Nate Knows Nada

They really are wonderful little notebooks.

Here’s one of a number of sites devoted to the Moleskine notebook.

It’s the paper and the way it feels when you push a good pen across it.

If you’re not familiar with 43folders.com, you should be.  It’s a bunch of real life hacks, shortcuts, and useful ideas.

• The hipster PDA — low-tech and dependent on 3×5 notecards.  Impress all your trendy coffeehouse friends!
• CD case as notecard organizer
• Abject worship of Moleskines
• Avoiding
  eating of cookie dough, not sending embarassing flame-mails, and
  folding up a big map very small without getting something as thick as a
  rural yellow pages

Keith Olbermann, who’s a
reporter over at MSNBC, proudly proclaims his membership in the
community of the religious, while still pointing out James Dobson’s
idiocy over the whole SpongeBob thing.  Why is this
relevant?  Well, Dobson’s group singled Olbermann out for “e-mail
action” because of his anti-God viewpoint.

And not to let the facts get in the way of FOF’s prejudice, but I
happen to be a religious man. I believe in God, I pray daily, and if
I’ve ever gotten any direct instructions from my maker, they were that
I’ll be judged by whether I tried to help other people, or hurt them.
Also, that true belief should not be worn like a policeman’s club, nor
used like one. And, finally, that I’m in big trouble for helping to
introduce funny catchphrases into sportscasting….

It goes back to the core of the Dobsonian point of view here: the fear
of the “pro-Homosexual” agenda. That may be the way he delicately
phrases it, but it is not shared by most of his followers who emailed
me. They were clearly angry that there was no anti-homosexual
agenda. And one of the most fascinating things about the studies of
homosexuality in this country is that while there is still debate
between the creationists and the environmentalists, I’ve never heard
anything suggesting that a child is more or less likely to be gay, depending on whether he’s taught not to hate nor be intolerant, of gays….

Hey, guys, worry about yourselves. You’re
spewing hate, while assuming that for some reason, God has chosen you
and you alone in all of history to understand the mysteries of
existence, when mankind’s existence is filled with ample evidence that
nobody yet has been smart enough to discern an answer.

You might try keeping it simpler: did you help others, or hurt them?

I’ll
be happy to be judged on the answer to that question, and if it’s a
group session, I don’t expect I’ll find many members of “Focus On
Family” in the “done ok” line.

Machiavelli taught us that in fear lies one of the most effective
political tools available.  Seems like Dobson read his Machiavelli
— too bad he didn’t read more of Jesus.

From the mouth of Andrew Sullivan, over at TNR.com:

Hillary Rodham Clinton is
absolutely right. I’ve waited many years to write that sentence, but,
hey, if you live long enough. … I’m referring to her superb speech
earlier this week on the politics and morality of abortion. There were
two very simple premises to Clinton’s argument: a) the right to legal
abortion should remain, and b) abortion is always and everywhere a
moral tragedy. It seems to me that if we are to reduce abortions to an
absolute minimum (and who, exactly, opposes that objective?), then
Clinton’s formula is the most practical. Her key sentences: “We can all
recognize that abortion in many ways represents a sad, even tragic
choice to many, many women. … The fact is that the best way to reduce
the number of abortions is to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies
in the first place.”

Echoing her husband’s inspired notion that abortion should be “safe,
legal, and rare,” the senator from New York seemed to give new emphasis
to that last word: “rare.” Hers is, in that respect, a broadly pro-life
position. Not in an absolutist, logically impeccable fashion–which
would require abolishing all forms of legal abortion immediately–but
in a pragmatic, moral sense. In a free society, the ability of a woman
to control what happens to her own body will always and should always
be weighed in the balance against the right of an unborn child to life
itself. And, if she and the Democrats can move the debate away from the
question of abortion’s legality toward abortion’s immorality, then they
stand a chance of winning that debate in the coming years….

In some ways, this does not mean a change of principle. Democrats can
still be, and almost certainly should be, for the right to legal
abortion. But, instead of beginning their conversation with that right,
they should start by acknowledging a wrong. Abortion is always wrong.
How can we keep it legal while doing all we can to reduce its damage?
Call it a pro-life pro-choice position. And argue for it with moral
passion. If you want to win a “values” debate, it helps to advance what
Democrats value. And one of those obvious values is the fewer abortions
the better. Beyond the polarizing rhetoric, a simple message: saving
one precious life at a time.

The moral positions on abortion hardly seem restricted to “pro-life” and “pro-choice.”

Political Arguments points out that today is the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau.  Few of the major papers in the US or Europe provide notice.

AKMA notes that a blog portal has decided that the only “Christian” bloggers worth mentioning are conservative evangelicals. 
I’m gonna turn around one of the conventional canards of conservative
evangelicals, who often complain that our society has an anti-Christian
bias (which I find a load of crap).  This little bit seems to
indicate that our society has an anti-liberal Christian bias, at least
insofar as people seem to believe that “Christian” means Republican
white men.

Over at my group blog, Ben links to a report noting that male circumcision associates highly with a lower overall HIV infection rate.  At least in Africa.

@U2 notes that special presales for the U2 fan club have gone horribly awry.

And Crooked TImber points out why more social science education proves ridiculously necessary, as a “social scientist” (and what else can you call anyone who works for AEI) demonstrates either stupidity or mendacity.

AKMA ponders the idea of marriage-as-licit-zone-of-sex. 
(There’s more than that, but you’ll have to read it.) If you remove the
sex from a relationship and leave only the “other stuff”–“shared
lives, mutual care, [and] lifelong exclusive spiritual intimacy”–it’d
amount to a relationship that people wouldn’t have much of a problem
with.

Bloggers, that is.  There are a couple here at methods camp.

First, aufheben by Andrew Dilts. 
Andrew’s geektastic.  It’s great to find other poli sci grad
students with similar obsessions over moleskine notebooks, good
fountain pens, and talking computer stuff.  He, in fact, knows
MUCH more about all the web stuff than I do, which is nice, because the
use of words like CSS and XML among most of my colleagues is one of the
few things they profess no understanding of and which I find
fascinating.

Greg Hoadley, a former colleague from Berkeley, keeps track of interesting news and his thoughts on it.

Are there two people who can help?

I still need two people to sign up for a free iPod to get one.  In my previous posting, I noted the offer’s legitimacy and provided some evidence. 
If you can help me out (or BF), I’d be quite grateful.  And you
can be on your way to getting your own Pod.  Think of it this
way.  You spend about $40, and you can get a $300 iPod.  (And
as a grad student, I’m not gonna see the $300 route any time soon, I
think.)


Click here (for me) (need 2 people).
Click here (for BF) (3 people).

This is fabulous.  A blog set up to trash the obsequiousness of the NY Times wedding announcements.  You may recall that I’ve had thoughts on this myself.

Noted on the website of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops this morning.

Note how the second word of the title is spelled.  I believe they
meant “Noting.”  Otherwise, this looks pretty unfortunate.

Worth Nothing in December

Prevention Messages Increasingly Critical This World AIDS Day

With African Americans and Hispanics now accounting for 70 percent of
new HIV infections each year, pastors and parish coordinators across
the country are preparing to seize the opportunity on World AIDS Day
“to incorporate prevention messages into their homilies. Families and
communities will become aware of the pandemic from a Catholic
perspective, which has its foundation in the inherent dignity of every
human person,” says Ronaldo Cruz, executive director, USCCB Secretariat
for Hispanic Catholics. …