LINK: Always nice to see a couple of Duke international relations professors land on, I am told, the front page of the Washington Post, though only in quotation form.

It's not particularly interesting to me, of course, because I took three classes from Gelpi last year, so I've gotten this argument many times, and seen at least two different versions of the working paper on this topic. Gelpi and I, of course, differ on our policy prescriptions for Iraq (at least somewhat); nevertheless, at least where he speaks of empirical results, I think he's standing on pretty firm ground.

KELO QUESTION: Does the Supreme Court's recent decision mean that the city of Durham could decide to buy part of the campus? For example, could they say, "yeah, we know you have that chapel thing y'all seem to be fond of, but we think that another BP would be a better use of that land?"

LINK: someone's channeling Rousseau, to pretty much the usual charming effect.

NOT YET, BUT GIVE US A FEW MORE YEARS: Harry's Place:

"The neo-cons have not taken over The Republican Party..."

Also:

"They share common ground with neo-conservatives on a good number of issues, particularly in foreign policy in the Middle East. Is there an ideological basis to this common ground? That's a big question worthy of a longer post sometime but I would venture that a shared commitment to liberal values does exist."

Funnily enough, I'm writing a paper at the moment which is sort of about that.

LINK: I don't mean to sound like a raging libertarian here, but is there any real argument for the Kelo ruling. I mean, even if you think it's right on the law (which seems terribly dubious to me), isn't this one of those instances where there's a clear potential for abuse and a need to be a little overly protective of individual rights? Sigh.

ALL-TIME DESERT ISLAND TOP FIVE: It's been a long time since I've done one of these, so...

ATDIT5: Songs that remind me of summer:

1. "1979" -Smashing Pumpkins (Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness); pretty much the soundtrack to driving around Midland with my friends in August before my junior year of high school, where high school memories should probably peak, anyway. It's got a remarkably light touch for being a Billy Corgan song, and it's pretty much devoid of his usual angst and earnestness, which always helps;

2. "A Summer Wasting" -Belle and Sebastian (Boy With the Arab Strap); what's more appropriate than "seven weeks of river walkways?"

3. "Green Arrow" -Yo La Tengo (I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One...); I lived out my own personal version of the old Volkswagen commercial (with "Pink Moon") using this song... and actually this entire album.

4. "Roam" -The B-52's (Cosmic Thing); summer is the time to really let your guilty pleasures out, you know.

5. "One Way Street" -Euroboys (no idea what the album is); irony and meta-irony; I first heard this song (by an American band called the Euroboys) last summer on German music television (viva, which was once described to me as "music for 14-year olds," though I think the person who said it meant it pejoritively) while hiding in my hotel in Dijon from French people. In any event, one of the guys in the band wears a Buffalo Springfield shirt in the video, which I think is probably a referencing so deadly uncool it circles around and becomes hip again.

LINK: Normally I try to avoid saying things which are more or less critical of Brendan (he being a fellow grad student and all), but this is, as Oz from Buffy would say, "a radical interpretation of the text":

"Fred Becker of Wonkette notes George W. Bush lording his office over Samuel W. Bodman, his PhD-holding Secretary of Energy, yesterday:


THE PRESIDENT: I appreciate the Secretary of Energy joining me today. He's a good man, he knows a lot about the subject, you'll be pleased to hear. I was teasing him -- he taught at MIT, and -- do you have a PhD?

SECRETARY BODMAN: Yes.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, a PhD. (Laughter.) Now I want you to pay careful attention to this -- he's the PhD, and I'm the C student, but notice who is the advisor and who is the President.


You think someone's a little insecure?"

Actually, I think someone's probably just trying to say something he thinks is funny (I am told this is sometimes referred to as a 'joke'*). I grant it may not actually be that funny (few politicians' jokes are, unless they're Bob Dole, who's hilarious), but the overall rhetorical device may actually have been to try and humanize the expert a little bit--not make him just a guy who's pronouncing from on high about policy matters (or whatever), but someone who's also a regular kind of person.

In any event, trying to read psychological motives into someone's statements has always struck me as a dubious move to make, whether they infer it from speakers on the left (inter alia, I don't think that Dick Durbin's comments on Gitmo were intended to be as radically corrosive as some on the right try to make them out to be--I think he spoke a little inaptly and so deserves some flak--but that hardly makes him an enemy of America) or from the right.

*I am aided somewhat in this supposition by the fact that the word '(laughter)' tends to appear in the transcript after each one of these statements.

WELL; I'm purposely sidestepping the arguments involved in Dan Drezner's and Henry Farrell's on the Downing Street Memo to ask a hypothetical question which I think arises nevertheless from their arguments:

Suppose it were the case that the real motivation behind going to war with Iraq was based (in whatever way pleases you or you can think most probable) out of humanitarian impulses: is there any historical precedent for a state intervening in another state a. for solely humanitarian reasons b. without any objection from the rest of the world (that is, without some other significant country in the world thinking such an action violated international law)? And if the answer to the previous question is 'no,' is it morally acceptable to invent 'fake but plausible' reasons which would lie within the purview of international law (and thus allow an intervention to go forward and acheive the humanitarian result)?

I ask these questions to ask them, not as a rhetorical club with which to beat those who disagree with me: if one believes that there are some cases where other countries are obligated to act, how do they get around the traditional reluctance of other states to recognize humanitarian casues?

THE PASSIVE VOICE AND HUMANITARIAN CRISES:

So, what I was attempting to say:

There seem to be two general impulses in dealing with humanitarian crises, both of which are wrong, but both of which seem to point to important facts not to forget:

1. To say that a humanitarian crisis is just the responsibility of the country in which it takes place. The attractive aspect of this argument is that it can (though perhaps does not always) recognize that a humanitarian crisis (in the way I'm choosing to define it, as a purely one-state matter) is enodgenous in its history, which is to say that the cause of the crisis arises out of the conditions of that country itself, and not from without (not that I don't think humanitarian crises can be caused in this way, but I think it's much less problematic (philosophically) to call for action when a situation is international in character), and, of course, that this first fact implies that the ultimate solution to the problem will have to be found within the country itself, as well--see the Head Heeb post I link to below for some cases of this, or think of the national reckonings of Argentina, South Africa and Germany with their pasts.

It also implies, I think, that the notion of such a thing as a bystander is wrong--no one in a country with a humanitarian crisis is able to take a neutral position. I meant to gesture to the following bit of Sartre:

"Thus there are no accidents in a life; a community event which suddenly bursts forth and involves me in it does not come from the outside. If I am mobilized in a war, this war is my war; it is my image and I deserve it... for lack of getting out of it [by desertion or suicide], I have chosen it. This can be due to inertia, to cowardice in the face of public opinion, or because I prefer certain other values to the value of refusing to join the war... Any way you look at it, it is a matter of a choice. This choice will be repeated again and again without a break until the end of the war."

and again:

"I am responsible for everything, in fact, except for my very responsibility, for I am not the foundation of my being. Therefore everything takes place as if I were compelled to be responsible." (both from the end of Part Four, Chapter Two, III)

I don't mean to quote him to fully endorse his views (it's not clear to me, for example, that he would be able to properly distinguish between those acting and those acted upon, and that makes a pretty big difference), but merely to suggest that he's right to allude to the fact that even the decisions to not make decisions are themselves decisions. I think this weakens a lot of analysis, because there's a tendency to look at people in countries (other than the victims) as perhaps less than fully possessed of the autonomy to make distinctions between right and wrong. I don't know that they should be let off the hook that easily (I also think there's a tendency to look at people as passive agents to be acted upon, but more on that in the next section).(jpe is also certainly correct that Sartre would not recognize the boundaries of nations as having any particular significance, I hope I didn't give off the impression that I thought JPS would endorse my argument)

Ultimately, though, I think the just-in-a-nation view has to fall apart when it comes to humanitarian crises because the Christian, the liberal, the Marxist, etc all recognize duties or responsibilities to others qua humans, and this sort of analysis can make no room for that.

2. Of course, the international analysis can and does make room for this--it's principle strength is that it recognizes that the rest of the world not doing anything bears a resemblance of kind with people within a country not doing anything, and recognizing that values which are taken to be 1. true 2. transcendant 3. universal require application. I think it generally fails because it posits humanity in a non-complicated way, and assumes that ties of country, language, culture etc are just transitory things that individuals will be happy to do away with--but there's not a lot of reason to think that's true (Head Heeb points out that establishing strong external sovereignty is something post-humanitarian crisis governments tend to want to do, and the internationalist has a hard time explaining that without recourse to some factor of state-identification).

I think it also fails because it tends to look at peoples involved in humanitarian crises as things to be acted upon, and this consequently tends to rob individuals within a country--those doing good and those doing evil--of their agency, and, thus, their responsibility for what exactly is happening in their country.

(I also have a lot of sympathy for the approach taken by Bill Wallo:

"On a geopolitical level, I would say the same is true. I would say that there is an ethical obligation to deal with human rights abuses. But I would say it is indeed “first” the duty of those closest to the problem (namely, those within a nation - we cannot simply ignore national boundaries and issues of sovereignty, even if we would like to do so). As awareness of abuses radiates out from the epicenter and outsiders learn of both the problem and the inability of those “closer” to it to resolve it, they then have to deal with their ethical obligations. It is not a question of suggesting that the outsider’s ethical obligation is somehow less than that of the local; it is instead to establish an appropriate hierarchy of response.")

So when L'Espirit D'Escalier says the following:

"So Nick is correct that the other-citizen is bound by the transcendental conditions of freedom; but his/her responsibility to him/herself in no way mitigates our ethical responsibility, our freedom to help. This is noted by Nick, but the placement of that "first" seems to cut against the plain meaning of this admission.

Politically or pragmatically speaking, this "help 'em iff [if and only if] they can't help themselves" may be correct, and is one I endorse, but if it's being used to transform Sartre's ontological notion of freedom into a political philosophy of rugged individualism, then I don't think it's tenable."

I think that jpe says this because I was being insufficiently clear that I was arguing against the 2nd, internationalist view (Norm's post seemed to be unproblematically asserting humanity and the duty of intervention), thus the "first": we have to be prepared to look and see what's endogenous and be willing to assign praise and blame, and we have to remember when and if we do intervene in foreign countries that we're not going to be able to solve all their problems for them. I'm not entirely willing to adopt the iff statement (yet; haven't spent as much time with the cases as I'd like), because I'm not 100% sure that's the right application of our duty in the event of a humanitarian crisis.

LINK: The Head Heeb has an excellent comparative case-study of post-genocidal states, which I'm basically bookmarking for myself to read more thoroughly later today... but you should read it too.

QUOTE: Somewhere, Joel is smiling:

"Feminae ad ludos semper ueniunt ut uideant--et ut ipsae uideantur" -Ovid

WELL: I'm still, you know, frustrated with my task for the afternoon of translating Cicero, but I did notice that my post on responsibility and conflict within a country prompted a couple of very good responses at L'Espirit D'Escalier and at Wallo World, and I do intend to address both of them a bit later today (assuming I do not crash from overconsumption of caffeine, which is, I admit, a real possibility), both on my particular reading of Sartre (more of a gesture than a reading, and I think jpe is probably largely right on the merits of what good ol' Jean-Paul would've argued (though as my Methods and History of Political Theory professor would tell you, I'm completely uninterested in the historical situation of the figures I'm interested in: I just deal with 'my' Sartre and 'my' Locke, etc)) and in general on the issues of moral responsibility and action involved.

WELL: Okay, so I'ma bit of a hypocrite: I think it's not particularly funny when people throw pies at Bill Kristol, but I think this is hilarious.

SUMMER MUSIC EXTRAVAGANZA:

Stylus' Summer Jamz 2005, highly recommended, of course.

This summer seems to lack a cohesive musical theme, unlike last year's highly successful Northern Soul/Motown-themed season. Which is not to say that my iPod doesn't get lots of use on the long trips between my parking space and my Latin class. Recent movers and shakers:

"Summertime" -DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince (it's not summer without it)
"Wake Up" -Arcade Fire (I know, I'm like 10 months behind the hipster curve on this one... I was just waiting until they ceased being cool to actually like them)
"Bells" -Electralane (you can actually get a lot out of playing the same chord over and over again, apparently)
"Since You Caught My Eye" -Banner Barbados

"Step On v. Crazy In Love" -Happy Mondays/Beyonce
"Yeah Toxic" -Britney/Usher (because a really good mashup is always worth listening to)

"Let's Go Javelin!/Ezekiel Bread" -Half-Handed Cloud (because sometimes you wake up in the morning and think, "I need a hipster retelling of some of the Old Testament")

LINK: I have a little hesitancy in fully embracing Norm's position here:

"Sixty years after the Nuremberg Trials, the world still has to turn this thought [that human rights abuses aren't solely internal affairs] into an effective reality, one that isn't constantly put in second place to the principle of national sovereignty, or lost in the creaking and flawed machinery of the United Nations and the joke that is its Commission on Human Rights (currently including China, Sudan and Zimbabwe, those contemporary beacons of freedom), and disregarded by 'realists' of every stripe."

I dissent just a little bit because I think the word 'solely' may be key: if one's looking for a third way between letting countries 'solve their own problems' and positing that if we have some sort of international istitution that's supposed to make sure there are no problems, then there are no problems, I think it might have to be this: a human rights problem is first a problem for that particular country. Arbitrary though it's boundaries might be, unchosen by the people in it; rife with tension amongst differing religious, linguistic, and cultural groups; defective and illegitimate though the governmental structure might be: it's still first the problem of the people in the country. They are, in a Sartrean sense, condemned to be free; to resist or accept their country's internal situation, and they must choose one or the other (this is why, in common sense, we blame them most if they are complicit and priase them most if they resist). And any solution to the ills of a country will ultimately have to be embraced and lived by the people in that country qua citizens of that country--it can't be done from outside. But of course--of course--we cannot sit idly by as outside observers; we owe a duty of support, of whatever kind is most appropriate to us and the situation, and we come in for moral praise or blame in accordance with that.

LINK: Harry at Harry's Place puts something like a smackdown on his fellow-blogger's attempt to be glib about what one Anglican Archbishop said about the internet and new media. But reading the relevant bit of his comments whole, he sounds much more like Jeff Jarvis than some sort of crazy religious quack. But I think the real lesson here is not to trust anything one reads in the London Times.

LIBERALISM AS REALISM: Henry Farrell has an excellent post on Andy Moravcsik's bizarre position on European integration: I read the article of Moravcsik's Farrell links to, and if I didn't know better, I'd think he'd been drinking the neorealist kool-aid (with a slight internationalist twist): he seems to be saying that the EU is good because it broadly protects national interests, and that there's no reason to bring in the opinions of the people on some of the more complicated topics involved because, well:

"Enthusiasts for deliberative democracy fail to appreciate that institutional reform can never generate an engaged public, because the average citizen responds only to highly salient ideals and issues. European ideals remain weak, while the bread-and-butter issues citizens care about most remain largely national. Forcing democratic debate about an institution that handles telecommunications standardisation, the composition of the Bosnia stabilisation force or the privatisation of electricity production produces the lowest common denominator of modern European politics: dissatisfaction with political elites, anger against foreigners and the symbolic dichotomy between Eurofederalists and Eurosceptics."

I'm just a little shocked to read that, because even I think that any such changes as may happen to Europe (I tend to look at it, in the main, as more of a national unification project than an international one) really do need to go through the people--or at least happen in ways that are clear to people--because it's not clear to me that it's the ignorance of the general public that makes them skeptical of advancements or changes to the system. The causal chain needs to go at least one step further back: it might well be that the lack of transparency in the system removes the opportunity for people to feel at all involved which leads to both the general disenchanment with further change and the reification of arguments divorced from reality (I'm borrowing heavily here from Tocqueville in the Ancien Regime, where he argues that it's the removal of political power from the French people that leads to their general discontent with politics, and not the other way around).

Farrell does make a point I'm not entirely willing to follow him on:

"Indeed, you could turn Moravcsik’s argument on its head – a fair amount of the animus that led to the “No” votes was less specifically directed at the constitutional text, or even at the EU, than at the general feeling that economic decision making is slipping away from democratic control, and that the EU is one manifestation of this. Indeed, I suspect (and hope) that the ‘No’ votes are the beginning of a wider challenge to the notion that vast areas of economic decision making should not be subject to political control."

I think there's a simpler explanation than this, which is to say that it's not the loss of control in economic decision-making that's troublesome, it's the loss of decision-making in general. One of the things that seems entirely baffling to me is that there are states in the EU which didn't turn over the decision on the constitution to their people (but, you say, isn't that analogous to state legislatures deciding to adopt the U.S. consitution? Yes, but, the U.S. constitution being an easier document to understand, it was presumably easier to have an open and vigorous debate over whether or not to accept the various previsions of it).

Anyway, the Moravcsik article makes for a truly bizarre read. I highly recommend it for that reason.

QUOTE: From Latin class today:

Instructor: "Now Latin has six forms for the infinitive..."
Girl sitting behind me: "Of course it does."

Yes, frustration is approaching the boiling point, as we've been working with participles for the week thusfar, and they still only seem to marginally make sense. I take some solace in the following bit of Augustine (Confessions, Bk. 1 Ch. XIII):

"adamaveram enim latinas, non quas primi magistri, sed quas docent qui gramatici vocantur"

which I translate roughly to be:

"I fell in love with Latin indeed; not the Latin of my teacher, but rather that which the great writers teach*."

In other words, he prefered translation to grammar, just like I do.

*literally, "that which by those called grammarians teach," but I rather take this to be a play on words: he didn't like the Latin taught to him by his "primi magistri," which was repitition of forms (grammar properly speaking), he liked the Latin which was written by people who created Latin grammar (e.g. Virgil)

LINK: Not being in any way an impartial observer on the question of KPMG possibly being indicted (my brother works for them, but not in southern NY), I wholeheartedly agree with Professor Bainbridge's thoughts (or allusions to other peoples' thoughts) on the topic. I mean, presumably not all regulation of the coroporate world is bad, but it does seem like the government is in position to dictate terms to any firm in a similar position to KPMG (because of the intense desire to avoid an indictment), which pretty clearly swings too far in the opposite direction. I'd almost lean towards saying that if there's widespread malfeasance, it should be the market that takes the firm down, not the government.

I see my movement to the right is proceeding nicely.

SNAP!

"any experience, however slight, of public affairs would have made them chary of accepting the opinions of mere theoreticians"

-Tocqueville, Ancien Regime

WEAK NASH EQUILIBRIA IN FIRST-PAST-THE-POST ELECTORAL SYSTEMS:

Okay, so, more of this McCain as a centrist candidate stuff. Sigh. Brendan discusses some here. Another thing that's occurred to me about this discussion:

There's a finding in game theory that you can get weak Nash equilibria for three-party (generally parliamentary) systems with a left, centrist, and right party: they're weak NE given that each party makes the best move given the moves the other sides make (rather than real mutual best responses). But this finding generally has two problems:

1. The parties, to get this result, have to be ideology-blind, that is, they have to move to wherever puts them in an NE, regardless of what stance that would require them to take. Even if you think McCain is "more centrist" than whomever the (as yet unchosen) republican and democrat will be, he's very, very unlikely to be in the dead center of the voting public.

2. Even if he was, he'd still lose. Consider it generally true that each party can claim 35-40% of the voting public as ID'd supporters or strong leaners: placing them on a spectrum (from 0-1, left to right), the Ds land at .35 and the Rs land at .65, and more or less evenly split the vote between them and McCain (at .5)*. So the Democrats get the .35 to their left plus half the .15 between them and McCain; the same for the Republicans, which makes for a final result of 42.5% of the vote going to each of the "extremist" parties and 15% for the "centrist" McCain. As you might suspect, this finding is quite robust, so the parties would have to be rather extreme before McCain can even get close to a plurality.

In other words, there's no reason to think a centrist candidate can win just because they're in the middle. McCain would have to peel off a lot more than just the independents or moderates to win, and affinities for Party ID being what they are, that's unlikely to happen.

*this is dependent on symmetric one-peaked preferences, except that McCain gets the same vote share no matter how preferences are distributed (so long as they're single-peaked)

WELL: via Harry's Place I find this report from the BBC on the status of Saddam Hussein's trial. I think I'm in substantial agreement with Marcus on this one--not giving over evidence to the other side isn't entirely fair to Saddam (and I'm wary of treating him substantially differently than other defendants get treated, for somewhat obvious reasons). On the other hand, I find the expidited trial to be somewhat refreshing on a substantive level (has Milosevic been found guilty yet?), and I highly approve of this all being taken care of at the national level--it seems, as Marcus suggests, to be an important part of Iraqi's process of reconciliation with its past. So all to the good.

But.

I actually find myself a little wary here, because, of all reasons, of the possibility of the death penalty being given to Saddam. Not because he doesn't richly deserve it, nor because I'm opposed to the idea of the death penalty in general, but this is an instance where the first interest shouldn't be to getting over the death penalty hurdle: I think, on balance, I'd prefer some kind of reckoning with everything that happened. Then let him fry (or equivalent).

LINK: Brendan Nyhan points out, yet again, the flaws in the third-party idea which everyone seems to be picking up nowadays. He covers all the usual electoral reasons to believe that the two main parties will be able to effectively shut out third parties (and have virtually every electoral cycle). It strikes me that there are two other reasons to be skeptical of such a possibility:

1. The success of outside parties generally reflects the existence of some new dominant issue which neither party addresses effectively or ignores (the Republicans, for example, take over from the Whigs because they're willing to take a position on the slavery question that's noticeably different from what else is being offered), with two requirements: there has to be one big, new cleavage issue which is obviously of primary importance, and there has to be room for a new position or a voicing of a position widely held but not represented in government. I think our current situation fails on both counts. The closest thing to an issue is "good government," a position either party could easily move to--especially because voter memories of policy stances tend to be short-lived, and the parties are in part in good positions to do this because

2. Political parties, being more-or-less coalitional, actually need to take positions on a wide number of issues to be able to draw in people who are oriented towards things other than the party's main issue--that is to say, one might think both parties are bad when it comes to good government issues, but one still probably lines up as a D or R when it comes to entitlement spending, the deficit, foreign policy, etc. A lot is needed to uproot people from where they are.

This actually makes me think that the closest analogy to the current climate is the Progressive movement of the early 20th century, which was primarily (if I remember my Hofstadter right) middle-class Republicans who temporarily defected from their party because 1. progressive candidates actually did differ somewhat substantially from regular Republicans on their policy positions and 2. they had (in 1912, anyway) someone whom they could plausibly back as a presendential candidate, but mostly because TR had already won before. McCain might be popular, but he has yet to be able to deliver on that level.

SOMETIMES*, I WISH I COULD JUST DECLINE ALL THE NOUNS: Given my forays into Latin recently, the following bit of Augustine (City of God, Bk. XIII, Ch. 11) was passed along to me:

"And therefore I think it has not unsuitably nor inappropriately come to pass, though not by the intention of man, yet perhaps with divine purpose, that this Latin word moritur cannot be declined by the grammarians according to the rule followed by similar words. For oritur gives the form ortus est for the perfect; and all similar verbs form this tense from their perfect participles. But if we ask the perfect of moritur, we get the regular answer mortuus est with a double 'u.' For thus mortuus is pronounced, like fatuus, arduus, conspicuus, and similar words, which are not perfect participles but adjectives, and are declined without regard to tense. But mortuus, though in form an adjective, is used as perfect participle, as if that were to be declined which cannot be declined; and thus it has suitably come to pass that, as the thing itself cannot in point of fact be declined, so neither can the word significant of the act be declined." (bolding mine)

*Okay, all the time.

HEH: "Yet while I am willing to give God the benefit of the doubt, that benefit does not extend to academics."

-Fernando Tesón, "The Liberal Case for Humanitarian Intervention"

WELL: Chris suggests a good discussion topic questions in the comments of the post below, which I submit for general consideration while I'm busy translating a Latinized version of The Three Little Pigs back into English:

What, if anything, is Radiohead ripping off on The Bends*?

First two answers that come to mind are Jeff Buckley (the falsetto that's everywhere, especially compare the pacing of "Fake Plastic Trees" to "Lilac Wine;" and I'll claim there's some similarity between "Just" and "Eternal Life"), and U2's Achtung Baby (particularly in track sequencing). But I suppose there could be others; this also prompts the question as to whether anything actually ever gets created ex nihilo in popular music, broadly speaking. Anyway, have fun, if you like.

*I narrow the question intentionally because from OK Computer on, the list of references is far too obvious to even be worth recounting: early 70s Miles Davis, Can and Kraftwerk, the Beatles (see "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" in "Paranoid Android," or the generous lifting of "Sexy Sadie" in "Karma Police"'s bridge), and then there's really nothing else but some weird electronica people (I'm not so fond of Kid A, in case you couldn't tell).

LINK: Pointed out to me by a fellow grad-student and political theorist, this NYT article on Coldplay. Oh my:

"Unfortunately, all that sonic splendor orchestrates Mr. Martin's voice and lyrics. He places his melodies near the top of his range to sound more fragile, so the tunes straddle the break between his radiant tenor voice and his falsetto. As he hops between them - in what may be Coldplay's most annoying tic - he makes a sound somewhere between a yodel and a hiccup. And the lyrics can make me wish I didn't understand English. Coldplay's countless fans seem to take comfort when Mr. Martin sings lines like, "Is there anybody out there who / Is lost and hurt and lonely too," while a strummed acoustic guitar telegraphs his aching sincerity. Me, I hear a passive-aggressive blowhard, immoderately proud as he flaunts humility. "I feel low," he announces in the chorus of "Low," belied by the peak of a crescendo that couldn't be more triumphant about it."

As the kids say, "Snap!"

Also, one additional note about the article: they refer to the band Travis as being "influenced by" Coldplay, which seems chronologically dubious*, as I believe Travis were releasing albums several years before Coldplay (1997-ish, as memory serves, but late period Britpop gets a little fuzzy for me after Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space). So, basically, Travis were ripping off "Fake Plastic Trees"-era Radiohead before doing that was cool.

UPDATE: TMFTML notes the same phenomenon:

"Coldplay's powers of suck are so all-encompassing that they extend out backwards through time, influencing bands that actually predate them."

*My other favorite example of this is in the liner notes of Gang of Four's Entertainment, where Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers is talking about the influence of GoF on RHCP, and mentions that he saw a TV program with The Edge (of U2) talking about guitarists who influenced him, and mentioning a bunch of old blues guys, and Flea wanted to know why Andy Gil (GoF's guitarist, which is stretching the term somewhat, I'll admit) wasn't on that list. Possibly because by the time Entertainment came out (1979) U2 was already a band, and The Edge probably beyond the influence-having stage (besides, early Edge totally rips of Tom Verlaine, which he will fess up to in his more honest moments)

QUOTE:

"With all due weight given to the matter of context... there is something else just as important, namely content. It is not collapsible into context, just as it is not collapsible into motivation."

-Norm Geras, "In a Class of its Own?"

LINK: Hopefully Eric will return sooner rather than later, but that whole taking-time-off thing makes total sense to me.

QUOTE: Though I don't really share the sentiment, I thought this quote of Christopher Hitchens, in conversation with his brother, was too good not to share:

"The great thing about family life is that it introduces you to people you'd otherwise never meet."

LINK: Killer Grease: loves puppies, slightly more ambivalent about John Edwards. As a one-time fan of the former Democratic Golden Boy (he sort of lost his mind once he lost the Dem primary in 2004, I think, and he was pretty terrible in all the contexts I saw him during the campaign), I think KGrease is spot-on:

"He has no relevant experience, and his time in the Senate gave absolutely no indication of either knowledge of or aptitude for foreign policy questions. Right now, Edwards is a one trick pony: Two Americas, Two Americas, etc. That's why he has the "One America Committee," to emphasize the two Americas theme. IF there were a Dem administration in the White House, he could get appointed to some kind of committee, or task force. But Bush is not going to help, so all Edwards can do is this aggressive "offensive of caring", where he makes appearances and expresses the fact that he really cares about foreign policy. (I'm joking. Some more jokes on Edwards)

Hillary has no more foreign policy experience than Edwards does, but she lived in the White House. She visited foreign dignitaries, presidents. She has flown on Air Force One. And, unlike Edwards, Hillary did things in the Senate the right way: she acted like a senator. She served on committees, did reports, and kept a low profile building experience and respect. Edwards acted like his hair was on fire, and never participated in the Senate as a Senator in any important way."

Edwards, when he's on, has pretty much the perfect style (and, unlike several other Democratic politicians we can name, seems to be a sincerely good person, so a lot of his 'caring about people' shtick comes off less as shtick and more as, well, caring about people), but he's always been pretty content-free. Even if you look at his "two americas" trope, it's real force seems to lie not in the idea itself but what it alludes to, which Edwards can leave for everyone to fill in for themselves. The Dems will be in a bad way if they nominate him.

I also tend to suspect that Hillary has more chances electorally than most people assume. Though, as Brendan Nyhan points out frequently (for example here), there's nothing particularly impressive about her win in the Senate in New York, she, I think, did an excellent job managing expectations of her (I expect nothing less from a Clinton), and subverted her desire to try and run in 2004 to keep on, well, being a decent Senator. She's clearly thinking strategically, and has been for a long time, so it's maybe not best to discount her quite yet.

LINK: The much-promised (probably not to you, but you'll survive) link to Neil Gaiman's blog-journal thingie.

LINK: If you, like me, have an abundant appreciation for the ironic, you'll love this post