Thursday, January 19, 2012
Painters Imagine Babylon
Politics as Team Sports
From the Post:
There is, I think, no escaping this. The desire to identify to with a group and root for its success is too deep in humankind ever to be excluded from democratic politics. The alternation of parties in power is probably essential for democracy in the long run, so everybody but the crankpots gets a chance to celebrate his team's success. (The crankpots get their jollies from seeing how stupid the mass of the people is, and how superior their own intellects.) One of the consistent findings of political science is that the more closely people follow politics, the more firmly they identify with one party or the other. Democracy needs citizen involvement, and people get involved as much to be part of a team as to work for any particular policy.
Yes, issues matter to some degree. But I think for most voters they serve largely as badges of team membership. Sometimes coalitions fracture over particular issues, as the liberals split between muscular humanitarians and pacifists over whether to intervene in Bosnia and Libya. But usually these disagreements are papered over for the good of the team. All most people need to know about an issue is, which is the conservative side and which is the liberal side? They then fall into line accordingly. It is something of a mystery to me how, for example, school reform based on standardized testing came to be a conservative cause, but, well, there it is.
To me the real danger in this comes when awful positions are embraced by one team or the other, and then thoughtlessly supported by millions of loyal team members. Thus we have had to watch American "Christian" leaders, including conservative Catholics, defending torture, never mind what Jesus said and the Pope teaches.
Lately the Republicans have taken what strike me as crazy positions on taxation and government spending, for what I think are at bottom emotional, team membership kinds of reasons. Should one of them become President, we will find out how serious they are. George W. Bush, as it turned out, was serious about cutting taxes but not about cutting spending, so we got ballooning deficits. Would President Romney really cut domestic spending by as much as he says, or will the arithmetic get the better of him? I wonder.
On the morning after a bellicose debate performance that had the audience leaping to its feet, Newt Gingrich got this challenge from a retired Marine officer who had come to hear him speak at an art gallery here.
“What I’ve been looking for in my candidate is, we’ve got to bloody Obama’s nose,” Vence Jelovchan said.
“I don’t want to bloody his nose,” the former House speaker replied. “I want to knock him out.”Read enough of this kind of stuff, and you realize that many Americans don't see politics as a way to pick the wisest leaders for the country, or the ones with the most intelligent policies. They see it as a struggle between our team and theirs over a prize called "power." People identify with their parties like they identify with their home town teams, like they used to identify with their tribes. To this retired Marine, Obama is a smugly successful quarterback of that hated rival, the Washington Liberals, and his fantasies are like those of people in New York or Pittsburgh who dream about watching their linebackers bury Tom Brady under a ferocious blitz.
There is, I think, no escaping this. The desire to identify to with a group and root for its success is too deep in humankind ever to be excluded from democratic politics. The alternation of parties in power is probably essential for democracy in the long run, so everybody but the crankpots gets a chance to celebrate his team's success. (The crankpots get their jollies from seeing how stupid the mass of the people is, and how superior their own intellects.) One of the consistent findings of political science is that the more closely people follow politics, the more firmly they identify with one party or the other. Democracy needs citizen involvement, and people get involved as much to be part of a team as to work for any particular policy.
Yes, issues matter to some degree. But I think for most voters they serve largely as badges of team membership. Sometimes coalitions fracture over particular issues, as the liberals split between muscular humanitarians and pacifists over whether to intervene in Bosnia and Libya. But usually these disagreements are papered over for the good of the team. All most people need to know about an issue is, which is the conservative side and which is the liberal side? They then fall into line accordingly. It is something of a mystery to me how, for example, school reform based on standardized testing came to be a conservative cause, but, well, there it is.
To me the real danger in this comes when awful positions are embraced by one team or the other, and then thoughtlessly supported by millions of loyal team members. Thus we have had to watch American "Christian" leaders, including conservative Catholics, defending torture, never mind what Jesus said and the Pope teaches.
Lately the Republicans have taken what strike me as crazy positions on taxation and government spending, for what I think are at bottom emotional, team membership kinds of reasons. Should one of them become President, we will find out how serious they are. George W. Bush, as it turned out, was serious about cutting taxes but not about cutting spending, so we got ballooning deficits. Would President Romney really cut domestic spending by as much as he says, or will the arithmetic get the better of him? I wonder.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
The Amazing Scale Models of the Musée des Plans-reliefs
Whooping Cough Makes a Comeback
Along with measles, whooping cough (pertussis) is a disease that had nearly been eliminated from the civilized world. Until, that is, anti-vaccine fanatics came along with their mad theories and sad fear of medicine that actually works. Before the vaccine, pertussis was a major killer of children:
We may have to rethink that, though, as long as thousands of American and European parents refuse to avail themselves of the one kind of medicine that really saves millions of lives every year.
There were 36,000 deaths from pertussis and pertussis-related complications between 1926 and 1930, and in 1934 there were 260,000 reported cases of pertussis.By 1976, thanks to the vaccine,there were fewer than 1,000 cases of pertussis in the US. But now:
In Michigan, 315 cases were reported in 2008, according to the state Department of Community Health. A year later, the incidence of whooping cough had nearly tripled to 902 reported cases. And by 2010, the number of reported cases in Michigan had risen to 1,564.Part of the danger with whooping cough is that the modern vaccine conveys imperfect immunity that wanes over time, leaving communities vulnerable to outbreaks if they occur. The old vaccine, which used whole killed cells, worked great, but the initial response was so powerful it sickened many children and scared many parents. So now we use a vaccine made with some proteins from the virus.
Similar outbreaks have been seen in other states as well. In California, nearly 10,000 cases of whooping cough were reported in 2010 -- the most since the 1940s, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Ten babies died.
We may have to rethink that, though, as long as thousands of American and European parents refuse to avail themselves of the one kind of medicine that really saves millions of lives every year.
Tom Ricks on Attacking Iran
Planning on attacking Iran? "Better pack a lunch," advises my friend retired Lt. Col. Terry Daly, who knows a lot about war. His point was that air strikes alone against Iranian nuclear facilities wouldn't do much. If you are going to attack Iran, you need to hit its ability to retaliate and that means that pretty soon you have a big fat war on your hands.
I can't believe we are even discussing this.
--Tom Ricks
Political Incoherence and the Rapid March of History
I have pointed out here several times that I think modern conservatism rests on a paradox: conservatives oppose change in general while supporting free market economics, which is our most powerful agent of change.
I was wondering, as I walked through the dark streets of northwest Washington on my way to work this morning, what is the equivalent liberal paradox. I suppose a conservative would say that it is trying to promote freedom through bureaucracy and taxation. And there is something to this -- every regulation designed to make the world better imposes real costs on somebody, and some of those costs fall most heavily on the poor people liberals want to help. Environmental regulation is full of unintended consequences. For example, one reason developers prefer to build on green pastures at the edge of suburbia rather than within old cities is that they might end up with severe liabilities because toxic waste dumped on their urban properties decades ago; the superfund act, designed to protect us from toxins, has mainly promoted sprawl.
Liberals of a certain sort also tend to be obsessed with art and to think that it holds the key to everything from child development to urban renewal, and yet art is probably the most elitist field of human activity and the one where inherited wealth plays the biggest part.
But if I had to say what is the biggest internal conflict within liberalism I would point back to the salient fact of the modern world: the unprecedented rate of change. Liberals or progressives define themselves as the party of change and the future. As a psychological type, this seems to hold largely true: the most liberal people are the ones most fascinated by new ideas in fields like science and spirituality, whereas one of the defining characteristics of conservatism around the world is an attachment to old styles of religion and culture. Liberals support gay marriage, cutting edge art, racial mingling. Yet the contemporary left distrusts many kinds of change. Liberals are prominent among the activists struggling to keep neighborhoods exactly the way they always were. Environmentalism has a very strong anti-modern component, expressed in slogans like "Split Wood Not Atoms." Anti-corporate feeling is driven in large part by the ways corporations change communities, as when they close factories, or when WalMart replaces a whole downtown with one huge store.
Modern politics has some of the dimensions of politics in past societies: conflicts between rich and poor, between ethnic groups, and between the elite within the government and other elites outside it. But modern politics also focuses very much on change and how we relate to it. It is the bewildering fact of constant social and economic revolution that makes our age different from every other, and that leaves us struggling to find our footing. Neither conservatives nor liberals have a consistent attitude toward this fact. Nor should they; only a fool would say that the changes of modernity have been all good or all bad. I think that we have been reconciled to the constant erosion of our social and psychic foundations by our ever increasing wealth, and this is why the public mood darkens so much whenever the economy turns sour. In such times conservatives turn toward traditional values and old religious ideas and rail against perceived attacks on them. Liberals turn toward old ideas of community and solidarity and rail against the attacks they think corporations and the rich are making on the common social fabric. Both are expressing the anxiety that assails us when the disorientation of rapid change is not mitigated by ever more money in our pockets.
I do not think we can do much to slow the rate of technical and economic change. We can try to guide it in certain directions, but in the main we can only choose how to respond. By all means, let us preserve what we can of past beauties, wonders, and accomplishments, as we rocket into the future. I would say, though, that neither free markets nor governments can be trusted to keep what is good from the past while seeking an ever better future. Probably no one and nothing can. But philosophical rigidity and ideological cant will certainly not help.
I was wondering, as I walked through the dark streets of northwest Washington on my way to work this morning, what is the equivalent liberal paradox. I suppose a conservative would say that it is trying to promote freedom through bureaucracy and taxation. And there is something to this -- every regulation designed to make the world better imposes real costs on somebody, and some of those costs fall most heavily on the poor people liberals want to help. Environmental regulation is full of unintended consequences. For example, one reason developers prefer to build on green pastures at the edge of suburbia rather than within old cities is that they might end up with severe liabilities because toxic waste dumped on their urban properties decades ago; the superfund act, designed to protect us from toxins, has mainly promoted sprawl.
Liberals of a certain sort also tend to be obsessed with art and to think that it holds the key to everything from child development to urban renewal, and yet art is probably the most elitist field of human activity and the one where inherited wealth plays the biggest part.
But if I had to say what is the biggest internal conflict within liberalism I would point back to the salient fact of the modern world: the unprecedented rate of change. Liberals or progressives define themselves as the party of change and the future. As a psychological type, this seems to hold largely true: the most liberal people are the ones most fascinated by new ideas in fields like science and spirituality, whereas one of the defining characteristics of conservatism around the world is an attachment to old styles of religion and culture. Liberals support gay marriage, cutting edge art, racial mingling. Yet the contemporary left distrusts many kinds of change. Liberals are prominent among the activists struggling to keep neighborhoods exactly the way they always were. Environmentalism has a very strong anti-modern component, expressed in slogans like "Split Wood Not Atoms." Anti-corporate feeling is driven in large part by the ways corporations change communities, as when they close factories, or when WalMart replaces a whole downtown with one huge store.
Modern politics has some of the dimensions of politics in past societies: conflicts between rich and poor, between ethnic groups, and between the elite within the government and other elites outside it. But modern politics also focuses very much on change and how we relate to it. It is the bewildering fact of constant social and economic revolution that makes our age different from every other, and that leaves us struggling to find our footing. Neither conservatives nor liberals have a consistent attitude toward this fact. Nor should they; only a fool would say that the changes of modernity have been all good or all bad. I think that we have been reconciled to the constant erosion of our social and psychic foundations by our ever increasing wealth, and this is why the public mood darkens so much whenever the economy turns sour. In such times conservatives turn toward traditional values and old religious ideas and rail against perceived attacks on them. Liberals turn toward old ideas of community and solidarity and rail against the attacks they think corporations and the rich are making on the common social fabric. Both are expressing the anxiety that assails us when the disorientation of rapid change is not mitigated by ever more money in our pockets.
I do not think we can do much to slow the rate of technical and economic change. We can try to guide it in certain directions, but in the main we can only choose how to respond. By all means, let us preserve what we can of past beauties, wonders, and accomplishments, as we rocket into the future. I would say, though, that neither free markets nor governments can be trusted to keep what is good from the past while seeking an ever better future. Probably no one and nothing can. But philosophical rigidity and ideological cant will certainly not help.
Height and Power
A recent study shows that people who have more powerful positions in the office feel taller than underlings. Given a tape measure, supervisors and underlings both mismeasure their height, but supervisors exaggerate and underlings err on the low side.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
More on Doctors Dying in Peace
I blogged a few weeks ago about doctors who refuse the drastic end-of-life care they routinely give to others. The article that started this online discussion has been criticized in some quarters as anecdotal. Now Shannon Brownlee, an expert on American health care, has weighed in with some real data showing that American doctors really do try to avoid hospital death:
there is good evidence that physicians have thought out end-of-life issues more thoroughly than laypeople and are more likely to decline medical intervention. For example, they sign advance directives far more often than the rest of us do. . . .Those advance directives are more likely to refuse rescue care than those of non-physicians. Brownlee also has some good anecdotes, including one about a doctor with a Do Not Resuscitate tattoo.
Why would doctors be so anxious to avoid the very procedures they deliver to their patients every day? For one thing, they know firsthand that these procedures are most often futile when performed on a frail, elderly, chronically ill person. Only about 8% of people who go into cardiac arrest outside of the hospital are revived by CPR. Even when your heart stops in the hospital, you have only a 19% chance of surviving. That’s a far cry from the way these procedures are portrayed on TV, where practically everybody survives having his heart shocked and undergoing CPR.
Doctors also know that undergoing heroic measures is a lousy way to die. They’ve seen what it’s like for an elderly patient to end up in the ICU, hooked up to machines, often semiparalyzed, in pain, lying on what philosopher Sidney Hook called “mattress graves” during his own terminal illness. At a recent meeting I attended, one emergency physician tearfully admitted she didn’t think she could stand to hear the sound of ribs breaking as she perform CPR on yet another elderly patient who almost certainly would not survive.
David Brooks Defines Republicanism
David Brooks has been in South Carolina, talking to primary voters. He found that hardly anyone was impressed by the ads attacking Romney's business background --these are believers in capitalism. What is on their minds?
I know the military has a lot of support in South Carolina, and this year's Republican candidates have tried to make hay out of standing up for America, refusing to apologize, and whatnot. But this is a bizarre non-issue. Obama has not been as aggressive overseas as George W. Bush, but his shoot-to-kill campaign against al Qaeda's leadership has certainly been plenty aggressive, and he didn't bother with approval from those wimps in Congress before bombing Libya. How many wars per decade do we need? The standing of the military in American public opinion is very high, even among many liberals. There has been no loss of "strong values" here.
Last night Gingrich gave a great paean to the virtues of standing on our own feet and earning a living rather than getting government handouts. I agree that it would be much better if more poor Americans had jobs. But who is going to hire them? And until they can get jobs, is it really a bad thing to help them put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads? If letting people starve is what Brooks means by "strong values," count me out.
Another thing that often comes up when Americans talk about lost values is community. It is certainly true that fewer Americans live in tight-knit neighborhoods than they used to. But why is that? Because of economic change. The lifelong factory job is a thing of the past, and with it the stable working-class neighborhoods where people like John Boehner grew up. Hundreds of small towns across America have disappeared as the economy has changed. Nothing new there -- Jamestown and Plymouth, two of our first towns, had both disappeared by 1700. But in recent years the pace of change has accelerated, bewildering many people. Is that the government's fault? No, it is not. The reason the country is changing at a dizzying pace is capitalism. It is men like Mitt Romney and entities like Bain Capital that are remaking the country and ripping up one formerly stable community after another.
In America, "conservative" has two meanings: opposing change, and supporting free market economics. Since free market economics is, along with science, the main engine of change in our world, it is not really possible for American conservatives to have a coherent world view. Instead they wallow in nostalgia about the good old days and blame liberals for everything wrong with the world. This may make for successful politics, but not for good government.
I was also struck, as in New Hampshire and Iowa, by the mood of this year’s rallies. Republican audiences this year want a restoration. America once had strong values, they believe, but we have gone astray. We’ve got to go back and rediscover what we had. Heads nod enthusiastically every time a candidate touches this theme.
I agree with the sentiment, but it makes for an incredibly backward-looking campaign. I sometimes wonder if the Republican Party has become the receding roar of white America as it pines for a way of life that will never return.Let's unpack that. What values are we talking about? Divorce and out-of-wedlock birth often come up in these contexts, and I agree that it would be better if more kids grew up with two parents. But what on earth is the government supposed to do about it? And if voters are serious, the one thing they could do would be to refuse to support divorced politicians. Yet thrice-married Gingrich is polling well in South Carolina, and I would be willing to bet that Ronald Reagan is still very popular there.
I know the military has a lot of support in South Carolina, and this year's Republican candidates have tried to make hay out of standing up for America, refusing to apologize, and whatnot. But this is a bizarre non-issue. Obama has not been as aggressive overseas as George W. Bush, but his shoot-to-kill campaign against al Qaeda's leadership has certainly been plenty aggressive, and he didn't bother with approval from those wimps in Congress before bombing Libya. How many wars per decade do we need? The standing of the military in American public opinion is very high, even among many liberals. There has been no loss of "strong values" here.
Last night Gingrich gave a great paean to the virtues of standing on our own feet and earning a living rather than getting government handouts. I agree that it would be much better if more poor Americans had jobs. But who is going to hire them? And until they can get jobs, is it really a bad thing to help them put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads? If letting people starve is what Brooks means by "strong values," count me out.
Another thing that often comes up when Americans talk about lost values is community. It is certainly true that fewer Americans live in tight-knit neighborhoods than they used to. But why is that? Because of economic change. The lifelong factory job is a thing of the past, and with it the stable working-class neighborhoods where people like John Boehner grew up. Hundreds of small towns across America have disappeared as the economy has changed. Nothing new there -- Jamestown and Plymouth, two of our first towns, had both disappeared by 1700. But in recent years the pace of change has accelerated, bewildering many people. Is that the government's fault? No, it is not. The reason the country is changing at a dizzying pace is capitalism. It is men like Mitt Romney and entities like Bain Capital that are remaking the country and ripping up one formerly stable community after another.
In America, "conservative" has two meanings: opposing change, and supporting free market economics. Since free market economics is, along with science, the main engine of change in our world, it is not really possible for American conservatives to have a coherent world view. Instead they wallow in nostalgia about the good old days and blame liberals for everything wrong with the world. This may make for successful politics, but not for good government.
Meanwhile, in South Carolina
At last night's Republican debate, his opponents savaged Mitt Romney for refusing to release his tax returns, waffling on abortion, and not being eager enough to kill foreigners. Rick Perry pretty much said that Turkey is run by Islamic terrorists, and he flat out said that South Carolina is at war with the Federal government, while repeating his line about Obama waging a "war against organized religion." ("This guy knows how to start a war," said Will Wilkinson.) For good measure Perry said that Obama feels "disdain for our country." Ron Paul called for the income tax rate to fall to zero. Rick Santorum sees nothing wrong with jailing people for "treason" on the President's say-so, with no need to present evidence, and he also accused Ron Paul of not being sufficiently pro-gun. (This is the Ron Paul who used to publish newsletters for survivalists.) And Newt, back at the top of his game, said that Obama hates work, "put more people on food stamps than any previous president," and is trying to create more dependency in America -- because, apparently, this somehow serves the interests of "elites." He also said that negotiations with the Taliban are wrong because the only thing we should ever do to our enemies is "kill them." A minute later the crowd booed Ron Paul for upholding the Golden Rule.
Romney, meanwhile, was practicing not answering questions, especially about his taxes, while saying that Obama has no plan to put Americans back to work -- other than the three or four he has presented to Congress, I suppose -- and that he has done nothing to open foreign markets to American goods -- which ignores both the three free trade pacts Obama has, in fact, signed, and also the anti-China rhetoric Romney had been throwing around 5 minutes before to excuse closing steel mills while he was running Bain Capital.
As Andrew Sullivan points out, the most interesting thing about the Republican debates is that George W. Bush never gets mentioned. Most of the candidates are offering nothing but warmed over Bush policies -- more foreign wars, more tax cuts -- but they don't even bother to ask how well those policies worked last time.
Republicans have a choice between the vulture-capitalist multi-millionaire who can't keep his own positions straight from day to day and lies whenever it suits his convenience (Romney), and a fabulous field of:
Romney, meanwhile, was practicing not answering questions, especially about his taxes, while saying that Obama has no plan to put Americans back to work -- other than the three or four he has presented to Congress, I suppose -- and that he has done nothing to open foreign markets to American goods -- which ignores both the three free trade pacts Obama has, in fact, signed, and also the anti-China rhetoric Romney had been throwing around 5 minutes before to excuse closing steel mills while he was running Bain Capital.
As Andrew Sullivan points out, the most interesting thing about the Republican debates is that George W. Bush never gets mentioned. Most of the candidates are offering nothing but warmed over Bush policies -- more foreign wars, more tax cuts -- but they don't even bother to ask how well those policies worked last time.
Republicans have a choice between the vulture-capitalist multi-millionaire who can't keep his own positions straight from day to day and lies whenever it suits his convenience (Romney), and a fabulous field of:
- a belligerent idiot (Rick Perry)
- a fundamentalist fanatic who opposes birth control and has already declared war on Iran (Santorum)
- a libertarian crankpot who wants to set our economy back to the 1920s (Ron Paul)
- a deeply corrupt megalomaniac who sees himself as the sole worthy defender of western civilization (Gingrich)
Monday, January 16, 2012
That's Very Twilight Sparkle of You
And you might be even more taken aback to learn that many, if not most, of those adult My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fans are men and that they've even coined a name for themselves: "Bronies." At least, I was taken aback. In fact, my curiosity was sufficiently piqued that I contacted Purple Tinker, the person in charge of organizing the bronies’ seasonal convention in New York City. Purple Tinker was friendly and helpful, saying that he had read about my work in the skeptic/rationalist communities, and commended me as only a brony could: “Bravo – that’s very Twilight Sparkle of you!”Sometimes it's hard to know what to make of the world.
Update: My 19-year-old son reports that he finds the show "pretty funny" and that two of his friends are big fans.
The Smallest Vertebrate
Tired of Political Nonsense
Albert Camus:
Every time I hear a political speech or I read those of our leaders, I am horrified at having, for years, heard nothing which sounded human. It is always the same words telling the same lies. And the fact that men accept this, that the people's anger has not destroyed these hollow clowns, strikes me as proof that men attribute no importance to the way they are governed; that they gamble--yes, gamble--with a whole part of their life and their so-called 'vital interests'.Things that make me crazy about our political discourse:
- our refusal to admit that some things (e.g., healthcare) are done better in other countries;
- the constant flattering of 'the American people' and the impossibility of calling the voters shallow, self-centered, and lazy;
- the pseudo-toughness of acting like children being blown apart by bombs is no big deal;
- the Republican insistence that lower taxes and less regulation would solve every economic problem,and the Democratic cowardice in not really standing up for why high taxes are a good thing;
- the notion that 'the market' is something natural, not something we have constructed for our own ends;
- the refusal to acknowledge that our big problems are complex and very hard to solve;
- the refusal to admit ignorance;
- ending every speech with 'God bless America.'
Death to Academic Journals, or, 150 Million Readers Turned Away
JSTOR made an announcement this week that made me want to tear my hair out. JSTOR is an online database of journal articles that you can only access with a subscription, something only academic libraries have. So unless you work for a university, or have a good friend who does, the thing is useless to you.
You can reach the title and abstract of JSTOR articles via an online search, and they regularly come up when I search for things. But you can't read them. So you are left gnawing your knuckles in frustration, wondering if the information you want is just a paywall away, trying to think of some professor friend who owes you a favor. According to JSTOR themselves, they turn away 150 million requests for journal articles every year.
What, exactly, is the purpose of academic publishing? Isn't it to get research out to the world? And yet JSTOR turns away 150 million knowledge seekers every year. What good is being done by turning away those poor slobs, who have the misfortune of not being professors? And don't try to tell me that people have to pay so creators can be rewarded for their efforts, because the professors who write the articles on JSTOR don't get paid a cent. The money all goes to the publishers of the journals.
The announcement JSTOR made is that they will start offering limited outside access to their journals:
Somebody is probably thinking, but who will supervise the content of these web sites? False information will be published that will lead people astray! Without peer review, the quality of academic work will collapse! And how will tenure committees know which assistant professors have enough game to be worth keeping on? To which I answer: academic journals are already full of crap, peer review is mainly a system of forced conformity that has nothing to do with quality, and the number of articles in "top" journals is a bogus measure of scholarship anyway.
The purpose of scholarship is to learn things and share them with others. Once upon a time, academic journals were the best way to do that. Now we have a vastly better way, the Internet. I suggest we use it.
You can reach the title and abstract of JSTOR articles via an online search, and they regularly come up when I search for things. But you can't read them. So you are left gnawing your knuckles in frustration, wondering if the information you want is just a paywall away, trying to think of some professor friend who owes you a favor. According to JSTOR themselves, they turn away 150 million requests for journal articles every year.
What, exactly, is the purpose of academic publishing? Isn't it to get research out to the world? And yet JSTOR turns away 150 million knowledge seekers every year. What good is being done by turning away those poor slobs, who have the misfortune of not being professors? And don't try to tell me that people have to pay so creators can be rewarded for their efforts, because the professors who write the articles on JSTOR don't get paid a cent. The money all goes to the publishers of the journals.
The announcement JSTOR made is that they will start offering limited outside access to their journals:
In the coming weeks, JSTOR will make available the beta version of a new program, Register & Read, which will give researchers read-only access to some journal articles, no payment required. All users have to do is to sign up for a free “MyJSTOR” account, which will create a virtual shelf on which to store the desired articles.Better than nothing, I guess, but not much. I say it's time to abolish academic journals altogether. We should just set up web sites where people can post their work and let readers judge them, offer editorial suggestions, etc. Or, if some philanthropist wants to endow a journal in a particular field, it could have an editor to supervise the content. But there would be no paper journals piling up by the felled forest in library basements, and the information would be free for all.
But there are limits. Users won’t be able to download the articles; they will be able to access only three at a time, and there will be a minimum viewing time frame of 14 days per article, which means that a user can’t consume lots of content in a short period. Depending on the journal and the publisher, users may have an option to pay for and download an article if they choose.
To start, the program will feature articles from 70 journals.
Somebody is probably thinking, but who will supervise the content of these web sites? False information will be published that will lead people astray! Without peer review, the quality of academic work will collapse! And how will tenure committees know which assistant professors have enough game to be worth keeping on? To which I answer: academic journals are already full of crap, peer review is mainly a system of forced conformity that has nothing to do with quality, and the number of articles in "top" journals is a bogus measure of scholarship anyway.
The purpose of scholarship is to learn things and share them with others. Once upon a time, academic journals were the best way to do that. Now we have a vastly better way, the Internet. I suggest we use it.
Bird Flight in Super Slow Motion
From Wired Science:
a Dutch program called Vilegkunstenaars, or Flight Artists, sent high-speed video tools to amateurs around the world. The challenge: Capture nature in flight.
Over the course of a year, the contest drew 460 amateurs who uploaded more than 2,400 slow-motion video clips shot with their complimentary cameras. A jury of scientists, philosophers and video experts then picked their favorites, which can be seen on these pages. The rest can be watched on Flight Artists.
The Hallaton Helmet
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Restored CSS Hunley Unveiled
Ken Hamilton's Portraits
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Continuity in Mexican Culture
And some contemporary Mexican folk animals:
Including monstrous animals (the Jaguar is eating a human heart):
The Matchstick Monastery
Friday, January 13, 2012
Iapetus
Today's Artistic Gimmick: Kitchen Tool Sculpture
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