see the very conservative Volokh commendariat show that he’s full of it.
The commentariat at Volokh runs the ideological gamut -- note in that very thread the surprise that certain commenters show in their agreement.
Also, what they agreed on (assuming that you're talking about the first dozen comments or so) is just that Obama isn't legally required to submit a budget, but that's not what McConnell was arguing (judging by the excerpt -- full article is behind a subscription wall). He was just saying that the absence of a formal budget proposal goes against the spirit of the Budget Act and contributes to the fog around the current debate.
This dovetails rather well with Patrick's recent "Emergency!" post -- the normal rules don't apply, because [fill in the blank]. Is there any work of fiction out there where a crisis is solved thanks to the people in authority dutifully following protocol?
By contrast, the government is a model of efficiency.
This is overstating the case. I'm in software as well, in a small company that helps big bureaucratic companies work with a big government bureaucracy, and both sides are pretty screwed up -- bureaucracies are bureaucracies.
My wife actually led a freer, more dangerous youth than I did and survived it quite well, but that didn't stop her from being over-the-top (IMO) protective of our kids. Seems like it's driven more by culture (or gender-subculture) than personal experience.
I was getting ready to post a comment much along these lines. One of the commenters to the Atlantic article pointed out that there really wasn't anything in the way of actual evidence to support the assertions being made -- just anecdote from professionals, which gave it a veneer of authority.
However, that's not going to stop me from forwarding the link to all the folks I know (mostly fathers) who've been complaining about the current culture of overprotectiveness (especially as embraced by the wives or ex-wives of those fathers).
This venom towards Tom seems unnecessary -- I posted a link to some research that suggested no ill effects overall in a particular instance, and he countered with a link to some research that suggested some ill effects for certain populations over a longer period of time. They're not mutually exclusive, and I don't see where Tom is suggesting what you're attributing to him.
If you haven't already, take a look at this post by Adam Ozimek, guesting for McArdle -- a natural experiment in mass immigration showed no effect on jobs or wages.
the push to get rid of old fashioned light bulbs and move to more efficient bulbs has led to the usual “GAHHH SOCILISM DICTATORSHIP” cries.
No doubt there are those, but there are also more soberresponses. The latter (Postrel's) is especially interesting -- the incandescent ban was a bipartisan move that looks more like corporate favoritism than conservation.
I don't understand why she digs in -- seems like she'd do better to take a just-plain-folks, "sure I'm no professor but I know what's really important" approach to her floundering, rather than insisting that her flubs aren't really flubs.
Or maybe she does this on purpose just to intensify the reaction. I liked this graf from Ron Replogle:
I’ve argued that we listen to Sarah Palin not because we're all that interested in what she has to say, but because she raises her voice. Her every publicly uttered word challenges the prevailing system of cultural accreditation that's supposed to determine who is worth listening to. Palin's chutzpah gives duly accredited people (and not just liberals) a welcome opportunity to condescend to unaccredited people, and unaccredited people a welcome opportunity to demonstrate that they don't like being condescended to.
In defense of (most of) the citizenry, it's worth pointing out that you need only a relatively small number of "P and not P" types to produce these results -- you could have, e.g., 40% coherently for cuts, 40% coherently for no cuts, and 20% for both.
Well I guess I should clarify my (reactive) comment, because it was not intended in the way that Jaybird took it. It was supposed to be in response to ThatPirateGuy at 3:29, which I took as saying that this issue was Very Important, too important to worry about having a polite conversation (I'm not sure now that that's exactly what s/he meant by it, but so it goes). So my comment was just to suggest that however important the issue itself might be, the benefit to the world from one random commenter's words on a low-traffic blog is likely to be much less than the cost of driving down the level of discourse for the other participants at said blog.
But I probably overreacted to the comment, possibly due to the pent-up annoyance at the recent Balloon Juice invasion.
The delicious irony is that "Friedersdork" has already been adopted by Mark Levin and his crew to fight back bravely against Conor's criticisms. They've even created a faux Conor Friedersdork facebook page.
At all costs, I avoid saying, “This is what it is” in favor of, “This is what it looks like.”
There's a story told about Oliver Wendell Holmes where he and a friend are on a train travelling through pastureland. The friend looks out the window and, by way of making a bit of conversation, says "Those sheep have been recently shorn." Holmes replies "It appears so -- at least on the side facing us."
So the New Testament reading at church this morning included Jesus' call to Simon and Andrew in Matthew 4:19 -- "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." I thought of this blog and its new euphemism, and I had a hard time keeping myself from laughing in the pew.
I’ve heard of universities having their retiring professors copy all of their lecture notes so that grad student instructors can try to replicate their lectures.
Some 25 years ago (gawd! that long??) I majored in Comp Sci at a university in Silicon Valley. Most of my courses for the major were in a room with A/V equipment, because the university sold the tapes to area tech companies. Which was all fine and dandy until the time when I came to the first day of class for a Winter quarter course and was greeted with the sight of a grad student sitting next to a TV -- for our class, we got to watch the tapes of the professor teaching the class in Fall quarter. The grad student helpfully pointed out that if anyone had any questions, he could stop the tape and answer them.
Of course, the bright side was that all the tapes were also housed in the Math library and could be viewed in quick succession the week before the exam, freeing up loads of time for non-academic pursuits.
I'd say he's mature enough to realize that there's no point in putting out the effort to have a serious conversation with someone whose mind is already made up.
What a stupid game this is. First of all, Douthat never argues for exact equivalence -- he just points to a set of poll results that show attitudes flipping, adds a few examples that you've conspicuously ignored, and talks about the effects of partisanship in coloring political opinions.
Second, for partisans there's never any such thing as equivalence anyway -- whatever examples one might come up with are always dismissed because they're inevitably distinguishable *somehow*. The given person is less prominent, less politically connected, drawing from the wrong set of people, or isn't nearly as bad as the other first guy. It's always Calvinball, always about as productive as arguing about who would win in a fight between Spiderman and Batman.
Yeah, Fallows is definitely stacking the deck here -- he's arguing against a straw Douthat that supposedly claimed total 180-degree turns from 100% of liberals, rather than the actual Douthat who spoke of many/most rather than all (and specifically identified one of the same exceptions that Fallows offers to counter him, i.e. Greenwald) and who discussed what the partisan can "live with" under the appropriate administration.
>people put a lot of work towards becoming excellent at Guitar Hero, and ... a similar amount of work would make them decent at real guitar.<
If by "decent" you mean anything more than stringing together some basic first-position chords with some facility, then I think you're wildly overstating the amount of work that GH/RB require to attain excellence (at least, given a little rhythmic aptitude).
More broadly, I think the basic problem you're identifying is just the temptation to substitute an easier, shorter-time-horizon goal for a harder, more long-term goal, and it doesn't really matter whether the particular choice of the former superficially resembles the latter. I'm skeptical that there's any significant number of people who would have learned to play the real guitar had they just not gotten GH or Rock Band -- more likely, the time not spent playing those games would be replaced by time spent mastering some other video game.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Mitch McConnell’s minor masterpiece”
The commentariat at Volokh runs the ideological gamut -- note in that very thread the surprise that certain commenters show in their agreement.
Also, what they agreed on (assuming that you're talking about the first dozen comments or so) is just that Obama isn't legally required to submit a budget, but that's not what McConnell was arguing (judging by the excerpt -- full article is behind a subscription wall). He was just saying that the absence of a formal budget proposal goes against the spirit of the Budget Act and contributes to the fog around the current debate.
On “Harry Potter and the Ministry of Magic”
This dovetails rather well with Patrick's recent "Emergency!" post -- the normal rules don't apply, because [fill in the blank]. Is there any work of fiction out there where a crisis is solved thanks to the people in authority dutifully following protocol?
On “Searching For Truth Versus Debating”
I think the problem is not the persuasion itself, but the adolescent arrogance and self-righteousness that motivates the attempt.
On “Libertarianism and Privilege”
This is overstating the case. I'm in software as well, in a small company that helps big bureaucratic companies work with a big government bureaucracy, and both sides are pretty screwed up -- bureaucracies are bureaucracies.
On “Because you said so”
I think Mark T should've left the replies to Evil Mark alone -- judging by yours, they would've had a cool "Garfield minus Garfield" vibe.
"
Reminds me of the classic:
"Sorry, but I'm not going to apologize anymore!"
"
My wife actually led a freer, more dangerous youth than I did and survived it quite well, but that didn't stop her from being over-the-top (IMO) protective of our kids. Seems like it's driven more by culture (or gender-subculture) than personal experience.
"
I was getting ready to post a comment much along these lines. One of the commenters to the Atlantic article pointed out that there really wasn't anything in the way of actual evidence to support the assertions being made -- just anecdote from professionals, which gave it a veneer of authority.
However, that's not going to stop me from forwarding the link to all the folks I know (mostly fathers) who've been complaining about the current culture of overprotectiveness (especially as embraced by the wives or ex-wives of those fathers).
On “Immigration, Inequality and Pie”
This venom towards Tom seems unnecessary -- I posted a link to some research that suggested no ill effects overall in a particular instance, and he countered with a link to some research that suggested some ill effects for certain populations over a longer period of time. They're not mutually exclusive, and I don't see where Tom is suggesting what you're attributing to him.
"
If you haven't already, take a look at this post by Adam Ozimek, guesting for McArdle -- a natural experiment in mass immigration showed no effect on jobs or wages.
On “Classical Liberalism in America”
I try to give labels to ideas even when, perhaps, they are inadequate.
When which are inadequate -- the labels or the ideas? I think "inadequate" is a pretty good label for a lot of ideas. :)
On “No Such Thing As A Free Lunch”
the push to get rid of old fashioned light bulbs and move to more efficient bulbs has led to the usual “GAHHH SOCILISM DICTATORSHIP” cries.
No doubt there are those, but there are also more sober responses. The latter (Postrel's) is especially interesting -- the incandescent ban was a bipartisan move that looks more like corporate favoritism than conservation.
On “What the hell is going on?”
I don't understand why she digs in -- seems like she'd do better to take a just-plain-folks, "sure I'm no professor but I know what's really important" approach to her floundering, rather than insisting that her flubs aren't really flubs.
Or maybe she does this on purpose just to intensify the reaction. I liked this graf from Ron Replogle:
I’ve argued that we listen to Sarah Palin not because we're all that interested in what she has to say, but because she raises her voice. Her every publicly uttered word challenges the prevailing system of cultural accreditation that's supposed to determine who is worth listening to. Palin's chutzpah gives duly accredited people (and not just liberals) a welcome opportunity to condescend to unaccredited people, and unaccredited people a welcome opportunity to demonstrate that they don't like being condescended to.
On “Incoherent Democracy, Again”
In defense of (most of) the citizenry, it's worth pointing out that you need only a relatively small number of "P and not P" types to produce these results -- you could have, e.g., 40% coherently for cuts, 40% coherently for no cuts, and 20% for both.
On “Is South Dakota About to Legalize Pro-Life Terrorism?”
Well I guess I should clarify my (reactive) comment, because it was not intended in the way that Jaybird took it. It was supposed to be in response to ThatPirateGuy at 3:29, which I took as saying that this issue was Very Important, too important to worry about having a polite conversation (I'm not sure now that that's exactly what s/he meant by it, but so it goes). So my comment was just to suggest that however important the issue itself might be, the benefit to the world from one random commenter's words on a low-traffic blog is likely to be much less than the cost of driving down the level of discourse for the other participants at said blog.
But I probably overreacted to the comment, possibly due to the pent-up annoyance at the recent Balloon Juice invasion.
"
By posting comments on obscure blogs?
On “Pigford: A Tragedy and a Non-Troversy”
The delicious irony is that "Friedersdork" has already been adopted by Mark Levin and his crew to fight back bravely against Conor's criticisms. They've even created a faux Conor Friedersdork facebook page.
On “Science, Non-Scientists, and the Mind-Killer”
At all costs, I avoid saying, “This is what it is” in favor of, “This is what it looks like.”
There's a story told about Oliver Wendell Holmes where he and a friend are on a train travelling through pastureland. The friend looks out the window and, by way of making a bit of conversation, says "Those sheep have been recently shorn." Holmes replies "It appears so -- at least on the side facing us."
On “Lucretius, “Of Natural Things”- also Atoms & Atheists”
So the New Testament reading at church this morning included Jesus' call to Simon and Andrew in Matthew 4:19 -- "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." I thought of this blog and its new euphemism, and I had a hard time keeping myself from laughing in the pew.
On “Please Give to Your Alumni Organization!”
I’ve heard of universities having their retiring professors copy all of their lecture notes so that grad student instructors can try to replicate their lectures.
Some 25 years ago (gawd! that long??) I majored in Comp Sci at a university in Silicon Valley. Most of my courses for the major were in a room with A/V equipment, because the university sold the tapes to area tech companies. Which was all fine and dandy until the time when I came to the first day of class for a Winter quarter course and was greeted with the sight of a grad student sitting next to a TV -- for our class, we got to watch the tapes of the professor teaching the class in Fall quarter. The grad student helpfully pointed out that if anyone had any questions, he could stop the tape and answer them.
Of course, the bright side was that all the tapes were also housed in the Math library and could be viewed in quick succession the week before the exam, freeing up loads of time for non-academic pursuits.
On “Think Tank Wars”
I'd say he's mature enough to realize that there's no point in putting out the effort to have a serious conversation with someone whose mind is already made up.
On “Santa Claus’s Nested Traveling Salesman Problem”
Hmm, I don't see the nesting - there's no requirement within a city that he return to his starting point.
On “Fallows on Douthat”
What a stupid game this is. First of all, Douthat never argues for exact equivalence -- he just points to a set of poll results that show attitudes flipping, adds a few examples that you've conspicuously ignored, and talks about the effects of partisanship in coloring political opinions.
Second, for partisans there's never any such thing as equivalence anyway -- whatever examples one might come up with are always dismissed because they're inevitably distinguishable *somehow*. The given person is less prominent, less politically connected, drawing from the wrong set of people, or isn't nearly as bad as the other first guy. It's always Calvinball, always about as productive as arguing about who would win in a fight between Spiderman and Batman.
"
Yeah, Fallows is definitely stacking the deck here -- he's arguing against a straw Douthat that supposedly claimed total 180-degree turns from 100% of liberals, rather than the actual Douthat who spoke of many/most rather than all (and specifically identified one of the same exceptions that Fallows offers to counter him, i.e. Greenwald) and who discussed what the partisan can "live with" under the appropriate administration.
On “Notes on video games as culture.”
>people put a lot of work towards becoming excellent at Guitar Hero, and ... a similar amount of work would make them decent at real guitar.<
If by "decent" you mean anything more than stringing together some basic first-position chords with some facility, then I think you're wildly overstating the amount of work that GH/RB require to attain excellence (at least, given a little rhythmic aptitude).
More broadly, I think the basic problem you're identifying is just the temptation to substitute an easier, shorter-time-horizon goal for a harder, more long-term goal, and it doesn't really matter whether the particular choice of the former superficially resembles the latter. I'm skeptical that there's any significant number of people who would have learned to play the real guitar had they just not gotten GH or Rock Band -- more likely, the time not spent playing those games would be replaced by time spent mastering some other video game.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.