What I'm reading

John Quiggin12 Comments

A PhD thesis. This is the entry ticket to the academic guild, the last survival of the medieval masterpiece.[1] The old-style thesis has largely disappeared in the United States, being replaced by a combination of coursework and a “three essays” dissertation. I think it would be a good thing if Australia went the same way. But, in the meantime, examining theses is part of the job, and often a painful one. The one I read this weekend was one of the easy ones, without any need for radical revisions or the ultimate catastrophe, a failing grade. I can write my report today and send it off with a light heart.

fn1. Not, as in today’s usage, an artist’s greatest work, but the piece done by an apprentice to qualify as a master, without any expectation that it should involve notable difficulty or efforts of a truly exceptional kind. premarin vaginal cream applicator

What would de Tocqueville think ?

John Quiggin6 Comments

Tim Lambert has more details on yet another Astroturf operation, the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, recently in the news for attacking open source software and also a shill for the tobacco industry.

A point of interest for me is that I don’t think you really need detailed evidence in cases like this (though of course, its handy to have the kind of chapter and verse Tim provides). Unless it’s devoted to the life and works of de Tocqueville, an outfit with a name like the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution is bound to be bogus.
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Updates

John Quiggin3 Comments

I’ve added links to some more fellow-members of the Crooked Timber academic group weblog, including Eszter and John and Belle. Eszter mostly crossposts her material from CT, but John and Belle have more on their own site than on CT.
Also, another economics site, with the overconsumptionist title General Glut

And, for the hard-core fans among you, I’ve added another picture, published by Gianna a while back, but supplied I think by James Farrell, who seems to be responsible for the Captain Haddock ID.

Darfur

John Quiggin2 Comments

For those who want to inform themselves of the situation in Darfur (Western Sudan), I’ve put up a report from the International Crisis Group (PDF file). , via Sudan: The Passion of the Present.

This opinion piece by Nicholas Kristof is also worth reading.

Clearly this is one of the biggest disasters happening in the world at present, and we should all be concerned about it. I want to learn and think more before committing myself, and my very limited resources of persuasion, to a particular course of action, but time is short. glucophage xl side effects

Peace with Sadr

John Quiggin3 Comments

Now that the inevitable peace deal between the American forces and Sadr’s Mahdi army appears to have been reached, amounting to restoration of the status quo ante

, can anybody provide a coherent rationale for Bremer’s decision to drive Sadr into revolt in the first place, by closing his newspaper and arresting his supporters? The assault on Fallujah was bound to be a disaster, but it’s not surprising that the Americans felt impelled to take some drastic action in response to the killing and mutilation of US contractors there. But the attack on Sadr seemed gratuitiously stupid, even more so than the disbanding of the army and the banning of the Baath party.

Tacitus, still taking the view that “failure is not an option in Iraq” is naturally furious about the deal . But any realistic analysis of the planned election must recognise that Sadr has enough support to make him a powerful force. He may not be a particularly attractive character, but he’s no worse than dozens of other world leaders with whom we deal for want of any better alternative. The notion that a military option with a June 30 deadline could take him and his movement out of the picture was never more than a delusion.

Whether you think, like Tacitus, that the attack on Sadr should been pushed through to its bloody conclusion, or like me that it should never have started, this is another appalling stuffup on Bremer’s part. Even at this late stage he ought to take responsibility and resign or, failing that, be sacked.

How Democracies Lose Small Wars

John Quiggin25 Comments

Below the fold is my draft review of Gil Merom’s How Democracies Lose Small Wars. Comments and criticism much appreciated.

UpdateAs regular readers will know, I have a habit of making small mental slips, and this post had two, with a reference to the downfall of Charles II following the English Civil War and to Saddam’s actions following the First Gulf War. Within hours of this post going up here and at Crooked Timber, four different people pointed these errors out to me in email and comments, in the nicest possible way (they’re fixed now)

It’s really great to know that I have so many attentive readers for a long, and rather academic post. And of course, it’s very helpful to have these errors picked up in Ozplogistan where errors are rife and correction is easy, before committing them to the unforgiving permanence of print.
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Paddy packs it in?

John Quiggin10 Comments

This piece in Crikey includes what purports to be PP McGuinness’ resignation letter from the Sydney Morning Herald. I can’t say I regret this. While McGuinness still does good stuff occasionally, the defining characteristic of his columns for the past decade or so has been sprays of vitriol, directed at a large, but predictable, range of targets. Even if you like this kind of stuff, the blogosphere supplies more, and purer, vitriol than any newspaper columnist, rendering the contributions of people like Paddy largely obsolete.

Parish backs Kyoto

John Quiggin27 Comments

Hot on the heels of Vladimir Putin, Ken Parish throws his weight behind Kyoto. As Ken says, the evidence of the last few years leads to a very strong presumption that the world is warming, at least at the surface[1].

There are still a lot of uncertainties to be resolved. But it’s better to take the low-cost measures required by Kyoto now, and prepare for more substantive action if current trends continue, than to do nothing and hope that things will turn out to be better than we now expect.

Since Ken and I are now in fairly close agreement, our long debate on this issue seems to be at an end. I enjoyed it and learnt a lot, and, although we both got bad-tempered on occasion, I think this was, in general, an example where blog debate worked the way we might hope. Certainly Ken has shown the kind of willingness to change his mind in response to new evidence that we should all seek to emulate.

fn1. In addition to climatic evidence, Ken cites superstitious fear as a reason for his change in position.

Where we should be looking

John QuigginLeave a comment

While the world’s attention (and mine, I admit) has been focused on Iraq, events that matter far more are happening elsewhere. As regards weapons proliferation, it’s obvious that North Korea and Pakistan are far more dangerous than Saddam ever was. And for a problem that cries out for some sort of humanitarian intervention, there’s none more urgent than that in Sudan. Although I’ve been aware of this for a while, it’s very hard to get the kind of information needed to motivate action, even as little action as writing a blog post. A new website Sudan: The Passion of the Present helps to fill that gap (link via Chris at CT).

The point of paradox

John Quiggin5 Comments

Suppose you have encountered Zeno’s Achilles paradoxfor the first time. Zeno offers a rigorous (looking) proof that, having once given the tortoise a head start, Achilles can never overtake it. Would you regard this as[1]

# A startling new discovery in athletics;

# A demonstration of the transcendent capacity of the human spirit – although the laws of logic forbid it, Achilles does in fact catch and overtake the tortoise; or

# A warning about how not to take limits?
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