February 2007

In the Netherlands, children between the ages of 2 and 4 (which is the age at which compulsory schooling starts) and who are not attending nurseries, can spend two mornings a week together in so-called ‘playgroups’. These playgroups are run by the municipalities. There is also a ‘pre-playgroup’ for kids between 18 months and two years, which only lasts one hour and where they are accompanied by one of the parents (or another adult). This morning a neighbour asked me whether I wouldn’t be interested in enrolling my son for such a pre-playgroup. But, she added, it’s only for mothers, fathers are not allowed. Apparently the justification is that otherwise mothers from certain ethnic minorities, where gender segregation is an important issue, would not attend with their children.

What should we think about such policies? In principle, I would strongly condemn such policies, since they are plainly discriminating fathers, grandfathers, and male babysitters. In practice, I can appreciate the underlying goal of offering mothers from social groups where opposite-sex parental activities are entirely out of the question more options to socialise, and also the social and developmental benefits for their children; but it does restrict the options of more progressive heterosexual couples to equally shared parenthood, let alone the options of gay fathers and single fathers. Since the kids of these ethnic minorities tend to be among the worst-off in society and we can safely assume that they are benefiting from joining a playgroup, I’m trying to look at this from its positive side – but I really have difficulties convincing myself that this is, all things considered, a wise policy.

I’ve been following the French presidential elections at second hand; as “Philip Stevens”:http://www.ft.com/cms/s/dc241e40-b261-11db-a79f-0000779e2340.html says in the _FT_, they seem to herald some interesting political changes, no matter who wins.

As one shrewd observer puts it, Mr Sarkozy is a social outsider but a political insider. Ms Royal is a social insider who has reinvented herself as a political outsider. No matter. Neither pays homage to the ancien régime. Talk to those who grace Paris’s political salons and the first thing they will say is that Mr Sarkozy is not an énarque – a graduate of the prestigious Ecole Nationale d’Administration. The second, that he is not an intellectual. The third – by now the scorn crackles in the air – that, until recently, he has not even sought the counsel of intellectuals. … Ms Royal similarly seems an unlikely king. … The daughter of an army officer, she is an énarque. It was as a student at ENA that she met her partner, François Hollande, the Socialist party leader. Something, though, went awry. To snatch the candidacy, she scorned the party chiefs. She made herself the choice instead of public opinion – a brutal affront to the authority of the old guard as well as to the presidential ambitions of her partner.

Sarkozy in particular is fascinating. While journalists usually compare him with Margaret Thatcher, he seems to me to to have a lot more in common with Richard Nixon (I’ve recently read a draft of Rick Perlstein’s _Nixonland_, so this analogy is on my mind). Sarkozy isn’t a true believer; what marks him is less his commitment to a cause than his extraordinary ideological suppleness. He’s been quite happy to abandon his pro-US stance, and to moderate his opinions on free markets to boost his chances of winning (Nixon went through similar ideological contortions on his way to power). But where the Nixon comparison really seems apt is in the source of his appeal and the psychological factors driving him. The first is a combination of law-and-order, barely concealed appeals to racism, and capitalization on widespread and not unjustified resentment of the dominance of political elites. His anti-intellectualism isn’t a bug; it’s part of what makes him attractive to many voters. The second is that like Nixon, he wasn’t a member of aforementioned elite, nor did he have a happy upbringing, and both continue to rankle. According to an interview quoted in a 2002 _Le Monde_ article (“behind a paywall”:http://www.lemonde.fr/cgi-bin/ACHATS/acheter.cgi?offre=ARCHIVES&type_item=ART_ARCH_30J&objet_id=775337) Sarkozy claims that “what made me is the sum of my childhood humiliations.” As best as I’m aware, Sarkozy, despite his fine gift for political opportunism, hasn’t done anything that begins to resemble Nixon’s assemblage of dirty tricks – insofar as I understand the Clearstream affair (which isn’t very far), he’s more sinned against than sinning. So the analogy isn’t perfect. Nonetheless, he surely deserves to someday have his very own Garry Wills.

I have an archiving question. Suppose I wanted to save a link to a page and do my best to ensure that it stays good – for years and years, in principle, even if the page goes away. As long as google shall reign. The obvious answer: just link to a googlecache URL. One thing I’m not clear about is google’s policy about these page images. Suppose I record a page as it appeared, say, today. That is: the google page has a little ‘as retrieved on 06 Feb 2007 04:14:38 GMT’ or whatever. Does google only take a new snapshot if something changes on the page (does it have some way of knowing that?) so that, so long as the page isn’t changed, the snapshot stays good forever? Suppose I link to a page and, in two years, the page is modified and google has in the meantime taken any number of fresh cache images. There’s no expiry date on old caches, right? (I’m sure about this. But I want to be really sure. Has google made any explicit commitments, archiving-wise? I’m thinking about the long haul here.) Also, googlecache URL’s are a bit unwieldy. Tinyurl promises to offer more convenient handles that ‘never expire’. But what if tinyurl dies? Would it be bad archiving policy to tiny-fy a googlecache link, for convenience (so someone could type it in, more easily than those long monsters?) What would you say are best practices, short of doing the old fashioned thing and hitting ‘print’ and locking the results in a fireproof safe?

I’ve got a busy week ahead, at two public events to which everyone around Madison is welcome, if they can bring themselves to leave their homes. The first is Tuesday night, at the Madison Public Library. UW Madison’s Center for the Humanities is sponsoring a 2-part forum on the topic of The Good Childhood (cool poster here). The speakers tomorrow are myself and Sally Schrag (an expert on child ddevelopment and educator of child-care workers); next Tuesday (the 13th) we’ll have Anne Lundin (of our SLIS department) and Carole Trone, who is a historian of childhood. Several respondents will also be at one event or another, including a newly minted member of the Wisconsin House of Representatives, and an excellent local elementary school principal.

On Wednesday and Thursday our Educational Policy Studies department is hosting its annual conference. This year the topic is “Education and Educational Research in an Era of Accountability: Insights and Blindspots“. The Keynote Speaker on Wednesday night is Richard Elmore. I’m speaking on Thursday at 9 am on the topic “Values in Evaluation: Why Empirical Evidence is Never Enough”. I’m currently trying to figure out how many nice things to say abut NCLB. This will be followed by excellent sessions looking at empirical evidence and the problems of gathering it. The past few conferences have been great, and the only thing that threatens this one is the weather.

Eugene Goodheart writes in the latest issue of _Dissent_, in an article entitled “The London Review of Hezbollah”:http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=733 :

bq. The London Review of Books is an egregious instance of this one-sidedness. Almost _every issue contains several articles devoted to attacks on Israel_ [emphasis added], and the target is not simply the governing party, but the whole spectrum of Israeli political life. _Absent from the columns of the Review are the injustices and cruelties of political Islam_ [emphasis added].

Perhaps accuracy is not Mr Goodheart’s strong point. Maybe he is merely unfortunate that the latest issue of the LRB contains “an article by James Meek”:http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n03/meek01_.html that begins:

bq. In 1995, in Sudan, Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri put two teenage boys on trial for treason, sodomy and attempted murder, in a Sharia court of his own devising. Of the two boys, one, Ahmed, was only 13. Zawahiri, the partner in terror of Osama bin Laden, had them stripped naked; he showed that they had reached puberty, and therefore counted as adults. The court found the boys guilty. Zawahiri had them shot, filmed their confessions and executions, and put video copies out to warn other potential traitors.

But even allowing the publication of Meek’s article as a mere co-incidence that should not be held against him, Goodheart’s case is not strong. A perusal of the LRB’s online archives reveals a total of five articles about the Middle East in 2006, some of which are, of course, about Iraq. To those should no doubt be added the well-known Mearsheimer and Walt piece. The LRB is published 24 times a year.

UPDATE: it turns out (thanks to Henry and K. Williams in the comments below) that the LRB’s online indexing is crap. The final para above is incorrect, but the basic point stands and the following para would have been better:

But even allowing the publication of Meek’s article as a mere co-incidence that should not be held against him, Goodheart’s case is not strong. A perusal of the LRB’s back issues reveals a total of 17 articles critical of Israel in 2006, but ten of these come from two issues published during the invasion of Lebanon (and the LRB is published 24 times a year). It is certainly false to say, as Goodheart does, that “Almost every issue contains several articles devoted to attacks on Israel.”

Yesterday’s NYT carries an editorial on proposed fee hikes at Citizenship and Immigration Services. It turns out that the section concerned with issuing visas and granting citizenship has to pay for itself, and is planning to raise fees in order to reduce the extraordinary waiting times and to improve customer service from the currently less-than-stellar levels (native American citizens might not know what I mean by that, but the immigrants among you do):

The application fee for citizenship would rise to $595 from $330. The fee for permanent residency would increase to $905 from $325, and charges for bringing in a foreign spouse or employee would more than double

The Times blames Congress for requiring that immigrants pay for the service which serves them, and I’m sure that there is no sensible economic rationale for that. But, I fear, Congress is unlikely to heed the Times’ advice. So what about an alternative: a tax on citizenship?

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Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science has joined forces with Alan Sokal, scourge of leftwing relativism and pseudoscience, in an LA Times op-ed piece on the current state of the Science Wars.

As Mooney and Sokal note, the decline of antiscience views on the left

frees up defenders of science to combat the enemy on our other flank: an unholy (and uneasy) alliance of economically driven attacks on science (on issues such as global climate change, mercury pollution and what constitutes a good diet) and theologically impelled ones (in areas such as evolution, reproductive health and embryonic stem cell research).

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There’s “a wonderful rant against Macs”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2006031,00.html and their owners (me, Kieran, half the rest of CT) from Charlie Brooker in the Guardian today. Daniel will be pleased. Brooker concentrates on Apple’s odd decision to use David Mitchell and Robert Webb in their ad campaign (and helpfully, the ads appear on the same page, at least to UK readers and maybe to the rest of you).

bq. The ads are adapted from a near-identical American campaign – the only difference is the use of Mitchell and Webb. They are a logical choice in one sense (everyone likes them), but a curious choice in another, since they are best known for the television series Peep Show – probably the best sitcom of the past five years – in which Mitchell plays a repressed, neurotic underdog, and Webb plays a selfish, self-regarding poseur. So when you see the ads, you think, “PCs are a bit rubbish yet ultimately lovable, whereas Macs are just smug, preening tossers.” In other words, it is a devastatingly accurate campaign.

Via “Teresa Nielsen Hayden”:http://www.nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/ come “Lore Sjöberg’s views on Wikipedia.”:http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,70670-0.html He says in part:

Wikipedia is a new paradigm in human discourse. It’s a place where anyone with a browser can go, pick a subject that interests them, and without even logging in, start an argument. … The Wikipedia philosophy can be summed up thusly: “Experts are scum.” For some reason people who spend 40 years learning everything they can about, say, the Peloponnesian War — and indeed, advancing the body of human knowledge — get all pissy when their contributions are edited away by Randy in Boise who heard somewhere that sword-wielding skeletons were involved. And they get downright irate when asked politely to engage in discourse with Randy until the sword-skeleton theory can be incorporated into the article without passing judgment.

This reminds me of my friend “Dave Chalmers”:http://consc.net/ and his abortive efforts to suggest some clean up of the Wikipedia entry on “consciousness”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness, especially the bits relating to his own well-known book _The Conscious Mind_. He registered a username and — politely — made a suggestion. “The results”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Consciousness/Archive01 were not encouraging:

As can be seen above, most of your criticisms are not supported. Please demonstrate your familiarity with the field by supporting your critique with reasoned arguments rather than pejorative comments. *loxley* 08:50, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Marshall McLuhan here. *Philos* is right about each of the points above. The philosophy section would be much improved if it reverted to the “philosopher’s” edit of a few days ago. *DavidChalmers* 23:51, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

How is he right about the points above? The points are clearly detailed and you could easily explain your criticism. Please could you also explain how cutting the historical, empirical descriptions of conscious experience and supervenience would improve the article. Why do you have the ID “DavidChalmers” yet use the name Marshall McLuhan? The only famous philosopher called Marshall McLuhan died in 1980. Are you taking the piss or are you philos with a duplicate ID? *loxley* 11:13, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

The user with ID DavidChalmers who claims to be the deceased and famous Canadian philosopher Marshal McLuhan should note that using the name of a living, prominent person as a USERID is against Wikipedia guidelines. *loxley* 11:19, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

My userID is my own name (I presume that’s allowed). “Marshall McLuhan” was an _Annie Hall_ reference. Sorry if that wasn’t clear. I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to get into a long argument involving an entry where I am discussed. But since you’ve invoked my name twice (here and on the history page) in support of your claims, I thought I should register my judgment here. I appreciate all that you and others have done to build up this entry. But your discussion in the article and above shows fairly basic misunderstandings of supervenience (the Derrida quote has no bearing on supervenience), direct realism (it’s not true that direct realists see the explanatory gap in terms of access consciousness), functionalism (it’s not true that “experience of” is a functionalist or eliminativist locution), and so on. I’m sorry! And I’ll bow out now. *DavidChalmers* 23:36, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Dear Prof. Chalmers, Thank you for your comments. I respect your willingness to bow out of decisions where conflicts of interest emerge, but I would like to stress that your informed opinion and guidance is most valuable here. This page has great potential to teach many curious readers about our current understanding of consciousness in an accurate and approachable way. I believe that all here would agree that this subject is a difficult one to get right and teach well, and thus your contributions here are most certainly a welcome public service. Many thanks for your past (and hopefully future) contributions. Cheers, *sallison* 01:47, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Sallison: yuk. Chalmers, if that is your name, your criticisms are not in the spirit of Wikipedia. Don’t wave your hand with a pompous air of authority, get them dirty by actually contributing. I have given details of the assertions in the philosophy section that you can rebut in the section below. *loxley* 10:56, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

I’m not sure how things stand these days with that entry. Hopefully it improved.

Not interested in football, but still want to get into the Superbowl spirit? Check out Jeremy’s “The Boy Detective” dance choreographed for the occasion. Try at your own risk.

Requisite addendum from a Chicagolander: Go Bears!

There are some dishes which you just can’t imagine that anyone in their right mind would dislike. Others, however much you love them, you assume to be idiosyncratic tastes. Such was always the case with Welsh Cakes, which I love, but long presumed that was because I associate them with long childhood walks in West Wales and visits to my maternal grandparents. Prompted by a colleague, I felt forced to bring an “ethnic” food to the final session of a class we taught (after, I should add, evaluations), and rushed off some welsh cakes because they are low effort and I had the ingredients to hand. I found that everyone raved about them and, in fact, that has turned out to be a universal reaction. So, add this to your CT recipe book:

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Anatol Rapoport has died at the age of 95. Among many contributions, perhaps his most widely-known was the Tit-for-Tat rule for repeated games of the Prisoner’s Dilemma, embodied in a four-line program Rapaport successfully entered in a contest run by Robert Axelrod. Rapoport’s program co-operates inititially, and thereafter matches the other player’s last action, defecting in response to a defection, and returning to co-operation if the other player does so. There’s more here from Tom Slee.

One of the questions — about a long-lived Biblical character — suggests the quiz author believes (amongst other things) in the existence of someone called “Strom Thurman.” It suggests a striking mental image, certainly. Via “PZ Myers”:http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/, who naturally also got an A.

_Update_: On the basis of the comments (and, to be honest, the questions), I think it’s fair to say that this post should probably be titled, “The Many Benefits of Taking Absurdly Easy Tests.”

It is a good long time since we had a sporting thread — and especially one that is utterly incomprehensible to most of our American readers. Today marks “the beginning of the Six Nations”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/rugby_union/fixtures/4777061.stm , and Ireland seem to be everyone’s nailed-on favourites. But I reckon there could be some surprises. Brian Ashton, the new England coach, will play a different kind of game to his predecessor, Wilkinson and Farrell may come good, and Leicester (with a good chunk of the England team) recently beat Munster (with much of the Irish one) in the Heineken Cup. So I’m backing England to do better than expected (and maybe win, pipping Ireland), for the French to be flakey and unpredictable but finish third, and Wales to come in fourth. As for last place, I think Italy might just do it this time and edge out Scotland, maybe by getting a home win against Wales. (The Merseyside derby is today too, so it will be a long stretch in front of the telly.)