Didn't know where to put this
I decided here because I don't have anything scholarly to say about it. But, it is about scholarship. Do we really need a special academic journal dedicated to the work of JRR Tolkien? I know there are a lot of academics who played a lot of Dungeons and Dragons, but are there really 4 good articles on Tolkien than need to come out each year? I don't know that I've overwhelmed by the current choices:

Light-elves, Dark-elves, and Others: Tolkien's Elvish Problem
The Adapted Text: The Lost Poetry of Beleriand
Do the Atlantis story and abandon Eriol-Saga"
Sir Orfeo: A Middle English Version By J.R.R. Tolkien
Identifying England's Lönnrot
When Philology Becomes Ideology: The Russian Perspective of J.R.R. Tolkien
Tolkien's Prose Style and its Literary and Rhetorical Effects
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 5:11 PM 1 comments

 
Dude, They Are Not Trustfunders
Their proper name is Trustifarians, and they're not a recent phenomena. They were everywhere at my boarding school, and they really do try to dress like hippies - even when driving home in the brand new BMW they got for their 16th birthday.
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 1:11 PM 3 comments

 
Unnecessary Specificity
The mother in front of me in line, when asked how old her child was, responded, "He's 19 and 1/2 months." I mean, kids are cute and all, and I understand that parents pay pretty close attention (at least when they're young) but, really, doesn't "almost two" get you all you need? Or can this little guy expect to be begging for a car for his 192nd birthday?
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 12:47 PM 1 comments

 
If you're REALLY bored
For those insufficiently bored with my lack of posting, I offer a whole new way to be bored. You can check out my history musings blog, which I've created (for reasons more throughly explained there) basically to keep this blog's general interest/political approach. And because I don't feel like I can put up half-baked ideas here (I feel more like I need 3/4 baked), but I want to put them up somewhere. So, go check it out if you'd like. But I'm not sure I recommend it.
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 7:09 PM 0 comments

 
Obi Wan Stewart
If you strike me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 8:45 AM 0 comments

 
More Patriot Act
I need the time to do some of the spade work to make this argument more convincing, both for the blog and for my life. But, for now, I just point you to this post from the Volokh Conspiracy pointing out that even the ACLU thinks the majority of the PATRIOT Act is perfectly acceptable. That's not to say, of course, that they're not very, very unhappy with those small parts of it they don't like, but it does indicate that there's a big gap between public perception of the PATRIOT Act and the reality.

The biggest problem with the debate is that the act is usually discussed without reference to the surrounding criminal investigation context. I'm no expert here (like I said, I need to do the spadework to nail this down) but it's my understanding that the ACLU and others are really fired up about the "library book search authority," as one example. The thing is, first of all, the provision is much more general, aimed not at libraries but at a broader set of documents. That provides greater authority, of course, but it also indicates that Congress and the administration were not specifically after your reading habits. And as for the breadth of the authority - it is quite easy to get the subpoena to look at the documents. As I understand it (again, sorry, no time to do the spade work right now), you go before a judge, say you need to see these documents and he or she is more or less required to grant the subpoena. Yes, that's pretty close to a rubber stamp. BUT NOT MUCH MORE OF A RUBBER STAMP THAN GETTING A GRAND JURY SUPOENA FOR DOCUMENTS.

If a grand jury will indict a ham sandwich, how easy do you think it is for a prosecutor (keep in mind, the prosecutor is in there alone - there's no opposing counsel) to convince them that they need to look at a few pieces of paper? My limited experience with grand juries is that they'd give you a subpoena for absolutely anything you asked them for. Library records included.

Of course, one may think that the government has too much authority to subpoena the papers of run of the mill criminals - the scam artists, the drug dealers, and everyone else - but it seems to me that's where the real question should be.
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 10:07 AM 0 comments

 
I KNEW Fords were better
Now that it's NASCAR season again, I feared I'd have my typical problem of being a Chevy guy pulling for a Ford driver (Dale Jarrett in the 88 UPS Ford). Turns out, however, that I can let go of the Chevy thing because I've learned Chevy's deep, dark little secret: They're named after some French dude.

I'm a Ford guys now - all the way.

Swiss you say? Swiss, French, whatever. There're all communists anyway.
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 9:56 PM 1 comments

 
Sigh
The good news is that I seem to be in demand for summer work around the department. Which is nice. The bad news is that four years out of law school I seem to be worth about $10 an hour. Sigh.
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 8:19 PM 12 comments

 
Espresso
is the nectar of the Gods. I don't know how I lived before I drank it.
(ok, maybe that's a pathetic comback post, but I needed something to break the ice. My long absence has left me with bloggers block and I think this will get me going again.)
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 12:24 PM 1 comments

 
Graduate School Life
I went out to dinner tonight after class with a few classmates. When ordering, one of them asked how much more the curly fries were than the regular fries. "40 cents," said the waitress. His response? "Well, I'll have the cheaper ones then."

That's God's honest truth.
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 8:21 PM 1 comments

 
Why Historians are REALLY good for
In class today I picked up this really interesting tidbit: John Tyler, who was born in 1790 and who was President from 1841-45, has, get this, a grandson who currently lives in Richmond and is around 80 years old.

It turns out President Tyler is the only President to marry while in office (the inspiration for the American President???). His wife died, and he married Julia Gardner, then 24 years old and 30 years his junior. He had seven children with her (after having 8 children with his first wife), the last when he was 70. One of them was Lyon Gardiner Tyler, who was the President of William and Mary, and who married late in life and had a son when he was around 70, in about 1925. Apparently (according to my Professor) that guy is still kicking and living somewhere in Richmond.

Now really, it's that kind of interesting minutiae that people really want historians around for, not for the "origins of the progressive party" stuff that historians generally think is interesting.
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 6:48 PM 0 comments

 
I Should Have Stayed Home...
Cigars in the Sand (see our blogroll) is a superb source of on the ground news in Iraq from an intelligent supporter of American policy. He suggests this blog, so I do too.
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 8:40 AM 0 comments

 
Smarter than Your Average Bear
Jonathan Rauch is one of my favorite journalists. His pieces are clear without being simple, and express opinion without being polemical. I also happen to agree with him more often than not. (You can see a good sample of his work here, but for real brilliance, you can see what I regard as the most interesting article to ever appear in the most interesting magazine in the world.) His most recent article, though, strikes me as being accurate without being right. He argues today in the Washington Post (and more completely in a longer National Journal piece) that Social Security is about values, not about economics:

what Bush and the Republicans are focused on is not the economy, stupid. It is conservative social engineering on the grandest possible scale.

The focus, he says, in not on saving social security per se, but on helping to create an "ownership" society.

I think that's right, as far as it goes, and that may be all that many of the people pushing reform think. But I rather think it's not. The vision of an ownership society can be justified on economic as well as moral grounds: when people own their stuff they make better decisions about how to use it; resources are distributed more efficiently; we create more stuff; and we can all benefit. That's certainly where I am - if someone convinced me that the government could better invest my retirement savings, I'd be strongly against personal social security accounts. But I don't believe that for a second, so support them.

The reason the economic perspective on the ownership society ought to be included in his piece, I think, is that without it, it looks like he's revealing supporters of personal accounts as ideologues ignoring practical issues, rather than as people trying to improve our society - both morally and economically - by making an important government program more efficient and effective. Perhaps all he's trying to communicate is that we ought to discuss this issue on those grounds, rather than on the more dubious grounds of "crisis." Maybe, but for those who support an ownership society for either moral or economic reasons, or both, this may be the only chance we have. In that sense, at least, it is a crisis.
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 9:17 AM 0 comments

 
Lewis Carroll, Funnier than Historians
In an attempt to not get too bogged down by the end of the semester, I'm reading Carroll's Alice in Wonderland for the first time. It's hilarious, and great fun if you need some escapist literature. Especially good for me was his skewering of historians's pedantic prose:

They were indeed a queer-looking party that assembled on the bank - the birds with draggled feathers, the animals with their fur clinging close to them, all ripping wet, cross, and uncomfortable. The first question of course was, how to get dry again.
* * *
At last the mouse, who seemed to be a person of some authority among them, called out "Sit down, all of you, and listen to me! I'll soon make you dry enough!" . . . "Ahem!" said the Mouse with an important air. "Are you all ready? This is the driest thing I know. Silence all around if you please! 'William the Conqueror, whose cause was favored by the Pope, was soon submitted to by the English, who wanted leaders, and had been of late much accustomed to usurpation and conquest. Edwin and Morcar, the earls of Mercia and Northumbria . . .'"

And if you think that sort of historical writing is just for the mid 19th century, try reading Bill Freehling's tome, "The Road to Disunion." It's an insightful book about the causes of the Civil War, but full of pedantic, turgid prose like this, from a page chosen at random:

An outsider who wished to share Southerners' sense of the world was wise to savor that moment. He was experiencing a master metaphor of the southern mind. The flow of slavery downward seemed as irreversible to a late antebellum slaveholder as sand in the hourglass. Eventually, it was widely feared in some quarters (and hoped in others), time would run out on slavery and plantations north of the Lower South.

Ugh. "As sand through the hourglass, so go the Days of Our Lives." If I ever write stuff like that I hope someone slaps me upside the head. Maybe I'll keep Louis Caroll nearby to keep me straight.

- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 11:17 PM 0 comments

 
"I've never been the answer to an argument before," alternate title, "F**k You, Jonathan Chait"
Jonathan Chait may well be a nice, thoughtful guy, but his LA Times editorial claiming that there is no bias against conservatives in academia is offensive bullsh*t on a stilts, and I prove it - not I can prove it - I prove it. Mr. Chait claims that the dearth of conservatives in academia is primarily due to two reasons:

First, Republicans don't particularly want to be professors. To go into
academia - a highly competitive field that does not offer great riches - you
have to believe that living the life of the mind is more valuable than making a
Wall Street salary. * * *

Second, professors don't particularly want to be
Republicans. In recent years, and especially under George W. Bush, Republicans
have cultivated anti-intellectualism.

Mr. Chait, I'm a conservative, and former member of the Bush Administration. I've also left the the prestige of a White House job, the security of a career government job, and the financial opportunities of the private sector to suffer through the poverty and drudgery of years of graduate school for the chance to get an academic job. And anyone who says my claim of drudgery proves I don't value the life of the mind has never been in a PhD program. There are plenty of great moments, but there is plenty of drudgery too. Drudgery at $12,000 a year. And anyone who doesn't mind working 60 hours a week for $12,000 a year hasn't done it. I have made major sacrifices for the CHANCE to get an academic job, and I am made aware every day that my conservative views, well within the mainstream in normal society, are on the far right fringes of academia and are likely unacceptable to many of the people who will determine the path of my career. As an example, I'd guess about half of my classmates, who will one day fill academic positions, equate conservative views with evil views, and every class discussion of politics I've ever heard assumes that as a starting point. When was the last time Mr. Chait has been on a campus? And just as importantly, when was the last time he talked with a conservative? His argument is so full of unreasonable generalizations and so disconnected from the reality of campus life as it is, and conservatives as they are that it's just plain ignorant. So, for insulting the sacrifices I have made for the opportunity to "live the life of the mind" as a conservative, for minimizing the dozens of times I've had to bite my tongue at outlandish leftist insults of a President I respect, of dedicated and hardworking friends in government, and even of my own religious faith, and indeed, for now making those insults yourself, here is my message to you, Mr. Chait: F**k you. And the horse you rode in on.

Professor Bainbridge, once again proving he belongs on our Blogroll, brought this item to my attention, and has some choice, and rather more balanced, words of his own.

- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 10:52 PM 0 comments

 
My Favorite Christmas Lights
Not complicated, or expensive, but full of truth. Last night I saw a 4 x 6 piece of plywood with Christmas lights stapled to it. The lights spelled out, "I love college."


- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 8:05 AM 0 comments

 
Breakthrough
No, not, unfortunately, on the research paper due Friday that I'm trying to salvage from a semester of neglect. Or on the essay summary due today for the essay I've yet to write, or even outline. Or on the review I'm trying to write for Friday based on the incoherent question (more on that later, for sure - lots of ranty goodness as Big Arm Woman would say). Instead, and more importantly, I've become a "regular" at my local diner.

I sat down yesterday, and the waitress, without asking, brought me a hot cup of coffee and called me "Hon.'" Nothing makes you feel welcome like a waitress that arrives with a cup of poor quality hot coffee and calls you "Hon" or "Sug" or any other sweetener abbreviation. It's awesome.

I've arrived.

- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 1:24 PM 1 comments

 
A Lawyer in Iraq
I've just put Cigars in the Sand onto our blogroll, and you should take the time to check it out immediately. It's written by a lawyer friend of mine who left the safe, if not exactly comfy, confines of the White House Homeland Security Council to help support the effort in Iraq, where he's advising the Iraqis about border security. Ryan is a straight shooter, and if his blog is anywhere near as interesting as the emails he's been sending out for a while, you'll want to make visits daily. At the very least you should check out the photo attached to this caption:

Terrorists often fire mortars into the Green Zone. Luckily the Green Zone is
large enough that most fall harmlessly in unpopulated areas. Unfortunately
they occasionally cause massive damage. This photo is the aftermath of the
mortar attack on Thanksgiving Day that killed 4 Gurkha guards and wounded
about 12 others.

That's Ryan in the foreground.

- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 9:23 AM 0 comments

 
"If you loathe political debate, join the faculty of an American university"
I think everyone whose been to college has noted that the great majority of political comments made by professors assume that everyone understands Republicans are at least foolish and very likely hateful and devious. Professors teaching about the civil rights here in Collegeville have been known to assert in class that denying gays the right to marry is just like preventing interracial marriage, or to flippantly refer to the President's ignorance. That seems to be acceptable behavior in this community. But, I feel sure most academics would find a conservative take on the gay marriage issue, for example, unacceptable. At least I would cringe for fear if a teaching assistant said in class something like, "As we've discussed today, Martin Luther King's religious beliefs were central to his involvement in and the success of the stuggle for civil rights in the 1960s. This evening, you may want to take some time to consider what this means for the debate over gay marriage. I certainly think it shows that adherence traditional Christian religous principles is of crucial importance."

What I don't know is whether I think that political comments like that are all inappropriate. My eventual PhD will show that I'm an expert in history, not in current political debates, and I'll get my job and my paycheck (hopefully) for talking about that stuff. On the other hand, it may well be that being a good teacher is about more than passing on technical knowledge, and showing the relevance of the past to the present, and demonstrating the pitfalls of using the past in present arguments, fits squarely within that role. For now, I lean towards the "check your politics at the door" approach, but that's evolving. What's clearly not appropriate, though, is different rules for conservaties and liberals, and there clearly are different rules.

I'm starting to think, however, that help may be on the way. The Economist has just written the latest in what appears to me to be an increasing drumbeat to address the scarcity of conservative voices in academia. It points out the lastest study showing a massive disparity in the political views of academics, and argues that the "the current situation makes a mockery of the very legal opinion [and rationale] that underpins the diversity fad." It also points out that the lack of conservaties hurts academia's ablity to influence popular culture, and that it's really hard to fix.

As a conservative, at least in many ways, in academia, I certainly hope that this drumbeat from the press and politicians will open up job and scholarship opportunities that are currently not closed to me, but are not as open as they otherwise would be. I'm not at all sure how that should happen - statutorily enforced affirmative action by voter registration seems like a very bad idea. But I'm hopefull that I'll be in the entering wedge of a new generation of conservative academics.



- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 8:40 AM 1 comments

 
An excellent start
in almost every way: Bush Nominates His Top Counsel for Justice Post. With his background and the newly more Republican Senate, I think his confirmation is less something to fear than something to endure. And it may offer an opportunity to clear away some of the foolishness surrounding the legality of the Patriot Act and the Guantanamo Bay detentions. For example, he may be able to finally convince people that there is a difference between the Patriot Act and the Guantanamo Bay detentions. If Fox News viewers are morons because they don't see Iraq completely accurately, aren't the NPR, PBS, and MSM viewers morons because they think the Patriot Act has anything to do with Guantanamo?

- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 8:25 AM 1 comments