Links 12/9/09

Has Moko the dolphin flipped? Sydney Morning Herald. Reader Crocodile Chuck informs us that this Moko is the same Moko of my favorite story of 2008. I hope he doesn’t get in trouble.

This decade ‘warmest on record’ BBC

We have entered the moment when the Greek crisis is turning dangerous Eurointelligence

May I Say that Stanley Fish Is Certifiably Insane? Brad DeLong

The Real Lost Decade: Japanese GDP Edition EconomPicData. And how do you get GDP growth wrong by 3%? OK, right, inventories, but still…..

Are Some Wall Street Firms Too Big To Punish? Huffington Post

Politics and bank regulation don’t mix Rolfe Winkler

Antidote du jour (hat tip reader Richard). I gather some of you could not view yesterday’s antidote. Apologies, but I am at a loss for an explanation, since I could view it.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

16 comments

  1. attempter

    If by a better press corps Delong means the NYT shouldn’t carry a hack like Fish, he’s right. But Fish himself is simply an op-ed blogger on the op-ed page.

    I stopped reading Fish a while ago anyway, but I definitely wasn’t going to read his drivel about Palin. When I saw the blurb I had a good idea what the piece was going to say, and seeing the passage Delong excerpts confirms my good judgement.

    Fish’s main project is to champion the neoliberal status quo, and sometimes its scabrous yahoo aspects like in this case, or when he sticks up for creationists.

    His basic shtick is to claim that especially in the academic world, but really everywhere else as well, the status quo is not ideological in any way, let alone extremely political. Therefore anyone who criticizes the status quo is a troublemaker injecting nasty “politics” where it doesn’t belong.

    Knowing him I could’ve written the piece myself: “Palin’s autobiography is automatically the truth because it’s the truth as seen by a Real American telling her Real American story, and if you insist on fact-checking it you’re just being a nasty partisan, because your notions of truth have nothing to do with what she says is the truth in Her book.”

    That’s exactly the kind of thing he says about university professors criticizing, for example, George Bush or neoliberalism. Once the syllabus for the course is set, written by status quo globalists of course, it becomes, not mere truth but Truth, and the professor’s job is to be the stenographer of that Truth, nothing more.

    I guess on second thought the MSM could use him, not just as an opinion writer but a stenographer, I mean reporter.

  2. Ben

    I have a theory as to why the previous antidote didn’t work for some people. It looks like the host of the image has some code in place to try to prevent hotlinking, which is the embedding of an image from one host in another host’s website.

    Ostensibly, and especially when such things were more expensive, the owner of the image has to pay the bandwidth cost for the other person’s usage. It’s possible to read the referrer heading on the incoming HTTP request, determine that it isn’t someone on your own site, and return a different (in immature cases occasionally obscene) image in place of the requested one, or to not return an image at all.

    You could see it while others (like myself) could not either because you had a cached version of the image available in your browser from looking at the site directly or their rules are not written to handle some variance in referrer header behavior of different browsers.

  3. M

    I’m a philosopher–uni professor. Fish is a total hack. He spouts arguments that would get my freshman failed. “Autobiographers can’t lie about themselves” is the conclusion of one. Another argument is that altruism is impossible because everyone necessarily views the world from their own perspective which is, by-definition, a selfish perspective.

    This is bad sophistry. People like him in the humanities (and there are many worse–the standards for scholarship in the humanities are next-to-nonexistent) make me want to flee and take my department to the natural sciences.

    1. Dave Raithel

      Glad you piled on. I was flailing for a response, given that that De Long is equally insane – it’s just that the contents of his mind (both literally and referentially) differ from Stanley’s.

      Reading Fish on the Stupid Milf From Alaska connoted, for me anyway, a deconstructionist on acid – or maybe a Valley Girl. Authenticity rocks!!!!!

  4. Peripheral Visionary

    Re: Has Moko the dolphin flipped? – This is what I call the “Wild Animals Really Are Wild Animals” story, something we need to hear a bit more often. The Disney Generation needs a reminder that wild animals really are wild animals and are not, in fact, huggable cuddly singing dancing humans in animal costumes.

    Re: May I Say that Stanley Fish Is Certifiably Insane? – May I say that the left’s [sic] fixation with Palin is certifiably insane? I am not sure it has occurred to a single one of the endless bloggers in the left wing of the blogosphere that Palin would not enjoy the prominence she enjoys now without the constant attention she receives from them.

    Re: This decade ‘warmest on record’ – “‘This subset release will continue the policy of putting as much of the station temperature record as possible into the public domain,’ said the agency’s statement.” Two paragraphs later: “‘We are dependent on international approvals to enable this final step and cannot guarantee that we will get permission from all data owners.'” Look, this is embarrassing. This isn’t the social sciences where there is personal information in the data, so there is absolutely no reason that I can see not to release the data. No respectable scientist in any other field would get far without releasing the data supporting his or her conclusions. The best way to answer the skeptics is very simple: release the data and methods so that the conclusions can be checked.

    1. fresno dan

      Agree.
      Palin is the human equivalent of the LOL cats, or the bear on the back deck “you tube” videos played endlessly on CNN. But than, isn’t 99% of what is portrayed (it can’t be correct to say that it is covered) in the media just entertainment, and bad entertainment at that?

      And I use the animals above because I do agree so much that wild animals are in fact “wild.” Again, there is a media “viewpoint” (or more accurately, profit center) that shows the animals in cutsy videos, and never shows the truly horrific attacks that occur.

    2. Dave Raithel

      “I am not sure it has occurred to a single one of the endless bloggers in the left wing of the blogosphere that [the stupid milf from Alaska] would not enjoy the prominence she enjoys now without the constant attention she receives from them.”

      Oh yes it has, I’ve suggested that reasonable people ignore her – not even speak or write her name. It’s the whole “Don’t think of elephant” problem….

      “The best way to answer the skeptics is very simple: release the data and methods so that the conclusions can be checked.” Sure, let’s see what the carbon companies (oil, coal, natural gas) have in THEIR files. Truth or dare….

    1. aet

      Hudson got it wrong.
      The recent announcement was…. just announced, right?
      Scientists have intellectual rights to the data they generate: like pharma does, right?
      At the time of hudson’s report in Oct, this data had not been crunched into releasable form.

      The new data supercedes the old.

      Just like japan’s GDP numbers.

  5. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

    He looks suspiciously like my cat, except hopefully he doesn’t pee, for no reason except maybe thinking that he was a Wall Street banker, on his human slave’s trousers.

  6. Elephant swims

    Re: wild or natural acting dolphins/animals. Lets talk about the pedophilia, gang rape (in human terms) of lesser status or juvenile male and female members, the attentions of captive dolphins to their female trainers during menstrual/hormonal periods, the studies of species traits with the caveat of individualism, the government funded studies of old that were suppressed when findings were the opposite of their hopes, aka natural sex drives vs neocon/religious natural order muhahaha bisexuality is more the natural order in intelligent design than the these folks would like to face ha ha ha!

    Yet many of the natural born leadership clan exhibit these very same traits ROFL.

    How many have been attacked or killed by that which they observe. Steve Erwin played with one too many a creature and all for MSM ratings and wealth, 70 bucks a head to traipse around his joint now, beware the food and souvenir shed as it will relive you of twice that amount per head. And all for the edjamacaton of seeing captive creatures totally out side their actual habitat and their actions with in it.

    Off to go mountain biking now with tuna fish sandwiches wrapped in butchers paper, in bear and mountain lion country, should be a hoot!

    1. Elephant swims

      Yet many of the natural born leadership clan exhibit these very same traits ROFL.

      See: Tiger Woods for a popular example…Tiger lol he sure lives up to his name ha ha ha…dad must be chuffed…

      Lawrence I think I under stand you now, those years upon your desk, one window to look out of…high up in your meager abode…sigh…

Comments are closed.