CT extends its hearty congratulations to Congressman Billy Tauzin (R-La), who’s demonstrating his sincere attachment to free market virtues by retiring from politics and selling himself to the highest bidder. For the last couple of weeks, there’s been a “bidding war”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42531-2004Jan23.html?nav=hptoc_p between the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) for Tauzin’s services. The MPAA had paid its outgoing head lobbyist, the unlamented Jack Valenti, more than $1 million a year. Apparently this wasn’t nearly enough for Tauzin, who held out for a substantially larger sum – and got it from PhRMA. As it happens, PhRMA is a particularly unpleasant organization – it played a dishonorable role in the AIDS drugs licensing for Africa controversy a few years ago, and has been up to its eyeballs in other controversies and backroom arrangements, up to and including the recent Medicare porkfest. Needless to say, Tauzin has been assiduous in his efforts to protect the interests of “big pharma”:http://energycommerce.house.gov/107/news/06072001_270.htm and the “content industry”:http://www.mpaa.org/Press/Broadcast_Flag_Tauzin_Roundtable.htm over the last couple of years; it’s hard to believe that his grossly inflated salary is unconnected to services previously rendered. The phenomenon of Congressman-turned-lobbyist is hardly a new one; but the openness and extent of the greed on display is unusual, even for Washington. A sign of the times.

Thanks to Calpundit for linking to this Reuters interview with David Kay.

Q: What happened to the stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons that everyone expected to be there?
A: “I don’t think they existed.
“I think there were stockpiles at the end of the first Gulf War and those were a combination of U.N. inspectors and unilateral Iraqi action got rid of them. I think the best evidence is that they did not resume large-scale production, and that’s what we’re really talking about, is large stockpiles, not the small. Large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in the period after ’95.”
…
Q: You came away from the hunt that you have done believing that they did not have any large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in the country?
A: “That is correct.”
…
Q: Do you think they destroyed it?
A: “No, I don’t think they existed.”

The interviewer, it seems, had some difficulty believing that Kay was being so straight, and wanted him to say these words twice.

Via Normblog, a piece in the nation on “The New Anti-Semitism, that being the kind practised by people like Paul Krugman when they criticise the Likud party, as opposed to the old kind of anti-Semitism – things like saying Mussolini wasn’t all that bad, which used to be unacceptable but apparently isn’t anymore.

The Nation piece argues that this new knd of Anti-Semitism doesn’t exist and isn’t anti-Semitism. Norm doesn’t like the article and he’s right; it’s a pretty weird and unsatisfying piece. But it contains one really odd standout line:

But the evidence suggests that the perpetrators of the anti-Jewish attacks in France were animated by political outrage, not bigotry.

Surely if this were true, it would mean that there was a new kind of anti-Semitism around, wouldn’t it? I know I’d certainly be a lot less vocal in criticising the Israeli government if I thought I was encouraging the “political outrage” of the kind of person who sets fire to synagogues. Wouldn’t you?

(and btw, this is the answer to Norm’s final question of “who cares?”. Liberal gentiles who oppose the actions of the current government of Israel care, because if there is a new kind of anti-Semitism, we’re potentially allying ourselves to a social trend which leads to racist attacks, and if there isn’t, we’re not. Personally I think there isn’t, but I begin to think I ought to make sure).

(by the way, I’ve not enabled comments because past experience suggests that links to Normblog have an almost pheromonal quality when it comes to bringing out the nasty side of otherwise lovely CT commenters. C’mon guys, you should be grateful. I’ve saved you from wasting Friday night on a pointless bulletin board flamewar).

I stole this idea from Cosma Shalizi, who got it from something else. Anyway, it’s basically an irregular sampling of economics things that interested me. Mainly post-Keynesian, econophysics or sociology of economics stuff, but if I see a good Austrian piece I’ll use it. Also a few things that aren’t really all that heterodox but struck me as good. I’m trying to put in a few bits that will interest fellow nerds and obsessives, and a bit of didactic stuff for the layman, so if any of it strikes you as incomprehensible and/or patronising, then I’ll hide behind the excuse that it probably wasn’t meant for you. Email suggestions very welcome.

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Just by the by, and for those with more than a passing interest in the subject, here’s a draft of a rather opinionated survey article on privacy that I’ve just written for a UK think tank. Health warning; it’s over 2000 words. Plus side; I’ve tried to keep it reasonably chatty. Apologies to any commenters (if indeed there are any) – I’m off to Chamonix for two days of terror on the nursery slopes so won’t be checking back in until Monday.

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– Ana Marie Cox, formerly of The Antic Muse, formerly of Suck.com, formerly of a lot of things, has a new political gossip site: Wonkette.

Ana Marie is an outstanding, witty writer who makes most of us look like we’re blogging in crayon. Long live the Wonkette.

– Michael Pine, of Off the Pine, is back to semi-regular posting on a new site. I was fond of Off the Pine before he gave it up, and I can’t imagine that he’s gotten any dumber.

– The Mr. T Experience, aka MTX, has a new album out called Yesterday Rules. It’s very good, and you should buy it. Full review shortly.

The “Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy” is organizing a conference with the nonsense title of “NOISETHEORYNOISE#1”:http://www.mdx.ac.uk/www/CRMEP/events/noise.htm although NONSENSETHEORYNONSENSE might be more appropriate. The “theme” of the conference is described thus:

bq. Noise is an unprecedented harbinger of aesthetic radicality: no-one yet knows what it is or what it means. This non-significance is its strength rather than its weakness. Noise is ‘non-music’ not because it negates music but because it affirms a previously unimaginable continuum of sonic intensities in which music becomes incorporated as a mere material.

And further elaborations include:

bq. Where a ‘new aestheticism’ might present itself as a resistance to pragmatic instrumentality, postmodern academicism continues to adopt theory as ballast: works are mere pretexts for ostentatious displays of theoretical chic. But in what way could noise change the conditions of theoretical possibility, not to say intelligibility or even sensibility?

In what way indeed? Explanations on a postcard please …. (or in comments).

Not often I admit this, but this Spectator article makes a lot of the points I’ve been trying to make myself on this issue rather better than I did. I’m not sure myself about whether or not the military-industrial complex is a red herring (I think that the defence procurement industry is too small to be as important as most conspiracy researchers think it is), but the rest is dead on. Thanks to the chaps at Slugger O’Toole for the link.

By the way, while we’re on the subject of defence procurement, why is it that every Army surplus shop in the world appears to have rack after rack of German army surplus shirts? Is this the result of a monumental purchasing error by the German Army or something?

According to our log-analysis program, Crooked Timber received its 1,000,000th unique visit today; a nice milestone. I think it’s fair to say that none of us anticipated how well CT would do when we started it in July. Thank you all for reading us.

The discussion on the Caroline Payne story below reminds me of a fine old piece of doggerel attributed to James Tobin:

The poor complain
They always do
But that’s just idle chatter
Our system brings rewards to all
At least, all those who matter

Two interesting perspectives on literary theory and related pursuits; one from “Elaine Showalter”:http://chronicle.com/free/v50/i20/20b00901.htm ^1^ and one from “Scott McLemee”:http://www.mclemee.com/id4.html (scroll down to January 10).

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Katherine at Obsidian Wings has several more excellent posts on the Maher Arar case. Here’s the editorial

We don’t know all the details or explanations, but we know that something terrible happened. Our government took a man from an airport in New York City and handed him over to Syria, where he was tortured for 10 months. I think I’ve made a decent case that he was probably innocent; that this was done with the knowledge and approval of fairly important government officials; and that this was not some freak accident or isolated occurrence. …

As Ted Barlow said last November, “I support the vigorous investigation and prosecution of terrorists and terrorist suspects. But if this isn’t over the line, then there is no line.” It is not acceptable to me for my country to send people to be tortured on scant evidence, or on evidence gained from other torture sessions.

Since whatever happens to Canadians can happen to Australians, and whatever can happen to Australians can happen to me, I have a selfish interest in taking this a bit seriously. (On that note, I saw in yesterday’s Washington Post that David Hicks has finally got to have one meeting with a lawyer. (Actually it’s three meetings with a military appointed lawyer according to this story.) After two years in custody. Hooray for due process!) Of course hideous behaviour by governments is hideous behaviour by governments whether the victims are people like me or not, but when they are it’s a little easier to feel appalled by it all.

Back on Arar, today it seems that Juliet O’Neill has (or perhaps will be) arrested over this story she wrote on Arar’s case. In more ficticious news the Feds have arrested Robert Novak for his role in leaking Valerie Plame’s name.

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Can we no longer hear about the “predictive power” of the Iowa Electronic Markets, please? They were bamboozled to exactly the same degree as the rest of us.

[UPDATE]: A couple of people in comments have pointed out that this market is for the nomination, not the Iowa Caucus itself. Fair point, but sadly, no. Either the Iowa Caucus is an important determinant of who gets the nomination, or it isn’t. If it isn’t, there shouldn’t have been anything like this sharp movement on the 19th. If it is important, then trading in these contracts ought to have reflected relative chances of winning in Iowa. Either way, big spikes like this on news days are not consistent with semistrong market efficiency. I’d also note that the Iowa Electronic Markets are strongly linked with Iowa University’s business school, so the Iowa caucus is their best chance of having local tacit knowledge. While we’re noting things, I’d make a few points on the alternative prediction methods. The Irish Independent’s online poll seems to have done at least as well as IEM if not a little better (fair enough, I don’t have a time series for this one), and BBC Newsnight ran a big feature on Kerry last week; they’d clearly picked up the buzz.

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I was thinking of leaving my little rant about Colin McGinn somewhere where other Timberites might not get any blame for it, but since Chris mentioned it, I figure it’s worth reposting here. McGinn is a relatively famous British philosopher, now at Rutgers, who in the 1980s produced some influential material on the mind-body problem, although his more recent work has not attracted as much attention. For various reasons (including his meteoric rise through the profession, the accessibility of his theories, his wide ranging interests, and his willingness to produce harsh verdicts on other philosophers) he became fairly well-known in broader intellectual circles. And now he’s written an autobiography. This led to an interview in the Times of London. (Note this is now subscriber-only, but I’ve put most of the text on my site.) The most notable passage is:

“I won’t talk to my colleagues about philosophy. It is too boring to me,” he says.

But why?

“They are too stupid.”

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