Evolution, bitches…

Special post for Professor Knuckey:

Good things definitely come to those who wait…

A Loss for Us All…

To this let me add my voice to the chorus of those depressed and offer my condolences. Dan’s site is a go to for information for anyone curious about International Political Economy, world affairs, and Salma Hayek. But more than that it’s the discussions his site, Brad DeLong’s, Crooked Timber, Duck of Minerva, and several other wonderfully written academic blogs generate that will be missed if he or any of them decide to give up blogging if they perceive it as a threat to tenure.

I just recently wrote a paper for class in which I was able to cull much of the extra-curricular knowledge I’ve gained over the past 3+ years reading blogs. I wouldn’t have been able to write with the precision and depth of knowledge without the basis those bloggers and the conversations they generated provided. I didn’t crib from their sites, didn’t copy their posts word for word, but it was the ideas the exposed me to, the different modes of thought and analysis they used, that served me so well.

I feel for Dan and his family (he has a wife and two young children) and I know he’ll get offered a slew of positions soon – he’s a prolific publisher and blogging has opened doors for him in many ways. But they’d made Chicago their home, and the crush of losing a job at one of the premiere universities in the country must be crushing. I just hope his experience doesn’t become a cautionary tale for others who want to blog.

This all may go back to the Tribble piece I wrote about before, but the fact remains that those who blog not only find an outlet for their interests above and beyond academia but affect the lives of those students they may never meet. Maybe Dan wants a job at UCF, I knew one poly/sci prof who I’m sure no one would miss…

How Not to Write an Opinion

I truly cannot believe the Future published this opinion about Anna Nicole Smith’s lawsuit before the Supreme Court.

Two weeks ago it was declared that former Playboy Playmate and poster girl for insanity Anna Nicole Smith will go before the justices of the Supreme Court to plead her case involving the massive fortune of her late husband, J. Howard Marshall II.

Smith deserves nothing more than the embarrassment of having a nation laughing at her and of her life parading around trying to convince the world she really loved an 89-year-old man.

The woman may not be right in the head, which seems evident by her believing that the precious time of the nation’s highest court should be wasted by a has-been model trying to once again convince anyone that she loved Marshall.[emphasis added]

All of which pretty much sums up the editor’s feelings about Smith and her case, yet curiously offers not one whit of information about the case or why the court agreed to hear it at all. The court, not Smith, chose to hear the case brought before it, at least 4 justices deemed the underlying issues worthy of a public hearing. The Supreme Court issues about 90 opinions a year, so the likelihood of getting your case heard is slim, but that they chose to hear Smith’s case is not a result of her being the only pettitioner, she was among 4,500 others.

This editor’s opinion [unsigned and not an editorial] is laughably naieve and full of ad hominem attacks and serves no purpose other than as a canvass for the author’s raging id. If s/he wanted to debate the merits of the case, fine, but this isn’t journalism, it’s the journalistic equivalent of shooting spitballs at the fat girl in class. Why did the Court choose to hear the case, what are the underlying legal issues, etc. not this nonsense.

But my favorite part was this piece of wrongheaded moralism

It is the Supreme Court’s duty to build a sense of legal responsibility in this nation, not to help a woman find some brain cells.

Oh relly, since when junior? The Court’s function is to hear and decide cases of major relevance, to pass judgment on policies that affect a broad swath of people. I can only imagine what the editor’s would have felt about Falwell v. Hustler – ooh that dirty and disgusting Larry Flynt, how dare he make fun of the righteous and moral Jerry Falwell. For shame great Court for hearing the case, let’s just throw him and his wheelchair in the dungeon and he can spew his filth to the rats.

From His Mouth to God’s Ears…

Via the The Washington Monthly:

“U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein said that terrorists ‘do not need pretexts for their barbarism’ and that suppressing the pictures would amount to submitting to blackmail.

‘Our nation does not surrender to blackmail, and fear of blackmail is not a legally sufficient argument to prevent us from performing a statutory command.’”

Not exactly a victory for the fourth estate but one can be proud that our national interests and purpose can be used to justify our 1st Amendment protections…