The Liberal Order

Be Careful What You Say

The obvious deserves repeating.

You may want to think twice about posting photos from your last toga party or road trip. According to CareerBuilder.com’s latest survey, one-in-four hiring managers (26 percent) say they have used Internet search engines to research potential employees. One-in-ten (12 percent) say they have used social networking sites in their candidate screening process.

The Blogsphere in September 2000

What were the most-linked blogs in September 2000?

Blogs in Everything

Ala Tyler Cowen's "Market in everything," I'm amazed by the information available on blogs. Here is one rather odd, but likey very beneficial, example.

Time for a change.

The other template looked too Naziish.

Oh no. Not here.

Some believe that a lack of racial and gender diversity is always caused by some form of overt discrimination.

So why, when millions of blogs are written by all sorts of people, does the top rung look so homogeneous? It appears that some clubbiness is involved. Suitt puts it more bluntly: "It's white people linking to other white people!" (A link from a popular blog is this medium's equivalent to a Super Bowl ad.) Suitt attributes her own high status in the blogging world to her conscious decision to "promote myself among those on the A list."

If you have not heard of the Libertarian Girl's hoax here it is.

One thing I learned from this blog is how easy attractive woman have it. When I had a blog as my real self, no one linked to me, no one left any comments, it was as if the blog existed in a vacuum. But things were different for Libertarian Girl. Every day I’d check Technorati and discover new unsolicited links. It was like I had warped into an alternate universe where all the rules had changed. At the rate things were happening, this would have been an A-list blog in a few more months.

Here is a rebuttal to Levy's piece by Heather MacDonald. Thanks to the Volokh Conspiracy for the link.

Blogs and Readers

An interesting analysis of blogs and readers.

If you're an average A-list blogger (those getting at least 15,000 hits per day), your 150,000 40-second visitors in aggregate are spending 1700 hours per day reading and commenting on your blog. The average B-list blogger (those getting at least 1,000 hits per day) is getting 62 hours per day of 90-second-per-visit aggregate reader attention, the average C-list (150-1,000 hits-per-day) blogger 13 hours per day of aggregate reader attention, and the average up-and-coming (50-150 hits-per-day) blogger 2.5 hours per day. These are not staggering numbers, but certainly an encouraging return on time invested in writing.

Thanks to Craig Newmark for the link.

Plagarism

I understand that "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery," but does that apply to plagarism as well? Check out this post and compare it to mine. Notice that the links are the same, but instead of the  "why drug reimporation from Canada won't work" link pointing to my original post "Why Drug Re-importation from Canada Won't Work," from October 24, the link goes to this, another plagarization from my site.

Blog Mistress

Blogger Gone Wild!! A major reason why communitarian voices are increasing in intensity and frequency on social issues.

"She's a sign," says Daniel Yankelovich, the pollster and analyst who has been studying American values for 50 years. He means a sign of our times, as is Jessica's frumpy 21-year-old contemporary, Pfc. Lynndie England, whose gleeful mugging for the cameras as she mocked naked Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib unsettled the national conscience. Both women have left many people questioning: How did we get here?

Gee, I wonder if this has anything to do with it?

Jessica grew up in Syracuse, N.Y., the oldest of three daughters raised by a former U.S. soldier and his Korean-born wife. Her parents fought a lot, remembers Jessica, who was in junior high when they divorced. Her mother moved out, leaving the girls to live with their father. They started leading largely separate lives.

"We all got cable in our rooms," Jessica says. "We all would just go to our rooms at the end of the day and watch the shows we wanted to watch."

Addendum: There are numerous academics and other theorists who condemn libertarianism, many referring to libertarians as libertines. One such group brings up some valid arguments, IMHO, predominantly because there are too many uber-individualists who refer to themselves as libertarians and who accept this type of behavior (or at least they don't condemn it). These uber-individualist libertarians would argue that the parties were all adults, that it was consensual, and that no external parties were directly harmed in the acts, so there is nothing to condemn about their behavior.

So what! First, her blogging about her exploits was probably not consented to, and my guess is that spouses of her married conquests were harmed, regardless of whether they know about it or not.

More importantly, liberty also implies responsibility, and that includes being responsible to and for one's self. In the Kantian tradition, one is not responsible to others or to their self when they treat others and/or their own self as means and not as ends. That is why I refuse to call myself a libertarian and instead refer to myself as a classical liberal.

There are far too many good people who refer to themselves as libertarians and I certainly don't mean to disparage them.

Addendum II: I am also still not convinced this was nothing more than a publicity stunt to promote her mundane, and apparently less-than-honest, life. But that would just underscore the depths to which one will stoop to use people for personal gain.