That's what The Atlantic said about too-close corporate contracting in academic research four years ago. Now a deal at the center of the criticism, UC-Berkeley's medical research contract with Novartis, is about to get a nearly clean bill of health from an independent review panel.
So is this kind of close collaboration with big companies what Clark Kerr's generation had in mind for the "Multiversity" as member of the military-industrial complex? How close is too close? And how much private profit is too much?
The death of Nobel laureate Francis Crick on Wednesday (and the ensuing press coverage) is a reminder that his and James Watson's discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA in 1953 has a claim to be, in the long-term, the most important event in the history of the 20th Century.
No doubt, however, the news of Dr. Crick's death will be another opportunity to rehash the hoary old legend that his colleague Rosalind Franklin, "the Sylvia Plath of molecular biology", was robbed of the Nobel in an act of sexist duplicity. Jim Holt laid out the real story in the New Yorker a couple of years ago.
Iraq doesn't figure a lot in the Horizon post roll because it's a subject that unfortunately generates more heat than light, and I expect that to continue. But I would think that everyone could agree with ex-marine Owen West that the increasing use of mercenaries by the US Army in place of its own fighting soldiers is a bad idea, for reasons of "morale deflation, gross monetary waste, tactical confusion, and direct competition for a tiny talent pool". Machiavelli had their number five centuries ago:
"Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous; and if one holds his state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor safe; for they are disunited, ambitious and without discipline, unfaithful, valiant before friends, cowardly before enemies; they have neither the fear of God nor fidelity to men, and destruction is deferred only so long as the attack is; for in peace one is robbed by them, and in war by the enemy. The fact is, they have no other attraction or reason for keeping the field than a trifle of stipend, which is not sufficient to make them willing to die for you. They are ready enough to be your soldiers whilst you do not make war, but if war comes they take themselves off or run from the foe; which I should have little trouble to prove, for the ruin of Italy has been caused by nothing else than by resting all her hopes for many years on mercenaries, and although they formerly made some display and appeared valiant amongst themselves, yet when the foreigners came they showed what they were. Thus it was that Charles, King of France, was allowed to seize Italy with chalk in hand; and he who told us that our sins were the cause of it told the truth, but they were not the sins he imagined, but those which I have related. And as they were the sins of princes, it is the princes who have also suffered the penalty.
I wish to demonstrate further the infelicity of these arms. The mercenary captains are either capable men or they are not; if they are, you cannot trust them, because they always aspire to their own greatness, either by oppressing you, who are their master, or others contrary to your intentions; but if the captain is not skilful, you are ruined in the usual way.
And if it be urged that whoever is armed will act in the same way, whether mercenary or not, I reply that when arms have to be resorted to, either by a prince or a republic, then the prince ought to go in person and perform the duty of captain; the republic has to send its citizens, and when one is sent who does not turn out satisfactorily, it ought to recall him, and when one is worthy, to hold him by the laws so that he does not leave the command. And experience has shown princes and republics, single-handed, making the greatest progress, and mercenaries doing nothing except damage; and it is more difficult to bring a republic, armed with its own arms, under the sway of one of its citizens than it is to bring one armed with foreign arms. Rome and Sparta stood for many ages armed and free. The Switzers are completely armed and quite free."
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Fellowship of the Ring, those litigious folks at Warners Brothers, New Line Productions and The Saul Zaentz Company have apprently decided to send off cease-and-desist warnings to domain name users of the word 'Shire', which the companies claim as the intellectual property of the Tolkein franchise. One can only wonder at the apopleptic fits at the WB when they learn about the shire counties of England, Scotland and Wales, not to mention the flagrant breaches of copyright that have been taking place since Anglo-Saxon times.
A French corporate drone has gotten into trouble for publishing a book about how to succeed in business without really trying - indeed, without lifting a finger, not to mention giving a damn.
Meanwhile, in the land that knows that work sucks, such a tome would be superfluous, non?
So Amazon is now asking for credit card details from "reader review" contributors. They say it's to keep writers from anonymously reviewing their own books. But it beats me how that keeps people from e.g. using a friend's name and credit card. Wonder if this move could also have to do with the recent rave reviews of the Reading Mastery Storybook formerly known as My Pet Goat.
Although I subscribe to the Rodney King Can't-We-All-Just-Get-Along school of thought when it comes to diversity, I'm not sure that the happy-clappy optimism of this year's UN Human Development Report really helps all that much. Yes, there's much to be said for debunking the dangerous idea that ethnic groups are fated to perpetual struggle (Robert Kaplan's misleading study of the Balkans may have deterred the Clinton administration from taking a more forthright approach to the Bosnian crisis in the 1990s), but the UN's Pollyanna approach - of assuming that any downside to diversity is just the result of ignorance or misperception - seems just as foolish in the long-run. Playing down the very real particularist tensions in Spain and Belgium, for instance, isn't going to help anyone (since this is a Canadian Cultural Blog perhaps someone who's actually been to Our Lady of the Snows can comment on the situation up north). And as The Economist points out, representing diversity as the key to prosperity requires a certain amount of fact-twisting too. Among the most ethnically homogenous countries in the world today are Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Japan, Ireland and Austria, none of which are exactly economic basket-cases.
Continuing our ongoing discussion of comic books and graphic novels that we love, we now come to the inevitable question of the films that they spawn. Here's one such take on the subject of adapting comics to film from NOW's John Harkness. Harkness is a great reviewer, but I disagree with him about From Hell which is a fine adaptation of a graphic novel...just not the one that Alan Moore wrote.
Alan H. has entered sample posts from this space on the New Blog Showcase, which is an offshoot of the former showcase at the Truth Laid Bear site that's also the home of the Blog Ecosystem. So here's a warm welcome to any visitors who reach us via the Showcase, and encouragement to folks here to check out the other Showcase entries. And of course if any other bloggers besides the much-appreciated Moosifer, and Ben's friend Molly, and, well, me, would like to help Horizon up from its current Slimy Mollusc status, do please give us a link.
Don't know whether this should be filed under politics, literature, or culture - probably all three; but is Tim Noah right, and is John Kerry disturbing dangerous Stalin-era memories by his embrace of Let America Be America Again?
We've already established that happy people are more callous than others. Now it turns out they also make more money and are luckier in love. Urrrrgggh. Why is this not cheering me up?
Horizon doesn't have many incoming links at the moment, so a tip of the hat and a thanks to Moosifer Jones' Grouch, who may unforgiveably describe us as a "Canadian Cultural Blog" but whose support is warmly welcomed nonetheless.
In honour, and the term is used loosely, of changing Thunderbirds into a cod Spy Kids, The Guardian has this quiz on British and European film and TV that have been butchered upon arrival in the Hollywood studio system. I managed to score 8 out of 10.
It's a shame they didn't include the 1996 Fox TV movie of Doctor Who, but you'd expect me to say that. But they also didn't include the 1981 movie version of Pennies From Heaven with Steve Martin, which had Dennis Potter's full weight behind it and it still bastardized the original source material (ditto for the recent film version of The Singing Detective).
It's a shame also that they didn't extend this quiz into American TV programs made from sources across the Atlantic. There's a rich mine of material that could be taken from the terrible remakes of Fawlty Towers, Queer as Folk and Coupling. We'll have the next TV season to determine if the remake of The Office will join this august company.
The New Republic reports on the attempts by some Sons of Confederate Veterans to prevent their organization's slide from harmless genealogical buffery to radical politics.
(Might be appropriate to mention here Tony Horwitz's excellent Confederates in the Attic, one liberal Yankee's surprisingly even-handed, often sympathetic account of Civil War enthusiasts in Dixie).
The Guardian reports on a UK program to instruct parents on teaching childhood games to their children. The goal is apparently to reduce childhood obesity. But, excuse me, doesn't anyone wonder if encouraging hopscotch as official policy might turn it into an obligation and thereby take the fun out of it? I mean, if it was me, I wouldn't mind playing hopscotch, but I'd just want it to be my idea, y'know?
An interesting article about the collaborative possibilities (or, in many cases, limitations) of Internet art and literature.
Sad to hear that Sacha Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head Distel died yesterday aged 71.
I will always associate him with that slightly bizarre 1966 Peter Sarstedt number Where Do You Go To My Lovely:
You live in a fancy apartment off the boulevard St Michel
Where you keep all your Rolling Stones records
And you're friends with Sacha Distel,
Yes you do, yes you do ...
Hot on the heels of the NYT's article about graphic novels comes a Salon interview with one of the masters of the form, the shaggy-haired mad monk Alan Moore.
(Although I wish the interviewer would get on with it rather than trying to impress us with his media studies pensees. And actually, you may just want to skip to the penultimate page where they drop the predictable politics and start talking about lit).
Via archy, who got it from TBogg, who got it from Sisyphus Shrugged, it's...
The 2004 Bulwer-Lytton winners. Read 'em and howl.
....Howl like a prematurely aging shih-tsu with a too-tight red silk bow tied in its forelock by an embarrassingly doting owner, causing it discomfort and an appearance if possible a little more than ordinarily like a mop -- the old-fashioned kind of string mop, none of your modern-day synthetic sponge mops that don't really pick up the lint but just push it around, do you know what I mean, except that it might look a little more like a sheepskin rug, especially when howling with full vigour...
...ah, never mind, go read the website. It's better. Or worse, depending how you look at it.
Jacob Levy writes on the Volokh Conspiracy about a New Yorker article on the gifted & talented summer residential program at Johns Hopkins. I attended the Duke University program in 1989 and 1990, and had the same sort of euphoric experience Levy writes about.
It's only been recently, however, that I realize just how much effect the experience had on my later life, particularly informing my decisions about college. Levy describes it as one of the major mechanisms for my own social mobility, which I think is true for most of the students who attend these programs. We're not talking about people from severly disadvantaged backgrounds, but rather kids from small-towns and public schools whose default path probably leads to the local state college branch. Other options simply never occur to them:
I wouldn't have understood the range of possibilities that were really open to me, and would have had my sights set much, much lower than they were ultimately set. And I do think I would have ended up internalizing (what I perceived to be) the hostility to nerdiness among my peers.
The New Yorker article isn't online, alas.
Death for Five Voices
Sometime in 1995 or earlier, Werner Herzog went to Italy with a small crew to film the old castle of Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, died 1613. While wandering through the palace, filming cracked walls and collapsed ceilings, the sound of bagpipes rings deafeningly through the ruin. Looking for the source, the crew come upon a man moving from room to room with his pipes, standing in corners as if looking for a particularly interesting acoustic effect. When the stunned crew ask the man what he's doing, he says he's plugging up the cracks in the walls with music so the evil spirit can't escape.
So begins Herzog's portrait of Don Carlo Gesualdo, widely considered the best composer of Renaissance madrigals, foreshadower, two centuries before his time, of Wagner, posthumous recipient, as Gesualdo fans like to remind people, of a "pilgrimage" by Stravinsky, murderer and lunatic.
Cinematic portraiture is not new to Herzog, and no one familiar with some of his non-fiction films will be surprised at his astonishing ability to home in on the "ecstatic detail" in any situation, presenting whatever he finds seemingly unvarnished and in all its bizarre glory, something especially impressive when the subject of his film has been dead for centuries. Unlike earlier work in the genre, such as Little Dieter Needs to Fly and Wings of Hope, Herzog can only approach his subject obliquely (or, let's say, more obliquely than usual), and this makes it all the more astonishing that he and his team recognized and incorporated such details as, for instance, the eerie symbolism of a very large dog play-biting a very small puppy before panning up to show the town palace in which Gesualdo murdered his wife and her lover in 1590.
Perhaps on account of this being a portrait of someone dead for centuries (a first for him, as far as I know) Herzog's two great skills are here sharper and more impressive than ever. Apart from having eyes in the back of his head, he seems immune to the clouding effect of superficial relevance. To Herzog anything that happens while touring the Prince's ruined castle or filming a consort in performance might be the way to a truer understanding (or at least a truer representation) of his subject, and his instinct for this is unfailing. This makes him unique among "documentary" filmmakers and certainly one of the greatest.
If I seem to have just said that Herzog's great strength in non-fiction is his complete disregard for relevance (as normally construed), you have read me right. In a wider sense, Herzog has little regard for facts in general. Death for Five Voices is as much interested in the stories about Gesualdo as in the facts as we know them, and Herzog seems to deliberately contrast bland interviews with Gesualdo experts with interviews of local chefs, doormen, janitors, and so on. Most of the experts seem to be American or English for some reason, and have an annoying tendency to read from their notes as if lecturing on camera, something Herzog surely was careful to catch within his frame where most filmmakers would not.
Much more interesting are his interviews with the people he randomly meets, and with various local experts. In one of the best scenes of the movie, Herzog interviews a chef in his kitchen with his wife. Herzog has given the man a copy of the menu for Gesualdo's wedding the night before, and the man excitedly talks about the extravagance and scale of the party while his wife, appalled at her husband's enthusiasm, keeps exclaiming in exasperated tones that Gesualdo was a devil. It's hard not to feel, as Herzog seems to, that these people, regardless of how unreliable or exaggerated their stories might be, are in some sense telling the truth where the lecturers are not.
Speaking of frivolous lawsuits, here's an amusing one from the ATLA website.
In 1998, Enterprise Rent-A-Car filed lawsuits against Rent-A-Wreck of America (a tiny rental company) and Hertz Corp. and threatened to file lawsuits against several other car-rental companies who use the phrase "pick you up," claiming that "We'll pick you up" is Enterprise's slogan. While those suits were pending, Advantage Rent-a-Car counter-sued Enterprise, claiming that Advantage had used the phrase "we'll pick you up" long before Enterprise did. Enterprise argued in its lawsuits that the phrase means more than "we'll give you a ride"; it means "we'll pick up your spirits." Competitors said that there was no other way to say "we'll give you a ride." Enterprise attorney Rudolph Telscher said that "we'll decide in the courtroom who is correct here."
Talk about activist judges.
OK, so what's all this about? No doubt 'Fair and Balanced' is a running joke, but surely the plaintiffs' lawyers must have warned them that this is a non-starter. Are they just grandstanding? Guys, do we really need more frivolous lawsuits in a political year which is already embarrassingly jejune?
Even the absence of foxes doesn't seem to deter them. I guess everyone enjoys a chance for dressing up.
I don't know if Martha still considers such topics verboten, but the 60th anniversary of the July 20 bomb plot seems worth recording.
It's curious to consider how world history might have turned out if von Stauffenberg had been successful. (My guess: not very differently).
No kidding: it's fine with Wal-Marts for RV campers to park overnight in their lots. But that's not fine with some town officials in California. And, apparently, only in California. Says one camper, "California is a profitable state, and the feeling is that you should have to pay for everything."
If Gaddafi is going to buy Crystal Palace, how about the Mullahs making a bid for the Dallas Cowboys? (Or 'The Great Satan's Team' as they're more popularly known).
My own professional organization has its moments, but I don't think anyone else quite emulates the embattled solipsism of the Modern Language Association.
From Christianity Today comes this fascinating review by Philip Jenkins of a new book on the history of religion and eugenics in the U.S. He points out that some of the implications of eugenics were predicted by Chesterton:
By far the most systematic critique can be found in G. K. Chesterton's Eugenics and Other Evils (1922), almost every line of which clamors for quotation. Chesterton not only demolished the evidence offered to support the new pseudo-science but also brilliantly analyzed its policy consequences. He shrewdly warned how the rhetoric of therapy and social hygiene in practice permitted total discretion to bureaucrats and administrators, eliminating traditional rights, and placing society under an "anarchy from above." Let no one say that the totalitarian appropriation of eugenics came as a complete surprise.
For just about any Canadian around the age of 30 or so, an important cultural touchstone was Hinterland Who's Who, a series of one minute public service announcements from the Canadian Wildlife Service. Critic Geoff Pevere explains its appeal in his book Mondo Canuck: A Canadian Pop Culture Odyssey:
Each one minute spot opened with the Hinterland Who's Who logo and a distinctive phrase of music--a doleful flute melody that, for most Canadians over 30, is as recognizable as the theme to Hockey Night In Canada
Then, in footage shot by naturalists, we'd see our best-known critters just chillin' on their won turf...In Hinterland's early years...was narrated by John Livingston, a guy who redefined the term "leisurely pace." His languid, mellow tones practically lulled the viewer to sleep as he shared pearls of wisdom like "with all the wood-cutting the beaver has to do, it's fortunate that his incisor teeth never stop growing"
Truly, Hinterland Who's Who could make a minute seem like an hour. So how have these mind-numbingly boring spots stayed on the air for more than 30 years? Simple, Hinterland has sold nature to us in a modest, distinctly Canadian way: no flashy effects, no snappy background music under Livingston's narration and (god forbid) no rapid-fire editing to liven up the pace.
I grew up with these, and when people want to know how Canadians are the way they are, I point people to these spots.
Now that we have the Hate Amendment to neatly complement Hate America, can a Hymn of Hate be that far away?
"You we will hate with a lasting hate,
We will never forego our hate,
Hate by water and hate by land,
Hate of the head and hate of the hand,
Hate of the hammer and hate of the crown,
Hate of seventy millions choking down.
We love as one, we hate as one,
We have one foe and one alone--
ENGLAND!"
Unfortunately, the passion of this message was somewhat dissipated by the fact that British soldiers picked up the lyrics and liked to sing along to it as well. There's a point, an easily reached point, at which overuse of hate becomes comedic.
People, it's an ugly word. It attributes motives that aren't usually there and adds nothing to collective understanding. It has its place. But it also has its more common misplace. Let's not write Hasslieds.
There's a Slashdot item s'morning suggesting some U.S. tech jobs may move north to Canada instead of overseas -- offshoring being logistically more awkward than, whaddayasay, "off-bordering"? (I guess, among other things, that would be taking advantage of Canadian national health coverage to avoid paying benefits. But is the Canadian standard of living really different? Graeme, how big is your fridge?)
The other day J. had this caper-movie idea about a U.S. programmer who follows his own offshored job to India with resulting cultural confusions, unexpected friendships, and other trappings of the "Man Goes On Journey" four-word plot. I guess the story might not be as dramatic if the guy moved to Canada but we could picture him outskated by little old ladies at an ice rink or something....
So who else will own up to reading comics, erm, graphic novels? I wouldn't call myself anything more than a dabbler in the genre, but I was a 2000AD and Warlord fan in my fading youth, and since then I've read Maus, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (much better than the lousy movie), From Hell (ditto), Berlin, The Adventures of Luther Arkwright, and I mean to get round to Watchmen and V for Vendetta one of these days. So is the NYT right? Have we seen the future, and is it Peanuts?
Anyone else taken the Red vs Blue test at Slate yet? My survey came out disappointingly middle-of-the-road, though I think that was the result of extremes cancelling one another out rather than genuine moderation. The problem with surveys such as these, of course, is that they test knowledge rather than temperament: I just happen to know when Rush Limbaugh broadcasts, for instance, even though I've never heard him on the radio once (just to deflate my smarty-pants, I should admit that I had no idea which colleges were in the Big 12 or who Larry Kramer was). I wonder how you'd really test something like this? Parachute the examinee into a NASCAR stadium and see how they manage?
The Guardian has a feature posted today about the increasing UK popularity of what they call "The Big American Fridge."
Which raises a number of questions, including whether UK and U.S. food preparation habits are really so very divergent any more; what counts as "big" in this writer's mind; whether my fridge is "big" by the said standard; and in fact what general mental picture a Guardian editor (or, for that matter, Telegraph reader) is likely to form of a typical U.S. household's amenities. Are UK cultural commentators just tempted to think that everyone in the U.S. lives like the people on our television programs? Or do we really still live larger over here?
I've been trying to learn the old German handwriting called Suetterlin lately, and have stumbled across an interesting bit of history here. Apparently Fraktur was moribund until its revival by the Nazis as a sort of official font:
Antiqua and Latin script were declared “Un-German” and “non-Aryan.” Only Fraktur and Gothic typefaces were to be considered "German."
They ran into problems, however, when nobody in occupied Europe could read anything a German wrote.
In 1941 however, Hitler ordered a complete reversal of existing policy and issued a curious decree, declaring Fraktur and Kurrent to be of “Jewish origin” and therefore taboo.
The nazi propaganda machine was charged with building public support for the decision, but quite apparently it choked on this particular bit of nazi reasoning. No mention of the order is made in the official newspapers for the following six months. At the start of the new school year, a more plausible reason was found, and the Reichsminister for Education touted the new policy as the creation of new standard script, better suited as a base for an individual handwriting.
It seems to me that it would be really hard for a regime to succeed in a historical rewrite like this since every time a German signed his name, Judenlettern came out.
S'true - but far from being a flip-flopper, 'the Diddler' had an unfortunate propensity for holding onto the ball far too long, according to his former coach (shades of Becks!). So who'd you rather vote for this November, red-blooded American males: a varsity champion or, ahem, a cheerleader?
(A nod to Barb MacDonald for this and the McGreevey-hooker-blackmail bizarreness below).
"NJ Politician Indicted on Corruption Charges" is supposed to be one of those eternally reusable headlines (like "Violence in Middle East" and "Canadian Makes Sensible Proposal"), but this is too weird even for us ex Garden-Staters.
July 14, 1789 (Tuesday). "My name is J.M. Humbert, and I am a native of Langres, working and living in Paris, at M. Belliard's watchmaker to the king, rue du Hurepoix.
I went to the district of St-Andres-des-Arts on Monday morning 13 July with the rest of the citizens, and patrolled the streets with them all day and night, armed with swords, the district having no firearms or only a few. Overcome with weariness and lack of food and sleep, I left the district at six in the morning. I learned during the course of the morning that arms for the various districts were being distributed at the Invalides. I promptly went back to inform the garde bourgeoise of St-Andres-des-Arts.
We reached the Invalides at about two o'clock. I followed the crowd, to get to the cellar where the arms were kept. On the staircase leading to the cellar, seeing a man armed with two muskets, I took one from him. Armed with my gun I then set off for my own district. As I learned on the way that they were handing out powder at the Hotel de Ville I hurried thither, and was given about a quarter of a pound, but they gave me no shot, saying they had none.
As I left the Hotel de Ville I heard someone say that the Bastille was being besieged ...
My regret at having no shot prompted an idea which I immediately carried out, namely to buy some small nails, which I got from the grocer's at the Coin du Roi, Place de Greve. There I prepared and greased my gun and immediately set off for the Bastille, loading my gun as I went.
It was about half-past-three. The first bridge had been lowered, and the chains cut; but the portcullis barred the way; people were trying to bring in some cannon which had previously been dismantled.
I crossed over by the small bridge and from the further side helped to bring in the two guns. When they had been set up on their gun-carriages again, everybody with one accord drew up in rows of five or six, and I found myself in the front rank. The cannons were then levelled: the bronze gun at the large drawbridge and small iron one, inlaid with silver, at the small bridge.
It was decided to start the attack with musket fire. We each fired half a dozen shots. Then a paper was thrust through an oval gap a few inches across; we ceased fire; one of us went to fetch a plank which was laid on the parapet to enable us to go and collect the paper. One man started out along it, but just as he was about to take the paper, he was killed by a shot and fell into the moat. Another man, carrying a flag, immediately dropped his flag and went to fetch the paper, which was then read out loudly and clearly, so everyone could hear. This message, which offered capitulation, proving unsatisfactory, we decided to fire the gun; everyone stood aside to let the cannon ball pass.
Just as we were about to fire, the small drawbridge was lowered; it was promptly filled by a crowd of people, of whom I was the tenth. We found the gate beside the drawbridge closed; after a couple of minutes an invalide [veteran] came to open it, and asked what we wanted: Give up the Bastille, I replied, as did everyone else: then he let us in. My first concern was to call for the bridge to be lowered; this was done.
Then I entered the main courtyard (I was about eighth or tenth). I happened to glance at a staircase on my left, and I saw three citizens who had gone up five or six steps and were hurrying down again. I immediately rushed over to the staircase to help the citizens, whom I assumed to have been driven back. I rapidly climbed up to the keep, without noticing that nobody was following me; I reached the top of the stairs without meeting anyone, either. In the keep I found a Swiss soldier squatting down with his back to me; I aimed my rifle at him, shouting: lay down your arms; he turned around in surprise, and laid down his weapons, saying: 'Comrade, don't kill me, I'm for the Third Estate and I will defend you to the last drop of my blood; you know I'm obliged to do my job; but I haven't fired.'
Immediately afterwards I went to the cannon that stood just above the drawbridge of the Bastille, in order to push it off its gun-carriage and render it unusable. But as I stood for this purpose with my shoulder under the mouth of the cannon, someone in the vincinity fired at me, and the bullet pierced my coat and waistcoat and wounded me in the neck; I fell down senseless. When I recovered from my swoon I found myself very weak and decided to go downstairs; people made way for me on seeing my blood and my wound.
On the way to the Bastille kitchens I met an army surgeon, who urged me to show him my wound; when he had examined the place, he told me that I had a bullet in my neck which he could not extract by himself, and persuaded me to go to a hospital to get it seen to. On my way there I met someone who had just been to the Minimes monastery to have a sprained wrist attended to. He immediately took me to the Minimes, where they readily attended to my wound. No bullet was found in it."
Nearly a hundred people are killed in the taking of the Bastille, mostly local artisans acting as members of the National Guard. Half a dozen prisoners are released, two of whom are manifestly insane. The prison governor, de Launay, is butchered by the mob despite attempts by the Guard to protect his person.
The economist interviewed in the Walrus article below points out that MMORPGs present a rare case of markets being born. While he's obviously right, we see a sort of market creation whenever the government limits production of something, but allows the remaining production rights to be traded. The new pollution credit system might be a good example of this.
I've been wondering about what happens when these virtual markets disappear. A plant that has bought the right to dump X many tons of nastiness into the atmosphere will lose their investment with the law's repeal just as surely as a gamer who's paid $50 for a magic wand will lose their wand if the game site goes out of business. When this happens, the investor will certainly feel cheated, but do they deserve any compensation?
This is the big question posed by the tobacco quota buyout recently passed by the House and now in committee. The end of the price stabilization program will force large numbers of farmers out of business, though it will allow other farmers in other parts of the country to enter or increase production. It will also cut off a source of income from quota owners who rent out their right to grow. Some of these owners are elderly rural farmers who have retired, some are descendants of those farmers, and some are people wholly unassociated with farming, who have purchased quota rights as investments.
Do any of these folks deserve compensation? If so, from whom? Opinions seem to vary a lot.
July 13, 1789 (Monday). Orders to send in the troops to Paris have been countermanded, the king having lost his nerve in the face on the weekend's disturbances. The National Guard is being formed to protect Paris from further royalist counterrevolution.
The radical newspaper Les Revolutions de Paris:
"This morning, 13 July, at 9 o'clock, the tocsin was rung to assemble the bourgeoisie. Citizens of all ranks and ages able to carry arms answered the call and reported to their districts. Calm has returned to the capital tonight; except for a few arrests made by the garde bourgeois."
---------
The British Ambassador, Lord Dorset, to the Foreign Office:
"Very early on Monday morning the St-Lazare monastery was forced [by the citizenry], in which, besides a considerable quantity of corn, were found arms and ammunition. Now a general consternation was seen throughout the town; all shops were shut; all public and private work at a standstill and scarcely a person to be seen in the streets excepting the garde bourgeois, a temporary police for the protection of private property."
A short series of readings to celebrate Bastille Day. Unless noted, all are taken from The French Revolution: Voices from a Momentous Epoch 1789-1795 (eds. Richard Cobb and Colin Jones).
July 12, 1789 (Sunday). M. Necker, the king's popular minister, was dismissed on Saturday afternoon, leading the way, it seems, for a royalist counterattack against the defiant Third Estate of the Estates General (now calling itself The National Assembly). Troops are said to be descending on Paris; the city's population is stirring.
Camille Desmoulins to his father:
"Paris was aghast at the dismissal of M. Necker; no-one would take up arms in spite of my efforts to galvanize people into action. About three o'clock I went to the Palais-Royal; I was deploring our lack of courage to a group of people when three young men came by, holding hands and shouting Aux armes! I joined them, my enthusiasm quite obvious; I was surrounded and pressed to climb up on a table: there were immediately six thousand people around me.
I was bursting with hundreds of ideas, and spoke without thought: 'Aux armes', I cried, 'Aux armes! Let us all wear cockades'. I grabbed a ribbon and pinned it to my hat. My actions spread like wildfire! Sound of the tumult reached the camp; the Cravates, the Swiss, the Dragoons, the Royal-Allemand all arrived. The prince Lambesc, heading the latter, entered the Tuileries on horseback. He personally cut down an unarmed Garde Francais with his sword, and knocked over women and children. The crowd became wild with anger. And then there was a single cry across Paris: Aux armes!"
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"It is said that on 12 July, the duc de Liancourt having gone to Versailles to report to the King on the disturbances in Paris, was asked by him: 'So, this is a revolt?' to which the duke replied, 'No Sire, this is a revolution!'"
The Walrus, Canada's answer to Harper's, has an article on the economy inside (and outside) the world of online role playing games such as EverQuest and The Sims. It's a fascinating account of how capitalism has taken root even in the most utopian and egalitarian of fictional scenarios.
Mad Cow hairspray.
Yes, it is apparently a real possibility -- well, um, not the '70s TV part -- but, really, the FDA plans to publish new regs on Wednesday to keep prions out of cosmetics. And all that "protein shampoo" I've poured on my head.... Hm. Maybe that explains the bad taste of this post...
Graeme Burk writes:
In what must be the oddest move CBS has made since allowing After MASH to air, tonight--at the height of Fahrenheit 9/11 mania-- sees the repeat of this episode of the military/courtroom drama JAG:
"People v. SecNav"
When the International Criminal Court in The Hague charges the Secretary of the Navy with war crimes and Harm and Mac are assigned to defend him. Meanwhile, Bud is forced to fly home in the middle of the trial when his son goes missing.
Yes, that's right two fictitious lawyers take on a nasty French judge with the fate of the US at stake. And if they don't win because of Dean Stockwell's pretty speech about protecting democracy then the Marine guard who takes a bullet from an extremist probably does the trick.
I swear I am not making this up.
As dopey off-the-cuff remarks go, Richard Riordan's lame attempt at humor was one of the dopier ones, and he probably deserves the embarrassing press he's getting. But wasn't it a good deal more offensive for Assemblyman Mervyn Dymally to try to play the race card without even bothering to check his facts? (After all, a little girl with an Egyptian name must be black, mustn't she?)
I think the mother has been the most sensible one in this sorry little fracas.
Since the new King Arthur movie sounds like a clunker, skip the multiplex this weekend and return to Mark Twain's Victorian Camelot, with its reassuring nineteenth-century faith in congenital democracy:
"There it was, you see. A man is a man, at bottom. Whole ages of abuse and oppression cannot crush the manhood clear out of him. Whoever thinks it a mistake is himself mistaken. Yes, there is plenty good enough material for a republic in the most degraded people that ever existed -- even the Russians; plenty of manhood in them -- even in the Germans -- if one could but force it out of its timid and suspicious privacy, to overthrow and trample in the mud any throne that ever was set up and any nobility that ever supported it. We should see certain things yet, let us hope and believe. First, a modified monarchy, till Arthur's days were done, then the destruction of the throne, nobility abolished, every member of it bound out to some useful trade, universal suffrage instituted, and the whole government placed in the hands of the men and women of the nation there to remain. Yes, there was no occasion to give up my dream yet a while."
Michael Moore Lies Again in New Movie
Randy Joobstern, the Gaffer on the crew of Michael Moore's new movie, Fahrenheit 9/11, couldn't believe his eyes when he sat down on opening night to watch the final cut.
"I was so excited," said Joobstern in an exclusive interview, "I really believed in Michael Moore and this movie, I really wanted to stick one to George W., who I, like all good liberals, thought was only slightly better than Satan himself."
But then the credits rolled, and his political life took an abrupt turn.
"They misspelled my name," said an emotional Joobstern from his office on Tuesday, "I just couldn't believe it. Right there on screen, Michael Moore misspelled my name and lied to the citizens of this country. I used to hate Bush as much as the next guy, but no person of conscience could condone such dishonesty."
Mr. Moore's former "Gaffer" isn't the only one surprised by what some are calling Moore's "credibility gap".
Brian Zorak, a syndicated columnist famous for having once claimed that Clinton "maybe wasn't so bad after all", has harsh criticism for Moore's characterization of President Bush's "working vacations", which reportedly occupied 42% of the President's first eight months in office.
"Michael Moore is once again playing fast and loose with the facts. The President actually spent 41.3% of his time in Texas," he said.
"Sure, Bush was on his ranch for almost half of that first eight months of his presidency," said Mr. Zorak, "but what Moore doesn't tell you is that Tony Blair visited the president at one point and they shot tin cans off the back porch together. Nor does Michael Moore want you to know that Charleton Heston approves of Bush's schedule and believes that a healthy life/work balance is essential to good governance."
Michael Moore, whose career was jump-started by "Roger and Me", a little known comedy about small town life, has also been criticized for calling Osama bin Laden sexy.
"I understand some people like beards," said Moore earlier this year, in front of a shocked audience at the annual meeting of the National Association of Barbers.
Has anyone here read George Packer's Blood of the Liberals? I'm not done reading it but there's a lot in it I'd enjoy discussing. Anyone got comments on it?
Further evidence, sort of, that as Alan H. puts it, "happy people are meaner":
Last fall, researchers at the National Center for Children in Poverty found that believing life is fair leads to believing other people deserve whatever they get. Unremarkable, put that way. But the executive summary puts it another way:
The National Center for Children in Poverty’s innovative Vignette Study tested public opinion toward government assistance by creating a female subject whose description randomly varied 11 characteristics, including whether she works or receives welfare, whether she attends school, whether she is looking for a job, and whether she sometimes skips a meal so that her family can eat. In all cases, this subject was described as the mother of two children.Respondents with a strong Belief in a Just World find women less deserving the more they act responsibly or make efforts to improve their situation.
Respondents with a weak Belief in a Just World find women more deserving the more they make an effort to improve their situation.There you have it: Pollyanna easily turns into Scrooge.The results suggest that the belief system is challenged for people with a strong Belief in a Just World when they are presented with women who make efforts to improve their situation but still can’t get ahead. In order to protect their belief system, people with a strong Belief in a Just World will devalue and blame the victim.
The "full" study text (in PDF) seems like a too-narrow summary but it does have a pretty striking graph with the Pollyannas' sympathy declining as the non-Pollyannas' sympathy increased.
The study rated subjects' "Belief in a Just World" by their responses to these statements:
- I am confident that justice always prevails over injustice
- I am convinced, in the long run people will be compensated for injustices.
- I believe that, by and large, people get what they fairly deserve.
- I think basically the world is a just place.
- I firmly believe that injustices in all areas of life (e.g. professional, family, politics) are the exception rather than the rule.
- I think people try to be fair when making important decisions.
So was the study tautological? Maybe yes. But if so, it used social science to make an interesting philosophical point that's worth considering by itself.
The Allport household has been laid up with a non-specific virus over the holiday weekend (bah), so it seems appropriate to revisit this 1999 nightmare about the rise of superbugs. It's worth remembering that, when it comes to biological warfare, the most dangerous Weapons of Mass Destruction are still in the hands of Mother Nature.
Via the UK Guardian, here's y/our chance to write a 400-word short story and win a McSweeney's subscription plus a Dave Eggers First Edition. (I'm writing this less than two miles from Eggers' Valencia St. clubhouse thanks to a website eight time zones away. What a world.)
Following up on the article on decision markets which Alan linked to recently, I thought I'd poke around the Iowa Electronic Markets system which featured prominently there.
The Markets are "real-money futures markets in which contract payoffs depend on economic and political events such as elections". The market which follows presidential elections is reportedly often more accurate than normal polls.
On the site there is a fascinating article (in pdf format) on the project which points out the following differences between the Iowa market and a normal election poll:
Polls ask the question, "If the election were being held today, do you think you would vote for the Democratic candidate or the Republican candidate?" They rely on a representative sample of likely voters, truthful responses to poll questions, and classical statistics to arrive at their prediction of election outcomes. In the Iowa Markets, traders receive an explicit financial reward tied to correctly answering the question, "Who will everyone vote for on election day?" Traders are not a representative sample of likely voters; they are overwhelmingly male, well-educated, high income, and young (the average age is close to 30). In fact, we do not require our traders to be eligible to vote in the election.
Now that is fascinating stuff.
So...assuming there is one crucial factor in making this market fairly accurate, which one would you bet on?
I don't know if these are commonly read or hidden gems, but I recommend to everyone the Ask the Pilot columns written by Patrick Smith for Salon. Even if you're not all that bothered about aviation (or don't think you are), it's surprising just how interesting they can be.
"...But to seek membership in an institution is death to a writer, particularly one with a penchant for... representing 'the fracture and splinter in her characters' comprehension of the world.'..."
That's in a Nation review of Joan Didion's new California book. Writerly ghosts familiar to present company are hovering all through this review. Has anyone read the book yet?
Fans of British spy drama have been treated very well lately. First the complete Sandbaggers was recently released on DVD, one of the very best spy things ever made and really something more of a gritty "spy procedural" than a standard spy drama, which puts the whole series, so far as I know, firmly in its own lonely category in the history of television.
At the end of March, just about the time I finished greedily watching all three seasons of The Sandbaggers, someone released Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, one of the finest adaptations of one of the finest works of "literary" spy fiction ever made. The even better sequel, Smiley's People, is due to be released in August.
Both series are saturated with the melancholy atmosphere that is instantly recognizable to anyone who remembers the books, but neither lays it on too thick, and that of itself seems to be more and more rare these days. I hesitate even to mention Alec Guinness; descriptions of someone so monumentally good are inevitably trite. Supposedly, John le Carre stopped writing about George Smiley because, after these series, he kept seeing Alec Guinness when he tried to imagine Smiley.
Visually, Tinker has almost a BBC noir about it, alternating from high key night streets and safe houses to drably lit, smoky little offices. Key scenes of interrogation often have a light source just within the frame, making the viewer involuntarily squint (cf. Kubrick's The Killing). The camera stays put and the editing is languid, which not only helps convey the melancholic flavor of the material but must have also saved the project some money. The refusal to edit at times also gives an otherwise ordinary sequence its own little kind of mystery and incidental tension as the viewer is left half-consciously perturbed because they can't see what they know, by normal filmic conventions, they ought to see.*
John Irvin directed and we clearly have him to thank, along with his editor and cinematographer, for Tinker's magnificent visual artistry. Irvin, incidentally, is one of many (often extraordinarily talented) directors of this generation who got their start in British TV and ended up falling onto the cogs of Hollywood. Others include the genius Mick Jackson, who did such exquisite work on A Very British Coup and "Connections" before stooping to make L.A. Story, and, on the other hand, the mediocre Ridley Scott, whose early films unfortunately won him the budgets he needed to foist idiocies like Black Rain on the public.
Irvin himself went on to do such forgotten feature films as City of Industry, remembered, if remembered at all, largely by adolescent boys for showing Lucy Liu nude, and the silly Ghost Story, interesting perhaps only because it has one of Fred Astaire's last performances.
Still, with a handfull of exceptions, even the best directors are notoriously uneven. Irvin deserves to be famous for his work on Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, and he should be given projects that make more of his extraordinary talent.
* A famous example of this strategy is illustrated in a story told by William Fraker, the cinematographer of Rosemary's Baby, discussed in an old article of mine written for Vox Clamantis.
A rumination on Franklin Foer's new book about soccer and globalization. I've seen some cockamamy explanations for the US antipathy towards the world's game, but Jack Kemp's suggestion that American football (that pampered welfare queen) is more 'capitalistic' than red-in-tooth-'n'-claw international soccer is particularly absurd and/or sad.