From the Chronicle of Higher Education:
Americans tend to have fewer close confidants today than they did two decades ago — but that isn’t because they’re all huddled over their computers playing World of Warcraft or reading the Volokh Conspiracy.
In fact, we like to think that reading the Volokh Conspiracy will give you more close confidants, and hotter ones at that. Indeed, “A report released Wednesday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project suggests that the Internet and other new communication technologies have, if anything, a modestly positive effect on the size and diversity of people’s friendship networks.” So remember: Every time you visit the Volokh Conspiracy, more people discover your inimitable charm and appeal.
Thanks to Prof. Mary Stange for the pointer.
BT says:
First!!!!
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November 7, 2009, 12:29 pmSoronel Haetir says:
For some purposes the internet provides more than a close confidant can. You can still describe enough of your problems to get advise, yet you also don’t really need to trust the people you are asking because in most cases the effort of tracing back to who you are just isn’t worthwhile.
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November 7, 2009, 12:30 pmthecabbage says:
Clearly, Ilya Somin is the Leroy Jenkins of Volokh.
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November 7, 2009, 12:35 pmArrowSmith says:
Frist!!!
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November 7, 2009, 12:37 pmPeteP says:
Eugene — your remarkable forum allows ‘ignorant peons;’ such as myself an opportunity to interact on an ongoing bi-directional basis with some of the most well known figures in academic law settings today, and to do so ‘as equals’, in so far as the opportunity for comment and rebuttal is concerned. This is truly an amazing thing. Talk about your ‘Great Equalizers’ ! Many of your bloggers, and you yourself, even respond to emails, on a direct one-to-one personal basis.
Outside of this forum, I couldn’t afford an appointment with your secretary to ask for an appointment to talk to you.
I have my various differences with ‘The Great Minds’ here, many of which I consider to be the result of their ‘divorce from the real world’ and ‘living insulated lives in the fantasy world of tenured academia and the law’, whereas I’m sure they consider that many of my positions come from, to put it kindly, a lack of education. And yet, we all get to say what we please ( within reasonable limits, usually but not always ) on a given topic.
I’ve always thought that the Internet is one of the great revolutions in the history of Mankind, as relates to freedom to communicate.
At one time, writing was invented. This allowed a very select few to communicate their thoughts, although delayed in time, to a very few select others ( who knew how to read, and could afford a book ).
Then the printing press was invented, which allowed a very select few to communicate their ideas to a gorwing population of literate individuals, at a greatly reduced cost to both writer and reader.
Then TV and radio again gave a very select few near-real-time ability to cast their thoughts in front of a much wider audience, literate or not.
Now comes the Internet — along with affordable computers ( including some free for use ) and connections to the global ‘net, commodity-level-cheap hosting, etc, where the entire paradigm changes from all previous models.
Every previous model was evolutionary, from ‘a very few communicating to a very few’, to ‘a very few communicating to more’, to ‘a very few communicating to very many’, with incumbent delays starting at years, and diminishing to perhaps months or even weeks.
The Internet Revolution changed all that — now the MANY can communicate to the MANY, and in fact do so world-wide, and in real-time or near-real-time. No longer is communication based on ‘The priviledged few can.... (do whatever they choose to do )’. Now it’s ‘ANYONE’ can communicate to as many millions as they can persuade to listen, at any time, on any topic.
VC is, IMO, a shining example of that revolution. You could as easily have set it up to be ‘only registered law profs and students’ etc, but you leave it open to EVERYONE instead . We thank you for it.
Sincerely,
The Great Unwashed :-)
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November 7, 2009, 12:56 pmHavoc Jack says:
What about those of us huddled over our computers playing World of Warcraft AND reading the Volokh Conspiracy? I’ve done both at the same time before.
While I might have claim on being inimitable, “charm and appeal” is a tough sell.
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November 7, 2009, 1:14 pmASlyJD says:
Havoc, we and other like minded uber-geeks need to exchange toon/server info.
Vickitt & Jagiello on Scarlet Crusade. For the Alliance!
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November 7, 2009, 1:33 pmJohn Armstrong says:
Next you’ll be telling me I don’t owe Orin a beer.
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November 7, 2009, 2:23 pmOff Kilter says:
That explains the answer to the riddle I heard the other day: What do Coke, Kleenex, and the Volokh Conspiracy have in common?
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November 7, 2009, 2:26 pmcirby says:
Off Kilter:
The letter “K.”
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November 7, 2009, 2:36 pmBaseballhead says:
Size and diversity, yes. Depth, not so much.
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November 7, 2009, 3:00 pmAnderson says:
What about those of us huddled over our computers playing World of Warcraft AND reading the Volokh Conspiracy? I’ve done both at the same time before.
Just don’t mix ‘em up.
Though “World of Volokh” is an interesting idea. Different character classes: the Expert, the Palinite, the Snarkster, the Libertarian ...
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November 7, 2009, 3:00 pmAnderson says:
Size and diversity, yes. Depth, not so much
You might think differently, if you were stuck in Mississippi and regularly encountered no more depth in conversation than “how ’bout them Saints?”
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November 7, 2009, 3:03 pmSteve says:
What do Coke, Kleenex, and the Volokh Conspiracy have in common?
None of them are in my kitchen...
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November 7, 2009, 3:05 pmPeteP says:
Off Kilter “What do Coke, Kleenex, and the Volokh Conspiracy have in common?”
They’re all good for an occasional snort ! :-)
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November 7, 2009, 3:05 pmPeteP says:
I hereby nominate myself for ‘thread winner’ for my previous comment above this one :-)
Oh, come’ on, that was a good one :-)
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November 7, 2009, 3:10 pmDaniel Chapman says:
Fail. You can’t nominate yourself. I probably would have done it if you gave me time to read it, though.
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November 7, 2009, 3:33 pmDjDiverDan says:
I certainly hope so — Maybe I’m just being paranoid, but I’m really afraid that people are just discovering how opinionated and obnoxious I can be.
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November 7, 2009, 3:34 pmCornellian says:
I also do both at the same time. I like to multi-task.
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November 7, 2009, 3:36 pmKenneth Anderson says:
I wish the Stuff From Us section of the website included cool shirts or mugs or sweatshirts. Or a tie — that would be great — I could wear it to class and radiate coolness while I taught. As it is, I wear a Tin Tin tie and suspenders with Mona Lisa on them.
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November 7, 2009, 3:45 pmKirk Parker says:
PeteP, it is indeed a good one. I didn’t quite snort, mind you, but it was definitely more than a chuckle.
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November 7, 2009, 4:23 pmSteve2 says:
Either way, you’ve got Trolls.
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November 7, 2009, 4:28 pmHavoc Jack says:
classes or monster types?
Torandin on Kel’thuzad, in case you’re curious.
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November 7, 2009, 4:41 pmASlyJD says:
Ah, yes, we have trolls. Though Volokh trolls have a distinct lack of Jamaican accents, I imagine their dancing skills are about the same.
So in World of Volokh, is Sarcastro a world boss or faction leader?
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November 7, 2009, 5:23 pmRyan Waxx says:
He’d be a mage, but his only spell would be “summon strawman”. Low INT penalty, you know.
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November 7, 2009, 5:46 pmtroll_dc2 says:
Not here, but on another board that allows private messages from one poster to another, that has indeed happened. It’s a hockey board, and I actually have met a number of posters and talked to others on the phone.
Everything is much more abstract here, which is okay; I already know plenty of people. But some commenters have their own blogs, and you can interact with them that way if you want.
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November 7, 2009, 6:24 pmkumquat says:
Another reader who does both at once — although in my case it’s Aion instead of World of Warcraft. I don’t know how it is in WoW, but in Aion you pretty much have to multitask when you’re leveling crafting skills, or else you’ll die of boredom.
Also, my guild has turned out to be an excellent addition to my “friendship network”.
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November 7, 2009, 6:33 pmSuperSkeptic says:
But the Pew study also found that people named an average of 1.93
Maybe it’s because we are working harder/longer, or that our family and friends have “moved with their feet,” or maybe it is the internet. But if it is the internet, in exchange for the VC I can live with that.
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November 7, 2009, 6:43 pmtroll_dc2 says:
SuperSkeptic, I think it is the Internet. In fact, one fairly close but not entirely intimate friend whom I met through the hockey board has commented that older people (like me) seem to have better people-meeting skills than people in his generation (late 20s) because we did not have the Internet to do our contacting for us; we had to go out there and actually learn to meet people.
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November 7, 2009, 6:51 pmOrin Kerr says:
Kenneth Anderson writes:
You should try here for that.
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November 7, 2009, 7:07 pmProsecutorial Indiscretion says:
What a disconcerting thing to read upon tabbing out to browse the Volokh Conspiracy after an afternoon huddled over my computer playing World of Warcraft.
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November 7, 2009, 8:14 pmBT says:
16.PeteP says:
I hereby nominate myself for ‘thread winner’ for my previous comment above this one :-)
Oh, come’ on, that was a good one :-)
PeteP that is totally uncool, eventhough what you said was funny. You just have to let things take their course. You win a few and you loose the rest.
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November 7, 2009, 9:15 pmMark Field says:
Charm and appeal won’t be anything more than propaganda until the VC has its first official couple. I’m waiting for the announcement from Randy and Dangermouse.
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November 7, 2009, 9:26 pmIlya Somin says:
Charm and appeal won’t be anything more than propaganda until the VC has its first official couple. I’m waiting for the announcement from Randy and Dangermouse.
Actually, my fiancee was a longtime VC reader before she met me in the real world, and she first heard of me by reading the blog.
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November 7, 2009, 9:38 pmRyan Waxx says:
Is that your way of letting us know that you and ArthurKirkland are no longer an item?
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November 7, 2009, 9:52 pmsabrina says:
Actually — kinda, yeah. :-) I work in IT, but I like to talk about politics and court cases and stuff with our company’s lawyer over coffee in the mornings when we bump into each other. We spent a fair amount of time talking about the Lori Drew thing, and at one point he offered to e-mail me a link to an article that he read. It was to something posted here, so I had already read it, and mentioned that. He was flabbergasted to find that a liberal non-lawyer would follow a bunch of libertarian law profs. But y’all are interesting and although I don’t necessarily agree with all the political points, I think it’s valuable to understand other points of view. And the law stuff is just interesting to me. So now he is trying to convince me to go to law school, and (after we thoroughly geeked out over Heller) I think we should roadtrip to see if we can go see NRA v. Chicago. See, you guys do help people make friends. :-)
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November 7, 2009, 10:02 pmMark Field says:
I’m holding out for theobromophile. Fellow chocoholics have to maintain a, pardon the expression, popular front.
Further evidence of her good taste.
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November 7, 2009, 11:19 pmtheobromophile says:
I agree. :)
(The soon-to-be-mentioned are more than welcome to identify themselves, but I’ll avoid “outing” them here and now.) I’ve gotten to know a handful of VC readers off-blog and am amazed that the wonder of the internet (specifically, the utter coolness of the VC) has made it possible to befriend people whom I would otherwise never have gotten to know. I’ve even met a few of them in person (one just last month, in fact). Some have been kind enough to send things like chocolate chip cookies during exams and chocolate before the bar. :)
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November 8, 2009, 2:50 amEMB says:
I actually quit WoW and started reading this blog at about the same time.
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November 8, 2009, 1:54 pmSammy Finkelman says:
Who is Leroy Jenkins?
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November 8, 2009, 11:09 pmBZ says:
Yeah, quit WoW a while back, after playing beta through a couple of expansions. Read VC throughout.
Interestingly, didn’t actually comment in VC until after quit playing WoW. May be something to mine in there somewhere.
Took up LOTRO recently while recuperating from surgery for something to do (and because I had a free disk). Yes, I know it’s passe, but the graphical details in DX10 on a hot machine are aMAZing. Mountain meadows, rolling hills, dramatic mountains, water effects so much better than WoW, plus much quieter, less PvP, easier to switch out to do other things while crafting.
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November 9, 2009, 9:21 amASlyJD says:
So to “go Jenkins” is to retreat from the economy and create a new faction at Black Rock Spire? A faction in which petty disagreements of Alliance and Horde are overlooked to create a libertarian paradise?
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November 9, 2009, 10:38 amCrunchy Frog says:
I don’t think Leroy Jenkins’ speech runs 70 pages though. Imagine having to tab through all that text to get a quest turnin...
Crunchyfrog @ Borean Tundra
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November 9, 2009, 7:36 pm