NOTED HERE AND THERE ...
Over at Easily Distracted, Tim Burke has two posts up about e-technology and scholarship that are of interest to all of us. "I Also Froth" argues that the continued print form of most journals is a folly. On the other hand, "Burn the Catalog" argues that e-library catalogs are largely and increasingly inadequate.
As out-going president of the American Historical Association, Jim McPherson acknowledges complex issues facing our profession – the relation of fact and fiction, the role of the historical imagination, whether history is a construction or a reconstruction, the scandal of plagiarism and fraudulent sources -- in an interesting final column for Perspectives. He calls attention to Leonard F. Guttridge's and Ray A. Neff's new book, Dark Union: The Secret Web of Profiteers, Politicians, and Booth Conspirators That Led to Lincoln's Death (John Wiley & Sons, 2003). It apparently relies on documents or copies of documents which may never have existed to reweave conspiracy theories about Lincoln's assassination which were long ago debunked. Will Guttridge and Neff reply to the charges from a president of the AHA? Is this another instance of a commercial press failing to subject a manuscript to peer review? Will Wiley withdraw the book from publication, as it has Candles and Soap-Making for Dummies? If not, why not? Does freedom of the press require that we tolerate occasional fraud or research so uncritical that it verges on fraud? McPherson says that the book is fiction, but if his review of the facts is correct, as I believe it is, so long as Wiley continues to market the book as history it appears to be fraud.
Richard Shweder, an anthropologist at Chicago, has a thoughtful essay, "Tuskegee Re-examined", which does an excellent job of contextualizing the Tuskegee syphilis experiment. There may be little here that revises James Jones excellent book, Bad Blood, but there is much that subverts popular rhetorical readings of the experiment.
I am second to none in admiration for Eugene Volokh, chief conspirator at The Volokh Conspiracy. He is simply so smart and teaches me so much that I allow for the libertarian bias and feast at his blog. Recently, his post on the release of a documentary about Ethel and Julius Rosenberg made what I thought was a sensible point that the western left ought by now be quite clear about the monstrosity of Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union. Unfortunately, the senior Volokh's post loosed the lesser dogs of war in a torrent of posts of lesser quality. See: Randy Barnett (here, here, here, here, here, and here), Sasha Volokh (here, here, and here), and Juan Non-Volokh (here). The urbane Conspiracy degenerated into the cheap form of liberal-bashing that we have come to expect from Ann Coulter and her ilk. Really, it's Coulter without the sexy look. They ignore the crucial difference between the regulative state and state ownership and elide the vast gulf between liberalism and Marxism to hold the former responsible for the latter. I expect better than that from the Conspirators!
Update: See also Brad DeLong's challenge to a Non-Volokh and the extended discussion at his site.
Finally, do read Quentin Hardy's"Hitting Slavery Where It Hurts" in the current issue of Forbes. At the risk of rewarding slave traders, market strategies seem to be more effective in freeing large numbers of people. Legal strategies, however, are slower and simply do not work in places like the Sudan, where there are no legal structures to work within to abolish slavery. Thanks to the Chronicle of Higher Education for the tip.
Update: Do also read Peter Landesman's "The Girls Next Door", if you are prepared for the graphic details, and Tim Burke's reflections on "Evil". It apparently thrives among us. Warning: Jack Shafer at Slate is skeptical of Landesman's journalism.