Monthly Archives: October 2007

Videos!

Jackie Mason gets angry – a rant only Republicans will love. It’s funny but maybe goes on a half-minute too long. h/t Josh – Hipster Olympics! I’ll be in the 2008 competition myself, I have the album I’m going to pick already picked out. Free alternative pharmaceuticals are welcome, your sponsorship is desired. Classic. Powered …

October 31, 2007 – 8:50 pm | By ashok | Posted in links | Comments (0)

A Quick Note: Why Voting On Comments Is Stupid

Voting is the end product of carefully considered opinion. Voicing an opinion on a vote can happen after an election, including an intermediate election to filter out choices. But voting on opinions while a debate is going on in real time? Are you kidding me? The only thing voting is doing in that case is …

October 30, 2007 – 3:43 am | By ashok | Posted in politics | Tagged , | Comments (4)

Self-Interest Rightly Understood: On Harvey Mansfield’s 2007 Jefferson Lecture

The American enterprise lends itself to the conduct of political science today: it is a science concerned with satisfaction, utility, and power. The reason why it is concerned with these concepts is that individuals can be abstracted into something more general, and their behavior can be predicted. Hence, “self-interest” arises, and it is a loaded …

October 27, 2007 – 11:15 pm | By ashok | Posted in academia, politics | Tagged | Comments (0)

Social Bookmarking and the Communities It Forms

The comment below was left by me on chrisg.com on a post concerned with what causes some of the nastier behavior at Digg towards bloggers: I don’t know that it is jealousy and ignorance alone. It seems to me forming community has a price, and that more tightly knit communities are going to have common …

October 27, 2007 – 2:50 am | By ashok | Posted in blogging | Tagged | Comments (1)

Leadership

The expert fails because he knows more than the wise – he has a complete grasp on the theory and all its particulars, and assumes that alone should be good enough. The assumption is reinforced with a presupposition: if the “theory*” doesn’t work, something is wrong with everyone and everything else. Finding that wrongness is …

October 26, 2007 – 8:49 am | By ashok | Posted in politics | Tagged | Comments (0)

Links, 10/24

On China: What I would like to have seen in this excerpt is an argument comparing the amount of social unrest in China with social unrest in other totalitarian regimes before they fall. It seems to me an authoritarian regime can live against the will of the vast majority of its own people in many …

October 24, 2007 – 1:01 pm | By ashok | Posted in links | Comments (1)

Introducing Rethink Forums

Gracchi and Lady Strange have kindly consented to be moderators for my newest crackpot idea.The idea is this: many of you sound like there are a million things you want to ask those of us who blog. Comments aren’t good enough – they only exist for a particular post and the topics related to that. …

October 23, 2007 – 6:30 am | By ashok | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Comments (0)

“Remembrance of Things Past” and the Problem of Order In Memory: On Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30

Sonnet 30 Shakespeare When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste: Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow, For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night, …

October 22, 2007 – 4:22 am | By ashok | Posted in poetry, shakespeare | Comments (1)

"Affirmative action for an oppressing minority:" Liberals, Conservatives, Academia and Capitalism

It’s not that there are no conservative professors, he [Larry Summers] said, but their share is so small as to raise questions that deserve more attention. – from The Liberal (and Moderating) Professoriate, by Scott Jaschik Affirmative action for an oppressing minority — that’s one hell of an idea! – Alexander Nekvasil, in comments on …

October 20, 2007 – 5:00 pm | By ashok | Posted in academia, education, politics | Tagged | Comments (2)

The UK’s Camera Fascination

Thanks to http://minnielass.stumbleupon.com for some of these links. Theodore Dalrymple at City Journal discusses possible reasons why the UK’s cameras don’t actually stop any crime. The Home Secretary of the UK thinks cameras that talk to you and tell you to obey are an excellent thing (I’m not making this stuff up) More on whether …

October 19, 2007 – 2:39 pm | By ashok | Posted in links, politics | Tagged | Comments (1)