This article in the Times is about the dangers to children, real and imagined, of social networking websites. The usual ping-pong back-and-forth about MySpace, etc. I liked the tag-line, though: “Parents fear Web predators. Some Internet experts, and some kids, call that fear overblown.” Other parental fears that “some kids” strenuously call overblown: the fear that the kid will spend some huge amount of money if given the chance, the fear that the kid will take the car and crash it at the first opportunity, the fear that the kid will have a big old party in your house while you’re away, etc, etc. Compare these reassurances to their near-perfect complement, “stern warnings from the AMA”:http://www.tpmcafe.com/node/27655 to 19-year-olds about to head off to Rocky Point for the week: “The American Medical Association is warning girls not to go wild during spring break after conducting a survey in which 83 percent of college women and graduates admit spring break involves heavier-than- usual drinking, and 74 percent saying the break results in increased sexual activity.” You don’t say! Both these messages will be put through the well-developed Bayesian filter located in the brains of their intended audience — parents in the first case, spring-breakers in the second — where the probability of the information being worthwhile is weighted by its source and then immediately disregarded.

“Pamela” of _Atlas Shrugs_ has a very funny and over the top encomium to Charles Johnson at the “Blogometer”:http://blogometer.nationaljournal.com/archives/2006/03/39_voting_on_th.html today.

bq. Who is your favorite political blogger? Favorite non-political blogger?

bq. Little Green Footballs. Hands down. When the history books are written, Charles Johnson will surely go down as a great American that made a critical difference between victory and defeat. His role has been largely ignored but so what? Most of the greats are ignored in their time. Van Gogh was ignored in his time too, although I don’t think Charles can draw… but you get my meaning. The media wants Charles and the blogs for that matter to just go away. But just the opposite is happening, the blogs are dictating the national dialog. What’s on the blogs today, is in the news 3,4 sometimes a week later.

Now, while you could certainly draw an interesting comparison between Charles Johnson and Vincent van Gogh, it wouldn’t be in terms of Johnson’s unrecognized genius. More generally, Pamela’s claim reminds me of this passage on palmistry from John Sladek’s 1974 book, _The New Apocrypha_.

bq. Palmists are of course in no doubt as to who was right. As with all cranks, they feel they haven’t been given a fair hearing and that orthodoxy is ganging up on them. [quoting palmistry author Noel Jaquin] “The reward of the pioneer is so often the ridicule of his fellow-men. We are not very much more just today. Of recent years men of genius have been deprived of their living and literally hounded to death by the ridicule of their more ignorant brethren.” How true, how true. They laughed at Galileo, they laughed at Darwin, they laughed at Edison … and they laughed at Punch and Judy.

I caught (the excellent) Stuart Maconie talking about Catweazle on the Freak Zone last weekend (about 40 minutes in, and easy to lose during the discussions of H R Pufnstuff: I wasn’t listening carefully but it sounded as if they hadn’t yet heard of Jack Wild’s demise!. They also discuss the Bugaloos which must have been created on some sort of drug, even if HR Pufnstuff wasn’t). I waited a long time to watch Catweazle, which was semi-forbidden when I was a kid (we were allowed to watch the commerical channel, but only if we were willing to put up with the merciless ridicule to which my mother would subject us). When we recently lived in Oxford the public library had a single video cassette with 3 episodes from series 1, and my daughter, then 5, was captivated. I mentioned this to a couple of her friends’ mothers, both of whom sighed and said “that must be lovely to watch”. After numerous delays it finally came out on DVD last year sometime. And series 1 really is lovely; Geoffrey Bayldon is quite believable as a 900 year old magician who is completely nuts, and the gags, although predictable, work every time. The light is just slightly dim, suggesting something sinister which never actually happens; and there’s wonderful chemistry between Bayldon and the young Robin Davies. Series 2 is fine; if you watch 1 you’ll want to watch 2. Before the DVD arrived I asked my daughter if she remembered it; her response was a withering ‘Dad, it doesn’t matter how long it is, you don’t forget TV that’s that good’. Which is about right.

Here’s a lovely little video that, near as I can tell, has not gone nearly so viral as it deserves. "Superman lay broken … La-da-da-da-Daa."

The naive beauty of it – part childcult, part cynicism about fight scenes – is what Daniel Clowes is getting at, I guess, in this interview.

As a kid, I was really attracted to superheroes, but I never read the comics. I’d buy every single comic, and I had some connection to it, but I didn’t like them, really. I remember talking to my other friends who read superhero comics, and they liked them on such a different level than I did. They were like, “Yeah, when Iron Man fights the guy, and punches him in the face, it’s so awesome!” But it had this pop-art iconographic quality to me that was really charming, and I just loved that aspect of it. I always gravitated towards that part of it, and I could never quite get past that, and that’s what I was going for. I wanted to create a story that lived up to the iconography, but also had something else going on.

If you don’t know who Clowes is, you should. (Go read wikipedia or something.)
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If, like me, you adored Linda Smith, you might want to put aside 30 minutes to listen to the News Quiz tribute to her. If you’d never heard of Linda Smith until I mentioned her last week you should definitely listen to the tribute — 30 minutes of an incredibly funny, and manifestly delightful, person. If she doesn’t make you laugh I don’t know what to say. (I’m not going to tell you what the name of this post refers to — you have to listen to the show). If the link above is slow, try this and then click on listen again.

Adonal Foyle is my (adopted) brother. (Here or here, but turn down your speakers first.) He came to live with my parents and go to high school when I was already away at graduate school. Then he attended Colgate before going on to play for the Golden State Warriors in the NBA. This is his ninth year with the team. In 2001, he founded an organization called Democracy Matters that is devoted to organizing college students around the issue of campaign finance reform. They now have chapters on over 80 campuses. The focus on campaign finance allows them to bring together many different issues, and there is a broader goal of helping students learn to be politically engaged. It’s really quite a great group.

C-Span showed an interview with him the other day. (It was up against the Oscars – I haven’t seen the ratings.) He talks about growing up on a very small island; life in the NBA; founding Democracy Matters; poetry; politics; his family; money; and lots more. Adonal says that he did the interview after a long flight, and he was completely exhausted and didn’t really know what he was saying. He finished it and thought he did horribly. In fact, he was very open and unselfconscious (for example, in public he’s usually much more guarded about talking about the abuse he suffered as a child). I think it came off really well. It’s now available on-line. And, yes, that’s my daughter sitting on my mother’s lap in the picture at 20:30 – thanks for asking.

CP Snow once said that all ancient British traditions date to the second half of the 19th Century, and his only error was to limit this claim to Britain. The great majority of real traditions having been swept away or reduced to irrelevance with the rise of capitalism, the 19th century saw the rise of a whole set of new ones, which were then fixed in shape by the system of nation-states, each with their own newly-codified language and officially sanctioned history that took shape at the same time[1]

Via Barista and an interesting link on the theatrical origins of the ninja, I came to this great piece by Craig Colbeck on Karate and Modernity, a lot closer to my own interests than black-clad stage assassins. Although the jargon is a bit heavy going in places, there’s a pretty clear argument to show that the Okinawa karate tradition developed in the late C19 and was derived from China.

Living in the 21st century, and in Australia, I can’t say I’m too worried about the invention of tradition. Anything more than 100 years old is old enough for me.

fn1, This process began a bit earlier in Britain and France and still hasn’t reached finality, but the crucial period, including German and Italian unification and the creation of the US in its current form, took place between 1850 and 1900.

Paddy Power is apparently running a book on who is going to succeed Bill Emmott as editor of the _Economist_, although I can’t find it online. Current odds are:

John Micklethwait 5 – 4 favourite

Emma Duncan 2 – 1

Matthew Bishop 6 – 1

Ed Carr 7 – 1

Gideon Rachman 8 – 1

Christopher Lockwood 10 – 1

Clive Crook 25 – 1

Boris Johnson 100 – 1

Michael Moore 250 – 1

At those odds, my mate Matthew Bishop looks well worth a flutter. The growth market for the _Economist_ these days is North America, and the only contenders with real US experience are him, the favourite (who’s priced out of the market in my opinion), and Michael Moore. It would be interesting to know how liquid the betting pool is (the UK has seen a fair amount of “manipulation”:http://news.ft.com/cms/s/ca763cd6-ab24-11da-8a68-0000779e2340.html of betting markets on succession races in the last few weeks), but obviously Paddy Power, unlike say Tradesports, isn’t likely to provide much in the way of useful information.

Via Lifehacker, I found a helpful video on how to peel potatoes without too much trouble. Not wanting to pass on a recommendation without having tried it myself, I dutifully boiled a potato to test the method. It worked great! Note that the water at the end doens’t have to be ice water, it’s enough to put the boiled potato in some cold water.

While we’re on the topic of how-to videos, if anybody missed the instructions for folding a shirt, it’s also worth a visit. I found it harder to follow than the potato-peeling guide though. It may help to look at this piece as well to figure out what’s going on. I haven’t made this technique part of my everydays, but depending on your current method you may decide differently.

Then again, given Chertoff’s overall record, maybe they did place the nation’s security first and foremost:

“I wouldn’t feel safe nowhere on this compound as an officer,” former guard Derrick Daniels told The Associated Press. Daniels was employed until last fall by Wackenhut Services Inc., the private firm that protects a Homeland Security complex that includes sensitive, classified information.

An envelope with suspicious powder was opened last fall at the headquarters. Daniels and other current and former guards said they were shocked when superiors carried it past the office of Secretary Michael Chertoff, took it outside and then shook it outside Chertoff’s window without evacuating people nearby.

I know life is meant to imitate art and all, but is it supposed to imitate Benny Hill episodes? I can just imagine the guards running around in fast-motion, shaking clouds of powder out just below a hacking Chertoff’s window. And if a somewhat zaftig, topless woman in a nurse’s uniform could be worked into an ensuing chase scene, then so much the better.

I’ve been rereading some Weber for an article I’m writing, and while taking a break from it came across “this story”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/04/AR2006030400867.html about the administration going after journalists:

bq. The Bush administration, seeking to limit leaks of classified information, has launched initiatives targeting journalists and their possible government sources. The efforts include several FBI probes, a polygraph investigation inside the CIA and a warning from the Justice Department that reporters could be prosecuted under espionage laws.

Weber is pretty direct on this subject:

The party leader and the administrative staff which is appointed by him … constitute the political administration of the state … The cabinet protects itself from the attacks of its followers who seek office and its opponents by the usual means, by monopolizing official secrets and maintaining solidarity against all outsiders. Unless there is an effective separation of powers, this system involves the complete appropriation of all powers by the party organization in control at the time; not only the top positions but often many of the lower offices become benefices of the party followers.

And later:

bq. Bureaucratic administration means fundamentally domination through knowledge. … This consists on the one hand of technical knowledge, which, by itself, is sufficient to ensure it a position of extraordinary power. But in addition to this, bureaucratic organizations, or the holders of power who make use of them, have the tendency to increase their power still further by the knowledge growing out of experience in the service. For they acquire through the conduct of office a special knowledge of facts and have available a store of documentary material peculiar to themselves. While not particular to bureaucratic organizations, the concept of “official secrets” is certainly typical of them. It stands in relation to technical knowledge in somewhat the same position as commercial secrets do to technological training. It is the product of the striving for power.

“Amy Sullivan”:http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0604.sullivan.html writes about the prospect of the Democratic party recruiting evangelical or conservative Christians. Kevin Drum “comments”:http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_03/008354.php

bq. I have to confess that I’ve always been skeptical of the notion that liberals should spend much time trying to get the Christian evangelical community on our side. When push comes to shove, they just care way more about sex and “moral degeneracy” than they do about helping the poor or taking care of the environment, and that means that outreach efforts are ultimately doomed to failure.

Two quick points about this (with pictures!) below the fold.
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Will Wilkinson emails me to push a Cato Institute forum on “When Inequality Matters”:http://www.cato-unbound.org/2006/03/06/david-schmidtz/when-equality-matters/ . I see that he’s also emailed Glenn Reynolds to promote the same. The paper being discussed is by David Schmidtz. Schmidtz is a serious philosopher whose writings I’ve read with profit and interest in the past. Nevertheless, I have to greet his opening sentence with some skepticism:

bq. Everyone cares about inequality.

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I’m back from a weekend in Tallahassee at the Werkmeister Conference on Cosmopolitanism, held at Florida State. It’s rather rare that we Timberites get to see each other in the flesh, so it was a treat that Harry was there, too. There were six papers with commentators, presented over a day-and-a-half. They were all quite good and spanned many different issues related to cosmopolitan political theory. One of the more striking things was how nice everyone was – and not in an obsequious way – despite some fairly sharp disagreements. In fact, Thomas Pogge commented on this at the beginning of his talk, and some interpreted this as a backhanded complement – yeah, and we had good handwriting, too. But I took the comment at face value – people were willing to talk and listen substantively and there was very little grandstanding or showing others up. Most of us went out for meals together, and a generally grand time was had by all. Still, my hotel room looked out over the capital building, and I just couldn’t shake the images of Elian Gonzalez, the 2000 election, Terri Shiavo …

The plan is for the revised papers to appear in Social Theory and Practice. Abstracts are on the web-page.