"If [Gleick's] judgement is this bad, how is his judgement on matters of science?"

"For that matter, what about the judgement of all the others in the movement who apparently see nothing worth dwelling on in his actions? When skeptics complain that global warming activists are apparently willing to go to any lengths–including lying–to advance their worldview, I’d say one of the movement’s top priorities should be not proving them right."

Megan McArdle's big lie.

"Have you noticed all the huge antiwar demonstrations in the last twelve months? Yeah, me neither."

"It turns out that a lot of the energy for the movement seems to have been provided by Democrats who are a lot less worried about wars conducted by Democratic presidents."

I have not noticed huge antiwar demonstrations in the last decade, and I live in Madison, Wisconsin, a place where, if there are going to be demonstrations somewhere, there will be demonstrations. During the height of President Bush's wars, I saw only small demonstrations, peopled by folks who look like they'd been around to demonstrate against the Vietnam War. I saw students stream by, showing very little interest.

Asking "Are You Sexist?" is asking the the wrong question.

Bob Wright frames the question that way as he is challenged about the way Bloggingheads commenters seem to get angriest at me and 2 other female diavloggers (Megan McArdle and Michelle Goldberg):



Of course, the commenters respond to his question by denying that they've been sexist. They're good little commenters, so they don't want to be something bad, and they accept that the thing that sounds bad — sexism — is bad, and therefore no one can say anything interesting.

But obviously, the human mammal has a response to the perceived sex of another human mammal. All sorts of conscious and unconscious thoughts and feelings flow through the nervous system. It is the most interesting topic of conversation. Don't squelch it! Facilitate it!

Why have diavlogs at all if not to expose the physicality of the interlocutors? If you want to exclude reactions of the more complex emotional/sexual kind, then let's stick to writing... and use sex-neutral pen names. If we're going to appear and speak out loud, we're doing something that has an elaborate effect on other human beings, and that's not something to deny and pretend not to see. It's something to observe,  have deep (and shallow) thoughts about, and analyze — seriously and jokingly — in writing and in speech.

We're so afraid of hurting other people and of being thought ill of that we make ourselves into crushing bores.

***

Bonus: Here's an August 2008 BHtv segment in which I talked with Megan McArdle about why female diavloggers inspire wrath.

AND: Here's the BHtv link to see the kind of answers Bob got to his question.

Are you going to stop flying?

Megan McArdle is.

What will you do?
	I'll continue, as usual, and accept the scanners seeing me naked.
	I'll continue, as usual, and opt for the grope.
	I'll cut back, and when I fly, accept the scanners seeing me naked.
	I'll cut back, and when I fly, opt for the grope.
	I'm quitting flying.
pollcode.com free polls

"Megan McArdle Really Hates Sex at Dawn"...

... is a funny title for an article, written by the author of "Sex at Dawn," which book title he declines to put in italics or quotes in his article title. I thought it would be interesting to discuss sex at dawn, in the literal sense, but I find myself confronted with an author who's miffed at a blogger who's dissing his book:

Her comments begin strangely, with the admission that she's "in the middle" of the book. Note the urgency to condemn it publicly, even before reading the damned thing! 

Oh, blah! I hate this criticism. McArdle is blogging, not doing the official book review for the Atlantic. A rule against criticizing books you haven't finished would overprotect authors, since you shouldn't finish a bad book, and it would also underprotect authors, since the critics wouldn't disclose that they hadn't read the whole thing.

But bloggers... bloggers can open a book to a random page, read one sentence, cogitate furiously, then open up their laptops — maybe right there at Borders, where they picked up the book they didn't buy — and tap out a free-association blog post saying anything that occurs to them and publish — using the WiFi they didn't pay for either. It's not the slightest bit strange. And it's not unfair either. It is what it is, and we know what it is. It's blogging.

And boy, does she lash out:

•    "It reads like horsefeathers . . . like an undergraduate thesis,"
•    "breathless rather than scientific"
•    "cherry-picked evidence stretched far out of shape to support their theory,"
•    "they don't even attempt to paper over the enormous holes in their theory."

Ouch! And that's just the first paragraph. 

Eh! There are only 4 paragraphs. By the way, "their theory" — if I can trust McArdle — is that "people are naturally polyamorous." The dispute continues with McArdle and the author (Christopher Ryan) throwing shit at each other in a fight about whether people are like bonobos. I'm just saying "throwing shit at each other" because that's how bonobos fight, and people are like bonobos, right? Not right? Advantage McArdle!!!!!

Anyway, as you've probably figured out by now, the book is not about sex at dawn — the practice of having sex upon first awakening in the morning — but sex and evolution — "dawn" in the sense of "the dawn of man."

So where am I going with this? It's a blog post. I'm a blogger. I'll go where I want, which is where I always go when this subject comes up, and I don't feel safe in this conversation no more...

"And [Peggy Noonan], Ann Althouse, and Megan McArdle will have to deal with it for the rest of their lives."

"Those three women have all been an intellectual blessing to public discourse in this country, but they all succombed [sic] to the same cult of personality two years ago, and we still do not know what the final price tag on that cult of personality is going to be."

Note to Little Miss Attila. Not everyone who voted for Obama voted for him for the simple stereotypical reason you keep in your head. If you want to know why I actually voted for Obama, read "How McCain Lost Me." The bottom line was:

1. [McCain] did not understand economics, the most important issue.

2. He lost the ability to make the experience argument [when he picked Sarah Palin for VP].

3. He never defined himself as a principled conservative.

4. Erratic and incoherent, he lacked sufficient mental capacity.

I'm not happy with the job Obama is doing, but it could be a lot worse, and what McCain would have done is something we will never get to see. I won't accuse you of succumbing to a cult of personality if you are imagining some wonderful McCain presidency that would have been, but you can't compare that what never happened to what is happening now.

In the end, we were stuck choosing between 2 far from perfect men, and I voted for Obama without being caught up in any sort of giddy emotionalism.

Megan McArdle was just trying to explain the nefarious "doc fix," and now she's stuck fending off a wave of stupid with the dreaded rhetorical device "um."

The post — "Politico's 'Doc Fix' Memo: Fake, But Accurate?" — now begins with a sadly urgent "update":

Update:  Please READ THE POST before launching into your attacks.  Hint:  the headline is name checking a famous quote, not suggesting that this was a valid idea.  Had you read the post before beginning your cringe-inducing denunciations of my "hypocrisy", you would have, um, known that.

The life of a blogger is tough. It's not easy, as some people seem to think. You work hard crafting snark, and nobody understands it! You write updates beating readers over the head with your point, and other bloggers needle you for being pissy and obvious....

Now, let's distinguish between wishing someone was dead and...

Jim Lindgren is struck by Michelle Goldberg's passion. It's hateful and casual, as she expresses the exquisite difference between the way lefties wanted Cheney dead and some righties — purportedly — actually want to kill Obama.

Hmm. Did anyone really threaten to kill Obama? It's a federal crime, and isn't it vigorously investigated? If people are doing this, why are we not seeing arrests?

Anyway, comparative hatred is a strange game, isn't it? Let's be rational and analytical, mm'kay?

"I had the thought last week that this entire thing is charade designed to sell a book."

Yeah, my thought too. That's why I didn't blog about "My Personal Credit Crisis" — by Edmund L. Andrews — when I read it last week. And it's a long article. It's very rare that I go all the way through a long article and refrain from blogging it. Normally, I taste things, and the decision to consume them in full is automatically a decision to blog them. But I felt aggressively hostile to giving Andrews any attention. It was a readable article. I'll give him that. But I wanted to smack him.

AND: Neo-Neocon wants to smack him too. In the comments, Beth said...

I read this with disbelief. This guy, after child support, was bringing home less than $3k a month, and his fiancee at the time had no job at all, and it made sense to borrow HALF A MILLION BUCKS???? He keeps saying how easy it was to borrow it, but until months after the bills actually start coming in, he never thought about how hard it would be to pay back. That's the kind of thinking I've seen in friends with manic depression, in a manic phase.

It seemed to me that the guy did whatever he could get away with. And now he writes a confessional memoir about his shamelessness with the NYT as his springboard.

Why not put people to work by paying them to water their own lawns?

The government could do that. And how different from that is the stimulus?

Watch this clip. Megan McArdle is on a rampage in this one. The other head is Dean Baker of Beat the Press.

"This woman is an Obama-level political natural."

Says Megan McArdle. Indeed.

It's like some bizarre nightmare/dream (depending on your party preference). The Dems had Obama, and then... suddenly Sarah.

It's as if some mad right-wing scientists designed and built an android to counter all the things that Obama is. Can she be real? Can it be that there was this actual human entity, on ice in Alaska, waiting for this moment to be thawed out and set loose in the lower 48?

IN THE COMMENTS: Simon:

Ann, remember Jon Turley's line about John Roberts et fam. at the 7th Circuit Bar meeting last year? "Hydroponically raised by Karl Rove in the White House basement" or something to that effect.

Good memory. Here's Turley:

Roberts is a handsome, perfectly groomed man who looks like he was raised hydroponically by Karl Rove in the White House basement.

"Clintons are lizard people and they are punishing Obama."

Links mentioned:

David Icke's theory of the lizard people

Skeptoid on Reptoids

It's me and Megan McArdle on Bloggingheads!

Topics:

Joe Biden: the exciting/boring choice (06:07)
Is Hillary better off if Obama loses? (04:13)
Don’t we all aspire to own so many houses that we lose count? (03:46)
Irreligious Megan defends religion’s role in politics (13:53)
The psychology of online trolls (07:44)
Why Ann and Megan drive the commenters crazy (06:47)

Some good stuff in there. I'll resist doing a whole lot of clips, but will try to find something very short and pithy to amuse you.

"The feminist movement has a right to define what constitutes being a member, and I'm not going to appropriate their label if it bothers them..."

"... any more than I'm going to start calling myself a Catholic who just doesn't happen recognize the authority of the Church. If you read any feminist blogs, you'll know that they spend an enormous amount of time trying to define the core values of feminism, and while I may disagree with the definitions they end up with, if they dislike my opinions on the matter, well, it's their movement."

Says Megan McArdle, and I completely disagree. I was going to explain my disagreement in detail but the second comment over there — by Julian Sanchez — is so apt that it instantly cured me of any propensity toward verbosity:

Why is it "their movement"? I didn't realize the analogy "Jessica Valenti : Feminism :: The Pope : Catholicism" held.

And why must feminism be attached to that ugly word "movement"? Movement feminists can have and define their movement, but they shouldn't be allowed to claim feminism. You know, back in the 1980s, I used to be afraid to say I was a feminist because there were other, more active people out there defining the term and I didn't want to adopt by reference a set of beliefs that I wasn't able to control. By behaving that way, I was ceding the field to the most activist types. That's what Megan is talking about doing now. I understand the impulse to say: Okay, then you can have your word and make it mean whatever you want it to mean. I'll find a different word. But if a word has a grand history and tradition — and "feminism" does — then it deserves a wide usage and a continued struggle over its meaning. Don't give it away to the boldest aggressor.

ADDED: Elisa Camahort thinks I have the better side of this argument and says:

In a way McArdle's concession of the term is not much different than Rush Limbaugh painting feminists as Feminazis. It's saying: over there there is a group of people who hold beliefs with which I disagree, and I am going to decide that they represent the sum total of all people who might believe some of the same stuff.

I do need to defend Rush here. In the time I've been listening to him (since January 2008), he hasn't said "feminazis" much, and when he does, it's always to bait a certain type of type of extremist feminist. He seems to support equal rights for women and similar individualistic feminist values.

In fact, I have heard him encourage young women not to marry, to go into business, and to compete with men. I have never heard him say women are inferior or that they should devote their lives to serving men and bearing children. So I suspect that he would concede that he agrees with feminism broadly defined.

The people to whom McArdle would defer are perhaps the same kind of extremists that Rush is talking about when he says feminazis. So if McArdle-style deference were to prevail, "feminist" and "feminazi" would come to mean the same thing but only because the category "feminist" will have shrunken.

"Likelihood of you being FEMALE is 9%/Likelihood of you being MALE is 91%."

Okay, thanks for the info.

Via Instapundit, who's much more likely to be female than I am (50%), via Megan McArdle, who's practically all female (99%).

ADDE: The websites I read that are really masculinizing me are Drudge (2.08 male/female ratio), PGA Tour (also 2.08 — they don't know I have a family member on the tour), Real Clear Politics (1.82), and Rush Limbaugh (1.99). I read a lot of things that are very close to 1. The only really feminizing thing that got counted is Television Without Pity (0.32).

"It’s like trying to claim that John Hawkins is unfairly labeled a 'right wing news blogger' ..."

"... and then providing a link to his site, which is called RIGHT WING NEWS."

Rachel Lucas cracks me up as she lashes into a lame Glamour blog post that complains about how female "political bloggers" are getting marginalized as "feminist" bloggers while citing 2 bloggers whose blogs are completely concentrated on feminism.

Surveys have shown that most political blog readers are straight men. Now, why on earth would straight men bookmark sites that have articles about periods and fashion and the Weekly Feminist Fuck You when they could just as easily bookmark a site that doesn’t?...

Let’s say the majority of political blog readers were straight women, as were the bloggers themselves. And say there’s a ton of male bloggers out there, too, trying to “break into” this Girls’ Club. How well do you think it would work for them to name their blogs things like Masculinity.com and had entire categories devoted to hot rods, power tools, mens’ fashion, and things like “The Monday Man-centric Fuck You”?

And Dr. Helen adds:

My guess is that some "feminist" blogs ... get the attention they do because they are feminist blogs, not in spite of it. As Rachel points out, they don't even mention real political blogs such as Michelle Malkin (nor do they mention Ann Althouse) both political bloggers who happen to be women. I wonder why.

Eugene Volokh says:

[A]s Rachel Lucas points out, how do you ask "Why are all the big political bloggers men?" and miss Michelle Malkin? And if you mention some of the somewhat lower-traffic but still prominent bloggers, why ignore Megan McArdle and Ann Althouse (an omniblogger, but with a good deal of political and policy content)?

To answer the second question, I think that when you don't hew to the hardcore all-politics style of political blogging, people are less likely to list you as a political blogger (as Volokh's ambivalence about me indicates). Now, I got included in that Village Voice survey of the right-wing political blogosphere, but look how much I confused the author (Roy Edroso):

ORIENTATION: "Moderate" Democrat who disapproves of nearly everything the Democratic Party does

TONE: Free-associative...

CANDIDATE: No coherently stated preference...

MODUS OPERANDI: Favors piquant reversals...

WHAT TO EXPECT: Something—a news photo, a quote, a gum wrapper on the sidewalk—will annoy her and she'll go to McCain....

The truth is I'm not a normal political blogger (or a normal law blogger). And by "normal," I kind of mean... male-style. I'm not surprised to be left off any normal list, and I was pleased that Roy included me and took the trouble to understand me as well as he did — which was on the level of one of those male comedians who do routines about how women don't make any sense.

I am doing something different here. It's something that feels instinctively right to me. This blog is a true expression of my mind — and I am a woman. I'm not saying there's one style of blogging that is the real female kind, but I think there is something female about what I am doing and what I want to do. (I think something of the same thing is true about Megan McArdle, who drives some people crazy. And I give credit to Roy for including her in his Village Voice survey and trying to understand her too. He called her a "lipstick libertarian" and identified her "tone" as "self-referential.")

So maybe Glamour has a bit of a point that Rachel Lucas missed, which is that the idea of what a political blogger is has been defined by what male writers tend to do. Women can do it too, but a lot of women writers, like me, want to do something else. I'm gratified that I get noticed as a political blogger at all, because I'm not the political type. I don't think like John Hawkins or Markos Moulitsas. I operate in the political sphere and drive political people crazy by completely indulging myself being myself. I'm glad this gets to count as political blogging and that, being on the inside of political blogging, I can have something to do with stretching the definition of political blogging.

"The Official Village Voice Election-Season Guide to the Right-Wing Blogosphere."

Roy Edroso puts a lot of work into this thing, and it would have hurt my feelings if he'd left me out. So don't cry for me. And, check it out, they got Tom Tomorrow to draw a cartoon of Glenn Reynolds.

ADDED: Should I take care what I put up now, as the new readers from the Village Voice click over? How many? You might wonder. Based on the Site Meter, 29. Ouch.

AND: I see that Tom Tomorrow has illustrated all of us, including me. I feel really weird about that... mainly out of vanity.

MORE: Armed Liberal says:

[A]side from being a juvenile jackass, [the author Roy Edroso is] a tool. Why? Because while nonsense like this is great for making the 15% of True Believers feel Really Really Good about themselves, ... it makes the other 36% that we on the left need to do things like - you know, win elections - pretty pissed off at the smug arrogance that's so proudly on display....

We're in an election cycle where the GOP candidate should be staked out like a sacrificial goat waiting for the knife. Instead, we get Democratic thinkers worrying - appropriately - that the Democratic candidate is going to actually lose in November. And one of the big reasons is that the public voice of the Party is cranky, smug yuppies.

I agree. It's counterproductive. Why do people like Roy want to demonize me? Roy even designates me as a "moderate 'Democrat'" and notes that I voted for Obama in the primary. If that's enough to make you a stupid, evil right winger, how do the Democrats hope to get enough votes to win?

AND: A comment over at the Voice by David on Wed Apr 16, 2008, 09:26:

I think this tripe is what David Mamet was referring to in his "Why I am No Longer a Brain Dead Liberal" article a few weeks ago. Heck of a job, guys.

Exactly.

Charles Johnson — another target of the Voice piece — like me, notes that there's hardly any traffic clicking over from there: "Since this article was published, we’ve received a grand total of ... count ’em ... 32 hits..."

Protein Wisdom says: "It’s wry, amusing, and demonstrates perfectly the left’s contention that if you disagree with them, you’re either stupid or evil, or some combination of both."

Megan McArdle rants (her verb) about the term Roy applied to her: "lipstick libertarian."

I do wear lipstick (well, usually gloss), and more than occasionally eyeliner and mascara and a little shadow. And what the hell does that have to do with my political ideas?

... I'm annoyed that a typically female narrative style, which touches on personal experience, is derided as fundamentally unserious--particularly when it is so derided by people who admire it in feminist bloggers.

Yes, the lefties think sexism is quite okay when it's used to attack their opponents. I'm too thick-skinned — despite the routine application of moisturizer — to let things like that annoy me anymore. But I don't mind saving the evidence to use against people like Roy when my wily feminine emotions tell me to attack.

And I'm perilously close to despair at finding that so many of my correspondents not only believe that pointing out that I am 35 and unmarried is a devastating insult, but apparently expect me to share that opinion.

Despair!? I recommend pity aimed at those who flaunt their incomprehension of the benefits of singlehood.

Glenn's back.

With 10 posts up before 9 a.m., so you won't fail to understand what it means for Glenn to be back. Why I remember how I felt yesterday at 8 a.m., thinking, damn, I need to make this thing look like it's going. What is worthy? What is pithy? What is pithy and worthy enough to tell 250,000 people?

But, of course, I'm immensely grateful for the opportunity to twirl around on the big stage for a week — and also for the nice feeling of being trusted with it. It's quite a responsibility and a complicated task: How can you be yourself but also fit into that other environment? It's not only that there it's a huge readership (and it doesn't exist because of interest in what I have to say). It's also that it involves group blogging, and — terrific as Megan McArdle and Michael Totten are — I'm used to controlling the whole structure of the front page.

So much as I love the chance to be Instapundit, which I've done a few times over the years, I'm also always happy to get back to being just Althouse. Among many benefits of things getting back to normal: I can read Glenn again.

Losing an hour, gaining a blog.

Did you enjoy jumping ahead an hour? I did. I got up naturally at -- what was it?... I looked at my Cingular cellphone and saw it was 5:15. That's great. I don't want to be up at 4:15. I turned on my computer -- yes, it's the first thing I do -- and saw it was 6:15 by the computer.

So, the computer clock figured out the early Daylight Savings Time, but Cingular did not? That's pathetic. But I'm glad to realize what a good night's sleep I got.

Meanwhile, I am gearing up to take on parallel blogging duties. I'm filling in -- along with Tom Maguire and Megan McArdle -- for Glenn Reynolds over on Instapundit. I'll have to dream up some extra things to say!

And don't worry. I will keep things going over here. I've done Instapundit blogging a few times in the past, and it gives me an interesting chance to see my ideas fall into two categories, things for Instapundit and things for here. Some of it has to do with length (and photography), and some of it has to do with politics versus eccentricity -- not that I think that Glenn would get upset if I created a vortex over there.