John Holbo

A few days ago Matthew Yglesias linked despairingly to a Caitlin Flanagan Atlantic book review/long article on ‘blowjob nation’ (and he wasn’t despairing because it was paywalled). Now I see (via Maud) it is available free online at Powell’s books. It seems to need a comment box; now it has one.

I myself will not comment, except to note that – in a sign of the times – TLS the Times just started a bunch of blogs. Just bought itself a typepad account, apparently. And – another sign of the times, perhaps – this venerable literary organ has allowed one of its tv critics (assigned to the Big Brother beat) to employ this image of herself (semi-worksafe). Like Flanagan, she appears to be named Caitlin. And that’s all I have to say.

Someone is sure to say that this will lead to this. I mean: this thing has been tried in Rome before. Oh never mind, I already missed it by six months. Man, it’s like there aren’t any bad arguments about this left to make.

Amazon just slapped a 35% off sticker on Battlestar Galactica, season 1. That means I finally get to learn what the fuss is about. Right after Belle and I finish Lost, season 1 (also 35% off.) Strictly to boost my Amazon associates revenue, let me note a whole bunch of DVD’s marked down 50%: Anime series and Anime feature films. Was Steamboy as bad as they said? Does anyone know anything about this intriguing little fella? You can get quite a bit of Disney Pixar stuff. Plus other stray goodness: Close Encounters plus 2001: A Space Odyssey together for less than $20. But if you’re like me, it’s good TV you crave …

Lots of folks have declared this the Age of HBO, admitted to watching Lost on the train (their eyes were watching pod.) Beauty is all well and good, but after my crassly commercial lede, let’s talk economics. Jim Henley has a post about an article about a BSG-inspired BitTorrent ad epiphany. The proposal: producers could embed a tiny ad where the broadcaster’s station ID usually squats, then let the stuff run free.

Seems relevant to Henry’s bleg for P2P-is-bad stuff; except it’s yet another P2P-is-good piece. Henley’s post didn’t garner so many comments, but I’m genuinely curious what people think. It sounds like a pretty good rebuttal to the ‘yes it works for music, but couldn’t it kill TV and film?’ One possible objection is that "the simple fact that people do not expect to pay for television programs" is not so simple. (See first paragraph.) Does anyone know how significant the revenue from DVD sales is for TV series? (If you check out DVD bestsellers, it seems about half are for TV.) Maybe BitTorrent giveaways would kill that.

Anyway, please feel free to enrich me by buying TV through the above links.

We’re staging a book event at the Valve. The book is Franco Moretti’s Graphs, Maps, Trees, subtitled “abstract models for literary history”. That means: quantitative history, geography and evolutionary theory. It was originally available on the web as articles in the NLR, but no longer. But we’ve got free PDF’s of the chapters temporarily available. At the very least, I think you owe it to yourself to look at the neat graphs plotting the rise of the novel in Britain, Japan, Spain, Italy and Nigeria. (Those would be in “Graphs”.)

A friend just told me a story: he left a post-it in a book, returned it to a university library, was soon summoned into the presence of an enraged librarian, informed that post-it’s destroy books and the one he had returned had been sent to the lab for testing. If deemed contaminated with corrosive post-it glue, he would be charged for replacement.

I am very sorry to hear that post-its in books are like facehuggers on all the minor characters in the Alien films; because I use post-its like mad. I have a copy of Schopenhauer’s World as Will and Representation with post-its on the post-its. (So I guess I should figure out whether post-it glue is bad for post-it paper, if I’m planning on saving those post-its for years.) I always assumed I was being kind to books, not writing on/dogearing the pages. I will change my habits if I must but I’ll miss the useful darlings.

Googling I’m getting some confirmation of the ‘post-its are bad’ thesis. But why haven’t I heard this before? Is everyone else in the know? Did the Volokhs already take sides two days ago and I missed the memo? I often walk around carrying library books that flutter like colorful tropical birds. I never noticed anyone glaring at me.

In other news, have you ever noticed how computer and software and general IT advertising often features a picture of a multiethnic, mixed gender group of co-workers, smiling faces all lit by the light of the monitor of the obviously excellently working computer they are gathered around. When in fact the only time five people are ever staring at the same lit computer screen is when one of them is saying something like ‘really? even the off button doesn’t work?’

No, not another post about how legal scholars are into it. Via Adam Kotsko, I learn that anonymous blogging is a lot less legal than you probably thought.

The fine print of the Waste of The Supreme Court’s Valuable Time Waiting To Happen Act Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act:

“Whoever…utilizes any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet… without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person…who receives the communications…shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.”

Given that for all x, such that x is a political opinion, there exists some y, such that y is a person who will be annoyed by x, hell I’d say it’s no longer legal even for the NY Times to post unsigned editorials on their website. I guess you can invoke some sort of doctrine of double effect here. But you get into a position in which it is legal, say, to intend to damage someone’s political career by criticizing them; but not legal to intend to annoy that person? Am I missing something here?

UPDATE: Comments inform me the Volokhs are already debating this. Sorry to have missed that. (I should read more blogs.) Kerr says it’s just a kerfuffle. Eugene V. says maybe it’s really a problem.

David Moles has found something funny – in an ‘if a lion could speak the language of topology, we would not able to catch him’ vein:

* We place a spherical cage in the desert and enter it. We then perform an inverse operation with respect to the cage. The lion is then inside the cage and we are outside.

* The set theoretic method: We observe that the desert is a separable space. It therefore contains an enumerable dense set of points from which can be extracted a sequence having the lion as the limit. We then approach the lion stealthily along this sequence bearing with us suitable equipment.

* In the usual way construct a curve containing every point in the desert. It has been proven that such a curve can be traversed in arbitrarily short time. Now we traverse the curve, carrying a spear, in a time less than what it takes the lion to move a distance equal to its own length.

* The lion has the homotopy type of a one-dimensional complex and hence he is a K(Pi, 1) space. If Pi is noncommutative then the lion is not a member of the international commutist conspiracy and hence he must be friendly. If Pi is commutative then the lion has the homotopy type of the space of loops on a K(Pi, 2) space. We hire a stunt pilot to loop the loops, thereby hopelessly entangling the lion and rendering him helpless.

Reminds me of an old Steve Martin piece which I find here:

Soup Folding.

First prepare the soup of your choice and pour it into a bowl. Then, take the bowl and quickly turn it upside down on a cookie tray. Lift the bowl ever so gently so that the soup retains the shape of the bowl. Gently is the key word here. Then, with a knife cut the soup down the middle into halves, then quarters, and gently reassemble the soup into a cube. Some of the soup will have run off onto the cookie tray. Lift this soup up by the corners and fold slowly into a cylindrical soup staff. Square off the cube by stuffing the cracks with this cylindrical soup staff. Place the little packet in your purse or inside coat pocket, and pack off to work. When that lunch bell chimes, impress your friends by forming the soup back into a bowl shape, and enjoy! Enjoy it until the day when the lunchpail comes back into vogue and we won’t need soup folding or cornstalks up the leg.

Bob Stein at if:book has a legal/ethical/tactical question about CC and non-commercial use:

there’s a site [but I’m not going to link to the pesky bugger – JH] that reposts every entry on if:book. they do the same for several other sites, presumably as a way to generate traffic to their site and ultimately to gather clicks on their google supplied ads. if:book entries are posted with a creative commons license which allows reuse with proper attribution but forbids commercial use. surferdiary’s use seems to be thoroughly commercial. some of my colleagues think we should go after them as a way of defending the creative commons concept. would love to know what people think?

If you want to view the splog in question, there’s a link in Bob’s post. (Click here for a wikipedia definition of ‘splog’.) It seems clear splog use cannot possibly be non-commercial. As to whether the if:book folks should care, one commenter writes: “Whether you want to go after this splogger is your choice, but in general I think bloggers should welcome addition exposure and treat it like an advertising opportunity. I don’t think splogs are a good thing, but RSS makes all kinds of syndication possible – legitimate or otherwise…”

I’m curious about a different question: how exactly does this CC license define the ‘commercial purposes’ bit of ‘you may not use this work for commercial purposes’? For example, good old J&B Have A Blog has a sidebar of Amazon links; I do the Amazon associates thing. I make a couple bucks. What makes our site different than a splog is, among other things, that small sums we earn are definitely not the point. But I’m not sure how that could be legally codified. ‘Non-commercial’ doesn’t seem the best way to capture ‘incidentally commercial’, or ‘not PURELY commerical’. No doubt the wise prof. Lessig has considered this, but I don’t know what the answer is. Do you?

In case it isn’t clear what I am asking, I think it’s this: the point of a CC license is to allow people to republish content with certainty that they are legally permitted to do so. What allows a blogger or web-publisher with incidental advertising to KNOW that they are a non-commercial user?

UPDATE: I actually have popped the hood on the license and looked inside. But I’m not sure I understand what the legal thing that ‘not for commercial purposes’ means really MEANS, in practical terms:

You may not exercise any of the rights granted to You in Section 3 above in any manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation. The exchange of the Work for other copyrighted works by means of digital file-sharing or otherwise shall not be considered to be intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation, provided there is no payment of any monetary compensation in connection with the exchange of copyrighted works.

Amazon associates and googleads provide monetary compensation. On the other hand, there is that ‘primarily intended’ clause. But that’s vague. The point of a license is to give users confidence they are in the clear. Perhaps there need to be test cases, and just haven’t been any yet?

Actually, the problem may be ambiguity: ‘…in any manner that is primarily intended.’ Does that mean the manner in which I make my blog as a whole? Or the manner in which I make an individual link with an embedded Amazon associates ID? Makes a bit of a difference.

Some time ago Tim Burke posted, requesting help expanding a ‘trope’ list for an ‘Images of Africa’ course. Here’s a sample, which gives you an idea what he’s looking for:

1) Hidden city/lost civilization deep in the jungle. Often civilization of whites or non-Africans.

2) Missionary/explorer in a cannibal cooking pot; general tropes of cannibalism.

3)  Mysterious ritual that turns out to have been marriage to chief’s daughter

4)  Superstitious bearer/guide

5)  Evil witchdoctor

6)  White man “gone native”/Tarzan figure

7)  Kurtz-style descent into madness …

And so on. I couldn’t think of anything to add at the time, now I’ve got one. [click to continue…]

Bill Kristol and Gary Schmitt in the WaPo:

   … That is why the president uniquely swears an oath – prescribed in the Constitution – to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. Implicit in that oath is the Founders’ recognition that, no matter how much we might wish it to be case, Congress cannot legislate for every contingency, and judges cannot supervise many national security decisions. This will be especially true in times of war.

Josh Marshall has thoughts on possible difficulties with this notion that ‘the power to set aside laws is "inherent in the president."’

But without waiting for the dust to settle we’ll just step back and declare: so it’s settled, Carl Schmitt’s Political Theology is the late-breaking, runaway dark-horse winner stocking-stuffer political book of the season. And we hereby open a new front in the war on Christmas, as it is clear the President, like Santa, doesn’t have the time to go to to some damn judge every time he needs to know whether someone is naughty or nice.

[click to continue…]

WaPo:

President Bush said yesterday he is confident that former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) is innocent of money-laundering charges, as he offered strong support for several top Republicans who have been battered by investigations or by rumors of fading clout inside the White House.

Now help me finish this thought by providing links to ALL those occasions when the President has not been so forthcoming. Mr. Google gives pretty good hits in response to “Bush won’t comment on ongoing investigations”.

Bush on the war: “Whether or not it needed to happen, I’m still convinced it needed to happen.”

Maureen Dowd, on this bit from the interview [sorry, NY Times select]: “The Bubble Boy can even contradict himself and not notice.” It does seem like a deeply irrational thing to say, yet it clearly is not a contradiction, per se. In fact it seems like a disjunctive variation on Moore’s paradox. Bush’s version (inadversion, rather) is perhaps rather interesting. “Whether or not P, I believe P” has the same truth-conditions as “I believe P”. So one can turn any of one’s own belief statements into a Bushian bit of madness without impairing its truth. (Just try it at home.)

Discuss.

Bonus points for working in the following lines from the interview:

Bush: “I’m interested in the news. I’m not all that interested in the opinions.”

Brian Williams: “So what is truth, Mr. President?”

Getting back to the paradox, I think the proper diagnosis of the peculiarity of Bush’s statement must run as follows. For Gricean reasons, you wouldn’t preface a belief statement with a tautology, in this way, unless you meant to conversationally implicate the irrelevance of one question to another. (That’s not adequate, and there’s got to be a better way to say it.) Example: ‘whether Bush sincerely believes the war was a good idea or not, I believe the the war was a bad idea.’ That’s completely coherent. (It also highlights the inadequacy of my brief gloss: obviously I don’t think Bush’s mental state is totally irrelevant to an assessment of the wisdom of the war plans. But I think the question about the war plans can be answered without settling that other thing.) Anyhoo, to complete the thought: what is odd about Bush’s statement is that he is conversationally implicating that facts about P are irrelevant to/do not determine his beliefs about P. An epistemic bubble, yes, but not a logical contradiction.

Ray Davis has made available a pair of essays by H. Chandler Davis, mathematician, SF author, resident of Canada, and no relation of Ray’s (so far as I know):

… From an exile (1960)

My apprenticeship was honorable, as a teaching fellow at Harvard, where I got my Ph.D. in mathematics, and as an instructor at the University of Michigan. I loved the university life. Not that it occurred to me at the time to compare it to any other; I had never seriously considered leaving it.

However, it happened that one summer ten distinguished members of my faculty convened (five at a time) and unanimously declared me guilty of “deviousness, artfulness, and indirection hardly to be expected of a University colleague.” I had refused, first before the House Committee on Un-American Activities and then before these juries of professors, to answer yes or no to the question, was I a Communist. The juries could assume (with that background and in the year 1954) that their recommendation that I be fired would mean my complete expulsion from the profession.

And:

“Shooting rats in a barrel”: Did the red hunt win? (1995)

“You want the short answer?” my late friend Chaim used to say, and if the student said, “Yes,” Chaim said, “I don’t know.” Today’s question may not even have any short yes-or-no answer. Let’s work toward an answer; there will be surprises on the way.

You can read a fine Davis story, “It walked in beauty”, at the (sadly soon to be discontinued) SCIfiction site. (Critical tributes to the site are being collected here.) You really should read the story. Written in the 50’s. Sort of a Woman in the Gray Flannel Suit fable.

Here are, more or less, two thoughts on Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.

§1 The Magic Christians
The setting is England at the turn of the 19th Century. Once upon a time, there was real magic – no more. Hence such comedy as the York Society Of Magicians:

They were gentleman-magicians, which is to say they had never harmed any one by magic – nor ever done any one the slightest good. In fact, to own the truth, not one of these magicians had ever cast the smallest spell, nor by magic caused one leaf to tremble on a tree, made one mote of dust to alter its course or changed a single hair upon any one’s head. But, with this one minor reservation, they enjoyed a reputation as some of the wisest and most magical gentlemen in Yorkshire.

John Segundus appears, who "wished to know, he said, why modern magicians were unable to work the magic they wrote about. In short, he wished to know why there was no more magic done in England." The society is discomfited.

The President of the York society (whose name was Dr. Foxcastle) turned to John Segundus and explained that the question was a wrong one. "It presupposes that magicians have some sort of duty to do magic – which is clearly nonsense. You would not, I imagine, suggest that it is the task of botanists to devise more flowers? Or that astronomers should labour to rearrange the stars? Magicians, Mr. Segundus, study magic which was done long ago. Why should anyone expect more?"

Magic is socially disagreeable, "the bosom companion of unshaven faces, gypsies, house-breakers ; the frequenter of dingy rooms with dirty yellow curtains. A gentleman might study the history of magic (nothing could be nobler) but he could not do any." A debate breaks out. A few members are roused from historicist slumbers to Secundus’ defense. One such – Honeyfoot – soons explains to Segundus about the Learned Society of Magicians of Manchester, a failed clutch of magical positivist hedge wizards.

It was a society of quite recent foundation … and its members were clergymen of the poorer sort, respectable ex-tradesmen, apothecaries, lawyers, retired mill owners who had got up a little Latin and so forth, such people as might be termed half-gentlemen. I believe Dr. Foxcastle was glad when they disbanded – he does not think that people of that sort have any business becoming magicians. And yet, you know, there were several clever men among them. They began, as you did, with the aim of bringing back practical magic to the world. They were practical men and wished to aply the principles of reason and science to magic as they had done to the manufacturing arts. They called it ‘Rational Thaumaturgy’. when it did not work they became discouraged. Well, they cannot be blamed for that. But they let their disillusionment lead them into all sorts of difficulties. They began to think that there was not now nor ever had been magic in the world. They said that the Aureate magicians were all deceivers or were themselves deceived. And that the Raven King was an invention of the northern English to keep themselves from the tyranny of the South (being north-country men themselves they had some sympathy with that.) Oh, their arguments were very ingenious – I forget how they explained fairies.

If only Max Weber had written "Magic as Vocation" [Zauber als Beruf], on the process through which the activity of enchantment has gradually become disenchanted. [click to continue…]