Crooked Timber

Jerry Cayford at Three Quarks Daily has written a piece responding to the near-farcical “jungle primary” in California where it appeared possible at one point that both of the candidates making it through to the general election might be Republicans. The proposed response is to allow the top five candidates through to the general election, […]

Last week, because of a combination of bad planning (my bad) and endless delays (Deutsche Bahn’s bad), I arrive very late in a hotel in Berlin. I had to ring the doorbell. The guy at the reception started giggling the moment I came in, which irritated me at first (did my hair look so funny, […]

Google maps said it would take 2.5 hours to drive from our place in the Blue Mountains to Hill End. Maybe we’re slow. And sure, we stopped to check out nearby gold mining village Sofala on the way. But we left home shortly after 8am and arrived at Hill End in time for us to […]

One my betes noires has been in the news lately. Jonathan Haidt has been annoying me since at least 2012, when I was critical of his bothsidesism on the culture wars. At the time, he was a concern troll, posing as a liberal worried about other liberals who were, he claimed, misunderstanding Republicans. Whereas liberals […]

Mostly I leave Sunday photography to our colleague, the estimable Chris Bertram. Still, this Sunday I was walking the dog in the hills above my town. (“My town” being a modest community of a couple of thousand people in the rolling countryside of northern Bavaria.) [copyright me, yesterday] And by the side of a grassy […]

Sunday photoblogging: Canigou with cherries (2)

Academics, especially in the humanities, produce texts, and they teach students to produce text. This is a standard assumption, often taken for granted, and maybe not too surprising in times in which productivity is a supreme social norm. Think of the relief – by students and faculty alike – when a text has been submitted […]

Last week Australia’s central bank (Reserve Bank of Australia, RBA) raised interest rates. Again. Political economists have been talking for decades about the RBA’s tendency to redistribute wealth from the bottom upwards. But now it seems most people understand that the latest interest rate rises requires ordinary people to hand over more of their cash […]

Sunday photoblogging: Pézenas, maison consulaire

Sunday photoblogging: Canigou and cherry trees

That’s the actual name of the paper. Isn’t that great? Here’s a prologue: a post I wrote a while back about the Portuguese Man-o’-War.  (It’s kind of long — I was new to CT back then, and still figuring stuff out).  To summarize: the Portuguese Man-o’-War is a large jellyfish-type creature.  And when I say […]

“I admire the many federal prosecutors across the country who have chosen to resign rather than carry out illegal or immoral orders. To my knowledge, no department head, dean, or other administrator at Texas A&M has taken any meaningful action to defend academic freedom.”—Martin Peterson Today’s post was prompted by two recent news items: first, […]

I said a while back that nobody’s going to Mars any time soon. Which is true. But that doesn’t mean Mars isn’t interesting! Mars is very interesting. So today’s paper is about Mars.  Okay, it’s about a moon of Mars.  TLDR: one of Mars’ moons may periodically tear itself apart, turn into a system of […]

Sunday photoblogging: Pézenas street

Back in the 1980s, I was (among other things) a writer and singer of satirical folk songs. Going to the National Folk Festival in Canberra at Easter, I caught up with old friends and was reminded that I had produced a book of my songs. Returning home, I dug out a copy, and decided to […]

What does it mean to be an academic in different parts of the world? What comes along as the same job description – a bundle of teaching, research, and impact tasks – varies enormously from place to place. Not only the financial conditions of universities differ, but also the social standing of researchers. This is […]

Do you know Baba Yetu? Take three minutes and listen to this performance of Baba Yetu.  (Our ancient blogging platform doesn’t like embedded video, so you’ll have to click through to YouTube.  Go ahead and click, nothing bad will happen.) Some notes: First off, if you didn’t figure it out from the short prayer at […]

Before I depart this world, I would like to visit St. Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh, Scotland, and see the Jenny Geddes memorial.  I’m told it’s open to the public. Why? What’s interesting about a stool? Well, it’s probably impossible to point to a single moment, or a single object, and say “The Enlightenment began here.”.  […]

Among other things, the unlamented former autocrat Viktor Orban was one of the leading proponents of pro-natalist policies, and more open than most about the racist underpinnings of his view. However, like others who have tried to raise birth rates, he wasn’t particularly successful. To understand why not, it’s useful to consider the question: how […]

The news from Hungary’s election is so good that I need to write about it, even if not all the implications are clear yet, and even in a disorganised and way, repeating lots of what others are saying. Although the polls predicted Orban’s defeat, nothing I read foreshadowed the scale of the victory – a […]