Comments Elsewhere: Pseudonym Troubles

In a discussion of pseudonymous blogging and academic identity, I noted

One thing that hasn't been discussed much as far as I can see is that pseudonymous commenting is harder than it used to be. New comment systems like Disqus which track users - for their convenience, of course - make it impossible to maintain multiple identities without basically wiping cookies between every comment. Similarly, facebook integration apps can reveal your identity if you stay logged in to facebook, even if you intend to comment under the pseudonym. I can't comment on a lot of blogs anymore without revealing my multiple identities.

This pseudonym has never been terribly secure - I wasn't all that good at anonymity when I started - but this has always been an UNprofessional space for me and I want to keep it that way.

Comment Elsewhere: Humorless

In comments at Grant Jones' blog I responded to Mr. Jones comment

Jack, I agree that Breitbart will have to be careful of doctored video being submitted as "proof." I wouldn't put such attempts past Progressives who believe that our means justify their ends.

with a well-deserved

ROFLMAO

Breitbart, after all, is the employer/sponsor of the infamous James O'Keefe, whose heavily doctored, fraudulent ACORN videos caused so much ruckus.

Mr. Jones has deleted my comment. To my knowledge, it's the first time he's done this, and he's certainly within his rights to do so. But it stinks.

(Also, as an aside, I'm not sure what "our means justify their ends" actually means...)

Comment Elsewhere: Pseudonymity and Politics

In response to the unmasking of Publius, I asked

There have been three fairly prominent pseudonymous bloggers outed in the last two months (Hilzoy, Alaska Muckraker, and now Publius), all two by conservatives. Can anyone name a pseudonymous blogger -- conservative or liberal -- outed by a liberal for something other than vicious harassment or sock-puppetry?

I've discussed my pseudonymity here (and a little bit here).
Update: Someone at WashingtonMonthly reminded me that the Alaska case actually involved a Democrat; that doesn't mean that he's not a conservative, especially in Alaska, but I don't actually know.

Update (6/9): Shockingly, the culprit has apologized. It even appears to be a fairly sincere and complete apology, which is very unusual for a lawyer (or a blogger):

On reflection, I now realize that, completely apart from any debate over our respective rights and completely apart from our competing views on the merits of pseudonymous blogging, I have been uncharitable in my conduct towards the blogger who has used the pseudonym Publius. Earlier this evening, I sent him an e-mail setting forth my apology for my uncharitable conduct. As I stated in that e-mail, I realize that, unfortunately, it is impossible for me to undo my ill-considered disclosure of his identity. For that reason, I recognize that Publius may understandably regard my apology as inadequate.

He does not seem, in this, to be retracting any of the supposedly substantive arguments he and his supporters made against pseudonymity. But it's more than I expected, and a very positive result. Publius has "of course accepted." Moving on....

Comment Elsewhere: Chronology and consistency

In response to an interesting article about political philosophy and civility post-9/11, I raised the following concern:

I have a—typical of an historian, perhaps—chronological problem with the set-up. It’s interesting, to be sure, to measure someone’s actions against their stated principles, but it’s much more convincing if the actions in question come after they’ve stated those principles.

Perhaps I should have added that there's virtue in changing one's mind; not all inconsistencies are hypocrisies. But I want to see if there's any reply (and what sort) before I get too involved in a discussion over there.

Crosspost and Comment: Exceptionalism and Permanancy

President Obama, 4 April 2009, Strasbourg [via]:

"I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism. I'm enormously proud of my country and its role and history in the world. If you think about the site of this summit and what it means, I don't think America should be embarrassed to see evidence of the sacrifices of our troops, the enormous amount of resources that were put into Europe postwar, and our leadership in crafting an Alliance that ultimately led to the unification of Europe. We should take great pride in that.

"And if you think of our current situation, the United States remains the largest economy in the world. We have unmatched military capability. And I think that we have a core set of values that are enshrined in our Constitution, in our body of law, in our democratic practices, in our belief in free speech and equality, that, though imperfect, are exceptional.

"Now, the fact that I am very proud of my country and I think that we've got a whole lot to offer the world does not lessen my interest in recognizing the value and wonderful qualities of other countries, or recognizing that we're not always going to be right, or that other people may have good ideas, or that in order for us to work collectively, all parties have to compromise and that includes us.

"And so I see no contradiction between believing that America has a continued extraordinary role in leading the world towards peace and prosperity and recognizing that that leadership is incumbent, depends on, our ability to create partnerships because we create partnerships because we can't solve these problems alone."

Passover is my nostalgic holiday. That and Thanksgiving, I guess: these are the holidays where the family comes together, or the community, or friends (or, since you can have multiple seders over Passover, all of the above!), where the food is distinctive and deeply rooted. Also, the preparation is fairly intense, so there's a period of anticipation and planning that hightens the experience.

So if you're wondering what I've been doing this last week, it's the usual, plus a bunch of extra shopping and planning. And next week will be a cavalcade of ritual: recipe following, haggadah-reading, actual seders, informal get-togethers, and more recipe following (I'm a very improvisational cook, usually, but not with Passover recipes; if you don't get them right, the results can be really unpleasant).

What are you up to these days?

That was my "Open Thread" post at Progressive Historians. I also left the following comment:

Twice in the last two weeks, at two different blogs, I've seen a post on which I'd left a comment deleted. In one case the author decided that it was a draft, not ready for prime time; in the other, the post remained crossposted elsewhere, where it got much friendlier comments.

One of the reasons I started my comments elsewhere tag was the sometimes fragile nature of the internet, but I need, apparently, to move more quickly on these things.

Comment Elsewhere: the life of a blog commenter

Over at Crooked Timber, where I rarely comment, a query on commenter behavior provoked this from me

Once a certain quantity of comments is reached, hardly anyone new to the conversation will read all the comments before commenting. If the purpose of commenting is to have one’s comment read, then it doesn’t make sense to contribute to already-long discussions.

I tend to avoid commenting on heavily-commented posts, because those usually feature well-worn positions without much chance of substantive contributions making much difference, and are usually dominated by a fairly small clique of frequent commenters (this isn’t directed at CT specifically, but it does happen here; I’m a member of the ingroup at some blogs myself, so I see it happening from both sides) who are focused on their ingroup interactions and don’t pay that much attention to comments from outsiders (unless they are flamingly provocative).

This is one of those posts that invites everyone to share their experience without really adding up to a conversation. There's sort of a discussion going on but, as I expected, nobody's addressed my point at all. Eventually, if it goes the way CT discussions often do, someone will make more or less the same point, but ignore the fact that I've made it already.

Update: The comments morphed into a discussion of "comment bait" -- what topics inspire the most comments. My contribution to that was

Declare the “END OF” something. Books, teaching, good television, bad doctors, an era, and epoch, a school of thought, a social pattern, a word, a meme, etc.

Four Years, 1167 posts later....

To mark the fourth anniversary of the humble beginnings of this blog (Seriously humble, friends), I will note other blogs -- many of them blogs of considerably energy and high quality -- which have added me to their blogrolls, in spite of my attempts to take a hiatus and generally focus my energies elsewhere. These are roughly in the order that I noticed them. If you like what I do here, check them out; apparently they do to, and you might find them worthwhile. I do.

• A Shrewdness of Apes by Ms. Cornelius


• BlueBird's Classroom. BlueBird and Ms. Cornelius are both classroom teachers who have a wonderfully perceptive and warm approach, as well as funny and rigorous.


• Scott McLemee's Quick Study


• Progressive Historians, where I'm an active commenter and recently rejoined the blogging team.


• ACRLog, the blog of the Association of College and Reference Librarians. No, I haven't a clue what got their attention, though I have done a bunch of book lists and intellectual memes


• Ericstotle, aka Eric Vance Johnson.


• The Academy's Bench Warmer, aka Geschichte Grad, one of my PH colleagues


• Spherical Frictionless Cow. Serious points for the name.

That's about it for new linkfriends. Not bad for someone who's mostly coasting, with the increasingly frequent, ill-tempered rant.

I'd also like to thank, with a link, the hardcore sources I've been reading on politics that I don't normally, and am going to go back to mostly ignoring:

• Talking Points Memo
• Think Progress
• Matthew Yglesias
• Daniel Larison
• Sadly, No!
• Andrew Sullivan
• FiveThirtyEight.com
• Digby's Hullabaloo
• FireDogLake
• Kevin Drum
• Political Animal

It's been a good ride!

Comments Elsewhere: Parties and Dreams

Prompted by Jeremy's criticism of dKos's founder, I noted:

I'm not a Kos fan, as you're well aware. I'm actually struck by the fundamentally party-conservative -- not really liberal or progressive, but deeply, Big-D Democratic -- nature of Markos's project and his consistent unwillingness to actually address the coalition nature of the Democratic party. (also by the contrary consistent tendency of Republicans and 'mainstream' news sources to view Markos and the dKos crew as some kind of ultra-liberal, hard-left cadre) He clearly sees constituencies like progressives and women as subgroups within and subordinate to the Party rather than seeing the Party as an alliance of something like equals.

On a lighter note, Terry asked for "not-quite-coherent thoughts" and I offered this

I had a dream just last night in which I saw a short movie in which M*A*S*H* character Margaret Houlihan originally signed up to go to war in WWI, then spent the rest of the dream explaining to someone the historical trajectory of her career. Upon awakening I realized that my dream self neglected to notice that it would make her a lot older than she was, as WWII was actually her first war and the TV show takes place during the Korean conflict.

Pirkei Avot, Chapter 1, Mishna 17

by Rabbi Dovid Rosenfeld

"Shimon his son [the son of Rabban Gamliel of the previous mishna] said: All my life I have been raised among the Sages, and I have not found anything better for oneself than silence. Study is not the primary thing but action. Whoever talks excessively brings about sin."
...
Maimonides, in his commentary to this mishna, has a lengthy but very worthwhile discussion about speech which we will summarize below. He divides speech into five categories.

(1) Obligatory: speech which the Torah requires us to utter. The primary example of this is Torah study. (Maimonides does not mention prayer. I assume this is because prayer is not considered "speech" per se, but is more of an internal, meditative activity.)

(2) Praiseworthy: speech which is not commanded by the Torah, but which fulfills a positive purpose. This would include complimenting others, praising good people and qualities, and denigrating bad qualities. Also words -- as well as song -- which inspire, which touch the soul of the listeners and goad them to become greater people would fall under this category.

(3) Permissible: speech which relates to our businesses and our basic needs -- food, clothing etc. One is considered praiseworthy if he minimizes his speech in this category.

(4) Undesirable: empty talk, that which the listener gains little from. This would include much of what we hear in the news (if it's not the juicy stuff which probably belongs in an even lower category). The commentators give such examples as discussing how a person became rich or died (or both), or how a wall was constructed. (It's almost amusing that scholars such as Maimonides had difficulty even coming up with examples of such talk. One imagines that they could not easily conceive of wasteful talk that would hold anyone's interest in the first place. Guess they lived in the days before pro ball... :-)

(5) Forbidden: that which the Torah explicitly forbids -- cursing, false testimony, gossip (whether true or false), vulgar language, etc.

Maimonides writes that needless to say, the first two categories should form the bulk of our speech. Even regarding this, however, he adds two qualifying conditions:

(1) We practice what we preach. Learning but not doing, or praising good deeds which we ourselves do not fulfill may very well be worse than not speaking or learning in the first place. In this vein, our mishna stated: "Study is not the primary thing but action."

(2) Our speech should be concise and to the point. We should always be wary that our words are proper and carefully chosen. Too much speech is counterproductive in almost every area. Even regarding Torah study the Talmud writes that one should teach his students in as concise a manner as possible (Pesachim 3b). And likewise, our mishna concludes: "Whoever talks excessively brings about sin."
....
In truth, however, there is a much deeper idea here as well. Speech does not have to be about G-d and religion to be valuable. Even light speech may be worthy if it is an expression of caring and concern for others. Kibitzing with another in order to befriend him or her, to show an interest in the other and to become a part of his life: all such speech is a form of using our Divine gift properly.

This just in....

In 2006, this was a really useful blog. In a calculation based on number of posts, number of inbound links from other blogs and especially inbound links from high-ranking blogs, Ahistoricality was ranked 24th in usefulness to answer the question "If I can read 100 blogs, which should I read to be most up to date?" I actually made the cut for high efficiency, too. It's a good thing I was ranked high, because I don't read any of the other blogs in the top 100, unless someone I do read links to them.

What does it mean? Well, if I ever go looking for a paid blogging gig, it might be worth something, I suppose. Anyone looking to hire a history-minded news junkie with a digital photography habit?

P.S.: All you folks coming here from the various reprints of the list of influential blogs might be a little disappointed to learn that I'm on hiatus, more or less. Sorry, but I highly recommend working through my blogroll if you want to learn something!

Ref: Cost-effective Outbreak Detection in Networks
Jure Leskovec, Andreas Krause, Carlos Guestrin, Christos Faloutsos, Jeanne VanBriesen, Natalie Glance.
ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (ACM KDD), 2007.

Taking a hiatus from my hiatus

I should note here that I've been doing a little ahistoricality blogging over at Progressive Historians. I got roped into volunteered to take over some of the Open Thread posting while the owner and regular host, Nonpartisan, was taking a break. I'm "on duty" for the rest of the week, so come over and see what's doing. I'm really enjoying being part of the PH community as a commenter, and the Open Threads are free-form enough that I can get away with it....

Here's a direct link to my "diaries" -- that's what posts are called in this dKos-style collective blog environment -- which are a mishmash of historical thoughts. Not too different from the kind of stuff I was posting here.