Quotulatiousness

December 7, 2010

The economics of Ebenezer Scrooge

Filed under: Books, Britain, Economics, Media — Tags: — Nicholas @ 00:10

Russell D. Longcore looks at the economics underlying Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol:

Next we are introduced to Scrooge’s philosophy on celebrating Christmas. His nephew greets him warmly with a “Merry Christmas!” Scrooge responds:

What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in them through a round dozen of months presented dead against you? If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with “Merry Christmas” on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.

Is he wrong, or is he a prophet? Today, a large percentage of Americans pay for Christmas with their credit cards, borrowing money from the future to pay for today’s luxuries. They work for wages, but American savings rates are near zero, so they are no richer than last year. They trade their irreplaceable time for wages as the years tick off. Where is Scrooge wrong in his assessment of Christmas celebrants?

Next we see an exchange between Scrooge and two do-gooders who come to the office looking for charitable donations.

[. . .]

Let’s pause to learn from this attempt at a shakedown.

The very existence of Christmas… both in the Dickensian era and today… promotes a desire for the giving and receiving of gifts. And that has nothing to do with Jesus. Merchandising is King of Kings in December. With that desire comes the feeling of “Want” described by Gentleman #2., particularly among those who have not. Everyone knows and feels the ubiquitous pressure on everyone to give gifts, even if you cannot afford to do so. Those who do not wish to participate in the expression of so-called “Christian cheer” may not be moved to part with their Abundance to provide the Poor with food, drink and warmth in this particular method of coercion.

As Scrooge reveals, he already supports the institutions that care for the needy. He either gives his own money voluntarily to the debtor’s prisons, the Union workhouses, the Treadmill… or money is exacted from him by taxation for the operations of these institutions. But Gentleman #2 argues that “many can’t go there… some would rather die (than go there). That is a choice made by an individual based upon haughty pride, not true need. Scrooge states that he does not accept the premise offered by #2 that anyone would rather die than go to the poor house, and that he is busy enough minding his own business. And thus ends this part of the story.

December 6, 2010

British parents unable to say no, may get Nanny(state) to do it for them

Filed under: Britain, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:34

Apparently, British parents are so fearful of the disapproval of their own children that they’re afraid to say “no”:

Retailers selling sexualised products aimed at children could face new restrictions under plans being considered by the government.

An inquiry to explore whether rules should prevent the marketing of items such as “Porn star” T-shirts or padded bras to children has been set up.

A code of conduct on “age appropriate” marketing and a new watchdog are among plans being considered by the review.

Children’s Minister Sarah Teather said parents faced a tidal wave of pressure.

She said: “Parents often find themselves under a tidal wave of pressure, buffeted by immense pester power from their children for the latest product, craze or trend.

“I want this review to look at how we can equip parents to deal with the changing nature of marketing, advertising and other pressures that are aimed at their children.”

Parents need the government to step in and protect them from “pester power”? Pathetic.

December 4, 2010

QotD: “Every futuristic vision that starts with a clean slate has a genocide or an apocalypse lurking in it”

Filed under: Media, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:11

Here’s a clip of HG Wells in 1943 predicting the demise of the newspaper, as people abandon print journalism in favor of using their telephones for up-to-the-minute news.

In one way, it’s very prescient — “using the telephone to get the news” isn’t so far off from what we do on the web today. But in another way, it’s exactly wrong (after all, it’s been nearly 70 years and there are still newspapers), And it’s wrong in a way that futurists are often wrong: it assumes a clean break with history and the positive extinction of the past. It predicts an information landscape that is reminiscent of the Radiant Garden Cities that Jane Jacobs railed against: a “modern” city that could only be built by bulldozing the entire city that stood before it and building something new on the clean field that remained. Every futuristic vision that starts with a clean slate has a genocide or an apocalypse lurking in it. Real new cities are build through, within, around, and alongside of the old cities. They evolve.

As Bruce Sterling says, “The future composts the past.” What happened to newspapers is what happened to the stage when films were invented: all the stuff that formerly had to be on the stage but was better suited to the new screen gradually migrated off-stage and onto the screen (and when TV was invented, all the “little-screen” stories that had been shoehorned onto the big screen moved to the boob-tube; the same thing is happening with YouTube and TV today). Just as Twitter is siphoning off all the stuff we used to put on blogs that really wanted to be a tweet.

Cory Doctorow, “Newspapers are dead as mutton – HG Wells, 1943 (No, they’re not)”, BoingBoing, 2010-12-03

December 3, 2010

Pay no attention to the statisticians behind the curtain

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Environment, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:23

James Delingpole has a handy guide to assure you that man made global warming is still happening:

“It’s all actually a sign that man made global warming is very much a live issue and that there’s more of it happening than ever,” says a top scientist, who holds the British record for securing grant-funding for global warming research projects so he must know what he’s talking about.

“Look at the Met office,” the scientist goes on. “They’ve just told us that 2010 is the hottest year since records began in 1850 and even though the stupid Central England Temperature record tells us something quite different and even though the year hasn’t actually finished yet they must know what they’re talking about and they definitely can’t have fiddled the data because the Met office is part of the government and they wouldn’t lie or get things wrong which is why that barbecue summer was such a scorcher.”

The big problem is, the scientist said, is that the public are really stupid. They think just because Dr David Viner of the Climatic Research Unit said in the Independent in 2000 that soon there’d be no snow because of global warming, when what he actually meant was that soon there’d be lots of snow and that this would be “proof” of global warming. The interviewer just missed out the word “proof” that’s all because journalists are lazy that way.

Yes, yes, confusing mere “weather” with climate again, I’m sure.

December 2, 2010

Smug, but nursing that inferiority complex: urban Canada in a nutshell

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:28

John Geddes seems puzzled by the apparent contradiction:

Can we settle on the putdown of preference when it comes to right-wingers expressing their disdain for Canada?

They often resort to either of two seemingly contradictory, but equally condescending, lines about Canadians: we are insufferable in our sense of moral superiority, or we exhibit an equally tiresome inferiority complex.

Now, I’m willing to take my lumps, but do they have to come from both directions at once? Can’t you decide if my national ego is obnoxiously over-developed or pathetically under-developed?

I can only assume that Mr. Geddes hasn’t attended too many parties in Toronto or Ottawa. Both psychological maladies are often displayed by the same people . . . sometimes in the same conversation. Torontonians in particular are capable of sneering at vulgar Americans in one moment, then fretting that they don’t pay enough attention to our “world class” city in the next. Short of finding a way of expressing both thoughts simultaneously, I’d say that was a strong indication that urban Canadians can hold both thoughts without an overwhelming sense of contradiction.

December 1, 2010

“London Calling” to come to the big screen

Filed under: Britain, Media — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:50

Fans of The Clash, your film is in production:

The creation of classic album London Calling by punk band The Clash is to form the basis of a new music biopic.

Former Clash members Paul Simonon and Mick Jones will executive produce the film, named after the 1979 record.

Playwright Jez Butterworth will pen the script, which will tell how producer Guy Stevens worked with the band to create their most celebrated disc.

This should be good for stirring up spirited debate

Filed under: Media, Science — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:52

Sarah Bee reports on the kerfuffle around Satoshi Kanazawa’s book Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature:

Women long for the classic Barbie figure with big boobs, long blonde hair and blue eyes because it makes men want to impregnate them, an evolutionary psychologist has proclaimed.

London School of Economics reader Satoshi Kanazawa has successfully manipulated the more malleable and shameless news outlets into excitedly regurgitating the provocative theories contained in his book, Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature. He explains that the traditional attributes of the buxom blonde babe have evolutionary advantages, as the Daily Mail duly recounts.

Big boobs are supposedly indicative of fertility, along with a large waist-to-hip ratio. Blonde hair displays grey hairs less obviously, thus concealing age — men prefer the younger bird for a better shot at passing on their DNA, sensibly enough.

Blue eyes, Kanazawa points out, more clearly display pupil dilation, which occurs when the peepers’ owner sees something she likes. Thus a man can tell more quickly if a blue-eyed woman fancies a bit or not, saving precious sharking time at the bar.

Kanazawa further postulates that women are getting hotter and having lovelier daughters, while men are regrettably as fugly as ever they were. Beautiful women have more children than the overlooked homely types, and also have more female children, and on it goes in a wondrous babeification of the species.

This is a case where the science may point in a direction that is so politically and socially unwelcome that everyone just ignores it. Or it could be a huge joke to put the politically correct folks into a lather. Pick your option and season to taste.

Five Books interview with P.J. O’Rourke

Filed under: Books, Economics, Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:05

P.J. O’Rourke is asked to talk about five books from the field of political satire:

P J O’Rourke talks Swift, Huxley, Orwell and Waugh and says we now live in the world of 1984 but, instead of being a horror show, a television that looks back at you is just a pain in the ass. It’s 1984-Lite. Sad in one way, but a relief in another.

The category of political satire books is simply closed. The top five are so good that in order to make any surprising choices one has to go a long way down to the next level.

[. . .]

I’ll be careful. Animal Farm and 1984.

Yes. One is comic satire and the other is tragicomic satire.

Let’s start with the comic.

Well, Animal Farm sticks in everybody’s mind. All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others. Again, something read twice. I read it for the first time when I was 14 or 15 and it was a funny story about badly behaved animals and then I read it again at college and someone pointed out to me that this was sharp social satire. I thought it was an animal story, a kids’ book, but when I took another look at it I realised what he was getting at. The Soviet leadership was pretty well represented there. But one of the things that’s interesting to me about both Animal Farm and 1984 is that they are warnings against collectivism from a man of the left. Sure, any old Tory or Republican might be likely to make this point, though not so well, perhaps, nor so amusingly, but the fact that it comes from a man of the left is interesting. It seems to me to be something Orwell never fully came to grips with. Maybe if he’d lived longer…

What do you mean?

The necessity for collectivism under his leftist ideals and yet the danger of collectivism no matter who it’s done by seems like something he really wrestled with. I think we all buy the necessity for collectivism in a way.

[. . .]

Have you actually been to Sweden? I’ve never been, but I find myself constantly holding it up as the pinnacle of socialist marvellousness. It could be a complete shit-hole for all I know.

I have been and you know what it is? It’s very foreign. It’s full of Swedes. I mean, there are a few immigrants, and it has more now than it did 15 years ago when I was there, but Swedes are really Swedish. They are just remarkably alike. So, when you have a country of only eight and a half million people and they’re very like each other and you take 80 per cent of their income away and redistribute it through political means and they go: ‘Ya, ya, dat’s vot I vonted! Abba records! Herring and a PhD!’ And it’s all okey-dokey. But if you take a country as diverse as the United States and you take everything away from everybody and redistribute it — oh my God, there’d be hell to pay! I mean, some people would want guns, and some people… I wouldn’t even want to ask what some people would want.

[. . .]

1984.

That’s satire more in the Roman mode. The usual definition of satire is humour used to a moral end for a moral purpose, and there’s certainly a moral purpose to 1984 but it’s not funny really. I mean there is a certain dark humour to rewriting history and things going down a memory hole.

It’s funny in the Russian sense of the word.

I like that. Believe me, I’ll steal that phrase.

I’ll see you in court.

It’s sort of like being popular in Japan.

The inevitable convergence of new technology with sex

Filed under: Media, Randomness, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:33

PC World looks at the latest convergence of all the sex-obsessed geeks in the world and the latest consumer electronics toys:

It’s practically the universal rule of electronics: Where there’s technology, there’s sex. Embrace it or shun it, but it’s the way of the world.

Now, it looks like Microsoft’s new Kinect may be the latest gadget to fall prey to prurient interests. The Kinect is undergoing a series of experiments designed to turn its motion-sensitive virtual gaming into motion-sensitive virtual mating.

Oh, come on — are you really that surprised?

The original term was “teledildonics”, which has the virtue of allowing you to discuss it without quite giving away the true subject.

If you want to know about the possibilities of Kinect sex, just ask Kyle Machulis. Machulis, aka “qdot,” runs a site called slashdong.org (Google it at your own risk). The site, which I probably shouldn’t mention by name more than once, focuses on the meeting point between sex and tech. It featured a blog this week exploring the idea of X-rated uses for Kinect-enabled Xboxes (hat tip to the crew from CNET for finding the page).

In the blog, Machulis — who was recently cited by New Scientist as a Kinect-hacking authority — observes how the Kinect is able to use depth in order to identify a person’s body shape. He goes on to note, however, that Microsoft’s gaming console really tracks the human body “as a whole,” looking at “major geometric features” of a user’s form. This doesn’t bode well for the prospect of Kinect sex; without getting too graphic, let’s just say that the primary anatomy involved in intimate relations isn’t exactly a “major geometric feature.” Sorry, fellas.

New technology is notoriously prone to being harnessed to the interests of prurience . . . after Gutenberg and his competitors got the mass-produced bible business going, one of the next profitable niches to be explored was the erotic/pornographic book market.

November 30, 2010

Apparently, the only solution is for us to all die off

Filed under: Americas, Environment, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:43

James Delingpole has some entertainment paraphrasing the Cancun climate talks:

Professor Kevin Anderson, Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, said today in a quote I’ve made up but which is only slightly less absurd than what he actually said:

“Since the hacked Climategate emails, we expert Climate Scientists have come in for a lot of stick from sceptics and deniers in the pay of Big Oil who claim that we’re just a bunch of misanthropic eco-fascists for whom freedom of choice is a concept more abhorrent than a baby polar bear pickled in shale oil. But nothing could be further from the truth. We believe that it should be entirely up to the people of the earth how they choose to kill themselves. If they don’t wish to follow any of the fun suggestions outlined in the Royal Society’s latest paper ‘So you’ve decided to die for Mother Gaia?’, we’re more than happy to send round a team of our experts to do the job for them.”

Meanwhile, a spokesman for David Cameron said he believed an outbreak of mass extinction would be “Great for Britain. Great for jobs.” He pointed out that after the Black Death in the mid-fourteenth century, there had been some kind of similar economic revival as a result of there being more land, or people dying, or class barriers breaking down or some such, but that the exact details would have to wait for the forthcoming report on history teaching by Simon Schama, entitled: “Why death is the very least Britain deserves for the despicable colonial record which shames us all!”

Assange says next target is a “major American bank”

Filed under: Media, Technology, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:35

Julian Assange talked to Forbes about the next big WikiLeaks release of confidential data:

Early next year, Julian Assange says, a major American bank will suddenly find itself turned inside out. Tens of thousands of its internal documents will be exposed on Wikileaks.org with no polite requests for executives’ response or other forewarnings. The data dump will lay bare the finance firm’s secrets on the Web for every customer, every competitor, every regulator to examine and pass judgment on.

When? Which bank? What documents? Cagey as always, Assange won’t say, so his claim is impossible to verify. But he has always followed through on his threats. Sitting for a rare interview in a London garden flat on a rainy November day, he compares what he is ready to unleash to the damning e-mails that poured out of the Enron trial: a comprehensive vivisection of corporate bad behavior. “You could call it the ecosystem of corruption,” he says, refusing to characterize the coming release in more detail. “But it’s also all the regular decision making that turns a blind eye to and supports unethical practices: the oversight that’s not done, the priorities of executives, how they think they’re fulfilling their own self-interest.”

November 29, 2010

Oh noes! WikiLeaks show “undiplomatic” side of US diplomacy

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Italy, Media, Politics, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:43

The latest release of WikiLeaks’ cache of US government documents shows the undiplomatic side of things:

The documents obtained by the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, some of which describe allies and adversaries in starkly blunt terms, could undermine the Obama administration’s efforts to improve ties that have frayed with some key countries in Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere.

As reported by The New York Times and other media, the cables at times deride or mock foreign officials, calling Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi a “feckless” partier and describe Afghan President Hamid Karzai as “weak” and “easily swayed.”

Below are highlights of the embarrassing comments from the new WikiLeaks documents.

— One July 2009 cable from the State Department’s intelligence bureau, posted by The New York Times, contains instructions to U.S. diplomats for collecting intelligence on the United Nations.

The directive, from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, urges diplomats to collect biographical information on U.N. personnel, including such personal data as telephone, cellphone, pager and fax numbers and e-mail addresses; credit card account numbers; frequent flyer account numbers, work schedules, and Internet and intranet “handles” (or nicknames).

Here we go: a perfect example of government duplication of effort. Everyone knows it’s cheaper to buy this information from Facebook!

Other “worldshaking” revelations include:

The newspaper says one 2008 cable characterizes the relationship between Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s president, and its Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as a partnership in which Medvedev, who has the grander title, “plays Robin to Putin’s Batman.”

It also says a cable describes Italy’s Berlusconi as “feckless, vain and ineffective as a modern European leader.” One cable from Rome to Washington describes Berlusconi as “physically and politically weak” and asserts that his “frequent late nights and penchant for partying hard mean he does not get sufficient rest.”

In other words, pretty much common knowledge.

Update: William A. Jacobson thinks this is the Jimmy Carter moment for Barack Obama:

The U.S. Embassy takeover in Tehran on November 4, 1979, was the start of 444 days which came to define Jimmy Carter. The U.S. government was revealed to be powerless and the President weak. Those among us who were alive and conscious during those days have embedded the feelings of helplessness.

There have been many comparisons of Barack Obama to Jimmy Carter, focused on the economy. But the continuing leak of documents by Wikileaks has become for Obama what the Iranian hostage crisis was to Carter.

November 27, 2010

Fry and Laurie Reunited, part 1

Filed under: Britain, Humour, Media — Tags: — Nicholas @ 12:17

November 26, 2010

“[T]he anti-TSA movement … is really a front for the Koch brothers”

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:46

Justin Raimondo pours scorn on the recent anti-libertarian hit piece in The Nation:

Speaking of implausible fiction, The Nation recently ran a piece by Mark “I spit on libertarians” Ames and Yasha Levine, which determined that the anti-TSA movement — that seems to have sprung up like a last gasp of life from the old America — is really a front for the Koch brothers, two formerly libertarian billionaires who have become the deus ex machina of clueless “progressive” commentators who cannot otherwise explain the explosion of anti-government anti-authoritarian populism currently upending politics. Glenn Greenwald seems to have taken care of the Ames-Levine fantasists, putting them in their proper place as apologists for the Obama regime and all its works, but one more thing needs to be said:

If Ames and Levine are going to become the “go to” team for the dirt on libertarians, such as it is, they ought to learn their subject. Because the very idea of Charles and David Koch leading a national resistance movement involving civil disobedience on a massive scale is laughable: to anyone who knows them, or knows of them in more than a glancing way, this can only provoke gales of unrestrained laughter. It is sheer laziness to believe this. Indeed, if only the Brothers Koch, and the plethora of organizations their money has funded, were that radical! Unfortunately, they are not: a stodgy, boring conservatism marks their both their methods and their politics, and always has.

Ames and Levine need to do some real research. It was the anti-Koch wing of the libertarian movement, centered around LewRockwell.com, that first gave John Tyner’s act of defiance the publicity and velocity that made it go viral. And if LRC is a front for the Koch brothers, then we have truly entered Bizarro World. In that case, so too is Antiwar.com a Koch front — and so why have we been doing this fundraising campaign for the past two weeks, begging our readers to save us from oblivion?

Gee, it seems like that check from the Kochs got lost in the mail! Charles, could you please look into that? Thanks.

H/T to Matt Welch for the link.

November 25, 2010

Publius argues against Julian Fantino’s candidacy in Vaughan

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:50

Publius thinks that Julian Fantino does not deserve the easy ride he’s getting in his attempt to win the Vaughan by-election:

The image of the crime-fighting crusader contrasts sharply with the OPP’s inaction during the occupation of the Douglas Creek Estate. Fantino’s status as a star candidate for the Conservative Party belies opposition from genuine conservatives.

In his four years in power Stephen Harper has played bait and switch with the Canadian electorate. He has talked of conservative values, and fear mongered on the dangers of a Liberal-NDP coalition government, while running a government which is fiscally to the Left of those of Paul Martin and Jean Chretien. In Julian Fantino he has again offered Canadians a false bill of goods, a law and order candidate who, as OPP commissioner, failed to uphold basic law and order.

What has allowed the Prime Minister to get away, so far, with the candidacy of Julian Fantino is the near silence the MSM has offered on the Caledonia tragedy. With the honourable exception of Christie Blatchford, the media has largely ignored the near anarchy which persisted for years in a Canadian small town, all within driving distance of Toronto. Canadian television journalists should long ago have stopped, if only for a moment, chasing down crooked used car salesmen, and paid attention to what should have been the biggest news story of the last five years. Placing the violence of Caledonia in Canadian living rooms, might have ended the tragedy and pain much sooner.

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