I’m very sorry to see, via “the Virtual Stoa”:http://virtualstoa.net/2007/03/05/in-memoriam/ , that “Chris Lightfoot”:http://www.ex-parrot.com/~chris/wwwitter/ , blogger, coder and social entrepreneur “has died suddenly”:http://www.mysociety.org/2007/03/05/rip-chris-lightfoot-1978-to-2007/ . My own knowledge of Chris was limited to reading his blog, exchanging the odd email, and sometimes visiting the various projects he helped create (such as “Pledgebank”:http://www.pledgebank.com/ ). But I read enough to notice that he was one of the few really individual voices on the interwebs: quirky, stubborn, idiosyncratic and pretty determined about the things he cared about – such as government and commercial threats to privacy.

Erik Olin Wright’s manuscript-in-progress, Envisioning Real Utopias is on the web. Erik has been working on the Real Utopias Project for about 15 years, cajoling and encouraging left-ish social scientists to think daringly but rigorously about reform ideas that may not be practicable in the short term, but, if enacted, would forward an egalitarian agenda, and would be internally workable. (I’ve been mentioning it a lot recently, in case you hadn’t noticed). I asked Erik to provide a brief intro for your edification, which is below the fold. He’s keen to get (useful) comments at this stage, so please either email him. Or, if your comments concern chapters one, two, or three, comment here (I’ll put up another post for discussion of subsequent chapters next week). If you have the patience to wait till publication to read the whole thing, this paper nicely motivates, and summarises some of, the project.

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Two sensible pieces, one by the BBC’s peerless Mike Baker (can we have an education journalist like him in the US, please?) and another by Fiona Millar on school places lottery flap. A very peculiar piece at the BBC site reporting on research that, as far as I can tell from the report, has nothing to do with the lotteries. The researcher is quoted as saying that:

Our research suggests that lotteries of over-subscribed school places would produce the worst of both worlds – greater educational polarisation and longer, more environmentally damaging car journeys to distant schools by middle-class parents. She said it was interesting that Labour-controlled Brighton was proposing it on the grounds of fairness and equality of opportunity, when this research suggested it might have exactly the opposite result.

I gather that this claim has gotten some play in the debate, so it’s worth refuting it. (As a bonus for my New Labour friends I include a criticism of David Willetts below the fold).

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38°13’36.38″N, 112°17’56.59″W.

_Update_: OK, sorry, so there are lots more of these.

Via “Gruber”:http://daringfireball.net/, comes a post about “The Boring Store”:http://www.methodsreporter.com/2007/02/27/826chi-boring-store-eggers/1/, which sells nothing of utility and definitely does NOT contain assorted spy equipment. Here’s a part of the awning:

“Brad DeLong”:http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/03/talking_past_ea.html on China and Jeff Faux:

In general, we have a choice between policies. We can eliminate or sharply restrict trade with an odious regime–as we do with Cuba–in the hope that it will put pressure on it for reform. We can encourage the maximum possible trade with an odious regime–as we do with China–in the hope that the more economic, cultural, and political contact there is the more we strengthen the forces over there that we like. Which of these policies we follow will have impacts on domestic income distribution–but much smaller impacts than do our educational, social insurance, and tax policies which do much, much more to move wealth and opportunity down or up the American income distribution. I tend to be on the side of free trade abroad and social democracy at home. But I am not sure that I am right. I am sure, however, that painting the issues as Davos plutocrats (and their water carriers) and commissars-turned-capitalists on one side and America’s working people on the other doesn’t move us forward at all.

I don’t agree with Brad that ‘painting the issues as Davos plutocrats … doesn’t move us forward at all.’ The consonance between mainstream political opinion on China and the interests of American businesses hungry for access to the Chinese market surely reflects in part the efforts of think tanks and politicians who depend on aforementioned businesses for funding and donations. But I do agree that there’s more to the story. The most interesting piece I’ve read on this recently is James Mann’s “long article”:http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=12477 (behind paywall) in the current issue of _The American Prospect_. [click to continue…]

On Bloggginheads.tv, Virginia Postrel and Dan Drezner discuss organ markets, Virginia’s recent spat with Amitai Etzioni, and the importance of making clear that Kieran Healy Is Not A Libertarian. In the discussion, Virginia wonders what I think of Etzioni’s view. I have a post up over at OrgTheory about it.

Looking back over the early history of the political blogosphere, I checked the site of one of the early European “warbloggers”, Bjørn Staerk, and found this newly published and very impressive reflective piece. Not many people have the courage to look unflinchingly at their own mistakes, but Staerk does so. A short extract

When I look around me at the world we got, the world we created after 2001, that’s the question I keep coming back to: What went wrong? The question nags me all the more because I was part of it, swept along with all the currents that took us from the ruins of the World Trace center through the shameful years that followed. Iraq, the war on terror, the new European culture war.

This mirror of “What Went Wrong” wouldn’t be a story on the same scale, but it has the main theme in common. It would be about Westerners who had their reality bubble pricked by people from an alien culture, and spent the next couple of years stumbling about like idiots, unable to deal rationally with this new reality that had forced itself on them. Egging each other on, they predicted, interpreted, and labelled – and legislated and invaded. They saw clearly, through beautiful ideas. And they were wrong.

Who were these people? They were us.

As someone else would say, read the whole thing.

OpenDemocracy has a “very good article by Martin Shaw”:http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization-institutions_government/icj_bosnia_serbia_4392.jsp on the recent International Court of Justice decision that found that the charge of genocide against Serbia in relation to the Bosnian was not established, a finding that has been seized upon by Milosevic apologists everywhere. As Shaw points out, the court did find that members of a protected group were systematically killed, raped and abused, and did decide that the Srebrenica massacre was genocide. Perversely, though it also found that it had not “been conclusively established that the massive killings of members of the protected group were committed with the specific intent (dolus specialis) on the part of the perpetrators to destroy, in whole or in part, the group as such.” Also whilst conceding the involvement of the regular Yugoslav forces with the Bosnian Serb perpetrators of the pre-Srebrenica (and therefore not-genocidal) operations, the court limits their responsibility for the massacre that they are forced to characterize as genocide principally to that of mere omission. A feeble verdict.

The newest book in the Real Utopias Project series is Redesigning Distribution (UK). The books are all based on conferences held at Madison, and each one focuses on a particular “real utopian” proposal – an institutional proposal which is supposed to embody or further some egalitarian ideal but is supposed to be in principle implementable in the real world and, more importantly, to be self-sustaining in some hard-to-specify way. This volume compares Basic Income Grants with Stakeholder Grants. Philippe Van Parijs makes the case for a BIG, a universal grant that all citizens would receive on a regular basis from the age of majority, funded most likely out of general taxation; Bruce Ackerman and Anne Alstott argue by contrast for a Stakeholder Grant, a one-off payment of (in the US at current rates) $80k paid to all high school graduates at the age of majority, funded by an inheritance tax (and returnable, with growth, to the Treasury at death).

I’ll assume some familiarity with the proposals (for the details of BIG see here and for the details of the Stakeholder Grant see Ackerman and Alstott’s book). I’ll also say at the outset that although I’ve been familiar with both proposals for a long time, and find both very appealing, I haven’t got a stake in the debate really. But I was surprised how much new and interesting stuff was in the book, so I thoroughly recommend it whether you are a newcomer to the debate or an old hand.

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.. is precisely what I don’t plan on being, but I liked my colleague‘s email subject line so I decided to use it here. Point being: I’ll be in Florence this weekend and am looking for suggestions for what not to miss. As a bit of background: 1. I’ve been already and have visited the relatively obvious touristy musts; 2. I have six guide books in my office with suggestions.

Of course, you could then say “so what do you need us for?”. Well, I’m looking for suggestions of that hole-in-the-wall place you found at the end of your trip having hoped in retrospect to have had more time to enjoy it. Or that specific sidestreet on which the view to some place is especially magnificent. Or whatever. There are hidden gems in every city so I thought it was worth asking.

And if anyone around here happens to be in Florence this weekend, let me know.* This is a work trip, but the meeting doesn’t start until Monday so I have Fri-Sun for fun.

For anyone curious, I’m going there for an OECD meeting on “new millennium learners”. Thanks to INDIRE for sponsoring this. We’ll also have a public meeting next Wednesday on this topic.

*I have another post in the works about how to keep people posted of one’s whereabouts.

One of the many useful services performed by Glenn Reynolds is his chronicling of the relentless decline of Moqtada al-Sadr. Some past instalments

The murders are the first sign of organised Iraqi opposition to Sadr’s presence a apr 29, 04

those who thought Sadr represented a mass movement among Iraqis were seriously mistaken. [May 5, 04]

ANOTHER BAD DAY for the increasingly irrelevant Sadr. [May 26, 04]

SADR’S DECLINE CONTINUES [Jun 17, 04]

Demonstrators shouted chants denouncing al-Sadr, including one that equated him with deposed dictator Saddam Hussein. [Sep 3, 04]

Bush has successfully mitigated the perils of having to grapple with two insurgencies simultaneously– through a nuanced combination of sophisticated counter-insurgency efforts and attendant political machinations contra Moktada al-Sadr. [Nov 1, 04]

And now:

Moqtada al-Sadr doesn’t like the surge. That he’s saying so from a secret location may explain why. . . .

I think it’s time for Glenn to let up on the guy. Hated, with no public support, isolated, irrelevant, outfoxed by the sophisticated Bush and now a lonely fugitive, surely by this time he’s too unimportant for a post.

Kenneth Horne was born 100 years ago today. My earliest memory is battling with my parents to be allowed to get to bed in time to hear Round The Horne. I even remember when it went off the air because of his untimely death (though in my memory it was replaced by These You Have Loved with Cliff Morgan, which can’t be right). In latter years my daughters have shared the joy of Horne with me courtesy of BBC7. Julian and Sandy, Rambling Sid Rumpo (and here), Charles and Fiona, and, bemused in the middle, the calm tones of Horne himself. BBC7 is celebrating with an episode of Much Binding in the Marsh, a feature-length musical dramatisation of Three Men on A Boat (with Leslie Phillips as a bonus!) and a fun-packed 3-hour history of Beyond Our Ken and Round the Horne.

Via “Atrios”:http://atrios.blogspot.com/2007_02_25_atrios_archive.html#117254677819500755, a quote from Laura Bush:

bq. Many parts of Iraq are stable now. But, uh, of course, what we see on television is the one bombing a day that discourages everyone.

Would this also be the talking point if we had one Iraqi-style car bombing per day anywhere in the entire United States for a month or two? Or indeed a day or two? I’ve sometimes wondered about this question: What level of domestic terrorism woud it would take to send the United States to the point where its citizens would accept a highly repressive domestic government response in order to feel safe? The immediate public reaction after the September 11th attacks was very calm. Of course people were shocked and appalled, but there was virtually nothing in the way of random reprisals or what have you. But thanks to the rhetoric of the GWOT and associated scaremongering in the media, my fear is that the threshold is by now much lower. Substantial numbers of Americans really do seem to believe that Al Qaeda might bomb their local mall.

Ergo, an obvious strategy for any terrorists would be to go and do this a few times, in more or less random locations. Not terribly spectacular, but they’d probably get a hell of a payoff in terms of public hysteria. And shutting down open societies has always been part of Al Qaeda’s agenda. We’ve seen something like this (though not in a sustained fashion) with the bombings in Madrid and London. The fact that it hasn’t happened in the U.S. suggests either that there aren’t any Al Qaeda cells in the country, or that if they do exist they are fixated on doing something extremely big, and presumably extremely difficult. Perhaps they have bought into the “24 Mindset”:https://crookedtimber.org/2007/02/10/takin-care-of-business/ too.