Politics, political economy & culchah

Hacking ‘widely discussed’ at NoW - FT.com

2011-08-16T10:22:00.000-05:00

This only works using gmail. Hacking ‘widely discussed’ at NoW - FT.com

Don’t Let Fiscal Brakes Stall Global Recovery

2011-08-16T07:48:00.001-05:00

Christine Lagarde warns against overly swift tightening. In today's FT: Don’t Let Fiscal Brakes Stall Global Recovery : "...support for growth in the near term is vital to the credibility of any agreement on consolidation. After all, who will believe that commitments to cuts are going to survive a lengthy stagnation with prolonged high unemployment and social dissatisfaction?"

Trade data mapped

2011-07-27T15:55:00.000-05:00

Excellent source of visual comparative trading data here: WTO - Statistics - Trade and tariff indicators

Regulators must risk more, and intervene less | The A-List | Must-read views on today’s top news stories – FT.com – FT.com

2011-07-27T13:35:00.000-05:00

The Maestro just won't shut up. Regulators must risk more, and intervene less | The A-List | Must-read views on today’s top news stories – FT.com – FT.com

WTO | 2011 Press Releases - Spain offers EUR 350,000 to the WTO training programme for developing countries - Press/636

2011-07-27T11:35:00.000-05:00

WTO | 2011 Press Releases - Spain offers EUR 350,000 to the WTO training programme for developing countries - Press/636

Public Information Notice: IMF Executive Board Concludes 2011 Article IV Consultation with France

2011-07-27T10:28:00.000-05:00

Public Information Notice: IMF Executive Board Concludes 2011 Article IV Consultation with France

Testing email posting

2011-07-27T10:08:00.001-05:00

Testing again.

--
For course information: https://sites.google.com/a/temple.edu/alistair-q-howard/
Dr. Alistair (Alix) Howard,
Associate Professor (Instructional)
World Societies General Education Area Coordinator
Temple University, Political Science Dep't,
Gladfelter Hall 424, 1115 West Berks Street
Philadelphia PA 19122-6089

alistair@temple.edu Cell: 215 882-0177
https://sites.google.com/a/temple.edu/alistair-q-howard/
Amplify: http://alistairqhoward.amplify.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AlistairQHoward (for students)
Tagging: http://delicious.com/aqhoward (for students, etc)

Testing

2011-07-27T09:58:00.001-05:00

Testing.

2011-06-15T11:56:00.001-05:00

Testing 1234 http://amplify.com/u/a158oc

Testing Blogger PPE&C

2011-06-15T11:54:00.001-05:00

Testing 1234

Keynes v. Hayek

2010-02-11T20:34:00.004-05:00

Thanks to one of my honors students who sent me this video link.

It's Keynes v. Hayek in rap mode. Their debate is all the more interesting today at a time when conservative elites continue to follow Hayek but the capitalists are all Keynesians...

This just goes to show (contra Keynes) that ideology counts for nothing when accumulation is at stake. The British Tories don't seem to have figured this out anymore than the Cato and Heritage people in the States. The difference is the Tories have the opportunity to really do some damage with their ridiculous notions of cutting spending at the worst possible moment.

2009-10-25T20:54:00.004-05:00

This evening I enjoyed hearing Elinor Ostrom discuss her work on the 'tragedy of the commons' on NPR's Planet Money podcast. We had talked about this in Development and Globalization. Her contribution to political economy was to show that sometimes people can and do overcome commons problems--even without government regulation. She contrasts this to lessons drawn from the standard micro-economic assumption that we are rational, self-serving and short-termist individuals who are only rarely 'other-regarding' or capable of collective action.

She also talks about how they arrange refrigerator cleaning at her office... And it was especially nice that the interview was played unedited (unlike the fleeting snippets we usually have to put up with on radio). Halfway through Ostrom asks the interviewer to wait while she looks at a deer in her front yard! Oh and she mentions how clever Swiss farmers are...

Another sad death

2009-07-14T11:49:00.000-05:00

Joe “Josh” "JoeCy" Cytrynbaum, 37
Beloved husband of Erin Flynn
Loving father of Rocky Seeger Cytrynbaum
Cherished son of Bryna Cytrynbaum and Solomon “Sonny” (Susan Lee) Cytrynbaum
Devoted brother of Pamela (Jeff Sklansky) Cytrynbaum and Glenna
Cytrynbaum
The Fun Uncle of Leah Sklansky, Lincoln Peters, and Maggie Peters
Fond son in law of Peter and Joan Flynn.

Public Memorial Service Thursday at 4PM Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation
303 Dodge Ave., Evanston.

Memorial donations may be sent in his memory to:

Umoja
Joe Cytrynbaum Memorial Scholarship
Umoja Student Development Corporation
2935 W. Polk St.
Chicago, IL 60612

And to:

Young Chicago Authors
In Memory of Joe Cytrynbaum
1180 N. Milwaukee ave. 2nd Floor
Chicago, IL 60622

Joe, “Josh” Cytrynbaum, of Evanston, an extraordinary Chicago teacher, student advocate and deeply adored father, son, brother and friend, died Saturday at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center in Chicago, after suffering an incredibly rare intra – cerebral hemorrhage. He was 37. He was an assistant professor and Coordinator of Field Education in Northeastern Illinois University’s Social Work Program, a job he started just one year ago. He came to Northeastern from his position as program director for Umoja Student Development Corporation, a not-for-profit organization that works with Chicago’s most challenged high schools to keep students in school, see them successfully graduate high school and prepare them to go on to college.
Joe’s impact on students is reflected in the hundreds of messages and pictures on Facebook from students whose lives were deeply touched and changed by his contagious faith in everyone, his unfathomable enthusiasm, his transcendent empathy and compassion, his unmatched energy and love, his roaring laugh, and his relentless sense of humor.
“Joe made every single person – especially all of his students – feel that no matter what, he had all the time in the world for them, their lives, their stories,” said Lila Leff, Founder and Executive Director of UMOJA, where Joe worked for four and a half years. “We are remembering his laser-beam focus and passion, and his generosity of spirit that allowed him to connect with EVERYBODY, crossing all differences and obstacles. No matter the stress, Joe moved through this world with grace and kindness,” Leff said.
The fast-growing Facebook messages on hundreds of students’ Facebook pages are a testament to Joe’s spirit, impact, and the extraordinary power of his kindness, Leff said. “They’re multiplying by the minute, kids are posting photos with Joe, writing ‘Joe was my guide,’ ‘Joe was my mentor’; ‘Joe was my father figure’…Joe was a moral and creative compass for us, and the world.”
One of his favorite parts of his work at UMOJA was serving as coach and mentor to the students on the “Louder Than A Bomb” team, a group of students who created, wrote and performed spoken-word poetry out of the Young Chicago Authors program. Joe was also on the board of Young Chicago authors. Joe also adored taking groups of high school students to visit colleges and universities all around the country. One of his greatest joys was helping to open the world to students.
He is a 1995 graduate of Northwestern University. He received a master’s degree in social work from Columbia University in New York , and a PhD from the School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania .
Joe’s greatest joy was being with his wife, Erin Flynn, and their astonishing son, Rocky Seeger, who turned 1 July 3.
“He was the best person I ever knew. He had the biggest heart, the sharpest mind, the most encompassing soul ever lent to this earth. He was my baby brother, but I wanted to grow up to be just like him,” said his older sister, Pamela Cytrynbaum, a former Chicago Tribune writer. Survivors include: his wife, Erin Flynn, son Rocky Seeger Cytrynbaum; parents, Bryna Cytrynbaum, Solomon “Sonny” Cytrynbaum and Susan Lee; sisters, Pamela Cytrynbaum and Glenna Cytrynbaum; parents-in-law, Peter and Joan Flynn; brothers in law, Clark Peters and Jeff Sklansky; sister-in-law, Kristin Flynn Peters; nieces, Leah and Maggie; nephew Lincoln; the loud and loving Toronto family; his beloved Evanston crew; friends and comrades from Philly, from New York; hundreds of students from the Umoja family and Northeastern, from whom he found so much inspiration and love.
His memory is a blessing to us all.
Peace

Eulogy for Steven Wells,

2009-07-03T22:54:00.003-05:00

Smokin' Betty's, July 1, 2009, Philadelphia, PA

Steven is well known for his relentless attacks on what HL Mencken called “boobus Americanus.” Many hereabouts were mystified and upset by what he wrote for The Weekly. But as you also know, the lazy and complacent of Philadelphia were not his first targets.

From the early 1980s Steven wrote for one of the three leading British music weeklies. The New Musical Express was a print highlight of our week at a time when information about music was infinitely harder to come by. At our village news-agents we graduated from lemon bon-bons to a weekly dose of pop, punk, and funk. And as we began spending Mum’s child allowance on records and finally on the gigs themselves, Steven’s reviews helped make sense of it all.

This was true even if half the time we had no idea what he was on about. As Susan Williams, he wrote that the audience is essentially the enemy and “must not be allowed to breathe.” But Swells’ importance, to me at least, was that he made us want to find out—to fight back and to breathe free.

He must have known, of course, that he also supplied countless pretentious sixth-formers with our lines in the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s. We parroted freely.

As to what he wrote, much has rightly been said about his humor and his humanity. He fought patriotism, racism, and homophobia at a time when Thatcher and Tebbitt encouraged all three. And of course he refused to believe that the political-economic status quo was good enough.

Some have also remarked on how angry and intimidating he could be.... He was a judgmental bastard.

But the key to understanding his relentless rectitude, is not, as one might think, the fact that he was English. Rather it was his high expectations. He demanded a lot from humanity.

This is related, if I may, to the tension between what dear Katharine and others in the academic world know as structure and agency. Steven understood that the world constrains us: that, as Marx said, we make our world, but do not do so exactly as we please.

We are subject to forces over which we have little control—the dominant racist culture of 1970s Bradford, what our mates do, finance capitalism, or the Radio One DJ Steve Wright. We might, it follows, go along. We might put up with the crap we’re being fed, or worse still reproduce it on stage or on record. We might be wankers.

But Steven, I think, would have agreed with James Baldwin’s comment: “I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly—but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.”

Steven fucking demanded this.

It underpinned his attack on people—musicians or fans, politicians or voters—who can’t be bothered. Like proper punk, he expected us to know or learn our place in history and space, and to change it where we can. We are to be agents despite our structures.

This is both a collective and an individual move. It begins in adolescence, reading the NME or the Philadelphia weekly. It continues in society, whether in a union or a party, whether at a club or in the pub. Whether making music or buying it.

The point for Steven was that those unwilling to make their move needed to be told.

And even at the end he was still feeding the lazy among us lines: as, for example, when he pointed out the remarkable similarity between what Americans call football and dogs making love.

He’ll be missed.

The continuing irrelevance of political science

2009-04-21T11:24:00.005-05:00

Joseph Nye recently published an op-ed pointing out, once again, the irrelevance of mainstream political science to public policy in this country. This sparked an uptick in posts to the Perestroika listserv, which was created some years back to challenge the imperialism of formal theory, econometrics, and theory-driven research in political science. I posted as follows:

I'm all for policy-relevance, but I should think a good start would be to produce material that is relevant and accessible to our students (undergrad, especially non-majors) who need to understand how politics does and could work.

I just despair at the waste of time, energy and paper that is delivered through my door quarterly from the APSA. What the hell do these folks think they're doing? Who do they think they're serving? It's especially offensive for publicly academic institutions to produce work that obscures and mystifies what is , after all, a constitutive human activity.

Easter Sunday: Tolstoy on nature, war, and justice

2009-04-12T20:12:00.002-05:00

On not understanding war:

Can it be that there is not room for all men on this beautiful earth under these immeasurable starry heavens? Can it be possible that in the midst of this entrancing nature feelings of hatred, vengeance, or the desire to exterminate their fellows, can endure in the souls of men? All that is unkind in the hearts of men should, one would think, vanish at contact with Nature--that most direct expression of beauty and goodness.

And, on understanding it:

Who will doubt that in the war...against the mountain-tribes, justice--resulting from a feeling of self-preservation--is on our side? Were it not for this war, what would secure the...territories from robbery, murder and raids by wild and warlike tribes? But consider two private persons. On whose side is the feeling of self-preservation and consequently of justice?

From The Raid, 1952

Creating wealth

2009-02-25T06:42:00.005-05:00

On Monday a student argued that government cannot 'create wealth,' implying that only the private sector can do so. My response was, I think it's fair to say, unfair and not particularly coherent. So, those of us who are interested may want to discuss this further. I'm going to look into what this line--which understandably resonates on the right--means to various scholars. Please feel free to join the conversation.

We hate you guys...but...

2009-02-12T14:51:00.005-05:00

A senior Chinese financial regulator, from today's FT, on whether his government will continue to buy US Treasuries:

Except for US Treasuries, what can you hold? Gold? You don't hold Japanese government bonds or UK bonds. US Treasuries are the safe haven...it is the only noption. We hate you guys. Once you start issuing $1 trillion-$2 trillion...we know the dollar is going to depreciate, so we hate you guys but there's nothing much we can do..."

External shocks and export-led economies

2009-02-12T14:12:00.002-05:00

FT reports Feb 10 on dramatically deteriorating economic conditions in East and South Asia. Months ago many argued that these nations (China, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Indonesia, India) might escape the worse of the global downturn as they'd stored up massive foreign exchange savings over the decade since the 1997 collapse. As is so often the case, however, the key to their prosperity is also key to their impending pain. In this case, it is exports. The collapse in demand for imported goodies in the US and elsewhere (and falling intra-Asian trade in components for goods ultimately exported to the US) constitutes a massive external shock. In Japan, for example, exports in Dec 2008 fell a dramatic 35% on the year. Clyde Prestowitz argues that these countries must abandon their mercantilist emphasis on exports and stimulate their own demand at home. And as for the widely touted developmentalist approach taken by these economies: "The export-led model has outlived its usefulness."

The incentives problem

2009-02-10T12:54:00.002-05:00

Yesterday in class I mentioned a study that showed that introducing extrinsic motivators (ie: rewards, payments of some kind) can discourage learning behaviors based on intrinsic motives, rather than creating greater incentives to learn, as common sense in our market-based world would suggest.

The study was: Edward Deci, "Effects of externally mediated rewards on intrinsic motivation," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 18 (1970) 105-111.

Ken Bain cites the study in his book What the Best College Teachers Do:

"...Deci and his colleagues had two groups of students play with a block construction puzzle called Soma. The subjects were brought to an examination room and asked to solve the puzzle. Each time the examiner would leave the room for eight minutes. The psychologists wanted to know whether and how long the subjects would play with the Soma while they were gone....

One group ofsubjects never got any rewards for solving the puzzle and never lost interest. A second group received money part of the time and lost interest when the compensation ended."

and later...

"Deci and others have performed scores of such experiments...they have consistently found that most extrinsic motivators damage intrinsic motivation."

Conservatism and individualism

2009-02-06T22:09:00.003-05:00

In his blog for The Atlantic, the expat Thatcherite Anglo-Catholic Andrew Sullivan explains the distinction between 'Oakeshottian' conservatism (in the tradition of Burke) and a more ideologically systematic Hayekian conservatism to which neo-liberals and libertarians in today's American conservative movment hew.

This is especially relevant to our ongoing class discussions (and to a midterm question!) about tensions between capitalism and conservatism. Rejecting the rigorous, unyielding defense of private markets that many movement conservatives adopt, Sullivan writes:

"One reason I admire Oakeshott is simply his understanding that the two deepest impulses in Western political thought - the individualist and the collectivist - need each other to keep our polities coherent. He, like me, preferred the individualist, and so my own leanings are toward smaller government, lower taxes, balanced budgets, individual freedom and prudent strength in foreign policy. But I also see when the alternative might be needed. There are times when the government does indeed need to make a big infrastructure investment or beef up its security technology or address an emergent and vital threat to a settled way of life, like climate change or Jihadist terror."

2008-11-15T10:37:00.005-05:00

OECD data, reported in The Economist, confirms the dramatic increase in income inequality since mid-1980s, with New Zealand, Finland and the US seeing the greatest increase (and Germany not far behind). There are a variety of audio-visual resources available at the OECD page announcing the Oct 2008 publication cited by The Economist. I've not read the Report itself yet, but will be interested to see whether data is reported for both pre- and post- transfer income. Growing inequality is a common feature of OECD markets, but some states are intervening more than others to ameliorate these effects.

2008-11-15T10:01:00.004-05:00

The Economist reports that in 2007 190 million migrants sent money across borders to their home countries. The total remittances were $337B, of which $251B went to developing countries.

Printing money? The Fed's nuclear option

2008-11-04T18:12:00.002-05:00

Interesting article from The Economist Nov 1 2008 on how governments will respond to a deepening recession.

As we've said in class, fighting recession is known as 'counter-cyclical' policy because it works against the business cycle (ie: trying to reverse a downturn). Governments use both monetary and fiscal policies to that end.

Conventional monetary policy involves central bank (ie: the Fed) interventions to increase the monetary base by open market operations or interest rate cuts. However, the current financial crisis has broken the link between monetary policy and lending. So, while there's plenty of liquidity, there's not much economically relevant lending going on.

Fiscal policies form another counter-cyclical toolbox. This essentially invovles getting money into the economy through cutting taxes or increasing spending. Since we run a budget deficit, this means borrowing money by issuing Treasury bonds (which, as I've explained in class, are snapped up by Asian investors flush with cash from our WalMart purchases).

But governments can also spend without borrowing...This is the 'nuclear option' mentioned in The Economist. Essentially, this means 'printing money' and it works as follows:

...the government announces a tax rebate and issues bonds to finance it. But instead of selling them to private investors, it lodges them with the central bank in exchange for a deposit. It draws on this account to clear the cheques mailed to taxpayers. This scheme is essentially the same as the proverbial “helicopter drop” of money, but with neater accounting and a less erratic distribution of cash. It bypasses banks and money markets, and puts money directly into people’s pockets.
Monetising a slug of public debt in this way is bound to be inflationary. But by this stage, inflation would be a blessing: an economy where conventional policy tools had failed would suffer from falling prices. A burst of inflation would lift asset prices, ease the weight on debtors (whose real burdens are increased by deflation) and improve public finances. Some central bankers will shudder at the thought. Some, but not all. Ben Bernanke, now the Fed chairman, recommended this course of action to Japan’s policymakers in 2003 (when he was a Fed governor). Indeed, he went further. One way out of a slump, he argued, is for policymakers to commit themselves to a period of catch-up inflation, to break deflationary expectations and heal the wounds from past price falls."

This is the ultimate way out for the US...and it'll help all of you with student loans! But watch out for your falling purchasing power.

Africa Since Independence, Paul Nugent

2008-10-26T16:11:00.004-05:00

Political scientist David Laitin reviews Paul Nugent's Africa Since Independence(2004) in New Left Review May/June 2008. Laitin reports that Nugent steers "between the Scylla and Charybdis" of the major divisions among Africanists (eg: about how important nationalism was to independence, the capitalist vs. socialist development strategies, whether military rule improves on nationalist leadership, and the impact of financial institutions). Laitin's primary criticism of the book is that he misses recent research on the economics of IFI impacts in Africa. He cites Randall Stone, Clark Gibson, Barak Hoffman, and Daniel Berger, etc.

The book is at Paley Library : DT30.5 .N84 2004

Branding young girls

2008-02-01T11:44:00.000-05:00

I studiously avoid advertising, and also have a strong argumentative streak. As a result I'm sometimes apt to quarrel with those who decry how widespread is the commodification of sex (and especially the young female body). I should pay more attention; the BBC reports today that Woolworths has withdrawn sales of its "Lolita" bed for youngsters.

Moreover, BBC reports that this isn't an isolated case:

"In 2005, WH Smiths came under fire for selling youngsters stationery bearing the Playboy bunny - a symbol of the pornography empire.

Prior to that Bhs decided to withdraw its Little Miss Naughty range of padded bras and knickers for pre-teen girls.

Argos, however, defended its range of underwear for girls as young as nine including G-strings and padded bras as products in demand among children."

How much do presidents earn?

2008-01-24T23:05:00.000-05:00

Five months after becoming president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy's salary rose from Euros 101,00 to Euros 240,000. This brought him closer to the norm for largest countries:

US President: Euros 343,000
UK PM: Euros 267,000
Irish Taoiseach: Euros 310,000
German Chancellor: Euros 272,000
Russian President (poor chap): Euros 56,000

FT report, "Sarkozy's salary will double..." 10/31/07

Yoof culchah, UK-style

2008-01-23T16:49:00.000-05:00

Goths apparently still turn heads in the UK:

Dog leash goths 'hounded off bus'

Chain male goth Dani Graves and Tasha Maltby, Picture Ross Parry
A goth who leads his girlfriend around with a dog lead and collar was stopped from getting on a bus amid fears for passenger safety, a bus firm confirmed.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bradford/7204543.stm

Carbon boot-print:--CO2 emissions from trade

2008-01-20T14:49:00.000-05:00

FT reports Tue Jan 15 2008 on the CO2 emissions resulting from different means of shipping 1 tonne a distance of 1 km (data from Network for Transport and the Environment). Container ships beat rail, road, and air. Air transport (by Boeing 747) was worst, at over 550 grammes/km. Heavy trucking road transport stood at 50 gm/km. Rail was much less than this, at approximately 15, with container ships coming in just below. However, the FT also reported research claiming that 60K die each year globaly as result of ships' emissions of sulphates.

Methods: doubt and certainty

2007-06-06T15:43:00.000-05:00

From a letter to The New Yorker (6 Nov 2006, p9) by one Philip Hansten of Port Ludlow, Washington; regarding Chris Hitchens' book on god, but apropos of method more generally:

"...this skill [high-powered rhetorical ability to win arguments] is inimical to reasoned discourse. Those proficient in the art of intellectual bullying need not be well informed or rational to win arguments, so they tend to become intellectually lazy, while those with more pedestrian rhetorical gifts may explore a subject more deeply..."

Mars and venus....

2007-06-05T20:58:00.000-05:00

Worth remembering, from Tony Judt:

...it is no accident that our European allies —for whom the twentieth century was a traumatic catastrophe—are predisposed to accept that cooperation, not combat, is the necessary condition of survival—even at the expense of some formal sovereign autonomy. British military casualties at the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917 alone exceed all US losses in World Wars I and II combined. The French army lost twice the total number of US Vietnam casualties in the course of just six weeks' fighting in 1940. Italy, Poland, Germany, and Russia all lost more soldiers and civilians in World War I—and again in World War II—than the US has lost in all its foreign wars put together (in the Russian case by a factor of ten on both occasions). Such contrasts make quite a difference in how you see the world.

"Is the UN doomed?" New York Review of Books, 2/15/07

Visual humour

2007-03-30T19:03:00.000-05:00

Best of British caroonists, as shown in class.
Steve Bell of the Guardian

Mark Rowson of the Guardian

Peter Brookes at The Times

Galbraith and political scholarship

2007-03-26T07:40:00.000-05:00

I'm finally posting the brief talk I gave at the International Studies Association. The venue was a roundtable honoring John Kenneth Galbraith. As my writing students will observe, this was a theoretical rather than empirical paper, and it was pitched at an audience already familiar with the most important concepts and concerns in American poltiical science. It is something of a call to intellectual arms.

You can read the paper here. I'd welcome any comments.

International comparison tables

2007-03-24T19:27:00.000-05:00

The good folks at Economic Policy Institute have made tables from their annual State of Working America available for download. Chapter 8 of the book compares the United States to other countries. The tables are available here.

Sensible talk about economics

2007-02-02T21:47:00.000-05:00

Students in the political-economy certificate program, and others studying capitalism may be interested--and should find useful-- the web-based journal Post-Autistic Economics Review. The Review publishes short and generally readable articles on heterodox approaches to economics, and on topics of general interst

Recently, for example, John Schmitt and Ben Zipperer contributed an article reviewing comparative international data on various measures of social exclusion and concluded (hardly a surprise!) that the US economy is not, in fact, a good model for European emulation. The data is presented in straightforward fashion and anticipates material we'll be covering in PS 244 later this semester (esp in Pontusson's book).

The article is in issue number 40 and is available online by subscription.

Saturday tunes

2007-01-27T13:25:00.000-05:00

dan le sac v. scroobius pip: Thou shalt always kill
www.myspace.com/lesacvspip

The music so far...

2007-01-27T13:10:00.000-05:00

British Gov't and Politics at Temple's poli sci dep't is off and running. As promised, I'm trying to include at least one musical interlude a week...

The story so far:
Cheeky Girls: Cheeky Song (Touch my Bum), music video
Blur feat. Ken Livingstone: Ernold Same, live at Meltdown Festival, 2000
Gang of Four: Why Theory

Stay tuned...

Accented conversation?

2007-01-01T20:55:00.000-05:00

Amusing and untaxing analysis from Sarah Lyall at nyt:

...As for the dinner parties alluded to in Ms. Paltrow’s reputed quotes, they are indeed different here. For one thing, said Amelia Mendoza, a transplanted New Yorker, London dinner conversation is enhanced by the alcohol that Britons like to swig between remarks. At the end of dinner — which can be later than midnight, even during the week — it is considered a hospitality failure if there aren’t at least as many empty bottles of wine left on the table as there were guests.

“People are more relaxed and they’re not thinking, ‘I’ve got to get home because I’ve got to get up to work,’ ” Mrs. Mendoza said. “It’s looser here; there isn’t that grind.”

Unlike Americans, Britons think it is rude to ask a stranger what he does, in case the answer is “nothing.” They think it is rude to talk about the price of one’s possessions, the cost of one’s house or the angst one feels on account of one’s shrink’s incompetence, not that anyone would admit to having a shrink.

But curiously, they don’t think it is rude to be rude, said Mary Killen, who writes the “Your Problems Solved” column in The Spectator magazine.

“People who are good value do tend to be outrageous and indiscreet and fairly childish,” Ms. Killen said. “In this country, we’re still quite happy behind closed doors to be as offensive as we want.”

That can lead to violent shouting matches over the table, with guests readily contradicting and insulting each other. A similar robustness of exchange — a delight in the quality and originality of the insult — characterizes proceedings in the House of Commons, where debates are as quick and sharp as fencing moves, thrust-lunge-recover, so nimble that Congress seems worthy and dull by comparison. In Britain, prime ministers’ careers can rise and fall on their ability to slash their opponents with the perfect verbal put-down.

“The Brits, as far as I can tell, don’t take themselves as seriously as Americans do,” said Stephen Miller, an American essayist who is the author of “Conversation: A History of a Declining Art” (Yale University Press). But they are serious about conversation itself, treating it as an art form...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/weekinreview/10lyall.html?ex=1323406800&en=c1124c1715a35010&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

2007-01-01T19:41:00.000-05:00

From Financial Times, Dec 28 2006, a brief editorial overview of the ways anti-globalization might lead to a reevaluation of Marx.

The latest surge of globalisation, which is in so many ways reminiscent of the era in which Marx lived, has undoubtedly led to renewed interest in his critique of capitalism. Globalisation may be lifting millions of people out of absolute poverty, but it has also led to startling divergences in relative wealth. How can it be, as a United Nations report recently estimated, that the richest 2 per cent of the world's adult population own more than 50 per cent of global assets while the poorest 50 per cent own only 1 per cent? How can one understand capital without Das Kapital?

"Far from being buried under the rubble of the Berlin Wall, Marx may only now be emerging in his true significance. He could yet become the most influential thinker of the twenty-first century," Francis Wheen, his British biographer, concludes in a recent essay on Das Kapital.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/df276536-9617-11db-9976-0000779e2340.html