My grandmother used to tell me that I should become a typist becuase I had long fingers. Maybe she said that for the annoyed responses I'd give her. I am not the secretarial type.

Trish Wilson, guest-blogging at Feministe, wrote a rant that Professor Drezner's done an admirable job of debunking on all fronts.

There's still one paragraph that annoys me:

That's right. Top ten - no women. "Elite" responses - no women. One woman (Amanda Butler) was thanked for "collecting and collating the data while displaying the utmost discretion." Women are valued for ... their secretarial skills.

Oh, for crying out loud... most undergrad tudents who work as research assistants in the social sciences do eventually compile some Excel spreadsheets because econometric analysis often needs coded data. This isn't about being female; this is about being a research assistant.

In Kazakhstan during Soviet times, being a doctor, engineer, or a computer engineer was de-valued as woman's work. The first, caring for sick people, was just an expansion of what women had always been expected to do; the other two weren't respected because they weren't creative jobs, but just forumlaic work. These jobs are more respected now, for they provide a relatively good income. As men enter these professions, the de-valuing descriptions of what the jobs entail have been re-written into something more gender neutral.

Creating a computerized database for political science research was probably once called a man's work; now it's been transformed, through 'secretarial,' into womens' work. Could it just be pointless to point out gender of workers in a job that doesn't depend at all on the worker's gender?

As you can tell, I've been in a sort of curmudgeonly mood today (just wait till you see the post I have drafted for tomorrow morning). I blame blog comments.

My favorite blogger once said to me (in an email) that comments represent a sort of "pollution" to the blogs they inhabit. This explains why even those of us who oppose comments (like my correspondent) can succumb to the temptation to post one on certain blogs (in my case, Amber's), but also why we'd really be happier if the blog's proprietor's could clean up the place.

Where the blogger is often reasoned, or within the bounds of what we consider acceptable and intelligent, the blogger's commenters usually go way off the deep end. This is how I feel whenever I make the mistake of reading Matt Yglesias's comments, or the even worse mistake of reading Sara Butler's. The whole reason the blogosphere is superior to the usenetsphere (sorry) usenet is noise control.

Anyway, this is, as Jeremy Reff would say, neither excuse nor justification, merely an explanation. I read comments due to some addiction or lack of self-control. Stupid comments-- of which there are many-- make me mad. Please, bloggers, clear out the riff-raff.

Tyler Cowen is in Poland and reports that it has "excellent food, arguably the best in Eastern Europe after Budapest." Things have definitely changed since I was there about ten years ago. I do hope Cowen has steered clear of Polish pizza though, which probably hasn't changed, and probably still involves both ketchup and wonderbread. And no, I kid you not.

In other bad food news, Barrett at Two Many Chefs-- a food blog I normally enjoy-- has a very frightening post up endorsing a sandwich that contains both meat-less Bacon and Vegenaise. I am all for healthy eating, but I cannot understand why somebody would rather use a frightening pseudo-pork product rather than, make oneself, say, a grilled cheese sandwich with tomato and lettuce and spicy garlic aioli, which would be just as easy, just as healthy, and many many times as good.

I have been thinking since last weekend of something intelligent to say about this New York Times piece on the hook-up culture among teens-- the gist of which seems to be that kids are sexually active, immature, and sometimes happy and sometimes unhappy with the results of this combination. Given that the conventional wisdom is that this is a change from when kids were sexually inactive, immature, and sometimes happy and sometimes unhappy with the results of this combination, it seems like there's nothing to get up in arms about. (Matthew Yglesias questions whether the hook-up culture is really new anyway).

Anyway, it's been sitting as a basically vacant link on my desktop until I found something to say and now I agree with Yglesias that Belle Waring has said all that need be said here.

Sara Butler fires one more salvo in the Hooters argument (she has links to the previous rounds, so I won't add them here). It seems to me there's a little bit of confusion over what it is for a view to be inconsistent.

When I say that the view that consensual-sex-is-always-fine is perfectly consistent with the view that dressing-up-five-year-olds-in-sexually-suggestive-outfits-and-parading-them-around is not-fine, what I mean, is what the word "consistent" implies to a philosopher. No logical (nor psychological) contradiction is engendered by believing both of those things, as I think I've conclusively shown.

What I don't mean to suggest is that both of those beliefs come from some grand-unified-theory of moral conduct (or even a semi-grand-unified-theory of moral sexual conduct), let alone that there is some compelling reason to accept such a grand-unified-theory if it exists. They don't, and there isn't.

Now the advantage of Sara's completely wrongheaded position is that it has a sort of philosophical unity to it. But that doesn't make it right. (In fact, I think that unity is part of what makes it wrong.) That's why I've limited my argument here to showing that the two beliefs are perfectly consistent. To do that, my task is to destroy any potential inconsistency, because that's what it is for two beliefs to be philosophically consistent with one another.

But the two beliefs aren't necessarily linked by any means. You could think consensual sex was okay and also think that five year olds can consent to sex. You could think that the Hooters thing was all wrong, and also think, as Sara seems to, that a lot of consensual adult sex is all wrong too. I don't think either of those things myself, but you could.

Sara thinks the two beliefs appear totally inconsistent on their face. I've shown that they aren't. If one believes a pair of supplementary premises-- that 5-year-old children are too young to validly consent to sexual acts, and that sexual consent may not be given by parental proxy-- then the two beliefs mesh perfectly. There's nothing necessary about these premises-- that is, there's nothing that forces you to believe them. But there's also nothing irrational about these premises. Furthermore, these premises are very common ones, and even more common among people who believe that consensual-sex-is-always-okay, so Sara Butler's confusion is extremely strange, and suggests that she needs to get out among philosophically serious libertarians more.

Amber Taylor gives me the word "dastard," which is not to be confused with its rhyming cousin. A "dastard," the OED tells us, was once "One inert or dull of wit, a dullard; a sot." Now, however, a dastard is "One who meanly or basely shrinks from danger; a mean, base, or despicable coward; in modern use, esp. one who does malicious acts in a cowardly, skulking way, so as not to expose himself to risk." Though "dastard" has fallen into disuse, we still retain "dastardly" as in, "That dark and despicable doer of dastardly deeds."

A New York Times lexis search gives us only six uses of the word "Dastard," two of which dicuss the book/show, "''How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, or the Dastard's Guide to Fame and Fortune".

"Dastardly," on the other hand, finds 422 uses, and there's also Franklin Roosevelt's famous description of the Pearl Harbor attack as "dastardly," although I question the accuracy of that usage.

Anyway, this is indeed a great word, whose currency we should try to increase, wherever applicable. Those of you who like to write hateful screeds to those of the opposite political persuasion may find it useful, colorful, and still retains a bit of zing. And, so far as I know, it's currently unpunishable by the FCC (but I could be wrong about that).

Compare and contrast:

"Hugh":

"Cleave" is the only word in English with two opposed definitions.

"Sanction": tr. v.

. . . .
2. To encourage or tolerate by indicating approval. See Synonyms at approve.
3. To penalize, especially for violating a moral principle or international law.

An awful lot of the so-called contronyms in the link you posted are
really something quite more modest: a neutral term that can be used in
a number of contexts. 'By" meaning both multiply and divide? 'by'
doesn't mean 'divide' in a sentence that also needs 'divide' to make
sense.

"Enjoin" doesn't mean two different things: it's neutral, depending on
whether you use the phrase 'enjoin to' or 'enjoin from' ("to' and
'from' being pretty well recognizable as opposites.)

And 'dollop' means neither a large amount or a small amount.

And 'buckle' means 'to act like a buckle': it doesn't mean to fall
apart. A hull plate that buckles folds (like a buckle) but remains in
one piece.

"custom" never means "usual". it means "specific to us." (And confusing
'customary' and 'custom' is extremely sloppy.)

"aught" means neither 'all' or 'nothing'. in means 'anything.'

There are a few words on the list that are simply 'opposites' when
people misuse them: "discursive' only means 'aimless' to the ADD crowd,
for whom anything long is rambling.

When has a 'dike' ever meant a ditch? Only to someone who's never seen
one . . .

Howard Bashman asked that in reference to an Seventh Circuit decision on the Chief Illiniwek controversy; Judge Evans includes a long section on mascot names in his opinion. Marty Lederman had replied with this website about the St. Louis University mascot, the Billiken. Apparently, he's a good luck figure created in 1908.

I don't know what connection exists between the SLU Billikens and Chicago, but since 1929, Chicago has celebrated the Bud Billiken Parade every year on the second Saturday in August. It's the second-largest parade in America and the largest African-American parade.

Bud Billiken himself is a mythical figure created by The Chicago Defender. His name comes from a Chinese figure thought to be a guardian of children, with 'Bud' added to complete the name. William Motley authored a children's column in the Defender under that pen-name, and the character grew from that persona; Bud Billiken is a cartoon character, a black Dennis the Menace; Dave Kellum of the Defender created the character and the parade, and the original point of the parade was to thank the newsboys and sell more papers. I don't know which of these stories is most accurate, for all that they agree on is that he was popular and he didn't exist.

It's time we found a neutral principle for picking a theory of Constitutional Law. I have one. Whose vision of the Constitution produces spiffier diagrams?

Exhibit A: Randy Barnett (link via Randy Barnett)

Exhibit B: Laurence Tribe (link via Waddling Thunder)

You be the judge, and vote below.