Henry

Taxonomy was once a sedate occupation; now it’s like staging triage in a big city hospital.

Context. Also check out the Cocoon concept cooker.

Scott reviewing David Harvey’s latest at BookForum (free reg. required).

It is unlikely that anyone has ever confused a page of Thomas Friedman’s with one of Immanuel Kant’s, but between them it is possible to triangulate a prevailing sensibility of the past two decades. Call it managerial cosmopolitanism. It celebrates the idea of a global civil society, with the states cooperating to play their proper (limited) role as guardians of public order and good business practices. The hospitality that each nation extends to visiting foreign traders grows ever wider and deeper; generalized, it becomes the most irenic of principles. And so there emerges on the horizon of the imaginable future something like a world republic, with liberty and frequent-flier miles for all.

The core insight here is sufficiently close to the Forty Days and a Mule post of last week as to suggest a competition. Winner will get the usual prize (a year’s free subscription to CT). Rewrite some of Immanuel Kant’s Perpetual Peace in the style of Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat. Or, if you prefer, Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat in the style of Immanuel Kant’s Perpetual Peace. Or any contemporary purveyor of bollocks in the style of some more learned and wordy philosopher with whom he or she may be said to have an intellectual connection, however tangential. Or vice-versa. Or plausible and amusing variations on any of the above; you get the idea.

Cory Doctorow in the Guardian:

Somewhere in the past year or so, it seems as though every studio exec has decided to greenlight one or more blockbuster in 3D, using a pretty impressive technology that employs polarised glasses to give a reasonably convincing illusion of depth. … And the 3D is … nice. … But I’m sceptical. … Up is a tremendous movie; it made me laugh and cry, and was intended to be seen in 3D … Nothing was obviously missing from the 2D experience that made me feel like the 3D was a must-have.

And of course, that’s true of all 3D movies. Movies, after all, rely on the aftermarket of satellite, broadcast and cable licenses, of home DVD releases and releases to airline entertainment systems and hotel room video-on-demand services – none of which are in 3D. If the movie couldn’t be properly enjoyed in boring old 2D, the economics of filmmaking would collapse … he economics just don’t support it: a truly 3D movie would be one where the 3D was so integral to the storytelling and the visuals and the experience that seeing it in 2D would be like seeing a giant-robots-throwing-buildings-at-each-other blockbuster as a flipbook while a hyperactive eight-year-old supplied the sound effects by shouting “BANG!” and “CRASH!” in your ear. Such a film would be expensive to produce and market and could never hope to recoup.

[click to continue…]

One of the odd and not-very-well-known-by-non-Irish-people things about Ireland is that every day, at 6pm, the main television station broadcasts the Angelus – one minute precisely of church bells ringing – for people to pause, reflect (and at least according to the original intentions of those who instituted it), pray.¹ Back when I was growing up in Ireland, and the vast majority of my compatriots claimed that they went to Mass every week, the Angelus bells were accompanied by still shots of paintings of the Holy Family. As the country began to modernize a bit in the 1980s and 1990s, the Angelus gradually became more pluralistic, titillating religiously adventurous viewers with the occasional picture of a Russian Orthodox icon or whatever. But what to do after the supplanting of Roman Catholic hegemony by a bog-standard West European post-religious society? The Irish Times has an interesting short article on the politics of the Angelus in the modern era.

THE ANGELUS will from next Monday be changed – though not utterly. Under a revamping of the evening pause for prayer on RTÉ One television, the gongs will remain the same. …the same ones as have been heard since the Angelus was first broadcast on RTÉ radio in 1950, and which originated with the bells at Dublin’s Pro-Cathedral … seven “episodes” in a new Angelus mini-series of visual reflections … oblivious calm amid the hue and cry … while he sketches an image of a pair of praying hands. … mother in Sixmilebridge, Co Clare, as she polishes a memorial stone to her drowned son … grandparents Tess and Pascal Finn feeding fussy swans on the Shannon at Limerick and Enniscorthy fisherman John Keating, who is shown out at sea in his trawler … Namucana Nyambe from Zambia as she gazes contemplatively towards the Phoenix Park … grist to the mill for those avid letter writers who have been campaigning for years to get the Angelus taken off the schedule of the State broadcaster.

It’s interesting how little bits of the previously dominant religious culture can weather the storm of progress – but only through the transfiguration of their content. If the Angelus didn’t already exist it would never be instituted in a society like contemporary Ireland – but since it does exist and would be difficult to get rid of without upsetting people (still-believing Catholics; once-were-Catholics who fancy they would miss it if it were gone) it has been gradually transformed instead into something that maintains the form of the original (still the old church bells), but few of the original religious valences.

¹ Italy’s Rai Uno has something similar as I recall (although timed not to interfere with the celebration of the true national religion, soccer).

Fabio Rojas at Orgtheory.

In general, there seem to be to two mindsets in the social sciences. The first I call “precision modeling.” The attitude might be summarized this way:

Social science should focus on simple & clearly defined concepts. Real science is when you formalize these simple concepts into models. The height of empirical research is clear identification of cause and effect mechanisms implied by such models.

The second attitude I call “thick accounts.” Here’s my summary:

Social science should be built around a tool box of flexible concepts. These flexible concepts can be juxtaposed, elaborated and rephrased. The height of empirical research is when researchers can use this tool box to interpret an otherwise opaque complex social domain. … these people can’t stand tool-centric theories that can’t accommodate meaning and eliminate complexity.

I’ve always thought that the loveliest expression of this dualism is set out in Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities (I’m relying here on William Weaver’s grave and lovely translation). [click to continue…]

This , via Making Light, is pretty awesome.

Book Titles, If They Were Written Today

• Then: The Wealth of Nations
  Now: Invisible Hands: The Mysterious Market Forces That Control Our Lives and How to Profit from Them
• Then: Walden
  Now: Camping with Myself: Two Years in American Tuscany
• Then: The Theory of the Leisure Class
  Now: Buying Out Loud: The Unbelievable Truth About What We Consume and What It Says About Us
• Then: The Gospel of Matthew
  Now: 40 Days and a Mule: How One Man Quit His Job and Became the Boss
• Then: The Prince
  Now: The Prince (Foreword by Oprah Winfrey)

Further suggestions solicited in comments.

So this week’s Sunday picture is a detail of the frontispiece of Darwyn Cooke’s excellent graphic novel adaptation of the first of Donald Westlake/Richard Stark’s Parker books, The Hunter (Powells,Amazon, B&N). It’s not typical of the art in the graphic novel itself (see here for a preview), but it does reflect an interesting choice on the part of the artist. Like many other long series of genre novels, the Parker series gradually become unstuck in time – time advances more or less as it does in the outside world, but Parker doesn’t age nearly as he should. He should be at least in his early seventies in the final books in the series, but rather obviously isn’t. The last couple of books recognize this – the world of the Internet and money flowing backwards and forwards across electronic networks is not Parker’s world anymore, and the author says as much.

So when Cooke starts the book with a specific date (the date that The Hunter first appeared) and draws the book in a style that borrows heavily from 1960s popular art, it is a deliberate choice. One could interpret Cooke’s frontispiece in at least two ways. One is as a decision to situate Parker again in his particular historical milieu. Cooke is contracted to do three more of these – if this is what he wants to do, one imagines that the successive volumes will either be the immediate sequels to The Hunter, or, if not will show Parker aging normally. The other possibility is that Cooke is embracing rather than rejecting the Parker series’ idiosyncratic chronology. This might see, for example, the follow ups set in different decades, with appropriate period drawing styles and an unaging (or only slightly aging) Parker. The second possibility seems a little more interesting to me than the first, but the first would have its virtues too.

The Economist’s Brussels correspondent muses on the difference between German and American campaigning.

The Bavarian event was genuine, in a way that stage-managed American politics cannot match. There is a lot that is creepy about an American campaign event. Arriving early at Bush rallies, I would watch aggressive and chilly young Republican aides in smart suits kneeling on gymnasium floors with fistfuls of different felt tip marker pens, and large rectangles of white card. Frowning with concentration, they would then write things like “South Dakota Loves W” in deliberately babyish writing, or pick out the words “Hello Mr President” in red, white and blue lettering. The styles and slogans would be carefully varied, and the end results were impressive: a stack of signs that looked as though supporters of all ages had lovingly written them out on homely kitchen tables. Then, when the crowd arrived (all of them invited and vetted as bona fide Bush supporters) any of them who had forgotten instructions not to bring signs of their own would have them politely confiscated. Then they would be handed one of the ersatz home-made signs by one of the chilly, bossy young munchkins from campaign HQ. On television, it all looked very sweet.

‘Chilly, bossy young munchkins’ is pretty good, I thought.

David Broder 2009

Looming beyond the publicized cases of these relatively low-level operatives is the fundamental accountability question: What about those who approved of their actions? If accountability is the standard, then it should apply to the policymakers and not just to the underlings. Ultimately, do we want to see Cheney, who backed these actions and still does, standing in the dock? I think it is that kind of prospect that led President Obama to state that he was opposed to invoking the criminal justice system, even as he gave Holder the authority to decide the question for himself. Obama’s argument has been that he has made the decision to change policy and bring the practices clearly within constitutional bounds—and that should be sufficient. In times like these, the understandable desire to enforce individual accountability must be weighed against the consequences. This country is facing so many huge challenges at home and abroad that the president cannot afford to be drawn into what would undoubtedly be a major, bitter partisan battle over prosecution of Bush-era officials. The cost to the country would simply be too great.

Lord Justice Denning, on the Birmingham Six stitch up

Just consider the course of events if their [the Six’s] action were to proceed to trial … If the six men failed it would mean that much time and money and worry would have been expended by many people to no good purpose. If they won, it would mean that the police were guilty of perjury; that they were guilty of violence and threats; that the confessions were involuntary and improperly admitted in evidence; and that the convictions were erroneous. That would mean that the Home Secretary would have either to recommend that they be pardoned or to remit the case to the Court of Appeal. That was such an appalling vista that every sensible person would say, ‘It cannot be right that these actions should go any further.’ They should be struck out either on the ground that the men are estopped from challenging the decision of Mr. Justice Bridge, or alternatively that it is an abuse of the process of the court. Whichever it is, the actions should be stopped.

Funnily enough, not only did the British political and justice system manage to keep stumbling on after the Birmingham Six were released, but most reasonable observers would agree that it was the better for finally admitting that it had locked up six men for sixteen years on trumped-up evidence. Similarly, one might imagine that the US justice system would be the better for examining the prima facie evidence that the Vice President of this country engaged in illegal acts, rather than pretending that it didn’t because of the risk of partisan upheaval. But not if one were David Broder.

The Washington Post cites worries among intelligence officials:

A. B. “Buzzy” Krongard, the third-ranking CIA official at the time of the use of harsh interrogation practices, said that although vigorous oversight is crucial, the public airing of once-classified internal assessments and the prospect of further investigation are damaging the agency. “Morale at the agency is down to minus 50,” he said.

… Krongard, one of the few active or retired CIA officers with direct knowledge of the program willing to voice publicly what many officers are saying privately, said agency personnel now may back away from controversial programs that could place them in personal legal jeopardy should their work be exposed. “The old saying goes, ‘Big operation, big risk; small operation, small risk; no operation, no risk.’ ”

“If you’re not in the intelligence business to be forward-leaning, you might as well not be in it,” Krongard said.

‘Forward-leaning’ in this context being a rather transparent euphemism for being ‘willing to break the laws forbidding torture of captives.’

There is of course a case that relatively low ranking CIA officers should not be prosecuted for torture while the high officials that ordered them to torture, or provided flimsy legal justifications for torture (or perhaps indeed encouraged them to go beyond the guidances provided) get off scot free. But I think that the pragmatic case that these officers should be prosecuted is a stronger one; on two grounds.

First, and most obviously, bringing these cases to trial may lead to the uncovering of new evidence. The most obvious defense open to these officers is that they were indeed only following legally mandated instructions – and it seems at least plausible to me (as a non-lawyer) that a judge will be more likely to allow discovery on potentially exculpatory evidence for these officers than for other potential plaintiffs, such as those who were in fact the victims of this torture. This is of course screwed up – but it is (as best as I can tell) part of the legal culture of this country. This evidence might perhaps (not very likely, given politics – but then I would not have predicted Holder’s decision a month ago) lead to the prosecution of high level officials who were more directly involved in creating the policies in question and possibly encouraging their underlings to go beyond even these policies.

Second, the more cautious that low-ranking CIA officers are about breaking the laws criminalizing torture in future, the better. I want them to be worried that they will be hung out and left to dry by their political masters if they break the law. This will give them a strong rationale to say no, the next time that they are asked to, and at least partially reshape the incentive structure in benign ways. There is something rather obviously fucked up about a political culture in which high ranking officials can make the opposite claim – that we want intelligence officers to be able to break the law by torturing people, and that not giving them this license ‘lowers morale.’ But you would not know that from reading the Washington Post.

Scott has a great short piece at IHE on Gambetta’s book on communication among criminals, which inter alia summarizes Gambetta’s theory of the signalling benefits of incompetence in Italian academia.

Gambetta argues that something similar takes place among the baroni (barons) who oversee the selection committees involved in Italian academic promotions. While some fields are more meritocratic than others, he says, the struggle for advancement involves a great deal of horse trading. “The barons operate on the basis of a pact of reciprocity, which requires a lot of trust, for debts are repaid years later. …The most powerful figures in this system, says Gambetta, tend to be the least intellectually distinguished. … “… and this is what is the most intriguing, they do not try to hide their weakness. One has the impression that they almost flaunt it in personal contacts.” … Gambetta argues that the cheerful incompetence of the baroni is akin to the mafioso’s way of signaling that he can be “trusted” within his narrowly predatory limits.

“Being incompetent and displaying it,” he writes, “conveys the message I will not run away, for I have no strong legs to run anywhere else. In a corrupt academic market, being good at and interested in one’s own research, by contrast, signal a potential for a career independent of corrupt reciprocity…. In the Italian academic world, the kakistocrats are those who best assure others by displaying, through lack of competence and lack of interest in research, that they will comply with the pacts.”

Andrew Gelman and John Sides have a very good piece at the Boston Review on the reasons why journalists and pundits got so much about the 2008 presidential election wrong, with responses by Rick Perlstein, Mark Schmitt and others. In their response to the response, John and Andrew say:

Will these efforts get political scientists invited to Joe Scarborough’s kaffeeklatsch? Probably not. The media ecology fetishizes novelty in reporting and certainty in commentary. And yet the academic study of elections shows that what is certain is almost never new, and what is new is almost never certain. We might only bore Fox & Friends with our scholarly qualifications and caveats, or simply look foolish trying to present our research in soundbites. [click to continue…]

Felix Salmon yesterday on the economics of tattoos:

Drewbie left me a comment this morning talking about people interviewing for jobs and not getting them, just because they had visible tattoos. I can well believe it. But at the same time, precisely because of this discrimination, I tend to both expect and receive much better service from people with visible tattoos. … Businesses with tattooed employees are signalling to me that they have better service, and as a result I’m more likely to try them out.

By coincidence, I’m reading Diego Gambetta’s new book, Codes of the Underworld: How Criminals Communicate (Powells, Amazon, B&N), which has a lot to say about signalling via tattoos and other forms of visible self-mutilation. Gambetta argues that criminals often cover themselves with tattoos precisely because they ruin the criminals’ prospects to go straight; they allow the criminals to signal “that defection would be not so much unprofitable as impossible.”

Self-binding can also take the form of self-branding as found, for instance, in South African prisons:

Erefaan’s face is covered in tattoos. “Spit on my grave” is tattooed across his forehead; “I hate you, Mum” etched on his left cheek. The tattoos are an expression of loyalty. The men cut the emblems of their allegiance into their skin. The Number [the name of the hierarchical system in Pollsmoor prison] demands not only that you pledge your oath verbally, but that you are marked, indelibly, for life. Facial tattoos are the ultimate abandonment of all hope for a life outside.

Neal Stephenson, in Snow Crash, proposed an America in which the collapse of government led communities to brand criminals faces’ with brief descriptions of their criminal tendencies, so that others in different communities would know to give them wide berth. Gambetta’s logic suggests that branding, whether voluntary or involuntary, could sometimes be in the criminal’s self interest – it serves as a costly signal of type. More generally, I’m enjoying the book a lot – the best bit so far is Gambetta’s lovely theory of incompetence as a signalling mechanism in Italian academia. Recommended.

Two book reviews I’ve done on netroots related stuff that may be of interest to CT readers.

First, a review for The American Prospect of Eric Boehlert’s and Matthew Kerbel’s books on the netroots.

But the netroots’ discomfiture isn’t mere pique. Nor is it simple anger that Obama has broken his promises to roll back the security state that developed over the previous eight years, although this is surely important. The real worry for the netroots is that Obama is undermining their particular blend of online politics. He has taken the parts of netroots politics that he likes (online organizing and fundraising), while dumping the parts that he doesn’t (a strongly confrontational politics and emphasis on bottom-up decision making). There isn’t much room for the netroots and vigorous online partisanship in Obama’s plans for the future of the Democratic Party.

I think I would modify this a bit now, given the interesting stuff happening around pressure to keep the public option in healthcare reform, but would still stick by my fundamental claim about the basic tensions between the administration and netroots and their allies.

Second, a piece for Times Higher Education on Matt Hindman’s book on digital democracy.

As his book title suggests, Hindman puts paid to some of the most pernicious myths of democracy and the internet. Lazy libertarian arguments that the internet was going to create radically empowered individuals, an “army of Davids” that would topple government and so-called “mainstream media” with a few well-aimed missiles are simply unsustainable. So, too, are some of the hazier left-wing claims about how the internet would foster “extreme democracy”. The internet is creating new forms of social organisation, but they have their own kinds of hierarchy. And in many cases the old hierarchies are co-opting the new ones. In the US, traditional media and think-tanks are hiring prominent bloggers. Few major bloggers are still independent, and those who are, are mostly trying to create their own miniature media empires. Still, stupid claims for the democratic benefits of technological pixie dust may be too tempting a target. Hindman’s focus on the bad arguments of internet evangelists leads him to make some over-reaching claims of his own.

Comments or criticisms welcome on either or both …