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Blogging from New Orleans

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Not me — I’m blogging from the Denver airport, on my way from Boston to California. Why someone who lives in Chicago would be flying from Boston to California is too complicated to explain.

Despite the weak coffee here, I’m sure I’m in much more comfortable surroundings than Lindsay Beyerstein from Majikthise, Bob Brigham from Swing State Project (and now Operation Flashlight), and Kyle Shank from Americablog. (It’s not perfectly clear who all is going along, so there may be others for all I know.) They have made the trip down to New Orleans, both to report what they see and to help out where possible. (For example, working to extend the Voting Rights Act to prevent evacuees from become involuntarily disenfranchised.)

The reports are chilling. Lindsay:

The Convention Center was truly horrifying: A sea of filthy orange-upolstered institutional chairs. Blocks and blocks of chairs set out on the sidewalk. Mountains of trash. Abandoned supplies rotting in the sun — cases of muffins, an entire crate of coffee creamers upended, dirty needles, unopened bottles of sparkling cider that looked like champagne, rhinestone earings still in their packages, a tiny Spiderman flip-flop, water bottles full of urine, strollers, several barbeques… The 82nd Airborne was on the scene in their red berets. Black Hawk helicopters were taking off and landing across the parking lot. It’s really something to see a Black Hawk skimming the horizon of a devastated American city.

Kyle:

Unreal.

That’s the only word I can think of to describe what I’ve experienced today. The moment you step in it’s as if you’ve entered another reality. Helicopters dart overhead and pound a rhythm into the horrific scene. The stench of death and suffering overwhelm the senses. It’s a smell that doesn’t make sense until you’ve seen the filth the victims had to cope with. Try to think about all the worst possible scents combined; I guarantee it’s worse. Chairs, clothing, and drinks remain in the same position as if those people just vanished into the air you’re breathing in. Your mind goes numb during that brief inhale and you can only try to imagine what these abandoned citizens went through. Being in New Orleans is like soaking yourself in unthinkable despair.

And Bob:

We are in Jefferson Parish, just outside of New Orleans. At the National Guard checkpoint, they are under orders to turn away all media. All of the reporters are turning they’re TV trucks around.

Things are so bad, Bush is now censoring all reporting from NOLA. The First Amendment sank with the city.

Fortunately they managed to make it in, with the 82nd airborne. Keep checking back at each blog as updates appear.

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Four-Star blogging

Retired general (and once-and-future Democratic presidential hopeful) Wesley Clark is doing a guest-blogging stint at TPM Cafe. I am cautiously optimistic about Clark, keeping in mind the uncertainty principle that guarantees that a candidate’s viability is in inverse proportion to how much I like them.

His first post concerns our options in Iraq, given the mess in which we are currently mired.

Not only do I disagree with the premise by which this Administration started the war in Iraq, I also disagree with their current strategy of urging American “resolve” and fighting in Iraq in an open-ended manner. Simply “staying the course” is not an option, and neither is cutting and running. Too much is at stake. There is still time succeed, but the President needs to stand up and admit his mistakes and be willing to do the hard work that is needed to build a stable and peaceful Iraq. He needs to implement to exhaustion a three pronged strategy — I outlined it in my op-ed, so I won’t do it again here — and work the regional politics to bring about a sustainable solution before the armed and political opposition to our presence in the region crystallizes, and finally justifies, a demand for the return of our troops.

A sensible strategy, obviously with serious questions about how realistic it really is. At least Clark seems to be welcoming criticism and commentary, which by itself would be a refreshing change from the status quo.

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arxiv.org Joins the Blogosphere!

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Over the last fifteen years, the way that physicists communicate research results has been revolutionized by arxiv.org, the preprint server devised by Paul Ginsparg (formerly xxx.lanl.gov). Any time you write a paper, you send it to the arxiv, where its existence is beamed to the world the next day, and it is stored there in perpetuity. Along with the SPIRES service at SLAC, which keeps track of which papers have cited which other papers, physicists have a free, flexible, and easy-to-use web of literature that is instantly accessible to anyone. Most people these days post to the arxiv before they even send their paper to a journal, and some have stopped submitting to journals altogether. (I wish they all would, it would cut down on that annoying refereeing we all have to do.) And nobody actually reads the journals — they serve exclusively as ways to verify that your work has passed peer review.

So it’s exciting to see the introduction of trackbacks to the abstracts at arxiv.org. As blog readers know, an individual blog post can inform other blog posts that it is talking about them by leaving a “trackback” or “pingback” — basically, a way of saying “Hey, I’m talking about that stuff you said.” This helps people negotiate their way through the tangles of the blogosphere along threads of common interest. Now your blog post can send trackbacks to the abstracts of papers at the arxiv! Here’s a test: I will link to my most recent paper. If it works as advertised, the trackback will appear automatically, due to the magic of WordPress.

Now, if you write a paper and people comment on it on their blogs, that fact will be recorded right there at the abstract on arxiv.org. Drawing us one step closer to the use of blogs as research tools.

Update: In the comments, Jacques points to an explanation of some of the history; he was (probably) the first to suggest the idea, years ago (which is millenia in blogo-time).

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Wagging fingers

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Eugene Volokh has inspired a useful and uplifting blogosphere meme: condemnation of groups of people whom, although nobody is claiming that they are numerous or influential, we can nevertheless agree are worthy of our scorn. (Indeed, the search for actual examples hasn’t been very fruitful.) His own entry in this game was “Westerners who side with the Iraqi resistance.” As he explains (after some prodding),

Fortunately, the group being criticized is not a vast group. So? They’re still worth condemning.

Capital idea. Next to join in was Belle Waring:

I points the fingerbone of scorn at those inhumanly cruel Republicans who drink puppy blood for breakfast. When I consider the sharp, tiny milk-teeth of those puppies, protruding from gums now white with blood loss, I am filled with a righteous and long-abiding anger.

Again, she is quick to note that there are very few Republicans who fit such a description, but they should surely be denounced. (Lindsay Beyerstein, playing the contrarian, denounces Belle’s denunciation, but is clearly just trying to score some intellectual-virtue points.)

Since one can never denounce such heinous activities too fervently, Brad DeLong chimes in:

I for one, would like to also denounce adherents of the Republican Party who pretend to “adopt” kittens from animal shelters, and then kill them and dissect their little kittenish bodies with knives. I acknowledge that rather few Republicans are in this category, but I insist that these people are very bad.

How true that is.

Not to pile on, but I can’t help but offer my own humble contribution to the rare-but-worthy-of-scorn category. To wit, we should condemn Republicans who attempt to justify the capture and long-term detention of prisoners who are denied counsel and not charged with any crime, and then tortured, sometimes to death, in a misguided attempt to extract useful intelligence from them, even though they may be perfectly innocent. Likewise, Republicans who make fun of such practices by selling witty T-shirts. Oh, and those who advocate public torture of criminals in order to satsify the public’s bloodlust — wouldn’t want to forget them.

Of course, nobody would suggest that such people comprise a vast group. So? They are still worth condemning.

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Critiquing the excesses

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I have to say that the response here to the first couple of days at Cosmic Variance has been wonderful. We especially appreciate everyone who mentioned our new existence on their own blogs. My, it sure is easier to get a running start these days than it was back in the Wild West pioneering era of the blogosphere (last year). As time goes on and we get into a groove, hopefully a fuller picture of who we are and what we have to say will begin to emerge.

Which leads me to return the favor: please welcome another new group blog, The UnCapitalist Journal, dedicated to economic and political issues from a fettered-free-market perspective. (I’m presuming that “fettered” is the opposite of “unfettered.” We need some better names here.) One of the contributors is Lindsay Beyerstein of Majikthise, who seems to be aiming to contribute to every blog in existence. You go, Lindsay.

Shakespeare’s Sister, kind enough to give us a shout-out (well, she’s from Chicago, we stick together), also points to Our Word, a community site for women’s voices. Hopefully some men will read it, too. Perhaps they will learn, for example, that abandoning popular liberal stances, like support for abortion rights, is not the way to win more elections.

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