Agnostic:

Oh yes, because this is a place where we put so much stock in credentials and such-like.

Krugman gets in a lot of egg-head newspapers and even has a Nobel Prize. That doesn't mean he isn't a shrill, dull-minded hack who has built a career on finding the precise mechanisms of the utterly obvious, then beating the side of the tub proclaiming his prescience.

You mistake the lack of quantifiable research into certain avenues as evidence of a lack of intellectual rigor and creativity in others. No, it's more like a lack of interest in what is tedious and ultimately worthless.

You brag of finding such sublime statistical snapshots of humanity in a few hours time digging. I fail to be impressed by it. It's like proclaiming a retired Los Alamos engineer lazy because he had to use a slide rule to calculate his functions and didn't use a computerized modeling engine. Oh to look down on those who came before, so mired in their antiquarian methods, they have nothing to contribute to us, we the perfectly modern, eh?

The sad thing is, you're quite right in one respect. This way of data-mining is quite revolutionary. It will change how social research is done. However, you will not be the one remembered for creating the magnum opii using this new tool.

Just as qualitative genius devoid of any sort of empirical or numerical awareness leads to the secular equivalents of monks arguing over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, or the shrill Kumbayah cum war chants of the "Fill in the blank" Studies departments, so too does a mind that can only think quantitatively provide only passing fodder for the chattering classes.

You mistake flawed conceptions presented with maximum braggadocio as a stand-in for actual fact. While a thick skin and an ability to posture are certainly necessary to be a successful academic, one makes conservative claims and spends months on developing a case for a reason. Namely, when it comes down to it, once you get past your dissertation committee, the gloves are off. I do wish I could see what will go on when you submit a peer-reviewed work for publication, it would be... delightful. Suffice to say, I don't think it would even phase you.

No, I'd just get pleasure out of seeing your rhetorical flailing while being flensed, raked over coals and bitchslapped by people who are much much smarter and well informed than I, a mere dabbler. Hah, it exists for that sole purpose. That's why I got out. Call it weakness if you like, I don't care. To be strong in *that* isn't something I value much.

That being said, I have no illusions that you *won't* end up an academic. It just takes a strong stomach and a willingness to eat cup-ramen much more often than a grown human should. If you can take the 5-9 years of grinding poverty, constant ego-battling and being around people who simply couldn't hack life outside the university, and pump out your 300+ pages, you get to battle for an academic job, where anything less than a Ph.D from a top-flite school means teaching at a Community College, mostly likely without benefits.

The sheer rarity nowadays of even State colleges hiring someone just out of grad school who is *not* in engineering or computer science or one of the fields where there is high private market demand bespeaks the most likely outcome of your life, being the dickish, priggish and a little bit creepy community college/junior college prof who fancies himself important because non-peer reviewed magazines still publish him and "they count for more, since they're not forced to speak the party-line and have higher circulation rates".

I can further imagine: You'll wear light colored sports coats to campus mixers and lean in uncomfortably close to frosh girls as you tell them "you remind me of this one chick I met in Barcelona with the most amazing smile. Really, you'd be a dead ringer if you dressed as elegantly as her, and hey, do you like to dance?" as they smile uncomfortably and nod, some of them putting a note in the back of their mind that if they take your class, they'll get decent grades if they wear tight jeans everyday and giggle coquettishly and stroke your arm during office hours. You may even go through the hassle of creating business cards with your publications listed on them.

You'll avoid doing as much of the endless committee work that academic life entails, but the others won't bug you about it, because of how intensely irritating you are to be around, as socially tone deaf as that Physics professor, but without his bumbling eccentric charm. Plus, it's whispered by some of more loose tongued, you had *improprieties* with a student once. Not just a plain vanilla affair, but with some quid pro quo involved. It might be true, it might not. No one really knows.

It's not such a bad life. It's a full-time job, and you will always be convinced of your vast import in life and the intellectual world. A few people will actually like and respect you. In the end though, after you die, you'll be as forgotten as myself and the countless others who sought to make themselves Ozymandias of the mind, consigned to dusty untraveled worm-eaten sections of the university library, where undergrads have furtive clumsy sex against the shelves.

What more fitting fate than to have an uncracked tome of your brain droppings grasped for physical leverage by a young coed?

One thing you can say about me, Aggie me boy, is that I don't lack for a vivid imagination or a sense of grasping a person's character, two things you are utterly devoid of.

To have your intelligence would be a curse to have a large amount of brain power and no discipline to use it wisely. To have your measure of curiosity would be to find delight in the obvious and tedious. To be as hard-working as you would involve too much time invested in maintaining a personal and mental facade as false as a three-dollar bill. You can keep your "strengths".

Though, however, I would like to take you at your word if you are a man who'll stand by it. It'll get to the real heart of the matter, and none of this oh-so-tiring shuck and jive in comment rolls.

Don't publish one of your net-pieces. Send the data, cites, and writing to me directly. I won't even put my name on your writing when I do publish it online. I only put my name on what I clearly write as my own. I pledge that I will not alter one single word of what you write. It will be posted as yours, complete and without any editing or expurgation, with my comments and critique following. Think of it as having a light preliminary peer review. I'm otherwise occupied in my writing through November and the beginning part of December, so I can't get to it until then, but after that I'm game. Now, I'm not a genius like you, so it won't take me an afternoon to do *my* work, but it will be done.

If you truly believe what you say about the solidness your finished work and my intellectual abilities (or lack thereof), then you have absolutely nothing to fear by this little exercise. You'll crow over my eviscerated corpse, and quite rightly so. I'll never ever bother you again with my needling little voice.

My one request is that you give me something interesting to work with. I really don't give a shit about cupcakes or teenaged asscheeks.

So, what say you? I've put my chips on the table. You going to ante up or fold?

Call it, friendo.

Posted by: Spike Gomes on October 20, 2008 10:26 AM

Wow. Folks have totally taken out the nerf bats, haven't they?

Anyway, when I first heard of global warming back in college (early 80s), it freaked me out because doomsday scenarios can do that.

So, for years, I read up on it and researched it and so on.

I've come to the conclusion that Michael Crichton did in "State of Fear" - it's probably not happening. If it is, it's probably a natural cycle we can't control ("ice age" anyone?). We also have not been collecting relevant data long enough to make any such long-term prediction either way (ice age or tropical age).

Should we try to be greener? Of course. It makes sense regardless.

Posted by: yahmdallah on October 20, 2008 11:20 AM

Chris, I don't know what Canadian culture you can pick up in Maine other than the hairy legs on the ladies from Kaybeck on the French-Canadian Riviera, otherwise known as Old Orchard Beach. Oh, wait, you can get poutine at Duckfat in Portland...

Will & Patrick, if you follow the press here in the self-absorbed States, you know that you'd probably have to question 50 Americans before you'd find 1 who knows who Harper is. Let's face it, your average American can't name his state representative!

Me, I want Madame Trudeau back!

For residents of the People's Republic of Massachusetts, compelling issues are definitly not AWOL. Our first 2 ballot questions concern eliminating the income tax and decriminalizing weed, both being given a good chance to pass in spite of the opposition from the good, "socially liberal" political class, which is 85% Democrat here. Statewide, the election of the hideous Barry O-blah-blah creates great opportunities here. Rumor has it thet Gigilo Kerry and Pimp-My-Gov Deval Patrick, our alleged governor and Obama buddy, are both slated to occupy some part of the new administration. That, coupled with the imminent demise of the Great White Whale of Hyannisport, gives voters here the possible chance to vote on the governor and both senators with NO incumbents in the running!

What's great is that state law used to dictate the the governor appointed the replacement for a congress critter not serving out the full term, but when Kerry ran for POTUS, the aforementioned Democrat-controlled state house developed hives over Governor Romney, a Republican for those who haven't noticed, having the chance to pick Kerry's replacement if he won (thank the Supreme Being that that never came to pass), so they changed the law, and now we have special elections. Given the love of justice and fair play that exists in our Commonwealth's power stucture, however, I expect them to change the law right back when the next session convenes.

Posted by: Brutus on October 20, 2008 8:10 PM

Spike: I demand foes like PatrickH and Shouting Thomas!

Spike, you wound me! That was a very hurtful comment. I hope you can see why.

Although I do admit that both ST and I are members of the human race, if at opposite poles of human development, so to speak. Membership in humanity is something I question when it comes to your little ant-aggie-nist, who's shown himself to be a genuinely nasty little c*nt.

So I like you too much to be your foe, Spike. Sorry.

Posted by: PatrickH on October 22, 2008 1:04 PM

Brutus, I too want Madame Trudeau back. She had balls, didn't she?

I join you in anticipation of the demise of the Chappaquiddick Floater, which will remove (finally!) the single most damaging political figure from American politics of the last fifty years.

I'll bet you God is going to f*ck us over though and give Ol' Noseveins a reprieve. After all, God is an Irishman, and that means he doesn't know his own Divine Afflatus from his Divine Flatulence.

He'll fart Teddy in our general direction for another couple of years. Enough to help pass an amnesty. Wanna bet?

Posted by: PatrickH on October 22, 2008 1:10 PM

PatrickH:

All apologies, Patrick. I should have qualified the different ways of being entertaining. You and ST are both entertaining, but in very different ways. Wit versus the buffoon.

That said, one can say that at least ST has a soul buried under all the comic opera rhetorical excess, and is no doubt a very decent man in his personal dealings (which for the most part I would extend to the vast majority of posters here).

Like yourself, I do reserve such a personal estimation from that "mouse who roared". He is a nasty catty bitchy little thing, isn't he? Funny thing is, I could forgive him that, if his intellectual merit were worth anything. Goodness knows some of my favorite writers and thinkers were hardly decent human beings.

Well, at least he's smart enough to stay silent to my little proposition. Mores the pity. It would have been so much fun to play such a little game, but I suppose he's probably not the type to actually do anything when something is on the line, even if the stakes are as paltry as an online reputation.

Posted by: Spike Gomes on October 22, 2008 8:06 PM

ST has a soul

He does indeed. Much as I hate to admit it, I actually like him a lot. He's a character, and that's no mistake. I can't help the feeling that he's the kind of guy you'd want on your side in a bar fight.

Not like, ah, well...you know.

Posted by: PatrickH on October 22, 2008 10:52 PM

Could we have more on the "light-colored sports coats" years. What book will he carry to impress the lay-dies? (I don't know if it is true, but it is entertaining.)

Posted by: sN on October 23, 2008 2:24 AM

sN:

Haha, I'd never thought I'd see the day when I would be praised by you.

In any case, it's a gestalt of certain academic types. I spent almost a decade working and studying on college campuses. Guys like Agnostic are an archtype, though he combines elements of the "balding over the hill player who thinks he's still with it" prof, the "socially tone deaf asshole" prof and the "genius in his own mind " prof in one body.

It's like some bastard offspring of the worst personal aspects of both the humanities and sciences faculties.

Suffice to say, my personal experiences both on-line and off feed into my fictional endeavors, so if I ever get around to publishing anything fictional, maybe you might be entertained by what I can do when I'm not shooting blog comments off the cuff.

Hey, even race realists get into my work, though with a much more positive portrayal than most depictions in fictional media. If you can believe it, I understand the roots of what you feel strongly about, even if I don't agree with the interpretation or expression.

Posted by: Spike Gomes on October 23, 2008 11:31 AM

Spike Gomes, I look forward to seeing your future efforts in fiction.

And feel free to continue throwing punches my way when the mood strikes. I think we both know that is the way it should be.

Posted by: sN on October 24, 2008 4:27 AM






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