by Maria on July 15, 2003
Howard Dean’s guest spot on Lawrence Lessig’s blog has gotten off to a slow-ish start. Today’s post was pretty waffly campaign-speak and didn’t seem to answer any of the almost 200 questions posed yesterday. Fair enough, as Dean says he can’t get to every question, but I hope as the week continues he’ll get more of a feel for the give and take of blogging. I scanned today’s and yesterday’s comments and didn’t see responses from Dean amongst them, but there was one from his campaign manager, Joe Trippi, asking for some input to speed up their learning process. Perhaps a little unreasonably, Lessig’s readership were expecting a much more detailed treatment of IP and copyright issues. Myself, I’d just assumed this was a free for all for whatever issues the commenters posed. Anyway, as one of the comments pointed out, the very least this exercise has done is bring many Dean supporters to Lessig’s site where they’ll pick up a lot about the IP and copyright protection debate.
But if you’re after politicians who’ve already crested the blogging learning curve, Westminster is where you need to be. Huge thanks to Mick Fealty over at Slugger O’Toole for his account of an informal meeting about political blogging in the UK. Top of the class is Lib Dem Richard Allan. I’ve been following his blog for a while and, insofar as anyone actually does, he really gets it. He’s come up with an ‘adopt an MP’ idea for getting more MPs into blogging, and is the only person I can think of who could have made a genuinely amusing pun out of the phrase ‘peer to peer networking’. I’m with Mick Fealty, though, in wondering who and when will be the first Irish politician blogger. Probably a Sinn Fein-er. They’ve been several steps ahead on the communications front for a long old time.
Oh, one for the Irish readership. Lessig’s commenters had a long discussion yesterday about the whole FCC and alternative channels of media issue. It got me thinking of the old days of RTE a h-aon agus RTE a do. I think people of Henry’s and my generation are about the last cohort to refer to changing the tv channel as ‘turning it to the other side’.
by Henry Farrell on July 15, 2003
“Ezra Klein”:http://www.notgeniuses.com/archives/000277.html has come across a rather wonderful site, detailing the “Fellowship Baptist Creation Science Fair”:http://objective.jesussave.us/creationsciencefair.html, in which kids do “science” projects to “prove” the truth of Creationism. I feel a little guilty linking to this – I’m sneering, basically – but how could you NOT sneer a little. It outdoes _The Onion_. I do feel a little sorry for the kids though.
Ezra quotes the most offensive science project, which seeks to show that women are designed by God for homemaking, but there’s plenty more goodness where that came from. Some personal favorites.
Update – oops. Looks like this one is a phony. It’s a pretty good one though. Guess it says something about my gullibility when it comes to extreme Bible-thumping lunacy – I have difficulty in telling the real stuff from the fake.
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by Daniel on July 15, 2003
It came to my attention that Condoleeza Rice is attempting to explain to us that 16 words of outright falsehood isn’t really all that much in the context of a two hour speech, not all of which has yet been proved to be untrue. How wonderful; I never realised before that she had much of a sense of humour. I have never been a great fan of this kind of reasoning, ever since an unscrupulous waiter once convinced me (I was young and drunk) that one obviously putrid, blackish-green prawn wasn’t really all that much in the context of a very generous paella. Three bloody days on the pot I was because of that one.
Anyway, it gave me an idea for a competition; how much can you say, how grandiose and extraordinary a claim can you make, in 16 words? “Let there be light” is only four, so I’m guessing that things could get pretty extreme. “Let there be light and I did not have sex with that woman Miss Lewinsky” is fifteen words, and fits the spirit of the joke whose punchline forms my title above.
In terms of a blanket condemnation of as many things as possible, I’m going for “The set of all sets of sets of sets of sets of cardinality aleph(1) is evil” as my entry; if anyone thinks that they can better it, have at ye. I might award prizes, but most likely only the glory.
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by Henry Farrell on July 15, 2003
And “on top form”:http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/15/opinion/15KRUG.html.
bq. More than half of the U.S. Army’s combat strength is now bogged down in Iraq, which didn’t have significant weapons of mass destruction and wasn’t supporting Al Qaeda. We have lost all credibility with allies who might have provided meaningful support; Tony Blair is still with us, but has lost the trust of his public. All this puts us in a very weak position for dealing with real threats. Did I mention that North Korea has been extracting fissionable material from its fuel rods? How did we get into this mess? The case of the bogus uranium purchases wasn’t an isolated instance. It was part of a broad pattern of politicized, corrupted intelligence.
Check out Nicholas Kristof’s “piece”:http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/15/opinion/15KRIS.html for extra _schadenfreude_, if _schadenfreude_ is your thing; mine is weary disgust.
bq. Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a group of retired spooks, issued an open letter to President Bush yesterday reflecting the view of many in the intel community that the central culprit is Vice President Dick Cheney. The open letter called for Mr. Cheney’s resignation.
by Kieran Healy on July 14, 2003
This is really Brian’s territory (and Laurie’s even moreso, but she’s in Australia so I am forced to ontologize without the help of a professional), but Eugene Volokh has been posting about gay marriage and he quotes this argument from one of his readers:
I happen to be 40 years old, happen to be an economist, and happen to be fertile, but I AM a man. I am not a human who happens to be a man. Being male is fundamental to who I am in a deeper way than any of these other characteristics.
The reader goes on to talk about fertility and infertility in hetero- and homosexual couples, and Eugene disagrees with him. But this first paragraph struck me as odd. I can understand how being male is more fundamental to his identity than being 40 or an economist, but he also seems to say that it’s the essential thing about him. He’s a man first, “not a human who happens to be a man.” Can he really mean this? What if he had to choose one property or the other? Would he really prefer to be a male non-human than a non-male human? Say, a fine, strapping male canary rather than a woman? Maybe I’m misreading his view. Or maybe my he-canary vs woman preference ranking is not widely shared.
by Daniel on July 14, 2003
Nobody comes particularly well out of this story. After winning a lawsuit with the Diana Foundation about rights to the image of the Princess of Wales (that’s the Princess of Wales as immortalised in the song, “Goodbye England’s Rose”, god damn you Elton John), the Franklin Mint, purveyors of granny crap1 to the world, decided to do what comes naturally to an American corporation with lawyers, and countersue the Foundation so hard that their regal ancestors feel the pain. Presumably pour decourager des autres; after all, there are a lot of celebrities on their last legs and I can see how it might be inconvenient to have to go through a prolonged court battle every time before you can get down to the business of milking the grieving fans for the price of a commemorative plate.
Anyway, the Diana Fund trustees have realised that they are potentially personally liable for the costs of this lawsuit, and in order to protect themselves against possible action for wrongful trading, have frozen all the accounts of the Fund until the suit is completed. Bad news for all manner of cute, furry animals and disabled children. I am not entirely sure who decided that it would be good publicity for the Franklin Mint to bankrupt Princess Diana’s legacy and close down a number of charities, but there you go. As I say, nobody comes particularly well out of this one.
1Since these people are apparently quite litigious, I would like to point out that I am using the term “granny crap” to refer generically to kitsch ornaments of all sorts. The term “granny crap” is not specifically meant to refer to the products of the Franklin Mint but rather to be a general pejorative comment expressing my opinion of the general aesthetic of celebrity-themed merchandise. To show goodwill, I am prepared to give the following unsolicited testimonial; I believe that the Franklin Mint is the finest manufacturer and direct marketer of granny crap currently operating today.
by Daniel on July 14, 2003
This series of reports in the Guardian is incredibly worthwhile, not just as an insightful piece of reporting on crime in the UK, but as a general example of what goes wrong when you try to manage things “by the numbers”. In general, if business school taught me anything it’s that companies with no strategy process of their own end up being managed by their most junior budget analyst (because he’s the one who writes the report and therefore picks the ratios to concentrate on), and it appears that something similar goes on in the public sector. While we’re on the topic, a couple of other fun facts for UK criminology nerds:
1. A prize for the first confirmed sighting this week of a report on the Home Office crime figures which attempts to find an explanation for the “massive increase” in the murder rate in the UK without the author realising that all 215 of the murders attributed to Dr Harold Shipman over a fifteen year period were booked in the 2002/3 numbers because that’s when the total was finally established.
2. One of the big driving forces behind the misbegotten policing “reforms” detailed in the Guardian article above was an “epidemic” of street crime in last year’s figures. It was particularly noted at the time that thefts of mobile phones had gone through the roof …. oh dear. It appears that more than half of reported mobile phone thefts and up to 10% of the total reported street crime in London is the result of people claiming to have had their telephones stolen in order to claim on the insurance. It gets worse … there is a distinct suspicion that some of the less reputable mobile phone shops are encouraging people to do this, in order to get the insurance companies to unwittingly subsidise upgrades in an increasingly competitive phone market. I’d always wondered how the industry was going to finance the transition to 3G handsets …
Both of the anomalies above, by the way (as well as the fact that, after a few years’ campaign to improve reporting levels, it is now the case that domestic violence accounts for a quarter of the violent crime in England and Wales, much more than anywhere else), can be avoided by serious researchers by always using victimisation survey data wherever possible.
by Henry Farrell on July 13, 2003
I went to see _Pirates of the Caribbean_ last night, and really can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s as much fun as movies can get. Johnny Depp is a revelation as Captain Jack Sparrow, moving like a fey, drunken “Keith Richards”:http://romanticmovies.about.com/library/weekly/aa062903a.htm who hasn’t gotten his land-legs; Geoffrey Rush is nearly as good. The plot is hokum of course, something about cursed Aztec treasure and blood sacrifice, but you don’t notice while you’re watching; you just go along for the ride.
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by Henry Farrell on July 13, 2003
“Kevin Drum”:http://www.calpundit.com/archives/001630.html complains about the writing style in an _Esquire_ piece on Wesley Clark. The offending quote:
bq. Look into his eyes. They’re not eyes so much as scanning devices—not quite predatory, no, but sort of an odd combination of jittery and calm, of patient and imploring, alert and exhausted, set back there in the hollows and shadows of his lean, handsome, deliberate face.
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by Henry Farrell on July 13, 2003
“The Economist”:http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1907893 has a long article asking whether or not companies are too risk averse to take proper advantage of new opportunities and a changing marketplace. Explaining the roots of corporate advantage is tricky stuff; conventional economic theory isn’t very good at telling us when efforts to innovate are going to be successful, and when they’re not. Economic sociologists do a slightly better job, but they still have difficulty in providing useful lessons for business people. Which opens the way for all sorts of cranks and quacks, who offer dubious nostrums for business success, with all the fervid enthusiasm of a 19th century medicine show charlatan. I’m referring of course to management “theorists.”
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by Kieran Healy on July 13, 2003
Via Kevin Drum and an Op-Ed piece by Daniel Dennett comes word of The Brights. A “Bright” is someone with a “naturalistic worldview … free of supernatural and mystical elements.” (E.g., consciousness.) You can meet them, learn about what it’s like to be them and even sign up. They have helpful tips on how to engage your Inner Bright (sorry, that sounds a little mystical). For instance:
bq. The most valuable contribution current Brights can make to the BrightS’ Movement is simply to “be the Brights they are” in their everyday interactions with others, keeping the most positive (Bright) shine they can on the endeavor.
This sounds like it’s being spoken by the bastard child of Buckminster Fuller and Norman Vincent Peale. It gets worse.
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by Maria on July 12, 2003
So, Italian tourism minister Stefano Stefani has finally fallen on his sword and apologised for his anti-German comments in defense of Berlusconi. Except that it’s not really an apology at all;
“I love Germany,” Mr Stefani wrote to (German newspaper) Bild. “If, through my words, a misunderstanding resulted for many Germans, I would like to hereby apologise many times.”
Just like his boss, Stefani merely ‘expresses regret’ that the thick headed targets of various insults – ‘Nazi guard’ or “stereotyped blondes with ultra-nationalist pride” who have no sense of humour and pass their time with belching contests – actually interpreted these comments as offensive. It takes a certain amount of pig-headedness to issue an apology that offers fresh insult, but I suppose that’s inevitable when the apology is triggered by political necessity and not genuine remorse.
Marina Warner, in a series of essays for Open Democracy, examines the history and politics of another kind of political apology; the currently trendy apologies made by leaders for long past acts, an easier task than a heartfelt mea culpa for last week’s gaffe. She notes that direct apologies for recent wrongdoings are the only ones that really count, but that they’re mostly in the female preserve. The grand political gestures – Blair’s apology for the Irish Famine, Pope JP II’s millennium apology to women and Jews – may help bind modern day identity politics, but rarely amount to more than words;
“Apologising represents a bid for virtue and can even imply an excuse not to do anything more about the injustice in question. Encurled inside it may well be the earlier meaning of vindication. So it can offer hypocrites a main chance. It can also, as in the case of the priestly self-fashioning of some political leaders, make a claim on their own behalf for some sacred, legitimate authority.”
So it seems that we may have to wait a century or two for our friends at Forza Italia to (hypocritically) bend the knee.
by Brian on July 12, 2003
Andy Egan at Philosophy from the 617 responds to some of the debate Henry’s Harry Potter post produced, and in doing so brings up an interesting point about how we judge fiction. Lots of people say that in fiction, especially visual fiction but also in written works, the author should show the audience what happens, not tell them what happens. But what exactly does this rule mean?
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by Brian on July 12, 2003
In Josh Marshall’s excellent reporting on the uranium claim in the State of the Union one of the frequent qualifications he makes is that what Bush said was “technically true”. Even if it worked, this would be a fairly pedantic defence if the White House insisted on it. At least in Australia it’s _misleading_ the House that’s the hanging offence, not necessarily _lying_ to it, and presumably the SOTU should be held to as least as high a standard as daily question time. But in any case the defence doesn’t hold up. For what it’s worth, Bush’s line wasn’t even technically true.
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by Chris Bertram on July 11, 2003
It seems to be Jane Austen day here at Crooked Timber, as the BBC brings news that Bend it Like Beckham director Gurinder Chadha – announcing that Jane Austen must have been a Punjabi in a previous life – discusses her forthcoming Bollywood adaptation of Pride and Prejudice:
Chadha’s film, renamed Bride and Prejudice, stays faithful to Austen’s original story, although the Bennett family become the Bakshis, and Mr Darcy becomes a wealthy American. Aishwarya Rai takes the lead role in the film His unsavoury friend Mr Bingley is still an Englishman – in this case a barrister – and according to Gillies, who plays him, his character will be “more despicable”.
Ah, those national stereotypes …. a pity they couldn’t get Alan Rickman.