Here’s a bit I rather liked in Fred Brooks’ classic essay on the management of software engineering projects, The Mythical Man-Month:

According to the Genesis account, the tower of Babel was man’s second major engineering undertaking, after Noah’s ark. Babel was the first engineering fiasco.

The story is deep and instructive on several levels. Let us, however, examine it purely as an engineering project, and see what management lessons can be learned. How well was their project equipped with the prerequisites for success? Did they have:

A clear mission? Yes although naively impossible. The project failed long before it ran into this fundamental limitation.

Manpower? Plenty of it.

Materials? Clay and asphalt are abundant in Mesopotamia.

Enough time? Yes, there is no hint of any time constraint.

Adequate technology? Yes, the pyramidal or conical structure is inherently stable and spreads the compressive load well. Clearly masonry was well understood. The project failed before it hit technological limitations.

Well, if they had all of these things, why did the project fail? Where did they lack? In two respects – communication, and its consequent, organization. They were unable to talk to each other; hence they could not coordinate. When coordination failed, work ground to a halt. Reading between the lines we gather that lack of communication led to disputes, bad feelings, and group jealousies. Shortly the clans began to move apart, preferring isolation to wrangling.

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Chris Bertram pointed me to the Chronicle piece which Brian discusses below on the difference between US and UK Philosophy. One passage that struck me was the following

There are two broad models of how such engagement might best be achieved: what I call the participatory and the contributory. In the participatory model, academics engage in real-world problems by becoming members of the institutions that are directly involved with those problems. In the contributory model, academics remain in academe, but issue documents, books, and papers that are supposed to contribute to public life

Baggini claims that the ‘participatory’ model is in the ascendance in Britain, whereas in the US philosophers just write wise things as pieces of advice. This is very misleading, although I can see why it might look that way. One reason that it looks that way is that whereas philosophers can enter the British upper house as a result of patronage, the US upper house is reserved for multi-millionnaires who are willing to devote their fortunes and lives to running for office — not a mechanism likely to suit academic philosophers, even successful ones.

But if, as Baggini suggests, sitting on government bodies counts as participation, US philosophers are at it all the time. Norman Daniels and Dan Brock were on the famous Hillary commission on health care reform; my former colleagues Dan Wikler and Allen Buchanan both served time in the Federal Department of Health (and Wikler has spent a good deal of time at the WHO). Wierdly enough, the aestheticist Myles Brand is now head of the NCAA. There are more numerous examples at less exalted levels of government on advisory bodies. And, more shamefully, Bill Bennett (of gambling fame) and Irwin Silber (candidate for Governer of Massachussets, and fervent supporter of the Contras)are both trained and formerly mediocre academic philosophers. I suspect it is ignorance of the situation in the US that drives the distinction.

But there is another fact that makes US philosophers look less participatory than the Brits. The kind of political outlook found in the mainstream of analytical philosophy is left-of-center, and so far off the American political map that it is hard to engage. Baggini cites the famous ‘Philosopher’s Brief’ on assisted suicide as an example of the contributory model. But in other times, and certainly in other countries, Ronald Dworkin would have been a likely Supreme Court candidate, and hence a participant — he has been ineligible because his political outlook is completely out of the mainstream of politics. By contrast those very same views are though of as part and parcel of political debate in the UK, so that people with them have potential access to political processes.

I am somewhat uneasy about writing this, as it is about the fourth post in recent weeks having a go at the Volokh guys, and one of quite a few on Tyler Cowen specifically, but I simply could not let this post pass without comment. It’s part one of a “Guide to Macroeconomics in Five Easy Lessons”, on monetary economics. I wholeheartedly support the idea of someone producing such a guide, but the actual statements made about monetary economics seem to me to be horribly confused. So much so that I’ve been reduced to commenting on it line-by-line; I wanted to write a proper response, but grew worried that by concentrating on my main disagreements, I would be implicitly endorsing some of the errors I didn’t single out.

I’ve edited this twice to moderate some of the more temperamental remarks, but the tone is still pretty angry, as I’m genuinely annoyed that this is being fed to laymen. As a result, I have perhaps been excessively inclined to pick nits; that’s how I get when I’m angry. I will accept the judgement of Brad DeLong as definitive on the question of whether I have been unduly harsh and will post an apology here if he thinks I have been. I pre-emptively apologise to Mr Cowen for the lack of civility inherent to the “fisking” genre; as I mention above, I tried and failed to come up with alternatives.

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I see that Norman Geras has joined the blogging community. Norm was involved in some of the early discussions around Crooked Timber and even suggested the name. He’s the author of many books on subjects as wide-ranging as Rosa Luxemburg, the holocaust, and cricket and he’s also been a contributor to one of my other collaborative projects, Imprints, which featured an interview with him recently (the current issue has his take on Polanski’s The Pianist). I’m sure that Norman’s blog will be one of my regular visits and I already see plenty to argue with, including his inclusion of Jules et Jim in his list of 20 best films when, as any fule kno, Les 400 Coups is superior. (Norman goes straight into the academic part of our blogroll under political science/political theory).

I’ve been interested in buildings, architecture and cities for about ten years now. Truth be told, probably for much longer than that: but I’ve been conscious of it as an interest for that time. It is an enormously interesting and absorbing subject in more ways than are worth enumerating here. But one of the aspects that has interested me as a philosopher and borderline social scientist is the way in which buildings and cities are records of human reason in the face of all kinds of practical problems (social, topographical, economic, weather-related, material related) at the same time as being items of great aesthetic importance. Form, style, design are all products of human trial and error and what emerges is often striking and beautiful. Sometimes the product of an individual’s vision; at others the result of the accumulated strivings of numbers of people working without any general conception. (Often, for cities at least, the best results have come when humans have worked blind; and the worst when some architect of other has been given free rein.)

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I think “Henry’s post”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/000306.html below about Will’s arrogance concerning EU constitutionalism is spot on. I was only planning to comment (again, see below), but I can’t resist piling on. Noting that the EU draft constitution contains language saying that “preventive action should be taken” to protect the environment, Will asks, “what in the name of James Madison is it doing in a constitution?” Of course, the obvious answer is that a constitution is, in part, an aspirational document. And aspiring to protect the environment is a legitimate goal of every state–and not merely a fleeting policy preference.

But, in fairness to Will, surely he could have picked some better examples. To find some, he might have turned to American state constitutions. Here are two of my favorites. The Oklahoma state constitution specifies the “flashpoint of kerosene”:http://oklegal.onenet.net/okcon/XX-2.html. But if EU politicians think that’s a bit too mundane, they can always look for inspiration to the “287 sections and 706 amendments of Alabama’s constitution”:http://www.legislature.state.al.us/CodeOfAlabama/Constitution/1901/Constitution1901_toc.htm. In particular, they might want to check out “Amendment 612: Bingo Games in Russell County”:http://www.lrs.state.al.us/publications/recompiled_constitution/counties/pages/county_const_amendsp433.htm, or, of course, the bingo amendments for “Jefferson”:http://www.lrs.state.al.us/publications/recompiled_constitution/counties/pages/county_const_amendsp212.htm#T2, “Madison”:http://www.lrs.state.al.us/publications/recompiled_constitution/counties/pages/county_const_amendsp297.htm, “Montgomery”:http://www.lrs.state.al.us/publications/recompiled_constitution/counties/pages/county_const_amendsp381.htm, “Mobile”:http://www.lrs.state.al.us/publications/recompiled_constitution/counties/pages/county_const_amendsp343.htm, “Etowah”:http://www.lrs.state.al.us/publications/recompiled_constitution/counties/pages/county_const_amendsp157.htm, “Calhoun”:http://www.lrs.state.al.us/publications/recompiled_constitution/counties/pages/county_const_amendsp42.htm, and “St. Clair”:http://www.lrs.state.al.us/publications/recompiled_constitution/counties/pages/county_const_amendsp446.htm. Forgive me for leaving off the links for Walker (549), Covington (565), Houston (569), Morgan (599), Lowdnes (674), and Limestone (692) counties. If you read the Alabama state constitution carefully, you’ll find that you’re allowed to play bingo in those counties, too. Oh, and don’t forget about the the “City of Jasper”:http://www.lrs.state.al.us/publications/recompiled_constitution/counties/pages/county_const_amendsp499.htm.

There’s a lot of buzz in the blogosphere about a DARPA project which aims to predict terrorist attacks, assassinations and coups, through creating a futures market, in which traders can speculate on the possibility of attacks; the “NYT”:http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/29/politics/29TERR.html?hp picks up on it too. Most of the commentary is negative, but “Josh Chafetz”:http://oxblog.blogspot.com/2003_07_27_oxblog_archive.html#105943317047655345 likes the idea, and invokes Hayek.

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Via “William Sjostrom”:http://www.atlanticblog.com/archives/001011.html#001011, I discover that “George Will”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48554-2003Jul25.html has opined on the draft EU constitution. I suppose I should be grateful that a stateside pundit is actually writing about it; not many people outside the Eurocracy are interested. Indeed, according to the “Commission’s own figures”:http://europa.eu.int/rapid/start/cgi/guesten.ksh?p_action.gettxt=gt&doc=IP/03/1115|0|RAPID&lg=EN&display=, only 45% of Europeans have even heard of the Convention that prepared the draft constitution (up from 30% in March). Furthermore, Will starts off by making a reasonable point – that Europe can learn some useful lessons from America’s constitutional history – but he frames it in a rather condescending fashion.

bq. Europe is, relative to the United States, remarkably young, meaning naive and inexperienced regarding the writing of a constitution. The handiwork of the 105 members of the convention which, led by former French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing, drafted the document for 16 months reflects a failure to grasp what a proper constitution does and does not do.

Unfortunately, Will’s article goes downhill from there, as it becomes increasingly clear that neither he nor his research assistants know very much about the European Union, or indeed about any constitutional tradition other than the American.

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