifty Thousandth Comment! And I’m not even counting all the spam we deleted. I believe the term of art these days is that these quarter of a million comments — do you mind if I say that again? These quarter of a million comments — are “curated”. Gently managed. Lovingly tended. Hosed down twice a day. It’s kind of like you are all in a big museum, or possibly zoo. Of the future. We’ve come a long way from the very beginning. Eventually there will be a grad student and a thesis, I am sure. In the meantime, for his good fortune Matt wins, em, well anyway we thank you sincerely for your many contributions. And of course we thank you, as well. And you. And especially you. But certainly not you, you troll. You are banned.
by Kieran Healy on March 11, 2010
Cosmic Variance‘s Sean Carroll doing a very good job indeed on The Colbert Report. That shit is hard. Along the way he makes deft use of a Dara O’Briain line (“Of course science doesn’t know everything — if science knew everything, it would stop”) that I believe I introduced him to, so therefore I take full credit for all the laughs he got and expect to receive a check for any royalties accruing from Colbert-related sales.
by John Q on December 31, 2009
For me the big change that came with the last decade was blogging. I started in 2002, and it’s been a big part of my life (sometimes too big) ever since. So, when it came to review the decade, the obvious place to look was the Wayback Machine, which captured my old blogspot blog on 27 July 2002. Looking at the blog as it was then, two things jump out at me
* Looking at the blogroll, I feel like the last of the Mohicans. The bloggers of those days have nearly all retired, and hardly any has a solo blog anymore. CT is something of an exception – quite a few of us still keep our personal blogs going. Mine is here.
* I’m singing the same song now as I was all those years ago. The top post on the page is about how the financial crisis has discredited the efficient markets hypothesis, trickle down economics, privatisation and so on. Of course that was the dotcom financial crisis of 2000-01. I think a few more people are paying attention this time around, but we will have to wait and see.
by Henry Farrell on December 6, 2009
I’m a bit hesitant to link to this (as I’m not an elderly right wing economist, I’m worried I might be accused of “belittling the other”), but it’s super-duper awesome! Charles Rowley, familiar to long time CT readers for his “ruminations”:https://crookedtimber.org/2003/07/20/worldly-philosophers/ on the corruption of the profession of political science (we’re all in hock to the federal government) and his “bizarre attack”:https://crookedtimber.org/2009/07/28/anger-and-greif/ on Avner Greif (see “here”:http://www.springerlink.com/content/e4477g1412453627/ for Greif’s reply), “now has his own blog”:http://charlesrowley.wordpress.com/. It’s everything that one might possibly hope for. My favorite so far is the bit telling us that:
bq. the massive fist of free market ideas once again will smash through the false consciousness of Keynesian dreams, and voters will rush to elect leaders such as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan
‘cos it’s a level of rhetorical styling that I haven’t seen since I used to pick up the newsletter of the Maoist International Movement (the title is a bit of a misnomer; the cadres all seem to hang out in Ann Arbor, Michigan) when I was a graduate student in statistics boot camp. But the Obama=Sykes, Larry Summers=Fagin “post”:http://charlesrowley.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/youve-gotta-pick-a-pocket-or-two-boys/ runs a very close second:
bq. The question that remains to be answered is whether the futures of Larry and Barack will mirror those of Fagin and Sykes. Will some fortuitous Oliver chance across the paths of these shady characters before they can fulfill their dreams while destroying the market system that created the wealth that they covet? Will both meet the dreaded drop in 2012, if not before? Or will pocket-picking accelerate to the point at which Atlas Shrugs and the wealth-creators remove themselves from the economy, leaving those who cannot create wealth to share in the economic collapse of a negative-sum game as the United States begins a long decline into economic mediocrity?
This is a man who was surely born to blog. Update your bookmarks.
Update: “The Fun Continues”:http://charlesrowley.wordpress.com/2009/12/08/a-great-deal-of-ruin-in-a-nation/
bq. As private investment is increasingly crowded out by government expenditures, and as entrepreneurship is dashed by national socialist policies – as indeed was the case in the US throughout the the first two administrations of FDR – the once-powerful engine of the US economy will sputter and then die. Unlike in 1945, in 2019 the United States will not bestride a shattered world economy like some hegemonic Colossus. Rather its _state capitalist,_ [HF: emphasis in original] social market economy will struggle just to maintain existing living standards, while newly-emergent, vibrant market economies demonstrate to a former master the awesome power of laissez-faire capitalism.
If Tyler Cowen hadn’t confirmed that this blog was the genuine article, I’d suspect it of being a clever fraud perpetrated by an old-school lefty – the ‘Staatsmonopolistischer Kapitalismus=Nationalsozialismus’ identity has fallen out of fashion since the collapse of the GDR, and it is rather odd to see it being revived as a defense of free markets.
by Henry Farrell on November 26, 2009
“3 Quarks Daily”:http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2009/11/3-quarks-daily-prize-in-politics.html are running another competition, this time for best political post, with Tariq Ali as final adjudicator. Those so inclined should get over there and nominate. NB that this is not an implicit bleg to nominate CT posts – if you really want to, go ahead, but the major social benefit of competitions like this is to uncover posts and posters that would otherwise be unlikely to get much public attention. While CT’s readership is respectable rather than enormous, I suspect that most of the web-savvy people who would be inclined to like CT have probably already been exposed to it. Hence, any benefit that we receive is likely to be proportionately much less than would accrue to other, smaller blogs which don’t get nearly as much attention as they deserve.
by Michael Bérubé on July 16, 2009
A moment of silence for <a href=”http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2009/07/barefaced-goaway-bird.html”>Hilzoy</a>, who’s retiring from blogging this week.
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by John Q on July 7, 2009
Blogs kill books. At least, that’s what I always thought. Between 1988 and 2000, I wrote four1 books and edited a couple of volumes. In 2002, I started blogging, and I haven’t done a book since then.
But, in the mysterious way of things, it turns out that blogs generate books, or at least book contracts. In comments here not long ago, Miracle Max wrote
The discredited ideas theme really needs a book, and JQ appears to be the ideal person to write it.
I will even contribute the title: “Dead Ideas from New Economists.” No charge.
Brad DeLong picked it up, and a couple of days later I got an email from Seth Ditchik at Princeton University Press suggesting that it really would be a good idea. Now, we have a contract, and we’re going to use Max’s suggested title.
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by John Q on June 20, 2009
The sacking of Dan Froomkin by the Washington Post reminds me of something attributed (IIRC) to Auberon Waugh on being told that Randolph Churchill had undergone the surgical removal of a tumour that turned out not to be malignant.
It is a marvel of medical science that they could first locate the one part of Randolph that was not malignant, and, having found it, immediately remove it
More from the ever-growing Wapo fan club.
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by Michael Bérubé on June 16, 2009
So I’m back from the AAUP national meeting, and I’ve decided that I’m a bad person for not blogging about <a href=”http://www.law.duke.edu/publiclaw/supremecourtonline/certgrants/2005/garvceb.html”><i>Garcetti v. Ceballos</i></a> or <a href=”http://www.umich.edu/~sacua/sacmin/hongvgrant.pdf”><i>Hong v. Grant</i></a> (.pdf) until now. (Marc Bousquet was all over it <a href=”http://chronicle.com/review/brainstorm/bousquet/high-noon-for-academic-freedom”>more than a year ago</a>.) The <i>Hong</i> case is just one example of what I call the Children of Garcetti, and if you teach at a public university in the United States (or if you know someone who does), you should know about <i>Garcetti</i>.
Here’s the <i>Oyez</i> <a href=”http://www.oyez.org/cases/2000-2009/2005/2005_04_473″>summary of the case</a>. Since <i>Garcetti</i> involves the fate of a deputy district attorney in Los Angeles who was whistleblowing with regard to what appeared to be a fraudulent affidavit, most people didn’t realize that it might have implications for academic freedom. Ah, but not the AAUP’s legal staff! They were on the case, so to speak, from the start (here’s a .pdf of <a href=”http://www.aaup.org/NR/rdonlyres/FA297466-D642-4040-987D-BAF46DDA0CA0/0/GarcettiSupremeCourtFinal.pdf”>the brief</a>). Which is yet another reason you all (if you’re college professors) should have <a href=http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/involved/join/>joined the AAUP</a> by now, because (a) the AAUP sees these things coming when most of the rest of us don’t and (b) helps to fight ‘em in court. Indeed, the AAUP/ Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression brief seems to have caught the attention of David Souter, who, bless his retiring heart, wrote in dissent:
<blockquote>This ostensible domain beyond the pale of the First Amendment is spacious enough to include even the teaching of a public university professor, and I have to hope that today’s majority does not mean to imperil First Amendment protection of academic freedom in public colleges and universities, whose teachers necessarily speak and write “pursuant to official duties.”</blockquote>
In response, Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion, citing Bugs Bunny, replied, “ehhhhhh … <i>could be</i>!” Though the actual language was this:
<blockquote>There is some argument that expression related to academic scholarship or classroom instruction implicates additional constitutional interests that are not fully accounted for by this Court’s customary employee-speech jurisprudence. We need not, and for that reason do not, decide whether the analysis we conduct today would apply in the same manner to a case involving speech related to scholarship or teaching.</blockquote>
In other words, <i>we’re leaving that door open, thanks — if any lower courts want to walk through it, just make sure they wipe their feet on the 1940 Statement of Principles of Academic Freedom</i>.
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by Kieran Healy on June 7, 2009
by John Holbo on June 1, 2009
Yes, it is true! Visit the official book site. You can view the whole thing via Issuu.com, which has a very nice Flash-based reader: minimal and elegant but full-featured. And/or download the PDF for offline reading.
Want to see a neat trick? I can embed the book, like so.
Then you just click to turn the page (illegible at this size) or click to open and read in full-screen mode. It’s a very nice viewer they’ve got. Or I could make the embed open on a particular page, so when I’m blogging about a passage while teaching, I can just point the kids to the page in question. Or open the book itself onscreen in class and zoom so it’s readable. Neat, I call it.
The full book title (some would say: over-full): Reason and Persuasion, Three Dialogues by Plato: Euthyphro, Meno and Republic book I, with commentary and illustrations by John Holbo and translations by Belle Waring. It will be out in print by mid-August. The version that is up right now is actually the final draft – so far as I can tell. But I still have a week-and-a-bit to catch any last typos or mistakes. (I have a terrible suspicion that the Stephanus pages may have shifted a bit during the last edit. Gotta check that. How tedious, but oh-so-necessary.) I hope there aren’t any major problems with the book still, at this point. But if there are – well, I will do my best to make needed changes. So if you would like to volunteer your services as proofreader/last minute reviewer/critic, you are most welcome.
Not pre-publication peer-review. Not old-fashioned post-publication review. Perinatal peer-review. (Socrates always said he was a midwife. So I assume he would approve.)
The book is published by Pearson Asia (that’s a story in itself) and will be available in paperback by mid-August. They’ve been bringing out nice, inexpensive draft versions for my students in Singapore (that’s why I have an Asian publisher.) For this first general release I insisted on extending the deal I had insisted on for my own classroom use: I reserve the e-rights and so have a free hand to try manner of cool free e-stuff. I’m hoping one reward for my virtuous ways will be that some folks will want to adopt the book for classroom use. (Free e-availability is a big pedagogic bonus, I think.) And will then see to it that copies of the book are in school bookstores, so Pearson (and I) get paid a little. That seems fair.
OK, that’s all for now. If you want to talk Plato, please come on over to the book site. (And link! Please link! And help me edit the book, last minute, if you wouldn’t mind.) But it might be fun to chat about e-publishing in academia in this thread. If you are inclined. Doesn’t this sort of thing make a lot of sense. whatever you think of my particular book? I say it does.
by Henry Farrell on May 25, 2009
“Three Quarks Daily”:http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2009/05/3-quarks-daily-announces-4-annual-blog-prizes.html has an announcement.
we have decided to start awarding four prizes every year in the respective areas of Science, Arts & Literature, Politics, and Philosophy for the best blog post in those fields. Here’s how it’s going to work: Starting next month, the prizes will be awarded every year on the two solstices and the two equinoxes. So, we will announce the winner of the science prize on June 21, the arts and literature prize on September 22, the politics prize on December 21, and the philosophy prize on March 20, 2010. … Just for fun, the first place award will be called the “Top Quark,” and will include a cash prize of one thousand dollars; the second place prize, the “Charm Quark,” will include a cash prize of three hundred dollars; and the third place winner will get the honor of winning the “Strange Quark,” along with two hundred dollars.
Voting rules etc explained at the post in question. Just to be clear, I personally don’t think you should be voting for a CT post in any of these categories. The value of competitions like this is in highlighting bloggers who people would be unlikely to come across otherwise, and we’re high profile enough that we really aren’t a deserving case. But I am very happy that 3QD is taking this initiatve increase the profile of the more intellectual side of the blogosphere (which doesn’t usually do well in larger competitions), and strongly recommend that you nominate good posts, read other nominees, and vote for whoever seems best.