Crooked Timber

Among the outcomes produced by a market economy, real wages are arguably the most important single variable for most people. With inflation rising around the world, and sensitive prices like those of food and petroleum going up a lot, most people’s living standards depend mainly on whether wages grow faster than prices. I got a couple of pieces of info on this today, which illustrate the difference between data and anecdote.
Continue reading “Data and anecdotes”

Speaking of public intellectuals, Siva Vaidhyanathan gave a talk here a couple days ago on privacy and surveillance, developing the ideas here. (For one thing, he now prefers “Cryptopticon” to “Nonopticon.”)

Siva thinks we should stop our Foucauldian worrying about Bentham’s Panopticon. He says he’s lived in the Panopticon, in New York, where there are lots of visible cameras everywhere (when I lived in one of the home counties, where it is said you can go all day without being out of CCTV range, I knew the feeling). Siva points out a lot of the cameras aren’t maintained, monitored, or even attached to anything; that’s not the point of them. They’re not there to watch you, they’re there to make you think that you’re being watched. Such reminders (your call may be monitored) are supposed to get you to become your own social superego.

On balance, Siva seems to think, this is pretty harmless. The point of the Panopticon is to get you to behave, to hide your real self, to conform. About which we can note two things: one, if you’ve been to London or New York, you see that in the real Panopticon people get their freak on just fine, thank you very much. And two, to the extent that it does work, the Panopticon actually reinforces privacy—getting you to hide your real self draws the boundaries around that real self. What we really need to worry about is unannounced, concealed surveillance: the NonCryptopticon.
Continue reading “I never feel like somebody’s watching me.”

The Maliki government’s offensive in Basra seems to have taken most observers by surprise. Possibly as a result, reporting of the event has been unusually revealing about the implicit presumptions that guide the news we get to read. The New York Times, for example, leads with a photo of “Fighters loyal to renegade Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr”, taking up positions in Basra. Later on, the article notes

If the cease-fire were to unravel, there is little doubt about the mayhem that could be stirred up by Mr. Sadr, who forced the United States military to mount two bloody offensives against his fighters in 2004

Like most of the other militia leaders in Iraq (including the leaders of mercenary militias like Blackwater), Sadr is not a particularly attractive character. But in what possible sense can he be described as a “renegade”? He was a consistent opponent of Saddam and became a consistent opponent of the US occupation. This might justify descriptions like “rebel” or “recalcitrant”, but Sadr is one of the few Iraqi figures who hasn’t switched sides, in many cases more than once.

More important though, is the second paragraph. The US was not, in any sense, forced to launch the 2004 offensives. These were miniature wars of choice within the broader war of choice in Iraq. The assumption was that Sadr’s supporters could be crushed by military force, leaving the way open for the US occupation government to reshape Iraq along the lines it wanted. In the end, after much bloodshed, nothing was achieved. Arrest warrants for Sadr, the pretext for the first offensive, quietly disappeared when they became inconvenient, and much the same happened the second time around.

We are now seeing a repeat of the same strategy, adopted by the Maliki government. On past performance, the likely pattern will be one of initial success, followed by a lot of tough talk, and then a bloody stalemate, ending in a patched-up compromise.

Via Unfogged comes Charlotte Allen in the WP:

What is it about us women? Why do we always fall for the hysterical, the superficial and the gooily sentimental? … I swear no man watches “Grey’s Anatomy” unless his girlfriend forces him to. No man bakes cookies for his dog. … At least no man I know. Of course, not all women do these things, either—although enough do to make one wonder whether there isn’t some genetic aspect of the female brain, something evolutionarily connected to the fact that we live longer than men or go through childbirth, that turns the pre-frontal cortex into Cream of Wheat. … Depressing as it is, several of the supposed misogynist myths about female inferiority have been proven true. Women really are worse drivers than men, for example. A study published in 1998 by the Johns Hopkins schools of medicine and public health revealed that women clocked 5.7 auto accidents per million miles driven, in contrast to men’s 5.1, even though men drive about 74 percent more miles a year than women. The theory that women are the dumber sex—or at least the sex that gets into more car accidents—is amply supported by neurological and standardized-testing evidence. Men’s and women’s brains not only look different, but men’s brains are bigger than women’s (even adjusting for men’s generally bigger body size). … I am perfectly willing to admit that I myself am a classic case of female mental deficiencies. I can’t add 2 and 2 (well, I can, but then what?). I don’t even know how many pairs of shoes I own.

There are different, and predictable, ways to react to Sunday-supplement piffle like this. Get angry; point-by-point rebuttal; roll your eyes; wonder whether it’s a put on; or, of course, pipe up and say how great it is that someone finally has had the courage to confirm the conventional wisdom of thirty years ago. Well done that gel. It’s certainly a well-executed example of the genre: the flipping back and forth between anecdote and gestures to the science; the carefully-placed qualifiers; the breezy non sequiturs.

I tend toward an ecological interpretation. If there is a niche in the market it tends to get filled, even—perhaps especially—if it seems like an unlikely niche. Because there’s lots of misogyny in the world, there is a demand for misogynist writing. There’s plenty such writing by men, but that’s by now boring and there’s probably too much supply. If a woman is doing it, though, there are bigger and better returns to it. Occupying a niche of this sort also gives you certain rhetorical advantages in generating controversy and responding to it. (See, a woman admits the truth! Or, how can I be anti-woman if I am one? And if you misjudge the reaction, you can claim the whole thing was a joke.) In short, being able to occupy a niche like this makes you a better troll. Hence, Charlotte Allen, etc.

The point generalizes to most other writing and broadcasting about classes of people by classes of people: if there are stereotypical beliefs about some social category, eventually you’ll see someone from within that category make a career by playing to type. Being able to embody different categories at once makes you distinctive, gives you some leverage. When your categorical identity runs against the grain of received opinion, you will probably be treated as a curiosity, an object of derision, or a freak. Here the benefits, if any, are associated with strong in-group solidarity and accompanied by active efforts to de-stigmatize the identity. When it confirms received opinion—but from an interesting or unexpected position—there are greater opportunities for being rewarded. Typically people who fit here are not at any particular risk of suffering from any downside following the public embrace of being stereotypically dumb, or lazy, or whatever. (Allen, for instance, can say she “breezed through academia” on a good memory, but she also went to Harvard and Stanford. Women who have full-time writing careers telling other women to stay at home with the kids are in a similar position.) When associations with some classification are strongly polarized, there’ll be more anger and fighting, but also more incentive to play against type. And of course these processes take place within nested contexts, which complicates the dynamic. But the bottom line is that cross-cutting social categories will be filled with people happy to bear the intersection as an identity, and probably also to spend most of their time talking about it: hence black conservatives, marxist economists, Log-Cabin Republicans, ex-gay fundamentalists, pacifist Marines, libertarian environmentalists, pro-life Democrats, or what have you.

Or how I can’t resist linking to Lee Siegel complaining on The Daily Show about how the market is making the Internets into teh Stupid.

In the late 1990s, Doug McLennan created Arts Journal, a comprehensive aggregator of cultural journalism; for the past couple of years has been in charge of whatever is going on with the National Arts Journalism Program, which gave out fellowships at Columbia University for a while. (Until, one day, it didn’t. I’m not really sure what happened there.) He’s had a blog at AJ, Diacritical, that has been pretty episodic, goings weeks and longer without new activity. Totally understandable, of course; the man has enough else to do.

But it looks like he’s resuming it, starting with some considerations on how badly the notion of the newspaper as part of “mass culture” serves us, especially now:
Continue reading “One Day Tom Brokaw Will Seem Like Walter Lippmann and Then I’ll Really Have Something to Complain About”

I’m teaching a course for freshmen this semester called “Childhood and the Family” covering topics such as children’s rights, parents rights, equality of opportunity, and the justifications of marriage. I’m planning to show movies a couple of evenings for them to watch as a kind of community building activity (the administration clearly wants us to use these small courses for this purpose, and I have a budget to provide food). But what movies to show? You can help. Here are the constraints: the suggestions should be about family life in some interesting way, not too slow-moving (I ruled Etre et Avoir on that ground, even though it is otherwise fantastic), readily available on DVD, and should have quite limited amounts of sex and violence (none, ideally; this is partly because I would like to bring my kids, and partly because I don’t want the students to be embarrassed watching the film with me, or vice versa).

Radioshift from Rogue Amoeba. Because I am addicted to listening to BBC Radio 4 and Radio 7 on my iPod before I go to sleep, I already use their Audio Hijack Pro application to do effectively what this does, except more cumbersomely. This way you can subscribe to live radio broadcasts and treat them as if they were podcasts. Fantastic. Harry Brighouse take note.

The NYTimes experiment with putting premium content behind a paywall lasted a bit longer than I expected, but eventually the cost, in terms of separation from the Internet at large, has outweighed the benefits. The NYT columnists and archives will now be available to all readers. (Hat tip, Andrew Leigh).

As Jay Rosen says, this is good news for the conversation that is the blogosphere. Paywalls are an obstacle that we can’t get around individually, since, even if I have free access to a site, there is no point in linking it for readers who have to pay.

But there’s always a downside. The Times decision has been motivated not only by the increasing costs of a closed system but by the increasing returns to advertising, of which the lion’s share is driven through Google (and to a lesser extent, other search engines), which rely on links to place their ads.

In my experience, growing returns to advertising are being manifested in more, and more obtrusive, ads. This may signal a renewed arms race with ad blockers. I’ve just installed Adblock Plus on Firefox, and am waiting to see if that gets me blocked from ad-dependent sites.
Continue reading “Tear down this paywall”

Here are some follow-up thoughts to my long story arc TV post. Let me step back and take in the bigger picture. Seasonality. It’s pretty weird that it makes sense to try to deduce what is going on in a war from long-term seasonal trends. This is one way in which TV and foreign policy differ. In the TV case it is perfectly fine – good, even – to indulge in long arc story-telling. Things don’t always have to make a bit of damn sense, episode by episode, so long as there there is a satisfying up and down, up and down, in the long term. But foreign policy seems different. Continue reading “Lost”

By general acclaim, it’s a fairly Golden age for TV. Thanks to HBO, but also for other reasons. Mostly it has to do with improved story-telling, due to whole season or multi-season story arcs, made possible largely by the DVD market, I suppose. Shows are being made to be sold as season-length packages. The effect on quality is salutary, but there are two risks. First, the show runs too long. A good story is undone – the early promise retroactively debased – by writers forced to drag it out; keep the golden goose laying past her prime. Second, a good show may be canceled, leaving the audience unable to finish the damn story.

Example: Invasion (2005) – which I’m considering buying for the typical Holbonic reason that it’s marked down 60%. (As a purchaser, I am indifferent – swayed neither in favor or against – by the consideration that it is written/produced by former teen idol Shaun Cassidy.) Who here has watched it? Any good? It seems to have won a solid fan-base, but not enough to stave off cancellation – supposedly due to a slow start, and being about a hurricane at the time of Katrina.

I like a good SF yarn. I don’t really like the thought of a cliffhanger with no resolution. But these sorts of no-end productions are actually becoming more common – the Edwin Droodification of TV, if you will. Which reminds me. I happened to catch a bit of a memorable Doctor Who episode a year ago – which I now learn is “The Unquiet Dead”. Charles Dickens is in it, and – inspired by the creepy, gaseous Gelth he has met – he promises to finish Drood, making the murderer a ‘blue elemental’. Maybe it could turn out, conversely, that there is a somewhat hypocritical family of Victorian snobs from Cloisterham under the water (!). Or something.

Let us discuss the state of TV, the long story arc, the advantages and risks that accrue thereto.

I’ve gotten a couple of reprint requests for the essay I did a while back for the Boston Review on the netroots and the Democratic party. Since the copyright for the essay reverted back to me when the BR published it, the easiest thing for me to do is to republish it here under a Creative Commons license, so that people can do what they want with it (under the broad parameters of the license). It’s beneath the fold in html format; one of these days I’ll port it into skinny-font LaTeX to annoy Daniel (if someone wants to do this themselves, of course go right ahead). I do make two (non-binding) requests of anyone who uses it. First, please say that it was first published in the Boston Review, and if you publish it on the WWW, link to their website at http://www.bostonreview.net. Second, in the unlikely event that you want to publish it in print, please send me a copy.

This is probably a good time for me to mention that the BR’s website has just undergone a substantial redesign ; it now looks much spiffier. The most recent issue has already gotten some attention because of Glenn Loury’s piece on the prison system/; also worthy of note are George Scialabba’s devastating little essay on Philip Rieff, and Roger Boylan’s article on Nabokov.

Continue reading “Netroots essay and Boston Review”