Housekeeping, Coping with Schizophrenia Edition - Two tweaks so far this weekend. This site now has a simple if invisible category system. The diet and exercise items go in Fitness; the comics, gaming and SF get classed under A Fanboy's Notes; and everything else (your standard political diary stuff) falls under Main.
The blog is for writing about what interests me, but I realize it is read by political junkies with no interest in comics, comics fans who would rather not wade through a lot of politics, people who could care less what I weigh and people who, strange as it may seem, eagerly follow my writings on health and exercise. (Just among libertarians, Jesse Walker keeps up with the comics posts but skips the fitness items; Radley Balko and Gene Healy do the opposite.)
Step One in giving the people no more Jim Henley than they require is new RSS feeds, for those who use syndicators.
A Fanboy's Notes (RDF)
A Fanboy's Notes (XML) - Your comics-blogging (and ancillary geekdom) newsfeed in your choice of versions.
Fanboy-Free (RDF)
Fanboy-Free (XML) - recent Main and Fitness items.
You can still syndicate the whole magilla if you're Ginger Stampley or Eve Tushnet. Choose one of the "Everything" feeds from the sidebar.
Minor tweaks to the index page are forthcoming for those who don't use newsreaders. (I still don't myself.)
Ooh! Ooh! Call on Me! - Calpundit has a reader who gets to ask a question, to be submitted in advance, at Tuesday's Democratic presidential debate in Boston. Said reader asked Kevin to canvas his audience for possible questions. Here's mine:
Is there an existing government program, subsidy, agency, tax or fee that you feel should be eliminated outright? Name it.
Just one. That's all I ask. (Inspired by a conversation the other night with Gene Healy.)
There's Your Trouble, Redux - Brooke Oberwetter patiently explains to the Doyenne of Conservative Blog Comedy how on earth libertarians could reject George Bush and in some cases even, horrors!, consider voting for a Democrat like Howard Dean. Well, eventually she gets patient. Just a taste:
No, Brooke's piece is not all snark either. The bulk of it is serious and lucid. ("It isn’t just that President Bush’s spending is too high. It is outrageously high, as in, instilling rage.") There is still no chance I will myself be voting for Howard Dean, and an even smaller one that it would matter whether I did. (Maryland is a reliably Democratic state in presidential politics.) But I continue to believe that this is an excellent election for "lesser of two evils" libertarians to recalibrate their meters.Emily’s frustration with the libertarians stems from her apparently total inability to comprehend that the things that are the most important to her aren’t the most important to everyone else. Her arguments read like the diary of a high school cheerleader who has just been dumped by the captain of the chess team, unwilling to believe that someone like him wouldn’t want her.
Why It Matters - In the comments sections on some conservative sites where the proprietors have denounced Luskin's attempt to intimidate Atrios, some of the man's fellow travelers have airily avowed that this story is of no interest "beyond the few thousand people who read blogs." Well okay, sure. To that I would say, if you're reading this, or commenting on someone else's site, you're one of those few thousand people, so why pretend it doesn't interest you? Second, people who aren't interested (non-blog readers) probably should be. Anytime one American tries to shut another American up under color of law, it matters, especially when the "coloring" is so obviously outside the lines.
Until Wednesday, Atrios and Luskin were two citizens participating in the American tradition of over-the-top political expression. I never read enough Luskin to know or care if he was the creep his critics painted him as or the sentinel of truth his partisans celebrated. I read enough Atrios to respect his energy and intelligence but find his unwavering devotion to, my god, the Democratic Party of all things almost incomprehensibly foreign to my sensibilities. But as of Wednesday, one of them is a bully and a coward and the other is not; and one of them is at least an ideological if not personal hypocrite. (Conservatives hate promiscuous litigation, remember?) And personal hypocrite doesn't look like such a bad call.
It matters because character studies matter - new lessons in human weakness and strength merit attention. It matters because free expression matters. It is not just Atrios' rights we're dealing with here. Were Luskin's legal claim to prevail it would establish radically burden sole-proprietor internet opinion sites - blogs, bulletin boards, any site with a discussion forum. It would fence off an exhilaratingly free range.
I Was Right About You - So the other night, when the news of the Donald Luskin legal threat against Atrios hit the news, I declared that Luskin was "a pussy." And then I wondered if I was being not just foul-mouthed but over the top.
Turns out, not. The Atrios letter hit Wednesday night. As I mentioned at the time, there was at least the possibility that the letter was a fake or a huge misunderstanding. (I essentially called Luskin a subjunctive pussy.) Luskin has updated his weblog each day since then. Not one word about the letter to Atrios from a man purporting to be his attorney. Not only has the story been widely reported on the sorts of sites that a conservative blogger/columnist is overwhelmingly likely to read, we know that Glenn Reynolds e-mailed Luskin for confirmation two days ago.
So. The story has been out there for two days. One of Luskin's biggest promoters asked for clarification two days ago. Luskin has had access to the internet. Luskin has not publicly denied the story or clarified it. Nor has Luskin so much as owned up to his action on his website - not even a bwa-ha-ha.
So, like I said, pussy.
Blogarama V.5, Venues Clarification Exercise - RGB Greg Pearson reminds me that Marriott, they went and built two hotels in Crystal City, about two blocks apart. I have confirmed with Chad Orzel that he's in the Crystal City Marriott, not the "Crystal Gateway" Marriott, so the Crystal City Marriott is where you go. 7PM. The bar is on the second floor, looks like the restaurant and is called "Bistro," or at least has a sign that says Bistro. If you don't find people, ask at the front desk where the "blogfest" is.
Speaking of Eerily Prescient Terrorism in Marvel Comics of the 1970s - I could swear that somewhere between Daredevils 110-114, the Mandrill collapsed the top floors of the World Trade Center, killing many people. (Captions inform us that Daredevil's super senses can perceive all the deaths.) Am I imagining this? Was it a different skyscraper?
Terrors of the Imagination - The Fiore post below reminds me of Avengers 113, titled Your Young Men Shall Slay Visions. It was Steve Englehart at his most earnest, and since I was an earnest lad myself, it made a big impression on me. Vision and Scarlet Witch kiss in public. She's a mutant, sure, but he's an android, so the kiss inspires outrage and bigotry. Anti-synthezoid bigots attack the Avengers, hoping to kill the Vision, willing to take down any Avengers who get in their way. They believe they are making a last stand on behalf of the human race. Here's the thing: the attackers are suicide bombers. They call themselves "the Living Bombs." A synopsis of the issue appears about a third of the way down the Avengers page from Forgotten Comic Book Character HQ.
I remember finding the idea of suicide bombers pretty unnerving. It's oddly more unsettling in retrospect - suicide bombings were not common features of real life back in 1972. Terrorists tried to get away. There had been the kamikaze in the 1940s; there would be the surge of murderous martyrdom in Lebanon beginning with the next decade. (The Wikipedia link quotes the London Times using "suicide-bomb" contemporaneously to describe kamikaze planes.)
But in 1972, suicide bombing as we know it existed purely in the imagination of a comic book writer. There is a qualititative difference between flying a plane into a warship during a battle and walking up to someone on the street and blowing you both up. Englehart was ahead of the goddam curve on that one.
Someone stupid enough might try to find some link between Avengers 113 and young Lebanese radicals - some kid who read a comic and later became a revolutionary. But the answer is probably simpler. Englehart wanted human villains to take on much more powerful foes. He must have wracked his brain to come up with something regular shmoes could do to superheroes. And at some point it hit him that, were they fanatical enough, sure enough that they were in the right and the situation was desperate, more committed to victory than self-preservation, there was a way. One of the bombers even declares that he is willing to "martyr" himself.
What we're actually observing between American newsstands in 1972 and Levantine war in 1980 is simple parallelism - different people, similar problem (taking out superior targets for millenialist reasons), same "solution." One imaginary, the other all too enduringly real.
Happy Halloween - The most perfect night for trick-or-treating in years, warm (c. 60F), dry, a bright quarter-moon. Not a lot of trick-or-treaters, alas, but a nice outing with Offering Boy (as Eddie from "Ed, Edd and Eddy") and the Littlest Offering (fairy princess).
Hot Liberty has a great Halloween treat suggestion, and Dave Fiore reminisces about two great lost Halloween traditions - the Rutland, VT Halloween parade, and the numerous early Bronze Age comic book stories set there. Dave points to a website devoted to Rutland Parade comics issues maintained by Rutland native Ian P. Berger.
When I was a kid, I dearly wanted one day to get to the Rutland Halloween Parade. Now I am left with nothing but questions, like: Why was the annual parade discontinued? and Come to think of it, wouldn't a Halloween Parade in Vermont be cold as hell? and It's all Howard Dean's fault somehow, right?
Ah, no matter.
Unqualified Offerings Gets Results - Chrissy Rockwell is a buddy of mine from the Elvis Costello list who has recently begun actively blogging at A Fine Idea at the Time. She's now appeased me by changing her template color so that the Unqualified Eyes can actually read the thing. Thanks, Chrissy! The blog is not just all politics all the time - not even mostly politics most of the time.
Meanwhile Dave at the new semicomics blog, The Intermittent, kindly avows that UO "is in many ways the inspiration for this here blog. To the extent we suck, however, blame us, not him." But can I blame him to the extent that I suck, is my question.
I should note that UO in no way inspired his fondness for the band Rush. Anyway, it looks like The Intermittent will be a great blog for comics and other stuff.
Blogarama V.5 - Our unassuming little party will begin, for the sake of simplicity, at the bar in the Crystal City Marriott at 7PM tomorrow night, Saturday November 1. Eventually it will probably move over to Restaurant Row. If in doubt, ask at the registration desk "where the blogfest is." We will keep them informed. Guest of Honor Chad Orzel has to attend a panel at his physics convention at 8pm, so what happens at that point will be a matter for group consensus, determined at that time.
UPDATE: Added day info. Party is Saturday, not tonight.
UPDATE UPDATE: See above for venue clarification.
Stupid Flies II - From this morning's Washington Post:
1) That's because they're all in Mali!SINJAR, Iraq -- Commanders of U.S. military forces responsible for monitoring the border between Iraq and Syria say there is no evidence from human intelligence sources or radar surveillance aircraft indicating that significant numbers of foreign fighters are crossing into Iraq illegally.
2) Um, commanders? What about significant numbers of foreign fighters crossing into Iraq legally?
3) Sinjar. That's a cool name for a town.
Stupid Flies! - Via Glenn Reynolds comes this story of Al Qaeda camps in the wilds of Mali. Bu-but - shouldn't the builders all be in Iraq now?
Weenie - Apparently Donald Luskin of National Review Online has threatened legal action against Atrios. From his lawyer's letter:
If the letter is a fake, it will be discovered to be such in short order, and Atrios will have ruined his reputation. It will be the greatest blog flameout of all time.You recently linked to Mr. Luskin’s October 7, 2003, posting on his website entitled “Face To Face With Evil,” in which he chronicles his attendance at a lecture and book signing presented by Paul Krugman. You chose the unfortunate caption “Diary of a Stalker” for your link. More importantly, your readers, in responding to your invitation to comment, have posted numerous libelous statements regarding Mr. Luskin. Picking up on the theme you introduced, several have made false assertions that Mr. Luskin has committed the crime of stalking.
Gee, what are the odds?
So I'm assuming the letter is genuine until demonstrated otherwise. If it is ever so demonstrated, I'll apologize for expressing the following personal opinion: Donald Luskin is a pussy. I hasten to point out that being a pussy is not a crime.
The other day, Matthew Yglesias had a funny little item about Conservatives Against Metaphor. This fits right in, except for the funny part.
UPDATE: Arthur Silber has a much longer response that boils down to "pussy."
UPDATE UPDATE: Don't mess this Atrios follow-up. And links to other comments can be followed from here.
UPDATE3: Don't miss the Poor Man. Short but sweet.
You Had Me For Awhile There - Henry Farrell has a good defense of good academic prose, worth reading despite Henry's unaccountable assertion along the way that "One may not agree with Edward Said on the facts - but his prose is compelling precisely because of its vigor and clarity." I've really only read Said's journalism, but it was gaseous nonsense, with all the vigor and clarity of a steam room. This is quite apart from the question of whether Said was the Devil.
Tell Me About It - Brendan is rapidly turning Human Liberty into an advice column. See his reader mail ("The thing is, I never wanted to load Linux anyway, I just took the CD to humor him. Now I've lost a friend. What can I do?--Sad in Austin" and "I am so fascinated by radical subsidiaritanism, but I noticed that most of the people who share these ideas are men. What can be done to make these ideas more appealing to women?")
Maybe he can help the people in this Agitator comment thread.
They Say It's Your Birthday - Not blog birthday; Happy Human Birthday to Nate of Polytropos, his last as a pre-parent. Nate is as nice and bright a guy as his blog suggests, by the way. Tonight's offering, an even-handed appreciation of 24, complete with first-season spoiler.
Took a Minute but then I realized - the connection between the previous two items is pretty freaking obvious, isn't it?
Can the Schools Get Any Stupider? - Do you mean before or after this?
Criminy.NEW YORK — A 14-year-old New Jersey schoolboy — whose dad and stepdad are in the military — was suspended for five days because he drew a "patriotic" stick figure of a U.S Marine blowing away a Taliban fighter, officials said yesterday.
"He's been punished for the drawing," said Tinton Falls school superintendent Leonard Kelpsh. "We felt it was highly inappropriate, and we took it very seriously."
When I was 14, most every classmate's dad had served in the Big One, and all the boys spent their class time drawing not just guns but tanks and planes. Oh yes! German ones! Not because we were little Nazis - that was only a few of us. Because we thought guns and tanks and planes were cool, and the Germans had some of the coolest. And I so rarely hear of Bund activity involving my former classmates.
Now, get the Administration at this joint a copy of Killing Monsters, quick, and drop it in the Clue Courier pickup box.
(Columbine! What if this guy comes to school and blows away all the teacher's that belong to the Taliban??? Silly person - "taliban" means student.)
I Come to You and See All This Ruin - Liberty&Power reports that the Alabama Scholars Association is protesting more shenanigans:
Through the wonders of the internet, you can view the works from Professor John Trobaugh's installation. The digital manipulation photography of human nudes is not to my taste. There's a series of "queer Ken doll" photographs to which I can muster a "cute!" and not much more. ("Meeting Mr. Wright" is my favorite. "Sycamore," a girl doll photo serving as a changeup pitch, is pretty good too.) The digital prints of ink wash drawings I rather like, especially "Burning Brick or the Downtown High Rise Burns Today" and "Fly Protection or Radio undercover." One of the gay-themed prints, "Sleeping Target," is pretty good.Drawings and photographs by Trobaugh depict scenes that could be construed as homosexual in orientation or theme.
The exhibit had been approved by the chair of the Art Department for display in the entrance to the Bean Brown Theater at Shelton State. The day after the exhibit went on display, President Rogers personally contacted the department chair and told him that the art would have to be removed. He had received "complaints," he said. A day later, and under orders from the president, the art was taken down.
The ASA is deeply concerned by the decision of President Rogers to censor an already-approved display of drawings and photos simply because it might be controversial.
But it's not about me. I've always been jazz and photography-impaired. It's about the fact that the gallery found Trobaugh's work worthy. I can see that even for the things that don't float my boat there is an active esthetic intelligence at work. Nor is this narrow "statement" work - less We're here, we're queer, get used to it than We're here, we're queer - oh look at how the light falls on that surface! The exhibit doesn't qualify as obscenity. Total illustrated dicks: 2, both in the same drawing. Total photographed dicks: one or two. (Hey, it's digital manipulation! I can't quite tell in one case.) Dicks, photographed or drawn, in physical contact with another man's flesh: 0.
More from David Beito's Liberty & Power report:
We cannot help noting that Rogers justified his censorship by saying that theater-going families might be offended by Trobaugh's works. The play currently in production is "Arsenic and Old Lace," a play about serial homicide and poisoning.
Finally Arriving at the Party - Mrs. Offering and I are surely the last couple in America to pick up on 24, but we both watched the season opener tonight, me fortified with spoilers from the Tony Kornheiser Show. I mean, I liked it, but who would want to work in that office? (The CTU office.) All those reflective surfaces, the oddly-angled and plain too dim lighting - I couldn't imagine actually concentrating on a project in that place.
Idle Rich Smackdown - Daniel Drezner vs. Max Sawicky. So far it's an entirely indirect smackdown, as the two items seem to have been written independently, but they make an interesting contest. Naturally, I think Drezner has the better of it, though I hasten to point out that I haven't seen the TV special in question.
The Clues Return to Neolibertariana - Megan McArdle in TechCentralStation can't quite bring herself to accept the implications of a basic libertarian insight: whatever else war is, it's a massive government program.
No liberal plumping for a municipal surcharge "for the children" ever put it in a more heartfelt fashion. I'm not saying that we should, in Megan's words, start "charging the Iraqis for the privilege of being invaded." I'm saying you should have thought of that before you left home. It was always going to be the real United States that conquered Iraq, not some textbook actor from a think tank monograph. And it was always going to be led by real politicians and real bureaucrats, not philosopher kings.That we are even thinking about beggaring Iraqis over so trivial a sum boggles the mind. And I'm beginning to wonder if my support for the war didn't rely on a Miracle Mile in which our government, in defiance of my basically libertarian instincts, had the desire and the will to do whatever it takes to help the Iraqis become prosperous and free.
Make the Magic Happen
But I haven't given up hope yet. I don't think that the American citizenry begrudges the Iraqis a little financial help, if it will help bring peace and prosperity to a dangerously -- and expensively -- unstable region. After all, we're talking about $35 apiece, which is a bargain for what we'd be getting.
Glenn Reynolds, linking to Megan's article, has a McArdlian moment of weakness (read: insight) himself before pulling it back together.
Technical Bulletin - I'm in possession of a mySQL update query from Michael Croft that should solve my categories problem. Thanks, Michael!
Thirty seven people in 2203 will listen to Kylie Minogue and love it - Will Wilkinson channels his inner Walter Benjamin. Bonus for this site's liberal readers - Charles Murray abuse!
Speaking of good art since 1950, Will's item inescapably reminds me that the following verse from the Barenaked Ladies' "It's All Been Done"
is just a damn fine piece of writing.Alone
and bored
on a thirtieth century night
will I
see you
on The Price Is Right?
Will I cry
will I smile
as you run
down the aisle?
My Blog Wants to Party All the Time - Blogarama V.5, in honor of Chad Orzel's visit to DC for a physics conference, will take place early Saturday evening in Crystal City. Details to follow tomorrow. We already have several commitments, but anyone is welcome.
After-action reports on Blogarama V continue to appear. Glen Engel-Cox, Jeremy Lott (now web editor of the American Spectator), tequila mockingbird ("the first rule of blogorama is…that you must post about blogorama"), Wolfgang Norton (who lacketh item permalinks), Brooke Oberwetter, Missy Schwartz, maybe someone I missed.
A Modest Proposal: Comics Blogging - Steven Grant interviewed writer Ed Brubaker last week - in some ways it was more of a mutual interview about the conditions of the marketplace and everyone's favorite topic, the shift from a floppy-based to softcover-based economy. During the transitional phase this presents the clear problem of how to write for two different formats simultaneously. Among the problems:
Hm. Might I suggest that comic book publishers consider editing? For the trade, you have the option of cutting balloons, captions, panels and even entire pages if they prove redundant. In some cases, you might need to commission the equivalent of a page or two of work from the artist or writer to plug any gaps in flow. But it could be done.I think that's been a flaw in Marvel and Crossgen collections specifically, that there's a strong emphasis every month with reacquainting the reader with the concept that works against trade paperback collection, there's that "make everything insanely clear for the reader" emphasis monthly comics are prone to (and, perhaps not coincidentally, mostly fail at) that simply becomes painful and often embarrassing redundant in collections, particularly when the same descriptive phrases are used over and over, from chapter to chapter.
Poetry Corner - Polytropos and God of the Machine are on about poetry workshops. I can say from experience that not one in a hundred works the way Aaron Haspel (and I, largely) would want them to work. The sacred texts of the poetry workshop as actually taught in America are Richard Hugo's The Triggering Town, Peter Elbow's Writing Without Teachers and William Stafford's Writing the Australian Crawl. The best you can say about any of these books is that they are dangerous in the wrong hands. Elbow's and Hugo's books have a certain amount of value, like Radium, and should be treated accordingly. (Nate describes getting some genuine use from Peter Elbow.) In my darkest moments I suspect Stafford's Australian Crawl of deliberate sabotage - attempting to make it as unlikely as possible that potential competitors would ever be able to produce work as good as Stafford's own best poems.
All three books are very seventies, deeply concerned with silencing your inner editor during composition, less concerned with making sure you understand that you have to turn the thing back on at some point, preferably before subjecting other human beings to what you've written. (The better workshops choose Donald Hall's Poetry and Ambition. This is a book to love. Favorite passage? Where Hall allows that perhaps silent reading of poems is not an unalloyed evil.)
Outside grad school, workshop culture performs a vulgarly religious function. It exists to bring comfort and meaning to middle class lives. The plain rooms in which workshops take place recall the austerity of the Quaker Meeting Hall, and it construes the vocation of poetry so as to provide maximum solace. Find your inner voice. (You have one. You're special.) Focus on the details of your life. (Your life is meaningful!) As a member, by the skin of my teeth, of the middle class, I don't disdain its comfort or meaning. But I could not love them half so much loved I not poetry more.
I completely agree that poetry can be taught. But as Gandhi said of Western Civilization, that would be a change.
Cutoff Man - Andrew Chamberlain's intellectual scalping odyssey continues:
It is, no lie, cool that Andrew is this intellectually supple. He is a blogger to keep your eye on. (The question was always less Do venues have good reasons to oppose scalping than Why should this particular contractual issue be a matter for the criminal rather than the civil law?)So contrary to my initial thinking, it looks like we can make a strong case for repeal of anti-scalping laws after all. Somehow, I knew the argument would lead here, given enough time...
Now is surely the time to explain why he's better than Paul Krugman, as I promised to do days ago. Both of them tried to explain the reasons venues have not themselves "scalped," though a few are now moving in that direction. But Krugman's construction reveals a surprisingly deep error for an eminent economist. Krugman:
Chamberlain:Ticket scalping is nothing new, though it continues to pose something of an economic puzzle. The fact is that there are a number of public events--most notably sports, but also concerts, plays, museum shows, etc.--for which tickets are consistently sold below the price that would limit demand to the available supply. Exactly why the owners of stadiums and theaters do this is a matter of some dispute. One theory (due to Chicago economist Gary Becker) is that tickets are underpriced because those who sell them believe that it is crucial to their image to have sold-out houses. Beyond this, many stadium and theater owners seem to believe that as an overall marketing strategy it is important that access to their most popular events be available to enthusiasts at moderate prices. For example, why doesn't George Lucas allow theaters to offer special preview showings of The Phantom Menace at astronomical (galactic?) prices, when surely they could find tens or even hundreds of thousands of people able and willing to pay? Presumably because so blatant a statement that wealth hath its privileges would alienate the tens of millions of nonwealthy moviegoers he counts on to turn the film into a megahit. Whatever the precise reasoning, what is clear is that when it comes to big games and big shows, private sector entrepreneurs themselves often feel that it is a bad idea to let market forces rule.
What's the big difference between the two passages, other than the fact that Andrew comes up with more plausible reasons than the paid columnist? Unaccountably, Krugman imagines that "market forces" and an aversion to "so blatant a statement that wealth hath its privileges [as to] alienate the tens of millions of nonwealthy moviegoers he counts on to turn the film into a megahit" are somehow different things - that a venue's aversion to alienating its audience is not also a market force.The question is, "why don't box offices just raise ticket prices, still sell out events, and increase profits"?
Well, there are good economic reasons firms systematically underprice tickets, and then try to prevent resale. Here are three:
1) Underpricing tickets generates "excess demand" for events. This leads to queues for tickets, vigorous word of mouth discussion, and a mentality of scarcity. This is a form of cheap advertising. And by cutting marketing costs, it may be consistent with profit maximization.
2) This explanation comes from economist Steven Landsburg. He argues lower ticket prices get fans in the door, and then leave them with more cash to spend on things like hot dogs, beer and t-shirts once inside. Instead of maximizing ticket revenue, teams jointly maximize profits from tickets plus food and memorabilia. And since these things are complimentary goods, that makes the most money.
3) The value to consumers of events like concerts and baseball games depends partly on how many other people are there. Economists call this the "bandwagon effect". Full games and shows are more fun than empty ones. So teams want to fill the seats, and they price below equilibrium levels to do that. If they allowed ticket reselling, it's possible not all seats would be sold, reducing the value of the event overall, possibly reducing demand for future events, and resulting in lost food and memorabilia sales (see "appendix" below).
To be sure, Krugman later elaborates on his distinction - "Well, the people who run the box office are attempting to pursue social goals--albeit in the ultimate name of profit--which require that tickets go not only to those who can afford to pay a lot but also to those who really care and are willing to book early and/or stand in line." and "And so there is a running conflict between the long-run thinking represented by the box offices and the short-run market forces represented by scalpers--a conflict that seems increasingly to be running in the scalpers' favor." But the overall impression is that, in Krugman's mind, "short-run market forces" is practically a redundancy, and that longer-term thinking is somehow not economic. Odd. Or maybe, given Krugman's politics, not.
PC and Neo-PC, Again - Atrios responds to my connection of him, Taranto and Easterbrook from Friday. Worth reading. I agree with him that identity politics is, among other things, a response to constructions dominant groups place on marginalized ones. But I don't think that's all identity politics is, and I think it tends to be a self-destructive strategy. Crucially, identity politics is a way for a sub-group elite to attain and maintain status and power within the sub-group. Getting to make the rules on just who is an Uncle Tom or self-hating Jew is power, and not always, or even, I would argue, usually, constructive power. There's a huge difference between "We're here, we're queer, get used to it" and "Real gays don't [X]."
Identity politics can also be a response to constructions dominant groups remove from marginalized ones, and in that mode is reactionary. I'm not for a moment going to argue that racism, antisemitism, the hatred of gays and other familiar prejudices are "things of the past." But the country has experienced genuine liberalization on all these fronts over the last half century. That leads to assimilation anxiety which leads to identity politics. Again, this is only one of the drivers of the phenomenon, but it is such a driver.
A final, unironic note: I admire Atrios's consistency. I think he's too free with the charge of antisemitism in Easterbrook's case (he does use the term), but I think he's often too free with the charge of racism too. But he stands in stark contrast to both the Sharptonite left, which sees no evil when it comes to Jew-hatred, and has even fostered such, and the "neo-PC" of the uberhawks, those neoconservatives, neolibertarians and neoliberals, Jewish and Gentile, who were in the forefront of the reaction against "political correctness" but replicate its tropes freely for the sake of smearing opponents of their desired wars.
Tonight's Debate - Firing General Boykin for his religiously-based statements would be to apply an unconstitutional religious test for public office. Discuss.
"Progress"ive Thinking - By the logic of Flypaper Theory, the lesson of the weekend's hallmarks of progress is clear: we must keep Paul Wolfowitz in Iraq. He sure does seem to draw flies. I can't imagine what moral case the hawks would make against the direction. If it's okay to troll public servants whose names you don't know before the Islamofascist hordes, there can be no reason not to do the same with public servants whose names you do know. The utilitarian case is surely greater - your Al Qaeda operative, Ba'athist holdout or rejectionist deadender fly of your choice has to get a lot more excited about the possibility of taking out an Undersecretary of Defense than some Spec IV Guardsman who never appeared on any panel at an AEI Symposium. I didn't want to put any of our troops in the way of this particular harm, so I have no reason to put the Undersecretary there either, nor to suggest that, should he be called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice in the War Against Terror, we should go to our bench, starting with Dick Cheney, nor to speculate on the "stickiness quotient" of moving General Boykin's headquarters to the Al Rasheed. But that's why you can't have us peaceniks setting policy: we lack the ruthlessness to wage these Savage Wars of Peace like they need waging.
Weekly Fitness Blog Item - 161 pounds, 32.5" waist. The weight is a new low, but I no longer have a weight goal as such. At this point it's all about the buns of steel and the six-pack abs. Getting there means losing some remaining fat, but I'd be hard-pressed to put a pounds figure on that. The other goals are health-related - resting pulse, blood pressure and cholesterol and the only one of those I can get my own metrics on is pulse rate.
This was a week of much cake (latebreaking birthday celebrations), and a lavish and tasty spread at the inaugural party for my brother-in-law's new jewelry store in Sterling. (He does wonderful custom work and now is the time to get your Holiday orders in. And yes, if you mention Unqualified Offerings, I will get a small cut.) It was also blogarama week, so there's something of an "after picture" available from Julian Sanchez. It's not full-figure, but faces don't lie. (I'm the one who is not Eve Tushnet, in the grey polo shirt.)
Michael Fumento has a column in the Washington Times from last week attacking the South Beach Diet, which he nevertheless allows is
This is just ridiculous, given how little fiber there actually is in the processed starches and sugars that Atkins and South Beach prohibit. I should note that your Talking Dog has not had much success with South Beach. Mrs. Offering is just starting it, and I'll provide progress reports.superior to Atkins in two ways. First, it encourages consumption of healthier unsaturated fats, while saturated fats like lard and those in bacon are emblematic of Atkins.
Second, while the "South Beach" allows carbohydrates, it promotes higher-fiber ones. Fiber is good for overall health. Further, by adding noncaloric bulk to food, it can aid weight control. But "South Beach" still can't be called a high-fiber diet since it discourages carbohydrate consumption.
Speaking of progress reports, Bruce Baugh continues to lose and explains how it's done:
Jeremy Scharlack is not dead, nor has he fallen off the fitness wagon. Jeremy, we salute you.I've made a good start on breaking a habit I know is trouble: of indulging in junk food when I'm particularly upset or depressed, the old "comfort food" trap. I'm building up a little shelf of things that satisfy the craving for something sweet and yummy without busting the diet too badly and that I don't normally eat, so that they retain their specialness. I realize this isn't rocket science, but there's a difference between knowing it needs doing and actually doing it [ . . . ]
Avram Grumer is 11 weeks into Body-for-Life. I think I officially count as a BFL dropout now, and I'm still transitioning to whatever workout routine I'll settle on next. Probably Heavyhands again for awhile. I finally dragged my lazy butt out to the park this morning for a half-hour session with the five-pound weights, but it was a ragged one, and after three weeks of minimal weight training and only a few miles of walking per week, my resting pulse is back up near 60.
MT Guru Wanted - I'm implementing a very simple category system for UO in Movable Type. Still to do is, ideally, assign 2500+ messages to the "Main" category. I really, really, really do not want to do this one at a time. If anyone knows a way to automate this, I'd greatly appreciate learning it.
Shorter Matthew Yglesias (Sorry, Matt. I just can't resist.)
The most successful liberal programs give government money to people who don't need it. Liberals need to keep that up.