Kieran Healy’s Weblog Sociology and other distractions

Nielsen Hayden Isms

In a bold commercial move, you Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden now have a Cafe Press Store where you can buy various Nielsen Hayden wit and wisdom on mugs, shirts and aprons. Weirdly, though, I remembered one of the reified sentiments—a superb phrase I will doubtless be using at a later date—backwards from the version […]

Red and Blue America

Via Kevin Drum comes this comment from political scientist Hans Noel, quoted in the Washington Post:

“Most people say they are ‘moderate,’ but in fact the country is polarized around strong conservative and liberal positions.” [Noel said, and the article continues] … As it becomes more difficult to reach across the party line, campaigns are […]

Culture Matters

There’s often a strong temptation to think that only other people have culture, a mistake of the same kind as thinking only other people speak with an accent. The odd beliefs and attitudes of foreigners are best explained by reference to their culture, whereas our own actions are generally rational and defensible on their own […]

Freebies

David Bernstein feels he doesn’t have enough to read:

I find it a bit odd that I’ve been blogging for the VC for almost a year but have not made it on to any publisher’s review copy lists … a smart university press (or even trade press) would put me on their list for review copies […]

Botching the Job

Bouncing off of a column by David Brooks, Matt Yglesias and Patrick Nielsen Hayden make the point that supporters of the war can’t run away from the problems of its aftermath just because they personally might have done things differently, because frankly anyone who knew anything about both the Bush administration and the complexities of […]

Smoking in Public

Ireland’s ban on smoking in buildings other than private homes has been in place for a few weeks now, and appears to be holding. Wandering around Cork and Dublin over the past week, hotels, cafes, shops, and of course bars are all smoke-free. According to the OECD, 27 percent of Irish adults smoked every day […]