I’ve done some fairly elaborate googling on this, and have found out much more than I want to know about Ted Nugent, but haven’t found what I want. I remember many years ago reading a story about the custody arrangements after one of his divorces; he and his ex-spouse agreed that instead of the kids moving back and forth between them, they would move in and out of the house in which their children were permanent residents. This is the nicest thing I’ve ever heard about Ted Nugent, including his music. Unfortunately, whatever references there are on the internet are hard to find because they are obscured by disputes over Ted’s tendency to produce further children (as well as sawing his leg off). I found one reference to it in a comment on a blog, but would rather cite something more authoritative when I write about this. Can anyone point me to an authoritative account fo Ted Nugent’s innovative custody arrangements.
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Harry
I knew they’d make a film of it when I first heard it, one of a few thousand apparently, in my teenage bedroom just outside Slough (ironically, as it turns out, for where would Martin Freeman be without Slough?). So I waited. And waited. And waited. 27 years or thereabouts. There have been months (years, perhaps) in which I haven’t thought about it, and when it finally opened I thought, “well, I can wait a few weeks more”. So yesterday I took my 8 year old and her friend. My hopes were not high — I didn’t even care whether it would be good, I was just fulfilling the wish I had 27 years ago. It couldn’t possibly match the radio series, I knew that, not least because Peter Jones is dead and Simon Jones is…over the hill.
I’m not going to review it: I’m already behind the curve.
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After featuring on 60 minutes last night, On Bullshit climbed from #21 (when I checked at the start of the segment) in the Amazon charts to #3 (when I checked 5 minutes ago). I have no idea what this means in terms of numbers, but the commissioning editor must be feeling pretty smug. As must Harry Frankfurt, I’d guess.
Talking of higher education and athletics, I want to recommend to people that they read Leveling the Playing Field. It’s is a terrific book, and a wonderful model of how to do applied normative philosophy. It pursues hard and interesting normative questions in the context of detailed and careful empirical analysis of the situation in higher education. The philosophy guides, but does not get in the way of, the empirical exploration; it is also obvious that the authors are steeped in the empirical evidence and institutional detail of the area they are investigating. In the areas where I know the empirical literature in detail they consistently introduced me to new, and more up-to-date findings than I had to hand.
Orlando Patterson and Jason Kaufman trail their forthcoming American Sociological Review paper on why cricket failed in the United States in today’s New York Times (it seems to be subscription only). Their thesis is that the egalitarian culture of the US caused elites to be extremely insecure, and therefore to hog cricket to themselves; which in turn helped out the entrepreneurs who were able to sell baseball as a game for the masses. In contrast, the self-confidence of the colonial elites in northern India and the Carribean enabled them to share cricket with the masses. This, of course, undercut any potential market for baseball, cricket being intrinsically superior (sorry, that last comment was from me, not them). You can hear them discuss it with Laurie Taylor here. In the interview, by the way, Kaufman claims never to have seen a game!
I saw Rufus Wainwright singing on stage in 1984, with Martha and their dad, at one of those free concerts the GLC used to put on. You couldn’t tell at the time that he was going to be a huge star, but I mention seeing him then occasionally when I want my cool students to think that I am not quite as uncool as I usually like to seem. But now Want One
is the featured album on Stuart Maconie’s show. Frankly, I still find it a bit nerve-wracking to hear a voice that is almost Loudon’s singing songs like Rufus’s, and it prevents me from being a true fan. If, though, there’s anyone here who hasn’t yet heard him, he’s brilliant.
As far as I know the Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy is the first online journal in moral philosophy. The first issue has interesting-looking contributions by Raz, Gideon Yaffe, and John Brunero. The team has obviously put a lot of work into providing authors with the assurance that this is as permanent as paper. In the editorial policy they say:
The Journal of Ethics & Social Philosophy website has been designed by the Annenberg Center at the University of Southern California and is maintained by the Center for the indefinite future. The website is guaranteed by a double back-up system, and it is designed to accommodate future upgrades and modifications. The journal is fully committed to maintaining the website and its entire database for the indefinite future and has taken every possible measure to that effect.
This is a pretty good guarantee, and authors may find the idea of having their work completely available instantly to anyone with a modem very appealing.
The latest episode of Mark Tavener’s comedy, High Table Lower Orders, includes a character who has held both the Donald Rumsfeld Chair in Peace Studies and the Bill Clinton Chair in Personal Ethics. (My University has a set of Chairs which are named by the recipients: my fantasy is to hold the Tony Hancock Chair in something, though if push ever came to shove I guess I’d go for C.L.R. James if his executors would let me). Anyway, you can do better than Mark Tavener, surely. Nominations please.
My review of In Good Faith in the TES is now on-line (or, at least, it seems to be when I look at it). Its a book by 3 British academics about state-funded faith schools in the UK, and might be of some interest to non-Brits. who want to know how the British system works. My review doesn’t seem to have done much for its amazon sales. Here is a taster:
the authors have researched a large number of Muslim, Jewish, Greek Orthodox, Sikh, Church of England and Roman Catholic schools, and their findings make a vital contribution to the debate about faith schooling. They highlight the rise, since 1998, of non-Christian state-funded faith schools, and lay out the controversies, as well as providing a good deal of pertinent data. The authors rightly place Muslim schools at the centre of the debate about faith schooling. Islam is the largest non-Christian faith in Britain, and has the worst press. It is the only religion about which it is permissible to publicly express uninformed hostile opinions. The sagacious Lord Hattersley is quoted as pointing out that “fundamentalism is less acceptable when it is not white”. Islam has been a focal point for the new racism, and remains on the edge of mainstream British life.
If you haven’t yet followed any of our numerous links to Scott McLemee’s columns in Inside Higher Education you might want to start by checking out this brilliant little essay about the lost art of the lecture (and no, he doesn’t pay us a cent for the links). Apparently the lecture is not only dead, but is widely regarded as
“another form of child abuse, aimed at nominal adults, of course, but still young people presumably subjugated and entrapped in an environment controlled by an authoritarian leader” — leaving them no self-defense except “to fall asleep to escape the painful environment they have paid so dearly to join.”
Worse, my former colleague Ron Barnett is quoted as saying that the lecture:
“keeps channels of communication closed, freezes hierarchy between lecturers and students and removes any responsibility on the student to respond.”
I suppose that every Brit who reads this site already knows about this, but the rest may not. The die-hard fans seem pleased, but it is very hard to tell whether that is just a function of the relief they feel.
When I first heard about the return I had a conversation with my favourite pop star (no, I won’t tell you who that is) who expressed skepticism: on the grounds that the only way the series can sell is by Americanising it. My skepticism is more based on the fact that the post-war social-democratic consensus is so long dead that a show that self-consciously embodied it would now seem weird; but if the doctor were not a social democrat he would not be the doctor. However, at least the Americanisation thesis seems false, given the star’s disavowal of both sexism (ha!) and RP.
Trevor Phillips is urging that consideration be given to segregating black boys, and teaching them separately.
bq. Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, said it may be necessary to examine the option of segregation because of the discrepancy between the academic achievements of black and white teenagers. Low levels of self-esteem, an absence of positive role models and a culture where it was “not cool to be clever” were combining to affect the performance of Britain’s black pupils, according to Mr Phillips. While he acknowledged some might perceive his conclusions as “unpalatable”, he insisted the steps were essential to protect future generations of black youths.
Former Anglican Bishop of Liverpool, England cricketer, ecumenicalist, and anti-apartheid campaigner David Sheppard has died. For my dad he was a cricketing hero. For me, as a teenage Anglican, he was a political hero. (via Normblog where there is more).
Bill Gardner notes an uptick in infant mortality in the US, and links to the National Center for Health Statistics report which tries to explain it. As Bill points out, undertsanding a slight rise in the rate is all very interesting, but not to the point when we know what can be done to lower the rate, even if what we know doesn’t address the sudden (and slight) increase. Here are his suggestions:
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Kieran says that in the ‘battle between bioethics and religion. The final score was Bioethics 3, Religion 1.’ This, I would say, was about the score in last night’s Wifeswap: Leierwoods 3, Patricks 1. The Patricks changed their own behaviour more than the Leierwoods did — a lot more. The Leierwoods would have won by more if only they hadn’t raised their son to be a bumptious clever clever, who spent the entire show trying to prove to American conservatives that liberals are a bunch of know-it-all insensitive bastards.
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