Chris Bertram

From the “Times Higher Education Supplement”:http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=408524&c=2

bq. Fights broke out as law students queued for up to 11 hours last night to secure the dissertation supervisor of their choice at Brunel University. More than 100 students queued outside Brunel Law School overnight in the hope of working with their preferred academic, after the school introduced a first-come, first-served supervisor-allocation system. ….“There are some people you just don’t want. If everybody in the school were a good supervisor, we wouldn’t have to do this. You’ve no idea how distressing it was to see people punching each other in the queue,” said the student.

Read the whole thing, as they say.

I was kind of surprised to see that the wonderful Tom Russell has a long essay on some new blog called The Rumpus, all about Juarez, El Paso, drug wars, borderlands, corruption, et cetera. I love his music, and I like his writing too, so I’m always pleased to see some more of it. The content, though, the content is shocking.

bq. I turned that page in section B where there was a short item about two El Pasoans slain yesterday in a Juarez bar shooting. Back page stuff. Hidden near the end of the story was the astounding body count: _nearly 2900 people, including more than 160 this month alone, have been killed in Juarez since a war between drug traffickers erupted January 2008_ . John Wesley Hardin wouldn’t stand a chance.

Jesus. You’re probably safer in Kandahar.

Philip Gerrans argues that there is a bubble in the humanities, and that all kinds of people are holding stock at an artificially inflated value, often on the advice of people who have a vested interested. (h/t Darius Jedburgh)

St Vincent’s Works

Originally uploaded by Chris Bertram

Various Timberites had a discussion some time ago about having a semi-regular Sunday photo on the blog. I think I probably take more pictures than the others, both digital and film, but, looking through my Flickr stream, I don’t tend to take pictures that illustrate grand social or political themes. Still, this one might be of interest. It is the interior of St Vincent’s works in Bristol, now the headquarters of a sustainable development consultancy, but once the offices of a Victorian factory. The building dates from the 1890s and the decoration, mainly ceramic, is extraordinarily ornate. Like many British cities, Bristol has an “open doors” day once a year, when buildings that are normally closed to the public are open to visit. Is this just a British thing, or do other countries do the same? This was taken on one of those days.

Some amazing time lapse sequences of glacier retreat and a spectacular ice-shelf collapse:

Martin Bright in the New StatesmanSpectator

bq. Incidentally, I now think the invasion was indeed an error: carried out at the wrong time, by the wrong coalition for the wrong reasons. But where I do agree with the “decents” is that those who opposed intervention in 2002/3 were arguing for the murderous Baathist regime to stay in power. This should remain on their conscience just as the murderous consequences of the invasion are on the conscience of those who supported the war.

(via comments at “Aaronovitch Watch”:http://aaronovitch.blogspot.com/ .)

An especially delicious offering for the start of the new academic year.

I see (via Tim Dunlop) that Troy Kennedy Martin is dead. There’s a lot to remember him for, but, like Tim, the work that will always stay with me is Edge of Darkness, one of the top six drama serials ever on TV. [fn1] Tim has a good clip and a link to a few more. The mid-1980s in Britain were a scary time, with Thatcher and the Tory party utterly and arrogantly dominant, the miners facing a brutally determined state, mass unemployment, nuclear standoff, vicious cuts in public spending, hmm, a bit like what we’re all in for soon. Bob Peck was terrific, but the real iconic figure was Joe Don Baker as Darius Jedburgh. Superb.

[1] The others being Heimat, Heimat 2, The Singing Detective, The Wire, and Our Friends in the North

Goldstone’s “report”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8257301.stm on Cast Lead is out. Google blog and news searches show that the people who were always going to say “It’s not trooo!” (and worse) have begun to do so in large numbers. So it goes.

I hardly ever buy newspapers these days, I just read their websites. The gains are probably greater than the losses: I used to take the Guardian and hardly ever see the others, now I get to read a range of British and foreign papers. The one exception I make is the weekend edition of the Financial Times. In fact, the FT, in its Saturday version is my nomination for the best English-language paper in the world. I love it, as every copy brings pleasurable reading. Today’s was a special treat as it contains “a conversation”:http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/cb8506f6-9e60-11de-b0aa-00144feabdc0.html between one of my favourite journalists (Lucy Kellaway) and Nick Hornby (about whom it is hard to avoid having warm, friendly feelings, even if he is an Arsenal fan). Also, check out “Simone Baribeau’s account”:http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/f64a9e36-9da3-11de-9f4a-00144feabdc0,dwp_uuid=a712eb94-dc2b-11da-890d-0000779e2340.html of working to sell overpriced houses to poor people during the bubble, whilst knowing that you are doing wrong but feeling unable to quit because of the need to fund dental treatment. I think I could post half a dozen more links to today’s edition, but just go and buy it (if in the UK) or browse away (especially the Arts and Leisure section).

Reading the current US debate on health care from the outside is pretty dispiriting. It is an example of what happens to rational debate in circumstances of inequality where vested interests and partisan pundits can distort discussion by throwing loads of noise, fear and disinformation into the conversation. Still, that’s no reason not to try to have a conversation about which principles ought to obtain, and I think for that it is hard to beat Ronald Dworkin’s paper “Justice in the Distribution of Heath Care”, _McGill Law Journal_, 38 (1993), pp. 883-98 (though I’m looking at the reprint in Clayton and Williams eds _The Ideal of Equality_ ).

Dworkin’s “central idea”:

bq. … we should aim to make collective, social decisions about the quantity and distribution of health care so as to match, as closely as possible, the decisions that people in the community would make for themselves, one by one, in the appropriate circumstances, if they were looking from youth down the course of their lives and trying to decide what risks were worth running in return for not running other kinds of risks. (C&W, 209)

[click to continue…]

I think I sort-of knew many of the facts that Elijah Wald recounts “in this piece in the Financial Times”:http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/eeca345e-8de1-11de-93df-00144feabdc0.html . Still, knowing and putting-together are two different things. You couldn’t listen to 78s as “background music” because even with an auto-changer, you’d have to get up every 15 minutes – hence the importance of radio if you wanted a soundtrack to other activities. Why did jazz singers such as Billie Holiday record such a wide repertoire of “standards”? They were packaging the hit songs of their day for a particular audience (with other singers styling for other market segments). Wald’s account also makes sense of other matters that seem incomprehensible to modern music fans. Wald doesn’t discuss this, but we are often surprised that great singers of the past died in poverty and obscurity and are buried in unmarked graves (Bessie Smith, for example). But Wald’s emphasis on the contemporary importance of the song rather than the singer helps to explain how this could have happened. We might prize the iconic performances of the time, but back then there were lots of jobbing singers churning out multiple versions. Interesting enough to make me order a copy of Wald’s new book, _How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ’n’ Roll_.

Well with Australia 133 for 8 and 199 behind at tea on the second day, I’m a bit late starting this. If I’d posted last night it would have been to berate a mediocre England – what a difference a day makes. Is Broad the new Flintoff? Can Australia yet pull it back? Comment away.

Sorry, I forgot to get this started. But in truth, it was pretty much over by lunchtime on day one. Should Harmison ever play for England again? I’m certain that Bopara shouldn’t. Comment away!