When leafing through a copy of the _New York Review of Books_ from a few weeks back, I came across Patricia Meehan’s “review”:http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=20693 (behind paywall, unfortunately) of Giles MacDonogh’s _After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation._ It’s an eye-opener. [click to continue…]

Talking of music, can it really be 4 years since we asked what the most annoying Christmas record is? Well, since then, youtube has enabled us to play them for you. So, instead of most annoying, this year I’d like your favourites. Here are the rules. The recording must be recognisably related to Christmas, must be non-traditional in some hard to define way, and while jokes are entirely welcome, they must be funny. One more rule: no wry, ironic, or mean references to Cliff.

Let me kick off with two secular songs, and two religious. First Jona Lewie’s Stop the Cavalry. Despite the wierd anachronisms and slightly unrespectable ott anti-war message, I love it simply for the refrain. When I used not to be home for Christmas, I would sing the whole thing to myself over and over, knowing neither the name of the song nor the singer. I know our British readers will be appalled by my complete lack of sophistication, but I also love Merry Christmas Everybody (even if you hate it, as I’m sure you do, it’s worth watching the first few seconds just to see Kid Jensen and John Peel not enjoying themselves). My wife won’t allow it to be played in the house.

From the ridiculous to the sublime (and religious). I once read that In the Bleak Midwinter is Britain’s favourite carol, which surprised me; sung here by Bert Jansch, with slightly different words than I remember. And finally, for Lindsey in France and Val in Madison, here is Def Leppard (yes, really) with what I find the most moving Christian pop song of the lot, Lindisfarne’s Winter Song. (“for Lindsey and Val” — I should have been Michael Aspel, or perhaps the other Cliff). And after you’ve listened, whatever you think of the religious message, take up the secular message, get out your credit card, go to Oxfam and donate a little bit more than you think you can afford.

In the thread to Harry’s “post”:https://crookedtimber.org/2007/12/05/what-are-snubbing-and-shunning/ on academies and Oxbridge, some of us got into a little exchange about “widening participation” and spotting “academic potential” (sorry for the scare quotes, Stuart). Now in the Telegraph there’s “the story of Barry Cox, the world’s only Scouse Cantopop star”:http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/foreign/richardspencer/dec07/cantopop.htm . Having left school with a bunch of poor to mediocre GCSEs and finding himself in a succession of unrewarding jobs, Cox decided, somewhat idiosyncratically, that the road to self-improvement lay via learning Cantonese with the proprietors of his local chippie. He managed in two years and is now a successful singer in Macau. Richard Spencer, author of the Telegraph article asks:

bq. someone, somewhere in Liverpool, particularly in Barry’s old school, should be asking themselves some questions about his achievement. How come a kid can master a truly difficult language, enough to forge a career in a highly competitive place like Hong Kong/Macau, but come out of the school as a “no brainbox, me” holder of five GCSEs just a couple of years before?

Good question. Lots of us have been signed up at some time in our lives to the idea that most people have a lot of unactualized potential and that the social structure of our societies (and institutional components like the education system) hold them back, undermine their sense of the possibilities, depress their confidence, tell them what is for “the likes of them” and so on. But then, when we sit as selectors for university places, we switch into a mind-set where only a few have a mysterious intrinsic quality called “academic potential” that it is our job to discern and then to develop. As for the rest, they must do as they do.

Relatedly (via Loren King) there’s a “Scientific American article”:http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-secret-to-raising-smart-kids&print=true about how damaging it is when parents push a model of achievement according to which you’ve either got “it” or you haven’t. On this view some (how many?) kids acquire a belief about whether they are, or are not, (in Cox’s parlance) “brainboxes”. Children (and other people) with the theory that being a “brainbox” is an instrinsic property react to failure by drawing the conclusion that further study is not for them and that things are hopeless. Fortunately for him, it looks as if Barry Cox didn’t have that damaging mind-set, despite his “no brainbox” comment.

[Thanks to “Blood and Treasure”:http://bloodandtreasure.typepad.com/blood_treasure/2007/12/a-journey-of-10.html , where there’s more on Cox’s idiosyncratic choice of language/dialect.]

This talk of Theory’s Empire brings to mind a classic article by one of my teachers, Michèle Lamont. Written at what John describes below as the high tide of Theory in literary studies, “How to Become a Dominant French Philosopher: The Case of Jacques Derrida” tackles the question of how Derrida managed to become so important in both France and the United States. The abstract:

bq. How can an interpretive theory gain legitimacy in two cultural markets as different as France and the United States? This study examines the intellectual, cultural, institutional and social conditions of legitimation of Jacques Derrida’s work in the two countries and develops hypotheses about the legitimation of interpretive theories. The legitimation of Derrida’s work resulted from a fit between it and highly structured cultural and institutional systems. In France, Derrida capitalized on the structure of the intellectual market by targeting his work to a large cultural public rather than to a shrinking group of academic philosophers. His work appealed to the intellectual public as a status symbol and as a novel and sophisticated way to deal with late 1960s politics. In the United States, Derrida and a group of prestigious literary critics reframed his theory and disseminated it in university departments of literature. His work was imported concurrently with the work of other French scholars with whom he shared a market. Derrida’s support is more concentrated and stronger in one discipline than the support for other French intellectuals. In America, professional institutions and journals played a central role in the diffusion of his work, while cultural media were more central in France.

[X-posted at the Valve]

I’ve got a book out! Framing Theory’s Empire [amazon]; or support your local independent publisher by buying direct. You can buy the paperback or download the entire book as a free PDF from the Parlor Press site. UPDATE: and it’s been marked down! Now Parlor direct is cheaper than Amazon. $17.60 vs. $22! A bargain! I’m still waiting for my paper copy to show. (Any of you contributors out there gotten yours yet?) I think the cover is rather handsome. But, then: a father should love his child. The lovely Belle Waring and I designed it together.

A book, eh? See here! What’s all this about? [click to continue…]

Behind the veil at the Google Book Scanning Facility.

Via Unfogged.

A very peculiar BBC report here, about the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge refraining from sponsoring Academies:

Oxford and Cambridge universities are snubbing the government’s flagship academy schools project. The government is urging universities to use their academic resources to support academies as part of the drive to raise standards in deprived areas. But the two famous universities have declined to commit themselves to sponsor an academy.

Just to be clear, I have no inside knowledge on this so there may be something going on that I don’t know, but nothing in the report justifies the use of “snub” in the headline, or “shun” in the text. It would be plain wrong of either University to commit to sponsoring an Academy unless it already had the relevant expertise on hand, and people with the enthusiasm to carry out the task. Cambridge might well have such resources, but I’d be surprised if Oxford does, and refraining from making a commitment until such resources are to hand seems perfectly sensible.

Another source of irritation. The article implies a connection between non-involvement in Academies and the fact that Oxford and Cambridge have high proportions of undergraduates coming from private schools.

This autumn the Universities Secretary, John Denham, urged universities to take an active role in secondary education by sponsoring an academy – with 20 universities already signed up. In particular, he highlighted the importance of such projects for universities which have an intake of wealthier students. Only 54% of students at Oxford University and 57% of students at Cambridge are drawn from state schools. “It is clear that the universities that recruit the vast majority of students from a small minority of society are missing out on a huge amount of talent,” said Mr Denham.

But involvement in Academies in deprived areas would — or should — do nothing to change this. Take the Academy which Oxford University might reasonably be asked to help with — the prospective Oxford Academy in Littlemore which serves the nearest deprived area to Oxford University (its about 3 miles fom the centre of town and I should declare an interest here — I attended Peers, the “failed” school on whose site the Academy will located, many years ago, though the catchment area hasn’t changed much in that time). Like most schools serving deprived areas, this prospective academy is unlikely to deliver many future Oxford undergraduates — the urgent issue for that school is raising the achievement of children who won’t go to University at all.

Gary Farber has been scraping by for a while on your previous generous donations, CT readers, but he’s in a world of hurt at the moment, so show some love.

In perhaps related news, some people just don’t know anything about being broke:

“The risk is that you could be modifying loans for people who don’t need it,” said Sharon Greenberg, director of mortgage strategy at Barclay’s. “There’s only so much you can do without talking to the borrower. You’re spending $60 a month on cable TV; can you get by with less? You’re spending $200 a month on food for two people, but food costs in your area show that you should be able to get by with $100 a month. These are the kinds of conversations that loan-servicing companies have to have with borrowers.”

Food costs in your area show that when there are no crawdads, you should be able to eat sand. No refinancing for you, Mr. Moneypants McRichington!!

I realize that some of the references in this video require a fairly intimate knowledge of the Silicon Valley scene, but not all so perhaps this will add a bit of amusement to your day regardless of your geek quotient.

Via Matthew Yglesias, this is enough to make a cat laugh. As I’ve argued elsewhere, although the Mearsheimer & Walt “Israel Lobby” does have a referent which is a real and definable set of groups and institutions, this lobby really doesn’t have all that much to do with Israel. Every time this slightly scary bunch of warlike, paranoid and rather right-wing people are asked to make a choice between the national interests of Israel and their own vanity politics, it’s Israel that gets shafted. Any concern over “divided loyalties” or what have you is completely misplaced – the “Israel Lobby” are nationalists of a completely imaginary state, one which has no meaningful politics of its own, no need to compromise with reality and no national interests other than constant war.

Note also that the well-known South Africa analogy, which has been pronounced to be intrinsically bigoted and anti-semitic by the wisest heads outside Israel, is considered normal politics by the head of government of that country. I begin to think that the Israeli state (which has, over the years, played its part in giving these nutters much more prominence and credibility than they deserve) has been lately finding the wingnuttier wing of American “pro-Israel” politics to be more trouble than it is worth. There are all sorts of reasons one might have to be less than happy with the human rights record of the State of Israel, but as far as I can see they don’t deserve to be blamed for the extremely negative contribution made to public debate in English-speaking politics by the political organisation trading under their name.

I was in Trier, Germany last week, famous for.. among other things, being the birth place of Marx.

I found the store filled with Marx merchandise amusing:

The “opium of the people” quote was only available on a magnet in German, not in English (other quotes were available in English), I’m assuming a conscious choice based on potential interest.

I couldn’t resist getting a copy of the poster that has the entire Communist Manifesto written on it with an image of Marx and Engels coming through from the text thanks to manipulation of the formatting.

I also got a postcard with a cartoon of Marx and the following quote: “Tut mir leid Jungs! War halt nur so ‘ne Idee for mir…”, which Babelfish completely butchers in its translation so I’ll try, but feel free to correct me: “Sorry kids! ‘Twas just an idea I had.”

Boarding a plane to Budapest later in the day added a twist to all this for me. While I can see friends and colleagues in the U.S. understanding why I would’ve picked up those items, I don’t think too many people in the town where I grew up would get why I’d want anything with Marx on my walls.

John Sides at _The Monkey Cage_ asks whether whites are more likely to support the death penalty when they think black people are being executed, and finds that the answer is yes.

In a 2001 survey conducted by Mark Peffley and John Hurwitz, a random subset of whites was asked:

“Do you favor or oppose the death penalty for persons convicted of murder?”
Somewhat favor: 29%
Strongly favor: 36%

Another random subset of whites was asked:

“Some people say that the death penalty is unfair because most of the people who are executed are African-Americans. Do you favor or oppose the death penalty for persons convicted of murder?”
Somewhat favor: 25%
Strongly favor: 52%

That is a 12-point increase in overall support

See more “here”:http://www.themonkeycage.org/2007/12/are_whites_more_likely_to_supp.html (and original paper “here”:http://www.uky.edu/AS/PoliSci/Peffley/pdf/Peffley%20&%20Hurwitz%20Death%20Penalty%20ajps_293.pdf.

What a relief. December 1st show here.