Over at the Guardian Blog, “Daniel looks to see”:http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/daniel_davies/2006/04/university_colours.html what percentage of the 300 “Comment is Free” contributors mentioned in their profile that they went to university, and of those what percentage went to Oxford or Cambridge. Answer: 20 percent mentioned a university, and 85 percent of the time it was Oxford or Cambridge. This reminds me of a line, which you still sometimes see in obituaries or profiles, that goes something like, “Educated at Eton and Oxford, he then [or “also”] attended Harvard.” There’s also that episode of _Inspector Morse_ where the Chancellor, played by John Gielgud, is asked by some toady how many honorary degrees he has. “Oh, fifteen,” he says blandly, “Sixteen, if you count Yale.”
From the monthly archives:
April 2006
This article on Iraq by “Nir Rosen”:http://bostonreview.net/BR31.2/rosen.html in the _Boston Review_ is a must-read – Rosen has talked to a lot of people who don’t usually talk to Western journalists, and captures the increasing tensions between Sunni and Shia Muslims in the months leading up to the bombing of the Samara shrine. Also, how Americans are being drawn into local disputes:
bq. The Americans had come maybe 20 times before to search for weapons in the house w[h]ere Sabah lived with his brothers Walid and Hussein, their wives, and their six children. They knew where to look for the single Kalashnikov rifle the family was permitted to own. They had always been polite. “This day they didn’t act normal,” Hussein told me. “They were running from all sides of the house. They kicked open the doors. They didn’t wait for us.” With Iraqi National Guardsmen standing outside, the Americans hit the brothers with their rifle butts. Five soldiers were on each man. Sabah’s nose was broken; Walid lay on the floor with a rifle barrel in his mouth. The Shia translator told them to kill Walid, but they ripped the gun out of his mouth instead, tearing his cheek. The rest of the family was ordered out. The translator asked the brothers where “the others” were and cursed them, threatening to rape their sisters. As the terrified family waited outside on the road, they heard three shots and what sounded to them like a scuffle inside. The Iraqi National Guardsmen tried to enter the house, but the translator cursed them, too, and shouted, “Who told you to come in?” Thirty minutes later Walid was dragged into the street. The translator emerged with a picture of Sabah and asked for Sabah’s wife. “Your husband was killed by the Americans, and he deserved to die,” he told her. He tore the picture before her face. Several soldiers came out of the house laughing. Inside, the family found Sabah dead. Blood marked his shirt where three bullets had entered his chest; two came out his back and lodged in the wall behind him. American-made bullet casings were on the floor. The house had been ransacked. Sofas and beds were overturned and torn apart; tables, closets, vases with plastic flowers were broken. Sabah’s pictures had been torn up and his identification card confiscated. Elsewhere in the house one picture remained untouched—Sabah with his three brothers and their father, smiling in happier times. When Sabah was buried the next day his body was not washed—martyrs are buried as they died. Hussein told me that three days before Sabah was killed, an American patrol had stopped in front of Radwaniya’s shops and the Shia translator had loudly taunted the locals, cursing and threatening them for being Sunnis.
One of the most depressing parts of George Packer’s _The Assassin’s Gate_ was his depiction of a meeting between George W. Bush and Iraqi exiles, where the exiles had to spend much of the meeting explaining to Bush that there were two different kinds of Muslims, Sunni and Shia. I suspect he knows the difference now.
(By the way, _Boston Review_ now has an “RSS feed”:http://bostonreview.net/rss.xml – it’s a really great magazine, with a lot of good online content).
“Kieran Setiya”:http://ideasofimperfection.blogspot.com/ announces the “results of his competition”:http://ideasofimperfection.blogspot.com/2006/04/economy-of-prestige.html to find the best exquisitely mean review. The criteria were:
1. The review must have a worthy target. Thus, I was forced to ignore, among other things, A. O. Scott’s review of Gigli.
2. The review may be grossly unfair, but…
3. It has to give good arguments, or memorable ones that contain a grain of truth.
4. Finally, preference was given to reviews that made good use of sarcasm.
Kieran’s readership is composed mostly of philosophers, and his list of reviews reflects this. The prize has already been awarded, to “Miles Burnyeat’s”:http://www.nybooks.com/articles/5444 enfilading of Leo Strauss’ _Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy_. But I have a late entry from another field. For sheer mean-spirited, grossly unfair (not to say misguided) but nevertheless well-written and funny attacks on worthy targets, you can’t beat “Philip Larkin’s”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Larkin criticism of modernist Jazz, especially his stuff on John Coltrane and Miles Davis. He thought Coltrane was “possessed continually by an almost Scandinavian unloveliness.” For example, here he is reviewing _A Love Supreme_:
It is of course absurd to suggest he can’t play his instrument: the rapidity of his fingering alone dispels that notion. It would be juster to question whether he knows what to do with it now that he can play it. His solos seem to me to bear the same relation to proper jazz solos as those drawings of running dogs, showing their legs in all positions so that they appear to have about fifty of them, have to real drawings. Once, they are amusing and even instructive. But the whole point of drawing is choosing the right line, not drawing fifty alternatives. Again, Coltrane’s choice and treatment of themes is hypnotic, repetitive, monotonous: he will rock backwards and forwards between two chords for five minutes, or pull a tune to pieces like someone subtracting petals from a flower. Apart from the periodic lashing of himself into a frenzy, it is hard to attach any particular emotional importance to his work.
And on Miles Davis:
bq. He had several manners: the dead muzzled slow stuff, the sour yelping fast stuff, and the sonorous theatrical arranged stuff, and I disliked them all.
Peter Levine has a nice essay on the contemporary school reform strategies being pursued at the Federal level in the US. Like me he is more well disposed to many of the levers being used than most of the left; as he says:
It’s important to think about incentives; that’s one of the main themes of modern social science. Asking schools to educate better (or differently) without changing their incentives won’t work.
But he points out what seems right once it is pointed out that many reformers evince a startling lack of interest in what is actually going on in schools:
Politicians and policymakers now show an extraordinary lack of interest in the “what” and “who” questions. They seem to agree with the economist Gary Becker about the futility of looking inside schools: “What survives in a competitive environment is not perfect evidence, but it is much better evidence on what is effective than attempts to evaluate the internal structure of organizations. This is true whether the competition applies to steel, education, or even the market for ideas.”
He goes on to criticise the reformers for, in effect, neglecting the collateral effects of their reforms. The incentives are changed, and the outputs that we measure (test scores) are not the only important, or even the most important, outputs of education. Many of the important outputs can only be assessed very roughly, and even to do it roughyl you have to look into the schools themselves (one of several good reasons why the UK has long used an inspection regime).
I’m not going to defend the reformers, because I think Peter is right; but I will note that most of the conservative opponents of reform (those who oppose the current battery of reform ideas without offering serious and thought-out alternatives), although they talk about what goes on in schools, do not often offer suggestions for how the democratic public that is supposed to deliberate about schools is going to find out anything about what goes on in them.
I recently wrote a review of a couple of books on global justice, one of which expended a great deal of effort in explaining how a liberal cosmopolitanism could be consistently combined with a reasonable patriotism. For some reason, the concern to combine these positions seems to especially concern liberal Americans who want be good patriots and think of themselves as endorsing universal values at one and the same time. Well I guess I agree about this far: that, within the limits justice allows, one both may feel an affection for one’s country and compatriots and promote the good of that nation and community, just as one can legitimately promote the good of one’s family and friends within the bounds set by justice. (I guess I think that promoting the interests of one’s family and friends is not merely permissible but also required, whereas promoting the interest of one’s country within the bounds allowed by justice is allowed but not obligatory.)
What I don’t agree with is the proposition that the citizens (or the government, for that matter) of a country are under any duty to promote the interests of that country in terms of its relative prosperity or military power, where their doing so is at the expense of the citizens of other countries. I’m mentioning this now partly because of some of the reactions I’ve read to the infamous Mearsheimer and Walt paper. Mearsheimer and Walt are neorealists, and, as such, they believe that governments (and their citizens) do have a duty to promote their country’s interests in the sense I indicated. So insofar as they claim that some group (the Israeli lobby) fails to do so, and promotes some other country’s interests, they are saying something bad about that group from their own perspective. [1]
Two quotes I happened to run across. The first from Michael Lind’s new piece at TAP, about Bruce Bartlett and Bushism.
From Bartlett’s perspective, genuine conservatism is better represented by the John Birch Society than by those closet liberals, Nixon and the two Bushes, not to mention Eisenhower, whom the Birchers accused of being a Communist (provoking Russell Kirk, one of the founders of modern conservatism, to quip, “Eisenhower isn’t a Communist, he’s a golfer”).
Next, from a Rick Perlstein piece at Huffpo late last year (via Henry’s announcement of the man’s new webpage). You really should read this great speech he delivered at a gathering of conservatives. (The Lind is good, too, but Perlstein is great.)
Republicans are different from conservatives: that was one of the first lessons I learned when I started interviewing YAFers. I learned it making small talk with conservative publisher Jameson Campaigne, in Ottawa, Illinois, when I asked him if he golfed. He said something like: “Are you kidding? I’m a conservative, not a Republican.”
Make of it what you will.
Continuing my tradition of being several years behind (I find it easier as time goes by), someone gave me a copy of Dan Brown’s _Angels and Demons_ to read on a flight. I knew about the Da Vinci Code and all that but hadn’t read anything by him. The result was very nearly as painful as “my attempt to read”:https://crookedtimber.org/2005/06/29/cryptonomicon/ _Cryptonomicon_ last year. _Cryptonomicon_ consisted of nerdish Mary Sues afloat in a sea of Cliffs Notes for popular science books. _Angels and Demons_ retains the nerd protagonists but adds a layer of cack-handed James Bond stuff. I mean, can you believe this shit:
Descending from the chopper in her khaki shorts and white sleeveless top, Vittoria Vetra looked nothing like the bookish physicist he had expected. Lithe and graceful, she was tall with chestnut skin and long black hair that swirled in the backwind of the rotors. Her face was unmistakably Italian–not overly beautiful, but possessing full, earthy features that even at twenty yards seemed to exude raw sensuality. As the air currents buffeted her body, her clothes clung, accentuating her slender torso and small breasts.
“Ms Vetra is a woman of tremendous personal strength,” Kohler said … “She spends months working in dangerous ecological systems. She is a strict vegetarian and CERN’s resident guru of Hatha yoga.” …She turned to Langdon, holding out a slender hand. “My name is Vittoria Vetra. You’re from Interpol, I assume?” Langdon took her hand, momentarily spellbound by the depth of her watery gaze.
I imagine it was the air currents from the chopper that were making her eyes water. My own eyes were doing the same by this point. I didn’t get much further, but I suppose it was worth it for the image of Harvard (the protagonist is “professor of religious iconology” there) and CERN (much like Dr Evil’s Island, apparently, except for being in Switzerland).
I’m on my way to Cornell to give a talk in the Information Science Colloquium tomorrow. There are several great people at Cornell across numerous departments studying IT-related topics so this should be a fun trip.
It’s been almost 15 years since I’ve been to Ithaca. That first visit was for the Cornell Summer College Program for high school students. I still have very fond memories of it and one of my closest friends to this day is someone I met that summer in 1991. Unfortunately, the program no longer offers full scholarships for international students. Bummer.
As a side note, I would like to recommend the Cornell campus-to-campus shuttle from NYC. It’s not only comfortable, it has wifi. I’ve never blogged from a bus before, it’s a nice option to have.
“Matthew Yglesias”:http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2006/04/index.html#009794 and “Mark Kleiman”:http://www.samefacts.com/archives/_/2006/04/citizen_kane_loses_the_italian_elections.php both express the hope that the narrow leftwing victory in Italy’s general elections will lead to a dismantling of Berlusconi’s near-monopoly over Italian broadcast media. This is probably true in the sense that the state owned channels won’t be under Berlusconi’s direct control any more, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up too high. The last time that the left was in power they seemed more interested in internecine squabbles over how the spoils should be divided than in the root-and-branch reform of Italian broadcasting regulation that is certainly necessary. I’d like to hope that things will be different this time around, but I certainly don’t expect it. On the other hand, I’m a little more optimistic about Laura Rozen’s “suggestion”:http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/003993.html that more might emerge about the role of Italian intelligence in the Niger forgeries scandal. One of the few things likely to unite the various parties in the Union, which range from Prodi-style former Christian Democrats to Fausto Bertinotti’s Stalinoids is dislike of the George W. Bush administration – a real inquiry might seem just the ticket for uniting the left parties and embarrassing the right.
“Rick Perlstein”:http://rickperlstein.org/ finally has a proper web page. Much goodness, including his classic “Unfucking the Donkey”:http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0531,perlstein,66378,2.html . Aaron Swartz, who put the page together, has also put up a mirror of Lingua Franca‘s old web page – archives are “here”:http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/archives/.
So it looks as though the Italian right has done “rather better”:http://news.ft.com/cms/s/ca24d172-c8aa-11da-b642-0000779e2340.html than the pundits (myself included) were predicting. Funnily enough, the exit polls, which predicted a substantial victory for the left, “were badly off-target”:http://www.repubblica.it/2006/04/sezioni/politica/elezioni-2006-7/altalena-dati/altalena-dati.html. With 60,794 out of 60,828 polling districts declaring, the left seems to have won the Camera by a margin of 25,000-40,000 votes, and is likely to win the Senate by a hair, once the votes from expatriates come in (see “here”:http://www.repubblica.it/speciale/2006/elezioni/senato/index.html for a nice flash animation of where those expatriate votes are going). The right is “calling for a recount”:http://www.repubblica.it/2006/04/sezioni/politica/elezioni-2006-7/unione-dichiara-vittoria/unione-dichiara-vittoria.html, but probably more because it wants to destabilize the left than because it thinks it’s likely to change the results. Under Italy’s new electoral system, even a knife-edge victory in the Camera should provide the left with a working majority, but it’s unlikely to get much done, because the Senate is just as powerful, and the coalition’s room for manoeuvre there is likely to be narrow indeed.
As all the pundits are lamenting, this means stalemate in the short run. Neither side is likely to give in – each thinks it has won. The left think that they’ve pulled off a victory, albeit one that’s far closer than they had hoped for, under circumstances where the broadcast media and the electoral rules were blatantly rigged against them. The right think that they’ve managed to stem the red tide, and deserve to hold onto power – they’ll be prolonging the agony as long as they can. Neither will concede easily.
We’re also likely to see increased pressures towards fragmentation in each coalition. Neither group of parties was precisely happy before the election. Prodi’s neck was already being measured for the chopping block, just as in the 1990’s when he was kicked upstairs to the EU Presidency thanks to the machinations of d’Alema and Cossiga. I suspect that he’s soon going to succumb to the siren call of academe (rector of some university perhaps) or of private sector opportunities. Rifondazione Comunista, a grim lot even as semi-reformed Stalinists go, are going to start getting restive, and the various opportunistic chancers among the left parties are likely to start feeling their oats. But Berlusconi isn’t much more secure than Prodi is – the Northern League has been getting increasingly truculent and may well calculate that under new circumstances it’s better off outside pissing in. On the one hand, Berlusconi can claim that he clawed back the result to a draw through the virulent ramping up of rhetoric in the last couple of weeks. On the other, he’s becoming increasingly radioactive. Even Confindustria – as right wing and self-interested a claque of capitalists as you’re likely to find – has made it clear that he’s a liability and an embarrassment.
Predictions as to what’s likely to happen over the next few months? My best guesses, in decreasing order of probability would be (1) A shaky left coalition that will hold out for a few months to a year. (2) failure to create a stable government, leading to new elections followed by a short lived right wing government under Berlusconi (I suspect that the left has taken its best shot in this round), which then collapses in on itself, creating a new crisis (3) new elections, but with no clear result, leading to stalemate and a caretaker government of technocrats appointed by the president, (4) breakdown of the opposing coalitions, and a return to the opera buffa of strange bedfellows coalition governments that were typical of Italy up to the early 1990s, with Berlusconi’s party Forza Italia likely being excluded. But really, your guess is probably as good as mine at this stage – it’s all up in the air.
Update: revisions made following discovery of new info on _La Repubblica_ after first draft was posted.
I picked up Alan Bennett’s new collection, Untold Stories over the weekend. It looks as though it is at least as good as Writing Home. The prose is — well, here’s an example from the diary entries:
bq. I’m sent a complimentary (sic) copy of Waterstone’s Literary Diary which records the birthdays of various contemporary figures in the world of letters. Here is Dennis Potter on 17 May, Michael Frayn on 8 September, Edna O’Brien on 15 December, and so naturally I turn to my own birthday. May 9 is blank except for the note: ‘The first British self-service launderette is opened on Queensway, London 1949.
This is just Bennett being the Woody Allen of Leeds, but there’s a lot more to him than this. Well worth your time.
Yesterday was a big day in the Bertram household, as we are season-ticket holders at “Bristol Rugby”:http://www.bristolrugby.co.uk/ and Bristol beat Newcastle Falcons convincingly and thereby secured our Premiership status for next season (Leeds would need to win every remaining game with a bonus point, with no further points for Bristol to catch us — it isn’t going to happen). Bristol came up from National Division One last season and were every pundit’s tip to go straight back down. So it is a very nice feeling that the critics have been proved wrong. I expect it will be tough again next season, but at least there will be a next season in the top division.
The great Madeleine Bunting/Enlightenment debate rolls one, with a “synoptic response from the columnist herself”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1750579,00.html . I’m not a great fan of Bunting’s brand of handwringing multiculturalism myself, but she doesn’t acquit herself badly despite getting in a bit of a muddle about rationalism and anti-rationalism. (It is instructive to contrast the calm engagement of her latest contribution with the “ill-tempered hectoring and puerile name-calling”:http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/archives/2006/04/10/she_wouldnt_let_it_lie.php that the self-styled defenders of the Enlightenment are engaging in, a mark of desperation if you ask me.) She also asks a very good question: why are this particular bunch of people wrapping themselves in this particular cloak at this particular time? I guess the answer is that once they have cast themselves in the role of historic defenders of reason and civilization against the barbarians, they can spare themselves the trouble of worrying too hard about the messy details of Guantanamo, torture, “extraordinary rendition”, and thousands upon thousands of dead bodies. They can also deliver stern lectures about “relativism”, “universalism”, “moral clarity” etc whilst applying one set of standards to them (the fanatical headchoppers) , and a different set to us (the shining defenders of civilization) . Steven Poole has written a “quite brilliant post”:http://unspeak.net/C226827506/E20060407120225/index.html on the use of the rhetoric of universalism to justify double standards by one of the foremost peddlers of this tosh, the ever-pompous Oliver Kamm.
From Erving Goffman to Jim Henley and his commenters.