by John Q on June 16, 2004
I’ve been enjoying a visit from my friend and co-author Simon Grant for the last couple of days. We’ve been working on fairly abstruse aspects of the economics of uncertainty, though with an eye to practical applications to issues like an analysis of the precautionary principle.
However, we downed tools this afternoon when it was announced that Simon has been awarded a Federation Fellowship. This is only the second such Fellowship in Economics, mine being the first.
Obviously, I’m very happy about this, and particularly about the fact that it will bring Simon back to Australia (he’s currently at Rice university in the US).
by Brian on June 16, 2004
As Brian Leiter reported, it’s a wonderful day for philosophy in Australia. David Chalmers, Paul Griffiths and Philip Pettit have been awarded Federation Fellowships, which are among the biggest and most prestigious awards in Australian academia. The awards are for five years, and having the three of them around (even more than they are now) should be great for Australian philosophy.
by John Holbo on June 16, 2004
I’ll assume you are an educated person who’s already read Josh Marshall’s post about … what to call it? Bush’s Al-Sadrist gambit: locked in a death-struggle with the forces of democratic reconstruction in your country? See if you can get zealous souls to lay down suppressing fire from the holy places. If you succeed, fine. If the holy places end up getting shelled when the targets lose patience, you cry religious persecution (even if it was pure self-defense) and make hay out of that. It’s win-win.
Let’s consider this issue of Bush’s attempt to “nudge the American bishops toward greater ‘activism’.” To wit: denying communion to Catholic political candidates who take church-disapproved stances on gay marriage, abortion and stem cell research.
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by Henry Farrell on June 16, 2004
Today is the 100th anniversary of the day on which stately, plump Buck Mulligan came down the stairs of the Martello tower, razor, mirror and washbowl in hand. Like many other Dubliners, I’ve a distant relative who’s a character in _Ulysses_. “Professor MacHugh” is based on my great-uncle Hugh MacNeill. He appears in the Aeolus section, which is appropriate enough; he’s a bit of a windbag (and according to family hearsay, the original was an alcoholic and a chronic gambler to boot). This isn’t as unusual as it might seem: everyone in Ireland is related to everyone else, and ‘placing’ someone (i.e. finding what relatives or friends you have in common) is a source for hours of entertainment whenever two Irish people meet. Not only that – but _Ulysses_ is a long novel, with many minor characters – Dubliners who don’t have some tenuous connection to the novel are perhaps even rarer than Dubliners of a certain age who don’t claim to have been regular drinking companions of Paddy Kavanagh, Brendan Behan, and Myles na gCopaleen (aka Brian O’Nolain). Which is to say, very thin on the ground indeed.
Update: Google too are celebrating Bloomsday.
!http://www.google.com/logos/james_joyce.gif!
by John Q on June 16, 2004
The success of Eurosceptic parties like the UK Independence Party, has contributed to generally negative coverage of the recent EU Parliamentary elections. Although I disagree with UKIP, I think its success is a good thing.
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by Henry Farrell on June 15, 2004
In comments at John and Belle’s other blog, Fafnir from Fafblog speaks to the perplexity caused by reading Gene Wolfe.
bq. Gene Wolfe is a punk. He also greedily ate my fudgcicle once while signin my copy of “The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories.” I said “hey gene wolfe that is my fudgcicle” an he said “maybe you only THINK it is your fudgcicle because you are plaaaaauged by the ghooosts of meeeeemory. wooooooo!” all the while makin wiggly fingers. And I went home thinkin that maybe I really was plagued by the ghosts of memory and maybe I wasn’t who I thought I was, was I Fafnir or was I Gene Wolfe, or was I a butterfly dreaming I was Gene Wolfe dreaming I was Fafnir? And the next day I woke up an realized that punk had just eaten my fudgcicle.
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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. 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 from a poll 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 (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, 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 at Euro 2004. The Scotsman has a useful guide to the history of footballing enmity between the two countries and one of the protagonists of the last really nasty episode (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
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 and a team of Military Lawyers by my side, together with a bag of bamboo splinters, a Leatherman Crunch, a Camping Stove and a copy of the Constitution of the United States 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, “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.)