Henry

Clive Crook tells us that Americans are ever so much more polite than Brits, and then goes on to complain about blogs.

Jarringly different standards apply in politics, and especially in the political blogosphere. There, “coarsening” is too mild a word. All that swaggering, sneering incivility: maybe I find it disgusting because it’s so unAmerican.

Fair enough if you don’t like it, but I am still at a loss to understand the difference between all this twuly vewy howwid incivility and suggestions that civil liberties types would be perfectly fine with the deaths of millions of their fellow citizens if only they could get their way. Perhaps it isn’t incivil by definition when it’s an FT pundit doing it rather than a nasty little leftist blogger? Or perhaps Crook believes that he’s just telling it like it is? (the rather obvious rejoinder being, however, that the bloggers he detests so much fancy that the same thing is true of them). I’ve previously invited Mr. Crook to explain the difference between the kinds of things that he says about lefty civil liberties types and the forms of debasing discourse that he so deplores; so far, he has unaccountably failed to do so. In the absence of such a clarification, I can only presume that his distinction rests on the Yes Minister theory of irregular verbs – I engage in vigorous yet fair truthtelling, you perhaps say things a little too stridently for your own good, he is a disgusting, swaggering and incivil boor.

The Financial Times

Among the wave of reality board games to have hit the Argentine market in recent years, Eternal Debt has remained a niche favourite among those who still blame the IMF for leading the country into a nearly $100bn default eight years ago. The game, by local manufacturer Ruibal, involves taking Latin American raw materials, turning them into industrial products and selling the finished goods in world markets, using IMF capital.

Also available is Bureaucracy, which exploits locals’ disenchantment with the country’s notoriously cumbersome civil service. … The game is designed to elicit groans of recognition to anyone who has ever spent hours grappling with regulatory issues in public offices in Argentina. The game, made by toymaker Habano, cheerfully invites players “to waste time and lose their patience” as they move across the board with a lengthening list of documents to procure and departments to visit in their quest to complete a simple piece of paperwork. It is a game “where everyone loses”, crows the box.

Other suggestions for topical boardgames, in Argentina, the US or elsewhere, welcome in comments.

Perhaps the recent terrorist outrage in the skies will bring the delusional opponents of group profiling to their senses. But I fear not. It should be a cut and dried case. A member of a group that is notoriously associated with terrorist violence and fundamentalist political beliefs tries to set off a bomb in a plane and only fails because of sheer luck. The nabobs of political correctness will try to convince us yet again that there are many strains of thought among these people, that most of them are non-violent, that compulsory cavity searches will alienate them and so on, and on, and on. But the PC mafia will be ignoring these people’s plans to build temples that dominate our major cities, and actions taken deliberately to flout our common norms. A strong country has a strong culture that it is willing to defend against the enemy – and a willingness to ignore the natterers of multiculturalism when its citizens’ lives are in danger. We were lucky this time. We may not be so lucky the next.

For those who are (a) not suffering from holiday hangovers, and (b) do not have something better to do tomorrow morning, I’ll be on C-Span from 9am to 9.30am discussing the differences between liberalism, socialism, fascism. I’m anticipating some lively callers to the show …

Or at least, MLA takeover by a CT blogger. Congratulations, Michael!

From the blog of the International Culture and Cognition Institute.

Yet more or less impersonal discussions did exist before the creation of Usenet (1979) – in newspapers or gazettes, in the public places of big cities, etc. We should find Trolls there too. Indeed, we can find them in some of the first public places where free conversation between strangers was allowed, on a variety of topics : the antique Forum, grandfather of the virtual forums of today, womb of all Trolls. There you may find the antique equivalent of Trolls : what people at the time called ‘sophists’ or ‘philosophers’ – two words that were used interchangeably by the man on the Forum. Many Sophists did not want to endorse the label – sophistry was frowned upon or downright illegal in many places – and insisted on being called Philosophers. But the average citizen did not distinguish much between all these varieties of arguers. It is clear from most outsiders’ accounts that sophists/philosophers were perceived as disrupting the usual rules of conversation in a noxious way.

Two important men are having a careful conversation on military training. What do you call the guy who, having no particular competence or interest in the matter at hand, jumps in the conversation, systematically contradicts everyone with contrived arguments, ridicules the two competent discussants, orients the conversation on a completely different topic, then leaves the audience baffled and walks away, laughing? That Troll is Socrates in Plato’s Laches.

One man’s muops being another man’s bridge-dweller. I hope John Emerson is happy …

Charles Rowley laments the cowardice of his erstwhile band of brothers. In verse, no less (or, if you insist, ‘verse’).

Where are all the real business cycle theorists who once argued that business cycles reflect Pareto-optimality? Where are all the monetarists who used to worry about the inflationary implications of massive increases in the money supply? Where are all the financial economists who used to thrust the efficient capital market hypothesis down the throats of Wall Street brokers? Where are all the law-and-economics scholars who used to boast of the efficiency of the common law? Where are all the New Classical rational expectations scholars who used to explain why systematic fiscal and monetary policies cannot influence macroeconomic activity? Where are all those Friedmanians who used to argue so effectively in support of capitalism and freedom?

Where? Where indeed?

Where have all the free market soldiers gone?
Why, they have run for cover, almost every one!
Their models have failed, their math is undone.
They need new statistics and that is no fun.
They dig into trenches to evade the socialist gun.
Their escape routes are cut off, nowhere else to run.
They hide in the darkness and avoid the free market sun.
Come out, come out, counter-attack and be done!

I’m reading Fearghal McGarry’s forthcoming book on the Easter Rising at the moment, and was reminded of an interesting bit of history – the British Conservative party’s advocacy of armed rebellion against the government in 1912 over the prospect of Home Rule for Ireland.

The Tory leader, Andrew Bonar Law – speaking at Blenheim Palace in July 1912 – openly alluded to the threat of civil war, describing the [British] government ‘as a revolutionary government which has seized by fraud upon despotic power’, and declaring his intention to support Ulster’s unionists in using ‘all means in their power, including force’ to prevent Home Rule. Nor was this mere posturing: leading Tories, including Walter Long and possibly even Bonar Law – were closely involved with the financing and running of guns into Ulster for use against their own government. Whether Bonar Law’s militancy was motivated by a desire to consolidate his own leadership and undermine the Liberal government rather than fervent loyalism remains a matter of debate …

It seems to me that this episode – in which Conservatives, who usually conceive of themselves as the law and order party, actively advocated rebellion against their own government and helped smuggle guns – has fallen out of historical memory in the UK. Perhaps I’m wrong, or just not included in the right discussions, but my strong impression is that the British record in Ireland’s War of Independence (the Black and Tans and so on) is reasonably well known, and still sometimes discussed. The run-up to it – and the direct advocacy of armed resistance by one of Britain’s major parties – not so much.

Brian Lenihan (Ireland’s finance minister) puts the best face he can on the external limits constraining Ireland’s economic decision making in his budget speech today:

In the recent Lisbon referendum the Irish people reaffirmed our place at the heart of Europe. This was the right decision for our economy, for our future and for our children. The single currency has provided huge protection and support to Ireland in the current crisis. It has prevented speculative attacks on our currency and provided funding to the banking system. But, membership of monetary union also means devaluation is not an option. Therefore the adjustment process must be made by way of reductions in wages, prices, profits and rents.

As a small open economy, Ireland would probably have devalued to help cushion the shock, if it had not been an EMU member with no effective control over its currency. Given EMU membership, devaluation (and exit from the system) would probably have been a very bad idea. Ireland is hoping to make the best of a bad job, adding levies, increasing taxes and making swingeing cuts to public sector pay so as to shore up its fiscal position.

The problem is that all the fiscal rectitude in the world cannot protect you from contagious crises of confidence.

One of the “signals” that could instigate a sudden stop in Ireland is a sudden stop somewhere else, particularly somewhere with regional or trade connections. This is why bad news for Greece is bad news for Ireland. If Greece hits a sudden stop, Ireland will wobble, and will be the next in line for a sudden stop in Europe. There is another simultaneous game being played: the ECB and its bailout policies playing a reputation game against member sovereign governments and their fiscal discipline. Again, the Greek situation is bad for Ireland. … Ireland has done everything (so far) that the ECB could reasonably ask of her to impose fiscal discipline and restore competitiveness. If it were only Ireland at risk of a sudden stop, the ECB could be very accommodating about bailout assistance. The ECB would not let a well-behaved minnow like Ireland cause market turmoil. If a sudden stop was brewing and Irish bond yields rocketed up, the ECB could easily mop up any excess of Irish sovereign bonds, killing the run, and later tell some convenient story about why this did not violate EMU no-bailout guidelines. On the other hand, we now know that the Greek government has deliberately and substantially falsified its national accounts over recent years. … no political will to impose any meaningful discipline on tax and spending … adherence to the Growth and Stability Pact is a charade. If the ECB bails out Greece, all semblance of future fiscal discipline throughout the Euro zone is lost. … How can the ECB bail out Ireland if it refuses to bail out Greece?

Greek government bonds tumbled today. It may very possibly be that Ireland is in the worst of both worlds – suffering the unmitigated agonies of fiscal rectitude imposed by the EMU’s straitjacket, but with at best highly uncertain prospects of support in the event of a new crisis of confidence. Brian Lenihan won’t be sleeping well the next couple of weeks.

Michael Zimmer

Recently, a student in one of my classes gave a presentation on Google, and proceeded to explain how Google ranks search results using an algorithm called…..PigeonRank: ….

PigeonRank’s success relies primarily on the superior trainability of the domestic pigeon (Columba livia) and its unique capacity to recognize objects regardless of spatial orientation. The common gray pigeon can easily distinguish among items displaying only the minutest differences, an ability that enables it to select relevant web sites from among thousands of similar pages.

By collecting flocks of pigeons in dense clusters, Google is able to process search queries at speeds superior to traditional search engines, which typically rely on birds of prey, brooding hens or slow-moving waterfowl to do their relevance rankings.

When a search query is submitted to Google, it is routed to a data coop where monitors flash result pages at blazing speeds. [HF – Didn’t Greg Bear write a novel about this once? ] When a relevant result is observed by one of the pigeons in the cluster, it strikes a rubber-coated steel bar with its beak, which assigns the page a PigeonRank value of one. For each peck, the PigeonRank increases. Those pages receiving the most pecks, are returned at the top of the user’s results page with the other results displayed in pecking order.

PigeonRank, of course, is a hoax, part of Google’s 2002 April Fool’s Day joke. But how did my student fall for it in 2009? Simple. He trusted Google. The first result when you search Google for “How does Google work?” is a link and a blurb purported to describe precisely that:

I’m a bit hesitant to link to this (as I’m not an elderly right wing economist, I’m worried I might be accused of “belittling the other”), but it’s super-duper awesome! Charles Rowley, familiar to long time CT readers for his ruminations on the corruption of the profession of political science (we’re all in hock to the federal government) and his bizarre attack on Avner Greif (see here for Greif’s reply), now has his own blog. It’s everything that one might possibly hope for. My favorite so far is the bit telling us that:

bq. the massive fist of free market ideas once again will smash through the false consciousness of Keynesian dreams, and voters will rush to elect leaders such as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan

‘cos it’s a level of rhetorical styling that I haven’t seen since I used to pick up the newsletter of the Maoist International Movement (the title is a bit of a misnomer; the cadres all seem to hang out in Ann Arbor, Michigan) when I was a graduate student in statistics boot camp. But the Obama=Sykes, Larry Summers=Fagin post runs a very close second:

bq. The question that remains to be answered is whether the futures of Larry and Barack will mirror those of Fagin and Sykes. Will some fortuitous Oliver chance across the paths of these shady characters before they can fulfill their dreams while destroying the market system that created the wealth that they covet? Will both meet the dreaded drop in 2012, if not before? Or will pocket-picking accelerate to the point at which Atlas Shrugs and the wealth-creators remove themselves from the economy, leaving those who cannot create wealth to share in the economic collapse of a negative-sum game as the United States begins a long decline into economic mediocrity?

This is a man who was surely born to blog. Update your bookmarks.

Update: The Fun Continues

bq. As private investment is increasingly crowded out by government expenditures, and as entrepreneurship is dashed by national socialist policies – as indeed was the case in the US throughout the the first two administrations of FDR – the once-powerful engine of the US economy will sputter and then die. Unlike in 1945, in 2019 the United States will not bestride a shattered world economy like some hegemonic Colossus. Rather its _state capitalist,_ [HF: emphasis in original] social market economy will struggle just to maintain existing living standards, while newly-emergent, vibrant market economies demonstrate to a former master the awesome power of laissez-faire capitalism.

If Tyler Cowen hadn’t confirmed that this blog was the genuine article, I’d suspect it of being a clever fraud perpetrated by an old-school lefty – the ‘Staatsmonopolistischer Kapitalismus=Nationalsozialismus’ identity has fallen out of fashion since the collapse of the GDR, and it is rather odd to see it being revived as a defense of free markets.

bq. If sketchy in other regards, _Brother West_ is never anything but expansive on how Cornel West feels about Cornel West. He is deeply committed to his committed-ness, and passionately passionate about being full of passion. Various works of art, literature, music, and philosophy remind West of himself. He finds Augustinian humility to be deeply meaningful. This is mentioned in one sentence. His taste for three-piece suits is full of subtle implications that require a couple of substantial paragraphs to elucidate.

From Scott's _IHE_ evisceration of Cornel West’s latest effusion. Recommended.

Update: I want to be finished with this, but probably should respond to Edward Champion's pissy little attack on Scott, since I helped launch this snowball down the hill in the first place. The bit about Scott not having published a book is fair enough, as far as it goes (which isn’t very far). But the bit about how Scott is “a man who doesn’t even possess a bachelor’s degree” is not. Academic credentialism is a pretty shitty substitute for argument – and if Champion disagrees and really wants to play that game, he should perhaps cough up a bit more about his own academic accolades and accomplishments for those (like himself) who care about these things. The crack about how:

his crude and lifeless essays have proven so soporific that, in 2004, the National Book Critics Circle awarded him the dubious Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing for his unadventurous pursuits. It was a questionable distinction, enervated by the fact that only a handful of out-of-touch elitists actually care about this dubious accolade

acquires a somewhat different resonance if one knows that Champion ran against Scott to be elected to the board of aforesaid organization – and lost. One can only presume that their failure to elect him by acclaim is Complete and Sufficient Evidence of their out-of-touch-eliteyness.

Champion is a bit of a sad sack – a gnawer-over of scraps of literary carrion disdained by larger predators and snarler at those whom he fears might take them away from him. And furthermore a writer possessed of a wavering and uncertain grasp of the English language (viz. the rummy use of ‘enervated’ in the passage above) and perpetrator of such metaphors as “a superficial conclusion distressingly reminiscent of a teabagger’s uninformed protest.”

Update 2: Scott responds to the fried chicken nonsense in his new _IHE_ column.

I know that there is some competition, but David Kopel’s explanation of the minaret vote as perhaps the only plausible response that solid Swiss burghers could make to secret conspiracies and sweetheart deals between their government and the “Islamonazis of Tehran” surely ranks as the most flat-out insane Volokh Conspiracy post ever. If I were one of the saner Volokh conspiracy contributors (there are several), I would be considering as rapid and public an exit as possible to avoid reputational contamination.

Via Tyler Cowen, Lev Grossman of _Time_ and _The Magicians_ (which I liked quite a bit, up to the end, but didn’t love) provides his personal list of the six best fantasy novels of all time. I’ll observe that any list of ‘best novels’ which includes one series consisting of short stories plus one to three novels, depending on how strictly you define the term (Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and Gray Mouser series) and one short story collection (Kelly Link’s _Magic for Beginners_ ) has some oddities – but since I like both of these series a lot, I shan’t raise a fuss. A thread on best fantasy novels seems like a good Thanksgiving occupation for those so inclined, so here are my 6, in no particular order.

(1) John Crowley, _Little, Big_
(2) Gene Wolfe’s _Book of the New Sun_ (critics may cavil that it is in fact Dying Earth SF, but under Michael Swanwick’s argument that fantasy, unlike science fiction, has mystery at the heart of its universe, I contend that they are wrong).
(3) Paul Park’s Romania quartet.
(4) M. John Harrison, _The Course of the Heart._
(5) China Mieville, the Bas-Lag books.
(6) Michael Swanwick, _The Iron Dragon’s Daughter_

I’ll note that this list is in many ways dull and predictable – none of these choices are likely to surprise anyone tolerably well read in the genre. But canons can have useful social purposes – they point towards books that are central to the conversation the genre is having with itself. Others should feel free to be more adventurous.