tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53135412011-04-22T05:12:42.640+01:00Nasi LemakRumours on the internets; or rice cooked in coconut milk, served with sambal and ikan kuning or ikan bilis.abelardnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1031100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1099510610913966592004-11-03T19:31:00.000Z2004-11-03T19:43:17.453ZSay not the sea of faith naught availeth; or, the tension of a Bush victory
Matthew Arnold v. Arthur Hugh Clough, no rounds, no padding, no submissions, two Victorian poets enter, one Victorian poet leaves...
The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; -on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out inabelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1097863075791565692004-10-15T18:19:00.000+01:002004-10-15T18:57:55.793+01:00The impossibility of 9/11 in the mind of someone living
Without wanting to get all ruminative this early in the weekend, it's funny how often writing something down seems to show up a previously unexpected pattern.
Below I wrote a bit about the Right's response, in the US, to 9/11; it has, in some ways, disappeared - not as a bloody shirt to wave, nor as a mass grave to stand on with a bullhornabelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1097335386169717362004-10-09T16:15:00.000+01:002004-10-09T16:24:36.140+01:00Wars on Terror
According to the New York Times' "News Analysis" of the second presidential debate, President Bush made a "crisp rejoinder" in saying:
"The war on terror is to make sure that these terrorist organizations do not end up with weapons of mass destruction. That's what the war on terror is about."
Um. Well, it's a crisp rejoinder if you believe it, I guess, but I am still surprised abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1096596112549110022004-10-01T02:58:00.000+01:002004-10-01T03:10:11.200+01:00Three thoughts about the Presidential debates
FIRST: pickled onions are an improvement on olives in martini, but the ensemble is too weird to become truly popular.
SECOND: also, lemon is good.
THIRD: if the main take-home lesson of this debate is not Bush's bizarre inability to let Kerry have the last word, to always demand the extra 30s/30s extended debate which is supposed to be the abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1095782602475281942004-09-21T16:57:00.000+01:002004-09-21T17:03:22.476+01:00It's rainy
There seems to be no 5.6.7.8's lyrics database that Google knows of.
abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1095782235043378702004-09-21T16:42:00.000+01:002004-09-21T17:11:36.196+01:00Whence and whither away
One remaining piece of the CBS Bush Memos story puzzles me.
What are the origins of the documents? There are three possibilities I can think of: i) the memos were designed to damage Bush; ii) they were designed to help Bush; iii) they were done for money by someone who didn't care about the consequences.
It seems to me that none of those possibilities makes sense in abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1095436166812104982004-09-17T16:30:00.000+01:002004-09-21T17:12:18.446+01:00Return of the rice dish
Back from the blogdead to do something I said an age ago I'd do: explain why exactly my thinking about the war was so uptight. I'm inspired to do so by this attempt at J&BHAB...) which does most of the work I'd otherwise have had to do.
A particularly helpful feature of that post is that it does emphasise that there were a lot of different reasons to support the war. abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1085700316101980082004-05-28T00:22:00.000+01:002004-05-28T00:26:12.550+01:00Blumenthal
I guess money is on something interesting happening and giving his rather wonderful final paragraph a bit of historical resonance (kinda like David Halberstam's writing on Vietnam now has):
Washington, which was just weeks ago in the grip of neoconservative orthodoxy and absolute belief in Bush's inevitability and righteousness, is now in the throes of agonizing events and being abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1085417072085505242004-05-24T17:44:00.000+01:002004-05-24T17:59:46.636+01:00Not so much fly, as plummet
The most up-to-date version of my Bush approval spreadsheet snitched from Polling Report and graphed here previously, as relied on by Crooked Timber's resident financier, Dsquared, to make his fortune, is below:
There seems to me to be a limited but dramatic Abu Ghraib effect (pushing the rolling average down very close to 45%; the last eleven polls have all had abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1081533307207524862004-04-09T18:55:00.000+01:002004-04-09T20:29:57.966+01:00budget rentals
It's always been pretty clear that the $87 billion supplemental the US Administration got for Iraq after the costs increased, umm, unexpectedly, was not really a final demand. Rather it was likely to run out, if not actually in November then not long afterwards, and there would need to be another (immensely unpopular, if you remember) infusion of the mighty dollar very soon after abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1081423715674442812004-04-08T12:28:00.000+01:002004-04-08T12:32:49.543+01:00The possibility of forgetting
From the Washington Post this time last year...
abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1081181464050441402004-04-05T17:11:00.000+01:002004-04-05T17:15:38.030+01:00Oven Chips
Both Matthew Yglesias and Kevin Drum say more or less positive things about the prospects of McCain as VP under Kerry. It all sounds a bit Hillary-really-is-running-for-President to me, but it's something I heard quite a bit of at a recent conference, also from people who I would have thought would know better, so let me take it seriously for a moment.
The debate gets carried on abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1080820231847979242004-04-01T12:50:00.000+01:002004-04-01T17:50:38.233+01:00Pretty pictures
Chief Justice Rehnquist, repository of all that is gold-trimmed in the American judicial tradition, has occupied three roles on the US Supreme Court; Chief Justice; Justice; and, a couple of decades earlier, law clerk to Justice Jackson in 1951-2 and 1952-3.
In the latter capacity, Rehnquist wrote a memorandum to his Justice urging the court to uphold the segregationist Plessy abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1080660538798690962004-03-30T16:28:00.000+01:002004-03-30T16:34:05.560+01:00abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1080660344467642892004-03-30T16:25:00.000+01:002004-04-01T12:53:55.936+01:00Occasional graphology
Data from pollingreport.com.
The boy emperor is in trouble (and the recent CNN poll showing Kerry behind Bush in a matchup is also a clear outlier for approval rating, implying that it's just a particularly Republican sample). I really wish the press would talk about polls more sensibly...
UPDATE: Gosh, I post several times a day and six people read it; I post once abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1076345828741073612004-02-09T16:57:00.000Z2004-02-09T16:59:52.840Zdistraction
I'm pretty desperately trying to get something productive out of my research leave, and this seems to leave me thoroughly deworded for other purposes, including blogging. I will try to get back on track soon.
abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1074430741555492832004-01-18T12:59:00.000Z2004-01-18T13:00:56.293ZObliquity
A wonderful piece by John Kay in the Financial Times talking about "obliquity": the name Kay (I think) gives to the notion that given some goals, apparently rational maximisation of goal achievement, through a direct route, may not in fact be optimising. In some ways this is a pretty obvious point, but it's one which eludes (for example) the managerialists currently in charge of abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1073666553470922292004-01-09T16:42:00.000Z2004-01-09T16:49:29.763ZHants
Talking Points Memo draws attention to the latest ARG tracking poll which has Dean on 35%, Clark on 20%, up 2% for the fifth consecutive day.
At this rate, someone should be pointing out, Clark will overtake Dean in New Hampshire in about a week to ten days. I don't think that will actually happen, because Clark's heady ascent will slow down a bit; but wouldn't it be entertaining if he abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1073576304388733202004-01-08T15:38:00.000Z2004-01-09T15:44:55.840ZMore evidence of BBC anti-semitism
It turns out that BBC presenter Robert Kilroy-Silk wrote a piece on the Arab world, in his Sunday Express column, which was so nuanced and carefully reasoned that the Commission for Racial Equality has reported it to the police. I don't think the piece is online, but the BBC has a couple of choice quotes:
"Apart from oil - which was discovered, is produced andabelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1073496585690383872004-01-07T17:29:00.000Z2004-01-07T17:38:40.920ZOxblogwatch XXXVI
OK, I know I shouldn't let this wind me up, and probably wouldn't if it were called Yaleblog or something, but...
Josh Chafetz is shocked - shocked! - to find a BBC reporter of long and distinguished service reporting a US customs official as saying "give them two fingers from me". Apparently Americans do the one-finger thing, but not the two-finger thing, which is good to abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1073478768461166652004-01-07T12:32:00.000Z2004-01-07T12:34:29.186ZRationality
Last November's APSR has only just reached me after its usual transatlantic journey (which must presumably be undertaken by attaching it to a migratory seabird of some sort, given the time it takes). It has a fascinating article on the epistemological foundations of rational choice theory, by Paul K. MacDonald at Columbia. (Link is to the abstract but is probably abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1073343780060883982004-01-05T23:03:00.000Z2004-01-05T23:04:39.000ZLong time no blog
That was a Christmas break involving rather too much contact with the crappier parts of the National Health Service. At least it's over.
Anyhoo, Tyler Cowen at the Volokh conspiracy actually has a thought-provoking question: why haven't there been any more al qaeda attacks on the US mainland?
Cowen proposes two speculations:
Firstly, what he calls "terrorism as theatre" - abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1072089199034682132003-12-22T10:33:00.000Z2003-12-22T10:34:38.436ZMore References
UPDATE: well, thank you Crooked Timber as well as various emailers. In sum, I think that nearly everyone in academia thinks this is a bad practice, although one or two people think it is no big deal. (In what follows, to bridge the anglo-american divide, one may read "reference" as "letter of recommendation", and "CV" as "resume", as preferred.) I remain of the view that even an abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-107186200281302982003-12-19T19:26:00.000Z2003-12-19T19:58:57.950ZPrivet Sea
The great British spokespaper for the suburban insane, the Daily Mail (or rather its Sunday sibling) is having to pay vast sums of money to a senior police officer who is gay: the Mail on Sunday undertook an extraordinary intrusion into his privacy and ended up making a number of allegations which they now admit are false.
I recently found out that a former colleague of mine in abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1071857669857986912003-12-19T18:14:00.000Z2003-12-19T20:08:08.013ZRisk
Mark A. R. Kleiman has an interesting post on encouraging innovation in the public sector. This brings back all kinds of happy memories of writing politics essays on Osborne and Gaebler's "Reinventing Government", a book the publication of which may have been the greatest of all possible gifts to snarky, cynical PPE undergraduates in the early 90s.
So two brief thoughts on this:
Firstly,abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1071606045012408752003-12-16T20:20:00.000Z2003-12-22T10:32:32.420ZQuandary
The following is somewhat hypotheticalised:
A former student X, now doing a graduate degree at a very prestigious research university in the United States wrote to me, to say that i) he has decided to apply for a doctoral programme at a very prestigious research university in the United States and ii) one of his professors (who is actually in a different department) said that she wouldabelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1071504772862894302003-12-15T16:12:00.000Z2003-12-15T16:14:03.606ZSympathy
A sympathetic critic, on my preferred research methods:
It seems to me you tread a difficult middle path between stories and sums
That's the best defense of what I do that I've ever seen...
abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1070993881155993812003-12-09T18:18:00.000Z2003-12-09T18:19:04.106ZUgh
Admissions. Gah.abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-10706503112620152003-12-05T18:51:00.000Z2003-12-05T18:52:48.500ZSearches
As ever, the big search that brings people here is "nasi lemak", and I don't, sadly, think they're looking for my insanely pedantic brand of academo-commentary. Two others bring out my conscientious, helpful side, though:
To the person searching for makan la restaurant "malaysian cuisine in Oxford" who came here as the 7th link: I'm afraid you're both well-informed and unfortunate, abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1070645848814957042003-12-05T17:37:00.000Z2003-12-05T17:42:34.200ZConspirra Sea
This is rather interesting. Is 9/11 going to turn out to be a source of conspiracy-theorizing on a parallel with the Kennedy assassinations? I believe that the latter were not really questioned in public until the late 1960s/early1970s, so some time to go yet. I wouldn't be entirely surprised if it did, since the events of 9/11 have some of the same characteristics of shock (abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1070538894881246192003-12-04T11:54:00.000Z2003-12-04T12:39:27.326ZExceptionalism
Brad DeLong has some fascinating thoughts about the socioeconomic consequences of technical change --- specifically, about the effects of each wave in terms of cheapness and plenty, expensiveness and shortage, unforeseen risks, wrongly foreseen risks. Really, really interesting stuff & something I want to write about myself on this site as soon as I have a moment.
However, he abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1070472031874853252003-12-03T17:20:00.000Z2003-12-03T17:24:00.530ZBang!
Word, as I believe the young people say. (It's particularly correct in implying that you could take a picture of Philadelphia, at any time, for an "after" photograph. Especially the area round the hotel I stayed in during APSA.)abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1070365525881310892003-12-02T11:45:00.000Z2003-12-02T11:58:18.170ZHildabeests
The BBC thinks St Hilda's College, Oxford, is run by its students. Seeing the headline I thought: the students are going to vote on it before the Governing Body does. Reading the story, and the tag under the photo, it's clear that they think the students are the Governing Body.
UPDATE: darn, they were quick to fix most of that. Here is a screenshot of the original.abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1070364227358472612003-12-02T11:23:00.000Z2003-12-02T11:26:25.700ZSledgehammer-nut crunch
Eugene Volokh explains the story of the dim Counterpunch reporter who attacked the Bush Thanksgiving trip to Baghdad on the grounds that it happened around 6am local time. This turned out to be based on a typo in the Washington Post; should've been 6pm.
Anyhow, two more thoughts on why the Counterpunch reporter was dumb:
i) I guess the US military in Baghdad doesn't abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1070363174918248132003-12-02T11:06:00.000Z2003-12-02T11:07:08.403ZGangsterism
Mark A. R. Kleiman still believes in a place called Hope, to coin a phrase.abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1070362203341970432003-12-02T10:50:00.000Z2003-12-02T10:50:56.216ZShock security revelation
Photo shows California blogger moonlights as UK e-Minister.
Well, I think they look alike, anyway, and more so in some other photographs of Timms, which explains why I was very surprised to see a photo of Kevin Drum in the Financial Times last week.
abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1070308125085741562003-12-01T19:48:00.000Z2003-12-01T20:38:36.733ZWerd
A post I was about to gently mock on Oxblog:
http://oxblog.blogspot.com/2003_11_30_oxblog_archive.html#107029555287571222
Posted 11:16 AM by Josh Chafetz
ELEANA GORDON IS ABSOLUTELY RIGHT that the mores and norms of democracy must be taught. As one -- although by no means the only -- step, why not print up thousands of copies of an Arabic translation of The Federalist Papers and give one abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1070128580270846182003-11-29T17:56:00.000Z2003-12-02T09:08:46.090ZO.B.N.
Here, President Bush gets the enormous respect that is his due from two separate blogs for not being the sort of segregationist Southern politician who opposed "miscegenation". Also, Sullivan, through one of his email "correspondents" manages to insinuate that President Clinton was such a politician, while Chafetz merely implies that Bush's supposedly breathtaking racial egalitarianism isabelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1070118556746199532003-11-29T15:09:00.000Z2003-11-29T15:10:06.513ZAntidotes to triumphalism
The worst that Maj. Michael Hilliard, 33, an emergency physician, saw back home in San Antonio were car crash and gunshot victims. Here, he estimates that he has treated the broken bodies of more than 1,000 U.S. soldiers.
"The injuries are horrific," he said. "They are beyond anything that you see in a textbook, and they are the worst that I have ever seen."
abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1070114848078952482003-11-29T14:07:00.000Z2003-11-29T14:08:17.810ZJournalism
One of the oddest facts about reporting of those depressing Northern Irish election results is that almost all the pieces submit to a single what-I-think-I-will-have-to-call "meme". That is, "extremists on both sides have improved their position" and threaten the peace process, referring to the DUP (on the unionist side, presumably, although I have long held the belief that they are aabelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1069707279241601282003-11-24T20:54:00.000Z2003-11-24T20:55:38.826ZConclusive proof of the existence of a powerful and beneficient God
According to CNN:
Participant at KKK initiation wounded after shots fired into sky
In other news, I have three weeks of university admissions hell and will be posting sparsely if at all in that period. I hope to be back to normal by about December 14th.abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1069638709486282502003-11-24T01:51:00.000Z2003-11-24T01:58:52.450ZBurger
Matthew Yglesias misinterprets LBJ, perceiving that he was a great progressive President on domestic policy but arguing
The only trouble with this theory is that Lyndon Johnson was also a terrible president who basically wrecked the country's foreign policy. The Vietnam War has its defenders, but nobody thinks prosecuting it in the Johnson mold was a good idea.
Well, maybe, but it's abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1069440085740116932003-11-21T18:41:00.000Z2003-11-21T18:42:03.623ZPredictions
Before the invasion of Iraq, the Flash epic "wargame" here was being linked to by lots of people in their emails. I looked at it again today; on the whole it holds up well (better than say the Pentagon's predictions of what would happen, in some ways) but it's fascinating in the ways that it assumes things, as we all pretty much did, that turned out to be wrong. In fact it hinges on abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1069343302686380732003-11-20T15:48:00.000Z2003-11-20T15:48:59.013ZThe Danger of Travelling Via The US
I have blogged about the Maher Arar case before and it's getting a new round of blogosphere-attention. Bits of the story that seemed less certain before are now being pretty much confirmed, and it's even clear which Justice Department official deserves to rot in hell for giving the specific order that this should happen.
Slightly less horrific, but abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1069341428330336562003-11-20T15:17:00.000Z2003-11-20T15:17:45.043ZIstanbul
This is too horrible to write about.
Somebody take me back to the late 90s, please.
abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1069261134471264982003-11-19T16:58:00.000Z2003-11-19T16:59:29.390ZSoylent
TPM reveals that... TechCentralStation is nothing but astroturf. How embarrassing for them!abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1069253119048688312003-11-19T14:45:00.000Z2003-11-19T14:45:54.046ZJournalism
Shorter Nicholas Kristof: The Democrats have failed to suggest coherent alternatives to the current Iraq strategy (he does not note various immediate and practical suggestions that have been made by Democrats: that the Iraqi Army might be restored, unilateral privatization should be avoided, and Ahmed Chalabi shunned). Instead, they should suggest that the Iraqi Army might be restoredabelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1069203504509702542003-11-19T00:58:00.000Z2003-11-19T14:39:08.200ZRiverbendwhimper
Riverbend.
It's very far away, but it's going day by day
At some point I will have to write a post explaining how I came to believe, wrongly, that the near-unilateral invasion of Iraq was the least bad of all the plausible alternatives; mea maxima culpa. abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1069162932044534922003-11-18T13:42:00.000Z2003-11-18T13:43:06.873ZFood
OK, my traffic logs show the world *is* going crazy over nasi lemak - the food, not so much the website/allegedly-incisive political commentary etc - for the second day in a row. It's the Eastern hemisphere's fastest-growing food sensation!
abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1069156201670293152003-11-18T11:50:00.000Z2003-11-18T11:56:51.623ZWhimper
Oh god. Collective punishment. And all for the folks watching on TV back home, I guess, because this is the worst god-awful thing they could do in local terms, leaving aside the moral question. (If anyone can show me collective punishment actually working as a counter-insurgency measure, I will retreat to the formulation that this is a rational outrage. Currently, however, it seems like abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1069089465240354652003-11-17T17:17:00.000Z2003-11-17T17:24:16.890ZTerra
Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber links to some fascinating material from Columbia symposia on Constitutions, Democracy and the Rule of Law. Although CB mentions Gerry Cohen's argument that, roughly speaking, if you are an oppressor state, you have no moral standing to criticise what the oppressed do in direct consequence of their being oppressed, he also does not create a comments link for abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1069076065851288082003-11-17T13:34:00.000Z2003-11-17T13:38:55.310ZFood
This site has now been running, and hence I have been dorking around on the LoserNet, for a bit over a month, and it gets two kinds of traffic. The first comes from blogs, and is usually about 90%, and the remaining 10% is from people searching for (recipes for?) nasi lemak on Google and Yahoo. Nasi lemak is a rather wonderful dish (described above), which is why I chose it as my nom de abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1068913791493497742003-11-15T16:29:00.000Z2003-11-15T16:30:21.576ZGyre
It looks as if the US will hand over authority to a transitional Iraqi authority in mid-2004, although US forces will remain there until it is "free and peaceful".
There is nothing particular wrong with this, but there are so many questions unanswered; two which strike me as particularly difficult:
i) What if the transitional authority (or its successor) wants to restrain US forces from, abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1068828383698594802003-11-14T16:46:00.000Z2003-11-14T16:46:52.280ZGibber
This post at Pandagon and the following comments are both brilliant (Jesse) and disturbing. Mandatory, mandatory reading, the whole thing, and then go off and read "The Paranoid Strain in American Politics".abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1068757688232987972003-11-13T21:08:00.000Z2003-11-13T21:35:57.310ZThe real reason why Kim du is a Toit
Pretty much everyone has had a go at Kim the Toit's hilariously (albeit unintentionally) self-revealing rant about masculinity, and there have been scattered responses to his rather pathetic response to his critics. Fish in a barrel, poor lamb.
Anyhow, having now actually heard of KdT I have managed to read a fair few of his magna opus, linked to as "major abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1068744941829943352003-11-13T17:35:00.000Z2003-11-13T17:51:06.296ZStrategery
Intel Dump has the usual intelligent analysis of today's WaPo article arguing that the ongoing resistance to coalition forces in Iraq was designed as a conscious strategy by the prior regime. I don't think anyone really has the resources, though, to tell whether the WaPo people are being fed rubbish (again) about the nature of the resistance or not: it seems very plausible that there abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1068595441413553552003-11-12T00:04:00.000Z2003-11-12T00:04:27.043ZThings I turn out to be correct about
Part I in a regular series.
Royal media disastrous mishandling prediction: spot on! Well done me.
Tory leadership prediction: also spot on! ditto.
Huzzah!
(I seem to be too busy to blog much but I still need the approbation. Hopefully more time later in the week.)abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1068158424560113672003-11-06T22:40:00.000Z2003-11-06T22:40:43.263ZIf I told you, I'd have to...
Over the past few weeks the British press has been heavily engaged in innuendo concerning a rumour about "a senior Royal", which they have carefully not revealed to their readership. However the potential scandal has been hyped up rather a lot - the Guardian, I think, saying that it would be the end of the monarchy if it were revealed. In that period, of course, abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1068140997983126092003-11-06T17:49:00.000Z2003-11-06T17:50:16.140ZWoof
From Rich Hall, "Things Snowball", p. 112:
Standing alongside special envoy Bono, Bush addressed a hastily assembled press corps. "This is not about oppression or human injustice", he snapped, exuding all the bluster of a chihuahua who thinks it's a terrier.
Unfortunately it's fiction, but isn't that chihuahua line good?
abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1068138454723938302003-11-06T17:07:00.000Z2003-11-06T17:07:53.420ZDepressing
Pretty much everything I've read today has filled me with woe and sorrow, so before retiring to my bed with a bottle of Bowmore let me try to put it all into a single megapost.
First of all, there is this. A guy of Syrian origins, a Canadian citizen for 17 years, was arrested at a US airport en route to Canada; was detained with minimal access to the outside world; was deported to abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1068078316416416062003-11-06T00:25:00.000Z2003-11-06T00:26:46.983ZThose darned anti-Semitic Europeans
Ah, a lovely excuse to tell my Significant Anecdote (singular of data) about this.
Calpundit advises the questing blogreader to visit an interesting post by Dan Drezner on a parallel between the Boykin affair, and the Pentagon's lack of action, and the Guenzel affair, and the German government's immediate action... and Calpundits advice here is as good as abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1067971429066166762003-11-04T18:43:00.000Z2003-11-04T18:44:24.030ZIlliteracy
David Adesnik of Oxblog appears to make the following argument:
1. Howard Dean said today that the recent attacks "weaken the position of the President" and Dean's opponents;
2. He also said "[t]here are now almost 400 people dead who wouldn't be dead if that resolution hadn't been passed and we hadn't gone to war"*
3. Regardless of Dean having been right about WMD, it follows that: abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1067969326018877082003-11-04T18:08:00.000Z2003-11-05T16:53:18.043ZThe ineluctable maw of mediation
Today's apparent rocket attack on the coalition compound in Baghdad is being covered by CNN using exactly the same sort of night-vision feed from Al Jazeera that was used for the "Shock and Awe" campaign in Baghdad in late March. Death of irony, film at 11.
UPDATE: BBC TV is also reusing a rather swish rotating-3D-map of central Baghdad that they used to show abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1067963901665161402003-11-04T16:38:00.000Z2003-11-04T20:26:10.606ZMoral clarity
Juan Non-Volokh points out that blogger critics of the Bush administration over the Plame affair should be equally up in arms over the leaking of Linda Tripp's personnel file during the Clinton administration.
Because, of course, leaks of personal information about a woman who had surreptitiously taped someone who thought they were friends, in order to pursue the crucially abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1067874727156643462003-11-03T15:52:00.000Z2003-11-03T15:52:22.030ZDemocrats
The Mahablog has some good things on how deeply misguided are various attempts to portray a vote against the $87bn slush fund for Presidential contributors as a vote to run away from the responsibilities imposed by the invasion of Iraq.
That aside, however, it was tactically somewhat foolish for Kerry and Edwards to vote against this, I think; it has created an issue out of something abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1067783411673699592003-11-02T14:30:00.000Z2003-11-02T14:30:24.780Znuked
Stumbling Tongue points to some decision market results on the use of a nuclear weapon on the United States by Jan 1 2010. (via the Poor Man).
Now, given the whole gibbering-fear thing, I should probably be a bull on this particular coupon. Actually, though, I think it's some way overpriced at around 20% (and having fluctuated wildly since the beginning of 2002, between about 10% and abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1067782162727098812003-11-02T14:09:00.000Z2003-11-02T14:09:36.013Zfear
Matthew Yglesias has a great post up about North Korea which fundamentally reinforces my gibbering, uncontrollable fear of the subject. There is, he suggests, a needle which can be threaded, but it will require great precision and timing and enormous diplomatic skill; moreover, it needs to be threaded soon. This administration, of course, is not noted for great diplomatic skill, foresight, abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1067778903744678912003-11-02T13:15:00.000Z2003-11-02T13:15:16.936Zturningpoints
This CNN story suggests that the repeated attempts by the Iraqi opposition to bring down a US aircraft have succeeded. Of course these attacks are part of a much broader set of behaviours on their part. But, crucially, attacks on US aircraft appear to have more potential than any other strategy to shape domestic US responses to the fighting, because these attacks appear to be able abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1067273838710962392003-10-27T16:57:00.000Z2003-10-27T16:58:22.310ZClothing
Frankly, I may have hallucinated all of this while feverish --- but I'm pretty certain Thomas L. Friedman was hosting a programme on CNN International over the weekend on the causes of 9/11. This is a worthy thing to do, but having watched 90 seconds of it my only reaction is FOR GOD'S SAKE MAN BUY A NEW SHIRT. He has some sort of tailored white T-shirt with lots of brown horizontal abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1067273331317862202003-10-27T16:48:00.000Z2003-10-27T16:48:56.326ZPrimary
Dr Marshall is offering to go to New Hampshire and report on everything he finds. It's a cliche to point out, though I will anyway, that if New Hampshire actually mattered as far as frontrunners go (it matters more for the back of the pack, I think) then we'd have seen as major-party presidential candidates Hart, Buchanan, Tsongas, McCain, etc - of course, we haven't. So this is a worthyabelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1067272394363477442003-10-27T16:33:00.000Z2003-10-27T18:41:10.436ZTories
I'm better - unlike the Conservative party, which may be in terminal decline, as Calpundit notes.
(nota bene to the American English part of the world. The governing party of UKOGBANI is the Labour Party, not the Labor party, no matter what variant of English you speak --- just like the book The Color Purple is spelled thus even in English English. It's a title. This is closely related abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1066935264913488122003-10-23T19:54:00.000+01:002003-10-23T19:54:24.286+01:00Walmart
CNN reports 300 illegal immigrants working for a Walmart contractor are being rounded up across the country by US officials.
There's not the slightest chance this is in any way an administration attempt to appeal to nativist sentiment and take attention away from the 386000 newly unemployed this week, is there?
abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1066874740383962492003-10-23T03:05:00.000+01:002003-10-23T03:05:40.506+01:00colds
I have a bad one, and am spending the rest of the week asleep.
abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1066735356809619262003-10-21T12:22:00.000+01:002003-10-21T12:22:36.680+01:00orchards
Mark A. R. Kleiman has more on the fairly lightly sourced story that US troops had destroyed a village orchard as collective punishment for opposing the occupation - something that would be a war crime, if true. The further information Kleiman has provides an alternative account of what happened: the orchard really was used for attacks; full compensation was paid; it was essentially a abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1066733993131241972003-10-21T11:59:00.000+01:002003-10-21T11:59:52.566+01:00death
From Linda Greenhouse's Supreme Court roundup in the NYT
Without comment, the court turned down the most recent challenge to the execution of those who committed their crimes before the age of 18. The appeal was filed on behalf of Nanon McKewn Williams, a Texas inmate who was sentenced to death for a murder when he was 17. The appeal, Williams v. Texas, No. 03-5956, argued that trends inabelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1066646935823222272003-10-20T11:48:00.000+01:002003-10-20T11:48:55.530+01:00reinforcement
Just in case you didn't already believe that the world is in the hands of someone very dim indeed:
Officials Correct Bush on Indonesia in the WaPo. The story:
Bush said on Indonesian television that new military programs could be launched because Indonesia had cooperated in an investigation into the killing of two U.S. citizens last year in the eastern Indonesian province of abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1066597357327257302003-10-19T22:02:00.000+01:002003-10-19T22:05:38.036+01:00eschatology
Slacktivist is deconstructing the Left Behind series. It's dirty work but someone has to do it; at a high enough level of analysis, the works themselves are less ... polluting. And of course they are a tremendously important cultural phenomenon, at least at the Father Coughlin level, maybe even more important.
abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1066577160542726572003-10-19T16:26:00.000+01:002003-10-19T22:03:03.130+01:00expertise
There are some blogs which post a lot, and some which post more rarely but are still interesting and useful. Intel Dump, for example, usually has only one posting a day. But it is reliably a fascinating piece which uses the author's two sources of particular expertise, in law and in the US military, to shed light on some underobserved phenomenon, news story, or development, and the abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1066576030517958332003-10-19T16:07:00.000+01:002003-10-19T22:03:37.083+01:00Untransactional
Needlenose points out a New York Times story about the President's unwillingness to negotiate over the terms of aid to Iraq:
"He said, `I'm here to tell you this is what we have to do and this is how we have to do it,'" said Senator Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana, one of the few Democrats who attended the Tuesday afternoon session. When she raised a question, she said, "He lookedabelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1066567436649238682003-10-19T13:43:00.000+01:002003-10-19T13:43:56.386+01:00Trudeau
Doonesbury nails down the White House's strategery on linking 9/11 and Saddam Hussein.
abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1066315258948201532003-10-16T15:40:00.000+01:002003-10-16T15:43:11.260+01:00Damnation
Via atrios' Eschaton:
Top terrorist hunter’s divisive views:
And we ask ourselves this question, 'Why do they hate us? Why do they hate us so much?'
Ladies and gentlemen, the answer to that is because we’re a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian. Did I say Judeo-Christian? Yes. Judeo-Christian. That means we’ve got a commitment to Israel. That abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1066253044880015862003-10-15T22:24:00.000+01:002003-10-15T22:31:30.443+01:00M_ss_ng
A comment thread at matthewyglesias.com develops the theme that George W Bush argues enthymematically, which is to say (according to the commentators, though the OED doesn't quite agree) with parts of his argument missing and provided by the reader/listener. This enables him to imply that certain things are true while never actually being pinned down and saying them: thus that al-qaeda abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1066141252724773282003-10-14T15:20:00.000+01:002003-10-14T15:40:01.906+01:00Panic
Billmon is spooked by a couple of polls appearing to show small rises in Bush's approval rating since the last polls by each organisation (CNN/USAToday and Gallup). He comes up with some arguments as to why Bush's approval rating may not matter for Bush; however he does not need to do so, and (since approval ratings in general are a good measure of support) his line is just not all that abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1066066696919823302003-10-13T18:38:00.000+01:002003-10-13T20:27:30.150+01:00Crossed lines
Atrios's blog Eschaton appears to have been replaced (temporarily, one hopes) by that of this Brazilian woman. I'm trying to see this as a political statement related to Columbus Day, but can't quite make it work. www.atrios.blogspot.com appears to point to the correct blog, however...
UPDATE: as soon as I posted this, it started working properly again. Weird!abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1066066379366911642003-10-13T18:32:00.000+01:002003-10-13T20:28:17.023+01:00Praxis
An interesting - if perhaps overinterpreted - piece at Donkey Rising suggests reasons to support Clark; meanwhile, Billmon breaks with Dean and decides to support anyone-but-Bush.
Which brings me to my point. As a non-American I've always found it pretty perplexing that individuals not paid to take part in campaigns get het up about primary candidates for ideological reasons. Sure, if abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1065969520411414772003-10-12T15:38:00.000+01:002003-10-12T15:38:40.066+01:00Cogency
The reliably wonderful Mahablog has taken on the shooting-fish-in-a-barrel task of keeping blogland in touch with the wacky world of Michigan columnist J. Grant Swank Jr.. Swank's articles appear to be machine-translated from a foreign tongue:
Women of the world: keep watch of Ms. Rice’s valiant efforts on behalf of shining freedom’s light.
President Bush has defined the planetary abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1065871943045420102003-10-11T12:32:00.000+01:002003-10-11T12:32:22.740+01:00Ames
Talking Points Memo follows up a point made in the NYT by Nicholas Kristof: Plame's identity may already have been compromised by Aldrich Ames. I wonder if this connects to the parsing issue? But, again, I can't really see a way in which it does.abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1065813924115477542003-10-10T20:25:00.000+01:002003-10-11T12:34:28.616+01:00Parsing
It's close to becoming conventional wisdom that there is something fishy going on with the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, repeating that various White House officials were definitely not involved with "the release of classified information": Needlenose; Talking Points Memo; Atrios; Orcinus.
These people are so smart that it worries me that I don't get this. TPM quotes, for abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1065806828780241402003-10-10T18:27:00.000+01:002003-10-10T19:14:49.800+01:00Kettles
Various people in a hilarious comment thread on Eschaton are having naughty fun with the latest from Krugman-stalker Donald Luskin.
Let it simply be said that it is not maximally convincing to argue that one is on the side of civility when
one's schtick (apart from setting up a company with a name that would be implausible in airport fiction) is to accuse the variousabelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1065779294354875902003-10-10T10:48:00.000+01:002003-10-10T10:48:13.900+01:00Greatness II
Paul Krugman, too.abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1065748984706948912003-10-10T02:23:00.000+01:002003-10-10T02:23:31.770+01:00Tenets
An unanswered question in Plamegate, as far as I can see:
Most people seem to think that someone familiar with the thinking of George Tenet was the source for the original WaPo story, including the information that two senior White House officials called at least six journalists with the news. Just as there is a potential is-this-a-conspiracy question involving how exactly the White abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1065744759535756952003-10-10T01:12:00.000+01:002003-10-10T02:26:54.473+01:00Aquinas
Oxblogger Patrick Belton points to a rather odd article in the Torygraph, in which Michael Barone attempts to connect Gray Davis' troubles in California with contemporary problems for Tony Blair. The defence of the claim that there are lessons for Blair to learn here, above and beyond those which might be learned from the study of any election anywhere, is ... well, Barone is clearly abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1065731298214058782003-10-09T21:28:00.000+01:002003-10-09T21:28:17.983+01:00Greatness
Ronald Dworkin is a great man.abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1065653143900617762003-10-08T23:45:00.000+01:002003-10-08T23:45:43.433+01:00Tedium
Progressive blogger Atrios is bored on (or perhaps during?) his/her Eschaton.
In other, apparently unexciting, news, the biggest scandal since Watergate, the weirdest election since the last weird election, WWIII imminent, etc etc.
(Personally I can entertain myself just by watching the flashes of light that happen with the stress headache I get every time I think about North Korea.)abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1065649631561829242003-10-08T22:47:00.000+01:002003-10-08T22:49:28.196+01:00Moving
What I think is the first de novo post at Mark A. R. Kleiman's new site is, in the circumstances, rather restrained and lacking in jubilation. The left-blogger who did more than more or less all of American journalism put together to keep the Plame flame (sorry) going points to the latest evidence that even eager Bushites, like Daniel W. Drezner, might be pretty unhappy with Bush's abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1065624466841511512003-10-08T15:47:00.000+01:002003-10-08T22:07:35.180+01:00The Fiscal Crisis of the States
Are there any US state governors out there who are actually popular right now? Any time any of them goes near an election they seem to get chopped in two - thinking of not just the gropinator, but also the Riley tax referendum in Alabama, the 2002 gubernatorial elections, and so on.
So, is there, somewhere, a state which is actually doing ok?
Update
The NYT abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1065565742012650842003-10-07T23:29:00.000+01:002003-10-07T23:37:52.680+01:00'Shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed'
Quoth CNN:
"I want to know the truth," the president told reporters after a meeting with his Cabinet. "I want to see to it that the truth prevails."
But, he added, "This is a town full of people who like to leak information. And I don't know if we're going to find out the 'senior administration official.' "
Isn't it the, singular, 'senior abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1065548248543117752003-10-07T18:37:00.000+01:002003-10-08T00:32:54.216+01:00Where did it all go wrong?
A confession of selfishness in response to world events.
In 2000-1, I was teaching US politics in Cambridge - the best class I've ever taught, by a long way, and a really fulfilling professional experience. I worked as hard as I could to get non-Americans to read American politics properly, to understand that it's not evil just (a bit) different.
And at exactly that abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1065523274301344672003-10-07T11:41:00.000+01:002003-10-07T11:41:13.953+01:00Thick
Tech Central Station does its thang on Open Source:
Maybe my business school coursework rendered me blind to the glorious vision of a "gift culture" in which people contribute their work to a decentralized development project like Linux for honor instead of money. Or possibly I'm just too thick to understand how cutting off a multi-billion dollar revenue stream from software sales, abelardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5313541.post-1065481766074811722003-10-07T00:09:00.000+01:002003-10-07T11:34:30.646+01:00Propriety
Eugene Volokh says:
I think it's quite proper for country A that's under attack by terrorists headquartered in country B to attack those terrorists, if country B won't do it for them (it may sometimes not be prudent, though it's also not prudent to get a reputation as being the sort of country that lets others get away with it)
I wonder if this is really true that it's not prudent toabelardnoreply@blogger.com