Brad DeLong writes in his support of his heretofore dormant plan to subvert the dominant Internet Link Hierarchy.

Here are his old posts on this subject:

1. Resist the Oppressive Dominant Internet Hierarchy Through Link Sluttage!


2. On the Impact on Web Quality of Positive-Feedback Linking Practices


3. Subvert the Dominant Internet Link Hierarchy!

He then offers his own fine, fine, choices in line with this nefarious scheme.

Allow me to contribute my own ideosyncratic list of ten blogs--among many--that deserve greater recognition.

In no particular order:

• Brad Plumer


• Worldchanging


• Needlenose


• Iraqi Letter to America and its companion site A Glimpse of Iraq


• Whirled View


• Kuwait Unplugged


• Green Car Congress


• Saudi Jeans


• Total Information Awareness


• And of course, no list of vital blogs would be complete without Baghdad Girl.

updated -- 9, 10, what's the difference?

This post of hers made my jaw drop:

Slashdot says:

D. Reed Freeman, the "Chief Privacy Officer" of Claria Networks (formerly Gator), the creators of the pervasive spyware package GAIN, has been appointed to the Department of Homeland Security's "Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee".

And in related news, the Bush administration announced today that Jack Kevorkian will be coming on board as the new head of the Department of Health.

In case you don't know what GAIN/Gator is, you're lucky: it's perhaps the most annoying, invasive software ever devised. Don't install it, ever. See Google for the gory details.

So when read this I thought: surely this is some kind of joke? Or maybe the guy has some technical skills that will come in handy?

Sadly, No!

It turns out to be 100% true, according to the DHS website:

D. Reed Freeman, Jr., Chief Privacy Officer at Claria, Arlington, VA. Mr. Freeman, a Certified Information Privacy Professional, works on privacy issues with emerging technology at a small business. Previously, he was a member of Collier Shannon Scott, PLLC, and a staff attorney at the Federal Trade Commission. Mr. Freeman is serving a 4-year term.

This is what Claria said about him, per one Slashdot commenter:

Claria Corporation, www.claria.com, today announced that D. Reed Freeman, Jr. will assume the position of Chief Privacy Officer and Vice President of Regulatory and Legislative Affairs for the company. Mr. Freeman, a partner in the Washington, D.C. law firm Collier Shannon Scott, PLLC, will spearhead Claria's continued commitment to industry-leading online advertising privacy practices. He will also represent Claria's interests both in Washington and internationally, coordinating Claria's efforts on policy matters.

As the commenter put it, he's a lobbyist, not a technical guy by any means.

Just another day in the Bush administration.

UPDATE: For more on Freeman, see veteran spyware-tracker Ben Edelman, who politely calls Freeman a liar here.

Kevin Drum recently set off a firestorm on the female side of the lefty political blogosphere for openly musing about reasons for the lack of female representation in the (flawed) NZ Bear ecosystem, the embers of which are still raging. Ezra took on the issue here, and a good discussion followed. Ezra subsequently added more female bloggers to his sidebar, including the excellent Julie Saltman. Personally, I don't read or link to nearly as many female bloggers as male bloggers, but I'm not sure I can explain why. Am I a jerk? I didn't have any opinion whatsoever on the Larry Summers controversy, although I think that firing people for things they say once is usually an extreme reaction (there may be other valid reasons for Harvard faculty to toss him out though). But I guess I just don't think about gender very much, and my reading habits have become increasingly narrow. Our beloved Nadezhda, obviously, is female, as are KatherineR and Hilzoy of one of the blogosphere's last bastions of bipartisan discussion, Obsidian Wings. I read them regularly and with gusto. Then there's also Garance France-Rutka of TAPPED (the lone woman!), and the award-winning Jeralyn Merritt at TalkLeft, who I read less often but with similar enthusiasm. I used to read Respectful of Otters but she seems to have disappeared. And then there's the incomparable Belle Waring, who also posts on Crooked Timber from time to time, which has taken up the gender-in-political-blogging thing on numerous occasions, though with little practical effect. And Elizabeth Anderson of Left2Right has become a blogosphere force in an astonishingly short period of time.

Meanwhile, I can't help but notice that, quietly, Big Media Matt has been breaking out of his usual habits and linking to more female writers and discussing gender issues in a more sensitive way than in the past, studiously immune to the slings and arrows directed his way. Sneaky.

UPDATE: I seem to have spoken too soon.

R.I.P. (story)

Bob of Unfogged, whose handle is strangely neithed unf nor ogged, blogs about okonomiyaki.

If you aren't eating okonomiyaki every day, you should be. Sadly, here in Pittsburgh we don't have such delicacies.

One funny thing about Japan that most Americans may not realize is that Japanese restaurants are mostly divided up by the type of cuisine in which they specialize. So the very idea of a "Japanese restaurant" is kind of foreign to Japanese, because they have separate sushi joints, udon joints, tempura joints, etc. I'm sure our more nihonophilic MC_Masterchef can expand on the finer points here.

When I was in Tokyo I was even taken to a "garlic restaurant," which I had viewed in advance with some trepidation. It turns out that my hosts were simply talking about an Italian place, however, which was a big relief.

This item, from a psychology prof at Univ of Toledo, showed up in Altercation's mailbag as part of an ongoing discussion of "how can creationists exclude scientific evidence" ? The full reference for the article is Niebauer, C., Christman, S., Reid, S., & Garvey, K. (2004). "Interhemispheric interaction and beliefs on our origin: Degree of handedness predicts beliefs in creationism versus evolution." Laterality, vol. 9, pp. 433-447 [sub reqd].

[O]ur work shows that strong right-handedness, relative to mixed- or inconsistent-handedness, is associated with an increased tendency to endorse literal creationist myths. In other words, our research indicates that the more strongly right-handed a person is, the more likely they are to endorse literal creationist accounts of the origin of species.

It turns out that a growing body of neurological evidence shows that, while the left hemisphere of our brain maintains our current beliefs about the world, the right hemisphere is responsible for playing "Devil's Advocate": detecting anomalies with those left hemisphere beliefs and forcing an updating of beliefs when appropriate. In order for this belief updating to occur, the right hemisphere has to interact with the left, and strong right-handedness is associated with decreased interaction between the two sides of the brain (hence, the lesser degree of belief updating in strong righties).

While there is certainly more going on in determining people's beliefs about the origin of species than simply one's degree of handedness, I thought your readers might like to learn about a neurological, brain-based factor that is clearly related to whether one believes in evolution versus creationism.

- Stephen Christman, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology
University of Toledo

Do we now have a neurological explanation for how some people can maintain, seemingly forever, levels of cognitive dissonance that have other peoples' heads exploding? Thinking in evolutionary psychology terms, and considering some of the advantages Malcolm Gladwell outlines of being able to apply lightening-fast heuristics, one can see certain adaptive benefits to maintaining cognitive bias.

So maybe it's a left-right thing after all?

Actually, I imagine not. Conservatives and traditionalists aren't the only tenacious upholders of fundamental "truths" that fly in the face of reality.

But it does get one ruminating. Both GHW Bush and Clinton -- strong lefties. Hmmm....

I'm sick with a sinus headache and busy with school and Habitat, and so don't have much time or energy for blogging at the moment. I will note, however, that not only is The Gates not saffron, it has also pretty much been done before.

Retromingent.

From Terry Teachout, About Last Night:

An actress friend shared a delicious piece of theater argot with me yesterday. It seems that when you’re doing a comedy and no one in the audience is in the mood to laugh, the chances are good that somebody in the cast will sooner or later come storming offstage muttering, “That’s it—I’m dropping ’em.” (Meaning, of course, his or her pants.)

BTW, Teachout says if you like dance and you like Stravinsky, American Ballet Theatre's program devoted to choreographer Michel Folkine is for you. He saw it this weekend in DC, and the program will be part of the ABT's NYC schedule. Says Teachout:

It was also exciting to hear Stravinsky’s music for Petrushka used as an accompaniment to dancing rather than as a free-standing concert piece. ... [T]hough Petrushka is an enthralling musical experience in its own right, it acquires a whole new level of meaning and implication when you can see those matchlessly vital Stravinsky rhythms being brought to visual life on stage, the way the composer intended. I mentioned the other day that I’d taken a New York music critic to see his very first Balanchine ballets. It was an all-Stravinsky program—Apollo, Orpheus, and Agon—and when it was over he told me that he felt as though he’d never fully understood the music until now. Petrushka is the same way, and as much as I love Stravinsky’s pungent score, I love it best of all in the theater, where it belongs. Cheers to ABT for bringing it back after too long an absence.

Though a NY music critic who'd never seen a Balanchine ballet strains credulity, but it makes for a good story. And Teachout's s certainly right about the movement and music together.

The Satin Pajama awards -- sponsored by A Fistful of Euros -- are out. And sadly, no!(TM), chez Nadezhda didn't win best non-Euro blog (although Sadly, No! did win in the humor category).

It was an exciting competition, however -- nip and tuck for third place just behind The Head Heeb (Jonathan Edelstein). The competition was certainly exhalted. Hey, when you beat out Brad Plumer and Matt Welch, you gotta feel pretty good about yourself. And the lot of us got totally creamed by One Good Thing by Leigh Ann Wilson, who took first place with more than half the votes -- none of this plurality business for Ms Wilson, thank you very much.

One of the great things about the various blogging awards is that they point you to all sorts of goodies you'd never otherwise come across in a lifetime of wandering the particular corner of the blogosphere you inhabit. And since I think Fistful has assembled a great list of blogs -- including their own regulars, who weren't eligible for PJs -- I'm going to try to make a habit of sharing some of the things I find on their nominee sites.

One of the most popular of the Satin PJs nominees -- and for very good reason -- is petite anglaise, a 30-something Brit, living in sin in Paris with Mr Frog and Little Miss Tadpole. She has a fine eye for all sorts of lovely absurdities passing by.  This one tickled my funny bone -- part of her take on another skirmish in the hopeless war against the invasion of English in all things French, this time French television. The French media government watchdog wants to see accompanying French program titles when the primary title is in English. This threatens to open a new battlefront, spearheaded by the dreaded "Attack of the Colon"!

Star Academy: l’Ecole des vedettes? Fear factor: le facteur de la peur? An amusing article in Libération  points out that the literal translation of “Loft Story’ would give us the following catchy title: ‘Loft Story: Une histoire de local a usage commercial ou industriel amenage en local d’habitation’.
[...]
The English titling phenomenon is not limited to made-in-France reality/junk TV shows. Quality programmes imported from the USA tend to be broadcast nowadays using their original titles. ‘Nip/Tuck’, ‘Six Feet Under’ and ‘Desperate Housewives’ (coming soon on Canal+) are examples which immediately spring to mind. Personally, I’m thankful for this, as if they had been renamed I probably wouldn’t have noticed they were on at all. It took me long enough to work out that ‘Chapeau Melon et Bottes de Cuir’ = ‘The Avengers’ and ‘Deux Flics à Miami’ = ‘Miami vice’.

I had exactly that problem with 'chapeau melon.' But then again, you've never lived until you've seen Walter Brennan dubbed in French!