In a moment of search engine ennui, I typed this into the Google search box: whatever I’m looking for, I won’t find it here.
First up was the nutty Tom Cruise video excerpt where he raves about Scientologists as the only people who can really help at the scene of an accident. Then, bizarrely enough, came a 2002 White House press conference with Bush convivially avoiding answering questions about unilaterally attacking Iraq and making in-jokes to the supine press corps. Then, suitably enough, a piece called ‘why search sucks and you won’t fix it the way you think’.
On page 2 of the results I found Trent Raznor moaning about album sales and proposing a music tax for ISPs, then Larry Birkhead insisting he would not share custody of poor (literally) misbegotten Dannielynn. Then MediaMatters gave a bizarre insight into the American poltiical psyche when a discussion of Clinton supporters sliming Obama for his middle name and Muslim father segued into how men feel castrated by Hillary.
And after that the randomness got a bit samey. Google’s tailoring of results to geographic location meant that any non-bracketed query of commonly used words returns me a cornucopia of US-oriented flim flam. It reminds me of why we used to buy a British Sunday newspaper at home; to know what they really thought of us. When the papers caught on to the Irish market and started finessing their stories and cutting back on the anti-Irishry, I lost interest. Same with Google. If I wanted to know about nothing but celebrity gossip and political tittle tattle then I’d, well.., I’d read the same pointless echo-sheets I already do every day.
I was going to ask Google if I’ll ever find true love. Don’t think I’ll bother now.
“Sadly No!”:http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/8788.html links to this Glenn Reynolds “post”:http://instapundit.com/archives2/015333.php arguing that Barack Obama should condemn some anti-Semitic black pastor in Murfreesboro, Tennessee who claims to support Obama, because otherwise
Obama’s big appeal — I’m a black candidate who’s not like Al Sharpton! — will be a fraud
He admits in a later update that the accusation of fraud was a “bit strong.” Indeed. But apart from the very unpleasant implication that black politicians need to be in the business of proving that they’re not Al Sharpton, this kind of ‘you must condemn …’ demand is a well established rhetorical trope. As “John Protevi”:https://crookedtimber.org/2008/01/15/six-degrees-of-louis-farrakhan/#comment-224600 pointed out in the comments to a recent post, this “entry”:http://decentpedia.blogspot.com/2007/08/will-you-condemn-thon.html in the Encyclopedia of Decency provides a nice encapsulation, and should, I suggest, become the standard reference point for this kind of nonsense in future.
Will-You-Condemn-A-Thon
Sporting pursuit
Amusing internet pastime, in which several Decents quiz a pro-fascist, repeatedly demanding denunciation of a vast range of randomly-chosen murders, atrocities, war crimes and military actions in an increasingly hectoring tone.
“I agree, Guantanamo Bay is an affront to democratic ideals. But Will You Condemn Palestinian suicide attacks on Israeli restaurants?…
Yes, well, Do You Condemn Jihadist chlorine-bomb attacks?…
Okay, I knew you would be too sly to openly support such acts, but Will You Condemn terrorist attacks upon the American military?
What about the Battle of Teutoberg Forest, then, Will You Condemn that? …I see.
“Spencer Ackerman”:http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/michael-ohanlon has a nice hit-job on Michael O’Hanlon at the _Washington Independent_ (which is rapidly becoming indispensable) which makes me wonder who the foreign policy community is that should be disavowing him.
Michael O’Hanlon is a Brookings Institution defense expert who doesn’t actually know anything about defense. He does, however, know how to be a reliable barometer of what very-slightly-left-of-center establishment types believe should be said about defense. … If anyone in the foreign-policy community respects O’Hanlon, I haven’t met him or her. … Today in the Wall Street Journal, O’Hanlon’s got yet another tendentious op-ed, in which he bravely subdues yet another straw man on the left. …Harder to understand is how the foreign-policy establishment doesn’t put him out to pasture.
I have a post up at the Guardian blog on the general subject of it not being terribly practical to assume that if we all shout hard enough at the Chinese government, they will wave their Chinese magic wand and the Darfur crisis will go away. In the post, I unaccountably forgot to link to Alex Harrowell at Fistful of Euros, who inspired the post by reminding me that I held this view. I’m now correcting this (frankly the CT referral stream is probably a little less, shall we say, problematic[1] than the Comment is Free one). So let the circle-jerk be unbroken, etc. Sorry Alex.
In general, though, and I didn’t explore this enough because it would have looked like rambling, a lot of people seem to think that the Olympic Games is the most important thing in the world to China. How much do we think they really care about it going well? I mean, seriously, we are going to be hosting this thing in London soon, and if it really is true that major world governments regularly make massive shifts of geopolitical influence in order to avoid a few slightly embarrassing scenes at their opening ceremony, then I am rather worried about what the rest of the world might have planned for us.
I’d be interested to know more about why the President of William and Mary was told that his contract wouldn’t be renewed; from what this “IHE story”:http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/02/13/nichol says, it sounds pretty terrible.
Gene R. Nichol resigned immediately Tuesday as president of the College of William & Mary, days after being told that his contract wouldn’t be renewed. In leaving Nichol issued a blunt attack on those alumni and conservatives who have sought his ouster, defended his stances in a series of controversial decisions, and accused board members of seeking to offer him a “substantial” sum of money to publicly state that he wasn’t losing his job for ideological reasons. … Even while defending the board’s conduct, the chair acknowledged the potential for the controversy to hurt the college by giving the impression (false, the chair said) that alumni or legislators can get a president canned at William & Mary. … the board voted days after some legislators urged the trustees to get rid of Nichol, citing his willingness to let a controversial art exhibit appear on campus. … Nichol … defended the right of students to play host to the exhibit. …substantial progress in efforts he started… to increase student aid, attract more diverse students, and hire a more diverse faculty. … state political leaders have focused much less on those issues than on the controversy that to many defined Nichol’s presidency — a dispute over a cross he had removed from a prominent campus building. Vocal alumni critics have been pushing for Nichol’s removal since the cross fracas started. They have been met by strong defenders, particularly among student leaders and some professors. … Nichol was accused of being hostile to religion, with critics going out of their way to tell reporters that he had done legal work for the American Civil Liberties Union, as if that would make his views clearly wrong.
A REJOINDER TO MR. DOBB’S REPLY TO CAPTAIN MIDDLETON; IN WHICH IS EXPOS’D, BOTH HIS WILFUL AND REAL IGNORANCE OF TIDES; &C. HIS JESUITICAL PREVARICATIONS, EVASIONS, FALSITIES, AND FALSE REASONING; HIS AVOIDING TAKING NOTICE OF FACTS, FORMERLY DETECTED AND CHARGED UPON HIM AS INVENTIONS OF HIS OR HIS WITNESSES; THE CHARACTER OF THE LATTER, AND THE PRESENT VIEWS OF THE FORMER, WHICH GAVE RISE TO THE PRESENT DISPUTE. IN A WORD, AN UNPARALELLED DISINGENUITY, AND (TO MAKE USE OF A VERODOBBSICAL FLOWER OF RHETORIC) A GLARING IMPUDENCE, ARE SET IN A FAIR LIGHT. LONDON: M. COOPER, G. BRETT, R. AMEY, 1745
“Matt Yglesias”:http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/02/super_osama_kulfa_balls.php is amazed that you can buy a coconut-flavoured candy called ‘Super Osama Kulfa Balls’ in China. There’s worse to be found in every German supermarket that I’ve ever been in …
Adam Swift and I have just posted a short critical working paper at the Center for the Study of Social Justice website. It’s a response to papers in Ethics (July 2007) by Elizabeth Anderson and Debra Satz (both, I’m afraid, behind a paywall, though I notice that the free sample issue is the one with Adam’s and my paper on parents rights, so I can’t resist encouraging people to read that), both arguing for a principle of educational adequacy as the correct principle of educational justice. Before reading their papers I had thought of adequacy as a straightforward strategic retreat by educational progressives, a retreat that makes strategic sense in the US because many States have constitutional provisions that are plausibly interpreted as demanding adequacy for all (and litigation, not politics, is the most promising way forward). But both Satz and Anderson argue for adequacy on principled grounds; they think that educational equality is a misguided goal, and also that adequacy is a good goal. There’s a great deal of good stuff in both their papers, so I strongly recommend them (if you can get at them). Satz is especially good on what adequacy, understood the right way, demands for low-achieving children, whereas Anderson is especially good on what it demands for children bound for elites; basically, her argument is that an adequate education for them requires that they have a lot of interaction with children from other social backgrounds so that they are well prepared for their roles in the elites they will join (which are justified, in Rawlsian terms, by their tendency to benefit the less advantaged). Our paper doesn’t dispute the importance of adequacy as part of the picture, and an urgent one at that, but responds to their anti-equality arguments, showing that they depend on (wrongly) interpreting equality as the sole principle of educational justice (in fact it is one among several principles, and not necessarily the most important); but also arguing that adequacy does not offer the right guidance in some circumstances. Comments welcome.
How utterly depressing to surf over to Amanda’s “excellent site”:http://flopearedmule.net/ only to discover that “Arlo Guthrie has endorsed Ron Paul”:http://www.ronpaul2008.com/press-releases/185/legendary-singer-songwriter-arlo-guthrie-endorses-ron-paul-for-president/ . I thought I’d wash this out of my head by listening to his father singing Plane Wreck at Los Gatos. Guess what? There’s not a clip of Woody singing it at Youtube, but there is one of Arlo covering it with Emmylou Harris. Did the man not listen to the lyrics? May he die of shame if he ever sings it again.
As many readers of this blog, I frequently receive requests from academic journals to referee papers. Sometimes refereeing a paper creates benefits for the referee (like reading an interesting argument or getting inspiration for a new project), but on balance I find referee work a burden. Still, I do a lot of it (I think), since I consider it a duty of any scholar who is sending manuscripts to journals.
How much should we referee? If I were to accept all referee requests that I get, I would hardly be able to do any research myself. So I want to find out how many papers I should referee before I have fulfilled my professional duty. In the last months, I talked to some (international) colleagues about how much they referee and how they decide whether to accept or reject a referee request, and I’ve discovered that some of them don’t find it difficult at all to refuse to referee virtually all the requests they get. Not me: I feel bad every time I turn down an editor (but I’m getting better at it!). Surely there is some sort of collective action problem here, since the system can only be sustained if enough people do referee; so I feel anyone who wants to be part of this system (that is, who submits papers to refereed journals), should feel a professional duty to referee. I think one should referee at least the same number of papers as the number of reports one receives; so if in the last 12 months you’ve received 10 reports, you should referee at least 10 papers in the same period (if asked and if you feel competent to referee them, of course). I’ve been told that this rule was once suggested at a meeting of editors at the APSA meetings – and it makes perfect sense to me. Perhaps we should add 10% or 20% as a margin, since there will be people who submit papers but are not yet being asked to referee, as they are not known by journal editors as potential referees.
Since we have several journal editors among our readers, I’d like to ask: how difficult is it these days to find (good) referees? And if you’ve been in the business for some time: is it getting easier or harder to find good referees? And to anyone who feels like commenting: what do you think of the above rule to decide when we’ve done our fair share of refereeing — any better proposals?
I learned today that the Admissions Department of the University of Arizona’s Law School is located in the Corleone Building. Arizona has always been a retirement spot for the mob, I suppose. There must be examples of this sort of thing elsewhere, too. Anyone?
Rowan Williams doesn’t need me to defend him, having, preumably, better placed and more powerful friends (one in partiuclar). But here goes anyway. One of my several Anglophile (and this one a rare Episcopalian) in-laws just sent me (approvingly) this piece from the Sunday Times, and added the following, rather lovely if a little unlikely, quote, recommending a different version of multiculturalism from that to which he takes the Archbishop to be committed (which, I gather from googling, comes from Mark Steyn):
In a more culturally confident age, the British in India were faced with the practice of “suttee” — the tradition of burning widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands. General Sir Charles Napier was impeccably multicultural:
”You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: When men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”
The “New York Times”:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/09/business/09nocera.html?_r=2&oref=slogin has an interesting piece on the efforts of J.K.Rowling to stop a Harry Potter lexicon from being published, on the grounds that it ‘hijacks’ Rowlings’ name and work.
So long as the Lexicon was a free Web site, Ms. Rowling looked kindly upon it. But when Mr. Vander Ark tried to publish part of the Lexicon in book form — and (shudder!) to make a profit — Ms. Rowling put her foot down. She claims that she wants to publish her own encyclopedia someday and donate the proceeds to charity — and a competing book by Mr. Vander Ark would hurt the prospects for her own work. But more than that, she is essentially claiming that the decision to publish — or even to allow — a Harry Potter encyclopedia is hers alone, since after all, the characters in her books came out of her head. They are her intellectual property. And in her view, no one else can use them without her permission.
“There have been a huge number of companion books that have been published,” Mr. Blair said. “Ninety-nine percent have come to speak to us. In every case they have made changes to ensure compliance. They fall in line.” But, he added: “These guys refused to contact us. They refused to answer any questions. They refused to show us any details.” _They fall in line._ There, in that one sentence, lies the reason Mr. Falzone and his colleagues have agreed to help represent RDR Books. And it’s why Mr. Lessig decided to start the Fair Use Project in the first place.
California representative Tom Lantos died earlier today. I’ll take this opportunity to mention the Oscar-winning film The Last Days (I’ve blogged about it before here). It’s a very powerful documentary in which Lantos is one of the five people featured. My one critique of The Last Days movie was that it ignored the plight of people like my grandmother (who died twenty years ago last week, at almost 80) and father who went back to Hungary after their time in a camp instead of emigrating. That doesn’t detract from the value of The Last Days. But I think it’s important to recognize that there is a sufficiently different outcome from very similar circumstances depending on where one went after those horrors. In any case, I learned about many things from watching that film, including details about Tom Lantos that may be lesser known. I thought this was a good occasion to mention the documentary again.
