Category Archives: Blogs

The excellent Washington Note summarizes what sounds like a rollicking session at the APSA meeting:

The Wonkette herself, Ana Marie Cox, stole the show by being the anti-blogger's blogger. She said that there is too much “blogger triumphalism” in the blogosphere and lamented Andrew Sullivan's absence because he was her favorite blogger triumphalist.

According to Wonkette, Andrew Sullivan says that “the revolution will be blogged.” Her dry response, “to have a revolution, you have to leave the house.” She also said that the blogging medium owes the most to AOL sex chat rooms since “both involve staying at home, pleasuring one's self.”

There were also some serious and worthy papers presented…

You know it's a power blog when the author gets A Letter From the Editor—of the Economist no less.

Even though the Economist is going through a bad patch — predictable leaders, a US columnist who uncritically recites GOP spin points, and less coverage of out-of-the-way places like Albania than it used to have — that's still quite something.

The Pink Bunny of Battle sees red over The War on Academic Freedom. We see an echo of this war here in Florida, where Betty Castor the leading Democratic candidate for our open Senate seat, is being castigated for not having fired a tenured professor accused of aiding terrorists when she was a university president. (In fact, if Castor can be accused of anything, it was over-reacting to flimsy charges and suspending the man for two years on the basis of what was then quite little evidence.)

One thing I don't agree with the Bunny about, though, is the claim that legislatures have an obligation to support good science. I want them to, and I demand they support academic freedom — but I can't say that this includes any sort of duty to go beyond contractual committments. The state has no duty to provide research grants unless it's spelled out in a contract of employment. And if the legislature thinks it has better ways to spend the money, or even if it disagrees with the research on ideological grounds (think stem cells), it has a right to withhold funds. Think of it as a right to be wrong, if you disagree with the decision.

You knows things are not right when college perfessors are takin' time off from important duties like showin' that entire sections of the White House have trouble with little things like addition and substraction and instead put on their deerstalkers and attempt to discern Who Is Fafblog?:

Fafblog is clearly (i) somebody who knows about the Byzantine Empire, the Knights Templar, and the Crusades, and (ii) somebody who knows more about early and Medieval Christian Theology (the suppressed last articles of the Nicaean Creed! Hah!) then is healthy. This implies somebody who was either (a) a medieval history major, or (b) went to a Jesuit high school.

Silly perfessor. Fafblog identity is not secret. Fafnir and Giblets are well known to both of their friends, and to the Medium Lobster, who himself is welcomed in all of the finest establishments in six spiral clusters and seven dimentions.

The Medium Lobster signals that he has never attended a Catholic School, or indeed needed to study in any institution of learning; a knowledge of Romania is only a small part of what one learns in higher dimensions.

“You will never be able to comprehend the Medium Lobster,” adds Fafnir. “He bein' a higher bein' an all,” agrees Giblets. “You is just cross because we have not told you nothing. NYAAAHHH!”

Suddenly Giblets is concerned. He an Fafnir have not been agreeing so much latterly, and now they are in agreement. This is intolerable! Quick, put the next Swift Boat ad on teevee! That's it! We iz miserable again.

Larry Lessig has Judge Richard Posner guest blogging for him next week.