Atrios “points to”:http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_05_08_atrios_archive.html#111590753078228325 an “absurd bit of ‘fact checking'”:http://factcheck.org/article325.html from Factcheck.org:

Judicial Fight Prompts Duelling, Distorted Ads
Millions are being spent on rival ads supporting and opposing two of President Bush’s most controversial judicial selections. Neither ad is completely accurate. … A rival ad by the liberal People for the American Way quotes Texas judge Janice Rogers Brown as saying seniors “are cannibalizing their grandchildren,” without making clear she was speaking metaphorically of debt being passed on to future generations by entitlement programs. … Brown was speaking about the debt being passed on to future generations, not suggesting that Medicare or Social Security causes old people to eat human flesh. Here’s the full quote from a speech she gave in 2000 before the Institute for Justice: … “My grandparents’ generation thought being on the government dole was disgraceful, a blight on the family’s honor. Today’s senior citizens blithely cannibalize their grandchildren because they have a right to get as much “free” stuff as the political system will permit them to extract.”

That’s certainly a colorful metaphor. Readers can decide for themselves whether the idea being expressed is “radical” or not.

Thanks for clearing that up! I now know that Janice Rogers Brown was not, in fact, claiming that Social Security causes seniors to literally eat the flesh of their grandchildren.

Yet it seems that Factcheck.org is not abiding by their own high standards. I think they need to issue a Factcheck on themselves, for erroneously (and perhaps maliciously and with partisan intent?) implying that the Progress for America foundation and the People for the American Way were engaged in a duel using their Ads. _Analysis_: (1) These organizations are merely legal entities, and strictly speaking cannot in fact have a duel between themselves or with real human beings. (2) Even if they could do so in principle, political Ads are not suitable weapons for dueling. According to an “authoritative history”:http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/duel/sfeature/dueling.html of the practice, there has _never_ been a case where the disputing parties agreed that their weapons of choice would be “30-second Spots at Dawn.” This is because major U.S. networks do not air political ads this early in the morning. (3) Perhaps most decisively, “dueling was outlawed”:http://internetproject.com/members/BurdanUSA/duel.htm in all American states in the years after the civil war, and in Washington DC as early as 1839. The continued neglect of basic facts like this in the public square is slowly poisoning our body politic. Oh shit. I mean, not _literally_ poisoning … Look, I’ll fix that later, OK? I need to get back to writing the release about how the “Nuclear Option” in the Senate is not actually a threat to bomb the opposing parties using silo-launched thermonuclear devices.

From a delightful “short essay”:http://www.ansible.co.uk/sfx/sfx128.html by David Langford on footnotes in literature.

bq. My favourite helpful annotation in fantasy appears in Lord Dunsany’s story “The Bird of the Difficult Eye”, where “beasts prowling in the blackness gluttered” at the doomed protagonist. Gluttered? A footnote is provided: “See any dictionary, but in vain.”

The essay discusses Alasdair Gray’s use of fictional footnotes, but curiously fails to mention his Lanark, an almost uniformly depressing novel, with a happy ending which is only described (implied?) in the endnotes to a nonexistent final section. It also mentions in passing J.G. Ballard’s short story, “The Index” (which nabakov talks about in the comments to this “post”:https://crookedtimber.org/2003/10/15/indexing-as-artform/ on ‘Indexing as Artform’). Of course, Anthony Grafton has written an entire book on the genealogy of the footnote. However, despite frequent displays of Grafton’s personal literary flair ( e.g. “Like the high whine of the dentist’s drill, the low rumble of the footnote on the historian’s page reassures: The tedium it inflicts, like the pain inflicted by the drill, is not random but directed.”), the book confines its scope to the academic footnote, almost entirely ignoring its exotic fictional cousins. Finally, Scott McLemee “writes”:http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2005/05/10/mclemee about the guilty pleasures of reading reference books for entertainment, and solicits nominations for “favorite reference books” to provide “diversion, edification, or moral uplift .” My personal favourite is Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, available in a thoroughly outdated (and thus vastly more entertaining) edition “here”:http://www.bartleby.com/81/. “Fowler’s English Usage”:http://www.bartleby.com/116/ (again available in an antiquated edition) runs a close second, although I understand that its most recent edition has lost much of the vigour and charm that earlier versions had.

Update: I’d always assumed (without reading it) that Fowler’s “The King’s English” was an early and rather different version of “Modern English Usage.” Not so; they’re separate (if related) texts, and the link above is to the former rather than the latter.

This really ought to enter the standard brief against PowerLine, along with “Jimmy Carter is a traitor!”, “That Schiavo memo is a forgery!”, “How dare the New York Times reveal the sexual orientation of openly gay activists!” and “When the left begins beating its wife, it will be an outrage!”

Tim Lambert catches John Lott “with his hand up a sock-puppet’s backside”:http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/cgi-bin/blog/2005/05#economist123 yet again. Under the reviewer name “Economist123”:http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A2E612F97JB6X2/ref=cm_cr_auth/002-7803436-2896049?%5Fencoding=UTF8, Lott puts up a signed review of Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner’s “Freakonomics”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/006073132X/kieranhealysw-20/ref=nosim/ — a book that criticizes Lott’s work in passing. Lott says:

Not surprisingly, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner’s new book “Freakonomics” ignores their academic critics. … If Messrs. Levitt and Dubner were correct, crime rates should have first started falling among younger people who were first born after legalization. … But in fact the precise opposite is true. …

John R. Lott Jr.
Resident Scholar
American Enterprise Institute
Washington

Now, if you scroll down through Economist123’s “other Amazon reviews”:http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A2E612F97JB6X2/ref=cm_cr_auth/002-7803436-2896049?%5Fencoding=UTF8, you get to a review of John R. Lott’s “More Guns, Less Crime”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/A2E612F97JB6X2/kieranhealysw-20/ref=nosim/. There, Economist123 doesn’t sign his review, but neither does he mince his words:

This is by far the most comprehensive study ever done on guns. … it is important to note how many academics have tired to challenge his work on concealed handgun laws and failed and that no one has even bothered to try and challenge his work on one-gun-a-month laws and other gun control laws.

I am constantly amused the lengths to which reviewers here will go to distort Lott’s research. … These guys will do anything to keep people from reading Lott’s work.

Given the way he’s misrepresented by his critics, it’s a good job Lott has defenders like Economist123 (“amongst others”:http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/cgi-bin/blog/guns/files/lottreviews.html) to back him up.

Stephen Bainbridge ruminates on Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin novels and the reasons for the success of the British Navy in its wars against Napoleonic France and the US. He gives a brief discussion of a “paper”:http://www.sfu.ca/~allen/navy2.pdf by Douglas W. Allen, which analyzes the institutions of the British Navy as a solution to a set of principal-agent problems. Now, the paper is interesting, but it seems to me to be flawed, in a manner that’s unfortunately rather typical of many economists who analyze social institutions. Allen treats the rules of the Navy as an efficient solution to a set of monitoring problems, where the British state wanted to make sure that its captains, officers and seamen fought well on its behalf. In other words, he’s making a functionalist argument.

Now the functionalist part of the story is an important one; the British Navy clearly existed for a reason. But if the Aubrey-Maturin novels provide any sort of an accurate picture of the institutions of the British Navy, there’s strong countervailing evidence to suggest that many of the institutions of the Navy were less intended to maximize the overall efficiency of the Navy as a fighting machine, than to provide powerful actors in the Navy with the opportunities for individual gain. Viz., the institutionalized prerogatives of pursers to engage in certain forms of peculation. The right of admirals to a third-share of any prize money won by captains under their command. The need to pay sweeteners to those in charge of the docks to provide timely repairs. The arbitrary system of promotion, which depended at least as much (and probably rather more) on patronage and political connections as on merit. Not to mention Aubrey’s (and Hornblower’s) continual source of complaint – the miserable official allotment of gunpowder, which meant that captains had to lay in their own supplies to have any chance of fighting successfully at sea. Now I imagine that one could construct “just-so” stories which explained why most (or all) of these institutionalized features of Navy life contributed to the overall goal of maximizing the Navy’s efficiency as a fighting machine. But they would be just-so stories – not especially convincing on their merits. To the extent that O’Brian is right (and he clearly did a hell of a lot of research), the institutions of the British Navy during the Napoleonic wars weren’t even a second-best solution. They were an ungainly compromise between a wide variety of different actors, each of whom had a strong streak of self-interest, and the ability and desire to bargain in order to achieve that interest, whatever this meant for the British Navy as a fighting force.

Update: title changed following comment from Kieran

For some neat images, check out the Art of Science online exhibition hosted at Princeton. [thanks]

Via Australian Senator Andrew Bartlett, I see that The Independent is campaigning for electoral reform in the UK, following Labour’s re-election with only 36 per cent of the vote.

Leading opponents within the government are named as John Prescott and Ian McCartney and the story also mentions that Many union leaders also fear it will lead to coalition government with the Liberal Democrats, and prevent Labour from governing again with an absolute majority.

I imagine that the opponents regard themselves as hardheaded realists, but it would be more accurate to view them as reckless gamblers.

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An unexpected follow-up to my last “post”:https://crookedtimber.org/2005/05/07/shutting-down-alternatives/ ; Brad DeLong “reacts bitterly”:http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/05/guenter_grass_m.html to Guenter Grass’s op-ed in the _New York Times_, which is itself apparently the transcription of a radio talk given in Germany. Grass is harshly critical both of the all-devouring market and of the current state of German democracy. Brad finds that it can’t be an accident that Grass never mentions the words “Jew,” and concludes by describing Grass as “crypto-Nazi scum.”

To put it mildly, Brad’s critique of Grass is misconceived (he’s already gotten a lot of remarks to this effect, a couple of which are themselves a bit over the top, in his comments section). “Crypto-Nazi scum” are extraordinarily harsh words to use to describe anyone other than the David Irvings of this world, and they don’t fit here. Grass’s talk was about Germany’s post-war record. He doesn’t use any of the code-words that Holocaust revisionists or sneaking regarders use. Grass states directly that Germany can never get away from its historical burden. He also makes it clear that Germany’s acknowledgment of its dreadful past is one of the few things worth being proud of in the post-war period (Brad notes this, but by some logic that I can’t quite follow, sees this as further evidence of Grass’s crypto-Nazism). Grass’s leftwing nationalism-that-has-harsh-words-to-say-about-Germany-as-a-nation is complicated, but I don’t know of anyone who believes that Grass is even slightly sympathetic to Nazism, given Grass’s own eloquent excoriations of the Nazi era. Even in this article, one of Grass’s indictments against Germany is its swiftness in rehabilitating former members of the NSDAP, and giving them high government positions.

A fair amount of Brad’s animus seems to be aimed at Grass’s description of capitalism as a new totalitarianism _in potentia_. But this is an entirely respectable view with long historical antecedents among democrats as well as authoritarians. Was Karl Polanyi, for example, a crypto-Fascist? Nor is Grass’s disquiet with the current state of a parliamentary government beset by lobbyists and special interests evidence of Nazi leanings. Again, it’s an entirely respectable political position – and one shared by a wide variety of people on both the left and the right of the democratic spectrum. Grass is quite evidently an old-style social democrat, with a hankering for a more radical version of the Soziale Marktwirtschaft that’s responsive to social needs as well as the profit motive. It’s a position with which one can very reasonably disagree, but it certainly doesn’t make him a Nazi.

Update: In a revision to his post, Brad seems to be withdrawing his criticism of Grass’s claim that Germany has had a better record of dealing with its past than some other countries. However, he still seems to believe that Grass is “crypto-Nazi scum.” As best as I can make out, this is because Grass doesn’t explicitly mention the particular Nazi animus against the Jews in his talk. Given that Grass’s talk was very clearly about the post-WWII German state rather than the Nazi era, and that he spoke clearly and unambiguously about Germany’s continuing historical burden, I can’t see that this helps Brad at all. It seems to me that Brad has made, and is continuing to make an extremely strong claim (and a claim that implies that Grass should be shunned by right thinking people) on the basis of extremely weak evidence. I’ve enormous respect for Brad – but I simply don’t see how he can stand over the claim that Grass is “crypto-Nazi scum” given Grass’s track record, and the evidence that he (Brad) has provided to date.

Update 2: It appears that Brad has indeed modified his position on this, and has struck out his reference to Grass as “crypto-Nazi scum,” but the strikeout doesn’t appear in Firefox due to a formatting problem. Thus, his restatement is considerably more generous than I first thought, and most of the above update is thus entirely redundant.

Jeff Weintraub has posted a petition calling on all academic and scholarly associations to join the AAUP in condemning the boycott of Israeli universities and academics. The American Sociological Association and the American Political Science Association are singled out as associations that should endorse the AAUP’s statement. You can add your signature to the petition here.

Yom Hashoah – Holocaust Remembrance Day – was just a few days ago. I thought I would post a note about one of the most difficult films I have ever seen: Spielberg’s “The Last Days”. It documents the final stages of the war when it was clear that Hitler was going to lose yet the Nazis did all that they could to continue to kill as many Jews as possible managing to annihilate over 400,000 Hungarian Jews in just two months. The movie looks at the lives of five Hungarian Jews who escaped to the U.S. and revisits the locations of their past with them. One of the people featured is California Congressman Tom Lantos. The movie is very effective. Although it is impossible to understand fully what these people experienced, this film brings you very close to the events. I did have one problem with it though. It completely ignores the plight of the thousands who returned after the war and had to start their lives over in the country that had taken everything away from them. I am surprised that the movie is rated PG13. Some of the images are among the most disturbing ones I have ever seen, certainly not for the faint of heart.

For some more personal thoughts on Yom Hashoah, check out this post over at Is That Legal?. (Be forewarned: difficult images.)

Matt Welch, LBC patriot, has had enough of these expansion-minded Angelenos, and he’s not going to take it anymore. Nativists at an LA radio station (in response to some flap about Californian billboards in Mexico) have erected a billboard reading “Just To Clarify, You Are Here: Los Angeles, CA; Gracias KFI AM 640.” The thing was, they put it in Long Beach. And that was where they made their fatal mistake:

That’s right, Juan y Ken, I’m on to your game, amigos. You and your kind have been trying for a century to effect a reconquista of the LBC, just like you successfully gobbled up weaker port-side sisters like San Pedro and Wilmington. We let you take advantage of our open borders every day, abuse our infrastructure (the 710 looks like freakin’ Mexico City), and now you’ve even stolen the name of what by all rights should have been the Long Beach Angels.

Well, this time you’ve gone too far, angelitos. We’re drawing a line in the asphalt, a bit to the north of the 91 (where the offending billboard stands, like a slap in our mothers’ faces). And you best not mess with our Minutemen — they’re not lard-asses in lawn chairs, they’re the G-funk crew with a gangsta twist. Mr. KFI, tear down this billboard!! Or else you’re gonna learn a new meaning for the word “regulate.”

Now, I’ve never met Matt Welch, but I figure it’s a safe bet all the Reasonistas are packing heat, so, watch your back, KFI AM 640. Watch your back.

Over at Left2Right, David Velleman “has posted in opposition”:http://left2right.typepad.com/main/2005/05/stating_the_obv.html to the AUT boycott. I’m largely in agreement with him, but in comments (and by email) he and Ralph Wedgwood ask a few questions. Since others less familiar to the UK university scene may want answers to the same ones, I’m posting them here. By the way, the current state of play is that AUT activists opposed to the boycott “have garnered the 25 signatures”:http://liberoblog.com/2005/05/04/aut-announce-special-council/ of Council members needed to trigger an emergency session of Council to reconsider the boycott, this will take place on the 26th of May. Below the fold I append the text of a resolution I’ve co-authored for my local association, which we’ll debate on the 18th.

What is the AUT? Do all university teachers belong to it? Are there other organizations representing university teachers, or is the AUT the only (or main) one?

The AUT is the main trade union representing university teachers (and librarians and other “academic-related” staff) in the “old” universities (i.e those that weren’t polytechnics pre-1992). It does have some membership also in those universities I believe. I’ve heard varying estimates of the proportion of eligible staff who belong to the AUT, it seems to be just under a third of academic and related staff at my own university. The other union, representing the same sort of people but in post-1992 universities, and in colleges of further education is NATFHE (National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education). This is much bigger than the AUT, there is a merger proposed, and, by the way, NATFHE currently has a more aggressive anti-Israel policy than the AUT. The policy of any merged union on this has yet to be determined.

Does the AUT tend to have a political affiliation or complexion? For example, does it tend to attract membership from left-leaning academics rather than others?

Not as such, though local meetings tend to attract a higher proportion of activists than are present in the general membership and, of course, left-wing people tend to attach more importance to being a member of a union.

How was the vote conducted? What was the turnout? Is this one of those cases in which a relatively small number of activists takes advantage of low turnout to push through a resolution?

The vote was conducted at the annual AUT Council, its sovereign body. Each local association sends one representative per 150 members, and I think there were about 200 representatives in all. The specific issue of the Israel boycott was not discussed or canvassed in most local associations in advance, the representatives mostly voted their own personal opinion without reference to the views of their members. (I have so far, despite efforts, been unable to get a reliable idea of how all our representatives voted.) The vote was narrow, and, allegedly due to time constraints, only one side of the argument was properly put before the motions were put to the vote.

Will British academics be bound by the AUT boycott? Are there sanctions for those who break the boycott?

No, they will not be bound. A key question here is whether local activists who try to implement the boycott will be disciplined by university management and whether the AUT will then try to defend them, and whether the AUT membership would be willing to act in their defence. I’m sceptical, given the AUT’s inability to secure collective action on basic questions of pay and employment over the years. I’m certain that those who don’t observe the boycott will face no negative consequences whatsoever.

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“Tyler Cowen”:http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2005/05/revenge_of_the_.html is excitedly looking forward to Revenge of the Sith, and is encouraged by “positive review”:http://www.variety.com/VE1117927015.html in Variety:

bq. The Force returns with most of its original power regained in “Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith.” Concluding entry in George Lucas second three-pack of space epics teems with action, drama and spectacle, and even supplies the odd surge of emotion … Whatever one thought of the previous two installments, this dynamic picture irons out most of the problems, and emerges as the best in the overall series since “The Empire Strikes Back.” Stratospheric B.O. is a given.

Not up to speed on Variety’s entertainment-industry jargon, my first thought on reading that last sentence was, “Well of course, what with all those nerds packed in to the cinema.”

George Lucas’s relationship with his fans must by now be a standard case study for second-year social worker students specializing in the treatment of abusive, co-dependent relationships:

_Fans_ (to therapist): I love him, and, and, I _know_ he’s really wonderful deep down — I know he means well and is a decent man. It’s just that sometimes … (sobbing)

(Cut to videotape)

_Lucas_: Take this, you stupid bitch! [Offscreen: Smack! Ewoks! Crash! Jar-Jar! Bang! Big parade/award ceremony at end!]

_Fans_ (crying openly): It’s my fault, I know — I just can’t seem to please him. He doesn’t _mean_ to hurt this way …

It’s awful, really.

An unusual slice of spam showed up in my inbox, offering to induce severe erectile dysfunction at a very reasonable price. Subject line: “make love to any woman instantaneously.”

Now I know what you are going to say: Holbo, that’s two CT posts in the last month, both about spam. I know, I know. But it’s this hurly-burly modern life I lead. I find after I’ve read all the spam in my inbox, patiently weighing the merits and demerits of so many anonymous pleas to enage in so many complex financial transfers; after I’ve dutifully clicked all the links in all the comment spam that sprouted in the night … well, half the day is gone.