I can't spell...

And Posterous doesn't have a spell checker button. 

I wish I cared enough to try harder.

sigh.

I don't.

Posted via web from jimnichols's posterous

Nature magazine says its good to blog...

Nature: It’s good to blog

Indeed, researchers would do well to blog more than they do. The experience of journals such as Cell and PLoS ONE, which allow people to comment on papers online, suggests that researchers are very reluctant to engage in such forums. But the blogosphere tends to be less inhibited, and technical discussions there seem likely to increase.

Moreover, there are societal debates that have much to gain from the uncensored voices of researchers. A good blogging website consumes much of the spare time of the one or several fully committed scientists that write and moderate it. But it can make a difference to the quality and integrity of public discussion.

1) I think blogging is good because it empowers someone to promote their opinions, views, or at the very least things they are reading, seeing, and thinking.

2) I believe the debate that can (but doesn't always happen as many tend to isolate within their own group) happen online is useful.  Debate helps clarify opinions, come to a better understanding of others, and helps us learn.

3) I think more academic professionals should blog...  it helps all of us learn!

 

Posted via web from jimnichols's posterous

Trying out posterous...

Should one blog, tweet, and update ones facebook all in one post?  I don't know.  Should Jim... most definately not.  Thats why i'm going to try this for a bit.

I've been falling far behind the online world for the past week and it has been wonderful.  But I don't want to drop out of sight--just become more productive.

So for now i'm trying posterous...  if you like it or hate it email me (Jim.Nichols@gmail.com) and tell me why.  If you know of something better or more effective let me know.  If you just want to show me love by telling me all the reasons why i'm wrong, it really isn't necessary--i'm on the case on that one!

 

Posted via web from jimnichols's posterous

The Disney Trip...

We just got back from Disney World. It was good to be on a break from the day to day world and I've come back refreshed. Its strange but I always come home from long breaks wanting to be a better person. I come with revamped ideas on how to accomplish goals, a fresh look at old ideas, and new energy for old ambitions.

I had many fruitful meme's that have developed in the past week and hope to expand on many of them in the next few weeks.

But one of my goals is to become more disciplined in my blogging. Try to add more substance. I posted on this before, but I truly want to keep from being simply a link a thon.

But I'm hesitant to cut back on the broad range of blogs and feed's I already read. So the quandary now becomes how do I keep up with all of the great, interesting, or pertinent stuff online? And I think the only answer is to one, stop seeing blogs as something you must read right this second. I always feel as if a blog post that is two weeks old is dead and useless (in some ways this is true... in some ways this is not true). I'm going to stop feeling like I have to stay on top of things so that I reframe my blogging as something I do rather than something I have to keep up with. Rather than a burden it can be an opportunity to further develop my own intellectual endeavors, keep track of interesting thoughts and events from my own life and across the globe, and help track my own personal narrative.

I've been off radar...

After a good back and forth on twitter with Jason Pye I bailed on blogging for a bit,while always enjoyable and often fruitful in clarifying my own positons as well as understanding others, it can be draining. Plus Deana's work has been hectic so we've been trying to veg out at home. Got some cleaning done round the house yesterday, as well as some henrydems stuff.

Other than that same old same...

I'm thinking of revamping the blog, and/or dropping it for a while. My blogging as those of you may know tends to ebb and flow. I end blogs, and start new ones...as my life changes so does my blog, and the theme that goes with it.

I also may go anonymous for a bit, gives me more creative options, ala Kierkegaard who would have two different pseudonyms attack each other in public debates in the newspapers.

Been reading Lyotards Postmodern Condition which has me intrigued with modern communication in postindustrial capitalism. I never knew he taught at Emory.

are you addicted?

Internet Addiction Update

interesting point to the quandry of post industrial new media information overload

Coturnix

Very few readers will read your article. But everyone will see the cover.

Very few people will read this post to the end, especially the links on the bottom that really contain the meat of the argument. But everyone will see this post title in their feeds.

Graham, you know print is swiftly dying and that journalism is moving to the Web, don't you? Do you understand that this means that in a year or two you will have to come here and play with the Big Boys? Do you understand that all the silly comments you plastered all over the blogs will be remembered? And if not remembered, easy to find - this blog has bigger Google juice than The New Scientist, you know?

Do you understand that in your future transition to online journalism you will have to abandon all the lies you were taught in J-school? That you will need to upgrade your journalistic ethics in order to match the higher ethics of the blogosphere?

of late....

I've been pondering my blogging directions of late. Oh, don't worry, i'm going to keep up with the blog filtering and news (with a tid bit of commentary) posting. But at what cost/benifit?

Pondering more original content. Pondering more cultural content. Pondering just writing more songs and posting on youtube--which probably isn't exactly my average readers interest.

So what if I lose readers? "Ah, but I want readers who want to talk economics, and policy" replys my other self.

Well, self, don't you also want readers who "put up" with your bad music, strange cultural leanings(aversions), and will let you be you?

"What does it mean for me to be me?"

good question. I'll ponder that one at work today.

Sigh...

philosophers make me smile

Time out for a logic lesson!

the art of blogging?

http://culture11.com/blogs/postmodernconservative/2009/01/14/dazz-dazz-discourse-jazz/

We all ought to be humble about our arguments, given how many smart people disagree with us completely, but a man whose claims are always tentative will (a) never make any progress against, toward, or with his opponents, and (b) bore everyone. Rather than offer the commonsense advice that an off-the-cuff medium like blogging should be handled with humility, I’ll read that advice against the grain and say that, the more humble a blogger is, the less tentative he will be.

Having a realistic estimation of one’s talents is a virtue, and having enough self-respect to be willing to suffer humiliation is, too. These two virtues yield utterly opposite styles of argumentation and I can’t imagine why they are both called "humility." I am more interested in the latter kind. In the same way that every man will eventually die, every man will eventually be wrong. The dogmatist never accepts this; the pragmatist accepts this before he begins; the humble blogger knows his humiliation is coming, but argues assertively until it arrives, secure in his confidence that, when it does, it won’t be that bad. This illogical confidence is an important rule of engagement

tax multipliers

This Mankiw op-ed starts a tuffle...

Intellectual Dishonesty (Gasp!) from a Conservative Economist

Mankiw retorts: The Importance of Being Exogenous

The Romer View of Tax and Spending Multipliers Revisited

Is There a Serious Conservative Argument Against the Stimulus?

This is honestly a bit beyond me for the most part...I remember the basics from macro101. But i'm still working on it!

something I notice all the time...

I'm a terrible speller. And I don't use spell check enough! sigh....

What is going on...

Jason Pye on the legislative session that just started today.

If you aren't reading his blog you do so at your own peril.

One of my academic interests is the question of where theory and reality merge and Jason's pretty staunch philosophy creates a number of intrigues... and quandary's for me. Plus he's up on his p's and q's of current conservative debate/policy

Also you should check out Georgia Legislative Watch where he is blogging on the session.

the world doesn't stop just because you do...

So i'm still falling behind on blogging, email, and the rest. I've taken a pause--which is refreshing and wonderful--and so am off my normal pace. I'm still poking around just a little.

Basically Krugman, Pye, Baker, and the New York Times...

Trying to refocus for next year...

cheers.

Why I blog

Andrew Sullivan's reasons at least...

I blog to keep up with others ideas, articles, studies, items of interest; anything I might want to go back to later on.

Also keep up with some day to day stuff to look back on. A place for random writings, poems, anything I might come up with. Also throw up some of my photos....

Plus I do it so often because its hard to catch up to the blogosphere once you fall behind--as is true now that i'm catching up from my holiday lapse!

I also blog because I can't spell and can't get away with such grammer school errors in any other format...

the great thing about blogs...

especially during an economic crisis that has the juices flowing for so many economists, is that you can get in over your head in a field which you have no training.

The economic crisis, the calculation debate, and stability theory

I wonder if 6 months ago I could have followed that post?

But I can't explain it to you very well. Maybe by the time the economy recovers I'll have learned a thing or two.

Teaching is the sign of knowledge. (Blogging the sign of pedantry?)

this might be satire... (on both our parts?)

comment from a fellow leftist that I highly disagree with:

FDR's and LBJ's fascist tendencies are the reason we have entitlements, and the United Auto Workers' fascist tendencies are the main reason the auto companies are failing. We blame CEOs, and exonerate unionized workers, because CEOs make "excessive" amounts of money, while workers are, well, working. But we never stop to think that CEOs have a lot of talent, education, and jobs that require hard work and much more stress than working on an assembly line. The advantage of being on the left is that you don't have to think or put forth any effort to be considered compassionate.

From this quote Robbie obviously took the side of Marx in his spat with Bakunin. I took the other side and I think history has exposed Marx as having been wrong about decreasing liberty via authoritarianism as an end to be sought.

Entitlements via subconscious pathologies? Robbie you are mixing micro with macro... even more you are taking quick steps from conscious to subconscious. Tough to do which is why I might be misinterpreting some of your positions.

But moving on... how do personal pathologies of elected officials equal out to social policies that are popular? Directly mind you not indirectly... because then everything gets thrown into the interpretation

So did the fascist tendencies of FDR beat the fascist society of Germany? If so then good. Ditto for passing popular legislation.

UAW? If you are opposed to the purchasing power of walmart and want to attack their ceo's then i'd be happy to get into a discussion of the collective bargaining pro's and con's of the UAW. I hold human beings to be more important than excessive shareholder value thats an ideological position on my part. The idea that unions are the reasons for their troubles shows a very shallow grasp of the issue, unions didn't stop the foreign makers from making popular high quality cars. If the American Auto Manufactures management aren't as good as the competitors with managing their unions,well that's a problem but not the unions or the other compainies.

CEO's have talent...well, some do some don't.

Ineptitude and pay rate are not necessarily corollaries.

Larry Summers is getting a promotion to a job in the Obama administration for missing and helping perpetuate the housing bubble!?!?!?

What percentage of economist missed the housing bubble as a major crisis... and/or stayed silent on it 75,85,95%????

How many of them got fired for it?

I am a lowly wage slave mind you so i'm oft to be disingenuous and ignorant of so many things.

As to Robbie's experience from being on the left, that "you don't have to think or put forth any effort to be considered compassionate" I can't speak to it because I have never worked with people and talked about compassion at all. I've always worked with people on the left talking about improving the quality of life for people through policies and organizing. At least in my experience compassion ain't a topic of discussion much.

Mind you compassion (ethics more broadly) often is a topic in my political philosophy classes... and I must confess I do enjoy a good philosophical debate. But when it comes to actual politics and organizing, dealing with very real problems and how to solve them--what I would define as "politics"--there isn't much use for such ivory tower intellectualism. To someone in politics words have meaning... but human consequences are the important issue at hand.

That does drum up some debates within social science has to how and what we are measuring with our analysis. But i'll leave that for anohter day.

Classic problem of our age...

This is a wonderful article on the excesses of our age.

Longing for brevity

Overflow seems to be one of the problems of the age. Sometime in the early 1980s I read an essay claiming that, even by then, the word processor had a lot to answer for. It just encourages writers to go on and on. In the days of the Remington and correction fluid, you thought really hard before committing anything to the typed page, as doing so was such a miserable experience, especially when it involved carbon paper. With the word processor, down it all goes and, more often than not, down it all stays, whether or not it really earns its keep. The author recommended the lapidary style of writing, which is how you would write if you had to carve every word on stone. One has to wonder, for example, whether the Ten Commandments would have been so crisply written if they had first been sent by email attachment.

The problem with the word processor is that there is never a moment when there is a physical cost to keeping something. In the days of manual typing, once you had typed the first draft you made corrections in red. Then blue. Then green. Then brown. And then you couldn't really see where you were any more, so you had to sit down and retype every word. At this point, you would desperately search for words, sentences, even paragraphs to excise to save the pain of retyping. But with the word processor there is never such a moment

I must confess I read this as a blogger if oft to do---mindnumbingly quick...

Do you ever recognize your own faults and flaws, yet are inable to care to overcome them...

sigh...

daggnabit...

bloging problem... my side bar is currently pushed down "below the fold" (if you will). I dunno why...

Blogs do impact peoples lives... bloggers are a part of our cultural narrative, intellectual climate; and even though we almost never meet many of our fellow bloggers and/or readers they are human to us in so many ways...

lovely post on the death of a blogger... from her readers...