Thanks to all for their “advice”:https://crookedtimber.org/2006/05/12/laptop-choice-bleg/ . I’ve just ordered a “MacBook”:http://www.apple.com/uk/macbook/macbook.html (white, 13 inch, 2.0GHz Intel Core Duo, with 1 gig of memory and an 80 gig hard drive).
From the monthly archives:
May 2006
“Firedoglake”:http://www.firedoglake.com/2006/05/14/fdl-book-salon-before-the-storm-pt-1/ is running a bookclub on Rick Perlstein’s _Before the Storm_, which I reckon is the best book on American politics that I’ve read over the last few years. It’s very interesting how the book has come to occupy a near canonical position for left of center bloggers. It’s not only influenced wonkish types like myself and Kevin Drum, but also netroots people like Kos and Jerome Armstrong (whose recent book, which I liked, is clearly influenced by Perlstein), and “Matt Stoller”:http://matt_stoller.mydd.com/ (who describes it in the Firedoglake thread as the “single best book on movement politics” that he’s read). But there’s a sort-of-disconnect there – or at least a part of Perlstein’s argument that doesn’t really fit with the netroots agenda as I understand it.
Roy Hudd’s investigation into the history of the comic song ended last week with a show on parody. The main highlight for me was being reminded of seeing Neil Lewis at the Cambridge Folk Festival in 1979 performing his hit song, “The Packer of the Leads” — google provides just a single reference, and the song is only mentioned (by Richard Digance) not played. The big question arising out of the show, though, is: why were The Smiths famous? Mitch Benn claims it is because fans fell for Morrisey’s winsome tortured poet act. But my wife (an American) says she liked them because they were funny. Me, I did fall for the act, so I thought they were prats; if I’d realised they were funny I’d probably have loved them (I eventually bought her their greatest hits, but only because it has Charles Hawtrey
This is something that came up as an aside in a dissertation defence the other day (congratulations, A!). The dissertation was about privacy, and a brief comment was made that secret ballots might protect a voter’s right to privacy. I was surprised that I already had a half-thought-out but very strong dissent from this idea, so I thought I’d articulate it here and see what you think. There are some practical arguments in favour of having secret ballots in representative democratic elections for governmental positions; most obviously the argument that secret ballots obscure the information needed to perfect a market in votes; so that the vote remains effectively inalienable. But is there a right to vote secretly?; that is, if other measures could effectively prevent the emergence of a market in votes, or government retaliation against individual voters, would voters have a complaint if ballots were public? The privacy thought it that the interest in privacy, or something like that, protects this information; it protects us from others having the information about how we voted, just as it protects us from others having information about various other details of our thoughts and personal life.
I don’t think so.
I’m still chunking out a review of Zizek’s The Parallax View
Faced with the enigma of how it is that we hold an evil person responsible for his deeds (although it is clear to us that the propensity for Evil is part of this person’s “nature,” that is to say, he cannot but “follow his nature” and accomplish his deeds with an absolute necessity), Kant and Schelling postulate a nonphenomenal transcendental, atemporal act of primordial choice by means of which each of us, prior to his temporal bodily existence, choose his eternal character. Within our temporal phenomenal existence, this act of choice is experienced as an imposed necessity, which means that the subject, in his phenomenal self-awareness is not conscious of the free choice which grounds his character (his ethical “nature”) … (p. 246)
It goes on a bit but it’s clear enough – wild, too. Speculative and produces a vicious regress. Literally vicious. Why would I choose to be the sort of person who will choose to do evil? My question is: did Kant actually propose this? I would have thought I’d have noticed. (Specifically, because Schopenhauer thinks his rather Platonic notion of transcendental ethical ‘character’ is an improvement over Kant. But Schopenhauer never had the brilliant idea of letting you choose your own.) Schelling, I have no opinion. The only footnote is to chapter 1 of Zizek’s own The Indivisible Remainder, which I don’t have handy. Kantians?
If this question is too easy then just chat amongst yourselves about the contours of Swedenborg space or something.
Political theorist Ramin Jahanbegloo has been “imprisoned”:http://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=9bVxyf6q2gcwXpjpdQTthyqxvXgD5Dx5 in the Tehin prison in Tehran as a purported American agent engaged in “cultural activities against Iran.” Tehin is a notorious center of torture, but as far as we know he is still physically unharmed. I missed being a colleague of his by a few months; he left the University of Toronto the year before I arrived. My friend Melissa Williams is organizing a “letter writing campaign”:http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/polsci/ramin/letters.htm to the Iranian authorities; she asks that writers
bq. be careful to adopt a respectful tone and avoid political condemnation. Bear in mind that our purpose is to secure Ramin’s safe release, not to make statements of principle, however valid.
While I appreciate that the Iranian government can arouse some pretty strong feelings, I’ll second Melissa’s cautionary note – but I would also urge CT readers to consider writing to their local Iranian embassies or representations. I’ll be writing further posts as more information emerges.
For your weekend listening pleasure, some Hungarian political campaign music. I had meant to blog about this a few weeks ago during the elections (it’s just one of about a dozen posts I haven’t managed to get around to recently), but it’s not as though it’s any less relevant now.
The song was written explicitly for the Hungarian Socialist Party‘s campaign in the recent parliamentary elections. I like it – it’s reminiscent of Hungarian pop/covertly political songs from the 1970s. I didn’t like it the first time I listened to it, but got pretty hooked the second time. I wonder if it’s at all of interest if you do not understand the language and/or are not familiar with the style. (No need to get into how unique the style is, maybe it’s not, but it still reminds me of lots of Hungarian songs from a while ago, songs that don’t tend to make it to the Billboard charts despite being quite good.)
The most commonly recurring words are “igen”, which means “yes” and “Magyarország”, which means “Hungary”. The bottom of the page suggests that the song was also made available as a ring tone for cell phones, which seems like an interesting idea.
So what are other exampes of political campaigns creating their own songs? I can think of campaigns adopting songs for their purposes and playing them at victory time, but those songs weren’t written for the campaigns explicitly. Bonus points if you can link to the examples.
Just when you thought the lamentable “we are too the 101st Flying Keyboardists” thing had plumbed the very depths of warblogger self-regard…you got another think coming. Here I must interrupt myself to post the best warblogger comment of all time, from the “Captain” Ed thread:
Captain,
It seems to me that when one’s country calls, one should respond with the very best one has – with what you are best at. Having served in the military a very long time ago, and being an unwilling victim of advancing age and persistent gravity, I find that my best resource is my ability to express my conviction as eloquently and persuasively as I can. Not to convert those on the opposite end of the spectrum, but to buttress and strengthen those who share my world view and inform those whose opinions are yet unformed. On the surface, of course, this sounds laughably self-serving and a towering rationalization[you reckon?!!!!!!!!!!–ed]. Bear with me a moment, however, for I have a point to advance.As I have stated on previous occasions, the great achilles heal of a free society at war in defence of its freedom, is its ability to maintain the support of its citizens. If the conflict be short, the enemy of obvious evil and the victory clear, then the support will be easily held. Victory has a thousand fathers, afterall. If however, the war is long and the enemy is elusive and victory is ill defined, then a free society is at a distinct disadvantage. A nation that cannot be smashed, can instead be nibbled to death!
And so, I and my keyboard stand at the pass – the weakest point [He’s like a noble Lacedaemonian, combing his long hair, oiling and strigilling the dust from the bodies of his loyal…where was I?–ed]. Armed only with words and whatever wisdom I may have gained along the way, to point to the danger and urge the defenders determination. To clarify the mist of confusion and uncertainty and to defend the vision of our purpose. These are my best weapons and I stand, old and bent and nearly used up, in the critical breach.
I’ve been travelling back and forth between Ireland and the US, attending a conference and grading over the last week, so I couldn’t participate in the Jonathan Chait bashing that’s been convulsing the left blogosphere. But I can’t resist pointing out the sheer silliness of this “purported riposte”:http://www.tnr.com/blog/theplank?pid=16524 from Chait.
bq. But it’s not true if you take account of their political style, which is distinctly New Left. It’s a paranoid, Manichean worldview brimming with humorless rage. The fact that the contemporary blog-based left, unlike the McGovernite New Left, lacks a well-formed radical program is some measure of comfort. However, I think there’s lots of evidence to suggest that this style of thinking is suggestive of a tendency to move in more radical directions over time. That, of course, is exactly what happened to the New Left, many of whose members starting off as relatively sensible liberals, or left-liberals before veering into the abyss.
This smear by association deconstructs itself – if you want to complain about bloggers’ paranoid, Manichean worldviews brimming with humourless rage, surely it’s best not to do so in paranoid, Manichean blogposts brimming &c&c. Chait, in his efforts to carry out the _New Republic’s_ self-appointed guardianship of sort-of-slightly-liberal-centrism (and to vilify those who have the impertinence to be to his left) becomes that which he’s complaining about. Peer not too long into the abyss of the blogosphere lest it peer back into thee.
In any event, I’d take the humour of McGovernites such as John Kenneth Galbraith (who as Scott McLemee “pointed out last week”:http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/05/03/mclemee was not only known for witty epigrams, but also for elaborate spoofs) over that of _New Republic_ apparatchiks any day of the week. As McLemee’s piece shows, Galbraith’s spurious psychologist Herschel McLandress, had the New Republic faction’s number a long time ago.
bq. Epernay [Galbraith’s pseudonym] enjoyed his role as Boswell to the great psychometrician. Later articles discussed the other areas of McLandress’s research. … He developed the “third-dimensional departure” for acknowledging the merits of both sides in any controversial topic while carefully avoiding any form of extremism. (This had been mastered, noted Epernay, by “the more scholarly Democrats.”)
No. 2 in an occasional series: Alex Tabarrok on France-US comparisons (with minor editorial changes)
(see “here”:http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2006/05/french_universi.html for Tabarrok’s original; see “here”:https://crookedtimber.org/2004/03/25/juan-non-volokh-with-minor-editorial-changes/ for No. 1 in this series)
The US has one of the most deplored health insurance systems in the world and one of the most “admired”:http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2006/01/paul_krugman_on_1.html veterans’ health care systems. Could the difference have something to do with the fact that America’s health insurance firms operate in a competitive market with lots of private suppliers while veterans’ health care is dominated by monopolistic, government provided hospitals?
What would our health system look like if it operated like the Veterans’ Administration?
Look to France for the answer. “Healthcare in France”:”:http://ezraklein.typepad.com/blog/2005/04/health_care_fra.html is “mainly under state control … The state plans out hospitals, the allocation of specialized equipment, etc.” However, as Kevin Drum “notes”:http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_04/006148.php, this
bq. works pretty well. French healthcare is excellent, waiting lists are short, the supply of doctors is high, overall costs are reasonable, and patient satisfaction levels are excellent. It couldn’t be transplanted whole into the United States, of course — doctors are paid considerably more here, for one thing — but it’s a pretty good model for what we could accomplish.
I’ve already let this slip out in a couple of threads, so I might as well announce that my wife is expecting our third child in September. We have two girls (9 and 5); they are thrilled. Some people will be relieved, and others shocked, that even in liberal Madison the number of people who have immediately said “A boy for dad” to one or other of us is now into double figures. I am neither relieved or shocked, but utterly bemused (this is apparently a common sentiment; I didn’t know). Anyway, we’re delighted, though only my 5 year old was gunning for a boy (why? No idea).
Naming a boy is going to be difficult, mainly because one of us (not me) doesn’t like many boys names, and the other (me), after coming up with two or three good names (Reginald, Alfred, Clement etc…) stops taking it seriously and starts proposing absurdities (Zebedee; Egbert; Canute etc…(no offense meant to holdrs of these excellent names, but you can see that someone who rejects Reginald wouldn’t even consider these)). Eszter sent me to this amazing site, which is no help at all, but a great time waster. So, there is a point to this post. Via the voyager I discover that my own name, which I have always liked despite its tendency to produce confusion, has completely collapsed in popularity since records began. What is amazing to me (but not at all distressing, is that its decline has not been halted at all since the arrival of on the scene of Henry Potter. Why would that be?
Show of Hands are brilliant. English folk with a rock beat, a sense of humour, and political passion. They sound like nice thoughtful guys, too. Hear them on this week’s Mike Harding show and make up your own mind. You can download two singles legally; Are We Alright and Crooked Man. Their home page is here. An inexpensive 2-CD sampler here
“Yet another flaw”:http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/12/us/12vote.html?ex=1305086400&en=5b3554a76aad524a&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss has been discovered in Diebold’s electronic voting machines. Company spokesman David Bear presents the watertight case for the defence:
bq. “For there to be a problem here, you’re basically assuming a premise where you have some evil and nefarious election officials who would sneak in and introduce a piece of software,” he said. “I don’t believe these evil elections people exist.”
This guy should get some kind of prize. America is the country that gave us the word “ratfucking”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratfucking, where party operatives “jam the phone lines”:http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/phonejamming.php of their opponents on election day, and where people say they want to die in Chicago so they can remain politically active.
During the discussion following the death of JK Galbraith, the issue of advertising came up. In the Affluent Society Galbraith dismissed the idea that advertising is informative, and argued instead that it was used to manufacture demand for goods and services people would otherwise not want. The NYT obit suggested that Gary Becker and George Stigler had disproved this, a proposition that attracted some attention, mainly focusing on the work of Becker and Murphy.
Although Becker and Murphy don’t present it this way, their model actually supports Galbraith in most respects.
So here’s a topic on which CT readers are bound to have opinions: which laptop should I buy? Or, more exactly, what should I be looking for? Productivity-wise I need a machine that will run a LaTeX implementation — currently I use MiKTeX plus WinEdt on my desktop machines (XP based) in the office or at home — but just about anything will do that. And I’d like something that will be generally OK for surfing, playing the occasional video-clip or mp3, but that’s about it. And, of course, wireless is essential (though I’ve got a spare wireless card for a notebook as it happens … it came packaged with my router). How much memory? What size HD?
I had thought about making the switch to Apple, having seen a grad student’s neat little iBook. But since Apple is moving to Intel and their low-cost laptops haven’t yet made the switch, that seems a bad choice at the moment. (If I’m wrong about that mattering, then I’m sure some Apple-fan will set me right.)