Anyone who’s at all interested in the relationship between law and the Internet has heard of Michael Froomkin; he’s done seminal work on “ICANN”:http://www.discourse.net/archives/2003/09/rose_burawoy_political_scientist.html and “privacy regulation”:http://personal.law.miami.edu/~froomkin/articles/privacy-deathof.pdf. He’s also run “ICANNWatch”:http://www.icannwatch.org for the last few years. And now he’s started a blog at “www.discourse.net”:http://www.discourse.net/. Early posts include “one”:http://www.discourse.net/archives/2003/09/virtual_worlds_real_rules.html on law in Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games and a wonderful “discursus”:http://www.discourse.net/archives/2003/09/rose_burawoy_political_scientist.html on his grandmother and John Ashcroft. One for your blogrolls.
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Henry
Technical standards are dull stuff for the most part; engineers or techies talking to other engineers or techies about the appropriate ways to implement this or that. While the politics of standard-setting is interesting in its own right^1^, it usually isn’t a very _political_ kind of politics. Here comes a prominent exception.
Via “Cory”:http://boingboing.net/2003_09_01_archive.html#106401808835764965 at BoingBoing: the Electronic Frontiers Foundation (EFF) has issued a “call to arms”:http://www.eff.org/Activism/E-voting/IEEE/ over voting machine standards. According to the EFF, various vested interests are trying to push through a weak standard for voting machines in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). If the EFF is right, this isn’t just an argument over technical issues; it has potentially serious consequences for politics and vote-fraud.
So what exactly is going on here?
Dan Drezner has a new “piece”:http://techcentralstation.com/091903D.html up in Tech Central Station. He suggests in passing that the EU, which used to be considered a trade liberalizer, is now an economic and political mess.
bq. Policy processes that generate illogical macroeconomic rules, incoherent foreign policies, insane agriculture subsidies, and interminable constitutional proposals have not showered Brussels with economic glory.
Fair enough. But what about US ‘policy processes’ under the Republicans?
* Illogical macroeconomic rules. “Check”:http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/14/magazine/14TAXES.html?pagewanted=print&position=
* Incoherent foreign policies. “Check”:http://talkingpointsmemo.com/sept0301.html#0907031101pm.
* Insane agricultural subsidies. “Check”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1978525.stm.
* Interminable constitutional proposals. “Check”:http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/politics/2106343.
In theory, the EU should find it much easier than the US to make a mess of things. It’s composed of fifteen argumentative sovereign states, each with its own turf to defend. But appearances deceive: US Republicans to be labouring under no comparative disadvantage at all. They’re screwing things up with quite extraordinary vigour and gusto. Kudos. I seem to remember that once upon a time, people thought that the Republicans too would be trade liberalizers. Word on the street is that they’re not only protectionists, they’re “incompetent protectionists”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31768-2003Sep18.html. Anyway, I’d take eurosclerosis any day of the week, if the alternative were the shambling monstrosity that is Bush’s macro-economic policy.
Egregious disinformation abounds on the Internet, but I was a little disappointed to see Josh Chafetz talking smack about smoked salmon. He advances the self-evidently preposterous thesis that
smoked salmon must be eaten with a bagel, cream cheese, and red onion.
Wrong. As any fule kno, smoked salmon ought to be eaten on lightly buttered brown bread, with a couple of drops of lemon juice squeezed over it. The butter should be Irish, and mildly salted (Kerrygold butter is widely available in the UK, continental Europe, US and Canada, and will do quite nicely). Ideally, the brown bread should be made by my mother. Since very few of you have had the privilege of eating my mother’s brown bread (Chris and, obviously, Maria are the lucky exceptions), I’ll share the recipe.
The “New Yorker”:http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?030915ta_talk_mcgrath reveals that Wesley Clark has outed himself not only as a Democrat, but as a sf fan.
bq. “I wanted to be an astronaut,” Clark said. “That was back when we had a real space program. We all wanted to invade the red planet, right out of Ray Bradbury’s ‘Martian Chronicles.’”
bq. The Oxonian looked puzzled, and Clark asked, “Are you familiar with Ray Bradbury?” He was not. “Not a science-fiction fan? What about ‘Lord of the Rings’? ”
Today I came across “John Palfrey’s”:http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/palfrey/2003/09/12#a391 blog for a class that he’s teaching in Harvard Law School on the Internet and the global economy. Interesting stuff; all the more so for those of us who are beginning to take the first, wobbly steps towards using blogs in the classroom. “Dan Drezner”:http://www.danieldrezner.com/blog/ used Blogger to put together his syllabus last semester; John Holbo runs a “couple”:http://examinedlife.typepad.com/nietzsche/ of “class”:http://examinedlife.typepad.com/ph1101egem1004/ blogs, and I’ve recently installed Movable Type on the university server so that I can do so myself. Palfrey is pushing his students to start their own blogs as part of the classroom experience – I haven’t had the courage to do this myself. But it seems to me that there are a variety of different ways that you can use blogs in the classroom, each with their own pros and cons. Discussing them in order of increasing ambition …
Paul Krugman has a long and devasting “critique”:http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/14/magazine/14TAXES.html?pagewanted=print&position= of the Grover Norquist agenda in the NYT magazine. Expect the usual talking points from Sullivan and co. – ‘shrill,’ ‘sloppy’ – but don’t expect any serious counter-arguments.
And, proving that conservatism can be something more than blind advocacy of tax cuts, Tacitus “gives forth”:http://38.144.96.23/tacitus/archives/000913.html#000913 on the decision to reject tax-reform in Alabama:
bq. prisons and cops — and yes, even public education — are legitimate functions of government at that level, and so I have to ask whether underfunding them is really the conservative thing to do … All in all, the whole episode and the anti-tax rejoicing in the aftermath points to an increasing cognitive dissonance in Republican circles. The notion of taxation as an evil in itself is useful as a tactical tool, but it’s not useful as an analytic tool: you don’t get good governance if you focus on cutting taxes in the absence of any consideration of legitimate budgetary needs or any effort to concurrently reduce spending. But that’s exactly what’s happening, in the Congress and in Alabama. It’s worrisome and I daresay wrongheaded
Via “Laura”:http://apartment11d.blogspot.com/2003_09_01_apartment11d_archive.html#106333241625339719 at _Apartment 11D_ comes this fascinating “website”:http://cluster1.claritas.com/MyBestSegments/Default.jsp?ID=20. Enter your zipcode, and you can find out which cheesy and facile marketing categories inhabit your neighborhood. Are you going through difficult times along with other Hard Years Sustaining Families, or hanging out with hip and happening Successful Singles? Details also provided on the likely purchasing habits of your neighbours (‘Struggling Metro Mixes’ are likely to buy jewelry, and own more than four televisions). You could waste hours if you’re not careful.
Neal Stephenson and his uncle had a lot of fun with these kinds of marketing labels in their pseudonymously written _Interface_ (purportedly written by ‘Stephen Bury’). Among the subcategories that Interface‘s crazed political-demographic operatives identify in their efforts to manipulate the American voting public are:
* Mid-American Knick-Knack Queens
* Post-Confederate Gravy Eaters
* Frosty-Haired Coupon Snippers
* Mall-Hopping Corporate Concubines
* Debt-Hounded Wage Slaves
* Trade School Metal Heads
* Depression-Haunted Can Stackers
By their labels shall ye know them.
Looks as though Berlusconi has outed himself as a moral relativist; he’s told two interviewers that Mussolini wasn’t such a bad chap after all. Berlusconi is “quoted”:http://www.repubblica.it/2003/i/sezioni/politica/berlugiudici/spectator/spectator.html as replying to a question comparing Mussolini and Saddam by saying:
bq. Mussolini never killed anyone. Mussolini sent people on holiday in internal exile [a fare vacanza al confino].
He’s now backtracking, saying that he never intended to signal a ‘re-evaluation’ of Mussolini, and was merely defending Italian national pride and honour.
bq. I wasn’t re-evaluating Mussolini; I was acting as a patriot. As an Italian, I wasn’t accepting a comparison between Mussolini and Saddam.
According to the “NYT”:http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/10/obituaries/10TELL.html?hp, Edward Teller has finally met his “antimatter twin”:http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/795.html.
Like “Jacob Levy”:http://volokh.com/2003_09_07_volokh_archive.html#106312814305620404 I’m waiting on the release of Neal Stephenson’s _Quicksilver_: and the early signs are good. Dave Langford, who’s part way through reading it for Amazon UK “pronounces”:http://www.ansible.demon.co.uk/cc/cc143.html it to be a “joy to read, with a genuinely fresh slant on 17th/18th century history (or ahistory).” And Jacob and I are not alone – I confidently predict that September 23 (the book’s release date) is going to see prolonged blog-silences from everyone from Glenn Reynolds to Atrios.
But I’m digressing … I wanted to post about another book that I’m nearly as excited about, which will be released at around the same time. JG Ballard’s new novel, “Millennium People”:http://associatesshop.filzhut.de/shop/product.php?ID=7e33e52a9f201e22872aa9c926e79e21&Mode=&CategoryID=&Asin=&ASIN=000225848X, is about to come out. Ballard isn’t as popular in the blogosphere as Stephenson – but he should be; he’s a writer of genius. Which isn’t to say that he’s without flaws. He’s notoriously obsessive; ever since he developed his own voice, he’s written the same novel over and over. His language is (deliberately) flat, and his imagery repetitive – abandoned swimming pools; empty wastes of sand; rusting launch platforms. But there’s something admirable about his singlemindedness; something important.
For my money, John Gray has the most concise “take”:http://www.newstatesman.co.uk/199905100041.htm on why Ballard’s important (indeed, I think that this short review-article is likely the best thing that Gray has ever written). Gray’s essay highlights the main theme of Ballard’s work – “life as it is lived when the fictions that sustain society have broken down.” If the Revolution was immanent in every moment for Walter Benjamin, the Catastrophe is immanent in every moment for Ballard. Polite society is always wobbling on the verge of savagery. Gray also mentions how funny Ballard is – something that a lot of people miss (his humour, like Beckett’s is black and so understated as to be very nearly obscured in the shadows).
Two of Ballard’s recent novels are of particular interest to social scientists. If I ever teach my dream course on muddy thinking in social science, _Cocaine Nights_ will be the first required reading in the section on social capital. It presents in satiric form the disturbing thesis that the vibrant civic activism prized by Putnam, Fukuyama, Etzioni and other neo-communitarians is best produced through systematic clandestine violence. For Ballard, it’s not only impossible to have Salem without the witchburning; it’s the witchburning that brings Salem together as a community. _Super-Cannes_ is of more interest to sociologists, geographers, and urban planners. It’s all about the return of the repressed in a very thinly disguised version of “Sophia-Antipolis”:http://www.sophia-antipolis.net/. The orderly planned community of Super-Cannes doesn’t so much break down into chaos, as it perpetuates it – again, community and violence reproduce each other.
At the end of “Science as a Vocation”:http://www2.pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/DSS/Weber/scivoc.html, Weber famously claims that the age of prophecy, when an inspiration might sweep ‘through the great communities like a firebrand’ is over; we live in an age of disenchantment. Ballard’s work is a direct riposte to Weber; it claims that the New Millennium is most likely to have its start amidst the bored and deracinated upper middle classes and suburbanites, the willing victims of Weber’s ‘rationalization.’ A rough beast is slouching towards Shepperton to be born …
Why is it, that when I see a “headline”:http://www.nytimes.com/cnet/CNET_2100-1016_3-5072973.html like “Study: Windows Cheaper than Linux,” I can expect with near 100% certainty to see the words “Microsoft commissioned” in the text of the article?
Sad news, if not unexpected; “Warren Zevon”:http://www.ew.com/ew/report/0,6115,483368~7~0~iconoclasticrockerwarrenzevon,00.html has just died. A few months ago, Michael Swanwick wrote this “short short story”:http://www.michaelswanwick.com/fiction/zevon.html which is, I think, about as good a pre-emptive obituary as Zevon could have asked for.
Update – incorrect link fixed thanks to Patrick Nielsen Hayden, who himself “records Zevon’s passing”:http://nielsenhayden.com/electrolite/archives/003482.html#003482.
The “Washington Post”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34457-2003Sep6.html reports today that
bq. The occupation of Iraq — once the home of the caliph, or universal leader, of Muslims — is a galvanizing symbol for radical Islamic groups. On Internet sites and in mosques across the Islamic world, thousands of potential fighters are hearing — and heeding — calls to go to Iraq to fight the infidel, according to European and Arab intelligence sources who have tracked some of the movements of the recruits.
Dunno how true this is – “Juan Cole”:http://www.juancole.com/2003_09_01_juancole_archive.html#106291558081416707 thinks that the Post is exaggerating wildly – but it got me to thinking about how the “flypaper” theory beloved of “Glenn Reynolds”:http://www.instapundit.com/archives/010343.php and his crowd is based on a fundamental error of logic. If you look at it closely, it distinctly resembles a fundamental mistake that economists call the “lump of labour fallacy”:http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/samlson.htm.
Much bad economic punditry starts from the premise that there’s a ‘lump of labour’ – a fixed amount of work to be done in the economy. On this argument, if you want to reduce unemployment, you can do it by lowering people’s working hours, so that work is ‘freed up’ to be shared with the unemployed. Of course, this argument doesn’t hold water – the demand for labour isn’t a fixed constant in real economies. Instead, it varies, depending on a host of other factors (which themselves are likely to be affected, perhaps in perverse ways, by any ham-handed efforts to ‘share the jobs around’).
Similarly, the ‘flypaper’ theory implicitly assumes that there’s a fixed amount of al Qaeda terrorism sloshing around in the international system, so that it’s a good^1^ idea to divert it from the US to Iraq – more terrorists attacking troops in Iraq would mean less terrorists attacking the homeland. But there isn’t a fixed amount – instead, US actions in Iraq are almost certain to affect the ‘supply’ of al Qaeda terrorists. Indeed, the WP article suggests that the US occupation is leading to a substantial increase in the willingness of potential fighters to take up arms, so that the invasion isn’t just drawing existing al Qaeda combatants to Iraq; it’s creating new recruits.
The jury is still out on whether the Post is right or not on the facts – but it’s demonstrably true that the actions of the US (in invading Iraq, in how it behaves within Iraq) are going to affect terrorism on the supply-side. Pro-war types can still try to make the case that the US invasion is going to decrease terrorism in the long run (they have their work cut out for them), but ‘lump of terrorism’ theories like the flypaper argument are bogus, and should be treated with the ridicule that they deserve.
^1^ Of course, ‘Good’ here means ‘good for Americans,’ not ‘good for Iraqis.’
“Teresa Nielsen Hayden”:http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/003424.html#003424 posts on a story that I’ve been interested in the last few days; how some conservative Alabama Christians have come out in favor of higher, less regressive taxes in the state. This may be a flash in the pan; for one thing it’s unlikely that these Christians are going to be successful in persuading Alabama’s public to sign on to tax reform. But it’s potentially important nonetheless. Grover Norquist and his ilk have been uncannily successful in boiling down a rich and complex tradition of thought into a single, sloganistic programme of all tax-cuts, all of the time. It’s nice to see some principled conservatives reacting against this.
The “TAP article”:http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2003/08/wilkinson-f-08-28.html that Teresa cites to sees these Christians as reminiscent of Dorothy Day; I think that may be going a step too far. These people aren’t interested in substantial redistribution of wealth so much as in ensuring that the poor have the basic minimum of opportunities which will allow them to look after themselves; decent education, access to justice, perhaps some form of public health care. Still, a “superior moral justification for selfishness”:http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3335 it ain’t. I wish them luck.