Thanks very much to Nick S for this news – Diageo plc is going to be dealing with its pension fund deficit by making a contribution of up to 2.5m barrels of whisky. Back in the dawn of CT[1], we addressed some of the financial aspects of this sort of thing …
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I’m sure I first heard Joan Rivers the same way I did Bob Newhart and Woody Allen, on Frank Muir Goes Into… but she never entered my consciousness really till I moved to LA in the mid-80s and started seeing her on daytime TV. I found her captivating — the only thing on TV worth watching a lot of the time. Rude, self-deprecating, very funny, and very clever. So when Swift and I wandered past a theater showing her new movie last night we decided, whimsically, to go in after dinner.

I’d recommend it to just about anybody over 21. It certainly deserves to be seen by a wider audience than the scattering of old Jewish women and two middle-aged Englishmen who saw it in our theater. At first, Rivers simply appears to be a grotesque — right from the opening shot, through the introduction to her diminished life, whining about her lack of success and how it sucks being old. But slowly, gradually, the film humanizes her, never refraining from showing the warts. It is also very funny (not least because she is very funny).

Googling her afterwards I found this delightful profile from which comes this plausible, but odd, story:

As we wait for it to start, she tells me a story about Prince Charles, with whom she has been friends for several years. (“Not inner circle,” she says. “Outer-inner circle.”) HRH sends her a Christmas gift every year, which, more than once, has been two very fancy teacups. “One year,” she says, “I took a picture under my Christmas tree with the teacups and wrote, ‘How could you send me two teacups when I’m alone?’ Another time I wrote, ‘I’m enjoying tea with my best friend!’ and I sent a picture of me in a cemetery. And he never acknowledges it! He never says to me when I see him”—doing his accent perfectly—“ ‘Ohhhh, funny funny funny!’ So this year I thought, I’m just going to write him a nice thank-you note. And the other day our mutual friend calls and says, ‘Just spoke to Charles! He said, “I can’t wait to see Joan’s note this year!” ’ ”

Maybe I should have a lie down.

When Alan Sillitoe died I experienced a moment of sadness that evaporated when I realized that it was, indeed, Sillitoe, and not Plater, who was gone. But now it is, indeed, Plater. Guardian obit here. A gorgeous appreciation by Tom Courtenay here. Z Cars, Softly Softly, Selwyn Froggitt, Fortunes of War, A Very British Coup (enormously superior to the book), Close the Coalhouse Door, it seems that for decades he was everywhere, words just spilling out. And all those radio plays, including the brilliant Roll Jordan Roll saga — many being replayed over and again on Radio 7. But above even the radio plays there is what for me was his masterpiece — the Beiderbecke Trilogy — a long, long, mood piece with lots of talk in which, by the end of each part, you realize belatedly that nothing has really happened. Brilliant.

Ken Coates, a very significant figure in the history of the British left, has died. The Guardian has an obituary.

Congrats to Dave Weigel on his new gig. You might want to read his mea culpa piece that just went up at (of all places!) Big Journalism. Comments are a hoot. [UPDATE: I see Breitbart is now offering a $100,000 reward for the complete JournoList archives. Sigh.]

The mea culpa makes the point that it’s risky, trying to make too many different groups like you, by talking down the other groups – whom you also want to like you. Age of Facebook and all. Not the sort of thing you should have to lose your job over, but embarrassing.

A point about the original leaked emails/postings. Weigel’s critics didn’t take kindly to severe snark about Drudge and Newt and Rand Paul; but what was presented as truly damning evidence that Weigel wasn’t willing and able to play his role as journalistic ‘bystander’ were the bits where he seemed to be 1) saying some prominent conservative thinkers/ideas aren’t worth taking seriously; 2) criticizing framing/spin efforts by conservatives and conservative media, and maybe hinting at ways that journalists should try, collectively, to counter such efforts. It’s easy to see why conservatives would be put off by the tone of Weigel’s comments, but it was apparently the fact that Weigel expressed ideas whose content fit categories 1) and 2) that got him fired. Let me try to say why this is nuts in a slightly different way than other people have been, rightly, saying this is nuts. And let me roll up 1) in 2), because 1) is just a special case of 2): crazy people are just spin doctors who have gone native, as it were. [click to continue…]

trying to get a policy piece on the Europe mess finished, but if I was blogging, I’d be blogging on the following:

(1) Eric Rauchway’s ‘Tom Buchanan’s Schooldays’ follow-up, _Banana Republican_ is out ( “Amazon”:http://www.amazon.com/Banana-Republican-Buchanan-Eric-Rauchway/dp/0374298947/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1277221259&sr=8-4, Powells). The publisher asked me to blurb it, but then never used the blurb (on account of I’s not famous, I suspect) – what I said was:

Harry Flashman VC – make room for Tom Buchanan. Eric Rauchway’s anti-hero is more caddish, more craven and more enjoyably despicable than his English predecessor as he swaggers and bluffs his way through the seedier parts of the American Imperium. Enormously entertaining.

(2) “A Fine Theory”:http://afinetheorem.wordpress.com/2010/06/28/economic-theory-in-the-mathematical-mode-g-debreu-1984/ on Debreu and how to think about economic models (via Cosma’s “delicious feed”:http://delicious.com/cshalizi ).

bq. The problem lies at the heart of the difference between social science and mathematics. In an axiomatic mathematical system, the axioms are by assumption true – there is no sense in which an axiom can be false, since it is merely an abstract statement used to derive implications. … Social science is not this way. We know, pace the arguments of Lionel Robbins, that our assumptions are false, though we hope that they are in some sense “good enough” to derive implications … If axioms are only approximate, though, as in the standard Humean problem of induction, we have no way of knowing whether conclusions will also be approximate; there is no “universal continuity”. I think economists would be better served to think of axiomatization as the formalization of analogies. That is, an axiomatic deduction when axioms are imprecise may tell us nothing about the real world, but it tells us as much as a qualitative analogy, and does so in a formal way that deemphasizes the rhetorical ability of the author.

(3) Dan Sperber “pwns”:http://www.cognitionandculture.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=660:oy-vey-have-you-got-the-wrong-vampire-a-reply-to-frans-de-waal&catid=29:dan&Itemid=34 Frans de Waal.

(4) “Teresa Nielsen Hayden”:http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/012461.html on Ireland’s economic problems. “If there’s anything I keep wishing the economic bloggers would explain in terms comprehensible to the general public, it’s that taxes are not the only way that government policies can cost them money. “

No, not that lot, obviously. (I hope Rooney put a downpayment on that caravan.) But even I have started to feel just very slightly bad about the recriminations and self-hatred engulfing English football writers at present. So here, as evidence of the sort of thing England is really quite good at, is The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain.

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“The FT today”:http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/39e9f212-82a1-11df-85ba-00144feabdc0.html (I wonder how long this will stay uncorrected).

Now England, France and the USA have been given their marching orders, perhaps we can get on with enjoying the football. On the first of those, I’d just like to say (i) that of course we need technology to check whether the ball has crossed the line, (ii) that Jamie Carragher would never have been caught out (as Terry and Upson were) for that first German goal and (iii) that the Germans, unlike the English (and the French), grasp that football is _a team game_ – so well done to them. Personally, I’m backing Ghana until they go out (and having warm feelings about Japan too). Realistically though, Argentina.

Even though today is Friday, this post is not ABF — neither arbitrary nor facetious (and certainly not fun).  I suppose it’s my own fault that I have to make this clear at the outset, since I have been known to make up “letters” from imaginary “readers” now and then.  But the following letter is quite real, as is my reply.  The person who wrote to me, earlier this week, suggested that I might post the exchange (so long as I deleted his/her name), in the hope that s/he could get some further advice in comments.  So, dear readers, if you have further advice, offer it in comments!

Dear Dr. Bérubé,

After reading your “Employment of English” at the tail end of my master’s in literature in 2007, I had pretty well sworn off my fanciful idea of becoming a professor. I come from a modest background and my parents have been hit pretty hard by the recession, along with most of my extended family. Making those kinds of sacrifices of time and lost income with very little hope of a job at the end just seemed dangerous to me.
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Via Andrew Anthony, some collateral damage from the Times paywall:

Oliver Kamm has commented that his blog at The Times will also be behind the pay wall. The comments section to his post on the matter is full of those who have said that this decision means that they will no longer read his blog, and these comments include those made by many long term readers. His blog will also not be read by the majority of users of the Internet around the world, even for those using Google to search for information. If they have to pay, they will not bother and try and read something else. […]

No doubt Oliver will continue writing his blog, and the next time Noam Chomsky writes something silly, he will expose him. But this will not assist an average Internet user around the world confronted with a Chomsky argument in an on line debate. For them, the day that The Times starts charging for content will be the day that Oliver Kamm ceases to exist.

Oliver Kamm’s bit of the blogosphere conversation, RIP. If only someone were able to write a suitable obituary.

An eternity ago, in 2008, Jay Nordlinger wrote:

And, in some respects, the entire country is a Church of Grievance. It is our national church. Everybody’s a victim, everybody whines, in this incredibly free and beneficent and prosperous country.

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Jesus Christ. Louis Michel, the former European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid, is reported by the EU Observer as offering his opinions about Leopold II, King of the Belgians and one-time private owner of the Congo:

bq. “Leopold II was a true visionary for his time, a hero,” he told P-Magazine, a local publication, in an interview on Tuesday. “And even if there were horrible events in the Congo, should we now condemn them?” … “Leopold II does not deserve these accusations,” continued Mr Michel, himself a descendent of the Belgian king and a “Knight, Officer and Commander” in the Order of Leopold, Belgium’s highest honour. … “The Belgians built railways, schools and hospitals and boosted economic growth. Leopold turned the Congo into a vast labour camp? Really? In those days it was just the way things were done.” …. Admitting there were “irregularities,” he said: “We can easily be tempted to exaggerate when it comes to the Congo … I feel instinctively that he was a hero, a hero with ambitions for a small country like Belgium.” “To use the word ‘genocide’ in relation to the Congo is absolutely unacceptable and inappropriate.”

Let’s be clear about this: what Michel has said is comparable to Holocaust-denial. If you doubt this, or even if you haven’t read it yet, then Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost should set you right. Perhaps 10 million people, perhaps half the population of the area, died during the “Free State” period, victims of Leopold’s greed for the region’s natural resources, chiefly rubber.