by Maria on November 23, 2006
After nine lovely Mondays spent anticipating the evening’s installment of Spooks, series 5, it’s all over. Monday is back to being plain old boring old Monday and Brussels seems even greyer than usual. Which isn’t to say this series was stellar. It was bigger and sexier, with more explosions and grander conspiracies. But the noisier Spooks gets, the less it seems to say. Spooks always had an eerie talent for anticipating world events – it started filming in the months before 9/11 – but fact is now so much stranger than fiction.
Two more of the few remaining characters from the first series have been dismissed. The only discernible character arc in the whole of series 5 was that of our hero, Adam, who spiralled further and further downward, with a quick stop off to bang his nanny. Actually, his story was a good one, and put the lie to most action-led tv series where characters bounce back from the deaths of loved ones within an episode or three. But the entry of a new female lead (Ros, played by Hermione Norris) flattened the entire series and crowded out two far more interesting and sympathetic characters, Zaf and Jo. Which is a pity, because Hermione Norris has the animation of a wooden cadaver. She’s no more credible doing hand to hand combat with Mossad agents than she is laying a glamorous honeytrap for a Saudi playboy.
The original strength of Spooks was the ordinariness of the spies and their struggles to reconcile their normal lives with the weird reality of their working world. Tom might have been an SAS-trained killer, but he had terrible taste in girlfriends and was never far from a nice cup of tea. The younger spies put their lives on the line every working day, but as junior civil servants they couldn’t really afford to live in London.
I know it’s dramatically useful for tv show characters to have no life outside of work, except for the occasional relative who can be placed in jeopardy. But it’s dull, dull, dull (not to mention deeply unquestioning of live-to-work capitalism). Life in the bubble suffocates the characters and makes them less believable. And that kills precisely what was so great about Spooks. Series five squeezed its characters into a smaller and less lifelike world, just as it inflated the scale of the threats a mere seven people face off. It’s now recycling stories – like the embassy hostages – from earlier series, but that only shows how much the Spooks has lost its own plot.
by Maria on November 23, 2006
Well worth reading; Alex Harrowell at Fistful of Euros dissects the difficulties of the French right following the left’s decision to run Sego in next year’s presidential election;
‘The problem being, of course, that De Villepin is damaged goods, Juppé is a rush-job and a crook, having just returned from trouble with the law, and Chirac is old, unpopular and has scandals like a dog has fleas. Sarkozy, for his part, represents the heritage of the non-Gaullist “droite classique” and, more importantly, appeals to the cult of America. His argument (everything is terrible and only I, the new young US-style leader, know what to do) and his prescription (free markets and mass surveillance) bear a far closer resemblance to Tony Blair than anything found on Ségolene Royal.’
by Henry Farrell on November 22, 2006
I’ll be moderating Firedoglake’s book club again on Sunday. This time, we’re talking about Jacob Hacker’s _The Great Risk Shift_. I’ve written about it “here”:https://crookedtimber.org/2006/10/16/review-jacob-hacker-the-great-risk-shift/ and “here”:https://crookedtimber.org/2006/10/23/hackwork/ on CT, while John posted on Hacker and David Frum “here”:https://crookedtimber.org/2006/10/28/to-bear-our-fortunes-in-our-own-strong-armswhich-now-we-hold-at-much-uncertainty/.
by Harry on November 22, 2006
by Brian on November 22, 2006
If you Google for “greatest rivalry in sports”:http://www.google.com/search?q=%22the+greatest+rivalry+in+sports%22&hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&start=0&sa=N today you’ll get a lot of references to the Ohio State-Michigan series (largely because of last week’s game) several references to Red Sox-Yankees, and a few other college pairings. From a global perspective, these all look faintly ridiculous. Does any of these rivalries really compare to Real Madrid-Barcelona for history, or Celtic-Rangers for intensity?
It’s probably futile to say which of these is *the* greatest. But I think on the list should be the series “that starts in a few hours”:http://usa.cricinfo.com/db/ARCHIVE/2006-07/ENG_IN_AUS/.
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by Ingrid Robeyns on November 22, 2006
The elections for parliament are held in the Netherlands today. The first exit polls are expected at just after 9 pm Dutch time. While in general elections in small countries are not particularly interesting for an international audience, one never knows what surprises (which may be relevant also beyond the national borders) are waiting for us. Apart from the question which party will become the biggest and hence (most probably) deliver the prime minister, here are two other prominent issues of the current Dutch elections. [click to continue…]
by John Q on November 21, 2006
The release of the Stern review on the economics of climate change has had a huge impact on the climate change debate in Australia. There had already been signs of movement, but the government was still adamant in rejecting both the Kyoto protocol and any form of emissions trading. And, although the offical position did not dispute the science of climate change, many of the government’s supporters in the media, and even some ministers, were pushing the denialist line.
That was only a few weeks ago. Now the Australian government has endorsed emissions trading (in principle at least) and is calling for a ‘new Kyoto’. Ratifying the old Kyoto is still a step too far for a government that has never disagreed with George Bush on anything, but it’s hard to see how long this position can last.
Given the impact of the Stern review, it’s important to see if it stands up to scrutiny, and I’ve done a series of posts on parts of the report at my blog. My main conclusions:
(i) Stern’s estimates of the cost of stabilising CO2 levels (1 per cent of GDP by 2050) are optimistic, but in the right ballpark
(ii) Stern’s treatment of discounting is correct (More to come on this, I hope)
(iii) Stern underestimates the costs of Business As Usual, particularly in relation to environmental damage
(iv) Headline reporting of Stern overstates the risks of worst-case outcomes in the long tail, but critics are wrong to suggest that low-probability extreme outcomes should be ignored.
Overall, my conclusion is that the Stern review gets the basic economics and the policy recommendation right, even if the presentation is inevitably political.
by Eszter Hargittai on November 21, 2006
I had lunch at the Googleplex yesterday and as a result got to add several geeky license plates to my photo collection. I wasn’t even trying hard to look for these, I was just glancing at the plates I passed walking to and from my car.
In unrelated geekiness, if you prefer to unleash your inner geek with the help of a bit more text then I recommend the quotes on this page. A couple of my favorites:
There are only two kinds of programming languages: those people always bitch about and those nobody uses. (Bjarne Stroustrup)
[The BLINK tag in HTML] was a joke, okay? If we thought it would actually be used, we wouldn’t have written it! (Mark Andreessen)
If none of that made sense then you could go watch some Jay Leno Headlines where it is by design that many of the featured items don’t make sense.
by Henry Farrell on November 20, 2006
There’s lots that I don’t agree with in Anatol Lieven’s reformulation of realism, but this quote from his LRB “review”:http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n22/liev01_.html of books on the Cold War (behind the subscriber wall) really has the number of the “more rubble less trouble mob”:https://crookedtimber.org/2006/11/06/compare-and-contrast-2/.
One important aspect of Westad’s book is the complex connection he makes between the US and Soviet modernising projects and racism. While both regimes insisted on their right to dictate values and solutions to the benighted peoples of the Third World, both also claimed that those peoples were capable of adopting them, doing so rapidly, and thereby joining the ‘socialist community’ or the ‘free world’. But because, in classic missionary style, both sides saw their truths as self-evident, their programmes as beneficial, and their own benevolence as beyond question, they often had no rational explanation to offer when their projects failed and their clients turned against them. In these cases, there was often an astonishingly rapid swing towards racist explanations. Currently, the neo-cons in America alternate between arguing that all Arab societies are capable of making rapid progress towards democracy (and that anyone who denies this is racist) and asserting that ‘Arabs understand only force.’
by Henry Farrell on November 19, 2006
Jim Henley “passed on”:http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2006/10/14/5537 one of those internets memes to me a few weeks ago which I’m finally responding to – name three authors whom you’ve given up on, and say why. Here goes …
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by Eszter Hargittai on November 18, 2006
Does anyone around here play Fantasy Congress? I’d heard about it before, but now that I was invited to join a league, I started looking into it in more depth.
As in other fantasy sports, you – the Citizen – draft a team of real-life legislators from the U.S. Congress and score points for your team’s successes.
However, as one commentator aptly notes: “[I]t’s lifelike: you win by getting bills passed, not by passing good bills.”
If you only care about winning the game, sure, you can compile a team of senators and represenatives who have an active record. But do you really want to be sitting around hoping that some real-life bill that makes your stomach turn is successful just so you can score some points in FC?
I can see the appeal to some extent, but overall I am not convinced the system is refined enough at this point to get me sufficiently enthusiastic. And while my first reaction was that at least it has educational value by teaching people about the legislative process, now I’m thinking that since it is most likely to appeal to folks who already know much about politics, it’s not clear that it will really spread the word far and wide about how the system works.
That said, I don’t have much experience with fantasy sports so I may be missing some important factors. Moreover, I do think the idea is interesting and certainly impressive that some college students thought it up and managed to execute it. And to be fair, it sounds like its creators – four undergraduate students at Claremont McKenna – are working on refining the system.
by Eszter Hargittai on November 17, 2006
Three weeks ago I started a project: take at least one photo a day and post these online. Of course, anyone who’s been following my various posts about Flickr knows that this is not exactly a hardship. Nonetheless, it’s interesting to make a conscious effort every day to stop for a moment and notice something in my surroundings worthy of photography for one reason or another. Part of the point is to have a visual reminder of the various things I’m up to during the span of a year. It’s called Project 365 and I got the idea from Photojojo.
I let my contacts in Flickr know about this and several have joined in on the undertaking. I set up a Flickr Group where everyone can post their additions. (It does have some rules though so don’t just start dumping photos into the pool.) Some of us are also using tags that allow an easy look at how any one day is represented by different people.
Needless to say this is definitely in the realm of personal diary blogging, which is not something I had engaged in much before. But it’s fun with photos. Intrigued? Join us. Grab a free Flickr account or just post to your un-Flickred blog if you’re so inclined. Let me know, I have a Project 365 section on my personal blog‘s sidebar and would be happy to expand it. It is not a requirement to post a photo each day, that can be done in clusters of a few. The requirement is to take at least one photo each day and before midnight strikes, decide which photo represents something about the day.
by John Holbo on November 17, 2006
In response to my complaints about Trevino, Hilzoy went and procured an actual historian to comment on the Phillipines Insurrection and – generally – on the advantages and disadvantages of such things for national life. I take the key sentence to be:
Once the indigenous resistance was stronger – more politically conscious, better armed and trained – this unspoken calculus no longer applied. Instead, the "home field advantage" came back into play. No longer could small numbers of well-armed foreigners dominate much larger numbers of "natives" on their home soil, as they had been able to do during the 19th century.
I have nothing to add, except that Lemuel Pitkin – I loved A Cool Million, too – requests that I tell you what comics to read.
I’ll start by completing my Green Lantern Geopolitics thoughts. (See also here.) It seems to me that what Matthew has forgotten to mention is that the Lantern in question is obviously Guy Gardner. We missed Guy Gardner appreciation week at Dave’s Long Box – just keep scrolling down below the Stiltman stuff – down, down – and election day ‘whose side is your superhero on?’ stuff. He has a nice essence of Guy frame. Before that he did a ‘what is Guy saying?’ caption contest. One of the entries seemed particularly Green Lantern Geopolitics relevant:
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by Chris Bertram on November 17, 2006
Ferenc Puskás, whose Hungarian team thrashed England at Wembley in 1953 with tactics that anticipated “total football”, and who is widely considered to have been one of the great talents of all time, has died. Obits and articles: “Brian Glanville in the Guardian”:http://football.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/0,,1950662,00.html, “Jonathan Wilson in the Guardian”:http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/sport/2006/11/17/best_beckenbauer_platini_zidan.html, “Soccernet”:http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=392277&cc=5739, “Football365”:http://www.football365.com/story/0,17033,8750_1694091,00.html, “Simon Barnes in the Times”:http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,27-2458213,00.html, “Times obituary”:http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,27-2458262,00.html .
by Kieran Healy on November 16, 2006
“Milton Friedman has died”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6156106.stm at the ripe old age of ninety four. Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution “writes a brief appreciation”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6156106.stm from the point of view of a fan. As “Harry said”:https://crookedtimber.org/2006/11/10/adam-swifts-political-philosophy-an-beginners-guide-for-students-and-politicians/ around here only the other day, everyone should read “Capitalism and Freedom”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0226264211/ref=nosim/kieranhealysw-20 at least once.
_Update_: The “Milton Friedman Choir”:http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6407847019713273360&q=milton+friedman sings about corporations, markets and social responsibility. (Hat tip: CB.)
