Agnotology

Philobiblon notes a whole new field of cultural studies: how knowledge is lost, distorted and suppressed. The blogosphere ought to be a fantastic field study....

Updates: I think I'm going to keep a list of really good examples here

• Medieval Pharmacology obliterated by theory-heavy early modern medicine.

But the campaign has already begun...

[via my brother]
I don't know if this will work in blogger, but here goes:



There's also a sidebar version as well, which will probably get pretty popular. My only objection to this is that I'm rooting for a Democratic revolution in 2006, leading to impeachment proceedings, so this is a maximum, not an absolute, countdown.

"All rights are a right to privacy."

The guys over at Positive Liberty have been going nuts on privacy and the ninth amendment, and they're great. My favorite single line so far, really the crux of the matter, is by Timothy Sandefeur:

I have never liked the phrase "right to privacy." It is redundant. All rights are a right to privacy.

Kristof misses again

Kristof of the NYTimes has one talent: storytelling. He's terrible at analysis, but he's got an amazing talent for finding people on the edges and telling their stories. In the case of religious conservative activism against North Korea, he's missing the forest for the trees. I'll update this entry with my own e-mail to the Times, which they did not deign to publish, when I'm at the right computer... Here it is:

Mr. Kristof's criticism of "liberals" for not being as vocal as Christian conservatives about repression and atrocities in North Korea is a classic example of mistaking volume for content. A steady drumbeat of "isn't that awful" does not equal policy substance. Liberals have been trying for years, unsuccessfully and without a lot of help from conservatives, Christian or otherwise, to push the administration to deal constructively with Kim Jong Il's regime. We have pushed for talks; we have proposed alternative solutions; we have regularly pointed out the failure of the administration to make progress or even to properly prioritize the issues. I feel no shame for myself or "liberals" in general on this issue: it is the administration which should be ashamed, and the Republican establishment which has let it slide by with so little effort.

Changes

I will be moving most of my blog reading to bloglines, and I will probably be posting less frequently. I will also be trimming from the blogroll here those sites that I don't read frequently and/or which don't link back to me.

Gut reactions are for food...

The ever-sensible Natalie Bennett suggests that immediate legislative and procedural responses to something like the London attacks are likely to be overreactions and counterproductive. It's not a new point, but it's one that bears repeating. Panic, like everything else, needs to be done in moderation.

"India, that hangs like a wet washcloth from the towel rack of Asia..."

It's the 2005 Bulwer-Lytton Contest for worst opening line of a novel! The best really bad prose imaginable... to be fair, the man for whom the contest is named wasn't as bad as all that, but he spawned some of the most hideous imitators and cliches.

Adventure category Runner-Up:

It was high noon in the jungles of South India when I began to recognize that if we didn't find water for our emus soon, it wouldn't be long before we would be traveling by foot; and with the guerilla warriors fast on our heals, I was starting to regret my decision to use poultry for transportation.

The Difference

between a conceptual artist and a normal person:

• bizarrely inflated sense of self-importance
• press releases and gallery notes detailing the smallest actions
• Tag (Garage, Yard, etc) Sale prices differ by two-three orders of magnitude
• Sense of accomplishment not linked to actual results
• Considers adding to the problem OK, if it "draws attention"

Feel free to add items in comments.

Wholesale corruption

A skeptical journalist finally looks past the horse-race and hurt-feelings stories to the actual cheating:

Here’s the thing about Ohio. Until you really look at it, you won’t understand its significance, which is this: the techniques used in this particular theft have the capacity to alter elections not by dozens or hundreds or even thousands of votes, but by tens of thousands.

And that's not including the damned no-trail digital voting. But there's some hope: Voters are taking the State to court to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Not a timed test, thank God.

Your IQ Is 135

Your Logical Intelligence is Genius Your Verbal Intelligence is Genius Your Mathematical Intelligence is Genius Your General Knowledge is Exceptional

A Quick and Dirty IQ Test

I'm pretty sure I only missed one question (out of sixteen), and it was actually quite tricky (actually, that's how you do an IQ test in sixteen questions: very tricky questions): I could argue the definitions.... never mind.