Rogueish
Five myths about liberal academia→
02/28/11
I’m a political theorist by profession, not a proper number-crunching political scientist, but even I can see the stats in this piece are ridiculously dodgy. You can’t show that college professors are getting more left-wing by comparing the views of younger professors with those of older professors, without considering how the views of the population as a whole have also changed over time. And you can’t conclude that university presses are left leaning because they publish more left-leaning than right-leaning books, unless you know the breakdown of books written in the fields studied and submitted to presses.
“Myths about political scientists and economists: that they understand statistics,” apparently.
01/23/11
Soon lots of cassette labels started popping up…. It’s partly a physical thing: you can’t damage a cassette that easily.
― Matt Mondanile in The Times, proving, I guess, that these cassette-touting hipsters don’t actually try and play back the music they’re busy recording.
Universal and Sony Music plan 'instant pop' to beat piracy→
01/16/11
Ten years after piracy first began to ravage the music industry…
Fucking seriously? Is the music industry, making record profits, really “ravaged”? And, how did piracy begin in 2001? I suppose it’s hardly surprising that the Guardian Media Group uncritically reprints press releases from its colleagues in the content industries, but it’s still annoying.
Andrea Louise Campbell for Democracy: A Journal of Ideas→
12/16/10
If a VAT is truly under consideration, it is crucial for progressives to engage the debate and bring to the table a VAT designed to achieve not just fiscal balance but progressive goals as well.
The guiding principle of “progressivism” is to always preemptively agree with conservatives, to avoid the possibility that, if you argue against them, the conservatives might win. If you agree with them, you can’t lose.
Attendance Not Logged at 'Required' Hamilton College 'Rape Culture' Event, but Fundamental Freedoms Still at Risk - FIRE→
10/13/10
I was reminded of the existence of this organization (and it’s more explicitly racist Horowitz-founded companion) by reading news that the neocon fuckwits at the Scoop Jackson society are attempting to set up a British version (another mindless attempt to apply the tropes of the American right to the UK, where they make even less sense than they do in the US). What fascinates me is the way the right construes the liberal subject as impossibly fragile; the faintest disturbance appears to destroy the supposedly autonomous subject. A required lecture persuading you not to rape people is “violating freedom of conscience”?
Obama must wish he were Cameron. You reach out and get things done | Timothy Garton Ash | Comment is free | The Guardian→
07/22/10
[Obama] would die for the kind of solid parliamentary majority that a bipartisan coalition gives the British prime minister.
Con/Lib majority: 363/650 (55%)
Democratic majority in House: 253/435 (58%)
Democratic majority in Senate: 59/100 (59%)
04/05/10
Slightly mystified by how stupid Melissa Harris-Lacewell is. Well, it’s not quite that she’s stupid; it’s that she uses fundamentally right-wing arguments in support of nominally left-wing positions. First it was her Schmittian state-worship in service of an opportunistic argument that the teabaggers are “seditious”; now she’s claiming Michael Steele is an incompetent who was only hired because he’s black. Way to go, MHL, channeling that other MSNBC contributor, Pat Buchanan.
