by Harry on June 15, 2004
I don’t know enough about this case to feel comfortable commenting on the all-things-considered rights and wrongs of it. But I was taken aback by the comments of the girl’s MP on Radio 4’s PM programme. Margaret Moran, who backs the school and the court, said, in their defence, that the girl had the option of going to a Muslim school, and her family also had the option of withdrawing her from school and home-schooling. She went on to accuse them of having ‘political motivations’ for their suit.
I can imagine good reasons for having uniform regulations, and for upholding them even in the face of religious objections, hence my relctance to comment on the all-things-considered merits. But the fact that the regulations might drive a girl into an educational situation in which her religious beliefs will not be challenged or tested seems to me a reason for bending, or revising the rules, not a consideration in their favour. The parents’ enthusiasm that their child should attend a state comprehensive school is to their credit. Telling them that they should school her religiously or at home doesn’t seem very helpful to me.
by Henry Farrell on June 15, 2004
I’m spending some time in Washington DC, where I’ll be starting a new job this September in George Washington University’s Dept. of Political Science and Elliott School of International Affairs. There was a Kerry fundraiser yesterday where Bill Clinton was speaking – I went along with my wife because I thought it would give some interesting insights into how Clinton was going to sell Kerry’s candidacy on his upcoming “book tour”:http://nytimes.blogspace.com/genlink?q=http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/14/politics/campaign/14CLIN.html?pagewanted=print&position=. As it did.
Clinton spoke for about 15 minutes. There were three main points to his speech. First was a slightly defensive apologia for Kerry’s lack of public profile – Clinton spoke about how difficult it was to get media space for a challenger at this stage of the Presidential campaign. Second was a thinly-veiled attack on Bush. Clinton spoke at length about how John Kerry would be a President who was comfortable with people who were smarter than him, and who were prepared to contradict him when he was wrong. This seemed to me to be a smart use of Clinton’s experience in running the Oval Office. It didn’t come across as raw partisanship (the criticism was implicit), but pointed up by contrast the plain, simple badness and incoherence of the executive policy-making process under GWB. Third, Clinton tried to sell Kerry as a caring Democrat, by talking about Kerry’s commitment to helping deprived youth during Clinton’s Presidency. This wasn’t very convincing – there wasn’t any specific information, or even anecdotes, about what exactly Kerry had done. All in all, it served to confirm my overall impression that the Democrats are still having difficulty in selling Kerry as a positive quantity, rather than as an alternative to the (undoubtedly execrable) incumbent. Some of this could be my bias as a non-US lefty who has no emotional commitment to the Democrats, but it seemed to me that Kerry still has a lot of work to do if he’s going to maintain his narrow lead, let alone extend it.
by Kieran Healy on June 15, 2004
Eugene Volokh “posts a table”:http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2004_06_14.shtml#1087270691 from a “poll”:http://pollingreport.com/religion.htm showing that about 60 percent of Americans say they believe Biblical stories like the 7-day creation, Noah’s flood and Moses’ parting of the Red Sea to be literally true. This is rather higher than other estimates I’ve seen of Biblical Literalism. Based on “GSS data”:http://webapp.icpsr.umich.edu/GSS/ (the GSS is the best available public opinion survey in the U.S. with a long time-series), we know that in 1998 about 30 percent of Americans agreed with the statement “The Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word”. This was down from about 40 percent in 1988. (Most of the decline seems to have happened in the late 1980s, however.) About half of Americans agree that “The Bible is the inspired word of God but not everything in it should be taken literally, word for word.” And a steady 15 to 17 percent agree that it’s “an ancient book of fables, legends, history, and moral precepts recorded by men.” “Here’s a graph”:http://www.kieranhealy.org/files/misc/BT-plot.pdf, I put together of these trends, in pdf format.
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by Chris Bertram on June 15, 2004
bq. Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.
That’s always been pretty much my least favourite Orwell quote, but I couldn’t help thinking about it when contemplating “tonight’s Netherlands-Germany match”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/euro_2004/3787535.stm at Euro 2004. The Scotsman has “a useful guide to the history of footballing enmity”:http://sport.scotsman.com/football.cfm?id=670242004 between the two countries and one of the protagonists of the “last really nasty episode”:http://observer.guardian.co.uk/osm/story/0,6903,1009645,00.html (scroll down to #6) — Rudi Voeller — is now the German coach. The football should be pretty good too … at least from the Dutch.
by Chris Bertram on June 15, 2004
British philosopher Sir Stuart Hampshire has died at the age of 89. The Telegraph has “a very interesting obituary”:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/06/15/db1501.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/06/15/ixportal.html . I’ll add others to this post as they appear: “Guardian”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,3604,1239568,00.html , “Times”:http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,60-1146540,00.html .
by Kieran Healy on June 14, 2004
When I am President, those people who think they are so _clever_ and such _savvy travelers_ for using the parents’ room instead of the regular bathroom — because it’s quieter and cleaner and they read about this handy trick in a “Travel Tips” column once, even though they do not have, say, an unhappy five-month-old in their arms who needs a change and a feed — had better watch out. I will have the “Justice Department”:http://www.discourse.net/archives/2004/06/olcs_aug_1_2002_torture_memo_the_bybee_memo.html and a team of “Military Lawyers”:http://billmon.org/archives/001518.html by my side, together with a bag of bamboo splinters, a “Leatherman Crunch”:http://www.leatherman.com/products/tools/crunch/default.asp, a “Camping Stove”:http://www.gearreview.com/stovereview98.asp#CGTristar and a copy of the “Constitution of the United States”:http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.overview.html for kindling. And who would stop me? For one thing, a War on Irritating Frequent Flyers would command widespread popular support, and I would be willing to consider opening New Fronts in this war, e.g., on People Who Cut Me Off In Traffic, or Bloggers Who Do Not Link To My Posts. Besides, in “the words of President George W. Bush”:http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/11/17/60minutes/main529657.shtml, “I am the commander, see? I do not need to explain why I say things. — That’s the interesting thing about being the President. — Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don’t feel like I owe anybody an explanation.”[1]
fn1. Previously thought to be mere managerial bravado but subsequently discovered by Administration lawyers to be a valid constitutional argument licensing the use of torture against unspecified numbers of persons.
by Eszter Hargittai on June 14, 2004
The Pew Internet and American Life Project has revamped its Web site making it easier than ever before to find interesting and timely reports about people’s Internet uses. They have organized the site by topic so you can jump directly to reports of particular interest. They usually do not go beyond binary analyses when writing up the findings, but it’s a helpful first cut at the material. Moreover, they are making some of their data available for secondary analysis so others can jump in and see what the deeper stories are. There are few data sets that are publicly available with this type of information so the Project has been doing a real service to this research community for quite a while. The Pew Project is run by a group of great folks, do hop on over and check out their work! (Check here for some additional data sources on the topic.)
by John Q on June 14, 2004
Like racehorses, Australia’s monarchs[1] all have the same official birthday, normally the second Monday in June (according to today’s Australian, this was based on the actual birthday of George IV III). It’s fair to say that, of all Australian public holidays, this is the one for which the official occasion is most completely ignored. (Labour Day isn’t marked by much, but taking the day off is an observance in itself).
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by Chris Bertram on June 13, 2004
They’ll be dancing in the streets of Glasgow and Cardiff tonight after England’s “last minute collapse to France”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/euro_2004/3787491.stm at Euro 2004. Not fatal, but very deflating to English morale. It is the worst way to lose a game, to think you’re home and dry and then to concede twice in extra time and I’m feeling almost as let down now as I did when Man U beat Bayern Munich in the European Cup (it isn’t quite that bad). Still, an entertaining start to the tournament with a “splendid Greek performance”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/euro_2004/3787343.stm against Portugal yesterday, and I rather fancy the Danes to shock Italy tomorrow.
by Kieran Healy on June 13, 2004
Eugene Volokh says he’s “not going to comment”:http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2004_06_07.shtml#1087053377 about the “torture memo”:http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=04/06/07/0988582, which has already been discussed in detail by “a number”:http://www.discourse.net/archives/2004/06/apologia_pro_tormento_analyzing_the_first_56_pages_of_the_walker_working_group_report_aka_the_torture_memo.html of “well-known”:http://balkin.blogspot.com/2004_06_06_balkin_archive.html#108678914722707979 law bloggers. Eugene says he doesn’t want to talk about it partly because it’s outside his main areas of legal expertise, but mostly because he finds the topic
bq. not just difficult but also sickening. Torture is disgusting. … Does the need to save people’s lives justify torturing suspects? How many lives? Would it take hundreds of thousands (as in the hidden nuclear bomb scenario)? Thousands? Dozens? A couple? I don’t know the answers, and while I have no doubt about the importance of the questions, I don’t enjoy thinking about them. The whole topic is sad and horrible, whatever the right answer is. … It’s not a rational reaction; it’s a visceral one. I’m not proud of my squeamishness, but there it is. I know that just because something is sickening doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it. Sometimes people need to do disgusting things to avoid greater harms. … But if I had a choice in how to invest my scarce time, I’d rather not invest it here.
I was surprised to read this, for two reasons.
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by Kieran Healy on June 13, 2004
I know I’m way late with this, but I must have missed it on my travels last month. The “Gadflyer”:http://www.gadflyer.com brings me “the story”:http://gadflyer.com/articles/?ArticleID=131 that the Rev Sun Myung Moon had himself “crowned Emporer of the United States”:http://www.gorenfeld.net/blog/2004/05/im-and-i-approve-this-messiah.html and “declared the Messiah”:http://www.jonsullivan.com/DiaryDetail.php?pg=1337&mat=ddef at a ceremony in the “Dirksen Senate Office Building”:http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/32914 in “the presence”:http://atrios.blogspot.com/2004_03_28_atrios_archive.html#108067610445417648 and with the “enthusiastic participation”:http://www.gorenfeld.net/blog/2004/05/im-and-i-approve-this-messiah.html of a bipartisan contingent of Members of Congress. No, really. Did this even make the newspapers?
by Belle Waring on June 12, 2004
Henry’s Harry’s post about his only proper job, and the tea breaks which it necessitated, reminded me of the finest weblog devoted to tea and biscuits: A Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down. This week’s biscuit of the week is is Lidl’s Choco Softies: “In the second of our Lidl’s inspired reviews we couldn’t come away with out my picking up a pack of Lidl’s own brand version of a German classic the Super Dickmann.” I honestly have no idea what any of these things are, but nonetheless it is a very charming site.
by Eszter Hargittai on June 11, 2004
I have been meaning to blog about this forever, but have not found the kind of time a post about this deserves. Since there will be a CSPAN2 airing of a related talk tomorrow, I thought I would pass on the longer serious post and just mention the book and speech so people have the opportunity to take advantage of the broadcast.
A new book that should be of interest to many readers of CT is Paul Starr’s The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications. I should say up front that Paul was one of my advisors in graduate school so I am not a completely objective observer here. In fact, Paul has influenced my thinking about IT quite a bit. First, he is great at conveying the idea that studying communication media without a historical context is extremely problematic. Ignoring history is the best way to make unrealistically optimistic or pessimistic assumptions about the potential implications of a new technology. Second, he convincingly argues – as he lays out in great detail in his book – that ignoring the role of political decisions in the evolution of a communication medium misses a major part of the picture. There was a review of the book in The New York Times Book Review last weekend and the New Yorker had a piece a few weeks ago as well.
Paul Starr gave this year’s Van Zelst Lecture at the School of Communication at Northwestern last month. His talk will be aired on CPAN2 tomorrow, June 12th at 10:59am (EST). Paul is a great speaker and extremely careful and engaged scholar so viewers are in for a treat. I highly recommend catching the broadcast and reading the book!