Contempt

John Quiggin2 Comments

There’s a story I read somewhere of a judge interrupting an unsatisfactory witness and asking

Are you trying to flaunt your contempt for this court ?

to which the witness replies

Oh, no Your Honour! I’m trying to conceal it.

I was reminded of the story by this NYT editorial, which accuses a Rhode Island judge of abusing the contempt power to pursue a vindictive campaign against a reporter, Jim Taricani, but then fails to name the judge in question. A one-minute Google search reveals that the judge in question is Chief U.S. District Judge Ernest Torres Given that it was defending the right of reporters to publish the truth without fear or favor, what exactly did the NYT have in mind here?

Weekend reflections

John Quiggin14 Comments

This is a chance to make comments on any topic of your choosing, to be written and read at the leisurely pace of the weekend. I’d welcome pieces a little longer than the usual comments, but not full-length essays. If you want to draw attention to something longer, try an extract or summary with a link. As usual, civilised discussion and no coarse language.

Over-reactions

John Quiggin30 Comments

I’ve been reading lots of stuff about the fundamental irrelevance of the Labor party and so on, and while this is inevitable in the aftermath of an election, it seems to be going on longer than usual. So let’s do a what-if. What if Labor had managed to get 3 per cent more votes than it actually did? The Liberals would have been out of government in every jurisdiction in Australia. Pundits would be falling all over themselves to point out the hopelessness of their cause, as witness the fact that they couldn’t win even with a strong economy and so on. This would be overstatement, but not as much as the corresponding claims with respect to Labor.

A related point is here at Crooked Timber

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Last post ?

John Quiggin8 Comments

Chris Sheil has announced that Back Pages is closing down, after exactly one year. Chris is taking six months off to write a book, which raises the prospect that he may return to the scene at some future date. Chris has a lengthy farewell, but isn’t taking comments, so I’ll be glad to host any appreciations here (critical comments aren’t precluded, but I’ll be ruthless in enforcing the norms of civilised discussion, which include respect for the recently departed). Chris also offers a lot of useful advice for bloggers.

I haven’t had time to formulate my own thoughts, but I’ll try to write something later.

In the meantime, this is as good an opportunity as any to note that Chris’s blog and this one were joint winners, with Surfdom and Troppo of Lord Sedgwick’s award for blog which consistently attracts the best comments. So you can all give yourselves a pat on the back.

Time to stock up on drugs

John Quiggin11 Comments

The Free trade deal with the US has been settled.

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, in Santiago, Chile for the APEC meeting, said Australia had agreed to what he said were some minor changes at the request of the US.

But that won’t affect the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, he said.

And if you believe that, I have a very profitable and mutually advantageous deal with a Nigerian bank manager in which you might be interested/

Common sense

John Quiggin40 Comments

Over at Crooked Timber, Kieran Healy complains that

When you’re a Sociologist like me, and your field has no credibility, people just assume you’re stupid and don’t bother sending you their Final and Completely True Theory of X in the first place. On the other hand, it does invite people to assume the answer to any problem you are studying is simply obvious common sense.

But sociology is a victim of its own success here. All of the big insights of sociology, from its beginnings in the 19th century up to 1950s work like that of Erving Goffman are indeed common sense, not because they were already known, but because they have been incorporated into the intellectual baggage of everyone in Western societies, educated or not. No one, for example, would be accused of talking academic jargon if they raised the problem of “peer group pressure” at their local school, or made a reference to ‘social status’.
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Guest post from Tom Oates

John Quiggin6 Comments

Expat Aussie physicist has sent me this personal view of the Ukrainian Presidential election. Well worth reading

‘I’m back in the USSR,
You don’t know how lucky you are boy…’

What exactly did Paul McCartney mean by that second line? The question ran through my head with a mixture of excitement and awe as I located Mykola’s wave and smile amongst the rainbow of babushka scarves on the platform at Kyiv Vokzal. A multitude of peaked caps were balanced precariously on the blond crew-cuts of rosy-cheeked teenage soldiers greeting girlfriends and mothers in the dim autumn evening. It was a relief to see Mykola’s familiar face after 24 hours on the Berlin-Kiev ‘express’. Through the train window the rural scenery presented the country as incredibly poor. Groups of farm workers digging potatoes by hand and antiquated soviet machinery were sparsely scattered between vast forests and the odd pollution belching industrial centre. A rude 2am awakening by a self important Ukrainian border guard, and subsequent mild interrogation, was smoothed over by my well ordered paperwork and an official letter of invitation from Mykola’s Professor at the Taras Shevchenko University to attend a physics conference.
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Postmodern spam

John Quiggin1 Comment

The latest trend in comment spam, at least on my blog, is self-referential stuff of the form

2 much spam in here 😦

The links appear to be to sites that try to download viruses or spyware as .exe files (having a Mac, I’m largely immune, so I sometimes do risky things like clicking on dubious links).