Left-of-center bloggers, could I have a quick word with you, before this becomes a problem?
(huddle)
Barbara and Jenna Bush are going to join their father’s campaign. There’s going to be a fair number of stories about them. They’re out of college, and many are going to consider attacks on them to be fair game. We shouldn’t.
When Rush Limbaugh referred to Chelsea Clinton as the “White House dog”… when John Derbyshire wrote his famous “I hate Chelsea Clinton” column… when Mickey Kaus attacked Kerry’s daughter for the dress she wore… those arguments were heavily quoted and promoted, not by conservatives, but by liberals. They make right wingers* look like cruel, petty people who attack the loved ones of their political opponents. I don’t want us to be like that. These attacks barely work in terms of preaching to the choir, and alienate and insult everyone else.
So it will be with the Bush daughters. There will never be a post or story about Bush’s daughters that loses votes for George W. Bush. The Bush daughters are good-looking young women who are doing nothing wrong by supporting their father, whom they love. They could hardly be more sympathetic if they fell down a well. We should leave them alone.
* “But Kaus is a Democrat!” Yes, he’s a Democrat who wrote a mean, inaccurate hit piece on the Democratic nominee’s daughter. Duly noted.
by Chris Bertram on May 27, 2004
Congratulations to Chris Brooke, whose funny, informative, enlightening (and splendid) “Virtual Stoa”:http://users.ox.ac.uk/~magd1368/weblog/blogger.html is now three years old. In my experience the third birthday party is the one where hordes of children turn up, are abandoned by their parents for several hours, grind jelly and crisps into the carpet and play at sticking their heads through the cat-flap. So I’m imagining the Stoical attitude Chris is displaying to such mayhem at Magdalen Towers even now.
by John Q on May 27, 2004
Below the fold is a draft review of Gil Merom’s How Democracies Lose Small Wars. Comments and criticism much appreciated.
[click to continue…]
by Chris Bertram on May 26, 2004
Via “Lance Knobel”:http://www.davosnewbies.com/2004/05/24 I see that Jim Moore has started a blog to encourage more coverage of the unfolding tragedy in the Sudan, “The Passion of the Present”:http://passionofthepresent.org/ .
by Chris Bertram on May 26, 2004
“Amnesty International’s annual report for 2004”:http://web.amnesty.org/report2004/index-eng is now out. A sobering reminder of how bad things are out there. It is also a reminder of how bad things are in world of chatterers, op-ed columnists and bloggers that we can expect (a) a great deal of moaning about how Amnesty has failed to treat country X (of which the writer approves) with due understanding, context, perspective etc; and (b) much noise about how the activites of country Y (of which the writer disapproves) are demonstrably condemned by the same report. Human rights are indivisible, and in my view, the burden of proof is on those whom Amnesty condemns to show their innocence.
by John Q on May 26, 2004
Suppose you have encountered Zeno’s Achilles paradoxfor the first time. Zeno offers a rigorous (looking) proof that, having once given the tortoise a head start, Achilles can never overtake it. Would you regard this as[1]
# A startling new discovery in athletics;
# A demonstration of the transcendent capacity of the human spirit – although the laws of logic forbid it, Achilles does in fact catch and overtake the tortoise; or
# A warning about how not to take limits?
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by Daniel on May 26, 2004
John Kay has a pretty decent column in the FT today. The actual message will eb pretty familiar to anyone who’s been folowing the Cassandra-like wailings of people like Wynne Godley and (on some occasions) me about the unusustainability of the US current account deficit, but he has some quality jokes in it. In particular, he recruits JK Galbraith’s concept of “the bezzle” to illustrate his thesis about overconsumption and asset price inflation:
John Kenneth Galbraith’s greatest contribution to economics is the concept of the bezzle – the increment to wealth that occurs during the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not understand that he has lost it. The gross national bezzle has never been larger than in the past decade.
by Kieran Healy on May 26, 2004
Successful commencement speakers are notoriously difficult to find. If you’re not “boring people to death”:http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2004/05/25/russert_bc_speech_stresses_values/ you are likely to be “ticking someone off”:http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2004_05_21.shtml#1085451256. With this in mind, the *Crooked Timber Talent Agency* is pleased to announce its list of *2004-2005 Commencement Speakers* to the Administrations of all interested degree-granting institutions of higher learning, high schools, kindergartens, day-care centers and also right-wing think-tanks posing as any of the above. A brief selection of our speakers follows.
*Saddam Hussein*. _Bio_: Former President of Iraq. _Speech topics_: The glorious history of Iraq; the importance of law and order; outdoor living and survival skills. _General theme_: The importance of following your dreams; bouncing back from unexpected adversity. _Special Appeal_: Like Ted Nugent, but with broader musical fan base.
*Paul O’Neill*, *Richard Clarke*, *Richard Foster* and *Larry Lindsey.* _Bio_: Former administration officials now collectively known as “The Mayberry Quartet.” Group bookings only. _Speech topics_: The meaning of loyalty; public service as its own reward; starting a new career later in life. _General theme_: The importance of following your dreams; bouncing back from unexpected adversity. _Special Appeal_: Barbershop quartet numbers at post-commencement reception.
*John Lott*. _Bio_: At various times very nearly on the faculty of several major universities, currently at the _American Enterprise Institute_. _Speech Topics_: Gun control in the United States and elsewhere; public policy; the dangers of the Internet. _General theme_: The importance of believing your dreams rather than the evidence, or presenting the former as the latter; bouncing back from unexpected adversity. _Special Appeal_: Much loved by graduands who faked all their physics problem sets in sophomore year.
*Ahmed Chalabi*. _Bio_: Future President of Iraq. _Speech Topics_: The glorious history of Iraq; the importance of law and order; indoor living and survival skills. _General theme_: The importance of being able to get other people to follow your dreams; causing unexpected adversity. _Special Appeal_: None.
*Judith Miller*. _Bio_: _New York Times_ reporter who as recently as a month ago was personally storing Saddam Hussein’s WMD stocks in her basement at home, according to one Iraqi scientist. _Speech Topics_: The overwhelming danger posed by Iraq; compromised sources I have known but not suspected. _General theme_: The importance of believing other people’s dreams; bouncing back from unexpected adversity. _Special Appeal_: Sincerity above all.
Many other speakers available for booking, most at short notice. Reasonable rates. Speeches guaranteed short. Email for details today.
by Daniel on May 26, 2004
Further to my comments last week on this subject, an update on Mr Wolfensohn’s progress toward the holy grail of Rights Based Lending. As of yesterday, China has a “winning formula” that the rest of the world ought to copy, while Israel can go screw itself. Something for everyone here, I think.
(The second of those two links is, IMO, disgraceful. Lord knows I’m not exactly a fan of the actions of the State of Israel in the territory it has annexed, but where the heck does Wolfensohn get off deciding to have a Middle East policy? Note that his comments appear to have no relevance to the action project involved; the Gaza Palestinians are just going to be made to wait for their new houses because of Wolfensohn’s amour propre, “as a Jew”. OTOH, it looks like he flip-flopped again shortly after that Ma’ariv interview and the discussions are still live after all. Lord, what a clown show)
by Kieran Healy on May 26, 2004
The _New York Times_ “hangs Judith Miller out to dry”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/international/middleeast/26FTE_NOTE.html?pagewanted=1&8dpc though it doesn’t mention her by name, preferring to spread the blame for its “credulous reporting”:http://slate.msn.com/id/2101124/ on Iraq around to other reporters and editors, whom it doesn’t name either. At least they come out and say, in an official capacity, that they were spun like a top by Chalabi and his buddies, and that if they’d been less excitable then they might not look so bad now.
by Henry Farrell on May 25, 2004
I’m in Europe at the moment for research, and staying with friends in Brussels while I do academic interviews with political types. The place I’m in has a nice big back garden (property is relatively cheap here) which is periodically invaded by flocks of wild green parrots that have gone native. It’s delightful – a splash of the exotic in a notoriously unexotic city. Apparently though, many of the locals are unimpressed – the parrots build big, ugly communal nests resembling poorly built rafts that are a bit of an eyesore in winter, when the leaves drop off the trees. How the parrots themselves make it through the winter, I don’t know. According to the “National Geographic”:http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/04/0407_030407_parakeets.html, Brussels isn’t the only city in temperate climes to support a wild parrot population; there are thriving flocks in London, San Francisco and elsewhere.
Bush, last night:
Our commanders had estimated that a troop level below 115,000 would be sufficient at this point in the conflict. Given the recent increase in violence, we will maintain our troop level at the current 138,000 as long as necessary.
Last Thursday’s testimony of General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff:
Myers gave one of the most candid official assessments yet of events in Iraq, which marked a further turn away from the administration’s stance that a smaller US force coupled with Iraqi security forces could secure Iraq.
He said General John Abizaid, commander of US forces in Iraq, was assessing what additional forces may be needed on top of the 135,000 American troops already there.
Tim Cavanaugh, who called this the “best Clinton moment” in Reason:
I can see Mike McCurry now, explaining that the President was actually using the pluperfect tense, so his comments were literally true.
by Eszter Hargittai on May 25, 2004
by Eszter Hargittai on May 25, 2004
I resisted temptation for a while, but have finally launched into a project on blogs with two graduate students in our Media, Technology and Society PhD program, Jason Gallo and Sean Zehnder. We are focusing on political blogs in particular. This raises a whole set of methodological questions. A big one has to do with sampling. We have decided that we would not focus on a random sample of blogs, not only because that is just about impossible to achieve, but more importantly because that is not our focus. We are interested in the most widely read political blogs. (Yes, there remains the question as to what counts as a political blog in the first place, that is just one of the many questions we are grappling with.)
One way of finding prominent political blogs (or prominent blogs of any type) is to look through the links of prominent blogs we already know about. However, since linking is one of the questions we are interested in, it seems problematic to rely only on that method to find blogs relevant for our study. The same concern applies to using Technorati as a method for finding prominent political blogs. Another idea is to run searches on certain political topics and “blog” or “weblog” and see what we find. Of course, in such cases we are left wondering how widely read the particular blogs are, especially if they do not have comments turned on (and in any case, number of comments is a very limited measure of how widely read a blog may be). Other methods we have thought of is to look at directory listings (such as Yahoo!’s) of political blogs for ones we may have missed using the other methods.
So to sum up: What other approaches should we be using to identify political blogs? What methods do people recommend for identifying “top” political blogs?Also, if people know of political blogs that don’t seem to get mentioned here much, please feel free to post away. I realize this method of collecting information mirrors many of the shortcomings mentioned above, but hopefully by using all these approaches, we can get a reasonable sample (or dare I say population) of the most widely read political blogs. Thanks!
by Chris Bertram on May 25, 2004
Tim Smith’s and David Korevaar’s page on “Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier”:http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~tas3/wtc.html is one of the best things I’ve seen on the web in a long time. Click on the links and you get music, analysis, history and fantastic graphics. (via “Michael Brooke”:http://www.michaelbrooke.com/2004/05/breathtaking-bach.html )