by Eszter Hargittai on October 5, 2004
Few academic institutions put anything concrete in writing when it comes to promotion and tenure review so it seems an informal discussion on a blog about the topic will be as informative as most other opportunities to consider the issues.
I have been pondering the pros and cons of co-authoring articles during one’s junior faculty years. How does a co-authorship count toward promotion and tenure? Obviously the answer is going to depend on a myriad of factors, but a discussion may still be interesting and illuminating. I realize that in some fields co-authorship is more the norm than the exception. In most lab sciences one rarely sees a sole-authored publication. But in the social sciences – the home discipline of several CT authors – it is less common. Since there are tenured faculty around here who have likely participated in promotion and tenure reviews, I would be curious to hear about their experiences. Of course, others are just as welcomed to contribute their thoughts.:)
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by Daniel on October 5, 2004
by Eszter Hargittai on October 5, 2004
For a while now I’ve been wondering about whether it’s a good idea to blog about one’s travels ahead of time. There are clear advantages (the opportunity to meet up with people one otherwise would not contact), but there are potential downsides as well. Ever since my parents’ place was badly burglarized a few years ago, I have been more sensitive about the issue. And now I see Allison wondering whether a blogged trip lead to a break-in at her home. Of course, the chances are pretty small that potential thieves are reading our blogs and they also would not know in most cases whether and to what extent others sharing the household, housesitters or security systems would stand in their way (thieves take note: in my case it is usually two out of three:). Nonetheless, I have been wondering whether it is best to be less open about some of our travel plans. This would be one of those issues with which anonymous bloggers likely don’t have to deal.
So don’t expect up-to-the-minute travel info from me, but I thought I would mention where I am headed in the next month or so in case paths cross with people I did not think to contact (I have a hard time keeping track of who is where). I’ll be giving a talk at Penn soon followed by a quick visit to Princeton and one night in New York City; I’ll be attending a workshop in the Bay area and giving a talk at Yahoo!; I’m going to a conference in Atlanta; and I’ll be giving a talk at my alma mater Smith College. I’ll likely stay put for a while thereafter, which will be necessary to gather energy for an even crazier Spring travel schedule.
by Kieran Healy on October 5, 2004
“David Brooks”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/05/opinion/05brooks.html today:
bq. Every few weeks I hear about a new twist in American strategy or tactics. It always seems promising, but conditions don’t improve. On the other hand, officials in this administration don’t have a thought in their heads about not sticking this out.
I know there’s a word for this. Just give me a minute and it’ll come to me. Alternatively, the CT “time machine”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/000423.html can bring us back to last September:
bq. The U.S.’s day-to-day problems in Iraq may end up resembling Northern Ireland rather than Vietnam: car bombings, political assassinations, a general effort by terrorists to violently undermine civil society and resist the occupying power. The cost in terms of soldiers’ lives would be much lower than in Vietnam, but if there’s no viable way to extricate yourself the feeling of the situation may be much the same.
by Ted on October 5, 2004
Is the extraordinary rendition provision in the 9-11 Commission bill just a particularly amoral piece of political gamesmanship? Katherine has the update, and Jeanne D’Arc has the commentary.
When I read conservative bloggers, I learn that many of Kerry’s opponents just consider him an inferior candidate to George W. Bush. But some consider him to be a genuinely bad person- unpatriotic, dishonest, with no principles except for the love of power. And yet, there’s a pretty good chance that Kerry’s going to be the next President. If this bill passes, Kerry will appoint a Secretary with the unreviewable power to declare someone a terrorist suspect, and have them deported and tortured.
Surely they don’t trust him to use this power with wisdom and restraint. And yet, they seem more interested in joking about the words “global test.”
Would you trust Janet Reno with the power to torture? I wouldn’t.
by Ted on October 5, 2004
Unbelievable.
One of the most-cited gotchas from Thursday was Bush’s assertion that “the A.Q. Khan network has been brought to justice.”
But CNN reports that national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, appearing on Late Edition, “said Bush did not misspeak when he said that the network of Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan — the founder of Pakistan’s nuclear program who was caught selling secrets on the global black market — had been ‘brought to justice.’
“Khan is living in a villa and was pardoned this year by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. None of Khan’s co-conspirators have been brought to trial.”
Here’s how Rice explained it, from the Late Edition transcript.
“A.Q. Khan is out of business and he is out of the business that he loved most. And if you don’t think that his national humiliation is justice for what he did, I think it is. He’s nationally humiliated.”
Via Respectful of Otters. Why is it harder for Rice to say “The President misspoke” than “We think selling nuclear secrets is a trifle”? “National humiliation” is an appropriate punishment for choosing to appear on reality television. For selling nuclear secrets, it’s rather inadequate.
by Ted on October 5, 2004
Speaking of this, there was another passage from Howard Kurtz’s Media Notes column that caught my eye as a former market researcher. (I actually asked a question about this during the Media Notes Q&A session, but it wasn’t selected.)
Luntz, who is under contract to MSNBC, had already spent $30,000 on recruits for several focus groups…
I worked in market research from 1997 to 2001. By some measures, it wasn’t very long, but it was long enough to get an idea of the costs involved in conducting a market research project.
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by Belle Waring on October 5, 2004
From the Washington Post: “Bremer Criticizes Troop Levels“. Maybe we should just start making lists of people who are well-informed about economics, the situation in Iraq, civil liberties, etc. and aren’t shrill. It would save the Shrillblog time.
The former U.S. official who governed Iraq after the invasion said yesterday that the United States made two major mistakes: not deploying enough troops in Iraq and then not containing the violence and looting immediately after the ouster of Saddam Hussein.
Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, administrator for the U.S.-led occupation government until the handover of political power on June 28, said he still supports the decision to intervene in Iraq but said a lack of adequate forces hampered the occupation and efforts to end the looting early on.
“We paid a big price for not stopping it because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness,” he said yesterday in a speech at an insurance conference in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va. “We never had enough troops on the ground.”
Now, though, Karl Rove has his balls in a vise everything is fine: “I believe that we currently have sufficient troop levels in Iraq,” he said in an e-mailed statement. He said all references in recent speeches to troop levels related to the situation when he arrived in Baghdad in May 2003. He added “please don’t hurt my family, Karl” that he “strongly supports” President Bush’s reelection.
by Ted on October 5, 2004
by Ted on October 4, 2004
Recently, Christopher Hitchens wrote a typically deeply-principled piece in which he accused “most… Democratic activists” of rooting for bad news in Iraq and Afghanistan. I would be deeply ashamed anyone supposedly on my side cheering for death and injury to Americans and civilians. Unfortunately, Mr. Hitchens doesn’t help me identify these traitors. He neglects to identify a single Democrat by name, or point to a single incriminating quote. I guess Slate isn’t giving him enough space, or something.
It’s much easier to identify Republicans who have, quite literally, voted for torture. They’re the Republicans in the House Judiciary committee. On party-line votes, they have defeated Democratic attempts to strip out provisions that would allow the Secretary of Homeland Security to deport anyone suspected of terrorism to a country where they could expect to be tortured. This power would not be subject to judicial review. (Katherine at Obsidian Wings has much, much more about specific cases of extraordinary rendition.)
Many of these Representatives are in safe seats, but not all of them. Indiana Rep. John Hostettler is identified by OurCongress.org as especially vulnerable.
I would be pleased if Rep. Hostettler was forced to answer some questions about his votes for torture. I suspect that the best way of making this happen is by contacting the newspapers in his district. Letters to the editor normally have to be accompanied by the name, address and phone number of the writer. They have to be short, and they have to be polite.
The Indianapolis Star has a special Letter to the editor page.
The Evansville Courier can be reached at letters@evansville.net.
The The Times-Mail can be reached at mikel@tmnews.com.
Supporters and detractors of the war in Iraq can agree that the world was a better place after we shut down Saddam’s torture chambers. If we follow up by procuring a time-share option in the torture chambers of Syria, Egypt, etc., history will not be kind to us.
UPDATE: Liddy asks why don’t I include a link to Hostettler’s opponent, Jon Jennings. Good question.
by Chris Bertram on October 4, 2004
“The Royal Institute of Philosophy lecture series for 2004–5”:http://www.royalinstitutephilosophy.org/lecture_series2005.htm has just been announced and includes several people whose work we’ve discussed on CT (Jonathan Wolff, Mike Otsuka, G.A.Cohen and John Kekes, to name but four).
by Chris Bertram on October 4, 2004
Jon Snow’s autobiography is being “excerpted in the Guardian”:http://books.guardian.co.uk/extracts/story/0,6761,1319059,00.html . The would-be future leader of Ewekip puts in an appearance:
bq. Meanwhile, we found our cause: anti-apartheid. Liverpool was effectively Tate & Lyle’s British capital. The university had sizeable investments, and a goodly portion found its way to investments in South Africa, where Tate was still big. “Disinvest from South Africa” became our clarion cry. One of the most active staff members was Robert Kilroy-Silk, a junior lecturer in the politics department. In those days, Kilroy was a rabid revolutionary.
A little later on ….
bq. Three days later, 10 of us, mostly elected officers of the students’ union, were charged by the authorities with bringing the university into disrepute. Of Kilroy-Silk, so voluble at the start, there was no sign.
by John Holbo on October 4, 2004
by Brian on October 4, 2004
“Atrios”:http://atrios.blogspot.com/2004/10/cancel-it.html linked to “this discussion”:http://www.xoverboard.com/blogarchive/week_2004_10_03.html#000967 of the rather odd claim that in 164 different TV shows, what we’re seeing is not what is really happening in the fiction, but what happens in the mind of a small character from _St. Elsewhere_ called Tommy Westphall.
The argument for this claim, what I’ll call the Westphall Hypothesis, is based around a rather impressive bit of research about “crossovers in TV-land”:http://home.vicnet.net.au/~kwgow/crossovers.html. (The site seems to be based in Victoria, so I have some natural fondness for it.) The reasoning is as follows. The last episode of _St. Elsewhere_ revealed that the entire storyline of that show hadn’t really (i.e. really in the fiction) happened but had all been a dream of Tommy Westphall. So by extension any story involving a character from St. Elsewhere is really (in the fiction) part of Tommy’s dream. And any story involving a character from one of those shows is also part of Tommy’s dream, etc. So all 164 shows that are connected to _St. Elsewhere_ in virtue of character sharing are part of Tommy’s dream.
It’s a nice little idea, but there are half a dozen things wrong with it.
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by Eszter Hargittai on October 3, 2004
There are always comments on The Daily Show that I want to blog, but then never get around to doing so. I did want to make sure to mention this one though, from last Wednesday (Sept 29), since it’s blog related. Jon Stewart was talking to Ed Helms about the next day’s presidential debates. Helms read out the notes he would be using to report on the debates, that is, he had already written them up a day before the debates.
Stewart: “What if any actual news happens?”
Helms: “That’s what bloggers are for.”
A propos TDS, America (The Book) is absolutely hilarious! I highly recommend it. I didn’t realize it was written in the form of a textbook. It’s got lots of little inserts, quotes on the sidebar and illustrations like most American textbooks good for those with attention problems. Not that you’ll have any such problems while reading this book (unless you’re trying to multitask and do something else at the same time in which case the other activity will get none of your attention). I don’t know if reading anything has ever made me laugh out loud as much as reading this book has.
