Major congratulations to Andrew Hartman! Last week, five posts from this blog were among the fifty-six nominees for the third annual 3 Quarks Daily Politics and Social Science Prize. Since we all nominated each other, this was not much of an accomplishment.
Over the weekend, Andrew’s post, “‘When the Zulus Produce a Tolstoy We Will Read Him’: Charles Taylor and the Politics of Recognition,” made the list of twenty semi-finalists. This was nicer…but it was still just a popularity contest among the thousand or so people who dropped by 3QD to vote.
The cut to nine finalists, however, was made by the 3QD editors, all of whom, as far as I know, are strangers to this blog. Especially given the many excellent semi-final entries, it’s a real honor to make this list…and one that Andrew richly deserves for his terrific post. At this point, the nine finalists will be sent to Stephen M. Walt (of Walt and Mearsheimer Report fame), who will pick first, second, and third place winners, to be announced “on or around” December 19. We’re all keeping our fingers crossed for Andrew! In the meantime, do swing by and read his nominated post. In a year that featured many excellent posts on this blog, it’s one of the very best!
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Congrats to Andrew! It’s a compliment to Andrew and our readership. Knowing that there are excellent readers out there challenges us all, I believe, to put out something worthwhile. – TL
I wasn’t going to be the one to break the strange stillness of the blog. But now that Tim has led the way…congrats to Andrew. Well deserved.
In terms of putting out something worthwhile, do they hand out awards for most impertinent blog comments? I am a shoe-in.
Thanks Ben, Tim, and LD.
LD: Once we establish the “Sushis,” we’ll designate one award the “LD”: for our best and most impertinent commenter.
So I can self-nominate myself for a prize named after my self-promoting self? Man, that’s almost too good to be true.
I will accept the nomenclature of this award on one condition: we also need to hand out the Varad (best — or worst — use of gratuitous snark), the Timmy (most multifaceted definition of a single term), the Felicitous Fracture (best invocation of Daniel Rodgers), the Culture Warrior (most unabashedly polemical use of history) , and the Wickberg (most exhaustive — or exhausting — historiographic essay-by-comment in response to a one-line off-the-cuff remark).
@LD: You said–“The Timmy (most multifaceted definition of a single term).” …Which term? Throw me a bone here. – TL
Well, pretty much *any* term.
And, though I am pretty sure that you and other regular readers / commenters named or alluded to in my remark understand this, I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to spell it out: my comment is intended as playful teasing, not snark. As online communities go, you folks suit me just fine.
I will take elaborate definitions, intellectual hobby horses, ideological dead horses, and exhaustive historiographical essays any day. I don’t think my day would be complete without them.
We need a “sarcasm font.” 🙂 …I’m game for snark and teasing, so long as I know which game I’m playing.
Yeah, it’s always tricky and risky to assume that an attempt at humor will be recognized as such by readers. And, even if they do recognize it, they might not consider it appropriate. (I seem to recall a recent kerfuffle about seedy Chicago nightspots as a case in point.)
But I wanted to express my sense of being at home in this virtual intellectual community, and I decided that humor was the best way to do that.
I guess I could have just said, “I am profoundly grateful for all the people who make this place what it is.” But that sounds so serious. And the end of this semester is serious enough as it is.
Where a sarcasm font is not available, the tag /s is placed at the end of a post. To wit:
Obviously you guys must be new to the web if you don’t know that you use /s at the end of a post to indicate you’re being sarcastic. /s
Do I win a Varad for that?