by Belle Waring on July 20, 2004
The New Yorker has the inside scoop on what really ocurred when Dick Cheney threw down on Sen. Patrick Leahy, (D.-Vermont):
As a quick-thinking senatorial aide switched on the Senate’s public-address system and cued up the infamous “Seven Minutes of Funk” break, Mr. Leahy and Mr. Cheney went head-to-head in what can only be described as a “take no prisoners” freestyle rap battle….
Unfortunately, as other senators (along with assorted aides and support-staff members) were casting their votes to decide the winner, using the admittedly subjective but generally accepted “Make some noise up in here!” protocols, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Leahy took the proceedings to what one aide accurately described as “the next level.”
Edward M. Kennedy (D.-Mass.) was the first to notice that the two men were circling each other, Mr. Cheney brandishing a switchblade and Mr. Leahy the jagged neck of a broken bottle.
“Oh, snap!” Mr. Kennedy recalls thinking at the time. “It’s getting kind of hectic up in this piece.”
Man, some of those professional writers are almost as funny as the Fafblog!
by Brian on July 20, 2004
Via “Justin Leiber”:http://www.hfac.uh.edu/phil/leiber/jleiber.htm, here’s “a playable version”:http://math.ucsd.edu/~crypto/Monty/monty.html of the “Monty Hall Problem”:http://math.ucsd.edu/~crypto/Monty/montybg.html. It’s simultaneously a lesson in decision theory and in the perils of small sample sizes – my first two plays I lost the car by switching.
by Chris Bertram on July 20, 2004
One thought that went through my mind during the recent fuss over the visit of Yussef al-Qaradawi to Britain was this: what did those who, after September 11th, uttered variations on “Islam needs a Reformation” expect the agents of such a Reformation to look like? Martin Luther or Calvin maybe? Because those guys had some pretty nasty views, and yet ….
Marc Mulholland has written “a very useful and serious post”:http://marcmulholland.tripod.com/histor/index.blog?entry_id=377372 on “liberal Islamophobia” over at Daily Moiders, and, in comments, Anthony Cox responds.
by John Q on July 20, 2004
In the most recent London Review of Books, Hugh Pennington has a generally excellent article on measles and erroneous (to put it charitably) research linking the combined MMR vaccine to autism. It’s a pity therefore that, on a peripheral issue, he perpetuates an equally glaring error, saying
‘Most people have an intuitive appreciation that the best vaccine programme, from an individual’s point of view, is one where almost everyone else is vaccinated while they are not, so that they are indirectly protected without incurring any of the risks or inconvenience associated with direct protection.’ If too many people act in this way, the infection becomes commoner in the population as a whole, and returns as a real and significant threat to the unimmunised. This is a modern version of the ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ described by Garrett Hardin in his influential 1968 essay: 16th-century English peasants had free grazing on commons; their need to supplement food supplies and income was very great; the resulting overgrazing wrecked the commons for everyone.
As
I’ve pointed out previously Hardin’s story was, in historical terms, a load of tripe.
It’s interesting to note that, in repeating Hardin’s story, Pennington adds the spurious specificity of “16th century England”, whereas Hardin’s account was not specific regarding dates and places, and therefore harder to refute. This is characteristic of the way in which factoids are propagated.
by Kieran Healy on July 20, 2004
New from MIT Press comes “_Causation and Counterfactuals_”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262532565/kieranhealysw-20/ref=nosim/, an anthology edited by “John Collins”:http://collins.philo.columbia.edu/, “Ned Hall”:http://web.mit.edu/philos/www/hall.html and “L.A. Paul”:http://www.u.arizona.edu/~lapaul. At the “Pacific APA”:http://www.apa.udel.edu/apa/divisions/pacific/ meetings, the latter was recently identified, much to her disgust, as “Kieran Healy from Crooked Timber’s wife.” _Causation and Counterfactuals_ presents the best recent work on the “counterfactual analysis of causation”:http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-counterfactual/, which helps us understand the metaphysical underpinnings of sentences like “If you don’t buy it you’ll be sorry,” “If I hadn’t blogged so much my own book would be finished by now,” and “If everyone on CT posted a shameless plug simultaneously, who’d be responsible?” The book is also perhaps the only place to read the full, gripping saga of “Billy and Suzy”:http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&safe=off&c2coff=1&q=billy+suzy+counterfactual&btnG=Search, a tale of “passion”:http://www.mit.edu/~yablo/advert.html, “overdetermination”:http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Philosophy/homepages/ney/overdetermination_and_mental_causation.pdf, “war”:http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:DtIwbmQeUTcJ:web.syr.edu/~edhiddle/Hiddleston%2520Causal%2520Powers%2520web.pdf+billy+suzy+war+causation&hl=en, “double prevention”:http://www.u.arizona.edu/~lapaul/papers/causation-preemption.pdf and “appalling violence”:http://philosophy.wisc.edu/eells/papers/ptprevmay01webver.PDF.
by Daniel on July 20, 2004
Ken Lay, Jeffrey Skilling and Andrew Fastow will all shortly be going on trial for their liberty over the Enron bankruptcy fiasco. I have to say that it seems to me that it would be a little bit unfair if any of them were to go to jail in the current political climate.
[click to continue…]
We’re delighted to announce that Ross, the man behind the excellent blog The Bloviator, will be joining us on Crooked Timber as a guest poster. I’ve long been a fan and an admirer. At the Bloviator, Ross concentrates non-exclusively on public health policy and law. For a while, he was surely the only blogger with a recommendation in his masthead from both me and Bill Quick of Daily Pundit.
After taking a few months off of blogging, he’s tanned, tenured and ready to debate. It’s a great pleasure to have him join us this week.
by Harry on July 19, 2004
Via the Virtual Stoa I have learned that you have to sign up to MPs’ email lists. I suggest that Tim Collins find out who is faking his site and email list, and close them down. I know it’s a fake, because if it were true Gyles Brandreth would be listed.
by Chris Bertram on July 19, 2004
“Norm’s rock stars poll closed”:http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2004/07/the_greats_of_r.html the other day, and, “like others”:http://users.ox.ac.uk/~magd1368/weblog/2004_07_01_archive.html#109023113656478321 , I’m inclined to protest a little about the results. [1] The source of _my_ dissatisfaction is that the incomparable “Grateful Dead”:http://www.dead.net/ not only miss the top 25 but aren’t even among the further 30 also-rans. Meanwhile, talentless losers like REM (someone had to say it) capture 11th place. Young people today….
fn1. I fear I may have misread the rubric, since the results include bands and I voted _inter alia_ for Keith Richards, Joe Strummer and Jerry Garcia. I assume that Norm just folded those in as votes for the Stones, the Clash and the Dead.
by Chris Bertram on July 19, 2004
British socialist journalist Paul Foot, contrarian and campaigner against many miscarriages of the criminal justice system, “is dead”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1264355,00.html.
by Chris Bertram on July 19, 2004
The Hansard Society “have produced a report on political blogging”:http://www.hansardsociety.org.uk/node/view/189
bq. “Political Blogs – Craze or Convention?”:http://www.hansardsociety.org.uk/assets/Final_Blog_Report_.pdf [pdf] reports on the relatively new phenomena of political blogging and examines whether these blogs can offer an alternative to traditional channels of political communication in the UK . The research study focuses on eight political blogs as representative examples of how individuals and organisations are harnessing blogging as a tool to promote political engagement. The research monitored activity on these blogs and, in addition, a blogging “jury” of members of the public with little or no experience of blogging scrutinised the blogs to assess their relevance as channels of political thought and debate.
[via “Harry’s Place”:http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/ ]
by John Q on July 19, 2004
There’s a cottage industry within economics involving the production of historical arguments giving rational[1] explanations of seemingly irrational historical episodes, of which the most famous is probably the Dutch tulip boom/mania. This Slate article refers to the most recent example, a complex argument regarding changes in contract rules which seems plausible, but directly contradicts other explanations I’ve seen.
Once opened, questions like this are rarely closed. Still, articles of this kind seem a lot less interesting in 2004 than they did in, say, 1994. In 1994, the efficient markets hypothesis (the belief that asset markets invariably produce the best possible estimate of asset value based on all available information) was an open question, and the standard account of the Dutch tulip mania was evidence against it. In 2004, the falsity of the efficient markets hypothesis is clear to anyone open to being convinced by empirical evidence.
[click to continue…]
by Kieran Healy on July 19, 2004
Guest-blogging over at Volokh, Cathy Seipp tells us “why we should learn French rather than Spanish:”:http://volokh.com/posts/1090100809.shtml
Last year, when she took French at Pasadena Community College, we got the same reaction: “Why French? Why not Spanish? Isn’t that more useful around here?” Well, no. What’s useful in Los Angeles, just like everywhere else in the country, is English. I suppose if I were a contractor rounding up day laborers every morning, and wanted my daughter to learn the family business, Spanish would be invaluable. … I do speak enough Spanish to communicate with the cleaning lady … This is sort of useful, but not vital.
Since 1066, educated English speakers have studied French. Even if we don’t speak it … it gives us a deeper understanding of our own language, and prevents embarrassing gaffes like “I just love that Why-vees Saint Laurent!” Which some trophy wife actually said to me at a fashion show once.
An example of the kind of embarrassing gaffe that the study of French seems powerless to prevent is left as an exercise to the reader.
by Henry Farrell on July 19, 2004
“Dan Drezner”:http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/001477.html makes a highly questionable empirical claim.
bq. The worst aspect of science fiction/science fantasy books is their malign neglect of the laws of economics.
Dan just hasn’t been reading the _right_ science fiction/science fantasy books. For starters, there’s “Ken MacLeod’s”:http://kenmacleod.blogspot.com/ ‘Trots in Space’ quartet, “Cory Doctorow’s”:http://www.boingboing.net/ and “Bruce Sterling’s”:http://blog.wired.com/sterling/ “different”:http://www.craphound.com/down/ “takes”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0553576399/henryfarrell-20 on the reputational economy; and “Steven Brust’s”:http://www.dreamcafe.com/weblog.cgi fantasy about a “complicated insurance fraud”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0441010105/henryfarrell-20. And those are just the economics-literate books written by bloggers. Neal Stephenson’s gonzo-libertarian novels are all about the intersection of economics and politics – his most recent set of books (which I’ve blogged “here”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/001721.html and “here”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/001362.html) is an extended fantasia centered on the birth of the free market economy. Can’t get much more economistic than that. Unless indeed you want to jump to the other end of the ideological spectrum, and read China Mieville’s Marxist account of mercantile capitalism at its nastiest in “The Scar”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345444388/henryfarrell-20 (also blogged “here”:http://www.henryfarrell.net/movabletype/archives/000149.html and “here”:http://www.henryfarrell.net/movabletype/archives/000157.html on my old blog – enter ‘ok’ for both userid and password if you want to read the entries). China has a freshly minted Ph.D. in international relations from the LSE – he’s a Fred Halliday student. And I haven’t even mentioned Jack Vance, or Iain M. Banks’ Culture novels, or Pohl and Kornbluth’s _The Space Merchants_, or the “interesting panel”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/000436.html on the economics of abundance that I went to at Torcon last year. Or … or … or … And I don’t even know this stuff that well – I reckon that Brad DeLong could point to many other examples of smart econo-sf if he put his mind to it.
Dan does have a point – yer average Star Trek novelization or ten volume fantasy trilogy about Dark Lords on the rampage probably doesn’t have much in the way of well-thought-out economic underpinnings. Diana Wynne-Jones has some fun with the latter in her cruel, frequently hilarious “Tough Guide to Fantasyland”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/057560106X/henryfarrell-20. But a fair chunk of the most interesting science fiction of the last few years starts with interesting economic questions and answers them, usually in rather unorthodox ways. It steals as much from game theory and Leontiev matrices as from hard physics. It’s never been a better time to be an academic in the social sciences with a weakness for sf – lots and lots of good, fun literate stuff out there.
by John Holbo on July 17, 2004
Orin Kerr writes: “The Engligh language needs a word for when advocates on both sides of an ongoing debate switch rhetorical positions, and yet they insist on decrying the inconsistency of their opponents while overlooking their own inconsistency.” If prof. Kerr will settle for a phrase, let me suggest ‘poetic justice as fairness’. I know it will never catch on among the non-Rawls joke getting set, but it’s the best I can do. (Actually what I am talking about is a slightly more generic version of what Kerr is talking about.) ‘Poetic justice as fairness’ denotes a vendetta-based, rather than abstract reason-based approach to argument. Dialectic as feud; Hatfields and the McCoys do thesis and antithesis, with stupidity as synthesis. The rule is: if you think your opponent commited a fallacy in the recent past, you are allowed to commit a fallacy. And no one can remember when it started, but the other side started it. It is difficult to break the tragic cycle of intellectual violence once it starts.
Timothy Burke has a post up at Cliopatra about why he doesn’t like Michael Moore, which is in this general vein:
What I find equally grating is the defense of Moore’s work as “fighting dirty” because the other side is doing so. I agree that many of the critics of Fahrenheit are astonishing hypocrites, applying standards that they systematically exempt their own favored pundits and politicians from, but the proposition that one has to play by those degraded rules to win the game repels me. If it’s true, then God help us all.
UPDATE: From comments received, it is clear my post appears even more naive than, in fact, it may be. I appear to be marvelling that these beings you call ‘humans’ sometimes employ rhetoric. Actually, I’m just giving a name to a peculiar slip. 1) You preceive that the enemy has employed a fallacy or other illicit rhetorical technique. 2) You denounce this as such. 3) You employ the very same trick against the enemy when the wheel turns and the opportunity arises. 4) You do so with a sense not just that it is fair to fight fire with fire but that somehow the bad argument has become mysteriously good, due to the fact that there is poetic justice in deploying it. (Admittedly, this isn’t what Burke is talking about, so my rather narrow point about argumentative psychology was muddled more than helped by the inclusion of the quote.)
2nd UPDATE: It occurs to me that the Rawls connection was probably not clear either. So I’ll just tuck a few further meditations discretely under the fold.
[click to continue…]