TAKEN TO THE WOODSHED

The distinguished Berkeley economist and active blogger Brad De Long took me to task on his blog two days ago.   [I actually have De Long's blog bookmarked, but I discovered this while idly Googling myself at 5:30 this morning.]  Here is the beginning of his entry:

"Robert Paul Wolff on Paul Samuelson on Karl Marx: Thursday Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot-Bang-Query-Bang-Query Weblogging

Robert Paul Wolff:

Eventually, it became possible for the shallow and vulgar technicians of the neoclassical synthesis to dismiss Marx entirely as an economist, trivialising him, in Paul Samuelson’s famous jibe, as a “minor post-Ricardian” and an “autodidact.”

Anybody think that Robert Paul Wolff actually read Paul Samuelson's AEA Presidential Address, and set out to fairly summarize its view of Marx to his readers? Anybody? Anybody? Bueller?"

I think I get the Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot part [that, I assume, is a clever way of writing WTF, which, for those of you even more clueless than I, is modern shorthand for "what the fuck."]  But maybe somebody can help me out with Bang-Query-Bang-Query.

First things first.  De Long is dead right.  I had never  read the AEA address from which my quote came until this morning -- De Long reproduces it, or at least a lengthy segment of it, right after the above.  Indeed, the only extended thing I have ever read by Samuelson is his famous textbook, and that in whichever edition was current in 1954 when I was a traveling student in Oxford, England.  So, full points to De Long.  I promise not to snark at any more neo-classical icons without first checking my sources.

By the way, I did not start the snarking.  Here is Samuelson, near the end of the segment of the speech reproduced by De Long:  "So far I have been talking about Marx as an economist. And I have been doing my best, subject to truth, to find some merit in him. (You may recall Emerson's neighbor in Concord: when he died the minister tried to find something to say at the funeral eulogy and ended up with, "Well, he was good at laying fires.")"

Let him who is without sin, and all that.

De Long concludes his brief roasting of me with these words: 

"I find it ironic that everything RPW wrote about Marx's economics was anticipatorily refuted by Samuelson in the sentence:

he did not labor over a labor theory of value in order to give us moderns scope to use matrix theory on the "transformation" problem."

Well, that does not come close to representing accurately what I have to say about Marx, but I am not in the same league with Samuelson, so I cannot expect De Long to do due diligence on me in the way I should have done on Samuelson.

De Long's Wikipedia entry describes him as a neo-liberal, and lists Milton Friedman among others as influences on him.  I ought not to be too surprised that he casts a basilisk eye on Marx.

I am delighted and rather surprised that De Long said anything at all about what I have written on Marx [and why now, for heaven's sake?].  As they say in show business, so long as he spelled my name right.

 

TFIOS release date announced

JUNE 6, 2014

Fox 2000 announced that The Fault In Our Stars will be released on June 6, 2014. It was not specified if this is for worldwide release or just the U.S.

The highly anticipated adaptation of John Green’s beloved novel The Fault in Our Stars will be released in theaters on June 6, 2014.  The film stars Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort, Nat Wolff, and Willem Dafoe. Per Box Office Mojo, Fox will release director Josh Boone’s adaptation of The Fault in Our Stars in theaters on June 6, 2014, giving it a prime summer release date. (Via Collider.com)

CREEPY

I just used SIRI for the first time.  It is really a little scary.

WHAT HAVE I BEEN READING?

Having finished The Rainbow and the Worm, I am now reading the fascinating Combes book about Parasites  [The Art of Being a Parasite].  I sent the following email message to my sister, who agreed with me:

"I am reading the Combes book slowly and enjoying it a great deal. The following thought struck me about it:

There has of course been an enormous and rather acrimonious debate about "neo-Darwinism" and all, in the course of which the critics of neo-Darwinism make it sound as though there is nothing at all to the theory of natural selection. It is nice to read a book that is replete with remarkable examples of the most elaborate adaptations, in critters one had never before heard of, just to remind oneself of what a powerful explanatory tool the theory of natural selection is in the right hands. I don't mean to suggest that those wonderful examples settle the debate, which has been fruitful and valuable, especially in digging beneath the surface of species to get at what happens at the molecular level, but it really is true that the sheer fecundity of variation in the natural world is astonishing, and surely natural selection explains a great deal of it."

Once again, I will say, what I have said several times before on this blog:  One really ought not to write about the philosophy of science without immersing oneself in a variety of the many books setting forth the remarkable work now being done in a number of branches of Biology.  Almost sixty years ago, when I was having tea with Bertrand Russell at his home outside London, he said that if he had it to do over again, he would have become a physicist rather than a philosopher.  ["And," I thought, when he said it, "you would probably have won the Nobel Prize for Physics rather than for Literature, which was all that the Nobel Committee had available for you."]  If Russell were alive today, I think he would become a biologist, for that is where the most exciting intellectual is now being done.
Reading the Combes book is slow going, even though it is engagingly and clearly written with first-rate diagrams.  I mean, unless you are up on all the species of metacircariae, it is a trifle hard tom keep track of the infinitely various ways in which they have adapted to their hosts.  But I think you can recapture some of the wonder that Darwin must have felt as he discovered, over and over again, the astonishing adaptations throughout the world of animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, and viruses.

THE OLD PHILOSOPHER DIPS A TOE IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

Yesterday, I went to an Apple Store, which seemed to be inhabited by people who were born thirty years after I first got tenure, and bought an Apple 5S IPhone.  I am now desperately trying to figure out how to use it.  I have managed to make a phone call with it, and I also took a picture of nothing in particular.  I still have not figured out how to configure it so that I can read my email.  But I did discover that no matter where I go, it knows where I am, which is weird.  I am not sure, but I do not think Immanuel Kant had one of these.

New vlogbrothers video: Ansel and Mike Birbiglia are interviewed

This week on John's vlogbrother vlog (which had been delayed due to the U.S government shutdown), he interviewed Ansel and talked about his favorite scene so far in the movie (he can't spoil it but HINT: gas station). They also discussed their ship name, Johnsel, which they both ship. Ansel also told the best story of how he found out he got the part of Augustus Waters. Points go out to Shailene for giving him a Dutch cheese sandwich and for Josh telling him he's going to Amsterdam.

John also talked to Mike Birbiglia, who will play testicle-less Patrick in TFIOS. They told the story on how he got interested in the movie and how he got the part. Who knew sending a scroll to John could land you a great role in a movie.

SOME IMPORTANT INSIGHTS INTO THE THINKING OF THE REPUBLICAN BASE

I just finished reading a thirty page report, filled with extensive quotations, of a series of focus groups that James Carville and some associates conducted with Tea Party Republicans, Evangelical Christian Republicans, and Moderate Republicans.  You can find it here.  If you are really interested in what people not like you are thinking, I urge you to take the time to read through it.  It is fascinating.  In many ways it supplements what I had to say on this blog, and also goes considerably beyond what I said.

On the one hand, the universal belief among the focus group participants that the left is winning was rather encouraging.  But since these folks are a large minority of the American public and aren't going anywhere, their utter alienation from contemporary America is very disturbing.