I’d be more excited if he had started posting to “Language Log”:http://www.languagelog.net/, but even if we won’t be seeing flashes of linguistic brilliance, it’s still newsworthy that “Noam Chomsky has started a blog”:http://blog.zmag.org/ttt/. The introductory post is a little hard to decipher.

bq. This blog will include brief comments on diverse topics of concern in our time. They will sometimes come from the ZNet sustainer forum system where Noam interacts through a forum of his own, sometimes from direct submissions, sometimes culled from mail and other outlets — always from Noam Chomsky.

bq. Posted by Noam Chomsky

I wouldn’t have guessed that Noam Chomsky calls Noam Chomsky “Noam Chomsky”, but if it’s good enough for Rickey Henderson I guess it’s good enough for the Noam.

Hat tip: “NicoPitney”:http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/3/24/223959/120 over at Kos.

Interesting, but also a bit demoralizing, to see “the bloggers”:http://fedsoc.blogspot.com/2004_03_01_fedsoc_archive.html#107931360182005218 of the Harvard Law Federalist Society “on the side”:http://fedsoc.blogspot.com/2004_03_01_fedsoc_archive.html#10793772196490613 of “Intelligent Design Theory”:http://fedsoc.blogspot.com/2004_03_01_fedsoc_archive.html#107942332680013733. (See “Cosma Shalizi”:http://bactra.org/weblog/archives/000212.html and “Brian Leiter”:http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/000956.html for context.) Maybe it’s only a short hop from originalism about the Founding Fathers to creationism about God the Father. They’d probably describe themselves as being on the side of “free speech and free thought”:http://fedsoc.blogspot.com/2004_03_01_fedsoc_archive.html#10793772196490613 rather than pseudo-science and sophistry, though their hysterical description of “Leiter’s criticisms”:http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/000878.html as “thuggish,” “vicious,” “naked threats” leads me to think that Harvard Law students are a lot more thin-skinned than they ought to be. My own view is that people who subscribe to Intelligent Design theory “need”:http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/hunch/IDnotes.html#14 to have the perverse mechanics of childbirth explained to them.

*Update*: For somewhat more in-depth and “professional”:http://www.pandasthumb.org/pt-archives/000002.html commentary on ID and evolution, check out the newly-formed “Panda’s Thumb”:http://www.pandasthumb.org/ group blog.

Does anyone know if there’s a free electronic copy of Moore’s _Principia Ethica_ online anywhere? It should be out of copyright, so there’d be no legal reason it wouldn’t be posted, but maybe no one thought it important enough to convert to electronic form. I wanted to cut and paste some long sections because I got interested in the role of necessity and a priority in Moore’s meta-ethical views, and it would be more convenient to (a) not have to transcribe things and (b) be able to refer readers immediately to the passages I’m talking about.

Henry’s post on “Microsoft as a monopolist”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/001571.html is generating a lively discussion. A side-point popped up that I think is worth discussing. As a libertarian, “Micha Gertner”:http://www.catallarchy.net/blog/cgi-bin/archives/001191.html doesn’t like Henry’s argument that “sometimes (as here) the maintenance of competition requires vigorous state intervention”. Micha asks,

bq. So the solution to a monopoly is … a monopoly? […] Henry’s proposed solution—vigorous state intervention—is no solution at all; it merely sweeps the problem under the rug.

Leaving aside the empirical details — Henry isn’t arguing that the State become a _manufacturer_ of operating systems, Micah equivocates in his use of the word “monopoly” and also understates heroically when he says “the only advantage Microsoft has over Mozilla in this respect is that Internet Explorer comes preinstalled with the Windows operating system” — I just want to focus on Micha’s implication that Henry is arguing in a circle. As it turns out, this kind of argument is a mainstay of social theory. And libertarians are the people _most_ likely to make it in other contexts, as with the claim that the solution to a market failure is more markets. That is, when they acknowledge the reality of market failure at all, free-marketeers often want to argue that the problem isn’t that the market has run amok but that it hasn’t been allowed enough room to work its magic. For example, a market failure in one area — say, negative externalities due to pollution — can be remedied by introducing another market — say, for pollution credits.

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Over at Anggarrgoon, “Claire”:http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/anggarrgoon/2004/03/23#a63 is worried about losing the hidden benefits of graduate school.

bq. I finished my dissertation today. … What excuse will I use now when I try to eat cereal with a fork? or have no clean clothes? or when I eat porridge for dinner? probably that I’m making the most of it before I stop being a grad student and have to be respectable… , dissertations are so useful….

Here’s a true story. When I was reading that a few hours ago, all the talk of food made me kinda hungry. So I headed over to the kitchen, washed a bowl, pulled out the cereal box, and then looked at the clock and realised a bowl of cardboard-flavoured cereal wasn’t what I needed at that time of day. But had I not noticed the clock, I think I’d think that being an academic would have been a pretty good excuse in the circumstances. So provided the job market for Australian linguists is as strong as it should be, Claire will have all the excuses she needs for a long long time.

More seriously, congratulations to Clare on finishing the thesis. I wonder how many people there are so far who have finished a PhD while maintaining an academic blog?

“Invisible Adjunct”:http://www.invisibleadjunct.com/archives/000498.html has announced that she will be leaving academia and giving up her blog. It’s a very considerable loss – her blog has been wry, balanced, and very very smart. It’s become the core of a real community. She’s going to be missed.

“Brad DeLong”:http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2004_archives/000515.html speaks to the costs of Microsoft’s market dominance.

bq. I certainly think that I have been harmed by Microsoft’s bundling Internet Explorer with its Windows operating system. Remember the days when there was not one single dominant browser that came preinstalled on 95% of PCs sold? Back then there was ferocious competition in the browser market, as first a number of competitors and then Netscape and Microsoft worked furiously to upgrade their browsers and add new features to them. … And now? There is no progress in browsers at all. Why should anyone (besides crazed open sourcies) write a new browser? Why should Microsoft spend any money improving its browser?

It’s a point that’s made eloquently in Albert Hirschman’s _Exit, Voice and Loyalty_. Hirschman, who has had far greater influence on political scientists and sociologists than his fellow economists (Brad is an exception) points out that the real costs of monopoly are much greater than the inefficient prices they maintain to extract rents. Monopolies are lazy. They have no reason to respond to their customers – where else, after all, can dissatisfied customers go? Without the threat of exit, monopolies face few incentives to improve their service.

Of course, it’s far harder to model or to measure these effects than it is to measure the inefficiencies caused by monopoly pricing (and even that involves a fair amount of guesswork). Still, they’re the real reason for welcoming the EU’s forthcoming decision to restrain Microsoft’s shenanigans with media player software. If Microsoft has its way, we can expect to have similarly sloppy, bug-ridden media software, with infrequent updates and proprietary standards. This isn’t to say that Microsoft’s competitors have the consumer’s interests at heart: inside every lean, hungry entrepreneur, there’s a bloated monopolist struggling to get out. But without competition, there’s no restraint on firms’ ability to abuse consumers, and sometimes (as here) the maintenance of competition requires vigorous state intervention.

I wish I could have normal recurring dreams like everyone else seems to; falling off buildings, discovering you’re naked in a crowd of people, or even flying. But no. Two or three times a year, unprompted by anything particular in my waking life, I have to re-sit the Leaving Cert. And not just re-sit it. I am sent to a new school half way through the school year, and have to figure out how, this time, I will manage to pass Honours Maths.

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“The Guardian leader today is about Jack Vettriano”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,3604,1175661,00.html “the self-taught Scottish painter of melancholily erotic encounters laced with a subliminal narratives”. Vettriano was the subject of an over-respectful treatment by Melvyn Bragg on British TV the other day. Pointing out the Mr V is now very rich (£500,000) and that the public buys posters of his work in large numbers, the leader-writer asks:

bq. Why is the most popular artist in Britain still shunned by its publicly funded galleries?

To which the answer is, simply and obviously, that his work is kitsch rubbish and that the curators of galleries have an elite function of educating the public and shouldn’t pander to their prejudices. (On this anti-democratic note, I’m off to New York for a week, where I’m sure that neither the Metropolitan nor MOMA have sunk so low as to be hanging Vettriano.)

Most politicians have got the memo that says book-burning is a no-no, but it seems that not all of them realised that this was meant to extend to other forms of written expression as well. It seems an Abercrombie & Fitch t-shirt with the slogan “It’s all relative in West Virginia” (picture below fold) has upset the West Virginia governor Bob Wise (D).

bq. “I write to you today to demand that you immediately remove this item from your stores and your print and online catalogues,” Wise wrote [to Abercrombie & Fitch]. “In addition, these shirts must be destroyed at once to avoid any possibility of resale and proof be given thereof.”(“link”:http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20040322/ap_on_re_us/t_shirt_tussle)

I can see why some people would find the t-shirt offensive. And to be fair the governor is not advocating a law against it. But government officials campaigning for the destruction of written material because of what is written still makes me worried.

Story via “Jonathan Ichikawa”:http://ichikawa.blogspot.com/2004_03_01_ichikawa_archive.html#108000850987197971[1].

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Where I come from, a “Removal” is when the body of a recently deceased person is transported from their house or the Funeral Home to the Church, where it awaits the funeral ceremony. I believe the phrase “The Viewing” is roughly equivalent in the United States. Which is why “Patrick Belton’s words”:http://oxblog.blogspot.com/2004_03_21_oxblog_archive.html#107999854522914337 threw me off for a few moments:

bq. Haaretz has a number of good pieces about the removal this morning of Sheikh Yassin: … Dichter argued against Yassin’s removal … while Europeans considered Yassin’s removal (to my mind, dubiously – has anyone seen a fleshed-out argument?) as a violation of international law …

Now, Patrick also quotes a news report that uses the correct word in this context — i.e., “assassination” — so I’m wondering why he avoids it himself. I can’t think of any good argument to prefer a euphemism like “removal” to “assassination,” or even to “killing.” Is it well-established in this context? Is the unarticulated implication here that actions of this sort cannot count as assassinations because they are carried out by the State? This seems obviously wrong. Better to just “come out and say”:http://www.jnewswire.com/news_archive/04/03/040322_yassin.asp that you thought they were right to kill him, I think, than let a euphemism do the work for you. If not, then should I expect to read about “removal attempts” in future? And what does this new usage imply about companies who carry out furniture removals?

Just finished James Hynes’ “Kings of Infinite Space”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/031245645X/henryfarrell-20, which I found a little disappointing after his very funny “The Lecturer’s Tale”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0312287712/henryfarrell-20. KOISP takes up a failed academic (his downfall is described in a previous Hynes novella) who ends up temping as a typist/technical writer for the Texas state government. There’s some clever, funny commentary along the way, including this description of the protagonist’s previous job working for a school textbook company.

bq. For eight months Paul sat in a little gray cube under harsh fluorescent lighting and composed grammar exercises for grades six through twelve. His job was to accommodate an old workbook by expunging any content that did not meet the textbook guidelines of Texas and California, the company’s two biggest markets. Fundamentalist Texas forbade even the most benign references to the supernatural (the first step towards the Satanic sacrifice of newborns), while nutritionally correct California forbade any references to red meat, white sugar or dairy products (the biochemical causes of racism, sexism and homophobia).

Still, the book just doesn’t have as much venom and verve as _The Lecturer’s Tale_. The setting isn’t as developed; the character sketches aren’t as pointed or as sharp. My very strong impression is that Hynes is much more comfortable describing academia than bureaucracy and office politics – his best jokes still riff off academic debates. Further, the main conceit of the book – downsized penpushers turned feral ghouls, scuttling through the ceilings and walls of office buildings – has been done before, and done better, in William Browning Spencer’s wonderfully droll “Resume with Monsters”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1565049136/henryfarrell-20. If you want to read a funny dead-end-job/comedy/horror mash-up, read Browning Spencer; if you want to read Hynes at his best, buy or borrow _The Lecturer’s Tale_. Unfortunately, _Kings of Infinite Space_ simply isn’t as good as either.

I’ve been reading the Aubrey-Maturin books by Patrick O’Brian and was struck by an episode in Post Captain . The hero, Jack Aubrey has been given command of a ship but is being pursued by his creditors and faces indefinite imprisonment for debt if they catch him. Reaching Portsmouth and his crew, he turns on the bailiffs who have been pursuing him and routs them. Several are knocked down and, in a marvellous twist, Aubrey presses them into service on his ship.

It struck me on reading O’Brian that this kind of thing would happen routinely in a libertarian utopia. On the one hand, bankruptcy and limited liability, the first great pieces of government interference with freedom of contract would be abolished, and imprisonment for debt presumably reintroduced. On the other hand, since most libertarians envisage a minimal state with no real taxing powers but a continuing responsibility for defence, reliance on conscription would be almost inevitable. From the libertarian viewpoint, any form of taxation constitutes slavery, and fairness is not a proper concern of policy, so there can be no particular objection to the press gang as opposed to, say, voluntary recruitment financed by involuntary income taxes.

Not bad. Not my choice though.